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 FERDINAND BRUNETlfeRE 
 
 Of the French Academy 
 
 MANUAL 
 
 of the History 
 
 OF 
 
 Translated from the French by 
 
 Ralph Derechef 
 
 LONDON 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN 
 
 Paternoster Square 
 1898
 
 [All rights reserved.']
 
 
 PKELIMINAKY NOTICE 
 
 IN writing this "MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH 
 LITERATURE," which is at the same time, I do not 
 venture to say the promise, but at least the 
 " programme " of a more exhaustive and detailed 
 "History," I have given attention in particular 
 to certain points, which will be noted I hope ; but 
 as there is a chance of their being overlooked if 
 I have been unsuccessful in making them clear 
 the reader will excuse my insisting upon them in 
 this short preliminary notice. 
 
 r In the first place, to the customary division 
 ~ into Centuries, and in each century into Branches 
 i^ poetry set apart from prose ; comedy in one 
 section, the novel in a second, " eloquence " in 
 __a third I have substituted the division into 
 x Literary Periods. For since the periods of physics 
 dor those of chemistry are not dated from the 
 h- transition from one century to another, nor even 
 r-from the beginning of the reign of a sovereign, 
 _what grounds are there to date in this way those
 
 VI PRELIMINARY NOTICE 
 
 of the history of a literature ? Did writers reflect 
 in the course of the year 1800 that they were 
 about to belong to the nineteenth century ; and 
 are we to believe that they were at pains to differ 
 from themselves in view of the advent of January 
 1, 1801 ? At the same time, the division into 
 branches is in nowise less artificial or less 
 arbitrary, supposing these branches to become 
 differentiated, after the manner of species in the 
 natural world, solely by the struggle, against one 
 another, to which they are perpetually exposed. 
 What, for instance, is tragi-comedy, if not the 
 hesitation of the drama between the novel and 
 the tragedy ? And how shall we perceive this, 
 if we separate the study of the novel from that 
 of tragedy ? The truth is, Literary Periods ought 
 to be dated only from what are called literary 
 events 1 the appearance of the Lettres provin- 
 ciales, or the publication of the Genie du CJiristi- 
 anisme ; and this is not only in accordance with 
 reality, but is also the only mode there is of 
 giving the history of a, literature that continuity 
 of movement and life without which, in my 
 opinion, there is no such thing as history. 
 
 In the second place and with a view to making 
 this continuity still clearer I have not omitted 
 
 1 I would remark, however, that of the other divisions in use the 
 most natural would yet be the division into reigns or political periods ; 
 and hi this very book, for example, I have sketched some of the 
 literary characteristics common to all the regencies in French history.
 
 PRELIMINARY NOTICE Vll 
 
 to note those other influences on which it is 
 the habit to lay weight, the influence of race or 
 the influence of environment ; however, as I hold 
 that of all the influences which make themselves 
 felt in the history of a literature, the principal 
 is that of works on ivories, I have made it my 
 special concern to trace this influence and to follow 
 its continuous action. We wish to be different 
 from those who have preceded us in history : this 
 design is the origin and determining cause of 
 changes in taste as of literary revolutions ; there 
 is nothing metaphysical about it. The Pleiad of 
 the sixteenth century wished to do " something 
 different " from the school of Clement Marot. 
 Racine in his Andromaque wished to do " some- 
 thing different ' ' from Corneille in his Pertharite ; 
 and Diderot in his Pere de Famille wished to do 
 '"something different" from Moliere in his Tartuffe. 
 The romanticists of our own time wished to do 
 " something different " from the classicists. 1 It is 
 for this reason that I have not concerned myself 
 with the other influences, except in so far as the 
 succession of periods is not sufficiently explained 
 by the influence of works on works. The useless 
 multiplication of causes is to be avoided, and under 
 the pretext that literature is the expression of 
 
 1 There have also been writers who have wished to do " the same 
 thing " as their predecessors. I am well aware of the fact ! But in 
 the history of literature and of art, they are precisely the writers 
 who do not count.
 
 Viii PEELIMINARY NOTICE 
 
 society, the history of literature must not be 
 confounded with that of manners: They are quite 
 distinct. 
 
 Finally and for the reason that neither origin- 
 ality nor even genius consists in being without 
 ancestors or forerunners, but most often in being 
 successful where many others have failed I have 
 given more attention to the Periods of Transition 
 than is usually accorded them. Is it necessary 
 to point out in this connection, that in spite of 
 all that can be urged, " periods of transition " 
 exist ? And since it is usual to describe them in 
 natural history or physiology, why should they 
 not be described in the history of literature ? Not 
 only do not all periods offer the same character- 
 istics, but there are periods whose peculiar feature 
 is to be lacking in characteristics. Able to show 
 few lasting works, they are often prolific in writers 
 of every class and particularly in ideas. Is it a 
 law of the human mind that it often does not 
 perceive at the outset the whole import of its 
 discoveries or of its inventions? In any case, 
 scarcely anything is seen to give definite results 
 in literature or art that has not been frequently 
 attempted, and in vain. Herein, precisely, lies 
 the interest of the periods of transition. They 
 explain the other periods because they pave the 
 way for them, and they are quite unexplained by 
 the other periods ; and in this way they transform
 
 PRELIMINARY NOTICE IX 
 
 into a genealogical link the connecting link of 
 history, which would otherwise be chronological 
 or solely logical. 
 
 Such are the two or three points I have 
 endeavoured to keep in view in the kind of 
 Discourse, which forms something like a half 
 of this Manual. I now come to the points to 
 which I devote attention in the continuous Notes 
 which constitute its other half ; they should serve 
 the former half as illustrations or proofs. 
 
 I have made a selection among the writers, and 
 have only retained for notice those of whom it 
 seemed to me it could truly be said that some- 
 thing would be wanting in the " sequence " of 
 French literature, were they not to be men- 
 tioned. There are very great writers not many, 
 but there are two : Saint- Simon and Mme de 
 Sevigne of whom I have not spoken, because the 
 first Lettres de Mme de Sevigne having only seen 
 the light in 1725 or perhaps in 1734, 1 and the 
 Memoires de Saint-Simon in 1824, their influence 
 is not sensible in history. A method is a discipline 
 which must be rigorously observed if it is to 
 render all the services of which it is capable. 
 On the other hand, to other writers, to Honore 
 
 1 I note here, as an indication of my method, that in a more 
 exhaustive history, I should place towards 1734 what I should have 
 to say of the Lettres de Mme de Sevigne ; and I should connect with 
 them that ambition to figure as letter writers, which a great number 
 of clever women are seen to display about the date in question.
 
 PRELIMINAEY NOTICE 
 
 d'Urfe for example, I have given more space than is 
 usually accorded them. Finally, there are writers 
 of the stamp of Eollin or d'Aguesseau of whom 
 I have thought it right to " disencumber " history. 
 It is necessary to adopt this course when we begin 
 to fear that the attention may be growing wearied, 
 and especially that in consequence of this passing 
 under review in triumphal succession of so many 
 authors, the notion of the distinctions and distances 
 that separate them may end by being abolished. 
 
 Again, this book being a Manual I would 
 almost say an Aid to the Memory I have so 
 contrived these Notes, that each of them in its 
 kind, and in its rather narrow but also most clearly 
 denned scope, should be the outline or "summary" 
 of a complete study, and naturally I have pro- 
 portioned the dimensions of this study, as mathe- 
 matically as I have been able, to the true importance 
 of the writer who is its subject. I say " mathe- 
 matically," because in such a matter there should 
 be no intrusion of one's personal tastes; one does 
 not write a History of French Literature for the 
 purpose of giving expression in it to his own 
 opinions, but, very much as he draws up the map 
 of a large country, with a view to giving in it 
 a correct idea of the relief, relations and propor- 
 tions of the constituent parts. 
 
 Further always in order that the book might 
 be more useful and a more efficacious and constant
 
 PRELIMINAEY NOTICE XI 
 
 aid I have given very special attention to the 
 Bibliography of the subject. Qui scit ubi scientia 
 alt, ille est proximus habenti : this old proverb 
 is never more apposite than in connection with 
 literary history. In consequence, at the end of 
 each of these notices will be found an almost 
 complete enumeration of the works, and of the 
 best editions, with their dates, of the works of each 
 writer; while the notices begin with an enumera- 
 tion of the principal sources of information to 
 which reference can be made if it be desired. It 
 is even incumbent on the student to refer to 
 these sources : first, because he cannot neglect 
 them without exposing himself to making dis- 
 coveries that are not discoveries at all ; and in 
 the next place, because the very judgments formed 
 upon the works of our writers by their contem- 
 poraries and by those who have come after them 
 have become, as it were, incorporated with the 
 idea we form of them ourselves. The criticism 
 of Boileau, for instance, and that of Voltaire are 
 inseparable from the notion of the tragedy of 
 Eacine. I have also endeavoured to classify these 
 sources, and to arrange them in a manner that 
 in itself constitutes their criticism ; but this classi- 
 fication is still all too imperfect and for this 
 reason I do not insist upon it. 
 
 It only remains for me to apologise for the 
 errors that it will be only too easy to point out
 
 Xll PRELIMINARY NOTICE 
 
 in this book. I have spared no pains to prevent 
 there being too many of them of a serious or of 
 a too serious nature, for in a certain sense every 
 error of fact or in a date is serious in a Manual, 
 based, one flattered oneself, upon an exact chro- 
 nology as its firm foundation. But how is it 
 possible to verify thousands of dates and to assure 
 oneself of the exactitude of hundreds of facts 
 without the memory wearying and even the 
 eyesight being at a loss ? I shall therefore 
 thankfully accept all rectifications or corrections 
 that may kindly be brought to my notice. A 
 book of this nature only becomes what it is 
 susceptible of becoming by the lapse of time 
 and owing mainly to the indulgence and collabo- 
 ration of the public. 
 
 1897.
 
 PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION 
 
 IT would doubtless be impossible for me to find 
 a better or surer means of inviting the indulgence 
 of English readers for the present Manual, than 
 to offer it them for what it is : an application of 
 the doctrine of Evolution to the history of a great 
 literature. In this way the work is placed, as it 
 were, under the auspices of the great name of 
 Charles Darwin, and while it is not for me to 
 decide whether the illustrious author of the 
 " Origin of Species " ranks, as has been main- 
 tained, but little below or perhaps on a level with 
 Sir Isaac Newton in the history of modern 
 European ideas, it is certain that for some forty 
 years past his influence is everywhere to be traced. 
 I shall be happy if English readers see it to be at 
 work in the present volume. 
 
 It is not, indeed, that I wholly accept the 
 doctrine in question, and still less the conse- 
 quences that have been deduced from it in 
 
 xiii
 
 XIV PEEFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION 
 
 England itself, in Germany or in France. So far 
 as I am in a position to judge, and I am not a 
 man of science, Evolution is only an hypothesis ; 
 the variability of natural species, however probable 
 it may be, is not what is called proven ; and 
 admitting selection to be one of its modes of 
 operation or factors, there are assuredly many 
 others. Still, as I myself have more than once 
 remarked, the very serious objections that may be 
 urged, it is said, against the hypothesis in the 
 domain of natural history, lose much of their 
 weight when the doctrine is applied to the history 
 of literature or art, where it is a method as well as 
 a doctrine. Even supposing that species do not 
 vary, it would be an advantage to natural history 
 to study them as if they did; and of all the 
 classifications that have been suggested with a 
 view to bringing home to us, I do not say the 
 spectacle merely, but the movement of nature, the 
 genealogical classification is by far the most con- 
 venient, the most probable, and above all the most 
 in conformity with the greatest number of facts. 
 
 It is from the genealogical standpoint, then, 
 that I have endeavoured to study in the history 
 of French literature the perpetually changing 
 succession of ideas, authors and works ; and if 
 there be any novelty in this Manual it is con- 
 stituted by this attitude. 
 
 I am aware that serious objection is taken to
 
 PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION XV 
 
 the employment of this method in history. To 
 reply to many of the objections made would 
 doubtless be beyond the scope of this short 
 Preface, but among them is one graver, or 
 apparently graver, than the others, and I must 
 not pass it over entirely. What, it is said, is most 
 interesting, or solely interesting perhaps, in the 
 history of literature or art is the individual, 
 Shakespeare or Moliere, Milton or Bossuet, Pope 
 or Boileau, Swift or Voltaire, Burke or Mirabeau, 
 Tennyson or Lamartine, George Eliot or Honore 
 de Balzac ; and I wholly share this opinion. 
 Whether we study these writers in their works, 
 or whether in their works it be they themselves 
 that excite our preference, what interests us in 
 them is what distinguishes them from all other 
 writers, or what in them is irreducible and incom- 
 mensurable. In their own line they resemble 
 themselves alone, a characteristic that is the cause 
 of their glory or renown. But is not this pre- 
 cisely the characteristic that no method is capable 
 of dealing with ? and if we treat the writers who 
 possess it in conformity with the laws of the 
 evolutionary hypothesis, is it not at the expense 
 of the very originality that is their pre-eminent 
 quality ? Do we not rob them of their indi- 
 viduality by resolving it into its elements, and 
 make away with their singularity when we 
 decompose it ? At first sight it seems that such
 
 XVI PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION 
 
 is the case, but Darwin had answered this 
 objection in advance, while inasmuch as it can 
 scarcely be said that he had the exigencies of the 
 history of literature or art in view when framing 
 his reply, we have the more right to regard it as 
 convincing. 
 
 What, according to Darwin, is Natural Selec- 
 tion, and what are the conditions under which it 
 operates ? He has told us explicitly, and indeed 
 it is the definition of this power that his disciples, 
 in spite of his express declarations, have so often 
 taken to be a psychological Entity. In a given 
 species, among all of whose representatives the 
 observer had hitherto detected none but almost 
 insignificant differences, it is inevitable that there 
 should at length appear a specimen better endowed 
 than its fellows a bull, for instance, with excep- 
 tional horns, or a horse of exceptional swiftness. 
 Until this better endowed individual has appeared 
 there is no variation, and in consequence no 
 ground or adequate reason for the action of natural 
 selection. Neither "need" as Lamarck believed, 
 nor " environment " as Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire 
 supposed, is sufficient. Something more is indis- 
 pensable, and this something, for which Darwin 
 expressly states he cannot account, is the appari- 
 tion of the profitable or useful variety ; and it is 
 precisely the fixation or consolidation of this 
 variety that constitutes the principle of Evolution.
 
 PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION XV11 
 
 Let us now apply this theory to the history of 
 literature or art. A given variety of literature, for 
 instance, the English drama of the sixteenth 
 century, or the French comedy of the seventeenth 
 century, or the English novel of the eighteenth 
 century is in process of development, slowly 
 organising itself under the double influence of the 
 interior and exterior " environment." The move- 
 ment is slow and the differentiation almost 
 insensible. Suddenly, and without its being 
 possible to give the reason, a Shakespeare, a 
 Moliere, or a Richardson appears, and forthwith 
 not only is the variety modified, but new species 
 have come into being : psychological drama, the 
 comedy of character, the novel of manners. The 
 superior adaptability and power of survival of the 
 new species are at once recognised and proved, 
 indeed, in practice. It is in vain that the older 
 species attempt to struggle : their fate is sealed in 
 advance. The successors of Richardson, Moliere, 
 and Shakespeare copy these unattainable models 
 until, their fecundity being exhausted and by 
 their fecundity I mean their aptitude for struggling 
 with kindred and rival species the imitation is 
 changed into a routine which becomes a source 
 of weakness, impoverishment and death for the 
 species. I shall not easily be persuaded that this 
 manner of considering the history of literature or 
 art is calculated to detract from the originality
 
 XV111 PEEFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION 
 
 of great artists or great writers. On the contrary, 
 as is doubtless perceived, it is precisely their 
 individuality that is responsible for the constitu- 
 tion of new species, and in consequence for the 
 evolution of literature and art. 
 
 Such, in my eyes, is the chief advantage of the 
 application of the evolutionary doctrine or method 
 to the history of literature or art. Other advan- 
 tages could be enumerated, but this is the 
 principal : the combination or conciliation of 
 " hero worship," as understood by Emerson or 
 Carlyle, with the doctrine of slowly operating 
 influences and the action of contemporary 
 circumstances. 
 
 This is the task I have attempted in the present 
 Manual, in which those who are interested in the 
 history of French literature will find, I trust, 
 useful information, but the true object and primary 
 intention of which has been to try what results 
 are to be obtained in criticism from a method 
 that has renewed all around us in the course of 
 the last forty years. It will be for the reader to 
 decide whethe* I have been successful. But if 
 I should have failed, it is not the method but I 
 myself, and I only, that is to blame ; moreover, 
 in laying down the principle, I shall have given 
 the reader the means of checking and rectifying 
 my work. " Neither Nature nor even God, it has 
 been said, produce all their great works at a
 
 PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION XIX 
 
 stroke : a plan must be made before building is 
 commenced, you must draw before you can paint," 
 and that this is the case is in absolute conformity 
 with the very spirit of the evolutionary method. 
 It is not in a day, nor even in a hundred years, or 
 a thousand years, that one given species transforms 
 or changes itself into another. Darwin was well 
 aware of this truth, which he has repeated often 
 enough ! Similarly in history or criticism, time, 
 a great deal of time, is necessary for a method 
 to render all the services that may rightly be 
 expected of it ; while one of the worst errors it 
 is possible to commit is to make the method 
 responsible for the shortcomings of the author. 
 
 F. B.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 842-1498 
 
 Pages 1-39. 
 
 I. The Formation of the French Language, p. 1 ; II. The Evo- 
 lution of the Epopee, p. 4; III. The Song Writers, p. 13; 
 IV. The Fabliaux, p. 17; V. Allegorical Literature, p. 19; 
 VI. The Farce de Pathelin, p. 27 ; VII. Francois Villon, p. 29; 
 VIII. The Mysteries, p. 32 ; IX. Philippe de Commynes, p. 37. 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 THE CLASSIC AGE 
 1498-1801 
 
 fogies 40-394. 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 
 1498-1610 
 
 Pages 40-107. 
 xxi
 
 XX11 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 FIRST PERIOD 
 From Villon to Ronsard 
 
 1498-1550 
 
 Pages 40-54. 
 
 I. Clement Marot, p. 40;^II. Marguerite de Valois, p. 42; III. 
 Francois Rabelais, p. 44; IV. The Amadis, p. 50 ; V. The Lyons 
 School, p. 51. 
 
 SECOND PERIOD 
 The Teachings of Antiquity 
 
 1550-1580 
 
 Pages 54-80. 
 
 The Renaissance of Poetry. I. The Formation of the Pleiad, 
 p. 54 ; II. Joachim du Bellay, p. 56 ; III. Pierre de Ronsard, 
 p. 58 ; IV. Jean-Antoine de Baif, p. 62. 
 
 Scholars and Translators. V. Henri Estienne, p. 63; VI. Jacques 
 Amyot, p. 66 ; VII. Jean Bodin, p. 69. 
 
 The Origin of the Classic Drama. VIII. The First Period of the 
 Classic Drama, p. 71 ; IX. Robert G-arnier, p. 73 ; X. The 
 Beginnings of Comedy, p. 75 ; XI. The Work of the Pleiad, 
 p. 77. 
 
 THIRD PERIOD 
 
 From the Publication of Montaigne's " Essays " to the 
 Publication of the " Astree " 
 
 1580-1610 
 
 Pages 80-107. 
 
 Bernard Palissy, p. 80; II. Francois de la Noue, p. 82; III. 
 Guillaume du Bartas, p. 84 ; IV. Michel de Montaigne, p. 86 \^- 
 V. The Satire Menippee, p. 92 ; VI. Pierre Charron, p. 93 ; VII. 
 Guillaume du Vair, p. 96 ; VIII. Francois de Sales, p. 98 ; IX 
 Mathurin Regnier, p. 102 ; X. Honore d'Urfe, p. 103.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS XX111 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 1610-1722 
 
 Pages 107-281. 
 
 FOURTH PERIOD 
 
 From the Formation of the "Precious" Society to the 
 First Representation of the " Precieuses Ridicules " 
 
 1610-1659 
 
 Pages 107-168. 
 
 I. The Hotel Rambouillet, p. 107 ; II. Irregulars and Libertines, 
 p. 113; III. Alexandre Hardy, p. 116; IV. Francois de Mal- 
 herbe, p. 118 ; ^L Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, p. 121 ; VI. 
 Claude Favre de Vaugelas, p. 125; VII. Pierre Corneille, p. 
 127^VIII. The Foundation of the French Academy, p. 134 \*- 
 IX. The Origin of Jansenism, p. 137^-^X. Rene Descartes, p. 
 139 ; XI. Port-Royal and the Arnaulds, p. 143 ; XII. The Novel 
 since the " Astree," p. 145; XIII. The Heroic Poem, p. 150; 
 XIV. Comedy from 1640 to 1658, p. 154; XV. Burlesque, p. 
 157 ; XVI. Blaise Pascal, p. 159. 
 
 FIFTH PERIOD 
 
 From the First Performance of the " Precieuses Ridicules" 
 to the Quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns 
 
 1659-1687 
 
 Pages 168-219. 
 
 I 
 
 Francois due de la Rochefoucauld 
 
 Pages 168-171. 
 II 
 
 Jean-Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere 
 
 Pages 171-183. ./
 
 XXIV TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 III 
 
 Jean de la Fontaine 
 
 Pages 183-191. 
 
 IV 
 
 Jacques-Benigne Bossuet 
 Pages 191-202. 
 
 V 
 
 Jean Racine 
 
 Pages 203-210. J 
 VI 
 
 Louis Bourdaloue 
 
 Pages 210-214. 
 VII 
 
 Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux 
 
 Pages 214-219. 
 
 SIXTH PERIOD 
 
 From the Cabal Organised against " Phedre " to the issue 
 of the "Lettres Persanes" 
 
 1677-1722 
 
 Pages 220-280 
 
 I. The Beginnings of French Opera, p. 220 ;, II. Nicolas Male- 
 branche, p. 222 ; III. Pierre Bayle, p. 225; IV. Fontenelle, 
 p. 231 ; V. The Reorganisation of the Academy of Sciences, 
 p. 236 ; VI. Charles Perrault, p. 238 ; VII. Jean de la Bruyere, 
 p. 241 ; VIII. Fenelon, p. 247 ; JX. The Quarrel between the 
 Ancients and Moderns, p. 255/ X. Jean-Baptiste Massillon, 
 p. 259 ; XI. French Tragedy from 1680-1715, p. 261 / j XII. 
 Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, p. 265 ; XIII. Comedy from the time 
 of Moliere to that of Destouches, p. 267 ; XIV. Alain-Rene Le 
 Sage, p. 272 ; XV. Mme de Lambert's Salon, p. 277.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS XXV 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 
 1720-1801 
 
 Pages 281-393. 
 
 SEVENTH PERIOD 
 
 From the " Lettres Persanes " to the Publication of the 
 " Encyclopedia " 
 
 1722-1750 
 
 Pages 281-311 
 
 I. Montesquieu, p. 281 ; II. Marivaux, p. 287 ; III. The Abbe 
 Prevost, p. 292 ; IV. Pierre-Claude Nivelle de la Chaussee, p. 
 295 ; V. The First Period of Voltaire's Life, p x> 207 ; VI. Jean- 
 Baptiste Gresset, p. 305 ; VII. Vauvenargues, p. 307 ; VIII. 
 Charles Pineau Duclos, p. 309. 
 
 EIGHTH PERIOD 
 The Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedists 
 
 1750-1765 
 
 Pages 312-333. 
 
 I. The Early Phases of the Undertaking, p. 314 ; II. Jean Le 
 Rond d'Alembert, p. 316 ; III. Denis Diderot, p. 317 ; IV. The 
 First Difficulties Encountered by the Encyclopedia, p. 319 ; 
 V. The Second Period of Voltaire's Life, p. 320 ; VI. After the 
 Suppression of the Encyclopedia, p. 325 ; VII. Claude-Adrien 
 Helvetius, p. 327 ; VIII. Frederic-Melchior Grimm, p. 328 ; IX. 
 The Encyclopedic Propaganda, p. 329. 
 
 NINTH PERIOD 
 
 From the " Encyclopedia " to the " Genie du 
 Christianisme " 
 
 1765-1800 
 
 Pages 333-393. 
 
 I. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, p. 333; II. Michel-Jean Sedaine, p. 
 349 ; III. The Last Period of Voltaire's Life, p. 351 ; IV. The
 
 XXVI TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Economists, p. 361 ; V. Pierre- Augustine Caron de Beau- 
 marchais, p. 365 ; VI. The End of Tragedy, p. 368 ; VII. Andre- 
 Marie de Chenier, p. 372 ; VIII. Buffon, p. 377 ; IX. Condorcet, 
 p. 385 ; X. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, p. 388. 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 MODERN TIMES 
 
 1801-1875 
 
 Pages 394-531. 
 
 FIRST PERIOD 
 
 From the Publication of the " Genie du Christianisme " 
 to the First Performance of the " Burgraves " 
 
 J 
 
 1802-1843 
 
 Pages 394-448. 
 
 I. Chateaubriand, p. 394; II. Mme de Stae'l, p. 401; III. The 
 Ideologists, p. 405; IV. M. de Bonald, p. 407; V. Joseph de 
 Maistre, p. 408 ; VI. Paul-Louis Courier, p. 412 ; VII. Beranger, 
 p. 414 ; VIII. Lamennais, p. 419 ; IX. Stendhal, p. 424 ; X. 
 Lamartine, p. 428 ; XI. The Sorbonne Triumvirate, p. 434 ; 
 XII. Augustin Thierry, p. 437 ; XIII. Romantic Drama, p. 
 438; XIV. Alfred de Musset, p. 441; XV. Prosper Merimee, 
 p. 444 ; XVI. Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 446. 
 
 SECOND PEEIOD 
 
 From the Performance of the " Burgraves " to the Publi- 
 cation of the "Legende des Siecles" 
 
 1843-1859 
 
 Pages 449-489. 
 
 I 
 
 Honore de Balzac 
 
 Pages 449-460.^/
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS XXV11 
 
 II 
 
 Michelet 
 
 Pages 460-465. 
 Ill 
 
 Victor Hugo 
 
 Pages 465-478 
 
 IV 
 George Sand 
 
 Pages 478-483. 
 
 V 
 
 Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve 
 
 Pages 483-489} 
 
 THIBD PERIOD 
 Naturalism 
 
 Pages 489-531. 
 
 I. Alfred de Vigny, p. 489; II. Theophile Gautier, p. 493; III. 
 Emile Augier, p. 497 ; IV. Octave Feuillet, p. 501 ; V. Leconte 
 de Lisle, p. 504 ; VI. English Influence, p. 507 ; VII. Gustave 
 Flaubert, p. 509 ; VIII. Taine, p. 513 ; IX. Ernest Renan, p. 
 517 ; X. Charles Baudelaire, p. 525 ; XI. German Influence, 
 p. 524 ; XII. Alexandre Dumas fils, p. 525.
 
 OF 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 I 
 
 " I have had occasion a philosophic historian has 
 somewhere said to study the political institutions of 
 the Middle Ages in France, England, and Germany ; 
 
 THE AUTHORS AND THEIE WORKS 
 I. The Formation of the French Language. 
 
 1. THK SOURCES. Amedee Thierry, Histoire des Gaulois, and 
 Histoire (le la Gaule sous la domination romainc; Roger de Bello- 
 guet, Ethnologic gauloise, Paris, 1861-1868 ; Fustel de Coulanges, 
 Histoire des Institutions politiques de I'ancienne France, vol. i., 2nd 
 edition, Paris, 1887. 
 
 G. Korting, Encyclopaedic und Methodologie der romanischen 
 1'liilologie, Heilbronn, 1884-1886; G. Grober, Grundriss der roman- 
 ischen Philologie, Strasburg, 1888-1896. 
 
 Raynouard, Lexique roman, Paris, 1838-1844 ; Edelestand du 
 Meril : Exsai philosophique sur la formation de la langue fran- 
 
 2 i
 
 2 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and as I advanced with this work, I was filled with 
 astonishment on noting the prodigious similarity that 
 is to be met with in all these laws; and I admired the 
 fact, that peoples so different and communicating so 
 little with each other should have been able to assure 
 themselves laws so alike." [Tocqueville, L'Ancien Regime 
 et la Revolution, book i., chap, iv.] The same admiration 
 or the same astonishment is inspired by an attentive study 
 of the European literature of the Middle Ages. Nothing 
 is so similar to a Chanson de geste as another Chanson 
 de geste, while as much may be said of the likeness of 
 one Romance of the Bound Table to another Romance 
 of the Round Table, of one Tale to another Tale, or 
 finally, of one Mystery Play to another Mystery Play ; 
 and two drops of water are not more alike, or, to use 
 a better comparison, two classic tragedies or two natu- 
 ralistic novels. At a first examination one may fancy he 
 
 caise, Paris, 1852 ; F. Diaz : Grammaire des langues romanes, 
 translated into French by Gaston Paris and Morel-Fatio, 3rd edition, 
 Paris, 1874-1876 ; W. Meyer-Liibke, Grammaire des langues 
 romanes, translated by Rabiet and Doutrepont, Paris, 1890-1895 ; 
 the Historical Grammars of Darmesteter, Brunot, Etienne, Schwan, 
 and Behrens ; the Etymological Dictionaries of Diez, Scheler, 
 Korting ; and the Historical Dictionaries of Forcellini for Classical 
 Latin ; du Cange for Low Latin ; La Curne Sainte-Palaye and F. 
 Godefroy for Old French. 
 
 2. THE SUCCESSIVE ELEMENTS OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE. 
 
 A. The Celtic element ; and of the difficulty of determining its 
 nature at the present day ; especially if the Celtic languages and the 
 Latin language are themselves sister languages. [Cf. Thurneysen, 
 Kelto-BomaniscJies ; and Zeuss, Grammatica celtica.~\ That if 
 the influence of the Celtic element is to be traced in French, 
 this would seem to be less the case in the vocabulary than 
 in the syntax ; and perhaps still less in the syntax than in the 
 pronunciation. Considerations on this subject ; and of the influence 
 of the conformation of the organs or of the nature of the water, 
 atmosphere, and locality upon pronunciation. That though the
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 3 
 
 detects differences, but when it comes to endeavouring 
 to point them out with precision, they disappear, and the 
 uniformity is complete. It would seem, in consequence, 
 that in the Middle Ages, a common mode of thinking 
 and feeling, enforced throughout Europe by the triple 
 authority of religion, the feudal system, and scholasticism, 
 kept under and indeed destroyed in literature all distinc- 
 tions of origin, race, and individuality. 
 
 Quis primus / . . . What is the origin of the Chansons 
 de geste ; and of our Romans de la Table-Eonde ? Is their 
 fountain-head Romance or Germanic ? or Celtic, perhaps, 
 unless it is to be held, like that of our Fabliaux, to 
 be Arab or Hindoo? The truth is, we are wholly in the 
 dark on the subject. This literature is without docu- 
 ments establishing its identity. [Cf . Pio Eajna, Le Origini 
 delV Epopea francese, Florence, 1884.] To say this, 
 moreover, does not suffice, and even when we know that 
 
 Celtic influence be ill-defined, still it cannot be explained away ; and 
 in its absence it would be impossible to explain the differentiation of 
 French, Spanish, and Italian. 
 
 B. The Latin element. Literary Latin and vulgar Latin ; 
 conquest and " Bomanisation " of Gaul; futility of "patriotic" 
 arguments in this connection. [Cf. Granier de Cassagnac, Les 
 Origincs de la langue francaise.] The hypothesis of Baynouard as 
 to the formation of a "Romance language" intermediary between 
 Low Latin or vulgar Latin and the New Latin languages ; to what 
 extent it can be upheld ; and, in any case, of the convenience it offers. 
 Deformation or transformation of vulgar Latin by local accents ; and 
 by the sole effect of time. Provincial linguistic peculiarities : dialects 
 and patois. 
 
 C. The Germanic element ; and in the first place the conditions 
 under which the " barbaric invasions " took place. [Cf. Fustel de 
 Coulanges, Histoire des Institutions, etc.] How and why it was that 
 the " Germanisation " of Gaul could not follow its " Bomanisation," 
 
 Gallia capta ferum victorem cepit . . . 
 Of certain categories of ideas and words that seem to have passed
 
 4 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 a particular Tale or Mystery saw the light for the first 
 time in France or in Italy, it is in vain that we endeavour 
 to recognise in it the marks of its origin, a local impress, 
 in a word, one of those "racial" characteristics to the 
 psychological or aesthetic determination of which the 
 attempt has too often been made in our time to reduce 
 the whole history of literature. In the same way there 
 is nothing more French about a Gothic cathedral opus 
 francigenum in Paris than in Cologne, or more German 
 about one in Cologne than about one in Canterbury. 
 And, in truth, the " races " of modern Europe merely 
 represent historical formations, whose literatures are less 
 their expression than one of their multiple " factors." 
 Whether we be Germans or Frenchmen, Italians, 
 Spaniards or Englishmen, in literature and art as in 
 history and politics, we have all been nations prior to 
 developing into " races." But before being nations we 
 
 from the German tongues into French [Cf. Gaston Paris, Litte- 
 rature francaise au Moyen Age] ; terms relating to warfare, archi- 
 tectural terms, maritime terms, etc. Whether the conclusion can 
 be drawn from these indications, that the Germanic element has left 
 a deep impression on the French language ? 
 
 3. THE EARLIEST SPECIMENS OF THE LANGUAGE. The Gloses de 
 Reichenau, seventh and eighth centuries ; The Serments de Stras- 
 bourg, 842 ; the Prose -de Saintc Eulalic, c. 880 ; the Homelie sur 
 Jonas, first half of the tenth century ; the Passion and the Vie de 
 saint Leger, second half of the tenth century ; the Vie de saint 
 Alexis, c. 1040. 
 
 II. The Evolution of the Epopee. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES.' Christoforo Nyrop, Storia delV Epopea fran- 
 cese nel media evo, translated from the Danish by Egidio Gorra, 
 Florence, 1886 ; Pio Eajna, Le origini dell' Epopea francese, 
 Florence, 1884 ; Leon Gautier, Les Epopees francaises, Paris, 2nd 
 
 1 As in the notes to this first chapter, we do not follow and for obvious reasons 
 the chronological order, but rather a systematic order, we shall follow this order 
 as well in the enumeration of the Sources, and we are less concerned with the date 
 of publication of the works than with the nature of their contents.
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 5 
 
 all formed but one homogeneous, indivisible, and, if the 
 term be permissible, inarticulate Europe feudal Europe, 
 the Europe of the Crusades ; and this is why the primary 
 characteristic of the French literature of the Middle Ages 
 is its uniformity. 
 
 Being uniform, it is also impersonal. By this is to 
 be understood that at no period has a writer put less of 
 his individuality into his work. It may be said that 
 almost all our Chansons might be by the same poet and 
 all our Metrical Tales by the same narrator. Even when 
 we know the authors, the works are none the less always 
 anonymous, after the manner, let us say, of the tragedies 
 of La Harpe which might be by Marmontel, and vice 
 versa. Is it that prevented from emancipating himself 
 from his social rank by the pressure, the number, and the 
 enduring constraint of the obligations that bind him down 
 to it, "the individual," serf or lord, clerk or layman, 
 
 edition, 1878-1894 ; Paulin Paris, Les Chansons de Geste, in I'Histoire 
 litteraire de la France, especially vols. xxii. and xxv. ; Godefroi 
 Kurth, Histoire poetique des Merovingiens, Brussels, 1893 ; Gaston 
 Paris, Histoire poetique de Charlemagne, Paris, 1865; Ambroise- 
 Firmin Didot, Essai de classification des romans de chevalerie, Paris, 
 1870. 
 
 Leopold Constans, Le roman de Thebes, Paris, 1890 ; Joly, Benoit 
 de Sainte-More et le roman de Troie, Paris, 1870; Paul Meyer, 
 Alexandre le Grand dans la litterature du Moyendge, Paris, 1886 ; 
 Arturo Graf, Roma nella memoria e nelle immaginazioni del 
 inedio evo, Turin, 1882. 
 
 Paulin Paris, Les Romans de la Table-Ronde, Paris, 1868-1877 ; 
 Birch-Hirschfeld, Die Sage vom Gral, Leipsic, 1877 ; Alfred Nutt, 
 Study on the Legend of tlie Holy Grail, London, 1888 ; Gaston 
 Paris, Les Romans de la Table-Ronde, in the Histoire litteraire de la 
 France, vol. xxx. ; J. Bedier, Les Lais de Marie de France, in the 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, October 15, 1891. 
 
 2. EVOLUTION OF THE EPOPEE. 
 
 A. The Heroic Epopee. Various forms of the epopee : the Maha- 
 bahrata ; the Homeric Epopee ; the Virgilian Epopee ; the Niebe-
 
 6 MANUAL OF THE HISTOKY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 monk or baron, does not belong to himself ? is the repre- 
 sentative of his order or his class before being himself ? 
 lacks at once the liberty, the leisure, and the stimulus he 
 would need to venture to distinguish himself from others? 
 The man who desires to be distinct from his fellows 
 can only effect his purpose by isolating himself as a first 
 step ; and the man of the Middle Ages does not seem to 
 have thought or even to have felt except as it were 
 corporately, as the member of a group or a mass. It is 
 doubtless to this cause that is to be attributed the poverty 
 of the lyrical vein during the Middle Ages. Herein, too, 
 lies in particular the explanation of that total absence of 
 all artistic preoccupation, which has been disguised under 
 the specious terms " spontaneity " or " naivete." "The 
 men of this period," it has been said, " are less given to 
 reflection than we are ; they do not observe themselves, 
 they live naively like children." [Cf. Gaston Paris, La 
 
 lungen ; the Epopee of Dante ; the French Epopee ; the Gerusalemme 
 liberata. That at its origin the essence of the epopee seems to 
 be : 1, the having an historical foundation, or a foundation believed 
 to be historical ; 2, the poetising of a conflict not merely between 
 " nationalities," but between " races " ; 3, and the personification of 
 the triumph of one of these races over the other in an " eponymous " 
 hero. That these characteristics once admitted, there can scarcely 
 be question of a Merovingian epopee ; and that a knowledge of 
 what were the " cantilenes " or vulgaria carmina that are supposed 
 to have preceded the national epopee becomes almost a matter of 
 indifference. Further, there is no occasion to examine whether the 
 French epopee is of " Romance " or " Germanic " origin; and still 
 less, to make the question one of patriotism. The precise moment 
 of the birth of the French epopee is that of the encounter or shock 
 of the East and West, of Islamism and Christianity, of the Arab and 
 the Frank; it is personified to begin with in Charles Martel, 
 who was confounded at a later period with his grandson Charle- 
 magne; and that in this way it can even be said "where" our 
 Chansons de geste came into existence : it was on the battle-field 
 of Poitiers.
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 7 
 
 Poesie du Moyen-Age] . And this remark is justified ! At 
 the same time, like children, they only experienced very 
 general or "typical" sentiments, whose expression is as 
 general as are the sentiments themselves ; and art is pre- 
 cisely an individual matter. What distinguishes one 
 painter from another is the different light in which each 
 of them sees the same model. The Middle Ages, for 
 their part, scarcely went further at first than noting 
 what was similar or identical in the model. In their 
 view all men resembled each other, much as in our 
 eyes all negroes or Chinamen are alike. And in reality 
 what is it diversifies human countenances, and by 
 diversifying them individualises them, unless it be the 
 reflection on them of an inward complexity, of a richness 
 or of an intensity of life unknown to the men of the 
 Middle Ages '? Their literature in consequence is very 
 general, is wanting in individual significance and also in 
 
 How from these characteristics of the epopee proper it is possible 
 to divide off its history. This history must have begun with the 
 songs of the Cycle of the King, with those, that is, of which Charle- 
 magne is the hero [Ex. the Chanson de Roland] ; to which succeeded 
 the songs of the Cycle de Garin de Montglane [Ex. the Chanson 
 <!' AUscans] , whose heroes continue the struggle between the great 
 Emperor and the Saracen ; next came the songs of the Feudal 
 Cycle [Ex. Renaud de Montauban] the heroes of which are the barons 
 in revolt against a royal authority that has ceased to fulfil its office. 
 It is to be noted that the songs of this last cj-cle coincided with the 
 waning of the fortunes of Islam. To the same period should also 
 belong the songs that show us the different nationalities struggling 
 with one another [Ex. the Chanson de Garin le Loherain} ; and 
 the genealogical poems [Ex. Les Enfances Guillaumc\ , whose object 
 is to give the heroes a birth and beginnings, whose marvels shall 
 befit the greatness of their exploits. A comparison between the 
 poems of this order and the cyclic poems of Greek poetry; and 
 the Semitic " genealogies." That the later of our Chansons de geste 
 are already, in the true sense of the word, literary epopees ; not 
 less artificial than at another period, a Henriade or a Petreide ;
 
 8 MANUAL OP THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 local significance, and this is what is meant when its 
 impersonal character is insisted on. 
 
 Finally and in comparison with the rapid succession 
 of artistic ideas and of forms of art in our modern lite- 
 ratures, and especially in contemporary literatures the 
 immobility of the literature of the Middle Ages constitutes 
 its remaining characteristic. For it is not only from one 
 end of Europe to the other that one Chanson de geste 
 resembles another Chanson de geste, or one Mystery Play 
 another Mystery Play, but it is also from one century to 
 another century, and from the time of good King Robert 
 to that of Saint Louis. Such differences as there are be- 
 tween the Chanson de Roland, which is dated from the 
 year 1080, and that of Raoul de Cambrai, which is 
 held to have been written towards 1220, being scarcely 
 more than "philological" differences, are only apparent 
 to the erudite. Let us make this point clear. If the 
 
 but with the reappearance of the cause, a really genuine inspiration 
 is once that, simultaneously more to be found in the songs that 
 form the Cycle of the Crusades [Ex. the Chanson du chevalier au 
 Cygne] . 
 
 It is almost directly afterwards that history proper begins to diffe- 
 rentiate itself from the epopee : Geoffroi de Villehardouin and the 
 Conquete de Constantinople, 1210-1215; the "epic" circumstances 
 of the event, and the " epic " turn of the narrative ; comparison, in 
 this connection, between the evolution of the French epopee and that 
 of the Greek epopee : the author of the Conquete de Constantinople 
 is to the author of the Chanson de Roland what Herodotus is to 
 Homer. To affect to find "epic" characteristics in the Sire de 
 Joinville's Vis de Saint Louii (1275) would be more arbitrary and 
 yet, if St. Louis is its hero, may it not be said that this hagiography 
 is the veritable Christian epopee ? or if the hero is Joinville himself, 
 then the work is already history in the form of autobiography. 
 The characteristics of the epopee are to be found, struggling as it 
 were with those of history, in Froissart's Chroniques. The trouvere 
 Cuvelier's Chronique de Bertrand du Guesclin ; and the Geste des 
 Bourguignons, " which closes the series of poems in single-rhymed
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 9 
 
 date of the Cid or of Horace were not known, one 
 would have to be blind not to see that Britannicus or 
 Bajazet are certainly posterior to them. On the other 
 hand, the Chronique de Bertrand du Guesclin by the 
 trouvere Cuvelier, although it be more insipid than the 
 Chanson de Renaud de Montauban, resembles the latter 
 work far more than it differs from it. In both there is 
 the same heroic matter and the mode of treating it is the 
 same. [Cf. Paulin Paris, Histoire litteraire de la France, 
 vol. xxiii.] It is clear that the hours slip by more slowly 
 in those days than in ours much more slowly, at a 
 lazier pace ; life is not so fast, and since it is not on 
 this account intenser or more individual, the result is 
 that if a silent travail is in progress in the depths 
 of this immobility, there is no trace of it at first on 
 the surface. 
 
 Still the quickening process is nevertheless going on, 
 
 stanzas," take us from this point to the threshold of the fifteenth 
 century. 
 
 B. The Ancient Epopee ; and that this name ought not to be given 
 to "romances of adventure" which offer none of the characteristics 
 of the epopee ; the Roman d'Alexandre le Grand and the Roman de 
 Troie are the Trois Mousquetaires or the Quar ante -Cinq of their 
 time ; which amounts to saying that the Middle Ages were only 
 alive to the "marvellous" or the "surprising" element in the 
 legends of antiquity ; and that in this sense the epopees inspired by 
 antiquity, together with the least historical of our chansons de geste 
 serve as stepping stones to the Romans de la Table lionde. 
 
 C. Tlie Romantic Epopee. Whether the origin of the romantic 
 epopee is to be sought for hi a transformation of manners ; and, in 
 this connection, of the contrast between the Courteous Epopee and 
 the National Epopee. That the true origin of the romantic epopee is 
 in the differentiation of the elements of the national epopee ; the 
 authentic element of which has become history ; while the marvel- 
 lous, symbolical and mythical element has become the novel of 
 adventure. Sources of the Romances of the Round Table. The His- 
 toria Begum Britannia by Geoffrey of Momuouth, 1135, and his Vita
 
 10 MANUAL OP THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and this is the occasion to remark that, as is the case 
 with that impersonality or that uniformity already 
 referred to, so this immobility is and can only be merely 
 relative. There is nothing absolute in history. Indeed, 
 let us add here that the great historical interest of the 
 literature of the Middle Ages is due to the fact that this 
 literature was not hurried or interfered with in its move- 
 ment by any intervention from without or any individual 
 caprice. It developed slowly, but it developed upon its 
 own soil, there where it sprang up, so to speak, and in 
 conformity with its nature. The philologists teach us 
 that the language of Joinville and of Guillaume de Loris 
 the language of the Vie de Saint Louis and of the 
 first part of the Roman de la Rose less rich assuredly, 
 less coloured, less supple, less subtle, and less refined 
 than our own, was yet, in a certain sense, nearer to 
 its perfection, because it was more logical ; and by 
 
 Merlini. The Geste des Bretons or Roman de Brut, by Wace 
 [translation in verse of Geoffrey of Monmouth], 1155. Constitution 
 of the Cycle of Arthur. The lais of Marie of France. Beroul's 
 Tristan. Other "Anglo-Norman" tales. The connection between 
 the adventures of Tristan and other Gallic heroes and the Cycle of 
 Arthur. Crestien de Troyes draws upon the matter offered by Brit- 
 tany ; and it is here that it is possible to trace for the first time in 
 the history of mediaeval literature the influence of talent upon the 
 transformation of a literature. 
 
 General characteristics of the romantic epopee ; and that they 
 are neither those of the heroic epopee, nor those of the poetry of 
 Provence : (1) the marvellous in these epopees is not that of sunny 
 countries, and the same is to be said of their background ; (2) the 
 adoration at once mystic and sensual of which woman is the object 
 in them in no way resembles that which is met with in the songs of the 
 troubadours; (3) passion in them is distinguished by a tenderness 
 and depth it presents nowhere else ; (4) and as a whole they are 
 enshrouded in a veil of melancholy or even of sadness about which 
 there is assuredly nothing meridional. Other characteristics dis- 
 tinguish our romantic epopee to an equal extent from Arabian poetrj' ;
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 11 
 
 this they mean that it was in closer conformity with 
 the organic evolution of languages. And the truth is 
 that no great writer, whether prose writer or poet, had 
 ventured as yet to disturb its development. The evolu- 
 tion of the literature of the Middle Ages is a similar 
 case, and is all the more instructive for the very reason 
 that it was logical. We have now to see how this evolu- 
 tion took place. 
 
 II 
 
 It has sometimes been asserted that it began with 
 lyrical poetry ; and without going back to those songs, 
 of which Salvin relates that they served our forefathers 
 as a consolation in their afflictions cantilinis infortunia 
 
 in spite of its having been alleged that the Arabs were the initia- 
 tors of "chivalry." Its inspiration is also different to that of the 
 Niebelungen. At bottom the inspiration of the Romances of the 
 Round Table is Celtic. 
 
 How their origin explains their success by their novelty. The long 
 influence of the Romans de la Table-Ronde ; their diffusion abroad ; 
 the compilation of Rusticien of Pisa, 1270 ; Italian, German, 
 Netherland, English, Spanish and Portuguese translations, continua- 
 tions and imitations. The Parsifal of Wolfram of Escheiibach and 
 the Tristan et Iseult of Gottfried of Strasburg. Reciprocal penetra- 
 tion of the Cycle of Arthur and of the Cycle of the Crusades. Prose 
 versions are made of the most ancient Romans de la Table-Ronde ; 
 original works of this class are written in prose, for instance, Merlin, 
 the Grand Saint Graal, etc. ; in this new shape they become the 
 source of inspiration of the Amadis ; and thus, through them, con- 
 nect the modern " novel" and classical literature with the literature 
 and romance of the Middle Ages. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The complete list of our Chansons de gestc will be 
 found in the work by M. C. Nyrop cited above ; and in M. G. Paris' 
 article in the Histoire litter aire de la France, vol. xxx., an analysis
 
 12 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITEEATURE 
 
 sua solantur, we are told of " cantilenes " of which our 
 great epopees are alleged to be only the reunion and 
 development. There is, however, nothing lyrical what- 
 ever about these cantilenes, and an effort to discern 
 their nature shows them to be, properly speaking, 
 merely diffuse epopee, epopee that is not as yet, that 
 is about to be, but is already epopee. They aspire to 
 form a composite whole ; and with us, as formerly in 
 Greece, it may be said with truth that they have no 
 raison d'etre except in virtue of and as forming a part 
 of the epopee they are one day to become. The epopee, 
 then, must be our starting-point. 
 
 At first, as once more was the case in Greece, it was 
 simply history, supposing it to be beyond doubt that the 
 men of the Middle Ages were as convinced of the reality 
 of the exploits of Koland as of the existence of Philip 
 Augustus or of Saint Louis. Are not children convinced 
 
 of most of the romances in verse that are allied to the Breton Cycle 
 We refer the reader to these works, and content ourselves here with 
 indicating more particularly : 
 
 The Chanson de Roland, numerous editions, among which it will 
 be well to point out : Leon Gautier's edition or editions, Tours, 
 1872-1883 ; Th. Miiller's editions, 1863 and 1878 ; Cledat's 
 edition, Paris, 1886; the Chanson d'Aliscans, Guessard and 
 Montaiglon's edition, Paris, 1870 ; the Chanson de Renaud de 
 Montauban [Les Quatre fils Aymon~\, Michelant's edition, 1862, 
 Sbuttgard ; [Cf. an article by Taine in his Essais de critique et 
 d'histoire]; the Chanson de Girart de Roussillon, P. Meyer's 
 edition or translation, Paris, 1884; the Chanson de Raoul de 
 Cambrai, Paul Meyer's and Longnon's edition, Paris, 1882 ; and 
 the Chanson du Chevalier au Cygne, Reiffenberg's edition, Brussels, 
 1846-1848. 
 
 The principal reprints of the ancient epopee are : the Roman de 
 Thebes, L. Constans' edition, Paris, 1890 ; the Roman de Troie, by 
 Benoist de Sainte-More, edited by M. A. Joly, Paris, 1870-1871 ; the 
 Roman d'Eneas, edited by M. J. S. de Grave, Halle, 1891 ; and the 
 Romans d'Alexandre le Grand, edited by M. Paul Meyer, Paris, 1886.
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 13 
 
 of the existence of Tom Thumb or of Puss in Boots V 
 But it is history amplified, history " heroified," if one 
 may risk the barbarism ; and thanks to this amplification, 
 which is nothing else than an effort on the part of the 
 poet to suit his language to the magnitude of the events 
 he is singing, there is already introduced into history a 
 commencement of exaggeration, and before long a mar- 
 vellous or fabulous element. Virtues greater than those 
 of humanity are ascribed to the Kolands, the Guillaumes, 
 the Kenauds ; exploits worthy of their virtues are attri- 
 buted to them ; one of them is armed with his " Duran- 
 dal," another is mounted on "Bayard"! Moreover as 
 this fabulous element flatters agreeably men's imagina- 
 tions, it is not long in encroaching upon the historical 
 element, of which it is even seen to serve as an 
 explanation, until finally it occupies the entire field, 
 in the Romans de la Table-Ronde, for example, in 
 
 Next in order come, among the Romances of the Round Table, and 
 independently of the Works of Crestien de Troyes, of which M. 
 Wendelin Forster has undertaken the publication in full : [Chrestien 
 von Troyes samtliche Werke, Halle, 1884, 1887, 1890] ; the Lais de 
 Marie de France, Karl Warnke's edition, Halle, 1885 ; Lancelot du 
 Lac [analysed by Paulin Paris, op, cit.] ; Perceval, Potvin's 
 edition, Mons, 1866-1871 ; Le Saint Graal, Hucher's edition, Le 
 Mans, 1874 ; Merlin, Gaston Paris and Ulrich's edition hi the 
 collection of the Societe des anciens textes frangais, Paris, 1886 ; 
 and Tristan, collection of what remains of the poems relating 
 to his adventures, Fr. Michel's edition, London and Paris, 
 1835-1839. 
 
 III. The Song Writers. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Paulin Paris' article on the Song Writers in the 
 Histoire litteraire de la France, vol. xxiii. ; Raynaud, Biblio- 
 graphic des chansonniers francais den XIIP et XIV" siecles, Paris, 
 1884 ; V. Jeanroy, Les Origines de la Poesie lyrique en France au 
 Moyen-age, Paris, 1889 ; G. Paris, Les Origines de la Poesie lyrique 
 en France, Paris, 1892.
 
 14 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 which history only serves the trouvere as a pretext 
 for exercising the fertility of his invention ; and 
 in this way the romance becomes distinct from the 
 epopee. 
 
 The epopee does not cease to exist ; and the Songs 
 which constitute the " Cycle of the Crusades" are con- 
 vincing testimony of the long survival of this literary 
 form. Henceforth, however, it is but a shadow, a re- 
 flection of itself, an unsubstantial survival whence little 
 by little the colour and the life disappear. On the 
 other hand, as the purely human greatness of historical 
 events comes to be better understood, the epopee is trans- 
 formed into the chronicle as in the Chanson de Bertrand 
 du Guesclin. Nothing can be more prosaic, or that 
 there is less reason to put into verse ! The authors 
 are quite alive to the fact, and their readers, or rather 
 their audience, still more so. Three or four centuries 
 
 2. THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 A. The " Chansons de Toile," or Historical Songs ; and that 
 they are contemporary with the national epopee as is proved by : 
 their essentially narrative style ; the part played in them by women ; 
 [the advances come from them, and the men treat them with the 
 brutality to which they always have recourse in such cases] ; finally 
 by the want of distinction between the epic, lyric and even the dra- 
 matic elements. The epic element predominates in the Historical 
 Songs proper ; the dramatic element comes to the front in the Pas- 
 tourelles and Dancing Songs whose ulterior development results 
 under the influence of the entertainments of the May Fetes in veri- 
 table plays, such as the Jeu de Robin et Marion by Adam de la Halle, 
 1260 ; but the second element, the lyric or personal, does not make 
 its appearance until the influence is felt of the poetry of Provence. 
 
 B. Artificial character of Provem;al poetry ; and that it is merely 
 a jeu d 1 esprit ; whose invariable theme is " courteous " love ; but 
 whose artistic value is not lessened on this account : Materiam 
 super avit opus [Cf. in Greek literature the poets of the Alexandrine 
 period] ; and whose aristocratic destiny is explained by its defects as 
 much as by its qualities.
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 15 
 
 before the Art poetique, they are conscious that the 
 epopee 
 
 Is based upon fable and draws its vitality from fiction. 
 
 And when reading the Vie de Saint Louis by the Sire de 
 Joinville, or the Conquete de Constantinople by Geoffroy de 
 Villehardouin, how should they fail to remark that the 
 use of prose in no way detracts from the interest of even 
 an heroic narrative ? In any case it is a fact that Master 
 Jehan Froissart, who, the better to honour Prowess, had 
 begun to write his Chroniques in verse, re- wrote them in 
 prose ; and thus history at once branches off from the 
 epopee and becomes distinct from the romance. 
 
 The meaning and nature of the evolution are here, 
 then, perfectly clear: it is a differentiation of literary 
 forms that is in progress. Instead of one form, for 
 the future we have three, to which, if desired, a 
 
 C. The principal representatives of lyrical poetry in the langue 
 d'oil are : Conon or Quesne de Bethune, Gace Brule, Blondel 
 de Nesle, Guy, Chatelaiii de Couci, Gautier d'Espinaus, Gontier 
 de Soignies, Thibaut de Champagne, King of Navarre, Charles 
 d'Anjou, King of Sicily, Colin Muset, and Eutebeuf. A very 
 few " commoners " practised this branch, particularly in the 
 " puys " of the north of France ; and among them are cited : 
 Adam de la Halle, Jean Bodel, Baude Fastoul, all three belonging 
 to Arras. 1 
 
 D. Whether either class added anything to their Proven9al models, 
 and that it would seem that they made a more serious matter of 
 love. But this is perhaps due to the character of the language ; less 
 formed and in consequence apparently more naive than the langue 
 d'oc. Still they expressed some sentiments that had not been 
 expressed before them ; and in the matter of form some of these 
 Courteous Songs are perhaps the most finished productions offered us 
 by the literature of the Middle Ages. 
 
 1 We borrow these two lists of names from M. Gaston Paris' Histoire de la 
 litterature franyaise uu Moyen-dye, p. 184-187, 2nd edition, 1890, Hachette.
 
 16 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 fourth might be added, the satiric epopee, of the type 
 of Baudoin de Sebourg or of the Pelerinage de Charle- 
 magne a Jerusalem, all the three clearly character- 
 ised ; and as we said, it is not any intervention from 
 without that has thus separated them from each other, 
 but, on the contrary, a necessity from within. It will 
 be noticed that a like differentiation of forms came 
 about in the past in Greece, the Odyssey having cer- 
 tainly succeeded the Iliad, and the Histories of Herodotus 
 the Odyssey. 
 
 A differentiation of classes, whose remote cause would 
 be found in the progress of civilisation in general, appears 
 to be almost contemporary with the last phase of the 
 differentiation of forms. 
 
 The date of Richeut, the oldest of the fabliaux that 
 have come down to us, is 1159, but Richeut can barely 
 be classed as a fabliau; and "the majority of the 
 
 E. Last transformation of lyrical poetry. Development of varieties 
 having a fixed form [Ballad, Rondeau, Virelay, Chant Royal] . Dis- 
 appearance of the personal sentiment. Guillaume de Machaut, 
 Eustache Deschamps, Christine de Pisan, Alain Chartier. " Cir- 
 cumstantial " character of their work ; they essay to make passing 
 events the subject of poetry. That there is room for astonishment 
 that, being the contemporaries of du Guesclin or of Joan of Arc, they 
 should not have been more successful in this effort [Cf. the best known 
 of Eustache Deschamps' ballads, that on du Guesclin] : 
 
 Estoc d'honneur et arbre de vaillance. 
 
 They make an effort, too, to " moralise" ; and poetry becoming con- 
 founded with prose, it is necessary to wait at least until Charles 
 d'Orleans, even until Villon before lyricism is seen to reappear. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Romanzen und Pastourellen, Karl Bartsch's 
 edition, Leipsic, 1870 ; (Euvres completes d'Adam de la Halle, 
 Coussemaker's edition, Paris, 1872. Chansons de Conon de Bethune, 
 Wallenskold's edition, Helsingfors, 1891 ; (Euvres de Blondel de 
 Nesle, Tarbe's edition, Bheinis, 1862 ; Chansons du cJtdtelain de
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 17 
 
 others seem to belong to the end of the 12th or to 
 the beginning of the 13th century." The fabliaux 
 bear witness to the intellectual emancipation of the 
 villain. The same remark may be made of the Roman 
 de Eenart and of the second part of the Roman de 
 la Rose. Whatever be the satirical bearing of these 
 works, even if it be reduced to the measure of ridicule 
 present of necessity, since we are not angels, in all 
 depictions of manners, they are " popular " works, of 
 which an entire class of society has made as it were a 
 literature in its own image and procuring it amusement. 
 The social unity to which the Chansons de geste bore 
 eloquent testimony is breaking up, and the feudal 
 hierarchy is taking for a time fixed shape. In response 
 to different functions we now have new customs, and 
 of these new customs are born new literary forms. 
 The villain in his turn would have his pleasures ; and he 
 
 Couci, Path's edition, Heidelberg, 1883 ; Poesies de Thibaut de 
 Champagne, editions of Levesque de la Kavalliere, Paris, 1742, and 
 of Tarbe, 1851 ; Trouveres Beiges au XII e au XIV" siecles, Scheler's 
 edition, 1st series, Brussels, 1876, and 2nd series, Louvain, 1879 ; 
 Les plus anciens chansonniers franqais, Brakelniann's edition, Paris, 
 1891, and Marbourg, 1896. 
 
 Almost all the poems of Guillaume de Machaut are still unpublished. 
 The complete works of Eustache Deschamps have been issued in nine 
 volumes, Paris, 1878-1894. 
 
 IV. The Fabliaux. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Victor Le Clerc's article on the Fabliaux in the 
 Histoire litteraire de la France, vol. xxii. ; A. de Montaiglon's intro- 
 duction to the Recueil general et complet des Fabliaux, Paris, 1875 ; 
 G. Paris, Lea Contes orientaux dans la littcrature franqaise du 
 Moyen-Uge, 1875, Paris ; J. Bedier, Les Fabliaux, Etude d'histoire 
 litteraire du Moyen-age, 2nd edition, Paris, 1895. 
 
 2. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FABLIAUX. Whether many Fabliaux 
 have failed to come down to us ; and whether, on the contrary, 
 
 3
 
 18 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 finds a very keen pleasure, at first in having his portrait 
 drawn, and one still keener a little later, in executing por- 
 traits in caricature of other people. 
 
 At the same time, in the better though barely educated 
 aristocratic class, the individual, under the double in- 
 fluence of the Romans de la Table-Ronde and the example 
 of the Proven9al troubadours, is attaining to a commence- 
 ment of self-consciousness ; and lyric poetry comes into 
 existence. Our trouveres, a Quesne de Bethune, the Sire 
 de Couci, Thibaut de Champagne, Huon d'Oisi, Charles 
 d'Anjou, all of noble birth, attempt to introduce the ex- 
 pression of their personal sentiments into the conventional 
 forms they borrow from these early masters, forms of 
 which they accept the exigencies with docility, when 
 they do not modify them with a view to making their 
 constraint the closer and the more monotonous. They 
 are but very imperfectly successful. Fresh to and un- 
 it is not to be regretted that more than a hundred have reached 
 us. Of the origin of the Fabliaux ; and whether it should be 
 sought for in the remote East [Cf. Gaston Paris for the affirmative 
 and J. Bedier for the negative view]. That it may be, indeed, 
 that a few Fabliaux have come to us from India ; but that in 
 general great abuse has been made in our time of " oriental origins " ; 
 and that the majority of our Fabliaux, such as Brunain, the 
 Vaclie au Pretre, or the Vilain Mire or the Boiirgcoisc d'Orleans, 
 only call for an inventive effort that does not exceed the capacity 
 of the most ordinary experience. Grossness of the Fabliaux ; 
 and the difficulty of reproducing even their titles ; on account 
 of obscenity. The satirical side of the Fabliaux ; and in this 
 connection, that they seem to have avoided attacking powerful 
 personages. How, on the other hand, they treat the priest, the 
 "village cure," not the monk or the bishop; and how they treat 
 women. Of the "documentary" value of the Fabliaux; and 
 whether they teach us anything more than the Dits for example ; 
 or a number of other "documents" of every kind. The favour 
 enjoyed by the Fabliaux throughout Europe ; and supposing their 
 origin not to have been French, of the slight gratitude we owe
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 19 
 
 skilled in self-observation, when celebrating their " lady " 
 or their " love pains," they would fain note the cha- 
 racteristic trait, give the precise and distinguishing touch, 
 render, in a word, their sentiments in a manner that 
 shall be peculiar to themselves, but they are ignorant 
 how to effect their purpose. They are perhaps too early 
 in the field ! Their period is that which has sometimes 
 been called the golden age of mediaeval literature, but the 
 time has not come to dissolve the solidarity that binds 
 the individual to his fellows. Neither the mental con- 
 ditions nor the manners of the period permit this. It 
 is too soon as yet ; and in the meanwhile all their 
 Songs, in which there are real qualities if not artistic 
 qualities at least those of grace, elegance and pretti- 
 ness continue without or almost without exception to 
 resemble each other. Still the signal has been given, 
 and this " courteous " poetry, in which the personal 
 
 our trouveres for the form of wit the Fabliaux have propagated in the 
 world. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. See Anatole de Montaiglon's and Gaston Raynaud's 
 Recueil general et complet des Fabliaux, 6 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1872-1890. 
 
 V. Allegorical Literature. 
 
 Of the advantages that accrue from studying from the same point 
 of view all the works of the literature of the Middle Ages distinguished 
 by the same allegorical character, and these are : A. The Roman dc 
 Renart ; B. The Bestiaires, the Dits, and the Debats or Disputes ; 
 and C. The Roman de la Rose. In this way it is easier to trace the 
 connection between them and the forms that preceded them. Bj* 
 noting that they all, or almost all, belong to the same time it 
 is perceived that the "allegory" characterises an entire "period" 
 of mediaeval literature ; and one is led to seek the reasons 
 for this taste for allegory. There are found to be social reasons, 
 such as the danger the writer might run in openly " satirising " 
 somebody more powerful than himself; but there are more es- 
 pecially literary reasons resulting, from the slight extent to which 
 the "direct" observation of reality was practised in the Middle
 
 22 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and when it is clearly established that neither the 
 Papacy nor the Empire is capable of maintaining the 
 unity of Europe in face of the conflicting interests that 
 divide it, it becomes the turn of the nations, after the 
 forms and the classes, to attain to self-consciousness. 
 
 This is nowhere better perceived than in the history of 
 literatures. The ground-work of our Chansons de geste 
 continues to subsist in France, and also that of our 
 Romans de la Table-Ronde, which are destined to serve 
 for the compilations of the Bibliotheque bleue, but it 
 would seem as if their spirit emigrates on the. one 
 hand to Germany, and on the other to Spain. In 
 opposition to the Spanish genius, which is about to 
 combine what is most extravagant in the Chansons de 
 geste or the Romans de la Table-Ronde with what is 
 most heroic in the " folly of the Cross," the French 
 genius manifests itself as a spirit of mockery, of irony 
 
 vehicle, and as it were as the "passe-partout" for satire ; pains are 
 taken, too, to imitate the animals' habits more exactly : and the 
 outcome of all this is something analogous to the " ample comedy " 
 of La Fontaine ; but of a La Fontaine who is no artist perhaps not 
 a poet. 
 
 Finally, in a last period, on the threshold of the fourteenth 
 century the new " branches " become purely satirical ; and alle- 
 gorical ; " the grossness of the worst Fabliaux invades these 
 writings"; or "they serve as a vehicle for bitter and excessive 
 satire " [Cf. Gaston Paris, La Litterature frangaise au Moyen-age] . 
 The matter outgrows the scope of the work ; the general interest 
 gives way to a purely topical interest ; and as this latter phase 
 coincides with the perversion of the language, the Middle Ages once 
 more miss an opportunity of giving definite shape in a masterpiece 
 to an ingenious idea. 
 
 3. THE WORK. See for the Roman de Benart proper, Ernest 
 Martin's edition, mentioned above. In Meon's edition, 1826, Paris 
 should be mentioned as well : Le Couronnement Benart Benard le 
 Nouvcl; and Benart le Contref ait, Wolf s edition, 1861, Vienna. 
 A piece such as that which Eutebeuf has entitled Benart le Bestuurne
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 23 
 
 and already of revolt. Very different from the English 
 genius, as exemplified almost at the outset in Chaucer's 
 Tales, it is no less different from the German genius. 
 Again, is it not almost as distinct from the Italian 
 genius, as the latter is beginning to take shape in 
 the Divine Comedy, for example, or in the sonnets 
 of Petrarch? And thus it is that in Europe, which 
 in the past was so closely united, the nationalities are 
 forming by the agglomeration of like to like, by a sort of 
 process of grouping round certain ideas or certain senti- 
 ments, to be transformed later on by heredity into racial 
 characteristics. 
 
 It is impossible to think without some uneasiness of 
 what would have become of the French genius had it 
 persevered in this direction, or rather, for it was 
 destined so to persevere, as we shall see, if this in- 
 fluence of the Gallic bent of mind had not been 
 
 may serve to prove the popularity of the Roman, but, on the other 
 hand, does not form part of it in any way whatever. 
 
 With the Roman de Renart may be compared, on account of their 
 more or less allegorical characteristics : 
 
 B. The BestiaireS, among which are cited those ; of Philippe 
 de Thaon, of Guillaume Le Clerc, and of Richard de Fournival. 
 They are animal tales moralised ; and whence are sometimes drawn, 
 as by Philippe de Thaon, Christian lessons ; or, as by Richard de 
 Fournival, amatory lessons ; 
 
 C. The Dits, and still more the DebatS for instance the Bataille 
 de Careme et de Charnage ; the theme of which has been repro- 
 duced by Rabelais in his epic account of the struggle between the 
 Heine des Andouilles and Quaresme prenant ; or the Bataille des 
 Sept Arts by Henri d'Andeli ; 
 
 D. The Arts d' Amour, among which are cited Andre le 
 Chapelain's De arte lioneste amandi, translated into French by 
 Drouart la Vache ; Jacques d' Amiens' Clef d Amours ; le Conseil 
 d 1 Amours by Richard de Fournival. It is due to the influence of 
 these works that courteous poetry finds its way into the Roman de 
 la Ruse.
 
 22 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and when it is clearly established that neither the 
 Papacy nor the Empire is capable of maintaining the 
 unity of Europe in face of the conflicting interests that 
 divide it, it becomes the turn of the nations, after the 
 forms and the classes, to attain to self-consciousness. 
 
 This is nowhere better perceived than in the history of 
 literatures. The ground-work of our Chansons de geste 
 continues to subsist in France, and also that of our 
 Romans de la Table-Ronde, which are destined to serve 
 for the compilations of the Bibliotheque bleue, but it 
 would seem as if their spirit emigrates on the one 
 hand to Germany, and on the other to Spain. In 
 opposition to the Spanish genius, which is about to 
 combine what is most extravagant in the Chansons de 
 geste or the Romans de la Table-Ronde with what is 
 most heroic in the " folly of the Cross," the French 
 genius manifests itself as a spirit of mockery, of irony 
 
 vehicle, and as it were as the " 2)asse-partout" for satire; pains are 
 taken, too, to imitate the animals' habits more exactly : and the 
 outcome of all this is something analogous to the "ample comedy " 
 of La Fontaine ; but of a La Fontaine who is no artist perhaps not 
 a poet. 
 
 Finally, in a last period, on the threshold of the fourteenth 
 century the new "branches" become purely satirical; and alle- 
 gorical ; " the grossness of the worst Fabliaux invades these 
 writings"; or "they serve as a vehicle for bitter and excessive 
 satire " [Cf . Gaston Paris, La Litterature francaise au Moyen-dge] . 
 The matter outgrows the scope of the work ; the general interest 
 gives way to a purely topical interest ; and as this latter phase 
 coincides with the perversion of the language, the Middle Ages once 
 more miss an opportunity of giving definite shape in a masterpiece 
 to an ingenious idea. 
 
 3. THE WORK. See for the Roman de Renart proper, Ernest 
 Martin's edition, mentioned above. In Meon's edition, 1826, Paris 
 should be mentioned as well : Le Couronnement Renart Renard le 
 Nouvcl; and Renart le Contrefait, Wolf's edition, 1861, Vienna. 
 A piece such as that which Eutebeuf has entitled Renart le Bestvurne
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 23 
 
 and already of revolt. Very different from the English 
 genius, as exemplified almost at the outset in Chaucer's 
 Tales, it is no less different from the German genius. 
 Again, is it not almost as distinct from the Italian 
 genius, as the latter is beginning to take shape in 
 the Divine Comedy, for example, or in the sonnets 
 of Petrarch? And thus it is that in Europe, which 
 in the past was so closely united, the nationalities are 
 forming by the agglomeration of like to like, by a sort of 
 process of grouping round certain ideas or certain senti- 
 ments, to be transformed later on by heredity into racial 
 characteristics. 
 
 It is impossible to think without some uneasiness of 
 what would have become of the French genius had it 
 persevered in this direction, or rather, for it was 
 destined so to persevere, as we shall see, if this in- 
 fluence of the Gallic bent of mind had not been 
 
 may serve to prove the popularity of the Roman, but, on the other 
 hand, does not form part of it in any way whatever. 
 
 With the Roman dc Renart may be compared, on account of their 
 more or less allegorical characteristics : 
 
 B. The BestiaireS, among which are cited those ; of Philippe 
 de Thaon, of Guillaume Le Clerc, and of Richard de Fournival. 
 They are animal tales moralised ; and whence are sometimes drawn, 
 as by Philippe de Thaon, Christian lessons ; or, as by Richard de 
 Fouruival, amatory lessons ; 
 
 C. The DitS, and still more the DebatS for instance the Bataille 
 de Careme et de Charnage ; the theme of which has been repro- 
 duced by Rabelais in his epic account of the struggle between the 
 Heine des Andouilles and Quaresme prenant ; or the Bataille des 
 Sept Arts by Henri d'Andeli ; 
 
 D. The Arts d' Amour, among which are cited Andre le 
 Chapelain's De arte honeste amandi, translated into French by 
 Drouart la Vache ; Jacques d' Amiens' Clef d' Amours ; le Conaeil 
 d 1 Amours by Richard de Fournival. It is due to the influence of 
 these works that courteous poetry finds its way into the Roman de 
 la Rose.
 
 24 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 counterbalanced, almost from the start, by other in- 
 fluences, and foremost amongst them by " scholasticism." 
 Many hard things have been said of scholasticism in 
 general, and doubtless with some justice, though, after 
 all, St. Thomas is not perhaps so much the inferior 
 of Aristotle, nor Duns Scotus of Hegel. However, 
 this is not the question here ; and we shall confine 
 ourselves to saying that if, as La Bruyere declares, 
 " the whole art of writing consists in defining well 
 and in depicting well," then scholasticism has certainly 
 taught us the half of it. Owing to the lack of a 
 sufficiently wide knowledge of nature, and still more 
 to the lack of a sufficiently experimental knowledge, 
 there is nothing " scientific," in the true sense of 
 the word, about the scholastic definitions ; but they 
 nevertheless served to discipline the French genius 
 by imposing upon it that need of clearness, precision, 
 
 E. The Roman de la Rose. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Paulin Paris' article on the Roman de la Rose, in 
 the Histotre litteraire, vol. xxiii. ; and his article on Jehan de Meung, 
 in the Histoire litteraire, vol. xxviii. ; Langlois, Origines et sources 
 du Roman de la Rose, Paris, 1891 ; Gaston Paris, La Litterature 
 francaise au Moyen-dge. 
 
 2. THE CONTENTS OF THE EOMANCE. The two authors of the 
 Roman, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung ; and the fact not 
 to be overlooked that there was a difference of age of forty years 
 between them ; or about the distance of time that separates le 
 Couronnement Renart or Renart le Nouvel from the principal 
 branches of the Roman de Renart. The relation of the "psychologi- 
 cal epopee" (Gaston Paris) of Guillaume de Lorris to the "animal 
 epopee " of the Roman de Renart. Guillaume de Lorris, in his Art 
 d'aimer, personifies the varieties of love, just as the authors of 
 Renart personified the vices of humanity in their animals. His con- 
 ception of love ; -and its relation to that in the " courteous poetry."- 
 His skill in the handling of allegory ; and that it was probably not 
 the least important cause of the success of the Roman de la Rose.
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 25 
 
 and propriety which throughout has had a notable 
 influence on the destinies of our prose. It may be, too, 
 that we owe to scholasticism our habit, not of going to 
 the bottom of questions, but of viewing them in every 
 light, and thus of perceiving their unexpected aspects 
 and of finding ingenious solutions to them, solutions 
 too ingenious perhaps, yet bordering at times on the 
 truth, which, as it is complex, may be garbled by 
 a too simple mode of expression. In any case, we 
 cannot be otherwise than grateful to scholasticism for 
 having taught us to "compose"; for, as is notorious, 
 it is this balance in the composition, this subordina- 
 tion of detail to the main idea, this nice proportion 
 of the parts that will prove to be one of the super- 
 lative and characteristic features of French literature. 
 It may be said indeed that the French genius, while 
 manifesting itself as a spirit of satire and oppo- 
 
 For all these reasons, the Roman de la Rose may be considered as 
 the ideal expression of the sentiments of the society, of which the 
 Roman de Renart is the satirical picture. 
 
 It would be well to seek to establish which were the works ; in the 
 interval that separates G. de Lorris from Jean de Meung, that " filled 
 the place " of the Roman de la Rose ; and why Jean de Meung, who 
 was about to alter its nature, should have chosen to continue it rather 
 than the Roman de Renart ? 
 
 Jean de Meung's Roman ; and that the poet himself regarded this 
 part of his work merely as a sally of his youth ; while its sig- 
 nificance is on this account only the more characteristic. While 
 respecting the story and the scope of Guillaume de Lorris' work, 
 Jean de Meung introduced into them a marked disposition towards 
 " social satire " and " natural philosophy " ; the first tendency con- 
 nects him with the authors of the additional " branches " of the 
 Roman de Renart ; with whom he has also in common the violence 
 of his language ; and his license of expression. His inclination 
 towards "natural philosophy" seems more exclusively peculiar to 
 himself ; although it can be compared with the doubtless very un- 
 conscious philosophy of the authors of our Fabliaux.
 
 26 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 sition took the shape as well of a spirit of logic and 
 clearness. 
 
 Further, in opposition to the feudal spirit, which is a 
 spirit of individualism and of liberty, it took the shape of 
 a spirit of equality, not to say in so many words, of justice 
 and "fraternity." Omnia qua loquitur populus iste 
 conjuratio est. Of all the characteristics of the European 
 literature of the Middle Ages there is none that has 
 remained more national, and, if one may venture so to 
 express oneself, more personal to French literature than 
 this leaning towards universality. It might be main- 
 tained without exaggeration, that the "Bights of Man" 
 are already set forth in the second part of the Roman de 
 la Rose, that by Jean de Meung, and what is more, the 
 contention could be proved. From the first it is, as it 
 were, an understood thing that authors shall not write 
 in French for the sake of writing, but with a view to 
 
 Prodigious success of the Itoinan dc la Hose ; and that Jean dc 
 Meung, with Christien de Troyes, is one of the very few writers of the 
 Middle Ages of whom it may be said that their works were epoch 
 making. The attacks of Gerson ; and of Christine de Pisan ; evi- 
 dence of Petrarch ; " Since you desire a foreign work in the vulgar 
 tongue, he wrote to Guy de Gonzague of Mantua, I cannot suggest 
 anything better than this one [the Roman de la Rose], unless all 
 France, with Paris leading the way, be mistaken as to its merit." 
 Numerous copies of the poem ; and immediately after the invention 
 of printing, the numerous editions of the book. 
 
 3. THE WORK. Independently of the edition issued by Marot at 
 the beginning of the sixteenth century there may be cited Meou's 
 edition, Paris, 1818 ; and Pierre Marteau's [a pseudonym] edition 
 with translation, Orleans, 1878-1879. 
 
 The importance of "allegorical" literature in the Middle Ages is 
 seen from these summary details ; it would remain to compare these 
 " personifications " with the " Entities" and " Quiddities " of scholasti- 
 cism ; and both with what will be called later " the reduction to the 
 universal," or, in other words, general ideas. That unfortunately,
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 27 
 
 exerting an action, and that the object of this action 
 shall be the propagation of general ideas. Later on, this 
 peculiarity will be found to contribute more than any- 
 thing else to extend throughout the world the popularity 
 of the French language and literature ; and is it not exact 
 that this is the quality in our tongue which pleases 
 foreigners, who spoke of it, as far back as the thirteenth 
 century, as "the most delectable in existence"? The 
 explanation of this characteristic lies : in part in the 
 persistence and continuity of Latin traditions ; in part 
 in the efforts of our legists to secure the triumph of 
 the spirit of lloman law over the Germanic or feudal 
 spirit ; and finally in the encouragement by our kings 
 of an effort that serves the ends of their noblest 
 ambition, since it makes for the unification of their 
 subjects' aspirations and for the formation of the 
 French nation. 
 
 if the intentions were excellent, the method was false ; for the idea 
 did not become clearer in proportion as recourse was had more and 
 more to allegory ; and the writers got further away from nature and 
 truth in the same proportion. This is what Petrarch meant when, 
 in the letter quoted above, he made the authors of the Human dc la 
 liusc the reproach that their "Muse was asleep"; and when he 
 contrasted with their coldness, the passionate ardour breathed by the 
 verses of " those divine singers of love : Virgil, Catullus, Propcrtius, 
 and Ovid. 
 
 VI. The Farce de Pathelin. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Petit de Julleville, La Comtdic ct lea Maura au 
 Afoycn-dgc, Paris, 1887 ; Littre, Histoirc dc la languc franpiisc, 
 Paris; Lenient, La Satire en France au Moi/cn-tign ; Ernest 
 Kenan, la Farce dc 1'athelin, in his Eusaia dc critique ct dc 
 morale. 
 
 2. MORALITIES AND FAUCES. That tlio examination of the Morali- 
 ties con (inns directly or indirectly the preceding observations upon 
 " allegorical literature " : directly if the moralities are merely a form 
 of this literature : by the nature of the personages who are the heroes
 
 28 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 III 
 
 How was it, then, that this movement was abruptly 
 interrupted? and in point of fact, was it interrupted? 
 For we possess but an indifferent knowledge of the long 
 period that elapsed between the reigns of the earliest 
 Valois and the time when the Renaissance was in full 
 progress. 
 
 The language becomes confused, faltering and heavy, 
 grows more complicated without growing more refined, 
 becomes at once more obscure, more pedantic and more 
 insipid. " An ordinance of Saint Louis, it has been said, 
 and an ordinance of Louis XIV. are both in French"; 
 this doubtless amounts to saying that an ordinance of 
 Jean le Bon, or an ordinance of Charles VII. are scarcely 
 in French or are not in French. [A. de Montaiglon, in 
 Crepet's Recueil des Poetes franqais.} The old forms 
 
 of them : Mal-Avise, Bien-Avise, Rebellion, Malefin, etc. ; by the 
 intention of "moralising" evinced by their very names; and by 
 the covert satire they contain. The same observations are indirectly 
 confirmed : by the superiority of the Farces to the Moralities ; 
 and by the nature of this superiority, which consists essentially in 
 the fact that the personages in the former works are not allegories, 
 but real personages. 
 
 The Farce de Maitre Patlielin ; and whether the origin of 
 classical comedy is to be traced to it ; and if its author is to 
 be regarded as a " forerunner of Moliere." Of the abuses in con- 
 nection with this perpetual search after "origins"; and that a 
 few good comic scenes do not warrant the pronouncing of the 
 name of Moliere. The Farce de Patlielin is after all only a Fabliau 
 in dialogue; the central idea of which is neither very clever 
 nor very deep ; though for all that the farce is excellent. That 
 the distinction between literary forms must be observed; and in 
 this connection of an excellent passage of Benan on the lowness 
 of the sentiments that find expression in the Farce de Maitre 
 Patlielin. 
 
 A few remarks upon the Soties ; which belong to the period of the
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 29 
 
 are exhausted and the new have not arisen as yet 
 upon their ruins. The epic , vein has run dry : there 
 are no more Chansons de geste or Romans. Fabliaux 
 are no longer composed, and even the important 
 Mysteries only make their appearance towards the 
 close of the period. [Cf. V. Le Clerc, Histoire 
 litteraire de la France, vol. xxiv.] The Chronicle, 
 on the other hand, has encroached in every direction. 
 There are chronicles in verse and chronicles in prose. 
 Eustache Deschamps is a chronicler, and so is Georges 
 Chastelain. The most wise Christine de Pisan, and 
 Froissart himself, are also merely chroniclers. They 
 are all of them exclusively preoccupied with the present ; 
 and this is comprehensible when one bears in mind the 
 time in which they are living. 
 
 Of a surety, it is not the moment to dream of the 
 mystic conquest of the Grail when the English are 
 
 literature of the Middle Ages that is still almost unexplored. That 
 it would seem, however, that they bear the same relation to such 
 a Farce as Pathelin, as the last branches of the Benard to the 
 earliest ; or as the inspiration of Jean de Meung to that of G. 
 de Lorris : once more it is the allegory that itself reacts upon 
 itself, by endeavouring to avoid dullness by recourse to gross- 
 ness. 
 
 3. THE WORK. The principal edition of the Farce de Maitre 
 Patlielin is that of F. Genin, Paris, 1854. 
 
 VIL Francois Villon [Paris, 1431 ....]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. A. Campaux, Franqois Villon, sa vie et ses 
 ceuvres, Paris, 1859 ; A. Longnon, Etude biographique sur Francois 
 Villon, Paris, 1877; Aug. Vitu, Le Jargon au XV e siecle, Paris 
 1884 ; Lucien Schone, Le Jargon et Jobelin de Franqois Villon, 
 Paris, 1888; A. Bijvanck, Essai critique sur les ceuvres de Francois 
 Villon, Leyden, 1883 ; (Euvres de Franqois Villon, edited by M. 
 Aug. Longnon, Paris, 1892. 
 
 2. THE POET ; that Boileau was not mistaken in hailing him as 
 unique among or the "first" of our "old romance writers" The
 
 30 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 masters of three-quarters of France ; and people have no 
 heart for rhyming amid the tumult of arms. Further 
 there was the Black Plague, the Jacquerie, the madness 
 of King Charles VI., and the sanguinary quarrels between 
 Armagnacs and Burgundians. To sing " the ladies " or 
 the return of spring 
 
 The year has doffed its mantle 
 Of wind, of cold, and of rain, 
 
 amid all these horrors and the universal distress, 
 the heedlessness is needful of a Charles d'Orleans. And 
 when finally, during the last years of the reign of Charles 
 VII., or under Louis XI., there is a return of peace and 
 tranquillity, one or two exceptions do not prevent what 
 I may perhaps describe as a Flemish or Burgundian 
 heaviness from invading the whole domain both of 
 literature and art the tomb of the dukes of Burgundy 
 
 Parisian student of the fifteenth century ; his adventures, and how 
 they nearly brought him to the gibbet ; he was perhaps on the eve 
 of being hanged when he wrote his Ballade des Pendus and his two 
 Testaments; although on the other hand the "Testament" was a 
 form of composition frequently adopted in the literature of his time. 
 Whether he was a member of a band of robbers, and that in any 
 case he was in the prison of Charite-sur -Loire when Louis XI. came 
 to the throne. He was released on this occasion, and from this 
 moment we lose sight of him. But enough is known to allow it 
 to be affirmed that the great superiority of his work is due to his 
 having "lived" his poetry. 
 
 That in point of fact he possesses all the qualities of a great poet 
 and of a lyric poet ; and even those of a wit ; although his wit was 
 generally in very bad taste ; and his jests are those of the stews 
 [Cf. the ballad of the Belle Heaumiere and that of the Grosse 
 Margot~\. But he is touching when expressing his repentance [Cf. 
 le Grand Testament, 169-224], proof of the sincerity of which is 
 afforded by la Ballade que Villon fit a larequete de samere. Further 
 he had the gift of seeing and of evoking the vision of "things seen " 
 [Cf. la Ballade des Contredits de Franc Gontier~\, a keen sentiment
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 31 
 
 at Dijon is proof and from crushing everything beneath 
 its incubus, which the ostentatious display of riches aggra- 
 vates rather than alleviates. [Cf. Ernest Benan, Histoire 
 litteraire de la France, vol. xxiv.] 
 
 Doubtless there is Villon, Fran9ois Villon, " born in 
 Paris, near Pontoise," a true gallows-bird, but a true 
 poet as well one would even venture to say a great 
 poet ; and assuredly some of his Ballades exemplify the 
 grace and vigour of style, the emotional sincerity, and 
 the originality of sentiment and ideas that attach to 
 this name of poet when it is deserved. What is there 
 grimmer than the Ballade des pendus? what fuller of 
 colour than the Ballade de la grosse Mar got ? more 
 naively "limned" than the Ballade que Jit Villon a la 
 requete de sa mere? and since Villon cannot be named 
 without the reference what is there more human in 
 its melancholy than the Ballade des Dames du temps 
 
 of the grim [Cf. Grand Testament, 305-329, and 1728-1778] ; infinite 
 grace and delicacy when he liked [Cf. Za Ballade des dames du temps 
 jadis~] ; the rugged eloquence of the satirist ; to such a degree 
 indeed that in none of our poets is the close relationship between 
 lyricism and satire better perceived ; such artistic mastery that 
 nobody in his own time or since has surpassed or equalled him in 
 the ballad ; and finally his entire work gives utterance to a cry of 
 profound anguish by which we ourselves are moved in our innermost 
 being. 
 
 Be it added that to Villon belongs the merit of having at least 
 " summarised " what Boileau believed he had "cleared up." Villon's 
 ideal is assuredly far removed from that of the " courteous poetry," 
 but if there exists a poetry of adventure and Bohemian life it is 
 his ; and he did not invent it. Again, the form in which death 
 haunted the imaginations of the Middle Ages has had no more 
 eloquent interpreter [Cf. the Vers de la Mort by the Monk Helinand 
 in the Histoire litteraire de la France, vol. xiii.]; and if the 
 courteous poetry itself, though it went the wrong way to work, tended 
 nevertheless to liberate from all restraint the expression of the poet's 
 personality ; this end, too, was attained by Villon.
 
 32 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 jadis ? But it was not the example of Villon that was 
 followed. The men who founded a school were the 
 " great rhetoricians " : Jean Meschinot, Jean Molinet, 
 Guillaume Cretin, the Raminagrobis of Rabelais, Jean 
 Marot, Lemaire de Beiges. Already prosaic with Alain 
 Chartier, poetry with these writers becomes pretentiously 
 didactic. Were they alive to the fact themselves ; and, 
 " being unable to make their poetry beautiful," was it 
 for this reason that they made it "artificial" by over- 
 loading it with infinite complications and regrettable 
 ornament? Their poetry reminds us of the village 
 queen of whom Pascal will somewhere write, the "pretty 
 maid, all mirrors and chains, who admires herself but 
 who provokes laughter." And the result is that nothing 
 of their work has remained, and it cannot even be said 
 that the succeeding age turned its fragments to account. 
 Nevertheless, in their own time they choked, as it were, 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Villon's authentic works consist of his two 
 Testaments and of five Ballades, the best edition of which is that 
 of M. Longnon referred to above. 
 
 He is the author neither of the Repues /ranches nor of the Franc 
 archer de Bagnolet, which are persistently given a place hi almost all 
 editions of his works ; and of the eleven Ballades in jobelin or slang 
 which are attributed to him, there are at least four that are certainly 
 not by him ; but all these pieces, since they are attributed to him, 
 are of great interest, as they prove for this very reason the represen- 
 tative character of his work ; and that his contemporaries appreciated 
 it at once. 
 
 VIII. The Mysteries. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Onesime Leroy, Etudes sur les mysteres, Paris, 
 1837; Charles Magnin, les Origines du theatre nwderne, Paris, 1846, 
 1847, 1858, Journal des Savants ; Edelestand du Meril, les Origines 
 latines du theatre moderne, Paris, 1849 ; Coussemaker, Drames 
 liturgiques, Eennes, 1860; Leon Gautier, les Origines du theatre 
 moderne, in the newspaper le Monde, 1873 ; and les Tropes, Paris, 
 1887 ; Marius Sepet, le Drame Chretien au Moyen-dge, Paris, 1877 ;
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 66 
 
 the reputation of Villon, and more than fifty years will 
 elapse before the Lunettes des princes or the Complainte 
 sur le trepas de Messire Guillaume de Byssipat will be 
 surpassed in the estimation of poets by the Petit and 
 the Grand Testament. 
 
 In the same lamentable fashion as in the rhapsodies of 
 the " great rhetoricians," the sterility of the period comes 
 into view in connection with the apparent abundance of 
 Mysteries, supposing indeed the Mysteries to belong to 
 the history of literature, and their text to be of greater 
 value than that of a modern opera libretto. For just as 
 in an opera it is first of all the music and in the next 
 place the scenery, costumes, and ballet that by definition 
 are the essential features of this class of work, while the 
 text in reality is only the peg on which they are hung ; 
 so in our great Mysteries the principal, capital, and 
 characteristic element is the spectacle or representation, 
 
 and les Prophetes du Christ, 1878 ; Petit de Julleville, les Mysteres, 
 Paris, 1880 ; A. d'Ancona, Origini del teatro in Italia, Florence, 
 1872 ; W. Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas, Halle, 1893. 
 
 2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 A. The origin of the Mysteries ; and in this connection of the 
 analogy between the origin of French mediaeval drama and that of 
 Greek drama ; but while this analogy should be pointed out it must 
 not be exaggerated. Of the Tropes or interpolations in liturgical 
 texts, and what was the object of the Church in allowing them : it 
 doubtless desired to add to the solemnity of certain services or certain 
 fetes ; to interest the faithful in a more active manner in the cele- 
 bration of worship ; to maintain its hold on them, to fix their 
 attention and to instruct them by " amusing them " [Cf. down to our 
 own time the "pomps" and " processions "]. Gradual formation of 
 the liturgical drama : by the introduction of the vulgar tongue into 
 the recognised texts ; by the material and costumed representation 
 of the "mystery" appropriate to the season; [Cf. the dramas 
 I'Epoux and the Prophetes du Christ] ; by the intervention of 
 lay authors. The Representation d'Adam, and the fragment of 
 the Resurrection. Removal of the site of the stage. Why was it 
 
 4
 
 or more exactly the exhibition. Whether clerks or 
 laymen, the authors, or, as it would be more correct to 
 term them, the purveyors of our Mysteries, do not even 
 propose to narrate the " drama of the Passion," to teach 
 the masses new truths, or to present them old truths in 
 a new guise; their aim, or rather their office, all that 
 they do and all that is asked of them, is merely to sketch 
 a sort of scenario, which shall serve as a pretext to the 
 burgesses of Tours or of Orleans for mounting on the 
 stage arrayed in resplendent finery, and thus for pro- 
 curing themselves the kind of pleasure afforded them 
 to-day by a so-called historical "cavalcade." At the 
 same time, for this very reason, and on account of the 
 living reality of the topical matter they contain of the 
 time of Louis XI. or of Charles VII., it is not to be 
 gainsaid that the Mysteries are precious documents for 
 the history of manners. 
 
 that the development of the liturgical drama was at a standstill 
 for nearly two centuries ? Impossibility of answering the question ; 
 and whether this impossibility does not throw some doubt on the 
 alleged "continuity" of the evolution of the drama during the 
 Middle Ages. That in any case the two plays of the thirteenth 
 century that have come down to us [the Jeu de Saint Nicolas, by 
 Jean Bodel, and the Miracle de Theophile, by Rutebeuf] do not re- 
 establish the continuity; any more than do the Miracles de Notre- 
 Dame; which have only a remote connection with the Mysteries. 
 
 B. THE MIRACLE PLAYS. They consist of an incident taken from 
 ordinary life, and terminating in the intervention of the Virgin or 
 of a saint; about the climax, and especially about "the plot" of 
 which, there is nothing obligatory; there is not necessarily any- 
 thing more or less historic about the personages of these plays ; 
 they can scarcely be said to aim at edifying and still less at in- 
 structing; indeed they are often hostile to the clergy; and there 
 is no evidence that the Church took them under its protection. 
 In consequence, their chief point of resemblance with the Myste- 
 ries is that they promoted a taste for the theatre; which they 
 may even be said to have developed by means of the fraternities,
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 35 
 
 But are not a " royal ordinance " or a " decree of 
 Parliament " also " documents " ? and to whom has it 
 equally ever occurred to regard them as " literature " ? 
 
 The only name in this period, apart from that of 
 Villon, which stands out and survives is that of Philippe 
 de Commynes. It would be a mistake to compare, 
 as has been done, Commynes with his contemporary 
 Machiavelli. The " Decades " or " The Prince " of the 
 great Italian are written in a very different style ; their 
 value and significance are very different from that of the 
 Mtmoires of the shrewd servant of Charles the Bold and 
 Louis XI. Still he, too, has his merits ! Commynes has 
 few prejudices, always an excellent qualification for 
 writing history, and above all he lived on familiar 
 terms with one of the most original models an artist 
 has ever been offered. This being the case, it is un- 
 fortunate that his example, as also happened to Villon, 
 
 the puys, or the chambers of rJietoric. That in contrast to these 
 characteristics, the Mysteries for their part are really stage represen- 
 tations of the " mysteries " of religion ; a fact that relieves us of the 
 necessity of dilating upon the signification and etymology of their 
 name. Herein moreover, and not in any other peculiarity, lies their 
 true character ; which is not altered by the episodic scenes in which 
 they abound ; as is further proved by the only classification that can 
 be given of them. 
 
 C. THE DRAMATIC CYCLES. They are three in number: (1) the 
 Cycle de VAnc-ien Testament; (2) the Cycle tin Nottveau Testament ; 
 and (3) the Cycle des Saints. That in the first of these three cycles 
 none of the Biblical themes are treated for their own sake, as in the 
 Esther or the Athalie of Racine for example ; but solely in their con- 
 nection with the coming of Christ, whose life entirety takes up the 
 second cycle. This peculiarity is the explanation and the only ex- 
 planation : of the choice of episodes [Job, Tobiah, Daniel, Judith, 
 Esther] ; of the grossness of some of them, which is meant to bring 
 into keener relief the figure of Christ ; and finally of the part that was 
 long taken by the clergy in the representation of the Mysteries. Of 
 the Cycle dcs Saints and of its generally local character; which is
 
 36 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 bore no fruit, but that on the contrary, far from his having 
 given rise to a literary movement, in him and with him 
 our chroniclers come to an end. His talent is merely an 
 accident, as was that of Villon ; and not only is it not 
 from him that our classical historians descend, but he 
 can scarcely be regarded even as the forerunner of those 
 authors of Memoirs, who are soon to become so numerous 
 in the history of our literature. 
 
 Thus, whichever way we look, and neglecting one or 
 two exceptions such as there must always be, we dis- 
 cover nothing but symptoms of decadence, and it seems 
 that the literature of the Middle Ages in all its branches, 
 at any rate in France, has met with a check in its growth 
 at the climacteric moment of its development. This 
 amounts to saying that the literature we refer to was 
 marked by all the qualities that are characteristic of 
 childhood; and for this reason we may still turn to it 
 
 not the more lay on that account. The Mysteries are " object 
 lessons," a mode of teaching the masses the essential truths of 
 religion ; and as has been said, a means of obtaining a hold on the 
 masses. That there are only two Mysteries that constitute an 
 exception : the Mystere du Siege (V Orleans and the Mystere de 
 Troie; but the mood that inspired the former had nothing in- 
 compatible with the essential character of the sacred Mysteries 
 and that the latter was doubtless never represented. 
 
 D. THE VALUE OF THE MYSTERIES, and that in general, from a 
 literary point of view, they are mediocrity itself; which is easily 
 understandable granting that the drama is as self-dependent as 
 any other independent art ; further it is only by an accident that 
 their history coincides with that of literature. But the Mysteries 
 are not even drama : they are merely " spectacle," and their authors 
 only handled them as such. That this opinion is borne out by the 
 very conditions under which the Mysteries were represented. And 
 by this is not meant that they do not occasionally contain interesting 
 "incidents," for such incidents are found in some of the Mysteries 
 of the Cycle des Saints ; scenes in which there are traces of the 
 greatness of the model, as in the Mysteries of the Cycle de VAncien
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 37 
 
 to-day, as to a purer source, and refresh in it our 
 fevered imaginations. But from the qualities of child- 
 hood it passed by an abrupt transition to the infir- 
 mities of decrepitude, and nothing or scarcely anything 
 occupies the interval. Never perhaps since the remote 
 times of Homer and the Greek epopee had epic matter 
 been more abundant, richer, and fresher than that of 
 the Chansons de Geste or the Romans de la Table- 
 Eonde. We ourselves are still living on it ! Yet 
 during four hundred years, from one poem to another, 
 from the earliest Chansons de geste to the latest 
 prose versions of the Bibliotheque bleue, this epic 
 matter floated in a diffuse state, without any of our 
 old trouveres, the author of Roland, as little as that 
 of Parsifal, being successful in giving it a shape that 
 should present it " under its eternal aspect." The 
 " dramatists " did not perceive the fact that the nature 
 
 Testament; and curious "episodes" of a more or less realistic 
 character as in the Cycle du Nouveau Testament ; but what is 
 meant is that they have no literary value ; that there is no cause to 
 regret their decadence or their extinction, and that they furnished 
 no element even to the " Christian" drama of the classic period. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The Mystere du Vieux Testament, edited by 
 James de Kothschild and Emile Picot, Paris, 1878-1891 ; the 
 Mystere de la Passion, by Arnoul Greban, edited by MM. Gaston 
 Paris and Gaston Raynaud, Paris, 1878; Les Actes des Apotres, by 
 Simon and Arnoul Greban, in 62,000 verses ; the Mystercs de 
 Sainte Barbe, Saint Denis, Saint Laurent, Saint Louis, &c. ; the 
 Mystere du Siege d'Orleans, by MM. Guessard and Certain in the 
 collection of Documents inedits sur I'histoire de France, Paris, 1862. 
 
 Further, excellent analyses will be found of all the Mysteries that 
 have come down to us, whether in manuscript or printed, in the second 
 volume of M. Petit de Julleville's work on the Mysteries. 
 
 IX. Philippe de Commynes [Chateau de Coinmynes, 1447 ; 
 f 1511, Chateau d'Argenton]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Lenglet du Fresnoy in his edition of the Memoires,
 
 38 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 or essence of drama is action ; and for want of this in- 
 tuition, it is seen, from the procession it began by being, 
 to become at first an exhibition, after an exhibition a 
 spectacle, and finally after a spectacle a show of the sort 
 that is seen at fairs. And lyric poetry, fettered in its 
 flight by circumstances, had no sooner spread its wings 
 than it was constrained to fold them, and confining its 
 free inspiration in poems of a conventional impersonality, 
 to content itself with the commonplaces of the ' ' cour- 
 teous " poetry. What has just been said is expressed in a 
 general way, when it is affirmed that the Renaissance, far 
 from having accomplished a work of destruction, did not 
 even interrupt what was already in progress. If the litera- 
 ture of the Middle Ages were not dead when the spirit of 
 the Renaissance began to get abroad in the world, it had 
 been expiring for two hundred years and more. It is 
 therefore possible, it is even probable, that in the absence 
 
 1747 ; Mile Dupont's Notice preceding her edition of the Memoires, 
 Paris, 1840 ; Kervyn de Lettenhove, Lettres et negotiations de 
 Philippe de Commynes, Brussels, 1867, 1874 ; Chantelauze, Notice 
 preceding his edition of the Memoires, Paris, 1880 ; Fierville, Docu- 
 ments inedits sur Philippe de Commynes, Paris, 1881. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. The favourite of Charles the Bold 
 and the counsellor of Louis XI. His numerous missions and his 
 political role. His disgrace, 1486. He reappears at court, 1492. 
 His retirement, 1498. His last years, 1505-1510; and his death. 
 
 Originality of Commynes. He is himself, and this distinguishes 
 him from the chroniclers contemporary with him ; who, whether 
 they write in French or Latin, are scarcely more than the expression 
 of their time ; reflecting public opinion rather than uttering their 
 own thoughts. His experience of public affairs. Qualities of his 
 Memoires ; they are those of a politician ; and also of a psychologist 
 [Cf. Memoires, iv. 6, and vii. 9] . It may even be said that in places 
 they are those of a philosopher [Cf. ii. 6, for example, and v. 18]. 
 But they are not the work of an artist [Cf. Froissart] ; or of an 
 historian who is at the same time a moralist capable, that is, of 
 deducing from events a signification of greater import than the facts
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 39 
 
 of the spirit of the Renaissance some other new spirit 
 would have entered and quickened this remnant of an 
 existence. But this did not happen ; and in the mean- 
 time the Renaissance was about to provide us with 
 three things we had so far lacked : an artistic model, 
 by setting before us the great examples of antiquity ; 
 the ambition to reproduce and imitate the ancient forms 
 of art ; and to fill up these forms, if I may so express 
 myself, new methods, in the shape of a new manner of 
 observing nature and man. 
 
 themselves ; It is this trait among others that distinguishes him from 
 his contemporary Machiavelli ; and not to mention his ignorance of 
 Latin or of classical traditions. His qualities as a writer ; and the 
 extent to which they are marked by the spirit of the Middle Ages. 
 
 3. THE WORK. Apart from his " negociations," the work of 
 Commynes is restricted to his Memoires. He did not have the time 
 to finish them, and they stop at 1498. 
 
 The first edition of them appeared in 1524, under the title of 
 Chronique de Louis XI. ; and as to the last portion in 1528, under the 
 title of Chronique de Charles VIII. 
 
 The best modern editions are those of Mile Dupont, Paris, 1840 ; 
 and Chantelauze's edition, Paris, 1881.
 
 BOOK II 
 
 CHAPTEK I 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 
 
 I 
 
 It was in Italy that the signal was given, and it was 
 the humanists who gave it. This name of humanists is 
 applied to the poets, to the men of culture and also to 
 the pedants who revived or rather who rediscovered the 
 
 THE AUTHORS AND THEIR WORKS 
 
 FIRST PEEIOD 
 
 Villon to Ronsard 
 
 1490-1550 
 
 I. Clement Marot [Cahors, 1495 ; f 1544, Turin]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. L' 'Adolescence and la Suite de V Adolescence 
 Clementine*; Bayle : Dictionnaire historique et critique, art. 
 MAROT. Lenglet du Fresnoy in his edition of the Works of Marot, 
 vols. i. and vi. ; Goujet : Bibliotheque francaise, vol. xi. ; Ch. 
 d'Hericault, (Euvres choisies de Marot, introduction, Paris, 1867 ; 
 
 1 We expressly include the works of a writer among the Sources of his biography 
 only when they contain, as dose I' Adolescence Clementine, information that is 
 personal and given as such by the author. 
 
 40
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 41 
 
 lost significance of antiquity. Not that they themselves 
 always appreciated it quite aright, or more particularly, 
 as was too long believed, that the Middle Ages entirely 
 ignored it. The Middle Ages were acquainted with Cicero 
 and Virgil, Livy and Horace, Ovid and Seneca, Plautus 
 and Juvenal ; they even translated and imitated them ! 
 But "they had only turned them to account, says an 
 historian there is little reason to mistrust, Canon J. 
 Janssen, in his memorable work on the Reformation in 
 Germany, as a medium that might help them to a more 
 profound understanding of Christianity, and to an im- 
 provement of the moral life " ; and this was doubtless a 
 perfectly legitimate manner of making use of them, but 
 it was possible to conceive a different manner. The chief 
 innovation effected by humanism was to make the object 
 of the study or knowledge of Latin antiquity that study or 
 
 0. Douen : Clement Marot et le Psautier huguenot, Paris, 1878 ; 
 G. Guiffrey : (Euvres de Marot, vols. i. and ii., which are all that 
 have appeared, Paris, n.d. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE POET. Did he belong to Quercv or to 
 Normandy? The disciple of his father, Jean Marot, and of the 
 " great rhetoricians " ; his youth and his love affairs ; his edition of 
 the Eommant de la Base, 1527. The valet de chambre of Fra^ois I. 
 Marot's imprisonments. The publication of I' Adolescence Clemen- 
 tine, 1532 ; and the edition of the Works of Villon, 1533. Marot and 
 Protestantism. His stay at Ferrara. Return to Paris. The Traduc- 
 tion des Psaumes, 1541. Marot in Geneva ; his quarrels with Calvin ; 
 he leaves Geneva for Turin, where he dies in 1544. 
 
 Esteem in which Marot is held ; and the qualities that justify it : 
 wit, clearness, and sly humour. That these qualities are scarcely 
 those of a poet, but rather of a prose writer, who should have fitted 
 rhymes to his prose. Marot possessed neither the intensity of feeling, 
 nor the picturesqueness of vision, nor the vividness of style of a poet ; 
 Marot's ideas commonplace ; and that Marot must not be under- 
 estimated ; but that it is necessary to assign him no more than his 
 proper value, if the work of Ronsard and the reform he accomplished 
 are to be rightly appreciated.
 
 42 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 knowledge itself, and in this way to transform, solely by 
 displacing them, the very foundations of education and 
 intellectual culture. For there is a wide difference 
 between the disposition of mind which induces the 
 reader to search the Tusculanae or the sixth book of the 
 Mneid for premonitory signs of the approaching advent 
 of Christianity, and that which leads him merely to seek 
 in these works, with a view to deriving pleasure from 
 them, the evidences of the melancholy genius of Virgil 
 or of the eloquence of Cicero. Numerous points which 
 were overlooked in the first case came into sight in the 
 second, aroused attention and held it. Suppose that at 
 the present day we were to affect to regard Eabelais 
 and Moliere merely as the " forerunners of the French 
 Revolution" and they are its forerunners in a certain 
 measure and a certain sense and endeavour to count 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The works of Marot are composed : (1 ) of 
 Translations and Allegories, such as his translation of the Meta- 
 morphoses, bk. i. and ii., and his Temple de Cupido, or again his 
 Enfer ; (2) of Chants royaux, Ballads, and Bondeaux ; (3) of 
 Elegies, Epistles, and Epigrams ; (4) of occasional pieces, that 
 figure in anthologies under the titles Etrennes, Epitaphes, Blasons, 
 Cimetieres, and Complaintes ; (5) of his translation of fifty of the 
 Psalnis. 
 
 The best editions are the Niort edition, 1596, published by Thomas 
 Portau; Lenglet du Fresnoy's edition, The Hague, 1731, Gosse and 
 Neaulme ; and among the modern editions, that published at Lyons 
 by Scheuring, 1869 ; and that of Guiffrey, which unhappily has 
 remained unfinished. 
 
 II. Marguerite de ValoiS [Angouleme, 1492 ; f 1549, Chateau 
 d'Odos] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Brantome : Les Dames Illustres, sixth discourse, 
 article 6 ; Bayle, Dictionnaire historique, article MARGUERITE; 
 Genin: Notice sur Marguerite preceding his edition of the Lettres, 
 Paris, 1841 ; Leroux de Lincy : Notice preceding his edition of the 
 Heptameron, Paris, 1853 ; La Ferriere : Le Livre de depenses de la
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 43 
 
 how many of their most characteristic traits would be 
 lost for us. To search Tartuffe with a view to learning 
 the religious opinions of Moliere is one way of reading the 
 work, but not the only way, and above all not the most 
 literary way. [Cf. Janssen, VAllemagne et la Eeforme ; 
 French translation, Paris, 1887, vols. i. and ii. ; and Furcy- 
 Eaynaud's translation of Pastor's Histoire des Papes, 
 Paris, 1888, vol. i.] 
 
 On the other hand, while the Middle Ages were fairly 
 well acquainted with Latin literature, they were almost 
 wholly ignorant of Greek literature. Grcecum est, non 
 legitur ! Greek was the language of the chief heresies, 
 the language of Nestorius, Arius, and Eutyches. It 
 is true indeed that in spite of the proverb, St. Thomas 
 d'Acquinas, to mention but him, was deeply versed in 
 Aristotle. But it does not seem that the Middle Ages 
 
 reine de Navarre, Paris, 1862 ; Marguerite de Valois, by the author 
 of Robert Emmet [C tesse d'HaussonvilleJ , Paris, 1870. 
 
 2. THE WOMAN AND THE WRITER. The mischances of a royal 
 reputation ; and how Marguerite has been the victim of the excess 
 or the indiscreetness of her affection for her brother, Francois I. ; 
 and of the liking of biographers for scandalous anecdotes ; and of 
 her homonymy with another Marguerite, whose memory has been 
 popularised by Le Pre aux Clercs, Les Huguenots, and La Heine 
 Margot. But the evidence of her contemporaries, and the examina- 
 tion of her works themselves, the Heptameron included, give an 
 exactly contrary idea of her. 
 
 Composition of the Heptameron ; testimony of Brantorne ; com- 
 parison between the Heptameron and Boccaccio's Decameron and the 
 Propos et Joyeux devis of Bonaventure des Periers. That the gross- 
 ness of some of the stories in it merely proves the grossness of the 
 manners and language of the time ; but that Marguerite's object was 
 to combat this grossness ; and that? the proof of this is to be found in 
 the Dialogues that separate the " days." The historical allusions in the 
 Heptameron, that it is the book of a virtuous woman and even of a 
 woman somewhat given to " preaching" ; testimony of du Verdier in 
 his Bibliotheque, vol. iv., edition of 1772. The study of the Poesies
 
 44 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 were acquainted with Homer, Herodotus, .ZEschylus, 
 Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pindar, Demos- 
 thenes, and the Alexandrians. How could a knowledge 
 have been acquired of these writers since there was 
 not a single professor of Greek at the University of 
 Paris? In consequence, when the Humanists began to 
 steep themselves in Grecian lore, they inaugurated a 
 veritable revolution. The fact is too commonly over- 
 looked when it is attempted, doubtless with a view to 
 lessening our debt to the Renaissance, to contest the 
 originality of that movement. One of the reasons, 
 probably, why the Renaissance did not come to a head 
 sooner, is that the study of Latin was insufficient 
 to provoke it. To accomplish this the dispersion was 
 necessary of the Greek element throughout the Europe 
 of the fifteenth century, as the consequence of the 
 
 and the Lettres confirms this interpretation ; since Marguerite's 
 Poesies are in general pious poetry; "She was very fond of com- 
 posing devout verses," says Brantome, " for she was much inclined 
 to godliness"; and her Lettres, when they were not business 
 letters or poetical letters, are "mystic" letters. Of Marguerite's 
 attitude towards Protestantism. The incident of the Miroir de frame 
 pecheresse. The last years of Marguerite and her death. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses, 
 1547 ; L'Heptameron des nouvelles de la Heine de Navarre, first 
 edition, 1558, and second edition, 1559 ; Lettres de Marguerite 
 d'Angouleme, published by Genin, Paris, 1841, for the Societe de 
 I'histoire de France ; Dernieres poesies de la Heine de Navarre, 
 edited by Abel Lefranc, Paris, 1896. 
 
 The best edition of the Heptameron is that of Leroux de Lincy. 
 
 III. FranQOiS Rabelais [Chinon, 1483, or 90 or 95; I 1552 or 
 53, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Niceron in his Homines illustrcs, vol. xxxii. ; 
 Chaufepie, in his Dictionnaire, article "Rabelais," very exhaustive 
 and very important ; J. Ch. Brunet : Becherches sur les editions 
 originates de Rabelais, Paris, 1834, and the new edition, greatly
 
 THE FOEMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 45 
 
 taking of Constantinople by the Turks. And even if 
 it be impossible to say in what manner, or precisely 
 in what connection, the influence made itself felt, its 
 effects are not on this account less certain, but merely 
 more hidden and far reaching. [Cf. Emile Egger, 
 I'Hellenisme en France, Paris, 1869 ; and Voigt, Die 
 Wiederbelebung des classiclien AltertJmms.] 
 
 It is needful, too, to take into account the essential 
 quality of the Italian genius. "Does the human plant," 
 in Alfieri's famous words, "grow more sturdily in 
 Italy than elsewhere?" The question is open to dis- 
 cussion, and it might be found that there is much 
 ingenuousness in the sort of admiring bewilderment our 
 dilettanti experience or affect to experience in presence of 
 a Caesar Borgia who, perhaps, as the son of his father, 
 was as much a Spaniard as an Italian. What, however, 
 
 augmented, Paris, 1852 ; A. Mayrargues : Rabelais, Paris, 1868 ; 
 Eugene Noel : Rabelais et son oeuvre, Paris, 1870 ; Emile 
 Gebhart : Rabelais et la Renaissance, Paris, 1887, and second edition, 
 Paris, 1893; Jean Fleury: Rabelais, Paris, 1877; Paul Stapfer: 
 Rabelais, sa personne, son genie et son oeuvre, Paris, 1889 ; Rene 
 Millet : Rabelais, Paris, 1892, in the collection of Grands Ecrivains 
 francais ; and finally the Notices or Notes in the editions of Le 
 Duchat, le Motteux, Desoer, Burgaud des Marets, Moland, and 
 Marty-Laveaux. 
 
 2. THE LEGEND OF EABELAIS. How it was formed ; the attacks of 
 his contemporaries ; Eon sard's epitaph on Eabelais : 
 
 A vine will grow up 
 From the stomach and paunch 
 Of good Eabelais who was drinking 
 Always, while he lived ; . . . 
 
 Eabelais' quarrels with the monks ; with the Sorbonne ; with 
 Calvin ; the declarations in the Prologues ; the general character of 
 Eabelais' work ; and in this connection, that in spite of the tendency 
 of the critics to make men resemble their works, there was nothing 
 either of the drunkard or the buffoon, nor even of the revolutionary
 
 46 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 is undeniable is that Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio only 
 deserved to be called the " first of the moderns " because 
 they were distinguished from their contemporaries by a 
 characteristic sign, whose nature we shall attempt shortly 
 to make clear. Still less can we disregard the conse- 
 quences of the wars of Charles VIII., Louis XII., and 
 Fran9ois I. The truth is that for us Frenchmen our 
 first contact with Italy was a sort of revelation. "Amid 
 the feudal barbarity of which the fifteenth century still 
 bore the imprint, Italy says Michelet offered the 
 spectacle of an ancient civilisation. It commanded the 
 respect of foreigners by its long-standing authority in 
 religion and the pomp of its opulence and arts." It 
 would be impossible to state the truth better or more ac- 
 curately. The charm of the Italian climate and manners 
 may be adduced as well. The Italy of the Kenaissance, 
 
 about Rabelais. Ginguene's opuscule dealing with " the authority 
 of Rabelais in the present revolution" (1791); and the notes in 
 Esmangart and Johanneau's edition. 
 
 3. RABELAIS' WORK. 
 
 A. The Sources of the Romance, Its mythical or mythological 
 ground-work [Cf. P. Sebillot, Gargantua dans Ics traditions popu- 
 laircs~] ; and that it is doubtful whether Gargantua is a " solar 
 myth." Moreover it is not certain that he is a caricature of 
 Fran9ois I. The Gallic ground-work and the tradition of the Middle 
 Ages. The Grseco-Latin antiquity, and in this connection of Rabe- 
 lais' erudition : totius encyclopcedice profundissimum abyssum. The 
 writers of the Renaissance ; of some of Rabelais' borrowings : from 
 Sir Thomas More [the Abbey of Thelema], from Merlin Coccaie 
 [the sheep of Dindenaut], from Pogge (the ring of Hans Carvel], 
 from Ccelio Calcagnini [the allegory of Physics and Antiphysics, the 
 Thawed Words], from Ccelius Rhodiginus, etc., etc. The historical 
 allusions in Rabelais' romance ; and the satire of contemporary 
 manners. Imitation in a general way of the " Iliad " in the earlier, 
 and of the " Odyssey " in the last books. [Cf. in Frederic Bernard's 
 edition, Amsterdam, 1741, an amusing " Parallel between Homer and 
 Rabelais," by Dufresny, the author of the Lettres 8iamoises~\.
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 47 
 
 invaded, devastated, and trampled under foot by the men 
 from the North, whether Germans or Frenchmen, subtly 
 mastered its rude conquerors as Greece had done before 
 it. They conceived the idea of a different life, freer, 
 more ornate, more " human " in a word, than that they 
 had led for five or six centuries : an obscure sentiment 
 of the power of beauty stole into the minds of even the 
 "men at arms" or the lansquenets; almost unawares, 
 the whole of Europe became Italianised ; and then it 
 was at last that the spirit of the Renaissance, recrossing 
 the mountains with the armies of Charles VIII., Louis 
 XII., and Fran9ois I., seemed to have destroyed in less 
 than fifty years the little that remained of the traditions 
 of the Middle Ages. 
 
 In this respect the Renaissance is without question the 
 work of the Italian genius. When two or more elements 
 
 B. Tlie signification of the Romance ; and it not being necessary 
 that a romance should have a signification or a philosophy, how is 
 it that one is sought for in Rabelais' romance ? The Prologue to the 
 first book ; two verses of Theodore de Beze : 
 
 Qui sic nugatur, tractantem ut seria vincat, 
 Seria quum faciet, die, rogo, quantus erit ; 
 
 four verses of Victor Hugo : 
 
 Rabelais, whom none understood ; 
 
 Rocks Adam to sleep, 
 
 And his vast ringing laugh 
 
 Is one of the abysses of the mind ; 
 
 and of the danger of seeing too much mystery and too much pro- 
 fundity in Rabelais' romance. 
 
 Of Rabelais' romance as a satire of manners ; and in this connec- 
 tion of the authenticity of the fifth book. Necessity of fixing the 
 dates: Pantagruel, first book, 1533; Gargantua, 1535; Pantagruel, 
 second book, 1546 ; Pantagrvel, third book, 1552. Satire of scholas-
 
 48 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 are brought into contact, to bring about or to complete 
 the mystery of their combination, it is not sufficient 
 (this is taught us by science itself) that they should 
 have elective affinities for one another, but the inter- 
 vention is necessary of a new force from without. It 
 was much in this way that the Italian genius con- 
 summated the work of the Renaissance ; it served as 
 the spark. Moreover, if the Italian element were to be 
 overlooked, not only would the true character of the 
 Renaissance movement be misunderstood, but it would 
 be difficult as well to explain the formation of classicism 
 and the reasons of its long domination. 
 
 The primary characteristic of this new spirit is the 
 development of Individualism. To be " themselves" is 
 now going to be the chief concern of men ; to be them- 
 selves to the utmost possible extent ; and in consequence 
 
 ticism, of monks in general, of the Romish Court of kings and the 
 great of the magistracy and of justice. 
 
 Of Rabelais' romance as the expression of the ideal of the Renais- 
 sance : Rabelais' pedagogy ; Pantagruelism ; the philosophy of 
 nature. 
 
 Of Rabelais' romance as a programme of reforms ; and that in 
 this respect with regard to a number of points it should not have 
 been displeasing to Fra^ois I. any more than to Henri II. Circum- 
 stances under which the third book was published. Rabelais' moral 
 and political ideas ; how far his book reflects the fact that he was a 
 doctor and a physiologist ; and that he had been a monk. 
 
 Of some of the shortcomings of Rabelais' romance. His contempt 
 for women, and that in this respect Rabelais is a thorough Gaul. 
 What is meant when it is said that he did not possess the sentiment 
 of beauty [Cf. Gebhart : Rabelais et la Renaissance]. He also lacked 
 the sense of the tragic side of life. That for all these reasons, the 
 "filth with which he strewed his writings," as La Bruyere said, does 
 not mark any depth of intention. Comparison in this connection of 
 Pantagruel with Gulliver's Travels. Of Rabelais' obscurity ; and 
 that where he is obscure it is perhaps a question whether he always 
 understood himself.
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 49 
 
 to be themselves "at all costs." Whereas up till now, 
 men were humiliated, as they might be by a blemish 
 or deformity, on discovering that they differed sensibly 
 from others of their race or class, henceforth, on the 
 contrary, if they think they detect in themselves an 
 original or distinctive quality they will regard it as 
 something of which to be proud. Est sane cuique 
 natural-tier, ut in vultu et in gestu sic in voce et sermone 
 quiddam swum ac proprium, quod colere et castigare 
 quam mutare quum facilius, turn melius atque felicius 
 sit. Such were already the terms in which Petrarch 
 expressed himself in a letter to Boccaccio ; and in fact 
 men will make it a point of honour for the future to 
 develop in themselves this quiddam suum ac proprium, 
 that is, to differ from other men with a view to sur- 
 passing them. Nothing could be in closer conformity 
 
 C. The literary value of the Romance. Luxuriance, richness, and 
 complexity of Eabelais' imagination ; and that possessing in the 
 highest degree the gift of seeing, that of depicting, and that of narra- 
 tion, he even had the gift of inventing veritable myths. Allegory, 
 Myth, and Symbol. Kabelais' humour. The gift of provoking 
 laughter. Rabelais' style, and that two periods should be distin- 
 guished in his style ; -of which the first is the better. Of some 
 artifices of Eabelais. The gift of verbal invention ; how Eabelais 
 let himself be carried away by it ; and while abandoning himself to 
 it, rises at times to lyricism. That Eabelais does not seem to have 
 founded a school, and why not ? 
 
 4. THE REAL EABELAIS. That far from having been in any way the 
 buffoon or the revolutionary of legend, Eabelais was the shrewdest 
 and most prudent of men. His relations with the du Bellays, the 
 cardinal of Chatillon, Fra^ois I., and Henri II. ; his squabbles with 
 Calvin and with Etienne Dolet [Cf. Eichard Copley Christie : Etienne 
 Dolet, le martyr de la Renaissance, trans. Stryienski, Paris, 1886] ; 
 which nearly got him into trouble. Eabelais and the Eomish Court. 
 His appointment as cure of Meudon, in 1550. Personal interven- 
 tion of Henri II. in the publication of the fourth book, in 1552. A 
 passage in Theodore de Beze : Pantagruel, cum libro suo quern fecit 
 
 5
 
 50 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 with the spirit of antiquity, or more opposed, it may 
 be, to that of the Middle Ages. Not only will men be 
 desirous to "surpass" their fellows, but what is more, 
 they will wish them to admit their inferiority. It is this 
 sentiment that Dante somewhere describes as lo grand 
 disio d'eccellenza, the keen desire to excel, and Boccaccio 
 as the ambition to outlive oneself : perpetuandi nominis 
 desiderium. A mere "latent" superiority, as it were, 
 will not be sufficient ; a superiority deriving its prin- 
 cipal satisfaction from a proud but undemonstrative 
 self-consciousness. The superiority will have to be 
 publicly acknowledged, proclaimed and recompensed ; 
 and this will be the case, as we now know, not 
 metaphorically but in fact. In this way the poet, the 
 writer, and the artist find themselves condemned to an 
 inevitable, continuous, and violent struggle for glory. In 
 
 imprimere per favorem cardinalium. . . . He resigns his position 
 as cure of Meudon in 1552. His death in Paris in 1553. 
 
 5. THE WORKS. Neglecting some Almanacks and two or three 
 brochures, the Works of Rabelais are confined to his romance, of 
 which it is sufficient to indicate the principal editions, which are : 
 
 (Original editions) the editions of 1533, 1535, 1542, 1546, 1548, 1552, 
 1562 and 1564 ; and 
 
 (The complete works) the Elzevir edition, 1663 ; le Duchat's 
 edition, Amsterdam, 1711, H. Desbordes ; le Duchat and le 
 Motteux' edition, Amsterdam, 1741 ; J. F. Bernard ; D. L. (de 
 1'Aulnaye's) edition, Paris, 1820, Desoer; and the more recent 
 editions of Rathery, Paris, 1857. F. Didot ; Jannet, Paris, 1874, 
 Picard ; and Marty-Laveaux, Paris, 1868-1881, Lemerre. 
 
 IV. The Amadis. 
 
 It is impossible to make no allusion to a book of the author of 
 which its contemporaries said " that he was the gentleman of his 
 time who had the greatest reputation for speaking French well and 
 as an orator " [La Croix du Maine, in his Bibliotlieque, article NICOLAS 
 DE HERBEKAY, SIEUR DBS ESSARS] ; and of the book itself " that there 
 could be gathered in it all the beautiful flowers of our language " [Et.
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 51 
 
 every manner and by every expedient they are going to 
 apply themselves to surpass their fellows, and by every 
 expedient and in every manner they will endeavour to 
 throw discredit upon those who rival them in popularity. 
 [Cf. J. Burckhardt, La Civilisation de la Renaissance en 
 Italic.] 
 
 Who has not heard of the famous quarrels of the 
 Italian humanists, of their overflowing vanity, of the 
 insults they bandied, and whose coarseness is generally 
 equalled only by the insignificance of the matters at 
 issue? Vadius and Trissotin will be "gentlemen" in 
 comparison with Philelphus and Poggius. This is a 
 natural consequence of the development of individualism. 
 There will be other and pleasanter consequences, fore- 
 most among which it is proper to point out forthwith 
 the revival or the birth of criticism. Who is it has 
 
 Pasquier, in his Recherches de la France]. See too on the subject of 
 Amadis de Gaule : La Noue, in his Discours politiques et militaircs. 
 The Sieur des Essars only translated the first eight books of the 
 Amadis, which appeared from 1540 to 1548 ; and the best edition of 
 which is that issued by Christophe Plantin, Amsterdam, 1561. 
 
 V. The Lyons School. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. La Croix du Maine, Bibliotheque francaise, 
 articles LOUISE LABE, MAURICE SCEVE, PERNETTE DU GUILLET ; 
 Goujet : Bibliotheque francaise, vol. xi. and vol. xii. ; Niceron : 
 Hommes illustres, vol. xxiii. ; Paradin : Memoires de Thistoirc de 
 Lyon ; Edouard Bourciez : Les moeurs et la societe polie a la cour 
 d'Henri II., Paris, 1886 ; Charles Boy : Becherches sur la vie et les 
 oeuvres de Louise Labe, and vol. ii. of the (Euvres dc Louise Lobe. 
 Paris, 1887. 
 
 2. THE POETS. A passage of Michelet on the subject of the tem- 
 perament of the inhabitants of the Lyons district [Hist, de France, 
 vol. ii. Cf. E. Montegut : En Bourbonnais et en Forez]. Italian 
 emigrants in Lyons; the great Printers; a town of passage. 
 Maurice Sceve and his sisters or cousins, Claudine and Sybille ; 
 Pernette du Guillet ; and Louise Labe. Testimony of Billion and
 
 52 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 said, what moralist or what preacher, La Bruyere or 
 Bourdaloue, that at the starting-point of all large for- 
 tunes there are commonly found ' ' things that cause a 
 shudder"? This is precisely the case with criticism; 
 for it would be vain for us to attempt to hide that at 
 first it was merely a form of literary envy ! In the 
 meantime, however, and thanks to this very rivalry, 
 men's characters begin to show themselves, even in 
 France, in their works. 
 
 Here we touch on the reason that has caused some his- 
 torians of literature to hesitate as to the place that ought 
 to be assigned to Villon, for example, or to Commynes. 
 Are they the end or the beginning of something, the last 
 of our mediaeval or the first of our modern writers? 
 What, at any rate, is certain is that they are already 
 somebody. Still more must this be admitted of Master 
 
 of Pasquier : " Continuing our story, and beginning with the town of 
 Lyons . . . it is notorious that it is proud of having produced . . . 
 the remarkable Marguerite du Bourg . . . and two very virtuous 
 sisters, called Claudine and Jane Sceve . . . and Claude Perronne 
 . . . and Jeanne Gaillarde . . . and Pernette du Guillet " [Le Fort 
 Inexpugnable de Vhonneur feminin, Paris, 1555, Ian d'Allyer. Cf. 
 Pasquier, Recherches dc la France, bk. vii.]. The Delie of Maurice 
 Sceve, 1544; and the Eimes of Pernette du Guillet, 1552. The Works 
 of Louise Labe, 1555. 
 
 Characteristics common to these works ; [Cf. Delie, decastich 331, 
 416, 418, 274, 168, 169 and 273 ; and Louise Labe : (Euvres, elegy i. 
 and sonnets 8, 9, 14 and 24.] The learned allusions and the inten- 
 tional obscurity ; and in this connection of the symbolism of the 
 Lyons school ; intensity of feeling ; the conception of love as some- 
 thing painful and tragic. Mysticism and sensuality. Growing Italian 
 influence ; new concern for form ; new conception of poetry. 
 
 Of the connection between the Lyons school and the Pleiad. Tes- 
 timony of Estienne Pasquier : " The first, he says, to innovate was 
 Maurice Sceve of Lyons"; and of du Bellay [L' Olive, sonnet 59]. 
 They applaud him for 
 
 having wandered 
 Far from the path traced by ignorance,
 
 THE FOKMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 53 
 
 Clement Marot, of whose poetry it may be said with 
 truth that it is full of himself and of himself alone ; 
 indeed the title of his first work, V Adolescence Clementine, 
 makes this clear enough to us. In this volume he tells 
 his own story ; he lays himself bare ; he exhibits himself 
 to our curiosity. Similarly, in the Heptameron, than 
 which, by the way, it would be hard to find less enter- 
 taining reading, it is her own personal experience of 
 life and men, it is even occasionally her own adventures, 
 that Marguerite puts into her anecdotes. Need I men- 
 tion here the name of Etienne Dolet, who has sometimes 
 been called "the martyr of the Eenaissance," though in 
 truth he was only the victim of the overbearing violence 
 of his character and of the excessive development of his 
 personality? It would be easy to join a dozen other 
 names to those given. And it is because it was the first 
 
 and also for having broken with court, circumstantial and occa- 
 sional poetry. It is in imitation of Sceve that the Pleiad will com- 
 pose its Erreurs Amoureuses, its Olive, its Sonnets a Cassandre, its 
 Amours de Francine. Maurice Sceve and Pontus de Tyard. Per- 
 sonal relations of Louise Labe with Pontus and with Olivier de Magny. 
 Comment on saying of Cicero : Nihil est simul et inventum et per- 
 fectum. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The works of Maurice Sceve are composed, omit- 
 ting sundry short works, of Delie, objet de plus haute vertu, Lyons, 
 1544 ; and of the Microcosme, a descriptive poem in three songs, 
 Lyons, 1560. 
 
 The works of Louise Labe include : (1) a prose dialogue, le Debat 
 de Folie et d? Amour; (2) three Elegies ; and (3) twenty-four Son- 
 nets, one of which is in Italian. They appeared for the first tune in 
 1555. 
 
 There are Italian verses too in the Eijmes de Pernette du Guillet. 
 
 Sceve's Delie and Pernette du Guillet's Byrnes, which had become 
 extremely rare, have been reprinted at Lyons by Scheuring, 1862 and 
 1864. 
 
 The last edition of the works of Louise Labe is M. Charles Boy's, 
 Paris, 1887, A. Lemerre.
 
 54 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 time that the writer appeared distinctly in his work that 
 there has been talk, and that it is still the custom 
 to talk emphatically of the richness, abundance, and 
 originality of the French literature of the time of the 
 Renaissance. The fact is, however, that it is somewhat 
 poor in works, yet poorer in ideas, and not less poor in 
 men ; and for very many years its chief originality will 
 consist in the freedom, quite novel at the period, with 
 which each writer will show himself as he is. 
 
 It is true that owing to the exercise of this very free- 
 dom, to this basis of individualism, another idea takes 
 shape, which may be termed the central idea of the 
 Renaissance, an idea of which foreigners themselves 
 admit that Franois Rabelais was the living incarnation ; 
 we allude to the idea of the goodness or of the divinity of 
 Nature. Its connection with the preceding idea is easily 
 
 SECOND PERIOD 
 
 The Teachings of Antiquity 
 1550-1585 
 
 I. THE RENAISSANCE OF POETRY 
 I. The Formation of the Pleiad. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Claude Binet : La Vie de Pierre Ronsard. 
 Estienne Pasquier : Recherche* de la France, book vii. Bayle, in his 
 Dictionnaire, articles DAURAT and RONSARD. Moreri : Dictionnaire, 
 edition of 1750, article DORAT. Goujet : Bibliotheque francaise, vols. 
 xii. and xiii. ; and Histoire du College de France, vol. i. Sainte- 
 Beuve : Tableau de la poesie francaise au XVI' siecle, 1828; and 
 Joachim du Bellay, in the Nouveaux Lundis, vol. xiii. -A. Jeandel, 
 Pontus de Tyard, Paris, 1860. Plotz, Joachim du Bellay et son role 
 dans la reforme de Ronsard, Berlin, 1874. Marty-Laveaux : his 
 Notices in the collection of the PUiade francaise, Paris, 1867-1896. 
 
 2. THE POETIC SYSTEM OF THE PLEIAD. The first meeting of 
 Ronsard and du Bellay ; Lazare de Baiif's house ; the college of 
 Coqueret. Formation of the Pleiad. Origin of the name ; the astro-
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 55 
 
 seen. We can only develop in ourselves what nature has 
 put in us, and nature had its reasons for what it put in 
 us. The consequence is that in reality we are following 
 nature when we develop our originality, just as inversely, 
 or reciprocally, to obey nature is to assure the develop- 
 ment of our personality ; and such is precisely the 
 " philosophy " of Rabelais' romance, or, if one decline 
 to allow that his vast, uproarious laugh covers so much 
 depth and mystery, such is at least the signification of 
 his Pantagruel. He preaches the easy morality of the 
 Abbey of Thelema, and " in his rule of conduct there 
 is but this clause : Do what you will." However, on 
 examination, this morality is found to go further than 
 would be thought at first ; it has a wider bearing if it 
 be not of greater depth ; and at bottom the rule of the 
 Thelemites is seen to be the contradiction, or even the 
 
 nomical Pleiad ; the mythological Pleiad ; the Alexandrian Pleiad ; 
 the French Pleiad ; and to keep in view that in French as in 
 Greek a " Pleiad " must contain more than six and less than eight 
 names. Romanticism generally in error as to the objects and work 
 of the Pleiad. Publication of the Defense et Illustration de la langue 
 francaise, 1550. 
 
 A few words on the Arts Poetiques of Pierre Fabri, 1521 ; [L'Art de 
 Pleine Rhetorique] of Gracien du Pont, 1539 ; and of Thomas Sibilet, 
 1548. That to understand the Defense it must be connected with the 
 intention of reacting against the school of Marot ; and that it is 
 then seen that what its authors desired was : (1) The Renewal of the 
 subjects of inspiration ; the fact being that for two hundred years, 
 and even with Marot, poetry had been merely " rhymed chronicle " ; 
 while what was now to be undertaken was to sing the past, nature, 
 fame, and love. But to succeed in this, it was above all necessary to 
 get rid of the restrictions imposed upon the liberty of the poet by the 
 tyranny of fixed literary forms ; and therefore : (2) tlie Renewal of 
 literary forms ; which will be those of antiquity : epic poem, ode, 
 satire, comedy, tragedy, etc. The sonnet, however, is spared in 
 honour of Petrarch. And finally to make these forms the vehicle 
 of matter worthy of their beauty, it is needful : (3) To Reform the
 
 Ob MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 negation of all that manners, the school, and the Church 
 had then been teaching for over a thousand years. 
 
 We have proof of this in Rabelais' commentary on or 
 rather justification of his Laissez faire, in which he sets 
 forth that " free men, of good birth, well educated, keep- 
 ing honourable company, have by nature an instinct and 
 incentive which always inclines them to virtuous deeds, 
 and restrains them from vice." This amounts to saying 
 that Nature itself inculcates virtue, and it is in this 
 connection that Pantagruel may rightly be called " the 
 Bible " of the Renaissance. It is saturated with Natu- 
 ralism, for throughout it gives expression to the con- 
 viction that all the ills of humanity solely result from 
 not following nature closely enough and faithfully 
 enough. But we need only recall the memorable 
 allegory of Physics and Antiphysics. " Physics, that 
 
 Language : by making a work of art of it. Linguistic theories of 
 the Defense. How widely they differ from those of the " Greekifiers " 
 and " Latinisers " at whom Rabelais scoffed in Pantagruel. Insig- 
 nificance of the metrical innovations of the Pleiad. The innovations 
 in rhythm will be the personal work of the genius of Ronsard. 
 
 Stir aroused by the Defense et Illustration ; Rejoinder of Quintil 
 Horatian. Hostility of Mellin de Saint-Gelais. Counter-rejoinder of 
 du Bellay : Publication of the Olive and of the Odes, 1550 ; The 
 protectors of Ronsard and du Bellay : Triumph of the Pleiad. It is 
 backed by the Hellenists, the poets and by the king, when Charles IX. 
 mounts the throne. It had already had the support of Mary Stuart 
 and of Catherine of Medicis. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. La Defense et Illustration de la Langue fran- 
 caise ; Du Bellay, le Poete Courtisan ; Pontus de Tyard, Solitaire 
 premier, Solitaire second ; Ronsard, Abrege de VArt poetique, 
 dedicated to M. A. d'Elbene, 1565 ; Preface de la Franciade, 1572. 
 
 II. Joachim du Bellay [Lire, 1525 ; f 1560, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Marty-Laveaux, (Euvres de du Bellay, in 
 the collection of the Pleiade francaise ; Sainte-Beuve, loc. cit. ; 
 J. H. de Heredia and F. Brunetiere : Speeches pronounced at the 
 inauguration of the statue of J. du Bellay at Ancenis, 1894.
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 57 
 
 is Nature, will bear as her first issue Beauty and 
 Harmony. . . . Antiphysics, who is ever opposed to 
 Nature, was straightway envious of this so brave and 
 honourable child-birth, and contrariwise bore Amodunt 
 and Discordance. . . . And afterwards she will bear the 
 Matagots, Cagots, and Papelards . . . and other un- 
 couth and misshapen monsters in despite of Nature." 
 [Pantagruel, book iii., ch. 32.] In fact it is in the 
 name of Physics that Rabelais attacks what still subsists 
 of the institutions of the Middle Ages. It is in the name 
 of Physics that he draws up the scheme for the encyclo- 
 pedic education of his Gargantua. It is in the name of 
 Physics that he demands the reform or suppression of 
 whatever interferes with the liberty of his development. 
 He does not state his aims expressly, since he is not the 
 prophet or the apostle he has been represented to be, any 
 
 2. THE POET. A younger son of a great family in the sixteenth 
 century. The youth of du Bellay ; his severe illness and his 
 studies ; his friendship with Ronsard. He enters the service of his 
 relative the Cardinal. His stay at Rome. Liaison with " Faustine " ; 
 Vexations and disgust. Return to France. Publication of his 
 Regrets. He falls out with the Cardinal. 
 
 The first verses of du Bellay ; U Olive and the Eecueil a Mme 
 Marguerite ; and that du Bellay in these works, in spite of the very 
 beautiful verses they contain, falls far short of his earliest ambitions. 
 He perceives this himself ; and this is perhaps the origin of his 
 melancholy. His piece against the Petrarchists. The very vexations 
 of his existence with Cardinal du Bellay supply him with the subject 
 matter of his masterpiece. Originality of his Regrets. The Anti- 
 quites de Rome and the poetry of ruins. 
 
 That du Bellay was the creator in France of " introspective poetry " 
 and of the satire ; Comparison between his elegies and those of 
 Marot. He possesses grace, delicacy, and melancholy. Also light 
 irony. Why it is that the ardour which marks his Latin poetry does 
 not appear in his French verses [Cf. E. Faquet, XV f" Siecle], 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The Works of J. du Bellay are composed of : 
 
 1. A collection of amorous sonnets, I'Olive, followed in the first
 
 58 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 more than he is a buffoon or a drunken Silenus, and since 
 in reality he has only one trait in common with his 
 Panurge, which is that he has a natural dread of 
 blows ! But he does better than express himself clearly 
 when he insinuates his views with an air, as it were, of 
 their not being in his thoughts, when he urges them 
 with involuntary ardour and almost unconscious enthu- 
 siasm rather than in a systematic spirit. Nothing in 
 nature is repugnant to him ; he loves all its manifesta- 
 tions, not excepting the grossest and the most humili- 
 ating, which seem merely to awaken in him the idea 
 of their cause. Are they not what they ought to be? 
 and can we do better than conform ourselves to them? 
 Zriv fj/moXoyov/jiivtttg T*J ^verst, the Stoics used to say in a 
 formula that summed up the loftiest teaching of Pagan 
 wisdom. Kabelais repeats it after them ; he repeats it 
 
 edition by the Recueil a Mme Marguerite ; (2) of another collection 
 of sonnets, les Regrets ; (3) of a third collection, les Antiquites de 
 Borne, together with les Jeux Rustiques ; and finally (4) of a trans- 
 lation in verse of books iv. and vi. of the jEneid. 
 
 The principal old editions are those of Paris, 1561, Langelier; 
 Paris, 1569, Frederic Morel; and Kouen, 1597, F. Maillard. The 
 best edition is that already cited of M. Marty-Laveaux, in the 
 Pleiade francaise, 1866-1867, A. Lemerre. 
 
 III. Pierre de Ronsard [La Poissonniere, 1524; f 1585, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. To the works already cited should be added : 
 Gandar, Ronsard imitateur d'Homere et de Pindare, Metz, 1854 ; 
 A. de Bochambeau, La Famille de Ronsard, Paris, 1869; G. 
 Chalandon, Essai sur Ronsard, Paris, 1875 ; E. Faquet, XVI e 
 Siecle, Paris, 1894 ; Mellerio, Lexique de la langue de Ronsard, 
 Paris, 1895 ; -and Pieri, Petrarque et Ronsard, Marseilles, 1895. 
 
 2. THE POET. 
 
 A. Les Amours. Of the sincerity of Ronsard's love poems; and 
 in this connection of the amorous poetry of the sixteenth century. 
 It partakes rather of the artificial character of the "courteous poetry" 
 of our old literature than of the passionate character of modern
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 59 
 
 after the Italians ; and by this I do not wish to say 
 that he himself learnt it either from the Italians or the 
 Stoics. I might make the assertion, since the alle- 
 gory of Physics and Antiphysics is not his own, while 
 assuredly he was as well acquainted with the ancients 
 as anybody of his time. What seems to me, however, 
 much more significant is that, in respect to this adoration 
 of the energies of nature, he is merely the inspired in- 
 terpreter of the current ideas of his time ; and on this 
 account his Pantagruel really possesses a significance that 
 may be called, that must indeed be called "European." 
 In a world that is still Christian, Pagan culture has made 
 of him, as of the Italians of the Renaissance, a pure 
 Pagan ; and while others before him or among his con- 
 temporaries have been this, none has been it in a larger 
 sense, with more verve, and even with more lyricism. 
 
 lyric poetry. Still, while this remark is just when applied to the 
 Sonnets a Cassandre, it is already less so applied to the Sonnets a 
 Marie ; and Marie seems really to have existed. The language of 
 Bonsard's sonnets ; and that it constitutes, perhaps, their principal 
 merit. The merit is all the greater seeing that Ronsard often gives 
 expression to very subtle sentiments in his sonnets. Another quality 
 of his sonnets is that they leave the impression of being the outcome 
 of a single effort. We know, however, that Ronsard corrected and 
 rewrote them to a prodigious extent. Were the corrections always 
 happy ? However this may be, none of his lines leave the impression 
 that they were "patched." [Cf. Sonnets 1, 20, 46, 62. 66, 94, 114, 
 133, 206 of the edition of 1584] ; Voluptuousness in Ronsard's 
 Sonnets ; how its ardour is always tempered by melancholy ; and 
 in this connection of Ronsard's Paganism and Epicureanism. 
 
 B. The Odes, the Hymns and the Poems. That it was Ronsard's 
 Odei and Hymns that established his reputation during his lifetime. 
 Were his contemporaries mistaken in their admiration of them ? 
 And what did they admire in them ? (1) Their diversity of note : 
 if some of them are " Pindaric," others are " Horatian ; some of 
 them are " Bacchic," some of them " heroic," some of them " Gallic " 
 and some of them "eligiac." They also rightly admired in them:
 
 60 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 But there is more of note in this famous romance. 
 For instance, beneath the humanist and the scholar there 
 is little difficulty in detecting the Gaul, a Gaul by race 
 and temperament, the continuator or the heir of Villon, of 
 the Eoman de la Rose, of the authors of our old Fabliaux. 
 There is no example of an author breaking singly and 
 at one stroke with a tradition several centuries old ! 
 And there is something of the monk, or more precisely of 
 the friar, in the indelicacy of Rabelais' jesting, in the 
 grossness of his language, in the license of his manners. 
 It may be, too, that there is something of the doctor 
 about him. Still, however diverse are the traits that give 
 him so complex a character and this very complexity is 
 signally expressive of the confusion of ideas of the period 
 there is one of these traits, the one precisely we are 
 trying to make clear, that stands out from, summarises 
 
 (2) The variety of rhythm ; and, in this connection, of Bonsard as 
 an inventor of rhythms ; he created almost all those which our 
 poets have used since, and he created some that are still unutilised. 
 
 (3) The flow of inspiration ; comparison of the Ode au cliancelier de 
 VHopital with the Mages of Victor Hugo ; how a descriptive or 
 " objective " element introduces itself ; and causes their lyricism to 
 evolve imperceptibly towards the epopee. 
 
 The epical inspiration of Bonsard's Hymns ; and that by dint of 
 living in the company of the ancients he himself became one of them ; 
 [Cf. Calays et Zetlies or Castor et Pollux] ; He is as much at 
 home in mythology as if it were his natural element ; and it lends 
 him the power of creating myths in his turn ; [Cf. the Hymne de 
 VOr or the Hymne de VE quite des vieux Gaulois]; -But in these 
 productions the purity of his outline is not always on a level with the 
 vigour of his colouring. Growing importance of description in the 
 Hymns ; and of rhetoric ; [Cf . the Hymne de la Mort or the Temple 
 de Messeigneurs le Connetable et des Cliatillons] . From the epic 
 form the poet evolves towards oratorical prose. 
 
 He does not quite reach this point in the Poems ; the reason being 
 that he has first to traverse a period of alexandrinism, [Cf. la 
 Fourmi, VAlouette, le Houx, le Frelon, la Grenouille] . Definition
 
 THE FOEMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 61 
 
 and dominates all the others. Rabelais was the first, 
 perhaps the greatest, and also the most sincere of those 
 of his race who believed in the goodness of Nature ; who 
 held that the great enemy of man went by the names 
 of usage, custom, rule, authority and restraint ; that in 
 consequence this was the enemy who ought to be attacked 
 by every method, by raillery, violence and insult ; and 
 finally that the supreme achievement of education was 
 the liberation of the instincts. 
 
 But while he was making in this way open and cynical 
 profession of his religion of nature, another sentiment, 
 which he lacked, had sprung up and was in course of 
 development in some of his contemporaries : this sen- 
 timent was that Sentiment of Art, in which, as we have 
 seen, the Middle Ages were so grievously deficient and 
 whose reappearance in the world is so characteristic of 
 
 of alexandrinism ; its three characteristic traits : (1) Indifference 
 to the subject matter, whence results : (2) The preference given to 
 petty subjects ; whence results in turn : (3) A disproportion between 
 the development and the interest and between the words and the 
 matter. One cannot help noting these characteristics in Bonsard's 
 Poemes. In consequence they would rightly be the most forgotten 
 portion of his work, if they did not contain information of value for 
 the story of his life ; [Cf . the Elegy 
 
 Since God has not fitted me to bear arms] ; 
 
 and for the literary history of his time ; Cf . Le Voyage d'Arcueil or 
 Les lies Fortunees~\ ; and finally if he had not written the Franciade. 
 C. His other Works. That it is not to be concluded that the 
 Franciade is contemptible. But Bonsard's heart was not in his work 
 in this case. Of the conditions of the epopee ; and that the subject 
 of the Franciade realised none of them. But the prose writer and 
 the orator develop in Bonsard in proportion as his poetical inspiration 
 declines ; [Cf . the Discours des Misercs de ce temps] ; and in this 
 connection of Bonsard's Catholicism ; and of the relationship between 
 the lyric form and the oratorical form. Of Bonsard's Discours as 
 evidence of this relationship. The patriotic inspiration of the Dis-
 
 62 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the spirit of the Renaissance. Who is unacquainted 
 with the expression given to it by Raphael in a cele- 
 brated letter to Baldassare Castiglione : Essendo carestia 
 di belle donne, io mi servo di certa idea che mi vieni nella 
 mente ? I am reminded too of a sentence of Cicero : 
 Nihil in simplici genere ex omni parte perfectum natura 
 expolivit. The meaning of both writers is that our 
 imagination never finds entire satisfaction in nature ; 
 that nothing natural, in any form, comes up to the idea 
 we conceive of its perfection ; and that thus we are 
 always able to add to it a something that is our own. 
 It is this doctrine, which inspired the great works of 
 antiquity, that was spread abroad by the Italians of 
 the Renaissance after they had elaborated it by thought- 
 ful study of their models, and had endeavoured to realise 
 it in their turn ; and, as might be proved, it has modified 
 
 cours, It was Konsard's Discours that endowed our literature with 
 the satire, though du Bellay may have had an inkling of this form of 
 composition. Eonsard's last love affair and the Sonnets pour Helene. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. As we have enumerated Eonsard's principal 
 works, it will suffice here to indicate the principal editions of them, 
 which are : 
 
 G. Buon's edition, Paris, 4 vols. in 16mo, 1560 ; the edition of 1567, 
 Paris, 5 vols. in 8vo ; the edition of 1584, 1 vol. in folio, the last re- 
 vised and corrected by Eonsard ; the edition of 1623, 2 vols. in folio ; 
 
 And among the modern editions : Blanchemain's edition 8 vols. in 
 18mo, Paris, 1857-1867, Frank ; and Marty-Laveaux' edition, 5 vols. 
 in 8vo, in the collection of the Pleiade francaise. 
 
 IV. Jean-Antoine de Baif [Venice, 1532 ; t 1589, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Cf. above ; and add Marty-Laveaux' Notice; 
 and V Academic des derniers Valois, by Ed. Fremy, Paris, s.d. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE POET. It being useless to study the poets of the 
 Pleiad one after the other, for what reasons Baif is given the preference 
 over Jodelle or Eemy Belleau. Eonsard's caricature. A natural 
 son ; his youth and education ; mediocrity of his work. That 
 where he is at his best, in his Ravissement d 1 Europe or his Hymne
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 63 
 
 not merely the conception of art and literature, but 
 the conception of life itself. " The language of the 
 Italians of the Renaissance, it has been possible to 
 say with truth, their ideal of society, their moral 
 ideal, their entire being is conditioned and determined 
 by the ideal they formed of art." [John Addington 
 Symonds, Renaissance in Italy ; the Fine Arts, ch. i.J 
 In other words, the Renaissance, having rediscovered 
 nature and freed the individual, perceived that it was 
 impossible to trust the development of either entirely 
 to chance, and it subordinated the imitation of nature 
 and the development of the individual to the realisation 
 of beauty. 
 
 The first of our French writers to experience, a little 
 confusedly but profoundly, this new sentiment was a 
 poet of Lyons, Maurice Sceve, in his Delie, objet de plus 
 
 a Venus, Baif holds the same position with respect to Ronsard as 
 do Primatice or Rosso to their masters. Extensiveness of his work ; 
 and that it is eminently representative of the artificial bide of the 
 Pleiad movement. His orthographical reforms ; his metrical inno- 
 vations ; his attempts to combine music and poetry ; his Academy. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Baif's works are composed of : (1) nine books of 
 Amours, consisting of the Amours de Francine, in four books ; the 
 Amours de Meline, in two books ; Amours diverses, in three books ; 
 (2) his Meteores ; (3) nine books of Poems on all sorts of subjects ; 
 (4) nineteen Eclogues, which are more or less translations or imita- 
 tions of those of Theocritus and Virgil ; (5) five books of Passe-temps ; 
 (6) and four books of Mimes, which are the most wearisome collec- 
 tion of all sorts of trivialities and moralities. 
 
 The best and only modern edition is that of Marty-Laveaux. 
 
 II. SCHOLARS AND TRANSLATORS 
 V. Henri Estienne [Paris, 1528; 1 1598, Lyons]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Niceron, in his Homines illustres, vol. xxxvi.; 
 A. Renouard, Annales de rimprimeris des Estienne, Paris, 1843 ; 
 Leon Feugere, Caracteres et portraits du, XVI" siecle, 1859; and a
 
 64 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 haute vertu, a symbolical poem, imitated from Petrarch, 
 the obscure night of which, if the expression may be 
 ventured on, glitters with rare beauties. It is, how- 
 ever, the poets of the Pleiad, Pontus de Tyard, Joachim 
 du Bellay, Ronsard and Ba'if, that really perceived its 
 force and revealed it to us ; and herein lies the essence 
 of the revolution they effected in our language, litera- 
 ture, and poetry. Their aim was to produce "works of 
 art," and this ambition, which with them dominates 
 every other, accounts for and explains their subsidiary 
 efforts. 
 
 It was not, for instance, as grammarians, or, as we 
 should say at the present day, as philologists, but as 
 artists that they endeavoured to reform or to transform 
 the language, with a view to rendering it capable of con- 
 veying their " sublime and impassioned conceptions," to 
 
 new edition, Paris, 1875 ; Sayous, Les Ecrivains francais de la, 
 Reformation, 2nd ed., Paris, 1881. 
 
 2. THE PUBLISHER, PHILOLOGIST, AND WRITER. The Estienne 
 family [Cf. Prosper Marchand, Dictionnaire liistorique}. A scholar's 
 education. Henri's first publication : Anacreontis Teij odce, grcece 
 et latine, 1554. Is the translation by Henri Estienne or by Dorat ? 
 What is certain is the influence exerted on the Pleiad by this tiny 
 volume. Evidence drawn from the works of Ronsard and Remy 
 Belleau. Of some other Greek writers published for the first time 
 by Henri Estienne ; that they are all of the second or third rank ; 
 and that he translated them all into Lathi. Of Estienne's predilection 
 for Analccta [Cf. the Adages of Erasmus] . The first Latin trans- 
 lation of the Antliologie grecque and the first Condones, 1570 ; The 
 Thesaurus Grcecce Linguce, 1572-1573. 
 
 Estienne's three chief treatises : .La conformite du Langage 
 frangais avec le grec, 1565 ; Deux dialogues du Langage francais 
 italianise, 1578 ; La Precellence du Langage francais, 1579 ; and 
 their connection with each other. Resistance to Italian influences. 
 Of Henri Estienne's views upon the relations between French and 
 Greek [Cf. <T. de Maistre, Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg, 2nd Conversa- 
 tion; and Egger, L'hellenisme en France, lessons 10 and 11.]
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL G5 
 
 use the expression of one of them, and above all in order 
 to bring to light its more hidden and previously unper- 
 ceived beauties. For words are something more than the 
 signs of ideas, and a language is not merely an algebra 
 or an organism : it is also a work of art. There are poor 
 languages and rich ; rugged languages and harmonious ; 
 languages that are obscure and others that are clear. 
 Similarly, the reason they condemned the old literary 
 forms the ballad, the rondeau, the virelai, the chant 
 royal, and "other like trivialities" was that they 
 seemed to them somewhat forced, jejune and anti- 
 quated ; and it was then that Bonsard, guided in his 
 effort by the very genius of rhythm, himself invented so 
 many varieties, that some are found in his work that 
 have not been turned to account down to the present 
 day. And lastly, what they attempted to appropriate 
 
 Henri Estienne's etymologies. His frequent digressions and how 
 almost all of them are prompted by his hatred of Italianism ; by 
 his Protestantism ; and by his hatred of the Valois. The result is 
 that his love for his native language is all the more passionate. 
 Why it is that if the importance of his Precellence only lay in its 
 title it would still be considerable. 
 
 Is Henri Estienne a "writer" ? and that at any rate neither the 
 verve of Rabelais nor the artistic preoccupations of Ronsard are to be 
 found in his works. Is he the author of the Quart livre de Pantagruel, 
 1564 ? His Apologie pour Herodote, 1566. In what respect the 
 book belies its title and is at bottom only a Protestant pamphlet ; 
 Henri Estienne and Rabelais on the subject of " ecclesiastics." 
 Comparison between the Apologie pour Herodote and the Quatriemc 
 livre de Pantagruel. Whether some few " tales " agreeably told justify 
 Henri Estienne being ranked much above Bandello, as has been 
 done. That it is difficult too, to detect in the Apologie a foretaste of 
 the Provinciates [Cf. Sacy, Varietes litteraires] . Is the Discours 
 merveilleux des deportements de Catherine de Medicis, 1575, by Henri 
 Estienne ? His last years and his death in the Lyons hospital. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The list both of the " editions " and of the works 
 properly so called of Henri Estienne will be found in Renouard's 
 
 6
 
 66 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 from antiquity was not its "science" or its "philosophy," 
 but its " art " : and by " art " it is to be understood the 
 secret of awaking in the reader the impression of almost 
 sensual pleasure, which the writers of the Pleiad them- 
 selves experienced when reading the ^neid or the Iliad, 
 Pindar or Horace. How far were they successful ? This 
 is another question, which we will answer in a word by 
 saying that they may have erred in the choice of their 
 models, assuredly a regrettable and serious mistake for 
 imitators to make ; and they pay the penalty of not 
 having been always alive to the distance that separates 
 Homer from Quintus of Smyrna or Virgil from Claudian. 
 They were uncritical or they lacked the spirit of dis- 
 cernment ; and in their impatience to produce their 
 work they did not always observe the conditions of fruit- 
 ful imitation. Still, their example was not wasted. Into 
 
 Annales de V Imprimerie des Estienne. We have cited the most 
 important of these books ; we shall confine ourselves in consequence 
 to mentioning here the principal new editions, which are : 
 
 That of the Discours merveilleux, in the Archives curieuses de 
 I'Histoire de France, by Cimber and Danjou ; of L a Precellence by 
 L. Feugere, Paris, 1850 ; of La Conformite, by the same, Paris, 1853 ; 
 of the Apologie pour Herodote, by P. Bistelhuber, Paris, 1879 ; 
 and of the Deux Dialogues du langage frangais italianise, Paris, 1883. 
 
 VI. Jacques Amyot [Melun, 1513 ; f 1593, Auxerre] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Eouillard, Histoire de Melun ; Bayle in his 
 Dictionnaire, article AMYOT ; Abb4 Leboeuf, Memoires sur V Histoire 
 civile et ecclesiastique d' Auxerre ; De Blignieres, Essai sur Amyot, 
 Paris, 1851 ; Leon Feugere, Caracteres et portraits du XVI e siecle, 
 Paris, 1859. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. A passage of Montaigne on Amyot 
 [Of. Essais, II. chap, iv.] . Amyot's parentage and youth ; his 
 studies ; his tutorships ; his translation of the romance of Helio- 
 dorus, 1547. He is appointed abbe of Bellozane. His translation of 
 Diodorus Siculus, 1554. His mission to the Council of Trent [Cf. de 
 Thou, Hist, universelle, vol. viii.] . He is appointed tutor to the
 
 THE FOKMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 67 
 
 a literature which ignored both the art of composition and 
 that of writing, and whose masterpieces had previously 
 been scarcely more than happy accidents, they intro- 
 duced the sentiment of the virtue of form or of style ; 
 and while this does not constitute all that is meant 
 by classicism, it is one of its elements or essential 
 " factors." 
 
 If we now place all these characteristics in juxtaposition 
 the sentiment of art, the glorification or deification of 
 the energies of nature, and the development of indi- 
 vidualism it has already been seen that they are 
 closely dependent on one another. The very notion of 
 a perfection that surpasses nature or that completes 
 it can only be derived from the observation of nature, 
 and only be realised in the work of art with and 
 by methods that are themselves furnished by nature. 
 
 princes of the blood, 1554 ; grand almoner, 1561 : and bishop of 
 Auxerre, 1570. 
 
 Of some translators prior to Amyot ; Lefevre d'Etaples and his 
 translation of the New Testament, 1523 ; Lazare de Baif and his 
 translation of the Electra, 1537 ; Pierre Saliat and his translation 
 of Herodotus, 1537; Views of Thomas Sibilet and du Bellay upon 
 translations from the ancients ; and what do they mean when they 
 affirm that "the translators are the source of more profit to us than 
 the authors themselves " ? The translations of the Greek poets in the 
 work of the Pleiad [Cf . Gandar, Ronsard imitateur d'Homere et de Pin- 
 dare] . Of the translators of Plutarch who preceded Amyot. 
 
 Of the choice of Plutarch ; and in this connection of some modern 
 opinions [Dacier, Villemain, Ch. Graux in his edition of the Lives of 
 Demosthenes and Cicero] on the author of the Vies Paralleles. The 
 attractiveness of biographies ; remarkable skill with which Plutarch 
 puts his heroes before the reader ; moral tendency of his work. That 
 Plutarch in his Scripta Moralia touched upon all the ideas of his 
 time ; and in this connection of a superiority of the writers con- 
 temporary with the Empire over the more classic writers of Greek 
 literature. In consequence Plutarch was the best author that could 
 have been put before the readers of the time of the Renaissance.
 
 68 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 It will further be noted that these characteristics, 
 taken together or separately, are in opposition to the 
 characteristics of the spirit of the Middle Ages. Not 
 only did the Middle Ages lack the sentiment of form, 
 but they were constantly suspicious of nature as of 
 a teacher of error or of a power hostile to man ; and 
 the essence of their policy was the imprisonment of 
 the individual in the shackles of his corporation, his 
 class or his caste. And since every created thing bears 
 within it, by the very conditions of its birth, the 
 germ of its future death, it must not be overlooked, 
 that just as the sentiment of form was capable of 
 speedily leading up to the conception of a beauty in- 
 dependent of its contents, so the glorification of the 
 energies of nature carried with it the possibility of 
 an ultimate justification even of immorality; and the 
 
 Amyot's translation ; and whether he has made more than " two 
 thousand blunders " as Meziriac declared. Opinion of Ch. Graux : 
 "Amyot's translation is of real philological value." That this point, 
 however, is here secondary ; and that it is the style of Amyot's 
 Plutarch that we are concerned with. Amyot's translation naive, 
 natural, graceful and vigorous. Comparison between some passages 
 in Amyot and the corresponding passages in Rabelais [in his Panta- 
 gruel, iii., chap, xxviii., cf. Traite de la cessation des oracles] ; in 
 Shakespeare [in his Julius Caesar, cf. Vie d'Antoine] ; in Joseph de 
 Maistre [Traite des delais de la justice divine]. 
 
 Last years of Amyot's life. His translation of Plutarch's moral and 
 miscellaneous works. Amyot at the " States " of Blois. His role 
 during the League. His return to Auxerre, and his death. General 
 idea of the services rendered by his translations. To what extent 
 Amyot's work profited by the circumstances of his life. A passage of 
 Rivarol on the utility of translations [preface to his translation of 
 Dante] . Duration of the influence of Amyot's Plutarch, and the 
 reasons of this influence. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Theagene et Chariclee, 1547 ; Les sept livres 
 des histoires de Diodore Sicilien, 1554 ; Daphnis et Chloe, 1559 ; 
 Les Vies des hommes illustres grecs et latins, 1st edition, 1559 ;
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 69 
 
 development of individualism that of the ultimate des- 
 truction of society. 
 
 II 
 
 This was not perceived at once by the Church nor even 
 by Royalty, a fact that is sufficiently surprising ! The 
 Popes at least a certain number of Popes took a keen 
 pleasure in making the capital of Christianity the capital 
 of the Renaissance ; and in France, Francis I., the 
 " Father of Letters," either did not comprehend the 
 nature of the revolution that was in progress, or only 
 concerned himself with the immediate advantages he 
 was able to derive from it. But when the general 
 corruption of morals by which this self-confident enthu- 
 
 2nd edition, 1565 ; 3rd edition, 1567. CEuvres morales et melees de 
 Plutarque, 1st edition, 1572 ; 2nd edition, 1574 ; 3rd edition, 1575. 
 Amyot has also left a few short works, such as the Projet de V Elo- 
 quence royale, written for Henri III. ; and the Apology in which he 
 rebuts the charge of having been mixed up in the assassination of 
 the Duke of Guise. 
 
 The best edition of his Plutarque is that of Vascosan [3rd edition of 
 the Vies and 2nd of the (Euvres melees] forming 15 volumes in 18mo. 
 
 VII. <Jean Bodin [Angers, 1530 ; f 1593, Laon]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Bayle, in his Dictionnaire, article BODIN ; 
 Niceron, in his Homynes illustres, vol. xvii. ; Baudrillart, Bodin et 
 son temps, Paris, 1853. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. Scarceness of information. Was 
 he of Hebrew extraction ? [Cf . Ant. Possevini de quibusdam scriptis 
 . . . judicium, 1583] . Early studies of Bodin. He starts with a 
 translation of Oppian's Cynegetica. His Eeponse a M. de Malestroit, 
 and the beginnings of political economy. His Methode pour la con- 
 naisance de Vliistoire and his quarrel with Cujas. That his protest 
 against the authority of Roman Law, is of the same order as the 
 protests of his contemporaries against the sovereignty of Aristotle.
 
 70 MANUAL OF THE HISTOBY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 siasm was followed began to be clear, when it was 
 perceived that it was in a certain sense the very founda- 
 tions of human society that were imperilled by this 
 philosophy of nature, it seemed that at this price the 
 miracles of art were being too dearly paid : and the 
 Keformation broke out. 
 
 Nothing could be more erroneous, or proof of a more 
 superficial philosophy, than to represent the Reformation 
 as analogous in its principle to the Renaissance, of which 
 it is exactly the opposite. The only point they had in 
 common was, that they both contributed for a short while 
 to the emancipation of the individual. In consequence 
 they were confronted for a moment by the same enemies, 
 the schoolmen and the theologians, and for a moment 
 they fought the same fight. Let us further admit, if it 
 be wished, that in order to abolish a detested state of 
 
 His Bepublique. Bodin's originality ; his conception of history ; 
 and that to appreciate him it is well to keep in view Sir Thomas 
 More's Utopia and Machiavelli's Prince. He attempts to conciliate 
 morality and politics. His theory of slavery, book i., chap. v. ; his 
 chapter on monarchy, ii., chap. ii. ; his theory of revolutions, iv., 
 chap. iii. ; his theory on climates, v., chap. i. He is a mixture of 
 erudition and credulity. Whether it can be said that he conceived 
 the idea of Progress [Cf. his Methode, chap, vii., Confutatio eorum 
 qui . . . aurea scecula ponunt, and his Repiiblique, v., chap, i.] ; 
 Of Bodin as a predecessor of Montesquieu. 
 
 Other works of Bodin ; and how the author of the Republique is at 
 the same time that of the Demonomanie des sorciers and of the Hepta- 
 plomercs. Of the belief of his contemporaries in sorcery ; and that 
 the Protestants believe in it no less firmly than the Catholics ; how 
 does Bodin reconcile his belief in sorcerers with his religious scepti- 
 cism ? History of the Heptaplomeres. [Cf. Guhrauer, in his edition, 
 1841, Berlin.] 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Translation into Latin of Oppian's Cynegetica, 
 1555 ; Methodus ad facilem liistoriarum cognitionem, 1566 ; 
 Reponse aux paradoxes de M. de Malestroit sur V enclierissement 
 de toutes choses, 1568 ; Six books of the Repiiblique, 1577 ;
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 71 
 
 things, the one and the other, and the one after the other, 
 found or sought in the present their weapons against the 
 past. Here, however, the resemblances between them are 
 at an end. Is not the second, moreover, most deceptive, 
 if it be a fact that while the Renaissance made for the 
 rooting out of Christianity in the world and the revival 
 of Paganism, the efforts of the Reformation, on the 
 contrary, were directed precisely towards bringing Christ- 
 ianity back to the severity of its primitive institutions'? 
 Is it necessary to recall in this connection the words 
 of Luther so often quoted ? " We Germans . . . 
 resemble a bare canvas, while the Italians are tricked 
 out and garish with all sorts of false opinions. . . . 
 Their fasts are more magnificent than our most sump- 
 tuous feasts. . . . Where we expend a florin on 
 clothes, they devote ten to a silk garment. . . . They 
 
 La Demonomanie des sorciers, 1582; Amphitheatrum natures, 
 1596 ; Heptaplomeres. This last work only existed in manuscript 
 until M. Guhrauer's edition of it in 1841. 
 
 There is no modern edition of the works of J. Bodin. 
 
 III. THE ORIGIN OF THE CLASSIC DRAMA 
 VIII. The first period of the Classic Drama [1552-1570]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. The brothers Parfaict, Histoire du tlieatre 
 francais ; L'ancien tJiedtre francais, published by Viollet-le-Duc ; 
 Ebert, EntwicTtelungs-gescliichte der franzosiclien Tragodie, 1856, 
 Gotha; Edelestand du Meril, Da developpement de la tragedie en 
 France, Paris, 1869; Emile Faguet, La tragedie francaise au 
 XVP siecle, Paris, 1883. 
 
 2. THE AUTHORS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TRAGIC DRAMA. 
 The decree of the Parliament of Paris [17 November, 1548] forbidding 
 the Brothers of the Passion to " play the Mystery of the Passion of 
 Our Lord or other Sacred Mysteries " ; and whether the Parliament 
 in issuing this decree intended to sacrifice the Mysteries " to the Pagan 
 enthusiasm of the poets of the New School " ? Italian origin of the 
 classic drama. Petrarch's Triomphes [Cf. in particular the Triomplie
 
 72 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 celebrate the Carnival with extreme impropriety and 
 folly." [Cf. Michelet, Memoires de Luther; and Merle 
 d'Aubigne, La Reformation au temps de Luther.} How 
 was it possible for him to state more clearly, that what 
 aroused his indignation in Rome, was precisely the 
 spectacle of the Renaissance '? Far from having any hold 
 on him, it was the very splendour of the arts, the 
 magnificence of the fetes, the luxury of the dress that 
 forced him into a schism. And in preaching the Refor- 
 mation, it was not merely the Papacy as such that he was 
 fighting, nor Catholicism, but it was the very spirit of 
 the Renaissance that he wished to destroy and over which 
 he was nearly triumphant. 
 
 I am not sure that the same intention is not even 
 more manifest in the work of Calvin. We hold him 
 rightly to be one of our great writers, and the Institution 
 
 de V Amour, and the Triomphe de la Benommee] ; Trissin's Sopho- 
 niabe, 1515 ; Tragic drama in Italy from 1515 to 1550 [Cf. Ginguene, 
 Histoire litteraire d'ltalie, vol. vi., chap. 19, 20, and 21] ; Lazare 
 de Baif's translations [Electro, and Hecuba] ; those of Bonaventure 
 des Periers [Andrienne] ; of Konsard [Plutus] ; the representations 
 in the colleges ; Jodelle's Cleopdtre, 1552. Hesitation of the Pleiad 
 between tragedy and comedy. 
 
 The preference is accorded tragedy, thanks to Scaliger's Poetique, 
 1561; thanks to the popularity of Seneca's tragedies ; andthans 
 finally to the success of Amyot's Plutarque. 
 
 La Mort de Jules Cesar, by J. Grevin, 1560 ; The determination of 
 the characteristics of tragedy [Cf. Scaliger, Poetices libri septem, 
 book i., chap. 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 16] ; the choice of subjects. The rule of 
 the unities. Jean and Jacques de la Taille. Of the unity of tone of 
 the tragedies of the Renaissance. Of the advantage the writers find 
 in treating well-known subjects, and even subjects already dealt with. 
 The utilisation of history in tragedy. The trend of classic tragedy 
 is already determined in 1570. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Of Jodelle : Cleopdtre, Didon and Eugene ; of 
 Jean de la Taille, Medee, 1554 ; of Ch. Toutain, Agamemnon, 1556 ; 
 of Jacques Grevin, La Mort de Cesar, 1560 ; of Gabriel Bounyn,
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 73 
 
 Chretienne is one of the noble books of the sixteenth 
 century. It is certain, on the other hand, that no book 
 could conceivably be more different from the Pantagruel of 
 Rabelais, and that none can be named that is less " confit 
 en mepris des choses fortuites," or that expresses less con- 
 fidence in the goodness of nature. Nobody has believed 
 to a less degree than Calvin, that it is possible for man, 
 without aid and succour from on high, to escape from his 
 natural " filth," or to prevent himself continually falling 
 back into it. Nobody has been less of opinion, that we 
 are justified in freely abandoning ourselves to our instincts, 
 and in making the joy of satisfying them to the full the 
 unique ambition of our existence. Nobody even has 
 believed to a less degree that liberty has been granted 
 us that we may turn it to account, for, on the contrary, 
 he held that its rightful use lay in its abdication. So 
 
 La Sultane, 1561 ; of F. Le Duchat, Agamemnon, 1561 ; of 
 Jacques de la Taille, Daire et Alexandre, 1562 ; of N. Filleul, 
 Achille, 1563, and Lucrece, 1567 ; of Florent Crestien, La fille de 
 Jephte, 1567 ; of Jacques de la Taille, Saul le Furieux, 1568. 
 
 Few of these works, with the exception of those of Jodelle, have 
 been reprinted in modern times. There is, however, a modern edition 
 of the Mort de Cesar, Marburg, 1886. 
 
 IX. Robert Gamier [La Ferte-Bernard, 1534 ; f 1590, Le Mans.] 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Niceron, in his Homines illustres, vol. xxi. ; 
 A. Ebert, Entivickelungs-geschichte des franzosischen Tragodie, 
 Gotha, 1856 ; B. Haureau, Histoire letteraire du Maine, Paris, 1872 ; 
 Einile Faguet, La tragedie francaise au XVI' siecle, Paris, 1883 ; 
 P. Bernage, Etude sur Robert Gamier, Paris, s.d. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE POET. Extraordinary popularity of Garnier's 
 tragedies ; more than forty editions in less than forty years from 
 1586-1616 ; and were they represented '? His Roman tragedies : 
 Porcie, Cornelie, Antigone ; and that they are simply history inter- 
 spersed with lyric and descriptive interludes [Cf. the choruses ; and 
 in Porcia : Description of Hell, verses 45-66 ; Description of the 
 Ages of Humanity, verse 725 and fol. ; TJie Labours of Hercules,
 
 74 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 much for the essence of his book. As for its manner, 
 having regard to its monumental severity, there was 
 never a book whose beauty was less . " aesthetic," so to 
 speak, or at the same time more logical. In no book has 
 the art of the writer consisted more manifestly in being 
 able to dispense with art, in renouncing every expedient, 
 even those that are most legitimate, by which the feelings 
 of the reader may be interested in the truth of the doc- 
 trine taught. In no book, to conclude, has assuredly 
 vigorous thought adopted to express itself what Bossuet 
 has termed a " sadder " style ; and I fancy that he means 
 a style more proper to discourage the reader. Such, too, 
 is the opinion of Eonsard, who is disturbed, offended, 
 and wounded in his artistic instincts by this gloomy 
 Puritanism ; and I was mistaken just now when I said 
 that the Institution Chretienne differs from no book so 
 
 verses 1076-1110]. Abundance of translations. Influence of Seneca. 
 Greek tragedies : Hippolyte, Antigone and La Troade ; that 
 Gamier composed this latter piece by combining the Hercules and 
 Troades of Euripides and the Troades of Seneca. Analysis of Hip- 
 polyte. Noticeable effort of the poet in the direction of psychology 
 [Cf. Hippolyte, verses 545-690, verse 1360 and fol. ; verses 1963- 
 2l50]. The first tragi-comedy : Bradamante. That Garnier's 
 Bradamante marks a decisive moment in the history of the drama : 
 tragedy "retreats" and gives way to tragi-comedy. Glance at the 
 state of the drama in Europe at the same period. Whether this 
 eclipse of tragedy is or is not a symptom of emancipation from the 
 ancients ? Qualities of Garnier's tragedies : loftiness of his imagi- 
 nation ; his style is that of Bonsard's school. Further that he was 
 mistaken in his view of the nature of dramatic action ; of the means 
 of interesting the public ; and in the choice of his models. 
 
 3. THE WOKKS. They are almost restricted to his tragedies : 
 Porcie, 1568 ; Hippolyte, 1573 ;^Cornelie, 1574 ; Marc Antoine, 
 1578; La Troade, 1578; Antigone, 1579; Bradamante, 1580 
 (tragi-comedy) ; and Les Juives, 1583. 
 
 He is also the author of an Hymne a la monarchie, 1567 ; and of 
 an Elegie sur le trepan de Bon-sard.
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 75 
 
 much as from Rabelais' romance : it differs at least as 
 much from the Sonnets a Cassandre, from the Ode a 
 I' Hospital, and from the Hymne de VOr. 
 
 But this is why it is that we shall not be surprised at the 
 resistance the Reformation encountered at first in France. 
 France had not emancipated itself from the domination 
 of scholasticism to fall at once under the tyranny of Pro- 
 testant Puritanism. Having tasted the seductions of 
 independence and of art, it was not going to allow itself 
 to be deprived of them for the future. It had not cast 
 aside what it held to be too " Germanic " in its constitu- 
 tion, as contained in the feudal system, in order to 
 reinstate, in the shape of Protestantism, something at 
 least as " Germanic." For this is a further point on 
 which the spirit of the Reformation is opposed to that 
 of the Renaissance ; indeed it is perhaps the most im- 
 
 An excellent edition of Robert Garnier's dramas has been issued 
 by M. Wendelin Forster, 4 vols., Heilbronn, 1882-1884. 
 
 X. The "beginnings of Comedy. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. The brothers Parfaict, Histoire du theatre fran- 
 cais ; L'Ancien theatre francais, edited by Viollet-le-Duc ; Ch. 
 Magnin : Les commencements de la comedie italienne en France, in 
 the Eevue des Deux Mondes for December 15, 1847 ; Rathery : In- 
 fluence de I'ltalie sur lea lettres francaises, Paris, 1853 ; Armand 
 Baschet, Lcs Comediens italiens a la cour de France, Paris, 1882 ; 
 Ad. Gaspary, Storia della litteratura italiana, translated from the 
 German, Turin, 1891, vol. ii., second part. 
 
 2. THE AUTHORS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMEDY. The last 
 soties. That comedy in France is not of French, nor of purely Latin 
 but of Italian origin. Italian comedy of the sixteenth century ; 
 its Latin sources ; its popular and national sources : La Commedia 
 deir Arte. Influence of the " novellieri." The personages of this 
 comedy. Disguises, misunderstandings and recognitions. The plot 
 hinges upon the valet ; and this continues the case until the 
 Mariage de Figaro. The Italian comedians in France ; the first 
 troupe of Gclosi, 1571 [Cf. Baschet, op. citJ] ; the second Gelosi,
 
 76 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 portant point. When one attempts to arrive at the very 
 essence of their opposition, it seems to lie in one of those 
 racial antagonisms that of all are the most insuperable. 
 Those who lived at the time overlooked this fact at first, 
 but they were quick to recognise their mistake. They 
 awoke to the necessity of choosing whether they would 
 become Germans or retain their Latin race, whether they 
 would follow the path that humanism was treading, or 
 attach to moral preoccupations a greater importance than 
 to those of every other order ; and the differentiation of 
 the literatures of the North from the literatures of the 
 South was the outcome of this conflict. [Cf. Mine 
 de Stael, De V Allemagne ; and H. Taine, Litterature 
 anglaise.~] It will be seen that it exactly coincides with 
 the division of the Europe of the Middle Ages into two 
 great "nations," which, separated for the future, will not 
 
 1577 ; and is it a fact that they played the comedies of Pierre de 
 Larrivey ? 
 
 Pierre de Larrivey [1540-1612] ; his Italian origin ; his transla- 
 tion of the Facetieuses Nuits de Straparole, 1576 ; his comedies, 
 1579. There is not one of the nine that is not translated or 
 'adapted" from some Italian comedy. Declaration of Larrivey in 
 his Dedication to M. d'Amboise. It is also to be noted that his 
 comedies are all in prose. They are examples of the comedy of pure 
 intrigue. The principal point of interest in connection with them is 
 that they were imitated later on by Moliere [Cf . in particular L'Avare 
 on the one hand, and on the other Le Laquais, L, sc. 1 ; La Veuve 
 (the author of the Italian original of which is a Bonaparte), iii., sc. 2 ; 
 and Les Esprits, iii., sc. 6]. Of a curious difference in the tone 
 of the first and last of Larrivey's comedies : La Constance, Le 
 Fidcle, Les Trompeuses ; and in what respect the latter are more 
 romantic. 
 
 Of some other authors of comedies : Jean Godard, Odet de Tur- 
 nebe, etc. The development of comedy, as that of tragedy had been, 
 is interrupted by the success of tragi-comedy. Was French society of 
 the time of Charles IX. and Henry III. ripe for comedy ? Eeasons 
 for doubting that it was ; the principal of which is the license that
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 77 
 
 be drawn together, will not again meet in the course of 
 their literary evolution for a long time to come. The 
 transition from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is 
 accomplished, and the work of differentiation will not be 
 interrupted again. It is here that comes to an end with 
 the history of the Middle Ages the history of " Euro- 
 pean " literature, and that begins with the history of 
 nationalities that of modern literatures. 
 
 Ill 
 
 One of the first consequences of the transformation 
 that is beginning is what has been happily termed the 
 Latinisation of culture. [Cf . Burckhardt, Civilisation au 
 temps de la Renaissance.] Little by little, and almost 
 without being aware or conscious of what they are about, 
 
 reigned at the time in satire. A second may be found in the circum- 
 stance that the national character was still unfixed : what makes 
 one race laugh has not the same effect on another, and the French 
 character was scarcely formed. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Jodelle's Eugene ; Remy Belleau's La Reconnue ; 
 J. H. de Baif's translations, the Eunuque and the Miles gloriosus ; 
 Grevin's La Tresoriere, 1558, Les Esbahis, 1560 ; Jean de la 
 Taille's Les Corriveaux, 1562 ; Louis le Jars' Lucelle, 1576 ; Pierre 
 Larrivey's first collection, containing Le Laquais, La Veuve, Les 
 Esprits, Le Morfondu, Les Jaloux, Les Escoliers, 1579 ; Odet de 
 Turnebe's Les Contens, 1580. 
 
 P. Larrivey's comedies have been reprinted by Viollet-le-Duc in 
 his Ancien theatre francais, vols. v., vi. and vii. 
 
 XL The Work of the Pleiad. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Cf. the texts given above and add : Vauquelin de 
 la Fresnaye : Art poetique, edit. G. Pellissier, Paris, 1885 ; Mathurin 
 Regnier, in his Satires, in particular Satire V. and Satire IX. ; 
 A. P. Lemercier, Etudes sur . . . Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, Nancy, 
 1887 ; Ferdinand Brunot, La doctrine de Malherbe, Paris, 1891 ; 
 E. Faguet, XVI e siecle, Paris, 1894 ; and Marty-Laveaux, La langue 
 de la Pleiade in the collection of the PUiade francaise. It will be
 
 78 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 it is to the Latin school that our poets attach themselves, 
 though they continue the while to profess a great admira- 
 tion for Grecian models ; they are disposed to imitate 
 Horace rather than Pindar ; and this tendency is so 
 general that even Ronsard, in his Franciade, but more 
 especially in his theory of the epopee, though he invoke 
 the great name of Homer, draws his inspiration in reality 
 from Virgil alone. A scholar of renown, Julius Caesar 
 Scaliger, goes a step further in his Poetique, in which he 
 openly proclaims the superiority of the Latins over the 
 Greeks. Is it that he is alive to the circumstance that 
 the Greeks, as a philosopher will point out later [Hegel, 
 Esthetique, trans. Benard, vol. i.], were only acquainted 
 with the Greeks and barbarians, whereas the Latins 
 attained to a knowledge of man ? However this may be, 
 towards 1560, or thereabouts, in spite of certain efforts, 
 
 well to consult from a general point of view : A. Couat's Poesie 
 alexandrine, Paris, 1882. 
 
 2. THE WORK OF THE PLEIAD. As regards style ; it gave the 
 alexandrine verse a definite footing in French poetry. Comparison 
 between the ten-syllable verse and the alexandrine. The Pleiad put 
 into circulation for poetical use all the rhythms which we employ ; 
 it considerably enriched the language ; and in this connection what 
 importance is to be attached to the reproach addressed by Ronsard 
 of having " spoken Greek and Latin in French " ? The Pleiad also 
 taught French poets and even prose writers the " intrinsic strength " 
 of words ; that is that in every language, and independently of their 
 meaning, there are beautiful words and ugly words. Of some exag- 
 gerations of the Eomanticists on this score [Of. Th. Gautier, Notice 
 sur Baudelaire]. Finally the Pleiad set itself the task of raising the 
 dignity of the poet simultaneously with that of poetry ; and it was 
 successful. Of the acclimatisation of the literary forms of antiquity 
 in our literature. 
 
 The Pleiad would have been more successful still but for having 
 committed three capital errors : (1) It blundered in the choice of 
 models, confounding them all in a like admiration provided they were 
 ancient ; (2) It blundered as to the conditions to which literary
 
 THE FOEMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 79 
 
 such as those of Henri Estienne in his Conformite du 
 langage fran^ois avec le grec, the language of Homer 
 and Plato is seen to drop out of general circulation, so to 
 speak, and to retire to the seclusion of the colleges. It is 
 the object once again of the attention of none but the 
 erudite. It is no longer to Sophocles or Aristophanes 
 that the earliest authors of our " classic " tragedies and 
 comedies will go for lessons in their art, but to Plautus 
 and to Seneca. The imitation of " antiquity " is, or will 
 soon be confined to the imitation of Latin antiquity ; and 
 thus it is that Greek, like a leaven that is only destined 
 to contribute to a combination into which it is not to 
 enter, is eliminated from the classic ideal after serving to 
 determine it. 
 
 Be it remarked, moreover, that if Greek has great 
 qualities, Latin has others, more suited, perhaps, to 
 
 forms are subject, thinking it could create forms at will without 
 regard to time, place, or the laws of the human mind. Theory of the 
 Epopee considered as the expression of a conflict of races ; Theory of 
 Lyricism considered as the expression of the personality of the poet ; 
 Theory of the Drama considered as an encounter between the force 
 of circumstances and the human will. (3) Finally the Pleiad was 
 mistaken as to its real capacities; it was not sufficiently cog- 
 nisant of its deficiencies in the matters of experience of life and 
 observation of man. 
 
 Still, and even as regards subject matter, its errors do not prevent 
 its having marked out the boundaries as it were of classicism. It was 
 alive to or at least had an inkling of the potentialities of style; it 
 recognised in what true imitation consists ; and the nature of the 
 transition from imitation to invention [Cf. on this head Andre 
 Chenier, Epitre IV. a M. Lebrun and his Invention] ; it communi- 
 cated to its successors the ambition of putting the dignity of the 
 French language on a level with that of Greek and Lathi ; and 
 finally it laid down in advance even the limits of classic art. In this 
 sense Ronsard, lyricism excepted, is already Malherbe ; and Malherbe, 
 when completed by the wide acquirements and the integrity of 
 reflection in which he will be wanting, will be already Boileau.
 
 80 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the nature of the French genius. " The dignity, it has 
 been said, of the Latin language is unequalled. . . . 
 It was spoken by the sovereign people, who stamped it 
 with that character of grandeur that is unique in the 
 history of human language. ... It is the language of 
 civilisation. Mingled with the speech of our barbarian 
 forefathers, it had the power to refine, to render supple, 
 to spiritualise those rude tongues which have become 
 what we see. . . . Take the map of the world and draw 
 a line within which this universal language was spoken : 
 it marks the limits of civilisation and of the European 
 stock. . . . The Latin language is the sign of the 
 European " [Joseph de Maistre, Du Pape] . The French- 
 men of the Renaissance recognised this, and though they 
 might have been unable to adduce the reasons just set 
 forth, they were the reasons that induced them to return 
 
 THIRD PERIOD 
 
 From the Publication of the " Essays " to the 
 Publication of " Astree " 
 
 1580-1588 * to 1608 
 
 I. Bernard Palissy [Paris, 1510 ; f 1590, Agen] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Bernard Palissy, Discours admirables de I" art 
 de terre, edit. B. Fillon, vol. ii., p. 206 and fol. ; Lamartine in the 
 Civilisateur, July, 1852 ; Haag, La France Proiestante, article 
 PALISSY, 1857 ; Louis Audiat, Bernard Palissy, Paris, 1863 and 
 1868 ; A. Jacquemart, Les Merveilles de la ceramique, vol. ii., Paris, 
 1868 ; Louis Audiat, Palissy, sa vie et ses ceuvres, preceding Fillon's 
 edition, Niort, 1888 ; Ernest Dupuy, Bernard Palissy, Paris, 1891. 
 
 2. THE ARTIST, THE WRITER, AND THE MAN OF SCIENCE. Of some 
 extravagant eulogies that have been made of B. Palissy [Cf. the article 
 alluded to by Lamartine, and Henri Martin in his Histoire dc 
 France] ; and that the masterpieces of the potter's art do not de- 
 
 * I note here, without further delay, that the edition of the Essais (Montaigne) 
 dated 1580 only contains the two first books of the work, to which the third was 
 added for the first time in the edition in 4to dated 1588.
 
 THE FOKMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 81 
 
 in a body to the Latin tradition after the brief and poetic 
 enthusiasm for Greek by which they had been carried 
 away for a moment. 
 
 Simultaneously, they feel the need of putting the 
 solidity, gravity, and dignity of their matter on a level 
 with the perfection of manner which they esteem they 
 have achieved [Cf. Estienne Pasquier, Recherckes de la 
 France, book vii., chap. 8, 9 and 10]. I see curious 
 evidence of this desire, in the nai've and pedantic coquetry 
 with which they resort to inverted commas " . . . . " to 
 draw the reader's attention every time they express a 
 general idea. The result is that while the Italians are 
 already going astray prior to losing themselves entirely, 
 as they will soon do, amid the subtilties of alexandrinism 
 and become according to the expression of one of the 
 best historians of their literature [Cf. Francesco de Sanctis, 
 
 serve so much enthusiasm ; there may be infinite art in them, but 
 there is no great art where there is no great intention ; and there is 
 nothing of the sort in a pot. Literary interest of the distinction. 
 Life and adventures of Bernard Palissy. The famous passage in the 
 Art de Terre [Fillon's edition, ii., 206 and fol.] ; and that there is a 
 great deal of declamation in it [Cf. Benvenuto Cellini in his Memoirs] ; 
 but it is sincere " declamation " or declamation of which its author 
 is himself the dupe ; and in this connection of Palissy as a writer. 
 
 That his self-opinionatedness is due to his ignorance ; and in this 
 connection of a form of vanity peculiar to the self-taught. The 
 dedication of the Discours admirables to the Seigneur de Pons. 
 Palissy 's work bears witness to the state of mind of a " poor artisan " 
 of his time. It is this that constitutes its singularity, originality and 
 naturalness. His talent as a tale-teller [Les ammonites de Marennes, 
 ed. Fillon, L, 48, 49 ; the Debat des outils d' agriculture, i., 106, 107. 
 The allegory Essay de la teste des hommes, i., 108 and fol] . His 
 sentiment of nature. In his writings, as in his enamels, Palissy is one 
 of those artists whose characters are not merely lifelike, but lifelike to 
 an extraordinary degree. The observer and the experimenter. 
 
 Should he be regarded as a " man of science " ? For what reasons 
 he cannot have had anything more than presentiments. Testimony of 
 
 7
 
 82 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Storia della Lett, italiana, vol. ii., chap, ii.], almost " in- 
 different to the subject matter," whose form alone is 
 capable of appealing to their senses, it is precisely with 
 the "subject matter" or the essence of things that our 
 writers are concerned ; and it is to what they see, or 
 think they see, to be the most durable and the most 
 universal side of things that they endeavour to give 
 expression. This liking for general ideas, or liking as it 
 will shortly be called for the reduction to the Universal, 
 is a second trait of the classic ideal that is beginning to 
 take shape. 
 
 We touch here upon the explanation of the prodigious 
 success of Amyot and his translations. His Plutarch is 
 only a rhetorician ; but this rhetorician has composed 
 biographies which are perhaps the most interesting we 
 know ; and given the manner in which Amyot has trans- 
 
 Cuvier [Histoire des sciences naturelles] and of Isidore Geoffrey- Saint- 
 Hilaire [Histoire des regnes organiques] . His attacks on the 
 Alchemists. Importance of the form he has given his work [Dia- 
 logues between a Theorist, or the a priori idea, and a Practical Man, 
 or experience] . It does not seem, however, that he made any 
 important discovery ; or laid down any principle in the sphere of 
 method ; or formed a single disciple. That his great merit lies in his 
 having emancipated himself from the servitude of the ancients general 
 in his time. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Recette veritable, " true recipe " by which all the 
 men of France may learn to multiply and augment their treasures ; 
 1563, and Discours admiralties de la nature des eaux et des 
 fontaines ; 1580. 
 
 The best edition of Palissy's Works is that of M. Benjamin Fillon 
 Niort, 1888, Clouzot. 
 
 II. Francois de la Noue [Fresnay-en-Retz (Loire-Inferieure) 
 1531 -f- 1591, Moncontour (C6tes-du-Nord)] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. La Noue himself in his Memoires ; Brantome 
 in his Hommes illustres ; Moise Amyrault, Vie de Franqois seigneur 
 de la Noue, 1661 ; Albert Desjardins, Les moralistes frangais au
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 83 
 
 lated them, it would be impossible to imagine more 
 instructive object lessons. "If we feel a singular 
 pleasure in listening to those who return from a distant 
 journey, when they relate the things they have seen in 
 strange countries, the manners of the inhabitants, the 
 nature of the localities . . . and if we are sometimes so 
 joyous and enraptured that we do not perceive the pass- 
 ing of the hours as we hearken to the discourse of a 
 wise, fluent, and eloquent old man, when he is telling 
 the adventures of his years of youth and vigour . . . 
 how much greater should be the pleasure and rapture we 
 should feel at seeing human examples vividly represented 
 in a comely, vivid, and truthful picture." Thus he 
 expresses himself in the preface to his Vies paralleles ; 
 and it would be impossible to state more aptly the nature 
 of the teachings, or, as we should say to-day, of the 
 
 XVI" sieclc, Paris, 1870; H. Hauser, Francois dc la None, Paris, 
 1892. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. As was Bodin, as was Palissy, he 
 too is an "observer," though of a different kind. His military career ; 
 but his sobriquet of " Iron- Arm " must not be taken as evidence of 
 his energy ; and that besides being a soldier he was something of a 
 politician. The scruples of conscience of a Protestant captain ; com- 
 parison between Montluc and De la Noue ; moral superiority of the 
 latter. His Discours politiques et militaires.H.e composed this work 
 in prison. Curious points of contact between Bodin, Palissy, and 
 La Noue. Classification of La Noue's discourses : Strictly Military 
 Discourses [11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18] ; compare the manner in which 
 he writes of war with a famous passage in the Soirees de Saint- 
 Petersbourg. Political Discourses [1, 4, 6, 12, 20, 21, 22] ; compare 
 the political views of La Noue with the " great plan " of Henry IV. 
 But of most interest as regards the history of ideas are his Moral 
 Discourses [3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 19, 23, 24, 25] and among them Discourse 
 23 on the philosopher's stone ; 6 against the Amadis ; and 24 against 
 the Epicureans ; La Noue a predecessor of Bossuet [Maxims on 
 comedy] in his Discourse against the Amadis ; and of Rousseau in 
 his Discourse against the Epicureans. This amounts to saying that
 
 84 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 " documents," relating to man contained by his Vies. 
 In strict truth the influence of Amyot has not been com- 
 mendable in every respect ; and if it be indeed his Plu- 
 tarque that may be said to have imbued us with that vague 
 ideal of heroism of the Greek or Roman pattern, which 
 will become the ideal of our classic tragedy ; if it be in- 
 deed his Agesilauses and his Timoleons, his Coriolanuses 
 and his Mariuses, that for two hundred and fifty years at 
 a stretch will be the subject of French drama, or rather 
 will encumber French drama without always providing 
 it with adequate subjects ; then it is allowable to regret 
 his influence. How would things stand after this if we 
 were to enumerate here all our painters, from. Poussin 
 to David, who have borrowed off him? And are we 
 to be asked to be grateful to him for that ideal of a 
 false, sentimental, and declamatory virtue of which his 
 
 he is above everything else a "moralist." The composition of La 
 Noue's Discours ; their oratorical turn ; their vigour of language 
 and style ; their impassionate patriotism. Success of the Discours. 
 A few words as to La Noue's Memoircs. His death at the siege of 
 Lamballe. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Discours politiques et militaires du sieur Francois 
 de la None ; Bale, 1587, Frai^ois Forest. 
 
 There are no modern reprints of his works, and the most recent 
 editions date from the beginning of the seventeenth century ; but 
 sundry of La Noue's Letters are to be found in a certain number of 
 historical publications. 
 
 III. Guillaume de Saluste, Seigneur of Bartas [Montfort 
 
 (Gers) 1544; f 1590, Montfort]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. J. de Thou, in his Histoire, book 99 ; Goujet, in 
 his Bibliotheque francaise, vol. xiii. ; Sainte-Beuve, Poesie frang aise 
 au XVI" siecle ; and Revue des Deux Mondes, February, 1842; 
 Poirson, Histoire litteraire du Regne d 'Henri IV., vol. iv., 2nd edition, 
 1867 ; G. Pellissier, La vie et les ceuvres de du Bartas, Paris, 1882. 
 
 2. THE POET. His Protestant education ; and that while profiting 
 by the example of Ronsard, he goes back beyond him, and must be
 
 THE FOEMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 85 
 
 Lycurguses and his Philopoemens, his Catos and his 
 Brutuses, have offered the model to our publicists or 
 to the members of our revolutionary assemblies? [Cf. 
 J. J. Rousseau, in his Confessions ; and Mme Roland in 
 her Memoires and in her Correspondance.~\ On the other 
 hand, however, it is unquestionably in his Vies paralleles 
 that the great figures of that antiquity which previous 
 to him had been shrouded in a sort of mythological or 
 legendary mist, assumed what seems to be an air of 
 reality and life. Whether they resemble the originals 
 or not, this is not the point, his personages are sub- 
 stantial, have ceased to be vain phantoms ; it seems that 
 one touches them with the finger. Indeed his own expres- 
 sion deserves to be retained : it is exact that he offers us 
 human examples vividly represented, whose description has 
 enriched our knowledge of humanity. Absorbed by the 
 
 connected with the author of the Miroir de Vdme pecliercsse. The 
 court of Jeanne d'Albret. Popularity of Du Bartas among the Protes- 
 tant community ; Goethe's estimate of him [Complete Works, Cotta, 
 1868, Stuttgart, vol. xxv., p. 261]. His avowed intention of combat- 
 ting the current Paganism of the time. The Premiere Sepmaine, 1579, 
 and the Seconde, 1584. The Premiere has for theme the adoration of 
 God in the marvels of nature ; the Seconde is a sort of universal 
 history. The descriptive and oratorical passages in the poems of Du 
 Bartas. Of the style of Du Bartas and of the absence of art that 
 characterises it. That together with Baif he is responsible for the 
 neglect that overtook Ronsard. Of Du Bartas as a caricature of 
 Bonsard. Unavailing efforts of the critics to restore him to favour. 
 It is very difficult to account for his influence, but his work was very 
 popular in his time. Explanation of this peculiarity. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. La Muse Chretienne, 1574, containing the 
 Triomphe de la foi, Judith and Uranie; La Sepmaine ou creation 
 du monde, 1578 ; La seconde sepmaine ou enfance du monde, 1584, 
 comprising 1st Day (1) Eden ; (2) The Imposture ; (3) The Furies ; 
 (4) The Artifices ; and 2nd Day : (1) The Ark ; (2) Babylon ; (3) The 
 Colonies ; (4) The Columns. 
 
 In addition to the above, in the posthumous edition published by
 
 86 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 interest of the narrative, we compare his Lycurgus or his 
 Sylla with ourselves rather than with each other, and 
 without perceiving what we are about. An unconscious 
 comparison is instituted, of which the effect, if it be 
 on the one hand to abolish the historical sense in 
 us, I mean the sense of the diversity of epochs 
 is on the other hand to teach us the essential identity 
 of human nature. None before Amyot had brought 
 this truth into sight ; and if it should be thought 
 surprising that a mere translator should occupy so 
 considerable a place in the literary history of his time, 
 let it be remembered that his " comely, vivid, and 
 truthful pictures " awakened the vocation of Michel de 
 Montaigne. 
 
 For whence comes the interest we take in all these 
 personages, and what is its true nature? Montaigne 
 
 Haultin at La Rochelle, 1590, 1591, are found : The Fathers, and the 
 History of Jonas, fragments of the 3rd Day ; The Tropliies, the 
 first part of the 4th Day ; the Magnificence ; and a translation in 
 verse of the Lepanthe de Jacques VI., roi d'Ecosse. The edition also 
 contains the C antique de la victoire d'lvry. 
 
 IV. Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne [Chateau of 
 Montaigne, near Bergerac, 1538 ; f 1592, in the same place]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Above all the Essays themselves ; Dr. Payen, 
 Documents inedits sur Montaigne, 1847-1855-1857-1862, and Notice 
 sur La Boetie, 1853 ; Feuillet de Conches, Causer ies d'un curieux, 
 vol. iii., Paris, 1862 ; A. Griin, La vie publique de Montaigne, Paris, 
 1855 ; Th. Malvezin, Michel de Montaigne, Bordeaux, 1875 ; Paul 
 Bonnefon, Montaigne, I'homme et Vceuvre, Paris, 1893 ; and Mon- 
 taigne et ses amis, Paris, 1898 ; Paul Stapfer, Montaigne in the 
 series of Grands Ecrivains, Paris, 1895, and La famille de Mon- 
 taigne, Paris, 1896 ; Villemain, Eloge de Montaigne, 1812 ; J. 
 V. Le Clerc, Discours sur la vie et Ies ouvrages de Montaigne pre- 
 ceding his edition of Montaigne's Works ; Sainte-Beuve, Port- 
 Royal, vol. ii., book iii., chap. ii. and iii. ; Vinet, Moralistes 
 francais du XVI s et du XVII 1 ' siecle, Paris, 1859. Gust. Allais, Les
 
 THE FOKMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 87 
 
 will tell us : it is " that every man carries in his own 
 person the model of the human condition." 
 
 Human! generis mores tibi nosse volenti, 
 Sufficit una domus . . . 
 
 The lines are Juvenal's, and without a doubt Montaigne 
 is sufficiently nourished on Latin, his book is suffi- 
 ciently that of a "humanist," or even it may be of a 
 pedant, for one to suspect him of having borrowed the 
 aphorism from the Latin satirist. This great reader is 
 a great pilferer, and he has not always indicated his 
 larcenies, as if he feared in truth that were he to have 
 done so there would remain nothing of his entire book. 
 A very useless precaution, but an almost vainer fear ! 
 Were the Essais only a collection or, if I may risk the 
 expression, a string, a chaplet of quotations, that would 
 
 Essais de Montaigne, Paris, 1887 ; D. Motheau, Notice sur Mon- 
 taigne, introduction to his edition of Montaigne's Works, Paris, 1886 ; 
 E. Faquet XVIe Siecle ; Eug. Voizard, Etude sur la langue de 
 Montaigne, Paris, 1885. 
 
 (2) THE LIFE OF MONTAIGNE. The origin of the Eyquem family 
 and Montaigne's pretensions to nobility. His studies at the college 
 of Guyenne. He is appointed Councillor of the Court of Aides at 
 Perigueux in 1557 ; and councillor to the Bordeaux Parliament in 
 1561. His friendship with Estienne de la Boetie; and in this con- 
 nection of the Contr'un or Discours sur la servitude volontaire, which 
 is nothing but purely rhetorical declamation. Death of La Boetie, 
 1563. Montaigne's marriage, 1565. Death of his father, 1568. In 
 1569 Montaigne publishes his translation of Raymond Sebon's Natural 
 Theology. Of. Raymond Sebon and his Natural Theology ; and he 
 must not be confused with another Spaniard, Raymond Martin, the 
 author of the Pugio Fidei. In 1570 Montaigne abandons law for the 
 army ; but he does not see any fighting. In 1580 he publishes the 
 first edition of his Essays. Montaigne's travels [June 22, 1580- 
 November 30, 1581]. He is made mayor of Bordeaux in 1581. The 
 plague of Bordeaux, and that Montaigne's conduct during it was the 
 reverse of heroic. He ceases to be mayor in 1585, and publishes in
 
 88 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 not prevent them being all that they are in the his- 
 tory of our literature : the first book in which a man 
 formed the project of depicting himself, considering 
 himself as an example of average humanity, and of 
 enriching the natural history of humanity with the 
 discoveries he made in his own person. " Every one 
 looks beyond himself, I look within myself, I am only 
 concerned with myself, I reflect on myself, I examine 
 myself, I take pleasure in myself. . . . Others are always 
 harking elsewhere . . . 
 
 Nemo in se tentat descendere ; 
 
 for my part I wrap myself up in myself." And by the 
 comparison I make between others and myself, he might 
 add, I not only know myself, I know others as well ; I 
 procure myself some notion of that general and common 
 
 1588 the real second edition of his Essays. His relations with Henri 
 IV. His last years. He dies September 13, 1592, leaving to his 
 wife and his adopted daughter, Mile le Jars de Gournay, the task of 
 issuing the definite edition of the Essays, which is that of 1595. 
 
 (3) COMPOSITION AND CHARACTER OF THE ESSAYS. 
 
 A. The composition of the book. A remark of Prevost-Paradol 
 [Cf. Moralistes francais~\ on Montaigne's quotations and the impossi- 
 bility of separating them from the context. But he has forgotten 
 that the edition of 1595 contained more than " six hundred " additions 
 to the text of 1588 ; and, from a general point of view, that the 
 distinctive character of the Essays is precisely their successive com- 
 position. It is probable that the project of writing his Essays did 
 not occur to Montaigne earlier than 1572 [Cf. book i. chap. xx.]. The 
 edition of 1580 ; and why good judges are of opinion that this edition 
 is the truest reflection of Montaigne's individuality; it contains fewer 
 quotations, and presents in consequence a less pedantic appearance ; 
 the arguments, being interrupted by fewer digressions, are easier to 
 follow in it ; and there is something livelier about its general tone 
 and style. Comparison between the chapter on the Education of 
 Children in the first and second editions. The way in which Mon- 
 taigne's text is added to and often becomes overloaded in consequence
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 89 
 
 humanity of which I form part with them, and to which 
 they belong as I do. 
 
 Informed of the intentions of the author of the Essais, 
 let us now picture him in his library in converse with his 
 favourite authors. He has been reading his Tusculanes, 
 and has been struck by a sentence or a saying of Cicero ; 
 he then remembers having read something similar in 
 Seneca's Letters to Lucilius ; he refers to the passage ; 
 and he proceeds to compare Cicero with Seneca, and 
 both of them with his own experience, which sometimes 
 confirms theirs and sometimes contradicts it. Or it may 
 be that, reversing the process, having first observed the 
 effects of pain or passion on himself, it happens that in 
 searching his Plutarch or his Tacitus he finds corrobo- 
 ration of his own experience ; and he is surprised and 
 pleased to see that Cicero, for instance, or Agricola have 
 
 of his wide and varied reading ; that Montaigne rarely deletes but is 
 always making corrections ; and that he is much given to making 
 additions. Comparison between the Apology for Raymond Sebon 
 in the editions of 1580 and 1588 ; entire absence of plan and com- 
 position. The scruples of the stylist. To what extent the additions 
 made in the edition of 1585 ought to be adopted. 
 
 B. The inspiration of the book. The chapter : " To study philo- 
 sophy is to learn how to die"; and that the chief concern of 
 Montaigne's life was to overcome his horror of death. This pre- 
 occupation explains : his curiosity with regard to himself; differences 
 in manners and customs ; and history. His Epicureanism, which 
 has sometimes been termed his Christianity, is to be ascribed to the 
 same cause ; Christianity being, in fact, merely a preparation for 
 death ; but in reality there was nothing of the Christian about 
 Montaigne. How his preoccupation with death explains the depth 
 and the fund of human feeling of his philosophy ; a remark of 
 Schopenhauer [The World as Will and Idea, iii. chap. xli.]. It is on 
 this head that Montaigne is distinguished from Rabelais. There is 
 something morbidly keen and in a certain sense something pessimistic 
 about his curiosity. This is just the characteristic too that gives the 
 Essays their singular value : they are a confession ; the effort of a
 
 90 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 experienced before him what he has just perceived and 
 noticed in his own person. In this way each successive 
 edition of his book is augmented, enriched, and diversi- 
 fied with the material he lights on in his daily observa- 
 tions or in the course of his reading. It is in this 
 way, too, that his pilferings reveal to us the very man 
 himself, and that as he becomes a more critical reader 
 and as his experience widens he perceives, and we per- 
 ceive with him, that his nature is always his own, but it 
 is my nature and yours as well. 
 
 It is for this reason that, whereas " authors appeal to 
 the public in virtue of some special and distinguishing 
 quality," he is the first author to base his appeal on the 
 characteristics he has in common with all humanity, to 
 present himself " as Michel de Montaigne, not as a gram- 
 
 man to make the knowledge of himself the basis of a knowledge of the 
 human race ; and an attempt to deduce a rule of conduct from this 
 knowledge. That the Essays are a melancholy book. 
 
 C. Montaigne's style. The way in which this melancholy is masked 
 by the charm of the style. What did Montesquieu mean when he 
 called Montaigne " one of the four great poets" ? Montaigne's style 
 is a "perpetual creation." The metaphors of Shakespeare himself 
 are not more numerous, more natural, or fresher ; and in this con- 
 nection of the metaphor as a cause and mode of the " fructification of 
 languages." Universality of Montaigne's vocabulary. Sainte-Beuve's 
 judgment on Montaigne's style [Cf. Port-Boyal, ii. p. 443, 450, edition 
 of 1878]. Moreover it is Montaigne's style that atones for what would 
 otherwise be the impertinence of his constant talk of himself. Strange 
 details furnished by Montaigne about himself. But by the way in 
 which he relates them, he contrives to express what is human about 
 them, as much as or more than what is individual and singular. 
 
 (4) INFLUENCE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ESSAYS. That " every man 
 carries in his own person the model of the human condition " ; and 
 a comparison in this connection between Montaigne's Essays and 
 Rousseau's Confessions ; the points of resemblance are external, but 
 the differences relate to essentials. Montaigne made moral and 
 psychological observation the basis of French literature. His
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 91 
 
 marian, poet, or jurist." What is to prevent him adopting 
 this course ? "Is not all philosophy contained in a humble 
 and private life as well as in a life on more spacious 
 lines ? " Is it necessary to be Aristides to have known the 
 ingratitude of men ? Alexander or Caesar to have experi- 
 enced the inconstancy of fortune ? And thereupon he 
 adds : " If people complain that I talk too much about 
 myself, my complaint is that they do not even think 
 about themselves." We are ignorant of our own nature; 
 and we hide or disguise our ignorance beneath the raillery 
 we mete out to those who study in their own persons 
 what is in fact the history of humanity ! 
 
 Shall I insist further, or is not the consequence clear 
 as it is ? Instead of plodding, as they had done hitherto, 
 in the footsteps of the ancients, instead of trying to pass 
 
 influence abroad : on Bacon [Cf . his Essays, 1597] ; and on 
 Shakespeare [Cf. Philarete Chasles, Etudes sur Shakespeare, Paris, 
 s.d.]. Shakespeare's numerous borrowings from Montaigne [Id. ibid.] , 
 That in this respect Montaigne returns to the tradition of the Euro- 
 pean influence of French literature. Certain matter in the Essays of a 
 nature bound to be displeasing to another generation. Testimony of 
 Balzac [eighteenth Conversation] ; of Pascal [Pensees] ; of Bossuet 
 [second sermon for All Saints' Day] ; of Malebranche [Recherche de 
 la Verite, ii., p. 3, ch. v.]. 
 
 5. THE WORKS. Neglecting his translation of the Theologie natu- 
 relle de Raymond, Sebon, 1569 ; and the Journal de ses Voyages, 
 which was first published in 1774 ; Montaigne's works are confined to 
 his Essays, of which it will suffice to note here the principal editions. 
 
 The Essais, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd editions, 1580, 1582, and 1587 [MM. 
 Dezeirneris and Barkhausen's edition, Bordeaux, 1874, is an exact 
 reproduction of the text of the 1st edition, and gives in addition the 
 different readings of the 2nd and 3rd editions] ; The Essais, 4th 
 edition, 1 vol. in 4to, 1588, Abel 1'Angelier [reprinted in Motheau- 
 Jouaust's edition, 7 vols. in 18mo, Paris, 1872, 1875, Jouaust] ; The 
 Essais, 5th edition, 1 vol. in folio, 1595, Abel 1'Angelier and Michel 
 Sonnius [reprinted in Courbet and Boyer's edition, 4 vols. in 8vo, 
 Paris, 1872-1877, A. Lemerre] .
 
 92 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 for, say, a Pindar or a Petrarch, our writers know for 
 the future that they can find in themselves the material 
 to put into and, as it were, sustain the literary forms 
 of which they had previously done little more than 
 imitate the outline. They will probe their own being. 
 Should they fail to discover in it the reasons for self- 
 satisfaction, a like inquiry afforded this Epicurean, their 
 effort will not have been wholly vain, for its outcome 
 will be the increase of the common treasure of humanity. 
 And finally, since at all times and under all circumstances 
 man's most interesting, instructive, and useful subject of 
 study is man, we find literature is based henceforth on 
 moral and psychological observation. 
 
 At the same time, the condition is enforced that a code 
 superior to that of nature shall serve as guide, or, as it 
 
 We may also cite P. Coste's edition (it is P. Coste who is related to 
 have blushed when Montaigne was mentioned in his presence) , 3 vols. 
 in 4to, London, 1724, to which is adjoined in the same format a 
 volume containing the Voyages ; Naigeon's edition, 4 vols. in 8vo, 
 Paris, 1802, Didot ; and J. V. Leclerc's edition, 5 vols. in 8vo, Paris, 
 1826, Lefevre. This is the edition that has become the standard 
 source of Montaigne's text. 
 
 V. The Satire Menippee [1593-1594] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Almost all the more special documents necessary 
 to or useful for the understanding of the Satire Menippee have been 
 collected in the Ratisbon edition, edited by Prosper Marchand, 3 vols. 
 in 12mo, 1726, and published by the successors of Mathias Kerner. In 
 addition there is Charles Labitte's introduction to his edition of 
 the Satire, Paris, n.d. ; and Les Predicateurs de la Ligue, Paris, 
 1841, by the same writer. 
 
 2. THE PAMPHLET ; and that neither its merit, which is quite 
 second-rate, nor its audacity, nor its consequences ought to be 
 exaggerated. It cannot be said that the Satire "gave France to 
 Henri IV.," since ifc was published in 1594, and the civil war did not 
 end until 1598 ; there is no audacity : (1) in five writers producing 
 a book between them, since it is well known that it is precisely on
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 93 
 
 were, as a law to this observation of ourselves. We are 
 to study nature in our own persons, but it will be with a 
 view to its discipline. On this point both Catholics and 
 Protestants will be quick to agree, and here, if we may 
 venture on the expression, we have the net profit of the 
 Reformation and the wars of religion. As we have said, 
 France had shrunk from the gloomy and hopeless morality 
 of Calvin. His teaching, however, had one result : it left 
 men convinced of the utility, the necessity, and even the 
 urgency of fighting against the growing licentiousness of 
 morals. Bead in this connection La Noue's Discours 
 politiques et militaires ; Charron's Sagesse and his Trois 
 Verites ; or again Du Vair's Philosophic stoique. By 
 \ different roads, all these writings, varied as are their 
 \> origin and characteristics, verge towards two or three 
 
 the division of risks that the principle of insurance is based ; 
 (2) further, there is no audacity in remaining anonymous ; and (3) 
 in having published a pamphlet of this nature nine months after 
 the conversion and three months after the re-entry into Paris of 
 Henri IV. The bravery of the authors wholly consists in conse- 
 quence of having egregiously insulted men already vanquished, 
 and in whose overthrow, moreover, they had had no hand. The 
 authors of the Menippec : Pierre le Boy, Gillot, Nicolas Rapin, Jean 
 Passerat, Florent Chrestien, and Pierre Pithou ; and that working 
 together they have not displayed a talent that none of them possessed 
 individually. There is, however, a certain vigour of caricature in some 
 ' passages of the Satire ; of satire even ; and almost of eloquence [Cf. 
 the oft-quoted " Harangue" of the civic lieutenant, Dreux d'Aubray]. 
 But there is not a trace of elevation or nobleness of feeling in "the 
 V work ; the writers are middle-class citizens infuriated at finding their 
 * pleasures interfered with ; they are also pronounced enemies of the 
 Jesuits ; and they doubtless loved their country ; but nevertheless 
 the Satire Menippee must not be numbered among the " great monu- 
 ments of the French genius." 
 
 VI. Pierre Charron [Paris, 1541 ; f 1603, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Bayle, in his Dictionnaire, article CHABRON;
 
 94 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 common ends : the first of which is to restore to the 
 morality of all time at least something of its former 
 authority ; the second to withdraw the French genius 
 from foreign influences, which are looked on at the 
 period far less as hindrances to its liberty than as the 
 causes of its corruption ; and the third to demand of the 
 individual, in the common interest of society, the qualities 
 or the virtues which, left to himself, he would be inclined 
 to spurn. 
 
 Of these three intentions, the first is specially notice- 
 able in the Discours of honest La Noue, for it would be 
 difficult to display greater concern than this soldier does 
 for purity of morals, the education of the young, and the 
 future of his country. Identical is the attitude of 
 Guillaume du Vair in his " Philosophy of the Stoics," 
 
 Franck, Dictionnaire des sciences 2)hiloso2)hiques, article CHARRON ; 
 Poirson, Histoire du Regne d'Henri IV. [see above] ; Vinet, 
 Moralistes francaise au XVP siecle. 
 
 2. THE PHILOSOPHER. Enigmatical character of the personage ; 
 he had been a priest ; he had even wished to enter the order of the 
 Carthusian monks ; there were pious prelates among his protectors ; 
 yet he had the reputation of being a " libertine," and the con- 
 tradiction that seems to exist between his personality and his reputa- 
 tion reappears in his two principal works : the Traite des Trois Verites 
 ("Treatise on the Three Truths"), which are: (1) that there is a 
 God ; (2) that this God is only known to the Christians ; (3) that this 
 God is only worshipped as he should be worshipped by the Roman 
 Catholics ; and the Traite de la Sagesse, which has generally been 
 looked upon as merely the systematisation of Montaigne's " scep- 
 ticism." That the order of publication of the works does not remove 
 the difficulty, seeing that he was acquainted with Montaigne when he 
 issued the Traite des Trois Verites. 
 
 Examination of the Traite de la Sagesse. Three contemporary, to 
 say nothing of ancient, writers are copied unscrupulously in the work : 
 Bodin [Cf. Sagesse, ii., ch. 44] ; Montaigne |_Cf. ii., chap, viii.] ; and 
 G. du Vair [Cf. iii., chap, xxviii.]. Meaning of these plagiarisms. 
 Charron's object is to make a synthesis of the ideas of his time; as is
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 95 
 
 a work whose spirit is sufficiently indicated by its title. 
 The writer, forestalling Pascal, already aims at opposing 
 Epictetus to Montaigne, the teaching that prescribes 
 an effort of the will to Epicurean indifference, the philo- 
 sophy of reason to that of Nature ! We must live 
 in accordance with Nature; but our "nature" is deter- 
 mined by the end to which we have been created ; and 
 " the end of man, of all our thoughts and all our actions, 
 is to lead a good life " ; and " our good " consists merely 
 in " the right use of reason, that is to say in virtue." 
 How different already is this teaching from that of 
 Kabelais, or even of Montaigne ! And, admitting that 
 Du Vair is here only paraphrasing Epictetus, the choice 
 of Epictetus as guide is in itself a symptom of impor- 
 tance. Experience has demonstrated the necessity of a 
 
 proved by the attention he pays to composition, a preoccupation that 
 is the chief originality of his book. The three central ideas of the 
 work : (1) the goodness of nature [Cf. ii., ch. iii.] ; and yet (2) the in- 
 finite wretchedness of man [Cf. i., passim] ; which should breed (3) a 
 sovereign contempt for death [Cf. ii., ch. ii.]. Connection Charron 
 establishes between these three ideas ; his confidence in human 
 reason ; in the power of the will ; in the universality of moral law. 
 
 That after this examination we are disposed to regard him as a 
 " transitional type " ; a forerunner of Descartes, and of Pascal, as 
 much as a disciple and continuator of Montaigne. Had Descartes 
 read him ? In any case, it is certain that Pascal was very familiar 
 with his works ; and in this connection that Pascal's annotators 
 have been too neglectful of Charron. It is generally recognised how 
 easy, and at the same time how difficult, it is to bridge over the dis- 
 tance between Montaigne and Pascal ; but in reality the connecting 
 link is afforded by Charron. Moreover, he did not believe that it 
 could possibly harm religion to establish its authority on a rational 
 basis ; which is what he loyally attempted to accomplish ; and in 
 this way his contradictions result from his having failed to grasp the 
 significance of certain of his assertions. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Les Trois Verites contre les athees, idoldtres, 
 juifs, hdretiques ct schismatiques, Bordeaux, 1593; Discours
 
 96 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 moral directing force. The crimes of Catherine, the 
 debauchery of Henri III., the corruption of the court, 
 have filled the cup to overflowing. There must be an 
 end to this state of things ! And while waiting for the 
 movement to terminate in a religious revival, an effort is 
 made to establish on a rational basis, to secularise or to 
 " layicise," the teachings which religion had inculcated in 
 the past solely on its own authority. 
 
 To attain this end, our writers endeavour at the same 
 time to escape from the pressure, the besetting pressure, 
 of foreign influences. There are two such influences : 
 first, the Italian, which during the long reign of the 
 mother of three kings has spread from literature to the 
 language, and from the language to manners ; and in the 
 second place the Spanish influence, the progress of which 
 
 chretiens de la Divinite, Creation, Redemjrtion, Bordeaux, 1600; 
 Traite dc la Sagesse, Bordeaux, 1601. 
 
 The last of these works is the only one of the three that has often 
 been reprinted. 
 
 VII. Guillaume du Vair [Paris, 1556; f 1621, Tonneins]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Richelieu, in his Memoires ; Niceron, in his 
 Hommes illustres, vol. xliii. ; C. Sapey, Essai sur la vie et les 
 ouvrages de G. du Vair, Paris, 1847 ; E. Cougny, G-uillaume du 
 Vair, a study based upon new documents, Paris, 1857. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. Undeserved oblivion into which 
 Du Vair has fallen ; although he was bishop and Count of Lisieux ; 
 First President of the Parliament of Provence ; and twice Keeper of 
 the Seals of France ; or perhaps it is because he held these offices 
 that he is forgotten. The truth is, his political career does not seem 
 to have added greatly to his reputation [Cf. Bazin, Histoire dc France 
 sous le regne de Louis XIII. ,] Moreover, he has not left his mark on 
 the history of the Church ; having only been appointed bishop of 
 Lisieux when over sixty years old ; but he was a great lover of 
 literature ; and he did more for French oratory than any of his 
 predecessors ; by his translations of Aeschines, Demosthenes and 
 Cicero [Pour and Contre Ctesiphon and Pour Milan] ; by the series
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 97 
 
 throughout Europe has kept pace with the political or 
 military successes achieved by Charles V. and Philip II. 
 While the women of France were bestowing their 
 admiration on the romantic qualities of the Amadis, the 
 language of current use was becoming loaded and dis- 
 figured by Italianisms. Henry Estienne has drawn up a 
 list of the military terms and the terms in vogue at court, 
 of the terms relating to the arts and those relating to 
 debauchery that invaded our vocabulary, and all, or almost 
 all, of which have since retained their place there. The 
 protest of La Noue, in his Discours sur les Amadis, 
 against the taste for romances and against the imitation 
 of Spanish manners was equally unavailing. It might 
 seem at first sight that the authors of the Satire Menippee 
 were more successful, but has not the political importance 
 
 of his Arrets rendus en robe rouge ; and by his very delicate percep- 
 tion of the qualities the language was still wanting in [Cf . his Traite 
 de I' Eloquence franc, aise, et des raisons pour quoi elle est demeuree si 
 basse]. 
 
 Furthermore, he exerted a really important influence as a 
 philosopher. Of his translation of the Manual of Epictetus and 
 of his Traite de la philosophic des Sto'iques. In what respect his 
 work is related to and throws light on that of Charron ; but he was 
 mixed up in public affairs to a greater extent than Charron, and in 
 consequence he has the advantage of the latter as regards experience ; 
 his field of psychological and moral observation is proportionately 
 wider. His conception, too, of the dignity of reason and of the power 
 of the will is more " Stoic " ; and in consequence loftier in the 
 measure in which the Stoic point of view is loftier than that of the 
 Epicureans. And to conclude, in his Traite de la sainte philosophic 
 he takes the final step : after having essayed to secularise morality, 
 he renounces the effort ; and failing to see a remedy for the pre- 
 vailing corruption except in a return to Christian morality, he asserts 
 the necessity of this return. Analogy between this evolution and 
 that of the thought of Pascal. The Traites philosophiques of Du 
 Vair are as necessary as La Sagesse to an understanding of the 
 movement from which Jansenism is to be evolved. 
 
 8
 
 98 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 of this celebrated pamphlet been somewhat exaggerated '? 
 In any case, and supposing it to have been as effective as 
 several armies, its literary importance is not much more 
 considerable on that account. But here again, as above, 
 the symptom is significant. There has been brought 
 into being a spirit of resistance against the enthusiasm 
 of the Pleiad and the infatuation of the courtiers for 
 everything Italian or Spanish. Moreover, a goal has 
 come into view : a goal which, though it will not be 
 reached at once, will not be lost sight of for the future. 
 The "nationalisation" of French literature, impossible 
 as circumstances for the time being may render its 
 realisation, has become the object at which writers, 
 society and even royalty, are about to aim ; in a word, 
 the classic ideal may be only vaguely self-conscious as yet, 
 
 3. THE WORKS. There being very many editions of Du Vair, in 
 enumerating his works here we follow the order observed in what has 
 seemed to us the most complete edition, that published at Cologne by 
 Pierre Aubert in 1617. ' (1) Actions et Traites oratoires, 1586-1614, 
 among which are to be noted : Exhortation a la paix adressec a ceux 
 de la Ligue and Suasion de I'arret pour la loi salique au Parlement ; 
 (2) De VEloquence francaise, including the treatise properly so 
 called and the three translations cited above ; (3) Arrets prononces 
 en robe rouge, of which there are three more in the folio edition of 
 1641 than in the edition of 1617, or in all eight ; (4) Philosophic 
 treatises, including, in addition to the works already cited, a Traite 
 de la Constance and an Exhortation a la vie civile ; (5) Treatises 
 on piety and Meditations, including the Traite de la sainte philo- 
 sophic and Meditations on the Lord's Prayer, the Canticle of Ezekiel, 
 the Psalms of Penitence, etc., etc. 
 
 We do not know of a modern edition of Du Vair. 
 
 VIII. Francois de Sales [Chateau of Thorens, in Savoy, 1567 ; 
 t Lyons, 1622]. 
 
 1 We have been unable to fix the exact dates of the first publication of the 
 separate works of Du Vair ; and we would remark, for instance, that the date 
 assigned to his Traites pliilosopliig.ues, 1606, is certainly erroneous, since entire 
 passages from it are found in La Sagesae of Charron, who died in 1603.
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 99 
 
 but nevertheless it is already in existence. Similarly, 
 a man of genius or talent may spend his youth in con- 
 fused agitation, may appear to fritter away or even to 
 dissipate his energy, whereas all the while an inner force 
 keeps him from straying and directs him to his goal ; and 
 his originality only gains by the chequered nature of his 
 experiences. 
 
 Again Guillaume du Vair has written in one of his 
 works : " Of all the benefits procured us by civil society, 
 there is none we should rate more highly or set greater 
 store on than the friendship of honourable men ; for it is 
 the foundation and pivot of our felicity. It shapes our 
 wliole existence, it sweetens the bitterness of life, it gives 
 savour to the pleasant experiences that befall us. In 
 prosperity it gives us persons to whom we may render 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Charles-Auguste de Sales, Histoire du bien- 
 lieureux Francois de Sales, 1634 ; Bossuet, Panegyrique de Francois 
 de Sales, 1662 ; Bulle de canonisation de Saint Francois de Sales, 
 1665; Sainte-Beuve : Port-Boyal, book i., chap. ix. and x., and 
 Causeries du lundi, vol. vii. ; A. Sayous : La litterature francaise a 
 Vetranger, vol. i., chap. i. and ii. ; Paris, 1853 ; Robiou : Essai sur la 
 litterature et les mceurs pendant la premiere moitie du XVII C siecle, 
 Paris, 1858 ; F. Strowski, Saint- Francois de Sales, Paris, 1898 ; 
 dom Mackey's Notices in the edition of the Works, Annecy, 1892 and 
 following years. 1 
 
 2. THE CONTROVERSIALIST, THE WRITER, THE ORATOR. Fra^ois 
 de Sales has his place in literary history as a controversialist, an 
 
 " ascetic " writer and a preacher. His family and education. The 
 college of Clermont and the university of Padua [Cf. Antonio 
 Favaro: Galileo Galilei e lo studio di Padova, Florence, 1883]. The 
 early career of Fra^ois de Sales. His meeting with Theodore de 
 Beze. The mission to Chablais [1594-1598] ; and the first writings 
 of Franois de Sales : Les Controverses and the Defense de Vetendard 
 de la Croix. The keen perspicacity and clearness of argument with 
 which he reduces the essentials of the controversy between Protestants 
 
 1 We naturally do not feel called upon to enumerate here the very numerous 
 publications belonging rather to hagiography than to literary history.
 
 100 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 service and with whom we may rejoice at our good 
 fortune, in affliction persons to aid and console us, in our 
 youth persons to advise and instruct us, in old age 
 persons to help us and reason with us, and in manhood 
 persons to assist and second us." At first sight one is 
 tempted to consider these words merely as the expression 
 of a commonplace of morality. But when one weighs 
 them "as with the scales of the goldsmiths"; and 
 further when one considers them in connection with the 
 historical events of the period ; when one reflects, in 
 fact, that they were penned at a time when the pacific 
 policy inseparably connected with the most glorious years 
 of the reign of Henri IV. was yielding its results, they 
 seem to acquire fresh significance. While suffering from 
 the combined evils of foreign and civil war, people learned 
 
 and Catholics to the matter of the unity of Church. His sojourn in 
 Paris in 1602 ; and the Oraison funebre du due de Mercosur. He is 
 ordained bishop of Geneva, 1602. 
 
 Of the Introduction a la vie devote [Cf. Jules Very, La Philothee de 
 St. Francois de Sales, Geneva, 1878] ; and in what respect Fra^ois 
 de Sales continues the work of Du Vair in this book. Charm and seduc- 
 tion of the book. The "harmonies of nature " in Fra^ois de Sales' 
 book. He is the first of the several Savoyards who will contribute to 
 the glory of French literature [Cf. Sayous, Litterature francaise a 
 Vetranger]. How far can he be said to have rendered piety accessible, 
 fashionable, and attractive ? In reality his doctrine is severe ; and 
 that had he presented it in a different manner it would no longer 
 have been Christianity, but Stoicism. The Traite de I'amour de 
 Dieu. 
 
 Of Fran9ois de Sales as a preacher ; and why has he been 
 omitted from among the "forerunners of Bossuet" [Cf . Jacquinet : 
 Les predicateurs du XVII s siecle avant Bossuet; and Freppel: 
 Bossuet et P eloquence sacree au XVII e siecle]. Comparison between 
 the " Sermon for the Fete of the Assumption " and Bossuet's sermon, 
 on the same subject. Utility of comparisons of this kind, and that 
 there is no surer method of characterising the different preachers. 
 Another comparison between the "Sermon for Twelth Night" and
 
 THE FOKMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 101 
 
 to appreciate the incomparable importance of the social 
 fabric, and awoke to the fact that its destruction or 
 weakening is the direst of misfortunes. The belief that 
 the aim of the individual should be the free development 
 of the forces with which nature has endowed him, falls 
 into disrepute ; and the belief is abandoned too, of the 
 author of the Essais, that men, like nuts in a sack, 
 always end by "making a heap" by settling down in a 
 sort of inertia born of habit, that bears a resemblance 
 to order. But just as bodily health, which is thought 
 to be a gift of nature, is really the outcome of ad- 
 herence to a system of hygiene, and, in consequence, 
 of an appropriate "effort," so to enable society to 
 maintain its equilibrium, it is not sufficient that it be 
 left to itself, but on the contrary this stability demands 
 
 Fenelon's sermon on the same subject. The Traite de la predication 
 and the rhetoric of Fra^ois de Sales. " The sovereign artifice is 
 to dispense with artifice." Whether Fran9ois de Sales has always 
 observed his own precept? That there is a certain affectation, a 
 certain striving after " prettiness " and intentional simplicity in his 
 manner. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. They fall into two groups : Polemical Works and 
 Ascetic Works. The first includes : Les Controverses, the Defense de 
 Vestendard de la Croix, and some shorter works of less importance. 
 The second group includes the Introduction a la vie devote, 1608 ; 
 the Traite de V Amour de Dieu, 1612 ; and the Entretiens spirituels, 
 which were not published until 1629. To these works must be added 
 a few opuscules, notably the opuscule Degres d'oraison, the Lettres 
 Spirituelles ou de direction and the Sermons. The lay corre- 
 spondence of the Saint also deserves to be read. 
 
 Few books have had so many editions as the Introduction a la vie 
 devote. There are two good editions of the complete works, but they 
 will be superseded henceforth by an edition at present in course of 
 publication "under the supervision of the nuns of the Visitation of the 
 first monastery of Annecy," and under the direction of the Reverend 
 dom Mackey, O.S.B. Eight volumes of this edition have already 
 appeared ; Annecy, printed by Nidrat.
 
 102 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 a constant personal effort on the part of each one 
 of us. 
 
 Such is the meaning of the excellent Du Vair, and of 
 a like way of feeling and thinking are the Canon of 
 Condom, Pierre Charron, author of the Traite de la 
 Sagesse ; Honore d'Urfe, the Forezian gentleman, the 
 unhappy husband of the beautiful Diane de Chateau- 
 morand, and the author of that Astree which is about to 
 become the code of polite society ; and Francois de Sales 
 as we see from his Introduction a la vie devote. We do 
 not exist for ourselves alone, but for other men as well ; 
 and what is more, we can only reach our full development 
 as the result of commerce with our fellows. In conse- 
 quence, in the interest of human society, and therefore in 
 our own individual and personal interest, let each of us 
 
 IX. Mathurin Regnier [Chartres, 1573 ; f 1613, Rouen]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Goujet in his Bibliotheque francaise, vol. xiv. ; 
 Sainte-Beuve, Tableau de la Poesie francaise c\u XVPsieclc; Mathurin 
 Regnier et Andre Chenier, 1829 ; Viollet-le-Duc, Notice preceding his 
 edition of the Satires, 1853 ; Eobiou, Essai sur I'histoire de la 
 litterature et des moeurs, etc., Paris, 1858; Garsonnet, Etude sur 
 Mathurin Regnier, Paris, 1859 and 1877 ; Courbet, Notice preceding 
 his edition of the Satires, Paris, 1875 ; J. Vianey, Mathurin Regnier, 
 Paris, 1896. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE POET. That Regnier, even when he begins to 
 write, is already behind his time, as a libertine, who is bent on 
 keeping up the licentious traditions of another age ; and as a 
 disciple of Ronsard, whom he copies outrageously. His qualities : a 
 freedom of expression and plainness of language that often degenerate 
 into grossness [Cf. Satire xiii.] ; the gift of observing, depicting, 
 and satirising [Cf. Satire viii.] ; at least apparent if not always real 
 ease and naturalness [Cf. Satires iii. and vii.]. His defects: sole- 
 cisms and prolixity [Cf. Satire L] ; want of taste and inartisticness 
 [Cf. Satire x.] : 
 
 His carelessness is his chief artifice. 
 
 lack of invention and of ideas. What is the reason of his
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 103 
 
 renounce in a measure that egoism that comes, it must be 
 confessed, so natural to us ! We shall be more than 
 repaid for the sacrifices we may have to make by the 
 pleasures the increased amenity of life will offer. Since 
 we all of us stand in continual need of one another, let 
 us arrange to live on a footing of " honourable friend- 
 ship," of friendship which, from being a service or a 
 help, will become sooner or later a pleasure. Let us 
 organise our life on a social basis, and in such a way 
 that, in addition to an habitual exchange of services, 
 it shall embrace an exchange of sentiments or ideas. 
 Let us multiply our occasions of meeting, since to do 
 so wil] be to multiply the means of arriving at a 
 mutual understanding; and from each of us will be 
 evolved, as it were, a social type without any distin- 
 
 reputation ? It is due to the fact that Boileau was pleased to drag 
 him from obscurity ; to the fact that he is a Gaul ; and to the fact 
 that in a certain sense, on account of the vigour of some of his lines, 
 he is one of the links between Rabelais, for instance, and Moliere. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Putting aside some epigrams, two elegies ; and 
 a few obscene pieces that have found their way into the Cabinet 
 satyrique; the works of Eegnier are restricted to his Satires, of 
 which there are in all nineteen. 
 
 The best edition is that of Courbet, Paris, 1875, Lemerre ; in which 
 two opuscules of M. Dezeimeris, Bordeaux, 1876 and 1880 ; and the 
 researches of M. Vianey [1896] would permit of numerous improve- 
 ments still being made. 
 
 X. Honore d'Urfe [Marseilles, 1568 ; f 1625, YiUefranche, Alpes- 
 Maritimes] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. D'Urfe himself in several episodes of his Astree, 
 which are merely incidents of his life " put into a romance " ; Patru, 
 Eclair cissements sur I'histoire de V Astree in the Plaidoyers et ceuvres 
 diverses de M. Patru, Paris, 1681, Mabre-Cramoisy ; Auguste 
 Bernard, Les d'Urfe, Paris, 1889; Norbert Bonafous, Etudes sur 
 I' Astree et Honore d 1 Urfe, Paris, 1846 ; Louis de Lomenie, L' Astree 
 et le roman pastoral in the Revue des Deux Mondes for July 15,
 
 104 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 guishing " sign," or, as would be said at the present 
 day, without any "speciality." We touch here on the 
 fundamental idea of classicism, and for one hundred 
 and fifty or two hundred years the historj 7 of French 
 literature will be merely the history of the transforma- 
 tions or the development of this governing idea. 
 
 Thus, when we come to determine in a few words the 
 progress made, we are offered the spectacle, during the 
 last years of the reign of Henri IV., of an original and 
 national literature endeavouring to emancipate itself 
 from the imitation of foreign literatures. To judge from 
 the most characteristic of the symptoms we have 
 enumerated, this literature will prove more especially 
 "social" ; by which is meant that it will set itself the 
 task of preserving, developing, and perfecting the social 
 
 1858 ; Emile Montegut, En Bourbonnais et en Forez, Paris, 1880 ; 
 Korting, Geschichte des Franzosischen Romans im XVII Jalir- 
 hundert, Leipsic and Oppeln, 1885-1887. 
 
 2. THE SOURCE OF THE ASTREE. B'ography of Honore d'Urfe;- 
 his first work : The Epistres Morales, 1598 ; his marriage with 
 Diane de Chateaumorand ; his conjugal misfortunes ; his poem Le 
 Sireine, 1606. The framework of the Astree, The mingling of fiction 
 and reality [Cf. Patru, Eclaircissements, etc.]. The background of 
 the narrative and the Diana enamorada of Georges de Montemayor. 
 The tone of the narration and the pastoral romance ; the European 
 vogue of the pastoral romance; the Arcadia of Sannazar and of 
 Sydney ; the descriptions of Forez in d'Urfe's romance [Cf . Montegut, 
 En Bourbonnais, etc.] ; the anecdotes of the court ; the symbolical 
 intention [Cf. the dedication of the Astree] . Connection between the 
 Introduction a la vie devote and the romance of the Astree. 
 
 3. THE CHARACTER OF THE ASTREE. General features of the work ; 
 and that far from the episodes in it being hors-d'oeuvre as compared 
 with the main plot, as is the case in other romances of the same type, 
 it is on the contrary the main plot that is the pretext or the oppor- 
 tunity for the episodes. Varied interest of the book in consequence : 
 (1) Historical episodes [Eudoxe et Valentinian, part ii., book 12] ; 
 (2) Contemporary allusions \Euric, Daplinide et Alcidon, part iii.,
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 105 
 
 edifice. Since it is to be social, it will be general, which 
 amounts to saying that it will not be, or that it will 
 rarely be, the expression of the personality of the writer, 
 but rather that of the relations of the individual with the 
 requirements of an ideal humanity, always and every- 
 where analogous to or identical with itself, subsisting 
 eternally, so to speak, and offering on that account im- 
 mutable characteristics. Social in its aims and general 
 in regard to its modes of expression, this literature will 
 also be moral to the exact extent to which morality is 
 indispensable to the existence of society. We would 
 convey by this restriction that the literature we are about 
 to deal with will be less concerned with embodying in its 
 works the absolute side contained in the principle of every 
 morality, than with rendering the relative element that is 
 
 book 3] ; (3) Personal inventions [Damon et Madonthc, part ii., 
 book 6]. The form of the narrative is no less varied : descriptions 
 [part ii., book 5] ; conversations [part ii., book 12] ; narrations 
 [part iii.. book 7] ; examples of every kind of composition are found 
 ia the work, including letters and love sonnets ; to say nothing of 
 passages of a more realistic or more brutal stamp. Of the style of 
 the Astree : its elegance and clearness ; it is smooth and flowing ; 
 it combines precision with copiousness ; its psychological value ; 
 and in this connection of the sketches of the different varieties of love 
 in the Astree. Sensual and brutal love [Eudoxe et Valentinian, part 
 ii., book 12] ; fickle and capricious love [Hylas, part L, passim] ; 
 young and passionate love \CTnryseide et Arimant, part iii., books 7 
 and 8] ;- -chivalrous love [Bosanire, Celeodante et Rosileon, part iv., 
 book 10] ; mystic love [Celadon et Astree]. Variety of the characters. 
 That the book as a whole leaves an impression of charm and grace- 
 fulness to which there had been nothing analogous previously in French 
 literature ; a fact that explains the success of the book, a success as 
 prodigious as almost any in literary history : and the duration of its 
 influence. 
 
 4. THE INFLUENCE OF THE ASTREE. Ought it to be ascribed a share 
 in the formation of " precious " society ? That in any case the work 
 will shape the destiny of the drama for more than twenty years ; and
 
 106 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 always to hand in its applications. In consequence, the 
 morality in question will be neither the Christian morality 
 of renunciation and sacrifice, nor even the Stoic morality 
 of effort : it will be a morality for the use of good society. 
 In the last place, this literature will not fail to attach 
 great importance to the charms of style ; first, because 
 to persuade it will need to please ; secondly, because style 
 alone is able to save generalities from the danger they 
 are always exposed to of degenerating into "common- 
 places " ; and thirdly, because it has already fashioned 
 its rules of poetry and rhetoric on the Latin model. 
 Let us now proceed to consider its performances and 
 so follow its development. 
 
 of the romance for more than fifty years ; supposing that the 
 Princesse de Cleves is, properly speaking, only an episode of the 
 Astree. It is possible to go still further [Cf. Montegut, En Bour- 
 bonnais, etc.], and to trace something of the inspiration of the Astree ; 
 in Racine's tragedies ; in Marivaux' comedies ; in Prevost's novels ; 
 in J. J. Rousseau ; and perhaps even among contemporary writers 
 in certain of the novels of George Sand. What precedes amounts to 
 saying that the success of the Astree determined the direction taken 
 by an entire and important current in our literature. 
 
 5. THE WORKS. We have already mentioned the Epistres Morales, 
 1598 ; and le Sireine, 1606. There must be added Sylvanire, a 
 woodland fable, 1627, and the Amours de Floridon. 
 
 As to the Astree, the two first volumes appeared in 1610 or per- 
 haps in 1608 ; the two following volumes in 1616 ; and the fifth and 
 sixth volumes in 1619. The four others are posthumous, and it is 
 scarcely possible to distinguish between what of them should be 
 attributed to d'Urfe and what of them is the work of Baro, his 
 continuator. It is for this reason that we have not referred to them 
 in our analysis of the romance. 
 
 The best edition of the Astree is that of 1647, published by Toussaint 
 Quinet and Antoine de Sommaville.
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH 
 LITERATURE 
 
 I do not know whether war is " divine," but a state 
 of conflict certainly seems "a law of the world"; no 
 triumph is really peaceful, and even ideas rarely assert 
 their empire except at the expense and on the ruins 
 of other ideas whose place they take. Several con- 
 
 THE AUTHORS AND THEIE WORKS 
 FOURTH PERIOD 
 
 From the formation of the " precious " society to the 
 first representation of the " Precieuses Ridicules " 
 
 1610-1659 
 
 I. The Hotel Rambouillet. 
 
 1. The SOURCES. The Historiettes of Tallemant des Reaux; the 
 letters of Balzac and Voiture ; Madeleine de Scudery's Artamene, ou 
 le Grand Cyrus ; Bodeau de Somaize, Le Grand dictionnaire des 
 Pretieuses, 1661 ; Flechier's funeral orations in honour of the Duke 
 and Duchess of Montausier. 
 
 Rcederer : Memoire pour servir a Vhistoire de la societe polie, 
 Paris, 1835 ; Walckenaer, Memoires sur Mme de Sevigne, vols. i. and 
 ii., Paris, 1852 ; V. Cousin, La Societe franqaise au XVII f siecle, 
 Paris, 1858 ; A. Fabre, Lajeunesse de Flechier, Paris, 1882. 
 
 2. THE GENERAL THEORY OF PRECIOSITY. 
 
 A. Of preciosity as a literary conception, It consists in believing 
 (1) that there is something specific or unique in its class about the 
 pleasure derived from literature as about that derived from music or 
 
 107
 
 108 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 ditions, in consequence, had still to obtain, at the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century, to permit of 
 French literature completely realising its true character ; 
 and first of all it was necessary that public opinion 
 should master or stay the progress of that individualist, 
 unruly, and licentious spirit, which had not been entirely 
 subdued by Henri IV. even in the sphere of politics. A 
 book which is at once one of the most enigmatical, and 
 one of the foulest in our literature, Beroalde de Verville's 
 Moyen de Parvenir, is contemporary with the Astree, 
 which itself is not exempt from a certain shamelessness 
 of language and grossness of sentiment ; while the obscene 
 collection of the Parnasse satyrique, of which one scarcely 
 
 from the picturesque, and this is the truth ; (2) that the essential 
 cause of this pleasure is style, that is the turn the writer gives what he 
 says, the manner in which he expresses himself, which is already less 
 true ; and (3) that the pleasure is in proportion to the effort that 
 has been expended or to the difficulties that have been surmounted in 
 hitting upon this mode of expression, which is not true at all. 
 Analogies and differences between this conception and the conception 
 of " art for art."- The principal of them is that preciosity aimed 
 at the realisation of the " fashion " instead of at that of "beauty." 
 The resulting consequences are : (1) A horror of pedantry, erudition 
 and even of tradition ; (2) That in intellectual matters as in conver- 
 sation and in clothes, store is only set on an air of modernity ; (3) 
 A tendency, the outcome of this latter disposition, to exaggerate the 
 distance that separates polite society from the vulgar herd. 
 
 B. Of preciosity as a disease of language. That it consists in 
 treating language no longer as a "work of art" even; but as a 
 pretext for the writer himself to make a display of virtuosity. 
 
 E del poeta fin la maraviglia 
 
 Chi lion sa far stupir, vada alia striglia. [MARINO.] 
 
 [Cf. de Sanctis : Storia della letteratura italiana, vol. ii. ; Mertendez 
 y Pelayo, Historia de las ideas esteticas en Espaiia, vol. ii. ; and 
 Mezieres, Predecesseurs et contemporains de Shakespeare.] Some 
 characteristics of the disease : Never to call anything by its name, 
 but always to have recourse to paraphrase, allusion or sous-entendu ;
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 109 
 
 ventures to cite the title, would alone suffice to illustrate 
 the state of morals towards 1610. 
 
 Further testimony is offered by the Satires of Mathurin 
 Kegnier. Often quoted, on account of some few happy 
 lines, which prior to those of Boileau became proverbs 
 directly they were published, little read, but only the 
 more vaunted, the Satires of Begnier are as it were the 
 protest of the Gallic genius against the new ideal. 
 Instinctively hostile, not only to all restraint, but to 
 every rule or every law, Regnier defends and upholds in 
 his Satires, not dogmatically, but with that nonchalance 
 which is " his greatest artifice " and his charm, the entire 
 and absolute liberty of the individual. Each of us is very 
 
 to lend an exaggerated and jesting importance to trtfleS and to 
 treat matters of moment in a conversational tone ; to play upon 
 words, to make points, conceits, agudezas, 
 
 Ne dis plus qu'il est amarante 
 Dis plutot qu'il est de ma rente ; 
 
 to draw unexpected comparisons ; to force metaphors [Cf. Les 
 Femmcs savantes] ; in a word, to couch all one says in a language 
 only comprehensible to the initiated ; and in this connection that 
 slang and jargon are to some extent the same thing. 
 
 C. Of preciosity as a turn or disposition of mind. It consists in a 
 natural or acquired dislike for the commonplace ; danger of this dis- 
 like ; but, on the other, hand, its advantages ; and that its counter- 
 part is a taste for what is refined, delicate, subtle and complex. The 
 way in which this disposition of mind tends to make affairs of love 
 and gallantry the constant preoccupation of those who possess it. 
 Great resulting advantage to : conversation, polite manners ; and 
 social relations in general. Women make their entry into literature 
 and with them make their appearance the qualities more peculiar 
 to women ; qualities of which neither Montaigne nor Rabelais had 
 had an idea ; and as much may perhaps be said of some of the 
 greatest of the ancient writers. 
 
 3. THE HOTEL KAMBOUILLET. 
 
 A. Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet [1588, f 1665] . 
 Her family ; and her father, although the Marquis de Pisani, must
 
 well as he is ; has the right to remain as he is ; and 
 whoever would interfere with this right deserves the 
 name of pedant. At any rate, I know of no idea 
 on which he harps in his verses more often or more 
 complaisantly than the idea that everything is relative ; 
 which clearly is another way of expressing what I 
 have just said. Around him is a numerous school that 
 thinks and feels as he does, that is not properly 
 speaking a school, in the sense that it is not inspired 
 by him or by anybody it is possible to call its chief, 
 but a school that along with him represents this spirit 
 or rather this instinct of resistance : vulgar Epicureans 
 of the type of the Motins, the Sigognes and the 
 
 not be taken to have been an Italian nobleman ; her marriage with 
 Charles d'Angeiines, Marquis de Rambouillet. Tallemant's portrait 
 of her [Historiettes, Paulin Paris' edition, in 8vo, ii., 485] ; Mile de 
 Scudery's portrait of her [Le Grand Cyrus, edition of 1654, vol. vii., 
 489] ; Flechier's portrait in his Oraison funebre. She hit upon 
 the idea of genius of assembling in her "ruelle" or private circle 
 noblemen and men of letters oa a footing of temporary equality. 
 The part played by the Salons in the history of French literature. 
 That it is sbrange that it should still be at the expense of Mme de 
 Rambouillet that jests are made while Mme Geoflrin is spoken of 
 with admiration. 
 
 B. Vincent Voiture, the living incarnation of Preciosity [Amiens, 
 1598; f 1648]. His Poems, and that among them there are many 
 that are very insipid ; but there are a few that are exquisite ; and 
 very superior to many of those of Cl. Marot ; and that can be com- 
 pared with the most vaunted poems of Voltaire [Cf. Stances, a Silvie, 
 Epitre a Conde ; Impromptu pour Anne d'Autriche~\. His 
 Letters ; and whether it be" true, as Voltaire has declared, that 
 they are the mere " triflings of a rope-dancer " ? Boileau's estimate 
 was juster. Voiture's love-letters have the obvious fault of being too 
 witty ; but among his miscellaneous letters there are many that 
 are quite admirable [Cf. Nos. 123, 109, 101, 63, 90 in Ubicini's 
 edition] ; and a few that are distinguished by real emotion. 
 
 C. Julie d'Angennes, Duchesse de Montausier [1607, f 1671]. 
 That she contributed more than any one else to render the Hotel
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 111 
 
 Berthelots ; irregulars and libertines, such as the Theo- 
 phile against whom Father Garasse will write his 
 Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits ; daring and cynical 
 free-thinkers of the kind that will be found depicted 
 by the dozen in the Historiettes of Tallemant des 
 Beaux. It may be worth while to note in passing 
 that writers of a similar stamp have been seen or will 
 be seen to arise during all the "regencies" of our 
 history : the regency of Catherine, the regency of Marie 
 de Medicis, the regency of Anne of Austria, and the 
 regency of Philippe d'Orleans. 
 
 To whom must be attributed the honour of having, to 
 begin with, checked and interrupted, and finally of having 
 
 Bambouillet ridiculous ; and that at any rate all that we know of 
 her from contemporary testimony shows her in a sufficiently dis- 
 agreeable light. She was spoiled by too much homage ; her suitors 
 or her " dying admirers " gave too much encouragement to her pre- 
 tensions to wit ; she seems to have been far vainer than her mother 
 of her good birth and high rank ; and finally the length of time she 
 made Montausier wait before she accorded him her hand has invested 
 them both with a certain amount of ridicule. [Cf. for Montausier, 
 Montausier et son temps, by Amedee Roux, Paris, I860.] 
 4. THE INFLUENCE OF PRECIOSITY. 
 
 A. On the Language. It refined, enriched, and elevated the 
 language. Preciosity cleared the language of a certain pedantic over- 
 growth which encumbered it even in Montaigne ; and also of a 
 coarseness that disgraced it [Cf. Beroalde de Verville's Moyen de 
 parvenir and Tallemant des Beaux' Historiettes']. It enriched the 
 language : by determining the exact meaning of words ; by adopt- 
 ing, inventing or creating new turns of speech ; and above all by 
 inculcating " the force a word acquires when put in its right place." 
 Finally, preciosity elevated the language ; though it is true that in 
 elevating it, it drew too deep a dividing line between the speech of the 
 vulgar and that of polite society. 
 
 B. On Manners. Bcederer's exaggeration on this head ; and V. 
 Cousin guilty of the same fault ; in their studies of the polite society 
 of the period. A saying of Pascal as to the malignity and kindliness 
 of people in general, " which is always the same " ; still, the names
 
 112 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 stemmed this current ? And shall we exclaim once more 
 with Boileau : 
 
 At last Malherbe came ? . . . 
 
 Doubtless no, if four or five very beautiful Odes and 
 some paraphrases of the Psalms are, after all, nothing 
 more than rhetoric ; and further, if Malherbe himself, 
 while not making a display of licentiousness or in- 
 credulity, was utterly wanting nevertheless both as a 
 writer and as a man in distinction and true intellectual 
 nobility. To take another point, it is not easy to see 
 how his influence should have made itself felt, since his 
 finest poems, which during his lifetime were scattered 
 
 by which things are designated have great importance. The way 
 hi which preciosity raised the tone of conversation ; and improved 
 the position of women. [Cf. Huet, Sur Vorigine des Romans^] On 
 the other hand, preciosity accustomed the French intellect to treat 
 serious matters too frivolously; and by binding it down to the 
 observation of good society, kept it from a wider and more sincere 
 observation of reality. 
 
 C. On the direction taken by literature. By establishing the 
 predominance of the manners of good society, preciosity completed 
 the downfall of lyricism ; since people do not frequent society with 
 a view to making a display of their inmost feelings ; and still less 
 with the intention of contradicting those they meet ; indeed, it may 
 perhaps ba said that nothing is more obligatory in society than the 
 avoidance of " originality ; and all these rules of society run exactly 
 counter to lyricism or personal literature. Again, while preciosity 
 furthered the development of the " universal branches " of literature 
 oratory and the drama, its influence even in this direction was not 
 without its drawbacks ; admitting that it was with a view to content 
 the Precieuses that our drama, in a general way, has refrained from 
 too spirited an imitation of reality ; has deserved to be styled " a 
 conversation beneath a chandelier"; and that gallantry instead of 
 passion has become its mainspring ? On the other hand, preciosity 
 aided the development to a notable extent of letter writing ; 
 of books of Maxims and CJiaracters ; and of the psychological 
 romance.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 113 
 
 through and to some extent lost in the anthologies of 
 the period, did not appear in collected form until 1630, 
 two years after his death. Moreover, if we are to believe 
 the memoirs of his faithful Racan, he was almost without 
 ideas except on the subject of his art. These various 
 considerations will lead us to seek elsewhere than in 
 his influence the causes of a transformation, of which 
 he experienced the consequences far more than he 
 brought it about or even conceived it. The trans- 
 formation which is effected in French literary history 
 between 1610 and 1630, let us say 1636, so as to reach 
 the Cid at one step, is the work of the Precieuses. 
 All that is remembered in general of the Precieuses is 
 
 II. Irregulars and Libertines. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Leonard! Lessii, De providentia numinis et 
 ammi Immortalitate libri duo adversus athcos et politicos, Antwerp, 
 1613 ; Garasse, La doctrine curieuse des Beaux Esprits de ce temps, 
 Paris, 1623 ; Tallemant des Beaux, Historiettes, articles DES 
 BARREAUX, LUILLIER, PRINCESSE PALATINE, etc. ; Bossuet, Oraison 
 funebre d'Anne de Gonzague ; Bayle's Dictionnaire, articles DES 
 BARREAUX, HESNAULT, and passim ; the works of Theophile de Viau, 
 Saint-Evremond, and La Motte le Vayer ; the Caracteres of La 
 Bruyere. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve's Port-Eoyal ; Victor Cousin, Vanini, ses ecrits, 
 sa vie et sa mort, in the Revue des deux Mondes, December 1, 
 1843 ; Ch. Bartholorness, Giordano Bruno, Paris, 1847 ; F. Fioren- 
 tino, Benardino Telesio, ossia studi storici sulV Idea della natura 
 nel risorgimento, Florence, 1874 ; Alleaume's Notice preceding the 
 works of Theophile, Paris, 1856 ; T. Perrens, Lea Libertins au 
 XVIP siecle, Paris, 1896 ; Kathe Schermacher, Theophile de Viau, 
 sein Leben und seine WerTce, Paris, 1898. 
 
 2. OF THE LIBERTINES IN GENERAL. Signification of this name in 
 the seventeenth century ; and that it applies as much to " freedom of 
 thinking" as to "license of morals." That from both a philosophical 
 and a literary point of view the libertines are belated survivors of 
 Montaigne's century; and the "Bohemians" of their time; but 
 that this in no way prevents them professing very pronounced 
 
 9
 
 114 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the characteristics by which they lend themselves to 
 ridicule, and it must be owned that they had many such, 
 on which Moliere's comedies and Boileau's satires will 
 dispense us from dilating here. They might be re- 
 proached more especially with having again brought 
 French literature under the influence of the Spanish and 
 Italian schools, the influence of Antonio Perez and 
 the Chevalier Marin, of Guarini and Gongora, always 
 supposing, however, that it would have been possible for 
 them to avoid this result, at a Court wholly Italian, and 
 at a time when the influence of Spain was reappearing 
 in France across a frontier open to its inroads at every 
 point. Nevertheless, the Precieuses rendered us great 
 
 principles; and that if they had lacked the formula for these 
 principles it would have been supplied them by Lessius in his de 
 Providentia, and by Garasse, Doctrine curieuse des Beaux Esprits. 
 That as disciples of Montaigne and even of Eabelais, they were 
 naturally hostile to almost all the projects of the Precieuses ; which 
 were directed indeed against the libertines. 
 
 3. THEOPHILE DE VIAU [Clairac, 1590 ; f 1626, Paris] . His early 
 education ; his relations with des Barreaux and Balzac ; his tragedy 
 Pyrame et Tisbe, 1617 ; and that it is a better work than the two 
 lines which have immortalised it might seem to indicate : 
 
 Ah ! behold the dagger which with the blood of its owner 
 Was stained in cowardly fashion ; the traitor blushes at it ! 
 
 There are lyric passages of singular vigour in this tragedy ; and parts 
 of the dialogue are already almost in the style of Corneille. 
 Other works of his deserve to be remembered ; for their animation 
 [ The Ode du Boi, ed. Alleaume, L, 135] ; for the keen feeling for 
 nature they evince [The Lettre a son frere (in verse) ii. 178] ; for a 
 certain sensual or Epicurean grace [La Solitude, vol. i., 176] . It is a 
 pity that his works are spoiled by lapses into the most offensive 
 vulgarity. See too his Satires [vol. ii., pp. 238 and 241], Whether it 
 was his Satires or his Traite de V Immortalite de Vame and his 
 Parnasse that brought about his first banishment in 1619 ? Hence- 
 forth the poet's life is entirely upset ; the publication of the book
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 115 
 
 services, which cannot be forgotten, slighted, or over- 
 looked without falsifying the history during twenty or 
 thirty years of manners and literature. For instance, 
 because they were women, and women of social standing, 
 they rid literature of the pedantry which hampers the 
 works of Ronsard and even of Montaigne. One would 
 be tempted to say at times that Ronsard and Montaigne 
 only wrote for scholars. Their injudicious, or rather their 
 complacent display of erudition ; their perpetual allusions 
 to an antiquity with whose scholiasts and grammarians 
 we are not familiar as they were ; their naive, and 
 sometimes indeed their rather suspicious, admiration 
 for the "false beauties" of Cicero or Seneca; their 
 
 of Father Garasse, which was aimed against him, deals him the 
 final blow; he is put on his trial; he is sentenced to perpetual 
 banishment by a decree dated September 1, 1625. 
 
 4. THE NEW TACTICS OF THE LIBERTINES. From this moment the 
 Libertines change their tactics. They keep their opinions ; but 
 henceforth they abstain from expressing them in public ; or if they 
 express them, they moderate and disguise them, as did Saint Evre- 
 mond and La Mothe le Vayer. Their convictions are not deep 
 enough for them to endeavour to assure their triumph in oppo- 
 sition to public opinion ; and provided they are allowed to live 
 as they think fit, they will not ask for more. This attitude is 
 the indirect cause of the discredit into which they fell ; and from 
 which they will scarcely recover until half a century later with 
 Bayle. 
 
 5. THE WORKS. Of Theophile we have : his Poems [Odes, Stanzas, 
 Elegies, Sonnets, Satires] ; a tragedy : Pyrame et Tisbe ; his 
 Letters ; and the Traite de VImmortalite de I'Ame, a paraphrase 
 of Phedon in prose interspersed with verse. In addition, there are 
 a few detached pieces relating to his trial. The best and most com- 
 plete edition is that to which we have referred of M. AHeaume in the 
 Bibliotheque Elzevirienne, Paris, 1896. 
 
 The best edition of Saint-Evremond is the Amsterdam edition, 
 1739, Covens and Mortier, 7 vols. in 8vo ; and of La Mothe le Vayer, 
 the Dresden edition, 1749, published by Michel Groell, 7 vols. in 8vo, 
 issued in fourteen volumes.
 
 116 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 habit of never making an assertion without supporting it 
 on the authority of an ancient writer ; these various 
 practices, while they may dazzle our ignorance for a time, 
 end before very long in tiring us, in trying our patience, 
 and, to be frank, in boring us. It is disagreeable to us 
 that a poet should bind himself down to a perpetual com- 
 mentary of Mark Antony Muret or of Peter Marcassus ; 
 and we do not wish to have to learn Latin as a pre- 
 liminary to understanding a French book. Such, at any 
 rate, was the feeling of the Precieuses, and their attitude 
 explains how it was, that by merely playing their part 
 and taking an interest in literature, they at once obliged 
 the writer to shake off the dust of his library. They 
 
 III. Alexandra Hardy [Paris, 1570; f 1631, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. The brothers Parfaict, Histoire du theatre 
 francais ; Ad. Ebert, EntwicJcelungsgeschichte, etc., already cited 
 above, pp. 71 and 73 ; Edelestand du Meril, Evolution de la tragedie 
 francaise, etc. ; E. Lombard, Etude sur Alexandre Hardy in the 
 ZeitscTirift fiir neufranzosiche Literatur, vols. i. and ii., 1880-1881; 
 Eugene Blgal, Alexandre Hardy et le theatre francais, Paris, 1889. 
 
 2. THE SECOND PERIOD OF FRENCH DRAMA. Alexandre Hardy may 
 be accounted one of the " irregular" or " belated " writers who con- 
 tinue the literary traditions of the preceding age. The " strolling 
 player " at the beginning of the seventeenth century [Of. Scarron's 
 Roman comique ; S. Chappuzeau, Le tJiedtre franqais ; and H. 
 Chardon, La Troupe du Roman comique, Le Mans, 1876]. The state 
 of the theatre towards 1610. Material organisation, actors and spec- 
 tators [Cf. especially Eugene Eigal, loc. cit. and his brochure : 
 Esquisse d'une histoire des Theatres de Paris de 1548 a 1653, Paris, 
 1887]. The incredible fertility of Alexandre Hardy. Of the struggle 
 for predominance between the different forms of drama as seen in the 
 pieces of Alexandre Hardy. The saying of Aristotle : Tpay^ia, TroXXag 
 jueraSoXdg /j.tTaa\ovffa, 7rei avrijg n)v Qvcriv tcr^e, iiravGaro. Pastorals, 
 tragedies and tragi-comedies. That in literary history as in nature, 
 the competition is the keener in proportion as the species are more 
 nearly related. Growing confusion between the art of the drama and 
 the art of romance; and that the "father of the French drama"
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITERATUEE 117 
 
 compelled him to comply with some of the exigencies 
 of their sex, and the result was that a literature, which 
 before had been purely erudite, adopted forthwith the 
 tone of polite society. 
 
 This change was consummated, almost simultaneously 
 and again in consequence of the influence of the 
 Precieuses, by literature acquiring an air, it had hitherto 
 lacked, of decency and politeness. Besides claiming the 
 liberty of indulging their humour without restraint, the 
 libertines and irregulars of the regency had asserted no 
 less stoutly their right to remain faithful to the worst 
 traditions and habits of the Gallic genius. They wished 
 to be coarse, cynical, and shameless to the top of their 
 
 entirely failed to make for clearness ; if in all respects save one his 
 tragedies are less modern than those of Robert Garnier. Their utter 
 lack of literary merit. They bear about the same relation to classic 
 tragedy as the melodramas of Guilbert de Pixerecourt will one day 
 bear to the romantic drama of 1830. That to see any interest in his 
 plays they must be considered as " experimental " efforts to determine 
 the laws or conditions of the drama of the future ; and also as evidence 
 of the recrudescence of Spanish and Italian influences. 
 
 That from this standpoint, Alexandre Hardy must be allowed the 
 merit, and it is a real merit, of having transformed a college amuse- 
 ment into a public representation. He also essayed to differentiate 
 tragi-comedy from tragedy. Digression in this connection : on what 
 depends the difference between the two branches? It would seem 
 to depend on the social status of the personages ; on the nature 
 of the denouement ; and of the reality of the personages taken from 
 history. Was Hardy alive to the importance of history in tragedy ? 
 
 3. THE WORKS. We know of forty-one plays by Hardy. They 
 include : an interminable tragi-comedy, TJieagene et Chariclee, based 
 upon the romance of Heliodorus, in eight " days " ; eleven tragedies 
 borrowed from antiquity, with among them a Didon, a Mariamna 
 and an Alexandre ; twelve tragi-comedies, on ancient and modern 
 subjects, imitated from the Spanish or Italian, Gesippe, Fhraarte, 
 Cornelie, La Force du sang, Felismene, La Belle Egyptienne ; 
 and finally five Pastorals ; and five mythological pieces, including 
 an Alceste and an Ariane.
 
 118 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 bent. There were to be no concessions to woman, whose 
 mission, as in the case of Mine de Montaigne, was held 
 to be limited to keeping house for her husband, to bear- 
 ing him children, to perpetuating his race or as happened 
 to the Cassandre and the Marie of Konsard, the Francine 
 of Ba'if, the Hippolyte of Desportes to serving as an 
 instrument of pleasure or a stepping-stone to literary 
 fame. The Precieuses demanded that men should accord 
 them the respect to which every woman, as a woman, is 
 entitled in civilised society ; and they gained their end. 
 No doubt it would be easy to point to passages even in 
 Balzac or Voiture of which the indecency, the naive 
 crudity and the bad taste are astonishing. Still, in a 
 
 The best and only modern edition of Alexandre Hardy's plays is 
 M. Stengel's, 5 vols. in 18mo, Marburg, 1883, 1884, Elwert. 
 
 IV. Franc. ois de Malherbe [Caen, 1555; + 1628, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Racan, Vie de Malherbe, printed in most editions 
 of Malherbe's works ; Godeau, Discours sur Ics ceuvres de M. de 
 Malherbe, preceding the edition of 1666. Malherbe's Letters. Bayle's 
 Dictionnaire, article MALHERBE ; Sainte-Beuve, Tableau la poesie 
 francaise ; Causeries du Lundi, vol. viii. ; and Nouveaux Lundis, 
 vol. xiii. ; G. Allais, Malherbe et la poesie franq aise a la fin du XVP 
 siecle, Paris, 1891 ; F. Brunot, La doctrine de Malherbe, Paris, 
 1891 ; V. Bourienne, Points obscurs et nouveaux de la vie de 
 Malherbe, Paris 1895 ; Due de Broglie, Malherbe, Paris, 1897. 
 
 2. THE MAN, THE POET, AND THE REFORMER. 
 
 A. That Malherbe, in spite of the disdain with which lie affected 
 to regard his predecessors, did not differ from them to the extent that 
 has been alleged. His general conception of poetry is that of 
 Ronsard ; and the resemblance between them extends to matters of 
 detail; he makes " conceits" as Ronsard did ; like Ronsard, he draws 
 upon mythology and to an abusive extent [Cf . Stances a M. du Perier ; 
 Ode a Marie de Medicis ; Stances sur le depart de Louis XIIIJ] ; 
 and finally his sentiments, as were those of Ronsard, are often Pagan 
 [Cf. Consolation a Caritee}. Of some anecdotes told of him, which 
 support this latter assertion [Cf. Tallemant des Reaux, L, 287, 290, 284]. 
 
 B. That lie lacks, or only possesses in an indifferent degree, the
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 119 
 
 general way, the influence of the Precieuses tended to 
 purify, or if the expression be preferred, to polish litera- 
 ture and even manners. Neither Mme de Rambouillet, 
 " the incomparable Arthenice," nor her daughter Julie 
 d'Angennes, so patiently wooed by Montausier, nor the 
 many gracious women whose training was effected by 
 the conversations of the famous " blue chamber," permit 
 the naked image to be thrust on them, in social converse 
 or in books, of what each of us endeavours to hide in real, 
 everyday life. There are acts that cannot be talked of, 
 and not all that is talked of can be written about. For 
 the future it is incumbent on men to have regard to social 
 considerations, to the season or the circumstances, to age 
 
 qualities which make the poet, but he has the qualities of an excellent 
 versifier. It would be impossible to be more deficient than he is in 
 enthusiasm ; the saying of Cavalier Marin. His want of imagina- 
 tion. Mythology, which with Ronsard is still instinct with life, 
 becomes a mere "tool" with Malherbe ; and the metaphors he 
 derives from it are not the expression of his emotion, but simply serve 
 as ornaments to his theme. His want of sensibility. It is the life 
 and still more the variety imparted by sensibility, when it is keen, 
 that is lacking in his Odes. Finally his want of naturalness. On the 
 other hand, he posesses the sense of logical development ; that 
 of oratorical harmony ; a taste for work well done. His theories 
 as to the importance and the " richness " of rhyme : his strict regard 
 for grammar [Cf. Eacan, Vie de Malherbe'] ; and that in view of this 
 characteristic it is strange that the Banvilles and Gautiers of con- 
 temporary French poetry should not have recognised that he is 
 their true ancestor. 
 
 C. That while the very nature of the lessons inculcated by Mal- 
 herbe explains their influence, he is none the greater as a writer on 
 that account. His ideal, as was the case with that of Eonsard as he 
 grew older, tended towards the entire elimination of the personal 
 element from lyricism ; and in consequence to transform lyricism 
 into oratorical verse [Cf. Stances au roi Henri le Grand partant 
 pour le Limousin]. This transformation responded exactly to the 
 taste of the time ; and it had been effected, moreover, by Bertaut 
 and the Cardinal du Perron in some of their poems [Cf. the Eecueil
 
 120 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and to sex. As a consequence, the situation of women 
 is at once improved to a notable extent. Henceforth 
 they will have to be taken into account, their modesty 
 will be respected, they will be treated as equals. And 
 should any belated survivor of another century be in- 
 capable of this self-restraint, he may fall back upon the 
 taverns, and rhyme his Bacchic verses and his coarse 
 songs amid men companions at the Pomme de Pin or the 
 Mouton Blanc. 
 
 The refinement of language accompanies the polishing 
 of manners, and were I not afraid of seeming to play 
 upon words, I should be disposed to say that "politeness" 
 and "polish" are matters that go naturally together. 
 
 des plus beaux vers de ce temps, 1606] ; Malherbe accomplished 
 nothing else, but he did the work better. [Cf. the Sonnet sur la Mort 
 de son fils ; the Ode sur Vattentat de 1605 ; the Ode a M. de Belle- 
 garde.] That in consequence it should rather be said that he wit- 
 nessed than that he realised the reform with which his name is 
 connected ; besides, the first collected edition of his poems, which 
 had been scattered previously, did not appear until 1630 ; that he 
 does not appear to have left any disciples rightly so-called, if the only 
 two that can be named are Maynard and Eacan ; and that the 
 budding Academy criticised his masterpiece, the Stances de 1605, as 
 severely as it did the Cid itself. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The works of Malherbe are composed : (1) of his 
 Poems, in all 125 pieces, the first of which : Les Larmes de saint 
 Pierre, appeared in 1587 ; and the last, Les Vers funebres sur la 
 mort d'Henri le Grand, and the Invective contre le marechal 
 d'Ancre : 
 
 Va-t-en a la malheure, excrement de la terre, 
 
 not until the edition of 1630 ; (2) of his Commentaire sur Desportes, 
 which was not published until 1825 ; (3) of his translations of the 
 23rd Book of Livy, 1621 ; of the De beneficiis ; and of Seneca's 
 letters to Lucilius, 1637, 1638, 1639 ; (4) of his Correspondence, of 
 great interest for the history of Marie de Medicis' regency. 
 
 We may mention among the editions of Malherbe subsequent to 
 the first, which was issued in 1630 by Charles Chappelain : the
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 121 
 
 Refinement in words follows on that in habits, and the 
 choice of ideas induces the choice of terms. In conse- 
 quence, the triumph of preciosity was the starting point 
 of a linguistic revolution ; a result, indeed, to which all 
 that was achieved by preciosity has been too often and 
 wrongly restricted. Many historians of literature would 
 confine the role of the Precieuses to having struck certain 
 words out of the vocabulary, to having introduced others, 
 and more especially to having replaced the habitual use 
 of the proper, straightforward, and exact term by the 
 employment of the metaphor. And I admit that they 
 accomplished all this ! But what is perhaps more in- 
 teresting, and in any case more important, than to 
 
 edition of 1666, published by Thomas Joli, and containing the 
 observations of Menage ; the edition of 1757, published by Barbou, 
 Paris ; Charpentier's edition, 1842, containing Andre Chenier's com- 
 mentaries ; and Lalanne's edition, Paris, 1862, Hachette. 
 
 V. Jean-LouiS Guez de Balzac [Angouleme, 1594 ; f 1654, 
 Angouleme]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Ogier, Apologie pour M. de Balzac, 1627 ; 
 Goulu, Lettres de Phyllarque a Ariste, 1628 ; Balzac himself "pro 
 domo sua " in his Entretiens : Relation a Menandre (Maynard), and 
 the Passages defendus ; Cassagne's preface to the great edition 
 of Balzac's works, 1665 ; Niceron, Hommes illustres, vol. xxiii. ; 
 Bayle's Dictionnaire ; d'Olivet, Histoire de V Academic. 
 
 Bcederer, Memoire pour servir a VJiistoire de la societe polie ; 
 Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, appendix to vol. ii., Balzac le Grand 
 Epistolier ; F. Lotheisen, Geschichte des franzosischen Literatur, 
 vol. i., pp. 165-201, Vienna, 1877. 
 
 2. BALZAC'S INFLUENCE. Of the privilege of poetry, and that it is 
 the sole explanation of the fact that Malherbe's reputation has out- 
 lasted that of Balzac. Admiration of his contemporaries : testimony 
 of Descartes [V. Cousin's edition, vol. vi., p. 189] ; of Bossuet \_Sur le 
 style et la lecture des ecrivains pour former un orateur, in Floquet's 
 Etudes, vol. ii.] ; --of Boileau {Reflexions sur Longin, vol. vii.] The 
 influence of Balzac was far more considerable than that of Malherbe,
 
 122 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 enumerate here the sundry words or locutions for whose 
 introduction they were responsible, is to arrive at the 
 reasons which determined the choice of these particular 
 words and locutions. We referred to them above. There 
 are acts which are ignoble in themselves, and of this 
 nature are in general all of our acts that are to be traced 
 to our animal origin : the words that serve to designate 
 them share their ignominy and baseness, or it should rather 
 be said, perhaps, that they heighten these characteristics, 
 owing to the debasing intention that attaches to their 
 use. There are other acts, walking or sitting down for 
 example, that have no significance good or bad, and in 
 consequence the terms that render them are equally 
 
 with which it was almost contemporary ; in a certain sense too it 
 was happier, as it had not been forced to accomplish a work of 
 destruction to enable it to exert itself. At the same time it tended 
 in the same direction ; and though they may mutually have spoken 
 ill of one another, they nevertheless had the same disciples and the 
 same admirers. 
 
 Of the principal qualities which his contemporaries admired in 
 Balzac ; (1) The purity of his elocution ; -definition of this word, 
 and that it implies the choice, the appropriateness, and the charm of 
 terms. (2) The harmony of his phraseology and sentences [Cf. Cas- 
 sagne's Preface and Godeau's Discours sur Malherbe~\. The boldness, 
 appositeness, and abundance of hi? metaphors. Whether Balzac was 
 in this respect an imitator of the Spaniards ; and in this connection 
 of the influence of Antonio Perez [Cf. Philarete Chasles, Etudes sur 
 le XVI'' siecle, and de Puibusque, Histoire comparee des Litteratures 
 francaise et espagnole~\.K remark of Cassagne : " M. de Balzac," he 
 says, " is always happy in the choice of his metaphors, and having 
 chosen them he does not fail to abide bij them." To these natural or 
 acquired qualities must be added that of never neglecting to turn 
 them to account [Cf. the" letter to Costar on the subject of "the 
 higher eloquence "]. 
 
 That the principal defect which spoils Balzac's qualities is due less 
 to their exaggeration than to his lack of ideas. A just remark of 
 Boileau, to the effect that in giving his attention more particularly 
 to letter writing, Balzac erred as to the suitability of the epistolary
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITEEATURE 123 
 
 wanting in significance. On the other hand there are 
 noble acts, such as that of self-sacrifice, or, without 
 going so far, such as all acts which constitute a 
 victory of the mind over the body, of the will over 
 instinct, of civilisation over nature ; and the nobility 
 of these acts is communicated to the words, and so 
 to speak to the very syllables that express them. 
 There is therefore a standard by which even custom 
 is judged, whatever may have been said to the contrary. 
 Our character is revealed by our manners, which in 
 turn are betokened by our words even more than by 
 our actions ; a race or a nation betrays itself by the 
 character of the language it speaks ; and finally a period 
 
 style to his talent. This mistake is clearly seen when his Treatises 
 or his Dissertations are compared with the Letters proper. That even 
 in these Treatises themselves he lacks experience to some extent of 
 the matter he discusses ; his politics are essentially "bookish"; 
 and his philosophy was forged entirely in his study. Still, neither 
 Pascal [Cf. Le Prince, p. 27, in the edition of 1665], nor Bossuet 
 [Cf. Socrate Chretien, pp. 239, 240], seems to have read him without 
 profit. But it was more particularly by Corneille that he was studied 
 [Cf. the four Dissertations politiques addressed to M me de Rambouillet, 
 sur les Remains and sur la gloire\. 
 
 In consequence, in spite of all his defects, he may be said to have 
 done something more for the French genius than to " coach it in 
 rhetoric," according to Sainte-Beuve's expression. He was acquainted 
 with the sources and, as the ancients said, with the " topics " of lofty 
 eloquence ; on more than one occasion he displayed a sufficiently 
 exact and practised critical sense [Cf. his estimates of Eonsard and 
 Montaigne] ; and finally he always strove after elevation. That for 
 all these reasons his personality is a considerable one in our literary 
 history. He has had many followers and many imitators ; the 
 transformation of lyricism into oratorical prose was completed in his 
 writings ; and his chief error, which he shared with all his con- 
 temporaries, merely consisted in his having believed that the object 
 of art is to adorn nature with a view to making it more beautiful. 
 The means by which this end may be attained ought to be studied, 
 but with the intention of having recourse to them as little as
 
 124 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 is characterised by the choice of its words and the turn 
 of its phrases. 
 
 The merit of the Precieuses is to have been conscious 
 of these truths. Their mode of expression was the exact 
 counterpart of their manner of thinking ; and they ought 
 to be judged from the psychological rather than from the 
 linguistic or philological point of view. Their efforts to 
 refine or to reform the language were not, as was the 
 case with the poets of the Pleiad, their principal concern, 
 but were only a secondary undertaking entered on because 
 they had perceived that the reform of literary habitudes 
 could only be effected by the reform of the language. 
 Doubtless while endeavouring to attain their end by all 
 
 possible ; and taking care to adapt them to the theme and to 
 circumstances. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The works of Balzac are composed : (1) of 27 
 books of Letters, of which the earlier appeared in 1624, and the last 
 after his death. Six books of these Letters are addressed to Chape- 
 lain and four to Conrart. All or almost all of them are of great 
 interest for the literary history of the period. (2) Of his Entretiens 
 or Dissertations, of which there are 67, divided into : Christian and 
 Moral Dissertations, 25 ; Political Dissertations, 14 ; Critical 
 Dissertations, 28. [The Relation a Menandre and Les Passages 
 defendus, in which he defends himself against the attacks of Father 
 Goulu, the author of the Lettres de Phyllarque a Ariste, form part 
 of the Christian Dissertations. The three dissertations on the 
 Romans form the first three Political Dissertations.] In addition 
 there are : (3) The Treatises, that is : Le Prince, 1631 ; Le Barbon, 
 1648 ; Socrate Chretien, 1652 ; and Aristippe, 1658. And in con- 
 clusion : (4) a series of letters in Latin. 
 
 The best editions of Balzac's works are : the edition formed by 
 combining the six volumes printed by the Elzeviers either at Leyden 
 or at Amsterdam, and adding Socrate Chretien ; and the standard 
 edition of 1665, in 2 vols. in folio, Paris, published by Louis 
 Billaine. 
 
 There are no modern editions, unless a "selection" of Balzac's 
 writings, edited by M. Moreau, Paris, 1854, Lecoflre, be counted as 
 such.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 125 
 
 the means at their disposal, they did not resist the desire 
 or the temptation to distinguish themselves from the 
 crowd, to form coteries amongst themselves, and, as the 
 saying is, to be " peculiar." However, if among the ways 
 of being peculiar there be one that is assuredly excusable, 
 and even in some respects legitimate, is it not that which 
 consists in desiring to feel, think, and act more nobly, 
 more delicately, and with more refinement than other 
 people ? To this ambition is to be ascribed the vogue of 
 such very different productions as the trifling verse of 
 Voiture, among which there is much that is charming; 
 the Letters or the Treatises of Balzac ; and the romances 
 of Gomberville and Gombaud, Endymion and Polexandre 
 
 VI. Claude Favre de Vaugelas [Meximieux (Ain), 1585; 
 f 1650, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Niceron, Hommes illustres, vol. xix. ; Pellison 
 et d'Olivet, Histoire de V Academic francaise ; Goujet, Bibliotheque 
 francaise, vol. i. ; Abbe Lambert, Histoire litteraire du siecle de 
 Louis XIV., vol. iii. 
 
 Moncourt, De la methode grammaticale de Vaugelas, Paris, 1851 ; 
 Sayous, Litterature frangaise a Vetranger, Paris and Geneva, 1853, 
 vol. i., ch. 3 and 4; Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux Lundis, vol. vi. ; 
 Chassang, Notice preceding his edition of the Remarques sur la langue 
 franqaise, Paris and Versailles, 1880. 
 
 2. THE BOLE OF VAUGELAS. Vaugelas' birth and early sur- 
 roundings ; and in this connection a few remarks on the subject 
 of the Academy of Florimon. Vaugelas' father : Antoine Favre ; 
 his relation with Fra^ois de Sales and Honore d'Urfe. Vaugelas, 
 a tutor to the Carignan family. 
 
 Importance of his book Remarques sur la langue francaise. By 
 affirming that language is governed by usage, Vaugelas shielded the 
 evolution of language from the caprices of individual taste ; by 
 drawing a distinction between good and bad usage, he divided off 
 the language of the " court " from that of the " street-porters of the 
 Port aufoin" ; and by making the usage prevailing in the spoken 
 language the standard of usage in the written language, he gave the 
 classic language its essential character, which is that of being a
 
 126 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 for example. A further reason of this vogue is that 
 while the great letter writer is at pains to hit on expres- 
 sions and turns of phrase the grandiloquence of which 
 shall be in keeping with what is termed around him 
 the "grand gout" (or it may perhaps be translated the 
 "best taste"), his fellow writers, the novelists, attempt 
 psychological observation and analysis in their intermin- 
 able narratives. 
 
 We are under yet another obligation to the Precieuses : 
 the conversation cultivated in their salons, besides in- 
 creasing the suppleness and fluency of the language, 
 made for intellectual refinement. The evolution of the 
 sentiments or the passions is studied with closer attention 
 
 spoken language. Digression in this connection ; and that Bossuet, 
 Moliere, Saint-Simon, and how many others will write as " they will 
 speak." This being the case, the greater part of the blunders and 
 licenses with which grammarians reproach them cease at once to be 
 of any account ; this circumstance also explains the inner qualities 
 of the classic language ; its vivacious clearness ; its briskness and 
 naturalness. The scruples of Vaugelas ; and that they concord 
 with those of Balzac ; and with the teachings of Malherbe. 
 Bossuet's saying to the effect " that nothing eternal is entrusted to 
 the keeping of languages that are always changing " ; and, in this 
 connection, of the comparison between a language and an organism. 
 That there is a distinction between " immobilising " a language (or 
 shutting the door against all change) and '' fixing " it (or giving it 
 stability as far as essentials are concerned) ; that Vaugelas' object was 
 to " fix " the current usage ; and in what measure he was successful 
 [Cf. Haase, Obert's trans., Syntaxe du XVII'' siecle, Paris, 1898] . 
 
 Vaugelas at the Hotel Rambouillet, and at the French Academy. 
 Rejoinders provoked by his Remarques. La Mothe le Vayer's opuscule 
 dealing with the Remarques sur la langue franqaise. P. Bouhours' 
 estimate of Vaugelas [Cf. Entretiens d'Ariste et d 1 Eugene], 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Remarques sur la langue franqaise, Paris, 1647, 
 in 4to ; and Quinte Curce : de la vie et des actions d'Alexandre le 
 Grand, translated by A. Favre de Vaugelas, Paris, 1653, in 4to. 
 
 We have referred above to the excellent modern edition of the 
 Remarques edited by M. A. Chassang (1880).
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 127 
 
 till an inkling is obtained of a number of their finer shades, 
 of which there is no indication that the "ancients" had 
 any idea, nor even the writers of the preceding generation. 
 Is it not essential that the notions conveyed by these 
 nice distinctions should be analysed or, to use a better 
 expression, be " dissected," if only with a view to an 
 improved classification of the terms of politeness and 
 good manners ? What constitutes elevation ? To decide 
 the matter it must be carefully examined. The result is 
 that, thanks to preciosity, appropriate expression and 
 delicate analysis are introduced simultaneously into con- 
 versation. The interest of society in grammar and 
 politeness has extended imperceptibly to psychology. 
 
 VII. Pierre Corneille [Rouen, 1606 ; f 1685, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES.' -Bibliographie Cornelienne ou description 
 raisonnee . . . des ouvrages relatifs a Corneille et a ses ecrits, by M. 
 Emile Picot, Paris, 1876 ; Fontenelle, Vie de Corneille, 1685, 1729, 
 1742 ; Thomas Corneille, Dictionnaire geographique, article ROUEN ; 
 Goujet, Bibliotheque francaise, vol. xviii. ; F. Guizot, Corneille 
 et son temps, 1st edition, 1813, last edition, 1852 ; Taschereau, His- 
 toire de la vie et des ouvrages de Pierre Corneille, 1829 and 1855 ; 
 Marty-Laveaux, Notice preceding his edition of Corneille's Works, 
 Paris, 1862 ; F. Bouquet, Les Points obscurs de la vie de Corneille, 
 Paris, 1888. 
 
 Corneille : Discours and his " Examinations " of his own tragedies. 
 Granet, Recueil de dissertations surplusieurs tragedies de Corneille 
 et de Racine, Paris, 1740, Gisseqet Bordelet ; Voltaire, Commentaire 
 sur Corneille, 1764. Laharpe, Cours de litterature, 1799, 1805 ; 
 Schlegel, Cours de litterature dramatique, 1809 ; Sainte-Beuve, 
 Portraits litteraires, vol. i., 1829; Port-Royal, vol. i., 1837; and 
 Nouveaux Lundis, vol. vii., 1864. Desjardins, Le grand Corneille 
 historien, Paris, 1861 ; Levallois, Corneille inconnu, Paris, 1876.- - 
 J. Lemaitre, Corneille et Aristote, Paris, 1882 ; G. Lanson, Corneille, 
 Paris, 1898. 
 
 1 The enumeration of the sources, complete up to the date of issue of the work 
 [1875], will be found in M. Emile Picot's Bibliographie Cornilieime. In the case of 
 Corneille and in that of the great writers generally, we shall only mention the 
 sources a knowledge of which appears to us indispensable.
 
 128 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 The effort to express old ideas in a novel, original, and, 
 on occasion, eccentric manner has led to the discovery 
 of new ideas, the search for which will now become the 
 general ambition and will soon be the chief concern of 
 the makers of Maxims ; and in the end La Koche- 
 foucauld, if he be given his proper place, will be merely 
 the last of the illustrious Precieux. 
 
 We should add that this movement was the outcome 
 of the efforts, made in common, not only of the men of 
 letters, but also of the " honnetes gens" or the members 
 of good society ; and it is doubtless due to this fact 
 that "preciosity," speaking generally, did not meet with 
 the same fate in France as in England, Spain, and Italy. 
 
 Frederic Godefroy, Lexique de la langue de Corneille, Paris, 1862 ; 
 Marty-Laveaux, Lexique, etc., Paris, 1868, forming the two last 
 volumes of the edition of Corneille in the collection " Les Grands 
 Ecrivains." 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE POET. 
 
 A. Corneille's emulators ; and in this connection, that it is urgent 
 to " disencumber " the history of literature ; and that only the name 
 but not the work of Mairet, or even Rotrou, having survived, they 
 are only worth attention in so far as they are a " function " of Corneille. 
 In what way and to what extent they paved the way for him. 
 Mairet's Sophonisbe and that Corneille was well acquainted with it, 
 since he borrowed from it the imprecations he puts in the mouth 
 of his Canaille. Predominance of the romantic element in Mairet's 
 dramas. The preface to Silvanire, 1625, and the rule of the three 
 unities [Cf. Breitinger, Les unites avant le Cid de Corneille, Zurich, 
 1883]. General tendency of the writers of tragedy to treat subjects 
 already dealt with. The four Sophonisbe [Trissino, 1515 ; Mellin de 
 Saint-Gelais, 1559; Claude Hermel, 1593; Moncrestien, 1596]. Back- 
 wardness of comedy in comparison with tragedy. The Galanteries du 
 due d'Ossone. The imitation of the Spanish drama in the dramas of 
 Rofcrou [Cf. Puibusque, Histoire comparee des litteratures francaise 
 et espagnole, Paris, 1842 ; and Jarry, Essai sur les oeuvres drama- 
 tiques de Rotrou, Paris, 1858]. How the romantic element in 
 Kotrou's dramas perpetually tends towards extravagance ; and the 
 sentiment hi them towards bombast. The traces of Rotrou's influence
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 129 
 
 For why is it that Euphuism in England, Marinism in 
 Italy, or Gongorism in Spain did not exert the same 
 influence as was exercised among us by preciosity ? 
 The reason is that the purely literary side of the 
 movement was overruled in France by its social side, 
 the desire to be peculiar by the need that this pecu- 
 liarity should find a host of admirers. Our Precieuses 
 never forgot that the adversaries they had to combat 
 in the first instance were the enemies of all order and 
 discipline. In consequence, while in Spain or in Italy, 
 Gongorism or Marinism led up to fresh excesses on 
 the part of individualism, in France, on the contrary, 
 it was the social ideal that came victorious out of the 
 
 in the history of French drama : on Corneille, on Moliere, on 
 Racine. 
 
 B. Corneille's early years. The false idea that is commonly 
 entertained that Corneille was throughout an " heroic" writer; and 
 that on the contrary he began as a writer of comedy. Melite, 1629 ; 
 Clitandre, 1632 ; La Veuve, 1633 ; La Galerie du Palais, 1633 ; La 
 Suivante, 1634 ; La Place Boijale, 1634 ; L' Illusion comique, 1636. 
 Literary interest of the comedies of Corneille's youth. They owe 
 nothing to the imitation of foreign writers ; they consist of incidents 
 taken from ordinary life and but very slightly " romanced " ; and their 
 personages are already of almost middle-class rank. The scenes of 
 gallantry in Corneille's comedies ; and that the language in which 
 they are written is a perfect imitation of that of the Precieuses; and, 
 in this connection, that there is a Louis XIII. style in literature as in 
 architecture. The " young girl " in Corneille's comedies; the style 
 of the comedies. Singular character of the Illusion comique ; and 
 why, towards 1635, there were so many comedies turning on actors 
 and stage life. Medee, Corneille's first tragedy. What reasons in- 
 duced Corneille to turn his attention to tragedy [Cf. Hatzfeld, Les 
 commencements de Corneille, 1857 ; P. Vavasseur, Corneille poete 
 comique, 1864 ; and F. Hemon, l&tude sur les comedies de Corneille 
 preceding his edition of the Works, 1886]. 
 
 C. The masterpieces. The Cid, 1637 ; Horace, 1640; Cinna, 1640; 
 Polyeuctc, 1642 ; Pompee, 1643 ; the Menteur, 1643 ; La Suite du, 
 Menteur, 1643 ; TJuiodore, 1645 ; Bodogune, 1646 ; He radius, 1647 ; 
 
 10
 
 130 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 crisis in the end. It was the Precieuses who deve- 
 loped, strengthened, and consolidated that deep-lying 
 tendency in French literature to give expression to 
 " common " or general ideas rather than to particular 
 opinions a tendency already foreshadowed in certain 
 of the writers of the preceding age. By their attitude, 
 the Precieuses assured the vogue of those branches of 
 literature which are termed "universal," and whose 
 essential characteristic lies in the circumstance that their 
 very existence depends upon the existence of a public to 
 encourage them. Our meaning is that it is quite con- 
 ceivable that a writer should compose an " elegy " or even 
 
 Andromede, 1650 ; Don Sanche d'Aragon, 1650 ; Nicomede, 1651 ; 
 Pertharite, 1652. Of some influences that have unquestionably left 
 their mark on Corneille : ind, in this connection, of the allusions to 
 current events in Corneille 's dramas ; the Cid and the duelling 
 question ; the influence of Balzac and of his Entretiens sur les 
 Remains [Cf. his letter to Corneille on the subject of Cinna] ; the 
 plots against Eichelieu and the tragedy of Cinna; Polyeucte and 
 Jansenism [Cf. Sainte - Beuve, Port - Royal]. Corneille's genius 
 suffers when he deals with subjects of pure "invention." The com- 
 plicated plots of Rodogune and Heraclius. But here again his 
 intention is to vie with the romance writers of his time : La Cal- 
 prenede and Scuderi. The sketches of the manners of the time 
 of the Fronde in Corneille's masterpieces. He exaggerates what is 
 already too " high flown " in his Roman and Spanish models. He 
 essays for an instant, in Don Sanche and Nicomede, a more sober 
 form of comedy ; but he is quick to renounce this effort as is seen 
 in his Pertharite ; in consequence of the failure of which he leaves 
 off writing for the stage for seven years. 
 
 D. The genius and the dramatic system of Corneille ; and that 
 his Discours and his Examens should only be consulted on this point 
 with much precaution ; because they are scarcely and only in- 
 directly dogmatic and explanatory, but rather apologetic and 
 polemical; the abbe d'Aubignac and his Pratique du theatre [Cf. 
 Arnaud, Theories dramatiques au XVII' siecle, Paris, 1888]. The 
 characteristics of Corneille's imagination. In the first place his 
 imagination was strong and daring ; that is to say it was dis-
 
 131 
 
 a "satire" and keep it to himself, that he should write 
 a novel and lock it up in his desk, that he should note 
 down in secret the chronicles of his time ; on the other 
 hand it has never occurred to any one to prepare a " dis- 
 course" or to write a tragedy in five acts and in verse 
 solely for his own personal satisfaction. 
 
 It is these various influences that paved the way for, 
 determined, and gave final sanction to the success of the 
 " great " Corneille. For nothing is less like the real 
 Corneille than the easy-going man of genius whose heroic 
 figure is placed before us in all our histories, the truth 
 being that the poet followed the veering of opinion with 
 
 tinguished by a leaning, at once natural and the outcome of circum- 
 stances, towards the extraordinary and the improbable ; hence his 
 theory that the subject of a fine tragedy ought to be improbable [See 
 Marty-Laveaux' edition, i., 147] ; hence his theory as to the use to 
 be made of history in drama [Marty-Laveaux' edition, i., 15], hence 
 his theory of heroism : 
 
 When fate allows us to pursue a career of honour, 
 
 It affords us a glorious opportunity to display our fortitude. 
 
 Hence, too, the epic character of the personages in his dramas 
 [Cf. an admirable passage on this point in Heine's La France] ; 
 the comparative absence of analysis and psychology ; the subordi- 
 nation of the characters to the situations [Cf. Saint-Evremond's study 
 of Racine's Alexandre], Comparison in this connection between 
 Rodogune and Ruy Bias, or between Cinna and Hernani. That 
 Corneille's taste for complications of plot grafted on these tendencies, 
 would have landed him in melodrama. 
 
 But while his imagination was strong and daring, it was at the 
 same time noble and lofty ; that is to say he prefers what is noble 
 to what is base in the domain of the extraordinary and the romantic ; 
 what elevates the soul to what demeans it ; and in general heroes 
 to monsters. Still it is not true as has been said [Cf. V. de Laprade, 
 Essais de critique idealiste] that his drama represents the triumph 
 of duty over passion ; it represents the triumph of the will [Cf. 
 J. Lemaitre, Corneille et Aristote] over the obstacles that interfere 
 with its development ; and hence, in his drama : his liking for
 
 132 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 unrivalled acumen, and ^guidfid- -his, .supple talent in 
 accordance with his observations. Quite rightly, he is 
 given an important place, a pjace of honour, in the Grand 
 Dictionnaire des Pretieuses, of Bodeau de Somaize, where 
 he is termed "the greatest man who has ever written 
 pieces for the playhouse." The appreciation is just ; and 
 the chief preoccupation of Corneille, both in the comedies 
 of his youth, in Melite, the Veuve or the Galerie du Palais, 
 and in the masterpieces of his maturity, was to win the 
 approbation of the^Precieuses. 
 
 In his Examen de Melite, he himself claims with pride 
 that his earliest achievement was to establish the reign of 
 
 political tragedy, which is pre-eminently the field for the exercise of 
 the will ; his contempt for the passions of love, which he regards as 
 being too "encumbered with weakness"; the moral purpose or 
 rather the apparent moral purpose ; hence, too, the highly-strung 
 sentiments ; and hence, finally, the art with which he exhausts the 
 subjects he treats [Cf. Examen de Bodogune, Marty-Laveaux' edition, 
 iv., 421]. " The second act surpasses the first ; the third is superior 
 to the second ; and the last act throws all the others into the shade." 
 He is the master of his subjects just as his heroes are the masters 
 of their fate. [Compare the contrary state of things in the Romantic 
 drama.] 
 
 It is a pity, after this, that his imagination should be tortuous and 
 quibbling; which amounts to saying that he partakes to some 
 extent if not of the lawyer at any rate of the casuist. The " cases of 
 conscience" in Corneille's tragedies; and that they constitute then- 
 greatness ; but they also give them a certain tortuousness. Hence the 
 actions in his drama which he terms "implex" [Cf. the character of 
 Sabine in Horace and that of Severe in Polyeucte] ; analysis of 
 HeracUus ; admissions of Corneille on this subject. To complication 
 of plot he adds complication of motives ; Schlegel's observations on 
 this point [Cf. Litterature dramatique, Saussure's translation, ii., 
 p. 41]. Corneille's Machiavellism, and that it would be possible to 
 extract as many immoral maxims from his work as from the Prince. 
 
 All those State crimes committed to wear a crown, 
 Heaven absolves us of them, when it gives us the crown.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 133 
 
 decency and morality on a stage whose license previous to 
 
 his timenad kepi women away from the theatre- 
 find then that if he borrows a subject from Spain, since 
 Spain is the fashion, he imparts to his personages in 
 the Cid the quality of humanity, in the Menteur the 
 quality of polish, and in both the quality of generality 
 that are the characteristics of the polite society around 
 him, and as it were the signs by which its members 
 recognise one another. Similarly, when in Horace, 
 Cinna, or Rodogune, he mingles politics and gallantry, it 
 must not be supposed that he is imitating Justinus, 
 Seneca, or Livy : he is sketching from the life the 
 
 Corneille's pretensions to a knowledge of politics ; the remark of 
 Conde, cited in this connection, after the representation of Sertorius : 
 " When did Corneille learn the art of war ? " and of Grammont after 
 that of Otlion. 
 
 E. The old age of Corneille. CEdipe. 1659; Sertorius, 1662; 
 Sophonisbe, 1663; Othon, 1664; Agesilas, 1666; Attila, 1667; Tite 
 et Berenice, 1670 ; Pulcherie, 1672 ; Surena, 1674 ; Corneille as a 
 delineator of history ; and of the falseness of the paradox of Desjardins 
 in his Grand Corneille historien. Local colour in the work of Corneille. 
 That the defects of his last plays proceed from the same causes as 
 the qualities of his masterpieces. That they are mere special plead- 
 ings written in support of a thesis. The Machiavellisrn of the motives 
 [Cf. Pertharite, vol. vi., p. 571 ; Othon, vol. vi., p. 632 ; Attila, vol. 
 vii., pp. 107, 162]. That the author's nobleness and elevation degenerate 
 in them : into affectation [Nicomede, vol. vi., p. 531] ; into bombast 
 [Don Sanche, voL vi., p. 458] ; into inhumanity [Attila, vol. vii., p. 
 172] ; and finally that the bent of his imagination takes the changed 
 shape of a mania for unreasoned inventions, innovations, and compli- 
 cations. It is for this reason that " he now loads his subjects with 
 matter" ; that after ha ving banished love from his plays he reintro- 
 duces it in the guise of the most frigid gallantry [Cf. Othon, vol. vi., 
 p. 587; Attila, vol. vii., p. 140, 141]; and that he puts history to a 
 false use in tragedy. 
 
 F. The language and style of Corneille. That the poet amid this 
 shipwreck of the qualities of his prime retains one gift to the end for 
 nobody, perhaps, has ever written better in verse than Corneille.
 
 134 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 manners and personages of his time. Who is the 
 Precieuse of whom Somaize tells us that " not only was 
 she much esteemed for her beauty, but as well for the 
 loftiness of her soul, while her intelligence was not solely 
 preoccupied with trifles, but rose to the consideration of 
 matters of the first importance " ? This Precieuse is 
 familiar to us ; and before being called Emilie in Cor- 
 neille's Cinna, or Cleopatre in his Bodogune, she had more 
 than once in actual history been a source of uneasiness to 
 the great Cardinal under her real name of the Duchesse 
 de Chevreuse. Numerous are the parallels it would be 
 possible to draw of a like nature. When Corneille compli- 
 
 [Cf . the speech of Auguste in Cinna and the narrative passages of 
 the MenteurJ\ Qualities of his style ; and to appreciate them, a com- 
 parison between the style of Polyeucte and that of Andromaque ; or 
 between the comic style of Corneille and that of Moliere and of 
 Eegnard. Appropriateness and vigour of his language. Richness and 
 harmony of his verse. Amplitude and vigour of his periods. In 
 what sense Corneille remains natural and consistent with himself even 
 when he is guilty of incoherence and preciosity. Of certain points 
 which Corneille has in common with the Romanticists ; and in con- 
 sequence of the points in common between Romantic literature and 
 the literature of the time of Louis XIII. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Apart from his tragedies and comedies, the only 
 work of Corneille of any importance is his translation in verse of the 
 Irrvitatio Christi. 
 
 We shall content ourselves with citing here among the editions of 
 his works : the edition of 1660 in 3 vols. ; that of 1664 in two folio 
 volumes, which is the most monumental, but unfortunately it lacks 
 the plays of his later years the edition of 1738 with Jolly's commen- 
 taries ; the edition of 1738 which is the first that contains Voltaire's 
 commentaries and Gravelot's illustrations ; finally, among modern 
 editions, to say nothing of very many others, that of Marty-Laveaux 
 in the collection of the Grands Ecrivains de la France, Paris, 1862- 
 1868, Hachette. 
 
 VIII. The Foundation of the French Academy, 1635. 
 
 1. THE OKIGIN OF THE ACADEMY. The Italian academies of the
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 135 
 
 cates, embroils, and entangles his plots to the utmost in 
 his Sertorius, his Othon, his Attila, he does so less in 
 response to his own inspiration than with a view to vying 
 as a romantic writer with the Gombervilles, the La 
 Calprenedes, and the Scuderis ! 
 
 And_his_genius is not diminished on this account ! His 
 superiority is unaffected by his compliances with the 
 variations and exigencies of the taste of his time, since 
 the numerous writers who surround him, Mairet, Rotrou, 
 du Ryer, Scuderi, La Calprenede, though they follow 
 the fashion as he did, produced nothing of the stamp 
 of the Cid, of Polyeucte, of Pompee, or of Heraclius. 
 
 time of the Renaissance [Cf. Pellisson, Histoire de V Academic] ; the 
 academy of the last of the Valois [Cf . on this head M. Edouard Fremy's 
 book, Paris, n.d.] ; the Florentine Academy. A remark of the Abbe 
 d'Olivet on Balzac : " Up to that time," he says, " men of letters had 
 formed a republic of which the dignities were divided between a 
 number of persons, but this republic suddenly became a monarchy to 
 the throne of which Balzac was raised by an unanimous vote." That 
 Corn-art's original scheme for the Academy [Cf. his Memoires] was 
 devised precisely with a view to introducing an ordered hierarchy 
 into the world of letters. This purpose coincided with the wishes 
 of the Precieuses of the Hotel Rambouillet ; with the general 
 desire of men of letters ; and with the more far-reaching plans 
 of Cardinal Richelieu. The " Letters Patent of January 29, 1635." 
 Why did the Parliament refuse to ratify them for two years ? 
 It may be that established bodies dislike to see other bodies 
 organised around them. But Richelieu effected his purpose in the 
 end. The first academicians. [Cf. Pellisson and d'Olivet, Histoire 
 de V Academic francaise, Livet's edition, Paris, 1858; Paul Mesnard, 
 Histoire de I' Academic, Paris, 1857 ; The successive prefaces of the 
 Dictionary of the Academy ; A. Bourgoin, Valentin Conrart, Paris, 
 1888 ; and the Abbe A. Fabre, Chapelain et nos deux premieres 
 Academies, Paris, 1890.] 
 
 2. THE OBJECT OF THE ACADEMY. That it did not differ in principle 
 from that which had been projected by the Precieuses, Malherbe, 
 Balzac, and Vaugelas : it was proposed to raise the French language 
 to the dignity of Latin and Greek ; and in consequence to the uni-
 
 136 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 I merely contend that his greatness is not dependent on 
 his isolation, and that though he towers above his rivals 
 he is bound to them nevertheless by ties of relationship. 
 But he belongs essentially to that Precious society, which 
 recognised and applauded itself in his works, which will 
 remain faithful to him to the end, and will defend him 
 against young and audacious rivals ; and the consequence 
 is, that although the Precieuses may have had their faults 
 and even have exposed themselves to ridicule, the drama 
 of Corneille is lasting testimony to the nobility, loftiness, 
 and generosity of their artistic ideal. 
 
 There is a man who made no mistake on this score. 
 
 versality they had formerly enjoyed. Conformity of this very clearly 
 defined intention with the intentions of Ronsard and the Pleiad. 
 Why was it that all the translators who enjoyed a reputation at the 
 time were members of the Academy ? Because the sole object of 
 their translations was to spread and, as it were, to incorporate with 
 the substance of the French genius an exhaustive knowledge of 
 antiquity. The " belles infideles" of Perrot d'Ablancourt. Why all 
 the grammarians ? Because it lay with them to set forth and to 
 catalogue the riches, the resources, and the "possibilities" of the 
 language. And why all the critics ? Because it was believed at the 
 time that there exists a necessary relation between the perfection of 
 literary ivorks and the observance of the rules or laws that govern 
 the branch of literature to which they belong. Chapelain's Prefaces. 
 Controversies as to "the excellence of the French language" [Cf. 
 Goujet, Bibliotheque francaise, vol. i.]. The early labours of the 
 Academy; services rendered in general by the French Academy ; 
 and in what sense it may be said of the Academy that it really fixed 
 the language. 
 
 3. THE IMMEDIATE INFLUENCE OF THE ACADEMY. In the first place 
 it substituted a central literary authority for the influence of dispersed 
 coteries ; and in this way, it was due to the Academy, and in the 
 works of its members, that individual efforts began to converge towards 
 a common goal. Advantages and disadvantages of this literary 
 centralisation. The establishment of the Academy enforced the con- 
 viction that literary glory is an integral and necessary part of the 
 greatness of a nation [Cf. Du Bellay, Defense et Illustration, etc,].
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 137 
 
 I refer to Kichelieu, whose perception of the truth is the 
 secret motive of his attitude, now friendly, now hostile, 
 towards Corneille. The moment the writer and the poet, 
 instead of keeping to themselves, began to mix in society, 
 and to submit, as an earnest of their intention to please, 
 to the discipline society imposed on them, Richelieu con- 
 ceived the idea of making this new-born docility serve his 
 political designs. It seemed to him that it would surely 
 be a master stroke to turn to account the power of the 
 intelligence, to make it an instrument of his authority ; 
 or, to put the matter a little differently, to interest men 
 of letters in the realisation of his ambitious plans without 
 
 In this way it raised the status of the man of letters ; in the State ; 
 and in his own eyes. Finally, when the Academy set itself the 
 task of " fixing" the language, it seemed at first as if the effort were 
 destined to be successful; and in any case, by enforcing respect for 
 the language, it paved the way for what foreigners themselves will 
 speak of a hundred and fifty years later as the universality of French 
 [Cf. Bivarot, Discours sur I'universalite de la langue francaise, in 
 answer to the question raised by the Berlin Academy]. 
 
 IX. The Origin of Jansenism. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Banke, Histoire de la Papaute aux XVI e et 
 XVII' siecles ; M. Philippson, La Contre-Revolution religieuse au 
 XVI 1 ' siecle, Paris and Brussels, 1884; Dejob, De V influence du 
 concile de Trente sur la litterature, Paris, 1884. 
 
 Molina, Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratice donis, 1595 ; 
 Jansenius, Augustinus, seu Sancti Augustini doctrina de natures 
 humana sanitate, cegritudine et medicina, 1640 ; C. Mazzella, De 
 Gratia Christi, Woodstock Marylandise, 1878. 
 
 Dom Clemencet, Histoire generale de Port-Royal, 10 vols. in 12mo, 
 Amsterdam, 1756 ; N. Bapin, Histoire du Jansenisme depuis son 
 origine jusqu'en, 1644, edited (and arbitrarily mutilated) by the Abbe 
 Domenech, Paris, 1861 ; Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, vols. i. and ii. ; 
 the Abbe Fuzet (at present Bishop of Beauvais), Les Jansenistes 
 et leur dernier historien, Paris, 1876. 
 
 2. THE FORMATION OF THE DOCTRINE. The importance of Jansenism
 
 138 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 acquainting them with the secret of his intentions ; and 
 he fancied he saw the means of effecting his purpose in 
 the movement in progress around him. All the small 
 literary coteries that had come into existence in imitation 
 of the Hotel Bambouillet, of which in reality they were 
 only the caricature, were evidence of a desire to see 
 reign, even in intellectual matters, a measure of order 
 and discipline. There seemed to be a tendency, ope- 
 rating on different lines to those he was following, in 
 favour of that unity or, to use a stronger expression, 
 that homogeneousness which was the principal or the 
 unique object of his home policy. Just as he wished to 
 
 in the history of religious ideas ; of French literature ; and of 
 politics. The still existing hostility against Jansenism of an entire 
 party. 
 
 The movement of the Counter-Reformation [Cf. Ranke, Histoire 
 de la Papaute\ ; Self-concentration of Catholicism ; the revival 
 of religious fervour during the last years of the sixteenth century. 
 Molinism [which must not be confounded with Molinosisni] ; 
 and how it seems to have accredited the idea that we are masters of 
 our destiny. Du Vergier de Hauranne, Abbe of Saint-Cyran [1581 ; 
 f 1643] and Jansenius or Janssen [1585 ; (- 1638] combat this " cor- 
 ruption" of Christianity. Early writings of Saint-Cyran. The 
 Question royale, 1609 ; Apologie pour Henri . . . de la Roclieposay 
 eveque de Poitiers, 1615. Meeting between Saint-Cyran and Arnauld 
 d'Andilly, 1620 ; their relations with the Fathers of the Oratory ; 
 the Refutation de la Somme du Pere Garasse, 1626 ; the publication 
 of the Petrus Aurelius, 1631 ; The Port-Royal des Champs is trans- 
 ferred to Paris, 1626 ; Saint-Cyran, director of the Port-Royal ; 
 his imprisonment in the Bastille, 1638 ; Publication of the Angus- 
 tinus in 1640. 
 
 Analysis of the Augustinus. The five propositions [Cf. the Abbe 
 Fuzet, Les Jansenistes et leur dernier historien ; and with regard to 
 the essence of the question of grace, C. Mazella, De Gratia Christi 
 prcelectiones scholastico-dogmaticce]. That the points at issue in 
 this controversy are : free will ; the definition of human nature ; 
 and, finally, the entire question of conduct. Further, from the point 
 of view of the history of literature, an acquaintance with the con-
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 139 
 
 make the French monarchy the type in some sort of the 
 modern State, a veritable whole, really living and really 
 organised, so literature also seemed to be tending towards 
 the same ideal of organisation and common life. In the 
 same way, while the object of Ijis foreign policy was to 
 rnSke France the regulator of European politics, the secret 
 ambition of the grammarians and critics of Vaugelas, 
 for instance, or of Chapelain was to insure the French 
 language inheriting the proud position of the Latin and 
 Trreek languages. A mutual understanding should be 
 easy ; and it took shape after some tentative essays in 
 the conception of the French Academy. The French 
 
 troversy is necessary to an understanding of the Provinciales and of 
 the Pensees, 
 
 X. Rene Descartes [la Haye (in Touraine), 1596 ; f 1650, 
 Stockholm] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. F. Cournot, Considerations sur la marche des 
 idees dans les temps modernes, vol. i., book iii., ch. 1, 2, 3, 4, Paris, 
 1872 ; Fiorentino, Bernardino Telesio, Florence, 1874 ; Ch. 
 Benouvier, Philosophie analytique de Vhistoire, v. iii., Bk. xi., ch. 1, 
 2, Paris, 1897. 
 
 A. Baillet, La vie de Monsieur Descartes, Paris, 1691. 
 
 3. Millet, Histoire de Descartes avant 1637, Paris, 1867 ; Louis 
 Liard, Descartes, Paris, 1882. A. Fouillee, Descartes, in the series of 
 Grands Ecrivains Francais, Paris, 1893. 
 
 Bordas-Demoulin, le Cartesianisme, Paris, 1843 ; V. Cousin, 
 Fragments philosophiques, vols. iv. and v. : Philosophie moderne, 
 Paris, 1845 ; Francisque Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophic car- 
 tesienne, Paris, 1854 ; Bavaisson, Rapport sur le prix Victor 
 Cousin, 1884 ; GL Monchamp, Histoire du carte sianisme en 
 Belgique, Brussels, 1886 ; F. Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, fourth 
 series. 
 
 2. THE MAN, THE PHILOSOPHER, AND THE WRITER. What was the 
 conception of science and philosophy in vogue before Descartes ? and 
 that to attribute him the honour of having overthrown the philosophy 
 of Aristo'ole is to make an error of something like a hundred years. 
 The role of Italy in the formation of the idea of science. Galileo [Cf.
 
 140 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Academy was created for no other purpose than to bind 
 up the destinies of literature with those of France itself; 
 and that it might not happen that a social force so con- 
 siderable as was already that of the intelligence should 
 entirely escape the action of the central authority. 
 
 It remained to be seen under what conditions the 
 understanding would be completed. For on several 
 occasions, and even on the morrow of the foundation 
 of his Academy, Richelieu had been brought to perceive 
 by the incident of Corneille and the critics of the Cid, 
 that he would not govern men of letters as he did his 
 " intendants." Men of letters are lacking at times in 
 that esprit de suite, which the cardinal demanded from 
 
 Florentine op. cit., and J. Bertraiid, Les fonda teurs de Vastronomie 
 moderne, Paris, 1865]. A few words as to Bacon and as to the 
 slightness of his influence [Cf. Liebig, Bacon, Paris, 1866 ; and 
 Claude Bernard, Introduction a la medecine ex-perimentale, Paris, 
 1865]. Of the learned ignorance of Descartes ; and how much he 
 was indebted to his predecessors. That he had certainly read 
 Charron's Traite de la Sagesse ; the Doctrine curicuse of Father 
 Garasse ; and, on his own admission, the Letters of Balzac. 
 Whether, as Huyghens believed, he was " very jealous of the 
 renown of Galileo." 
 
 Descartes' education ; his early studies at the College of La Fleche, 
 1604-1612 ; his early career in Paris and his passion for gambling 
 [Cf. Baillet, ch. 8] ; his military career, 1617-1621 ; he is present 
 at the battle of Prague, 1620. His journey to Italy and his pilgrimage 
 to Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, 1624-1625 ; his sojourn in Paris, 1625- 
 1629 ; where it is probable that he wrote his Begulce ad directionem 
 ingenii. The mythological allusions and the preciosity of expression 
 in the Begulce : one is reminded of the Latin style of Bacon. That 
 these details reveal a Descartes who is an entirely different man from 
 the speculative genius of legend. No philosopher has seen more of 
 the world ; has obtained an acquaintance at first hand with more 
 varied social conditions ; which he studied with the express intention 
 of learning " to know the human race." He drew from life and from 
 the observation of mankind what Montaigne sought in the observation 
 of himself and in books. He decides to settle in Holland, and takes
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITERATUEE 141 
 
 those he took under his protection ; and though their 
 obedience is quite capable of going to the length of 
 servility, still it is always to a certain extent capricious 
 and intermittent. 
 
 It is at this juncture that the historians of French 
 literature place the influence of Descartes and of his 
 Discours de la methode, the date of publication of which 
 is 1637. " The influence of Descartes," wrote Desire 
 Nisard, " was that of a man of genius who taught 
 men their true nature, and together with the art of 
 attaining to a knowledge and control of their intelli- 
 gence, the art of employing it to the best purpose." 
 In another passage he says : " This is the reason why 
 
 up his residence in Amsterdam, 1629. His romance : Helene et 
 Francine. 
 
 Some peculiarities of Descartes' character, and how is it his 
 biographers have not given greater attention to them ? The wide 
 scope of his interests. What has become of his verses on the " Peace 
 of Munster"? and of the comedy "in prose interspersed with 
 verse," of which mention is made in the list of his manuscripts ? 
 His habitual state of uneasiness ; his absentmindedness ; his changes 
 of residence; his mysterious existence ; his " fads." Some curious 
 fragments of his Journal; his hallucinations and his dreams ; the 
 memorable night of November 10, 1619, when "it seemed to him 
 that the spirit of truth descended into him from heaven and 
 possessed him." Nothing similar is found in the life of Corneille ; 
 and still less in that of Malherbe. That it is time that a place 
 should be given these peculiarities in the historical character of 
 Descartes; and that they should be kept in view in passing 
 judgment on his philosophy. 
 
 The publication of the Essais de philosophic [in 4to, Leyden, 
 1637] comprising : the Discours sur la inethode, the Dioptrique, the 
 Traite des meteores and the Geometric. His controversy with Voet 
 [Cf. J. Bertrand, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1891]. He publishes his 
 Meditations metaphysiques, 1641 ; his Principes de philosophic, 
 1644. " He takes a dislike to the function of author, that deprives 
 him of all desire td publish anything " [Cf. Baillet, Vie de Descartes]. 
 His taste for the study of natural history and physiology. His last
 
 142 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the writers who came immediately after Descartes 
 . . . are almost all his disciples. They are his dis- 
 ciples by the doctrines they adopt wholly or in part, 
 and by the systematic treatment they apply to every 
 order of ideas, and every branch of literature." Nisard 
 also says in praise of Descartes that "he reached per- 
 fection in the art of writing French " ; and he adds that 
 this perfection consisted " in the perfect conformity 
 between the language of Descartes and the French 
 genius." I am of opinion, however, that it would be im- 
 possible to be more utterly mistaken ; and without refer- 
 ring to the "perfection of Descartes' style," of which I 
 should be disposed to remark, to borrow a well-known 
 
 journey to France, 1648. The disappointment he experiences in his 
 country [Cf. his Letters at this date]. That, in any case, the 
 troubles of the Fronde would have sufficed to drive him out of 
 France. He takes up his residence in Stockholm, October, 1649 ; 
 where he dies [February 11, 1650]. 
 
 Whether Descartes' style deserves the praise that has been 
 bestowed on it by some critics? If his style be considered im- 
 partially, it seems that he wrote clearly ; and that he expresses well 
 enough what he wishes to express ; but there is nothing very 
 superior in his style to that of Arnauld in his Frequente communion. 
 Its principal merit is that it is free from those " ornaments " and 
 "embellishments" with which Voiture and Balzac "enriched" their 
 style. On the other hand, for his style to be perfectly " natural," it 
 would have to be a reflection of his true character, which it is not ; 
 it is only his reason that finds expression in his prose ; and yet 
 imagination played a greater part in his life than in that of any other 
 philosopher. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. They consist of the Essais de philosophic, pub- 
 lished in 1637 ; of the Meditations tnetaphysiques, 1641 ; of the 
 Reponses aux objections, 1641-42 ; of the Lettre a Gisbert Voet, 
 1643 ; of the Principes de philosophic, 1644 ; and of the posthu- 
 mous works; Traite des passions, 1650; Traite de Vhomme, 1662; 
 Traite du foetus, 1662 ; and Traite du monde. To these works is 
 to be added a voluminous Correspondence, published for the first time 
 in 1657 by Clerselier.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 143 
 
 saying, that it may be likened " to pure water, which has 
 no special flavour," the influence of Descartes, as will be 
 seen further on, was not exerted in the direction that is 
 alleged, and still less at the precise moment at which it 
 is said to have taken effect. The truth is, that the pub- 
 lication of the Discours sur la methode, far from having 
 been followed by any progress in the domain of reason or 
 good sense, was merely followed chronologically by a 
 resumption of the offensive on the part of foreign in- 
 fluences : of Spanish influence to start with, then of 
 Italian influence, and before long of both influences 
 combined. The explanation of this circumstance is 
 easy. Eichelieu's work has been interrupted by his 
 
 Add also the Regulte ad directionem ingenii and the Inquisitio 
 veritatis per lumen natures, 1701. 
 
 There are several editions of the works of Descartes : (1) The 
 Amsterdam edition, 8 vols. in 4to, 1670-1683 and 9 vols. in 18nio, 
 1692-1713 ; (2) the Paris edition, 1724-1729, 13 vols. in 12mo ; and 
 (3) Victor Cousin's edition, 11 vols. in 8vo, Paris, 1824-1826, Levrault. 
 
 M. Foucher de Careil has published two volumes of a Supplement 
 to the works of Descartes, Paris, 1859-1860, Durand. 
 
 XI. Port-Royal and the Arnaulds. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Add to the sources given in article IX. : Bayle, 
 Dictionnaire, article Arnauld ; Histoire du Jansenisme, 3 vols. in 
 12mo, Amsterdam, 1700 [by Dom Gerberon] ; Memoires du P. 
 Rapin [a continuation of his Histoire du Jansenisme, covering the 
 period 1644-1669] edited by M. Louis Aubineau, 3 vols. 8vo, Paris, 
 1865 ; Memoires d' Arnauld d'Andilly, edited by Petitot and by 
 Michaud and Poujoulat ; P. Varin, La verite sur les Arnauld, 
 2 vols., Paris, 1847 ; P. Faugere, Lettres de la mere Agnes Arnauld, 
 2 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1858. 
 
 2. THE ARNAULDS, and in particular ANTOINE ARNAULD [Paris, 
 1612; t 1694, Brussels]. A letter of Balzac on the subject of the 
 Arnaulds : " The entire household argues, preaches, persuades . . . 
 and one Arnauld is worth a dozen Epictetuses." The history of the 
 family. Soldiers, civil servants, courtiers, priests and nuns. 
 Arnauld d'Andilly, the father of Poiuponne, the Minister, and the
 
 144 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 death before he has been able to complete it ; the Fronde 
 has broken out ; and for eighteen years the sovereignty 
 is wielded by a Spanish Queen and an Italian Minister : 
 Anne of Austria and Mazarin. 
 
 It is customary to date the Spanish influence from 
 the great success of the Cid and the Menteur ; but if 
 something more be in view than a mere exchange of 
 subjects between the two literatures, this is placing the 
 date too late or too early. It is too late, since long 
 before Corneille the Astree, as we have seen, was 
 nothing more than an adaptation in the French spirit 
 of Montemayor's Diane ; since Hardy, Mairet, and 
 Botrou had done little else than imitate or translate 
 
 author of the Menwires [1588 ; t 1674] ; Angelique Arnauld, who 
 reformed the Port-Royal [1591 ; f 1661] ; Agnes Arnauld, the 
 authoress of the Lettres [1593; t 1671]; Antoine Arnauld, who 
 shared with Louis XIV. the honour of having been called the Great 
 by his contemporaries. 
 
 The publication of his book La Frequente communion, 1643. 
 History of the book [Cf. Eapin, Memoires, i. 22, and Sainte-Beuve, 
 Port-Royal, vol. ii.]. Whether it be true, as Rapin asserts, that no 
 better written work had previously appeared in French ; and does he 
 not overlook the Introduction a la vie devote ? In what respect the 
 book was really an innovation ; because it brought theology properly 
 so called within reach of the lay public. As to the authority of lay- 
 men in the matter of religion. The Prince of Conde [father of the 
 Great Conde] refutes Arnauld's first book in his Remarques chreticnnes 
 et catholiques, 1644 ; another refutation by the learned Father 
 Petau : De la penitence publique, 1644. The fortunes of Arnauld's 
 book come to be bound up with those of the Augustinus, for which 
 work Arnauld writes an apology in answer to the bull of Urban 
 VIII. ; and in this way the Port-Koyal becomes the fortress of 
 Jansenism. Arnauld s conflicts with the Sorbonne ; his condemna- 
 tion ; appearance on the scene of Pascal. 
 
 Jansenism becomes a definitely organised party; its numerous 
 adherents; the "Mothers of the Church": Mme de Guenienee,' 
 Mine du Plessis-Guenegand, Mme de Sable, the Duchesse de Luynes, 
 the Duchesse de Longueville ; and in this connection, of the
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 145 
 
 Cervantes, Lopez de Vega, and Rojas ; since the 
 Precieuses, as has been said, confined their efforts at first 
 to acclimatising Gongorism in France. But it is too 
 early if the object in view be to fix the moment when 
 this Spanish influence became a real menace to the 
 development of our national literature, as the Italian 
 influence had- been in the past. In point of fact it is 
 scarcely prior to the period between 1645 and 1660 that 
 our dramatic authors, Thomas Corneille, Quinault, or 
 Scarron to mention but those whose names are not 
 entirely forgotten wholly restrict their activity to 
 imitating the Spanish drama, and that they arrive at last 
 at such a pitch that they are even unable to write a play 
 
 imprudence of the abbe Fuzet's scoffs [Cf. Les premiers Jansenistes, 
 p. 154 and following pages]. Growing progress of the party under 
 the Fronde. Alliance between Jansenism and Gallicanism. A pro- 
 nouncement of Ranke on the subject of Jansenism : " While the 
 Jesuits were piling up erudition in enormous folios, or were losing 
 themselves in the labyrinth of scholastic systems of morals and 
 dogma, the Jansenists addressed themselves to the nation." [Histoire 
 de la Papaute, French translation, vol. iii., p. 307], 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Of Arnauld d'Andilly we have his Memoires ; a 
 translation of the Confessions of St. Augustin ; the Vies des Peres du 
 desert, without counting other translations and a considerable number 
 of shorter works of edification or controversy ; (2) Of Agnes Arnauld, 
 the Lettres published or rather collected by M. Faugere ; (3) Of 
 Antoine Arnauld, "the Doctor," one hundred and forty volumes of 
 works, the list of which is to be found in the Dictionnaire de Moreri. 
 
 We are not aware that more than two or three have been reprinted ; 
 and the only work of his that is still read is his Logique de Port- 
 Boyal [written in collaboration with Nicole], 1662. 
 
 XII. The Novel since The "Astree." 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Huet, De Vorigine des romans, preceding Mine 
 de Lafayette's Zayde, Paris, 1671; Gordon de Percel [Lenglet- 
 Dufresnoy], De I'usage des romans, % vols., Amsterdam, 1734; G. 
 Korting, Geschichte des franzosischen Bomans im XVII. Jahrhundert, 
 Oppeln and Leipsic, 1885-1887 ; A. Lebreton Le roman au XVII' 
 
 11
 
 146 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 on a subject of their own, without placing the scene of it 
 in Lisbon or Salamanca. At this juncture, there becomes 
 rampant in every branch of literature a sort of exaltation, 
 a predilection for the high-flown that amounts to extrava- 
 gance. The great Corneille in person persuades himself, 
 and proclaims in his preface to Heraclius, " that the sub- 
 ject of a fine tragedy ought to be improbable." The 
 Gascon Gautier de Costes de la Calprenede his name 
 deserves to be printed in full and Scuderi, who is from 
 Normandy, and who, moreover, in this matter only lends 
 his name to his sister Madeleine, are writing their 
 Ibrahim and their Cassandre, their Cleopdtre and their 
 Artam&ne, genuine novels of adventure, which stir the 
 
 siecle, Paris, 1890 ; P. Morillot, Le roman en France depuis, 1610 ; 
 Paris, 1893. 
 
 V. Cousin, La societe franqaise au XVII C siecle; Rathery, 
 Mademoiselle de Scudery, Paris, 1873 ; Rene Kerviler, Marin Le 
 Hoy de Gomberville, Paris, 1876. 
 
 2. THE EVOLUTION OF THE NOVEL. That the influence of Descartes 
 is no more to be discerned in the novel than in the drama ; and 
 that it hindered the novelists and their readers from adopting the 
 Astree as their standard, as little as it had affected the literary career 
 of Corneille. Can it be said that there is such a thing as a Cartesian 
 system of ./Esthetics ? [Cf. Emile Krantz, VEsthetique de Descartes, 
 Paris, 1882] ; and, in any case, the reading of the Grand Cyrus or 
 of Faramond' would never lead one to suppose that such a system 
 exists. It is the influence of preciosity that continues to make itself 
 felt in these works. 
 
 The idealist tendency of the novel in the seventeenth century ; and 
 that parodies, such as that by Sorel in his Francion, only confirm its 
 existence ; since it is only what is in fashion that is parodied. The 
 complicated plots of these works ; and, in this connection, as to the 
 connection between Corneille's tragic drama and the novels of La 
 Calprenede and Mile de Scuderi. In both cases history is put to 
 the same use, and in both cases there is the same preoccupation 
 with current events. The novelists, however, ascribe to hazard 
 what Corneille attributed to the action of the will. The epical 
 structure and the impersonal character of the novel in the seven-
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 147 
 
 imaginations of all their contemporaries, while the 
 Picaresque literature is giving birth, so to speak, to 
 burlesque under the auspices of the Scarrons, the 
 d'Assoucis, and the Saint-Amants. The Italian in- 
 fluence comes into play side by side with the Spanish. 
 Robortelli or Castelvetro is cited in justification of 
 criticisms on Corneille. The writers of epopees, ren- 
 dered prudent for half a century by the failure of 
 the Franciade, take courage again in consequence of 
 Tasso and his Gerusalemme. Mazarin acclimatises the 
 opera in France. La Fontaine, who is beginning his 
 career, completes his literary education by the study of 
 the Decameron ; Moliere produces the Etourdi ; Boileau 
 
 teenth century. Its " documentary " interest and its psychological 
 value. 
 
 A. Marin Le Roy de Gomberville. [Chevreuse or Etampes, 1599, 
 or 1600; I 1674, Paris]. His Polexandre [1629-1637]. In this 
 novel the kind of interest found in the Amadis is combined with a 
 geographical interest : the adventure of Prince Zelmatide and the 
 history of Mexico; the story of Almanzaire, Queen of Senegal ;-- 
 the adventure of the Princess Perselide and the court of Morocco ; 
 Analogy between the sort of interest offered by Polexandre and that 
 of certain " exotic " novels of our own time. 
 
 B. Gautier de Costes de la Calprenede [Cahors, 1609 or 1610 ; 1 1663, 
 Andely-sur-Seine]. A few words as to La Calprenede's dramatic 
 writings : his Mithridate, 1635 ; his Essex, 1639 ; his Hermenegilde, 
 1643. His effort to combine the sort of interest he sees is taken on 
 the one hand in Gorneille's and on the other in Du Eyer's translations. 
 The use to which history is put in La Calprenede's novels ; and 
 the sub-titles that might be given them ; Cleopdtre, or the dissolution 
 of the Roman Empire ; Faramond, or the foundation of the French 
 monarchy. The declarations of Mine de Sevigne on the subject of 
 La Calprenede. " The beauty of the sentiments, the violence of the 
 passions, the magnitude of the events, and the miraculous efficacy 
 of their redoubtable sword, all these features entrance me as ihey 
 might a young girl" [letter of July 12, 1671]; and in a letter of 
 July 15: "As to the sentiments ... I confess that they please me 
 and that their perfection is such as to satisfy my ideal of what the
 
 148 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 chides and exclaims in a tirade that will afterwards 
 disappear from his first satire : 
 
 Who can to-day, without just scorn, 
 
 See Italy in France, and Rome in Paris ! 
 
 ... I cannot without horror and without pain 
 
 See the Tiber mingling its swollen waters with the Seine, 
 
 And flooding Paris with its children, its mountebanks, 
 
 Its language, its poisons, its crimes and its manners. 
 
 Where is a trace to be found in all this of the influence of 
 Descartes and Cartesianism ? No ! it is entirely untrue 
 that the publication of the Discours de la methode was an 
 epoch-making event in the history of our literature. The 
 contemporaries of Descartes, while full of admiration for 
 
 sentiments of noble characters ought to be." Whether, too, La Cal- 
 prenede's style is as bad as Mme de Sevigne alleges it to be in the 
 same passage. That its qualities do not stand comparison with those 
 of Corneille's style ; but that the defects of both styles are identical 
 or at any rate kindred. La Calprenede's abundant imagination. 
 The whole of his art consists in exciting " astonishment," which he 
 does with success. Distant but indisputable analogy between the 
 novels of La Calprenede and those of Alexandre Dumas. 
 
 C. Madeleine de Scuderi [Le Havre, 1607 ; 1 1701, Paris]. Whether 
 her role does not consist in her having adapted preciosity to the re- 
 quirements of the middle classes ? In any case, it is a fact that she 
 vulgarised preciosity by superadding, in her Artamene, to the 
 adventures in Polexandre and to the historical details in Cleopdtre : 
 (1) allusions to and portraits of the men and women of " precious " 
 society [Cf. Cousin, Societe francaise au XVII' siecle\ ; (2) con- 
 temporary episodes ; for example, the story of Scaurus and Lydiane 
 (Scarron and Fran9oise d'Aubigne) in her Clelie ; Hesiod's dream (a 
 picture of the literature of the period) ; the description of the " country 
 of the Tender Passion" (the "Pays de Tendre ") ; and (3) a polite- 
 ness or a gallantry very superior to anything of the kind to be found 
 in La Calprenede or de Gomberville. Perspicacity of some of her 
 analysis of character. Mile de Scuderi's novels are "psychological" 
 novels. 
 
 The success of all these novels was considerable. For example, 
 there were four or five editions in less than twenty years of La
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 149 
 
 him as a mathematician, almost ignored him as a philo- 
 sopher. And if literature finally threw off the yoke of 
 all the influences that seemed in league to prevent its 
 becoming purely French, it owes its release to entirely 
 different causes, of which the first and most important 
 was the revival of the Christian idea under the guise of 
 the Jansenist idea. 
 
 For whatever difference there may be and such a 
 difference doubtless exists between the Christian and 
 the Jansenist idea, it was not detected at the outset ; 
 and while to-day it is no longer allowable for us to 
 confound the two ideas, it is a fact that they were 
 confounded for a time. It never occurred to Jansenius, 
 
 Calprenede's Cassandre. His Cleopdtre was printed by the Elzevirs, 
 a circumstance that was in itself a first step towards fame [Cf. 
 Balzac's letter to the Elzevirs reproduced in A. Willem's book, Les 
 Elzevier, Brussels, 1880]. There are German and Italian transla- 
 tions of these novels ; English imitations ; and, if Pradon is to be 
 believed, there was even a version in Arabic of the Grand Cyrus 
 [Remarques sur tous les ouvrages du sieur Despreaux, The Hague, 
 1685]. The reasons of this success are to be sought for hi the fact 
 that the romantic tone of the works was in accordance with the spirit 
 of the time ; these novels did as much as or more than more vaunted 
 works to establish the supremacy of the French language and of 
 French literature. 
 
 3. THE WORKS.' (1) Of Gomberville : Carithee, 1621 ; Polexandre, 
 1629-1637 ; Cytheree, 1640 and following years [2nd edition of the 
 earlier volumes hi 1642] ; La Jeune Alcidiane, 1651 : " This is a 
 Jansenist novel," wrote Tallemant, "for its heroes are preaching 
 sermons and offering up prayers at every turn " [Historiettes, iv. 
 467]. There is also a collection of verses by Gomberville. 
 
 (2) Of La Calprenede : Cassandre, 1642 ; CUopdtre, 1647 ; 
 Faramond, 1661, only the first three parts of which are by La 
 Calprenede. The novel was finished by P. de Vaumoriere, 1665. We 
 have already mentioned that La Calprenede wrote several tragedies. 
 
 (3) Of Madeleine de Scuderi : Ibrahim ou I'illustre Bassa, 1641 ; 
 Artameneou le Grand Cyrus, 1649-1653 ; Clelie,hitstoireromaine, 
 1654-1661. There is no doubt as to the authorship of these three
 
 150 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Saint-Cyran, Saci, Arnauld and their followers that they 
 were engaged on a different work from that of a Vincent 
 de Paul, an Olier, a Berulle, or a Francois de Sales ; and it 
 was not till later that their initial emulation in promoting 
 the good of mankind was transformed into mutual hos- 
 tility. If, moreover, as is proper in the history of ideas, 
 we understand by Jansenism less a rigorously denned 
 theological doctrine than a general manner of feeling 
 and thinking, it will be found that Jansenism is not 
 confined to the Port-Royal writers, but is also a 
 characteristic of some of their most illustrious adver- 
 saries. The style that will most closely resemble that of 
 Nicole, " a grave, serious, scrupulous style," will be the 
 
 novels, which, although they purport to be by Georges, are certainly 
 the works of Madeleine. It is less certain that she is also the 
 authoress of Almahide ou Vesclave reine, 1660-1663 [which, moreover, 
 is unfinished] ; but she certainly wrote Mathilde d'Aguilar, 1667, a 
 short novel which, with those by Segrais, published under the title 
 Les divertissements de la princesse Aurelie, 1 forms the link between 
 the long novels of this period and Zayde and the Princesse de Cleves. 
 Mile A. Scudery has also left a work entitled Conversations morales, 
 Paris, 1886 ; and an interesting Correspondence. 
 
 XIII. The Heroic Poem. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. The Prefaces to Adone, 1623; Alaric, 1654; 
 La Pucelle, 1656; Saint Louys, 1658; Boileau, Art poetique, 
 "chant" iii., 1674; Voltaire, Essai sur la poesie epique, 1728. 
 
 J. Duchesne, Histoire des poemes epiques francais du XVIF siecle, 
 Paris, 1870. 
 
 Theophile Gautier, article on Scuderi in his Grotesques. Rathery, 
 Mile de Scuderi [Cf. above]. 
 
 Chapelain, Correspondance published by M. Tamizey de Larroque 
 in the collection : Documents historiques, 1880, 1883. Les douze 
 derniers chants de la Pucelle, with an introduction by M. Rene 
 Kerviler, Orleans, 1882 ; the abbe Fabre, Les Ennemis de Chapelain, 
 Paris, 1888. 
 
 Rene Kerviler, Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin,Paris, 1879. 
 
 * Racine borrowed the subject of Bajazet from one of these short novels.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITERATURE 151 
 
 style of Father Bourdaloue. And supposing Jansenism, 
 after all, as was the case with Protestantism before it, 
 to have done the Christian idea no other service than 
 that of forcing it on the attention of polite society, the 
 achievement would be sufficient for our purpose. We are 
 not entitled to appeal from the decisions of Borne in a 
 matter of faith, nor to reopen the quarrel, nor to allege 
 that in default of Jansenism another cause would not 
 have produced its effects ; but we have the right to 
 ascribe these effects to Jansenism if it were indeed 
 responsible for them ; and to affirm that in the history 
 of our literature the victory of the Jansenist idea was the 
 triumph of the Christian idea. 
 
 H. Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des anciens et des modernes, 
 Paris, 1856 ; P. Delaporte, S.J., Le Merveilleux dans la litterature 
 francaise sous le regne de Louis XIV., Paris, 1891. 
 
 2. THE AUTHORS. Of the natural relationship between the novel 
 and the epopee ; and, in this connection, of the histories of Herodotus 
 and of Homer's Odyssey. The seventeenth century was well aware 
 of this relationship [Cf. the preface to Polexandre and Ibrahim, and 
 Boileau, Reflexions sur Longiii], On the other hand, the Heroic 
 Poerus of the period are not the outcome of a natural communication 
 between the two branches ; all their authors did was to follow in the 
 footsteps of Ronsard ; it was also their ambition to emulate the 
 European success of Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata ; and, in this 
 connection, of Tasso's influence on French literature. Finally, it was 
 the current opinion that the dignity of France demanded that the 
 country should possess its Virgils and Homers. The double error of 
 classicism : as to the necessary condition of the epopee ; and as to 
 the efficacy of rules. This double error is nowhere more apparent 
 than in the history of such efforts as Alaric or La Pucelle. Another 
 kind of interest presented by these works, failures and unreadable 
 though they be : they raised the question of the utilisation in 
 literature of themes drawn from Christianity ; and in this way, as will 
 be seen, they started the quarrel between the ancients and moderns. 
 
 A. Georges de Scuderi [Havre, 1601; f 1667, Paris]. The first 
 line of his Alaric : 
 
 I sing the conqueror of the earth's conquerors.
 
 152 MANUAL OF THE HISTOBY OF FEENCH LITERATUBE 
 
 It is in view of these considerations that the appearance 
 in 1643 of Arnauld's book La Frequente Communion marks 
 a date of importance. " No devotional book, it has been 
 said, exerted a greater influence," was more read, more 
 discussed, even by women, and for this reason, while the 
 work did not take the direction of literary opinion out of 
 the hands of the Precieuses, it contributed more than any 
 other book to divert their attention from merely agreeable 
 questions towards questions of a more serious character. 
 It appeared, too, at precisely the right moment to bar 
 the possible progress of Cartesianism by renewing the 
 authority of "tradition" the strength of which might 
 
 A mixture of history, fiction, and the marvellous; the table of 
 contents of the poem Alaric : list of the " descriptions " and list of the 
 " comparisons." The unfailing bad taste of Scuderi ; it reaches such 
 a pitch that it almost renders him witty, by leaving the impression on 
 the reader that he is parodying himself. 
 
 B. Jean Chapelain [Paris, 1595 ; \ 1674, Paris]. It would be im- 
 possible to be less "Parisian" and less "Gallic" than Chapelain, 
 though he was born in Paris, lived in Paris for eighty years, and died 
 in Paris. It is strange that anybody should have wished to revive his 
 reputation [Cf. V. Cousin, La Societe francaise, vol. ii., p. 158]. 
 His admiration for the Chevalier Marin and his preface to Adone, 
 1628 ; his translation of Guzman d'Alfarache, 1631 ; his reputation 
 as a critic ; and as a prose writer. His role in the quarrel over the 
 Cid : and that Les Sentiments de UAcademie sur le Cid is in any 
 case his best work. The character of the man ; and that he was 
 one of the most commonplace of individuals, and one of the most 
 rancorous as well. 
 
 The theme of La Pucelle ; and whether it be true, as Cousin 
 asserts, that a finer theme does not exist. Patriotism and aesthetics 
 ought not to be mixed up uselessly ; and that what Cousin admires 
 in the "plan" of La Pucelle is precisely what constitutes its 
 inferiority. Logic and Poetry. Chapelain's chief pretension : he 
 desired that his poem should be at once history, poetry, and a moral 
 allegory [Cf. his preface]. " In order to consider action under its 
 Universal aspect, in accordance with the precepts, and so as not to 
 deprive it of the allegorical sense by which Poetry is made one of the in-
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 153 
 
 have been singularly weakened had there been nothing 
 to counterbalance the influence of the Discours de la 
 niethode. Shall we add that the book was written in 
 French? In 1643, however, this circumstance, whatever 
 may have been said to the contrary, was only a novelty 
 when taken in connection with the Augustinus of Jan- 
 senius; and unhappily, as Sainte-Beuve has remarked, the 
 method adopted in the book was still wholly scholastic 
 or theological. It was reserved for Pascal to have done 
 with this method, and to bring into existence a prose that 
 should be purely French, by ranging talent or genius on 
 the side of Jansenism in his Lettres provinciales. [In 
 
 struments of architectonics, I have arranged my matter in such sort 
 that . . . France represents the Soul of man, . . . King Charles 
 the Will, . . . the Englishman and the Burgundian the transports 
 of the irascible appetite, . . . Amaury and Agnes the concupiscent 
 appetite, . . . Tanneguy the Understanding, . . . the Pucelle (Joan 
 of Arc) Divine Grace," etc. That preoccupations such as these might 
 have cooled a more ardent imagination than Chapelain's. Prosaic 
 character of his verse [Cf. his Pere eternel, ch. i. ; his portrait of 
 Agnes Sorel, ch. v. ; the description of the burning of Joan of Arc, 
 ch. xxiii.]. 
 
 That it must be well understood that in spite of the legend the 
 publication of the Pucelle in no way diminished the reputation or the 
 literary authority of Chapelain. There were six editions of his Pucelle 
 in less than two years. The work was praised in high-flown terms by 
 Godeau, Menage, Gassendi, Huet, and Montausier [Cf. Goujet, 
 Bibliotheque francaise, vol. xvii., p. 378, etc.]. It is Chapelain who is 
 chosen by Colbert in 1661 for a part that may be described as 
 " superintendent of letters" ; and the truth is that, until the time of 
 Boileau, the only reproach made the Pucelle is that it is tedious ; a 
 criticism of which Polyeucte had also been the object. 
 
 C. Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin [Paris, 1595 ; f 1676, Paris]. He 
 attempted every branch of literature : the novel, in his Ariane, 1632 ; 
 comedy, in his Visionnaircs, 1637 ; tragedy, in his Erigone, 1638 ; 
 in his Scipion, 1639 ; lyric poetry, in his Office de la Vierge, 1645 ; 
 epopee, in his Clovis, 1657. Moreover the sole interest of Clovis 
 lies in the preface to the edition of 1673, in which Desmarets, almost
 
 154 
 
 this work, and in it alone, are found united all the 
 qualities to attain to which had been the incessant effort 
 of the writers of the previous fifty years. For almost 
 the first time, the Provinciates brought within reach of 
 whoever could read those great problems, of which it 
 really seemed as if the theologians had desired to deprive 
 us of a knowledge or to hide from us the interest, by 
 overloading them with the weight of their erudition 
 and dialectics. Even that air of fashion, that ease 
 and distinction of manner, that sprightly and graceful 
 wit to which so much importance and so much mystery 
 were attached by the Precieuses, peeped forth from 
 
 for the first time, sets forth clearly the theory of " the literary uses of 
 Christianity." 
 
 There is no occasion to allude to the writers of epopee who were the 
 rivals of Desmarets and Chapelain. The Saint-Louys of Pere Le 
 Moyne has fallen into utter oblivion, and this in spite of the efforts 
 that have been made to resuscitate it. The century was already too 
 reasonable, and above all too ordered for the writing of an epopee to 
 have been possible at the period. Nevertheless, from a feeling of 
 national pride, Frenchmen will obstinately continue to produce 
 epopees from generation to generation ; and while it is the habit 
 to talk of the continuity of dramatic production ; that of pseudo- 
 epic production will remain no less regular in France. 
 
 XIV. Comedy from 1640 to 1658. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. The brothers Parfaict, Histoire dw theatre 
 franqais, vols. vi., vii., and viii. ; Lens, Dictionnaire des theatres; de 
 Puibusque, Histoire comparee des litteratures frangaise et espagnole, 
 Paris, 1843 ; L. de Viel-Castel, Essai sur le theatre espagnole in the 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, 1840, 1841, 1846 ; V. Fournel, Les con- 
 temporains de Moliere, Paris, 1863-1875. 
 
 Goujet, Bibliotheque francaise, articles SCAKRON, vol. xvii., and 
 QUINAULT, vol. xviii. ; Morillot, Scarron, sa vie et ses ceuvres, Paris, 
 1888 ; G. Eeynier, Thomas Corneille, Paris, 1892. 
 
 2. THE TRANSITION FROM CORNEILLE TO MOLIERE. Of the utility 
 of statistics ; and that they prove better than anything else that the 
 history of literature and literary history are two different matters.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITERATURE 155 
 
 amid the theology of the Lettres Provinciates. The 
 tone varied from letter to letter in accordance with the 
 changing necessities of the controversy, and great as 
 might be the gulf between direct and personal satire and 
 the highest eloquence, the author bridged it with a 
 successful mastery, of which it is no exaggeration to say 
 that it enraptured the reader. No comedy that had ever 
 been put on the stage had produced so delightful an 
 impression. No more eloquent utterance had ever been 
 made even from the pulpit. Moreover, if the necessity 
 were felt of opposing to the corruption of manners, to the 
 growing relaxation of the discipline formerly in force, not 
 
 During the twenty years. 1640-1660, there were played or printed 
 more than two hundred tragedies, tragi-comedies, comedies or 
 pastoral plays ; how many of them have survived ? or of how 
 many of the authors are the names remembered ? It would seem, 
 then, that between the Menteur and Les Precieuses ridicules there 
 was nothing but ... a void ; which accounts for the honour that is 
 accorded the Menteur of having paved the way for the comedy of 
 Moliere. What is to be thought of this allegation [Cf. Les epoques du 
 theatre francais}. That in reality something did take place between 
 1640 and 1660 ; and that what it was may be gathered from the 
 statistics themselves. 
 
 Tragedy continues to gain ground ; and of the two hundred plays 
 referred to it claims scarcely less than a half ; among which are 
 included Horace, Cinna, Polyeucte, Pompee, Rodogune, Heraclius, to 
 say nothing of Theodore or Pertharite ; and much below these, but 
 still of a certain rank, the Saint-Gencst, 1646 ; the Wenceslas, 1647 ; 
 the Cosroes, 1649, of Eotrou ; the Saiil, 1639, and the Scevole, 1646, 
 of Du Byer ; the Mort de Seneque, 1644 ; the Mort de Crispe, 1645 ; 
 and the Mort du Grand Osman, 1647, of Tristan 1'Hermite. Tragi- 
 comedy, on the other hand, with only fifty plays during the same 
 period, loses ground ; while it is comedy that makes progress at its 
 expense. According to the exact figures given by the brothers 
 Parfaict, from thirty-nine plays [1639-1646] tragi-comedy falls to 
 sixteen [1646-1653] and then to twelve [1653-1660], while comedy 
 advances from eighteen to tiventy-five and from twenty-five to twenty - 
 eight. Conclusion : plays of a clearly defined order are ousting and 
 will soon entirely supplant those of a hybrid or doubtful kind.
 
 156 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 indeed a new morality, but rather a morality of which 
 some even of those whose mission it was to teach it 
 were oblivious, it was just this morality that was con- 
 tained in the Provinciates. And finally and above all 
 I only speak from the point of view of literature if the 
 aspiration of the moment was to be natural, and the 
 efforts in this direction had as yet been unavailing; if 
 a mistake had been made hitherto as to the means by 
 which this end was to be attained, the Provinciates were 
 at once the signal and the model that had been awaited. 
 " The first book of genius to appear in prose, Voltaire has 
 said, was the collection of the Lettres provinciates " ; and 
 
 But while the true nature of tragedy has been determined by the 
 masterpieces of Corneille, comedy is hesitating between two or three 
 directions ; writers have discovered the art of drawing tears ; they 
 are still in search of that of provoking laughter. Thomas Corneille 
 [1625 ; f 1709] endeavours to solve the problem by putting on the 
 stage romantic and complicated adventures ; Philippe Qtiinault 
 [1635 ; f 1688] by combining a realism of detail that is suggestive of 
 the humbleness of his birth ; with an insipid gallantry that gives a 
 foretaste of his operas ; Paul Scarron [1610 ; f 1660] by what Moliere 
 will term his " buffoonery," that is by the most exaggerated caricature, 
 when he does not have recourse to obscenity. Moreover all three 
 writers continue to go to Spain for their models. Dom Japhet 
 d'Armenie, 1652, is an adaptation of a comedy by Moreto. Les 
 Rivales, 1653, is merely a fresh version of Rotrou's Pucelles, which 
 itself is said to have been borrowed from Lope de Vega ; Le charme 
 de la voix, 1653, is an imitation of a comedy by Moreto. It seems as 
 if all these authors had "eyes that see not" and "ears that hear 
 not"; and hence it is that, in a certain sense, all these dramas are 
 merely of interest to the curious. 
 
 Still they accustom the public to distinguish between the elements 
 of its pleasure, with a view to experiencing a pleasure that shall be 
 keener and more complete ; and the fact is it is only Eabelais that 
 makes us laugh and cry at the same time. The public is about to set 
 its face against the mixing up of the different branches of the drama ; 
 an attitude that constitutes a first step towards naturalness. The 
 language also becomes more natural ; it grows more supple, more
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 157 
 
 a little further on he makes " the fixing of the language " 
 coincide with the issue of this work. This assertion is 
 excellent as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. 
 Another and still more important period dates from 
 the issue of the Provinciates that of the determina- 
 tion of the characteristics of classic literature and of the 
 classic ideal. 
 
 The sun has arisen, let the stars retire ! 
 
 Were it not that this line of Scuderi's is slightly ridicu- 
 lous, this would be the appropriate time and place to cite 
 it. The "naturalness" of the Provinciates made no im- 
 
 diversified ; the vocabulary of Thomas Corneille is copious ; Quinault 
 is fluent ; Scarron is often spirited ; and, in this connection, a com- 
 parison between the comedy of L'Ecolier de Salamanque or of Dom 
 Japliet d'Armenie and that of Buy Bias or of Tragaldabas. Finally 
 even a taste for the burlesque necessitates a measure of observation ; 
 since a caricature is only good when it offers a resemblance with 
 what is caricatured. 
 
 3. THE WORKS : of Scarron : Jodelet ou le maitre valet, 1645 ; 
 Les trois Dorothees, 1646 ; of Th. Corneille : Les engagements 
 du hasard, 1647 ; Le Feint Astrologue, 1648 ; of Scarron : L'Heritier 
 ridicule, 1649 ; Th. Corneille : Don Bertrand de Cigarral, 1650 ; 
 Iu 'Amour a la mode, 1651 ; Scarron : Dom Japhet d'Arrnenie, 
 1653 ; Th. Corneille : Le Berger extravagant, 1653 ; Le Charme de 
 la voix, 1653 ; Quinault : Les Rivales, 1653 ; Scarron : L'Ecolier de 
 Salamanque, 1654 : Th. Corneille : Les Illustres Ennemis, 1654 ; 
 Quiuault : L'Amant indiscret, 1654 ; Scarron : Le Gardien de soi- 
 meme, 1655 ; Th. Corneille : Le Geolier de soi-meme, 1655 ; Quinault 
 La Comedie sans comedie, 1655 ; Scarron : Le Marquis ridicule, 1656. 
 
 The best edition of Scarron is that published by Welstein in seven 
 volumes, Amsterdam, 1752; of Thomas Corneille, that by David in 
 five volumes, Paris, 1748 ; and of Quinault, that by Duchesne in five 
 volumes, Paris, 1778. 
 
 XV. Burlesque. 
 
 It would be sufficient to mention burlesque and then to refer the 
 reader to Boileau, were there not three remarks to be made with
 
 158 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 pression upon the men of the preceding generation, upon 
 the aged Corneille, for example ; and when the author of 
 the Cid, after having stood aloof from the theatre for six 
 years, resumes writing for the stage in 1659, it will be 
 with his (Edipe, to be followed shortly afterwards by his 
 Sertorius or his Othon ! On the other hand, to all the 
 young and ardent writers the Lettres Provinciales were a 
 revelation. 
 
 Shall I say that Bossuet himself was, as it were, 
 transformed by the work? The expression might seem 
 somewhat strong; and yet, seeing that his eloquence 
 never made greater progress than in passing from his first 
 
 respect to the origin of this branch of literature ; its true character ; 
 and its consequences : 
 
 (1) It is of neither French nor Gallic origin ; and Saint- Amant, 
 Scai'ron and d'Assouci in no wise continued the tradition of Rabelais. 
 It is in the main of Italian [Cf. Vianey, Mathurin Regnier, Paris, 
 1896] ; and in part of Spanish origin [Cf. the entire series of the 
 Picaresque Romances] . 
 
 With regard to its true character, one is tempted to connect it with 
 preciosity. Voiture in his " petty " verse [Cf. A une demoiselle qui 
 avail les manches de sa chemise retroussees et sales, and the verses 
 A Mile de Bourbon qui avait pris medecine], displayed a tendency 
 towards burlesque ; while Saint-Amant and Scarron were members 
 of "precious" society. The Precieux aimed at being more refined 
 than nature and truth ; the writers of burlesque at exaggerating 
 nature and truth ; but both classes of writers belong to the school 
 whose motto we quoted above : 
 
 Chi non sa far stupir, vada alia striglia . . . 
 
 Their object is to excite admiration ; and the means all of them 
 employ to this end is to excite astonishment. 
 
 Finally, an important consequence of burlesque was to break up 
 the party of the libertines into two groups : on the one side the 
 Scarrons or the Saint-Amants, who will put up with anything pro- 
 vided they be free to follow their humour ; on the other those who 
 care less for being at liberty to live as they choose, than for the right 
 to think as they please.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 159 
 
 manner to his second, between 1653 and 1658 from the 
 Sermon sur la bonte et la rigueur de Dieu to the Panegyrique 
 de saint Paul, how can one refrain from noting that this 
 progress coincides exactly with the moment at which the 
 Lettres Provinciates were at the height of their vogue? 
 It was the example of Pascal, too, that liberated the 
 genius of Boileau, since, as we are aware, his first Satires 
 were composed between 1658 and 1660, while, in addition, 
 the admiration Boileau will entertain for the Provinciales 
 throughout his life is no secret. The truth is, it is this 
 book that will convert him in the end to Jansenism ! In 
 the meantime, however, it is also the Provinciales that 
 
 XVI. Blaise Pascal [Clermont-Ferrand, 1623; f 1662 Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Mme Perier (Gilberte Pascal), Vie de Pascal, 
 1684 ; Bayle, Dictionnaire, article PASCAL, 1696 ; Condorcet, Eloge 
 de Pascal, in his collected works, 1776 ; Bossut, Discours sur la vie 
 et les ouvrages de M. Pascal, 1779 ; Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, vols. ii. 
 and iii. ; Victor Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, 1844 ; Lelut, VAmulette 
 de Pascal, 1846 ; Gazier, Le Roman de Pascal, in the Revue 
 politique et litteraire, November 24, 1877 ; J. Bertrand, Blaise 
 Pascal, Paris, 1891 ; Ch. Adam, Pascal and Mile de Roannez, Dijon, 
 1891. 
 
 Bauny, Somme des pecJies qui se commettent en tons etats, 1630 ; 
 Caramuel y Lobkowiez, Tlieologia moralis ad clarissima principia 
 reducta, 1643 ; Escobar, Liber tlieologia moralis, 1656, Paris, 42nd 
 edition ; the Notices preceding most of the editions of the Pro- 
 vinciales ; Reponses aux Lettres provinciates, 1657, by Fathers 
 Annat, Nouet and Brisacier, S.J. ; Daniel, S. J., Entretiens de 
 Cleandre et d'Eudoxe, 1694; Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, vol. iii. 
 
 Garasse, Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits, 1623 ; Et. Perier, 
 Preface (anonymous) to the first edition of the Pensees, 1670 ; 
 Voltaire, Remarques sur les Pensees de M. Pascal, 1728-1734 ; 
 Boullier, Sentiments sur la critique des Pensees de Pascal, 1741 ; 
 Condorcet's edition of the Pensees, 1776 ; the Notices preceding the 
 editions of the Pensees from that of Frantin, Dijon, 1835, to that 
 of M. Guthlin, Paris, 1896; A. Vinet, Etudes sur Blaise Pascal,
 
 160 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 open, or unseal, so to speak, the eyes of Moliere. For the 
 date of the Etourdi is 1653, and that of the Depit amoureux 
 1655 ; but by what masterpiece in its class were these 
 imbroglios in the Italian manner followed in their turn ? 
 It is clear that Moliere, Boileau and Bossuet read the 
 Lettres provinciales. But supposing we had no proof of 
 this, there would remain the fact that the Provinciales, 
 by completing the purification of the literary atmosphere 
 of the time, and sweeping from it the last obscuring 
 clouds, at any rate, by rendering them possible, paved the 
 way for almost all the masterpieces that are about to 
 succeed the work of Pascal. The Provinciales founded a 
 
 1833-1844 [collected in a single volume, 1848] ; Victor Cousin, 
 Etudes sur Pascal, Paris, 1842, 1844 ; Saint-Beuve, Port-Royal, 
 vol. iii. ; abbe Maynard, Pascal, sa vie, son caractere et ses ecrits, 
 Paris, 1890 ; G. Dreydorst, Pascal, sein Leben und seine Kampfe, 
 Leipsic, 1870 ; Gory, Les Pensees de Pascal considerees comme 
 apologie du christianisme, Paris, 1883 ; Edouard Droz, Etude sur 
 Ic scepticisme de Pascal, Paris, 1886 ; Sully Prudhomme, La pliilo- 
 sopliie de Pascal, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July, October, 
 and November, 1890. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. Diversity of the opinions that 
 have been formed on Pascal. Some [Voltaire and Condorcet] have 
 regarded him as a mere "fanatic," or at least as a "sectary"; 
 others have made him out to be a " mystic " ; others [Sainte-Beuve] 
 a semi- Romanticist, by fits and starts a believer and an unbeliever. 
 There have also been critics who have reproached him with " scepti- 
 cism " [Cf. V. Cousin, Etudes sur Pascal; and in the contrary sense, 
 Droz, Etude sur le scepticisme de Pascal, p. 18, etc.], and, in this 
 connection, of the numerous false ideas on literary questions put in 
 circulation by V. Cousin. That this diversity of interpretation is 
 solely due : to the mutilated state in which the Pensees have come 
 down to us ; to the mistaken view according to which the Pensees 
 are regarded as Pascal's " confession," whereas they are only the 
 material for a work of Christian apologetics ; and to the insufficient 
 attention that has been given to the fact that Pascal's life was broken 
 up into several successive periods. 
 
 Pascal's birth. His family ; his education ; precociousness of
 
 school of writers who were to take nature for their model, 
 a school that is equidistant from the stiltedness of Balzac 
 and the preciosity of Voiture, authors whose character- 
 istics were determined in each case by the ambition to 
 ornament, embellish, and disguise nature ; and thus 
 it came about, by one of those ironies frequent in 
 history, that it was the man who of all our great 
 writers was most hostile to nature, and even to reason 
 owing to his uncompromising moral attitude, that 
 it was nevertheless this man who had the chief hand 
 in influencing Moliere and Boileau, and I now add 
 La Fontaine and Eacine, in the direction of " the 
 
 his genius [Cf. J. Bertrand, Pascal] ; his Traite des sections coniques, 
 1639 ; his arithmetical machine, 1642 ; his experiments on vacant 
 space, 1646 ; and that these efforts afford sufficient evidence of the 
 great inventive talent, the possession of which has been foolishly 
 denied him [Cf. a diatribe by Nodier in his Questions de litterature 
 legate], His conversion to Jansenism, 1646 ; and his first serious 
 illness [Cf . Mine Perier, Vie de Pascal] ; first relations with the 
 Port-Eoyal. Pascal's experience of society, 1649-1653 ; his rela- 
 tions with the Chevalier de Mere and the Due de Roannez. 
 The alleged romance in the life of Pascal. Was Pascal a 
 " gambler " as Saint-Beuve has asserted ; " handsome, a physical 
 sufferer, a mixture of languidness and ardour, impetuous and delibe- 
 rate, proud and melancholy " as Cousin sketches him ; or, as another 
 writer holds, had he an ambition to play a part in politics [Cf. 
 Derome in his edition of the Provinciales]. That without these 
 suppositions we can understand his having studied the theory of 
 probabilities ; his having written the Discours sur les passions de 
 V amour, supposing it to be indeed his work ; and his being the 
 author of the remarks which Nicole has collected under the title Dis- 
 cours sur la condition des grands. Pascal's second conversion, 
 1654 ; and that it is to be regarded as a passage from a religion 
 allowing some freedom of observance to a stricter religion. His visits 
 to Port-Koyal. The influence his sister Jacqueline obtains over him 
 [Cf. V. Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, and in particular the two letters of 
 Sister Sainte-Euphemie (Jacqueline) to Mme Perier, p. 240, etc.]. 
 Whether the Entretien avec M. de Saci is to be ascribed to this 
 
 12
 
 162 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 imitation of nature" and of respect for the "rights of 
 reason." 
 
 It is impossible to imagine two geniuses more unlike 
 than the genius of Moliere and that of Racine, unless 
 indeed it be yet more difficult to draw a parallel 
 between the heedless Epicureanism of La Fontaine and 
 the middle-class staidness of Boileau. And yet, in spite 
 of their dissimilarity, these four great men not only knew 
 and appreciated each other, but were united by a real 
 affection ; and the hostelry, whose name has not come 
 down to us, where Bonsard and Du Bellay met on a day 
 in the year 1548, is not more famous in literary history 
 
 period ; his invention of the dray ; of the wheel-barrow ; he hits 
 on the idea of omnibuses. Definite conversion and entry into Port- 
 Royal, 1655. The miracle of the Holy Thorn, March, 1656 [Cf. 
 Jacqueline Pascal], Whether it was not at this juncture that Pascal 
 planned writing his Pensees, but was hindered from executing his 
 design owing to circumstances inducing him to produce the Pro- 
 vinciales ? Advantages of this hypothesis. It explains at once the 
 growing boldness of the Provinciales from the sixth and seventh 
 onwards; and, in the later Letters, the close and too little heeded 
 connection there is between the conclusion of the Provinciales and 
 the general scheme of the Pensees. 
 
 The question of fact in the first three Letters, and that it is of 
 slight importance. The way in which Pascal, by changing his tactics 
 from the fourth letter onwards, raised the real question at issue, 
 which concerned the essence of the matter in dispute, and put it on 
 its proper ground. The point to be decided was whether the Jesuits 
 or the Jansenists should direct opinion ; and, more generally, 
 whether an almost " society " morality should triumph or an uncom- 
 promising morality [Cf., in the Pensees, the fragment entitled : Com- 
 paraison des premiers Chretiens et de ceux daujourd'hui\. It may 
 be that Pascal, while - he was right in attacking the excesses of 
 Probabilisrn, made a mistake in scoffing at the same time at casuistics ; 
 and that this mistake is of far graver import than the fact that he 
 tampered with some few quotations. For in the place of the few 
 quotations of which the absolute exactitude is open to question, he 
 could have found a score of others ; whereas, although he may have
 
 163 
 
 than that classic tavern of the " Mouton Blanc," at 
 which foregathered Ariste and Gelaste, Acanthe and 
 Polyphile. What was there in common between the 
 four friends ? Merely two or three ideas, and no more, 
 but two or three ideas that were fruitful. All four 
 of them believed that the essential principle of art 
 consists in the imitation of nature, and, in this con- 
 nection, I have been at pains to show, on more than 
 one occasion, that what the four admired in the ancients 
 was the fidelity with which they had imitated nature 
 [Cf. Evolution des genres, vol. i., Paris, 1889]. It was 
 not at all because they were the ancients that they 
 
 won over to his severity a few souls of exceptional purity, he ran the 
 risk of offending others of less purity, but souls for all that [Cf . Sainte- 
 Beuve, Port-Royal, bk. iii., the chapter on the morality of the 
 average man]. The Provinciales, from the fourth to the fifteenth 
 inclusive, went near to ruining the moral credit of the Jesuits ; but 
 they would have proved as well the destruction of a part of religion 
 itself ; had not the scheme of the forthcoming Pensees come into 
 sight in the three last Letters. 
 
 The first edition of the Pensees, 1670 ; and the successive additions 
 to the text : in 1727 [letter of the bishop of Montpellier to the 
 bishop of Soissons] ; in 1728 [Pere Desmolet's Memoires de littera- 
 ture et d'histoire], in 1776 [Condorcet's edition], in 1779 [Bossut's 
 edition], in 1841 [V. Cousin's observations], in 1844 [Faugere's 
 edition], in 1879 [Molinier's edition]. Is it possible to determine 
 the plan of the Apology projected by Pascal ? Efforts in this 
 direction of Frantin, 1835 ; Faugere, 1844 ; Astie, 1856 ; Eocher, 
 1873 ; Molinier, 1879. That they have all failed, as all similar 
 attempts will fail, so far as arranging the fragments of the unfinished 
 book in their proper place is concerned. But it is possible to form a 
 general idea of the projected work ; the spirit in which such an idea 
 is to be conceived is given by the spirit of the Augustinus itself ; 
 admitting Pascal's Pensees to be the fragments of a Jansenist work of 
 apologetics. To the Augustinus are to be added among the books 
 read by Pascal : Montaigne's Essais ; Charron's Sagexse ; Du Vair's 
 Epictete and Sainte Philosophic ; Balzac's Lettres and Traites. This 
 list indicates as it were the worldly element [the element of a nature
 
 164 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 admired them, and they have said so clearly enough : 
 " The ancients are the ancients and we are the men of 
 the present day"; but they admired them "for having 
 excelled in hitting off nature," doubtless because they 
 were nearer to nature : Novitas turn florida mundi \ 
 They believed, in the second place, that to allow that 
 the imitation of nature is the principle or the "begin- 
 ning " of art, is to declare in plain language that it is 
 not the object or the "end" of art, and they held 
 that a writer fails to fulfil his mission or his function, if 
 he does not " improve on nature," as Bossuet is about to 
 put it: he did not say "embellish" nature! And they 
 
 to persuade society] he added to the arguments of the Augustinus. 
 His own more especially personal addition consisted in his desire to 
 convert the " libertines," whom he had had an opportunity of 
 becoming acquainted with and even of frequenting .while he moved in 
 society ; and in his conviction that, in connection with the miracle 
 of the Holy Thorn, he had been the object of a special Divine inter- 
 vention. If, after this, we keep in view the succession of dates, that 
 is : 1654, the Entretien avec M. de Sad ; 1655, his entry into Port- 
 Eoyal ; 1656, the miracle of the Holy Thorn ; 1657, the last Pro- 
 vinciales; and 1658 or 1659, the sketch of the plan of his Apology 
 as transmitted us by his nephew, Etienne Perier, we are in a position 
 to picture Pascal's scheme very much as follows : 
 
 Everything within us and around us bears loud witness to our 
 misery; and whether it be in the feebleness of our frame, or in 
 the vices of the organisation of society, or in the impotence of our 
 reason ; we are confronted by nothing but motives for despair. To 
 what, then, is to be ascribed the protest that arises from the depths 
 of this despair itself ? the fact that on this account, we form an 
 exception in nature ? and the invincible confidence we have that a 
 better destiny awaits us ? We shall obtain a solution of these prob- 
 lems if we accept the doctrine of original sin, the obligation we are 
 under to expiate it, and the doctrine of the redemption, three 
 points of dogma which, it will be remarked, are the essence of 
 Christianity. It may be that we are averse to accepting these 
 doctrines ? In that case let us reflect, that to believe in them is 
 sufficient in itself to allow of us being as good men as human frailty
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 165 
 
 believed, in the last place, that the surest means to 
 achieve this purpose, or, if I may be allowed this rather 
 pedantic expression, to evolve this " end " from this 
 "principle" was to make form or style the perpetual 
 object of their concern. 
 
 It is this community of ideas that is to be met with at 
 every turn, in Boileau's satires as in Moliere's comedies, 
 in the prefaces of Racine as in the confessions of La Fon- 
 taine. And the aims of the four writers were novel in the 
 extreme if they be considered merely in connection with 
 the ideas of their contemporaries, but the novelty dis- 
 appears if it be a fact that the goal they had set themselves 
 
 will permit ; that these dogmas, too, were foreshadowed by the Old 
 Testament, announced by the prophets, confirmed by miracles ; 
 and finally, that if our reason will not admit them, we can at any 
 rate accept them by an effort of the will. 
 
 That there is not a single fragment of the Pensees, that does not tend 
 to establish some one of the preceding propositions ; though to 
 thoroughly realise this fact, it must be borne in mind that Pascal's 
 apology, as he himself conceived it, was directed at once against the 
 libertines ; the philosophers, the Jesuits, and the Jews. Im- 
 portance of this remark. Of the present day value of the Pensees as a 
 work of apologetics. [Cf. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, vol. iii. appendix, 
 and A. Gory, Les Pensees de Pascal considerees comme apologie du 
 christianisme, Paris, 1883], Of certain fresh facts which need to be 
 taken into account in modern apologetics ; and, in this connection, of 
 the science of the comparative study of religions. Of the remarkable 
 confirmation of Pascal's apologetics afforded by the Pessimism of 
 Schopenhauer ; and by the doctrine of evolution [Cf. Brunetiere, La 
 moralite de la doctrine evolutive, Paris, 1896], That the moral 
 value of Pascal's apology subsists in its entirety, so far as rational 
 certitude is not the only mode or the only species of certitude ; 
 as man is not born good ; and as nothing human is organised on 
 purely human principles. 
 
 Of Pascal's style, and that there is nothing in French superior to 
 certain of the Provinciales ; unless it be certain fragments of the 
 Pensees. Whether his style lacks grace, or (so as to avoid seeming to 
 play upon words) tenderness and sweetness ? But, in any case, his
 
 166 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 was that towards which literature had been tending for 
 something like a hundred years. After a century of 
 tentative efforts, during which French writers had 
 addressed themselves in turn to the ancients, to the 
 Italians, to the Spaniards, for means to achieve a purpose 
 as to the nature of which they were a good deal in the 
 dark, the goal was at last in sight, and to reach it all 
 that had to be done was to cease imitating the Spaniards 
 or Italians, and, following the example of the ancients, 
 to stand face to face with nature. " The imitation 
 of nature is the chief matter, an illustrious painter 
 will declare at a later period, and the only object of all 
 
 style ranges from the most familiar simplicity to the loftiest 
 eloquence. " Pascal's rhetoric, 1 ' and that it does not consist 
 in entirely dispensing with rhetoric ; but in making rhetorical 
 expedients serve to their own destruction ; and in only having 
 recourse to art to attain to a more faithful imitation of nature. Of 
 the sentiment of the mysterious in Pascal's prose ; of his way of 
 intervening in person in the cause he is pleading ; of his profound 
 sensibility; and of the "poetic" qualities that result from the 
 mingling of all these elements. Of sundry other qualities of Pascal's 
 style : its sharpness and conciseness, its copiousness, and its 
 " compactness.' 1 Sainte-Beuve's remark: "Pascal, an admirable 
 writer when he completes the expression of his thought, is a yet 
 greater writer in his unfinished utterances." 
 
 3. THE WORKS. We shall only make a passing reference to 
 Pascal's scientific works, of which we may cite the Essais pour les 
 coniques, 1640 ; Avis a ceux qui verront la machine arithmetique, 
 1645 ; Experiences touchant le vide, 1647 ; Eecit de la grande 
 experience de I'equilibre des liqueurs, 1648 ; Traite du triangle 
 arithmetique, 1654 ; and his writings relating to roulette, 1658 
 [Cf. A. Desboves, Etude sur Pascal et les Geometres conteniporains, 
 Paris, 1878]. 
 
 The principal editions of the Provinciales and of the Pensees are : 
 
 Of the Provinciales ; the original editions, 1656-1657, the artificial 
 
 selections of which differ from each other to a considerable extent ; 
 
 the Latin translation issued by Nicole under the name of Wendrock, 
 
 1658 ;- the Cologne edition published by Nicolas Schouten in 1659 ;
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 167 
 
 rules is to enable us to imitate nature the more easily " 
 [Cf. a lecture by Oudry in Watelet's Dictionnaire des 
 Beaux-Arts, vol. i., Paris, 1760]. A final coincidence, 
 of the kind which, because they cannot be foreseen, 
 lend history its varying and ever novel attractiveness, 
 was destined to prevent this principle being responsible 
 for the abusive consequences it might otherwise have 
 involved : Mazarin had just died ; Anne of Austria was 
 about to follow him into the tomb; and Louis XIV., by 
 three or four master strokes, had inaugurated his per- 
 sonal government. 
 
 Maynard's edition, Paris, 1851, Firuiin-Didot ; Derome's edition) 
 Paris, 1880-1885, Gamier ; Molinier's edition, Paris, 1891, Lemerre ; 
 Faugere's edition, Paris, 1886-1895, Hachette. 
 
 Of the Pensees : the original edition, Paris, 1669-1670, of which at 
 least five examples offering a certain dissimilarity are known ; Con- 
 dorcet's edition, Paris, 1776 ; Frantin's edition, Dijon, 1835, Lagier ; 
 Faugere's edition, Paris, 1844, Andrieux ; Havet's edition, Paris, 
 1852, 1887, Dezobry and Delagrave ; Astie's edition, Lausanne, 1857, 
 Bridel ; Bocher's edition, Tours, 1873, Mame ; Molinier's edition, 
 Paris, 1879, Lemerre ; Guthlin's edition, Paris, 1896, Lethielleux ; 
 Michaut's edition, Friburgi Helvetioruin, 1896 ; and Brunschwieg's 
 edition, Paris, 1897, Hachette. 
 
 None of these editions is an exact reproduction of that which 
 preceded it, and there is not one of them that should not be consulted 
 for special reasons : theological, critical, literary, or paleological. 
 
 With the Pensees are usually given some opuscules of which the 
 most important are: VEntretien avec M. de Sad; Trois discours 
 sur la condition des grands ; De Vesprit geometrique ; the Preface 
 du Traite du vide ; and the Lettres a Mile de Roannez.
 
 168 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 II 
 
 At this period the great king was young, gallant, and 
 addicted to ostentatious splendour; there was nothing 
 formal, solemn, or pompous about his youthful court, 
 which bore no resemblance whatever to the idea that is 
 formed of it by the study of what it became in later years. 
 
 FIFTH PERIOD 
 
 From the first performance of the "Precieuse Ridicules" 
 to the "beginning of the quarrel between the ancients 
 and moderns 
 
 1659-1687 
 
 L Frangois [vi.], Due de la Rochefoucald [Paris, 1613; 
 
 1 1680, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. La Rochefoucauld himself in his Me moires [Cf. 
 Memoires du cardinal de Retz and Lettres de Mme de Sevigne] ; 
 Sainte-Beuve, Portraits de femmea [Mine de Longueville, Mme de 
 Sable, Mme de La Fayette, M. de la Rochefoucauld], 1840; V. 
 Cousin, Madame de Sable, 1858 ; Ed. de Barthelemy, Lea amis de 
 Mme de Sable, Paris, 1865 ; Gilbert's Notice sur La Rochefoucauld 
 preceding his edition of the Works, Paris, 1858 ; d'Haussonville, 
 Madame de La Fayette, Paris, 1891 ; J. Bourdeau, La Rochefoucauld, 
 Paris, 1893. 
 
 A. Viuet, Les Moralistes frangais au XVII s siecle: La Roche- 
 foucauld, 1837; Prevost-Paradol, Etudes sur les Moralistes francais, 
 1865. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. His family and his entry into 
 society ; where he reads novels aloud. The " ladies' favourite " : 
 he is indebted for his first successes to the Duchesse de Chevreuse ; 
 he endangers his fortunes by his adventure with the Duchesse de 
 Longueville ; he finds consolation for the shattering of his ambitions 
 in his close friendship with the Marquise de Sable ; and he spends 
 the last years of his life, which was that of an Epicurean, at the side 
 of the Comtesse de La Fayette. To this amatory and society
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 169 
 
 In proof of this, it is only necessary to consult the eye- 
 witnesses of the beginning of the reign : Mme de Motteville 
 in her Memoires, Mme de La Fayette in her Histoire de 
 Madame Henriette, Montglat, Loret in his Gazette, Bussy 
 in his Histoire des Gaules, and finally Moliere, Moliere 
 himself, the adroit Moliere, in his account of the Pleasures 
 of the Enchanted Island (Plaisirs de Vile enchantee). 
 After the rather melancholy and even surly restraint 
 of the preceding reign, on the morrow of the futile 
 
 experience add that of politics; or at least of intrigue; and the 
 qualities or the defects of a nobleman who is at the same tune a man 
 of letters, which are : the superiority that accompanies good breeding 
 and taste ; the constant fear of being duped ; independence of spirit ; 
 and impertinence [Cf. Fenelon and Chateaubriand]. 
 
 How the book of Maxims was written, and that it is a quintessence 
 of the " precious " spirit. Mme de Sable's dinners, her " soups" and 
 her " preserves " [Cf. Cousin, Mme de Sable, pp. 105, etc]. The way 
 in which the Maximes were raved over in Mme de Sable's salon. This 
 vogue was due, so far as the subject matter of the Maxims is 
 concerned, to the same intellectual tendencies that prompted the 
 psychological analysis in Mile de Scuderi's novels ; and so far as 
 their style is concerned, to the prevailing taste at the Hotel de 
 Rambouillet. La Rochefoucauld's early writings : his Portrait par 
 lui-meme, 1659 ; his Memoires, 1662 ; and, in this connection, of 
 the state of mind of a man who publishes his memoirs during his life- 
 time. The preparatory stages through which the Maximes passed. 
 They are communicated to the author's friends [Cf. Gilbert, hi his 
 edition, vol. i., pp. 372-398] ; they are even made public without being 
 actually published [Cf. Willems, Etude sur la l re edition des Maximes, 
 1864]. Whether this manner of sounding opinion was as common 
 as some have alleged ? 
 
 Of the value of the Maximes, and that it has been strongly overrated. 
 Does La Rochefoucauld possess a system or merely a " doctrine " ? 
 That if he possess one, it merely consists in blaming men in general 
 for the defects of his own character. The Maximes do no more than 
 sum up his own experience of life ; and his experience is limited in 
 three directions ; by his immense ignorance ; by the comparative 
 narrowness of the circle in which he moved ; and by his indifference 
 to momentous questions. Some of his maxims are commonplace
 
 170 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 though disastrous troubles of the Fronde, the court, the 
 sovereign, and his youthful following of brilliant men 
 and women were bent on amusement, eager for pleasure 
 and possessed by an almost frenzied desire to taste life 
 to the full. In what Mme de Motteville described as 
 the " enchanted " gardens of Versailles and Fontaine- 
 bleau, a thousand intrigues began and ended, compli- 
 cated and crossed each other, to the indignation of 
 the cross-grained champions of virtue, of those whom 
 
 [Cf. Gilbert's edition, Max. 2, 31, 79, 132, 134, 174, etc.]. Repetitions 
 in the Maximes [Cf. on the subject of love, 74, 76, 77, 136, or on the 
 subject of fortune, 53, 57, 58, 60, 165, 470]. Absence of composition 
 and order in the Maximes. The style of the Maximes and its con- 
 formity of idea with the " precious " style [Cf. 4, 115, 175, 252, 355, 
 etc.]. Whether this preciosity does not degenerate hi places into 
 nonsense [Cf. 69, 78, 97]. But there remain a few maxims that 
 deserve their reputation : for real ingeniousness [Cf. 165, 182, 218] ; 
 for vivacity [Cf. 19, 367, 370] ; and above all for clearness. That 
 this last quality, which, up to then, had been extremely rare, doubt- 
 less assured the success of the book. 
 
 Did La Rochefoucauld collaborate with Mme de La Fayette ? The 
 statement in Segraisiana: " Mme de La Fayette used to say of M. de 
 La Rochefoucauld : ' I have to thank him for my wit, but it is I who 
 regenerated his heart.' " The earlier novels of Mme de La Fayette : 
 La Princesse de Montpensier, 1660 ; Zayde, 1670 ; La Princesse de 
 Cleves, 1672 ; Mme de Scuderi's evidence on this point [Cf . Cor- 
 respondance de B ussy- Bab utin, Lalanne's edition, iii. 340], and 
 confusion must be avoided between Mme de Scuderi, the wife of 
 Georges, and Madeleine, her sister-in-law. That after a thorough 
 examination it is difficult to find any trace of the hand of La 
 Rochefoucauld in the Princesse de Cleves; that it is merely true 
 that both the Princesse de Cleves and the Maximes are natural 
 off-shoots of the "precious 5 ' spirit, though of a slightly different 
 order ; and that there is no trace either in the one or in the other 
 of " Cartesianisrn'' ; while it is easy to point to traces of " Jansenism " 
 in them [Cf. the preface to the first edition]. 
 
 Of La Rochefoucauld's place in the literature of his time ; and of 
 the impropriety there would be in making him out " a great writer." 
 A "great writer" is always abundant and fertile, and above all offers
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 171 
 
 Moliere attacked in Tar tuff e t perhaps with the consent 
 of the king and in any case greatly to his satisfaction. 
 It seemed says an historian, whose idea I should be loth 
 to borrow without giving it in his own words "it seemed 
 as if pleasure were eager to encircle with its garlands and 
 to deck with its flowers the throne whose possession it was 
 jealously disputing with fame " [Cf. Walckenaer, Memoires 
 sur Madame de Sevigne, vol. ii., Paris, 1844] . The time 
 passed in a perpetual succession of banquets, repasts, 
 
 greater variety than La Eochefoucauld did. That on this account, 
 and in every sense of the word, he may be called " a writer of rare 
 talent " : rare by reason of his sterility ; rare by reason of his 
 originality ; and finally, when he is at his best, rare by reason of his 
 exquisite qualities. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Portrait de M. la Rochefoucauld in the Portraits 
 de Mile de Montpensier, 1659 ; Memoires de M. D. L. R., Cologne, 
 1662, Vandyck ; Reflexions on sentences, et Maximes Morales, The 
 Hague, 1664, J. and D. Stencker, reprinted by M. Alphonse Pauly, 
 Paris, 1883, D. Morgand. Still the genuine "original" edition is 
 that of 1665, Paris, Barbin. 
 
 La Eochefoucauld has also left some minor works or fragments 
 which, according to their nature, are included in the editions either of 
 the Memoires or of the Maximes ; and about a hundred Letters. 
 
 The last edition of the Maximes that appeared under his own 
 supervision was that of 1678, containing 541 maxims instead of 314 ; 
 the best edition of his works is that of MM. Gilbert and Gourdault, 
 Paris, 1868-1883, Hachette. 
 
 II. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere [Paris, 1621 ; f 1673, 
 
 Paris] . 
 
 1. THK SOURCES'. Bayle's Dictionnaire, article POQUELIN, 1695; 
 Grimarest, La Vie de M. de Moliere, 1705 ; Baillet, Juge- 
 ments dcs savants, No. 1520, vol. v. in the edition of 1722 : the 
 brothers Parfaict, Histoire du theatre frangais, vol. x. 1747 ; 
 J. Taschereau, Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de Moliere, 
 1825, and the 5th edition, 1863 ; Bazin, Notes historiques sur 
 la vie de Moliere, 1847, 1848, 1849, 1851 ; Soulie, Recherche* 
 
 1 Consult M. Paul Lacroix, Bibliographic Moliiresque. Paris, 1875, Auguste 
 Fontaine.
 
 172 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 promenades, carousals, water parties, "river baths," 
 masquerades, concerts, comedies and ballets, whence 
 arose and assumed definite shape, not without some 
 prejudice to morality, a new politeness, less studied 
 and freer than that of old, equally removed 
 
 From the rigorous virtue of the remote ages 
 
 and from the ceremoniousness of preciosity, both of 
 which it rendered ridiculous in a different way but to 
 
 sur Moliere et sur so, famille, Paris, 1863 ; Jal, Dictionnaire 
 critique de biographie et d'histoire, articles BK.TART and MOLIERE, 
 1864 and 2nd edition, Paris, 1872 ; J. Loiseleur, Les Points obscurs 
 de la vie de Moliere, Paris, 1877 ; L. Moland, Moliere, sa vie et ses 
 ouvrages, 2nd edition, Paris, 1885 ; Henri Chardon, Monsieur de 
 Modene . . . et Madeleine Bejart, Paris, 1886 ; G. Larroumet, 
 La comcdie de Moliere, Vauteur et le milieu, Paris, 1887 ; Paul 
 Mesnard's Notice forming volume x. of the Moliere in the collection of 
 the Grands Ecrivains de France, 1889; G. Monval, Le Molieriste, 
 ten volumes, 1879-1889. [The brochures dealing with Moliere' s stays 
 in the various provincial towns he visited are too numerous for a list 
 of them to be given here, but almost all of them are referred to in the 
 last five works], 
 
 Vauvenargues, Reflexions critiques sur quelques poetes, 1746 ; 
 Diderot, Entretiens sur le Fils naturel, and Essai sur la poesie 
 dramatique, 1758 ; Rousseau, Lettre sur les spectacles, 1758 ; 
 Chamfort, Eloge de Moliere, 1769 ; N. Lemercier, Cours analytique 
 de litterature, 1810-1816, vol. iv. ; Schlegel, Cours de littera- 
 ture dramatique, 1809-1814 ; Sainte-Beuve, Portraits litteraires, 
 1835 ; Port-Royal [bk. iii., ch. 15 and 16] ; and Nouveaux Lundis, 
 1864 ; P. Stapfer, La Petite Comedie de la critique litteraire, Paris, 
 1866 ; Louis Veuillot, Moliere et Bourdaloue, Paris, 1863 and 1875 ; 
 F. Brunetiere, La Philosophic de Moliere [Etudes critiques, vol. iv.] 
 and Les Epoques du theatre frangais, Jules Lemaitre, Impressions 
 de theatre, 1886-1896. 
 
 F. Genin, Lexique compare de Moliere, Paris, 1845 ; Paringault, 
 De la langue du droit dans le theatre de Moliere, Paris, 1861 ; 
 Alexandre Dumas fils, preface to Un pere prodigue, 1868 ; Edmond 
 Scherer, Une heresie litteraire, 1886 ; Ch. Livet, Lexique compare 
 de la langue de Moliere, Paris, 1895-1897.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OP FRENCH LITERATURE 173 
 
 an equal extent. This new politeness speedily exerted 
 its influence, at first on manners, which became at once 
 more elegant and more natural ; on the language, of which 
 it completed the refinement ; on the sentiments, which 
 became more subtle and more complicated. The success 
 of the Misanthrope in 1666, of Andromaque in 1667, of 
 Amphitryon in 1668 was the outward evidence of its 
 triumph. It spread throughout the capital, and before 
 long even to the provinces ; and still further afield, abroad, 
 
 V. Fournel, Les Contemporains de Moliere, Paris, 1863-1875. 
 
 Samuel Chappuzeau, Le Theatre francais, with a preface and notes 
 by G. Monval, Paris, 1876 ; Eugene Despois, Le Theatre francais 
 sous Louis XIV., 4th edition, Paris, 1894. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE POET. 
 
 A. His youth and his years of apprenticeship and travel [Cf. 
 Goethe, Willielm Meister]. Moliere's family; his father, Jean 
 Poquelin, and his mother, Marie Cresse ; second marriage of 
 Moliere's father, 1633 ; Moliere's studies at Clermont College ; it 
 is untrue that the Prince de Conti was among his comrades there ; 
 on the other hand, he frequented the household of Luillier, of whom 
 Chapelle was the natural son [Cf. Luillier's Historiette in Tallemant 
 des Reaux, vol. iv., and the notes of Paul in Paris] ; and that there he 
 perhaps became acquainted with Gassendi ; who most certainly was 
 not a Cartesian. Did Moliere, in a well-known passage of the 
 Misanthrope, 
 
 La malpropre, sur soi de peu d'attraits charg6e, &c., 
 
 translate a not less well-known passage of Lucretius '? and that in 
 any case others had imitated the passage before him ; among them 
 Desmarets in his Visionnaires and Scarron in his Japliet d'Armenie. 
 The company frequented by Moliere in his early years was not the 
 best that was open to a young man of the middle class in 1640 ; 
 while the company he kept became still worse when he made the 
 acquaintance of Bejarts [Cf. Jal in his Dictionnaire, and Henri 
 Chardon, Monsieur de Modene, etc.] He gives up his post of valet 
 attached to the royal household and becomes an actor, 1643 ; 
 Founding of the Illustrious Theatre, 1643 ; the enterprise is un- 
 successful ; a second theatre started in the Croix Noire tennis-court 
 has a still shorter existence ; Moliere is imprisoned for debt, 1645.
 
 174 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FBENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 in the petty German courts and on the restored throne 
 of the Stuarts, it became for the whole of Europe the 
 example and lesson it was for France. 
 
 The truth is the change marked an epoch not only 
 in the history of manners, but also in the fortunes of 
 France. Amid all these innovations, amid the very 
 pleasures in vogue, the action of the sovereign was 
 making itself felt by the energy of his will, the fixity 
 of his purpose, the ubiquity of his regard, and the might 
 
 Changes in the troupe and departure of Moliere for the provinces, 
 end of 1646 or beginning of 1647. 
 
 His tour through the provinces [Cf. Chardon, La troupe du Roman 
 comique devoilee, Paris, 1876]. He plays successively: 1647, at 
 Carcarsonne, Toulouse, and Albi; 1648, at Nantes, and Fontenay- 
 le-Cornte ; at Angouleme? at Limoges? [It will be remarked 
 that Limoges is the only French town of which Moliere specifically 
 mentions a street in his plays] ; 1649, at Toulouse and Narbonne ; 
 1650, at Agen ; and why this stay at Agen authorises the belief that 
 prior to it Moliere gave two or three representations at Bordeaux 
 [Cf. Etudes critiques, v. i.] ; 1651, at Pezenas and Carcarsonne ; 
 1652, at Lyons ; 1653, at Lyons, La Grange des Pres [Cf. Memoires 
 de Daniel de Cosnac] ; 1654, at Montpellier, Lyons and Vienne ? ; 
 1655, at Montpellier, Lyons, and Pezenas ; 1656, at Pezenas, 
 Narbonne, and Beziers ; 1657, at Beziers, Nimes, Lyons, Dijon, 
 and Avignon ; 1658, at Grenoble and Rouen. On October 24 of 
 the same year, Moliere plays for the first time in the presence of 
 the king, "in the guard-room of the old Louvre," the pieces repre- 
 sented being Nicomede and the Docteur amoureux. 
 
 The advantages Moliere derived from his years of travel. In the 
 first place, he learnt his profession in the course of his tours ; and, 
 in this connection, that it is strange that it should have occurred 
 to no student of Moliere to draw up a list of the pieces in which 
 he acted. There would be several ways of setting about this task, 
 for instance : an effort might be made to ascertain what plays 
 were successful in Paris between 1646 and 1658 ; and to ascer- 
 tain who were the authors with whom the Bejarts were personally 
 acquainted [and at least three of them are known : Rotrou, Magnon, 
 and Tristan 1'Hermitte] ; and, finally, his library might be searched 
 [Cf. E. Soulie, Reclierches] for plays, which he seems to have
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OP FRENCH LITERATURE 175 
 
 of his arm. He had done more than merely accept 
 as the natural heir the authority which had been, as 
 it were, stored up for him by Mazarin and Richelieu ; 
 he had taken it over with the intention of keeping it 
 intact in his own hands. In the place of ministers 
 there were to be more managing clerks ! Counsellors 
 were to give way to courtiers ! He was to have no 
 more equals, not even abroad, but instead, on the 
 banks of the Thames or amid the sands of Branden- 
 
 imitated in his own pieces, but in which he does not appear to 
 have acted in Paris [Cf. Desmaret's Visionnaires ; Gilet de la 
 Teyssonnerie's Le Deniaise; Cyrano's Le Pedant joue], Other 
 advantages derived by Moliere from his tours. During the wars of 
 the Fronde he saw the provinces in naturalibus ; and, in this 
 connection, of the services rendered literature by revolutions. As a 
 "Bohemian" and an actor, he was well placed to observe the comic 
 side of life from an independent standpoint ; and to gauge social 
 inequalities ; the foolishness of the great ; the power of resistance 
 or of inertia of prejudices. Finally, as actor, author, and the 
 manager of a company he learnt what responsibility meant ; a 
 matter of which his friend La Fontaine, for example, will never have 
 any conception ; while, if a certain bitterness resulted from these 
 manifold experiences, it is to this bitterness that he owes the 
 superiority of his genius. 
 
 B. Moliere's plays. 
 
 That there are at least two reasons why the language in which 
 they are written should be studied first of all ; the first is that 
 Moliere's language is almost the only point on which Moliere is 
 still taken to task at the present day; and the second, that it is 
 primarily as a writer that he contrasts with those who preceded him, 
 Pascal excepted. Alexandre Dumas is mistaken in thinking that 
 Moliere would be reproached with making an involved use of sentences 
 beginning with the relative pronouns "qui" and " que." [Cf. preface 
 to TJnpereprodigue], On the contrary, he is blamed : for not having 
 an organic style [Scherer] ; for mixing his metaphors [Scherer, 
 Fenelon, La Bruyere] ; for being " abominably " addicted to the use 
 of " chevilles," that is, of expressions introduced solely with a view 
 to filling up a line or to obtaining a rhyme [Scherer] ; for being 
 incorrect in his grammar [Vauvenargues, Bayle, La Bruyere]. It
 
 176 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 burg, mere "pensioners" and "clients." A bare five 
 or six years sufficed to achieve these results. Under 
 the influence of this sovereign action, the establishment 
 of order was witnessed, peace was seen to reign in the 
 provinces, justice to penetrate there, honesty to resume 
 its sway in business transactions, commerce, industry and 
 the arts attracted and transplanted into France from 
 Flanders or Italy, to make a fresh and vigorous start. 
 France speedily became the richest and most populous of 
 
 may be rejoined : that many of his grammatical blunders are not 
 blunders at all, as is the case with those with which Voltaire finds 
 fault in Corneille [Cf. his Commentaire] or Condorcet in Pascal [Cf. 
 Eloge de Pascal] ; that it is true that "chevilles" abound in his 
 verses, because he writes too rapidly ; on the other hand, strict 
 adherence to metaphors is a characteristic of that "preciosity" of 
 which he openly declared himself the enemy [Cf. the metaphors of 
 Saint- Simon or Montaigne] ; while, to conclude, the " organic style " 
 is not proper to comedy. Again, it was impossible that Arnolphe 
 should employ the same language as Agnes, Agnes as Armande, 
 Armande as Angelique ; the fact is, Moliere's style adapts itself to 
 the character of his personages ; it is a dramatic and a comic style ; 
 or, in other words, it is primarily expressive of the truth of 
 the characters. Had Moliere written like Terence, he would only 
 have been half himself. Further, for reasons of temperament; 
 of extraction ; and of personal experience of life, Moliere's style is : 
 middle-class, which distinguishes it from Racine's style ; " affluent," 
 to use Saint-Beuve's expression, which distinguishes it from Regnard's 
 style [Cf. J. J. Weiss, Eloge de Eegnard] ; it is " life-like," which 
 distinguishes it from Boileau's style, which, though it issues from the 
 same source, remains " bookish " ; finally, and since it is throughout 
 prosaic, a feature that distinguishes it from La Fontaine's style, 
 Moliere's style is eminently realistic or " naturalistic." 
 
 The naturalism of Moliere ; and how it shows itself in the first 
 place in his attitude ; if his two first plays be excepted ; and it be 
 studied in Les Precieuses ridicules, 1659 ; Sganarelle, 1660 ; L'Ecole 
 des maris, 1661; L'Ecole des femmes, 1662; Critique de I'ecole des 
 femmes, 1663 ; Impromptu de Versailles, 1663 ; and the Tartuffe of 
 1664. " Precieux " and pedants; nobles and commoners; actors 
 and authors; courtiers and ecclesiastics; prudes and grotesque
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 177 
 
 all the European states, and when, after a campaign of 
 a few months, the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle consummated 
 what had been accomplished in the Pyrenees and in 
 Westphalia, there was at once no more brilliant Court 
 than that of Louis XIV., and no sovereign better obeyed 
 by his subjects, or more admired, more feared and more 
 envied by his rivals than this monarch of twenty-nine ! 
 It is not surprising, under these conditions, that the 
 " men of letters " should have admired him with the rest 
 
 characters, all those whom he attacks in these works are those 
 who disfigure and tamper with nature ; are those who interpose 
 pedantic rules or respect for prejudices between art and the repre- 
 sentation of life ; and are more especially those who claim to put 
 nature under restraint or to discipline it. Nature cannot be trans- 
 formed ; and the vanity of the efforts that are made to transform 
 it is the source whence Moliere draws his comic effects. This con- 
 sideration, too, accounts for his showing himself independent of 
 rules ; and of foreign writers ; an end to plays of the stamp of 
 Bertrand de Cigarral or dom Japhet d'Armenie ! It is for the 
 same reason that Moliere attacks Corneille and the " great come- 
 dians," those of the Hotel de Bourgogne ; since they do not work 
 from the living model ; but set themselves an ideal of which we 
 cannot verify the excellence by comparing it with nature. 
 
 That this naturalism is also met with in Moliere' s philosophy ; 
 for there is a connection between these principles and those of the 
 " libertines " ; and those of Montaigne and Rabelais [Cf. above, pp. 
 59 and 88]. In his earlier plays and down to Tartuffe, Moliere does 
 not appear to doubt for an instant of the goodness of nature ; and, 
 in any case, he prefers leaving nature to itself to endeavouring to 
 make it " unnatural." The signification of Tartuffe, [Cf. Stendhal, 
 Racine et Shakespeare ; Louis Veuillot, Moliere et Bourdaloue ; abbe 
 Davin, Les sources de Tartuffe, in the newspaper Le Monde, August 2, 
 13, 15, 22, 27 and September 3, 15, 19, 1873; Louis Lacour, Le 
 Tartuffe par ordre de Louis XIV., 1877] ; and that to understand 
 the indignation the play aroused, attention must be directed more 
 particularly to the character of Orgon. Both Jansenists and Jesuits 
 are taken to task in the play ; while it is beyond question that 
 religion is attacked in it, so far as religion be conceived as a " restrain- 
 ing principle." Of the reasons Moliere had to believe that he was 
 
 13
 
 178 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 of their contemporaries, and that like them, they should 
 have resolved of a common accord to lend him obedience, 
 or, if a nobler, and perhaps a more just, expression be 
 preferred, that they should all have gravitated towards 
 this rising sun, as to a natural and inevitable centre of 
 attraction. Their interests, even the interests of their 
 art, and their concern for their dignity invited them 
 to adopt this course. Admitting, for example, that 
 
 approved by Louis XIV. ; and of the vexations which Tartuffe 
 procured him. 
 
 That these vexations coincide with the critical period of Moliere's 
 life ; with his connubial misfortunes ; and with the early stages 
 of his illness. Was his faith in his philosophy of " nature " shaken in 
 consequence ? The doubtful and almost enigmatical character of the 
 plays he produced between 1664 and 1669 : Don Juan, 1665 ; Le 
 Misanthrope, 1666; Tartuffe (the second), 1667; L'Avare, 1668; 
 Georges Dandin, 1668. The signification of these plays is not clear ; 
 he seems to admit in them that nature sometimes stands in need of 
 being modified ; he is doubtless undergoing the influence of the 
 " politeness " in vogue around him ; and the obligations he is under 
 as a courtier hinder him from following the bent of his temperament. 
 At last, however, the authorisation to play Tartuffe in public frees 
 him from this restraint, 1669 ; and the absurdities of medical science 
 strengthen him in his ideas [Cf. Maurice Raynaud, Les Medecins au 
 temps de Moliere} ; and his plays become as clear as ever they 
 were. 
 
 Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, 1669 ; Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, 
 1670 ; Les fourberies de Scapin, 1671 ; Les femnies savantes, 1672 ; 
 La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas, 1672 ; Le malade imaginaire, 1673. 
 How Monsieur de Pourceaugnac takes us back to the period of the 
 Etourdi and of the Depit amoureux, especially if the Fourberies de 
 Scapin be considered together with it. Similarly the Fcmmes savantes 
 takes us back to the Precieuses ridicules ; perhaps without there 
 being any very excellent reasons at the time for the reversion ; and 
 the Malade imaginaire takes us back to the Medecin malgre lui. 
 Of the character of Moliere's jests at the expense of doctors, and 
 that the essence of his quarrel with them is that he blames them for 
 wishing to be more skilful than nature. Nature cannot be "patched 
 up " when once it is " broken up," but rather to attempt to patch it 
 up is to break it up altogether [Cf. Malade, iii., sc. 3]. " Nature
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 179 
 
 they stood in need of a Maecenas, who should secure 
 them the boon of leisure, and how could it be otherwise 
 at a period at which the idea had not occurred to men 
 that a writer might live by his pen ? the protection of 
 the king relieved them of the necessity of being the ser- 
 vants of some nobleman or rich citizen, exempted them for 
 the future from writing "dedications a la Montauron," and 
 gave them a definite, though doubtless still a modest rank 
 
 has veiled our eyes too closely to allow of our fathoming the mys- 
 teries of our frame. . . . When a doctor talks to you of ... again 
 putting the natural functions in full working order ... he is telling 
 you a medical fairy tale. . . . When we are ill, nature of itself 
 contrives to find a way out of the trouble with which it is beset." 
 Finally, in Moliere's art, his naturalism shows itself by his choice 
 of his subjects, which are less and less complicated. There is but 
 very little " matter," to use the expression Racine will shortly 
 employ, and scarcely any plot in the Misanthrope, 1666 ; in L' Avare, 
 1668; in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, 1670; in La Comtesse d'Escar- 
 bagnas, 1672 ; in Le Malade imaginaire, 1673 ; or where there is a 
 semblance of a plot, as in the Femmes savantes, it is of no interest ; 
 and, in this connection, of the endings of Moliere's plays. In the 
 second place, whereas up to Tartuffe Moliere introduced none but 
 individual characters into his plays, in his later pieces he is constantly 
 depicting " the family " ; as in L' Avare ; Georges Dandin ; Le Bour- 
 geois gentilhomme ; Les femmes savantes ; Le malade imaginaire ; 
 and the reason is, that it is only in our relations with others that our 
 ludicrous traits and our vices come into full view and bear all their 
 consequences. In the third and last place Moliere widens more and 
 more his field of observation, so as to make it include the whole of 
 his experience of life : for instance his knowledge of the provinces in 
 Pourceaugnac and La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas ; of the middle 
 classes in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme ; of the semi-middle class in 
 Georges Dandin. It is as if one were to say that in each successive 
 work he summoned a greater number of spectators ; and a greater 
 variety, to judge of the truth of his delineations ; and to recognise 
 themselves, their children and their neighbours in the pictures of 
 life he offers them. This is the explanation of the bitterness that 
 underlies a portion of his work ; and, in this connection, of 
 the connection between Naturalism in literature and Pessimism. 
 Whether this connection, perceived by Moliere, did not oblige him,
 
 180 MANUAL OF THE HISTOBY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 in the social hierarchy. In view of these benefits, of 
 what importance is it that some indulgence in flattery 
 was the price of this protection ? And who will argue 
 that Moliere, Boileau, Racine, and their fellow writers 
 would have been the greater had they been wanting in 
 gratitude ? In reality they were well aware that in a 
 purely aristocratic society neither their talent nor their 
 genius would have sufficed to allow of their accomplish- 
 
 from fear of finding himself writing drama, to give more and more 
 room to buffoonery in his later works : Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, 
 Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Le Malade imaginaire : and whether a 
 measure of sadness is not inherent to all observation of life that is in 
 any way deep ? 
 
 How Moliere escaped the consequences of his naturalism ; and to 
 begin with he did not always escape them ; as for example in 
 Georges Dandin or in Le Malade imaginaire. Still, being absolutely 
 in need of the protection of Louis XIV., he endeavoured to fall in 
 with the latter's tastes ; and, in this connection of Moliere as a 
 courtier [Cf. Tartuffe and Amphitryon], How his principle of sub- 
 ordinating his situations to his characters was yet more efficacious 
 in saving him from his naturalism ; because there are few 
 "characters" in nature, few Tartuffes, Harpagons or Alcestes; hut 
 there are the beginnings of such personages in everybody ; and to 
 develop these beginnings to the full is to add something to nature ; 
 and to outstrip nature while imitating it [Cf. the " types " in Balzac's 
 novels, in Eugenie Grandet or Le Pere Goriof]. That the ideal does 
 not consist solely in the representation of beauty ; but also in the 
 portrayal of characters or of types. Add to this that most of the 
 more important of Moliere's comedies are written to some extent 
 in support of a thesis ; and a thesis, in the drama as in the novel, 
 implies that the writer criticises nature while imitating it ; not to go 
 so far as to say that he proposes to correct nature. This is exactly 
 Moliere's case; and to this circumstance is due the "satirical" 
 force of his comedy. Finally, Moliere wrote in general in verse ; 
 and prosaic as his verse may be in general, there are things it is 
 impossible to express in verse. 
 
 C. Moliere's influence ; and that in 110 branch of literature has 
 the influence of a writer been more considerable upon the works 
 belonging to that particular branch. His influence on Regnard ; the 
 Folies amoureuses is merely the Ecole des femmes travestied by the
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 181 
 
 ing their work in liberty, of their enforcing the esteem of 
 their adversaries, or of their triumphing over the resistance 
 of the coteries and of opinion. Without the protection of 
 Louis XIV., Moliere would have succumbed to the hos- 
 tility of his enemies ; and it was the king in person who 
 overcame the disinclination of the courtiers of the former 
 regime to admire the masterpieces of Racine. They all 
 of them preferred Corneille ; and to say nothing here of 
 
 introduction, after the Italian fashion, of disguisements and lazzi ; the 
 Legataire universel is merely a skilful combination of the Malade 
 imaginaire and the Fourberies de Scapin. His influence on Le 
 Sage: Turcaret is merely a combination of the Bourgeois gentil- 
 Jwmme and the Comtesse d'Escarbagnas ; and Gil Bias itself is 
 merely a comedy of Moliere related in narrative and presented in 
 the form of a novel. His influence was not less great abroad [Cf. 
 Macaulay, Le TJiedtre anglais sous la Eestauration]. Fielding's 
 comedies are merely " adaptations " of the comedy of Moliere ;- and 
 the same must be said of one of the masterpieces of English drama 
 Sheridan's School for Scandal [Cf. Louis Moland, Histoire posthume 
 de Moliere~\. We again meet with the influence of Moliere in 
 Beaumarchais' masterpiece, which is Le Barbier de Seville [Cf. for 
 the central idea L'Ecole des femmes, and for the subsidiary details, 
 for instance, for the scene of the singing master, the Malade imagi- 
 naire]. In consequence, one might almost say that for the past two 
 hundred years a comedy has been good in proportion as it has 
 resembled the comedy of Moliere ; and mediocre or bad in propor- 
 tion as it has differed therefrom ; or, in other words, that for two 
 hundred years Moliere's comedy has determined the form of " Euro- 
 pean comedy." 
 
 On the other hand Moliere has exerted less influence on ideas, and, 
 as will be seen later on, his attacks on preciosity were entirely 
 unavailing [Cf. Roederer, Memoire sur I'histoire de la societe polie\. 
 Why it is that women do not care for Moliere. Was he successful 
 in his attacks on religion ? This, also, does not seem to have been 
 the case ; even his attacks on affected piety were unsuccessful ; 
 admitting his Tartuffe to be almost nearer the truth as a picture of 
 the manners of French society in 1690 than as a picture of those 
 manners in 1665 [Cf. La Bruyere]. But he was most unsuccessful of 
 all in his attacks on doctors ; indeed, it is since he scoffed at them 
 that doctors have come to be accepted as veritable guides in matters
 
 182 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the cabal of the two Phedre, who is not acquainted with 
 Mme de Sevigne's estimate of the author of Andromaque ? 
 I fear, too, that had the times been different, such writers 
 as Chapelain and Montausier would have caused the author 
 of the Satires to be well beaten, to the damage of their 
 reputation and to that of the shoulders of the poet. And, 
 finally, ought we to-day to underrate the extent of the ser- 
 vices rendered French literature by Louis XIV., rendered 
 almost without an effort, I mean by the sole effect of his 
 
 of conscience. Ought the conclusion to be drawn from Moliere's 
 failures that art should have no other object but itself? 
 
 No, if a number of persons continue to regard Moliere as their master 
 in the matter of conduct. The exaggeration on this score of Moliere's 
 admirers, and of Sainte-Beuve himself [Cf. Nouveaux Lundis, vol. v., 
 1864]. A remark of Goethe [Cf. Conversations with Eckermann] ; 
 and that neither the perfection of Moliere's masterpieces, nor the 
 trials of his existence should blind us or prevent us calling attention to 
 the limitations of his genius. His philosophy consists in part in carica- 
 turing or deriding all delicacy [Cf. Bossuet, Maximes sur la Comedie, 
 and Rousseau, Lettre sur les spectacles} ; and that this fact is the 
 explanation of his failure in his conflict with preciosity; since the 
 "precious " spirit represented in part a legitimate resistance to natural 
 coarseness, and Moliere did not refrain from scoffing at this feature of 
 preciosity. Whether it can be said that this hatred of preciosity is 
 the very essence of the Gallic genius [Cf. Eenan, La Farce de Pathe- 
 lin, and La Theologie de Beranger] . That a still graver error of 
 Moliere, and another error that is perhaps inseparable from the 
 Gallic genius, lies in his having persistently set himself against every 
 idea of restraint and discipline. 
 
 It is our master that is our enemy, 
 This I tell you in plain French. . . . 
 
 He must not be reproached with having lacked nobleness and 
 elevation ; since one does not go to comedy for lessons in elevation 
 or nobleness ; the higher sentiments not coming within its scope ; 
 and as much may perhaps be said of too studied politeness. Still, 
 the greatness of Moliere would not suffer had he here and there been 
 less forcible or even less violent when making his points. And his 
 plays might have inculcated a less easy-going morality.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 183 
 
 example and authority, when it is remembered that he 
 obliged men of letters, by causing them to mix with the 
 courtiers, to rid themselves little by little of a certain middle- 
 class self-sufficiency, of a certain rusty pedantry with which 
 they were still besmeared, so to speak ; that in this way 
 he secured their admission into the ranks of polite 
 society ; and that it is due to him that they acquired, by 
 coming in contact with and frequenting statesmen and 
 men and women of fashion, a number of qualities which 
 
 3. THE WORKS. It will suffice to enumerate here those of Moliere's 
 works to which we have not had occasion to refer above. They are : 
 Le Medecin volant, and La Jalousie du Barbouille, two sketches of 
 dubious authenticity : Dom Garde de Navarre, 1661 ; Les Fdcheux, 
 1661 ; La Princesse d 1 Elide, 1664 ; Le mariage force, 1664 ; I 1 Amour 
 medecin, 1665 ; Le medecin malgre lui, 1666 ; Melicerte, 1666 ; Le 
 Sicilien, 1667 ; and Les amants magnifiques, 1670 ; two pieces of 
 verse: Le Remerciement au roi and La Gloire de Val-de-Grdce ; 
 and in the last place his Prefaces and Dedications and his Petitions to 
 Hie King in connection with Tartuffe. 
 
 The principal editions are, as regards original editions or editions 
 deserving to be regarded as such, the edition of 1666 ; that of 1673 ; 
 that of 1674 ; and that of 1682 by Lagrange and Vivot. These four 
 editions form a first connected batch to which may be added the 
 Elzevir editions. The edition of 1682, which some publishers adopt 
 as their standard even to-day, is as incorrect as it is ugly. 
 
 Next in order come : the edition of 1734 [with the commentary of 
 Joly and La Serre and Bouchers' illustrations] 6 vols. in 4to, Paris, 
 Prault ; and the edition of the " Librairies associes " [with Bret's 
 commentary and Moreau's illustrations], Paris, 1773. The first is the 
 finer, and the second the more estimable. 
 
 Among the many modern editions may be cited : A Begnieir's 
 edition, 5 vols. 4to, Paris, 1878, Imprimerie Nationale ; and the 
 edition in the series of the " Grands Ecrivains," edited by Mine 
 Eugene Despois and Paul Mesnard, Paris, 1873-1893, Hachette, 
 11 vols. in 8vo. 
 
 III. Jean de La Fontaine [Chateau-Thierry, 1621; f 1695, 
 Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Baillet, Jugements des savants, vol. v. of the edition
 
 184 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 are not come by as a rule in the back parlour of a 
 " master upholsterer " or in the household of a clerk of 
 the Courts ? 
 
 For it is at this juncture that under the combined 
 influence of all these causes, French literature becomes 
 at once really human, in the widest sense of the word, 
 and really naturalist or natural. What is more " natural " 
 than the comedy of Moliere unless it be the tragedy of 
 Eacine ; and what is more human ? It is by this cha- 
 
 of 1722, No 1551 [Cf. Fureteire's second Factum] ; Louis Racine, 
 Memoires sur la vie de son pere, 1747 ; Matthieu Marais, Histoire 
 de la vie et des ouvrages de la Fontaine, published for the first time 
 in 1811 ; Walckenaer, Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de La 
 Fontaine, Paris, 1820, 1822, 1824, 1858; -Paul Mesnard's biographical 
 notice preceding the La Fontaine in the series of the " Grands 
 Ecrivains," Paris, 1883. 
 
 C. Robert, Fables inedites des XII", XIII e et XIV siecles and 
 Fables de La Fontaine, Paris, 1825 ; Lessing, Abhandlungen iiber 
 die Fabel [1759], vol. viii. of the collected edition of his works 
 published by Gosc.hen, 1868, Leipsic ; Saint-Marc Girardin, La 
 Fontaine et les Fabulistes, a series of lectures delivered in 1858-1859, 
 and published in 1867, Paris ; Max Muller, La Migration des 
 fables, in his Essais de mythologie comparee, London and Paris, 
 1870. 
 
 Chamfort, Eloge de La Fontaine, 1774 ; Taine, La Fontaine et 
 ses fables, Paris, 1853-1860 ; Sainte-Beuve, Portraits litteraires, 
 vol. i., 1829, and Causeries, vol. xiii., 1857 ; G. Lafenestre, La 
 Fontaine in the " Grands Ecrivains fran9ais " series, Paris, 1895. 
 
 Damas-Hinard, La Fontaine et Buffon, Paris, 1861 ; P. de 
 Remusat, La Fontaine naturaliste, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
 December 1, 1869; Nicolardot, La Fontaine et la Comedie 
 humaine, Paris, 1885. 
 
 Marty-Laveaux, Essai sur la langue de la Fontaine, Paris, 1853 : 
 Th. de Banville, La Fontaine, 1861, in Crepet's collection of 
 French poets, vol. ii., and at the end of the 2nd edition of his Petit 
 traite de poesie francaise, Paris, 1881. 
 
 2. THE ARTIST, THE MAN AND THE POET. The first part of La 
 Fontaine's life [1621-1660]. His neglected education ; his sojourn 
 at the Oratory ; his marriage [1647] ; and that were it not for
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 185 
 
 racter of humanity that the work of these writers differs 
 from, though at the same time it be a continuation of, 
 the tragedy of Corneille, the novel of La Caprenede and 
 the burlesque comedy of Scarron, rEcolier de Salamanque 
 or Dom Japhet d'Armenie, and as La Fontaine says in 
 speaking of the Fdcheux : 
 
 We have changed our method, 
 Jodelet is no longer in fashion, 
 And now it is incumbent on us 
 To follow nature with tJie utmost closeness. 
 
 Moliere, he would doubtless have been merely a " Precieux " and a 
 " libertine." His adaptation of the " Eunuch " of Terence, 1654. 
 He is pensioned by Superintendent Fouquet, 1657. His Sonnets, 
 Madrigals, and Ballads. His poem Adonis [Cf. the Adonis of Shake- 
 peare], 1658. Le Songe de Vaux, 1658 ; Elegie aux nymphes de 
 Vaux, 1661. La Fontaine's relations with Moliere, Boileau, and 
 Racine [Cf. the prologue to Psyche, and Scherer, Le Cabaret du 
 Mouton blanc in his Etudes critiques]. He exchanges the protection 
 of Fouquet for that of the Duchesse de Bouillon [Cf . Amedee Renee, 
 Les Nieces de Mazarin], The first of the Contes, 1664-1666 ; and 
 the early Fables, 1668. 
 
 La Fontaine's character. His easy-going nature and his egoism ; 
 his lack of dignity ; his parasitism. What would have become of 
 the social status of the man of letters if there had been many La 
 Fontaines? La Fontaine's " riskiness " (gauloiserie) ; and what is 
 to be understood by this word [Cf . Taine La Fontaine et ses fables]. 
 Of the danger that might attach to treating La Fontaine with too 
 much indulgence ; that his Contes are, in general, unwholesome pro- 
 ductions; and that he contrives to be even more licentious than 
 Boccaccio, where he follows his text [Cf. Marc Monnier, La Renais- 
 sance de Dante a Lutlier, Paris, 1884]. The reception accorded the 
 Contes by his contemporaries. That La Fontaine's naivete pre- 
 vented him neither from depicting himself as a beau in the prologue 
 to Psyche ; nor from having amply sufficient cunning to allow of his 
 " eating the bread of idleness " ; and how, in defiance of morality, 
 some of his finest qualities were the outcome of his very defects. 
 
 A. The Artist. A remark of Mme de la Sabliere on the subject of 
 " the Fablier." For the very reason that he never took life seriously 
 and that he lived, as it were, outside it, life for him was never anything 
 more than a spectacle. In what respect this disposition of mind is
 
 186 MANUAL OF THE HISTOKY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 It is well understood, however, that this close imitation 
 of nature shall be confined to the copying of the most 
 general and permanent characteristics observed in it, 
 and shall not include the rendering of any of the acci- 
 dental features, of the exceptions and deformities that 
 distort or corrupt it, that make nature, in fact, "un- 
 natural." Indeed, although there is no doubt that a 
 man who is one-eyed, lame, or humpbacked, is still a 
 
 eminently that of the " artist " [Cf. G. Flaubert, Preface pour les 
 ceuvres de L. Bouillief] ; and that this disposition, coupled with La 
 Fontaine's desultory existence, explains how it was that his Fables 
 were works of a character unique at the time. Corneille had been 
 a writer with a purpose ; Moliere had written in support of this or 
 that thesis and had engaged in conflicts ; La Fontaine merely aimed 
 at depicting what pleased him ; or even had no aim whatever 
 except that of pleasing himself. This attitude affords the key to 
 the character of his alleged satire ; and Taine's exaggeration on 
 this score. That men are perverted and that women are gossips ; 
 that the rich are insolent, and that the poor are invariably obse- 
 quious ; that the great abuse their authority and that the humble 
 allow themselves to be trodden on ; or, finally, that the lion is the 
 king of animals, and that the ass is eternally a dupe ; that such things 
 should be, never irritates La Fontaine or arouses his indignation; and 
 yet that they should do so is the primary condition of satire. Satire 
 cannot exist unaccompanied by a moral purpose. La Fontaine merely 
 " observes " ; he never passes judgment. His maliciousness never goes 
 further than the amusement a poor philosopher may find in convicting 
 the great of this world of foolishness ; he is of opinion, too, that what- 
 ever is human, since it is "natural," has an equal claim upon the 
 attention of the artist ; and in this way his artistic epicureanism leads 
 him insensibly to naturalism. 
 
 B. The Naturalist. That in applying this word to La Fontaine, it 
 would be going too far to make it mean that he was a curious observer 
 of the habits of animals [Cf. Paul de Eemusat, La Fontaine natu- 
 raliste\ ; it is even a question whether he was a very close observer 
 of their habits. Of scientific truth and poetic truth. That, in any 
 case, it is sufficient that La Fontaine's animals should be something 
 more for him than mere human beings in disguise ; and in point of 
 fact, they fulfil this condition.- They possess for him a very individual 
 and clearly defined character ; they have their peculiar outward
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 187 
 
 man, it is held, and quite rightly, not altogether that the 
 sight or the representation of such beings is painful, but 
 that they themselves fall short, as it were, of the definition 
 of a man. Similarly, while the reality of an Attila, of a 
 Jodelet, or of a Dom Japhet d'Armenie is not denied, 
 though the denial might be made, were it desired, it is 
 held that the characteristics which distinguish these per- 
 sonages from ordinary mortals, cause them to be exceptions, 
 
 aspect ; and more especially they have idiosyncrasies. But in 
 describing him as a naturalist what is meant is : That in his case, his 
 curiosity with respect to and the freedom with which he imitates nature 
 was never restrained or moderated ; by any necessity of "playing the 
 courtier " ; by obligations of the kind which the exigencies of the stage 
 imposed on Moliere and Racine ; or by any moral consideration. It 
 resulted that his interests were wider than those of many of his contem- 
 poraries ; and in consequence that his work contains and depicts more 
 of nature than the work of any of his contemporaries. They, for then- 
 part, merely depicted man and not even the whole of man; the 
 reverse is the case with the La Fontaine ; who goes to the length of 
 showing us man in attitudes he had better have left alone. He also 
 depicted animals; a circumstance which gives life to his fables 
 and distinguishes them from the jejune Aesopian fable [Cf. Lessing, 
 Abliandlungeri}. He also introduced into his work the stars, the sky, 
 water, an entire " exterior nature," which is absent from the work of 
 his contemporaries. Herein lies the charm of his work ; and it is 
 this characteristic that renders it eminently suitable, in one respect at 
 least, and despite what has been said to the contrary [Cf. J. J. Rousseau, 
 Emile] for the education of children. Children derive * from an 
 acquaintance with La Fontaine's fables much the same benefits as 
 from visits to a zoological garden ; and supposing children to learn 
 from the fables that " people must not be judged by appearances," or 
 that "humble folk are the victims of the folly of great personages," 
 what harm is done? The same characteristic of familiarity is also 
 met with in his style. However studied his style may be it is still 
 that of a " naturalist " ; owing to the freedom with which he chooses 
 his words ; he does not draw the line at words of any class ; owing 
 to his rare employment of abstract terms, or to his happy way of 
 accompanying such terms with popular expressions; and, finally, 
 owing to his free and easy phraseology, he is always more inch'ned 
 to follow the dictates of sensibility than the rules of logic.
 
 188 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and place them outside nature and humanity. This is all 
 as yet for care must be taken not to confound one epoch 
 with another ! Nothing more is aimed at than to please 
 the average man. But to please him it is necessary in the 
 first place to enter into his feelings, and since it is 
 imperative that we should ourselves have experienced 
 these feelings before we can be acquainted with them 
 and before we can give them expression, it comes about 
 
 How the " naturalism " of La Fontaine brings him into touch with 
 Moliere ; and that both of them have the same "philosophy"; 
 though in the case of La Fontaine it is less reasoned than in that of 
 Moliere. La Fontaine is a practical but not a militant Epicurean ; 
 he is as much of the school of Saint-Evremond as of that of Moliere, 
 more concerned with enjoying life than with preaching ; and 
 sufficiently easy-going not to be ruffled when fortune elects to 
 trouble his enjoyment. However, he is above everything else a poet ; 
 and it is this last characteristic that definitely distinguishes him from 
 certain of his illustrious contemporaries. 
 
 C. The Poet. A first proof that he is essentially a poet is his choice 
 of irregular or " lyric " verse; and, in this connection, of the depicting 
 or expression of sentiment by means of diversity of rhythm. The 
 Alexandrine only became " lyrical " by becoming " romantic," that is 
 to say by abandoning classic uniformity. Of La Fontaine's versifica- 
 tion [Cf. Theodore de Banville, La Fontaine}. Lamartine's strange 
 opinion on this subject ; and that when he blamed La Fontaine for his 
 " unequal " verses, he had doubtless forgotten for how many such verses 
 he was responsible for himself. The poet is also recognisable in La 
 Fontaine in the discreet but perpetual intervention of his own personality 
 in his work ; it is he in person who acquaints us with his tastes and 
 his mode of life, who even gives us information as to his furniture ; 
 and this is another lyrical characteristic, in view of the limitations 
 imposed on lyricism by the taste of the time. Add the gift of depict- 
 ing, of calling up before the eye, material objects ; the rhythm, 
 harmony, and music of his verse ; and the higher gift, displayed even 
 in his Contes, of stripping reality of what is too material about it, of 
 spiritualising it. There are verses of his which are a landscape in 
 themselves : 
 
 But you are born most often 
 On the watery shores of the kingdoms of the wind . . .
 
 189 
 
 that what is unusual or singular is eliminated little by 
 little from the conception of literature. "What, Boileau 
 is about to ask, is a new thought ? It is in nowise, as the 
 ignorant are disposed to believe, a thought nobody has ever 
 had, or that it is improbable has ever occurred to anybody : 
 on the contrary it is a thought that must have occurred to 
 every one." This point established, let us call to mind one 
 of the Satires or Epistles of Boileau himself, one of the 
 comedies of Moliere, the Ecole des Femmes or the Misan- 
 
 There are others that evoke a season of the year : 
 
 When the mild zephyrs have renewed the grass . . . 
 
 and there are others which, while they caress the eye and charm the 
 ear, transport us into dreamland and the realm of illusion : 
 
 Softly cradled by calm vapours, 
 
 Her head on her arm and her arm on the cloud, 
 
 Letting flowers fall, and not strewing them . . . 
 
 If these qualities make of him a man " unique hi his kind," do they 
 sever all connection between him and the literature of his time '? 
 No ; and his artistic ideal is in close conformity with that of his 
 illustrious contemporaries. By his general mode of thinking he is of 
 the family of Moliere and of Boileau ; by his mode of depicting and 
 of expression he is of the family of Racine ; and we have said that to 
 start with he belonged to the school of Voiture and Racan. The main 
 difference between him and his contemporaries lies in the fact that he 
 wrote more especially for himself ; which is doubtless permissible in 
 the Fable as in the Ode ; while it is not permissible in the drama. 
 
 The last years of La Fontaine. Admiration aroused by his Fables ; 
 and why did Boileau make no allusion to them in his Art poetique ? 
 Suppositions on this score ; and that in any case the Dissertation 
 sur Joconde relieves us of the necessity of regarding the fact in a light 
 unfavourable to Boileau. The successive editions of the Contes : 
 1667 ; 1669 ; 1671 ; 1674 ; The lieutenant of police decides to con- 
 fiscate them. The Fables of 1678 [books, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11]. 
 Testimony of Mine de Sevigne. The incident in connection with the 
 Academy, 1683. Did La Fontaine keep the promise he had made " to 
 be on his best behaviour''? The Aveux indiscrets and the Fleuve 
 Scamandre. His relations with Mme d'Hervart, with the Vendouie
 
 190 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 thrope, one of the tragedies of Racine, Andromaque or 
 Bajazet, one of the fables of La Fontaine, Les Animaux 
 malades de la Peste or Le Meunier, son Fits et I'Ane, one 
 of La Rochefoucauld's maxims or one of the sermons of 
 Bossuet or of Bourdaloue. Different as these works may 
 be, their chief merit is to belong to all periods and to all 
 countries, to depict man in general and not merely the 
 Frenchman of the seventeenth century, to be natural in 
 that they are human, human because they are natural. 
 
 family [Cf. Desnoiresterres, Les cours galantes and La jeunesse de 
 Voltaire] with Mme Ulrich [Cf. (Euvres de la Fontaine, Regnier's 
 edition, letters 26 and 27]. That it is unfortunate that we should 
 know nothing of the poet's last protectress except what we learn from 
 the police records. The illness and conversion of La Fontaine in 
 1692. He takes to writing pious poetry. His last letter to his friend 
 Maucroix, and his death. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. In addition to his Fables, of which the dates of 
 publication have been given above, La Fontaine is the author : (1) 
 of five books of Contes, of which the dates have also been given ; (2) 
 five Poems : Adonis, 1658, published for the first time in 1669 ; 
 Quinquina, 1682; La captivite de saint Male, 1673; Philemon et 
 Baucis ; and Les Filles de Minee, 1685 ; (3) various poems, including 
 six Elegies, nine Odes, thirteen Ballads, twenty-five Epistles, and a 
 number of Dizains, Sizains, Chansons, Madrigaux, etc. ; (4) some 
 minor works in prose, interspersed with verse : Psyche et Cupidon ; 
 Le Songe de Vaux [a fragment] ; Lettres a sa femme ; and (5) his 
 Dramas, of which there are twelve in all, from his adaptation of 
 L'Eunuque, 1654, to the two first acts of a piece entitled Achille, 
 published for the first time in 1785. La Fontaine was destitute of 
 dramatic genius. 
 
 The separate editions of the Contcs and of the Fables are too 
 numerous for it to be possible to give even the principal of them here, 
 and we shall confine ourselves to mentioning, on account of the 
 beauty of their illustrations, the edition of the Fables, 1735-1759, 4 
 vols. in folio, illustrated by Oudry ; and the edition of the Contes 
 known as that of the " Fermiers Generaux," Amsterdam [Paris], 1 vol. 
 in 8vo, 1762, illustrated by Eisen. 
 
 The best editions of the complete works are : the successive editions 
 brought out by Walckenaer, who made the life and works of La
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 191 
 
 Indeed were I not afraid of the expression appearing 
 somewhat metaphysical, I would say of these works 
 that they are fragments of nature and humanity shown 
 under their eternal aspect. 
 
 Their human character does not prevent them being 
 national at the same time : and by the word national I 
 would express three things, which go together, but which 
 it is possible and necessary to distinguish. Henceforth 
 our writers esteem, that were they to take lessons from 
 
 Fontaine his own special property as it were, Paris, 1822, 1826, 1835, 
 1838, 1840 ; Marty-Laveaux' edition, in the " Bibliotheque Elzevir- 
 ienne," Paris, 1857-1877 ; and H. Regnier's edition, in the " Grands 
 Ecrivains " series, Paris, 1883-1892, Hachette. 
 
 IV. Jacques-Benigne Bossuet [Dijon, 1627 ; f 1704, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Levesque de Burigny, Vie de Bossuet, 1761 ; 
 Cardinal de Bausset, Histoire de Bossuet, Paris, 1814 ; Floquet, 
 Etudes sur la vie de Bossuet, Paris, 1855 ; and Bossuet precepteur du 
 Dauphin, 1864 ; Abbe Guettee, Journal [1 vol.] and Memoires [3 
 vols.] de I'abbe Le Dieu, Paris, 1856 ; Abbe Reaurne, Histoire de 
 Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, Paris, 1869 ; Abbe Delmont, Quid con- 
 ferant latina Bossuetii opera ad cognoscendam illius vitam . . . 
 Paris, 1896. 
 
 P. de la Rue, Oraison funebre de Bossuet, 1704 ; Maury, Essai sur 
 I'eloquence de la chaire, 1777 ; Doin Deforis, in his notices preceding 
 the volumes of the first edition of Bossuet's sermons, 1772 ; 
 Jacquiiiet, Les Predicateurs du XVII 1 ' siecle avant Bossuet, Paris, 
 1863 and 2nd edition, 1885 : Abbe Vaillant, Etudes sur les sermons de 
 Bossuet, Paris, 1851 ; Gandar, Bossuet orateur, Paris, 1867 ; and 
 Edmond Scheref 's review of this book, Etudes, 1867 ; Abbe Lebarq, 
 Histoire critique de la predication de Bossuet, Paris, 2nd edition, 
 1891 ; Freppel, Bossuet et I'eloquence sacree au XVIP siecle, Paris, 
 1893. 
 
 Gerin, Recherches sur Vaxsemblee du clerge de France en 1682, 
 Paris, 1870, 2nd edition ; Abbe J. T. Loyson, L'Assemblee du clerge 
 d^e France en 1682, Paris, 1870 [Cf. the books of J. de Maistre, Du 
 Pape and De I'Eglise galiicane, the second of which in particular is 
 directed against Bossuet]. 
 
 Voltaire, Essai sur les moeurts ; Turgot, Discours de Sorbonne and
 
 192 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the foreigner, from the Spaniards, or the Italians, as 
 their fathers had done and a 'few of their belated con- 
 temporaries were still doing, they would be false to the 
 guiding spirit of the reign, and guilty of a public act of 
 ingratitude to the sovereign who has accorded them his 
 protection. It is for this reason that they refuse to 
 consider the works, which had been most admired by the 
 preceding generation, Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata or 
 Georges de Montemayor's .Dwme enamour ee, for example 
 
 Fragments historiques, vol. ii. of his collected works ; Herder, Idees 
 sur la philosophic de I'histoire de Vlmmanite. 
 
 Bebelliau, Bossuet, historien du protestantisme, Paris, 1891. 
 
 Abbe Bellon, Bossuet, directeur de conscience, Paris, 1895. 
 
 Abbe de la Broise, Bossuet et la Bible, Paris, 1890. 
 
 Th. Delmont, Bossuet et les saints Peres, Paris, 1896. 
 
 Tabaraud, Supplement aux histoires de Bossuet et de Fenelon, 
 Paris, 1822 ; A. Bonnel, La controverse de Bossuet et de Fenelon sur 
 le quietisme, Macon, 1850; Guerrier, Madame Guyon, sa vie et sa 
 doctrine, Paris, 1881 : Crousle, Bossuet et Fenelon, Paris, 1894. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. x., 1854; vol. xii., 1856; vol. 
 xiii. 1857 ; and Nouveaux lundis, vol. xii. Poujoulat, Lettres sur 
 Bossuet, Paris, 1854 ; G. Lanson, Bossuet, Paris, 1891. 
 
 2. THE LIFE, THE BOLE AND THE INFLUENCE OF BOSSUET. Bossuet 
 never having written a line that was not an act, the history of his life 
 is inseparable from that of his work. His birth, and that it is 
 important to keep in view that he came of a family of magistrates ; 
 his studies at Dijon [college des Godrans] ; and in Paris at the 
 college of Navarre and at the Sorbonne. He is ordained priest and 
 appointed archdeacon of Sarrebourg, 1652 ; his sojourn at Metz [Cf. 
 Floquet, vol. ii. and Gandar, Bossuet orateur] ; and that it is at 
 Metz, from 1653-1659, that he, as it were, fixed on almost all his 
 ideas. Did Bossuet traverse a period of doubt ? and in what sense 
 the question must be understood. An observation as to his character 
 and that few men have less resembled their style. That it does not 
 appear, however, that his doubts ever shook the foundation of his 
 faith. To what extent his perplexities resembled those of Pascal and 
 to what extent they differed from them. Of Bossuet's predilection for 
 Saint Chrysostom among the Greek Fathers, and for Saint Augustin 
 among the Fathers of the Latin Church. Whether, in the course of
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 193 
 
 otherwise than as the obstacle which has hindered them 
 too long from being themselves. To appreciate this feel- 
 ing, it is only necessary to read Boileau's Dissertation 
 sur Joconde, which is one of his first works, and to 
 note with what assurance he accords La Fontaine the 
 superiority over Ariosto, in a case were the former is 
 treating a subject borrowed from the latter ! His attitude 
 is tantamount to a declaration that in a work of art the 
 subject is of no account, while the style is all important ; 
 
 his studious life, he did not somewhat neglect the study of men ? 
 Difference in this respect between him and Pascal. His first 
 published work : La Refutation du catechisme de Paul Ferry, 1665. 
 His first sermons [Cf. Gandar, and more especially Lebarq, Histoire 
 critique']. He takes up his residence in Paris, 1659. 
 
 A. Bossuet's Sermons. The history of Bossuet's sermons [Cf. 
 Lebarq, Histoire critique], He preached in Paris: in 1660, the 
 Lenten sermons at the Minimes of the Place Royale; in 1661, the 
 Lenten sermons at the Carmelites of the Faubourg Saint- Jacques ; 
 in 1662, the Lenten sermons before the Court ; in 1665, the Advent 
 sermons before the Court ; ha 1666, the Lenten sermons before the 
 Court ; in 1668, the Advent sermons at Saint-Thomas du Louvre ; 
 and in 1669 the Advent sermons before the Court. The Oraison 
 funebre de Nicolas Cornet, 1663, and the funeral oration on the Queen 
 of England, 1669, must be included in the same period. The latter 
 sermon is thf second work he published, at the desire of Madame the 
 Duchesse d'Orleans. Bossuet's three " manners." The first is more 
 especially " theological and didactic " [Cf. Sermon sur la Bonte et la 
 Rigueur de Dieu; Premier sermon pour Vendredi Saint ; Panegy- 
 rique de saint Gorgon; Panegyrique des saints Agnis gardiens\. 
 The sermons in this manner are longer than those that followed them ; 
 more encumbered with dissertations ; less skilfully composed ; they 
 offer too a realism of expression that is sometimes excessive : but for 
 this very reason they are more "coloured." The masterpiece of this 
 first manner is the Panegyrique de saint Paul, 1657 in which more- 
 over the second manner is foreshadowed. This second manner is 
 more especially "philosophic and moral"; although not at all 
 " lay " on this account ; moreover, these distinctions are not to be 
 taken too literally [Cf. the sermons : sur la Providence, 1656 and 
 1662, sur la Mort, 1662, sur V Ambition, 1662 and 1666, sur U 
 
 14
 
 194 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and since it was generally admitted that we were justi- 
 fied in regarding the Greeks and more especially the 
 Romans as ancestors rather than as foreigners, it is by 
 freeing itself, by means of originality of style, from all 
 foreign influence, that our literature takes the first step 
 towards becoming truly national. 
 
 It makes further progress in this direction by developing 
 henceforth, out of its own resources, and shut off, as it 
 were, from every external influence, certain more deep- 
 
 Delai de la conversion, 1665, sur la Justice, 1666, pour la fete de la 
 Toussaint, 1669]. Bossuet, like Pascal, endeavours to prove that 
 religion, independently of the numerous other reasons that make belief 
 in it incumbent, is of all the "philosophies" that which offers the 
 best explanation of man and nature. The composition is at once 
 freer and more original ; the style, while perhaps less coloured, 
 has more spaciousness and movement, is more oratorical, or it may 
 even be said more "lyric." Finally, and if only the sermons proper 
 be taken into account, the third manner might rather be described 
 as " homiletic," by which is meant less strained, more indulgent, 
 and above all less imperious ; in the sermons in this manner 
 there is less of the spirit of the Bible or of the Old Testament and more 
 of that of the Gospels [Cf. the sermons : pour la Pentecote, (the 
 third) pour la fete de la Circoncision, (the third) pour le jour de 
 Noel~\. The sermons in this last manner are fewer in number; 
 doubtless because Bossuet had come to improvise with greater ease ; 
 and it must be remembered that they were contemporary with the 
 most important Funeral Orations. 
 
 Did Bossuet's contemporaries appreciate his sermons at their full 
 value ? Evidence on this subject [Cf. Etudes critiques, vol. v., 
 r Eloquence de Bossuef], In any case it seems that the glory of the 
 controversialist was prejudicial to that of the orator. To say of 
 Bossuet that he was too superior to his audience to be appreciated by 
 it, is to make a strange mistake with respect to listeners who were 
 Pascal's readers and Eacine's spectators. A remark of Nisard on this 
 subject. It is also not to recognise the way in which eloquence exerts 
 its influence. That if, as Voltaire declares, " Bossuet ceased to be 
 accounted the first among the preachers from the moment Bourdaloue 
 appeared," the reason is very simple ; it is that Bourdaloue made his 
 appearance in the Paris pulpits just as Bossuet was leaving them,
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FKENCH LITERATURE 195 
 
 lying qualities it is somewhat difficult to define, but the 
 " national " character of which is evinced by the circum- 
 stance that foreigners, to whom they do not appeal, are 
 blind to them. Among them are some of the qualities 
 which Frenchmen esteem more highly, perhaps, than any 
 others in Eacine : depth and subtlety of analysis and 
 moral observation ; a style of apparent but studied negli- 
 gence, and of a suppleness that may be said to respond to 
 the most hidden movements of passion ; harmony of 
 
 and was only to mount them again at rare intervals; owing to his 
 being appointed bishop of Condom, 1669 ; and tutor to the Dauphin, 
 1670. 
 
 B. Bossuefs role at Court. He publishes his Exposition de la 
 doctrine de VEglise sur les matieres de controverse, 1671 ; he endea- 
 vours to estrange Louis XIV. from Mme de Montespan ; his " Letters 
 to the King," 1675 ; his " Letter to Marshal de Bellefonds," 1675. 
 Was Bossuet wanting in courage on this occasion ? and what 
 could he have done in addition to what he did '? Of the education of 
 the Dauphin, and of the way in which Bossuet conducted it [Cf. the 
 Lettre au pape Innocent XI., March 8, 1679]. The question of the 
 " regale" and the assembly of the clergy [Cf. Gerin and Loyson]. 
 Was Louis XIV. prepared to go as far as a schism ? The sermon sur 
 V unite de I'Eglise, 1681. How the parliamentary traditions of his 
 family ; his education at the Sorbonne ; the complaisance of a 
 faithful subject and of a good Frenchman ; and the idea he had 
 formed of Pope Innocent XL, induced Bossuet to take up the attitude 
 he adopted on this occasion. Characteristic remarks of Joseph de 
 Maistre in his book, de VEglise gallicane [bk. ii., ch. 8]. The four 
 articles. Marriage of the Dauphin, 1680 ; Bossuet is appointed 
 chaplain to the Dauphine, 1680; and the following year bishop of 
 Meaux. 
 
 C. The Discours sur Vhistoire universelle. Of all the writings 
 Bossuet composed for the education of the Dauphin, the Discours is 
 the only one Bossuet published himself. His reasons for publishing 
 it ; and that they are analogous to those which led Pascal to compose 
 his apology. Of the criticisms of which the Discours has been the 
 object, and that some of them do not take into account that the 
 Discours which has come down to us was to have been followed by 
 a second; that others are the consequence of the Discours not
 
 196 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 proportion ; and in general all the qualities, which, it 
 must be admitted, the oratorical character of his tragedies 
 seems to place beyond the ken of all those who are not 
 of French birth. To the same category belong certain 
 of the qualities of Bossuet. Universal justice is rendered 
 to the vigour and precision of his language ; he is admired 
 as an historian and as a controversialist ; and homage is 
 paid the orator, who was more abundant than Cicero and 
 more nervous than Demosthenes. I am not certain 
 
 being read aright, and of its second part being neglected : the part 
 entitled La suite de la Religion. And yet this second part is the 
 more important ; in this sense, that in it Bossuet replies : to the 
 attacks of the " libertines " on religion ; to Spinoza's Traite 
 theologico-politique ; and to the new-born exegesis of Richard Simon. 
 Beauty of the scheme of the Discours. Simplicity, vigour, and 
 majesty of the style. To what extent has modern erudition destroyed 
 the value of the Discours sur Vhistoire universelle ? Confession of 
 Eenan on this point ; and that the final effort of his " philology " was 
 to recognise that there were only " three histories of paramount 
 interest : Grecian, Roman, and Jewish " ; and that in consequence 
 to lead up from the two first to their point of contact with the third, 
 even though it be only a method, is the right method. That, this 
 point conceded, Bossuet's judgments on particular incidents retain a 
 real, " scientific " value ; and contain observations, the justice and 
 depth of which have not since been surpassed. It should be added 
 that he founded the "philosophy of history " as a part of European 
 literature [Cf. Robert Flint, La Philosophic de VHistoire^. 
 
 D. Bossuet's leading idea: the reunion of the Churches. What 
 were his reasons for believing this reunion possible. Numerous con- 
 versions in which he had a share. The conversion of Turenne. 
 Difficulties experienced by the Protestants in refuting the doctrine of 
 the Exposition. The Conference avec M. Claude, 1682. The great 
 Oraisons funebres. The progress of " libertinism " and the Oraison 
 funebre d'Anne de Gonzague. The Oraison funebre de Michel Le 
 Tellier and the repeal of the Edict of Nantes. -That just as the idea 
 of Providence dominates all Bossuet's philosophy, so the idea or the 
 dream of the reunion of the Churches dominates all his controversial 
 writings. That this circumstance explains : his indulgent attitude 
 [Cf . Ingold, Bossuet et le Jansenisme, Paris, 1897] towards Jansenism ;
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITEEATURE 197 
 
 whether the fund of naturalness, of simplicity, and I will 
 venture to say of familiarity, that underlies the splen- 
 dour of his inimitable eloquence is appreciated outside 
 France, where it may be, too, full justice is not done to 
 his remarkable freedom from rhetoric, artificiality, and 
 self-sufficient literary vanity. Again, to take La Fon- 
 taine, how many foreigners are there who understand the 
 rare admiration we have for the unique combination he 
 offers of easy-going Epicureanism, Gallic maliciousness, 
 
 his severity towards the Casuists ; his role in the assembly of 1682 ; 
 and his apologetic method. In his opinion only one question 
 separates Protestants and Catholics : the question of the Church ; 
 and his only reason for writing his Histoire des variations was to 
 show by what sure signs the true Church is to be recognised. 
 
 E. The Histoire des variations des eglises protestantes, 1688. 
 Recent discussions on this subject [Cf. Rebelliau, Bossuet historieri] ; 
 and that Bossuet showed himself a true historian in this great work. 
 His solid erudition ; his acute and impartial criticism. Moreover, in 
 this book, which is too little read, are to be found some of the finest 
 passages Bossuet ever wrote. The portraits in the Histoire des 
 variations ; the narrative passages ; the dialectics. Sobriety, 
 vigour, and fluency of Bossuet's style. Effect produced by 
 the Histoire des variations. It is attacked by Burnet and by 
 Jurien in his Lettres pastorales. Bossuet replies to Burnet in 
 his Defense de V Histoire des Variations, 1691 ; and to Jurien 
 by his Avertissements aux Protestants, 1689-1691. In what 
 sense the Avertissements form a constituent part of the Histoire des 
 variations. The three first Avertissements [Cf. Pressense, Les trois 
 premiers siecles de VEglise chretienne ; and Ad. Harnak, Lehrbuch der 
 Dogmen Geschichte, 2nd edition, Fribourg, 1888-1890] ; the fourth 
 Avertissement dealing with Christian marriage ; the sixth Avertisse- 
 ment ; and whether in it Bossuet did not foresee, point out and 
 describe in advance, the evolution of contemporary Protestantism ? 
 That in any case the problem continues to turn upon the reconcilia- 
 tion of Protestant individualism with the pretension of Protestantism 
 to found churches. Of the masterly clearness of Bossuet's treatment 
 of these difficult and obscure questions ; and that even in his sermons 
 there is nothing more oratorical than in the Avertissements or in the 
 Histoire des variations.
 
 193 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and unalloyed poetry ? Above all they have a difficulty 
 in comprehending how it is that a writer who, more than 
 any of his fellows, "went to the ancients for his inspira- 
 tion" should be "the most French of our poets"; that 
 a collection of Fables, every one of which is borrowed 
 from a foreign source, should yet be wholly creative 
 work throughout. 
 
 There is still another point, however, for in my opinion 
 the most national feature of all these works is precisely 
 
 F. Other works of Bossuet. His Defensio cleri gallicani [posthu- 
 mous workj . His Defense de la tradition et des saints Peres directed 
 against Richard Simon. Bossuet's respect for tradition. Opinion of 
 the Brandenburg envoy upon Bossuet's role [Cf. Ezechiel Spanheim, 
 Relation de la cour de France en 169ff\. Correspondence with 
 Leibnitz [Cf. Foucher de Careil, CEuvres de Leibnitz, vols. i. and ii., 
 Paris, 1867] . The Maximes sur Iq^comedie, 1693. The Quietist episode. 
 How Bossuet came to be mixed up in it without such being his in- 
 tention. Importance of the question, and how it was complicated by a 
 political question [Cf . A. Griveau, Etude sur la condamnation du livre 
 des Maximes des saints, Paris, 1878]. The party of the Dauphin and 
 that of the Due de Bourgogne [Cf. the correspondence of Madame 
 duchesse d' Orleans]. Of Bossuet's role in the controversy. His 
 conception of mysticism. His writings : Instruction sur les Etats 
 d'oraison, and Relation sur le quietisme, 1697-1698. That if during 
 the heat of the conflict he was wanting in " charity," his adversaries 
 were wanting in frankness. The last years of Bossuet [1700-1704]. 
 He finishes off the works he had long had in hand. He finishes his 
 Politique ; his Elevations and his Meditations ; he resumes writing 
 his Defense de la tradition et des saints Peres. His work as a director 
 of consciences. His family preoccupations and his weakness for his 
 nephew. His solicitations of the king. His death. 
 
 G. The Elevations sur les mysteres and the Meditations sur 
 VEvangile. The conditions under which theslf two works were 
 written ; and that Bossuet's aim was to embody in them the 
 substance of his sermons. He resorted to the same process in his 
 Politique [Cf . the sermons : sur les Devoirs des rois, and sur la 
 Justice]. It is possible, too, that in the Meditations and the Eleva- 
 tions there is something of what Bossuet had had to learn over again 
 in order to combat Fenelon. Plan of the Elevations and of the
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the impossibility by which we are confronted of distin- 
 guishing in them between what is properly and purely 
 French and what is universal. They possess the quality 
 of universality, and yet it is inconceivable that they should 
 have seen the light except in the France of the seven- 
 teenth century ! While belonging to all times and to 
 every country, not only are they of their own time and 
 their own country, but the fact that they are so seems 
 to constitute a part at least of their originality. In this 
 
 Meditations. Originality of the former work and its philosophical 
 import. The first "weeks" of the Elevations contain some of 
 Bossuet's finest inspirations. Of the accent of tenderness there is 
 in the Meditations ; and, in this connection, of Bossuet's gentleness 
 of character. Testimony on this point : -of Pere de la Rue in his 
 funeral oration ; of Abbe Le Dieu in his Journal; of Saint- Simon 
 in his Memoires. That the very letters of the Elevations and the 
 Meditations are evidence of the lyric element there was in Bossuet's 
 temperament [Cf. Vigney's Elevations and Lamartine's Meditations]. 
 That for this reason the Elevations and the Meditations, taken 
 together, are perhaps the most "personal" of Bossuet's works; 
 and in this way by leading him back to the preoccupations of his 
 early years they give his life an harmonious ending : after the enthu- 
 siasm of his youth, the agitation, the cares, and the conflicts of his 
 maturity ; perhaps, too, the weaknesses ; and to end with his 
 retirement into the sanctuary of lofty ideas and of hope. 
 
 H. Of the influence exerted by Bossuet on his contemporaries, 
 and of the injustice of the reproach that has been addressed him [Cf. 
 Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, and Renan in his introduction to Kuenen's 
 Histoire de I'Ancienne Testament] of not having foreseen Voltaire. 
 How, on the contrary, a part of his work is directed against the 
 " libertines " ; how the object of another part is to prevent the 
 increase of the difficulties in the way of belief ; and how finally 
 another part proves that he was alive to the fact that the chief danger 
 run by religion lay in the division among Christians [Cf. Sermons sur 
 la Verite de la religion, 1665 ; Oraison funebre de la Princesse 
 Palatine, 1685 ; Lettre a un disciple du P. Malebranche, 1687 ; 
 Sixieme Avertissement aux protcstants, 1691]. That he also foresaw 
 what would be the outcome of Richard Simon's method of criticism ; 
 and that he cannot reasonably be found fault with for not having
 
 200 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 sense they are the equivalent of the Italian painting of 
 the Renaissance or of the Greek sculpture of the best 
 period, the very universality of whose masterpieces is 
 proof of their national character, since, although they 
 have been imitated everywhere, they have nowhere been 
 even reproduced, let alone equalled. The case is the 
 same with Racine's tragedies or Moliere's comedies ; and 
 the fact that it is difficult to explain this mystery is no 
 reason for denying it. Above we said of these works that 
 
 admitted with the " father of modern exegesis " that the Bible is a 
 book of the nature of the Iliad or the Ilamayana. That in reality 
 Bossuet was the master for nearly a century of orthodox thought ; 
 in consequence, it is against him that the "philosophers" will soon 
 direct their principal efforts ; and for this reason Voltaire cannot be 
 understood without a previous acquaintance with Bossuet. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The works of Bossuet, which form some forty 
 volumes [in the Versailles edition] may be divided into Exegetical 
 Works ; Works of Edification and Piety; Controversial and 
 Polemical Works ; Works composed for the instruction of the 
 Dauphin ; and Miscellaneous Works. 
 
 A. His Exegetical Works scarcely come within our scope, as they 
 are written in Latin ; while those written in French, such as his 
 Explication de V Apocalypse, 1689 ; and his two Instructions sur la 
 version dti Nouveau Testament imprime a Trevoux, also form part, 
 and even more properly, of his Controversial Works. 
 
 B. His Works of Edification and Piety, not including his Pastoral 
 Works, which moreover are inconsiderable in number, comprise : his 
 Oratorical Works, sermons, panegyrics and funeral orations ; his 
 Elevations sur les mysteres, his Meditations sur VEvangile ; and his 
 Lettres de direction. 
 
 Of these works, only the six great Oraisons funebres, 1670, 1670, 
 1683, 1685, 1686, 1687; and the sermon, I 'Unite de I'Eglise, 1682, 
 appeared during Bossuet's lifetime. 
 
 The Elevations and the Meditations, which he had himself intended 
 to have printed, did not appear until 1727 and 1730-1731, when they 
 were published by his nephew, the bishop of Troyes. 
 
 The Lettres de direction, almost all of which are addressed to 
 nuns, and of which the most important are the Lettres a la sceur 
 Sainte-Benigne [Mme Cornuau] and the Lettres a Mme d' Albert de
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 201 
 
 they were natural in so far as they were human; we 
 now have to say of them that they were national in 
 so far as they were universal, and universal in so far 
 as they were national. 
 
 From these characteristics there proceeds or results a 
 third, which explains the others and is explained by them. 
 It consists in the fact that while all these works are 
 marked by a desire to please, they are animated as well 
 by the ambition to instruct ; they are didactic or moral 
 
 Luynes, were published the former in 1746 and 1748 and the latter 
 in 1778. 
 
 As to the Sermons, the majority of which exist in manuscript 
 at the Bibliotheque Nationale, they were first published between 
 1772 and 1778 by Dom Deforis. They were revised by M. Lachat 
 for his edition of Bossuet's works, Paris, 1862, etc. Finally and 
 more recently they were again revised and classified for the first 
 time in chronological order by M. 1'abbe Lebarq for his edition of 
 Bossuet's oratorical works, Paris, 6 vols. in 8vo, 1890-1896 ; Desclee 
 and de Brouwer. 
 
 C. The Works composed for the education of the Dauphin, or 
 rather in connection with the education of the Dauphin, are : (1) 
 the Discours sur Vhistoire universelle, published by Bossuet himself 
 in 1681 ; (2) the Politique tiree des propres paroles de VEcriture 
 Sainte, published by his nephew, together with the Lettre au pape 
 Innocent XI sur V education du Dauphin [in Latin], 1709; (3) the 
 Traite de la connaissance de Dieu et de soi-meme, published for the 
 first time in 1722, and ascribed to Fenelon, among whose papers it 
 had been discovered, and for the second, under the name of its real 
 author, in 1741 ; and (4) the Abrege de Vliistoire de France, which 
 appeared for the first time in 1747. 
 
 It is the habit to put in this class the Traite du libre arbitre, 
 published by the bishop of Troyes in 1731, but we find it difficult 
 to believe that this work was written for the instruction of the 
 Dauphin. 
 
 D. The Controversial Works include : (1) the works against the 
 Protestants, of which the principal are : the Exposition de la doctrine 
 de rEglise catholique en matiere de controverse, 1671 ; the Confer- 
 ence avec M. Claude, 1682 ; the Histoire des variations des eg/Uses 
 protestanles, 1688 ; the six Avertissements aux prottastants, 1689-
 
 202 
 
 works in the highest and the widest sense of each of the 
 two words. It is only natural that this characteristic 
 should be perceived at a glance in a sermon of Bossuet 
 or of Bourdaloue, in a chapter of Malebranche, or in 
 a satire of Boileau, and it may even seem somewhat super- 
 fluous to call attention to its presence. It is already of 
 greater interest to meet with the same intention in the 
 Maximes of La Kochefoucauld or the Fables of La Fon- 
 taine, who of all these great writers is doubtless the most 
 
 1691 ; and the two Instructions sur les promesses de I'Eglise, 1700 
 and 1701. Hereto must be added the series of dissertations and 
 letters, written with a view to reunite the Protestants of Germany to 
 the Catholic Church, published for the first time in 1753 ; completed 
 in the successive editions of Bossuet's works ; and by M. Foucher de 
 Careil, in the two first volumes of his edition, left unfinished, of 
 Leibnitz, 1867. 
 
 2. The works relating to Quietism, of which the principal are : 
 Instruction sur les etats d'oraison, 1697 ; -the collection entitled : 
 Divers ecrits stir les Maximes des saints, 1698 ; and the Relation 
 du Quietisme, 1698. Add a voluminous Correspondence, which did 
 not appear until 1788, and which takes up three entire volumes of 
 the Versailles edition. 
 
 3. The works relating to the Gallican question, almost all of them 
 in Latin. 
 
 4. Finally, the works relating to Eichard Simon, the principal of 
 which are : the Instructions sur la nouvelle version du Nouveau 
 Testament donnee a Tre'voux, 1702 and 1703 ; and the Defense de la 
 tradition et des Saints Peres, which appeared in 1753. 
 
 E. A last class may be formed of the Miscellaneous Writings and 
 Minor Works and of the Correspondence of Bossuet. We shall 
 confine ourselves to citing among these writings : the Maximes sur 
 la comedie, 1693 ; the Traite de la concupiscence ; the Traite du 
 libre arbitre, 1731 ; the Traite de Vusure, 1753 ; and a considerable 
 correspondence [Cf. H. H. Bourreaud, Histoire des manuscrits et des 
 editions originates de Bossuet, Paris, 1897]. 
 
 The best editions of Bossuet are the Versailles edition in 43 vols. in 
 8vo, Versailles, 1815-1819, printed by Lebel ; and M. Lachat's 
 edition, 31 vols. in 8vo, Paris, 1862, Vives. Also Abbe Lebarq's 
 edition of the oratorical works, Paris, 1890-1896.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 203 
 
 irregular, or whom indeed there is perhaps too common a 
 disposition at the present day to regard as an exception 
 in his time. As he was well aware " that in France only 
 what pleases is esteemed," that " this is the chief and 
 even the only rule," he was careful to observe this neces- 
 sary condition ! Elsewhere, however, he remarks : " These 
 triflings, he refers to his Fables and not, as might be 
 imagined, to his Contes, these triflings are such in 
 appearance only, for at bottom they have a very sub- 
 
 V. Jean Racine [La Ferte-Milon, 1639 ; f 1699, Paris.] 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Racine's Correspondence, especially that with 
 Boileau, in the majority of editions of his works ; Louis Racine, 
 Memoires sur la vie de son pere, 1747 ; Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, 
 book vi., chap. 10 and 11 ; Paul Mesnard's biographical notice 
 preceding his edition of the works. 
 
 Saint-Evremond, Dissertation sur VAlexandre, 1670 ; Longepierre, 
 Parallele de Corneille et de Racine, in Baillet's Jugement des savants, 
 edition of 1722, vol. v., No. 1553 [the article was written in 1686] ; 
 La Bruyere, in his Caracteres, 1688 ; Fontenelle, Parallele de 
 Corneille et de Racine, 1693 ; Abbe Granet, Recueil de plusieurs 
 dissertations sur les tragedies de Corneille et de Racine, 1740 ; 
 the brothers Parfaict, Histoire du tliedtre francais, 1734-1749, vols. 
 ix., x., xi., xil. ; Stendhal, Racine et Shakespeare, 1823 and 1825 : 
 A. Vinet, Les poetes franqais du siecle de Louis XIV., Paris, 1861 ; 
 Sainte - Beuve, Portraits litteraires, 1830 ; and Nouveaux lundis, 
 vol. iii., 1862, and vol. x., 1866 ; Taine, Essais de critique et d'histoire, 
 1858 ; F. Deltour, Les ennemis de Racine au XVII e siecle, Paris, 
 1859 ; P. Robert, La poetique de Racine, Paris, 1890 ; F. Brune- 
 tiere, Histoire et litterature, vol. v. ; Etudes critiques, vol. i. ; and 
 Les epoques du theatre francais, 1893 ; Jules Lemaitre, Impressions 
 de theatre, 1886-1896 ; G. Larroumet, Racine, in the " Grands 
 Ecrivains franyais " series, 1897. 
 
 Marty-Laveaux, Lexique de la langue de Racine, Paris, 1873, in 
 the 8th volume of Mesnard's edition. 
 
 2. RACINE'S EARLIER YEARS. His family. Would it be suspected 
 that he came from the same part of France as La Fontaine ? and in 
 this connection of the theory of environment. His education at Port- 
 Royal, and that he was the only one or almost the only one of the
 
 204 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 stantial meaning. And just as by the definition of a 
 point, a line and a surface, and by other very familiar 
 principles we become acquainted with sciences which 
 enable us at last to measure heaven and earth, so by the 
 arguments and consequences that may be drawn from 
 these Fables the judgment and character are formed, and 
 the reader is rendered capable of great things." Is it 
 necessary that I should point out, that supposing it was 
 never the design of Moliere to improve or " purify " 
 
 great writers of his time who had a thorough knowledge of Greek ; 
 a knowledge that has left its trace upon his work, into the composition 
 of which there enters, let it be noted to start with, at least as much 
 cleverness and " virtuosity " as genius. His precocious taste for 
 novels ; his early poems ; La promenade de Port-Royal, and, 
 in this connection, of the sentiment of nature in the seventeenth 
 century. La Nymphe de la Seine, 1660 ; Racine's stay at Uzes ; 
 Les Stances a Parthenice, 1661-1662 [Cf. Voiture's poem 
 
 Je me rueurs tous les jours en adorant Sylvie . . . 
 
 Ubicini's edition, No. 9] ; the Ode sur la convalescence du, roi and 
 the Renommee aux Muses. None of these poems seemed to fore- 
 shadow a dramatic poet ; and at another period perhaps Racine 
 would have been only an elegiac poet ; or a novelist. A compatriot 
 and one of the youthful friends of La Fontaine, to whom he was 
 related [by Mdlle Hericart, La Fontaine's wife] he might even have 
 joined the ranks of the Precieux had it not been for his liking for 
 actors ; for the gatherings at the Mouton blanc ; -for his thirst for 
 fame, which at the time the drama was able to satisfy more com- 
 pletely than any other branch of literature ; for the facilities offered 
 him by his friendship with Moliere ; and for an inner warmth of 
 passion or genius, which could not rest content with moderate 
 emotions [Cf. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal]. 
 
 Racine's two first tragedies : the Thebatde, 1664, and Alexandre, 
 1665 ; they procure him numerous enemies ; as many as the Cid 
 had formerly procured Corneille, while Comeille himself was promi- 
 nent among them. Racine's enemies are also those of Boileau and 
 Moliere. In spite of Racine leaving Moliere's theatre for the Hotel 
 de Bourgogne, and of Corneille passing from the Hotel de 
 Bourgogne to Moliere's theatre, the situation remained the same.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 205 
 
 morals, at any rate his Tartuffe, his Misanthrope, or his 
 Femmes savantes are there to show that it was certainly 
 his purpose to "modify" or to "mould" them? In a 
 word, it may be said that no great writer of this period 
 separated the idea of art from that of a certain social 
 function or purpose. Far from affecting contempt for 
 the vulgar after the manner of the Precieux and the 
 great writers of the preceding age, far from taking up 
 _ their cry : 
 
 Eacine's estrangement from the leaders of Port-Royal ; and 
 that in writing his Lettre a Vauteur des Visionnaires, 1666, 
 he seems publicly to take the defence of the Tartuffe party 
 against them [Cf., in the second letter, the passage referring to 
 Tartuffe, which would have left little doubt on the matter if the 
 letter had been printed]. How the conflict came to lie between two 
 dramatic schools or systems [Cf. d'Aubignac, La pratique du theatre, 
 1657] ; and how the coinciding of the success of Andromaque, 1667 
 with the failure of Attila heightens the antagonism. Britannicus, 
 1670, and the criticisms of Robinet, Boursault, and Saint- Evremond 
 [Cf. his letter to M. de Lionne]. Madame, duchesse d'Orleans brings 
 the rivalry of the two poets to a pitch, by pitting them against one 
 another on the subject of Berenice ; and, hi this connection, of the 
 cruelty that marked her thoughtlessness ; and how fortunate it is 
 for this frivolous and perfidious Henriette that she is defended by 
 her funeral oration. The preface to Berenice, 1670 ; and how the 
 radical antagonism of the two poetical systems is at last brought 
 clearly into view hi it. 
 
 3. RACINE'S POETICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 A. The theory of invention. Corneille Had declared hi the preface 
 to his Heraclius [edit. Marty-Laveaux, vol. v., p. 147] : " I shall not 
 hesitate to assert that the subject of a fine tragedy ought not to be 
 probable " ; and Racine replies to him : " Only what is probable is 
 effective in tragedy " [edit. Mesnard, vol. ii., p. 147]. Consequences of 
 this principle. (1) The exceptional, extraordinary, and " complex " 
 action found hi Corneille's plays is replaced by a simple action, " but 
 little burdened with matter," and turning upon everyday experiences, 
 [Cf. the Cid, Heraclius, Rodogune, or Horace, on the one hand, and~^ 
 on the other Andromaque, Britannicus, Berenice, Bajazef]. Few 
 men have found themselves in the situation of Horace or of Rodogune,
 
 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Nothing is to my taste, except what is likely to offend 
 The judgment of the rude populace ; 
 
 they endeavoured, as is admirably explained by La 
 Fontaine, to raise this " populace " to their own level. 
 They wrote for " everybody " ; and there has never been 
 a doctrine more widely removed than theirs from what 
 has since been termed the paradox of art for art in 
 whichever of its several senses the expression be taken. 
 
 but many women have known what it is to undergo experiences 
 such as those of Hermione or Berenice, invitus invitam. A still 
 more decisive comparison is that between Andromaque and Pertharite, 
 where the subject is the same ; or between Bajazet and Floridon 
 [Cf. Segrais, Les divertissements de la princesse Aurelie]. (2) The 
 imitation of living reality takes the place of romantic combinations. 
 Fontenelle's remark on the characters of Racine's personages, 
 " which," he says, " are only true to nature because they are common- 
 place " ; and it would be impossible to praise Racine more highly than 
 in this remark intended as a criticism. Racine's heroes resemble our- 
 selves ; his invention is bolder than Corneille's in the measure in 
 which his subjects are more commonplace ; more hi touch with 
 ourselves ; more akin to what goes on around us every day. Of a 
 mistake of Taine on this point [Cf. Essais de critique et d'histoire] 
 and that of the two, Corneille and Racine, it is assuredly Corneille 
 who is the " Precieux." (3) The very subject matter with which the 
 invention deals is regarded from a different point of view. The object 
 is no longer to supplement reality, to embellish it, to arrange it in 
 accordance with " the grand gout " ; but to have a better insight 
 into it and to give it better expression. Racine's singular predilec- 
 tion for subjects already dealt with [Cf. Les Epoques du theatre 
 francais] ; and how he finds scope for his inventive faculty in 
 treating such subjects. Moliere and La Fontaine regarded invention 
 in the same light ; and this is Fontenelle's grievance against them, 
 when, as he says of Racine, he declares that they are " low by dint 
 of being natural." 
 
 B. Of the psychology and art of Racine ; and hi the first place 
 that they are inseparable ; as are Corneille's " dramatic system " 
 and the " quality of his imagination." Racine's principal concern 
 is the depiction of character [Cf. Moliere in the Critique de VEcole
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FKENCH LITERATURE 207 
 
 The question, too, has been raised whether " the most 
 significant characteristics attaching to the glory of the 
 seventeenth century are not the result of the general 
 march of civilisation, rather than of the influence and 
 destinies of France " ? The question was assuredly worth 
 putting. Moreover, if the answer made to it be and 
 such was the answer of the writer who mooted the 
 question [Cournot, Considerations sur la marche des idees 
 dans les temps modernes, vol. i., Paris, 1872] that " it 
 
 dts femrnes, and Boileau, Epitre a Seignelay]. Unprecedented im- 
 portance given in his tragedy to the passion of love ; as being the 
 most "common" or the most general of all; as being the most 
 " natural," and perhaps the most tragic [Cf. Aristotle's remark on 
 Euripides, whom he terms rpayucwraroc] ; and finally as being the 
 passion which, while it remains identical in its essence, best displays 
 the diversity of men's characters. It is a fact that there are fewer 
 ways of being " avaricious " than there are of being " in love " ; 
 the love of Hermione is different from that of Berenice, and the love 
 of Iphigenie from that of Phedre ; while the love of Neron is no less 
 different from that of Titus, and the love of Achilles from that of 
 Xiphares. Voltaire's mistake on this point [Cf. his Temple dugout]. 
 How a new dramatic system arises out of this diversity in the 
 depiction of character, a system based, as was clearly seen by 
 Saint-Evremond [Cf. his Dissertation sur V Alexandre], on the 
 subordination of the situations to the characters. Comparison, in 
 this connection, between Rodogune and Berenice. How all the 
 points just enumerated are mutually interdependent, and turn upon 
 the principle of probability. Observations on this head ; and that 
 there are entire schools that have based art upon " the exaggera- 
 tion of the real relations between things." 
 
 C. Racine's style ; and (1) that it, too, obeys the law involved in 
 the principle of probability, as regards its degree of naturalness, 
 and, in this connection, of a remark of Sainte-Beuve : " Racine's style," 
 he has said, " borders, as a rule, on prose, except as regards the 
 invariable elegance of its form." Accuracy and fruitfulness of this 
 observation. The truth is there is no prose more simple, it might 
 almost be said more bare than that of Racine [Cf. his Abrege de 
 rhistoire de Port-Royal] ; and in his plays it is to this same prose 
 that the passion of his character imparts colour, variety, animation,
 
 208 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 was the privilege of the France of Louis XIV. to be so 
 situated, that its own movement took the direction of the 
 movement of Europe in general . . . in such sort as to 
 make it the interpreter or the vehicle of the current ideas 
 of the epoch," if this be the answer given the question, 
 a vivid light will certainly have been thrown on a 
 period of the history of our literature, and more par- 
 ticularly a good deal will have been done to explain the 
 rapidity of its propagation. At the same time, how it 
 
 warmth, and fire. (2) That the simplicity of Racine's style makes 
 it an incomparable vehicle for psychological analysis ; and in con- 
 sequence for complex sentiments, which it expresses in the most 
 usual words : 
 
 I loved even the tears I made her shed [Burr.]. 
 
 Take care of her, my hatred demands that she should live [BAJ.] . 
 
 That this mode of writing is exactly the contrary of that of the 
 Precieux ; who express very simple things in a very complicated 
 manner. (3) Further, that this simplicity is not prejudicial to the 
 elegance and still less to the boldness of Racine's style ; and that 
 Racine is one of the most daring writers in existence ; his associa- 
 tions of words ; his ideas conveyed by masterly touches [Cf. P. 
 Mesnard, Etude sur le style de Racine], Other qualities of Racine's 
 style; harmoniousness, life, colour, plasticity [Cf. Epoquesdu theatre 
 francais] ; and that the pains he is at to conceal them again leads 
 us back, to finish with, to the principle of probability. 
 
 4. THE SECOND PAET OF RACINE'S LIFE. Vexations caused him by his 
 Mithridate, 1675 ; his IpJiigenie, 1675 ; and finally by Phedre, 1677 
 [Cf. Deltour, Les Ennemis de Racine and Amedee Renee, Les Nieces 
 de Mazariri] . The two Phedre. Whether the very daring of Racine's 
 tragedies was not one of the causes of the implacable animosity of his 
 enemies ? People refused to admit the truth of his depictions of love ; 
 and because they were too " true " they were held to be " excessive." 
 A remark of Subligny : " I should consider M. Racine very dangerous 
 if he had made this hateful criminal (Phedre) as pleasing, and as much 
 to be pitied, as he desired to do." That sufficient stress has not been 
 laid on this feature of Racine's tragedies ; and yet he was thoroughly 
 alive to it himself ; that in asking Arnauld to accord Phedre his 
 approbation, what he really demanded was an "absolution"; and
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 209 
 
 was that France came by this "prerogative " would still 
 remain to be accounted for ; and, without entering on 
 this somewhat long inquiry, may it not be held that the 
 character of our literature, that of French civilisation of 
 the time of Louis XIV., and lastly the influence of 
 Louis XIV. himself are, even in this connection, effects 
 rather than causes? Can it be said that the ideas of 
 Pascal or those of Bossuet, for example, were " in 
 the direction of the movement of Europe in general"? 
 
 that having obtained it, it did not satisfy him. Voisin's evidence 
 in the affair of the Poisons [Cf. Ravaisson, Archives de la Bastille, 
 vi, 51]. The innermost cause of Racine's conversion was his abhor- 
 rence of his own writings ; and it is for this reason that, having 
 once turned his back upon the stage, he even ceased to concern him- 
 self with the new editions of his plays ; and that he devoted him- 
 self entirely to his historical studies, and to his family. 
 
 His genius, however, far from waning after he had thus sought 
 retirement, gathered strength as its inspiration grew purer. His 
 Esther, 1689, is sufficient to prove this ; and his Athalie, 1691. The 
 conditions under which these two plays were written. It is note- 
 worthy that in choosing the subject of Esther, Racine resorted to 
 a subject that had already been treated six times by previous French 
 dramatists. Success of Esther at Saint-Cyr, and the vexation, in 
 consequence of Racine's enemies. The changing opinions of Mine de 
 Sevigne [Cf. the letters dated 1690]. Disdainful criticisms of Mine de 
 La Fayette [Memoires]. Athalie, 1691. The criticisms redouble, 
 and Racine is more dissatisfied than ever. In accordance with the 
 opinion of Boileau and Voltaire, should Athalie be esteemed Racine's 
 " finest work " ? Racine's last years. Racine as an historiographer 
 and as a courtier. His intervention in the quarrel over the ancients 
 and moderns. His indifference to his own works [Cf. the letter to 
 Boileau, dated April 4, 1696]. " For a long time past God has 
 graciously permitted that the good or evil that may be said of my 
 tragedies scarcely moves me, and I am only troubled by the account 
 of them I shall one day have to render Him." He enters into closer 
 relations with the Port-Royal ; and it is doubtless for this reason that 
 he forfeits the king's favour [Cf. Louis Racine, Memoires sur la vie de 
 sonpere]. His death, April 21, 1699. 
 
 5. THE WOBKS. It may properly be said of the works of Racine 
 
 15
 
 210 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Would not the statement apply rather to the ideas of 
 Locke or Grotius ? Besides, what would be the explana- 
 tion of the resistance, of the opposition encountered in 
 France itself by Moliere, Boileau, Eacine and their 
 fellows, opposition over which, I repeat, they would 
 not have triumphed but for the personal intervention 
 of Louis XIV. ? But it is especially necessary to 
 remark that the " century of Louis XIV." scarcely 
 lasted for more than twenty-five years, which is short 
 
 that apart from his youthful poems and a few epigrams ; all, 
 or almost all of which are extremely biting and malicious ; they 
 are confined to his eleven tragedies and to his comedy, Les 
 Plaideurs. 
 
 The principal editions are : the edition of 1697, Paris, Barbin, 
 which it is in nowise certain was revised by Racine himself ; the edition 
 of 1743, Amsterdam, J. L. Bernard, with Abbe d'Olivet's observations ; 
 the edition of 1807, 7 vols. in 8vo, with Laharpe's commentary, Paris, 
 Agasse ; the edition of 1808, also in 7 vols., with Geoffroy's com- 
 mentary, Paris, Lenormand ; Aime Martin's series of editions, 1820, 
 1822, 1825, 1844, Lefevre ; P. Mesnard's edition in the " Grands 
 Ecrivains de France " series, Paris, 1865-1873, Hachette. 
 
 VI. Louis Bourdaloue [Bourges, 1632; f 1704, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Mine de Pringy, Eloge du P. Bourdaloue in the 
 Mercure galant, June, 1704 ; Abbe Lambert, Histoire litteraire du 
 regne de Louis XIV., 1751, vol. i. ; Maury, Essai sur r eloquence- de 
 la chaire, 1777. 
 
 Vinet, Bourdaloue in the Semeur, 1843, and in his Melanges ; 
 Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. ix. ; J. J. Weiss, Bourdaloue 
 in the Revue des cours litteraires, September, 1866 ; Abbe Hurel, 
 Les predicateurs sacres a la cour de Louis XIV., Paris, 1872; A. 
 Feugere, Bourdaloue, sa predication et son temps, Paris, 1874 ; 
 Father Lauras, S.J., Bourdaloue, sa vie et ses ceuvres, Paris, 1881 ; 
 Abbe Blampignon, Etude sur Bourdaloue preceding his Clioix de 
 Sermons du P. Bourdaloue, Paris, 1886 ; H. Cherot, S.J., Bour- 
 daloue inconnu, in Etudes Religieuses, Paris, 1898. 
 
 Louis Veuillot, Moliere et Bourdaloue. 
 
 2. THE ORATOR. Absence of information respecting his early years ;
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FKENCH LITEEATUKE 211 
 
 measure for a century, if only the number of years 
 be considered, but the period will seem longer when 
 it is borne in mind that there was not one of these 
 twenty-five years that was not rendered illustrious by the 
 appearance of a masterpiece. We have no sooner climbed 
 one side of the hill, than we have to descend the other ; 
 and why should we complain of this necessity, if life and 
 movement be one and the same thing? 
 
 The truth is, the Treaty of Nimeguen in 1678, which 
 
 and absolute uneventfulness of his life ; sincerity of his vocation ;- - 
 simplicity of his existence ; and unity of his work. His first appear- 
 ance in the Paris pulpits, 1669 ; and as to Voltaire's remark that 
 " Bossuet ceased to be accounted the first among the preachers from 
 the moment that Bourdaloue appeared." Bourdaloue at court ; the 
 Advents of 1670, '84, '86, '89, '91, '93, '97 and the Lents of 1672, '74, 
 '76, '80, '82, '95. Bourdaloue's prodigious success [Cf. the letters of 
 Mine de Sevigne passim and the Journal de Dangeau]. Should 
 this success be attributed to the exclusively moral and seldom 
 dogmatic character of his preaching ? Nisard's exaggeration on this 
 point. Does the cause of Bourdaloue's success lie in the " portraits " 
 or " allusions " his sermons may contain ? Difficulty of answering 
 this question. We do not possess the sermons Bourdaloue really 
 delivered ; but his sermons touched up, recast, and several of them 
 amalgamated into one. The " portraits " of Pascal, in the Sermon 
 sur la medisance ; and of Arnauld, in the Sermon sur le severite 
 chretienne ; and are they really " portraits " '? Bourdaloue's " out- 
 spokenness " and that it does not seem to have surpassed the 
 degree of outspokenness customary at the time in the pulpit. The 
 explanation of Bourdaloue's success must be sought elsewhere ; and 
 is easily found : 
 
 A. In tJie richness of his oratorical invention. Diversity of the 
 plans of Bourdaloue's sermons, and, in this connection, of the four 
 sermons for All-Saints Day, or of the three sermons : sur la Crainte 
 de la Mort, sur la Preparation a la Mort, sur la Pensee de la 
 Mort. Peculiar beauty of this last sermon. Severity of Bourdaloue's 
 method ; and, in this connection, of Fenelon's paradox in his 
 Dialogues sur V eloquence. That it is as puerile to find fault with a 
 sermon because it is divided as a rule into three parts, as to take 
 objection to a tragedy because it is in five acts ; that Bourdaloue,
 
 212 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 seems to mark the zenith of the power of Louis XIV., 
 marks in reality the beginning of its decline. The 
 gallantry of the opening of the reign had degenerated 
 into a public scandal, against which the preachers had 
 inveighed in vain from the pulpit ! Louis XIV. had 
 persisted in preferring the teaching of Moliere to that of 
 Bourdaloue : 
 
 Un partage avec Jupiter 
 
 N'a rien du tout qui deshonore . . . 
 
 moreover, was of opinion, that it is unseemly to seek to pose as a 
 " wit " in the pulpit ; and that it is impossible to go too far in 
 the matter of subdividing, distinguishing, and insisting, when the 
 orator's chief preoccupation is, as was his case, to instruct and to 
 "moralise." The transitions in Bourdaloue's sermons; and, more 
 generally, of the importance of transitions in the art of oratory ; as 
 serving as a "means of intercommunication" between the ideas 
 expounded ; to establish their natural gradation ; and as a means 
 of passing from them to kindred ideas. Of the superlative and in 
 particular of the sustained clearness, which these qualities lend 
 Bourdaloue's sermons ; and the primary cause of his success must 
 be attributed to this characteristic. Another cause lies : 
 
 B. In the practical character of his preaching. Bourdaloue's 
 sermons are of the class in which precise rules of conduct abound. 
 [Cf. the sermons sur les Devoirs des peres, sur le Soin des domes- 
 tiques, sur les Divertissements du monde, sur la EestitutionJ] He 
 is not content with setting forth what people should not do ; but he 
 points out what they ought to do ; his instructions are concrete and 
 his advice is definite. The way in which Bourdaloue goes for his 
 inspiration to current events [Cf. the sermon sur Vlmpurete], 
 Contemporary polemics in Bourdaloue's sermons [Cf. the sermons 
 sur le Severite chretienne, directed against Jansenism; sur UObeis- 
 sance due a l'Eglise,ag&insi Gallicanism ; sur VHypocrisie, against 
 Moliere and Tartuffe]. A last cause of Bourdaloue's success lies : 
 
 C. In the nature of his eloquence and of his style. Bourdaloue is 
 the French preacher whose eloquence is most sustained. By which is 
 meant : that he throws an equal light upon every part of his subject ; 
 that the ordinary flow of his eloquence is ample rather than varied ; 
 and that he seldom makes points or indulges in passages of exceptional 
 brilliance. Simplicity of Bourdaloue's style. His disdain for all
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 213 
 
 Excess of power or its intoxication, now induce him to 
 engage in enterprises that are beyond his strength. His 
 haughtiness and self-sufficiency, untempered henceforth 
 by the least familiarity, and congealed, as it were, 
 in a perpetually solemn attitude ; his abuses of power ; 
 his "charnbres de reunion," his great quarrel with 
 the Court of Koine, and the repeal of the Edict of 
 Nantes; his intervention in English affairs and the 
 brutal and despotic policy of Louvois; all these things 
 
 rhetoric, and whether he did not go to extremes in this direction? 
 That the manner of the man who has been rightly called " the living 
 refutation of the Provinciates," is the most Jansenist there is ; after 
 that of Nicole ; and that this very manner stood him in good stead at 
 the time. That it is too exact or too reasonable a manner for the 
 taste of the present day ; but we must not on this account be blind to 
 the subtletj-, the depth, and the breadth of his psychology. Com- 
 parison, in this connection, between Nicole's Essais and Bourdaloue's 
 Sermons. Mine de Sevigne's equal admiration for both. That all 
 these reasons for Bourdaloue's success as a preacher of sermons, 
 explain his inferiority when he essays funeral orations, panegyrics, or 
 when he preaches upon the mysteries of religion. 
 
 On the other hand and for the same reasons, Bourdaloue is the 
 real master among Frenchmen of the art of handling a subject 
 oratorically ; admitting him to have had no superior in the art of 
 setting forth, subdividing, and arranging a subject ; of treating it 
 according to its nature ; and of refraining from introducing into it 
 any extraneous or superfluous matter. This absolute sincerity does 
 no less honour to his character than to his talent, or rather his 
 talent and his character form an inseparable whole. The appreciation 
 he received at the hands of his contemporaries [Cf. Lauras, S.J., 
 Bourdaloue, sa vie et ses oeuvres\; of all those who discussed him; 
 both Catholics and Protestants. 
 
 3. THE WOEKS. Bourdaloue's works are confined to his sermons ; 
 to fragments of his sermons, collected by his editors under the title of 
 Pensees ; and of a very small number of letters. 
 
 The original edition of the sermons or works of Bourdaloue, certainly 
 prepared in part by himself, but issued by his colleague, Father Breton- 
 neau, appeared from 1707 to 1734, Rigaud, director of the Royal 
 Printing Works, being the publisher. It comprises : for the Advent
 
 214 MANUAL OF THE HISTOKY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 estrange, alarm, and irritate the opinion, and turn 
 against him the arms of the whole of Europe. In- 
 fatuated, too, as he is with his own parts, he chooses 
 the moment when he has no longer a Colbert to 
 administer his finances, a Turenne, a Conde or a 
 Luxembourg to lead his armies, a Lionne or a Pomponne 
 to inspire his diplomacy, he chooses this moment to 
 embark rashly on the war, which is destined to end in 
 the fatal treaty of Utrecht. 
 
 sermons, one volume, 1707 ; Lenten sermons, three volumes, 1707 ; 
 Mysteres, two volumes, 1709 ; Sermons de veture, Panegyriques, 
 Oraisons funebres, two volumes, 1711 ; Domincales, three volumes, 
 1716; and finally Instructions chretiennes, Exhortations de retraite 
 or Pensees diverses, five volumes, 1721-1734. 
 
 The best modern editions are : the edition of 1822-1826, Paris ; 
 and Guerin's edition, 1864, Bar-le-Duc. 
 
 VII. Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux [Paris, 1636 ; f 1711, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES.' Desmaizeaux, Le vie de M.Despreaux: Amster- 
 dam, 1712 ; Louis Racine, Memoires sur la vie de son pere, 1747 ; 
 this work is printed too in a number of editions of Racine ; Cizeron 
 Rival, Lettres familieres de MM. Boileau-Despreaux .et Brossette, 
 Lyons, 1770 ; d'Alembert, Eloge de Despreaux, in his collected 
 Eloges academiques, Paris, 1779 ; Berriat Saint- Prix, Essai sur 
 Boileau, Paris, 1830. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, Portraits litteraires, vol. i. ; Port-Royal, bk. vi., 
 ch. vii. ; and Causeries du lundi, vol. vi. ; Philarete Chasles, Les 
 Victimes de Boileau, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, June and 
 August, 1839 ; F. Brunetiere, article BOILEAU in the Grande Ency- 
 clopedic, 1887; notice preceding the (Euvres poetiques de Boileau; 
 1889; and Devolution des genres, vol. i., 1890; P. Morillot, Boileau 
 in the " Classiques populaires " series, 1891 ; Lanson, Boileau in the 
 " Grands Ecrivains francais " series, 1892. 
 
 Delaporte, S. J., L'art poetique de Boileau commente par sea con- 
 temporains, Lille, 1888. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. Boilieau's birth and early years ; 
 the legal profession in 1640 ; Boileau's " theological studies " ; his 
 
 1 Consult, too, the biographical notices printed at the beginning of the first 
 volume of Berriat Saint-Prix' edition, Paris, 1830, Langlois and Delaunay.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 215 
 
 Simultaneously the situation becomes gloomy at home. 
 The tragic and scandalous affair of the poisons suddenly 
 lays bare unfathomable depths of ignominy [Cf . Eavaisson, 
 Archives de la Bastille, vols. iv., v., vi., vii., Paris, 1870- 
 1875J . While the immense majority of Frenchmen unhap- 
 pily regard with approval the repeal of the Edict of Nantes, 
 commerce and industry are sapped and the foundations of 
 public morality are shaken by this wholesale expulsion of 
 the Protestants. The character of the court itself under- 
 
 legal studies ; his early writings ; the writing of the first Satires, 
 1660, 1661 ; the Stances pour VEcole des femmes, 1662. Boileau's 
 friendship with Moliere, La Fontaine and Racine. The Mouton blanc 
 tavern once more ! The Dissertation sur Joconde. Readings of the 
 Satires in society. The collection printed hi Holland, 1665. Boileau 
 decides to print his writings, 1666. Emotion caused by the first 
 Satires [I., VI., VII., II., IV., III., V.] particularly in the " precious 
 society." Cotin replies to them: La satijre des satyres, 1666, also 
 Boursault, 1669. Their scurrilous violence. Boileau's courage and 
 perseverance. The Discours sur la, Satire, 1668. Coalition of Boi- 
 leau's enemies. Chapelain and Perrault prevent his being inscribed 
 on " the list of the King's bounties," and endeavour to prevent his 
 obtaining the authorisation to print his works ; while M. de Mon- 
 tausier threatens him with personal violence. The Epitre au Boi ; 
 Boileau has it presented the King by Mme de Montespan ; and, in 
 this connection, of the services rendered men of letters by Mme de 
 Montespan, services which explain, though they do not excuse, the 
 flatten- bestowed on her by all or almost all contemporary men of 
 letters. Could they be more prudish than Vivonne, the lady's 
 brother? and living as they did [Cf. Mine de Sevigne's letters, 
 1671] ; are we to accuse them of baseness '? Publication of the 
 first Epitres ; of the Art poetiquc ; and of the first cantos of the 
 Lutrin, 1674. Boileau figures for the first time on the " list of the 
 King's bounties " in 1676 ; he is appointed " to write the history of 
 the King," 1677 ; and he renounces " the profession of poetry." 
 
 A. Boileau as a Critic. The great merit of Boileau's criticism 
 is : that it turned away the reading public from the Chapelains and 
 Scarrons ; that it may almost be said to have revealed Moliere [Cf . 
 the Stances sur VEcole des femmes] ; La Fontaine [Cf. the Disser- 
 tation sur Joconde~\ ; Racine [Cf. the Dialogue sur les Jieros de
 
 216 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 goes a change. La Valliere expiates her passion in the 
 austere seclusion of a cloister; Fontanges is dead, 
 " stricken in the king's service " ; Mme de Montespan 
 has had to retire from court ; and in their stead reigns 
 Mme de Maintenon, who occupies an ill-defined situation, 
 partaking at once of that of a mistress, a housekeeper, 
 and a governess. " Such is the state in which things 
 were in 1690, an eyewitness tells us, Ezechiel Spanheim, 
 the Brandenburg envoy, and in which they still are so 
 
 roman\. He revealed these writers to themselves as well as to the 
 public ; and enforced admiration for them. The hatreds naturally 
 engendered by this manner of conceiving satire ; and how Boileau 
 held his own against them ; without any protection except his 
 honesty [Cf. Discours sur la satire and Satire IX.]. Boileau's 
 moral superiority [Cf. Satires L, V., VIII. and Epitres III., V., VI.] 
 over the majority of his adversaries ; and over two at least of his 
 illustrious friends. The absolute independence of his situation, 
 humour, and taste ; his freedom of judgment [Cf. Satire V., on the 
 nobility, and Epitres VIII. and IX.], and that it was far greater 
 than might be thought at first sight. Fruitfulness of his criticism, 
 and, in this connection, whether the " criticism of faults " may not help 
 to an appreciation of the contrary qualities. Of the personal influence 
 Boileau may have exerted on Moliere ; on La Fontaine ; on Racine ; 
 and of an opinion of Sainte-Beuve on this subject. Of the Art 
 poetique ; and how it forms a continuation of Boileau's "critical" 
 work [Cf. in particular, canto iii.]. The "rules" laid down in it are 
 at once a eulogy of Virgil and a satire on the Puce lie from a literary 
 point of view ; while the " rules " it gives for tragedy constitute at 
 once an apology for the tragedy of Racine and a criticism of that of 
 Corneille. In the same way the Lutrin is the criticism in action 
 of the Virgile travesti. How a doctrine grew naturally out of this 
 criticism ; and what is this doctrine ? 
 
 B. Boileau's doctrine. That its starting-point is the imitation of 
 nature : 
 
 Nature must never be departed from ; 
 
 and hence, as in Moliere's comedy, the condemnation alike of bur- 
 lesque ; and of preciosity. Novelty of the advice at the time it was 
 given, since it was so many years since anybody had proffered it ;
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 217 
 
 far as is known a state of things which, at the finish, 
 of a woman of undistinguished birth, old, poor, the 
 widow of a writer of burlesque, an attendant on the 
 mistress of the king, whose court, too, is the most 
 gallant in Europe, has made of this woman the confidant, 
 the mistress and it is even believed the wife of a great 
 monarch " [Cf. Ezechiel Spanheim, Relation de la Cour 
 de France en 1690, Paris, 1882] . Whether wife or 
 mistress, the aged woman esteems that the only way to in- 
 
 with the sole exception of Pascal. The way, however, in which the 
 general principle of the imitation of nature suffers restrictions in 
 Boileau's doctrine ; owing to his indifference as a citizen of Paris 
 to external nature ; to his taste, derived from his contemporaries, 
 for purely moral observation ; and by the exigencies of the current 
 politeness : 
 
 Never touch upon what is low. 
 
 Of the usefulness of these restrictions ; and of their dangers ; of 
 which the most considerable is to reduce the imitation of nature to 
 the imitation of what all men have in common ; -and in consequence 
 to reduce nature itself to what is most abstract in nature. How 
 Boileau, who was fully alive to this danger, essayed to avoid it ; by 
 giving to style the importance he has accorded it : 
 
 In this dangerous art of rhyming and writing 
 
 There is no intermediary stage between the mediocre and the bad, 
 
 and by recommending the imitation of the ancients ; whose works in 
 his eyes are not only models ; but are the treasure store as well of 
 the accumulated experience of men ; and are so much evidence of 
 the identity of human nature beneath all its outward variations. How 
 Boileau's doctrine is completed by a moral side ; and how much 
 loftier his morality is than of the other men of letters of his time. 
 
 C. Boileau's Polemics against the Moderns. Of the usefulness of 
 polemics as obliging us to look clearly into our own ideas. The 
 translation of the Traite du sublime, 1674 ; and the Reflexions 
 critiques sur Longin, 1694. Whether Boileau's admiration for the 
 ancients was not almost superstitious? and what did he imagine was 
 "Pindaric" about his Ode sur la prise de Namur, 1693? [Cf. his 
 Discours sur V0de\. That in any case the quarrel obliged Boileau to 
 revise his principles ; and that while he did not abandon them ; he
 
 218 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 sure the duration and the condonation of her extraordinary 
 fortune is to affect to be pious and a prude. Altri tempi, 
 altre cure ! Her chief concern is for the king's salvation. 
 He is governed by her, and she is governed in turn by 
 Nanon her servant. The glorious period of the reign is 
 over. After Eyswick and the Savoy marriage, the 
 vivacious Duchess of Burgundy is scarcely successful in 
 bringing about some semblance of a revival of the splen- 
 
 extended the range of their consequences ; and better defined their 
 application. The Septieme reflexion sur Longin, 1694. Of the 
 distinction which Boileau admits should be made between Lycophron 
 and Homer ; and of the importance of this distinction ; seeing that 
 Eonsard and Corneille put all the ancients in the same category. 
 That he made yet another step in advance ; when he determined the 
 "historical conditions" on which the perfection of literary works 
 depend ; and he was the first to make these conditions lie in the 
 juncture or coinciding of the arrival at perfection of the literary 
 branches with the arrival at maturity of the language. Boileau's last 
 works : the three last Epitrcs, 1695 ; the preface to the edition of 
 1701, containing the letter to M. Perrault; and the three last 
 Satires, 1694, 1698, and 1705. 
 
 Of Boileau as a poet, or rather as a writer ; his admissions on 
 this head [Cf. Satires II. a M. de Moliere, and XII. VEquivoque and 
 Epitres VI. and X.]. Would one suspect in reading him the close 
 relationship between Satire and Lyricism ? How much narrower and 
 above all how much less daring his art is than his criticism. 
 The qualities he lacks are those in which Moliere is too often 
 deficient ; elevation, distinction, and grace ; and these are not only 
 among the essential qualities of a poet ; they are also the qualities 
 upon which depend " aristocracy " of style : and, in this connection, 
 that this enemy of the Precieuses might have learnt more than one 
 useful lesson from them. On the other hand, and as was the case 
 with Moliere, he possesses all the " middle-class " qualities, and in 
 the first place, and -within the limits of his horizon, the sense of the 
 picturesque side of reality, [Cf. Le repas ridicule, the Satire des 
 femnies, the four first cantos of the Lutrin} ; he has humour, too, 
 humour of no very lofty order but often biting ; and finally he 
 possesses in a high degree the gift of rendering his thoughts with the 
 expressive brevity of the proverb ; a gift which consists in the ability 
 to find a " handy " form of expression for common experiences. The
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 219 
 
 dour that has vanished beyond recall. The king may 
 still be alive, but the reign is at an end though he live 
 for ten, fifteen, or twenty years ! The laughter and 
 the pleasure are things of the past, and in their place 
 reigns a gloomy sadness. And little by little a thick, 
 lugubrious atmosphere of boredom settles down over all 
 that remains of what was once " the most gallant court 
 in Europe." 
 
 same qualities and the same defects are to be found in his prose [Cf. 
 his correspondence, the Discours sur la Satire and his prefaces] 
 accompanied by less restraint ; and by a certain impressionableness 
 and off-handedness ; which exactly reflect his character; and which 
 do him honour. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The poetical works of Boileau comprise : his 
 Satires, of which there are twelve; his Epitres, also twelve in 
 number ; his Art poetique, in four cantos ; his Lutrin, in six 
 cantos ; and finally some miscellaneous poems including the Ode sur 
 la prise de Namur and a certain number of epigrams. 
 
 His prose works comprise : the Dissertation sur Joconde and the 
 Dialogue sur les heros de roman, which he did not publish himself ; 
 his translation of the Traite du sublime ; his Eeflexions critiques sur 
 Longin ; the prefaces to the different editions of his works, 1666, 
 1674, 1675, 1683, 1685, 1694, 1701 ; and an entire volume of letters of 
 which the most interesting are those addressed to Racine and to 
 Brossette. 
 
 The early editions of the Satires, and in particular that of 1666, 
 contain a considerable number of passages which were suppressed, 
 transposed, or modified in the succeeding editions. And it is doubtless 
 interesting to know that the first edition of the Satire des femmes, 
 which is that of 1693, did not contain the famous portrait of the 
 criminal lieutenant Tardieu : 
 
 Mais pour mieux mettre ici leur crasse en tout son lustre . . . 
 
 Boileau having deleted it on the advice of Racine. In a general way, 
 however, the editions that furnish the standard text are nevertheless 
 that of 1701, and in a certain measure that of 1713, which there is 
 reason to believe he prepared for the press himself. 
 
 The best posthumous editions are : Saint-Marc's edition, Paris, 
 1747, five volumes ; Berriat Saint-Prix' edition, Paris, 1830 ; and 
 Gidel's edition, Paris, 1880.
 
 220 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 III 
 
 Beyond the pale of the court, however, the formation 
 of fresh coteries is soon in progress. Moliere is dead and 
 Eacine converted. Boileau, charged with writing the 
 history of the royal campaigns, is overjoyed " at being 
 engaged, as he says, on the glorious task, which has 
 released him from the poetical profession " : and thus 
 engaged he is silent. The victims these writers thought 
 they had slain return at once to life : with smirk and 
 bow the adepts of preciosity reappear on the scene. 
 Mme Deshoulieres rallies them around her, and under her 
 protection 
 
 Pradon and his crew dare to write verse and go unpunished ! 
 
 SIXTH PERIOD 
 
 From the ca"bal organised against "Phedre" to the 
 issue of the " Lettres Persanes " 
 
 1677-1722 
 
 I. The beginnings of French Opera. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Goujet, Bibliotlieque francaise, articles, BEN- 
 SERADE and QUINAULT ; Chauffepie, Dictionnaire, article QUINAULT ; 
 Titon du Tillet, Parnasse francais, articles QUINAULT and LULLY; 
 Grimm, in the Encyclopedic, article POEME LYRIQUE ; the life of 
 Quinault preceding the edition of his works, Paris, 1778 ; Leris, 
 Dictionnaire des Theatres. 
 
 Nuitter and Thoinan, Les origines de V Opera francais, Paris, 1886 ; 
 Bomain Holland, Histoire de I'Opera en Europe, Paris, 1895. 
 
 2. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN OPERA AND DRAMA. The triumph of 
 tragedy and comedy, the pure species, did not entirely do away with 
 the hybrid species : tragi-comedy, the pastoral, and the ballet. 
 Spectacular plays : Andromede, 1650, and the Toison d'or by 
 Corneille ; Isaac de Benserade and his ballets ; Moliere's ballet- 
 comedies : La princesse d 1 Elide, 1664 ; Melicerte, 1666 ; Psyche, 1671.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 221 
 
 Jesuits join in, and now give lessons in taste as they used 
 to give lessons in morality. Criticism is overrun with 
 professors. Father Bouhours publishes his " dialogues 
 on the art of thinking aright as applied to literature." 
 He teaches in them that it is incumbent on an author to 
 imitate nature. Unfortunately, he cites the following 
 quotation as a specimen of a perfectly natural thought : 
 " The actions of princes resemble mighty rivers of which 
 few have seen the source, but of which all men see the 
 course." Father Kapin, his colleague, when not engaged 
 on his history of Jansenism, discusses with Bussy the 
 question " whether a man should address his mistress in 
 the second person singular'? " : doubtless the question is 
 merely one of style, but to Pascal it would indeed have 
 seemed a " pretty " question. In the meanwhile Quinault 
 
 Analogy between all these essays, and that their object was : to 
 procure the eye satisfactions which tragedy did not furnish : to turn 
 to account the fables of mythology ; and to set free the musical 
 element that is contained in all " poetry." The foundation of the 
 Academy of Music, 1669, and the first French opera : Pomone, 1671. 
 Jean-Baptiste Lully [Cf. the Memoires of Mme de Montpensier] . 
 His collaboration with Moliere, and with Quinault. Their first 
 operas: Cadmus et Hermione, 1673; Alceste, 1674 ; T//ese'e, 1675; 
 Ati/s, 1676 ; Isis, 1677. 
 
 Quinault's remarkable talent for opera ; Voltaire's pompous eulogy 
 of him ; and that of Quinault and Lully it was the former who during 
 a hundred and fifty years was accounted " the great man." Pleasing 
 frivolity of Quinault's imagination ; his fluent style ; and, in this 
 connection, of the frequent recurrence in his verses of comparisons 
 drawn from " liquids " ; his constant desire to please ; and wishing 
 to please, his avoidance of the more profound aspects of passion. Of 
 the " commonplaces of licentious morality " in Quinault's operas. 
 
 How the success of the opera influenced the direction taken by the 
 evolution of the drama. The triumphs of Quinault undoubtedly 
 aroused the jealousy of Racine ; and what is worse, his emulation. 
 Of the evidence there is in PJiedre of an intention on the part of 
 Racine to vie with Quinault [Cf. Les epoques du theatre francais]. 
 That Racine's retirement favoured the development of opera.
 
 222 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 is triumphant ; the success of his Atys, his Persee, or his 
 Armide is his vengeance for the onslaughts of the author 
 of the Satires ; while half a dozen opera librettos refurbish 
 his reputation so entirely that Voltaire, eighty years later, 
 will be led astray by its brilliancy. There is an active 
 production of novels of the stamp of the Histoire 
 amour euse des Gaules, the work of pamphleteers of the 
 calibre of Courtilz de Sandras, the author of the Memoires 
 de Bochefort and of the Trois Mousquetaires I mean of 
 the Memoires de M. d'Artagnan. At the same time, 
 writers of the class of Montfleury, of Poisson, and of 
 Dancourt, who is beginning his career, exhibit their 
 " buffooneries " on the stage made illustrious by Moliere 
 on the stage they have converted into a show of as 
 base an order as "a public execution" according to 
 
 Thomas Corneille's Psyche, 1678 ; Fontenelle's Belleroplion, 1679 ; 
 Quinault's Proserpine, 1680. The " tragic authors " take to writing 
 indifferently either tragedy or lyric tragedy. Of some consequences 
 of this practice ; and how after having influenced style in the direc- 
 tion of greater laxity, it extends its influence from the style to the 
 matter ; it enfeebles the conception of the drama ; and substitutes 
 for the art of depicting character or the passions, the art of appealing 
 to the sensibility. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Of Quinault : Cadmus, 1673 ; Alceste, 1674 ; 
 Thesee, W15;Atys, 1676 ; Isis, 1677 ; of Fontenelle and Th. 
 Corneille : Psyche, 1678 ; Bellerophon, 1679 ; of Quinault : 
 Proserpine, 1680 ; Persee, 1682 ; Phaeton, 1683 -Arnadis, 1684 ; 
 Roland, 1685 ; Armide, 1686 ; of Campistron : Acis et Galathee, 
 1686 ;Achille, 1687 ; of Fontenelle : Thetis et Pelee, 1687 ;Enee 
 et Lavinie, 1690. 
 
 II. Nicolas Malebranche [Paris, 1638 ; f 1715, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Fontenelle, Eloge de Malebranche ; Tabaraud, 
 Biographie universelle, article MALEBRANCHE. 
 
 Cousin, Fragments de philosophie moderne ; F. Bouillier, Histoire 
 de la philosophie cartesienne, 1854 ; Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, 
 bk. vi., chap. v. and vi. ; Blampignon, Etude sur Malebranche, Paris, 
 1831 ; OUe-Laprune, La philosophie de Malebranche, Paris, 1870.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 223 
 
 Eacine's vigorous expression. La Fontaine, now that 
 his former friends are dead or live apart from him, 
 abandons himself to his natural inclinations, and almost 
 confines himself to writing tales and such tales, for an 
 author who is over sixty years of age ! From the other 
 side of the Channel, Saint-Evremond, who has also grown 
 old, encourages him in his course. At the residence of 
 the Vendome family in the Temple it is the custom to 
 get royally intoxicated, and this is not the worst that 
 passes there. The Princesses of the blood have taken to 
 smoking pipes. Finally, to complete the parallel between 
 the last years of the century and its opening, it is the 
 turn of the "libertines" to reappear on the scene to 
 which the rakes and the Precieux have returned or are 
 returning. 
 
 Father Andre : Vie du Pere Malebranclie, published by Father 
 Ingold, Paris, 1886. 
 
 2. THE PHILOSOPHER ; and in the first place of the homage it is 
 just to pay the writer. Daunou's fine eulogy of the style of Male- 
 branche ; Daunou not having forgotten that he had himself belonged 
 to the Oratory [Cours d' etudes historiques, vi. and xx.]. Perfect 
 simplicity ; naivete ; eloquence ; and more particularly the ease of 
 his style, qualities which in his case are the more admirable owing 
 to the abstruse nature of the topics he treats. No French philo- 
 sopher has a style that can compare with that of Malebranche. 
 
 The disciple of Descartes [Cf. his Eloge by Fontenelle] ; and that 
 the philosophy of Malebranche is an attempt to reconcile Christianity 
 and Cartesianisin. Malebranche's exaggerated confidence in the 
 power of reason, and in its capacity to give a " natural " explanation 
 of the inexplicable. His optimism ; and that though he owes it 
 directly to Descartes, still it is more in conformity with the Christian 
 conception of life than is the optimism of his master. The idea of 
 Providence in the philosophy of Malebranche ; and that it scarcely 
 differs from the idea of Providence entertained by the Stoics of 
 antiquity. That all these theories tended to establish the sufficiency 
 of " natural religion" ; and it is a fact that the influence of Male- 
 branche achieved this result, though doubtless in opposition to his 
 wishes.
 
 224 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Bossuet was the only man who might perhaps have 
 been able to cope with these invaders, to keep them in 
 check and to overawe them : and Bossuet, it happens, 
 though he delivered his last Funeral Orations in 1685, 
 1686, and 1687, preaches but rarely. On the other hand, 
 being no longer burdened with, or at least being no longer 
 responsible for the education of the Dauphin, it is at this 
 very period that he is producing almost all his principal 
 works. The date of the Discours sur I'histoire universelle 
 is 1681, and that of the Histoire des variations des eglises 
 protestantes, 1688. Of these two works, it is the first 
 that comes in for the most praise. And yet it must be 
 said of the second that there is no finer book in the French 
 language, for while, like the Provinciates, it contains un- 
 perishable examples of every kind of noble writing, it has 
 
 The critics of Malebranche : Arnauld, Bossuet, Fenelon, 
 Leibnitz ; a letter of Bossuet [May 21, 1687] to a disciple of Male- 
 branche. Feneloii refutes the Traite de la nature et de la grace. 
 The critics of Malebranche object more particularly to his theory 
 that the Divine action takes effect " on general lines " ; since they 
 consider this theory leads to that of the " stability of the laws of 
 nature " ; that is to the denial of the supernatural ; and at the same 
 time to the disappearance of the possibility of miracles ; of the 
 necessity for a revelation ; and of the utility of religion. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. La recherche de la verite, 1674-1675 ; Conversa- 
 tions chretiennes, 1676 ; -Traite de la nature et de la grace ; 
 Meditations chretiennes, 1683 ; Traite de morale, 1684 ; Entretiens 
 sur la metaphysique, 1688 ; Traite de I 'amour de Dieu, 1697 ; 
 Eeponses a M. Arnauld, four volumes, the last of which appeared in 
 1709 ; Reflexions sur la promotion physique, 1715. 
 
 In his Fragments de philosopliie moderne, vol. ii., Victor Cousin 
 has published an important series of letters by Malebranche, the 
 literary interest of which lies in their showing the philosopher in 
 touch with Mairan and with Fontenelle and his group. 
 
 There is only one edition of the complete works of Malebranche, 
 two volumes in 4to, Paris, 1837. 
 
 In 1871 Jules Simon published an edition of the works of Male- 
 branche in four volumes containing the Entretiens sur la meta-
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 225 
 
 this advantage over Pascal's work, that it is a book in the 
 highest sense of the word, a book of which all the parts, 
 though distinct, form an indivisible whole, whose every 
 page, indeed whose every line, is inspired by and helps to 
 prove the soundness of the idea that underlies the entire 
 fabric. Recent researches, moreover, have revealed that 
 greater labour and greater impartiality have never been 
 expended on the preparation of a polemical work [Cf. 
 Rebelliau, Bossuet liistorien du protestantisms, Paris, 
 1891] . And why should we not add that it would be 
 hard to cite a work of this class, whose aim is nobler or 
 more generous, since its author's sole object in writing it 
 was to labour for that " reunion of the Churches " which, 
 after being the dearest dream of his youth, remained to 
 the end of his life the most tenacious of his illusions ? 
 
 pJiysique, the Meditations chretiennes, and the Recherche de la 
 verite. 
 
 III. Pierre Bayle [Le Carlat (Ariege), 1647 ; \ 1706, Rotterdam]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Calendarium Carlananum, 1660-1687, and 
 Bayle's correspondence ; Desmaizeaux, Vie de M. P. Bayle, 1730, 
 found in the last editions of the Dictionnaire and in vol. xvi. of 
 Beuchot's edition ; Abbe Marsy, Analyse raisonnee des ceuvres de 
 Baylc, 1755 ; Sainte-Beuve, Portraits litteraires, vol. i., 1835 ; L. 
 Feuerbach, Pierre Bayle, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philosophic 
 und Menschheit, Leipsic, 1838 and 1848 ; Damiron, Essai sur Vhis- 
 loire de la 2>hilosophie en France au XVII'' siecle, Paris, 1846; A. 
 Sayous, La litteralure francaise a Vetranger, Paris and Geneva, vol. i., 
 1853 ; Lenient, Etude sur Bayle, Paris, 1855 ; Arsene Deschamps, 
 La genese du scepticisme erudit cliez Bayle, Brussels, 1878 ; Ernile 
 Gigas, Choix de la correspond ance inedite de Pierre Bayle, Copen- 
 hagen, 1890 ; F. Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, 5th series, Paris, 1893 ; 
 Ch. Renouvier, Philosophic analytique de Vhistoire, v. iii., Paris, 
 1897. 
 
 2. THE CRITICISM OF BAYLB. 
 
 A. The early years and the first efforts of Bayle. He came of a 
 Protestant stock ; his studies at Puylaurens and at Toulouse, 1666- 
 1669 ; he is converted to Catholicism, 1669 ; he is reconverted to 
 
 16
 
 226 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 The Avertissements aux Protestants, which complete 
 and strengthen the Histoire des variations, were written 
 between 1689 and 1691. But the "reunion" was not 
 destined to be accomplished, nor was Bossuet, in spite 
 of his eloquence and his masterly dialectics, to be success- 
 ful to any notable extent in stemming the progress of 
 " libertinism." 
 
 If he failed, however, it was not because he was blind 
 to this progress, as is proved sufficiently by the many 
 passages that might be quoted from his works [Cf. in 
 particular the Sermon sur la divinite de la religion, 1665 ; 
 the Discours sur I'histoire universellc, part ii., 1681; and 
 the Oraison funebre d'Anne de Gonzague, -1685]. From 
 the very first he was fully alive to the tendencies of 
 the exegesis of Richard Simon, and yet to divine them 
 
 Protestantism, 1670 ; his departure for Geneva and his tutorships : 
 in the family of M. de Normandie ; in that of the Comte de Dhona ; 
 his return to France, 1647. Bayle professor of philosophy at the 
 Protestant Academy of Sedan, 1675-1681 [Cf. his Cursus philoso- 
 2)hia, and Bourchenin Les academies Protestantes], Suppression 
 of the Sedan academy. Bayle takes up his residence at Rotterdam, 
 1681, where he holds the post of unattached professor of philosophy, 
 in the pay of the town. Publication of the Pensees sur la comete, 
 1682, and of the Critique generate de Vhistoire du Calvinisme du 
 Pere Maimbourg. Singular character of these two works ; the 
 style of which is behind, and the ideas of which are in advance of 
 those of his contemporaries by thirty or forty years. Bayle embarks 
 upon the publication of the Nouvelles de la Bepublique des lettres, 
 1684. It is a paper or a magazine, and Bayle must not for a moment 
 be judged by it : " I did not exercise the functions of a critic in 
 this publication, he has himself declared, " merely noting in the 
 books what was of a nature to call attention to them." Revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes. Bayle publishes his two pamphlets : Ce 
 que c'est que la France toute catholique sous le regne de Louis le 
 Grand, 1686 ; and the Convmentaire pMlosophique sur le Compelle 
 intrare, 1686; indignation of the Protestant party, and of Jurien 
 in particular. Bossuet' s adversary is equally the adversary of Bayle ; 
 whom he bitterly reproaches with "preaching the dogma of reli-
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 227 
 
 so early as 1678 was none too easy. Again, as early as 
 1687, he foresaw what he himself spoke of as " the great 
 attack, which, under the name of Cartesianism, was pre- 
 paring against the Church." He was as little mistaken in 
 his opinion that, if the progress of libertinism were to be 
 resisted efficaciously, a beginning must be made by re- 
 uniting in a single body the scattered elements of the 
 Church ; for both time and the admissions of orthodox 
 Protestantism have borne out the correctness of his views 
 on this point. Under these circumstances, what were 
 the reasons of his failure ? The first was that the Pro- 
 testants, encouraged at the time by their successes in 
 the war which followed the formation of the League of 
 Augsburg, believed they would profit by all the losses 
 that might be sustained by Catholicism, an opinion that 
 
 gious indifference and universal tolerance." Bayle conceals his 
 authorship of the book ; himself makes ironical allusions to it in 
 his Lettres ; complains in his Nouvelles of its being ascribed to 
 him ; and thus sets the example of those rather dishonourable 
 tactics, which will be adopted by Voltaire. He has the " courage of 
 his opinions," but he is afraid of their consequences. The Avis 
 aux refugies, 1690; and whether Bayle is its author [Cf. Sayous, 
 Litterature francaise a Vetranger] ? Interest of the question. 
 The discussion between Bayle and Jurien grows more and 
 more bitter. Jurien accuses him of atheism ; in support of 
 Jurien' s accusation the " Protestant ministers " call attention to 
 certain characteristic passages in the Pensees sur la comete ; 
 the Rotterdam magistrates deprive Bayle of his pension ; and 
 cancel his authorisation to teach. Curious passage in one of 
 Bayle's letters [December 28, 1693], which goes to show that 
 the hostility he had excited was more especially due to his being 
 a Cartesian : " The Rotterdam ministers ... he says, are obstinate 
 admirers of Aristotle, whom they do not understand, and they 
 cannot hear Descartes spoken of without falling into a rage." 
 
 B. The Dictionnaire historique et critique. The original scheme 
 of the Dictionnaire [Cf. the scheme of 1692] ; and that the work 
 was intended to be one of pure erudition ; having for its sole object 
 to trace and to rectify the errors in the other dictionaries. The
 
 226 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 The Avertissements aux Protestants, which complete 
 and strengthen the Histoire des variations, were written 
 between 1689 and 1691. But the "reunion" was not 
 destined to be accomplished, nor was Bossuet, in spite 
 of his eloquence and his masterly dialectics, to be success- 
 ful to any notable extent in stemming the progress of 
 " libertinism." 
 
 If he failed, however, it was not because he was blind 
 to this progress, as is proved sufficiently by the many 
 passages that might be quoted from his works [Cf. in 
 particular the Sermon sur la divinite de la religion, 1665 ; 
 the Discours sur I'histoire universellc, part ii., 1681; and 
 the Oraison funebre d'Anne de Gonzague, -1685]. From 
 the very first he was fully alive to the tendencies of 
 the exegesis of Eichard Simon, and yet to divine them 
 
 Protestantism, 1670 ; his departure for Geneva and his tutorships : 
 in the family of M. de Normandie ; in that of the Comte de Dhona ; 
 his return to France, 1647. Bayle professor of philosophy at the 
 Protestant Academy of Sedan, 1675-1681 [Cf. his Cursus philoso- 
 pliice, and Bourchenin Les academies Protestantes]. Suppression 
 of the Sedan academy. Bayle takes up his residence at Rotterdam, 
 1681, where he holds the post of unattached professor of philosophy, 
 in the pay of the town. Publication of the Pensees sur la comete, 
 1682, and of the Critique generale de I'histoire du Calvinisme du 
 Pere Maimbourg. Singular character of these two works ; the 
 style of which is behind, and the ideas of which are in advance of 
 those of his contemporaries by thirty or forty years. Bayle embarks 
 upon the publication of the Nouvelles de la Republique des lettres, 
 1684. It is a paper or a magazine, and Bayle must not for a moment 
 be judged by it : " I did not exercise the functions of a critic in 
 this publication, he has himself declared, " merely noting in the 
 books what was of a nature to call attention to them." Revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes. Bayle publishes his two pamphlets : Ce 
 que c'est que la France toute catJiolique sous le regne de Louis le 
 Grand, 1686 ; and the Commentaire philosophique sur le Compelle 
 intrare, 1686; indignation of the Protestant party, and of Jurien 
 in particular. Bossuet's adversary is equally the adversary of Bayle ; 
 whom he bitterly reproaches with " preaching the dogma of reli-
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 227 
 
 so early as 1678 was none too easy. Again, as early as 
 1687, lie foresaw what he himself spoke of as "the great 
 attack, which, under the name of Cartesianism, was pre- 
 paring against the Church." He was as little mistaken in 
 his opinion that, if the progress of libertinism were to be 
 resisted efficaciously, a beginning must be made by re- 
 uniting in a single body the scattered elements of the 
 Church ; for both time and the admissions of orthodox 
 Protestantism have borne out the correctness of his views 
 on this point. Under these circumstances, what were 
 the reasons of his failure ? The first was that the Pro- 
 testants, encouraged at the time by their successes in 
 the war which followed the formation of the League of 
 Augsburg, believed they would profit by all the losses 
 that might be sustained by Catholicism, an opinion that 
 
 gious indifference and universal tolerance." Bayle conceals his 
 authorship of the book ; -himself makes ironical allusions to it in 
 his Lettres ; complains in his Nouveiles of its being ascribed to 
 him ; and thus sets the example of those rather dishonourable 
 tactics, which will be adopted by Voltaire. He has the " courage of 
 his opinions," but he is afraid of their consequences. The Avis 
 aux refugies, 1690; and whether Bayle is its author [Cf. Sayous, 
 Litterature francaise a Vetranger} ? Interest of the question. 
 The discussion between Bayle and Jurien grows more and 
 more bitter. Jurien accuses him of atheism ; in support of 
 Jurien's accusation the " Protestant ministers " call attention to 
 certain characteristic passages in the Pensees sur la comete ; 
 the Rotterdam magistrates deprive Bayle of his pension ; and 
 cancel his authorisation to teach. Curious passage in one of 
 Bayle's letters [December 28, 1693], which goes to show that 
 the hostility he had excited was more especially due to his being 
 a Cartesian : " The Rotterdam ministers ... he says, are obstinate 
 admirers of Aristotle, whom they do not understand, and they 
 cannot hear Descartes spoken of without falling into a rage." 
 
 B. The Dictionnaire historique et critique. The original scheme 
 of the Dictionnaire [Cf. the scheme of 1692] ; and that the work 
 was intended to be one of pure erudition ; having for its sole object 
 to trace and to rectify the errors in the other dictionaries. The
 
 230 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 was the sensation aroused by the Relation sur le quietisme, 
 and the book was literally devoured. Victory followed 
 close on the appearance of the work, which brought about 
 the downfall of Quietism. Still for five whole years a 
 purely theological question, and a question too of mystical 
 theology, had diverted Bossuet's attention from a matter 
 which, perhaps, was of greater urgency. Once again, 
 moreover, public opinion had taken but a languid interest 
 in a quarrel, the violence of which it found so incompre- 
 hensible, that it had sought an explanation in reasons 
 that were little to the honour of either of the combatants. 
 " I assure you," wrote the Princess Palatine, "that this 
 quarrel between bishops turns on anything rather than 
 on matters of faith." 
 
 Rotterdam consistory ; and to justify himself he writes his four 
 dissertations on " Atheists "; on the " Manicheans" ; on " Obsceni- 
 ties"; and on the " Tyrrhenians." Remarks, in this connection, 
 on the subjects of " Protestant tolerance " and " liberty in Holland." 
 The Reponses aux questions d'un provincial, 1703 ; and the 
 Continuation des Pensees sur la comete, 1704. The theory of the 
 incompetency of universal consent; and the chapter : " It is in no- 
 wise sure that the impressions left by nature are to be accepted as 
 the expression of the truth " [Cf. Continuation, ch. 23 and 24]. 
 Death of Bayle : Perfect dignity of his life. His disinterestedness. 
 His only vices were intellectual vices ; and with Spinoza ; although 
 his existence was less noble than Spinoza's ; he was one of the first 
 writers whose intellectual libertinism was not prompted by moral 
 libertinism. Importance of this fact [Cf. Bossuet's and Bourdaloue's 
 attacks on the libertines] ; and how greatly it contributed to the 
 propagation of Bayle's philosophical ideas. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. We have enumerated Bayle's principal works, 
 and there only remains to mention in addition a voluminous and 
 interesting correspondence. 
 
 The best edition of his Works is the great edition of 1727, 1731 in 4 
 folio vols, the Hague, published by Husson, Johnson, Gosse, &c. [the 
 reprint of this edition of 1737 contains about 150 additional letters] ; 
 the best edition of the Dictionnaire is that of 1720, also in 4 vols., 
 Rotterdam, published by Michel Bohm.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 231 
 
 She quoted the epigram : 
 
 In these conflicts in which our French prelates 
 
 Appear to seek the truth, 
 
 One declares it is hope that is being destroyed, 
 
 The other that it is charity. 
 
 But it is faith that is being destroyed without anybody giving 
 the matter a thought. 
 
 And under cover of this controversy it was libertinism 
 that was making giant strides in proportion as religion 
 lost its prestige and authority. 
 
 For while "the secret of the sanctuary" [Cf. Diderot, 
 Apologie pour I'abbe de Prades] was being betrayed, as it 
 seemed, in this way, Cartesianism was biding its time, 
 was merely awaiting an opportunity to enter the citadel. 
 
 In 1820 Beuchot published an edition of the Dictionnaire in sixteen 
 volumes, enriched with the commentaries or remarks of all the notable 
 students of the author, Prosper Marchand, Chaufepie, Leclerc, 
 Joli, &c. 
 
 It cannot be too much regretted that there are no modern editions 
 of the Works, not even of the famous Avis aux refugies or of the 
 Pensees sur la comete. 
 
 IV. Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle [Rouen, 1657; 
 t 1757, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Grimm, Correspondance litteraire February, 
 1757 ; Abbe Trublet, Memoires pourservir a. Vhistoire de la vie et des 
 ouvrages de M. de Fontenelle, 2nd edit. Paris, 1761 ; Villenave's 
 Notice preceding his edition of Fontenelle's works, Paris, 1818 ; 
 Garat, Memoires sur la vie de M. Suard, Paris, 1820 ; Flourens, 
 Fontenelle ou de la philosophic moderne, Paris, 1847 ; Sainte-Beuve, 
 Fontenelle in the Cauteries du lundi, vol. iii. ; J. Bertrand, L'Aca- 
 demie des sciences de 1666 a 1793, Paris, 1869. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. The Cydias of La Bruyere, that 
 La Bruyere's experience of life was insufficient to allow of his know- 
 ing and appreciating the real Fontenelle. Fontenelle's universality; 
 he is the author of tragedies, eclogues, operas, and comedies ; and 
 of dissertations, dialogues, novels and of works that are of the nature 
 of works of history and criticism. His characteristic trait is that he
 
 232 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 It may be that this Cartesianism was a degenerate form 
 of the true doctrine of Descartes, but it was a logical 
 Cartesianism logically evolved from the philosopher's 
 principles ; and this is the moment to trace its real 
 influence. 
 
 " Every philosophy, Sainte-Beuve has said [Cf. Port- 
 Royal, bk. iv., ch. 5] , whatever it be at the outset and 
 in the mouth of its original founder, becomes anti- 
 Christian or at least heretical with the second generation ; 
 this is a law it is essential not to overlook." An instruc- 
 tive example of its operation is afforded by the gentle, 
 eloquent and candid Malebranche. A faithful and indeed 
 a passionate disciple of Descartes, it occurs to him to 
 form the project of applying his master's principles to 
 
 was a " man of wit " ; in every sense of the word ; that is to say a 
 man of culture, a witty man, and almost a man of great intellect ; 
 and that he is a remarkable example of what the intellect is capable 
 and incapable of. 
 
 A. The Man of Culture : He was Corneille's nephew ; and for this 
 reason the born enemy of Racine and Boileau ; his first literary efforts 
 in the Mercure galant, 1677 ; he collaborates in the operas Psyche 
 and Bellerophon, 1678 and 1679 ; his tragedy Aspar [Cf . Racine's 
 epigram] ; the Dialogues des Marts, 1683 ; the Lettres du chevalier 
 d'Her . . . , 1683 ; and of the sort of family likeness there is 
 between this work and Voiture's Lettres. Bayle's eulogy of this 
 book [Cf. Nouvelles de la Hepublique des lettres, December, 1687] ; 
 Fontenelle publishes his Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes, 1686. 
 Success of this book and the nature of its success [Cf. Garat, Memoires 
 sur M. Suard~\. ^Injustice of La Bruyere. With the Entretiens sur 
 la pluralite science makes its entry into literature for the first time ; 
 and even into the conversation of society. Fontenelle's other 
 writings ; his Memoires sur le nombre 9 ; his Doutes sur le systeme 
 des causes occasionelles ; his Histoire des oracles, 1687. The way 
 in which Fontenelle's culture enables him to procure acceptance for 
 a number of ideas which are as daring as they are novel. Extensive- 
 ness and diversity of the world in which his intellect moves, as 
 compared with the narrowness of the world to which Racine and 
 Boileau had confined themselves.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 233 
 
 the demonstration or the development of the truths of 
 Christianity ; and now suddenly, through a rent in the 
 veil, the essential contradiction comes into view. It is 
 impossible to be at once a Christian and a Cartesian ! it 
 is clear in an instant that the universal determinism of 
 the philosophers is incompatible with the conception of 
 a divine Providence. Pascal had detected this latent 
 antagonism, and it does not escape Bossuet, for it is at 
 this juncture that he causes Fenelon to write his Refuta- 
 tion du Traite de la nature et de la grace, in answer to 
 Malebranche. Arnauld also, the great Arnauld as he is 
 already called, is alive to the truth. " The more mindful 
 I am that I am a Christian, writes the one, the less 
 can I share the ideas he (Malebranche) propounds " ; and 
 
 B. The " homme d j esprit." New signification acquired by the 
 word "esprit " at the time of Fontenelle; and in the first place it 
 conveys the idea that the man who possesses the quality it expresses 
 is a man of wide interests. Fontenelle is interested in very many 
 things ; and in the essence of things [Cf. among his Dialogues : 
 Laure et Sapho, Agnes Sorel et Roxelane, Socrate et Montaigne, 
 Anne de Bretagne et Marie Tudor, Brutus et Faustine] Secondly 
 an " homme d'esprit " is a man who does not attach more importance 
 to things than they deserve; and to employ one of Fonteiielle's 
 favourite expressions he is "that man" [Cf. among his Dialogues : 
 Erasme et Charles-Quint, Alexandre et Pliryne, Guillaume de 
 Cabestan et Frederic de Brandebourg, Straton et Raphael]. His 
 liking for what is new [Cf. Digression sur lea Anciens et les 
 Modernes]. His independent attitude towards tradition. Finally an 
 "homme d'esprit" is a man who perceives the relations between 
 things and the category to which they belong [Cf. Histoire des 
 oracles] ; who makes further suggestions to his readers in these 
 connections ; pointing out relations and categories which are unex- 
 pected and remote. That Fontenelle makes his readers think ; and 
 that the distinguishing features of his talent are its subtlety ; and 
 the far-reaching import of the hints he gives. 
 
 C. Fontenelle as a great intellect ; that it is justifiable to regard 
 him as such merely because he applied his intelligence to the con- 
 sideration of matters of great moment. His preface to the Histoire
 
 '234 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 in turn the second declares : " The further I progress 
 with this work (it was a refutation of the Traite de 
 nature et de la grace) the more I am struck by the 
 antagonism between religion and these metaphysical 
 imaginings." But the mighty theologian has been long 
 in perceiving this antagonism, and what is more, well 
 equipped as he is in some respects, he labours under the 
 disadvantage of lacking the rich, fluent, and seductive 
 style of Malebranche. Nobody reads him, while Male- 
 branche is read. He is confronted at last by a writer, a 
 genuine writer, by the great writer whom up to now 
 Cartesianism had been without. And it is a fact that 
 Malebranche finds disciples. While Bossuet and Fenelon 
 are wasting their energy in other conflicts, he goes on 
 
 de I 1 Academic des sciences, 1699. The idea of the " solidarity of the 
 sciences " finds expression in it for perhaps the first time in litera- 
 ture; also the idea of the "invariability of the laws of nature." 
 Fontenelle's "eulogies" [See in particular the eulogies of Vauban, 
 d'Argenson, Newton (1727), Boerhaave, Malebranche, Leibnitz] ; they 
 are evidence of a subtle intellect ; of a wide power of comprehension ; 
 and of a faculty of grouping things so as to allow of their being 
 regarded from the same point of view. Growing authority of 
 Fontenelle among men of learning ; in society ; among literary 
 men. Fontenelle's later works ; his Vie de Corneille, 1729 ; his 
 Reflexions sur la Poetique ; his Theorie des tourbillons cartesiens, 
 1752. The numerous points on which Fontenelle was the harbinger of 
 Voltaire ; the many personal traits which make him the forerunner 
 of Voltaire ; and what were the deficiencies that prevented him 
 playing Voltaire's part ? 
 
 In the first place he was wanting to a certain degree hi originality ; 
 and above all, to a certain degree, in conviction. Mine de Tencin's 
 remark: "You have a brain where you ought to have a heart"; 
 and, in this connection, of Fontenelle's scepticism ; it did not consist 
 so much in the belief that it is impossible to arrive at the truth ; as 
 in the belief that truth is essentially aristocratic ; that it cannot be 
 communicated to the masses ; and further that it is of no very great 
 utility. How this conception of truth is characteristic of the " wit" ; 
 of the society man and of the epicurean. Whether it was not this
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITERATUEE 235 
 
 with his work in the retirement of his humble chamber, and 
 his work consists in humanising in " laicising " it would 
 be said to-day those elements of Christian doctrine which 
 mankind is most disposed to regard as harsh or as contrary 
 to reason. He softens down the doctrine of the fall ; he 
 tempers the doctrine of grace ; he banishes God to a dis- 
 tance from the world ; he denies His intervention in the 
 affairs of men ; he has a way of interpreting the super- 
 natural which makes of it a sort of less obvious con- 
 formity with the laws of nature ; and his contemporaries 
 made no mistake as to his teaching : they recognised it 
 to be Cartesianism. 
 
 They saw a further exemplification of this same 
 doctrine in the scepticism or criticism of Pierre Bayle, of 
 
 philosophy that prevented Fontenelle putting his whole soul into some 
 great work ? The Fragments d'un traite de la Raison humaine. 
 And that in any case it prevented him exerting the influence he could 
 have exerted had he chosen. Still, on the other hand, it is a fact that 
 with the exception of Bayle, he did more than any other writer to 
 fashion the generation of the Encyclopedists. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Fontenelle's works being too little known, we 
 think it right to outline here the contents of the eight volumes of the 
 edition of 1790. 
 
 VOL. I. Documents relating to Fontenelle's biography ; Dialogues 
 des morts anciens ; Dialogues des morts anciens avec les modernes. 
 
 VOL. II. Entretiens sur la pluralite des Mondes ; Theorie des 
 iourbillons ; Histoire des oracles. 
 
 VOL. III. Histoire du Theatre francais ; Vie de Corneille ; 
 Reflexions sur la Poetique ; Description de V empire de Poesie [Cf . 
 the Carte du pays de Tendre~\ . In this last work occur the following 
 lines, which were evidently [1678] intended for Kacine, Boileau, and 
 their followers : " The High Poetry is inhabited by solemn, 
 melancholy, surly people who speak a language which, compared 
 with that spoken in the other provinces of poetry, is what low Breton 
 is to the language of the rest of France." Fontenelle's operas and 
 tragedies, of which one is in prose, complete the volume. 
 
 VOL. IV. His eight comedies : Macate, Le Tyran, Abdolonyme, 
 the Testament, Henrietle, Lysianasse, the Comete, and Pygmalion.
 
 236 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 whom almost the only work consulted to-day is his great 
 Dictionary. But his Pensees sur la comete date from 1682, 
 and no work made more noise at the time, or stood the 
 party of the libertines in greater stead. For briefly put, 
 what else is Bayle's criticism but the extension of the 
 Cartesian principle of doubt to dangerous matters, which 
 Descartes had skilfully avoided, and excluded as it were 
 from the application of his method ? Bayle, writing like 
 his master from his retreat in Holland, and armed with 
 his Cartesianism, is the first who dares to subject religion 
 and morality to a dissolvent criticism. It may be urged at 
 first sight that he criticises and doubts for the sole pleasure 
 of doubting and criticising. But examine his work more 
 closely and consider attentively some of his conclusions. 
 
 The last of these comedies is in verse ; the other seven are in 
 prose. 
 
 VOL. V. His ten eclogues ; his miscellaneous poems ; the 
 Digression sur les Anciens et les Modernes ; the Fragments (Tun 
 traite de la liaison humaine ; and a few minor works of the same 
 stamp at once playful and philosophic. 
 
 VOLS. VI. and VII. The Eloges (Eulogies). 
 
 VOL. VIII. The Doutes sur le systeme des causes occasionelles. 
 The Lettres galantes du chevalier d'Her . . .; and Fontenelle's 
 letters. 
 
 There is a modern edition of Fontenelle's works dated 1817. 
 
 There have been numerous modern reprints of the Entreiiens sur 
 la pluralite des Mondes and the Eloges. 
 
 V. The Reorganisation of the Academy of Sciences. 
 
 1. The SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT PRIOR TO FONTENELLE, and of the 
 mistake that is made in overlooking its importance. The great dis- 
 coveries in mathematics and the physical sciences were made during 
 the earlier years of the seventeenth century ; also some of the great 
 discoveries in natural science ; and discoveries of greater importance 
 will not be made in any of these fields until towards the close of the 
 following century. In proof of this assertion it is sufficient to cite 
 some few names: Kepler, 1571-1630; Galileo, 1564-1642; 
 Descartes, 1596-1650 ; Pascal, 1623-1662 ; Huyghens, 1629-1695;
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 237 
 
 It will be found that he is in nowise addicted to paradox, 
 and when he writes "it is better to be an atheist than 
 an idolater," he knows perfectly well what he is saying, 
 and above all he knows the goal at which he is aiming. 
 Again, is there any doubt as to his intention when he 
 contrasts "the evidences afforded by reason " with "the 
 truths of our religion " ; and who does not see or suspect 
 the end he has in view? The truth is, this alleged 
 sceptic is engaged in establishing the sovereignty of 
 reason on the ruins of tradition and authority. " During 
 the reign of Louis XIV. there were already men who 
 are our contemporaries," Diderot will say referring to 
 Bayle, who in fact was the thinker who served the 
 encyclopedists as master. Descartes had been but the 
 
 Newton, 1642-1727. Or in the field of natural science : Harvey, 
 1578-1658 ; Malpighi, 1628-1694 ; Leuvenhoeck, 1632-1723 ; 
 Svammerdamm, 1637-1680. Effects produced by their discoveries. 
 The telescope and the microscope. Pascal's observations on the two 
 infinite quantities [Cf. Pensees] ; physiology in Bossuet's Traite de 
 la connaisance de Dieu ; astronomy in La Bruyere's Caracieres 
 [Cf . the chapter entitled : Les esprils forts] ; and again in the 
 Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes. A passage in Perrault's 
 Paralleles [fifth and last dialogue, edition of 1696, p. 41, &c]. 
 
 2. THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. Its first establishment, 1666, and 
 its early labours [Cf. Fontenelle, and J. Bertrand, L'Academie des 
 sciences]. The construction of the Observatory, 1667. Huyghens 
 and Rcemer are invited to settle in France. The laboratory of the 
 Academy. The king is present at the dissection of an elephant from 
 the Versailles menagerie. Reorganisation of the Royal Botanical 
 Garden (Jardin des Plantes), 1671. The " second birth " of the 
 Academy, 1699. The number of academicians is increased from 
 sixteen to fifty. The sections : Geometry, Astronomy, Mechanics, 
 Chemistry, Anatomy, and Botany. The Academy after being under 
 the precarious tutelage of a minister, is accorded the personal pro- 
 tection of the sovereign. 
 
 3. SOME OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF THIS REORGANISATION, or some 
 proofs of the wide diffusion of a taste for science. The lectures on 
 chemistry by the apothecary Lemery [Cf. Fontenelle, Eloge de
 
 238 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 harbinger of rationalism : it is Bayle who is its true 
 father. 
 
 But where will this rationalism find a foundation on 
 which to take its stand ? what will be the model or type 
 of certainty? the point of leverage? "the ultimate im- 
 movable basis ? " the rock to which we shall cleave so 
 as not to be carried away and drowned in the ocean of 
 doubt ? They will be found in science is the answer given 
 at the opportune moment by the witty author, himself 
 another Cartesian, of the Entretiens sur la pluralite des 
 mondes. 
 
 The nephew of Corneille, and therefore the born 
 enemy of Moliere, Boileau, Eacine and their sup- 
 porters, Fontenelle was long considered to be ade- 
 
 Lemery"]. "Even the ladies, following the fashion, are bold enough 
 to show themselves at such learned gatherings." They flock, too, to 
 the dissections practised by Du Verney ; as do numerous foreigners 
 [Cf. Fontenelle, Eloge de Du Verney]. Corroborative evidence 
 furnished by the memoirs of Mme de Staal-Delaunay. The chemical 
 experiments of the Due d'Orleans [Cf. Samt-Simon, ix., p. 268, &c. ; 
 and Fontenelle, Eloge de Homberg]. The conception of science takes 
 definite shape, and the idea of progress is evolved [Cf Brunetiere, 
 Etudes critiques, v.]. 
 
 VI. Charles Perrault [Paris, 1628 ; f 1703, Paris.] 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Perrault's memoirs published for the first time 
 in 1759 ; P. Clement, Lettres, Instructions et Memoires de Colbert 
 particularly vol. v. ; Niceron, Hommes illustres, vol. xliii. ; 
 d'Alembert, Eloge de Charles Perrault, in his Eloges academiques ; 
 Sainte-Beuve, Charles Perrault in his Causeries du lundi, vol. v., 
 and Nouveaux lundis, vol. i. ; Ch. Giraud, Lettre critique preceding 
 his edition of the Conies des Fees, 1864 ; Arvede Barine, Les 
 Contes de Perrault in the Bevue des Deux Mondes, December 1, 
 1890. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. 
 
 A. Chief Clerk of the Works. Perrault's family ; the Boileau 
 family and the Perrault family ; Pierre Perrault, the translator of 
 the Secchia rapita, 1678 [Cf. Racine in his preface to Iphigenie~\ ;
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 239 
 
 quately depicted in the Cydias sketched by La Bruyere, 
 " a mixture of the pedant and the Precieux," whose 
 originality scarcely went further, to continue to quote 
 La Bruyere, " than merely avoiding the profession of 
 other people's ideas while contriving to be of the opinion 
 of somebody." And all these criticisms were deserved. 
 Fontenelle's tragedy Aspar is only known to us by an 
 epigram of Bacine, but we have his Eclogues and his 
 Lettres galantes du chevalier d'Her . . . What was 
 Boileau to think of such a passage as the following : 
 " We have been told, sir, that you have become a philoso- 
 pher, but that your philosophy is the most extraordinary 
 in the world. You do not believe that colours exist ! . . . 
 I broached the matter one day with Mme de B , 
 
 Nicolas Perrault ; Claude Perrault, architect and doctor [Cf. 
 Fontenelle, Eloge de Claude Perraulf] ; Charles Perrault ; his 
 early studies and his early verses; his "travesty" of the sixth 
 book of the Aeneid ; and, in this connection, of the revival of 
 burlesque. Colbert appoints Perrault secretary of the Academy of 
 Inscriptions ; Perrault gives him the idea for the first Academy 
 of Sciences ; he is charged, together with Chapelain, with draw- 
 ing up the "List of the King's Bounties." He is given the 
 control of the Public Works; his labours; he suggests to his 
 brother the colonnade of the Louvre ; his disappointments and his 
 retirement. His " occasional pieces." The Saint-Paulin, 1686 ; 
 and, in this connection, of the revival of the epopee. The Siecle de 
 Louis le Grand, 1687 ; and of the double claim on our attention of 
 this work ; first as having suggested to Voltaire his Siecle de Louis 
 XIV. : and secondly as having given rise to the quarrel between 
 the ancients and moderns. 
 
 B. Perrault as the Apologist of the Moderns. The Paralleles des 
 Anciens et des Modernes, 1688-1696. Emotion aroused by these 
 dialogues ; Boileau and Perrault ; Perrault and La Bruyere ; 
 Perrault's thesis and the object of his work [Cf. below " THE 
 
 QUAKREL BETWEEN THE ANCIENTS AND MODERNS."] Perrault's polite 
 
 and courteous attitude hi the discussion. Moreover that there is 
 much that is excellent in the Paralleles. That in reading this book, 
 only the opinions of the Abb^ of the Dialogues should be imparted
 
 240 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 who is a friend of yours, and who is really pained at your 
 case. She would strangle Descartes if she had him in 
 her power. And it must be admitted that his philo- 
 sophy is a scurvy doctrine : it strips the ladies of their 
 charms. If there be no such thing as a complexion, 
 what becomes of the roses and lilies of our beauties ! It 
 will be useless for you to tell them that colours are in the 
 eyes of those who look, and not in the objects ; the ladies 
 will not permit their complexion to be dependent on the 
 eyes of other persons ; they intend that it shall be their 
 own property, and if there is no colour at night M. de 
 
 M is nicely caught, for he has fallen in love with 
 
 Mile D. L. G. on account of her beautiful complexion 
 and has married her." Voiture has written nothing more 
 
 to Perrault.- Reconciliation between Perrault and Boileau. The 
 publication of the Hommes illustres de ce siecle, 1696-1700. 
 
 C. Perrault as a ivriter of fairy stories ; and that d'Alembert in 
 his eulogy of Perrault does not even mention his fairy stories ; 
 an omission that is none to d' Alembert's credit ; since Cendrillon 
 and the Chat botte are the best things Perrault ever wrote ; 
 and from 1680 to 1715 no kind of literature was produced in 
 more abundance than fairy stories. Of some of Perrault's rivals ; 
 Mme d'Aulnoy, the author of the Oiseau bleu ; Mile de la 
 Force ; Mile Lheritier ; [Cf . Histoire litteraire des femmes francoises 
 by the abbe de la Porte, Paris, 1769] ; and whether this taste for fairy 
 stories should not be connected with that, manifested at the same 
 time, for oriental tales ? The translation of the Arabian Nights, 1704- 
 1708. Do Perrault's fairy tales deserve the praise that has been 
 bestowed on them ? Sunt bona, sunt mala qucedam, mediocria 
 plura. The naivete of Perrault's tales only exists in the imagi- 
 nation of those whom they amuse ; La Fontaine's remark on 
 Perrault's Peau d'ane ; Perrault's subjects are entertaining in them- 
 selves ; but he has chosen to present them in a style devoid of charm. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Perrault's works comprise : (1) a certain number 
 of occasional pieces, such as the Discours sur ^acquisition de 
 Durikerque par le Boi, 1663, or his Parnasse pousse a bout, sur la 
 difficulle de decrire la conquete de la Franclie-Comte, 1668; (2) his 
 Poeme sur la Peinture, 1668 ; his Saint-Paulin, 1686 ; and his Siecle
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE '241 
 
 " precious," Balzac nothing more affected. But neither 
 Balzac nor Voiture were acquainted with the art of convey- 
 ing a scientific truth in a similar affected or " precious" 
 dress : and to have done this constitutes Fontenelle's 
 originality. He may be said indeed to serve up Cartesian- 
 ism, astronomy, physics, and natural history in madrigals ; 
 and from this point of view the Entretiens sur la pluralite 
 des mondes is a masterpiece unique of its kind. In gallant 
 and insinuating fashion the work introduces into literature 
 for the first time an entire order of ideas and facts which 
 before had had no part in it. Fontenelle devotes his 
 ingenuity to fostering the new preoccupations that are 
 beginning to steal into men's minds. His effort is suc- 
 cessful, and, owing to his footing in society, these novel 
 
 de Louis le Grand, 1687 ; (3) his Paralleles, five dialogues in four 
 vols., published, as has been said, from 1688 to 1696 ; to which must 
 be joined, as being conceived in the same spirit, his Homines illustres, 
 1696-1700 ; and finally (4) his fairy tales : La Belle au bois dor- 
 mant, Le petit Chaperon rouge, La Barbe bleue, Le Chat botte, Les 
 Fees, Cendrillon, Riquet a la houppe, Le Petit Poucet in prose ; and 
 Griselidis, Peau d'dne, and Les souhaits ridicules in verse. 
 
 They were published for the first time separately in Holland 
 between 1694 and 1711 ; and in volume form by Barbin, 1697-1698, 
 the author being given as Perrault d'Armancour, son of Charles 
 Perrault. 
 
 There are innumerable modern editions of the fairy stories. 
 
 The Oiseau bleu, which is frequently adjoined to them, is by Mine 
 d'Aulnoy ; and Finette ou I'Adroite Princesse by Mile Lheritier. 
 
 VII. Jean de la Bruyere [Paris, 1645 ; f 1696, Versailles]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Suard, Notice sur la vie et les ecrits de La 
 Bruyere, 1781, and printed at the head of several modern editions. 
 Walckenaer, Etude sur La Bruyere, preceding his edition of the 
 Caracteres, Paris, 1845 ; Sainte-Beuve, Portraits litteraires, vol. i. ; 
 Nouveaux Lundis, vol. i. and vol. x. ; A. Vinet, Moralistes frangais 
 des XVI e et XVII e siecles, Paris, 1839; Edouard Fournier, La 
 comedie de La Bruyere, Paris, 1866 ; Etienne Allaire, La Bruyere, 
 dans la maison de Conde, Paris, 1866. 
 
 17
 
 242 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 matters become topics of fashionable conversation. Under 
 these circumstances it may be asked what is there that is 
 still wanting to the victory of Cartesianism and even of 
 science itself ? What is wanting is exactly and solely the 
 element which the quarrel between the ancients and 
 moderns is about to supply. 
 
 Charles Perrault, a man of wit and merit who can only 
 be reproached with having, like Scarron, begun his literary 
 career by " travestying " Virgil and with being more 
 learned in "buildings" than in literature conceives the 
 idea of flattering his king in somewhat novel fashion. 
 He can hit on no better notion than to call his century 
 the " Century of Louis the Great." Is there not the 
 century of Augustus or the century of Pericles ? But is 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. 
 
 A. The Moralist. La Bruyere's birth ; and that he was the only 
 one of the great writers of his time who was acquainted with four or 
 five languages, including German ; his family and his youth [Cf. 
 Servois, Notice biograpliique]. He is appointed treasurer of the 
 finances for the district of Caen ; he enters the household of Conde 
 in the capacity of tutor to the young Duke of Bourbon, 1684. The 
 spectacle presented by the Conde household [Cf. Saint- Simon, 
 Me moires.'] La Bruyere's reactions with Bossuet ; and with Boileau. 
 The alleged " romance " in La Bruyere's life ; and that it has no 
 bearing on literary history. Was the pean of La Bruyere's book 
 suggested him by Mile de Montpensier's Galerie de Portraits ? 
 or by the " portraits " scattered through the novels of Mile de 
 Scuderi ? Improbability of this supposition. On the other hand 
 he was greatly influenced by La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, and 
 Malebranche [Cf. Auguste Damien, Etude sur La Bruyere et Male- 
 branche, Paris, 1866]. Whether the characters of Theophrastus only 
 served him as a pretext ; or whether he was mistaken as to their 
 literary value ; as was Boileau as to that of the Treatise of Longinus 
 on the Sublime ? The first edition of the Caracteres, 1688 ; and 
 that it contains barely half a dozen portraits ; maxims predominating 
 in it ; and La Bruyere merely emulating La Rochefoucauld in his 
 book as at first produced. 
 
 Is there a " plan " in the Caracteres ; and that in any case it was
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 243 
 
 it enough to say that the century of Louis XIV. is in no 
 wise inferior to that of Augustus or that of Pericles? 
 Perrault holds that it is not. The century of Louis XIV. 
 is not the equal of those of Pericles and Augustus ; it 
 surpasses them ! and in proportion as the sovereign 
 himself is the superior of Augustus and Pericles, so 
 Bossuet, for instance, is the superior of Demosthenes, 
 Moliere the superior of Plautus or Terence, Racine the 
 superior of Euripides, so France is in advance of Athens 
 or Borne, and so in general the moderns are superior to 
 the ancients. In this way begins or is fomented a dis- 
 pute of which Perrault himself did not foresee the con- 
 sequences. He merely proposed to flatter his sovereign, 
 and, satisfied with having acted like a good courtier, he 
 
 not perceived by Boileau ; and that it is certain that if the chapter 
 du Merite personnel were to follow that de VHomme ; or the 
 chapter de la Conversation to precede that du Cceur ; it does not 
 appear that the economy of the book would be affected in conse- 
 quence. This fact, however, does not prove that the chapter des 
 Esprits forts is not a precaution ; on the contrary, in a certain 
 sense, it may be maintained with the author that all the rest 
 of the work leads up to this chapter. The friend and protege 
 of Bossuet, the future author of the Dialogues sur le quietisme, 
 purposed writing a work of apologetics ; or at any rate he aimed 
 at being a moralist ; as plainly appears, moreover, from a careful 
 reading of the first edition of the book ; or again of the Dis- 
 cours sur Theophraste. La Bruyere proposed to strike a blow 
 at once at the moderns and at the libertines, as if he had per- 
 ceived the solidarity of the two causes ; he proposed to reply at 
 the same time to the Perrault's Siecle de Louis le Grand ; and to 
 the Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes ; and this double refer- 
 ence to current controversies stood him perhaps in as good stead 
 as his talent in the early editions of his book. 
 
 B. The Artist. There was an " artist," however, inJLa_Bruy_erej27 
 or, as would be said at the present day, a stylist ; 
 
 oyershadowed_t,hp moroJigf. ; as is proved by the following strange 
 statement : " Moses, Homer, Plato, Virgil, and Horace are superior 
 to other writers solely on account of their images." Boileau, who
 
 244 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 would have gone no further, had not the partisans of 
 the ancients compelled him in some sort to look more 
 closely into his paradox. In reality it is the idea of 
 progress, vague as yet, inchoate or floating, scarcely self- 
 conscious, but still this idea and no other that pervades the 
 Paralleles des anciens et des modernes. It is in vain that 
 Racine, that La Bruyere in his Caracteres, 1688-1696, 
 that Boileau in his Reflexions critiques sur Longin, 1694, 
 endeavour to stem the current, to exert a contrary 
 influence. The witty retort is made them that they 
 themselves adduce proof in their works of the superiority 
 they are vexed should be accorded the moderns. " How 
 much, exclaims Perrault, does the public prefer to the 
 characters of the divine Theophrastus the reflections of 
 
 inclined to this opinion, when expressing it had at least made the 
 restriction : 
 
 Before starting to write, learn to think. 
 
 La Bruyere's style ; and that while lacking continuity, it is never- 
 theless oratorical ; in the sense that the Caracteres are the repertory 
 of classic rhetoric. There are to be found in it every one of the 
 " movements " enumerated in treatises on rhetoric : the interrogation, 
 the exclamation, the suspension, the digression, the interpellation, 
 the adjuration; every one of the "figures": the extenuation, the 
 hyperbole, the synecdoche, the catachresis, the prosopopoeia ; 
 every one of the " modalities " or modulations from irony to emphasis. 
 This rhetoric, however, is saved from its own excesses ; by its 
 tendency to realism ; that is to the close imitation of nature ; and, 
 in this connection, of the " naturalism " of La Bruyere. How careful 
 he is to thoroughly observe his models ; to note in them their 
 respective, individual characteristics ; and to see that each portrait 
 only fits the character it is intended to represent. The circumstance 
 that La Bruyere's characters were often the portraits of real persons ; 
 and without examining his intention to indulge in personal 
 satire, that where the identity of these persons can be traced 
 the resemblance of the portrait to the original furnishes proof of 
 the truth to nature of La Bruyere's depictions. That further proof 
 of his truthfulness to nature is found in his pessimism; and, in
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 245 
 
 the modern who has given us a translation of them ! " 
 [Cf. Paralleles, third dialogue, 2nd edition, 1693] . To 
 the side of the moderns flock the rising generation and 
 the women, to say nothing of the members of the 
 Academy, of whom barely six are supporters of Racine 
 and Boileau. Society follows suit. On all sides it is urged 
 that if the matter be strictly examined it is found that it 
 is we, the so-called moderns, who are really the ancients. 
 Our knowledge is more extensive than that of our fathers, 
 and the knowledge of our sons will be more extensive 
 still. Long enough, and indeed too long, have "men, 
 garbed in black and wearing the pedant's cap, held up 
 to us the works of the ancients, not merely as being all 
 that is most beautiful in the world, but as embodying 
 
 this connection, a reference once again to the connection between 
 pessimism and realism. The fact that La Bruyere is rather a 
 melancholy writer than otherwise, is due to his having endeavoured 
 to see things as they are, in order to render them as they are. He 
 may be suspected, however, of having seen things uglier than they 
 are ; or more grotesque than they are ; in order to make them lend 
 themselves to fine effects of style ; and in this way of having been 
 led by the very artifices of his rhetoric into the exaggeration he desired 
 to avoid. 
 
 C. The Satirist. Of the interest of this question owing to its 
 bearing on the solution of another question ; that, namely, of the 
 philosophic import of La Bruyere's book. The famous saying : " A 
 man who is born a Christian and a Frenchman feels himself shackled 
 when attempting satire." The fourth edition of the Caracteres, 1689 ; 
 and of the growing daring of La Bruyere up to the ninth edition, 1696. 
 It must be noted, however, that to spare nobody is almost equivalent 
 to attacking nobody. When a writer scoffs alike at men and women, 
 at courtiers and townsmen, at financiers and at the magistracy, 
 at the pious and at the libertines ; he is doubtless a pessimist ; but 
 he is not a revolutionary [Cf. Taine, Nouveaux essais de critique 
 et d'histoire]. This observation once made, it may and it should be 
 admitted : that La Bruvere'a iniiHiffftlffT* is rlppppr thnn thnt, *f 
 L:i l-'ontuim- : tli.-it lie ivrcnirilcil liim-'-lf less easily than Molu-iv to 
 the society of his time ; and that the dawning is seen in his writings
 
 246 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the very idea of the Beautiful " ! The moment has come 
 to escape from this servitude. And the emancipation, 
 which is speedily an accomplished fact, is followed by 
 three consequences. 
 
 Men's curiosity takes an altered direction. Forsaking 
 the study and meditation of the works of the ancients, 
 it becomes exclusively bent on the observation of the 
 realities of contemporary existence. Those who were 
 scoffed at in the Femmes Savantes have their revenge. 
 "Almost infinite," writes Perrault in his fifth and last 
 dialogue, " are the discoveries that have been made in our 
 century " ; and it is a fact, that while in general the 
 historians of our literature have dated wrongly the 
 triumph of Cartesianism, placing it thirty or forty 
 
 of a pity that is absent from those of Boileau. It is the idea of 
 humanity that is beginning to take shape. 
 
 Of some other merits of the Caracteres ; and in particular of 
 certain portraits and narratives ; which herald the approaching vogue 
 of the novel [Cf. Lesage's Diable Boiteux]. The transition is accom- 
 plished in La Bruyere's book from character as it is understood in the 
 comedy of Moliere ; to characters as they are about to be understood 
 in the novel of manners. La Bruyere's enemies. He replies to them 
 in his Discours de reception a I'Academie, 1693 ; and in the preface to 
 this discourse. He also essays on this occasion to define the " plan " 
 of his book ; but rather late in the day, imitating in this respect 
 La Eochefoucauld in the preliminary notice to his Maximes. He is 
 successful in showing that all the other chapters are subordinate to 
 the last ; but not that they observe a fixed order or gradation, or 
 that they have a constant bearing on his principal idea. That it is 
 worth while noting, moreover, that his principal idea is wholly a lay 
 idea ; La Bruyere's religion being a degree less Christian than the 
 religion of Malebranche ; if, indeed, it may not be termed a purelj 7 
 natural religion. The Dialogues sur le quietisme ; and that they 
 added nothing to the glory of La Bruyere. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. We have mentioned all the works of La Bruyere. 
 
 The editions to be consulted are : the first edition, 1688, reprinted 
 in the Cabinet du bibliophile, 1868 ; all the following editions down 
 to the ninth inclusive, which appeared in 1696.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITERATURE 247 
 
 years too early, on the other hand they have placed 
 thirty or forty years too late what may be termed the 
 advent of the scientific spirit [Cf. on this point F. 
 Cournot, Considerations sur la marche des idees, vol. i., 
 book iii.] . In reality, the reorganisation or the renewal 
 of the Academy of Sciences in 1699 is almost as important 
 and significant a date in French intellectual history as 
 that of the founding of the French Academj^ in 1635. 
 Boileau may compose if he chooses his Satire desfemmes : 
 
 Good ! it is that blue -stocking 
 Of whom Roberval has a high opinion and whom Sauveur frequents ; 
 
 but nevertheless the very women henceforth take an 
 interest in geometry, and the spectacle of a dissection, 
 
 We shall confine ourselves to citing among modern editions : 
 Walckenaer's edition, 1845 ; Destailleur's edition, 1854 ; G. Servois' 
 edition in the " Grands Ecrivains de la France " series, Paris, 1865- 
 1878, Hachette. 
 
 Two " classic " editions also deserve mention : Hemardinquer's 
 edition, 1849, 1854, 1872, 1890, Delagrave ; and Rebelliau's edition, 
 1890, Hachette. 
 
 VIII. Frangois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fenelon [chateau 
 
 of Fenelon, near Sarlat, 1651 ; f 1715, Cambrai]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Fenelon's voluminous correspondence, printed at 
 the end of the Versailles edition, and completed by a considerable 
 number of letters published in 1849, 1850, 1853, 1869, 1873, and 
 1892. 
 
 La Harpe, Eloge de Fenelon, 1771 ; d'Alembert, Eloge de Fenelon, 
 1774 ; Cardinal de Bausset, Histoire de Fenelon, 3rd edition, 1817 ; 
 Abbe Gosselin, Histoire litteraire de Fenelon, 1843 ; Sainte-Beuve, 
 Causeries du lundi, vol. ii., 1850, and vol. x., 1854 ; P. Janet, Fenelon 
 in the " Grands Ecrivains Fran9ais " series, Paris, 1892 ; R. Mahren- 
 holz, Fenelon, ein Lebensbild, Leipsick, 1896. 
 
 O. Douen, L 'intolerance de Fenelon, 2nd edition, Paris, 1875. 
 
 Tabaraud, Supplement aux histoires de Bossuet et de Fenelon, 
 Paris, 1822 ; A. Bonnel, La controverse de Bossuet et de Fenelon sur 
 le quieiisme, Macon, 1850 ; Algar Griveau, Etude sur la condemna-
 
 248 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 which Moliere thought so comic when he made his 
 Thomas Diafoirus offer it to Angelique in the Malade 
 imaginaire, is now a spectacle the sex flocks to witness. 
 The anatomist Du Verney, when introducing Mile de 
 Launay to the Duchesse du Maine, explains that " of 
 all the young women of France, it is she who is best 
 acquainted with the human body," and the statement is 
 considered perfectly natural. On the other hand it is 
 held to be extraordinary that men should still be found 
 who, while priding themselves on their judgment and 
 taste, confess to an admiration for Pindar. We are the 
 men of the present day, and what we are chiefly concerned 
 to know is the world in which we live and to which we 
 belong ! And what can Aristotle the Stagyrite and 
 
 tion du livre des Maximes des saints, Paris, 1878 ; Guerrier, 
 Madame Guyon, sa vie et sa doctrine, Paris, 1881 ; Crousle, Fenelon 
 et Bossuet, Paris, 1894 ; abbe Delmont, Fenelon et Bossuet, Lyons, 
 1896. 
 
 Emmanuel de Broglie, Fenelon a Cambrai, Paris, 1884. 
 
 Consult too, but cautiously, Saint-Simon's Memoires ; the letters 
 of the Duchesse d'Orleans ; and La Beaumelle, Memoires et corre- 
 spondance de Madame de Maintenon. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. He is a further example of a 
 writer who does not resemble his style ; and the real Fenelon was 
 just as hard, inflexible and overbearing as the style of Telemaque is 
 mellifluous and even unctuous. If there be added to this essential 
 characteristic a very high idea of himself, of his family, and of his 
 personal dignity ; a natural preciosity displayed in a taste for strange 
 and unusual opinions ; and finally a sort of insincerity of which he is 
 scarcely conscious ; an idea will be obtained of the Fenelon of the 
 first period of his life, from whom the second Fenelon was only 
 evolved very late in his career ; and the idea will be incomplete since 
 Fenelon is a strangely complex and fluctuating character ; still it 
 will allow of his being understood ; and will give a sort of unity to 
 his life, his role, and his work. 
 
 A. Fenelon 's early years. His family ; his early studies ; Cahors, 
 the college du Plessis, and the seminary of Saint-Sulpice. His
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 249 
 
 Cicero, who hailed from Arpinum, know on this subject 
 or teach us in connection with it ? 
 
 The influence of these new ideas, or more accurately of 
 the new direction taken by men's curiosity, may quickly 
 be traced even in the partisans of antiquity themselves, 
 in the Caracteres of La Bruyere, for instance, or in 
 Fenelon's Telemaque, the respective dates of which are 
 1696 as regards the last edition of the Caracteres, and 
 1699 for Telemaque. It was La Bruyere who was the 
 first to be attacked or railed at by the moderns, while 
 as for Fenelon he was destined to remain faithful 
 to the ancients to the end of his life. And yet in 
 what direction did the interests of La Bruyere really 
 lie ? He has told us explicitly in a very curious passage 
 
 youthful letters [to Bossuet and to the Marquise de Laval] ; and 
 that they are characterised by preciosity. He is put in charge of the 
 Nouvelles catJioliques. Is what Saint-Simon says of the intrigues of 
 Fenelon to secure his advancement to be believed ? and that, as a 
 general rule, it is always prudent at any rate to begin by disbelieving 
 Saint-Simon. Did he even ever see Fenelon ? That in any case 
 Louis XIV. distrusted Fenelon to start with ; never inviting him, in 
 spite of his early successes as an orator [Cf. the Sermon pour la fete 
 de VEpiphanie, 1685], to preach before the court ; while after the 
 success of his " Saintonge Mission," 1686-1687, the king declined to 
 confer on him either the bishopric of Poitiers, or that of La Bochelle. 
 How Fenelon triumphed over his sovereign's prejudice against him ; 
 thanks to the intervention in his behalf of the Due de Beauvilliers, 
 of Mme de Maintenon, and of Bossuet. He belonged to the group 
 of persons who formed Bossuet's habitual society. At the request of 
 Bossuet he writes his Refutation du Traite de la nature et de la 
 grace, directed against Malebranche. He is appointed tutor to the 
 royal children, 1689. 
 
 B. His early works. The Sermon pour la fete de VEpiphanie, 1685, 
 and that it almost marks an epoch in pulpit eloquence. Seduc- 
 tion, charm, and elevation of Fenelon's manner. The Traite de 
 V education des filles, 1686 ; and, in this connection, of the progress 
 made since Moliere and his Femmes savantes. Telemaque, 1693- 
 1694 ? and of the principal questions it raises. What was Fenelon's
 
 250 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 of his book, which is not a book, but the collected fruit 
 of his direct and close observation of his contempo- 
 raries. " Thej^unse--affioag-men infinite combinations 
 of power, of favour,. -of- genius, of riches, of dignities^ 
 of birth, of strength, of industry, of capacity, of vice-, of 
 weakness, of virtue, of stupidity, of poverty, of powerless- 
 of humbleness, and of vilen&ss_ These elements, 
 
 mingled together in a thousand different manners and 
 mutually compensated, give rise to the different classes and 
 the different social grades." And we declare in turn, that 
 in his Caracteres, it is these thousand combinations, these 
 different classes and different social grades that he delights 
 to depict, and no longer " man in general." He does 
 more than take nature for his model ; in reality he goes 
 
 intention in writing the work ? In writing it did he merely take an 
 artistic satisfaction in so "disfiguring" antiquity as to bring it into 
 accordance with his own conception of the period ? or was it his 
 intention to indulge in satire ? [Cf. the Lettre a Louis X.IV.~\ ; or, 
 again, was his purpose to set forth his scheme of government ? How 
 far was Fenelon responsible for the publication of the book in 1699 ? 
 and, in this connection, of strange sentence in his Memoire in 
 which he exonerates himself from all responsibility in the matter ; 
 " he preferred, he says, to allow it to appear in a deformed and dis- 
 torted shape, than to issue it as he had written it." Whether the 
 unfaithful copyist whom he accuses of having stolen his manuscript 
 was not well inspired in only publishing it after Fenelon had been 
 appointed to the see of Cambrai in 1695 ? [Cf. L. Genay, Etude lii- 
 teraire ei morale sur le Telemaque, Paris, 1876 ; and L. Boulve, De 
 rhellenieme chez Fenelon, Paris, 1897] . 
 
 C. The great controversies. The Quietist controversy [Cf. above, 
 BOSSUET]. Difficulties of Fenelon's situation. His dilatory tactics; 
 and beneath his apparent gentleness, his unconquerable resistance. 
 The essence of the controversy and the question of pure or dis- 
 interested love. The seduction the doctrine would exercise on Fenelon 
 given his aristocratic and singular nature. The quarrel becomes 
 complicated by political considerations. Fenelon's ambition, and 
 that it is superabundantly proved ; by his Lettre a Louis XIV. ; by
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 251 
 
 to current events for his inspiration, and his one ambition 
 is to give a vivid picture of "the manners of his time." 
 We touch here on the chief reason of the immense success 
 of his book. People recognise their neighbours in its 
 pages. Such an one is Diphile, such an one Theodecte. 
 Everybody can put a name to Irene, to Lais, or to Cesonie. 
 Hence it is that the book is amusing, that it is instruc- 
 tive : it teaches in how many ways one man may differ 
 from another. But Lns Bruyere complains that " great 
 subjects are forbidden him " ; five or six years pass and 
 Fenelon essays them in his Telemaque. 
 
 I do not believe there exists a book, a celebrated and 
 justly celebrated book, in which antiquity is presented us 
 in a falser light than in Telemaque ; and I do not except 
 
 Telemaque and by his Tables de Chaulnes. The utopia of Fenelon ; 
 and its retrograde character. Is it to be regretted that his pupil 
 did not reign ? His condemnation, March 12, 1699, and the Letters 
 Patent of August 14th. His exile at Cambrai. In his exile he con- 
 tinues to keep in communication with his party [Cf . his correspondence 
 with the Duke of Burgundy], and to occupy himself with the scheme 
 of government he looks forward to being able to put in force. His 
 conflict with the Jansenists ; and of the unscrupulousness he dis- 
 played in the course of it. His attitude in this instance may be 
 regarded as his revenge for the defeat he had suffered ; and in any 
 case as wholly characteristic of one side of his policy. Imprudence of 
 this policy ; seeing that the ruin of Port-Royal contributed as much 
 as the revocation of the Edict of Nantes to the progress of libertinism. 
 Hopes conceived by Fenelon at the time of the death of the Dauphin 
 [Cf. his letter of April 14, 1711] ; it is at this juncture that he com- 
 poses his Tables de Chaulnes. Death of the Duke of Burgundy 
 [February, 1712]. 
 
 D. Feneloris la#t years. Although the hopes that had buoyed him 
 up for the last fifteen years are shattered, he does not abandon him- 
 self to despair ; but on the contrary accepts his fate as a special 
 manifestation in his interest of the will of God [Cf. his correspond- 
 ence for the years 1712, 1713, 1714]. His remark to the Due de 
 Chaulnes : " My dear Duke, let us die without regret " [March, 1712] ; 
 and it may be said that from this moment his sole and ardent concern
 
 252 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 even the Cyrus or the Clelie of Mile de Scuderi, to whom 
 moreover, it owes as much as to Sophocles or Homer 
 Bossuet esteemed the work to be "unworthy" of a priest 
 and I am much afraid that he was right. Still, if th 
 book be read as it ought to be read, that is with the date a 
 which it was written constantly in view, the impression i 
 produces is at once modified. As is the case with Li 
 Bruyere, it is " portraits " and " contemporary portraits ' 
 that Fenelon draws. Mentor is he himself, and Telemaqui 
 is the Duke of Burgundy. He lectures the prince, and lesi 
 on the subject of morality than on that of government. 
 
 The tale serves to pass off the precept. 
 He discusses problems of statesmanship, and chimerica 
 
 was to prepare himself for death. Still he seeks distraction ; an< 
 writes his Lettre sur les occupations de V Academic francaise, 1714 ; 
 perhaps, too, he revises his Dialogues de reloquence; and his Trait 
 de Vexistence de Dieu. He continues to combat the last remnants o 
 Jansenism ; -and administers his diocese admirably. He is mortally 
 stricken, however ; and the spectacle of his gradual throwing off o 
 his former self, year by year and almost month by month, is exceed 
 ingly beautiful. 
 
 E. Of some oilier of Fenelori's works. The Lettre sur les occupa 
 tions de V Academic francaise ; and that it bears traces of Fenelon'i 
 strange and unusual bent of mind. His judgment on French poetry ; 
 which he complains is the slave of the laws of versification. His judg 
 ment on Moliere. His scheme for a treatise on history. His Dialogue. 
 sur reloquence [published in 1718] ; and that they contain all th< 
 objections against and the criticisms of pulpit eloquence, which wil 
 afterwards be elaborated by Voltaire ; that in this respect the worl 
 would have come better from a man of letters than from a bishop ; 
 while it is sovereignly unjust as far as it refers to Bourdaloue. Indeec 
 Fenelon is already quite of the view of a modern critic; and th< 
 words of Edmond Scherer might almost be put into his mouth : "th( 
 sermon is a spurious branch of literature." The Traite de Vefistenct 
 de Dieu ; and of the influence of the scientific movement of the timt 
 on the first part of the book. Comparison between the second parl 
 and Malebranche's Entretiens sur la metapliysique ; and of the eas(
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 253 
 
 though his views may be they are closely connected with 
 the situation of France at his time. In short, he too 
 seeks his inspiration in current events. He has a goal in 
 view, and a goal that is neither distant nor indistinct, but 
 in proximity and clearly defined. Was it possible, under 
 these conditions, that Telemaque should not have aroused 
 the eager curiosity of its writer's contemporaries, that they 
 should not have seen that they themselves were its subject 
 matter, that they should not have essayed to gather from 
 the lessons of the tutor what manner of government would 
 be that of his royal pupil ? For these reasons Fenelon's 
 " novel " is the outcome, as were the Caracteres, of the 
 newly developed thirst for knowledge. It is the book of a 
 reformer, and this despite the fact that the aristocratic ideal 
 
 with which more than one passage in it might be made out to have 
 pantheistic leanings. 
 
 After what precedes it is incumbent to add : that, while in Fene- 
 lon's case the style is not " the man " ; for the only point of resem- 
 blance between his character and his style is the marvellous suppleness 
 of both ; yet his style is instinct with a very keen charm ; a sort 
 of social optimism ; and also a very keen sentiment for what is 
 about to be called humanity. The truth is that Fenelon was very 
 kind, to those who recognised his superiority ; and he was very 
 sensitive. It is evidently to these two characteristics that he owes 
 his reputation as a philosopher or even as a philanthropist [Cf. La 
 Harpe in his eulogy, and the Fenelon of Marie-Joseph Chenier] ; and 
 in this way the world has formed an idea of Fenelon, as it has of 
 Bossuet, which is false as far as it is arrived at but no further by 
 an attempt to judge of the character of the men from the nature of 
 then- writings. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. They are divided, or rather they have been 
 divided in the Versailles edition, into five classes. 
 
 (1) TJteological and controversial works, of which the principal 
 are : the Traite de I 'existence et des attributs de Dieu, 1712, 1718 ; 
 the Lettre a Veveque d 1 Arras sur la lecture de VEcriture sainte en 
 langue vulgaire, 1707, 1718 ; and the Refutation du Traite de la 
 nature et de la grace, published for the first time in 1820 [vols. i., ii. 
 and iii.] Volumes iv., v., vi., vii., viii. and ix. contain Fenelon's dif-
 
 254 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 of the archbishop of Cambrai lies wholly in the past, as 
 we clearly see to-day, though nobody perceived the truth 
 at the time. Fenelon interests the men of his epoch in 
 themselves, an achievement that accorded exactly with 
 the demands of the coterie of the moderns. 
 
 There are other works which, although they are of 
 inferior literary merit, are not less significant of the trans- 
 formation that is in progress ; and disrespectful as it may 
 seem to speak in the same breath of Telemaque or the 
 Caracteres and of the" comedies of Dancourt, in reality 
 the association of these works is more interesting and 
 instructive than it is slighting to Fenelon or La 
 Bruyere. It is in Dancourt's pieces that the transforma- 
 tion takes place of the comedy of character into the 
 
 ferent writings on the subject of Quietism with the exception of the 
 Maximes des saints; while volumes x., xi., xii., xiii., xiv., xv. and xvi. 
 contain his writings against Jansenism. 
 
 (2) His moral and devotional ivorks, comprising : his Sermons, of 
 which the principal are the Sermon pour I'Epiphanie, 1685, and the 
 Sermon pour le sacre de VElecteur de Cologne, 1707 ; his Lettres 
 sur divers points de spiritualite, 1718, 1738 ; and, included in this 
 class for no obvious reason, the Traite sur V 'education des filles, 1687 
 [vols. xvii. and xviii.]. 
 
 (3) Fenelon's diocesan charges, 1701 to 1713 [vol. xviii.] 
 
 (4) Literary works including : thirty-six Fables ; the Dialogues 
 des morts, an imitation, probably, of Fontenelle's work. The edition 
 of 1700 contains four dialogues, that of 1712 forty-seven, that of 
 1718 sixty-nine, that of 1787 seventy-four, that of 1823 eighty-one ; 
 the Aventures de Telemaque, 1699 and 1717 ; the Dialogues sur 
 Veloquence, 1718, and sundry minor works including the Lettre sur 
 les occupations de V Academic francaise, 1716 [vols. xix., xx., xxi. and 
 xxii.] 
 
 (5) Political writings including : Divers Mernoires concernant la 
 guerre de la succession d'Espagne ;. the Examen de conscience sur 
 les devoirs de la roi/aute; and the Essai philosophique sur le gou- 
 vernement civil. This last work is not by Fenelon, but was written 
 by the Chevalier de Eamsai " in accordance with the principles of M. 
 de Fenelon," and published in London in 1721 [vol. xxii.].
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 255 
 
 comedy of manners, in his "curtain-raisers" as well as in 
 his more important plays in the Moulin de Javelle, in 
 the Foire de Besons, in the Vendanges de Suresne, as in 
 the Chevalier a la mode, in the Femme d 'intrigues, or in 
 the Agioteurs. And as for the comedy of manners, in 
 what does it exist if not in the presentation of the foibles 
 of the hour and the follies of the period in a scenario that 
 itself is wholly contemporary ? Plays of this stamp are a 
 mirror in which the comic author invites us to recognise 
 ourselves ; and, for our part, after making allowance for 
 the exaggeration inseparable from caricatures, and further 
 necessitated, as we are aware, by the requirements of 
 dramatic art, what we look for in such plays is our own 
 likeness. The attractiveness, however, of comedy of this 
 
 It remains to mention the Correspondence in twelve volumes: 
 Correspondence with the Duke of Burgundy [vol. i.] ; Miscellaneous 
 letters [vols. ii., iii., iv.] ; letters dealing with spiritual matters [vols. 
 v. and vi.] ; letters relating to the Quietist controversy [vols. vii., 
 viii., ix., x., xi.] Vol. xii. contains a good review of Fenelon's works. 
 
 IX. The Quarrel "between the Ancients and Moderns. 
 1. THE ORIGIN OF THE QUARREL. Three lines of Horace : 
 
 .3tas parentum, pejor avis, tulit 
 
 Nos nequiores, mox daturos 
 
 Progeniem vitiosiorem ; 
 
 and that notwithstanding Bodin [Cf. above BODIN] ; Bacon and his 
 De augmentis ; Descartes [Cf. Discours de la methods, vi.] ; and 
 Pascal [Fragment (Van Traite du vide} ; the idea expressed by these 
 three lines was entertained " by all thoughtful persons " until towards 
 1680. The real quarrel, the result, like many important events, of 
 insignificant causes, has a threefold origin. It arose out of : (1) the 
 controversies touching the " miraculous character of Christianity " ; 
 controversies which inevitably raised the question of the superiority of 
 Christianity over Paganism [Cf. Desmarets de Saint- Sorlin's preface 
 to Clovis and to Marie-Mag deleine] ; (2) the mere spectacle of the 
 progress made by science between the time of Descartes and that of
 
 256 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 order, whatever its literary value, lies, just as does 
 the attractiveness of the Caracteres, in the fidelity of 
 observation displayed in it. What is asked of the author 
 is no longer that he shall unravel a plot or develop a thesis, 
 but that he shall hit off his models accurately ; and, in 
 response to this demand, the author allows himself to be 
 directed both in his choice of subjects and in his mode of 
 treating them by passing events. Dancourt is such an 
 author. He is without genius, his talent is slight, his 
 comedy is superficial, his wit is often coarse ; on the other 
 hand, his plays abound in details relating to manners, in 
 scraps of dialogue transported on to the stage from real 
 life, and I will not dare to say in portraits it would be 
 doing him too much honour but at least in silhouettes of 
 
 Newton ; (3) the idea that occurred to Charles Perrault of disparaging 
 the ancients with a view to flattering Louis XIV. The sitting of the 
 French Academy held on January 27, 1687 [Cf. Bigault, Histoire de 
 la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes], Indignation of the partisans 
 of the ancients : La Fontaine, Boileau, Racine. Fontenelle supports 
 Perrault in his Digression sur les Anciens et les Modernes, 1688. The 
 first edition of the Caracteres appears almost simultaneously [the royal 
 authorisation for its printing is dated October, 1687] ; and Perrault 
 determines to write his Paralleles, of which the first volume appeared 
 in October of the same year. Fontenelle elected to the French 
 Academy, 1691 ; election of La Bruyere, 1693. Boileau replies to 
 the Paralleles in his Reflexions critiques sur Longin, 1694 ; Per- 
 rault publishes the concluding volume of his Paralleles in 1696 ; 
 he treats in it of the superiority of the moderns in the matter of 
 science ; and the quarrel seems appeased by Boileau's letter to 
 Perrault, 1701. 
 
 2. IMPORTANCE OF THE QUARREL ; and of the error that has been 
 committed in regarding it as a quarrel between pedants. In addition 
 to Rigault's estimable book on the subject, students should read 
 Auguste Comte's pronouncement on the matter [Cf. Cours de pliilo- 
 sophie positive, vol. iii., forty-seventh lesson ; and Pierre Leroux's 
 treatise, Sur la Loi de la continuite qui relie le XVIF au XVIIP 
 siecle~\ . The real point at issue in the quarrel is : 
 
 A. From the pedagogic point of view, Will the ancients remain
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 257 
 
 personages, who dress, speak, move about, behave them- 
 selves, feel and think after the fashion of people of the 
 year 1700. It remains that there shall appear on the 
 scene a more skilful artist, and above all a more con- 
 scientious artist and one more devoted to his art, and 
 that he shall improve on Dancourt if he can ! Still, as it 
 is, the comedy of Moliere is threatened, or even already 
 undermined. The case is the same with the politics of 
 Bossuet and with the aesthetics of Boileau, and all three 
 writers are the butt of the same patient, subtle, and almost 
 invisible enemy. 
 
 This enemy might be said, if desired, to be a contempt 
 or rather a disdain for tradition, but I prefer to speak of it 
 as a frenzy or a rage for novelty. Nothing gives more flavour 
 
 the educators of humanity for all time ? for what reasons ? and in 
 virtue of what privilege ? Ronsard was saturated with Greek tradi- 
 tion, and Malhei'be with Latin tradition ; and the question is, has 
 not the time come for writers to be purely French ? La Bruyere, in 
 his Discours sur Theophraste, shows that he appreciates that these 
 are the points at issue, and very skilfully defends the ancients ; by 
 justifying the authority of tradition on the ground of the element of 
 eternal truth contained in the writings of the ancients ; and contained 
 in consequence of their greater faithfulness to nature ; while he 
 also urges that they expressed ideas the propriety of which is still 
 recognised after the lapse of three thousand years ; in spite of 
 the immense changes in manners, in customs, and in the very 
 conception that obtains of life. In the second place : 
 
 B. From tlie philosophic point of view ; the question at issue is 
 that of progress ; an idea of which a conception, confused as yet, but 
 undoubtedly existent, was abroad at the period; and an idea the 
 paternity of which has wrongly been ascribed to Turgot. Explicit 
 passages in the Paralleles : [Cf. vol. iv., p. 40] arithmetical progress. 
 [Cf. vol. iv., p. 72] organic progress. [Cf. vol. iv., p. 119] evolution 
 or progress by differentiation ; and in this connection that it is un- 
 doubtedly Perrault who triumphed over convictions ; which Pascal 
 and Descartes had only shaken. 
 
 C. From the (esthetic or literary point of view ; the point at 
 issue was whether the ancients had attained to perfection ; and laid 
 
 18
 
 258 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 or "spice" to a literary work than an air of novelty! 
 Unfortunately, although truth may "have a bearded 
 chin," as Malebranche said, it is the truth for all 
 that ; and what is more, it is not given to every one to 
 strike out a new line, or to strike out a new line when 
 he wishes to or because he wishes to. It must also 
 be borne in mind that tradition at no period represents 
 the whole of the past, but, on the contrary, only that small 
 portion of it which has survived. Tradition is not Mevius 
 or Bavius, who have passed into utter oblivion, but Virgil 
 and Horace, who have survived. And why have they 
 survived ? Boileau has answered the question in excellent 
 fashion: "It is because the esteem in which they are held 
 does not depend in reality on the length of time during 
 
 down laws that can only be swerved from to the detriment of art ; 
 or whether, on the contrary, the various branches of literature 
 must not necessarily be developed and transformed in the course of 
 time. 
 
 3. SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE QUARREL. It transferred the golden 
 age of humanity from one period to another ; dealt tradition in this 
 way a serious blow ; and completed the triumph of Cartesianism. 
 For whatever the divisions among the Cartesians, they are all agreed 
 011 this point : that optimism is justified by reason ; or that optimism 
 is the only reasonable opinion [Cf . in this connection Spinoza's Ethics, 
 Malebranche's Entretiens, and Leibnitz's TJieodicee]. Another con- 
 sequence of the quarrel was to subject literature in all its branches to 
 the authority of fashion ; fashion being merely the search for novelty 
 whether in the matter of ideas or of that of dress and customs ; and, 
 in this connection, of the great number of women writers at the close 
 of the reign of Louis XIV. ; Mme Deshoulieres [Cf. Sainte-Beuve, 
 Une ruelle politique sous Louis XIV. in his Portraits de femmes~\ ; 
 Mme de Villedieu, Mile Bernard, Mme Durand, Mile de la Force, 
 Mme d'Aulnoy, Mile Lheritier, Mme de Murat [Cf. Abbe de la Porte, 
 Histoire litteraire des femmes, and Gordon de Percel (Lenglet du 
 Fresnoy), Bibliotheque des Tomans']. And from all these conse- 
 quences there results in turn another consequence : the disorganisa- 
 tion of pulpit eloquence ; and of tragedy ; the parodying of lyricism ; 
 the transformation of comedy and of the novel.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITER ATUEE 259 
 
 which their works have survived, but on the length of time 
 during which their works have been admired," or, in 
 other words : " The antiquity of a writer is not a cer- 
 tain sign of his merit, but the long-standing and con- 
 stant admiration that has always been entertained for 
 his works is sure and infallible proof that they ought to 
 be admired." [Cf. Reflexions critiques sur Longin, re- 
 flection vii.] . It would be impossible to employ more 
 sensible language. But in the year 1700, Boileau is not 
 among those who are listened to, if indeed he be not 
 among those who are scoffed at ; and at this juncture 
 writers, instead of aiming, as they did in his time, 
 at being superior to their predecessors, seek to be 
 " different " from them. Massillon expressly made this 
 
 X. Jean-Baptiste Massillon [Hyeres, 1663 ; f 1742, Clermont- 
 Ferrand] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. D'Alembert, Eloge de Massillon, in his Eloges 
 academiques ; Maury, Essai sur V eloquence de la cliaire ; Abbe 
 Bayle, Massillon, Paris, 1867 ; Abbe Blampignon, Massillon, Paris, 
 1879, and L' Episcopal de Massillon, 1884 ; F. Brunetiere, L'Elo- 
 quence de Massillon, Paris, 1881 ; Abbe Allais, Massillon, Toulouse, 
 1883 ; M. Cohendy, Correspondances, Mandernents, etc., de Massillon, 
 Clermont, 1883. 
 
 2. MASSILLON'S ELOQUENCE. Of the " profane " character of Mas- 
 sillon's Sermons ; and of the defects and at the same time of the 
 qualities this epithet "profane" must be understood to convey. 
 No orator has ever contrived to say so little while employing such a 
 multitude of words ; or, on the other hand, to say that little in more 
 harmonious language ; no orator, again, has made more abusive use 
 of every rhetorical expedient ; but no orator has known better how 
 to turn rhetoric to account ; to give life to abstract truths ; to lend 
 his discourse an air of " elegance " or sustained distinction ; and to 
 suit religion to an audience of fine ladies and courtiers. 
 
 Massillon had recourse to the same rhetorical expedients even in 
 planning his sermons. His method is to sketch the plan of his 
 sermon before he is very sure as to what he will put into it. Of the 
 measure of ingenuousness that this mode of composition presupposes ;
 
 260 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 confession. The highly impertinent question was put 
 him whether, mounting the pulpit after such men as 
 Bossuet and Bourdaloue, he nattered himself he would 
 surpass them : "I shall preach differently, 1 " he answered 
 his indiscreet questioner. And this justice must be done 
 him he kept his word : he preached differently but not 
 so well. As for the consequences of this rage for 
 novelty, of which Massillon was an eloquent example, they 
 speedily prove to be what it might have been foreseen 
 they would be : the decadence or demeaning of all the 
 nobler or more elevated branches of literature. 
 
 May it be the case that certain of these branches had 
 exhausted themselves as it were, owing to over-production, 
 owing to their having furnished too many masterpieces in 
 
 and of the measure of artifice [Cf. the sermons Sur la Mort du 
 pecheur et la Mort du juste, or Sur V enfant prodigue]. Comparison, 
 in this connection, between Massillon's expedients and Bourdaloue's 
 method. Of the importance of the details in Massillon's sermons. 
 His affectation of preciosity. 
 
 How this preciosity has its influence even on his doctrine ; and 
 leads him to display alternately excessive rigorism, or excessive 
 complaisancy. Carried away by his flow of words he says more than 
 he means to say ; as when he declares that " ambition is the most 
 marked characteristic of a base soul" ; or when he exaggerates the 
 good it is in the power of nature to accomplish. It will now be 
 understood what is meant when he is reproached with having been 
 a mere rhetorician ; it only remains to add that he is one of the most 
 delightful of rhetoricians; a fact that explains his success as a 
 preacher; the admiration the Encyclopedists will profess for him; 
 and the real pleasure experienced in reading him. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The works of Massillon comprise two series of 
 Advent sermons, joined together, and numbering in all ten sermons ; 
 forty-one High Lent sermons ; ten minor Lent sermons ; eight 
 sermons on the Mysteries ; ten panegyrics ; six funeral orations, 
 including those on Louis XIV. and on the Dauphin ; four Sermons 
 de veture ; and a certain number of Conferences, Charges, Synodical 
 Discourses, etc. 
 
 Apart from the funeral orations, the only sermons whose date is
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITERATURE 261 
 
 too short a space of time ? This is the reason Voltaire 
 would content himself with, and we are not going to deny 
 that it contains a portion of the truth. Literary branches 
 are subject to fatigue and exhaustion ; they die out 
 as species do in nature, when they cease to find around 
 them the conditions necessary to their development. 
 Genius itself would seek in vain to revive them under 
 these conditions. But they die out yet more surely 
 when they become blind to their true nature. This 
 is the fate which, at the point we have reached, 
 definitely overtakes lyric poetry of the true genius of 
 which Malherbe, as we have seen, was but partially 
 conscious as exemplified in the Odes and Cantatas of 
 Jean-Baptiste Bousseau. Jean-Baptiste is the model or 
 
 absolutely certain are the twelve minor Lent sermons. They were 
 preached in 1718 in the chapel of the Tuileries for the benefit and in 
 the presence of Louis XV., still a child at the time. 
 
 The first authentic edition of Massillon's works is that published by 
 his nephew, Father J. Massillon of the Oratory, in 1745, and in the 
 absence of manuscripts all subsequent editions have had no option but 
 to follow this edition [Cf. Sacy, Varietes litteraires et morales]. 
 
 XI. French Tragedy from 1680 to 1715. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. The brothers Parfaict, Histoire du theatre 
 francais, vol. xii. to xx ; Leris, Dictionnaire des Theatres ; Petitot, 
 Repertoire du theatre franqais, vol. i. and ii. ; d'Alembert, Eloges de 
 Campistron et de Crebillon; Villemain, Litterature frangaise au 
 XVIIP siecle ; A Vitu, Crebillon, notice preceding his edition of this 
 writer's works, 1885 ; F. Brunetiere, Les Epoques du theatre francais, 
 1892. 
 
 2. THE SUCCESSORS OF EACINB. The actors of the Hotel de 
 Bourgogne combine with those of Moliere's theatre and the Coniedie- 
 Fran9aise is founded. The first performance at the Comedie-Fran- 
 9aise : Phedre and the Carrosses d' Orleans. J. G. Campistron [1656, 
 f 1723], and whether, as Voltaire has declared, " his plots are 
 better constructed than those of Racine " ? He doubtless means that 
 they are more romantic. Arminius, 1684 and Andronic, 1685. The 
 first statutes of the Comedie-Francaise, April-October, 1685. Pradon's
 
 262 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 type of the spurious man of talent. It is merely with a 
 view to completeness that I mention the comedies of 
 Regnard, the Meneckmes, the Folies amoureuses, the 
 Legataire universel, the least of whose errors is to 
 imagine that he has struck out a new line by returning, 
 after an interval of fifty years, to the lazzi and imbroglios 
 of Italian comedy. Still, let it be conceded him that his 
 plays are cleverly written ! It is impossible to say as 
 much for the tragedies of the elder Crebillon from the 
 moment that Atree et Thyeste and Rhadamiste et Zenobie 
 are his masterpieces ! Whereas tragedy had owed its evolu- 
 tion to the elimination from its scope of the romantic 
 element, under the auspices of this sombre poet it is again 
 invaded and even swamped by this discarded material. 
 
 very successful piece : Begulus, 1688. The " King's Comedians " take 
 possession of their theatre in the Rue des Fosses-Saint-Gennain [at 
 the present day Eue de I'Ancienne-Comedie] ; and give their first 
 performance 18th April, 1689 : Pliedre and the Medecin malgre lui. 
 Mile Bernard's Brutus [written in collaboration with Fontenelle], 
 1690. Lagrange-Chancel's first tragedy : Adherbal, 1694 ; Longe- 
 pierre's first tragedy : Medee, 1694. Thomas Corneille's last tragedy : 
 Bradamante, 1695. Antoine de la Fosse [1653, f 1708] ; and the 
 success of his Manlius Capitolinus, 1698 ; of which as late a writer 
 as Villemain speaks as if it were a sort of masterpiece. And yet, 
 leaving on one side the recrudescence of novelty by which such a play 
 as Manlius might benefit between 1790 and 1820 owing to favouring 
 circumstances ; and to the genius of Talma ; what is best in 
 Manlius belongs to Saint-Real as the author of the Conjuration des 
 Espagnols contre Venise ; or to Thomas Otway, the English drama- 
 tist, as the author of Venice Preserved ; and only what remains to 
 Antoine de la Fosse. Crebillon's first tragedies : Idomenee, 1705 ; 
 and, in this connection, of the influence of Telemaque on the concep- 
 tion of antiquity which will obtain henceforth. 
 
 3. CK^BILLON'S PLAYS. Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon (1674, f 1762) ; 
 his extraction and his youthful years ; his lack of primary 
 instruction and of mental culture ; Boileau's remark concerning 
 Crebillon: "The Scuderis and the Pradons at whom we scoffed so 
 heartily in my youth, were eagles compared with these writers." A
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 263 
 
 Crebillon sells as a pure Burgundy wine 
 
 A fumy wine of Auvergne blended with the grape of Lignage. 
 
 What becomes of pulpit eloquence, at this same 
 juncture, is known to everybody by the sermons of 
 Massillon. As one of his contemporaries says, it has 
 developed into " a pleasure in which the very senses seem 
 to participate " : and if this appreciation be just, as in my 
 opinion it is, what terms at once more nattering and more 
 profane could be employed to characterise the merit of a 
 madrigal, of a love elegy, or of some Anacreontic ode ? 
 
 Under the influence of all these causes the character of 
 the language itself undergoes a change. To the stately 
 sentence, a little long at times but so nobly spacious, to 
 
 remark of I [ontesquieu to the contrary effect ; and what does he 
 mean when he says that Crebillon " made him enter into transports 
 akin to those of the Bacchantes " ? Crebillon's most successful 
 pieces: Atree, 1707; Electre, 1708; Bhadamisie, 1711. How the 
 romantic element reappears in tragedy through the intermediary of 
 Crebillon's "masterpieces." His choice of subjects; and that while 
 he is careful as a rule that they shall be " atrocious," he is still more 
 careful that they shall be "extraordinary" [Cf. the subject of Atree, 
 that of Bhadamiste or that again of Pyrrlms}. The nature of the 
 plots hi Crebillon's plays ; and of the two signs by which their 
 romantic side, and then- artificial and arbitrary side, are seen : the 
 starting point of the action is a misapprehension, it proceeds to turn 
 on a qui pro quo and the end is brought about by the recognition of 
 the truth. The depiction of character in Crebillon's plays ; and that 
 it is as wanting in conscientiousness as is the depiction of the passions 
 therein in truth to nature ; his tragedies are entirely lacking in general 
 or human interest. Of some other characteristics of Crebillon's plaj's ; 
 and of the declamatory affectation which he takes to be eloquence. 
 Crebillon's tragedies are merely " melodramas " written in verse. 
 
 4. THE FORERUNNERS OF VOLTAIRE ; and the new tendencies of 
 tragedy. Abundance of tragedies based on biblical subjects : Abbe 
 Brueys' Gabinie, 1699 ; Abbe Nadal's Saul, 1705 ; and, one after 
 the other : Herode, 1709 ; Joseph, 1710 ; Absalon, 1712 ; Jona- 
 thas, 1714. The first performance of Racine's Athalie, 1716.
 
 264 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FBENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the complex and genuinely " organic " sentence of Pascal 
 and Bossuet, of Kacine and Malebranche, to this periodic 
 sentence, whose sinuous construction is such an admirable 
 presentment of the processes of thought, there now suc- 
 ceeds a lighter and brisker sentence, a sentence that is 
 unencumbered and quicker of foot, so to speak. The 
 period, after tending for a while towards heaviness, be- 
 comes disjointed or is broken up. " For the past twenty 
 years writers have strictly observed the rules, La Bruyere 
 declares as early as 1688, they have been the slaves of 
 construction, they have enriched the language with new 
 words, thrown off the yoke of Latinism and evolved a style 
 in which the sentence is purely French." What he means 
 to say is that the rules have been laid down of a style which 
 
 Mythological subjects, and that they are the outcome of the growing 
 influence of the Opera : Lagrange-Chancel's Meleagre, 1699 ; de la 
 Fosse's Thesee, 1700; La Mort d'Ulysse, 1707; The Tyndarides 
 and Atree and Thyeste, 1707 ; Electre, 1708 ; Ino et Melicerte, 
 1713 ; and how the pieces of this class completed the deformation 
 of the conception of tragedy ; by giving less and less place in it to 
 the observation of reality, and converting it into a mere recreation 
 without profit or significance. Whether this mistake is counter- 
 balanced by the political tendencies which creep into some of these 
 tragedies, in such a way as to make them herald the corning of 
 Voltaire ? But the efforts to rejuvenate this branch of the drama 
 are vain ; and nothing can prevail against the opinion which is 
 taking root ; to the effect that people no longer go to the theatre 
 to have their feelings profoundly stirred; but to be diverted or 
 amused ; and that the primary charm of stage fiction lies precisely 
 in its air of unreality. Henceforth the subjects are merely pretexts 
 for stage effects or ingenious verses ; neither authors nor spectators 
 attach any importance to them, except so far as it is necessary to do 
 so with a view to passing an hour or two agreeably. 
 
 5. THE WORKS. Of all the pieces just enumerated there are not 
 half a dozen that are still remembered ; or a single one that theatrical 
 managers still venture to play ; while not one of the authors deserves 
 more than a passing mention in a history of literature. 
 
 However, it may be worth while to consult the Repertoire du
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITERATURE 265 
 
 is far more impersonal even than it is regular. For the 
 future every word will have its appointed place in the sen- 
 tence, and will have to occupy that place ; henceforth it is 
 forbidden to place the subject after the verb, or the attri- 
 bute before the subject ! Further on he adds : " The 
 literary language has been endowed with the utmost 
 possible measure of order and clearness : a state of things 
 which tends insensibly to make authors introduce wit into 
 their utterances." This is the use to which he puts 
 language himself, and his example encourages others to 
 do likewise. He would have been nearer the truth had 
 he said that authors are more concerned with achieving 
 brilliancy, or spurious brilliancy, than any more sterling 
 qualities. " It seems to me, my dear Sacy," writes Mme 
 
 Theatre francais for : Carnpistron's Andronic ; de la Fosse's Man- 
 lius ; and Lagrange-Chancel's Amasis ; and for Crebilloii the edition 
 of the Collection des classiques Lefevre ; or Vitu's edition mentioned 
 above, Paris, 1885. 
 
 XII. Jean-Baptiste Rousseau [Paris, 1671; f 1741, La 
 
 Genette, near Brussels]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Seguy, Notice preceding the edition of 1743 ; 
 Voltaire, Vie de Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, 1748 ; Cizeron Rival, 
 Remarque sur les ceuvres de Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, 1760 ; La 
 Harpe, Cours de litterature, part ii., ch. 9 ; Aniar, Notice preceding 
 the edition of 1820 ; Sainte-Beuve, Portraits litteraires, 1829, vol. i. 
 
 2. THE POET ; and in the first place of the uselessness of alluding 
 to the man, who was a sorry personage ; but between whose life and 
 works there is scarcely any connection ; a fact that in itself deter- 
 mines indirectly the nature of his lyricism. Rousseau's "lyricism" 
 is impersonal lyricism ; that is it is the very contrary of lyricism ; 
 and nothing is more difficult than to account for his reputation. His 
 early and unsuccessful efforts at writing for the stage. His para- 
 phrases of the Psalms ; his Odes and Cantatas ; his Allegories. 
 How he endeavours to make up for his lack of personal sentiment, 
 by the irregular movements or contortions which the author of the 
 Art poeiique had seemed to declare were the essential characteristics
 
 266 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 de Lambert to one of her friends, " that in quoting Latin 
 to you I overstep the bounds of modesty, and that I acquaint 
 you with my secret excesses." However, it is at least pos- 
 sible to understand her, but what, will it be supposed, is 
 the meaning of Massillon when he reproaches the great of 
 this world "with transporting into the field of the Lord what 
 takes up room uselessly in their own field" ? His intention 
 is to blame the great for making over to the Church the 
 sons or daughters whom they are unable to provide with 
 a portion. Mile de Launay, more learned and clearer, 
 writes in her Memoirs : " He used to offer me his hand to 
 escort me home. We had to traverse a spacious square, 
 and during the early period of our acquaintance he would 
 make the round of its sides. Later he took to walking 
 
 of the ode ; by bombastic or declamatory language ; and by the 
 piling up of mythological allusions [Cf. the Ode an comte du, Luc : 
 
 Tel que le vieux pasteur du troupeau de Neptune, 
 and the Canlate de Circe : 
 
 Sa voix redoutable 
 Trouble les enters, 
 Un bruit formidable 
 Gronde dans les airs]. 
 
 Close connection between this false conception of lyricism and the 
 vogue of opera ; a vogue which is also the explanation of the vague- 
 ness and generality of Rousseau's abstractions. That this form of 
 lyricism is merely the unconscious caricature of true lyricism ; since 
 its principle is to feign emotions the writer does not feel ; and to 
 invest those he does experience with a counterfeit elevation ; that is 
 confined to the phraseology, and has nothing in common with eleva- 
 tion of ideas or of sentiment. 
 
 3. THE WOKKS. The works of Eousseau consist of : (1) his 
 writings for the stage, including a short piece in prose, Le Cafe, 
 performed in 1694 ; two operas, Jason, 1696 and Venus et Adonis, 
 1697 ; and five comedies in verse, of which, however, only two were 
 put on the stage : Le Flatteur, 1696 and Le Capricieux, 1700 ; (2) 
 of his lyric poems, comprising four books of Odes, the first of which 
 contains his paraphrases of the Psalms ; two books of Allegories and
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITERATURE 267 
 
 straight across the middle of it, and I judged that his love 
 liad diminished by the difference between the diagonal and 
 the two sides of the square." Whatever may be the differ- 
 ences between these modes of expression, at bottom they 
 all resemble one another ; and are they not those at which 
 Moliere had been wont to scoff? They evince, however, 
 a desire to please, and this desire explains a final charac- 
 teristic of the transformation the language is undergoing : 
 grown more logical and simpler in construction, easier to 
 follow and livelier, it becomes at the same time more 
 "social" or, if it be preferred, more "fashionable." 
 
 I have sometimes w r ondered whether this transforma- 
 tion should not be attributed in a measure to that resump- 
 tion of the offensive on the part of Spanish influence which, 
 
 some twenty Cantates ; (3) of his other poems, namely, two books 
 of Epitres, four books of Epigrammes, the last of which contains 
 nothing but gross obscenities, and a book of miscellaneous poems ; 
 (4) of his Letters, in which some items of information touching literary 
 matters can be gleaned here and there. 
 
 It is proper to add that between 1710 and 1820 few writers were so 
 often reprinted as Jean-Baptiste Eousseau. 
 
 XIII. Comedy from the time of Moliere to that of 
 Destouches. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. [Cf. above, Article XI.] and in addition: Petitot, 
 Repertoire du Theatre francais, vols. viii., ix., and x. Gherardi, 
 Theatre italien ; Sainte-Beuve, Regnard, Causeries du lundi, vol. 
 vii. ; J. J. "Weiss, Etoge de Regnard, 1859, in his Essais sur I'histoire 
 de la litterature franeaises ; Gilbert, Regnard in the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, 1859 ; Edouard Fournier, Notice preceding his edition, Paris, 
 1874, 1875 ; Notice on Dufresny preceding the edition of his works, 
 Paris, 1747 ; J. Lemaitre, Le Theatre de Dancourt, Paris, 1882. 
 
 2. THE TRANSFORMATION OF COMEDY. 
 
 A. Jean-Francois Regnard [Paris, 1655 ; f 1709, Grillon]. 
 
 He was born and brought up in Paris ; his Epicurean existence ; 
 his travels and adventures ; they form an unexpected justification of 
 the endings to Moliere's plays Begnard's captivity in Algeria.
 
 268 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 between 1700 and 1714, coincided with, or rather was the 
 result of, the accession to the throne of Charles V., of a 
 grandson of Louis XIV. For this to be permissible, how- 
 ever, it would be necessary that the only man of real talent 
 who shows signs of this influence I refer to Le Sage 
 should not also be the only writer who scoffs at this new 
 form of preciosity. In his Diable boiteux, which appeared 
 in 1707, he merely makes passing allusions to the subject, 
 but he returns to the attack in his Gil Bias, the date of the 
 first part of which is 1714. With a boldness that recalls 
 La Bruyere and Moliere, he makes Mme de Lambert her- 
 self figure in his work under the name of the Marquise de 
 Chaves. At a much later period, he has a final thrust at 
 the fashionable affectation in the Bachelier de Salamanque, 
 
 His first plays at the Theatre Italien : Divorce, 1688 ; L'Homme 
 a bonnes fortunes, 1690; Les Chinois in collaboration with Dufresny, 
 1692 ; his comedies of " character " : the Joueur, 1696 ; the Distrait, 
 1697 ; Democrite, 1700 ; and how he endeavours in these works to 
 imitate at the same time the methods of observation of Moliere and 
 those of La Bruyere. His observation, however, lacks depth and 
 strength ; not to say conscientiousness ; and it is obvious that he 
 takes neither his subjects nor his art seriously ; -It is for this reason 
 that his real masterpieces : the Folies amoureuses, 1704, and the 
 Legataire universel, 1708, are works of a different class ; in which, 
 to the accompaniment of better constructed plots and a more rapid 
 action, the characters of Italian comedy reappear ; clothed in the 
 latest French fashion ; and speaking the language of the extremely 
 free and easy world in which Regnard moved. Regnard's style, 
 and whether it deserves the very high praise that has been bestowed 
 on it ? -His style is really vivacious, supple and brilliant ; qualities 
 which are those of the language of his time as much as or more 
 than they are his personally ; qualities which are met with in the 
 Crispin or the Diable boiteux of Le Sage, 1707 or in the Memoires 
 de Grammont, 1713. 
 
 B. Florent Carton Dancourt [Fontainebleau, 1661 ; I 1725, 
 Courcelles (Berry)]. 
 
 The favourite pupil of Father de la Rue ; his youthful exploits ;
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FEENCH LITERATURE 269 
 
 when he indulges in ironical praise of the " proconchi " 
 dialect. " If you ask me what ' proconchi ' is, I reply 
 that it is a language which has its declensions and its 
 conjugations, and that it can be learned as easily as the 
 Latin language, more easily even, for it is a living lan- 
 guage which it is possible to master in a short time by 
 dint of conversing with Indian purists." It is a Spaniard 
 who is speaking, and he continues : " It is an harmonious 
 language, too, and even richer than our own in metaphors 
 and high-flown figures of speech. Should an Indian who 
 prides himself on speaking proconchi well decide to pay 
 you a compliment, he will employ none but strange and 
 unusual thoughts and far-fetched expressions. The result 
 is an obscure, inflated utterance, a brilliant verbiage, a 
 
 he runs away with the daughter of the actor La Thorilliere ; becomes 
 an actor on her account ; makes his first appearance on the stage in 
 1685, and as a dramatic author in 1686 with his comedy Les Fonds 
 perdus. This work is followed by the Chevalier a la mode, 1687 ; 
 the Femme d'intrigues, 1692; the Bourgeoises a la mode, 1692; 
 and if these plays, which are all of them in prose, be considered in 
 connection with such pieces of minor importance as : the Maison de 
 campagne, 1688 ; the Parisienne, 1691 ; or the Gazette, impromptu 
 de garnison, 1692 ; the rise is seen of a new stamp of comedy ; in 
 which greater importance is attached to current events ; which is a 
 more exact reflection of contemporary manners ; is less satirical and 
 more jocose than the comedy of Moliere. which, in a word, is the 
 comedy of manners. 
 
 Of the comedy of manners as exemplified in Dancourt's plays ; 
 and in what respects it still remains faithful to the Molieresque tra- 
 ditions. Thus it adopts the old, oft-used subjects and without any very 
 great concern as to their "reality" : for instance the befooled guardian 
 [Cf. Le Tuteur, 1695 ; the Enfants de Paris, 1699 ; the Trois Cou- 
 sines, 1700 ; Madame Artus, 1708] and the unmasked cogue [Cf. the 
 CJievalier a la mode, 1687 ; L'Ete des coquettes, 1690 ; the Femme 
 d'inlrigues, 1692 ; the Agioteurs, 1710]. But new features are to be 
 distinguished amid these general resemblances. Dancourt is in the 
 habit of putting an entire social category on the stage, as is indicated 
 indeed by the fact that his titles are frequently in the plural [Les
 
 270 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 pompous rigmarole, but this is precisely what constitutes 
 the excellence of the language. Such is the fashion at the 
 Academy of Petapa." But the raillery of the worthy 
 novelist, as happened in the past to that of La Bruyere 
 and Moliere, has no effect. Lie Sage is endowed with wit, 
 endowed with it indeed in abundance, and he has a fair 
 amount of learning, which he is rather prone to display. 
 Shall I venture to say that he is not very intelligent and 
 that he is lacking in social polish ? The reasons of the 
 transformation that is in progress escape him, and not 
 understanding it he scoffs at it, an attitude eminently 
 French. But more circumspect critics look closer into 
 the matter, and although they do not perceive, or they ill 
 perceive, what will be the outcome of the transformation, 
 
 Enfants de Paris, Les Bourgeoises a la mode, Les Agioteurs. Hence- 
 forth, to represent a given phase of character, several personages are 
 introduced instead of a single personage as had previously been the 
 custom ; and this scattering, as it were, of the satire results in its 
 becoming more superficial ; though, on the other hand, it owes its 
 " topicalness " to the same cause [Cf. the Foire de Bezons, 1695; the 
 Moulin de Javelle, 1696 ; the Loterie, 1697 ; the Mari retrouve, 
 1698]. Subordination of the choice of subjects to topical, anecdotic 
 incidents ; and of the quality of the humour to the exigences of 
 fashion. 
 
 " Documentary " value of Dancourt's plays ; and, in this connection, 
 of a paradox of Eugene Scribe [Discours de reception] to the effect 
 that the stage is independent of manners. The types of character in 
 Dancourt's plays. The world of finance [Cf. the Femme d'intrigues, 
 1692, or the Agioteurs, 1710]. The " demi-monde " or the world of 
 shady morality [Cf. the Chevalier a la mode, 1687 ; the Bourgeoises 
 a la mode, 1692; the Femme d'intrigues, 1692]. Comparison 
 between Dancourt's plays and Le Sage's fiction. The beginnings" of 
 realism ; and in what respect it differs from naturalism. Dancourt's 
 later plays: SancJio Panga, 1713; the Vert Galant, 1714; the 
 Prix de Varquebuse, 1717; the Deroute du Pharaon, 1718. The 
 deficiencies which have prevented him leaving a profounder trace on 
 the history of the French stage.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 271 
 
 they are struck by two or three advantages it offers, and 
 reserve their judgment. 
 
 Were they disposed to reply to the novelist, they would 
 tax him in the first place with ingratitude, and without 
 insisting on the classical reminiscences which are frequent 
 in his own style to the detriment at times of its fluency, 
 they would point out to him that he is the first to profit 
 by the transformation at which he is pleased to scoff. 
 French prose, after having been essentially oratorical, is 
 becoming narrative at the close of the seventeenth century. 
 Fifty or sixty years of the history of our literature will 
 now elapse before we again meet with prose that is really 
 eloquent. On the other hand, what writers of narrative 
 prose had we had since the death of Marguerite and 
 
 C. Charles Riviere-Dufresny [Paris, 1648 ; f 1724, Paris]. 
 
 Late period of his life at which Dufresny began to write. He was 
 one of the valets de chambre of Louis XIV. ; his passion for 
 gardening and his dilettantism ; his collaboration with Eegnard ; 
 he begins writing for the Theatre Italien : the Opera de campagne, 
 1692 ; the Adieux des officiers, 1693 ; he writes for the Theatre 
 francais : the Negligent, 1692 ; the Chevalier joueur, 1697, and 
 whether Regnard was indebted to Dufresny for the idea ? The 
 character of Dufresny would invite the belief that this is the case ; 
 since he was " a man of ideas," and it seems probable that at a 
 later period Montesquieu was indebted to him for the idea of the 
 Lettres persanes ; another of Dufresny's ideas was to emancipate 
 himself from the influence of Moliere [Cf. the prologue to the 
 Negligent] ; and how far was he successful in this ambition ? His 
 Malade sans maladie, 1699 ; and his Esprit de contradiction, 1700. 
 That Dufresny depicts himself to some extent in this latter work. 
 His chief plays : the Joueuse, 1709 ; the Coquette de village, 1715 ; 
 the Reconciliation Normande, 1719. Studied novelty of the plot ; 
 of the dialogue ; and even of the versification in Dufresny's plays. 
 Whether it can be said that there is already, as it were, a fore- 
 taste of Marivaux in his work ? 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Independently of his plays, Regnard has left ac- 
 counts of his travels in Flanders, Lapland, Poland, and Germany ; a
 
 272 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 Rabelais, or genuine "historical" writers since the time 
 of Amyot ? The name of Mme de Sevigne must not be 
 cited here, because the first of her letters will not see the 
 light before 1726. Bossuet himself, Bossuet indeed in par- 
 ticular, remains an orator while writing history in historia 
 orator and unless higher value be set on La Fontaine's 
 Psyche than ought to be done in our opinion, La Fontaine 
 is only a narrative writer in his verse. In consequence, 
 since Le Sage is assuredly one of the masters of the art of 
 narrative among French writers, are we not justified in 
 holding that he owes something at least of his superiority 
 in the art to the new practices against which he yet 
 protests ? He would have been a less excellent narrator 
 had he written some twenty years earlier. A circumstance 
 that goes to prove this assertion is the spectacle of the 
 
 sort of novel La Provencale, which is the narrative of his adventures 
 in Algeria ; and some miscellaneous poems, among which should be 
 mentioned his Satire contre les maris, and the Tombeau de M. Des- 
 preaux. 
 
 The best or the finest edition of his works is that of 1790, Paris, 
 V ve Duchesne. 
 
 Dancourt's plays are his only works, and there exists no "critical" 
 or even complete edition of them. 
 
 The best edition of Dufresny, and it is not very good, is that of 
 1747, the three first volumes of which contain his plays and the last 
 volume a number of short pieces in prose, among which may be men- 
 tioned the Amusements serieux et comiques ; a Parallele de Rabelais 
 et d? Homer e ; and a dozen " Historical Stories," that resemble so 
 many scenarios for vaudevilles or comedies. 
 
 XIV. Alain-Rene Le Sage [Sarzeau (Morbihan), 1668; f 1747, 
 Boulogne-sur-Mer]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES.- Gordon de Percel (Lenglet-Dufresnoy), Biblio- 
 tJieque des romans ; La Harpe, Cours de litterature, part iii., book 
 i., chapter v., section 4; chapter vii, section 2; and book ii., chapter 
 iii. ; Malitourne, Eloge de Le Sage, and Patin, Eloge de Le Sage, 
 preceding the edition of 1810-1823 ; Audiffret, Notice sur Le Sage 
 preceding the edition of 1822, Paris ; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du
 
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 273 
 
 narrative writers, his inferiors, who crop up around him in 
 continually increasing numbers, from the author of the 
 Memoires de Eocliefort and of d'Artagnan, whom we have 
 already mentioned, to the author of Fleur d'epine and of 
 the Quatre Facardins. And if the reason be sought of this 
 progress of the narrative style, where will it be found if 
 not in the new-born interest taken at this juncture in 
 familiar and contemporary matters ? It would not be easy 
 and it would even be rather absurd to relate " oratorically " 
 the adventures of Gil Bias ; or how would it be possible to 
 set forth the medical theories of Doctor Sangrado in stately 
 and eloquent periods ? 
 
 Simultaneously and for the same reason, and this de- 
 spite the authority of Fenelon, or whatever may be urged 
 on the strength of his " Letter on the Occupations of the 
 
 lundi, vol. ii. ; and Jugements sur Gil Bias et Le Sage, preceding the 
 table of contents of the Causeries du lundi ; F. Brunetiere, Etudes 
 critiques, vol. iii. ; Leo Claretie, Le Sage romancier, Paris, 1890 ; 
 Lintilhac, Le Sage, in the " Grands Ecrivains fran9ais " series, 1893. 
 
 Francis de Neufchateau, Examen de la question de savoir si Le 
 Sage est Vauteur de Gil Bias, 1818, and reprinted in Lefevre's edition, 
 Paris, 1820 ; Llorente, Observations critiques sur le roman de Gil 
 Bias, Paris, 1822; Fraiiceson, Essai sur la question de Voriginalite 
 de Gil Bias, Berlin, 1857 ; Veckenstedt, Die Geschichte des Gil Bias 
 Frage, Berlin, 1879. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WHITER. Obscurity surrounding his early 
 years ; his family difficulties ; and his start in literature ; Lettres 
 galantes d'Aristenete, 1695. His relations with the Abbe de Lionne. 
 He publishes bis Theatre espagnol, 1700 ; and Don Quichotte, a 
 translation from the Spanish of Avellaneda. His first play at the 
 Theatre franqais, 1707, and his Turcaret, 1709. In what respects 
 Turcaret concentrates and summarises the novel features in Dancourt's 
 plays ; although without swerving from the Molieresque tradition. 
 Why Turcaret was never a success ; and did Le Sage possess 
 dramatic genius ? The farmers of the revenue endeavour to have 
 the acting of Turcaret forbidden ; intervention of the Dauphin, the 
 son of Louis XIV. ; Le Sage quarrels with the actors of the Theatre 
 Fran9ais ; and secedes, to spite them, to the Theatre de la Foire. 
 
 19
 
 274 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 French Academy," the vocabulary is being enriched to a 
 considerable extent. A few old-fashioned words drop out 
 of use : withdrawn from circulation; they are no longer 
 current coin. Their place is taken, however, by other 
 and far more numerous words. " We have added a great 
 many words," declares in 1718 the writer of the Preface 
 to the second edition of the Dictionary of the Academy ; 
 and in another passage he makes the following observation 
 which does not solely concern the language : " The 
 Academy has not thought it right to exclude certain 
 words to which the freaks of custom or perhaps of our 
 manners . . . have given currency during the past few 
 years. ... It would seem, indeed, that there exists a 
 sort of equality between the words of a language as 
 between the citizens of a republic ; they enjoy the same 
 
 Henceforth he devotes all his time not occupied by his novels to 
 writing for this theatre. The collaboration of Le Sage, d'Orneval, 
 and Fuzelier ; and of the documentary interest attaching to the 
 Theatre de la Foire. The Diable boiteux, 1707; and Gil Bias, 1715, 
 1724, 1735. 
 
 A. The elements which Le Sage's novels owe to his predecessors. 
 The development of story writing between 1680 and 1700 ; and the 
 transition from the oratorical to the narrative style ; the abundance of 
 Memoirs ; and the growth of the personal form of narrative. What 
 Le Sage owes to Le Bruyere ; and that in a certain sense the Diable 
 boiteux is merely a series of portraits or characters [Cf. the old 
 coquette, the old gallant, the German, the Frenchman, the school- 
 master, &c.]. Just as Dancourt did in his plays, the novelist seeks to 
 arouse the interest of his readers by resorting to the " depiction of 
 social classes " ; and in this respect Gil Bias itself is merely a 
 comedy. The allusions to contemporary events in Le Sage's novels ; 
 and whether, when he denies these allusions, he is more sincere 
 than was the author of the Caracteres under similar circumstances ? 
 Le Sage's imitation of Spanish writers ; and, in this connection, 
 of the picaresque novel [Cf . Ticknor, Histoire de la litteralure espag- 
 nole, and Eug. de Navarrete in the collection of Spanish Classics 
 (Ribadeneira)]. Le Sage's numerous borrowings; -and the puerility 
 of the reproaches that have been addressed him on this score [Cf.
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 275 
 
 privileges and are governed by the same laws ; and just 
 as a general of an army or a magistrate are not citizens in 
 a greater degree than a common soldier or the humblest 
 artisan ... so the words ' justice ' and ' valour,' although 
 they express the highest of all the virtues, are not 
 French words in a greater degree or better French words 
 than those destined to express the basest and most 
 despicable things." Shall we cite some of these words? 
 In the Preface itself are pointed out the words Falbala, 
 Fichu, Battant Vceil, Batafia, Sabler ; as will be seen 
 at once, they are popular or concrete terms in use in 
 e very-day life. Others of these new words are terms 
 relating to the toilette, for example, or terms employed in 
 the sciences in mechanics, physics, or natural history. 
 Their introduction is accompanied by the development of 
 
 Llorente, loc. cit. ; Baret, Litterature espagnole ; F. Brunetiere, 
 Histoire et litteralure, vol. iii. ; and Leo Claretie, op. cit.~\. 
 
 B. The originality of Le Sage's novel ; and that to judge of it, 
 it is necessary of course to eliminate the subsidiary incidents which 
 interrupt the main narrative [Cf. the love affairs of the Comte de 
 Belflor and Leonor de Cespedes]. Where Le Sage has imitated the 
 picaresque novel he has "humanised" it; and that exactly what 
 this means may be understood by comparing his Gil Bias with his 
 translation of Estevanille Gonzalez, 1734. The rogues' confessions to 
 be found in the picaresque novels become in his hands a picture of 
 human life ; and in the place of a succession of adventures devoid of 
 significance, he gives us a satire on the social conditions of his tune. 
 In other words, he considers what in his models is too exclusively 
 peculiar to the individual under its universal aspect ; and in this way 
 gives a moral import to incidents in themselves insignificant. 
 
 C. TJie importance of Le Sage's novel ; and that it lies in the fact 
 that it is due to Gil Bias that the realistic novel became a branch of 
 literature. Coming after La Bruyere and resorting to analogous 
 methods, Le Sage transferred the satire of manners from the stage 
 to books ; and by so doing he struck out a genuinely new line. It 
 was his good fortune to determine the fundamental distinction 
 between the stage play and the novel. The hero of a novel is 
 always the victim or the creature of circumstances ; and he resigns
 
 276 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 an interest in the things they designate. These things 
 are made to serve for the drawing of fresh comparisons 
 and as the source of new figures and metaphors. The 
 whole of a vast province that hitherto had been outside 
 literature is now incorporated with it. Words, too, are 
 introduced from Holland, where they are coined by the 
 newspapers to express ideas for which no term existed 
 in France ; while from England come yet other words 
 which are not exactly English, but French words that 
 had crossed the Channel as " refugees " if the term 
 be allowable. The plasticity of the French genius per- 
 mits it to absorb and assimilate all these heterogeneous 
 elements, to conform them to its exigences, and to subject 
 them to the rules of French grammar. And what is the 
 final outcome of this movement ? It is and the fact 
 
 himself to circumstances ; whereas the stage hero claims to domi. 
 nate them. The imitation of every-day life in Le Sage's novel ; 
 and that neither the Spanish background, nor the continual aiming 
 at satire result in the masking of its exactitude. Comparison between 
 the " fictitious " history in Gil Bias and the history proper of Dubois 
 or Alberoni. Of the nature of the incidents in Le Sage's novel ; and 
 that there is nothing " romantic " about them, so far as the word is 
 synonymous with arbitrary or extraordinary. The mistake sometimes 
 made in this connection is the outcome of insufficient acquaintance 
 with the private life of the time of Louis XIV. and the Regency. 
 Abundance of realistic touches in Le Sage's novel ; and how, as in 
 Boileau's satires, their excessiveness is always tempered by his 
 literary training. A strange remark of Nisard on Le Sage considered 
 as a moralist ; and that there is nothing in common between Le 
 Sage and Rollin except their abuse of Latin quotations. 
 
 The last works and the last years of Le Sage. His translation, 
 Guzman d'Alfarache, 1732 ; his exotic novels : the Aventures du 
 chevalier de Beauchesne, 1732 ; and the Bachelier de Salamanque, 
 1736. In the meantime he continues to write for the Theatre de la 
 Foire ; and on the stage as in the novel to satirise the classes of 
 persons he most disliked, namely : actors themselves ; financiers ; 
 and the Precieux. His literary opinions [Cf. in Gil Bias the 
 conversations of Gil Bias with Fabrice ; in the Bachelier de Sala-
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 277 
 
 must be insisted on that while a more elevated, a graver, 
 a more serious French may have been spoken previously, 
 there has never been spoken a "prettier" French than 
 that in use between 1685 and 1715 or thereabouts, a 
 French more limpid, a French that is a closer transcript 
 of thought, or at the same time a more concrete French. 
 For proof it is only necessary to read Fontenelle and Le 
 Sage, Mme de Lambert and Mile de Launay, Eegnard 
 and Massillon. The truth is, the writers of this period 
 are merely deficient in composition, in depth and in 
 harmony, important qualities no doubt, but not always 
 and everywhere indispensable, since their very absence 
 was to contribute to the European vogue of our literature. 
 In reality what was happening was that, in propor- 
 tion as the influence of royalty waned, " society " was 
 
 manque the thrusts at Mme de Lambert and the account of the 
 Academy of Petapa; and Hoiincher, Die litterariscJie Satire Le Sage's, 
 Leipsic, 1886]. This realistic novelist is almost the last of the 
 " classic " writers. His protracted old age. His last works : the 
 Valise trouvee, 1740 ; and the Melange amusant, 1743. His influence 
 in France and abroad. 
 
 3. THE WOKKS. They are composed, as has been seen : (1) of his 
 plays ; (2) of dramas, comedies, and picaresque novels translated 
 from the Spanish ; (3) of his original novels : the Diable boiteux, 
 Gil Bias, the Aventures du chevalier de Beauchesne, and the Bachelier 
 de Salamanque ; (4) of the pieces he wrote in collaboration with 
 Orneval and Fuselier for the Theatre de la Foire [four volumes] ; 
 (5) and of some works written for the booksellers, among which may 
 be mentioned his revision of the Mille et un Jours of Petis de la 
 Croix, the Orientalist. 
 
 The " definite " edition of Gil Bla* is that of 1747 in four volumes. 
 
 The modern editions are innumerable. 
 
 Two good editions of the complete works are the edition of 1810- 
 1823 ; and Renouard's edition, Paris, 1820. 
 
 XV. Mme de Lambert's Salon. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Lettres choisies de M.dela Riviere, Paris, 1751 ; 
 Fontenelle, Eloge de Mme de Lambert ; the Memoirs of Mme de
 
 278 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATUEE 
 
 recovering its independence, and far from the sovereign, 
 far from the Court, " in the town " to use the expression 
 of the period the salons, and with the salons women 
 were reconquering their authority. Between 1660 and 
 1690 they had been excluded to a certain extent from 
 literature and art they had been kept a little in the shade. 
 Now, however, that the aged King regards them with 
 indifference, and awaiting the time when the Regent will 
 treat them in the way that is notorious, they regain their 
 natural influence, and as a prelude to the revels of Sceaux, 
 the glories, thought to have vanished for ever, of the 
 Hotel de Bambouillet are revived in the salon of Mme 
 de Lambert. Moreover, since lofty speculations rebut 
 them, and they are rather afraid than otherwise of 
 strenuous passions, authors tax their ingenuity to present 
 
 Staal-Delaunay, d'Argenson, and the President Henault ; d'Alembert, 
 Eloges de Sacy, de Sainte-Aulaire, de la Motte ; Sainte-Beuve, 
 Mme de Lambert, Causeries du lundi, vol. iv. ; Desnoiresterres, Les 
 cours galantes ; Ch. Giraud, La Marechale de Villars, Paris, 1881 ; 
 Lescure's study preceding his edition of the works of Mme de 
 Lambert, Paris, 1882 ; Emmanuel de Broglie, Les mardis et les 
 mercredis de la Marquise de Lambert, in the Correspondant, April 
 10 and 25, 1895. 
 
 2. THE EEVIVAL OF PRECIOSITY; and that, as at its first appear- 
 ance, it is to be regarded as a protest on the part of the women against 
 coarseness of language ; indecency of manners ; and the tendency 
 towards naturalism. Anne-Marie Therese de Marguenat de Courcelles, 
 Marquise de Lambert [1647, f 1773] ; her youth ; her marriage 
 and her early writings. Her "correspondence" with Fenelon. The 
 Avis d'une mere a son fils and the Avis d'une mere a sa fille. Mme 
 de Lambert takes up her residence at the Hotel de Nevers, 1698 
 [to-day the Bibliotheque Nationale] ; and assigns herself the role of 
 patroness of letters. Her " Tuesdays " and " Wednesdays." As 
 formerly at the Hotel de Rambouillet, men of letters mingle at 
 her receptions with noblemen, actresses [Cf. Letires d'Adrienne 
 Lecouvreur, edited by M. G. Monval, Paris, 1892] ; and ladies 
 of high birth [Cf. Giraud, La Marechale de Villars']. However, 
 a greater freedom of tone prevails than at the earlier salon ; or
 
 THE NATIONALIZATION OF FRENCH LITERATURE 279 
 
 such matters to them under an amusing form ; while 
 they, for their part, rid the language of all trace of 
 pedantry and strip thought itself of the sort of pride 
 on which it fed in solitude. And it is for these reasons 
 that this thought and this language become the most 
 faithful image that exists of the French genius, admit- 
 ting this genius to be, as we have endeavoured to show 
 is the case, the genius of " sociability." The authors 
 of the period have the public, and the public only, 
 in view in their writings. They write to amuse their 
 fellow-men, to please them, to win their applause and 
 to a slight extent to instruct them. Whatever be the 
 author's extraction, in whatever rank of society he may 
 have been born, whatever conception he may have of 
 his parts, his first care is to determine the relations 
 
 a freedom of a different kind ; and the conversations had a wider 
 range. 
 
 3. THE GEEAT MEN OF MME DE LAMBEET'S SALON. Antoine 
 Houdar de la Motte [1672, f 1731]. [Cf. the Abbe Trublet, Memoires 
 sur M. de la Motte, and d'Alembert, Eloge de La Motte}. His 
 triumphs at the opera : L' 'Europe galante, 1697 ; Isse, 1698 ; Amadis 
 de Grece, 1699. His Odes, 1706, and his Fables, 1719. His Discours 
 sur Homere, 1714 ; and Mme Dacier's rejoinder : Des causes de la 
 corruption du gout. Mme de Lambert's intervention in the quarrel. 
 The entire Salon sides with the Moderns ; and as it was held to 
 represent both polite manners and good taste, the opposition of 
 literary opinion to the Ancients is consummated. Other works of La 
 Motte. His tragedies : the Macchabees, 1721 ; Romulus, 1722 ; 
 Ines de Castro, 1723. La Motte scores further successes with his 
 " academical speeches " ; and becomes the literary oracle of Mme 
 de Lambert's salon. [Cf. Paul Dupont, Houdar de la Motte, Paris, 
 1898J . 
 
 4. THE FOBMATION OF PUBLIC OPINION. The mixture of men of 
 culture and business men in the salon of the Hotel de Nevers results 
 in the formation of a public opinion. Mme de Lambert becomes the 
 "Great Electress" of the French Academy; to the increase of her 
 own influence and that of the Academy. This result is promoted by 
 the indifference of the authorities ; and also by the growing disorder.
 
 280 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 between his personality and the ideas of his time and 
 to put himself in accordance with them. In no other 
 way are literary vogue, authority, glory or reputation to 
 be acquired. This attitude is one way of understanding 
 literature, and we have just reviewed its advantages. But 
 may it not be that these advantages are counterbalanced 
 by drawbacks ? This is the point we shall examine in the 
 following chapter. 
 
 The court, which has ceased to direct opinion, is blind to the significance 
 of the movement in progress. Budding talent no longer looks to Ver- 
 sailles for definite recognition ; but to the salon of Mme de Lambert. 
 While Fontenelle and La Motte reign over the salon, Marivaux and 
 Montesquieu are its new recruits. With their appearance on the 
 scene ; and that of the Abbe Saint- Pierre [Cf. G. de Molinari, 
 L'abbe de Saint-Pierre, Paris, 1857 ; and Goumy, Etude sur la vie 
 et les ecrits de Vabbe de Saint-Pierre, Paris, 1859] ; begins the dis- 
 cussion of " serious subjects " ; and the sway of the salons and the 
 authority of the intellect are founded simultaneously.
 
 CHAPTEK III 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 
 
 Despite what has been said in support of the con- 
 tention, literature is not always " the expression of 
 society," but when once it has become so, it is doubtless 
 only natural for its destinies to follow the fortunes of the 
 society of which it is the expression. As has just been 
 
 THE AUTHOES AND THEIR WORKS 
 SEVENTH PERIOD 
 
 From the " Lettres Persanes " to the publication of the 
 " Encyclopedia" 
 
 1722-1750 
 
 I. Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brede et de Mon- 
 tesquieu [Chateau de la Brede, near Bordeaux, 1689 ; f 1755, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Maupertuis, Eloge de Montesquieu, 1755 ; 
 d'Alembert, Eloge du President du Montesquieu, 1755, in the 5th vol. 
 of the Encyclopedia ; Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV., in the Catalogue 
 des Ecrivains, 1756 ; his article Esprit des Lois in his Diction- 
 naire pliilo*opliique, 1771; and Commentaire sur VEsprit des Lois, 
 1777 ; Villemain, Eloge de Montesquieu, 1816 ; Garat, Memoires 
 historiques sur la vie de M. Suard, 1820 ; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries 
 du lundi, vol. vii., 1852; Louis Vian, Histoire de la vie et des 
 ouvrages de Montesquieu, Paris, 1879 ; Albert Sorel, Montesquieu 
 in the " Grands Ecrivains frai^ais " series, Paris, 1887. 
 
 281
 
 282 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 seen, this is what is beginning to happen to literature in 
 the early years of the reign of Louis XV., and the process 
 is consummated during the same period. 
 
 Freed from or rid of the Protestants, Jansenism and 
 Louis XIV., the "Libertines" gain ground unceasingly 
 and become the leaders and masters of opinion. " There 
 may have been ungodly persons in the past, exclaims 
 Massillon in his Petit Careme, but the world regarded 
 them with horror. . . . To-day, however, ungodliness 
 almost lends an air of distinction and glory ; it is a 
 merit that gives access to the great, that adds lustre, 
 as it were, to humbleness of name and birth, that procures 
 for obscure men the privilege of familiarity with the 
 people's princes." [Cf. Petit Careme, third sermon " On 
 the respect due to religion."] The people's princes are 
 the Vendome family, unless for we are in 1718 the 
 
 Bertolini, Analyse raisonnee de VEsprit des Lois, 1754, printed too 
 in vol. iii. of Laboulaye's edition ; d'Alernbert, Analyse de VEsprit 
 des Lois, 1755, printed too in Parrelle's edition ; Crevier, Observations 
 sur le livre de VEsprit des Lois, 1764 ; Destutt de Tracy, Commen- 
 taire sur VEsprit des Lois, Philadelphia, 1811 ; and 1819, Paris ; Sclo- 
 pis, Recherches Jiistoriques et critiques sur VEsprit des Lois, Turin, 
 1857 ; Laboulaye, Introduction a VEsprit des Lois, Paris, 1876. 
 
 See, too, Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophic positive ?, vols. v. andvi., 
 Paris, 1842 ; Ernest Bersot, Etudes sur le XVIII e siecle, Paris, 1855; 
 J. Barni, Histoire des idees morales et politiques en France au 
 XVIII' siecle, Paris, 1865 ; P. Janet, Histoire de la science poli- 
 tique, Paris, 1858 ; and 2nd edit., 1872 ; Robert Flint, The Philo- 
 sophy of History in France ; H. Taine, L'ancien regime, Paris, 
 1875 ; Emile Faguet, Dix-huitieme siecle, Paris, 1890. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. Montesquieu's extraction ; he was 
 a Gascon, of good birth, and a magistrate. He enters the Parliament 
 of Bordeaux, 1714 ; and hi succession to one of his uncles he is 
 appointed President of the Bordeaux Court of Justice, 1716. Inte- 
 resting analogy between the beginning of his career and the beginning 
 of Montaigne's career. Montesquieu's early works ; their scientific 
 character; his "Discourse on the cause of echoes," 1718; and on
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 283 
 
 allusion be to Philippe d'Orleans himself ; and the 
 obscure men whose "low estate is ennobled" by the 
 profession of atheism or libertinism are also known to us : 
 they are the wits who assemble at the Cafe Procope or 
 the Cafe Gradot, and among them is the "little Arouet," 
 as he is called, who the previous year was imprisoned in 
 the Bastille. If they have not their entry into society 
 as yet, it will soon be given them, and to deserve it they 
 adopt, or rather they have already adopted, society 
 manners. They are met with in the salons, in that of 
 Mme de Lambert for instance, and in these resorts 
 the freedom of their conversation beguiles the idleness 
 of the women and the careless humour of the men. 
 They even find their way into the boudoirs, and there 
 as well their wit is triumphant over social prejudices. 
 In the meantime, and until they form a sort of corpo- 
 
 the " Functions of the renal glands," 1718; and that traces of this 
 scientific culture will be met with in the Esprit des Lois. Strangeness 
 of his literary tastes; his admiration for the tragedies of Cre billon, 
 " which, he declares, make him enter into transports akin to those 
 of the Bacchantes " ; he publishes his Lettres persanes, 1721-1722. 
 
 A. The Lettres persanes ; and in the first place the bibliographical 
 question ; Pierre Marteau of Cologne and his spurious editions. The 
 works that suggested the Lettres persanes ; and that it is doing 
 Dufresny too much honour to assert that they were solely suggested 
 by his Amusements serieux et comiques. The truth is Montesquieu 
 was influenced, as much as by Dufresny, by the Caracteres of La 
 Bruyere and the Diable boiteux of Le Sage ; by Fenelon's Tele- 
 maque [Cf. the episode of the Troglodytes] ; by the books of travel of 
 Tavernier and Chardin ; and even by the Arabian Nights. Kegret- 
 table dwelling on the intrigues of the harem in the Lettres 2>ersanes ; 
 and that Montesquieu will never renounce the depiction of scenes of 
 this nature [Cf. his Temple de Gnide; Arsace et Ismenie, etc.]. 
 The satire of contemporary manners in the Lettres persane& [Cf. in 
 particular Lettres 48, 57, 72, 148, etc.] ; and that it strikes far deeper 
 than the satire of Le Sage or Le Bruyere [Cf. 24, 29, 44, 68, etc.]. 
 The last portion of the book and of the singular importance the
 
 284 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY" OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 rate body, or almost a State within the State, the rich 
 and persons of good birth are at first a little astonished, 
 and affect to be galled, but they do not take real umbrage, 
 and reconcile themselves in the end to being treated with 
 the unrestraint and pleasant impertinence they themselves 
 in the past had shown the newcomers. 
 
 It must be kept in view in this connection that for 
 several years previously a curious mixing up of social 
 ranks and fortunes has been in progress. " The corpo- 
 ration of lackeys writes Montesquieu in his Lettres 
 persanes in 1721 is more respectable in France than 
 elsewhere ; it fills up the vacancies in the other classes. 
 Those who compose it take the places of the great who 
 fall upon evil days, and when they cannot do this in 
 person they reinvigorate the great families by means of 
 their daughters, who serve in some sort as the manure 
 
 author ascribes in it, long before Malthus, to the population question 
 [Cf. 113 to 123]. His perpetual comparisons between Europe and 
 Asia. Great guccess of the Lettres persanes ; Montesquieu resigns 
 his post of President, 1726 ; he enters the French Academy, 1728 ; 
 and undertakes a series of journeys, in the course of which he 
 becomes acquainted with almost the whole of civilised Europe, 
 1728-1731 [Cf. Voyages de Montesquieu, Paris and Bordeaux, 1892, 
 1894, 1896]. He takes up his residence on his property at Brede; 
 and publishes his Considerations in 1734. 
 
 B. The Considerations sur les Causes de la grandeur et de la 
 decadence des Romains. What was Montesquieu's intention in 
 writing this work ; and whether it should not perhaps be regarded 
 as a "fragment" of the Esprit des Lois; or whether the author 
 really proposed to vie "with Tacitus and with Florus " ? Montes- 
 quieu's predilection for Florus [Cf. his Essai sur le gout] ; and 
 generally for the Latins of the decadence ; a predilection which does 
 not prevent him blaming Livy " for having belauded the giants of 
 antiquity." Comparison between Montesquieu's book and the third 
 part of the Discours sur Vhistoire universelle ; and to what extent 
 it was Montesquieu's intention to combat Bossuet. His theory of the 
 causes ; and his philosophy of history.
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 285 
 
 with which mountainous and arid land is improved " 
 [Cf. Lettres persanes, No. 99]. La Bruyere had made 
 a somewhat similar remark in his Caracteres. The 
 second part of Gil Bias should be read in the same 
 connection. Its date is 1725, and in it figures a lackey 
 who becomes the arbiter of the Spanish monarchy "by 
 dint of filling disgraceful posts." As to any hesitation 
 there may be to ascribe " documentary " value, political 
 significance, or social import to this novel, it will be 
 lessened when it is remembered that the effective masters 
 of Europe on the eve of its appearance were a Dubois, 
 the son of the apothecary of Brive-la-Gaillarde, or an 
 Alberoni, the son of a gardener of Parma ! The Lettres 
 historiques et galcuntes of Mine Dunoyer or the Memoirs 
 of Saint- Simon should also be consulted on the point. 
 It is of special importance, however, to bear in mind 
 
 C. The Esprit des Lois. The bond of union between the Lettres 
 persanes and the Esprit des Lois ; and in what sense it may be said 
 that in reality Montesquieu has only written one work. Of the plan 
 of the book ; and that it must be that it is not clear ; since every 
 one of Montesquieu's commentators gives a different explanation of it. 
 That Montesquieu's real ambition was to write a great book ; in 
 which he was only half successful. Indefiniteness of his plan ; 
 regrettable trend of his humour ; Inadequacy or triflingness of his 
 criticism [Cf. Voltaire's commentary]. Of certain errors he was 
 pleased to let subsist in his book [Cf. bk. vii., ch. 16 ; bk. xv., ch. 4 ; 
 bk. xxi., ch. 22] ; and what can have been his reasons for not 
 correcting them? What was Sainte-Beuve's meaning when he de- 
 clared "that Montesquieu's works were scarcely more than an ideal 
 recapitulation of his reading " ; and that the statement amounts to 
 saying that they are deficient in order and logic. Of Mme du 
 Deffand's remark on the Esprit des Lois ; and that it well charac- 
 terises the defects of Montesquieu's manner. But that all these 
 criticisms do not do away with the fact that Montesquieu brought an 
 entire order of ideas into the domain of literature, which before had 
 not formed part of it ; that he was the first to outline a philosophy 
 of history conceived from a purely lay point of view ; that he arrived
 
 286 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the upheaval wrought in social conditions by the 
 system of Law, 1716-1721, nothing similar to which 
 had previously been known. " All those who were 
 wealthy six months ago are now in poverty, and those 
 who lacked bread are now overflowing in riches. . . . 
 This foreigner has turned society inside out as a dealer in 
 old clothes turns a coat. . . . What unhoped for fortunes 
 have been witnessed, fortunes incredible even to those 
 who have made them ! God himself does not bring men 
 into existence more rapidly out of the void. How nume- 
 rous are the valets served by their comrades, and to-morrow 
 perhaps by their masters ! " [Cf. Lettres persanes, No. 
 138] . The words are again those of Montesquieu, who, 
 though doubtless he was a satirist, was a serious man and 
 a magistrate. Like the froth in a boiling mixture, the 
 dregs of society rise to the surface in this way, overspread 
 
 at an inkling of the analogies between history and natural history ; 
 and, from a more general point of view, that he gave eloquent expres- 
 sion to ideas, on liberty, on tolerance, and on humanity- which 
 even at the present time are not so commonplace and so prevalent 
 as is alleged. Success of the Esprit des Lois both in France and 
 abroad ; and whether the defects of the book did not contribute to 
 its success to as great an extent as its qualities ? 
 
 Montesquieu's lesser writings : the Temple de Gnide, 1725 ; the 
 Voyage a Paphos, 1727 ; the dialogue between Sylla and Eucrates, 
 1745; Lysimaque, 1751-1754; Arsace et Ismenie, 1754; and the 
 Essai sur le gout, 1757. Of the qualities of Montesquieu's style ; 
 and that it is a kindred style to that of Fontenelle ; although 
 graver, richer, and more compact ;- and, in this connection, of 
 Montesquieu's preciosity. Of the art of and the capacity for con- 
 ceiving general ideas ; and that they constitute another pre-eminent 
 characteristic of Montesquieu's style ; as does the power of ex- 
 pressing in a few words not only many things, but many different 
 things, and in consequence many relations between things. Montes- 
 quieu's last years. He is on intimate terms with Mine de Tencin 
 and Mme Geoffrin [Cf. Marmontel's Memoirs, and P. de Segur, 
 Le royaume de la rue Saint-Honor e, Paris, 1897]. His unique
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 287 
 
 it and remain at the top. A new aristocracy is in course 
 of formation, an aristocracy of doubtful or impure origin, 
 crassly ignorant, cynical and of loose morals, but refined 
 in its tastes and assuredly unable to reproach the men of 
 letters with their humble extraction, since of the brothers 
 Paris or of the little Arouet it is the latter who is the 
 "better born." 
 
 Amid this general confusing of the classes, or rather in 
 consequence of it, the influence of women continues to 
 increase, and with the Marquise de Prie, under the 
 Ministry of the Due de Bourbon (1723-1726) it extends 
 to affairs of State for the first time for a century. Mine 
 de Lambert only made Academicians ; the Marquise de 
 Prie makes a Queen of France, Mme de Tencin cardinals 
 and ambassadors. " There is nobody writes Montes- 
 quieu in possession of a post at the court in Paris or 
 
 position in the literary world ; and in the European opinion of 
 his time. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Montesquieu's principal works have been men- 
 tioned above. It remains to add a hundred and fifty or a hundred 
 and sixty (exactly 152 in Laboulaye's edition) letters ; and three 
 volumes of Unpublished Works issued by Baron de Montesquieu 
 [Paris and Bordeaux, 1892, 1894, 1896]. 
 
 The principal edition of Montesquieu, independently of the original 
 editions which it is well to consult, at any rate in the case of the 
 Lettres persanes and the Esprit des Lois, are : Parrelle's edition in 
 the " Collection des Classiques fran9ais " series, Paris, 1826, Lefevre ; 
 and Laboulaye's edition, Paris, 1875-1879, Gamier. 
 
 II. Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux [Paris, 
 1688; f 1763, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. D'Alembert, Eloge de Marivaux, 1785; Mar- 
 montel's Memoirs ; Geoffrey, Cours de litterature dramatique, 1825, 
 vol. iii. ; Sainte-Beuve, Marivaux in the Causeries dulundi,\o\. ix., 
 1854 ; Edouard Fournier, Etude sur Marivaux, preceding his edition 
 of the Theatre complet, Paris, 1878 ; Lescure, Eloge de Marivaux, 
 Paris, 1880 ; Jean Fleury, Marivaux et le Marivaudage, Paris, 1881 ;
 
 288 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 in the provinces who has not a woman who distributes 
 all the favours it is in his power to bestow and who 
 sometimes commits the injustices he is able to perpetrate " ; 
 and naturally this " woman " is not his wife. In conse- 
 quence, it is necessary henceforth that whoever desires to 
 make his way in the world shall have the women on his 
 side, shall possess the gift of pleasing them and of 
 interesting them in his fortunes or his reputation. The 
 writers of the period are alive to this necessity ; and it 
 must be admitted that although their complaisancy is not 
 without its dangers the least of which is to make them, 
 as were their predecessors the Precieux, the servants or 
 the courtiers of fashion it results in the first place in an 
 advantage. " The somewhat volatile and inconstant 
 French character, chilled by convention and artificiality, 
 seems to gain in w r armth to a sensible extent" [Cf. 
 
 G. Larroumet, Marivaux, sa vie et ses aeuvres, Paris, 1882 ; F. 
 Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, vol. ii. and vol. iii., 1881 and 1883; and 
 Epoques du theatre francais, 1892; G. Deschamps, Marivaux in the 
 " Grands Ecrivains fran9ais" series, Paris, 1897. 
 
 2. THE WRITER. Marivaux' family. His early education ; the 
 society in which he moved in Paris at first ; his early protectors or 
 literary patrons : Fontenelle and La Motte. His tragedy Annibal. 
 His first novel : Pharsamon ou lesfolies romanesques, 1712 ; and how 
 Marivaux, considered as a Precieux, goes back to the Grand Cyrus 
 and to Polexandre. His contempt for antiquity : the Iliade travestie, 
 1716 ; and, in this connection, of the peculiarly spiteful character of 
 Marivaux' parodies. 
 
 A. The Novelist. His Effets suprenants de la sympathie, 1713- 
 1714 ; the Voiture embourbee, 1714 ; and, in this connection, of the 
 poverty of Marivaux' imagination ; the Vie de Marianne, 1731-1741 ; 
 and the Paysan parvenu, 1735-1736. Essential characteristics of 
 Marivaux' novels. They are realistic novels as far as regards : the 
 social status of the personages, who are usually middle-class or lower 
 middle-class ; the simplicity of the plot ; and the faithfulness with 
 which they depict every-day life. In the second place they are 
 psychological novels ; whose principal interest lies solely in the
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 289 
 
 Michelet, Histoire de France ; Louis XV, ,] ; and thanks 
 to the women, and with a view to their conquest, sensi- 
 bility is emancipated from the strict and suspicious 
 tutelage in which it had been kept by the masters of the 
 preceding age. 
 
 Timidly at first, but soon with growing boldness, it is 
 seen to show itself, to attempt its first exploits in the 
 comedies of Marivaux : the Jeu de I' amour et du hasard, 
 1730 ; the Serments indiscrets, 1732 ; the Mere confidente, 
 1735 ; the Fausses confidences, 1737, in a dozen other 
 plays which not only revenge women for the slights of 
 Moliere, but bring comedy under the control of their sex, 
 firmly establish this control and ensure its lasting mainte- 
 nance. Of a surety there is wit, indeed too much wit, 
 there is studied elegance and subtlety, and there is exces- 
 sive refinement of ideas and expression (tnarivaudage) in 
 
 analysis of sentiment ; the adventures in them being of slight 
 importance ; so slight indeed even in the eyes of the author him- 
 self, that Marianne and the Paysan remained unfinished. Finally 
 they are novels if not of love at any rate of gallantry ; which dis- 
 tinguishes them from Le Sage's novels. Whether, too, they are 
 as " decent " and as moral as has been alleged ? Comparison in this 
 respect between Gil Bias and the Paysan. Of Marivaux' curious 
 predilection for domestic servants. 
 
 B. The Dramatic Author ; and that his threefold originality con- 
 sists in : his having ceased to follow in the footsteps of Moliere ; his 
 having transported the tragedy of Racine into ordinary life ; and his 
 having made his plots turn more especially on the transformation of the 
 sentiments : the Double inconstance, 1723 ; the Seconde surprise de 
 V amour, 1728 ; the Jeu de I 'amour et du hasard, 1730 ; the Faussess 
 confidences, 1737 ; the Epreuve, 1740. The criticisms of his contem- 
 poraries and Marivaux's rejoinder. " All his pieces turn on the 
 delivery of lovers from a predicament in which they are involved by 
 false pride, timidity, the difficulty of coming to an explanation, or 
 social inequalities." Importance of the women's parts in Marivaux' 
 plays. The originality that accrues to his pieces from the impor- 
 tance of the women's parts as seen in : the curtailing of the role 
 
 20
 
 290 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 the masterpieces of Marivaux : where else would these 
 characteristics be looked for if not in his plays? His 
 comedies, too, are marked by a coldness, and even by 
 an irony, which he seems to have inherited from Fon- 
 tenelle, his friend and master. Still, sensibility is the 
 soul of his writings, even though it does not occupy 
 the entire place in them ; for if there be one quality 
 it is impossible to deny the Aramintas and Silvias of 
 this gallant man, it is assuredly that of being what is 
 called "touching." Voltaire's Zaire (1732) and his 
 "American" Alzire (1736) are more than touching: 
 they are pathetic. As a good judge has well remarked 
 [Cf. A. Yinet, Literature frangaise au XVIP siecle, vol. 
 ii. pp. 24, 37] , it is insufficient to say that their adven- 
 tures stir our feelings : they positively distress us. In this 
 respect as in several others Voltaire's tragedies are as 
 
 played by satire ; the increased importance accorded the sentimental 
 element in the very conception of comedy ; and the revolution in 
 matters theatrical that is the necessary consequence of these features. 
 Marivaux' comedies and Watteau's pictures.- Marivaux and Shake- 
 speare ; and that together with the vaguely poetic background and 
 the Italian names, what is most Shakespearian in Marivaux, is 
 perhaps the " marivaudage." " Marivaudage " and " Euphuism."- 
 Marivaux' preciosity, however, does not prevent him being often 
 somewhat blunt ; and even at times coarse.- The Jeu de V amour et 
 du hasard and Victor Hugo's Buy Bias. 
 
 C. The Publicist. A remark of Sainte-Beuve touching " certain 
 serious sides of Marivaux' mind " ; and that evidence of them must 
 be sought for in his " papers." The Speciateur francais, 1722-1723 ; 
 and that the idea of this production is evidently taken from Addison's 
 Spectator. The Indigent philosophe, 1728, and the Cabinet du 
 philosophe, 1734. Borrowings from these works made by the author 
 of the Neveu de Bameau and that of the Mariage de Figaro [Cf. 
 Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, vol. iii.]. Of certain of Marivaux' 
 ideas; on criticism; on the organisation of a literary "marshal- 
 ship"; on the status of women and on the education of children; on 
 the inequality of human conditions. To what extent did Marivaux
 
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 291 
 
 much superior to those of Crebillon or La Motte, as Mari- 
 vaux' comedies are superior to those of Destouches or even 
 of Regnard. And after making allowance for the "roman- 
 tic" and the "melodramatic" elements in Voltaire's crea- 
 tions, is it going too far to say that after a lapse of a hundred 
 and fifty years his Alzire, and more especially his Zaire, 
 still make us shed real tears ? But there is another poet 
 who causes the shedding of yet more abundant tears : we 
 refer to the author of Manon Lescaut, 1731 ; of Cleveland, 
 1733 ; of the Doyen de Killerine, 1735, to the kindly, 
 soft-hearted, sentimental Abbe Prevost. Tempered or 
 restrained in the case of Marivaux by a certain dread of 
 ridicule, and mingled in Voltaire's tragedies with other 
 novelties, sensibility overflows in Prevost's novels. It is the 
 sole source both of their inspiration and of their attractive- 
 ness. A superficial observer of the manners of his time, 
 
 himself takes his ideas seriously ? and how his work paved the way 
 for the generation to which Vauvenargues and Eousseau belonged. 
 3. THE WORKS. Marivaux' works comprise : 
 
 (1) His short writings, of which we have just mentioned the 
 principal, and to which may be added, with a view to making the 
 enumeration sufficiently complete, sundry articles written for the 
 Mercure. 
 
 (2) His plays, of which there are thirty-two in all, the principal 
 being : Arlequin poh par V amour, 1720 ; La surprise de V amour, 
 1722; La double inconstance, 1723; Le prince travesti, 1724; La 
 seconde surprise de V amour, 1728 ; Le jeu de V amour et du liasard, 
 1730; Les serments indiscrets, 1732; L'heureux stratageme, 1733; 
 La Mere confidente, 1735 ; Le legs, 1736 ; Les fausses confidences, 
 1737 ; L'epreuve, 1740 ; and Le prejuge vaincu, 1746. 
 
 (3) His novels : Pharsamon, 1712, but not published till 1737 ; the 
 Effets surprenants de la sympathie, 1713-1714 ; the Voiiure 
 embourbee, 1714 ; the Vie de Marianne, in eleven parts, 1731-1741 
 [The twelfth part, which is not found in all editions, is by Mme 
 Riccoboni] ; and the Paysan parvenu, in five parts, 1735-1736. There 
 remain for mention the Iliade travestie, 1716, and the Telemaque 
 travesti, 1736.
 
 292 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 a copious, fluent, and harmonious, but an unequal and 
 negligent writer, Prevost's chief originality and bond of 
 union with his readers lies in the readiness with which 
 his feelings are stirred by his own imaginings ; they inte- 
 rest him, they trouble him profoundly. He weeps, he is 
 an adept at weeping if the expression be allowable ; and 
 his whole century starts weeping with him. 
 
 This incursion of sensibility into literature deals the 
 classic ideal a second, a serious and a profound blow : the 
 first, as we have seen, proceeded from the renunciation of 
 tradition. For while it is impossible, as has been rightly 
 observed, " to make languages that are perpetually chang- 
 ing the vehicle of anything that is eternal" [Cf. Bossuet, 
 Discours de reception], it is equally true that that char- 
 acter of eternity which is the very condition or the definition 
 of the work of art cannot be conferred on what itself is 
 
 The best edition of Marivaux, or up to now the most complete 
 edition, for it is not particularly good, is the edition of 1781 in 12 
 volumes, Paris, Vve Duchesne. 
 
 III. Antoine-FranQois Prevost d'Exiles [Hesdin, 1697 ; f 
 1763, St. Firmin, near Chantilly]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Prevost's own novels, and in particular : the 
 . Memoires d'un homme de qualite ; Cleveland ; and the Histoire de 
 
 M. de Montcal [Cf. too his journal: Le Pour et Contre], Bernard 
 d'Hery's Notice preceding the editions of 1783 and 1810 ; Sainte- 
 Beuve, Portraits litteraires, vols. i. and iii. ; and Causeries du lundi, 
 vol. ix., 1853 ; Ambroise Firmin-Didot, article PRKVOST in the 
 Biographic universelle ; A. de Montaiglon's biographical notice at 
 the end of Glady freres' edition of Manon Lescaut, 1875, Paris ; F. 
 Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, vol. iii. ; Henry Harrisse, I' 'Abbe 
 Prevost, 1896, Paris ; and the Notices preceding various editions of 
 Manon Lescaut, notably those by Alexandre Dumas fils and Guy de 
 Maupassant. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE NOVELIST. His adventurous youth. Jesuit, 
 soldier, and Benedictine, 1721. He helps with the Gallia Christiana. 
 He leaves the Benedictines, 1728 ; publishes the first part of the
 
 THE DEFOKMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 293 
 
 changeable ; and what is more changeable than the sensi- 
 bility of one man with regard to another, or of the same 
 man at different moments ? Who was it declared in this 
 connection that sensibility "being a disposition that accom- 
 panies organic weakness, that results from the mobility 
 of the diaphragm, from the vivacity of the imagination, 
 from the sensitiveness of the nerves, a disposition which 
 inclines us to sympathise, to be thrilled, to fear, to admire, 
 to weep, to faint, to succour, to cry aloud, to take to 
 flight, to lose our reason, to have no exact idea of the 
 true, the good, and the beautiful, to be unjust, to be mad," 
 that sensibility, for all these reasons, was merely the 
 "characteristic of a kindly nature and of a mediocre 
 genius "? It was Diderot who made this declaration in a 
 moment of frankness [Cf . his Paradoxe sur le comedien'] ; 
 and the fact is that it seems that sensibility, left free to 
 
 Memoires d'un liomme de qualite, 1728; and visits England ; and 
 afterwards Holland [Cf. Memoires du Chevalier de Ravannes, and 
 Melanges de Bois-Jourdain]. The first edition of Manon Lescaut, 
 1731 or 1733 ? He returns to France. Publication of Cleveland, 1731 ; 
 Le Pour et le Contre, 1733. Prevost writes for the booksellers ; 
 Le Doyen de Killerine, 1735. He becomes " almoner to the Prince 
 de Conti." 
 
 These details help to an understanding of Prevost's novels : he 
 may truthfully be said to have lived his works ; the desultory char- 
 acter of which is explained by the hasards of his existence ; more- 
 over, such of his work as he did not " live," he " felt " rather than 
 " imagined." The sombre and melancholic character of Prevost's 
 novels ; and how greatly they differ from the novels of Le Sage and 
 Marivaux. The passion of love in Prevost's novels ; how they are 
 almost exclusively occupied with it ; and that it offers in them the 
 same features of suddenness ; violence ; and fatality as in Racine's 
 tragedies. It is this circumstance that constitutes the conspicuous 
 merit of Manon Lescaut, and not the fact that the novel is a sketch 
 of the courtesan. The depiction of manners in Prevost's novels ; 
 and how insignificant or superficial it is. Prevost's novels 
 are idealist novels ; moreover, they are not in the least degree
 
 pursue the impetuous irregularity of its course, has never 
 produced in any age or in any branch of literature work 
 that is other than inferior or of secondary importance. 
 The novels of Prevost himself or the comedies of De la 
 Chaussee [La Fausse antipathic, 1733 ; Le prejuge a 
 la mode, 1735 ; Melanide ; La gouvernante] may serve 
 as excellent examples in point ! If the reason of this 
 be asked, it is again Diderot who furnishes it when he 
 remarks that "the man whose sensibility is highly de- 
 veloped is too much at the mercy of his diaphragm . . . 
 to be a profound observer of and in consequence a sublime 
 imitator of nature." Here, indeed, we have a man who 
 knows himself ! What we see through a cloud of tears, 
 he is entirely in the right ! is indistinct, confused, 
 and uncertain, and one of the first effects of this 
 untrammelled indulgence in sensibility is to modify pro- 
 psychological ; and their style is that proper to passion ; that is to 
 say, it rises at times to the highest eloquence ; and descends in 
 places to the lowest depths of the commonplace ; while it is always 
 easy, harmonious, copious, and prolix. 
 
 Prevost's last years ; and his role of intermediary between the 
 literatures of England and France ; his translations of Richardson : 
 Pamela, Clarisse, Grandison ; of Hume's History of England ; and 
 of Middleton's Life of Cicero. He writes for the Journal etranger; 
 and is one of the authors of the Histoire generale des voyages. His 
 relations with Eousseau ; and that he and Marivaux are the only 
 men of letters to whom sympathetic allusion is made hi the Con- 
 fessions ; natural reasons for this sympathy ; and the interest of 
 this remark. Of certain information respecting Prevost's novels ; 
 and in particular that furnished by Mile Aisse ; and by Mile de 
 Lespinasse. The legend of Prevost's death [Cf. Henry Harrisse, 
 L'Abbe Prevost~\. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The works of Prevost are composed of his novels, 
 among which we will mention : the Memoir -es d'un homme de qualite, 
 of which Manon Lescaut forms the seventh part, 1728, 1731 ; the 
 Histoire de M. Cleveland, 1731 ; the Doyen de Killerine, 1735-1740 ; 
 the Histoire d'une Grecque moderne, 1740 ; the Campagnes
 
 THE DEFORMATION OP THE CLASSIC IDEAL 295 
 
 foundly the observation of nature, and the nature of 
 this observation. 
 
 The great writers of the preceding generation had not fore- 
 seen that the consequence of making a certain social ten- 
 dency a constituent part of the classic ideal would one day be 
 to cause the realisation of beauty and the imitation of nature 
 to be held of less account than the pleasing the fashionable 
 world, or than considerations of social utility ! This, how- 
 ever, is what happens. The psychological and moral 
 observation, which for a hundred and fifty years had been 
 the basis or the pedestal of the classic ideal, gives place to 
 social observation. " Man is in no way an enigma, as you 
 imagine him to be in order to have the pleasure of 
 solving it. ... There is no more apparent contradiction 
 in man than in the rest of nature. . . . What intelligent 
 man is there who will be filled with despair because he is 
 
 philosophiques ou les Meinoires de M. de Montcal, 1741; and the 
 Meinoires d'un honnete homme, 1745. 
 
 He also wrote almost the whole of Pour et Contre, 1733-1740 ; 
 further he translated or adapted all of Richardson's work, several 
 volumes of Hume, etc. ; and wrote, it is said, the first 17 volumes 
 of the Histoire generate des voyages, 1745-1761. 
 
 There exist two editions of Prevost's works, joined to those of Le 
 Sage, and forming in all 54 volumes, 39 of which are occupied by 
 Prevost's writings. These editions were issued in Paris in 1783 and in 
 1810-1816. 
 
 The editions of Hanon Lescaut are innumerable. 
 
 IV. Pierre Claude Nivelle de la Chaussee [Paris, 1691 or 
 
 1692; f 1754, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. D'Alembert, Eloge de La Chaussee ; Geoffrey, 
 Cours de litterature dramatique, vol. iii. ; Lanson, Nivelle de la 
 Chaussee et la comedie larmoyante, Paris, 1887. 
 
 2. THE ORIGIN OF THE " MIDDLE-CLASS" DRAMA. La Chaussee's 
 first successful work : La fausse antipathic, 1733 ; and that his fresh 
 departure consisted less in his having " mixed " the branches of the 
 drama, Marivaux having already done that in his comedies, than in
 
 acquainted with only some few of the attributes of matter? " 
 [Voltaire, Beuchot's edition, vol. 37, pp. 41, 46]. It 
 is in these terms that Voltaire combats Pascal, and the 
 truth is that all these questions have ceased to interest 
 either Voltaire or his contemporaries. He believes he 
 knows all about man that can be known ; he esteems 
 that the time is past for man to resort to introspection : 
 in sese descendere as Montaigne put it ; and that on the 
 contrary the moment has come for man to look beyond 
 himself. And here we have the explanation of that 
 universal curiosity to which his Charles XII., 1732, his 
 Zaire, 1732, his Lettres anglaises, 1734, and a little later 
 his Essai sur les mceurs, bear convincing witness. His 
 contemporaries, with the single exception of Vauvenargues, 
 are of his opinion. They too believe that they have a 
 sufficient knowledge of man, of his inner promptings, of 
 
 his having treated seriously, and turned to account for tragedies 
 dealing with middle-class life, the very same incidents of ordinary 
 existence which Dancourt, Destouches, and Marivaux had made the 
 subject matter of their plays. How this idea takes clearer shape in 
 the Prejuge a la mode, 1735 ; in the Ecole des amis, 1737 ; and in 
 Melanide, 1741. La Chaussee's aim is to provoke the same kind of 
 emotion as is aroused by tragedy ; without having recourse to an 
 historical background ; to princely personages; or to too violent pas- 
 sions. That this conception brings comedy into line with the novel; 
 and that hi point of fact La Chaussee's comedies are merely novels ; 
 though at the same time they pave the way for the plays of Diderot 
 and Beaumarchais. That, given the character of La Chaussee's 
 dramas, it was a singular idea on his part to write them in verse ; 
 and, bearing in mind the nature of the subjects he treated 
 [Cf. Lanson, loc. cit., pp. 170, 175] , and the success they 
 were to meet with a little later, the oblivion into which his plays 
 have fallen is perhaps explained by the fact that they are in verse. 
 It is difficult enough to write comedy in verse ; but to write middle- 
 class drama in verse is impossible. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. La Fausse antipathic, 1733 ; the Prejuge a la 
 mode, 1735 ; the Ecole des Amis, 1737 ; Melanide, 1741 ; Amour
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 297 
 
 the secret motives of his actions, of his passions, of his 
 instincts ; and, like Voltaire, they are solely concerned 
 with depicting manners. Whether, like Gresset, whose 
 Mediant dates from 1747, they write for the stage, or pride 
 themselves on being philosophers as was the case with 
 Duclos, whose Considerations sur les moeurs will appear in 
 1750, their observation is not only restricted to man con- 
 sidered as a member of society, but it does not attempt to 
 deal with the fundamental qualities of man, held to be 
 always and in every respect identical. Voltaire expressly 
 states that such is his belief : " Nature, he says, is every- 
 where the same." He is never weary of repeating the 
 assertion of Harlequin: " Tutto il mondo e fatto come la 
 nostra famiglia." His object in studying history is to dis- 
 cover proofs of this saying ; and he even styles his method 
 " the philosophic view of history." Any differences on 
 
 pour amour, 1742 ; Pamela, 1743 ; the Ecole des meres, 1744 ; the 
 Rival de lui-meme, 1746 ; the Gouvernante, 1747 ; the Ecole de 
 la jeunesse, 1749 ; the Homme de fortune, 1751 ; the Retour 
 imprevu, 1756. 
 
 La Chaussee is also the author of a number of somewhat coarse 
 Contes in verse ; of an JZpitre in defence of the Ancients, which, pub- 
 lished in 1731 under the title Epitre de Clio, was the beginning of his 
 literary reputation ; and of a wretchedly bad tragedy, Maximien, 
 1738. 
 
 The only complete edition of La Chaussee's works is that published 
 in Paris by Prault, 1761-1762. 
 
 V. The first period of Voltaire's life [1694-1750]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. -The complete works of Voltaire himself 
 (Beuchot's edition) ; and the eighteen volumes of his correspondence 
 (Moland's edition, Paris 1878-1882) ; Condorcet, Vie de Voltaire, 
 1787 ; Or. Desnoiresterres, Voltaire et la societe francaise au 
 XVIII" stecZe, 2nd edition, 8 vols., Paris, 1871-1876 ; and* G. Ben- 
 gesco, Bibliographic des ceuvres de Voltaire, 4 vols., Paris, 1882-1890. 
 
 The two last mentioned works summarise or refer the student to the 
 majority of the other books dealing with Voltaire.
 
 298 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 which he may happen, in passing from one epoch to another, 
 he ascribes to the slow " progress of enlightenment." His 
 historical studies may not give him a very lofty idea of 
 human nature, but he nevertheless continues of opinion 
 that "we are a species of monkey that can be taught to 
 act either reasonably or unreasonably ' ' : and to afford us 
 such teaching is precisely the end he has in view. And in 
 this way the conception is arrived at of an universal man, 
 an extremely tractable and pliable being, a man who 
 remains everywhere the same, who, properly speaking, is 
 neither a Frenchman nor an Englishman, but "man," and 
 the diversity of whose manners is only interesting so far 
 as there seems a possibility of replacing it by uniformity. 
 The same idea underlies the Esprit des Lois (1748) of 
 Montesquieu, unless indeed some other idea be discover- 
 able of a nature to elucidate the obscurities and to recon- 
 
 However, we add the following works from which foreign opinion 
 on the subject of Voltaire may be learned : John Morley, Voltaire, 
 London, 1874; J. F. Strauss's six lectures on Voltaire; James 
 Parton, Life of Voltaire, London, 1881 ; and W. Kreiten, S.J., 
 Voltaire, ein Characterbild, 2nd edition, Fribourg (Brisgau), 1885. 
 
 2. VOLTAIRE'S EARLIER YEARS. His family and his middle-class 
 extraction [Cf. above the articles MOLIBRE, BOILEAU, REGNARD] ; his 
 education at the College of Clermont ; his early masters [Fathers 
 Poree, Tournemine, Thoulie (d'Olivet)] ; his early friends [d'Argen- 
 son, Cideville, Maisons, d'Argental] ; and his entry into society, 1711. 
 The society gathered round the Vendome family ; and that it was 
 a school of gallantry, vulgar debauchery, and infidelity. The Holland 
 incident, and Arouet's first love affairs [Cf. Correspond ance between 
 1713 and 1714, and Mme Dunoyer's Lettres liisioriques et galantes] . 
 His first satirical writings. First exile at Tulle, and then at Sully- 
 sur-Loire, 1716. His return to Paris ; two new satires are ascribed 
 to him ; and he is imprisoned in the Bastille for the first time [May, 
 1717 to April, 1718] . The first performance of (Edipe [November, 
 1718] and the first important success of Arouet ; who on this occasion 
 takes the name of Voltaire. Of the importance at this period of a 
 success scored on the stage ; and of the acquaintances Voltaire makes,
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 299 
 
 cile the contradictions of this celebrated book. For to deny 
 that the book is obscure is impossible : the different inter- 
 pretations that have been given are proof of its obscurity. 
 Was Montesquieu's sole intention in the Esprit des Lois to 
 give a further version of or a sequel to his Lettres per- 
 sanes ; and can it be that this great work, which occupied 
 twenty years of his life is mainly a political pamphlet, in 
 which it sometimes happens that the author points out 
 what he considers to be the proper remedies for the evils 
 he denounces '? Voltaire rather inclines to this opinion, 
 and he had it in view when he blamed Montesquieu " for 
 having played the witling in a book of universal juris- 
 prudence." The opinion is also that of the last editor of 
 the Esprit des Lois. Or, on the other hand, did Monte- 
 squieu propose, as the author of the Politique tiree de 
 I'Ecriture sainte had done before him, to give a sketch of 
 
 thanks to his (Edipe ; acquaintances that improve his social standing 
 [the Villars and Richelieu families, the Duchesse de Maine] ; useful 
 acquaintances [the banker Hogguers and the brothers Paris] . Vol- 
 taire's business instinct is awakened ; his intrigues with a view to 
 embarking on a diplomatic career through the agency of Dubois ; 
 and his taste for secret missions. Voltaire's second journey to Hol- 
 land. The Epitre a Uranie, 1722 ; and why it is important to bear 
 in mind the date of this work. The first publication of the Henriade, 
 1723 ; Marianne, 1724. Voltaire installs himself in the good graces 
 of the Marquise de Prie. The Chevalier de Rohan incident [December, 
 1725] ; second imprisonment in the Bastille [April, 1726] ; and his 
 exile in England [May 2, 1726] . 
 
 Voltaire's first impressions in England [Cf . Beuchot, vol. xxxvii.] ; 
 and, in this connection, a few words as to the French colony in 
 London in 1726 [Cf . Prevost, Histoire de M. de Montcal, and J. Churton 
 Collins, Bolingbroke . . . and Voltaire in England, London, 1886] . 
 Voltaire renews his acquaintance with Bolingbroke, and makes the 
 acquaintance of Pope, of " the merchant " Falkener, etc. He learns 
 English and studies Newton, Locke, and Bacon ; he sees Congreve's 
 comedies performed, and Shakespeare's dramas. He writes his 
 Essai sur la Poesie epique. The English freethinkers [Cf. Tabaraud,
 
 300 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 what he considered the best form of government, and did 
 he discover it, according to his own expression, " in the 
 woods," as his predecessor, Bossuet, had lighted on it in 
 the Bible ? This latter view is held by certain of his com- 
 mentators, by d'Alembert for instance ; and since d'Alem- 
 bert by Tracy; and since Tracy by several others. It has 
 also been suggested that his intention may have been to 
 systematise historical data according to the method in use 
 in natural science, or in other words to apply the " positive 
 method," at a period at which it had not yet been invented, 
 to a subject which even at the present day admits of its 
 utilisation to a less degree than any other. This was the 
 view adopted by Auguste Comte, and Taine also adhered 
 to it in his Ancien regime. The truth is, however, that 
 none of these interpretations mutually exclude one 
 another. If the Esprit des Lois is wanting in clearness, 
 
 Histoire du Philosophisme anglais, Paris, 1806 ; and Leslie Stephen, 
 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, London, 2nd edition, 
 1881] ; and that, while taking into account their influence on Voltaire, 
 it must be remembered how much they owe to Bayle. Of the advan- 
 tage Voltaire derived from his stay in England [Cf. John Morley, 
 Voltaire] ; and that it has perhaps been a little exaggerated. 
 
 The Histoire de Charles XII., 1731, and the Lettres pliilosophiques. 
 How did the idea of writing the history of Charles XII. occur to 
 Voltaire ? and that it probably dates from the time of his acquaint- 
 ance with the Baron de Gortz. Character of the work ; and that while 
 conceiving it as a tragedy, Voltaire spared no pains to make it a 
 serious, historical work [Cf. Bengesco, Bibliographic, vol. i., p. 373 
 and fol.]. Of the use that is made in Charles XII. of information 
 obtained orally ; and that the value of the book is due in part to this 
 information. Charles XII. regarded as an early attempt to write 
 history in a philosophic spirit [Cf. the Essai sur les guerres civiles and 
 the notes to the Henriade] , and, in this connection, of Voltaire's 
 curious mixture of admiration for his hero and of indignation against 
 him. Zaire, 1732. The publication of the Lettres philosophiques, 
 1734. Significance of the book, and how much more considerable it 
 is than that of the Lettres persanes^ and particularly so if it be
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 301 
 
 if it makes greater claims upon the perspicacity of the 
 reader than the Essai sur les mceurs, if we can only regard 
 it as the rough draught of a great book, the reason is that 
 it is a confused medley of three or four things, of the 
 connection between which Montesquieu himself had no 
 exact intuition. "If it be desired to inquire into the 
 design of the author, he wrote, in a Preface which is a 
 monument of literary vanity, it can properly be discovered 
 only in the plan of the work " ; a statement which is an 
 indirect way of confessing or rather of dissembling the 
 truth that in reality and at bottom he had no design or 
 plan. In short, let us have the courage to admit that 
 the Esprit des Lois is a failure, and that it will always be 
 impossible to establish the unity of its plan for the 
 excellent reason that Montesquieu himself in writing it 
 was never very sure of his own purpose. 
 
 taken together with the Bemarques sur les Pensees de Pascal, 
 which belong to the same date. The subjects dealt with in the 
 Lettres. Religion and tolerance [Lettres, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Govern- 
 ment, politics and commerce [8, 9, 10]. Science and philosophy [11, 
 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17]. English literature and the social standing of 
 men of letters [18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24]. Of certain ideas Voltaire 
 and Montesquieu possess in common : on the supreme importance 
 of the social institution ; on the dangers of religion, 
 
 Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum I 
 
 on the lay constitution of the society of the future ; and on the 
 force of opinion. Condemnation of the Lettres philosophiques [June, 
 1734]. 
 
 Voltaire's sojourn at Cirey. His liaison with Mine du Chatelet ; 
 he takes up his residence at Cirey [Cf. Eugene Asse's editions of the 
 Lettres de Mine de Graffigny, Paris, 1879 ; and of the Lettres de Mme 
 du, CMtelet, Paris, 1882]. Varied nature of Voltaire's writings: 
 his Alzire, 1736 ; Le Mondain, 1736 ; and of the clearness with 
 which the idea of progress is expressed in this work. The comedy 
 L 'enfant prodigue, 1736 ; Voltaire enters into correspondence with 
 the Prince Royal of Prussia, afterwards Frederick II. ; the Essai sur
 
 30'2 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 It remains to explain why the book had such a brilliant, 
 such a notable success in its time throughout Europe as 
 well as in France, and to determine what it is that we 
 ourselves still like or admire in it. Montesquieu's con- 
 temporaries were charmed by the wit or sedate humour 
 of the work, by its epigrammatic tone and phraseology, by 
 the chapter on Despotism or the chapter on Slavery ; by 
 its allusions, quotations and singularities ; by the fashion, 
 at once discreet and licentious, in which it treats of the 
 curious or indecent customs of Benin, of Calicut and of 
 Borneo ; by its anecdotes ; by the novelty of the infor- 
 mation it contained; by its praise of "honour" and 
 "virtue." Montesquieu was the first to enable ladies to 
 imagine, as they proceeded with their toilette, that they 
 understood legal language, and it was due to him that 
 " universal jurisprudence " became a topic of conversation 
 
 la nature du feu, 1737 [Cf. Ernile Saigey, La Physique de Voltaire, 
 Paris, 1873] ; the Discours sur Vlwmme, 1738 ; the Elements de la 
 philosophic de Neivton, 1738 ; the quarrel with Desfontaines, 1738- 
 1740 [Cf. Maynard, Voltaire, sa vie et ses oeuvres, Paris, 1867, vol. i. ; 
 and Nisard, Les ennemis de Voltaire, Paris, 1853] ; Zulime, 1740 ; 
 Doutes sur lamesure des forces motrices, 1741 ; Mahomet, 1742; 
 Merope, 1743. 
 
 Voltaire's plays [Cf. Geoffrey, Cours de litterature dramatique, 
 vol. iii. ; Emile Deschanel, Le theatre de Voltaire, Paris, 1886 ; and 
 H. Lion, Les Tragedies de Voltaire, Paris, 1896]. Voltaire's passion 
 for the theatre ; and the reality, flexibility, and variety of his dramatic 
 aptitudes. Successive influence of Racine, the elder Crebillon, and 
 Shakespeare on Voltaire's conception of the drama. Zaire, 1732 ; 
 and whether Voltaire had Bajazet or Shakespeare's Othello most 
 in mind in writing it ? The Mort de Cesar, 1735 ; and the idea 
 of tragedy from which love should be absent. Of certain innova- 
 tions introduced to the French stage by Voltaire. Subjects of pure 
 invention. Extension of the localities in which the scene is laid 
 and the development of local colour : Zaire and the Mussulman 
 world. Alzire and America; the Orplielin de la Chine and the 
 Asiatic world. National reminiscences; and, in this connection,
 
 THE DEFOKMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 303 
 
 in the salons and at court where he was not without 
 friends. As Fontenelle had done before him, he annexed 
 to the domain of literature a new and spacious province. 
 For this service we are still grateful to him, if it be the 
 sign of a great writer to utilise for literary purposes a 
 subject hitherto foreign to literature, to bring it at once 
 within general reach, and by the sole authority of his work 
 and name to ensure its remaining common property for 
 the future. But in the eyes of the men of his time, pro- 
 foundly convinced as they were of the " charm of living," 
 his chief claim upon their gratitude was the ardent, the 
 almost religious respect he professed for the " social 
 institution," whose intangibility he seemed to have based 
 on deep-lying grounds that raised it even above the laws. 
 And finally his contemporaries were thankful to him for 
 the perspective of increasing perfection he opened up 
 
 
 of the influence of the Henriade on the tragedy of the eighteenth 
 
 century. The abuse in Voltaire's tragedies of such romantic 
 expedients as misunderstandings and recognitions [Cf. in this 
 respect Crebillon's plays]. Voltaire's pathos; and does it merit 
 the praise that has been bestowed on it [Cf. Vinet, Litterature 
 francaise aw XVIP siecle} ? How Voltaire compromised his qualifi- 
 cations as a dramatist ; by converting tragedy into a vehicle for the 
 propagation of philosophic theories ; by choosing his subjects in 
 accordance with the exigences of the taste of his time rather than in 
 accordance with any conception of art ; and by the fact that he grew 
 more and more unable to dissociate himself from his personages. 
 That for all these reasons it is unnecessary to study those of Voltaire's 
 plays that are posterior to Semiramis, 1748 ; since from this date 
 onwards, with the possible exception of Tancrede, he will produce 
 nothing in the way of tragedy, and still less in the way of comedy, 
 that is not far inferior to his earlier efforts. A few words as to the 
 mediocrity of Voltaire's comedies. 
 
 Voltaire at Court. His relations with Mme de Chateauroux ; and 
 more particularly with Mme de Pompadour. He flatters himself 
 that the king will be prevailed on by his new mistress to espouse the 
 cause of the philosophers ; and he overwhelms the sovereign with
 
 304 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OP FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 before them. At the present day we may not be able to 
 admit that this fervent faith in the destinies of humanity 
 lends the Esprit des Lois the unity in which it is deficient, 
 but we can at least allow that it gives the book its 
 elevation. 
 
 " Every man he had written in his Lettres persanes 
 is capable of contributing to the good of a fellow 
 man, but to assure the welfare of an entire society is to 
 resemble the Gods ! " Montesquieu, like the Stoics of 
 whom he was so great an admirer, desired to resemble 
 the Gods, and as a means to this end he subordinated, as 
 did the Stoics, every consideration to the good of society. 
 In the view of the author of the Esprit des Lois we 
 are men merely so far as we are fitted for society. In 
 his eyes the social utility of a law is the criterion, not 
 only of its character and merit, but also of its moral 
 
 
 
 flatteries ; which bring him the title of historiographer of France 
 [1745]. The Poetne de Fontenoy, 1745 ; and the Temple de la Oloire, 
 1745. Voltaire elected to and received at the French Academy [May, 
 1746]. He is appointed gentleman in waiting to the king [December, 
 1746]. Voltaire's imprudences. He wearies the king by his excessive 
 flatteries ; Mme de Pompadour by his familiarity ; and the courtiers 
 by his self-sufficiency. 
 
 He retires to the residence of the Duchesse de Maine at Sceaux, 
 1747. His early tales : Le Monde comme il va, Cosi Sancta, Zadig, 
 Micromegas, 1747 ; the quarrels with the Duchesse de Maine. 
 He leaves Sceaux for Cirey ; his stay at the Court of Lorraine. 
 Mme du Chatelet's treachery; and, in this connection, a few words 
 on the subject of the Court of Lorraine, King Stanislas, and the 
 Marquis de St. Lambert ; death of Mme du Chatelet, 1749 ; and 
 return of Voltaire to Paris. Difficulties of his situation ; owing to 
 his being regarded with equal suspicion by the court and the new 
 generation of "men of letters. "His dramatic rivalry with the elder 
 Crebillon. His Oreste, 1750, and his Rome sauvee, 1752. Frederick 
 proposes to him that he shall take up his residence in Berlin. 
 Voltaire's hesitations [Cf. Marmontel in his Memoirs]. Frederick's 
 advances to Baculard d'Arnaud cause him to make up his mind. His
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 305 
 
 excellence or hatefulness and even of its intrinsic justice. 
 Indeed he has allowed the observation to fall from his 
 pen, that from the reprehensible principle of the denial of 
 the immortality of the soul " the Stoics deduced con- 
 sequences which, although not accurate, were admirable 
 from a social point of view" [Cf. Esprit des Lois, xxiv., 
 chap. 19] . In another passage he writes [Cf . Esprit des 
 Lois, xxiv., chap. 1] : " Just as in the dark it is possible 
 to distinguish different degrees of obscurity ... so we 
 may compare false religions with a view to deciding which 
 of them are most in conformity with the good of society." 
 And if we probe his opinions to the bottom, what do we 
 find is his grievance vented, be it said, with infinite pre- 
 caution against the "true religion"? It is that certain 
 of its laws may clash with the good of society. "What 
 hold has the law on a man who firmly believes that the 
 
 departure for Berlin [June 18, 1750] ; and his arrival at Potsdam 
 [July 10, 1750]. Sincerity of his enthusiasm for Frederick; and, in 
 this connection, of the benefits Voltaire derived from his sojourn in 
 Prussia. When he left Paris he was in evil odour, and was only 
 regarded there as one man of letters among many ; his stay in 
 Berlin, and his intimacy with Frederick, in spite of the Frankfort 
 incident, will make of him in less than three years, a man whose 
 situation is henceforth unique, the trusted literary adviser of the 
 Powers ; and already almost the king of European literature. 
 
 VI. Jean-Baptiste Gresset [Amiens, 1709; f 1777, Amiens]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. D'Alembert, Beponse au discours de reception 
 de Vabbe Millot, 1777 ; Father Daire, Vie de Gresset, Paris, 1779 ; 
 Maximilien Eobespierre, Eloge de Gresset, Paris, 1785 ; Notice pre- 
 ceding Renouard's edition, Paris, 1811 ; Campenon, Essai sur la vie 
 et les ouvrages de Gresset, Paris, 1823 ; E. Wogue, Gresset, Paris, 
 1894. 
 
 2. THE POET ; and that his sole merit is that he is representative 
 of a very special phase in the art of writing in verse ; the publication 
 
 .of Ver-Vert in 1734 having been almost a literary event; and the 
 Mechant (1747) being certainly the best comedy in verse we have of 
 
 21
 
 306 MANUAL OF THE HISTOET OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 severest penalty the magistrates are able to inflict on him 
 will end in a moment in ushering him into a state of 
 bliss?" [Cf. Esprit de Lois, xxiv., chap. 14] . We touch 
 here on the central idea of his book, and this is the stand- 
 point we must take up if we desire " to discover the 
 purport " of his work. However confused the com- 
 position of the book may seem, and strange as may be 
 the medley of laws that form its subject matter, we 
 have only to consider these various laws from the point 
 of view of their bearing on the "good of society," and 
 at once the reasons of the author's mode of proceeding 
 become apparent and a fresh light is thrown on his 
 book. In this way Montesquieu has his revenge. What 
 was obscure in his work grows less obscure, what was 
 disconnected acquires cohesion, and what seemed con- 
 tradictory ceases to be so. The Esprit des Lois remains 
 
 the eighteenth century; without excepting even Alexis Piron's 
 Metromanie. The work, moreover, is not without a certain satirical 
 force; and some "documentary" value; admitting the principal 
 personage in the Mediant to be a transitional type between the 
 dandies of Marivaux [Cf . L'Epreuve] and the heroes of the Liaisons 
 dangereuses. Gresset's recantation, 1759 ; and Voltaire's lines : 
 
 Gresset is mistaken, he is not so guilty . . . 
 
 Have we lost much by the auto-da-fe Gresset made of his manu- 
 scripts? and that his unpublished pieces, the Ouvroir or the 
 Gazetin, doubtless contained nothing that is not to be found in his 
 Ver- Vert. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Gresset's works comprise : 
 
 (1) His poems, including Ver-Vert, the Careme impromptu, the 
 Lutrin vivant, the Chartreuse, and some Epistles and Odes; also 
 a somewhat feeble translation in verse of Virgil's Eclogues. 
 
 (2) His plays, comprising Edouard III., a tragedy ; Sidney, a 
 drama in verse ; and the Mechant, a comedy. 
 
 (3) Some prose writings, of which the most noteworthy is perhaps 
 his Discours de reception, 1748. A posthumous poem of Gresset's in 
 irregula* verse, Le Parrain magnifique, was published in 1810.
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 307 
 
 for all this an imperfect book, but it is felt to be less 
 unworthy of its lofty fortune ; it becomes comprehensible 
 that its influence should have surpassed its merit, a cir- 
 cumstance explained by the consideration that the genius 
 of Montesquieu was doubtless superior to his work. 
 
 At the same time this central idea of the Esprit des 
 Lois was not the exclusive property of Montesquieu ; on 
 the contrary it is met with in the writings of almost all 
 his contemporaries. A "social" literature was bound to 
 lead up to it, and thus to gain at first in comprehen- 
 siveness what it was losing in depth, and to perish or 
 at least be distorted and disorganised by the carrying 
 to extremes of its principle? At the very moment 
 when Montesquieu was completing the Esprit des Lois, 
 Vauvenargues was issuing his Introduction a la con- 
 naissance de I' esprit humain (1746), where the following 
 
 The best edition of his works is Renouard's edition, 2 volumes, 
 Paris, 1811. 
 
 VII. Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues [Aix in 
 Provence, 1715; f 1747, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Suard's notice ; and Saint-Maurice's Eloge de 
 Vauvenargues to be found at the beginning of vols. i. and iii. of the 
 edition of 1821 ; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. iii., 1850 ; 
 A. Vinet, Litterature francaise au XVIIP siecle ; Prevost-Paradol, 
 Moralistes francais ; Gilbert, Eloge de Vauvenargues, preceding 
 his edition, Paris, 1857 ; Maurice Paleologue, Vauvenargues in the 
 " Grands Ecrivains fran9ais " series, Paris, 1890. 
 
 2. THE MORALIST. His melancholy destiny. He is a transitional 
 type. The essential and original characteristic of Vauvenargues con- 
 sists in his having combined some of the traits of Pascal's pessimism 
 with J. J. Rousseau's optimism ; while his work, though uncompleted, 
 is the confession of a soul. 
 
 Vauvenargues' military career and campaigns ; his love of glory ; 
 his generosity of heart ; and his love of humanity. Comparison in 
 this respect between Vauvenargues and La Rochefoucauld. Did 
 Vauvenargues possess a doctrine? and that in any case his pre-
 
 308 MANUAL OF THE HISTOBY OF FBENCH LITEBATUBE 
 
 passage is to be read : " For anything to be regarded as 
 good by the whole of society, it is necessary that it 
 should tend to the advantage of the whole of society, and 
 for it to be regarded as an evil, it must tend to the 
 destruction of society : herein lies the main characteristic 
 of what is morally good or morally evil." He was briefly 
 discussing, not the ''spirit," but the ''origin " of laws ; and 
 he added : " We are born and we grow up in the shade of 
 these solemn conventions ; we owe them the security of 
 our life and the tranquillity that attends it. The laws are 
 also our only title to our possessions : from the very dawn 
 of our life we profit by their beneficent consequences, and 
 we are attached to them by bonds that grow ever stronger 
 and stronger. Whoever claims to throw off this authority 
 to which he owes everything, cannot esteem it unjust 
 that it should deprive him of everything even of his life. 
 
 mature death prevented him from reconciling its contradictions, 
 and from developing all its consequences. His veneration for social 
 institutions [Introduction a la connaissance, &c., chap. 43]. His 
 indulgent attitude towards the passions and the apology he makes for 
 them [Cf. Introd. bk. ii., chap. 42, and Reflexions et Maximes, Ed. 
 Gilbert, 122, 123, 124, 149, 151, 153, 154]. His belief in the goodness 
 of nature ; and his theory as to the superiority of sentiment over 
 reason [Cf . Reflexions et Maximes, passim, and Reflexions sur divers 
 sujets, 54]. Analogy between these ideas and those to which 
 Rousseau will soon give expression; and to what is this analogy 
 to be attributed ? to the resemblance between the two periods ? 
 or to the fact that Vauvenargues, like Rousseau, was self 
 taught ? 
 
 How superior his moral personality is to that of Rousseau ; though 
 his talent is inferior. Vauvenargues' eloquence. Melancholy tone 
 of some of his thoughts. Delicacy of his literary taste. 
 
 3. THE WOEKS. Vauvenargues' works consist of (1) his Introduc- 
 tion a la connaissance de Vesprit humain, which was first published 
 in 1746, and to which were joined the Reflexions sur divers sujets ; 
 the Conseils a un jeune homme, the Reflexions critiques sur quelques 
 poetes and some Caracteres in the manner of La Bruyere; (2) his
 
 THE DEFOBMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 309 
 
 Is it reasonable that an individual should dare to sacrifice 
 his fellows solely in his own interest, and that society 
 should not be able to restore the public peace at the cost 
 of his ruin ! " To discuss these daring principles is 
 beyond our province here, but it is not impossible that 
 Montesquieu had some knowledge of them, and in any 
 case their resemblance to those of the Esprit des Lois is 
 plain. The truth doubtless is that they pervaded the 
 atmosphere of the time in a disconnected and inchoate 
 state, and that in succession the author of the Intro- 
 duction a la connaissance de I 'esprit humain, the author 
 of the Esprit des Lois and the author of the Essai sur les 
 mceurs did no more than give them literary expression, 
 while adapting them respectively the first to his subject, 
 the second to his vague " plan," and the third to the 
 bent of his intellect. 
 
 Dialogues ; (3) his correspondence with Voltaire, Fauries de Saint- 
 Vincent and the Marquis de Mirabeau. 
 
 Vauvenargues was prevented by his early death from completing 
 any of his writings with the exception of his Introduction. The 
 remainder of his works have been enriched by the successive addition 
 of unpublished fragments, which have nearly doubled their volume. 
 
 For example, Suard published for the first time hi 1806 the Traite 
 sur le libre arbitre ; eighteen of his dialogues did not see the light 
 till 1821 ; while his correspondence with Mirabeau is only to be 
 found in the last edition of his works that has been published, that 
 edited by Gilbert, in 2 volumes 8vo, Paris, 1857, Furne. 
 
 VIII. diaries Pinot Duclos [Dinan, 1704; f 1772, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Duclos' Memoirs (unfinished) ; Mme d'Epinay, 
 Memoir es ; Noual de la Houssaye (Duclos' nephew), Eloge de 
 Duclos, 1806 ; Villenave, Notice preceding his edition of the works, 
 1821 ; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. ix., 1853 ; Lucien 
 Perey and G. Maugras, La Jeunesse de Mme d'Epinay, Paris, 1882 ; 
 L. Brunei, Les philosopJies et V Academic francaise au XVIIP 
 siecle, Paris, 1884. 
 
 2. THE WRITER. His licentious youth, and his habit of adopting
 
 310 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Another idea takes definite shape at about the same 
 period : the idea of progress which, first evolved, as we 
 saw, some fifty years before in the course of the quarrel 
 between the ancients and moderns, has since been pro- 
 fiting, as it were, by the losses sustained by the spirit of 
 tradition and now penetrates into the very sanctuary of 
 routine, into the Sorbonne itself. Are we to believe that 
 because Voltaire and Montesquieu did not expressly give 
 this idea the name by which we know it, they on that 
 account had no " presentiment of the important part it 
 was about to play on the world's stage '.' ? This view 
 can only be taken by those who have read these writers 
 most inattentively, for they are full of the idea of 
 progress. Shall we suppose that Montesquieu was not 
 aware of what he was saying when he wrote that 
 "human laws as compared with the laws of religion 
 
 cynical airs. His eccentric humour ; and the mediocrity of his 
 talent. His novels : Histoire de la baronne de Luz, 1741 ; and the 
 Confessions du oomte de . . . 1742 ; and that they are of a kindred 
 stamp to those of the younger Crebillon ; that is as indecent, as 
 tedious, and doubtless as false. His Histoire de Louis XI., 1745, is 
 almost unreadable at the present day. On the other hand his 
 Considerations sur les mozurs de ce siecle, 1750, a fairly well written 
 work, contains somewhat interesting observations on various 
 subjects ; and helps to an understanding of the manners of his time 
 [See in particular the second chapter dealing with " education " and 
 "prejudices"; the fifth with "reputation," "celebrity," "renown," 
 and " consideration " ; the seventh with " people who are the 
 fashion"; and the eleventh with "men of letters "]. The success 
 of this book, too, was considerable ; no literary man has been more 
 the fashion than was Duclos in his time ; while none have better 
 looked after their interests. He was also successful in preserving his 
 independence ; and his dignity ; not only with respect to persons 
 of position and social standing ; but more especially with respect 
 to his fellow men of letters ; and particularly with respect to the 
 Encyclopedists. For these reasons his personality has a significance 
 that is not possessed by his works ; and on this account he deserves 
 to be remembered.
 
 THE DEFOEMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 311 
 
 owe their advantage to their novelty" [Cf. Esprit 
 des Lois, xxvi., ch. 2] , or that Voltaire was blind to 
 what he was about, when he got himself into trouble 
 in connection with his Mondain? Moreover we have 
 no hesitation in affirming that the young Bachelor of 
 Letters, who expressed himself in the following terms 
 in a Discourse dated 1750, had read Voltaire and Mon- 
 tesquieu, even if he did not owe them his inspiration : 
 " Societies are seen to come into existence and the founda- 
 tion is witnessed of nations, which in turn dominate other 
 nations or are subject to them. . . . Interest, ambition, 
 and vainglory perpetually change the aspect of the world 
 and deluge the earth with blood, but amid their ravages, 
 human enlightenment advances, manners grow milder, 
 the nations are brought closer together, commerce and 
 politics at last unite the different parts of the globe, and 
 
 3. THE WORKS. They include in addition to his novels, to his 
 Louis XI., and to his Considerations : 
 
 (1) A certain number of memoirs contributed to the Recueil de 
 V Academic des Inscriptions, the two most important among them 
 relating to the origin of and the changes in the French and Celtic 
 languages ; an annotated edition of the Port-Royal Grammar, 1754. 
 A new system of orthography is followed in the printing of this 
 work ; and the Preface to the 4th edition of the dictionary of the 
 Academy, 1762. 
 
 (2) Of his Memoires secrets sur les regnes de Louis XIV. et de 
 Louis XV. This work was first published in 1791, and its interest has 
 greatly diminished since the appearance of the Memoirs of Saint- 
 Simon. 
 
 (3) Of his Considerations sur Vltalie, [1766-1767] also published 
 for the first time in 1791. 
 
 (4) Of his Essai sur les corvees, 1759, and of his Reflexions 
 sur les corvees, 1762, two works which are certainly by the same 
 author, though it has not been absolutely proved that that author is 
 Duclos. 
 
 The most complete edition of Duclos 1 works is that edited by 
 Villenave> Paris, 1821.
 
 312 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the total mass of the human race, traversing alternate 
 periods of calm and agitation, of prosperity and of 
 suffering, moves on, unceasingly though slowly, towards 
 a state of greater perfection" [Cf. Turgot's Works, Daire's 
 edition, vol. ii.]. Without wishing in any way to rob 
 Turgot of his merit, or of the honour that is paid him, 
 one is justified in pointing out that there is not a word in 
 this quotation or a line in the whole of the Discourse, 
 which does not recall some passage or other of the Esprit 
 des Lois or the Essai sur les mceurs. That Turgot gives 
 us the very spirit of these works is still clearer, if Voltaire 
 conceived his Essai sur les mceurs solely with a view to 
 demonstrating the superiority of his century over all 
 others ; and if Montesquieu, for his part, sought to 
 ground his conviction that " history offers nothing com- 
 parable with the might of the Europe of his time " on 
 
 EIGHTH PERIOD 
 The Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedists 
 
 1750-1765 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. The Memoirs and Letters of the time, and in 
 particular : Voltaire's correspondence ; the Memoirs of d'Argenson ; 
 of Barbier ; of Morellet ; of Marmontel ; Frederick the Great's 
 correspondence [Preuss' edition] ; Eavaisson, Archives de la Bastille, 
 vol. xii., covering the years 1709-1772 ; Barruel, Histoire du 
 Jacobinisme, vol. i., London, 1797 ; Picot, Memoir es pour servir a 
 rhistoire ecclesiastique pendant le XVIII e siecle, Paris, 1806 and the 
 last edition, 1853-1857 ; Freron's Annee litteraire ; Grimm's Cor- 
 respondance litteraire ; P. Rousseau's [of Toulouse] collection of 
 the Journal encyclopedique. 
 
 The complete works of d'Alembert, Paris, 1821 ; of Diderot, the 
 Assezat and Maurice Tourneux edition, Paris, 1875-1877 ; -of Voltaire, 
 Beuchot's edition, and more especially the Melanges [vols. 37-50] ; 
 of Helvetius, Didot's edition, Paris, 1795 ; and of Condorcet, 
 O'Connor's edition, Paris, 1847-1849.
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 313 
 
 the superiority of the laws of his period ? Is it necessary 
 to make the further remark that Turgot's Discourse, 
 written and delivered in Latin by an obscure individual, 
 attracted but the slightest attention ? In consequence, 
 are we not in some measure entitled to conclude that 
 while he was perhaps the first to speak of the idea of 
 progress in express terms, it was not until after the 
 conception had been spread abroad by his masters ? 
 
 In reality it would seem difficult to suppose that the 
 discoveries in the domain of Science alone to say 
 nothing of the improvements in the mechanical arts or in 
 the conditions of daily life should not have suggested 
 the idea of progress to the men of whom Turgot was the 
 disciple. With scarcely an exception they were men of 
 science themselves. Montesquieu had begun his career 
 by composing treatises on the functions of the renal 
 
 With regard to Diderot in particular consult : his correspondence 
 with Mile. Volland ; his Paradoxe sur le comedien ; and his Neveu de 
 Rameau ; Mme de Vandeul's (his daughter) Memoires sur Diderot, 
 1787 ; Naigeon, Memoires historiques et philosophiques sur M. 
 Diderot, Paris, 1821 ; Rosenkranz, Diderot's Leben und Werke, 
 Leipsic, 1866 ; John Morley, Diderot and the Encyclopedists, 
 London, 1878 ; Edinond Scherer, Diderot, etude, Paris, 1880. 
 
 Consult for the second half of Voltaire's life, in addition to the 
 works mentioned above : his correspondence with Mme du Deffand, 
 Lescure's edition, Paris, 1865 ; Lucien Perey and G. Maugras, La vie 
 in time de Voltaire aux Delices, Paris, 1885 ; G. Maugras, Voltaire et 
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Paris, 1886. 
 
 Consult for d'Alembert : his correspondence with Frederick the 
 Correspondance de Mme du Deffand, Lescure's edition. 1865 ; the 
 correspondence of Mile de Lespinasse, edition Eug. Asse, 1876 ; 
 Condorcet, Eloge d'Alembert, among his Eloges academiques, 1784 ; 
 Charles Henry, Correspondance inedite d'Alembert, Paris, 1887 ; 
 J. Bertrand, d'Alembert in the " Grands Ecrivains fran9ais " series, 
 Paris, 1889. 
 
 Useful details may be obtained from the following works : Male- 
 sherbe's Memoires stir la librairie, Paris, 1809 ; Garat, Memoires sur
 
 314 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 glands (1718) and on the causes of the weight of bodies, 
 while the first important work he had planned was a 
 physical history of the earth. Voltaire's essays on the 
 nature of fire and on the measurement of motive forces 
 (1741) were held in esteem. On his return from his 
 sojourn in England he had promulgated the theories of 
 Newton. While it might be questioned whether his 
 Alzire or his Zaire raised him above Racine or Corneille, 
 there could be no doubt that he possessed a knowledge 
 of many matters with which the author of the Cid 
 and the author of Andromaque had had no acquaint- 
 ance and could have had no acquaintance. He was 
 conscious, and those around him were conscious also, 
 that new horizons had opened out before the human 
 intelligence. It was the joint action of all these con- 
 siderations, and not a theoretical view expressed by a 
 
 la vie de M. Suard, Paris, 1820 ; Felix Eocquain, L'esprit 
 revolutionnaire avant la Revolution, Paris, 1878 ; J. Kiintziger, La 
 propagande des Encyclopedistes francais en Belgique, Paris, 1891 ; 
 Henri Francotte, La propagande des Encyclopedistes francais an 
 pays de Liege, Brussels, 1880 ; Edmond Scherer, Melchoir Grimm, 
 Paris, 1887. 
 
 Finally, the subject should be studied in the following works from 
 a general point of view : Damiron, Memoires pour servir a I'histoire 
 de la philosophic au XVIII" siecle, 1858-1864; Lanfrey, L'eglise et 
 les philosophes au XVIIP siecle, 1855 ; Ernest Bersot, Etudes sur la 
 XV 'IIP siecle, 1855 ; Barni, Histoire des idees politiques et morales 
 en France au XVIII' siecle, 1865-1866 ; and H. Taine, Ancien 
 Regime, 1875. 
 
 I. The Early Phases of tlie Undertaking. 
 
 The encyclopedias of the Eenaissance and in particular the 
 Encyclopedia omnium scientiarum of Alstedius or Alstedt, 1620 ; 
 Bayles' Dictionary [Cf. supra], 1696-1706 ; and Ephraim Chambers' 
 English Cyclopedia, 1728. The translation of this latter work is 
 suggested to the bookseller Lebreton ; who agrees to the idea, 
 1740 ; but the translators and the publisher falling out, the
 
 THE DEFOEMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 315 
 
 Bachelor of the Sorbonne, that was contributing to 
 the formation, the development, and the popularity of 
 the idea of progress. The number and variety of the 
 recent acquisitions made by science gave weight to the 
 conception, with the result that science, if not already 
 the idol it was destined to become, was universally 
 regarded with respect or even with superstition, while 
 these preoccupations of a scientific order invested litera- 
 ture with a new character. Buffon, who may almost 
 be said to have learned to read in the mathematical 
 writings of the Marquis de 1'Hopital, began his career 
 in the field of " letters " with translations of Hales' 
 work on vegetable statics and Newton's treatise on 
 fluxions (1740). There were still writers of tragedies, 
 novels, and comedies, but it was with a new System 
 of Musical Notation that Rousseau arrived in Paris 
 
 undertaking remains in abeyance until the intervention of the 
 Abbe du Gua de Halves [Cf. as to du Gua de Halves, Diderot's 
 Salons ; and Condorcet's Eloge de du Gua de Malves], who 
 widens the scope of the undertaking ; but he too falls out with 
 Lebreton ; who approaches d'Alembert and Diderot on the subject. 
 The scheme is still further enlarged ; Lebreton secures additional 
 financial support ; d'Alembert and Diderot recruit numerous writers ; 
 and d'Aguessau is prevailed on to grant the " privilege " necessary for 
 the publication of the work, 1746. Of the " privilege " to publish a 
 book under the old regime and of its true nature [Cf . Saugrain, Le 
 code de la librairie, 1744 ; Diderot, Lettre sur le commerce de la 
 librairie, 1767; and Haleshei'bes, Memoires sur la librairie, 1809]. 
 That the authorities in nowise looked askance at the publication of 
 the Encyclopedia ; and how Diderot having been incarcerated at 
 Vincennes, it was due to the efforts of the booksellers that he was 
 set at liberty, so as to allow him to work at the Encyclopedia, 1749. 
 The Prospectus of the Encyclopedia ; it sets forth that the object 
 of the work was twofold : (1) to systematise the branches of human 
 knowledge ; (2) to give the " mechanical arts " the place they de- 
 served in this schema. This dual purpose is again insisted on in the 
 Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia. Other novelties an-
 
 316 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 (1741) from Geneva or Lyons, and it was his Thoughts 
 on the Interpretation of Nature that first raised Diderot 
 from obscurity. This new trend of literature was to 
 become more clearly defined every day, and in 1750 was 
 to find its ultimate expression in the Encyclopedia. 
 
 What share in this movement is to be ascribed to 
 English influence ? It is difficult to answer the question 
 with exactness [Cf. on this subject : Tabaraud, Histoire 
 du philosophisme anglais, and Leslie Stephen, English 
 Thought in the Eighteenth Century]. The influence is be- 
 yond doubt, and if it merely be desired to fix the date at 
 which it began to operate, it is not of much importance 
 whether choice be made of the year 1725, the year of 
 publication of Beat de Muralt's Lettres sur les Anglais, 
 or of the year 1733, in which the Abbe Prevost founded 
 his newspaper, or of the year 1734, the year of publica- 
 
 nounced in the Discourse, and that they are of more far-reaching 
 significance than would be thought at first sight ; while they may be 
 traced to the influence of Descartes as well as to that of Bacon. But 
 to arrive at the true significance of the Discourse it must be read in 
 connection with the article on Encyclopedias in the Encyclopedia 
 itself. D'Alembert is the author of the Discourse, and Diderot that 
 of the article. 
 
 II. Jean Le Rond d'Alembert [Paris, 1717 ; f 1783, Paris]. 
 
 His parents [he was the son of Mme de Tencin, and, it is said, of 
 the Commissary Destouches] ; his studies at the Mazarin college ; 
 his talent for geometry ; his early treatises on the laws of refraction 
 (1739) and on the integral calculus (1740). He is elected a member 
 of the Academic des Sciences, 1741. His Traite de dynamique, 1743, 
 and his Memoire sur la cause generate des vents, 1746 [Cf. as to the 
 value of d'Alembert's scientific labours, J. Bertrand's d'Alembert]. 
 What were the reasons which induced the bookseller Lebreton to give 
 him the editorship of the Encyclopedia, and, in this connection, of the 
 situation of an Academician under the old regime. Whereas the title 
 of Academician is to-day only an honorary distinction, to be an Acade-
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 317 
 
 tion of Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques. It is known, 
 too, that Voltaire visited England in 1726, Montesquieu 
 in 1729, and Prevost towards the same period. The 
 mere enumeration of the translations from the English 
 about this time would demand several pages, and it can 
 be affirmed without exaggeration that between 1725 and 
 1750 French versions were given of the entire writings 
 of Pope, Addison, Swift, and Eichardson, not to men- 
 tion minor authors [Cf. Joseph Texte, Jean Jacques 
 Rousseau et Us origines du cosmopolitisme litteraire, 
 Paris, 1895]. If we do not include Locke and Bacon in 
 the list, the reason is that Bacon wrote more especially 
 in Latin, and that in consequence, in 1750, the Novum 
 organum, the De augmentis scientiarum, and the In- 
 stauratio magna had already been within the reach of 
 merely cultured readers for a hundred and fifty years ; 
 
 mician in d'Alembert's time was almost to occupy a State function ; 
 and in particular the Academician possessed influence, and in virtue 
 of his membership he entered the ranks of " privileged persons." 
 Other considerations which induced Lebreton to fix his choice on 
 d'Alembert ; his conciliatory disposition ; his social position ; his 
 liaisons with Mme du Deffand, which should date from 1746 or 
 1747 [Cf. Lescure's edition of Mme du Deffand's correspondence, 
 Paris, 1865] ; his relations with Mme Geoffrin. He was already 
 almost a personage when he consented to take the Encyclopedia in 
 hand ; and it was in 1752 that Frederick offered to make him 
 President of his Academy of Sciences when the post should become 
 vacant by the death of Maupertuis. 
 
 III. Denis Diderot [Langres, 1713; f 1784, Paris]. 
 
 Diderot's family ; his early studies at Langres and Paris ; his 
 refusal to become a doctor, a barrister, or a solicitor ; he quarrels 
 with his family. His early poverty ; he writes for the booksellers 
 and gives lessons in mathematics ; he even thinks of turning actor. 
 His escapades [Cf. Mme de Vandeul, Memoires, and Naigeon, loc. 
 cit.~\. His marriage, 1743; and his definite estrangement from his 
 father. His first translations ; Stanyan's History of Greece, 1743 ;
 
 318 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 while Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding had 
 been accessible to the French public for a shorter period 
 indeed, but still for half a century, through Coste's 
 translation published in 1700. 
 
 This observation has its importance, as it helps us to 
 understand the nature of the English influence. For 
 since it is Locke and Bacon who are about to become 
 the intellectual masters of the new generation, the fact 
 that they did not occupy this position earlier doubtless 
 points to the conclusion that the English influence did 
 not come into effect by means of what may be termed 
 infiltration, as the Spanish influence had done formerly, 
 but in consequence of the substitution of a new ideal 
 for that previously in vogue. In other words, so long 
 as the French genius was dominated by the classic 
 deal, and as French literature, as has been seen, re- 
 James' Dictionary of Medicine, 1746 ; his Essai sur le merite et la 
 vertu, which is a paraphrase of Shaftesbury. His first original work, 
 Les pensees philosophiques, 1746 ; and whether it is true that he 
 wrote it to satisfy a caprice of Mme de Puisieux, his mistress ? In 
 any case she gave him a still more unhappy inspiration when she 
 prompted him to write his Bijoux indiscrets, 1748 ; an obscene novel 
 in the style of those of Duclos and Crebillon, though infinitely coarser ; 
 and a book of which he will say at a later period " that he would 
 willingly have cut off an arm not to have written it. His Lettre sur les 
 aveugles a Vusage de ceux qui voient, 1749 ; and of the interest of 
 a comparison between this work and Condillac's Traite des sensations. 
 The work, moreover, procures Diderot a term of imprisonment at 
 Vincennes ; -not on account of its audacity ; but of a passage in it 
 which aroused the displeasure of Mme Dupre de Saint-Maur, the 
 intimate friend of Beaumur, of the Academic des Sciences. Of the 
 difference between the situations of Diderot and d'Alembert ; and 
 that it perhaps accounts to some extent for the subsequent straining 
 of their relations. Diderot has been faithfully portrayed by Bacon 
 in the following sentence : Sunt qui cogitationum vertigine delec- 
 tanlur, ac pro servitute habent fide fixa aut axiomatis constantibus 
 constringi.
 
 THE DEFOEMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 319 
 
 mained "national" despite its "social" characteristics, 
 so long as this was the case, we did not come under the 
 English influence ; but when the classic ideal began to 
 lose ground, the English influence at once entered the 
 breach, qua data porta, and asserted its supremacy. These 
 considerations enable us to obtain a better view of the 
 effects of this influence, and to affirm that, to begin with, 
 they were not particularly happy. 
 
 " We have borrowed from the English annuities, 
 reversible funds, sinking funds, the construction and 
 manosuvring of ships, the laws of gravitation, the diffe- 
 rential calculus, the seven primary colours, and vaccina- 
 tion. Imperceptibly we shall acquire from them their 
 noble freedom of thought and their profound contempt 
 for the petty trifling of the schools." It is in these 
 terms that Voltaire wrote to Helvetius, but he forgot to 
 
 IV. The First Difficulties Encountered by the Ency- 
 clopedia. 
 
 Whether the Jesuits who were bringing out the Journal de Trevoux 
 were jealous of the success of the Encyclopedia ? [Cf. Diderot, Lettre 
 au pere Berthier, vol. xiii. of his works ; Voltaire, Le Tombeau de 
 la Sorbonne, vol. xxxix. ; and d'Alembert, Sur la destruction des 
 Jesuites]. The thesis of the Abbe de Prades, who was writing 
 articles on theological subjects for the Encyclopedia ; its con- 
 demnation by the Sorbonne [Cf. Picot, op. cit., vol. iii., p. 185]. 
 Jesuits, Jansenists, and the official world seize this opportunity to 
 attack the Encyclopedia. The Abbe de Prades, exiled from Paris, 
 goes to Berlin ; Voltaire seeks to interest Frederick in him ; and it 
 is on this occasion that his relations with d'Alembert and Diderot 
 become for the first time in any way close. The Encyclopedia is 
 " suppressed " by a decree in Council, 1752 [Cf. Memoires de Barbier, 
 vol. v.; and Memoires d'Argenson, vol. vii.]. But as the work has 
 its protectors at court, including Mme de Pompadour, who is inte- 
 rested in the undertaking by her doctor, Quesnay ; and in the 
 Cabinet, including M. de Malesherbes himself [Cf. Mme de Vandeul, 
 Memoires sur Diderot], its publication is allowed to go on; and
 
 320 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 add that for his part he had borrowed further his Micro- 
 megas from Swift, his Poeme de la loi naturelle from 
 Pope, and Zaire from Shakespeare. Moreover, having 
 pillaged Shakespeare himself, he would doubtless have 
 been better advised had he refrained from deterring his 
 contemporaries from the study of one of the deepest and 
 purest sources of poetry the world possesses. Again, if 
 we examine what he terms the " noble freedom of 
 thought " of the English, we find that he refers to the 
 aggressive infidelity of such writers as Bolingbroke, 
 Collins, and Toland. As for the " contempt for the petty 
 trifling of the schools," it is doubtless in these terms 
 that he alludes to the narrow utilitarianism of Locke : 
 " There is no knowledge worthy the name but that which 
 leads to some new and useful invention, which teaches us 
 to do something better, quicker, or more easily than 
 
 vols. iii., iv., v., vi. and vii. are issued regularly between 1753 and 
 1757. The Encyclopedists profit by the conflicts between the Parlia- 
 ment and the court, 1756 [Cf. Rocquain, L'Esprit revolutionnaire, 
 etc.] ; their imprudences [Cf. the article, Encyclopedic] ; and their 
 admissions. Barrister Moreau's pamphlet : Memoir es pour servir a 
 I'histoire des Cacouacs, 1757, and the article in the Encyclopedia 
 on Geneva. Outcry raised by the Geneva pastors, indignant at 
 having been praised for their Socinian tendencies. Intervention in 
 the quarrel of Voltaire and Rousseau ; Rousseau writes his Lettre 
 sur les spectacles, 1758. D'Alembert's discouragement. Diderot 
 publishes his Pere de famille, and Helvetius his De I'Esprit, 1758. 
 The archbishop of Paris issues his pastoral charge. The Parliament 
 takes cognisance of the affair ; it is decided to judge the Encyclo- 
 pedia and the book of Helvetius together. Speech of the Procurer- 
 General ; condemnation of the Encyclopedia; the "privilege" of 
 which is definitely revoked, March, 1759. Pitiable retractation of 
 Helvetius ; d'Alembert retires from the scene ; and Rousseau 
 abandons the cause. 
 
 V. The Second Period of Voltaire's Life, 1750-1762. 
 
 Voltaire's sojourn in Berlin, 1750-1753 ; and whether he found
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 321 
 
 before" [Cf. Joseph Texte, loc. cit., p. 100]. Is not the 
 conclusion enforced, that the only English thought which 
 exerted an influence on Frenchmen between 1730 and 
 1750, was that which offered the least analogy with the 
 classic ideal, w T hich was most contrary and even most 
 hostile to that ideal? The purpose of literature, which 
 from being " psychological and moral " had been first 
 "social," and then "scientific," was now to become purely 
 practical under the influence of Bacon and Locke. Backed 
 by the authority of Newton, who somewhere speaks of 
 poetry as ingenious fiddle-faddle, geometricians are about 
 to ask what a tragedy "proves"; while d'Alembert will 
 not hesitate to declare in the preliminary notice to the 
 Encyclopedia "that if the ancients had produced an ency- 
 clopedia, as they produced so many great works, and had 
 this manuscript alone survived the burning of the famous 
 
 Frederick a more indulgent master than Louis XV. ? The mistakes 
 he made ; he insists on the king dismissing Baculard d'Arnaud ; 
 and on his not taking Freron as correspondent. The incident in con- 
 nection with the Jew Herschel [Cf. Desnoiresterres, vol. iv. ; and 
 Strauss, Voltaire]. Voltaire's license of language and attitude towards 
 Frederick. His quarrels with Lessing and La Beaumelle. He falls 
 out with Maupertuis, a former friend of Mme du Chatelet, and the 
 President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. The Diatribe du docteur 
 Akakia, 1752. Frederick has the pamphlet burned by the public 
 executioner. Voltaire's anger, humiliation, and submission [Cf. Cor- 
 respondence, Preuss' edition, 1752-1753J ; he decides to ask for leave 
 of absence on the plea that he desires to drink the waters at Ploni- 
 bieres ; Frederick eagerly grants his request ; and accepts Voltaire's 
 resignation of his title of " Chamberlain to the King of Prussia."- 
 Voltaire's departure, March 26, 1753. The Frankfort incident. He 
 makes successive stays at Strasburg, Colmar, Lyons and Geneva. 
 
 Voltaire's historical works. Voltaire's two principal historical 
 works belong to this period of his life : the Siecle de Louis XIV., of 
 which the first edition was issued in Berlin in 1751 ; and the Essai 
 sur les moeurs, of which the first edition under this title appeared at 
 Geneva in 1756 ; though it was eleven years earlier that the Mercure de 
 
 22
 
 322 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Alexandrian library, it would have sufficed to console us 
 for the loss of the others." 
 
 II 
 
 One of the consequences of these new principles is, that 
 there being scarcely anything in the world less " literary " 
 in its essence than the Encyclopedia of d'Alembert and 
 Diderot, the work scarcely belongs to the history of litera- 
 ture. For this reason we shall not relate here how the 
 French Encyclopedia, originally conceived as a mere 
 translation of the Cyclopedia of Ephraim Chambers, 
 developed into the most important piece of publishing 
 enterprise that had as yet been seen, nor how circum- 
 stances, far more than men, converted what was at first 
 
 France had begun to publish detached passages of the work. The 
 Annales de VEmpire (1753) also belong to this period ; as too does 
 the definite edition of Charles XII., the date of which is 1756-1757. 
 The two first-mentioned works introduced a new method of writing 
 history into European literature. 
 
 In Voltaire's hands history, which had previously been the work of 
 mere annalists or had been purely polemical, became in the first place 
 narrative in the true sense of the word, and by this is implied : the 
 exercise of choice as regards the subject and the choosing of a subject 
 of general interest and not of interest to the learned only ; the use 
 of discrimination as regards the facts to receive mention, those which 
 merely obstruct the narrative, or are useless and uninviting, being 
 eliminated ; and a continuity of interest only obtainable by recourse 
 to art and intentionally. This amounts to saying that whereas history 
 before Voltaire's time had been erudite or learned, in his hands it 
 became, in the second place, literary, and by this is implied : the 
 paying attention to style and to the arrangement of the component 
 parts ; the constant reminding the reader of the interest offered by 
 past events to the living generation ; and in consequence a perpetual 
 invitation to the reader to exercise his faculty of thought. Finally, 
 history which had been indifferent to its own subject matter became
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 323 
 
 a purely commercial undertaking into the most formidable 
 weapon of offence that had hitherto been forged against 
 tradition. Furthermore we shall not attempt to determine 
 the general or central idea of the work, an idea which 
 doubtless was never particularly " general " as conceived 
 by the jejune, rigid and narrow mind of d'Alembert or 
 particularly clear as reflected in the nebulous brain of 
 Diderot [Cf . in Diderot's works his article Encyclopedic] . 
 The number of wTiters engaged in carrying out the scheme 
 could not fail to be an additional source of obscurity ; 
 masterpieces are never the outcome of the combined 
 efforts of two authors and still less of those of several. 
 Finally, in spite of the anecdotal interest of the story, we 
 shall not narrate how the Encyclopedia, after multiple 
 incidents and many successive " suppressions," developed 
 into the monumental compilation of which Lord Chester- 
 
 in Voltaire's hands philosophic, by which is implied : the subordina- 
 tion of facts to the consequences in which they resulted ; the appre- 
 ciation of these facts in the light of a given ideal : and the basing of 
 this ideal on a given conception of life and of humanity. 
 
 The disadvantages of this mode of understanding history ; and 
 that Voltaire himself was not uninfluenced by them. 
 
 The disadvantages of treating history philosophically are : the 
 substitution, when judging men and things, of the authority of an 
 abstract criterion for the sentiment of the diversity that distinguishes 
 the different epochs ; the putting all history in this way on the same 
 level ; and in consequence the distorting or perversion of history. 
 Voltaire's respect for literary considerations makes no less for 
 historical misrepresentation ; if the importance of historical events 
 has nothing to do with the possibility of presenting them under an 
 attractive guise ; if the interest the events may have for posterity is 
 at any rate no measure of their importance ; and if nothing is more 
 calculated to obscure the true significance of a period than the desire 
 to present it in such a manner as shall please our contemporaries. 
 Finally Voltaire's method offers disadvantages in so far as it is narra- 
 tive ; if the choice of the facts to be dwelled on ought not to depend 
 on the caprice of the historian ; if there are " subjects which make a
 
 324 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 field said, in a letter to his son who had asked him 
 whether he should make its acquisition : 
 
 " You will buy it, my son, and seated on it you will 
 read Candide." On the other hand, since even at the 
 present day a regrettable confusion is often made between 
 " the spirit of the Encyclopedia " and " the classic spirit," 
 recalling that which was long made between the spirit of 
 the Eeformation and the spirit of the Renaissance ; since 
 there has even been a disposition to regard the encyclo- 
 pedic spirit as the final and in some sort preordained 
 expression, as the necessary outcome of the classic spirit ; 
 for these reasons an effort must be made to dissipate this 
 confusion, and to show that while there may perhaps be 
 one or two features in common between the encyclo- 
 pedic and the classic spirit, as there were between the 
 spirit of the Renaissance and that of the Reformation, in 
 
 claim upon the attention " and it is " impossible to make the strain- 
 ing of the attention other than a laborious effort " ; and if, finally, 
 there are no useless or cumbersome facts in history, but merely facts 
 of which we do not perceive the significance. 
 
 How the accumulation by Voltaire of all these defects, defects 
 aggravated moreover by his very success, reduced his other histories 
 his Histoire du Parlement (1769) for example to the rank of mere 
 pamphlets ; and thus degraded history till it became the mere 
 instrument of his philosophic passions. History, like tragedy, 
 demands to be treated for its own sake ; but this does not prevent 
 the Essai sur les mceurs ; and above all the Siecle de Louis XIV. 
 being epoch-making works in the art of writing history ; or Voltaire 
 himself from having exerted on the direction taken by historical 
 studies, almost as considerable an influence as on the drama itself, 
 and perhaps indeed an influence even more considerable. 
 
 Voltaire takes up his residence at the villa Delices, 1755. Publica- 
 tion of the poems La loi naturelle and Le Desastre de Lisbonne, 
 1756; Rousseau addresses him his letter on the subject of Providence. 
 Voltaire's difficulties with the authorities of Geneva. He suggests 
 to d'Alembert the article on Geneva printed in the Encyclopedia. 
 Renewed intervention of Rousseau in the quarrel [Cf. above, p. 320].
 
 THE DEFOBMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 325 
 
 every other respect they offer nothing but opposition and 
 contradiction. 
 
 For example, " the classic spirit " only took shape by 
 dint of freeing itself, and at the same time Frenchmen 
 and French literature, from all foreign influence. The 
 "encyclopedic spirit," on the contrary, attained to self- 
 consciousness, as has just been seen, owing to the 
 quickening action of English thought. What is more, 
 after failing to recognise its harbingers in Descartes and 
 Bayle, it preferred to trace its origin to Locke and Bacon. 
 Who is unaware that, in a certain sense, the Esprit des 
 Lois is merely a glorification of the English Constitution? 
 The case is the same with the Traite des sensations, 
 which is nothing more than an " adaptation" of Locke's 
 Essay on the Human Understanding. The Encyclopedic 
 itself, as we remarked above, was intended originally to 
 
 Purchase of Ferney, 1758. Candide, 1759 ; Tancrede, 1760 ; the 
 Ecossaise, 1760 ; and, in this connection, of the role of Freron [Cf . 
 Ch. Nisard, Les ennemis de Voltaire]. At the same period Voltaire 
 writes what we possess of his Memoirs [Cf. Beuchot's edition, vol. xl.]. 
 A few skits of indifferent value : the Relation de la maladie et de 
 la mort du Pere Berthier, 1759 ; Les Quand, 1760, a rejoinder to an 
 academical discourse hi which Lefranc de Pompignan had attacked 
 the philosophers ; his Dialogues chretiens, 1760 ; and a more im- 
 portant work, the Extrait des sentiments de Jean Meslier, 1762, cause 
 him to be ranked definitely as the unquestioned leader of the philo- 
 sophic party. The Eloge de Crebillon, 1762 ; the Commentaire sur 
 Corneille, and the Rccueil de pieces originates concernant la mort 
 des sieurs Calas, 1762. 
 
 VI. After the suppression of the Encyclopedia. 
 
 How the issue of the Encyclopedia was proceeded with in spite of 
 its " suppression " ; thanks to the protection of M. de Malesherbes, 
 who had supreme control over the printing and publishing of books ; 
 of M. de Sartine, Lieutenant of Police ; and of Mine de Pompadour ; 
 and also because the Government was influenced by the importance 
 of the material interests involved in the enterprise. The consideration
 
 326 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 be a mere translation of an English work ; while as to 
 Diderot, who has undoubtedly some pretensions to be 
 regarded as the incarnation of the encyclopedic spirit, there 
 is nothing that is not English in the work of a writer, who 
 is still often termed the "most German" of Frenchmen. 
 He began by translating Stanyan's History of Greece ; his 
 Essai sur le merite et la vertu is a mere paraphrase of 
 Shaftesbury ; while he imitates Kichardson and Sterne in 
 his stories and novels, and Moore and Lillo in his dramas 
 or his middle-class tragedies. ... It would be superfluous 
 to multiply the examples ! Seeing, however, that the 
 foreigner is now translated or appealed to as a source of 
 inspiration with an ardour equal to that with which the 
 imitation of him was formerly avoided, can it be said that 
 no change has occurred? is it possible to consider this 
 different disposition as the effect of the same causes? 
 
 of the Government went further still ; as is proved by the incident 
 in connection with the comedy Les Philosophes (May, 1760) ; and yet 
 more so by that in connection with the Ecossaise (July, 1760), if it 
 be a fact that Freron, whom Voltaire had grossly insulted by name 
 came very near to being prevented from replying to him in the Annee 
 litteraire [Cf. Desnoiresterres, La comedie satirique au XVIII e siecle, 
 Paris, 1885]. That this tolerance of the Government was not uncon- 
 nected with the fear of seeing an undertaking forbidden in France 
 brought to a successful conclusion abroad, in Berlin perhaps or in St. 
 Petersburg ; and further with the necessity the authorities were under 
 of making some concessions to the philosophers, on the eve of the 
 expulsion of the Jesuits, 1762. D'Alembert's work: De la destruction 
 des Jesuites en France ; and that it is curious to note that its publi- 
 cation coincided with the issue of the last ten volumes of the Encyclo- 
 pedia. Eemarks on this subject ; and of the difficulty of circulating 
 ten folio volumes clandestinely. Comparative indifference amid which 
 they appeared ; and that this indifference was natural ; seeing that 
 they contained scarcely anything that had not been touched on, to 
 say the least, in the first seven volumes ; and that these first seven 
 volumes had realised all the effect that could be expected from the 
 work.
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 327 
 
 And if the answer is negative from both an historical and 
 a logical point of view, a first difference is perceived 
 between the " encyclopedic spirit " and the " classic 
 spirit." 
 
 A second difference lies in the fact that whereas the 
 classic spirit, from the time of Ronsard to that of 
 Boileau, for a hundred and fifty or two hundred years, 
 had displayed the utmost respect for the ancients and 
 for tradition, the very essence of the encyclopedic spirit, 
 on the contrary, is contempt for the ancients and 
 hatred of tradition. These terms are not too strong. 
 The encyclopedists not only did not appreciate the 
 ancients ; they despised them. They regarded as a mere 
 prejudice, as a foolish prejudice, not to say as mere 
 pedantic hypocrisy, the admiration which some few 
 humanists still ventured to profess for Virgil and 
 
 VII. Claude-Adrien Helvetius [Paris, 1715 ; f 1771, Paris]. 
 
 His father and grandfather were doctors ; he becomes a farmer 
 of the taxes and a patron of literature ; steward to Queen Marie 
 Leczinska ; beset with a desire for celebrity, he starts by acquiring 
 a reputation as a dandy. He next essays poetry ; and submits his 
 efforts to Voltaire ; who encourages him by reminding him that 
 Atticus was a farmer of the taxes ; though at the same time he 
 declares the poems somewhat commonplace. Helvetius then turns 
 his attention to mathematics ; and finally to philosophy. He 
 resigns his post of farmer of the taxes, and with much labour 
 composes his book De V Esprit, 1758. Mediocrity of the book in 
 general. The worst paradoxes are propounded in it on the strength 
 of proofs ; which for the most part are mere scandalous " anecdotes " ; 
 in spite of which no book has made more noise in its time ; or 
 spread abroad more ideas destined to make their way in the world. 
 Helvetius was the first writer to declare " that ethics ought to be 
 treated according to the methods of experimental physics." [Cf. De 
 V Esprit, Discourse ii., chap. 15] ; that moral questions are at 
 bottom merely social questions, " since the vices of a people always 
 lie hid in ito legislation" [Cf. De VEsprit, Discourse ii., chap. 15] ;
 
 328 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Homer. " At one time I was made to believe that I took 
 a pleasure in reading Homer, are the words the author 
 of Candide puts in the mouth of the senator Pococurante, 
 but this perpetual repetition of combats . . . bored 
 me beyond measure. It has happened to me to ask 
 the learned whether they, too, found Homer tedious 
 reading. . . .All of them who were sincere confessed 
 that the work could not hold their attention an instant, 
 though it was necessary to have it in a library as a 
 monument of antiquity, just as one preserved those 
 rusty coins that have lost all commercial value " [Cf. 
 Candide, chap. 25]. Let a comparison be made between 
 this quotation from Candide and the following passage 
 from the Discours sur I'histoire universelle [Cf. part iii., 
 chap. 5] : " One of the reasons of the enthusiasm 
 aroused by the poetry of Homer is the fact that he 
 
 and further that there is nothing education cannot accomplish 
 [Cf. De I' Esprit, Discourse iii.]. Sensation aroused by the book. 
 Helvetius makes a full and pitiful retractation ; and afterwards 
 remains silent ; and disappears from the literary scene. 
 
 VIII. Frederic-Melchior Grimm [Ratisbon, 1723; f 1807, 
 Gotha]. 
 
 Grimm's classical and philosophic culture ; his first literary efforts 
 and his tragedy Banise (in German). His arrival in Paris ; his 
 relations with Diderot, Rousseau, and the society of which Mme 
 d'Epinay was the centre, 1749-1750. His two Letters on German 
 Literature [Cf. Mercure de France, 1751] ; the letter on the subject 
 of OmpJiale [Destouches' opera], 1752; and the Petit prophete de 
 Boehmischbroda, 1753 [Cf. Adolphe Jullien, La Musique et les 
 Philosophes au, XVIII 6 siecle, Paris, 1873]. The Correspondance 
 litteraire [1754-1790] ; and that it is inseparable from the ency- 
 clopedic movement, of which it was for fifteen or twenty years what 
 may be called the secret official organ in Europe. What Grimm and 
 the numerous assistants who worked under his supervision really 
 did, was to make accessible to the German sovereigns, his sub- 
 scribers, the ideas of the " corporation of philosophers " ; while
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 329 
 
 sang the victories and advantages scored by Greece over 
 Asia. On the side of Asia was Venus, the emblem of 
 pleasure, of profligate passion and of effeminacy ; on the 
 side of Greece were Juno, the grave patroness of con- 
 jugal love, Mercury, the god of eloquence, and Jupiter, 
 who personifies political wisdom. On the side of Asia 
 was the impetuous and brutal Mars, or war conducted 
 with fury; on the side of Greece was Pallas, that is 
 the military art and valour guided by intelligence. . . . 
 From this moment Greece . . . could not suffer that 
 Asia should harbour the thought of effecting her conquest, 
 for had she submitted to this yoke she would have seemed 
 to make virtue subject to profligacy, the mind to the body, 
 and true courage to an unreasoning force residing solely 
 in ..numbers." The light in which the- classic spirit 
 regarded the masterpieces of antiquity has never been 
 
 contriving with great skill to soften down what there was in these 
 ideas that might not have been to the liking of princes ; by dint 
 of showing the ideas in such a light as to make the sovereigns 
 regard them as a means of destroying the hindrances that still stood 
 between them and absolute power. On the other hand, as the 
 Correspondance was not published until 1812, this is not the place 
 to judge it on its merits ; and it will suffice to have noted to what 
 extent it contributed to the encyclopedic propaganda. 
 
 IX. The Encyclopedic Propaganda. 
 
 Financial success of the undertaking. There were 4,800 subscribers 
 in 1750. Foundation of the Journal encyclopedique, 1756 ; its 
 editor, P. Rousseau (of Toulouse) and his co-workers ; its wide 
 circulation. Centres of the encyclopedic influence in Paris : Mme 
 de Geoffrin's salon [Cf. Memo-ires de Marmontel ; and P. de Segur, 
 Le royaume de la rue Saint-Honore, Paris, 1897] ; Mine d'Epinay's 
 group [Cf. Memoires de Mme d'Epinay, Boiteau's edition, Paris, 
 1863 ; and L. Perey and G. Maugras, La jeunesse de Mme d'Epinay, 
 Paris, 1882] ; Baron d'Holbach's group [Cf. Diderot, Correspondance 
 avec Mile Volland ; and d'Avezac-Lavigne, La societe du baron 
 d'Holbach, Paris, 1875] ; and Mile de Lespinasse and her friends [Cf.
 
 330 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FKENCH LITERATUEE 
 
 better defined : masterpieces it looked on as lessons in 
 social morality presented under the guise of poetic fictions. 
 The encyclopedists considered these fictions as mere 
 trifling, and were blind to the lesson they convey. 
 Tradition, too, in their eyes, in literature and in every 
 other sphere, is only an impediment, bred of super- 
 stition, to their freedom of thought, to the " diffusion 
 of enlightenment," and to the progress of reason. " It 
 is by weakening the foolish veneration of the masses 
 for ancient laws and customs," writes Helvetius, "that 
 sovereigns will be enabled to rid the earth of the 
 greater number of the evils that afflict it, and to assure 
 the duration of their empires " [Cf. De I'Esprit, 2nd 
 discourse, ch. 17]. His meaning surely is that eman- 
 cipation from tradition is the very essence of progress. 
 And shall we not admit that there is certainly a difference 
 
 her correspondence]. How the very adversaries of the Encyclopedia 
 served its cause ; and in particular Palissot and Freron ; -who were 
 always referring to it ; and often for no other reason than with a 
 view to filling their papers. Spread of the encyclopedic ideas among 
 the lower middle class [Cf. Correspondance de Mme Roland avec 
 les demoiselles Cannet] ; and doubtless even in the provinces ; 
 although it is impossible to give trustworthy proof of the fact [Cf. 
 however the letters of Mme Butet in J. Cruppi's work, L'avocat 
 Linguet, Paris, 1895] . There is proof, on the other hand, of the 
 spread of the ideas abroad ; in the district of which Liege is the 
 centre, for instance [Cf. Francotte, La propagande encyclopedique, 
 chap. ii. and iii. ; and Kiintziger, Les encyclopedistes francais en 
 Belgique, chap, iv.] ; in Switzerland, where the 28 volumes of the 
 original work were thrice reprinted ; in Italy, where the work was 
 twice reprinted, once at Leghorn and once at Lucca ; in Germany 
 and Russia by the intermediary of Grimm. -How this propaganda 
 necessarily contributed to the diffusion of French ideas ; and indi- 
 rectly to the formation of a European literature. 
 
 THE WORKS. 
 
 The only works of importance of Grimm and Helvetius are those 
 mentioned above.
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 331 
 
 between appealing in everything to the authority of 
 tradition and treating it persistently as an obstacle and 
 an enemy? 
 
 How many other differences of a moral or philosophic 
 and even of a political order would it be possible, would it 
 be a duty to point out, were it not for the fear that to 
 indicate them might seem somewhat beyond the scope of 
 a history of literature ! While the classic spirit had in 
 general regarded the instincts and passions with proper 
 suspicion, the encyclopedic spirit, on the contrary, made 
 insolent and cynical profession of the trust it placed in 
 them. "A man becomes stupid w r hen he ceases to be 
 passionate," writes Helvetius [Cf. De V Esprit, 3rd dis- 
 course, ch. 8]. In Diderot's eyes the vice of " all political, 
 civil, and religious institutions" is that they have "in- 
 stilled men with the poison of a morality contrary to 
 
 In the case of Diderot, on the contrary, while his writings for the 
 Encyclopedia are not the least portion of his work, and still less the 
 portion which has had the least influence, they are not the most 
 considerable and in particular not the most original portion. On the 
 other hand, almost all his most vaunted writings only appeared after 
 his death, for which reason we did not think it proper to deal with 
 them in the article devoted to him. It is necessary to bear in mind 
 that Diderot's contemporaries were acquainted neither with the 
 Religieuse, the Neveu de Rameau, the Supplement au voyage de 
 Bougainville, the Reve de d'Alembert, nor the Salons ; and in face 
 of this fact how is it possible to discuss the effect of the writings in 
 question on the thought of the period ? Since, however, this is still 
 too often done, we shall proceed to classify Diderot's works in the 
 chronological order of their publication, which is the order followed in 
 the general divisions adopted in the edition of Assezat and Maurice 
 Tourneux. 
 
 1. BELLES-LETTRES [Novels, Plays, Criticism and History] . Les 
 bijoux indiscrets, 1748 ; Le Fils naturel, 1757 ; Le Pere defamille, 
 preceded by a Discourse on Dramatic Poetry, 1758; Essai sur la vie 
 de Seneque . . . et sur les regnes de Claude et de Neron, 1778 ; La 
 Reliyieuse, 1796 ; Jacques lefataliste, 1796 ; Ceci n'est pas un conte,
 
 332 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 nature " [Cf. Supplement au voyage de Bougainville]. 
 The Cartesian tenet which the classic spirit had corn- 
 batted most energetically had been the dogma, new at 
 the time, of the omnipotence and sovereignty of reason, 
 of that reason which opines "that two and two make 
 four," which denies, when it does not take a pleasure 
 in scoffing at, whatever is outside the range of its 
 deductions. " Be silent, foolish reason ! " Pascal had 
 said. The encyclopedic spirit, on the contrary, regarded 
 reason as the sole source of truth; and the many things 
 in the world that appeared to it to be " irrational," 
 proclaiming the antagonism between the world and 
 reason, it decided that a work of destruction was its most 
 immediate concern. Again, the classic spirit esteemed 
 that laws are a reflection of morals, or in other words 
 that the public good is secured by the combined action of 
 
 1798; Le Neveu de Eameau, 1823; Paradoxe sur le comedien, 
 1830. 
 
 2. ART CRITICISM. The Salons, of which the dates of publication 
 were as follows : Salon of 1761, 1819 ; Salon of 1763, 1857 ; Salon 
 of 1765, 1795 ; Salon of 1767, 1798 ; Salon of 1769, 1819, and 1857 ; 
 Salon of 1771, 1857 ; Salon of 1775, 1857 ; Salon of 1781, 1857. 
 
 3. PHILOSOPHY. Essai sur le merite et la vertu, 1745 ; Pensees 
 philoso2)Mques, 1746 ; Lettre sur les aveugles, 1749 ;Lettre sur les 
 sourds et muets, 1751 ; Apologie de Vabbe de Prades, 1752 [Part iii. 
 only] ; Pensees sur V interpretation de la nature, 1754 ; Supplement 
 au voyage de Bougainville, 1796 ; Le reve de d'Alembert, 1830 ; La 
 Promenade du sceptique, 1830. 
 
 4. Plan d'une universite pour le gouvernement de Russie, 1813-1814. 
 
 5. We also possess sundry scientific works by Diderot, the value of 
 which does not appear to be very great ; -and an extremely interesting 
 but unfortunately incomplete Correspondence, the most curious por- 
 tions of which' are the letters addressed to Falconet and the corre- 
 spondence with Mile Volland. 
 
 The best and most complete edition of Diderot's works is that of 
 MM. Assezat and Maurice Tourneux, 20 vols. in 8vo, Paris, 1875- 
 1877, Gamier freres.
 
 THE DEFOEMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 333 
 
 the best efforts of the individual members of society, 
 whereas the encyclopedic spirit spread abroad the idea 
 that "if the laws are good, morals will be good, and if 
 the laws are bad, morals will be bad." It is thus that 
 Diderot expresses himself in another passage of his 
 Supplement au voyage de Bougainville. Helvetius emits 
 a like opinion, picked up doubtless in one of the salons 
 of the period : " The vices of a people always lie hidden 
 deep down in its legislation ; it is there that search 
 must be made with a view to extirpating the root from 
 which a people's vices spring up " [Cf. De I' Esprit, 
 2nd discourse, ch. 15] . And since this irreconcilable 
 opposition or even contradiction between the classic 
 spirit and the encyclopedic spirit is thus everywhere 
 patent, is it not natural enough that we should again 
 meet with it in literature ? 
 
 The principal literary works of d'Alembert in addition to the 
 Discours preliminaire de V Encyclopedic, 1750, are ; his pamphlet 
 La destruction des Jesuites en France, 1765 ; some translations ; 
 a few short writings, and the valuable series of his Eloges Acade- 
 miques, 1779-1787. 
 
 NINTH PERIOD 
 From the Encyclopedia to the " Genie du Christianisme " 
 
 1765-1800 
 
 I. Jean- Jacques Rousseau [Geneva, 1712; f 1778, Ermenon- 
 ville] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Almost all the works of Rousseau himself, and 
 particularly his Confessions ; his Dialogues (Rousseau, juge de Jean- 
 Jacques} ; the Reveries d'un promeneur solitaire ; and his Correspond- 
 ence ; Mme d'Epinay 's Memoirs ; Grimm, Correspondance litteraire ; 
 Freron, Annee litteraire, 1754-1776 ; Diderot, Essai sur les regnes 
 de Claude et de Neron ; Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Fragmens and 
 Essai sur Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
 
 334 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 That this is indeed the case is naively admitted by 
 d'Alembert in the preliminary notice he wrote for the 
 Encyclopedia. "Abuse is made of the best things. That 
 philosophic spirit, so much in the fashion at the present 
 day, which demands conviction and spurns hypothesis, 
 has spread even to literature : it is even asserted that 
 its influence on literature is harmful, and it is difficult to 
 hide from oneself that the accusation is well-founded, 
 Our century seems desirous of applying rigid and didactic 
 methods of discussion to matters of sentiment." But, 
 given the definition he himself offers of the philosophic 
 spirit, defining it, that is, as a taste for " analysis " 
 and "combination" what was likely to become even 
 of psychological observation, let alone of poetry or of 
 eloquence? I have somewhere asserted, I believe, that 
 a wider and above all a deeper knowledge of man is 
 
 Musset-Pathay, Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de J. J. Rousseau, 
 Paris, 1821 ; G. H. Morin, Essai sur la vie et le caractere de J. J. 
 Rousseau, Paris, 1851 ; Saint-Marc Girardin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 
 sa vie et ses ouvrages, Paris, 1848, 1851, 1852, 1856 and 1875 ; 
 Streckeiseii-Moultou, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ses amis et ses ennemis, 
 Paris, 1865 ; John Morley, Rousseau, London, 1873 ; F. Brocker- 
 hoff, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, sein Leben und seine WerJce, Leipsic, 
 1868-1874 ; Jean-Jacques Rousseau juge par Ics Genevois d'aujour- 
 d'hui, Paris and Geneva, 1878 ; H. Beaudouin, La vie et les ouvres 
 de J. J. Rousseau, Paris, 1891. 
 
 These works, which are of a somewhat general character, should 
 be completed, checked, and connected by the more special investiga- 
 tions of M. Eugene Bitter ; La famille de J. J. Rousseau, 1878 ; 
 Nouvelles recherclies sur les confessions, 1880 ; La jeunesse de J. J. 
 Rousseau, 1896 ; of M. Albert Jansen : Rousseau als Musilcer, 1884 ; 
 Rousseau als Botaniker, 1885 ; Documents sur J. J. Rousseau, 1885 ; 
 of M. Fritz Berthoud, Jean-Jacques Rousseau au Val de Travers, 1881 ; 
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau et le Pasteur de Montmollin, 1884 ; of M. G. 
 Maugras, Voltaire et Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1886; of M. P. J. 
 Mobius, Rousseau's Krankheits-geschichte, Leipsic, 1889 ; of M. 
 Chatelain, La Folie de Rousseau, 1890 ; of M. F. Mugnier, Madame
 
 THE DEFOKMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 335 
 
 displayed in the memoirs of the least important writers 
 of the time of the Fronde, of any petty woman author 
 of the seventeenth century, in the memoirs of Mine 
 de Motteville, or in Mme de La Fayette's Histaire de 
 Madame Henriette, than in the whole Encyclopedia. 
 The reason for this fact is now perhaps plain. It is 
 that the Encyclopedists did not concern themselves 
 with the study either of man in general or of men 
 individually, but solely with the study of the "rela- 
 tions between men " ; and the exclusive study of the 
 " relations between men " speedily leads to the losing 
 sight of the diversity of nature by which men are dis- 
 tinguished from one another. Voltaire and d'Alembert 
 are examples in point. The former declares in dis- 
 paragement of Eacine that his Hippolytes and his 
 Achilles are all of them much alike [Cf. Le Temple du 
 
 de Warens et Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1891 ; of H. H. de Montel, 
 Mme de Warens et le pays de Vaud, Lausanne, 1891. 
 
 Consult as well : Mme de Stael, Lettres sur les ouvrages et le 
 caractere de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1788; Villemain, Tableau 
 de la litterature francaise au XVIII' siecle, 1828-1840 ; Lord 
 Brougham, Voltaire and Rousseau, 1845 ; Louis Blanc, Revo- 
 lution franqaise, vol. ii., 1847 ; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, 
 vols. ii., iii., xv., 1850-1861 ; and Nouveaux lundis, vol. ix., 
 1864; Vinet, Litterature francaise au XVIII' siecle, 1853; 
 Ernest Bersot, Etudes sur le XVIII' siecle, 1855 ; Taine, Ancien 
 regime, 1875, and La Revolution, vol. ii., 1881 ; J. Texte, Jean- 
 Jacques Rousseau et les origines de cosmopolitisme litteraire, 
 Paris, 1895. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. 
 
 A. The character of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Of the absolute con- 
 formity between the writings and the character of Rousseau ; and 
 that his Emile and even his Nouvelle Helo'ise are in reality memoirs 
 and confessions in which the " romance " element is of the slightest ; 
 Eousseau's extraction ; his birth and education ; his adventurous 
 youth ; his precocious, varied and bitter experience of life. Rous- 
 seau's psychology : (1) The Plebeian ; and that this first feature of
 
 336 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 gout] , and the latter is astonished that Marivaux " was 
 so successful a dramatic writer, seeing that he is always 
 giving what is practically the same comedy under dif- 
 ferent titles" [Cf. Eloge de Marivaux]. In their eyes 
 the delicate, penetrating and subtle psychology of these 
 authors is so much " metaphysics," which amounts to 
 saying that it is little better than gibberish. They are 
 blind to the fine distinctions between the characters. 
 When they do not perceive a distinction they deny its 
 existence without further scruple, while if they happen 
 to detect one they dismiss it as mere " hair-splitting." 
 Who will be astonished, under these circumstances, that 
 there is no trace of psychology in Voltaire's tragedies, 
 in Semiramis, in the Orphelin, or in Tancrede ? that 
 there is still less, if possible, in those of his disciple 
 Marmontel ? in the Incas or in Belisaire ? and generally 
 
 his character accounts for : the innate simplicity of his tastes ; his 
 affectation of coarseness; the turbid and passionate nature of his style; 
 the violence of his hatreds ; the nature of his pride, which is the 
 pride of a self-taught or self-made man ; his contempt for cultured 
 wit, which he considers an aristocratic quality ; his incorrigible 
 optimism ; and finally the depth of some of his views. (2) His 
 sensitiveness ; and that this second feature of his character accounts 
 for : the ease with which the slightest pleasure or the slightest pain 
 makes an impression on him ; the quickness with which he gives 
 himself over entirely to the impression of the moment ; the per- 
 petual vibration of his style ; his habitual inability to control his 
 ideas ; the contradictions in which his work abounds ; and the early 
 weakness and final atrophy of his will. (3) The Madman, that is to 
 say " the neurasthenic and the lipamaniac " [Cf. Mobius, op. cit.~\ ; 
 and that this last characteristic accounts for : the incoherency of his 
 conduct ; the ease with which he took offence even at kindness 
 shown him ; his suspicion of everybody ; the suddenness of his 
 quarrels [Cf. Eug. Ritter, Nouvelles Beclierclies] ; his naive egoism ; 
 and the eccentricities of his later years. Importance of this last 
 feature ; if it was impossible that it should not manifest itself in 
 his works in the shape of a disposition to literary morbidness ; and
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 337 
 
 that the entire literature of the Encyclopedists, on account 
 of its philosophic trend, should be wanting in nothing so 
 much as in reality, substance, and life '? 
 
 Like exception must be taken to the language of the 
 Encyclopedists. Everybody is acquainted with Voltaire's 
 Commentary on Corneille, and is aware of the timidity of 
 taste to which the work bears instructive and melancholy 
 testimony ! In the opinion of d'Alembert, " the prefaces 
 of Racine are weakly written," and those of Corneille are 
 as " excellent as regards the matter as they are defective 
 in respect to the style " [Melanges litteraires, art. Elocu- 
 tion]. Condorcet, too, will complain a few years later 
 " of finding in the Provinciates too many familiar and 
 proverbial expressions, which appear at present to be 
 deficient in elevation" [Cf. Eloge de Pascal]. In reality, 
 in spite of their professed admiration for "the models," 
 
 if it thus comes about that what was perhaps, in more than one 
 respect, mere corruption ; has been taken for an innovation in 
 literature and art. 
 
 B. The Early Career of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The novels of 
 La Calprenede and Plutarch's Lives are his earliest reading. His 
 departure for Geneva and his life of adventure. The experience he 
 acquires in the servants' hall and while tramping the roads ; his 
 liaison with Mme de Warens ; his life at Charmettes, 1738-1741 ; 
 and, in this connection, of the novel Flaubert has entitled L' education 
 sentimentale. Rousseau at Lyons. His first stay in Paris, 1741 : 
 his system of musical notation ;- the beginning of his intercourse 
 with Grimm and Diderot. His stay in Venice, 1743-1744 [Cf. P. 
 Faugere in the Correspondant for June 10 and 25, 1888] ; and his 
 quarrel with his patron, M. de Montaigu. His return to Paris. He 
 remodels the Princesse de Navarre of Voltaire [Les Fetes de Bamire], 
 with whom he is brought into contact in consequence, 1745. He 
 becomes secretary to Mine Dupin, 1746 [Cf. Le Portefeuille de Mme 
 Dupin, edited by M. de Villeneuve-Guibert, Paris, 1884] ; the repre- 
 sentation of the Muses galantes, 1747. He makes the acquaintance 
 of Mme d'Epinay [Cf. Mme d'Epinay's Memoirs, L. Perey and 
 G. Maugras' edition, Paris, 1882 ; and Edmond Scherer, Madame 
 
 23
 
 338 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 they are convinced at bottom that the progress made 
 in the domain of thought owing to the action of the 
 philosophic spirit has extended insensibly to the art of 
 writing. And the fact is that the straightforward and 
 somewhat rugged but rich, unconstrained, familiar and 
 yet eloquent language of the past has undergone a 
 change with a view to the necessities of their propa- 
 ganda. There has been introduced, or rather they 
 have introduced, not indeed more order than existed in 
 the old language, but a different, an inverse order, an 
 order too that is very distinct from that which prevailed 
 at the beginning of the century, a genuinely " ency- 
 clopedic " order, algebraic instead of merely logical. 
 Words in their eyes have become mere conventional, 
 artificial, and arbitrary signs; sentences mere "multi- 
 nomials" to be "ordered" in accordance with certain 
 
 d'Epinay, in his Etudes, 1866] ; and, in this connection, of the 
 indulgence shown by the biographers of Mine d'Epinay. Rousseau 
 contributes to the Encyclopedia. The Dijon discourse, 1749 ; and 
 the conditions under which Rousseau wrote it [Cf. Rousseau's version 
 in his Confessions ; Diderot's in his Essai sur les regnes de Claude 
 et de Neron ; and those of Morellet and Marmontel in their Memoirs] . 
 Prodigious success of the Discourse, 1751 ; and that this success 
 must be attributed to a warmth of eloquence to which the public had 
 been unaccustomed for half a century ; to the unexpected assist- 
 ance furnished the enemies of the Encyclopedists by the Discourse ; 
 and to the conformity between its tendencies and the spirit of reaction 
 against the artificial character of the civilisation of the century, which 
 was beginning to show itself ; the preface to Narcisse, 1752 ; the 
 Devin du village, 1752 ; the article on Political Economy for the 
 Encyclopedia, 1755 ; the Discours sur Vorigine et les fondements 
 de rinegalite, 1755. Rousseau's journey to Geneva, and his recon- 
 version to Protestantism. -His return to Paris. He takes up his 
 residence at the Ermitage, 1756. The Lettre sur la Providence, 
 1756. Rousseau and Mme d'Houdetot, 1756-1758. Rousseau's early 
 dissensions with Grimm and Diderot. The article on Geneva in the 
 Encyclopedia, 1757. Rousseau replies to it by his Lettre sur les
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 339 
 
 rules ; while they regard style as merely the equation of 
 pure thought. Indeed, in their estimation progress con- 
 sisted in the impoverishing of the vocabulary, in imposing 
 a more rigorous syntax, in the abuse of " general terms," 
 and in the subordination of individual originality to the 
 exigences of the public. Condorcet has admitted as much 
 in so many words : " The necessity has been felt that a 
 literary style should be more elevated and more sustained 
 than the language of conversation. . . . Conversation 
 itself has adopted a nobler tone . . . and it may be that 
 we owe to conversation the advantage of possessing at this 
 period of our literature, he writes in 1776, a greater 
 number of men of letters who write with charm and ele- 
 gance " [Cf. Eloge de Pascal]. 
 
 The more attentively these facts are considered, the 
 more difficult it becomes to regard the formation or 
 
 spectacles, 1758. Marmontel's rejoinder. Rousseau's definite rupture 
 with the philosophic party. His new liaisons with the Marechale de 
 Luxembourg, the Comtesse de Boufflers, the Marquise de Crequi and 
 Mine de Verdelin. He takes up his residence at Montmorency, 1758. 
 C. Rousseau's Chief Works. (1) La Nouvelle Helo'ise, 1761 [Cf. 
 Lettres inedites de Rousseau a Marc-Michel Rey, Paris, 1858] . The 
 real sources of the novel ; the Swiss background [Cf . Jean-Jacques 
 Rousseau et le pays romand] ; Rousseau's passion for Mme 
 d'Houdetot [Cf. Lucien Brunei, La Nouvelle Helo'ise et Mme 
 d'Houdetot, Paris, 1888] . His imitation of Clarissa Harlowe ; 
 and of Marivaux' novels. The moral purpose of the book ; and 
 that, to judge it equitably, it is only necessary to compare it with the 
 salacious productions of the younger Crebillon. The novelty of the 
 surroundings in which the scene of the book is laid ; and that its 
 primary merit at the time of its issue was that it was not a " Parisian 
 novel " [Cf. the novels of Crebillon, Duclos, and Marivaux] . The 
 personages of the book belong not only to the middle classes, but to 
 the provinces ; though then: adventures are not the less tragic on 
 that account. The incidents are of a psychological order instead of 
 being incidents in the lives of the personages [Cf. the novels of Prevost 
 and Le Sage] . Further, the novel which had hitherto been looked
 
 340 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 development of the encyclopedic spirit as the natural 
 outcome of the classic spirit. One is tempted rather to 
 regard them as contrary to each other. If it were under 
 the influence of any general idea that the Encyclopedists 
 gathered round d'Alembert and Diderot in the room behind 
 Lebreton's bookshop or in the apartment of the Rue 
 Taranne, if their association were prompted by some defi- 
 nite design, their purpose was to change the trend of the 
 French genius ; and on the whole their efforts were crowned 
 with success. In art as in philosophy, in literature as 
 in morals, their attitude was just the contrary of that 
 of Corneille, Racine, Pascal, Bossuet, La Bruyere, and 
 Boileau. Their wish was to overthrow the ideal that had 
 formerly obtained ; and this being the case, of what im- 
 portance are some dozens of tragedies whose mediocre 
 authors imagined that their imitations of Andromaque 
 
 upon as an inferior branch of literature, is regarded by the author of 
 the Nouvelle Helo'ise as a vehicle of thought on a par with tragedy 
 itself ; and, in this connection, of the abuse of digressions in the 
 Nouvelle Helo'ise. Finally nature occupies less space in the work 
 than man ; but more space than had customarily been allotted it in 
 works of art ; and if the style of the book is not absolutely new, it 
 is widely different from the style of the period ; owing to the warmth 
 and movement that animate it ; owing to the imprint it bears of the 
 personality of the writer ; and finally owing to its tone, which is not 
 purely oratorical, but lyric as well. Divided opinion of the critics on 
 the Nouvelle Helo'ise [Cf. Voltaire, Lettres sur la Nouvelle Helo'ise, 
 Beuchot's edition, vol. xl. ; Freron, Annee litteraire, 1761, vol. ii. ; 
 Grimm, Correspondance litteraire, February, 1761] ; and success 
 of the novel among the general public [Cf. Rousseau, Confessions, 
 bk. xi.] . 
 
 (2) The Contrat social, 1762 [Cf. Lettres inedites cited above ; J. 
 Hornung, Les idees politiques de Rousseau, 1878 ; and Andre Lich- 
 tenberger, Le socialisme au XVIIP siecle, 1895] ; and that to appre- 
 ciate the work properly it must be borne in mind that Rousseau was 
 a plebeian ; a Protestant, who had been brought up to believe in 
 the sovereignty of the people ; and finally a native of G eneva. To
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 341 
 
 were improvements on the original ? It only remains to 
 add that the influence of the Encyclopedists was at once 
 aided and thwarted by another influence of which it is an 
 extremely delicate task to define the nature : I refer to 
 the influence of Rousseau ; and it is doubtful whether 
 there had been a more considerable or more revolutionary 
 influence since that exerted by Pascal. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Stultos facit fortuna quos vult perdere ! and in truth 
 it would be hard to explain the progress, the vogue 
 and, following a moment of uncertainty at the out- 
 
 what extent Rousseau's conception of the Social Contract was 
 influenced by the constitution of Geneva ; and how by taking an 
 ideal view of this constitution, it appeared to him as even more 
 tyrannical than it actually was. That the citizen of Geneva in the 
 eighteenth century was not to be envied. Rousseau's unconscious 
 Calvinism [Cf. Jurieu, Lettres pastorales ; and Bossuet, Avertissements 
 aux Protestants'] ; and, in this connection, of Calvin's fundamental 
 error in the domain of politics ; which consists in his having made a 
 confusion between the rights'of religion and those of the government ; 
 and in his having mixed up the object of government with that of 
 morality. The traces of Rousseau's plebeianism in the Contrat social; 
 and that they are seen more especially in his incapacity to understand 
 the social function of inequality. Rousseau's three dogmas ; universal 
 equality ; the sovereignty of the people ; the omnipotence of the 
 State. Individualism and Socialism; and how it has come about 
 that while some people regard Rousseau as a forefather of " revolu- 
 tionary socialism," others praise him " for having made the indepen- 
 dence of the individual the firm basis " of his philosophy [Cf. as regards 
 the numerous contradictions on this head, Lichtenberger's book referred 
 to above, pp. 129 and 130] . The explanation of these conflicting 
 views lies first of all in the fact that it has been overlooked that the 
 essential characteristics of his dialectics, or of his rhetoric, is the
 
 342 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 set, the rapid spread of the encyclopedic doctrine, 
 were we to overlook how this result was furthered to 
 the most regrettably imprudent or the most signally 
 foolish extent by all those whose interests the doctrine 
 threatened : by the very adversaries of the Encyclo- 
 pedia, by the Government, and in particular by the 
 salons, 
 
 Unmeasured praise has been bestowed on the famous 
 and vaunted salons of the century with which we are 
 dealing. While it has become the custom to expend 
 nothing but raillery on the ruelles of the preceding 
 century, and to adopt, in referring to them, the tone of 
 Moliere in his Precieuses ridicules or in his Femmes 
 savantes, we are all indulgence and complaisancy even at 
 the present day for the charmers who, like Mme de Tencin 
 or Mme d'Epinay, had the art to combine looseness of 
 
 giving eloquent expression to aggressive paradoxes ; whose conse- 
 quences he at once proceeds to attenuate ; hi the further fact that his 
 socialism is only a means to an end which is individualism ; and we 
 find the same contradiction exists for the same reason in the socialism 
 of the present day ; when Anarchists seemingly make common cause 
 with Collectivists ; although their respective ideals are utterly con- 
 tradictory ; and finally in the fact that Rousseau does not boggle at 
 contradicting himself ; if indeed it can be said that he even perceives 
 his self-contradictions. 
 
 (3) Emile, 1762 [Cf. Letlres inedites, cited above ; Jean-Jacques 
 Rousseau, ses amis et ses ennemis, vol. ii. ; and Gabriel Compayre, 
 Histoire des theories de V education en France, 1885] . Wide-spread 
 interest taken in educational matters towards 1760. That while it is 
 not easy to show the Contrat social to be the development of a single 
 master principle, a like task is still more difficult in i-espect to Emile ; 
 but Emile being the treatment from an ideal point of view of 
 Rousseau's experiences as a tutor, Rousseau's personality suffices to 
 give the book an appearance of unity. Of the imitation of Locke in 
 Emile [Cf. De VEducation des enfants, Paris, 1721] . The main 
 defect of Emile ; and that having formed the design of writing a 
 treatise on education, it is a pity that the author should have started
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 343 
 
 morals with philosophic pedantry. Indeed, we do not 
 esteem quite so highly Mme du Deffand, who was no friend 
 of the Encyclopedists, who even ventured to jest at their 
 expense in her correspondence, or the Marechale de 
 Luxembourg, who throughout kept them at a distance 
 and who, iri addition to her other delinquencies, chose 
 to protect Rousseau. On the other hand, what an 
 atmosphere of sympathy, not to say what a halo of 
 respect, surrounds the figures of Mile de Lespinasse, 
 of passionate memory, and Mme Geoffrin, that queen 
 among women of her rank ! However, since we have 
 not to thank them for food and lodging, since we do 
 not owe them such a debt of gratitude as did d'Alem- 
 bert and Marmontel, let us venture to say that the 
 role they played it being necessary to admit that they 
 did play a role was of disastrous effect. It was in the 
 
 by imagining a child without father or mother ; a rich child ; a 
 child without hereditary tendencies, temperament, or character, and 
 on the other hand a tutor who subordinates his whole life to that of 
 the child in question ; two suppositions that run equally counter to 
 natural and social reality. That apart from this reservation, the im- 
 portance of which cannot be exaggerated, there are three chief reasons 
 for the success of Emile : the high key in which the moral sentiment 
 is pitched in the book [Cf. in particular the Profession de foi du 
 Vicaire Savoyard] ; its ardent spiritualism, which afforded a welcome 
 contrast to the grovelling materialism of the Encyclopedia ; and the 
 entire confidence it displays in the possibility of moral progress result- 
 ing from education. Comparison in this respect between Emile and 
 Helvetius' work De I' Esprit ; and as to certain ideas common to 
 Helvetius and Rousseau. Emile, moreover, is Rousseau's literary 
 masterpiece ; it is less stilted than the Nouvelle Helo'ise ; more 
 supple and more varied than the Contrat social ; and though oratori- 
 cal, less declamatory than the Discours of 1751 and 1755. Of some of 
 the secondary ideas in Emile ; the suckling of children by their mothers 
 themselves ; the importance of physical education ; the usefulness 
 of a manual calling ; the advantages of what have since been termed 
 " object lessons " ; and that these secondary ideas did not contribute
 
 344 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 "talent factories" they severally kept that was forged 
 the reputation of so many literary mediocrities of the 
 stamp of Marmontel, Morellet, Thomas, and M. Suard. 
 They induced Europe and the world to believe that there 
 were no men of note in France beyond the few who 
 were to be met with at their table or in their salmi. 
 They are responsible for the practice of treating serious 
 questions wittily a manifest absurdity, since how is it 
 possible to treat wittily such questions as poverty, or the 
 future of science ? and trivial matters seriously. Their 
 flatteries encouraged men of letters to vie with one 
 another in paradox, while they were destructive of 
 genuine originality. "To energy they objected: 'You 
 display an exaggerated interest in persons and things ' ; 
 to depth : ' You make too great a demand on our time ' ; 
 to sensibility : ' You are too exclusive ' ; and finally to 
 
 less to the success of the book, than the general ideas which consti- 
 tute its framework, or the persecution of which it was to be the 
 object. 
 
 D. Rousseau's last years. Seizure, condemnation, and burning of 
 Emile in Paris (June 9th) ; in Geneva (June 19th) ; and in Holland 
 (June 23rd). Eousseau obliged to leave France, and expelled from 
 the territory of the Republic of Berne, takes up his residence in the 
 Val de Travers, where he stays from 1762 to 1765. He writes there 
 his Lettre a Varcheveque de Paris, 1763 ; his Prajet de constitution 
 pour la Corse [published for the first time in 1861] ; and his Lettres 
 de la Montagne, 1764. He is the object of fresh persecution on account 
 of this last work. Obliged in succession to quit the Val de Travers 
 [September, 1765] ; the He de Saint-Pierre [October, 1765] ; and 
 Switzerland ; he spends a few days in Paris ; and decides to take up 
 his residence in England, 1766. His sojourn at Wootton, 1766-1767 ; 
 his quarrel with Hume, and the slight interest that attaches to all 
 these incidents. H^s stays at Fleury ; at Trye ; at Grenoble ; at 
 Monquin ; and his return to Paris, 1770. His relations with Dusaulx, 
 Rulhiere and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. He gives readings of his 
 Confessions ; but is obliged to stop them owing to denunciations on 
 the part of his former friends ; and in particular of Mme d'Epinay.
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 345 
 
 intelligence: 'You are too individual a distinction.'' 
 Such, at least, is the judgment that has been passed on 
 them by a woman [Cf. Mme de Stae'l, De VAllemagne, 
 part i., chap, xi.j . But it is now understandable that 
 they should have been the precious auxiliaries of the 
 Encyclopedists. They may not have had a clearer insight 
 than had Diderot himself into his confused genius, and, 
 above all, they may not have gauged the signification of 
 the doctrine they elected to champion, but they made 
 Diderot and his doctrine the fashion, and procured them 
 the recognition of society. Thanks to them, it was con- 
 sidered "good form" to be a "philosopher" [Cf. Taine, 
 Ancien regime, book iv.]. And, we repeat, it is natural, 
 and even to their credit that the "philosophers" should 
 have repaid them with gratitude. On the other hand, 
 from our point of view the case is different, and if, for the 
 
 It is at this period that he becomes afflicted with the mania of perse- 
 cution from which he suffers almost without intermission for the rest 
 of his life. He writes his Considerations sur le gouvernement de 
 Pologne, 1772 ; Dialogues de Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, 1772 
 1776 ; and Reveries d"un promeneur solitaire, 1777. Singular cha- 
 racter of these last two works ; and novel character of the second. 
 Rousseau goes to reside at Ermenonville with the Marquis de Girar- 
 din ; his death, July 2, 1778. Did Rousseau commit suicide ? the 
 improbability of this supposition ; which has nevertheless given rise 
 to an entire literature. 
 
 E. Rousseau's influence ; and that during his lifetime his notoriety 
 was out of all proportion to the influence he exerted ; as if the 
 passionate interest aroused by his personality ; the strangeness of 
 his fortunes ; and the real charm he knew how to display when in 
 the humour; had diverted attention from, or masked the importance 
 of his fundamental ideas. A further reason is that the public did not 
 get to know him completely until after the publication of his 
 Confessions ; the issue of which did not begin until after his death ; 
 while their unique character shed an unexpected light on his 
 entire work. Are the Confessions the product of a healthy intelli- 
 gence ? That to justify doubts on this score it suffices to compare
 
 346 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 reasons which have been set forth, the intrinsic tendency 
 of the encyclopedic spirit was to make for the disorgani- 
 sation of literature, what grounds have we to congratulate 
 these women on their having chosen to sound the praises 
 of the Encyclopedia ? 
 
 The complicity of the government of Louis XV., 
 though less apparent, and in particular less loudly pro- 
 claimed than that of the salons, was not less real. The 
 fact has been insufficiently insisted on, important though 
 it is to take it into account. It was under the auspices 
 of Chancellor d'Aguesseau, and of d'Argenson, Minister 
 of War, that the Encyclopedia was launched. When 
 Diderot was imprisoned at Vincennes at the entreaty of 
 the scientist Reaumur, whose mistress he had libelled, 
 it was the booksellers who, in their capacity of pub- 
 lishers of the Encyclopedia, procured his liberation in 
 
 them with certain portions of Montaigne's Essays ; and in the 
 second place to consider them in connection with the Dialogues ; 
 a work whose every page bears striking testimony to the mental 
 disease of the writer ; and to compare them as well with the con- 
 fessions of Restif de la Bretonne, who has rightly been called 
 "the Rousseau of the gutter." In any case, however, few books 
 have produced a more considerable effect ; Rousseau's Confessions 
 seeming indeed to have given his ideas the prestige of a sort of 
 revelation. Of Rousseau's influence on the French Revolution [Cf. 
 the works of Maximilien Robespierre, Paris, 1840 ; Fichte's Con- 
 siderations sur la Revolution francaise ; Carlyle's Revolution ; and 
 Taine, Origines, etc., vols. i. and iii.] . Rousseau's infhience in the 
 domain of philosophy : on Kant [Cf. Diettrich, Kant et Rousseau, 
 1878 ; and D. Nolen, Les Maitres de Kant, in the Revue j)hiloso- 
 phique] ; and on Fichte. His influence on Jacobi and Schleier- 
 macher. Rousseau's literary influence [Cf. H. Hettner, Literatur- 
 geschichte des XVIII 6 Jahrhunderts, vol. i. ; Marc Monnier, Jean- 
 Jacques Rousseau jug e par les Genevois; and J. Texte, Jean-Jacques 
 Rousseau et le cosmopolitesme litteraire] ; on Goethe ; and, in this 
 connection, a comparison between Werther and the Nouvelle Helo'ise 
 [Cf. Erich Schmidt, Rousseau, Richardson et Goethe] ; on Schiller ;
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 347 
 
 order that he might devote himself to their enterprise. 
 M. de Malesherbes, the official entrusted with the control 
 of the booksellers, allowed the issue of the Encyclopedia 
 to continue, in spite of the decree of the king's council 
 in 1753 suspending its publication. In 1758, after the 
 definite condemnation of the work, he showed himself 
 more complaisant still, for "he consented to ensure the 
 safety of Diderot's manuscripts, by preserving them in 
 his own study " [Cf. Mme de Vandeul, Memoires sur la 
 vie de son pere]. The same condemnation did not pre- 
 vent d'Alembert's name remaining on the list of the 
 "royal censors," while it was doubtless for similar 
 reasons that, when Freron attacked the Encyclopedists in 
 his Annee litteraire, it was the Annee litteraire that was 
 suspended and Freron who was sent to the Bastille. Far 
 from being injured, indeed, by the suppression of its 
 
 on Byron, etc. His influence in France, and that, as will be seen in 
 the history of Romanticism, its most characteristic feature is that it 
 paved the way for the emancipation of the personality of the individual. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau may be 
 divided into three principal groups, clearly determined by the 
 corresponding periods of his life. It is of slight importance that the 
 precise dates of publication of the works in each group are not exactly 
 the same as the dates at which they were composed. 
 
 1734-1749. Narcisse, 1734; Le verger des Charmettes (in verse), 
 1739 ; Dissertation sur la mu^ique moderne and Projet concernant 
 de nouveaux signes pour la notation musicale, 1742 ; Les Muses 
 galantes (opera) 1743 ; L'allee de Silvie (inverse), 1747 ; L 'Engage- 
 ment temeraire (comedy in verse), 1747. 
 
 1751-1765. Discours sur les sciences et les arts, 1751 ; sundry 
 writings dealing with the refutations of this work, 1751-1752; 
 Lettre sur la musique francaise, 1753; Discours sur V Economic 
 politique, 1755 ; Discours sur Vorigine et les fondements de I'ine- 
 galite, 1755 ; Lettre sur les spectacles, 1758 ; La Nouvelle Heloise, 
 1760; Le Contrat social, Yl&l;Emile, 1762; Lettre a Varclie- 
 vequ* de Paris, 1763 ; Letlres de la Montagnc, 1764 ; Lettres sur la 
 legislation de la Corse, addressed to M. Buttafuoco, 1765.
 
 348 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 privilege, the Encyclopedia profited by the action of the 
 authorities, whose sole result was to make the work 
 independent of the approval of the censor. When M. 
 de Malesherbes resigned his post of supervisor of the 
 booksellers, Mme de Pompadour took the Encyclopedia 
 under her protection at the instigation of Quesnay, her 
 doctor, and when the Jesuits were expelled in 1762 she 
 shared the satisfaction of the philosophers. After her 
 death in 1764 she must have had a successor in the role 
 of protectress, since the last ten volumes of the Ency- 
 clopedia were freely circulated in Paris. 
 
 At the same time it must be admitted that the enemies 
 of the Encyclopedia, owing to their blundering attacks, the 
 weakness of their polemics, and their utter lack of talent, 
 were largely responsible for the admiring attitude of the 
 salons, and what may almost be described as the co-opera- 
 
 1765-1805. Dictionnaire de musique, 1767 ; Considerations sur 
 le gouvernement de Pologne, 1772 ; the Confessions (the six first 
 books) and the Reveries d'unpromeneur solitaire, 1782 ; Confessions 
 (the last six books) and the Dialogues, 1790 ; Lettres sur la Botanique, 
 1805. 
 
 To the above should be added a voluminous correspondence, only 
 about a half of which is contained in the five or six volumes devoted 
 to the Correspondance in the majority of editions ; the volume of 
 unpublished works issued by Streckeisen-Moultou, Paris, 1861 ; and 
 numerous fragments scattered through various publications. 
 
 The Neufchatel library possesses an important collection (Nos. 
 7,829 to 7,941) of Rousseau manuscripts, or manuscripts left behind 
 by Rousseau, from which there would doubtless be a certain amount 
 of information to be derived. 
 
 It follows from what has just been said, and although the editions 
 of the works are numerous, the best being Petitain's edition, 22 vols., 
 Paris, 1819-1822; and Musset-Pathay's edition, 23 vols., Paris, 1823- 
 1826, that there is no edition of Rousseau that can be regarded as 
 definite, or that is comparable with Kehl's [Decroix and Condorcet] 
 or Beuchot's editions of Voltaire. [Cf. for the bibliography of Rous- 
 seau, Querard, La France litteraire, vol. viii., pp. 192-230] .
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 349 
 
 tion of the Government in the enterprise. That the truth 
 does not shine by its own light, and that excellent causes 
 suffer grievously owing to their being ill defended, are un- 
 fortunately only too common occurrences. The Nouvelles 
 ecclesiastiques, the Jansenist organ, is a sample of the 
 efforts of the enemies of the Encyclopedia. The publica- 
 tion is as malevolent as possible, but also as insipid, the 
 writers in it being capable of little else than of branding 
 all the productions of the encyclopedic school as so much 
 "nonsense" and "rubbish." Freron, the editor of the 
 Annee litteraire, may not have been invariably wanting in 
 wit and good sense, and still less in courage, but it would 
 be difficult to imagine anything pettier, narrower, and 
 more superficial than his criticism ; while his bad reputa- 
 tion, whether justified or not, and this is not the point 
 here, made it impossible that weight should be attached 
 
 II. Michel-Jean Sedaine [Paris, 1719 ; f 1797, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Grimm, Correspondance litteraire ; Duels, 
 Notice sur Sedaine, 1797, to be found in vol. iii. of the 1826 
 edition of Ducis' works ; Mme de Vandeul's [Diderot's daughter] 
 Notice in vol. xvi. of Tourneux' edition of Grimm's Correspondence ; 
 Alfred de Vigny, De Mile Sedaine et de la propriete lilteraire, 
 1841 ; Jal, Dictionnaire critique, article SEDAINE. 
 
 2. THE DRAMATIC AUTHOR. The legend attaching to Sedaine [Cf. 
 Mme de Vandeul's notice] . His first literary efforts ; the Epitre a 
 mon habit, and the Recueil of 1752 ; Le Diable a quatre, 1758. 
 Sedaine writes in collaboration with Philidor ; Blaise le savetier, 
 1759 ; and with Monsigny : On ne s'avise jamais de tout, 1761 ; 
 Le Roi et le Fermier, 1762 ; Rose et Colas, 1764, etc. ; The trans- 
 formation of comic opera. He writes for the Theatre-Fran9ais, Le 
 Philosophe sans le savoir ; and that over-estimated little comedy, 
 La Gageure imprevue, 1768. 
 
 That the Philosophe sans le savoir is the realisation of the middle- 
 class drama as conceived by Diderot ; by reason of the nature of the 
 plot ; the social status of the personages ; the solemnness of their 
 conversation ; their preoccupation with morality ; and the unvary-
 
 350 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 to his utterances. Palissot was scarcely held in greater 
 esteem. In his comedy Les Philosophes (1760), the 
 utmost he could do -in the way of satire was to represent 
 Mme Geoffrin, under the name of Cydalise, as an 
 authoress Mme Geoffrin whose ignorance was so pro- 
 verbial that it was said of her that she reverenced it "as 
 the active and fruitful principle of her originality! " [Cf. 
 Garat, Memoires sur M. Suard, vol. i., bk. vi.]. Of another 
 work of Palissot, Petites lettres sur de grands philosophes, 
 La Bruyere might have said, as he declared of the Mer- 
 cure of his time, that it ranks " immediately after 
 nothing." This being the calibre of the adversaries of 
 the Encyclopedia, their thrusts failed to take effect. The 
 impotent lampoon of Moreau, the barrister, Memoir e pour 
 servir a I'histoire des cacouacs (1757), might raise a laugh 
 for a moment, though without its being very clear whether 
 
 ing vulgarity of the style. On the other hand, in connection with 
 the incident of the duel skilfully made to supervene just as a mar- 
 riage is being arranged, with the delicately drawn character of 
 Victorine [Cf. George Sand, Le mariage de Victorine] , and with the 
 sincerity of the author, the work offers almost all the qualities which 
 Diderot's dramas lack ; and in this way the honour belongs to 
 Sedaine of having been the first to construct a drama on really the 
 same lines as will be followed later by such writers as Scribe, Augier, 
 and Dumas. 
 
 Of some of Sedaine's other works ; and that their characteristic 
 is that they are " pleasing " ; but deficient in strength and humour ; 
 even more than in style ; and this in spite of the opinion of his 
 contemporaries. Moreover he doubtless owes much to the composers 
 who wrote the scores for his works ; and in particular to Gretry ; 
 whose music procured him his greatest success, Bichard Cceur-de- 
 Lion. 1874 ; and his admission to the Academy. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Sedaine is the author of a number of comic operas, 
 the principal of which we have mentioned ; of the Pliilosoplie ; of 
 the Gageure [based on the tale by Scarron which Moliere turned to 
 account in his Ecole des femmes] ; and of two long dramas, of a 
 more or less historical order : Raymond V., Comte de Toulouse, which
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 351 
 
 the laugh was at the expense of the author or of those he 
 was attacking. On the other hand, it was obvious that 
 none of these criticisms, whether in a serious or a jocose 
 vein, went to the root of the matter, or even came near 
 to doing so. In consequence, the reputation of the 
 Encyclopedists, who gloried as much in the inefficacy 
 of their adversaries' efforts as in their own talent, and the 
 fortunes of the Encyclopedia gained ground and acquired 
 additional strength and solidity owing to the very on- 
 slaughts of their enemies. 
 
 " It is precisely at this moment," writes Garat, " that 
 a voice which, though not young, was entirely unknown, 
 made itself heard, not from out of the deserts and the 
 forests, but from the very midst of these societies, acade- 
 mies, and philosophers, among which the many triumphs of 
 the intelligence were giving birth to such infinite hopes . . . 
 
 has been neither played nor printed ; and Maillard ou Paris sauve, 
 printed but never produced on the stage. 
 
 III. The Last Period of Voltaire's Life [1762-1778] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. [Cf. above : The First Period of Voltaire's 
 Life.] 
 
 The Potentate of Ferney ; and that there is no exaggeration in this 
 expression when one takes into consideration : the very situation of 
 Ferney [Cf. Correspondance, December 24, 1758] ; the footing on which 
 Voltaire stood both with the King of Prussia and the Empress of Eussia ; 
 his growing reputation ; and the sort of seal that is put on his fame 
 by his intervention in favour of Galas [Cf. Athanase Coquerel, Jean 
 Calas et safamille, 2nd edition, Paris, 1869] ; and of the Sirven family 
 [Cf. Canaille Rabaud, Etude historique sur Vavenement de la 
 tolerance, 2nd edition, Paris, 1891] . He at once takes advantage of 
 his exceptional situation to publish his Anecdotes sur Freron, 1761 ; 
 his Lettres sur la Nouvelle Helo'ise, 1761 ; his Eloge de Crebillon, 
 1762 ; and the Relation du voyage de Pompignan, 1763 ; writings 
 which are mere collections of insults directed against his various 
 adversaries. During the same period he is visited at Ferney by the 
 "philosophers " ; he continues to write tragedies, Olympic, 1762;
 
 352 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and appealing in the name of truth to the human race, the 
 voice brings an accusation against literature, the arts, the 
 sciences and society itself" [Cf. Garat, Memoires sur M. 
 Suard, vol. i., p. 164]. The author adds and the infor- 
 mation is precious "It was not, as has been stated, a 
 general scandal that was aroused ; the universal feeling 
 was one of admiration and, in a way, of terror." This 
 passage should be taken in connection with the follow- 
 ing lines from the Confessions : " Proud, daring, and 
 courageous, writes Rousseau, I displayed an unfailing 
 assurance that was the more steadfast because it was 
 unaffected, because it was rooted in my inmost being 
 rather than expressed in my attitude. The contempt 
 with which my profound meditation had inspired me for 
 the morals, maxims, and prejudices of my century made 
 me insensible to the scoffing of those who were imbued 
 
 tales, Jeannot et Colin, 1764 ; he composes his Philoso])hie de 
 I'histoire, 1765 ; his Dictionnaire ^thilosophique, 1765 [Cf. with 
 regard to the order in which the articles in the Dictionnaire were 
 written, Beuchot's edition, vol. xxvi., and Bengesco, vol. iii.] ; and 
 keeps up an immense correspondence. His intervention in connection 
 with the Chevalier de la Barre [Cf. Cruppi, L'Avocat Linguet, Paris, 
 1895 ; and Edouard Herz, Voltaire und die Strafreclitspflege, Stutt- 
 gart, 1887] ; and his Commentary on Beccaria's treatise on crimes 
 and penalties, 1766. He judges that the moment has come to make 
 a determined onslaught on Christianity ; and any expedient is good 
 enough for his purpose ; -encouraged as he is both by the instiga- 
 tions of Frederick, and by the entry into favour of Mme Du Barry, 
 1769. His Histoire du parlement regains him the favour of the autho- 
 rities. Publication of the Questions sur V Encyclopedic, 1770-1772. 
 His intervention in the Montbailly affair, 1770; the Morangies 
 affair, 1772 ; the Lally affair, 1773 [action for rehabilitation] ; in 
 the matter of the serfs of Saint-Claude, 1770-1777 ; and the way in 
 which the habitual indecency of his jests spoilt the effect of his efforts. 
 His relations with Turgot, 1776. Voltaire's last writings. His 
 Commentary on the Esprit des Lois and his last tilt against 
 Montesquieu. His last series of comments on Pascal's Pensees ;
 
 THE DEFOEMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 353 
 
 with them, and with my sentences I crushed their petty 
 witticisms as I would crush an insect between my 
 fingers " [Cf. Confessions, part ii., book 9, under the 
 date 1756]. Both Kousseau and Garat are in the right. 
 It was contempt for their "morals," their "prejudices," 
 and their " maxims " that brought about the violent 
 breach between Rousseau and his former friends the 
 philosophers. Alone and unaided he struck out a new 
 line ; and it is because they will perceive what he 
 is about, or rather because they will have an inkling 
 of it before they really perceive it, that the Marmontels 
 and the Morellets, the Grimms and the Diderots, 
 d'Alembert, the group of Baron d'Holbach and that 
 of Mme d'Epinay, that Voltaire himself after the Lettre 
 sur les spectacles (1758) which is the declaration of 
 war of " the citizen of Geneva " that they will all 
 
 and of the interest offered by a comparison between the last and the 
 first series; the two series being separated by an interval of fifty 
 years. The Dialogues d'EvJiemere and the Prix de la justice et de 
 Vhumanite, 1777. His efforts to obtain permission to return to Paris. 
 He leaves Ferney, February 5, 1778 ; and arrives in Paris on the 
 10th of the same month. 
 
 Voltaire's philosophy ; and that without desiring to exaggerate its 
 importance, it has greater significance ; but above all more cohesion 
 than is sometimes thought ; while its object only differs from that of 
 Montesquieu hi so far as the temperaments of the two writers are 
 different. Three mam ideas are met with in his Dictionnaire philo- 
 sophique as in his tragedies ; and again in Candide or the Ingenu no 
 less clearly than hi the Essai sur les m&urs ; of which the first 
 would be correctly described as respect for the BOOJaI_iastitution ; 
 were it not that owing to Voltaire's manner it is difficult to use the 
 word " respect " hi connection with him. The fact remains, however, 
 that his philosophy is a .social philosophy ; and there is justification 
 for the remark that he was "^conservative in everything except in 
 religion." Although he holds that men are decidedly sorry creatures 
 [Cf. Candide and the Histoire d'un bon Bramiri\ ; he considers that 
 " they can be taught to act reasonably as well as foolishly"; and 
 
 24
 
 354 MANUAL OF THE HISTOBY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 combine to form the most compact and implacable 
 coalition against him. 
 
 The futile question is still occasionally argued as to 
 whether Diderot or Rousseau was the first to " redis- 
 cover " that idea of " nature " against which the three or 
 four generations of writers and thinkers that preceded 
 them had fought so vigorously. Let it be conceded that 
 the merit belongs to Diderot, and let it be conceded as 
 well, since he himself lays claim to the honour, that he 
 had " laboured at " the early works of Rousseau. 
 Under these circumstances, Diderot would have done 
 well to explain how it was that none of his own works 
 produced the impression "of universal admiration and 
 terror" aroused by Rousseau's two first Discours. 
 Moreover, why does he not boast of having laboured 
 at Emile, the Contrat social, and the Lettres de la 
 
 that the object of civilisation is to turn this circumstance to account 
 [Cf. his He-marques sur les Pensees de Pascal] , and that society has 
 the same object [Cf. the A.B.C.] . It is his views on this subject that 
 bring him into conflict with Rousseau ; far more than the divergency 
 of their interests ; a fact which explains the violence of their disputes ; 
 Voltaire having always held that the possibility of men accomplishing 
 such progress as they are capable of lies in the very conditions which, 
 in Rousseau's eyes, are the cause of their " depravity." This idea 
 leads him to adopt another, in pursuance of which he violently attacks, 
 and unfortunately by any means he finds ready to hand, what in 
 his opinion is irrational or merely unreasonable in the organisation 
 of society ; hence his attacks on " justice," he himself having been 
 the victim of injustice ; his diatribes against war, which he ascribes 
 without hesitation or reflection to motives in every case low and 
 interested; hence, too, his attacks on religion, which he con- 
 siders inhuman, irrational, and " good enough for the common 
 herd" [Cf. Dieu et les hommes, the Examen de Mylord Baling - 
 broke, and a dozen other pamphlets] . On the other hand, as he 
 is Voltaire, as he is too clear-sighted, that is, not to be alive 
 to the value of religion as a " repressive principle," he believes 
 in the existence of a " rewarding and avenging God," a belief which
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 355 
 
 montagne? The truth is that Rousseau, when once 
 in possession of this idea of " nature," perceived all 
 its consequences, including those which had escaped 
 the too hasty and fuliginous imagination of Diderot ; 
 he made the idea his own, his very own property, 
 and at his epoch solely his property ; and vivifying 
 it with the ardour of his grudges, his hatreds, and his 
 pride, enriching it, so to speak, out of his own 
 substance, and communicating to it the fire of his elo- 
 quence and of his passion, he gave it an importance 
 and contagious properties with which it had not been 
 endowed previously. 
 
 Be it observed that Rousseau, by his mode of con- 
 trasting nature, not as Rabelais or Montaigne had 
 formerly done with the vices which dishonour it, but with 
 art itself, proclaimed, at his first appearance in the arena, 
 
 implies belief in the immortality of the soul ; in Providence ; and 
 generally in all that constitutes " natural religion " ; including trust 
 in the "God of honest folk"; a belief accompanied by the secret 
 conviction that this God looks with special favour on the friends of 
 enlightenment ; particularly when they write verse ; and compose 
 tragedies. 
 
 Voltaire did not perceive that there is no such thing as " natural 
 religion " ; any more than there is such a thing as " free necessity " 
 or " unvarying chance " ; " natural religion " being a contradiction in 
 terms ; all the truths that natural religion teaches having a source 
 outside itself ; and being merely a lay adaptation of the teachings of 
 some " revealed " religion. He also did not perceive that, if reason 
 be capable of arriving at some of the constituent truths of religion, 
 it is not the highest truths that may be thus arrived at ; and still 
 less the most efficacious ; and that a belief in a " rewarding and 
 avenging God " being incapable of serving as a principle and still less 
 as a motive of action, being only capable indeed of serving as a 
 motive for inaction, is an insufficient base for morality; which 
 thus becomes purely social ; and in consequence relative, diverse, 
 and changeable. Furthermore, in his coarse and insulting attacks on 
 Christianity, he was often unfair as well as unjust; for instance,
 
 356 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 not merely that all that had been accomplished for two 
 hundred and fifty years past in the way of treating 
 nature from an artistic standpoint had had its day, but 
 also that the effort itself was based on an initial error. 
 For more than two centuries writers had been on the 
 wrong road! There was nothing but "error and folly 
 in the doctrine of the wise men " of the Encyclopedia. 
 His contemporaries were engaged in thinning the growth 
 of prejudices, but without going to its root or even 
 perceiving it, so that how could it be supposed that it 
 would not put out fresh shoots from age to age? " Tell 
 us, oh ! celebrated Arouet, how many sturdy and virile 
 beauties you have sacrificed to our false delicacy?" 
 [Cf. Lettre sur les spectacles, and compare Nouvelle 
 Heloise, part ii., letters 14, 17, 21]. Admit, says 
 Rousseau in other words, that your art has impaired 
 
 when he refuses to admit the superiority of Christianity over 
 Mohammedanism or Paganism; although, from the purely his- 
 torical or human point of view, Christianity has changed the face of 
 the world ; and intolerance and " fanaticism " existed before the 
 advent of Christianity ; for it will not be maintained that it was their 
 proselytising ardour that pitted the Persians against the Greeks ; or 
 that the partisans of Marius and Sylla fell to butchering each other 
 over a question of dogma. What, however, he perceived less clearly 
 still, was that reason alone and unaided has never founded anything 
 really durable in the social domain ; if, indeed, it cannot be said that 
 it tends to anarchy rather than to union. The failure of reason in 
 this sphere had been firmly established by Bossuet and Pascal; 
 which is the reason why Voltaire attacked them so persistently, 
 without always understanding them. Possessing in an incom- 
 parable degree the gift of perceiving the superficial aspects of 
 great questions and the external resemblance between them, 
 Voltaire was deficient throughout in the meditative faculty ; he 
 never gave himself the time or prosecuted the studies required 
 for their adequate examination; and this is what good judges 
 mean, when they refuse him the title of philosopher or thinker, 
 and term his work " a chaos of clear ideas " [E. Faguet] .
 
 THE DEFOEMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 357 
 
 your genius by forcing you to make concessions which 
 your nature would certainly have led you to refuse. 
 You have given utterance, not to what you had 
 to say, but to what you believed would please your 
 contemporaries ; and not content with wishing to 
 please them, with a view to their satisfaction you have 
 imitated, you have submitted to be influenced by models 
 which were none of your choice, models which you suffered 
 should be forced on you. You were bent on obtaining the 
 approval of the public ! Born to be yourself, unique 
 perhaps of your kind, you have accepted the tyranny of 
 fashion, you have made it your glory to resemble others, 
 to resemble your entire generation. But if art in this 
 way, far from aiding your natural gifts, has hindered 
 their development, enslaved them, and finally perverted 
 them, what is the remedy for this evil, what is the lesson 
 
 Nevertheless his philosophy forms a connected system ; admitting 
 that few people are inclined to make a thorough examination of great 
 questions ; and that this very disposition of mind may be said to 
 constitute what is termed Voltaireanism. The attitude is common 
 enough ; and while it would be going too far to say that it is natural 
 to the French genius ; Frenchmen have always inclined to it in virtue 
 of a sort of intellectual Epicureanism. Voltaire's genius made hiru 
 the incarnation of this bent of mind ; and the secret of his influence 
 lies in the fact that he secured it recognition, thanks to the authority 
 he wielded by reason of his intellectual gifts ; his literary renown ; 
 and his social position. He dealt with all the ideas of his time [Cf. 
 Taine, Ancien Regime] ; and he summed up all or almost all of them 
 in " a portable form " ; expressing them in terms that were some- 
 tunes coarse ; but most often witty, ingenious, and humorous ; and 
 as a rule clear. He perceived the more superficial affinities between 
 them ; gave a sufficient exposition of their relations ; and connected 
 them with each other more or less satisfactorily ; so that his chief 
 merit lies in his having saved his readers the laborious effort that 
 attaches necessarily to the straining of the attention. His readers 
 enjoyed the illusion that they understood complex problems ; and on 
 finding themselves so intelligent they accorded him their admiration
 
 358 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 taught by your example ? The answer is that we should 
 return to nature, that we should conform ourselves to 
 nature; and by the mere assertion of this principle 
 especially in view of the arguments he adduces in favour 
 of its adoption Rousseau overthrows at one stroke the 
 long-standing authority of the established rules, the little 
 that survived of the power of tradition, and the rights to 
 which the community pretended over the sentiments of 
 the individual. 
 
 For our sentiments are we ourselves, or rather each of 
 us is only himself so far as he is entirely free to give 
 expression to his sentiments, and it is this very freedom 
 that constitutes nature : " We are all born capable of 
 experiencing sensations. ... As soon as we are con- 
 scious, so to speak, of our sensations, we are disposed to 
 regard with favour or to avoid the objects which produce 
 
 and affection. It was probably something of this sort that Goethe 
 meant when he termed Voltaire " the greatest writer that can be 
 imagined amongst the French " ; and, in this connection, that before 
 accepting the compliment, which perhaps is not without a trace of 
 envy, it must be well weighed ; and the question asked whether at 
 bottom it does not involve a somewhat contemptuous criticism, of 
 French literature and of the genius of the French race. 
 
 Voltaire's return to Paris and death, It only remains to recall 
 briefly the circumstances of Voltaire's last sojourn in Paris [Cf. 
 Desnoiresterres, Voltaire et la societe francaise, etc., vol. viii.J. 
 Arriving in Paris on February 10, he takes up his residence at 
 the Hotel de Bernieres ; where he is besieged at once by the 
 court and society ; the Academicians and the actors of the 
 Comedie Fran9aise ; the musical world and the philosophers ; 
 the old and the new world. Madame du Deffand writes: "People 
 follow him in the street and raise cries recalling his intervention 
 in favour of the Galas family"; and that there is perhaps some 
 exaggeration in this picture ; as indeed in most of the con- 
 temporary testimony, which takes a pleasure ha contrasting the 
 enthusiasm of society with the frigid attitude of the court [Cf. 
 Grimm, or rather Meister and La Harpe in their Correspondances
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 359 
 
 them. These dispositions acquire a wider range and be- 
 come strengthened . . . but they are more or less perverted 
 by the repressive influence of our habits. Before they 
 undergo this perversion they constitute what I call our 
 nature" [Emile i. 1]. What does this mean if not 
 that "nature" is as much in opposition with civilisa- 
 tion in general as with art in particular? Bousseau 
 indeed expressly states that such is his meaning : 
 " Everything is good as it leaves its Maker's hands, 
 everything degenerates in the hands of man. . . . Pre- 
 judices, authority, necessity, example, all the social 
 institutions in which we are submerged stifle nature in 
 us" [Emile i. 1]. In consequence, the aim of true educa- 
 tion will be to rid us of the prejudices which prevent 
 our nature developing in conformity with itself. "Men 
 in the natural order of things being all equal, their 
 
 litteraires] . The celebrations of the 30th of March : the sitting of 
 the Academy ; and the sixth performance of Irene. The crowning 
 of Voltaire. He takes steps with a view to fixing his residence in 
 Parif.. -His visit to the Masonic Lodge, the Neuf Sceurs. He is 
 invested with the apron of " brother Helvetius " ; which he " desires 
 to kiss before accepting it " [Cf. Desnoiresterres, vol. viii., pp. 305-307] . 
 The sitting of April 29th at the Academy of Sciences. Voltaire and 
 Franklin. The sitting of the French Academy of May 7th and the 
 scheme for an Historical Dictionary. Weariness, illness, and death 
 of Voltaire [May 30, 1778] . Tronchin's letter relating Voltaire's last 
 moments [Cf. Desnoiresterres, vol. viii., pp. 364-366] ; and whether 
 the construction that has been put upon it is justified. The legends 
 in circulation in connection with Voltaire's death ; and that it would 
 seem that they are legends and nothing more. 
 3. THE WORKS. Voltaire's works are composed of : 
 
 (1) His Poems, comprising a little of everything : an epic poem, the 
 Henriade, 1723, 1728 ; Odes, Epistles, Satires, Epigrams, Madrigals, 
 and Tales ; didactic or philosophic poems, such as : the Discours sur 
 rhomme, 1738, the Poeme sur la loi naturelle, the Poeme sur le desastre 
 de Lisbonne, 1756 ; translations ; and the Pucelle. 
 
 (2) His plays, which include : tragedies, of which the most cele-
 
 360 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 common vocation is to be men, and whoever is so 
 brought up as to fit him to be a man cannot be ill fitted 
 for the various vocations of men. . . . When he leaves 
 our hands our pupil will be neither magistrate, soldier, 
 nor priest; he will be primarily a man, and he will 
 be as capable as no matter who else of being whatever 
 a man may be called upon to be " [Emile i. 1]. Is it 
 necessary to point out that Rousseau is thus in direct 
 conflict with the former theory of education, according 
 to which the chief aim of the educator should be the 
 adaptation of man to society ; with the former system 
 of morality, whose principle was to substitute general 
 motives of action for the individual impulse given by the 
 instincts ; and with the former system of aesthetics, which 
 proclaimed that it was above all things imperative to 
 regard the faculty of sensation with suspicion, it being 
 
 brated are CEdipe, 1718 ; Zaire, 1732 ; Alzire, 1736 ; Mahomet, 1742 ; 
 Merope, 1743 ; Semiramis, 1748 ; the Orphelin de la Chine, 1755 ; 
 and Tancrede, 1760 ; comedies not one of which has escaped 
 oblivion, unless it be, for reasons that have nothing to do with 
 literature, the Ecossaise, 1760 ; and a few operas. 
 
 (3) His histories: Histoire de Charles XII., 1731; Le siecle de 
 Louis XIV., 1751-1752 ;Annales de V Empire, 1753-1754 ; the 
 Essai sur les Mceurs, 1756 ; Histoire de Russie, 1763 ; and his 
 Histoire du Parlement, 1769. 
 
 (4) His prose tales, the principal of which are : Zadig, 1747 ; 
 Micromegas, 1752 ; Candide, 1759 ; Jeannot et Colin, 1764 ; the 
 Ingenu, 1767 ; the Homme aux quarante ecus and the Princesse de 
 Babylone, 1768 ; the Oreilles du comte de Chesterfield, 1775. 
 
 (5) His Dictionnaire philosophique, 1764 ; and his Questions sur 
 V Encyclopedic, 1770-1772. In Kehl's and subsequent editions these 
 two works are combined into one and printed in alphabetical order. 
 
 (6) His Commentary on Corneille, 1764. 
 
 (7) His miscellaneous works, which, like his poems, contain a 
 little of everything: veritable works such as the Lettres anglaises, 
 1734 ; the Traite de Metaphysique, 1734 ; the Traite de la Tolerance, 
 1.763 ; and mere tracts of the length and nature of our newspaper
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 361 
 
 of all our faculties the most fluctuating and the most 
 variable. 
 
 There remains, however, a further point : since man 
 does not constitute the whole of nature, what are the 
 relations between nature and man ? What is man's 
 position in nature? After borrowing an idea from 
 Diderot, Rousseau now appropriates Buffon's main 
 idea, and proceeds to develop its most extreme con- 
 sequences. Nature is the cause of which we are the 
 effects. We are thus absolutely dependent on nature, 
 and in consequence we only become intelligible to our- 
 selves in proportion as we perceive the complexity of the 
 relations that exist between us and nature. Herein lies 
 the secret of happiness. " Nothing is so proper as a 
 favourable climate to make the passions which would 
 otherwise be the torment of man contribute to his 
 
 articles such as his skits on Lefranc de Pornpignan, les Car, les 
 Quand, les Si. 
 
 These miscellanea may be divided into scientific, philosophic, 
 historical, literary, and anti-religious writings. 
 
 (8) His Correspondence, consisting of more than 10,000 letters, 
 filling 20 volumes in Beuchot's and 18 in Moland's edition, while 
 even thus it is far from complete. New letters of Voltaire are con- 
 tinually being discovered. We ourselves are aware of the existence of 
 hundreds of unpublished letters, and when they have been printed 
 fresh ones will probably be discovered. Moreover, the wonderful 
 thing about these letters is that scarcely one .of them is wholly 
 insignificant, a fact which distinguishes them from Eousseau's 
 Letters, for example, and still more from Montesquieu's. We will go 
 further still and say that, if the correspondence of some few women 
 be excepted, or rather with the sole exception of the Letters of Mine 
 de Sevigne, Voltaire's Correspondence stands alone hi our literature, 
 while of his entire work it is the most living portion. 
 
 IV. The Economists. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Grimm, Correspondance litteraire ; Voltaire, 
 J-iliomme aux quarante ecus ; the Memoirs of Mme du Hausset, 
 Marinontel, and Morellet ; Galiani's Correspondence.
 
 362 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 felicity " [Nouvelle Helo'ise, part i., letter 23] ; and it 
 is nature and nature only that procured Rousseau 
 himself " some few moments of that perfect and 
 absolute happiness, which leaves the soul with no 
 void it feels the need of filling " [Cf. Letter to M. de 
 Malesherbes]. Let us, then, abandon ourselves to 
 nature, and henceforth, instead of priding ourselves on 
 dominating it, let us yield it a wise obedience. We 
 must not break, we must not try to break or even to 
 loosen, the bonds between us and nature. " Let us 
 plunge into its bosom," as a poet will shortly express 
 himself, and entrust it with the conduct of our destiny, 
 unhappy hitherto for no other reason than our passion for 
 shaping it in accordance with the dictates of reason. In 
 this way, after having emancipated the individual from 
 the tyranny of the community, and transferred to 
 
 Garat, Memoires sur la vie de M. Suard, Paris, 1820 ; Louis 
 Blanc, Histoire de la Revolution francaise, vol. i. ; Tocqueville, 
 L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution, 1856 ; Mastier, La philosophic 
 de Turgot, Paris, 1862; F. Cournot, Considerations sur la marche 
 des idees, etc., vol. ii., Paris, 1872 ; L. de Lornenie, Les Mirabeau, 
 vols. i. and ii., Paris, 1879 ; A. Neyrnarck, Turgot et ses doctrines, 
 1885 ; Leon Say, Turgot, 1887 ; Aug. Oncken's introduction to the 
 works of Quesnay, Paris, and Frankfort, 1888. 
 
 2. THE DOCTRINE. It is not the custom to accord the " Econo- 
 mists " a place in the history of French literature ; but this neglect 
 is a mistake ; since after all they write no worse than the majority 
 of the Encyclopedists ; since the best estimate of the book of 
 Helvetius is that we owe to Turgot [Cf. Correspondance inedite 
 de Turgot et de Condorcet, edited by M. Ch. Henry, Paris, 1882] ; 
 since one of the most interesting correspondences it is possible 
 to read is that between the Marquis de Mirabeau and Rousseau [Cf. 
 J. J. Rousseau ses amis et ses ennemis, Paris, 1865] ; and since the 
 Ami des hommes, 1756 ; or the Essai sur le despotisme de la Chine, 
 1767-1768, are among the works which in their tune made the most 
 noise and produced the most effect, and this quite rightly. 
 
 The founder of the doctrine : Frai^ois Quesnay [Merey, 1694 ;
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 363 
 
 sensibility the rights of the intelligence itself, Rousseau 
 completes his work by laying down the principle that 
 man shall henceforth be regarded as a function of nature. 
 There could scarcely be an idea more contrary to 
 humanism, of which indeed it is the direct contradiction, 
 or in consequence an idea which must deal the classic 
 ideal a graver, a more mortal blow. 
 
 What was the attitude of contemporary opinion towards 
 all these novelties? and what reception did it accord them? 
 It greeted them with applause. Never, perhaps, has a 
 literary reputation been more speedily or more universally 
 established than that of Eousseau. Ten or a dozen years 
 sufficed to raise him as high in public esteem as even 
 Voltaire. Moreover, public opinion was mistaken neither 
 in its estimate of Rousseau nor in the reasons for its 
 estimate. In the Dijon Discours, in the Discours sur 
 
 f 1774, Paris] ; he begins life as a surgeon ; he is appointed doctor 
 in ordinary to the king ; and he enjoys the confidence of Mme de 
 Pompadour [Cf. Memoires de Mme du Hausset] ; his scientific 
 writings ; his first economic writings ; his articles on the farmers 
 of the taxes and on cereals in the Encyclopedia ; his friendship with 
 the Marquis de Mirabeau. 
 
 The enfant terrible of the party: Victor de Eiquetti, Marquis de 
 Mirabeau [Perthuis in Provence, 1715 ; \ 1789, Argenteuil] . His 
 boisterous youth, and his first campaign, 1734 ; his friendship with 
 Vauvenargues [Cf . vol. ii. of Gibert's edition of Vauvenargues] ; he 
 writes, in collaboration with Lefranc de Pompignan, the Voyage du 
 Languedoc, 1740-1746; his marriage, 1743; his brochure on the 
 utility of the provincial States-General, 1750. He publishes his Ami 
 des homrnes, 1756, a work which is the beginning of his friendship 
 with Quesnay. His work on the Theorie de I'Impot, 1760, procures 
 him the honour of imprisonment at Vincennes ; after which he is 
 exiled to his estate at Bignon. His return to Paris, and his first 
 Letter to Rousseau, 1766 ; his friendship with Turgot ; and the 
 triumph of the Economists. 
 
 The great man of the party : Anne-Robert- Jacques Turgot [Paris, 
 1727 ; f 1781, Paris] ; his extraction and his studies at the Sorbonne ;
 
 364 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 I' InegalitS, in the Lettre sur les spectacles, Rousseau's 
 contemporaries recognised the accents of an eloquence, 
 the secret of which, there was ground to fear, had been lost 
 in the course of the preceding fifty years. They felt that 
 the Nouvelle Heloise was athrill with an ardour of passion 
 of which they were fully conscious, although they them- 
 selves had ceased to be acquainted with it, that the drama 
 and the novel of the time offered them but an inadequate 
 and sorry parody. The women went into ecstacies over 
 the book and the author [Confessions, ii. 2] ; while the 
 men, for their part, were vaguely aware that the pages 
 of Emile, of the Lettre a I'archeveque de Paris, of the 
 Contrat social were eloquent of some ill-defined menace ! 
 The public, however, does not always understand what it 
 admires or even what it dreads ; and in reality Rousseau 
 was not understood by his contemporaries, because his 
 
 his career as a magistrate. He writes for the Encyclopedia [Cf. 
 the articles, Etymology, Existence, Expansibility, Fairs and Markets, 
 Endowments] . He is appointed Intendant at Limoges, 1761-1774 ; 
 his Ministry, 1774-1776. 
 
 From a general point of view the side which interests us the 
 Economists are distinguished from the Encyclopedists by three 
 essential characteristics : their belief in the laws of economics, which 
 they hold to be as " necessary " as the laws of physiology or of 
 physics; their opinion that these laws and a knowledge of them 
 are of more importance to civilisation and progress than progress in 
 the arts or hi letters ; and their conviction that the only way to 
 improve nature is to begin by submitting to it. Other differences 
 might be pointed out, for example : that they are " empirics " or 
 "utilitarians"; who consider that they affirm nothing that cannot 
 be demonstrated by facts; while the Encyclopedists are "theori- 
 cians " and "rationalists." Further they have a respect for 
 authority, which Diderot, d'Alembert, and their followers, and even 
 Voltaire, were in general without; a fact which explains the 
 favour shown them down to the fall of Turgot. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Of Quesnay : Essai physique sur I' economic 
 animate, 2nd edition, 1747 ; Maximes du go-uvemement economique
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 365 
 
 readers were people of fashion, the frequenters of the 
 salons he attacks, and being people of fashion, after the 
 passing emotion caused them by this citizen of Geneva, 
 their attention is claimed and held by an endless variety 
 of other objects of distraction, curiosity, and discussion. 
 
 For example, have not the Jesuits just been expelled 
 and even suppressed indeed a "subject of conversation," 
 and as well a victory for philosophy ! Voltaire leaped for 
 joy at the measure, and d'Alembert regarded it as a 
 merited chastisement for the hostile attitude the Jesuits 
 had thought fit to adopt towards the Encyclopedia. 
 " Their diatribes in society and at court against the 
 Encyclopedia had stirred up against them a class of 
 men who are more to be feared than is often thought : 
 the men of letters " ; and it is incumbent to avoid making 
 enemies who, " enjoying the privilege of being read from 
 
 d'un royaume agricole, 1758; Le Droit naturel, 1765; Du Com- 
 merce, 1766 ; Le Despotisme de la Chine, 1767, 1768. 
 
 Of the Marquis de Mirabeau : L'Ami des hommes, 1756 ; and the 
 Theorie de I'lmpot, 1760. 
 
 Of Turgot : Reflexions sur la formation et la distribution des 
 richesses, 1716. This is almost the only work of Turgot's, apart from 
 his articles in the Encyclopedia, with which his contemporaries were 
 acquainted. Moreover, all or almost all his writings which figure in 
 his collected works (Eug. Daire's edition) were in reality mere rough 
 draughts, which owe most of their interest to the role played by their 
 author. 
 
 V. Pierre- Augustin Caron de Beaumarchis [Paris, 1732; 
 f 1799, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOUBCES. Gudin de la Brenellerie, Histoire de Beau- 
 marchais, 1801-1809? [first published by M. Maurice Tourneux 
 in 1888] ; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. vi., 1852; L. 
 de Lomenie, BeaumarcJiais et son temps, Paris, 1855 ; Jal, Diction- 
 naire critique, article BEAUMAECHAIS ; d'Arneth, Beaumarchais et 
 Sonnenfels, Vienna, 1868; Paul Huot, Beaumarchais en Alle- 
 magne, Paris, 1869; Clement de Koj'er, Les Memoires de Beau-
 
 one end of Europe to the other, are in a position to wreak 
 a signal and lasting vengeance with a stroke of the pen ! " 
 [Cf. d'Alembert, vol. ii., p. 48, edition of 1821 ; and 
 Diderot, Letter to Mile Volland, August 12, 1762]. Be 
 it said that it is not of himself or of Diderot that he speaks 
 in these terms, but of Voltaire. The beginning of the 
 incident of the Jesuits preceded the burning of Emile, 
 and the Galas incident occurred immediately after it. 
 Never has public emotion been more legitimately aroused 
 than on this latter occasion, if there be no example of a 
 more deplorable judicial error. "From one end of Europe 
 to the other" the expression is justified here the entire 
 magistracy is affected by the scandal, and the whole 
 system of French criminal law is put on its trial. Once 
 more it is Voltaire who leads the campaign, and his 
 TraiU de la toUrance (1763) does more to popularise 
 
 marchais, Paris, 1872 ; Bettelheim, Beaumarchais, eine Biographic, 
 Frankfort, 1886; E. Lintilhac, Beaumarchais et ses CEuvres, 
 d'apres des documents inedits, Paris, 1887 ; A. Hallays, Beau- 
 marchais, in the " Grands Ecrivains franais " series, Paris, 1897 ; 
 Henri Cordier, Bibliographic des ceuvres de Beaumarchais, Paris, 1883. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. Beaumarchais' extraction, family, 
 and early education; he begins life as a clock-maker. His first 
 quarrel with Lapaute, 1753-1755. He is appointed teacher of the 
 harp to the daughters of Louis XV., 1759. His duels and his success 
 with women. He makes the acquaintance of Paris-Duverney, 
 through whom he becomes mixed up in all sorts of financial affairs. 
 The Spanish adventure, 1764 [Cf. the fourth Memoire against 
 Goezman ; and Goethe's Clavijo] , His first literary efforts : Eugenie, 
 1767, and the Essai sur le genre dramatique serieux. Beaumarchais 
 as an unsuccessful imitator of Sedaine, and a faithful disciple of 
 Diderot. Of the value of Beaumarchais' main argument against 
 classic tragedy: "Of what concern to me . . . are the revolutions 
 of Athens and Eome ; " and that it has a social as well as a literary 
 significance. Beaumarchais' second drama : Les Deux amis, 1770. 
 
 The Goezman incident, and the Memoires, 1773-1774. Prompt 
 sensation they cause ; and sudden popularity of Beaumarchais.
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 367 
 
 his name in a single day than all the rest of his work 
 in half a century. The Parliament of Paris rejoins in 
 1765 by ordering his Dictiomiaire Philosophique to be 
 burned, but the odious legal procedure resorted to at 
 Abbeville and the punishment inflicted on the Chevalier 
 de la Barre again causes opinion to side with the 
 philosophers. Already victorious over the clergy, they 
 are now victorious over the magistracy [Cf. Felix 
 Rocquain, L' esprit revolutionnaire avant la Revolu- 
 tion, bk. vii., Paris, 3878]. To complete their triumph 
 it only remains for them to throw discredit on the 
 Government, and it happens that towards 1768 the 
 " Economists " seem to give them their opportunity. 
 The philosophers pretend to regard Turgot and his 
 companions as " extollers and upholders of despotic 
 authority " ; they reproach them with employing 
 
 Reasons for this success ; and that while they are in part political ; 
 they are also in part literary ; although the humour of the Memoires 
 is sometimes in doubtful taste ; their style is always on the verge of 
 being declamatory, and the matters they treat are of rather a 
 trumpery order. The Barbier de Seville, 1775 ; and how, while 
 turning to account in this work a subject that might be thought 
 worn out, Beaumarchais produced his masterpiece ; and the 
 masterpiece of the French comedy of the eighteenth century. The 
 success of the Barbier de Seville won definite recognition for prose 
 comedy ; and it is from the appearance of this piece onwards that 
 skill in the conduct of the plot ; dramatic action ; and daring and 
 vivacious dialogue become the essential characteristics of plays of 
 this order. Beaumarchais' political and commercial intervention in 
 American affairs, 1776, 1778. The qualities of the Barbier de Seville 
 are again met with in the Mariage de Figaro, 1783 ; though this lattei 
 work contains additional characteristics, of a kind less theatrical per- 
 haps, and as proper to the pamphlet as to comedy. The political 
 influence of the Mariage; and that it would doubtless have been 
 even greater than it was ; had not Beaumarchais, who was always 
 occupied with business speculations as well as with literature, had 
 the misfortune to fall foul of Mirabeau, 1786 ; and to intervene
 
 368 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 "apocalyptic and pious language," with being "enemies 
 of the Fine Arts " [Cf. Grimm, Correspondence, October, 
 1767]. Voltaire attacks them in his Homme aux quarante 
 ecus, which, although not one of his best skits, is never- 
 theless a success, its title passing into a proverb. And 
 thus, thanks to the patriarch of Ferney, the Economists 
 too, vanquished and discontented, are kept in check for a 
 time. 
 
 We say "thanks to the patriarch " advisedly, for the truth 
 is that the various incidents just referred to would scarcely 
 belong to the history of literature, were it not for Vol- 
 taire's intervention in them, and in particular for the fact 
 that the place he occupies in the history of his century is 
 due to this very intervention. It is because he inter- 
 vened in the question of the " nett product " and in that 
 of " legal despotism" that he is Voltaire ; and he would 
 
 (1787) in the trial of Kornmann and his wife ; on which occasion the 
 counsel Bergasse handled him as severely as he himself had handled 
 Goezman twelve years previously; for different reasons indeed, 
 but with an equal appearance of justice ; and amid like applause. 
 
 Beaumarchais' last years. His opera Tarare, 1787. Obscurity of 
 his role during the revolution ; his drama La Mere coiipable, 1792. 
 Although rich and already sixty years of age, his passion for 
 speculation reasserts itself. His purchase of fire-arms [Cf. Lomenie, 
 vol. ii., p. 460] ; and, in this connection, of Beaumarchais' patriot- 
 ism; his arrest; his release and his Memoire a la Convention. 
 He is entrusted with a mission by the Committee of Public Safety, 
 while simultaneously the Paris Commune declares him a suspect and 
 an emigrant. His stay in Hamburg ; his return to France ; his 
 two letters on Voltaire and Jesus Christ, 1799 ; and his death. 
 
 3 . THE WORKS . B eaumar chais' principal works are mentioned abo ve, 
 and it will suffice to indicate as the best edition of his complete works 
 that issued by his friend Gudin, Paris, 1809, Collin [Cf. E. Foumier's 
 edition, Paris, 1876, Laplace and Sanchez] . 
 
 VI. The End of Tragedy, 1765-1795. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Grimm, Correspondance litteraire; Laharpe,
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 369 
 
 not be Voltaire if he had not undertaken the defence of 
 the Galas and of the Chevalier de la Barre. We are not 
 examining here the motives of a more or less political 
 order which prompted his intervention, and we do not 
 desire to analyse, as it were, his outburst of generosity. 
 We merely note that his real masterpiece was his life. 
 If his contemporaries admired him chiefly for his extra- 
 ordinary faculty of assimilation, combined with a not less 
 extraordinary facility of execution or expression, it is 
 certain that they admired these qualities the more, in pro- 
 portion as the objects in connection with which he turned 
 them to account were more numerous, more varied, and 
 more foreign in appearance to his interests or any con- 
 siderations of personal vanity. It is to be noted finally, 
 that while until 1760, or thereabouts, he had been but 
 one man of letters among unus ex multis from this 
 
 Correspondance litteraire ; Geoffrey, Cours de litterature drama- 
 lique ; Mgr. Lemercier, Cours analytique de litterature generate ; 
 Petitot, Repertoire du theatre francais, vols. v. and vi. ; and Supple- 
 ment, vol. i. ; Laharpe's, de Belloy's, Duels' and M. J. Chenier's 
 Prefaces and notes to their tragedies ; Saint-Surin's Notice in his 
 edition of Laharpe's works ; Carnpenon's Notice in his edition of 
 the posthumous works of Ducis ; Etienne and Martainville, Histoire 
 du theatre francais pendant la Revolution, Paris, 1881. 
 
 2. THE RIVALRY BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF TRAGEDY. 
 Voltaire's predominant and sovereign influence over the tragic drama 
 of his tune ; reasons of this influence ; and its consequences [Cf. 
 the Discours de reception de Ducis] . 
 
 Philosophic tragedy ; and its evolution in the direction of melo- 
 drama ; Laharpe's Melanie, 1770 ; and his Brames, 1783. The 
 dramas of Mercier [1740 ; f 1814] ; and the tragedies of Marie- 
 Joseph Chenier [1764 ; f 1811] : Charles IX., 1789 -Henri VIII., 
 1791 ; Jean Colas, 1791 ; Fenelon, 1793. Comparison between the 
 subject of Fenelon and that of Melanie ; and that these works must 
 not be regarded as imitations of Diderot's Religieuse, which was not 
 published until 1796. Definition of philosophic tragedy; and that 
 so far as it is confined " exclusively to the defence of some political, 
 
 25
 
 370 MANUAL OF THE HISTOBY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 date onwards he has become the man of his century and 
 the personage known to history. All these events, then, 
 which might seem to have nothing to do with the history 
 of literature, belong to it in consequence of the part he 
 played in them. They brought into existence the real 
 Voltaire ; they acquainted Voltaire with the nature of his 
 power, they raised him out of the ruck and put him on an 
 equality with the " dozen men " of whom Diderot declared 
 as late as 1762, that " without standing on tip-toe they 
 would still surpass him by a head " [Cf. Letter to Mile 
 Volland, August 12, 1762]. Furthermore they invested 
 him in the eyes of the nation with that universal, that 
 authoritative influence which, in spite of his efforts, had 
 hitherto been disputed or denied him ; and certain essen- 
 tial consequences were almost at once the outcome of the 
 unique, the predominant, the almost sovereign situation 
 which events had procured him. 
 
 religious, or moral thesis " [Cf. Laharpe, Works, vol. ii., p. 639], 
 it is the very opposite of tragedy, and of drama. 
 
 National tragedy ; and that it is again Voltaire who with his 
 Hcnriade and his Zaire, is found to be the originator of "national 
 tragedy," that is of tragedy based on the history of France ; and 
 principally intended to familiarise the spectators with that history. 
 De Belloy's very successful pieces : Le siege de Calais, 1765 ; 
 Gaston el Bayard, 1771 ; Gabrielle de Vergy, 1777 ; and that the 
 object of these tragedies is scarcely dramatic ; but rather didactic. 
 [Cf. the Prefaces of de Belloy himself in Petitot's Repertoire, vol. v.] 
 
 Exotic tragedy ; and that in spite of what might be thought at 
 first sight, the conception from which it proceeds is akin to that 
 underlying " national tragedy " ; if its object be to make the theatre 
 a medium for the vulgarisation of geography and foreign history. ; 
 Lemierre's [1723 ; f 1793] Guillaume Tell and his Veuve du Malabar, 
 1766 and 1770. De Belloy's Pierre le Cruel, 1773, and Laharpe's 
 Menzicoff, 1775. Laharpe's Barmecides, 1778. Du Buisson's 
 Tliamas Kouli Khan, 1780. Marignie's Zora'i or Les Insulaires de la, 
 Nouvelle-Zelande, 1782 ; and that all these creations are inspired 
 by Voltaire's Alzire or his Orpliclin de la Chine.
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 371 
 
 During the closing years of the reign of Louis XV., if 
 the religious question be excepted, a sort of appeasement 
 is seen to succeed the tumult and agitation of the pre- 
 ceding period. The conflicting parties are not reconciled, 
 but they agree at least to a truce. The Sorbonne may 
 censure Marmontel's Belisaire, "but neither the court nor 
 the parliament interferes in the matter ; the author is 
 merely recommended to keep silent"; the printing of 
 Belisaire is proceeded with, and the work is on sale 
 bearing the king's privilege [Cf. Marmontel's Memoirs, 
 bk. viii.]. The encyclopedic doctrine is circumscribed by 
 its upholders themselves until it is nothing more than the 
 Deism of Voltaire. The Parliament condemns, indeed, 
 Baron d'Holbach's work, Le systeme de la nature (1770), 
 but it declines to insert in its decree the speech of the 
 Advocate General, Seguier, while it is Voltaire himself 
 
 Grceco-Roman tragedy ; and that it is astonishing that nothing of 
 value resulted from this effort to attain to historic truth ; and to 
 exactness of local colour. Lernierre's Hypermnestre, 1758, and his 
 Idomenee, 1764. Laharpe's Timoleon, 1764. Ducis' CEdipe cJiez 
 Admete, 1778. Laharpe's Philoctete, 1783, and his Coriolan, 1784. 
 N. Lemercier's Meleagre, 1788. Chenier's Ca'ius Gracchus, 1792 ; 
 Legouve's Epicharis, 1794. The reason that induced these writers to 
 give a preference to Greek subjects [Cf. below ANDRE CHKNIBR] ; and 
 whether this tendency should not be regarded as evidence of a formal 
 intention to fight against the English influence ; and to return, to 
 this end, to the most remote sources of Classicism ? 
 
 Shakespearean tragedy ; and of Campenon's significant eulogy of 
 Ducis [1733 ; f 1816] ; in whose favour he urges " that he has never 
 once been seen to go to the Greek tragic writers for his subjects." 
 Relative importance of the role of Ducis in this respect. His " adap- 
 tations " : Hamlet, 1769 ; Borneo et Juliette, 1772 ; Boi Lear, 1783 ; 
 Macbeth, 1784 ; Othello, 1792 ; and of Sedaine's curious remark 
 [letter to Ducis] : " The writer to whom Othello only suggested Zaire 
 neglected what is essential " in Shakespeare's play. Still it was the 
 author of Zaire who showed the way to the imitators and adapters of 
 Shakespeare ; and to Ducis in particular ; and if with the exception
 
 372 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 who undertakes to attack and refute the book. The 
 attitude of Voltaire is the same when De I'homme, a post- 
 humous work of Helvetius, appears in 1773. Rousseau, 
 who lives obscurely in his humble retreat in the Rue 
 Platriere, has ceased to attract attention. " It was his 
 wish to avoid men," writes La Harpe, " and men have 
 forgotten him." D'Alembert is translating Tacitus, and 
 Diderot is at work on his Essai sur les regnes de Claude et 
 de Neron. Grimm, who in 1768 predicted " a revolution 
 to be imminent and inevitable," declares in 1770 that 
 " public tranquillity has never been more assured." When 
 Chancellor Maupeou effects his coup d'etat against the 
 Parliaments in 1771, he is applauded by the men of 
 letters, who have become the supporters of the central 
 authority. In 1774, on the succession to the throne of 
 Louis XVI., the reconciliation of the Encyclopedists and 
 
 of philosophic tragedy [CL however, Victor Hugo's Preface to his 
 plays] ; all the other branches just referred to are those which will 
 be essayed before long by the Romanticists ; the latter, in conse- 
 quence, followed the initiative of Voltaire. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Nothing survives at the present day of the works 
 we have just been mentioning ; and still less of many other produc- 
 tions it would be easy to enumerate. For the curious, however, there 
 exist excellent editions of Lemierre (selected works), Paris, 1811, F. 
 Didot ; of Laharpe (complete works with the exception of the Lycee) 
 Paris, 1820-1821, Verdiere ; and of Ducis [complete works, 3 vols., 
 and posthumous works, 1 vol.] , Paris, 1826, Nepveu. 
 
 VII. Andre-Marie de Chenier [Constantinople, 1762 ; f Paris, 
 
 1794] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. H. de Latouche's Notice in the edition of 1819 ; 
 Saint-Beuve, Mathurin Regnier et Andre Chenier, 1829, in his 
 Tableau de la poesie franqaise au XVI e siecle ; Portraits lit- 
 teraires, 1839, vol. i. ; Portraits contemporains, 1844, vol. v. ; 
 Causeries du lundi, 1851, vol. iv. ; and Nouveaux lundis, vol. iii., 
 1862. A. Michiels, Histoire des Idees litteraires au XIX e siecle, 
 1843 ; Becq de Fouquiere's Notice in his edition of the works, 1862 ;
 
 THE DEFOEMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 373 
 
 the Economists is consummated by the simultaneous 
 presence in the Ministry of Malesherbes and Turgot. 
 The two parties are now at the head of affairs and 
 disposed to scoff at the younger generation, " which on 
 leaving college believes itself under the obligation of 
 teaching those in authority how to govern their States ! " 
 A curious movement comes into existence under cover 
 of this appeasement. The classic spirit concentrates its 
 forces and takes the offensive, as if about to deliver 
 a last battle before abandoning its dismantled strong- 
 hold. It essays what little strength it still possesses 
 against that " anglomania " whose "alarming progress" 
 it regards as an equal menace to " the gallantry of 
 the French, the culture of their society, their taste for 
 the toilette," and their literature. Voltaire writes : 
 " A few Frenchmen are setting up amongst us an effigy 
 
 and Documents nouveaux, Paris, 1875 ; G. L. de Chenier's Notices 
 and Notes in his edition of the works, Paris, 1874 ; Caro, La fin du 
 XVIIP siecle, vol. ii., 1880 ; Anatole France, La vie litteraire, 
 vol. i., 1888, and vol. ii., 1890; J. Haraszti, La poesie d 1 Andre 
 Chenier, translated from the Hungarian by the author, Paris, 1892 ; 
 Em. Faguet, XVIIP siecle; L. Bertrand, La fin du classicisme et le 
 retour a Vantique, Paris, 1897. 
 
 2. THE POET ; and that although his works did not appear until 
 after his death, this is the place to deal with them ; since a num- 
 ber of his contemporaries were acquainted with them in part ; and 
 even imitated them (Millevoye for example), and since their essential 
 features are characteristic of a renaissance of Classicism, of which 
 proof has survived in the shape of Caylus' Histoire de Vart, of 
 David's pictures ; and of Abbe Barthelemy's Voyage du jeune 
 Anarcharsis. There cannot, in consequence, be a greater error than 
 to regard Andre Chenier as a " forerunner of Romanticism." On the 
 contrary, it is proper to consider him not merely as a Boileau or a 
 Malherbe gifted with inspiration ; but as a Bonsard, who should 
 have read Voltaire, Montesquieu and Buffon ; Buffon more especially 
 perhaps ; and more modern than the original Konsard by two hundred 
 and fifty years.
 
 374 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 of the divinity of Shakespeare, just as another set of 
 imitators have recently erected a Yauxhall in Paris, or 
 as others have distinguished themselves by calling ' aloy 
 aux' 'roastbeef.' Formerly the court of Louis XIV. 
 helped to polish that of Charles II. ; nowadays, it is 
 London that rescues us from a state of barbarism." La 
 Harpe re-echoes his complaints in his Gorrespondance 
 litteraire. Translations from the Greek and Latin 
 abound, and are contrasted with versions of Shakespeare 
 and Ossian. The appearance in 1769 of Abbe Delille's 
 Georgiques was quite an event, Voltaire declaring the 
 work together, it is true, with Saint-Lambert's Saisons 
 and after the Art poetique "the best poem by which 
 France has been honoured." Four translations of the 
 Iliad and the Odyssey, two in verse and two in prose, 
 were issued between 1770 and 1789. Even archaeology 
 
 Chenier's Elegies, and that they are characteristic of their period 
 as regards their somewhat complicated phraseology ; their dedication 
 to a " Lycoris," a " Camille," or a " Fanny " ; the impersonal 
 character the poet is at pains to give them ; their sensuousness ; 
 and a sort of amorous ferocity that marks them, a ferocity that 
 points to the influence of the Liaisons dangereuses. Chenier's Elegies 
 are the work of a greater poet than those of the Chevalier de Parny, 
 but they are work of a kindred type [Cf. H. Potez, VElegie depuis 
 Parny jusqu'a Lamartine, Paris, 1898] ; for though doubtless more 
 Greek and Latin in their inspiration ; they nevertheless offer the 
 same characteristics ; when indeed they do not remind the reader 
 of P. J. [Gentil] Bernard ; and of the Abbe Delille : 
 
 Pourquoi vois-je languir ces vins abandonnes 
 Sous le liege tenace encore emprisonnes ? 
 
 The fragments of Hermes ; and that it is easy to trace the same 
 characteristics in them ; and to point out others which also belong 
 to the eighteenth century. Full of the ideas of Buffon, Andre 
 Chenier appears in this work as an enthusiastic interpreter of the 
 ideas of his time ; and already as the poet of the " struggle for life.'
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 375 
 
 and erudition, which had been so disdainfully handled in 
 the Preliminary Discourse of the Encyclopedia, come into 
 fashion again. A young writer declares, in the notes he 
 scribbles on the margin of his copy of Malherbe, that 
 " even when we depict modern scenes and characters, we 
 must learn how to delineate them by studying Homer, 
 Virgil, Plutarch, Tacitus, Sophocles, and ^Eschylus." 
 A little later he will write in verse: "Feast on the 
 seductive fare offered by the mighty writers of Greece, 
 but avoid the heavy intoxication of that spurious and 
 boisterous Permessus, where drink the harsh singers of 
 the nebulous North." Would Boileau himself have 
 given different advice ? 
 
 The reader will perhaps be surprised that in proof of 
 this renaissance of the classic spirit we should cite the 
 author of the Barbier de Seville and of the Mariage de 
 
 Like Voltaire and Condorcet he deals with the origin of religions ; 
 laying to their door most of the sufferings of humanity ; and accusing 
 the " priests " of having turned them to account in their own interest. 
 Finally in the third Canto he develops the doctrine of " transformed 
 sensation " ; proclaims the invincible tendency of man towards 
 " virtue and truth " ; and concludes by addressing a hymn to 
 " science " [Cf. Condorcet's Esquisse des progres de VEsprit 
 humain] . This is the pure philosophy of the Encyclopedists ; 
 and doubtless Chenier would have developed it otherwise than did 
 his friend Le Brun; but no philosophy is further removed not 
 merely from that of the Romanticists who are about to appear on 
 the scene ; but even from that of Rousseau. 
 
 Andre Chenier's Idylles ; and that without doubt it is not the 
 inspiration of Oaristys or of the Jeune Malade, that differs from 
 that of Hermes or of the Elegies ; at least if this latter inspiration 
 be taken as just defined. But as Andre Chenier is in immediate 
 touch with Greek literature ; and is in deep sympathy with Alex- 
 andrinism ; if not with the antiquity of Sophocles, Pindar, and 
 Homer ; by dint of imitating his models his verse has a strength 
 which the inconsistent, colourless verse of his rivals lacks ; but his 
 poetry is not on this account in contradiction with the ideas of his
 
 376 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Figaro? It is a fact that Beaumarchais is scarcely a 
 man of letters ; he is a man of business, and a man of 
 business whose transactions were often or even usually of 
 no very reputable order. Few, assuredly, of his contem- 
 poraries were less versed than he in the ancients, who were 
 quite unknown to the society he frequents. His case, 
 however, is only the more interesting on this account, 
 and his example the more significant. For so long 
 as he followed in the footsteps of Diderot and Sedaine 
 in his Eugenie (1716) of which he laid the scene in 
 England, and in the Deux amis (1770) he did but poor 
 work. However, after producing those Memoires, whose 
 spiritedness excited the jealousy of Voltaire and the work 
 indeed would be wholly in the classic tradition but f6r 
 its shortcomings in the matter of good taste and in par- 
 ticular of good manners it occurs to him to be the third 
 
 time. Or rather, while resembling his contemporaries in every other 
 respect, he is distinguished from them solely by a subtler intelligence 
 of that antiquity they have ceased to understand, and by the fact 
 that he combined their admiration for their own time, with an 
 artistic sense which finds utterance in the proverbial line : 
 
 Let us express new thoughts in verse such as the ancients wrote. 
 
 Moreover Chenier's doctrines are in entire conformity with the 
 character of his work, as is proved, by his protests against " Anglo- 
 mania" : " The English poets . . . sad as their ever cloud-girt sky, 
 swollen as the sea that washes their shores, sombre and heavy ; . . ." 
 and still more by the fourth of his Epitres addressed to Le Brun ; 
 or again by his Poeme de I' Invention ; the precepts in which are pre- 
 cisely those of Boileau ; but of a Boileau more emancipated, and in 
 particular more cultured, and perhaps, too, more " aristocratic " than 
 the real Boileau. Comparison in this respect between the Poeme de 
 V Invention and the Art poetique ; and the Defense et Illustration 
 de la Langue franqaise [Cf. in particular verses 299-390]. In 
 consequence, Ch&iier must in nowise be regarded as the " first of the 
 Romanticists," but on the contrary as the "last of the classic 
 writers." Had he lived, his influence would not perhaps have
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 377 
 
 writer to treat the subject dealt with in the Folies 
 amoureuses and the Ecole des femmes : the guardian of the 
 old comedy, duped by the eternal ingenue. He gives this 
 subject a Spanish background, the background of Le 
 Sage's stories and of Scarron's plays, and he produces the 
 Barbier de Seville (1775) in reading which we are re- 
 minded of Gil Bias. In 1783 he repeats his performance, 
 and the result is the Mariage de Figaro. And whether 
 Figaro be he, Beaumarchias, himself, drawn from the 
 life, with his utter absence of scruples and his fund 
 of gaiety, or, as some regard the character, a " fore- 
 runner of the Be volution," he is first of all and above 
 all the valet of old comedy, the last and most enter- 
 taining of the Frontins, the Crispins, and the Scapins. 
 Might we not declare, in other words, that directly 
 Beauniarchais followed in the footsteps or rather re- 
 
 absolutely modified the direction taken by literature ; owing to the 
 strength of the movement in progress ; but it is certainly in Chenier 
 that the disciples and literary imitators of Eousseau would have 
 found their most redoubtable adversary. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The works of Andre Chenier are composed of : 
 
 (1) his poetry, forming three principal divisions : the Idylls, the 
 Elegies, and the Poems or fragments of poems. Students of his 
 poetry ought to consult at least four editions : H. de Latouche's 
 edition, Paris, 1819 ; Becq de Fouquiere's edition, Paris, 1862, Char- 
 pentier ; G. de Chenier's edition, Paris, 1874, Lemerre ; and the last 
 edition issued by Becq de Fouquieres, Paris, 1888, Charpentier; 
 
 (2) his prose writings, all or almost all of which have to do with 
 politics ; and (3) of a somewhat brief but extremely important 
 Commentary on Malherbe, first published in 1842, in the standard 
 edition of Malherbe's works (Paris, Charpentier). 
 
 VII. Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon [Montbard, 1707 ; 
 f 1788, Paris.] 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Grimm, Correspondance litteraire ; Herault 
 de Sechelles, Voyage a Montbard, Paris, 1785 ; Vicq d'Azyr, Dis- 
 cours de reception, 1788 ; Condorcet, filoge de M. le Comte de Buffon,
 
 378 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 sumed the traditions of Regnard and Moliere he met 
 with the success he had in vain sought to achieve by 
 imitating Sedaine and Diderot ? And what is more 
 characteristic of the movement of which we are endeav- 
 ouring to determine the nature ? Apart from Voltaire's 
 last pamphlets and the concluding volumes of Buffon's 
 Histoire naturelle, which are " continuations," only two 
 "novelties" destined to survive appeared between 1775 
 and 1785, two comedies whose inspiration is certainly 
 " classic," whatever opinion be held with regard to their 
 qualities or their shortcomings. 
 
 Towards the same period, tragedy, like comedy, harks 
 back to its original sources of inspiration, though with 
 less happy results, in this sense that it has left us nothing, 
 I will not say comparable to the Barrier de Seville or the 
 Mariage de Figaro, but nothing that will bear reading 
 
 to be found in vol. iii. of Condorcet's complete works ; Cuvier, 
 Rapport historique sur les progres des sciences naturelles, Paris, 
 1810 ; Flourens, Histoire des travaux et des idees de Buffon, Paris, 
 1844 ; and Des manuscrits de Buffon, 1859. 
 
 Correspondance inedite de Buffon, edited by Henri Nadault de 
 Buffon, Paris, 1860. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. iv., 1851 ; vol. x., 1854 ; and 
 vol. xiv., 1860; Emile Montegut, Souvenirs de Bourgogne, 1874, 
 Paris ; F. Hemon, Eloge de Buffon, Paris, 1878 ; N. Michaut, 
 Eloge de Buffon, Paris, 1878; C. d'Haussonville, Le salon de Mme 
 NecJcer, Paris, 1882 ; Emile Faguet, XVIIP siecle, Paris, 1890; 
 De Lanessan's introduction to his edition of Buffon's works, 1884 ; 
 Eclm. Perrier, La Philosophic zoologique avant Darwin, Paris, 1884. 
 
 2. THE MAN OF SCIENCE AND THE PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 A. Buffon's early years. His birth and education. Dijon as an 
 intellectual centre during the first half of the eighteenth century 
 [Of. Th. Foisset, Le President de Brosses, 1842 ; and Em. de 
 Broglie, Les Portefeuilles du President Bouliier, 1896]. The 
 Angers duel, and Buffon's friendship with the Duke of Kingston 
 [Cf. Desnoiresterres, Epicuriens et Lettres au XVIIP siecle, 1879]. 
 Buffon's travels, 1730-1732 [Cf. his correspondence]. His first
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 379 
 
 at the present day. After having gone the round of the 
 universe, having sought for subjects in Mexico, Peru, 
 China, Malabar, and even in New Zealand, and having 
 explored every epoch of the national history in quest of 
 something new, tragedy at the finish returns to the 
 Greeks and Komans, and again offers us plays whose 
 heroes are Coriolanus and Virginia, Hypermnestra and 
 Philoctetes. It is admitted that the "simplicity of the 
 ancients is still capable of serving as a lesson to our 
 luxury, a word that may be fitly used, says Laharpe, 
 in connection with our tragedies, which we have made at 
 times somewhat too ornate." The same writer opines 
 that "our overweening delicacy, in its desire to ennoble 
 all it touches, may cause us to overlook the charm of 
 primitive nature " ; and he concludes that while it is 
 doubtless a mistake " to imitate the Greeks in everything, 
 
 Memoir to the Academy of Sciences ; he is appointed assistant to 
 the mechanical section of that body ; and his translation of Hale's 
 work on vegetable statics, 1735. He is appointed " Intendant of the 
 King's Garden," 1739 ; he devotes himself exclusively to natural 
 history ; and brings to bear on his studies the independent spirit 
 and wide curiosity characteristic of the men of his time ; the 
 qualities of his own well-balanced Burgundian temperament ; a 
 temperament not without analogies to that of Bossuet ; his genius 
 for assimilation ; his wealth of imagination ; and his elevated style. 
 The three first volumes of the Histoire naturelle. 
 
 Of Buffon's style ; and does it deserve the sharp criticism of 
 which it has been the object ; or the jokes in doubtful taste 
 that are still made at its expense ; on account of the occasional 
 occurrence in it of rather pompous sentences, or somewhat garish 
 touches ? Buffon's co-workers : Daubenton, Bexon, Gueneau de 
 Montbeillard ; and his method of correcting them [Cf. Flourens, 
 Manuscrits de Buffon}. On the other hand, his frigid treatment of 
 some of the great scenes he has described or imagined has also been 
 reproached him [Cf. Em. Montegut, Souvenirs de Bourgogne~\ ; 
 a fact that might tempt one to say that these criticisms counterbalance 
 or annul each other. It is more accurate, however, to say that they
 
 38BO 3UJKIML OOF THE IHUTMBIV DBF 
 
 siiwioilf ttfec natural! 3HnUimtu 
 
 . ttfeea eanatts na* nraraer rnBflfei ; ttiaa ttiatr . 
 IMS iin ttiMcr lieesi mite:" Of; . Hatiacgft, Obdirr 
 
 r. tiaa tra^dtyv -n rceoxnin^ to ii 
 
 : i'wr itfr- sficn^n^Bc rufflimfii rfae 
 
 idiicnKai^l 5E^^ 
 lirtrr cdii (jrtnibeain 'i& i3?ceBeoairt;. ii> ttice atinMtT eaaoto 
 XD ht fcmiwr <;caifflib8WBcn^rtifc rta^prA 
 
 odi ctici- llevnimiraa I-OE ;nitt- 
 aa ssep ftncttifir. . fear; . as iis ^reili liMmu; tiiey 
 n rrauiifc iiie ant: oar the Hftmaa: 
 . tiw; om tfas GBrEeite^ aawi B^aaaaai 
 
 On rfae rnreKPttmfr isanlticcr wniec;' .aR gsac; .aaiii the 
 -authojor. ' ij': ttiet rinui Qsaaeeoedtl oii' :iaic$icc feeding . 
 
 lUMf ml ...... >:r^bct;>^faa 3 UtfUac; soi^r 
 
 to fiil: rrtfawr liliil^ wfefc: vne, ,tuxriA eowset: -bett 
 
 fter 
 to 
 
 r*tumiar in 
 
 tiret fnatiiigo., UttlTMr. inanxxrer. COT 
 aeceesarr : HJO* rto . aaOBWHoif tJu.si' 
 
 HHBOB inoe> ^faajoi onsr JOCOABJO 
 
 o mcMM 
 
 -' : 
 
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 imn : trf: ina- ranik 
 TfTf I i film iMha irfTllii
 
 u, 
 
 further l^k Mill to the very beg' f <<| **!<< 
 
 refe* to Andre Chattier, id whom lton*nnl in 
 lie Mid to live again. The temptai ion i great t<, dwell M 
 length on Andr4 Clrfnier. but hi work id po*thutuouii, and 
 we can only -..M,.io r Mm here a* representative of the 
 toteUectti*! ^tMlwwiwi of hiti <inttn^inirt or of tmm of 
 hi oonkinpomri^. At \e**l we (^-n wiy thut his in<!pim- 
 tiofl, like Hurt of HonMird* WM purely Lutin nod Greek. 
 Like l{<nAnl. too. hut with olerer CHinwkniMieMP of 
 the r--ic.,i,c for hia choice, he ftppiiex! hiuinelf in prtieulr 
 to the imitation of the erotk? Latin writer* and of the 
 poet* of the Alexandrian school, Like Honaard, he held 
 that all beauty, all perfection w** wntained in the 
 fiMoterpKHx* of the ancient o. and in oonequemH>. like 
 Honsard. he belieted all invention, all genius even, to 
 in clothing hie thought in their immortaJ fonu 
 
 ttMte* * f**rih(t frwn "dotiMwUo" niinls k, "wild" 
 ite)in "wiW" <uiktMl9 k " wrniveroa " Miinml* : r frviu 
 to IM Ml* f gtt 44 C^nHwni; >d fwin tii OW 
 ***** ** ptwwding whkh Mitoitate It 
 erf tttfeu* to 
 
 ' v .. 
 
 . in UM tniiniita, erf ook>gi<il f(*ogrphT. ln pwt.. 
 l* trf tM. Nw World M* m4 tb* AMM M thow . ' 
 
 M ) , Kixni not th *M*. ili^jr tf ftilnpMij till 
 
 , To xp]in thvi* pbnototM be 
 
 ItM tto oih.r urtiy opwi to him tiiMi to n* rwourw to Uw 
 trf &fflft*< food. And the riruJry Mtrwn tlw diffmnt 
 to aMHbtito to tMtfeu* ii grtlr j-lnHiriiT thm he hud d ^- 
 
 (I ki i thii, period Umi hi* Wen* mort elowlv nwnnble wh* will one 
 i*y be the ide<m erf DwvteMl pH of the frt Umi b tf* 
 ponUnue* to rapfi flMtt betog jjj^ijli^ {& ^^^ 
 n**re [Of. hi nomefX'Utnr* of HKnikT] . FlnuJlr, between 1704 
 Ml 17W further new ideM otwir to him ^-whleh be oppow to thce
 
 382 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 Let us express new thoughts in verse such as the ancients wrote. 
 
 A Pagan like Konsard, as profoundly Pagan in his Idylles 
 as the author of the Hymnes and of the Sonnets a Cas- 
 sandre, he loved, he was affected by, he conceived nature 
 in the same way as Ronsard. Sensual and voluptuous as 
 Eonsard was, his melancholy, like that of Ronsard, scarcely 
 differed from that of the great Epicureans. And why 
 should it not be said that he was a completer Ronsard 
 than even Ronsard himself, if over and above Ronsard 
 he represents the reaction against Malherbe and the 
 protest of the subjective against the objective school ? 
 It is for these reasons, that if it had been possible to 
 resuscitate Classicism, the feat would doubtless have been 
 achieved by this son of a Grecian mother. But was the 
 resuscitation of Classicism possible ? 
 
 We do not think so, and for more reasons than one, 
 
 of Rousseau [Cf. vols. vi. and vii.] . He now has a greater mastery 
 of his subject. New views abound in his work. He writes the 
 Epoques de la nature ; and as he becomes more and more con- 
 vinced of man's insignificance in nature ; of the humbleness of our 
 position ; and of the irrevocableness of the laws to which we are 
 subjected ; he seems to set a higher value on society ; an attitude 
 that again brings him into agreement with the general ideas of his 
 contemporaries ; and with that religion of humanity with which they 
 were all of them imbued by this time. 
 
 C. Buff on 1 s influence. This is the place to examine what Buff on 
 taught his contemporaries ; and to begin with, from a purely literary 
 point of view, whether his Discours sur le style, which is merely 
 the speech he delivered on the occasion of his reception at the 
 Academy, is as important as it is sometimes held to be ? In any 
 case there are two passages in it that are ill understood and on which 
 a meaning almost the opposite of that intended is put : " The style 
 is the man " ; Buffon meant by this that since ideas belong to 
 nobody in particular, the expression we give them is our only means 
 of appropriating them ; and the passage in which he advises writers 
 to make use of none but " the most general terms." The most
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 383 
 
 the first being that it had existed for a hundred and fifty 
 years. Nothing human is eternal, and strive as it may to 
 render the eternal aspect of its subject matter, every 
 artistic ideal is subject to that decay which is the universal 
 law. In the second place, if Classicism as we have 
 shown, or at least as we have endeavoured to show was 
 the case owed its definite shape as much to social as to 
 literary considerations, it was inevitable that it should 
 perish as the result of the exaggeration of its own prin- 
 ciple, or in other words that it should follow the fortunes 
 of the society of which it was the expression. It is much 
 in the same way that the genius of the great masters 
 of Italian painting was unable to prevent their art ending 
 in the rhetoric of the Carracci, or, the world having 
 changed, to hinder their Humanism being supplanted by 
 Dutch naturalism. Finally, if French Classicism, as 
 represented in its masterpieces, had been nothing more, so 
 
 general terms are in nowise vague or abstract terms, but " non- 
 technical " terms ; and to say with Buffon that what is most 
 personal about an author is his manner of writing, does not for a 
 moment convey that an author's personality is absolutely reflected in 
 his style. There are writers whose character did not correspond to 
 their style ; and we have cited more than one example. 
 
 In the case of Buffon himself it was more especially his ideas that 
 influenced his contemporaries, or, more accurately, the consequences 
 of his ideas ; for nobody has done more than, or as much as Buffon, 
 to make us feel the insignificance of our planet ; and the boundless 
 immensity of the universe ; considerations whose outcome could not 
 fail to be the destruction of the very foundations of humanism, so 
 far as they were bound up with the supposition that man is nature's 
 masterpiece; and that the earth is the centre of the world. 
 Another consequence of the diffusion of Buffon's ideas ; and a 
 consequence almost more important, as tending to a revolution in 
 scientific methods, was to bring men to regard the natural instead 
 of the mathematical sciences as typical of science ; to substitute, 
 that is, the results of experience and observation for those of calcula- 
 tion and meditation ; a change of attitude which, while giving a
 
 384 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 to speak, than the imprint left by the French genius on 
 universal literature, it is inconceivable that it could have 
 avoided being driven back behind its own frontiers owing 
 to the very progress of that literature, and thus perishing 
 as the result of its own triumph. The generally accepted 
 ideal throughout Europe for a hundred and fifty years, 
 Classicism could only endure so long as this Europe 
 itself endured ; but this Europe passing away, it was 
 impossible that Classicism should not be transformed and 
 disorganised and at last disappear along with it. 
 
 The truth is, it is necessary to keep clearly in view 
 the fact that there was something contradictory in 
 the dream of Andre Chenier. To " express new 
 thoughts in verse such as the ancients wrote " is, 
 as he proves in his own person, an impossible feat, 
 for while in Oaristys or the Mendiant there are 
 assuredly lines in the manner of the ancients, what do 
 
 new and " biological " trend to human curiosity brought into existence 
 a new mode of thinking ; the effects of which have still to be 
 exhausted [Cf. Ernest Haeckel's History of Creation] . 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The mistake has been made in all editions of 
 Buffon, the first included [Paris, 1749-1804] , of endeavouring to 
 justify the title he himself chose for his great work, and to this end of 
 printing along with his own work, and mixed up with it, the work due 
 to those who continued his labours so as to form a " Complete Course 
 of Natural History." It is of importance in consequence to point 
 out what really belongs to Buffon in the 127 volumes of Sonnini's 
 edition, 1798-1807 ; or in the 90 volumes of the edition published 
 from 1752 to 1805 ; or in the 44 quarto volumes of the first edition. 
 It comprises : 
 
 The Theorie de la terre ; the Histoire de Vhomme and the 
 Histoire des quadrupedes, 15 vols. in 4to, written in collaboration 
 with Daubenton so far as regards the anatomical portion, 1749- 
 1767. 
 
 The Histoire des oiseaux, 9 vols. in 4to, in collaboration with the 
 Abbe Bexon and Gueneau de Montbeillard, 1770-1783. 
 
 The Epoques de la nature, 1778.
 
 THE DEFOKMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 385 
 
 these poems offer in the shape of " new thoughts " ? In 
 the same way, it is not for a writer who has ceased to 
 feel and think after the fashion of Corneille or Racine 
 to take their tragedies as his model : it is impossible 
 to acquire the secret of their manner, while neglecting 
 their fundamental ideas. That they attempted this im- 
 possibility was the cardinal mistake of the men who may 
 be termed the pseudo-Classicists of the revolutionary 
 period, Marie-Joseph Chenier, Gabriel Legouve, Nepo- 
 mucene Lemercier, and how many others besides, writers 
 who were not absolutely wanting either in talent or ideas, 
 and whose rhapsodies, nevertheless, were only surpassed, 
 as regards the mediocrity of their style and the abject 
 poverty of their matter, by the verbose eloquence of a 
 Robespierre or a Saint-Just than which, however, they 
 did less harm. And be it not said that literature " is 
 silent" in times of civil discord. The theatres and the 
 
 The Histoire cles mineraux, 5 vols. in 4to, in collaboration with 
 Andre Thouin, 1783-1788. 
 
 And finally seven volumes of Supplements, published, the two first 
 1774-1775, the third in 1776 ; the fourth in 1777, and the three 
 last 1782-1789. The best edition is M. de Lanessan's, Paris, 1884, Le 
 Vasseur. 
 
 II. Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet 
 
 [Ribemont, 1743 ; f 1794, Bourg-la-Eeine]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Condorcet's manuscripts preserved in the library 
 of the French Institute ; F. Arago's biography of Condorcet preced- 
 ing his edition of the works, Paris, 1847-1849 ; Sainte-Beuve, 
 Causeries da lundi, vol. iii., 1859 ; Charma, Condorcet, so, vie et ses 
 ceuvres, 1863 ; Ch. Henry, Correspondance inedite de Condorcet et 
 de Turgot, Paris, 1883 ; M. Gillet, L'utopie de Condorcet, Paris, 
 1883 ; F. Picavet, Les Ideologues, Paris, 1891 ; Dr. Eobinet, 
 Condorcet, sa vie et son ozuvre, Paris, 1895 ; Guillois, Madame de 
 Condorcet, Paris, 1896. 
 
 2. THE PHILOSOPHER ; and that it may be that he has not as yet been 
 impartially judged ; seeing that he is almost the only Encyclopedist, 
 
 26
 
 386 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 booksellers were as busy during the storm and stress of 
 the Revolution as were, of course, the orators. But with 
 an entire misapprehension of the diversity of successive 
 periods, and of the conditions to which eloquence and 
 literature are subject, the men of the time considered it 
 was possible to borrow the style of generations whose ideas 
 they had ceased to share, and held that masters, whose 
 supremacy was no longer acknowledged in the domain of 
 thought, might still be appealed to as guides in the art 
 of writing. It is found in consequence that the three 
 men Condorcet, Buffon, and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre 
 who continue to exert an influence on opinion during 
 the closing years of the century, the years of the slow 
 agony of classicism, have a single trait in common 
 they have broken resolutely with the past. 
 
 It has been said of Condorcet "that he was the superior 
 product of the civilisation of the eighteenth century," and 
 
 and even almost the only Girondin, proscribed though he was with the 
 rest of the party ; who has not benefited by a sort of amnesty that 
 is accorded the Encyclopedists on account of the persecutions they 
 never suffered [Of. above the articles dealing with the Encyclopedia] ; 
 and the Girondins because want of time did not allow of their show- 
 ing themselves in their true light [Cf. Edmond Eire, La legende des 
 Girondins]. Whether the explanation of the treatment the " Marquis 
 de Condorcet " has met with does not lie in the facts that he was un- 
 true to his birth ? that the amiable woman who bore his name 
 acquitted herself ill of the task of defending and keeping up his 
 memory [Cf. Guillois, Madame de Condorcet} '? and that while a 
 talented man in some respects, he was a foolish one in others. The 
 truth is a greater measure of fanaticism and of credulity ; even of 
 naivete ; have never been combined in one individual, nor has there 
 ever been a man who concealed in quite a natural manner less real 
 originality behind a more considerable fund of science and intelligence. 
 Still, and without any reference to his scientific labours proper, 
 his edition of the Pensees and his Panegyric of Pascal, 1776, together 
 with his great edition Voltaire, the edition known as Kehl's edition, 
 the promoter of which was Beaumarchais, are among the most
 
 THE DEFOKMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 387 
 
 beyond doubt he is the embodiment of what is best and 
 worst in the encyclopedic doctrine. He might also be 
 termed a fanatical Fontenelle were it not for the incon- 
 gruity of coupling fanaticism with the name of the author 
 of the Entretiens, A disciple of Voltaire, a very intimate 
 friend of Turgot, a member of the French Academy, 
 and perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences, 
 it will scarcely be held that his scientific labours bear 
 witness to any great originality or erudition ; while he 
 has never been esteemed a great writer. Still, even 
 to-day he exerts a potent influence on the lives of 
 Frenchmen, since the organisation of the national system 
 of education should be traced in reality to his Memoires 
 sur ^instruction publique, a work whose excellence 
 may best be appreciated by comparing it, for example, 
 with the writings of his friend Cabanis. Then he is the 
 author of the famous Esquisse d'une histoire desprogres de 
 
 interesting evidence that exists of the state of men's minds on the 
 eve of the French Revolution ; a fact which alone lends Condorcet 
 a considerable "representative" value. A further point is that his 
 influence is still felt in France ; since it was he in reality who 
 organised or inspired the French system of public education; 
 while to gauge the worth of his ideas on this matter it is sufficient 
 to compare them with those, for example, of his friend Cabanis. 
 The programme of studies followed in French schools at the present 
 day is conceived in the spirit of Condorcet 's views on education. 
 Finally his Esquisse d'une histoire des progres de V esprit humain ; 
 which does honour to his courage and to his strength, or 
 rather his serenity of character ; if he wrote it, as is said, when in 
 hourly expectation of being guillotined ; remains a work of capital 
 importance in the history of modern thought, European as well as 
 French, owing to the precision of outline, the wide diffusion, and the 
 strong impulsion it gave the idea of Progress. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Neglecting his scientific, economic, and political 
 works, which cannot be considered as belonging to the history of 
 literature owing to the absolute lack of any originality in their con- 
 tents and of any merit in their style, there only remain for mention :
 
 388 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 I 'esprit humain, of which it may be said that if other 
 books have expressed the idea of progress with greater 
 eloquence, few have done so with more persuasiveness. 
 His contemporaries were fully alive to the value of the 
 work, and the National Convention was well aware of 
 what it was about, when it decreed [April 2, 1795], on 
 the recommendation of Daunou, the " sage," that the 
 volume should be printed at the public expense and distri- 
 buted " throughout the territory of the Kepublic." It will 
 be admitted that if the progress of science be accepted, as 
 it was by Condorcet, as the measure of progress in general, 
 it is difficult not to be struck by the advance of human 
 knowledge. The religious veneration for science still 
 entertained at the present day was founded by Condor- 
 cet's Esquisse, which transmitted to posterity in portable 
 and handy form all the mingled error and truth con- 
 tained in the encyclopedic doctrine. 
 
 (1) His academical panegyrics (Eloges), some of which are very 
 nteresting ; (2) His Eloge de Blaise Pascal ; his Vie de M. Turgot ; 
 and his notes to Kehl's edition of Voltaire the majority of which 
 are reproduced in Beuchot's edition ; (3) His Esquisse d'une histoire 
 des progres de I 'esprit humain ; (4) His Memoires sur Vinstruction 
 p oblique ; and (5) His Correspondence. 
 
 The best, or it may be said the only, edition of Condorcet's works is 
 that edited by Arago, Paris, 1847-1849, Firinin-Didot. 
 
 X. Jacques-Henri Bernardin de-Saint-Pierre [Le Havre, 
 
 1737; t 1814, Eragny]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Airne Martin, Essai sur la vie et les ouvrages 
 de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, preceding his edition of the works, 
 Paris, 1818 and 1826 ; Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's correspondence, 
 edited by Akne Martin, together with the latter's Supplement aux 
 Memoires de so, vie, Paris, 1826 [In consulting this Supplement, 
 as in reading the Essai, it must be remembered that Airae^ Martin 
 married the widow of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre] ; Villemain, 
 Litterature francaise au XVIII* siecle ; Saint-Beuve, Portraits 
 litteraires, vol. i. ; Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire, vol. i. ; and
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 389 
 
 Buffon, by his Histoire naturelle, also aided in propa- 
 gating this veneration for science. The Encyclopedists 
 had been parsimonious in their praise of him, and not to 
 refer to the treatment he received at the hands of Grimm, 
 he is caricatured, and spitefully caricatured, in the 
 portraits the vapid Marmontel has left of him in his 
 Memoirs [Cf. Marmontel, Memoires, bk. vi.j . A new 
 generation, however, had already done him greater 
 justice. The Epoques de la nature, issued in 1778, raised 
 Buffon to the rank he merited. The Hermes of Andre 
 Chenier was inspired by the great naturalist, while 
 allowing that the Abbe Delille merely rendered him 
 ridiculous in his Trois Regnes, it is certain that such 
 was not the intention of the author. Moreover, it 
 was Buffon's good fortune that, having left his work 
 incompleted, it was continued by his assistants, by 
 Daubenton, Gueneau de Montbeillard, Lacepede and 
 
 Causeries du lundi, vol. vi. ; Arvede Barine, Bernardin de Saint- 
 Pierre, in the " Grands Ecrivains francais " series, Paris, 1891 ; 
 Fernand Maury, Etude sur la vie et les oeuvres de Bernardin de 
 Saint-Pierre, Paris, 1892. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. His family and education ; his 
 adventurous youth ; his travels in Germany, Holland, and Russia. 
 A favourite with women [Cf. Maury, Essai, etc.] . He goes to the 
 Mauritius in the capacity of colonial engineer, 1768. His return to 
 France, 1771 ; his quest of a wife, or rather of a dowry ; and his 
 friendship with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He publishes his Voyage a 
 Vile de France, 1773 ; a work which procures him admittance to 
 the society of Mile de Lespinasse, and of Mme Geoffrin ; where 
 he makes the acquaintance of " the philosophers " ; whose adversary 
 he promptly becomes owing to incompatibility of humour ; and also 
 because d'Alembert fails to induce Turgot to accord him a pension 
 and a post. He publishes the Etudes de la nature, 1784 ; and Paul et 
 Virginie, 1787. His role during the early years of the Revolution ; 
 his appointment as Intendant of the King's Garden, 1792. His 
 Memoir on the " necessity of adjoining a menagerie to the Horti- 
 cultural Garden." The reorganisation of the Museum causes the
 
 390 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 Lamarck, who were shortly to be followed by such 
 naturalists as Cuvier and Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire. He had 
 brought a new science into existence, the science of 
 organic life, and this fresh department of knowledge was 
 about to be enriched, was daily being enriched, by the 
 discussion of his bold theories as much as by his dis- 
 coveries themselves. But since these discoveries and 
 theories all tended to strip man not precisely of his rank 
 in nature where he continued to occupy the first place 
 but of the sovereignty he assigned himself in the 
 natural world, they could not fail sooner or later to 
 produce effects analogous to those which resulted from 
 Newton's discoveries, making of the earth, instead of the 
 "centre of the universe," merely one of the "small 
 planets " of a siderial system which is itself constituted 
 by an infinity of other planets [Cf. E. Haeckel's History 
 of Creation, chap. i. and ii.] 
 
 abolition of his post. He is appointed professor of ethics at the Ecole 
 Normale [Cf. as to the Ecole Normale, Picavet, Les ideologues, 
 Paris, 1891, and the Livre du Centenaire de V Ecole normale, Paris. 
 1895] . 
 
 Importance of Bemardin de Saint-Pierre's role in literature ; 
 and that he is eminently representative of three things : the first 
 attempts to introduce the exotic element into descriptive literature ; 
 the reaction of the champions of sentiment against the abuses of 
 nationalism ; and the transformation of the algebraic style into a con- 
 crete style instinct with life and colour. His accounts of his travels : 
 and how they widen the horizon opened up by Rousseau in his Nou- 
 velle Helo'ise. The descriptions in the Voyage a Vile de France, 1773, 
 and those in the Abbe Delille's Jardins, 1782. Opposition between 
 the two writers' manners ; and how Bernardin de Saint-Pierre supple- 
 ments and completes Buffon. Whether the principal merit of Paul 
 ei Virginie does not lie in the novelty of the background ; and what 
 would remain of the rather silly child's idyll, if it were stripped of 
 the seduction and charm of the descriptive passages that set it off 
 
 [Cf. Sainte-Beuve, Chateaubriand ef son groupe litferaire, vol. i., 
 
 eighth and ninth lessons] .
 
 THE DEFOEMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 391 
 
 Had Bernardin de Saint-Pierre a presentiment of some 
 of these consequences ? To-day he is solely remembered 
 by a brief novel, Paul et Virginie, which has caused the 
 shedding of more tears than the story of " Iphigenia offered 
 up in sacrifice in Aulis." This fate is inadequate to his 
 deserts. A sincere and appreciative moralist though 
 indeed an egoist, a schemer, ambitious of success and a 
 man whose gallantry has often a wheedling tone that is 
 unctuous and unpleasant Bernardin de Saint-Pierre is 
 an admirable writer. The delightful and brilliant hues, 
 or the delicate and nicely graduated tones with which he 
 lends variety to his descriptive passages one is tempted 
 to say to his "palette " in the Etudes de la nature are 
 too generally ignored. He aimed, too, at protesting 
 against the narrow rationalism of the Encyclopedists, 
 and, after his fashion, at preventing his contemporaries 
 abandoning all belief in God and still more in Provi- 
 
 The philosophy of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre ; and that it may 
 almost be said to begin and end with the idea of finality. His exag- 
 gerations on this head ; already in the Etudes ; but still more in 
 the Harmonies ; which it is true did not appear until after his death. 
 The cause of these exaggerations ; and that they are the outcome 
 at once of the author's intimate knowledge of nature, and of his 
 intention to counteract the philosophy of his century. How they 
 led Bernardin de Saint-Pierre to impeach the science of his time ; 
 to subordinate science to morality ; and morality itself to aesthetics. 
 That in this and several other respects Bernardin de Saint-Pierre 
 forms the connecting link between Chateaubriand and Eousseau ; 
 between the Genie du cJiristianisme and the Profession de foi du 
 vicaire Savoyard ; and between the renovation of the Christian idea 
 and the crisis undergone by sentimentalism in the second half of the 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 Moreover all three writers mark distinct stages in the renewal of 
 style ; and, in this connection, that it must not be forgotten that the 
 Etudes de la nature were written before the publication of the Con- 
 fessions and the Reveries du promeneur solitaire [Cf. Correspon- 
 dance, I. and II.] . Suppleness, precision, and colour of Bernardin de
 
 392 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 dence. It has to be confessed that the way in which 
 he set about this task is proof that he was not what 
 was termed in his time a " thinking head." His use 
 and abuse of final causes is only too notorious, while, 
 to speak plainly, his excessive sentimentalism lands him 
 in sheer silliness. His chief misfortune, however, was 
 to have been preceded by Rousseau and followed by 
 Chateaubriand. His entire work, so far as concerns the 
 thought that finds expression in it, or attempts to find 
 expression amid the overgrowth of verbiage, is a mere 
 development or amplification of the Lettre sur la Pro- 
 vidence. On the other hand, considered as a champion 
 of the rights of sentiment he is merely a forerunner of, 
 or is paving the way for, the author of the Genie du 
 ckristianisme. Similarly, while his style is neither as 
 sober, as vigorous, nor as eloquent as that of Rousseau, 
 it is without the brilliancy, the beauty, and the stately 
 
 Saint-Pierre's descriptive style. That it is the objects themselves 
 that he describes, and not at all, or to quite a secondary extent, 
 the feelings or moods the objects arouse in him. Freshness, 
 richness, and " technicality " of his vocabulary. Of the nature of his 
 picturesqueness ; and that it is more especially the result of a 
 faithfulness of imitation ; which obtains broad effects by processes 
 of the kind employed by the miniaturist. 
 
 Last years of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre; and that he furnishes 
 another good example of the writers whose character has been 
 strangely different to their style [Cf. P. Maury, Bernardin de Saint- 
 Pierre] . His lectures at the Ecole Normale, 1795 ; and his election 
 to the Institute ; he works at his Harmonies de la nature. His 
 Mart de Socrate [a fragment of the Harmonies] and his Memoire sur 
 la nature de la morale, 1798. His relations with Bonaparte and 
 Chateaubriand. His second marriage ; and the light which the 
 circumstances under which it was contracted throw upon his 
 character ; and how Aime Martin, his secretary, and the second 
 husband of his widow, has made of him the " respectable and 
 virtuous personage " he is populai-ly believed to have been. The 
 great edition of Paul et Virginie, 1806 [in 4to, Didot] ; and the
 
 THE DEFORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 398 
 
 measure of the style of Chateaubriand. His very life, 
 while it has something of the adventurous character of 
 the lives of Chateaubriand and Rousseau, lacks the psy- 
 chological interest that attaches to the existence of Rous- 
 seau, without possessing the public or almost political 
 interest offered by the career of Chateaubriand. Finally, 
 whether it be the fault of circumstances or his own 
 fault, it cannot be said of him that he either closed a 
 finishing or started a commencing period in the history 
 of literature. This honour belongs to Chateaubriand. 
 It is with Chateaubriand that a really new period begins, 
 and for once in history, by the greatest of hazards, it 
 happens that the opening of the new period coincides 
 with that of a new century. 
 
 preface " against the tyrants of literature and of common sense."- 
 His last controversies and his death. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's works comprise: 
 (1) his novels : Paul et Virginie, 1787 ; Arcadie, bk. i., 1788 ; the 
 Chaumiere indienne, 1790, followed by the Cafe de Surate ; Ernp- 
 sacl, the Priere d'Abraham, and the fragments of the Amazone 
 [posthumous, as are also the fragments of Arcadie, bks. ii. and iii.] . 
 
 (2) The Etudes de la nature, 1784, which resumed, developed, com- 
 pleted and exaggerated, form the Harmonies de la nature, first pub- 
 lished in 1815. 
 
 (3) Of his political works and a certain number of short writings, of 
 which the principal are : Les voeux d'un Solitaire, 1790 ; and the 
 Essai sur Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1820] . 
 
 (4) The Voyage a Vile de France, 1773, and a certain number of 
 notes or narratives of travel [Holland, Prussia, Poland, Russia] . 
 
 The best, though very imperfect, edition of the works is that of Aime 
 Martin in 12 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1826, Dupont, to which should be 
 adjoined the Correspondence, also very incomplete, in 4 vols., Paris, 
 1826, Ladvocat.
 
 BOOK III 
 MODERN TIMES 
 
 One of the first results of the waning of the classic 
 ideal was necessarily to emancipate " the individual," to 
 restore to him his natural independence, and to make of 
 him, in the words of the ancient philosopher or sophist, 
 "the measure of all things." The ego, formerly pro- 
 nounced " hateful," and as such kept in subordination, 
 
 THE AUTHOES AND THEIE WOEKS 
 FIRST PERIOD 
 
 From the Publication of the " Genie du Christianisme " 
 to the First Performance of the " Burgraves " 
 
 1802-1843 
 
 I. Frangois-Rene de Chateaubriand [Saint-Malo, 1768; 
 f 1848, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Marie- Joseph Chenier, Tableau de la litterature 
 francaise en 1810 ; Essai sur la vie et les ouvrages de Chateaubriand, 
 vol. i. of Pourrat's edition, Paris, 1838 ; Chateaubriand's Prefaces in 
 the same edition of his works ; and the Memoires d'outre-tombe, 
 Eire's edition, Paris, 1898. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. i., 1834 ; Chateau- 
 briand et son groupe litteraire, 1849 ; Causeries du lundi, vol. i., 
 1850 ; ii., 1850 and 1851 ; x., 1854 ; and Nouveaux lundis, vol. iii., 
 
 394
 
 MODERN TIMES 395 
 
 recovered its sovereign rank, and once more found in 
 itself its object, its adequate justification, and its final 
 cause. Such, as we have seen, were the views of the 
 author of the Confessions ; and the renown he had won 
 seemed to have proved the truth of his opinion. For the 
 originality for which he had been admired, for which he 
 had been feared, without its nature being very clearly dis- 
 cerned, what else was it, at least in the main, than his 
 contempt for fashionable conventions, than the jealous 
 care, the savage obstinacy with which he had avoided 
 being contaminated by current prejudices, than his violent 
 assertion of his personality in the face of these conven- 
 tions and these prejudices ? 
 
 If Eousseau, however, had been a mere impassioned 
 
 1862; A. Vinet, Mme de Stael et Chateaubriand, professorial lec- 
 tures delivered at Lausanne in 1844 ; A. Villemain, M. de Cha- 
 teaubriand, sa vie, ses ouvrages, et son influence, Paris, 1858 ; 
 De Marcellus, Chateaubriand et son temps, Paris, 1859 ; L. de 
 Lomenie, Esquisses biographiques et litteraires, 1849, 1861, 1862 ; 
 J. Danielo, Les conversations de M. de Chateaubriand, Paris, 1864 ; 
 H. de Bonder, Eloge de Chateaubriand, 1864 ; Em. Faguet, XIXe 
 siecle, Paris, 1887; De Lescure, Chateaubriand in the "Grands 
 Ecrivains fran9ais " series, 1892. 
 
 P. de Saman, Les enchantemens de Prudence, Paris, 1869 ; A. 
 France, Lucile de Chateaubriand, Paris, 1879 ; P. de Raynal, Les 
 eorrespondants de Joubert, Paris, 1883 ; A. Bardoux, Mme de Beau- 
 mont, Paris, 1884 ; Mme de Custine, Paris, 1888 ; and Mme de Duras, 
 Paris, 1898 ; G. Pailhes, Chateaubriand, sa femme et ses amis, 
 Paris, 1896 ; Rene Kerviler, Essai d'une bio -bibliographic de 
 Chateaubriand, Vannes, 1895. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WKITEK. His birth, education, and early 
 years ; and to what a slight extent they throw light on his char- 
 acter, seeing that Lesage, for example, and Duclos were of Breton 
 extraction, as he was ; that Maupertuis and Lamennais were born, 
 as he was, at Saint-Malo ; and that Bonald and de Maistre came, as 
 he did, of a good family. His sub-lieutenancy in the regiment of 
 Navarre, 1786 ; his presentation at court ; his first stay in Paris ; 
 and his departure for America, 1791. He returns to France, but at
 
 396 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 advocate of the theories of individualism, a mere " self- 
 exhibitor," so to speak, his cynicism would rather have 
 tended to estrange a certain proportion of his admirers and 
 in particular of his imitators. It must on no account be 
 overlooked that when the Confessions saw the light in 1782, 
 they aroused at first a general impression of disgust. " I 
 am astounded to think that I should have veritably wor- 
 shipped Rousseau," wrote Mme de Boufflers, " for it 
 seems to me that his Confessions might be the work of a 
 stable-man, or of some one of even lower rank" [Lettre 
 a Gustave III., May 1, 17821 . A few years later, after 
 the publication of the last six books of the Confessions, 
 Volney, who represents the opinion of a different circle, 
 urged the same objection against the work in plainer and 
 
 once joins the " Emigrants," 1792 ; and serves in Conde's army, 
 1792-1793. His years of hardship and privation ; his residence in 
 London ; and the Essai sur les Revolutions, 1797. The death of 
 his mother, 1798 ; and his conversion. He conceives the idea of his 
 Genie du cliristianisme. His return to France, 1800. Publication of 
 At ala, 1801 ; and of the Genie du cliristianisme, 1802. The second 
 edition of this latter work and its dedication : "To the First Consul, 
 Citizen." Chateaubriand is appointed Secretary to the Embassy at 
 Rome ; and French Minister in the Valais ; he resigns his post on 
 account of the execution of the Due d'Enghien. He commences the 
 Martyrs and goes on a journey to the East. Publication of the 
 Martyrs, 1809 ; and of the IHneraire de Paris a Jerusalem, 1811. 
 Elected a member of the Academy, 1811. The Emperor refuses to 
 approve the speech he was to have made at his reception by the 
 Academy, a circumstance which definitely converts him into an 
 irreconcilable enemy of Napoleon. His pamphlet, De Buonaparte 
 et des Bourbons, 1814 ; and how its success forced Chateaubriand 
 to abandon literature for politics. His literary work is now termi- 
 nated ; whatever additions he may make to its volume ; and after 
 the disappointments caused him by the Government of the Restora- 
 tion, his role will be confined during twenty-five years to observing 
 the effects of his influence ; which a poet [Th. Gautier, in his His- 
 toire du romantisme] has happily summarised by saying : that he 
 " restored the Gothic cathedral " ; " threw open to men the immen-
 
 MODERN TIMES 397 
 
 stronger terms. Writing in 1796, he deplores the fact 
 ' ' that the author of Emile, after having had so much to 
 say on the subject of nature, should not have imitated 
 the discretion of nature who, while exposing to view what 
 is so designed as to flatter the senses, has hidden in our 
 bowels and covered with a thick veil what threatened to 
 shock our delicacy " [Cf. Lemons d'histoire in vol. vi. of 
 Volney's works] . At the same time, however shameless 
 Eousseau may have been in his boastful exposure of his 
 shortcomings, it is nevertheless a fact that the citizen of 
 Geneva was a moralist ; and it was the moralist in him 
 that the philosophers more particularly disliked, but that 
 their adversaries especially esteemed, a circumstance which 
 explains how it comes about that Rousseau, by a crown- 
 
 sity of nature from which they had been shut off" ; and "invented 
 modern melancholy." 
 
 A. How Chateaubriand widened and renewed our feeling for 
 nature; on the one hand by giving the additional charm of splen- 
 dour of colouring to the still " monochrome " descriptions of 
 Rousseau ; by the way in which he expanded into frescoes the 
 "miniatures" of Bernardin de Saint- Pierre ; by the vivid reflection 
 of his own ardent personality he introduced into his descriptions ; 
 and on the other hand by the diversity of the scenery he sketched ; 
 now borrowing his material from the still virgin nature of North and 
 South America ; now bringing into sight the poetry of the calmer, 
 temperate nature of his own land ; now indulging in a melancholy, 
 a sadness, and a majesty worthy of the country round Rome. 
 Further he gave cornpleter expression than any of his predecessors 
 to the secret affinities that exist between nature and man ; to 
 relationships and " correspondences " ; which are themselves repre- 
 sentative of a relationship still more remote ; that between nature 
 and its Creator ; and here is perceived the bond of union in his 
 work between the feeling for nature and the religious sentiment. 
 
 B. Of the apologetic value of the " Genie du cliristianisme " ; and 
 that to estimate it, it is specially necessary to consider the work in 
 connection with the needs of its author's time. The desideratum at 
 the period in question was to " reinstall " the religious sentiment in 
 its rights ; while to counteract the philosophy of Voltaire, it was
 
 398 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITEEATURE 
 
 ing and most characteristic singularity, is at once the 
 man whose Contrat social was the gospel of Eobespierre 
 and Babeuf, and the man who is found to be the intel- 
 lectual ancestor of Mme de Stae'l and Chateaubriand. 
 
 At the same time we are far from asserting that Mme 
 de Stae'l or Chateaubriand refrained from imitating the 
 individualism of Rousseau. It would be hard to point 
 to more "personal" novels, to novels that is that more 
 strongly resemble confessions, than Rene, Delphine, or 
 Corinne. There were certainly fewer personal revelations 
 in the Nouvelle Helo'ise, and at a later date we shall not 
 find completer or more sincere confessions in Adolphe or 
 in Indiana. It is her own cause that Mme de Stae'l pleads 
 both in Delphine and in Corinne, while Chactas and 
 
 urgently necessary to define the role of Christianity in civilisation. 
 Chateaubriand accomplished this task by showing in his own way 
 that art and literature themselves as well as morality are indebted to 
 religion for " new beauties " ; and by showing what Christianity has 
 done in the way of awakening sentiments unknown to the ancients ; 
 and of procuring human nature satisfactions of a profound order. 
 Proceeding on these lines, he established three points, which, since 
 his time, have secured general adhesion ; the dissidents being con- 
 fined to some few freemasons ; the first point is that a believer is 
 not necessarily a fool or a knave ; the second that " Voltairianism " 
 is contrary to historical truth ; and the third, that supposing all 
 religions to be false, the reality of the " religious sentiment" would 
 still subsist. 
 
 C. Chateaubriand's influence on the development of the historical 
 sentiment ; and that to appreciate it, it is sufficient to compare the 
 Martyrs with Voltaire's Histories ; for whatever be the measure of 
 absolute truth offered by his Franks, his Gauls, his Eomans and his 
 Greeks ; and the point is open to discussion owing to the advance 
 in accuracy of modern research ; they do not resemble one another ; 
 a circumstance which distinguishes them from the Greeks and 
 Eomans of pseudo-classic tragedy. This amounts to saying that he 
 possessed the art of " individualising " historical epochs ; as he had 
 individualised natural scenes ; a side of his talent to which justice 
 is done by Augustin Thierry [Cf. below, the article AUGUSTIN
 
 MODEEN TIMES 399 
 
 Eudore as well as Rene were no other than Chateaubriand 
 himself in real life. The Memoires d'outre-tombe would 
 serve to remind us of this latter fact if we were tempted 
 to forget it, and in the case of Mme de Stael, who has 
 left no Memoirs, we have the evidence of Mme Necker 
 de Saussure [Cf. her Notice in vol. i. of Mme de StaeTs 
 works]. "Her object in writing was far more to give 
 expression to her feelings than to execute works of art " ; 
 or again : " Corinne represents an ideal Mme de Stael, 
 and Delphine, Mme de Stael as she really was in her 
 youth." In a word, Chateaubriand and Mme de Stael 
 were the creators of the novel that is at once psycho- 
 logical and lyric, of the novel whose effusions may 
 be said to be nothing more than the unrestrainable 
 
 THIERRY] . Of the importance of this innovation in art ; and how 
 by becoming the principle of what Romanticism will term local 
 colour; it contributed to the renovation of poetry; to the re- 
 novation of the mode of writing and conceiving history ; and even 
 to the renovation of criticism ; since traces of the influence of 
 Chateaubriand are to be detected in Villemain, Sainte-Beuve, and 
 Renan. 
 
 Chateaubriand's political career ; and that it is of slight interest as 
 regards its bearing on the history of ideas. Chateaubriand's political 
 writings and speeches added nothing to his glory ; while the articles 
 he wrote for the Journal des Debats between 1824 and 1830 did the 
 utmost harm to the monarchy of 1815 ; and to the cause of which their 
 author was the champion. Of the element of self-sufficiency which 
 he introduced into the literature of his time. The Memoires d'outre- 
 tombe; and that they do not differ in character from Rousseau's 
 Confessions ; but that they deal in places with more important 
 interests ; in appreciating which Chateaubriand has been guided in 
 general solely by his personal vanity. Whether the Memoires d'outre- 
 tombe are Chateaubriand's masterpiece ? and that while no doubt 
 they have not detracted from his renown as a writer, the rhetorician 
 is too often manifest in them beneath the poet ; and not only the 
 rhetorician but the actor ; while, a graver matter still, they invite 
 doubt as to the sincerity of their author's convictions. The last 
 years of Chateaubriand ; the Abbaye-au-Bois and Mme Recamier's
 
 400 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 outpourings of a personality which reveals itself in 
 giving vent to them. In spite of this, however, it 
 must not be overlooked that it was the moralist in 
 Rousseau who attracted the two writers, and his hold 
 over them was due to the possibility they thought 
 they saw of utilising his ethics as a basis on which 
 to reconstruct all the Revolution had ruined, to the 
 beginning or the promise of a new order of things they 
 fancied was contained in his works. It was because she 
 thought she had found a firm foundation for her hopes 
 of progress in the Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard, 
 that Mine de Stael, on the morrow of the Terror, wrote 
 an entire book with a view to proving " that reason 
 and philosophy were continually acquiring fresh vigour 
 
 circle. Publication of the Memoires d'outre-tomte, 1849 ; and the 
 controversies around the name of Chateaubriand that are the result. 
 Sainte-Beuve's book on Chateaubriand ; the caution with which 
 it must be read ; and that the judgment of posterity on Chateau- 
 briand has still to be pronounced. 
 
 3. THE WOKKS. Chateaubriand having supervised during his life- 
 time the issue of his Complete Works in 36 volumes, Paris, 1836-1839, 
 Pourrat ; we might confine ourselves to giving the contents of 
 the 36 volumes, were not the arrangement of the matter in them 
 really too arbitrary, and chronology too little respected. The 
 principal titles and dates that should be borne in mind are the 
 following : Essai sur les revolutions, London, 1797 ; Attala, 1801 ; 
 Le genie du Christianisme and Rene, 1802; Les Martyrs, ou le . 
 Triomphe de la religion chretienne, 1809 ; Itineraire de Paris a 
 Jerusalem, 1811; De Buonaparte et des Bourbons, 1814; Les 
 Natchez, 1826; Voyage en Amerique, 1827; Etudes Mstoriques, 
 1831. 
 
 The Cong res de Verone ; and the Vie de M. Ranee ; which are 
 not included in Pourrat's edition, were published respectively in 1838 
 and 1844. 
 
 Vols. xxvi. to xxxii. of the edition in question contain the miscel- 
 laneous political writings and the speeches, vols. xxxiii. and xxxiv. the 
 Essai sur la litterature anglaise, and vols. xxxv. and xxxvi. the 
 translation of Paradise Lost, 

 
 MODERN TIMES 401 
 
 amid the innumerable misfortunes of the human race." 
 Again, if the religious sentimentalism of Chateaubriand 
 had not been the outcome of his birth and education, he 
 too would have found in this same Profession de foi the 
 essence of his Genie du christianisme. 
 
 As proof that Chateaubriand and Mme de Stael were 
 logically as well as chronologically the descendants or 
 successors of Rousseau, the fact would suffice that at the 
 time of the appearance of La litterature (1800) and the 
 Genie du christianisme , the two works are indeed, to 
 start with, pronounced to be in opposition, and Fon- 
 tanes, although not as yet at the head of the Uni- 
 versity organised by Napoleon, rails somewhat bitterly 
 at Mme de Stael on the score of her chimerical, 
 
 II. Anne-Louise-G-ermaine Necker, Baroness de Stae'l- 
 Holstein [Paris, 1766 ; f 1817, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Notice sur les ecrits et le caractere de Mme de 
 Stael [by Mme Necker de Saussure] preceding the edition of the 
 Complete Works, Paris, 1820 ; 0. d'Haussonville, Le salon de Mme 
 Necker, Paris, 1882 ; Sainte-Beuve, Portraits de femmes, Mme de 
 Stael, 1835 ; Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire, 1849 ; and 
 Nouveaux lundis, vol. ii., 1862; A. Michiels, Histoire des Idees 
 litteraires au XIX e siecle, Paris, 1843 ; A. Vinet, Mme de Stael et 
 Chateaubriand ; Baudrillart, Eloge de Mme de Stael, 1850 ; G. 
 Merlet, Tableau de la litterature frangaise sous le premier Empire, 
 Paris, 1877 ; Lady Blennerhasset, Mme de Stael et son temps ; 
 Em. Faguet, Politiques et moralistes au XIX e siecle, Paris, 1891 ; 
 Albert Sorel, Madame de Stael, in the " Grands Ecrivains frangais " 
 series, Paris, 1890 ; G. Brandes, Die Hauptstromungen der Lite- 
 ratur des 19 Jahrhunderls, 5th edition, Leipsic, 1897. 
 
 Mme Lenormant, Madame de Stael et la grande-duchesse Louise, 
 Paris, 1862; Saint-Ben Taillandier, La Comtesse d' Albany, Paris, 
 1862 ; Dejob, Mme de Stael et V Italic, Paris, 1890. 
 
 2. THE ROLE OF MME DE STAfiL. Mme de Stael may be shown to 
 have had a threefold influence on the development of contemporary 
 ideas ; and, according to her own expression, her influence was 
 " European " or cosmopolitan, as befitted the birth of the daughter 
 
 27
 
 402 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 "indefinite perfectibility." He did not perceive that 
 perfectibility for the author of La litterature means 
 " moral perfectibility," of which she expected great things, 
 while she expected little or nothing from the progress of 
 science or philosophy. She does not quarrel for a 
 moment with science and philosophy, but she regards 
 them merely as means to an end which is the moral 
 amelioration of humanity. There are persons, however, 
 who are fully alive to what escaped the attention of 
 Fontanes, and they combine to a man against Mme de 
 Stael and Chateaubriand without troubling to draw fine 
 distinctions between the two, whom they even place on 
 occasion in the same category as Bernardin de Saint- 
 Pierre. But those who adopt this attitude are found to 
 
 of the Neckers. She rescued what was worth preserving of the spirit 
 of the eighteenth century; she reunited the "literatures of the 
 North " and the " literatures of the South " ; and she laid down the 
 principle of what is to-day known as the Feminist movement or 
 the movement in favour of Women's Eights. 
 
 A. The Lettres sur Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1788 ; and her work 
 La litterature, &c., 1800. In what respect these two books, although 
 the Revolution intervened between their publication, are the out- 
 come of the same inspiration ; and are conceived in the spirit of 
 the eighteenth century as regards the confidence they exhibit in 
 the power of reason ; in the adequacy of natural religion ; and in 
 the indefinite perfectibility of the human race. Originality of the 
 volume La litterature ; and the abundance of its author's " views " ; 
 which are always intelligent, often ingenious, and sometimes pro- 
 found. Theory of the distinction between the literatures of the North 
 and the South ; and that it is a fruitful theory. 
 
 B. Her book De I'Allemagne ; and of the progress it indicates in 
 the development of its author's ideas. Her eyes opened by the 
 objections of Fontanes and Chateaubriand to her book la Litterature; 
 enlightened by a wider experience of life ; having visited Italy and 
 undergone its charm ; and in turn restrained or stimulated by the 
 conversation of the visitors to Coppet ; Mme de Stael does not 
 abandon her early ideas ; on the contrary, in a certain sense, her 
 estimate of the literature of the North is too favourable ; conceived
 
 MODERN TIMES 403 
 
 be precisely the former enemies of Rousseau; they are 
 the men who are continuing the traditions of Voltaire 
 and the Encyclopedia the " Ideologists," in a word. 
 
 They are numerous and influential, for besides having 
 the control of almost all the newspapers, while they are 
 on the eve of invading the reconstituted and reorganised 
 Academies, they lack neither merit nor talent. Les 
 Euiiies are but little read at the present day unless it be 
 in Germany, where new editions of the work are frequent 
 and yet Volney must be regarded as one of the founders 
 of exegesis and one of the reformers of philology. The 
 real significance of the celebrated book of Cabanis, Les rap- 
 ports duphysique et du moral, is that it contains the germs 
 of the science of psychological physiology, or of psycho- 
 
 as it is in a spirit of opposition to the Empire ; and affected as it is 
 by her tendency, as a woman, to be attracted by novelty. But in this 
 new work she demonstrates admirably that the " social spirit," after 
 having been the soul of French literature, has become the cause of 
 its disorganisation ; and that French literature, in consequence, 
 can only be regenerated by going to new models for inspiration ; 
 models whose originality will emancipate it from obsolete conven- 
 tions ; and serve both as an example of and to promote a taste for 
 liberty. The next step will be the constitution by all concerned of a 
 Western or European civilisation ; of which literature will be the 
 common expression ; and whose characteristics will be substanti- 
 ally the same hi Paris and Berlin, in London and Saint Petersburg. 
 The object of this literature will be the improvement of the con- 
 dition of humanity ; a goal which brings us back to the book La 
 litterature ; but an improvement achieved more especially by moral 
 or religious means ; a stipulation that brings the writer into touch 
 with the Genie du christianisme ; and thus re-establishes at the 
 close the harmony which existed between Mme de Stael and Chateau- 
 briand at the opening of their literary careers. 
 
 C. Mme de StaeTs novels; and that the two most important of 
 them, Delphine and Corinne, are in reality a protest against woman's 
 lot in modern societies ; as regards the obligation she is under to 
 submit to opinion on every occasion ; the obstacles she encounters 
 in the way of developing her " superiority " when she happens to be
 
 404 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 physiology to employ the term in use to-day. Destutt de 
 Tracy, too, the author of the Elements d'ideologie, has 
 more than one illustrious contemporary at the present 
 time. These writers, however, are assuredly not men of 
 sentiment, and nothing is more foreign to them than the 
 tendency to melancholy that characterises Mine de Stael, 
 or than the poetry of Christianity ; if indeed it ought 
 not to be said that they are resolutely hostile to the 
 melancholy of Mme de Stae'l and the fanatical opponents 
 of the doctrines of Chateaubriand. The ideas of the 
 authors of La litterature and the Genie du christianisme 
 are as little to the taste of Garat, for instance, or of 
 Ginguene, or of the other writers on the Decade, which 
 although the philosophic organ of the period, accords its 
 
 exceptionally gifted ; and the price she is made to pay for this 
 superiority. -It should be added that the eloquence of the protest is 
 increased by the fact that, according to the expression employed 
 by Mme Necker de Saussure, "if Corinne represents an ideal Mme 
 de Stael, Delphine shows her as she really was in her youth " ; and 
 thus it is that Mme de Stael's novels pave the way for those of the 
 author of Indiana and Valentine. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The works of Mme de Stael are composed of : 
 
 (1) Her novels : Mirza, Adelaide et Theodore, the Histoire de 
 Pauline, written about 1786 and first published, together with the 
 curious Essai sur les Fictions, in 1795 ; Delphine, 1802 ; and 
 Corinne, ou de Vltalie, 1807. 
 
 (2) Her critical works : Lettres sur les ecrits et le caractere de J.-J. 
 Rousseau, 1788 ; De V Influence des passions sur le bonheur des 
 individus et des nations, 1796 ; La litterature consideree dans ses 
 rapports avec les Institutions sociales, 1800 ; De VAllemagne, 1810, 
 which was destroyed by the Imperial police, and reprinted in London 
 in 1813 and in Paris in 1814 ; and Reflexions sur le suicide, 1812. 
 
 (3) Her political writings : Reflexions sur le proces de la Reine, 
 1793 ; her apology for her father : Du caractere de M. Necker et de 
 sa vie privee, 1804 ; the Memoirs she has entitled : Dix annees 
 d'exil ; and the Considerations sur la revolution francaise. These 
 last two works were published in 1818 by her son and her son-in-law, 
 Baron A. de Stae'l and the Due V. de Broglie. 
 
 .
 
 MODERN TIMES 405 
 
 hospitality to the most slippery productions of citizen 
 Parny. The men of science, for their part, the true 
 men of science that is those whose immortal discoveries 
 have counterbalanced or compensated the sterile abund- 
 ance of the literature of the Revolution and the Empire, 
 Laplace and Monge, Berthollet and Fourcroy, Chaptal, 
 Cuvier, Lamarck and Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, are scarcely 
 more favourable to the new sentimentalism. Their 
 opinions will one day be profoundly modified, together 
 with their interests, but for the moment, as becomes the 
 true descendants they are of the preceding generation, 
 their chief concern is the free exercise of their " thinking 
 faculty," and in their eyes even the "rewarding and 
 avenging" God of Voltaire is a mere hypothesis, in 
 
 Mme de Stael also wrote some poetry and essayed the drama. 
 The authentic edition of her works is that of 1820-1821, 17 
 volumes, Paris, Treuttel et "Wurtz. 
 
 III. Ideologists, Men of Science, and Philologists. 
 
 The role of the ideologists, who were long regarded as merely 
 " the tail end of the Encyclopedia " and treated in consequence by 
 historians, has recently been given its rightful importance by M. 
 Ferraz in his Histoire de la Philosophic pendant la Revolution 
 [1789-1804], Paris, 1889; and by M. F. Picavet in his Ideologues, 
 Paris, 1891. The Ideologists included Saint-Lambert, Sieyes, 
 Garat, Tracy, and Laroniiguiere, and they were frequently to be 
 met with in the offices of the newspaper La Decade philosophique. 
 They frequently met, too, at the house of Mme Helvetius at 
 Auteuil [Cf. Guillois, Le salon de Mme Helvetius, Paris, 1894 ; and 
 La Marquise de Condorcet, Paris, 1896] ; or at that of Coiidorcet's 
 widow, who had become the intimate friend of the tribune Mailla- 
 Garat. They were the uncompromising champions of the purest 
 Encyclopedic principles, which they defended against Chateaubri- 
 and, Mme de Stael and the First Consul [Cf. Jules Simon, Une 
 academic sous le Directoire, Paris, 1884] . 
 
 Some of them had leanings towards science ; Cabanis, for 
 example, the author of that famous book Les Rapports du physique 
 et du moral, 1802 ; or were even genuine men of science : Lamarck
 
 406 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 whose absence the movements of the heavenly bodies 
 or the manufacture of beetroot sugar would go on 
 equally well. The critics and the erudite hold 
 similar opinions. "That the French genius needs 
 to be regenerated by an infusion of more generous 
 blood" is not at all the view of such men as Daunou, 
 Marie-Joseph Chenier, or Hoffmann, of an entire genera- 
 tion of skilled Hellenists that included Clavier, Villoison, 
 and Boissonnade, of Courier himself, the author of the 
 Lettre a M. Renouard (1810), an artillery officer who 
 would give the Genie du christianisme, La litterature, 
 Delphine, Attala and Helo'ise into the bargain for an 
 unpublished manuscript of Longinus or an Homeric 
 scholiast ! Furthermore, they are all suspicious of, they 
 
 or Etienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, for instance ; and this is the place 
 to note the prodigious development between 1789 and 1810 or 1815 
 of the natural sciences [Cf. Cuvier, Rapport sur les progres des 
 sciences naturelles] ; the methods in use which are about to creep 
 into criticism and literature. The articles in the Decade [Cf. Picavet, 
 loc. cit.] . Sainte-Beuve belonged, to begin with, to this school [Cf. 
 Causeries du lundi, vol. xiii.] ; and it will be seen that Auguste 
 Comte was a product of it as well. 
 
 Another group which included Volney, Daunou, Guiguene and 
 Fauriel ; and with which Eaynouard had points in common ; give 
 a new direction to exegesis [Cf. Volney, Lecons d'histoire, 1795 ; 
 EechercJies sur I'histoire ancienne, 1814] or lend precision [Cf . 
 Daunou] and significance [Cf. Fauriel] to literary history ; convert- 
 ing it from a mere subject of curiosity into what will be called 
 later on " the science of the products of the human intelligence " 
 [Cf. Sainte-Beuve's articles on Fauriel and Daunou in his Por- 
 traits contemporains, vol. v. ; and Benan, L'avenir de la science, 
 1890] ; while from the "philosophy of history" as understood by 
 Voltaire, they derive a conception of history which, though more 
 or less open to discussion, is genuinely philosophic. It is right to 
 add that the consequences of their efforts do not make themselves 
 felt at once, and in the meantime the development of the new 
 literature goes on, not merely unaffected by, but in opposition to 
 their influence. 

 
 MODERN TIMES 407 
 
 believe they have grounds to be suspicious of, the 
 "Baroness" de Stael and the "Viscount" de Chateau- 
 briand ! They seem to be afraid that these " aristocrats " 
 may one day contemplate reinstating the old regime ; 
 and they are greatly mistaken in entertaining this fear ; 
 they have too little confidence in the work of the Revolu- 
 tion ! but who will be surprised at their apprehensions 
 on the morrow of the Restoration, and if attention be 
 directed no longer to the author of the Monarchic scion 
 la Charte, or to that of the Considerations sur la Revolu- 
 tion Fraju^aise, but to the Vicomte de Bonald, Comte 
 Joseph de Maistre and the Abbe de Lamennais? 
 
 These men, of a surety, are as much " politicians " as 
 writers, and if their earlier works, which coincide with 
 
 IV. Louis-Gaoriel-AmDroise de Bonald [Milhau, 1754; f 
 
 1840, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. H de B [onald] , Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages 
 de M. le vicomte de Bonald, Paris, 1841 ; Barbey d'Aurevilly, Les 
 Prophetes du passe, 1851 ; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. iv., 
 1851 ; A. Nettement, Histoire de la litterature sous la Bestauration, 
 Paris, 1853 ; Em. Faguet, Politiques et moralistes au XIX C siecle, 
 Paris, 1891 ; Henry Michel, L'idee de VEtat, Paris, 1895. 
 
 2. THE THEORIST OF AUTHORITY. Two of his sayings are insepar- 
 ably associated with his name : " man is an intelligence served by 
 organs"; and "literature is the expression of society." He is the 
 author, too, as is well known, of a bold paradox concerning the origin 
 of language ; and of a remarkable essay on the subject of divorce. 
 Above everything else, however, he is the " theorist of authority " ; 
 and the man who, combatting the author of the Esprit des Lois ; 
 or that of the Contrat social, has done more than anybody else 
 to establish that society is the work neither of men, nor of nature ; 
 but of God Himself. Less eloquent than Jean- Jacques Eousseau 
 and less ingenious than Montesquieu ; he has yet contrived to find, 
 with a view to varying his enunciation of this his unique or principal 
 idea, forms of expressions which are not only varied ; but often of 
 the utmost brilliancy and precision. There are thinkers who " write " 
 and others who " speak " : Bonald " formulates " ; and for all these
 
 408 MANUAL OF THE HISTOKY OF FRENCH LITERATUEE 
 
 the issue of L'Allemagne or are even anterior to the 
 Genie du christianisme attracted but little notice, their 
 talent, nurtured in solitude and ripened in obscurity, 
 now shines forth with all the more brilliancy. All 
 three of them enter the arena at the same moment ; and 
 it will be seen, it ought to be seen, if their efforts be 
 regarded attentively, that it is against individualism that 
 all three of them more especially direct their attacks, 
 though they are not acting in concert, and are even as 
 yet unacquainted with one another. Their contempo- 
 raries do not realise the situation at once, and public 
 opinion insists on regarding the Essai sur V indifference 
 en matiere de religion (1817), Bonald's Recherches philo- 
 sophiques (1818), his Pape (1819), his Soirees de Saint- 
 
 reasons, having been the metaphysician of the religious revival, 
 he deserve's more attention than is often given him in histories of 
 literature. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Bonald's chief works are : his Theorie du pouvoir 
 poliiique et religieux dans la societe civile, 1796 ; his Essai analy- 
 tique sur les lois de Vordre social, 1800 ; his Divorce considers 
 relativement a I'etat domestique et a Vetat de societe, 1801 ; his 
 Legislation primitive, 1802; his Recherches philosophiques sur les 
 premiers objets de nos connaissances morales, 1818 ; two volumes 
 (1819) of articles that appeared in the Mercure de France from 1801 
 to 1810 ; a few speeches and various short political or religious 
 writings. 
 
 The best editions of Bonald's works are Le Clere's edition, Paris, 
 1817, 1819, 1843 ; and Nigne's edition, Paris, 1864. 
 
 V. Joseph Marie de Maistre [Chambery, 1753 ; f 1821, 
 Turin] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, iii. chap. 14, 1837- 
 1839 ; Portraits litteraires, ii., 1843 ; and Causeries du lundi, vol. iv., 
 1851, vol. xv., 1860; Barbey d'Aurevilly, Les -proplietes du passe, 
 1851; Edmond Scherer, Melanges de critique religieuse, Paris, 
 1853 ; L. Binaut, Joseph de Maistre in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
 December, 1858, and February, 1861 ; A. Nettement, Histoire de la 
 litteratiire francaise pendant la Restauration, Paris, 1853 ; Albert
 
 MODEEN TIMES 409 
 
 Petersbourg (1821), and Lamennais' second volume 
 merely as the most furious onslaught of which the 
 philosophy of the eighteenth century has as yet been 
 the object. After having previously attempted to destroy 
 the authority of Montesquieu, Bonald the most sys- 
 tematic, and in appearance, but in appearance only, the 
 least impassioned of the three now measures himself 
 with Condorcet and Condillac. Joseph de Maistre, on 
 his side, has taken in hand Bacon and Voltaire, much 
 as Voltaire formerly tried to account for Pascal and 
 Bossuet. His choice of Voltaire as the object of his 
 attacks is the explanation of more than one analogy 
 that may be pointed out between his manner and 
 that of Bossuet. He has fought his way, so to 
 
 Blanc, Memoires et correspondance diplomatique de M. de Maistre, 
 Paris, 1858-1861 ; G. Merlet, Tableau de la litterature francaise 
 sous le premier Empire, Paris, 1877 ; Em. Faguet, Politiques et 
 moralistes au XIX e siecle, Paris, 1891 ; F. Descotes, Joseph de Maistre 
 avant la Revolution, Paris, 1893 ; and Joseph de Maistre pendant la 
 Revolution, Paris, 1895 ; M. de Lescure, Le comte Joseph de Maistre, 
 Paris, 1893 ; G. Cogordan, Joseph de Maistre in the " Grands 
 Ecrivains fran9ais" series, Paris, 1894. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. His birth, youth, and education 
 [Cf. Descostes, loc. cit.] ; his earlj' writings : Eloge historique de 
 Victor- Amedee III., 1775 ; and Adresse a, la Convention nationale, 
 1794. His stay at Lausanne. Cinq Paradoxes a la Marquise de 
 M***, 1795 [published in 1851] ; and of the importance of a study 
 of this work with a view to denning J. de Maistre's talent ; since 
 the book is proof that none of his contemporaries had a greater 
 taste for paradox ; or greater leanings towards preciosity. Les 
 Considerations sur la France, 1796. The King of Sardinia appoints 
 him his Minister at Saint Petersburg, 1802 ; where he resides until 
 1817 ; and composes his principal works : the Essai sur le principe 
 generateur des constitutions politiques, 1810; the Traite de 
 Plutarque sur les delais de la justice divine (translation), 1815 ; 
 his book Du Pape, 1819; his Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg ; and 
 his Essai sur la philosophic de Bacon. 
 
 Of the general inspiration of J. de Maistre's writings ; and that it
 
 410 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FBENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 speak, through Voltaire to Bossuet, and identifying 
 himself as Bossuet had done with the idea of Provi- 
 dence, of which he might be termed the lay apostle, 
 the grandeur of his doctrine is reflected at times in the 
 character of his style. Lamennais, on the other hand, 
 the most impetuous, violent, and gloomy of the three, 
 singles out Rousseau, the Rousseau of the Discours sur 
 Mnegalite and of the Contrat social, with whom he will 
 one day fall into line ! The public, be it repeated, does 
 not always understand them, does not clearly perceive 
 whither they are bound, does not gauge the significance 
 of their principles. They themselves have no inkling of 
 the amalgamation that will shortly be made by certain 
 thinkers between their ideas and those now coming into 
 
 is in accord with that of Bonald's writings. Both propose toreascend 
 the stream of thought ; to effect the overthrow of the philosophy of 
 the eighteenth century ; and to re-establish the authority of religion 
 on its ruins. De Maistre's superiority over Bonald lies in his having 
 been mixed up to a certain extent in affairs of State ; and more 
 especially in his having possessed an admirable gift for writing ; a 
 gift enhanced by his aristocratic superciliousness ; and his indefatig- 
 able " combativity." 
 
 The " theologian of Providence " ; and how all de Maistre's works 
 hinge upon his desire to prove that the world is governed by God. 
 The Considerations sur la France ; and that, guided by the idea of 
 Providence, nobody has been more alive than de Maistre to the 
 " apocalyptic " character of the French Revolution. His admiration 
 for France ; and how it shows itself even in his invectives. His 
 books on the Gallican Church and on the Pope ; and that their 
 object is to show the injury France has done itself; every time it 
 has become estranged from the Papacy ; considered as the instru- 
 ment of Providence on earth ; and the centre that cannot be 
 departed from without error. The Soirees de Saint-Peter sbourg ; 
 how characteristic is the sub-title of the book : " Conversations on 
 the temporal government of Providence " ; and of the connection 
 between the Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg and the Examen de la 
 philosophic de Bacon ; if what de Maistre attacked in particular in 
 Voltaire was the philosophy of the Essai sur les Mceurs ; and in
 
 MODEEN TIMES 411 
 
 existence of Saint-Simon and his school. Still, they have 
 a following, and are more successful in their onslaught on 
 the Encyclopedists, the Ideologists, and the Eevolution 
 than was Mme de Stael with all her intelligence or 
 Chateaubriand with all his genius ; though they are more 
 imbued than they believe with the spirit of the revolution, 
 a fact that makes them witnesses to its " satanic " or 
 apocalyptic character to use the expression of Joseph de 
 Maistre. 
 
 It cannot be doubted that the Meditations, which 
 appear in 1820, and the first Odes, which are dated 1822, 
 are due in a certain measure to their inspiration. Bonald 
 and Lamennais, both of them frequenters of the aristo- 
 cratic salons of Paris, are among the privileged few to 
 
 the Essai sur les Mceurs the Baconian conception which, by excluding 
 the consideration of final causes, excludes all action of God Himself 
 on the world. 
 
 Joseph de Maistre's style ; and that in certain respects it is a 
 kindred style to that of Bossuet ; which may be explained by the 
 fact that, among all the truths of religion, they both of them concerned 
 themselves more especially with the idea of Providence. A further 
 resemblance between Bossuet and de Maistre lies in the fact that the 
 essence of their character, which was gentleness, differs from the 
 character of their style ; in the same way, and so to speak to the 
 same extent. As, however, they are separated from each other by a 
 century ; and that the century is that of the Encyclopedia ; de 
 Maistre has an insight into matters of which Bossuet was necessarily 
 ignorant ; while he possesses faults Bossuet was without. 
 
 De Maistre's insulting violence in controversy ; and his tendency 
 to paradox. His defence of capital punishment [Soirees, 1st con- 
 versation] ; of war [Ibid., 7th conversation] ; of the Inquisition 
 [Letlres a un gentilhomme russe] . Whether he would not have 
 done his cause greater service had he displayed greater modera- 
 tion ? and that in any case, had he done so, more credit would be 
 accorded him; if not for certain strange theories with which his 
 writings are strewn ; and certain more than hazardous predictions 
 [Cf. Considerations, ch. iv.] ; at any rate for a number of fruitful 
 and profound ideas ; to which he gave his imprint ; if indeed
 
 412 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 whom the Meditations are first communicated [Of. 
 Correspondance de Lamartinc, April 13, 1819] . Lamartine 
 writes to de Maistre (March 17, 1820) : " M. de Bonald 
 and you, Monsieur le Comte . . . have founded an 
 imperishable school of lofty philosophy and Christian 
 politics ... it will bear fruit, of a kind that may be 
 judged in advance." To his contact with or to the 
 conversations of de Maistre, Lamennais, and Bonald, 
 he owed, perhaps, that vigour and decision which 
 weaned him for a moment from the vagueness in 
 which he aspired to lose himself ; and it is possible 
 that in the absence of their influence the Meditations 
 would have been merely " pure as air, sad as death, and 
 soft as velvet " [Of. his letter of April 13, 1819] . Again, 
 
 it ought not to be said that he was the first to promulgate 
 them. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Joseph de Maistre's works include : his Con- 
 siderations sur la France, 1796, a work it is of extreme interest to 
 compare with the writings of Burke and Fichte ; the Essai sur le 
 principe generateur des constitutions politiqu-es, 1810-1814 ; his 
 book Du Pape, 1819 ; the Eglise gallicane, 1891 [posthumous] ; 
 the Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg, 1821 ; and the Examen de la 
 philosophic de Bacon, first issued in 1836. 
 
 Two volumes of his Letters and Unpublished Short Writings were 
 issued in 1851 [Lyons, Vitte et Perussel] by his son Comte Rudolphe 
 de Maistre ; while M. Albert Blanc edited in 1858 his Political 
 Reminiscences and in 1861 his Diplomatic Correspondence [1811- 
 1817] , Paris, Michel Levy. 
 
 There is an edition of his complete works in 14 volumes, Lyons, 
 Vitte et Perussel, 1884-1886. The last six volumes contain the two 
 volumes issued in 1851, M. Albert Blanc's three volumes, and some 
 two hundred unpublished letters. 
 
 VI. Paul-Louis Courier [Paris, 1772 ; f 1825, Veretz, Indre- 
 et-Loire] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Armand Carrel, Essai sur la vie et les ecrits de 
 P-L. Courier, preceding the edition of the Works, Paris, 1834 [the 
 Notice is dated 1829] ; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. vi.,
 
 MODERN TIMES 413 
 
 there are the familiar opening lines of the first preface to 
 the Odes : "A dual intention underlies the issue of this 
 book, a literary intention and a political intention, but in 
 the mind of the author, the latter is the consequence of 
 the former, for poetry is only to be detected in the history of 
 mankind when it is judged from the pinnacle of monarchical 
 ideas and religious beliefs." Is not this the place to recall 
 the fact that before the publication of the Odes, Victor 
 Hugo was on terms of close intimacy with Lamennais ? 
 [Cf. Victor Hugo raconte par un temoin de sa vie, ii. 38]. 
 Such pieces as La Vendee, Quiberon, Les Vierges de Verdun 
 and Buonaparte, did not belie the declarations of the pre- 
 face ; and the author, if we are to believe Stendhal, 
 becomes the favourite poet of the " Ultras," a destiny he 
 
 1852; A. Netteinent, Litterature franqaise sous la Bestauration, 
 Paris, 1853. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER ; and that he deserves to be remem- 
 bered if only for the originality of his figure ; while in the anny, he 
 did little else but perpetually desert his post ; in his public life he 
 affected to be a " peasant," while engaged in translating Greek authors 
 into the French of Amyot ; and in his best writings he combines the 
 most delicate sense of style with a rare rudeness of thought. What 
 were his reasons for siding with the Liberal opposition under the 
 Restoration ; and whether the principal of them was not his failure 
 to secure admission to the Academic des Inscriptions, 1818 ? In any 
 case, it is from this moment onwards that he becomes irreconcilable ; 
 and that he issues his bitterest pamphlets ; though his views did not 
 prevent his being in private life the most exacting of landlords ; 
 the most pitiless of masters ; and the harshest of creditors ; and 
 that a knowledge of this side of his character makes it possible not to 
 attribute his murder to the " bigots " ; as is still done in some histo- 
 ries [Cf. Paul Albert, Litterature frangaise au XIX" siecle, vol. ii.] . 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Paul-Louis Courier's works comprise : his imita- 
 tions or translations of the ancients, among which may be mentioned 
 his translation of the Pastorals of Longinus, of some fragments of 
 Herodotus, and of Xenophon's short work on the leading of cavalry. 
 The choice of this last work is pure affectation, while his translation 
 of " Daphnis and Chloe " is extremely heavy and pedantic. (2) His
 
 414 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 deserved, seeing that neither Lamennais, Bonald, nor de 
 Maistrehad denounced more energetically" the saturnalia 
 of atheism and anarchy " or treated with loftier contempt 
 the " sophistical and licentious writings of the Voltaires, 
 the Diderots, and the Helvetius." 
 
 The literary effect of the Meditations and the Odes on a 
 generation whose favourite poets were Andrieux, Nepomu- 
 cene Lemercier, Casimir Delavigne, and Pierre- Jean de 
 Beranger may be imagined. While Beranger, for example, 
 was laboriously rhyming such songs as La bonne vieille 
 or Le Dieu des bonnes gens, masterpieces it may be, 
 but masterpieces in what would be the lowest branch of 
 writing if the vaudeville did not exist, French poetry 
 
 literary pamphlets : Lettre a M. Renouard, 1810 ; and the Lettre a 
 MM. de V Academic des Inscriptions, 1819 ; and his political 
 pamphlets : Petition aux deux Cliambres, 1816 ; Lettres au Redac- 
 teur du "Censeur," 1819-1820; Simple Discours (written in connec- 
 tion with the subscription for the acquisition of Chambord), 1821 ; 
 Proces de Paul-Louis Courier, 1821 ; Petition pour des Villageois 
 qu'on empeche de danser, 1822 ; and the Pamphlet des pamphlets, 
 1824. (8) Diverse fragments, the most interesting of which is the 
 Conversation cliez la duchesse d 1 Albany (composed in 1812) ; and 
 (4) a volume of Letters, often reprinted under the title Lettres de 
 France et d 'Italic (1797-1812). 
 
 The best edition of Paul-Louis Courier's works is that in four 
 volumes, Paris, 1834, Paulin and Perrotin. 
 
 VII. Pierre-Jean de Beranger [Paris, 1780 ; f 1857, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. i., 
 1832, 1833 ; Causeries du lundi, vol. ii., 1850; and Nouveaux lundis, 
 vol. i., 1861. 
 
 Beranger, Ma Biographic ; also his Correspondence edited by 
 M. Paul Boiteau in 1860. 
 
 Gustave Planche, Revue des Deux Mondes, June, 1850 ; Emile 
 Montegut, Nos morts contemporains, 1857 and 1858 ; Savinien 
 Lapointe (the cobbler poet) Memoires sur Beranger, 1857 ; Ernest 
 Kenan, La Philosophie de Beranger, in the Journal des Debats, 
 December 17, 1859 ; Paul Boiteau, Vie de Beranger, Paris, 1861 ;
 
 MODERN TIMES 415 
 
 in the Meditations was reaching heights it had never 
 perhaps attained to, and in the hands of the poet of the 
 Odes the " bronze lyre " was yielding notes such as had 
 not been heard since the time of Ronsard. That the 
 scale of " values " had changed could only be doubted by 
 a few belated Voltairians. What till quite lately had 
 been taken to be poetry was now seen to be a mere 
 caricature or spurious imitation of the genuine article. 
 Was there any comparison between the lofty design and 
 vigorous colouring of Hugo's Buonaparte, or the volup- 
 tuous melancholy of the Lac, and the prosaic declamation 
 of a Messenienne on ' ' the need of union after the de- 
 parture of the foreigners " ? The pseudo-lyricism of the 
 
 N. Peyrat, Beranger et Lamennais, 1861 ; Arthur Arnould, Beranger, 
 ses amis et ses ennemis, Paris, 1864 ; Jules Janin, Beranger et son 
 temps, Paris, 1866 ; Brivois, Bibliographic de I'ceuvre de Beranger, 
 Paris, 1876 ; Legouve's Notice preceding the Beranger des Ecoles, 
 1894. 
 
 2. THE SONGWRITER ; and, in this connection, of the song in 
 France prior to Beranger. Panard [Cf. Marmontel's Memoirs] ; 
 and Desaugiers [Cf. Chansons et Poesies diverges de Desaugiers, 
 Paris, 1827, Ladvocat] . The heartrending character of their gaiety ; 
 and the vulgarity of sentiment displayed by their songs. But if it is 
 desired to trace Beranger's " ancestors," it is necessary to go back 
 to the Chansonnier Maurepas ; and his work is then found to be the 
 result of a combination of the political song : the erotic song ; and 
 the "Bacchic" song; but, on the other hand, there is nothing 
 whatever of the " popular " vein in his work. Of a serious error that 
 is still made in this connection ; and that there is nothing in the 
 entire work of Beranger, which recalls either the customary melan- 
 choly ; or the habitual frankness ; or the naive generosity of the 
 popular mind ; his songs, on the contrary, bring the expression of 
 what is most " bourgeois " in the French temperament. 
 
 Of another error made in connection with Beranger ; and con- 
 sisting in representing him as a " simple, easy-going fellow " of the 
 stamp of La Fontaine ; who himself was nothing of the kind [Cf. 
 above article LA FONTAINE] ; the truth being that he could hardly 
 have displayed more unfairness, perfidy, and cunning than he did in
 
 416 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 classicists, of a Chenedolle, a Fontanes, a Lebrun-Pindare, 
 even of Jean-Baptiste Eousseau himself ceased to exist in 
 presence of this revelation of a new poetry. For a few 
 years to come, efforts will be made, solely for political 
 reasons, to bolster up the doomed traditions, but their 
 supporters will be restricted at last to readers of the 
 Constitutionnel, to a few aged Academicans, and to the 
 most narrow-minded and retrograde element in the so- 
 called "liberal" bourgeoisie. 
 
 There were other symptoms that pointed to a revolu- 
 tion in literature, and first among them was a growing 
 and, while not a new, a henceforth reasoned enthusiasm 
 for foreign literatures. This disposition was neither the 
 
 his conflict with the Government of the Restoration [Cf. Le Fils du 
 Pape, VEnfant de bonne Maison, les Reverends peres and le Vieux 
 caporal] . It would be impossible to flatter more skilfully passions, 
 which Beranger does not seem to have shared himself ; as it would 
 be impossible to turn to more ingenious account, with a view to 
 sowing suspicion and hatred, a more shallow [Cf. La Nature, le Dieu 
 des bonnes gens] ; or more ignoble philosophy [Cf . les Filles, les Deux 
 Soeurs, etc.] ; or a more indecent suggestiveness [Cf. le Vieux celiba- 
 taire, les Cinq etages, etc.] . There is no need to go further afield for 
 the reasons of Beranger's popularity ; reasons moreover which are its 
 justification ; if this taste for suggestiveness ; this refusal to think ; 
 and this spirit of opposition for the sake of opposition ; are unfortu- 
 nately among the most assured characteristics that are included in 
 the expression " gauloiserie." 
 
 Still, it cannot be contested that there is infinite art in certain of 
 Beranger's songs [Cf. la Bonne vieille, le Vieux celibataire, les Cinq 
 etages, le Vieux caporal, etc.] . There is art in his choice of his 
 choruses ; which almost always express in a single verse the theme 
 of the entire song ; while he always leads up to the chorus with the 
 utmost ease and naturalness [Cf. Mon habit, les Cartes, la Fille du 
 peuple, le Vieux vagabond] . There is still more art in the way in 
 which his songs are " composed" ; they may be said to be so many 
 " genre " pictures ; appealing directly to the eye ; and inviting 
 illustration. Of the depiction of bourgeois hie in Beranger's songs ; 
 and that there exists no barer evidence respecting ; or more
 
 MODERN TIMES 417 
 
 least unexpected nor the least natural result of the 
 great wars of the Empire. Over a period of twenty 
 years a mixture of races to which nothing similar had 
 been seen for centuries, had taken place on the battle- 
 fields of Europe, where the blood that had been shed had 
 ended in cementing, as it were, a sort of European 
 community. " We should aim at having a European 
 bent of mind," wrote Mme de Stae'l, around whom, at 
 Coppet, an entire school had grown up, whose labours, 
 after perhaps inspiring hers, now complete, continue and 
 prolong them. Through the wide-open breach there 
 enter not only Shakespeare, accepted without restriction, 
 but the Italians Alfieri and Manzoni, and the Germans 
 
 accurate and more faithfully limned representation of the life of the 
 lower French middle-class between 1815 and 1830. Again there is 
 much art in the way in which the rhythm of the Songs is suited to 
 the sentiments they convey ; as also in the choice of expression ; 
 and in the clearness of the style. Of Beranger as a writer ; and that 
 some few rather ridiculous lines do not prevent his having a right to 
 this title. As has been said of him with propriety ; " he is a great 
 prose writer who has fitted his prose with rhymes." 
 
 On the other hand it is difficult to term him a poet ; though 
 doubtless he has here and there been successful in giving poetic 
 expression to such poetry as is occasionally offered by bourgeois life 
 [Cf. la Bonne vieille, le Vieux celibataire] ; and, in this connec- 
 tion, of the poetry of old age in Beranger's work. Occasionally, too, 
 he has struck a patriotic note [Cf. le Vieux drapeau, le Cinq mai, les 
 Souvenirs du peuple\ . In general, however, he lacked force and, still 
 more, elevation when expressing strong sentiments. He was also 
 wanting in generosity of feeling; and far from having raised the 
 Song to the level of the Ode ; it was on the contrary the triumph 
 of the Ode ; and in general of Romantic lyricism ; that opened 
 people's eyes to the " prosaicness " of Beranger's songs. 
 
 Beranger's correspondence ; and that incomplete though it is, 
 though the four volumes of it we possess may not justify the 
 enthusiasm of his admirers ; it is a part of his work that merits 
 attention. It contains nothing very striking; and nothing that is 
 evidence of conspicuous large-mindedness ; but it completes our 
 
 28
 
 418 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Schiller, Goethe, Burger, Novalis, and Hoffmann, to be 
 followed shortly by the philosophers Kant, Fichte, and 
 Schelling. Nor must the Scotchmen Thomas Reid and 
 Dugald Stewart be forgotten. The events of 1815 
 accelerate the movement, which is furthered, too, by the 
 returning emigrants, of whom it would be a mistake to 
 believe that they have " neither forgotten anything nor 
 learned anything" during their exile: they have learned 
 English or German, and that France does not consti- 
 tute the universe. In this way, during the early years 
 of the Kestoration, between 1815 and 1825, there comes 
 into existence a common mode of thinking and still more 
 of feeling; the limits of the old horizon are extended, 
 
 insight into Beranger's character ; and shows us, behind the 
 Beranger of popular legend, a dexterous, cautious, and calculating 
 man ; and a writer who has never been surpassed for the skill 
 with which he turned his popularity to the utmost account. 
 The literary criticism in Beranger's correspondence [Cf. Sainte- 
 Beuve, Nouveaux lundis, vol. i.] . His last years, his death, and 
 his "funeral." 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Beranger's works are practically restricted to his 
 Songs, of which the principal original editions are those of 1815, 
 Paris, Eymery ; 1821, Paris, Firmin Didot ; 1825, Plassan ; 
 1827, Brussels; 1834, Paris, Perrotin ; and 1857 (his last songs), 
 Perrotin. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve [Causeries du lundi, vol. ii., 1850] has proposed the 
 following more critical classification of his songs : (1) Old-fashioned 
 songs, in the style of Panard and Desaugiers: le Eoi d'Yvetot; la 
 Gaudriole ; M. Gregoire ; (2) Sentimental songs, such as le Bon 
 veillard, le Voyageur, les Hirondelles ; (3) Party and patriotic 
 songs [among which one is surprised to see Sainte-Beuve, who is 
 usually less accommodating, include le Dieu des bonnes gens] ; 
 (4) Satirical songs, such as le Ventru or the Clefs du Paradis ; (5) 
 Poetic songs, such as les Contrebandiers, le Vieux vagabond, les 
 Bohemiens. 
 
 We have already said that to the Songs have to be added Beranger's 
 Memoirs, Ma Biographic, 1857, and his Correspondence in four 
 volumes.
 
 MODERN TIMES 419 
 
 or rather they disappear, and literary cosmopolitanism 
 comes into being. It differs from the old humanism 
 in this, that instead of taking Greco-Latin culture for 
 its foundation, it proposes to appropriate, to assimi- 
 late as completely as possible, what is most national in 
 the " national " literatures; and the universality it aims 
 at is an universality, not of abstraction or generalisation, 
 but of composition, under the sway of which each element, 
 far from renouncing, will develop its originality owing to 
 its very contrast with the other elements/ 
 
 To this evolution of criticism corresponds a parallel 
 evolution of history, or rather the two are identical, if 
 space and time, as Kant has just demonstrated, form 
 
 VIII. Hugues-Felicite-Robert de Lamennais [Saint-Malo, 
 
 1783 ; f 1854, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Lamennais' Correspondence ; Sainte-Beuve, 
 Portraits contemporains, 1832, 1834, 1836 ; and Nouveaux lundis, 
 vol. i., 1861, and vol. xi., 1868. 
 
 Censure de cinquante-six propositions extraites des ecrits de M. de 
 Lamennais . . . par plusieurs eveques de France, Toulouse, 1836 ; 
 the papal Encyclical Mirari vos . . . printed in Lamennais' volume 
 Les Affaires de Rome, 1836-1837; and the Encyclical Singulari 
 nos ... to be found in the same work. 
 
 Ange Blaize, Essai biographique sur M. de Lamennais, 1857 ; 
 E. Forgues, Notes et Souvenirs, preceding his edition of the 
 Correspondance de Lamennais, 1859 ; Ernest Renan, Lamennais et 
 ses ecrits, 1857 [in his Essais de morale et de critique] ; Edrnond 
 Scherer, Lamennais, 1859 [in his Melanges de critique religieuse] ; 
 Louis Binaut, Lamennais et sa philosophic, in the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, August 15, 1860 ; Ravaisson, Rapport sur les progres de la 
 philosophic en France au XIX* iecle, 1868 ; P. Janet, Laphilosophie 
 de Lamennais, 1890; E. Spuller, Lamennais, Paris, 1892; A. 
 Roussel, of the Oratory of Rennes, Lamennais, d'apres des documents 
 inedits, Rennes, 1892 ; Mercier, S. J., Lamennais aapres sa 
 correspondance et de recents travaux, Paris, 1893 ; P. Le Cannet, 
 La Jeunesse de Montalembert, Paris, 1896 ; Em. Faguet, Politiques 
 et Moralistes, Paris, 1898.
 
 420 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 together but one and the same category of pure reason. 
 The sentiment of the diversity of places is inseparable 
 from that of the diversity of periods ; and the two 
 combined constitute local colour. The honour of having 
 revealed the importance of this conception to his contem- 
 poraries must be ascribed to Augustin Thierry, for without 
 any desire to belittle the merit that accrues to Vitet for his 
 Etats de Blois, or to Vigny for his Cinq-Mars, it must yet 
 be borne in mind that these two works were preceded in 
 1825 by the Histoire de la Conquete de I'Angleterre par les 
 Normands. The part taken by Augustin Thierry in 
 the formation of the doctrine of Romanticism has been 
 underestimated, and it is time to repair this injustice, 
 
 2. THE BOLE OF LAMENNAIS ; and that nobody perhaps, in recent 
 times, has exerted a more considerable influence on the history of 
 religious ideas. 
 
 Lamennais' birth and early education. His early writings : the 
 Reflexions sur I'etat de VEglise en 1808, suppressed by the Imperial 
 police ; and the Tradition de VEglise sur V institution des eveques, 
 1814. His visit to England, 1814^1815 ; and the issue of the first 
 volume of the Essai sur V indifference en matiere de religion, 1817. 
 Emotion aroused by this work ; an emotion that is increased by the 
 publication of the second volume in 1821. Lamennais, attacked by 
 a portion of the French clergy, is defended by de Maistre and 
 Bonald [Cf. de Maistre, Correspondence, September, 1820 ; and 
 Bonald, Melanges'] . He replies himself to these attacks in his 
 Defense de VEssai sur Vindifference, 1821 ; the first effect of 
 which work is to make him numerous enemies at Borne. He visits 
 Borne, 1824. His return to France. Foundation of the Memorial 
 catholique and of the Association for the Defence of Beligion. 
 Publication of the Progres de la Revolution et de la guerre contre 
 I'Eglise, 1828-1829. Lamennais' conflict with M. de Frayssinous and 
 M. de Vatimesnil. The revolution of 1830, and the foundation of the 
 newspape* VAvenir. Fresh difficulties. Second journey to Borne, 
 1832. Lamennais' submission, dissolution of the Catholic Association, 
 and definite suppression of VAvenir, 1832 [Cf. Affaires de Rome] . 
 Lamennais' difficult situation. He publishes his Paroles d'un 
 croyant, 1834. Prodigious effect of this book [Cf. Sainte-Beuve,
 
 MODERN TIMES 421 
 
 since it may be that of all the conquests made by 
 Romanticism it is Thierry who realised one of the most 
 durable. 
 
 Ought a like reparation to be accorded the writers on 
 the Globe or, on the contrary, has not somewhat too 
 much been made, in almost all histories of literature, 
 of the group whose principal members were Ampere and 
 Remusat, Dubois and Magnin ? Goethe, who read them 
 with an assiduous attention which was explained in part 
 by the terms in which they were accustomed to speak of 
 him, esteemed them "supremely daring"! [Cf. Conver- 
 sations with Eckermann]. To-day, we are rather inclined 
 to smile at the daring of Jean-Jacques Ampere and 
 
 Portraits contemporains, 1834] . The Encyclical Singulare nos . . . 
 1834, and the condemnation of Lamennais. He rejoins by issuing 
 the volume entitled Les Affaires de Rome, 1836, which brings to a 
 close the first series of his works and the first period of his life. 
 
 Whether the second period of his life differs as profoundly from 
 the first as Lamennais himself believed ? and that in reality, although 
 the means he resorted to were different, it might almost be contended 
 that the end he had in view remained substantially the same. 
 
 His aim was to establish the sovereignty of religion amongst men ; 
 and it was to this end that he wrote the Essai sur V indifference ; 
 while as several ways of attempting to effect his purpose were open 
 to him ; he began by calling on " the old-established sovereignties 
 to league themselves" against the growing progress of irreligion. 
 Perceiving, however, that the old-established sovereignties were only 
 disposed to defend such of the elements of religion as they believed 
 to be serviceable to their own interests ; and seeing that in con- 
 sequence of their attitude the suspicion with which they were 
 regarded by the political parties tended to fasten on religion itself ; 
 he conceived the idea of separating religion and politics ; and, as 
 Eenan appropriately puts it, of constituting a religious party ; an 
 idea which was the starting-point of the movement which has since 
 come to be known as " Liberal Catholicism." 
 
 Borne, for reasons of which she was alone the judge, though they 
 were not without their political value in 1836, refused to follow his 
 lead, or to allow herself to be enticed into adopting this policy.
 
 422 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Charles Magnin ; and which of their writings seem to 
 call for mention ? Let it simply be said then that they 
 had their share of influence both as continuators of 
 Mme de Stael, and as having formulated the principle 
 of the distinction between "literary" works and works 
 that do not belong to literature. In this latter connec- 
 tion, it might be said that the theory of art for art is 
 contained in germ in their writings, surprised though 
 they were destined to be to see it evolved therefrom. 
 They also helped Komanticism to emancipate itself from 
 a political tutelage it was beginning to find burdensome. 
 For all these reasons, even if they cease to be read, 
 they will not be grudged the gratitude that is due to 
 
 Lamennais' rupture with the Papacy was due to motives which he 
 has set forth himself [Cf . Affaires de Borne] ; and in this way he was 
 brought to state the question in the following terms: "What is 
 Christianity considered in its relation to human societies ? What is 
 it that characterises it '? What order of thoughts and sentiments has 
 it developed in the world ? On what fundamental ideas of right and 
 justice has it established the mutual relations between men ? But to 
 the question stated in these terms, which are tantamount to the 
 suppression of history, he could only give one answer; he who 
 at an earlier date had founded religion itself on the authority of 
 "universal consent"; and this answer was that Christianity and 
 democracy are one and the same thing. 
 
 We have here the origin of what has since been called " social 
 Christianity " or " Christian Socialism " ; the irresistible trend of 
 which is towards pure Socialism, directly it breaks away from 
 authority and tradition. Nevertheless we return to the point from 
 which we started ; and Lamennais' error does not consist in his 
 having contradicted himself ; but in his having desired to establish 
 between the two terms religion and democracy, an identity which 
 would render them always convertible ; while it left him no 
 alternative but to be a pure democrat, should the Church refuse 
 to admit this identity. 
 
 Lamennais' other writings ; and how inferior they are to his 
 earlier productions ; if an exception be made in favour of his Esquisse 
 d'une philosophic, 1841-1846 ; which has been said with truth to
 
 MODERN TIMES 4'23 
 
 those who are sincere lovers of literature and who faith- 
 fully serve its interests though without contributing 
 much to its glory. In the articles of the Globe, as in 
 the lectures at the Sorbonne, towards the same period, 
 of Villemain, Guizot and Cousin, the old and the new 
 aesthetics, university criticism and Romantic criticism, 
 endeavoured to effect their mutual reconciliation : an 
 effort attended, it must be confessed, with only a limited 
 measure of success. 
 
 Numerous definitions have been given of Romanticism, 
 and still others are continually being offered, and all or 
 almost all of them contain a part of the truth. Mine de 
 Stael was right when she asserted in her Allemagne that 
 
 be " a philosophy of evolution" [Cf. Paul Janet, La philosophic de 
 Lamennais] ; while it contains some of the finest passages he has 
 written [Cf. his Esthetique] . Still, his great works are his early 
 works : and it is by them that the writer must be judged. He is 
 one of the most powerful of contemporary writers, but his peculiarity 
 is that while his style is one of the least "personal" that can be 
 mentioned, few authors have held " stronger " ideas. His style, too, 
 which was very harsh to begin with [Cf. Essai sur I 1 indifference, 
 vols. i. and ii.] , softened down as he grew older [Cf. his accounts of 
 his journey in the Affaires de Rome] ; while if there are traces of 
 imitation and declamation in the Paroles d'un croyant, there is 
 poetry as well. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. There are two editions of Lamennais' complete 
 works, one in twelve volumes, Paris, 1836-1837, P. Daubree and 
 Cailleux ; and the other in ten volumes, Paris, 1844, Pagnerre. Both 
 editions are very incomplete, and to the writings contained in these 
 editions must be added : Amschaspands et Darvands, 1843 ; Le 
 deuil de la Pologne, 1846 ; the Esquisse cCune philosophic, 1841- 
 1846 ; the Melanges philosophiques et poliiiques, 1856 ; his trans- 
 lation of the Gospels ; and his translation of the Divine Comedy 
 [posthumous] , 1855-1858. 
 
 Of his correspondence, still very incomplete, has been published 
 up to now : 2 vols. in 1859, Paris, Paulin ; 2 vols. in 1863, Paris, 
 Dentu; 1 vol. in 1884 (Correspondance avec M. de Vitrolles), 
 Paris, Charpentier; 1 vol. in 1897 (Correspondance avec Monta-
 
 424 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 " Paganism and Christianity, the North and the South, 
 antiquity and the Middle Ages, chivalry and the institu- 
 tions of Greece and Rome," having divided between them 
 the history of literature, Romanticism in consequence, in 
 contrast to Classicism, was a combination of chivalry, the 
 Middle Ages, the "literatures of the North " and Chris- 
 tianity [Cf. De I'Allemagne, part ii., chap. ii.]. It should 
 be noted, in this connection, that some thirty years later 
 Heinrich Heine, in the book in which he will rewrite that 
 of Mme de Stael, will not give such a very different idea 
 of Romanticism ! On the other hand, Stendhal, for his 
 part, was not wrong when he wrote in 1824 : " Roman- 
 ticism is the art of acquainting the nations with those 
 
 lembert), Paris, Perrin ; and 1 vol. in 1898 (Correspondance avec 
 Benoit d'Azy), Paris, Perrin. 
 
 IX. Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) [Grenoble, 1783 ; f 1842, 
 
 Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Journal de Stendhal, Paris, 1888 ; Vie de Henri 
 Brillard, Paris, 1890 ; Souvenirs d'egotisme, 1892, posthumous works 
 published by M. Casimir Stryienski ; E. Colomb, Notice sur la vie et 
 les ouvrages de Beyle, preceding Hetzel's edition of the Chartreuse de 
 Parme, 1846. 
 
 H. de Balzac's article [1840] printed at the end of Hetzel's 
 edition of the Chartreuse de Parme; P. Merimee, H. B., Paris, 
 1850; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. ix., 1854; Taine, 
 Essais de critique et d'histoire, Paris, 1857 [the article is only 
 to be found in the 2nd edition] ; A. Collignon, L'art et la 
 vie de Stendhal, Paris, 1868 ; A. Paton, Henri Beyle, London, 
 1874 ; Emile Zola, Les romanciers naturalistes, 1881 ; P. 
 Bourget, Essais de psychologic contemporaine, Paris, 1883 ; 
 Edouard Bod, Stendhal, in the " Grands Ecrivains fran9ais " series, 
 Paris, 1892. 
 
 2. THE WEITEK ; and to begin with, of the traces there are in his 
 work of the influence of the Ideologists and even of the Encyclo- 
 pedists. Stendhal's first masters : Montesquieu, Marivaux, Duclos, 
 Helvetius, Cabanis. Henri Beyle's military and administrative career
 
 MODERN TIMES 4'25 
 
 literary works which, given the state of their customs or 
 their beliefs, are susceptible of procuring them the greatest 
 possible degree of pleasure" [Cf. Racine et Shakespeare]. 
 It has been remarked, however, in regard to this declar- 
 ation, that, if " Eomanticism " were merely equivalent to 
 " Modernism," Racine, Boileau, and Voltaire would have 
 been Romanticists in their time, a proposition that is 
 wholly indefensible. Shall we recall yet other defini- 
 tions, that of Hugo for example ? After asserting in 
 1824, in the second preface to the Odes, "that he was 
 absolutely ignorant of what was meant by the Classic 
 school and the Romantic school," he nevertheless defined 
 Romanticism, three years later, in the preface to Crom- 
 
 1800-1814 ; and that he acquired early an experience of life that is 
 uncommon among men of letters. His admiration for Napoleon 
 [Cf. Le Rouge et le Noir and his Vie de Najjoleon] . His long 
 residence at Milan, 1814-1817 and 1817-1821 [Cf. the Chartreues 
 de Panne, chap, i., and the celebrated epitaph : Arriglw Beyle, 
 Milanese} Stendhal's early writings: Vies de Haydn, Mozart et 
 Metastase, 1814, 2nd edition, 1817 ; and the Histoire de la pein- 
 ture en Italie, 1817. His relations with Lord Byron and Destutt 
 de Tracy. The volume entitled Amour, 1822; and that it might 
 easily pass for a work of the eighteenth century ; owing to the 
 jejuneness and sustained irony of its tone ; to its affectation of 
 cynicism ; and to its desultory composition. Still the influence of 
 Cabanis is plainly discernible in the work [Cf. Rapports du physique 
 et du moral] ; which contains, moreover, two or three new and 
 original elements ; that make of Stendhal one of the forerunners of 
 Romanticism. His intervention in the quarrel : Racine et Shakes- 
 peare, 1823 ; and that it is worth noting that this book appeared in 
 part in an English magazine ; if the fact may be taken as evidence 
 of Beyle's cosmopolitanism. The Promenades dans Rome, 1829 ; 
 and Le Rouge et le Noir, 1830. 
 
 That Stendhal, besides helping in a general way to direct attention 
 to foreign literatures, supplied Romanticism with the three essential 
 principles of its aesthetic system, even although he may not have 
 clearly denned them. These principles are : 1. The Principle of ihe 
 equivalence of the arts ; or of the possibility of a perpetual exchange
 
 426 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 well, to be the mingling of the branches of literature, the 
 alternating the sublime with the grotesque, and finally 
 the substitution, as the ideal of art, of an " effort to 
 render character" for the realisation of beauty. There 
 are further the ironical definitions contained in Musset's 
 Lettres de Dupuis et Cotonet (1836); definitions which, 
 although they are not so much witty as intended to be 
 so, possess the great advantage over all the others of 
 being " successive," and thus of putting the question as 
 it ought to be put. The definition of Romanticism is 
 a question neither of etymology nor of doctrine, but of 
 history ; and the word "Romanticism," having in itself 
 no principal or primary signification, merely conveys the 
 
 of their respective " methods," and, in consequence, of their effects, 
 between poetry, painting, and music ; 2. the Principle that the 
 representation of character is the essential object of art ; so far as 
 character is the expression of the physiological " temperament " of 
 individuals ; and of nations ; 3. The Principle of the glorification 
 of energy ; if his admiration for Napoleon ; for Italy ; and for 
 England prove essentially that he sympathised with the resistance of 
 individuals to the conventions and laws of society. He was also one 
 of the first to make the " cultivation of the individuality " the law of 
 the development of the artist. 
 
 It was due to other and different, though allied, reasons ; that he 
 himself outlived Romanticism ; for instance to his taste for minor or 
 precise and " documentary " details ; to his tendency to transform 
 particular incidents into laws of the intelligence or of nature ; to his 
 anonymous or impersonal but, in particular, " analytic " manner of 
 writing ; and also, indeed, to the value of certain of his observations. 
 It may be questioned, however, whether the " documentary " value, 
 and still more whether the literary value, of the Chartreuse de Parme, 
 1839, are as considerable as has sometimes been maintained ; or, 
 again, whether the profoundness of the work is not often more 
 apparent than real ? and, in this connection, of the strange pretension 
 of ironists to make the reader believe that merely because they indulge 
 in raillery he ought to credit them with being thinkers. Stendhal's 
 last works : Vittoria Accoramboni, 1837 ; Les Cenci ; La duchesse 
 de Palliano, 1838 ; L'Abbesse de Castro, 1839. Stendhal's letter to
 
 MODERN TIMES 427 
 
 different meanings which have been given it in the course 
 of history ; in the course, that is, of time, by men and by 
 literary works. 
 
 Still, in spite of the multiplicity of senses which have 
 been attributed in turn to Eomanticism by Hugo, Dumas, 
 Vigny, Musset, Saint-Beuve, or George Sand, to omit 
 minor names, and of the diversity of its characteristics, 
 if it be essayed to isolate and determine a single feature 
 that shall include all the others, there would not seem 
 to be room for long hesitation. Romanticism is above 
 everything else the triumph in literature and art of in- 
 dividualism, the entire and absolute emancipation of the 
 Ego. Once again we are confronted by the influence, 
 
 Balzac, 1840 ; and the two sentences of it that have become famous : 
 " The Chartreuse de Panne is written in the style of the Civil Code " ; 
 and : "I fancy that I may perhaps meet with some success towards 
 1880." 
 3. THE WORKS. Stendhal's works comprise : 
 
 (1) His novels, all of which we have mentioned with the exception 
 of the first : Arrnance, 1827 ; his Chroniques italiennes, 1855 ; and 
 Lamiel, published in 1888 by M. Stryienski ; 
 
 (2) His critical works [art criticism or li terary criticism] , of which 
 the principal are : the Vies de Haydn, Mozart et Metastase, 1814- 
 1817 [under the pseudonym of Louis Cesar Alexandre Bombet] ; the 
 Histoire de la peinture en Italic, 1817, by M. B. A. A. ; Rome, 
 Naples et Florence, 1817 ; Racine et Shakespeare, part i., 1823, and 
 part ii., 1825 ; Vie de Rossini, 1824 ; and Promenades dans Rome, 
 Paris, 1829 ; 
 
 (3) His miscellaneous works, of which the principal are : L' Amour, 
 1822 ; Memoires d'un touriste, 1838 ; his correspondence, two 
 volumes of which were published in 1855 ; and a volume of Letters 
 to his Sister, 1892. 
 
 An edition of his complete works has been issued in 13 volumes, 
 followed by 4 volumes containing his posthumous works, Paris, 1853- 
 1855, Calmann Levy. There have since been added the Vie de 
 Napoleon, 1876 ; and the five or six volumes published by M. Casiruir 
 Stryienski.
 
 428 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 victorious at last over the obstacles that had long 
 stood in its way, of Rousseau and Chateaubriand. Each 
 of us, according to the Romanticists, is his own un- 
 disputed master. The artist and the poet, as such, 
 are subject to but one law and as men have but one 
 duty : it is incumbent on them to reveal themselves 
 in their works. Their contemporaries may ask no 
 more of them, and they themselves can accomplish 
 no more without being wanting in the respect they 
 owe in some sort to their own originality. But as we 
 have insisted on this point, on various occasions, so 
 strongly that we may deem it useless to again lay stress 
 on it, we shall content ourselves with adding that between 
 
 X. Alphonse-Marie-Louis Prat de Lamartine [Macon, 
 1790; f!869, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Lamartine's correspondence, edited by Mme 
 Valentine de Lamartine, 1st edition, 1873-1875 ; and 2nd edition, 
 1881-1882 [completer but still very incomplete] ; his Confidences, 
 1849 ; his Nouvelles confidences, 1851 ; his Memoires inedits [1790- 
 1815] , 1870 ; and the Manuscrit de ma mere, 1871. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. i., 1832, 1836, 1839 ; and 
 Causeries du lundi, vol. i., 1849 ; and vol. iv., 1851 ; A. Vinet, 
 Etudes sur la litterature francaise au XIX s siecle, vol. ii., 1845 ; 
 Gustave Planche's articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes, June, 1851, 
 November, 1859 ; Cuvillier-Fleury, Dernieres etudes litteraires, 1859, 
 Victor de Laprade, Le sentiment de la nature chez les modernes, 
 1868 ; Eugene Pelletan, Lamartine, sa vie et ses oeuvres, Paris, 1869 ; 
 Ch. de Mazade, Lamartine, sa vie litteraire et 2)olitique, Paris, 1870 ; 
 Emile OUivier, Lamartine, Paris, 1874 ; Ernest Legouve, Soixante 
 ans de souvenirs, Paris, 1876 ; Ch. Alexandre, Souvenirs sur 
 Lamartine, Paris, 1884 ; F. Brunetiere, La poesie de Lamartine, in 
 the Revue des Deux Mondes, August, 1886 ; and Devolution de la 
 poesie lyrique, vol. i., 1894 ; Em. Faguet, XIX C siecle, 1887 ; Ch. de 
 Pomairols, Lamartine, Paris, 1889 ; Chamborand de Perissat, 
 Lamartine inconnu, 1891 ; F. de Reyssie, La Jeunesse de Lamar- 
 tine, Paris, 1892 ; Em. Deschanel, Lamartine, Paris, 1893 ; Jules 
 Lemaitre, Les contemporains, vol. vi., 1895 ; E. Zyromski, Lamartine, 
 poete lyrique, Paris, 1896.
 
 MODERN TIMES 429 
 
 1825 and 1835 there was nothing, from the example of 
 Byron to the " subjective idealism " of Fichte, that did 
 not concur to favour this development of individualism. 
 Moreover, this is precisely why, of all the characteristics of 
 Romanticism, none is more essential than individualism : 
 by which I mean that none better explains the causes of 
 its rise and fall and the nature of the reaction it was 
 destined to provoke. 
 
 The truth is that all the other matters about which 
 so much noise was made hostility to Classicism, liberty, 
 truth in art, local colour, the imitation of foreign litera- 
 tures merely served to cover or disguise the primary 
 preoccupation of the period, which was self -exhibition. 
 
 2. THE POET, and that whatever may have been his role in other 
 fields, whatever disdain he may have affected at times for poetry ; 
 and finally whatever be the service he may have rendered France on 
 one memorable occasion ; his glory will always be that he is the 
 author of the Meditations and the Harmonies ; and not that he 
 wrote the Histoire de la Restauration, or even the Histoire des 
 Girondins. 
 
 His birth and education [Cf. his Correspondence, which is full of 
 precious information]. Lamartine's family; and of a remark 
 of Sainte-Beuve's : " that it is an excellent thing to come of 
 a sound stock." The sentiment of nature ; and that to possess 
 it Lamartine had no need to acquire it ; as he was imbued with 
 it from his childhood upwards. The religious sentiment ; and how 
 much more sincere it is in Lamartine than in Chateaubriand ; 
 or at least more "innate"; and perhaps, too, more favourable to 
 poetry. Natural nobleness of Lamartine's imagination. His early 
 verses [Cf. his Correspondence] ; and their resemblance with those 
 of Chenedolle^ ; but still more with those of Parny. The Elvire 
 of the Meditations [Cf. A. France, L'Elvire de Lamartine] . 
 His essays in dramatic writing and his relations with Talma. The 
 publication of the Meditations, 1819. They produce an incomparably 
 greater effect than the poems of Chenier, 1819 ; and give a new trend 
 to poetry. The Nouvelles Meditations, and the Mort de Socrate, 
 1823. Stay in Italy. The Dernier chant du pelerinage de Childe 
 Harold, 1825. Lamartine French charge d'affaires at Florence. He
 
 430 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATURE 
 
 Victor Hugo and Musset, the elder Dumas and George 
 Sand, confined their imitation of Goethe or Byron 
 to copying their practice of living their novels, of 
 " romancifying " their lives, of introducing themselves 
 into their works, of relating and publicly confessing 
 their love affairs, after the manner of Goethe in 
 Werther, and of Byron in Don Juan : they did not 
 imitate either the rare perseverance with which Goethe 
 endeavoured to perfect his individuality or the heroic 
 death of Byron. Similarly, if we examine what con- 
 stituted liberty in their eyes, liberty in art, and not the 
 liberty of art, which are two very different things, it 
 doubtless consisted neither in the right to choose their 
 
 composes the Harmonies ; returns to Paris. Reception at the 
 French Academy ; publication of the Harmonies, 1830. He 
 retires from his official position on the morrow of the Revolution 
 of 1830; and publishes his first political writing. He is a candi- 
 date in the Var, but fails to be elected ; he leaves for the East ; 
 his meeting with Lady Esther Stanhope. Return to France, 
 1833 ; publication of the Voyage en Orient, 1835 ; and of Jocelyn, 
 1836. 
 
 A. The Meditations. Of the general character of the first Medita- 
 tions ; and that when they are compared with Beranger's Songs (1816- 
 1824) ; a comparison that is almost a sacrilege ; or even with the 
 Elegies of Chenier (1819) ; their most novel feature is found to be 
 that their author returns to the genuine lyric " themes " ; which are 
 Nature, Love, and Death ; themes he treats with as much eleva- 
 tion as there is sensuality in Chenier's verses ; and sniggering 
 " gauloiserie " or sly epicurism in Beranger's songs. The Mort de 
 Socrate ; and of Lamennais' aptitude for philosophic poetry [Cf. 
 Voltaire in his Discours sur Vhomme] . The Nouvelles Meditations 
 [Cf. M. Pomairols, Lamartine] ; and that this work, while offering 
 the characteristics of the first volume of Meditations, is further dis- 
 tinguished by the union of more grace [Cf. Ischia] with more vigour 
 [Cf. le Crucifix] ; and not less sincerity with greater virtuosity 
 [Cf. les Preludes] ; while it is at once the noblest and the most 
 voluptuous work in French poetry. 
 
 B. Jocelyn ; and that it has the merit in the first place ; and the
 
 MODERN TIMES 431 
 
 subjects, since no objection had been raised when Vol- 
 taire had gone for his subjects to America or China; 
 nor in the right to write prose dramas, since Cromwell, 
 Hernant, Christini, Othello, are in verse; nor even in 
 the right to violate the "rules," since what "rules" 
 can be said to have been in force in connection with 
 the elegy, the ode, or the novel, and Cinq-Mars, the 
 Orientates, Notre-Dame de Paris, the Confessions de 
 Joseph Delorme, are they, or are they not, Romantic 
 works ? In short, it must be admitted that the Eoman- 
 ticists understood liberty merely as the right to be 
 themselves in everything, to subordinate the " sove- 
 reignty " of the artist to no authority whatever, and to 
 
 merit is a real one; of being the only "poem" of any considerable 
 length that exists in French. Of the subject of Jocelyn; and of 
 certain objections that have been urged in this connection [Cf. on this 
 point the articles of Vinet and Em. Deschanel for one side of the 
 argument and those of Sainte-Beuve and J. Lemaitre for the other] . 
 That to blame Lamartine for not having married Jocelyn and 
 Laurence ; is to blame Corneille for having separated Polyeucte and 
 Pauline ; and to forget that beyond a doubt Corneille wrote his 
 drama and Lamartine his poem solely with a view to bringing 
 about this " separation." Of a comparison Sainte-Beuve has made 
 between the " country clergyman's poetry," which he pretends to 
 admire particularly hi Jocelyn ; and Wordsworth's poetry ; and 
 that to adopt this attitude is to praise Jocelyn for its least merit ;- 
 for while the work really possesses the merit hi question ; and is 
 traversed by a vein of familiar poetry ; it also bears the imprint of 
 the poet of the Meditations ; of his sentiment of nature ; and of 
 his conception of love, always as chaste in its expression as it is ardent 
 hi its passion. The work, too, displays that exuberance of inspiration 
 and that descriptive facility which can only be found fault with on 
 the score that they tend to develop themselves towards an abusive 
 degree. Finally, Jocelyn is illustrative of that " philosophic " side 
 of Lamartine's poetry ; which we have already referred to in con- 
 nection with the Meditations ; and which reminds the reader in 
 places of Fenelon. 
 
 C. The Harmonies ; and that having appeared before Jocelyn ;
 
 432 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 recognise no law beyond that of their caprice or their 
 fancy : 
 
 Toujours le cceur humain pour modele et pour maitre ! 
 Le coeur humain de qui ? Le coeur humain de quoi ? 
 Quand le diable y serait, j'ai mon " coeur humain " moi ! 
 
 Finally, if it has been possible to assert and I believe I 
 have myself made the remark that Romanticism was 
 in every respect the exact opposite of Classicism, the 
 essential, the sole reason is that Classicism had made the 
 impersonality of a work of art one of the conditions of 
 its perfection. 
 
 This liberty for the artist to be himself and nothing 
 
 if we deal with them after that poem ; the reason is that " being 
 written as they were felt, neither connectedly nor consecutively" ; 
 they are the very essence of Larnartine's poetry ; when instead of 
 being kept under jealous control it is allowed to vent itself freely. 
 The Harmonies show the fundamental character of Lainartine's 
 poetry ; which consists in an inability to set itself a limit ; and in 
 a tendency towards philosophy; and what is more, pantheistic 
 philosophy ; and towards vagueness and indeterminateness in con- 
 sequence of its exuberance. At the same time the object of this 
 remark is not to belittle the Harmonies; since Lamartine, while 
 following the general inspiration, attains in some passages to as 
 great a precision as anywhere in his work [Cf. Le premier regret, 
 Milly ou la terre natale] ; but to show him losing his self-con- 
 trol ; unconcerned henceforth either with selecting his ideas ; 
 or with restraining the ever more abundant flow of his improvisa- 
 tion ; and thus getting ready to write La chute (Tun ange. Whether 
 it is to be regretted that Lamartine turned his attention to politics ; 
 and that in any case, from the moment of his doing so his poetic 
 inspiration seems to have been, if not dried up, assuredly "un- 
 personalised." However, he continues to occupy a place in the 
 history of literature ; in virtue of some of his speeches [Cf. L. de 
 Bonchaud, La politique de Lamartine, Paris, 1878] ; of certain 
 of his presentiments [Cf. E. M. de Vogue, Heures dhistoire, Paris, 
 1893] ; of his Histoire des Girondins, 1847 ; a work in which 
 history is doubtless strangely distorted ; but certain pages of which
 
 MODEEN TIMES 433 
 
 but himself, or to "refract" in himself the universe, is 
 also the explanation of the exuberance, richness, and 
 brilliancy of Romantic lyricism. There is nothing in 
 the French language superior to Lamartine's Medita- 
 tions, to certain of the finest of Hugo's odes, from 
 the Deux lies (1824) to the Mages (1856), or to the 
 Nuits of Alfred de Musset. If these very great poets 
 do not always interest us when they talk of themselves, 
 they never interest us except when they talk of them- 
 selves ; or rather the happenings in history and in life 
 by which they themselves were stirred are the origin 
 and the theme of their songs, which do not interest us 
 when they make them the vehicle merely of what is 
 
 could only have been written by a poet ; and finally in virtue of 
 his personal novels : Raphael, 1849 ; the Confidences, 1849 ; the 
 Nouvelles Confidences, 1851 ; Graziella, 1852. Eeduced henceforth 
 to " writing for the booksellers," his books and newspaper articles 
 contain, no doubt, some reminiscences of his past ; and in particular 
 display more critical acumen and judgment than it is somewhat the 
 fashion to allow ; but he has ceased to influence opinion ; and his 
 literary role is terminated nearly fifteen years before his death. 
 3. THE WORKS. Lamartine's Works comprise : 
 
 (1) His poetry : the Meditations, 1819 ; Lamort de Socrate, 1823; 
 the Nouvelles Meditations, 1823; the Dernier chant du pele- 
 rinage de Childe -Harold, 1825 ; the Harmonies poetiques et reli- 
 gieuses, 1830; Jocelyn, 1836; La chute d'un ange, 1838; the 
 Recueillements poetiques, 1839. 
 
 To the above must be added the volume of Poesies inedites, 
 published in 1873 ; and a certain number of youthful poems scattered 
 through the first volume of his Correspondence ; 
 
 (2) His novels : Raphael, 1849 ; Genevieve, 1850 ; Le tailleur de 
 pier res de Saint-Point, 1851 ; Graziella, 1852; and [although these 
 works contain a large amount of truth mixed up with a great deal 
 of imagination] , the Confidences, 1849 ; and the Nouvelles Con- 
 fidences, 1851 ; 
 
 (3) The Voyage en Orient, 1832-1833 ; 
 
 (4) The Histoire des Girondins, 1847 ; and the Histoire de la 
 Restauration, 1852, &c. ;
 
 434 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 most singular in their own nature ; whereas our entire 
 being thrills in harmony with their utterances when we 
 find they express our own emotions reverberated, ampli- 
 fied and multiplied by the echo of their voice. It may be 
 said indeed that they were the first to reveal to us that 
 highest order of lyric poetry of which Eonsard had 
 had but the presentiment, while Malherbe, by striking 
 off in the direction of eloquence, had reduced it to 
 a matter of laws. But the question arises, what is 
 the difference between eloquence and lyricism, seeing 
 that both are characterised by the same " movements," 
 the same " imagery," and the same " qualities of 
 language " ? There is perhaps but one, and it is at 
 the same time a very slight and a very great difference. 
 
 (5) The Correspondance ; 
 
 (6) The Cours familier de litterature, 
 
 There are several editions of Lamartine's complete works : that 
 published by Gosselin in 13 vols., Paris, 1840 ; that by Furne, 8 vols., 
 Paris, 1845-1849 [in reality these editions contain only the political 
 works and the Voyage en Orient] ; and that published by the author 
 in 40 vols., Paris, Rue de la Ville-l'Eveque, 1860-1863 [which contains 
 neither the Correspondence nor the whole of the Cours famiUer de 
 litterature] . 
 
 XI. The Soroonne Triumvirate [1815-1830] . 
 
 Of the similarity between the careers of Fra^ois Guizot [Nirues, 
 1787 ; f 1874, Val-Richer] ; Abel Villemain [Paris, 1790 ; f 1870, 
 Paris] ; and Victor Cousin [Paris, 1792 ; f 1867, Cannes] ; and that 
 it lies less in their having all three used literature as a stepping stone ; 
 in their having all three been Minister of Public Instruction ; or 
 even in their having all three of them been professors at the Sorbonne 
 and at the same period ; than in their having aroused the same mis- 
 trust or the same enthusiasm by their teaching ; spread the fame of 
 " professorial " eloquence until it rivalled that of the eloquence of the 
 pulpit, the tribune, or the bar ; and given the same trend to philo- 
 sophy and literary criticism. For this reason they should be taken 
 together ; and also because, not being very original, they were less 
 genuine innovators than the eloquent spokesmen of the "common
 
 MODERN TIMES 435 
 
 While the orator endeavours to give the most general 
 expression possible to his emotions so as to reach the 
 widest and most varied audience, the poet, on the con- 
 trary, aims at giving the most individual expression he 
 is able to the emotions that are common to everybody. 
 Such, at any rate, was the mode of proceeding of Musset, 
 Hugo, and Lamartine, and, longo intervallo, of the poet 
 of lambes or of that of the Confessions de Joseph Delorme. 
 Yet all these writers have been reproached with being in 
 general rather orators than poets. The reproach is based 
 on a misconception at once of the conditions of lyricism 
 and of the principle of Romanticism. If the writers in 
 question are indeed the greatest of our lyric poets, the 
 reason is that of all our poets they are the most per- 
 
 ideas " of their times : less " thinkers " than " vulgarisers " ; while 
 at least two of them were " rhetoricians " rather than genuine orators 
 the exception being Guizot. 
 
 All three contributed to arouse curiosity in foreign literature and 
 affairs : Guizot by his translations of Shakespeare and Gibbon ; and 
 by his Histories, in writing which he had England perpetually in his 
 mind's eye ; Villemain, by the most celebrated of his series of lectures, 
 the Cours de litterature frangaise au XVIIP siecle ; in which 
 English writers and, in particular, English political orators occupy as 
 much space as French authors ; and Cousin by his " adaptations " of 
 the philosophy of Reid or Dugald- Stewart and of the metaphysics of 
 Schelling and Hegel. All three indulged in general criticism; or 
 rather in " eclecticism " ; Villemain in literature and with the greater 
 acumen ; Cousin in philosophy and with the more ardour ; and 
 Guizot in history and in the more formal spirit ; but without possess- 
 ing, in reality, in Guizot's case a personal method ; hi Cousin's an 
 original philosophy ; in Villernain's an artistic doctrine ; and rely- 
 ing merely on the guidance afforded them by their " Liberalism. "- 
 However, if literary criticism, prior to Villemain, was based almost 
 exclusively on the individual humour of the critic ; philosophy, prior 
 to Cousin, on the supposed necessity of having recourse to it to combat 
 or bolster up this or that set of opinions ; and history, prior to 
 Guizot, on the desire to find in the past arguments applicable to the 
 present ; all three caused general criticism to achieve considerable
 
 436 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 sonal ; and because they are the most personal, they are 
 the most Komantic of our poets. 
 
 Their irresistible leaning to take themselves as their 
 subject matter is, lastly, the starting-point of all the in- 
 novations it is only just to credit them with. If they 
 rendered more pliant, if they, in a way, broke up the 
 classic alexandrine, the reason is that it was to thought 
 and still more to the feelings a sort of sheath or armour, 
 whose rigidity lent itself ill to the exigencies of what 
 is most personal in thought and in the feelings. De- 
 sirous of expressing the more inward emotions, the 
 Romanticists stood in need of greater freedom of move- 
 ment, and it was to secure it, and to no other end, that 
 they reformed the alexandrine. They also felt the 
 
 progress by making it rest on principles which, though more or less 
 debatable, were regarded at any rate as scientific. Finally, all three by 
 their manner of treating history, philosophy, and literary criticism, 
 brought into view the solidarity that exists between the elements of the 
 same civilisation : Guizot by including history, literature, and philoso- 
 phy in his historical generalisations ; Cousin by showing the connection 
 between Condillac's philosophy and the general spirit of the eighteenth 
 century ; and Villemain by mingling history and literature. 
 
 All three of them too, though in different ways, helped to direct 
 " the century of criticism and history " into the path it was to follow ; 
 to freshen the atmosphere of the higher French scholastic establish- 
 ments ; and to bring the French educational programme into harmony 
 with the spirit of the age. As they all lived to a considerable age ; 
 and exercised as Ministers, Councillors, and Academicians a great 
 influence, they each of them formed a school ; and brought the 
 university into touch with " society " ; from which it may be said to 
 have been isolated for two centuries. They also caused their own 
 special studies to be accorded a place in " general literature " ; and 
 in this respect, since they did not confine their attention to France ; 
 but followed the example set by Mme de Stael ; their influence was 
 European as well as national ; and if only on this score they played 
 their part, from amid the seclusion of the Sorbonne, in the formation 
 of Romanticism ; so far as that movement was an effort to emanci- 
 pate literature from purely classic tradition.
 
 MODERN TIMES 437 
 
 necessity of a more extended vocabulary. In this connec- 
 tion the following lines of Victor Hugo may be recalled : 
 " When, in an effort to understand and to judge, I looked 
 on nature and on art, the language was the image of the 
 kingdom with its vulgar sort and its nobility ; poetry 
 was the monarchy, a word was a duke and peer, or a mere 
 common fellow." The reason for what the poet says in 
 these famous verses has been seen above. It is that at 
 the period to which he refers even nature was merely 
 expressed as a function of man, and man as a function of 
 society. From the moment, however, that the individual 
 was allowed to be wholly himself, these distinctions 
 disappeared with the doctrine of which they were the 
 expression ; every word which helped the writer to niani- 
 
 XII. Jacques -Nicolas -Augustin Thierry [Blois, 1795 ;f 
 
 1856, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Augustin Thierry, Dix ans d'etudes historiques, 
 preface of 1840; Charles Magnin, Augustin Thierry, in the Revue 
 des Deux Mondes, May, 1841 ; -A. Nettement, Histoire de la litter - 
 ature franqaise sous la Bestauration, 1853 ; Ernest Benan, Ensais 
 de morale et de critique, 1857 ; Pierre Dufay and Rene Bibour, Li 
 Centenaire d' Augustin Thierry, Blois, 1895. 
 
 2. THE TRANSFORMATION OF HISTORY ; and that it is no going too 
 far to attribute it to Augustin Thierry ; the bent of whose mind was 
 not greatly influenced, it should be remarked in the first place, 
 either by the fact that he was for a time a student at the then 
 recently founded Ecole Normale Superieure ; or by his relations 
 with Saint- Simon ; and the Liberal newspapers of the period (1820) ; 
 the Courier frangais, for instance. It was to begin with Chateau- 
 briand ; and afterwards Walter Scott, who revealed to him his true 
 vocation ; which was : (1) to introduce into history the sentiment of 
 the diversity of epochs ; all, or almost all, of which had hitherto 
 been confounded owing to the uniformity with which they had been 
 depicted ; (2) to introduce into history, through the medium oi the 
 doctrine of the irreducibleness of races, a sort of physiological fatal- 
 ism ; but also a leaven of poetry ; since, as we saw in connection 
 with the Mediaeval epopee, all epopees are the expression of a racial
 
 438 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 fest his personality passed muster ; and individualism in 
 literature as in politics ended in equality. And finally, 
 was it not inevitable that in prose, as in verse, liberty in 
 the choice of words should be followed by liberty as 
 regards the turning of the sentence, a more varied 
 vocabulary by a more pliant phraseology, a revolution 
 in the language by a revolution in syntax? 
 
 Komanticism in short, from whatever point of view it 
 be regarded, is found to mean individualism ; or it may 
 be said that lyricism is the medium by means of which 
 individualism came forth out of Romanticism and vice 
 versa. Further proof of this assertion is found in the 
 contagious rapidity with which all three overran, per- 
 vaded, and transformed every branch of literature between 
 
 conflict ; and (3) finally, to show that aj> active preoccupation with 
 the present throws a flood of light on the obscurities of the past ; 
 and leads to an understanding of their true significance. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Augustin Thierry's works comprise : 
 
 (1) His Lettres sur I'histoire de France, 1820, augmented, cor- 
 rected, and printed in volume form in 1827 ; (2) his Histoire de la 
 conquete de V Angleterre par les Normands, 1825, his principal work ; 
 (3) his Considerations sur I'histoire de France, which is an intro- 
 duction to the Recits des temps merovingiens, 1840 ; and (4) his 
 Essai sur la formation et le progres du Tiers-Etat, 1853. 
 
 The volume entitled Dix ans d'etudes Jiistoriques, published in 
 1834, contains, besides the Lettres sur I'histoire de France [new 
 edition], essays on various subjects, historical, literary, and philo- 
 sophic. 
 
 There are two editions of Augustin Thierry's complete works : 
 Paris, 1859, Furne; and Paris, 1883, F. Didot. 
 
 XIII. Romantic Drama. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. G. Schlegel, Cours de litterature dramatique, 
 1814 ; F. Guizot's preface to Letourneur's reprint of his Shakespeare, 
 Paris, 1821 ; Stendhal, Racine et Shakespeare, Paris, 1823-1825 ; 
 Ch. Magnin, Le theatre anglais a Paris, 1827-1828 [in his Causeries 
 et Meditations, vol. ii., Paris, 1843] ; Benjamin Constant, De 
 Wallenstein et du theatre allemand, in his Melanges, Paris, 1829 ;
 
 MODERN TIMES 439 
 
 1830 and 1840. It is a matter of common knowledge that 
 the plays of Hugo, of Musset, and of Dumas himself, that 
 such fiction as Vigny's Stello, as George Sand's Indiana, 
 Valentine, or Lelia, as the Confession d'un Enfant du 
 siecle, are at once the most "Romantic" and the most 
 "personal" works in French literature. The same must 
 be said of Lamartine's Eapliael and of his Graziella. 
 These writings in truth, to borrow Du Bellay's expres- 
 sion, are " merely the diaries of or the commentaries on " 
 their authors' impressions of every description ! But a 
 circumstance still more worthy of attention is the fact 
 that a like tendency is observable even in criticism. The 
 early writings of Sainte-Beuve, the Portraits litteraires, 
 or the Portraits contemporains, at least when the writer 
 
 Fauriel, Carmagnola et Adelghis, two of Manzoni's tragedies, fol- 
 lowed by a study entitled TJne lettre a M. C. sur P Unite de temps et 
 de lieu, Paris, 1834 [Cf. Waille, Le romantisme de Manzoni, Algiers, 
 1890]. 
 
 The prefaces of N. Lernercier ; Alexandre Dumas ; Alfred de Vigny ; 
 Victor Hugo, &c. 
 
 Jules Janin, Histoire de la litterature dramatique, Paris, 1853- 
 1858 ; Gustave Planche's dramatic criticisms in the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, 1832-1857 ; Theophile Gautier, Histoire de Vart dramatique, 
 Paris, 1859 ; Saint-Marc Girardin, Cours de litterature dramatique, 
 Paris, 1853. 
 
 2. THE EVOLUTION OF ROMANTICISM IN THE DRAMA; and that its 
 principle will be sought for in vain in the appropriation of English or 
 German plays ; in the introduction on to the French stage of national 
 subjects ; or in the employment of exotic backgrounds. Romanti- 
 cism, as far as the drama is concerned, consisted in proceeding in 
 everything on exactly contrary lines to Classicism ; in denying the 
 existence of the " rules " ; and in claiming a liberty, the first effect 
 of which was to lower tragedy to the level of melodrama. The 
 accuracy of this view may be established by considering the ground 
 traversed, by Vigny between Othello, 1829, and Chatterton, 1835 ; 
 by Hugo between Cromwell, 1827, and the Burgraves, 1843 ; and 
 by Dumas between Henri III. et sa cour, 1829, and Mademoiselle de 
 Belle-Isle, 1839. A second characteristic of Romantic drama is that
 
 440 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 is to some extent sincere, are merely the diary of the 
 literary impressions of Joseph Delorme. And how shall 
 we describe Michelet's Histories, if not as the lyric nota- 
 tion of the emotions their author experienced as he lived 
 over again, in the peaceful silence of the archives, the 
 shame or the glory of the past ? To these names I would 
 add those of Lacordaire and Berryer, were it not that, 
 although the great preacher and the great orator have 
 only been dead some thirty or forty years, their works 
 have become almost unreadable. 
 
 A reaction was inevitable. " Men are made to live 
 together and to form civil bodies and societies. But it 
 must be remarked that none of the individuals who 
 compose these societies will consent to be regarded 
 
 it breathes a spirit of revolt which, without its being necessary to go 
 as far as the lucubrations of Felix Pyat, is easily recognisable in 
 Dumas' Antony, 1831 ; in Victor Hugo's Le roi s' 'amuse, 1832 ; 
 and even in Vigny's Chatterton, 1835. But since the most unbridled 
 liberty ends inevitably in fashioning a code for itself, a final char- 
 acteristic of Romantic drama is the affirmation of the sovereignty 
 of passion ; and the glorification of crime under the name of 
 energy. 
 
 Happily, while their imitators, a Frederic Soulie for example, carry 
 the doctrine to extremes, Vigny is saved from its consequences by 
 the natural elevation of his character ; Hugo by his lyricism, which 
 in Hernani or Buy Bias raises him above his subject ; and Dumas 
 by the fertility of his dramatic invention. It thus happens that 
 Romantic drama, after having made a great stir, but having accom- 
 plished comparatively little, returns with the Burgraves to the 
 epopee ; and with Mademoiselle de Belle Isle or Les demoiselles 
 de Saint- Cyr to the drama as understood by Scribe ; without 
 having conquered for the dramatic author anything more than a 
 very vague general liberty ; the applications of which only become 
 clear when contrasted with the obligations imposed by Classicism. 
 The Romantic drama is a Classic tragedy ; in which the author 
 has the right to violate the three unities ; the personages of which 
 may be mere private individuals ; and in which the "grotesque" is 
 constantly alternating with the " sublime."
 
 MODERN TIMES 441 
 
 as the most inferior member of the body to which he 
 belongs. It thus happens that those who vaunt them- 
 selves, raising themselves above their fellows, whom 
 they regard as inferior members of society, necessarily 
 render themselves odious to the entire community." The 
 Romanticists were assuredly unacquainted with these 
 words of the modest and timid Malebrariche, but had it 
 been otherwise they would have had little weight with 
 them. They were mistaken, however, in neglecting this 
 admonition, for what it is possible to put up with from 
 the author of the Meditations or of the Nuits, becomes 
 insupportable after a while even from a Sainte-Beuve, 
 it is of the poet I speak, or a Desbordes-Valmore. We 
 esteem it impertinence on their part to trouble us with 
 
 3. THE WORKS. (1) Alfred de Vigny : Le More de Venise, 1829 ; 
 La, Marechale d'Ancre, 1831 ; Chatterton, 1835. 
 
 (2) Victor Hugo: Cromwell, 1827; Hernani, 1829; Marion 
 Delorme, 1830 ; Le roi a 1 amuse, 1832 ; Lucrece Borgia, 1833 ; 
 Marie Tudor, 1833 ; Angela, 1835 ; Buy Bias, 1838; Les Bur- 
 graves, 1843. 
 
 (3) Alexandre Dumas : Henri III. et sa cour, 1829 ; Christine a 
 Fontainebleau, 1830 ; Napoleon Bonaparte, 1831 ; Antony, 1831 ; 
 Charles VII. cliez ses grands vassaux, 1831 ; Richard Darlington, 
 ia31 ; Teresa, 1832; La Tour de Nesle, 1832-,Angele, 1833; 
 Catherine Howard, 1834 ; Don Juan de Marana, 1836 ; Kean, 
 1836 ; Caligula, 1837 ; Paul Jones, 1838 ; Mademoiselle de Belle- 
 Isle, 1839; the Alchimiste, 1839; Un manage sous Louis XV., 
 1841 ;Lorenzino, 1842. 
 
 XIV. Alfred de Musset [Paris, 1810; f 1857, Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. ii., 
 1833, 1836, 1840; and Causeries du lundi, vol. i., 1850, and vol. xiii., 
 1857 ; Alfred de Musset' s Nuits ; and his Confession d'un enfant du 
 siecle, 1835 ; George Sand, Elle et lui, Paris, 1859 ; Paul de Musset, 
 Lui et Elle, Paris, 1860 ; and Biographic d' Alfred de Musset, Paris, 
 1877 ; Mme O. Jaubert [nee d' Alton Shee] , Souvenirs, Paris, 1881 ; 
 Emile Montegut, Nos morts contemporains, Paris, 1884 ; Ernile 
 Faguet, Dix-neuvieme siecle, Paris, 1887 ; Jules Lemaitre, Intro-
 
 442 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUBE 
 
 their personal concerns as if we had none of our own ! 
 and as they lack as a rule the gift of expression, we are 
 irritated by their airs of superiority. They are well aware 
 that this is the impression they create, and with a view 
 to being able to pretend, on the strength of their origi- 
 nality, to a right to bore us with their affairs, they 
 compose themselves, they laboriously attempt to compose 
 themselves an originality, and in doing so quickly land 
 themselves in the fantastic and the monstrous. They 
 then claim for the maladies they have given themselves 
 the indulgence and attention they despaired of obtaining 
 by other means, and literature becomes pathological as 
 a consequence of this self-exhibition. At this juncture, 
 however, good sense revolts, common sense resumes its 
 
 duction au theatre d'Alfred de Musset, Jouaust's edition, Paris, 
 1889-1891 ; Arvede Barine, Alfred de Musset, in the " Grands 
 Ecrivains frangais " series, Paris, 1893; F. Brunetiere, Evolution 
 de la poesie lyrique, 1895 ; Lettres d'Alfred de Musset et de George 
 Sand, edited by M. S. Rocheblave, Paris, 1897. 
 
 2. THE POET. His middle-class extraction and his aristocratic 
 pretensions ; his Voltairian education [Cf . what he says himself in 
 the Confession, as to his early reading] ; and the primary trait of 
 his character, which is impatience or eagerness for pleasure. His 
 early poems ; and that they would be spoiled by a perpetual affecta- 
 tion of " dandyism " [Cf. M.ardoche\ ; and of elegant debauchery, 
 of the stamp of that of Laclos and the younger Crebillon [Cf. 
 Namouna] ; and as well by a phraseology which is still reminis- 
 cent of the eighteenth century ; if it were not for the beauty they 
 derive from the "pride of life" with which they are instinct; and 
 from the ardent and objectless [Cf. La Coupe et les levres] passion 
 they breathe. Effect they produce among the " Romantic clique " ; 
 the premature reputation they procure their author ; and that never 
 has a more precocious celebrity been purchased more dearly by a 
 man more disposed to drain its intoxication to the dregs. 
 
 The "poet of love"; and that it is as the "poet of love" that 
 Musset must always be thought of ; since although exception may 
 and indeed must be taken to his style and versification ; more beau- 
 tiful, more sincere, more impassioned, and more poignant love poems ;
 
 MODERN TIMES 443 
 
 rights, and the sentiment of the social function of litera- 
 ture and art is reawakened. The public ventures at last 
 to call in question the " sovereignty " to which the poet 
 pretended. It is simultaneously perceived that the essen- 
 tial defect of Romanticism consists in this invasion by 
 lyricism of all the branches of literature ; and if further 
 proof were wanted that Romanticism is at bottom lyri- 
 cism, it would be found in the fact that the attempts that 
 are beginning to be made to impose restrictions on the 
 one result in the other losing ground. 
 
 The sensational failure of the Bur graves in 1843, 
 contrasted with the not less sensational though certainly 
 less merited success of Ponsard's Lucrece in the same 
 year, deals romantic drama a blow from which it did 
 
 than the Lettre a Lamartine or the Nuit d'octobre ; do not exist 
 in French. Moreover, and with the exception of his Lorenzaccio ; 
 which represents his contribution to the Romantic controversy ; his 
 plays constitute one long hymn to love [Cf . Les caprices de Marianne ', 
 the Chandelier ; On ne badine pas avec V amour ; II ne faut jurer de 
 rien ; Fantasio, etc.] ; and to love conceived as the sole reason for 
 existence ; and for continuing to live. Herein lies the secret of his 
 dramatic strength ; and of the often unhealthy or questionable, but 
 always infinitely seductive poetry that envelops his plays, as it were, 
 in an atmosphere that is unique ; and herein lies in consequence the 
 secret of the vitality of his work. It may be, too, that the same 
 qualities ; together with the information the work contains with 
 regard to the " pathology of love " ; save his Confession from what 
 would otherwise be the disastrous effects of the declamation by which 
 it is marred ; and finally that this worship of love constitutes almost 
 the sole merit of his Contes and Nouvelles. 
 
 Remarks on this subject ; and that after all it was a happy thing 
 for Musset that he was a victim of love ; if the result of his getting 
 over his great crisis (1832-1837) ; was to restore him to his former 
 self ; and to make of him once more the " dandy " ; or, as Flaubert 
 put it, the bourgeois, he was at the outset of his career. That the 
 " bourgeois " side of Musset's work is not, however, without its 
 merit ; to appreciate which it is sufficient to term " Parisian " what 
 Flaubert styled " bourgeois " ; and thus to make the author of Une
 
 444 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 not recover. But Frar^ois Ponsard is unequal to the 
 task of playing the part with which he has been invested 
 almost in spite of himself, and in reality it is Eugene 
 Scribe and Alexandre Dumas, though they have far less 
 "literary" pretensions than the author of Lucrece, who 
 bring back the drama to an understanding of its true 
 conditions. The two playwrights must be taken together 
 and reconciled in death, for if both of them write badly, 
 almost as badly indeed as anybody has ever written in 
 French, at any rate it cannot be said that either of 
 them writes worse than the other. In any case they 
 thoroughly comprehended that twelve or fifteen hundred 
 spectators of all ages and ranks do not shut themselves 
 up for four or five hours in a closed building to listen to 
 
 bonne fortune and of Apres une lecture ; a lineal descendant of 
 Voltaire, Regnard, Boileau, and La Fontaine. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Musset's works, which are excellent^ 1 classified 
 in the complete edition of them in 10 vols., Charpentier, 1865, 1866, 
 1867, 1876, 1886, comprise : (1) his Poems ; (2) his Plays ; (3) the 
 Confession d'un enfant du siecle ; (4) his Conies and Nouvelles ; 
 (5) his miscellaneous writings, and (6) his posthumous works [Cf. 
 Vte de Spoelberch, Etude critique et bibliographique sur les (Euvres 
 d' Alfred de Musset, Paris, 1867 ; and Derome, Les editions originales 
 des romantiques, vol. ii., Paris, 1887] . 
 
 XV. Prosper Merim.ee [Paris, 1803 ; j 1870, Cannes] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. iii., 
 1841 ; Causeries du lundi, vol. vii., 1853 ; Taiiie, Prosper Merimee, 
 1873 ; Merimee himself, Lettres a une Inconnue, 1873 ; and Lettres 
 a Panizzi, 1881 ; 0. d'Haussonville, Prosper Merimee in the Revue 
 des Deux Mondcs, April, 1879 ; Maurice Tourneux, Prosper Merimee, 
 sa bibliographic, Paris, 1876 ; and Prosper Merimee, ses portraits, etc., 
 Paris, 1879 ; Emile Faguet, XIX C siecle, 1887 ; Aug. Filon, Merimee, 
 Paris, 1893 ; Merimee, Une correspondance inedite, 1896. 
 
 2. THE ROLE OF MKRIMKE ; and that it seems to have been that of 
 an ironist ; who pretended to believe in Romanticism,- merely in 
 order to become better acquainted with it ; to be able the better to 
 ridicule it ; arid finally to bring it into discredit. Mdrimee's first
 
 MODERN TIMES 445 
 
 an author talk to them of himself. In consequence, if 
 they do not return to the ways of the classic drama 
 though it may be that what is best in Scribe is due to 
 Beaumarchais they tend in that direction, and their 
 works, Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle (1839) and the Demoi- 
 selles de Saint-Cyr (1843), for example, or the Bataille 
 de Dames and the Verre d'eau, are works of an undecided 
 character that do not differ to a great extent either from 
 each other or from the works of the past. They are 
 doubtless lacking in observation and psychology, and 
 also, I repeat, in style, but if only in consequence of 
 the historical pretensions of which they make a show, 
 some slight measure of reality is reintroduced into the 
 drama, which seeks, as it were, in their writings to 
 
 works : the Theatre de Clara Gazul, 1825, and La Guzla, 1827 ; 
 and that if they are the work of a Eomanticist as regards their 
 " colour," as regards their initial idea they are that of a man of 
 wide curiosity or of a dilettante ; the work, in fact, less of a disciple 
 of Chateaubriand, than of a pupil of Fauriel and of a friend of 
 Stendhal. The Chronique du regne de Charles IX., 1829 ; the 
 Vase etrusque, 1830 ; the Double meprise, 1833 ; and that already 
 in these last two works the author has almost discarded his Roman- 
 ticism. Those which followed : Les Ames du Purgatoire, 1834, and 
 the Venus d'llle, 1837, might seem to be a return to the Romantic 
 formula ; but the tendency is only apparent ; as is proved by 
 Colomba, 1840 ; Arsene Guillot, 1844 ; Carmen, 1845 ; in which 
 only two of the characteristics of Romanticism are met with : a 
 striving after "local colour" ; and the glorification of energy ; but 
 scarcely any intention of self-exhibition. These works are also free 
 from declamation ; and the art in them consists, on the contrary, in 
 the subjecting what is rare or singular to the ordinary conditions of 
 reality. This attitude would have sufficed, even if it had not been 
 accompanied by a taste for archaeology and erudition, to turn 
 Merimee's attention to history ; and it was as an historian that he 
 ended ; though somewhat obscurely ; while the close of his career 
 also found him ridiculing that " realism " of which he was one of the 
 founders; just as he had formerly ridiculed "Romanticism"; 
 although fighting in its ranks.
 
 446 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 return to its natural laws. The fact has been realised 
 that the drama cannot exist in the absence of a subject 
 of really general interest, and in particular of a certain 
 " self-alienation," which, forbidding the poet to be pre- 
 occupied by his own individuality, leads him to embody 
 himself in his personages. It is recognised, it is confessed 
 that in the drama the individuality of the author must be 
 subordinate to something outside itself ; and this is tanta- 
 mount to saying that the drama is unable to turn its 
 methods to account so long as it continues to be 
 Romantic. 
 
 But the evolution of the novel is about to further 
 the development of the resources of the drama. It 
 is at this juncture towards 1840 that the author of 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Merimee's works comprise : (1) the Theatre de 
 Clara Gazul, 1825, and La Guzla, 1827 ; (2) his Nouvelles, the 
 principal of which have been mentioned ; (3) his historical writings, 
 of which the principal are : his Essai sur la guerre sociale, 1841 ; 
 Don Pedro de Castille, 1848; and the Faux Demetrius, 1852; 
 (4) his archaeological writings, the principal being his Description des 
 veintures de Saint - Savin, 1845 ; (5) his translations from the 
 Russian : Pouchkine's La dame de pique ; Gogol's Inspecteur 
 general ; Tourgueiiieff s Apparitions ; (6) four volumes of travels : 
 Dans le Midi de la France ; Dans Vouest ; En Auvergne ; and En 
 Corse ; and numerous magazine articles, all of which have not been 
 reprinted in volume form; (7) his Correspondence composed so far 
 of Lettres a une inconnue, 2 vols., 1873 ; Lettres a une autre in- 
 connue, 1 vol., 1875; Lettres a Panizzi, 2 vols., 1881; and Une 
 correspondance inedite de P. Merimee, 1 vol., 1896. This Corre- 
 spondence does not constitute the least interesting portion of his work, 
 and we have reason to believe that it might easily be doubled in 
 volume. 
 
 XVI. Alexis-Charles-Henri Clerel de Tocqueville [Paris, 
 
 1805 ; f 1859, Cannes] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. His Correspondance inedite, Paris, 1861 ; and 
 his Nouvelle correspondance inedite, Paris, 1865 ; G. de Beaumont,
 
 MODERN TIMES 447 
 
 Indiana, of Valentine, of Lelia, after having "sown her 
 wild oats," so to speak, after occupying attention with 
 the story of her marriage and the scandal of her love 
 affairs, that George Sand herself begins to see that 
 objective, impersonal and disinterested observation, which 
 is the very definition of the novel, also constitutes its 
 value. With the facility for going to extremes charac- 
 teristic of women, and with their tendency to obey the 
 masculine influences that sway them for the time being, 
 George Sand, guided at first by Lamennais and afterwards 
 by Pierre Leroux, passes at a bound from the subjective 
 or lyric to the social and even the Socialist novel : with 
 the result that the Peche de M. Antoine or the Com- 
 pagnon du Tour de France, if they be novels at all, are 
 
 Notice sur Alexis de Tocqueville, preceding the latter's CEuvres et 
 correspondance inedites, 1861, Paris ; L. de Lomenie, Esquisses 
 historiques et litteraires, Paris, 1859 ; Sainte - Beuve, Premiers 
 limdis, vol. ii., 1856 ; Causeries du lundi, vol. xv., 1860, 1861 ; and 
 Nouveaux lundis, vol. x., 1865 ; Smile Faguet, Alexis de Tocqueville 
 in the Revue des Deux Mondes, February, 1894 ; G. d'Eichthal, 
 Alexis de Tocqueville, Paris, 1897. 
 
 2. THE HISTORIAN. Originality of his manner ; which differs no 
 less from that of Guizot, with which it has often been compared ; 
 than from that of Thiers or that of Augustin Thierry. La Demo- 
 cratic en Amerique, 1835-1840 ; and that Americans admit that 
 nothing that has been written about them shows more conscientious 
 observation ; or remains truer on the whole after a lapse of sixty 
 years. The reason is that the author combines the serene im- 
 personality of the philosopher with the perspicacity of the born 
 observer; the disinterestedness of the man of learning with the 
 curiosity of the politician ; and the art of formulating the laws of 
 phenomena with that of grasping their essential character. The Ancien 
 Regime et la Revolution, 1856 ; and that this book marks an epoch 
 in the manner of conceiving the causes and of representing the history 
 of the Revolution. Tocqueville saw clearly : (1) that the work ac- 
 complished by the Revolution was the necessary sequel of the 
 most remote French history; (2) that the Revolution owed its 
 "religious" character to the depth of its causes; and (3) that
 
 448 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 assuredly not good novels. Are those of Alexandre 
 Dumas, Frederic Soulie, and Eugene Sue any better ? 
 Their vulgarity admitted, they are at least better com- 
 posed, more interesting and more dramatic ; while 
 Eugene Sue's works, to an equal or greater degree than 
 George Sand's, help by diverting attention from the 
 miseries the Romanticists had brought into such strong 
 relief, to direct it to other sufferings which are more real, 
 deeper, and more cruel. Mention, too, may be made 
 here of the names of Merimee, Jules Sandeau, and 
 Charles de Bernard. But it was reserved for Honore 
 de Balzac to rid the novel, by recourse to methods 
 that are a further innovation, of the conventions of 
 Romanticism, and to raise it in his masterpieces to a 
 
 for this reason it was beyond the power of any political force to 
 nullify its effects. By these two works Tocqueville contributed 
 more than anybody else, to make history independent of the 
 arbitrary judgment of historians ; to pave the way for the conception 
 of history that now obtains, and to give history all the charac- 
 teristics of a science it is susceptible of acquiring. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. As we have neglected the politician in this article 
 and merely considered the historian, we shall not refer to de 
 Tocqueville 's political writings : to his Rapports, Discours or 
 Souvenirs [published in 1893] . His Democratic appeared in 1835- 
 1840 ; -his Ancien Regime et la Revolution in 1856. His other 
 historical writings consist of fragments, all of which bear on one or 
 the other of these two works. His Correspondence, which is very 
 interesting, has been published by Gustave de Beaumont, who 
 accompanied him on his journey to the United States. 
 
 Mine de Tocqueville has edited his complete works in 9 vols., Paris, 
 1864-1868. The two volumes edited by M. G. de Beaumont form the 
 fifth and sixth volumes of this edition.
 
 MODERN TIMES 449 
 
 perfection which perhaps has never since been surpassed 
 or equalled. 
 
 Doubtless there had been novels, and good novels, 
 before the time of Balzac, and among them two or three 
 the Princesse de Cleves, Gil Bias, Nation Lescaut 
 which will last, it may be believed, as long as the French 
 language. These productions, however, were merely 
 happy " accidents," chance " finds," which were not of 
 a nature to be repeated or to prove the parent stock 
 of works of a like order. None of Balzac's predecessors 
 had divined that the true role or the true literary function 
 of the novel is to be the abridged representation of 
 ordinary life. The novelist in reality is nothing more 
 than a witness whose evidence should rival that of the 
 
 SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 From the performance of the " Burgraves " to the publica- 
 tion of the " Legende des siecles." 
 
 1843-1859 
 
 I. Honore de Balzac [Tours, 1799 ; f 1850, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES.' Balzac's Correspondence j 1818-1850] , forming 
 vol. xxiv. of his complete works, Paris, 1876 ; and his Lettres a 
 I'etrangere [Mme Hanska, afterwards Mine de Balzac] in the Revue 
 de Paris, 1894, 1895, 1896. 
 
 Sainte - Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. ii., 1836 ; and 
 Causeries du lundi, vol. ii., 1850 ; P. de Molene's articles in the 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, March, April, November, 1842, and June 
 1843 ; Lerminier, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, April, 1847 ; 
 Mme de Surville [Balzac's sister] , Balzac, sa vie et ses oeuvres, Paris, 
 1858, and preceding the volume containing his Correspondence. 
 
 Eugene Poitou, M. de Balzac, ses oeuvres et son influence, in the 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, December, 1856 ; Taine, Nouveaux essais 
 de critique et d'histoire (the date of the article is 1858) ; Th. Gautier, 
 Honore de Balzac, Paris, 1859 ; Edmond Werdet, Portrait intime de 
 
 1 Cf. Histoire des (Euvres de Balzac by the Vicomte Spcelberch de Lovenjoul, 
 3rd edition, Paris, 1888, Calmann L6vy. 
 
 30
 
 450 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 historian in precision and trustworthiness. We look 
 to him to teach us literally to see. We read his novels 
 merely with a view to finding in them those aspects of 
 existence which escape us owing to the very hurry and 
 stir of life, an attitude we express by saying, that for a 
 novel to be recognised as such, it must offer an his- 
 torical or documentary value, a value precise and de- 
 termined, particular and local, and as well a general and 
 lasting psychological value or significance. 
 
 Both these conditions are fulfilled by Balzac's novels. 
 Les Chouans, although one of his earliest works, but 
 more especially Une tenebreuse affaire, Un menage de 
 garqon, Cesar Birotteau, La Cousine Bette are among 
 the most lifelike pictures that exist of the revolutionary 
 
 Balzac, Paris, 1859; Champfleury, Grandes fig ures d'Jiier et d'au- 
 jourd'hui, Paris, 1861 ; Lamartine,-Ba.foac, in his Cours de litter ature, 
 1864, and in volume form, Paris, 1866 ; Emile Zola, Le roman ex- 
 perimental, 1880 ; and Les romanciers naturalistes, 1881 ; -Emile 
 Faguet, Dix-Neuvieme siecle, 1887 ; Marcel Barriere, I'OSuvre 
 d'Honore de Balzac, Paris, 1890 ; Julien Lemer, Balzac, sa vie et 
 son ceuvre, Paris, 1891 ; Paul Flat, Essais sur Balzac, 1893 ; and 
 Nouveaitx essais, Paris, 1895 ; Edrnond Eire, H. de Balzac, Paris, 
 1897. 
 
 Anatole Cerfbeer and Jules Christophe, Repertoire de la Comedie 
 humaine, Paris, 1887. 
 
 2. THE NOVELIST. 
 
 A. His early years and career. His extraction ; and that he has 
 many of the characteristics of the inhabitants of Touraine, and yet 
 his mother was a Parisian and his father came from the Languedoc 
 country. His education at the college of Vendome [Cf. Louis 
 Lambert] . The years he passed in the offices of a lawyer and of a 
 notary ; and the account to which he turned them ; learning not 
 only the " procedure " which was to occupy so large a place in certain 
 of his novels; but acquiring a knowledge of "business " as well; 
 and of the part it plays in contemporary life. His tragedy Cromwell, 
 1820 [unprinted], and his first novels [under the pseudonym of Horace 
 de Saint- Aubin] , and that it is useless to give their titles, as he 
 disowned them. His commercial undertakings ; publishing, printing,
 
 MODERN TIMES 451 
 
 period, the Empire, the Eestoration, and the Government 
 of July. But his studies of character are equally admir- 
 able, as is seen when he is depicting inveterate vice in 
 Baron Hulot, or middle-class vanity in Cesar Birotteau, 
 or military haughtiness and brutality in Philippe Bridau, 
 or the obsequiousness of the functionary in Marin de 
 Gondreville. Be it added that love, I say love and not 
 women, does not occupy a larger place in his books 
 than is actually accorded to it in real life, while he gives 
 hatred, vanity, ambition, avarice and all the passions 
 their due importance. It would be difficult, again, to 
 praise too highly his astonishingly exact and minute 
 descriptions, or rather inventories, his " resuscitations " 
 of periods and places, even his vivid sketches of fashions 
 
 type-founding ; and that it is curious to note that his efforts to 
 make money always took the shape of some enterprise connected with 
 the book trade. Moreover, if he was unsuccessful botfh as a printer 
 and type-founder, the further experience he thus gained, coming 
 on the top of that he had acquired in the lawyer's and notary's offices, 
 contributed in no small measure to the composition of his talent. 
 The Chouans, 1827-1829 ; the Physiologic du mariage, 1829-1830 ; 
 the Maison du chat qui peloie, the Bal de Sceaux, the Vendetta, 
 1830. His feverish activity and his inordinate production [Cf. Ch. de 
 Lovenjoul, Histoire des (Euvres, 3rd edit., pp. 315-328] . Peau de 
 chagrin, 1831 ; the Muse du departement ; the Cure de Tours, 
 Louis Lambert, 1832 ; the Medecin de campagne ; Eugenie Grandet, 
 1833. The idea of the " Human Comedy " first occurs to him ; and 
 he draws up its principal divisions. The Recherche de Vabsolu, 1834 ; 
 Sainte-Beuve's article in the Revue des Deux Mondes [Cf. below] ; 
 and Balzac's quarrel with Sainte-Beuve. His financial embarrass- 
 ment and lawsuits. He frequents aristocratic society. Pere Goriot, 
 1835 ; the Contrat de mariage, 1835 ; the Lys dans la vallee, 
 1835 ; Fresh lawsuits and fresh schemes. La vieille fille, 1886 ; 
 Illusions perdues, part i., 1837 ; Les employes, 1837 ; Cesar 
 Birotteau, 1837. The incident of the Sardinian mines [Cf. his 
 Correspondence for March and June, 1838] . He takes up his 
 residence at the Jardies. The Cure de Village, 1839 ; his drama 
 Vautrin is performed and then prohibited, 1840. Foundation of
 
 452 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 which, although they lasted but a year or only a few 
 months, have been immortalised by the master's laborious 
 but powerful art. Whether better novels have ever been 
 written, or will ever be written, than Eugenie Grandet, 
 Ursule Mirouet, Le Cure de Village or Le Cousin Pons, I 
 cannot say, but there are no novels like them in existence. 
 But it is time to employ the only word that meets the 
 case, while its application to Balzac will determine its true 
 meaning, and prevent it from being falsely interpreted as 
 has too often been done. Balzac's attitude towards 
 his characters or the subject he is writing about, is that 
 of the naturalist towards the animal or the plant he is 
 studying. It is a patient and attentive attitude, an 
 attitude "subservient to its object," and uninfluenced 
 
 the Revue parisienne. Pierrette, 1840 ; Une tenebreuse affaire, 
 1841 ; La Babouilleuse [Un menage de gargon] , 1841 ; Ursule 
 Mirouet, 1841. Performance and failure of his piece Les ressources de 
 Qitinola, 1842. The Introduction to the " Human Comedy " appears, 
 1842. 
 
 B. Balzac's art ; and to begin with, whether Balzac's style is so 
 bad in general as has been asserted ; on the strength of some 
 instances of exaggerated or incoherent metaphors ; or of far-fetched 
 expressions ; and of the frequent use or abuse of the slang terms 
 peculiar to the various professions or trades ? That in any case, 
 when the justice of these criticisms has been recognised ; and when 
 he has further been reproached with presenting his subjects in a 
 manner that invites the charge of charlatanism ; owing to a perpetual 
 affectation of profoundness, displaying itself in high-sounding but 
 often empty pronouncements ; it is still impossible not to accord him 
 an unique " power of evocation " ; and the gift, as he said himself, of 
 having with the personages of his Comedy " competed with the 
 Eegistrar of births." There arises in this connection a question with 
 which we have already been confronted [Cf . the article on Moliere] : 
 can it be that this manner of writing, a manner as irregular, confused 
 and jumbled as life itself, is a necessary condition of the representa- 
 tion of life ? The defects of Balzac's style are of the same nature, 
 having regard to differences of education and period, as those of the 
 style of Saint-Simon's Memoirs ; or as those perhaps of Shake-
 
 MODEEN TIMES 458 
 
 by any preconceived personal notions. He does not 
 give us his impressions ; it is reality, and reality in its 
 entirety that he strives to grasp, as is indicated by the 
 spacious lines on which his work is designed. In the 
 " Human Comedy," glorying as much in forgetting 
 himself as the Romanticists in thrusting themselves on 
 our attention, his sole ambition was to reflect the history 
 of his time with the utmost faithfulness compatible with 
 the methods of his art. 
 
 To consummate the downfall of Romanticism, it was 
 only necessary that it should be deserted by its chiefs or 
 masters themselves ; and this desertion was an accom- 
 plished fact. To say nothing of Lamartine, Victor Hugo, 
 who had thrown himself into politics, had ceased to write 
 
 speare's style ; a circumstance which gives one pause ; but there 
 is inducement to believe that it is for this reason that it has been 
 possible to term Balzac, after Saint-Simon and Shakespeare, 
 "the greatest repertory of documents bearing on human nature 
 we possess." The value of these " documents " has now to be 
 examined. 
 
 1. They are in the first place historical documents; and, in this 
 connection, of Balzac's admiration for Sir Walter Scott [Cf. Intro- 
 duction to the Comedie humaine ; and the letter of January 20, 1838, 
 to Mme Hanska] . The novels of the author of Quentin Durward 
 and Ivanhoe are lifelike resuscitations of the past [Cf. Aug. Thierry's 
 article on Ivanhoe] ; and Balzac's novels resemble them in this 
 respect. No historian has given a more striking picture of the civil 
 wars of the time of the French Revolution than the author of the 
 Chouans ; the France of the First Empire is nowhere more vividly 
 depicted than in Une tenebreuse affaire [Cf. Ernest Daudet, La 
 Police et les Chouans sous V Empire] ; if the soldiers of the Restora- 
 tion are anywhere conjured up before us it is in Un menage de 
 garcon ; and to see the middle classes of the time of Louis-Philippe 
 live again before our eyes, we have only to open Cesar Birotteau 
 or La Cousins Bette. It should be added that Balzac has recourse 
 to the same expedients as Sir Walter Scott : schedules, inventories, 
 exact, minute, and picturesque descriptions of furniture and cos- 
 tumes ; " localisation " of provincial manners and of the various
 
 454 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 plays, and was withholding his Contemplations from pub- 
 lication. Vigny, from the retirement of his " ivory 
 tower," was issuing the Mort du Loup, the Maison du 
 Berger, the Bouteille a la mer, works of which it may be 
 said, whatever further characteristics we may have to 
 point out in them later, that nothing could be less 
 Komantic. Musset, whose error throughout had been his 
 desire to conform his life to his poetry, was wearing him- 
 self out in debauchery ; the enfant terrible of the party had 
 become its most lamentable victim ! Already, and without 
 the least inquiry as to whether they were justified or not, 
 the jests, dull though they were, which the author of 
 Jerome Paturot a la recherche d'une position sociale (1843) 
 was making at the expense of the Eomanticists in general 
 
 phases of Parisian life ; " genealogy," physiology, and detailed 
 psychology of even his least important personages ; connection, by 
 brief indications, of their private history with the general history of 
 their time ; and generally whatever is wanting in this respect in 
 Volupte ; in Valentine or Indiana ; in Adolplie. This is Balzac's 
 primary merit, and it is an unique merit. He was the "historian" 
 as well as the "painter" of the manners of his time; of which he 
 has noted the very evolution or movement ; as well as caught the 
 physiognomy. And while Walter Scott, to give us the sensation of 
 the diversity of periods, requires to be separated from the periods 
 he depicts by a somewhat long interval, Balzac has rendered the 
 distinctive characteristics of the three or four generations of men it is 
 possible to come into contact with in the course of a single life. 
 
 2. Balzac's documents in consequence are, in the second place, 
 realistic documents ; for he has accorded a place in the novel to 
 details which his predecessors had kept out of it as being vulgar or of 
 little interest ; and in particular to all such details as relate to 
 money questions [Cf . Eugenie Grandet ; Cesar Birotteau; Les illu- 
 sions perdues ; La Cousine Bette] . He may be said, indeed, to have 
 made money the very soul of his plots ; instead of and in the place 
 of love, which occupies but a secondary place in his works [Cf. Le 
 contrat de mariage ; La recherche de VAbsolu ; Les Paysans ; Le 
 Cousin Pons] ; and sometimes no place at all. Moreover, as he 
 was himself familiar with every description of financial embarrass-
 
 MODERN TIMES 455 
 
 and of the greatest of them in particular, were meeting 
 with unanimous applause. Moreover, if it be true that a 
 form of literature or a literary doctrine cannot disappear 
 unless another form or another doctrine has taken its 
 place, the novel has just been seen to have profited in the 
 hands of Balzac by all the drama was losing, and realism 
 to have been the gainer by the drooping fortunes of 
 Romanticism. Something more, however, was wanted 
 to change the retreat into a rout : the spectacle was 
 needed of Romantic individualism at bay with its exact 
 opposite, with what we should have liked to have 
 termed socialism, if the word had not since acquired, 
 unfortunately, so many dangerous and regrettable 
 meanings ! 
 
 ment ; the reality of his personal experience is superadded to the 
 inevitable touch of realism lent the stage play or the novel by the 
 introduction of money questions ; and he is the novelist of the 
 money question, as Musset is the poet of love. He was alive to 
 the exigencies imposed on the novel by the mere contention of deal- 
 ing with the question of money in it. Besides understanding the 
 nature of the activity, intelligence, and acumen requisite for financial 
 success ; matters which Scribe, on the contrary, never understood ; 
 he recognised that he would have to introduce an entire class of 
 men previously overlooked by novelists : bankers, notaries, bailiffs, 
 lawyers, usurers, and petty money-lenders ; that is an entire group 
 of characters whose depiction or representation must result in 
 realism ; since their lives hinge exclusively on the most concrete, 
 and, in our modern civilisations, the most universal of realities. 
 After the money-makers, however, all the social classes made their 
 entry into the novel ; with the infinite diversity of their professions 
 and trades ; which it became necessary to distinguish by their 
 genuine characteristics ; by the intellectual, psychological, or moral 
 deformation which result from them ; soldiers and magistrates, 
 artists and men of letters, functionaries and shop - keepers, 
 diplomatists and politicians, doctors and persons of independent 
 means ; it became necessary to be acquainted with these occupa- 
 tions, to describe and explain them ; and to describe them to 
 employ the terms which constitute the vocabulary or slang of those
 
 456 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 II 
 
 While the Romanticists were engaged in introspection, 
 were probing " to its waste bottom the gulf within them," 
 and finding nothing there, were unsuccessful in getting 
 beyond themselves, were always harping on themselves 
 and on themselves alone, there was coming into existence 
 independently of them an immense movement in which 
 not only they took no part, but of the very existence 
 of which they were ignorant in their utter inability to 
 discern its nature or gauge its significance. Their 
 self-preoccupation blinded them to the progress of 
 science, and the fact must be insisted on that never 
 
 who follow them ; as there are not two ways of saying that 
 a bill has been dishonoured, nor is there a literary paraphrase for 
 designating a depilatory ointment. Finally when he had conceived 
 the idea of linking all his novels together ; and of making of them 
 not a succession of episodes, one of which should be the continuation 
 of another ; but a picture of the society of his time ; if he had over- 
 looked some characteristic trait it became necessary that he should 
 note the omission ; and then it was that he clearly perceived the 
 realistic character of his work ; or, as it might also be called, its 
 scientific character. 
 
 3. For, in the third place, his documents are assuredly scientific 
 documents ; and it is no affectation on his part ; when he invokes 
 the names of Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire or Cuvier ; but the expression 
 of his gratitude ; for it is a fact that he contributed to a greater 
 extent than anybody else to make the history of manners a depen- 
 dency or province of natural history [Cf. the Introduction to the 
 Comedie humaine] . He had recourse, as naturalists do, to mono- 
 graphs [Cf. Etude de femme ; Lafemme de trente ans ; Autre Etude 
 de femme ; I' Usurier Gobseck] ; in which he scarcely concerned him- 
 self with producing literature or art ; but rather with depicting his 
 " subject " exactly as he had observed it; Nobody has given so 
 much attention as he to the reproduction of the " surroundings " 
 in which he placed his characters [Cf. La recherche de I'Absoln ; 
 Le Pere Goriot ; Le Cousin Perns] ; indeed, carried away by his
 
 MOPEBN TIMES 457 
 
 have poets existed, not forgetting Racine or Boileau, 
 more wholly oblivious of whatever did not immediately 
 concern their art of mechanics or astronomy, of physics 
 or chemistry, of natural history or physiology, of his- 
 tory and philosophy than Lamartine, Hugo, Musset, 
 Dumas, Gautier, and their fellows. Shall it be said that 
 they had a right to adopt this attitude? It is certain 
 that, just as " there is no need for a quadrant to journey 
 with ease from Paris to Auvergne," so the utter in- 
 difference of a Musset or a Hugo to whatever did not 
 concern their loves or their verses does not in the least 
 detract from the beauty of the Nuits or the Orientales. 
 They must even be admired for having, as Hugo did for 
 example, "described" Greece or the East so admirably 
 
 subject, he has more than once gone to extremes in this con- 
 nection ; and treated this branch of his work for its own sake. 
 His great ambition was to describe and classify " social species " ; 
 considered as analogous to " zoological species " ; and capable, 
 like these latter, of changing the one into the other; a con- 
 ception which, as has been quite rightly observed [Cf. Paul Flat, 
 Essais sur Balzac] , is that of Evolution. For this reason it is a 
 mistake to talk of the immorality of his novels ; for they are not 
 immoral in general, and with the exception of those which show 
 traces of Romanticism [Cf. Un grand homme de province a Paris, or 
 La derniere incarnation de Vautriri\ , except in the way in which 
 experience of life itself is immoral. All that can be said is that his 
 work bearing the imprint of his temperament ; he has not escaped 
 the danger incident to all realism ; of regarding man as he would 
 an animal ; of forgetting that man is man only so far as he avoids 
 resembling an animal ; and that a social function attaches to art 
 and literature ; if not to natural history. 
 
 By recourse to the methods just described, Balzac made the novel 
 a " literary genus " ; blending together for the first time the historic 
 novel [in the manner of Walter Scott, or before him of Prevost] ; 
 the novel of manners [as seen in the works of the younger Crebillon, 
 Fielding, and Marivaux] ; the novel of character [as exemplified by 
 Le Sage] ; and the social or philosophic novel [as conceived by 
 George Sand or Eousseau]. His success in combining these varieties
 
 458 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 without ever having seen them. At the same time, in 
 proportion as the discoveries in every direction at once of 
 a Geoffroy Saint-Hilaixe or a Dumas the chemist of an 
 Ampere or a Fresnel, of a Cauchy or a Fourier, gave almost 
 infinite extension to the field of "objective" certitude, it 
 was impossible that the confidence the Romanticists had 
 placed in a purely " subjective " certitude should not 
 be lessened to a corresponding extent, to the consequent 
 undermining of the authority of the Individual. Since 
 reality is not always in conformity with the idea we 
 form of it, since this is a demonstrable fact, since indeed 
 one of the habitual characteristics of scientific truth is 
 that it is in contradiction with the evidence of our senses, 
 it follows that the individual is not the " measure of all 
 
 of the novel was due to the fact that he discerned the ultimate pur- 
 pose of all of them ; which is to realise an " image of contemporary 
 life " ; in which the individuals and the spheres in which they move 
 are shown in their reciprocal reactions on one another ; and on this 
 score it may be said that the novel as conceived by Balzac is a 
 creation analogous to that of the comedy of Moliere. Balzac's last 
 novels : Modeste Mignon, 1844 ;Les Paysans, 1845 ; Le Cousin 
 Pons, 1846 ; La Cousine Bette, 1847 ; Le Depute d'Arcis [un- 
 finished] , 1847 ; and that three at least of them are among the best 
 Balzac wrote. 
 
 C. Balzac's influence. What precedes explains how it is that his 
 influence has been so far-reaching ; and the truth is that since he 
 first came to the front some sixty years ago, no novels have been 
 written in France or elsewhere that do not seem to show the influence 
 of Balzac ; or if there has been a novel or a type of novel that has 
 escaped his influence, it has suffered on that account and on that 
 account alone. The influence of the Lys dans la vallee is trace- 
 able in all psychological novels ; that of Eugenie Grandet or of La 
 Cousine Bette in all novels that claim to be studies of character ; 
 while the origin of the "detective" novel is to be found in La 
 derniere incarnation de Vautrin or in Une tenebreuse affaire. On 
 the other hand, since Balzac, the novel of adventure has ceased 
 to belong to literature ; and the sentimental novel has come to 
 be regarded as of quite an inferior order ; the first because of
 
 MODERN TIMES 459 
 
 things," that the sincerity of our impressions is no 
 guarantee of their accuracy, and that we are merely 
 their scene, while their judge is outside ourselves and 
 our superior ! 
 
 Such is the idea that is beginning to filter into men's 
 minds, which before long it will dominate entirely. In 
 the light of science, the reason is perceived of the resist- 
 ance that had been offered the pretensions of Komanticism. 
 The poet has not the right to assert that " he has his 
 human heart " of his own, or at least we have the right 
 for our part to declare that he is mistaken ! And we in 
 turn, on what shall we base our affirmation? Clearly 
 not on our knowledge of ourselves, as to do so would be 
 to argue in a vicious circle, but on observation of a more 
 
 the arbitrariness of its combinations ; the second because it is always 
 a " confession " on the part of the novelist ; while both have fallen 
 into disrepute because they are mere partial or illusory representations 
 of life. What is more, an entire generation of men that learned to 
 read in Balzac's novels, learned, as it were, to live in them ; and to 
 borrow the expression of an illustrious naturalist [Louis Agassiz] , 
 his personages have become "prophetic types"; from his " Gau- 
 dissarts " to his " Rastignacs " and his " Rubempres." We still 
 elbow them in real life ; they have modelled themselves on Balzac's 
 heroes ; and it thus happens that he " has competed with the 
 Registrar of births " far more literally than he believed himself ; 
 which is doubtless the highest praise it is possible to give the 
 creative artist. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Balzac's works consist essentially of his novels, 
 which he has himself classified as follows : 
 
 Scenes from private life ; Scenes from provincial life ; Scenes 
 from Parisian life ; Scenes from military life ; Scenes from country 
 lif e ; Scenes from political life ; Philosophic studies ; and Analy- 
 tical studies. Grouped together, these sub-divisions of his work form 
 his Human Comedy. 
 
 Balzac's works further include the following plays : Vautrin, 1840 ; 
 Les ressources de Quinola, 1842 ; Pamela Giraud, 1843 ; La 
 mardtre, 1848 ; and Le Faiseur or Mercadet [1838, 1840] , which, 
 revised by M. d'Ennery, was first represented in 1851 ;
 
 460 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 varied, a wider, and a more general order, on observation 
 uninfluenced, as far as possible, by whatever is " per- 
 sonal " or individual in us : and by a coincidence it would 
 be somewhat na'ive to regard as a mere effect of chance, 
 it happens that the rules of this observation are laid down 
 precisely at the moment when the need is felt of opposing 
 them to the systematic licence of Eomanticism. 
 
 The rules in question are due to Auguste Comte. We 
 shall not be expected to summarise here his Cours de 
 philosophic positive (1831-1842), but it is essential to note 
 that the main object of the founder of Positivism was to 
 combat the assertion of the eclectic school to the effect 
 that the Individual is judge of the truth or error con- 
 tained in philosophic systems. The cases of Electicism 
 
 The Conies drolatiques, 1832, 1833, 1837 ; 
 
 His Miscellaneous Works, the collection of which is exceedingly 
 incomplete ; and his Correspondence. 
 
 There are two good editions of Balzac's works, the first in 20 
 volumes, Paris, 1855, Houssiaux; and the second in 24 volumes, 
 Paris, 1885, 1888, Calmann Levy. 
 
 H._j u les Michelet [Paris, 1798 ; f 1874, Hyeres] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. A. Cochut, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
 January, 1842 ; A. Nettement, Histoire de la litterature sous le 
 gouvernement de Juillet, vol. ii., Paris, 1855 ; H. Taine, Essais de 
 critique et d'histoire, 1855 and 1856 ; E. Montegut, in the Revue 
 des Deux Mondes, February, 1857 ; G. Monod, Jules Michelet, 1875 
 and 1897 ; O. d'Haussonville, Etudes biographiques et litteraires, 
 Paris, 1876 ; F. Correard, Michelet in the " Bibliotheque des 
 Classiques populaires," 1886 ; J. Simon, Notice historique sur 
 Michelet, Paris, 1886 ; E. Faguet, Etudes litteraires sur le XIX,, 
 siecle, Paris, 1887; J. Brunhes, Michelet, Paris, 1898. 
 
 2. THE WRITER ; and that the reason we have not dealt with him 
 earlier is that his influence, which has been most considerable [Cf. G. 
 Monod, loc. cit.] , was restricted at first to a group of students, and 
 did not begin to make itself felt on the general public until towards 
 1845. Proof of this assertion may be found in the fact that of all the 
 great writers of his time, he is, we believe, the only one of whom
 
 MODERN TIMES 461 
 
 and Komanticism are parallel : both have been ill under- 
 stood and combatted perhaps still more infelicitously 
 because both have, to a certain extent, been ill defined. 
 In reality, both Victor Hugo and Victor Cousin were the 
 most "personal" of men, and just as there is nothing 
 but Hugo in the Feuilles d'atitomne or the Voix interieures, 
 so there is nothing but Cousin in his philosophy. If his 
 work be read and reread, if the essence and object of his 
 method be carefully examined and considered, nothing 
 more will be found in his Eclecticism than the assertion 
 of the right of Victor Cousin to cull from all philosophic 
 systems what belongs to Victor Cousin, while his " obser- 
 vation of oneself by oneself " is merely an application of 
 individualism to philosophy. The aim of Auguste Comte 
 
 Sainte-Beuve said nothing prior to 1862 ; and even on this occasion 
 [Cf. Nouveaux lundis, vol. ii.] he had less to say of Michelet than of 
 Louis XIV. and the Duke of Burgundy. Guizot, Mignet, and even 
 Thiers were held in far greater esteem. Taine was the first to do 
 justice to Michelet ; placing him in the front rank of the poets, as 
 well as of the writers of his time ; and his reputation thus started 
 by Taine, was definitely established by the issue of his books : 
 I'Oiseau, 1856 ; VInsecte, 1857 ; V Amour, 1859; la Femme,186Q; 
 and of the concluding volumes of his Histoire de France, 1855-1867. 
 Michelet's humble birth ; his early difficulties ; his first literary 
 efforts : his translation of the Works of Vico, and his Precis d'histoire 
 moderne, 1827. The first volumes of the Histoire de France, 1833- 
 1844 [from the earliest times to the Renaissance] ; and whether they 
 should be regarded, as they are by some critics, as Michelet's master- 
 piece ? Remarks on this subject ; and that while he has other and 
 more lyric qualities than Augustin Thierry, the methods of the two 
 writers are substantially analogous ; though Michelet's inspiration is 
 the more Catholic or the less hostile to the Church. It is surprising 
 in consequence that Michelet's first volumes did'not at once win him 
 fame ; and that the Romanticists did not recognise him forthwith as 
 one of the greatest amongst them. At this juncture, however, his 
 work induces him to forsake picturesque history in some measure, 
 for the philosophy of history ; a change of attitude that is observed 
 simultaneously in his friend Quinet ; and his appointment to the
 
 462 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 was to demonstrate the narrowness and sterility of this 
 "egoistic" method of observation. "The so-called 
 psychological method, he wrote in his first Lesson, is 
 radically null in its principle. . . . Introspective obser- 
 vation, the italics are his, gives rise to almost as many 
 divergent opinions as there are individuals who fancy 
 they exercise it. As to genuine men of science, they are 
 still demanding in vain that a single real discovery be 
 cited them that is due to this vaunted method." In 
 consequence, the method he desired to substitute for that 
 of Cousin, on the score of its being not merely the best, 
 but in reality the only valuable method, was that which 
 decrees our inability to attain to true self-knowledge, 
 unless we begin by looking beyond ourselves, and 
 
 College of France, 1837, results in both of them playing an active 
 part in politics. 
 
 A second Michelet is now evolved from the first, the Michelet of 
 the Jesuites, 1843; -the author of the Pretre, de lafemme, et de la 
 famille, 1845 ; of the Peuple, 1846, and of the Histoire de la 
 Revolution francaise, 1847-1853. At first sight there does not seem 
 to be any great difference between this second Michelet, and those 
 of his contemporaries who are waging the same conflict ; while his 
 early originality would seem to be lost amid the commonplace ideas 
 he is developing with all the violence of an Encyclopaedist. There is, 
 however, a something in him that his fellow combatants lack ; and 
 in particular the faculty of making what he says and what he writes 
 instinct with his personality. He retires from his professorship at 
 the College of France, 1852 [Cf. Jules Simon, loc. cit., p. 219-221] , 
 and from this date onwards, during the last twenty-five years of his 
 life, his reputation and his influence are at last equal to his merit. 
 
 He " discovers " " science " ; natural history and physiology more 
 particularly and as he remains fundamentally " Romantic, " he 
 becomes the poet of science [Cf. VOiseau, VInsecte, la Femme, 
 V Amour] . Astonishment of his contemporaries at seeing him 
 mingle the most pronounced crudities of physiological realism and 
 the extremest lyricism of Eomantic mysticism. He applies this 
 method to history [Cf. his volume on the Renaissance and the 
 Reformation] ; and derives from it unexpected effects ; not the
 
 MODERN TIMES 463 
 
 scrupulously set aside all personal bias when we attempt 
 to systematise our observations. Far from our individu- 
 ality being the standard by which we are to judge others, 
 it is, on the contrary, our knowledge of our fellow-men 
 that enables us to rectify the idea we form of ourselves. 
 Properly speaking, we are merely the theatre or the 
 scene of our impressions, and our originality is in general 
 only an illustration of our vanity, a mirage, a phantasma- 
 goria. True psychology is to be learned, not from the 
 study of ourselves, but from the study of what is outside 
 us and around us, of history and society. The connection 
 which existed in the mind of Auguste Comte between 
 the conception of " psychology " and what was said above 
 of the progress of science in his time, will doubtless be 
 
 least considerable of which is to bring down, as it were, the con- 
 ventional dignity of history, to the level of life as we lead it 
 ourselves. His division of the reign of Francis I. : " Before the 
 abscess and after the abscess"; and of the reign of Louis XIV. : 
 " Before the fistula and after the fistula." How closely this manner 
 resembles, on the one hand, that of Victor Hugo ; and on the other 
 that of Taine and Eenan ; and that while it may have suggested to 
 Michelet some singular ideas ; it nevertheless renewed history. 
 Michelet did on a large scale, what Sainte-Beuve did in detail in his 
 Causeries du htndi, a fact to which is due the attraction, the some- 
 what questionable attraction, of his Louis XIV. or his Louis XV. ; 
 but which constitutes as well the danger of these works. 
 
 Michelet's last works, especially his Bible de Vhumanite, 1864 ; 
 and the General Prefaces to his Histoire de France and his Histoire 
 de la Revolution. Return to his early symbolical and apocalyptic 
 tendencies ; and, in this connection, of the resemblance between the 
 closing phases of the intellectual evolution of Michelet and Victor 
 Hugo [Cf. following article] . Analogy between their methods of 
 expression ; and that both of them remained Romanticists to the 
 end; that is to say lyric writers, "democrats," and staunch 
 spiritualists. Michelet, however, has the greater measure of 
 sensibility, and having a less abundant command of words, he has 
 perhaps more sincerity. 
 
 Of Michelet's influence ; and that it has been considerable ; since,
 
 464 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 perceived. All that we can affirm with regard to our 
 impressions is that we have experienced them ; we can- 
 not say that they are in conformity with their cause, or, 
 in consequence, that we were right in experiencing them. 
 Moreover, unless I am mistaken, the connection is not 
 less clear between Comte's ideas and what is now termed 
 " sociology." 
 
 A distinction is made at the present day between 
 "Sociology" and "Socialism"; though we are as little 
 certain of what constitutes the difference as we are 
 of the true nature either of " Socialism " or of " Soci- 
 ology." Towards 1840 these points were equally 
 obscure, the very word " Socialism " being then but a 
 barbarism of recent invention. Still, there was already 
 
 while favouring naturalism, it has maintained, in opposition to 
 naturalism, one of the traditions of idealism. For there has been no 
 more fervent believer in progress than Michelet ; especially in moral 
 progress ; as to the conditions of which he may indeed have been 
 mistaken ; but to promote which he laboured with his whole soul ; 
 and though particularly inclined to underestimate the difficulty of 
 its realisation ; he would never allow the matter to be one to which 
 a writer may remain indifferent. Further, he worked harder than 
 anybody at founding "the religion of the Revolution"; a task in 
 which he has succeeded, whatever may be said to the contrary. 
 Finally, with all its defects, defects inseparable perhaps from its 
 qualities, his "History of France" is the only work of the kind 
 worthy of the name ; because he alone of all the historians who 
 have attempted such a work, possessed an imagination strong 
 enough to enable him to " personalise " his country ; and thus lend 
 its history something of that living interest which attaches to bio- 
 graphy. All other "Histories of France" are mere compilations. 
 
 3. THE WOKKS. Michelet's works may be divided into : (1) his 
 Historical Works, comprising his Histoire de France [from the 
 earliest times to the Renaissance] , 1833-1844 ; and its continuation 
 [from the Renaissance to the Revolution] , 1855-1867 ; his Histoire 
 de la Revolution, 1847-1853 ; and his Histoire du XIX C siecle 
 [posthumous] ; his Histoire roniaine, 1839 ; and some miscellaneous 
 writings, including the Proces den Templiers, 2 vols., in the collec-
 
 MODERN TIMES 465 
 
 an agreement, or, as it may perhaps be said, a conspiracy 
 between all the thinkers of the period to denounce the 
 excesses of individualism, and to extend beyond litera- 
 ture the war that was beginning to be waged on that 
 doctrine. The Christian sociology of Bonald and de 
 Maistre was seen to be giving rise to unexpected though 
 logical consequences, which astonish even to-day both 
 their adversaries and the disciples of Auguste Comte. 
 Lamennais had written : "In any society whatever, self- 
 renunciation is the primary condition of the existence of 
 that society. . . . Human society is based on mutual con- 
 cessions, on the sacrifice of one man to another, or of 
 each man to all his fellows ; for sacrifice is the essence of 
 every true society. The evangelical doctrine of self- 
 
 tion of Documents inedits de Vhistoire de France, 1851 ; and his 
 translations of Vice's works and of Luther's Table Talk. 
 
 (2) His Political or Polemical Works, the principal being : Des 
 Jesuiteg, 1843 ; Le Pretre la Femme et la Famille, 1845 ; le Temple. 
 1846 ; and the Cours professe au College de France, 1848. 
 
 (3) His remaining works, which can be called neither " works of 
 imagination " nor yet " scientific works": VOiseau, 1856; I'lnsecte, 
 1857 ; I' Amour, 1859; la Femme, 1860 ; la Mer, 1861 ; la Bible 
 de I'humanite, 1864 ; la Montague, 1868, etc. 
 
 Finally, certain posthumous works, the principal being: Ma 
 jeunesse, 1884; Mon Journal, 1888; Sur les chemins de V Europe, 
 1893. 
 
 An edition in 40 volumes of Michelet's Complete Works [Paris, 
 Flammarion] is at present in course of publication under the super- 
 vision of Mme Michelet. Begun some years back, this edition is now 
 approaching completion. 
 
 III. Victor Marie Hugo [Besanson, 1802 ; |1885, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Sainte-Beuve, Premiers lundis, i., 1827, iii., 
 1829, and Portraits conternporains, vol. i., 1831, 1832, 1835 ; Gustave 
 Planche's dramatic criticisms in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
 December, 1832, February, 1833, November, 1833; May, 1835; 
 November and December, 1838 ; A. Vinet, Etudes sur la litterature 
 franqaise au XIX e siecle, Paris, 1851 ; A. Nettement, Litterature 
 
 31
 
 466 MANUAL OP THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 renunciation, so strange from the human point of view, 
 is merely the proclamation of this great social law " [Cf. 
 Essai sur V indifference, vol. i., chap, ii., 1817]. More- 
 over, when he abandoned Christianity, Lamennais did not 
 abjure the doctrine of self-renunciation, but persevered 
 with more ardour than ever in his great conflict with in- 
 dividualism. He converted George Sand to his way of 
 thinking, and the author of Lelia now wrote : " Are there 
 not misfortunes that call more urgently for relief than the 
 boredom of this or the whims of that individual ? The 
 masses are faced by vital problems : abysses have been 
 laid bare. Our tears, unable to fill them up, fall into them 
 in vain. Amid sufferings so real and so profound, what 
 interest can be aroused by the proud complaints of in- 
 
 francaise sous la Bestauration et sous le gouvernement de Juillet, 
 Paris, 1853 ; Charles Baudelaire's very remarkable Notice in Crepet's 
 Becueil des poetes franqais, Paris, 1862 ;^ Victor Hugo racontc par 
 un tetnoin de sa vie, Paris, 1863 ; Edmoiid Eire, Victor Hugo et 
 la Bestauration, 1869 ; and Victor Hugo avant 1830, Paris, 1883 ; 
 Victor Hugo apres 1830, Paris, 1891 ; Victor Hugo apres 1852, Paris, 
 1893 [five volumes which together form the most circumstantial but 
 not the most impartial biography there is of Victor Hugo] . 
 
 A. Asseline, Victor Hugo intime, Paris, 1885 ; Leconte de Lisle 
 and A. Dumas fils, Discours prononces pour la, reception de M. 
 Leconte de Lisle, 1887 ; Ernest Dupuy, Victor Hugo, Vhomme et 
 le poete, Paris, 1887 ; Emile Faguet, XIX 11 siecle, Paris, 1887 ; G. 
 Duval, Dictionnaire des metaphores de Victor Hugo, Paris, 1888 ; 
 G. Pellissier, le Mouvement litteraire au XIX e siecle, Paris, 1889 ; 
 F. Brunetiere, VEvolution de la Poesie lyrique au XIX e siecle, 
 1893-1895 ; L. Mabilleau, Victor Hugo, in the " Grands Ecrivains 
 franais" series, 1893 ;Ch. Eenouvier, Victor Hugo, Paris, 1889- 
 1893. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE POET ; and of some interesting points of com- 
 parison between Voltaire and Victor Hugo ; not the least remarkable 
 being the exceptional shrewdness and practical sense, with which 
 they looked after their material interests and regulated their lives. 
 Their longevity ; their fertility ; their universality, moreover, are 
 three reasons which contributed in both their cases to make them the
 
 MODERN TIMES 467 
 
 tellectual arrogance ? The masses are hungry ; let the 
 geniuses not take it amiss that we should think of pro- 
 viding the people with bread before we turn our attention 
 to erecting temples in their honour" [Cf. Lettres d 
 Marcie, iii., 1837]. The movement did not stop here. 
 Concern for "the boredom of this or the whims of 
 that individual " had given place to " pity for the 
 masses," and there now followed the organisation of 
 this pity into a system, its development into a philo- 
 sophy. " To live, is essentially to have humanity for 
 object," wrote Pierre Leroux, and he explained his mean- 
 ing in these terms : " Our existence is normal if it does 
 not violate the bond that unites us to humanity. We 
 ought to live in consequence as if we were to live eternally 
 
 greatest, though not the most original, " literary men " of their 
 respective centuries. Finally, they have at least two other char- 
 acteristics in common : both of them possessed in a supreme degree 
 the gift of complying with the exigencies of the opinion of their time ; 
 a fact that explains their variations ; and both owed their success 
 in this direction to the same gift of " virtuosity," a gift which 
 enabled them to appropriate the inventions or the ideas of their con- 
 temporaries, with a view to transforming them and to giving them 
 definite expression, the one in prose and the other in verse. That 
 this faculty of appropriation is perhaps one of the forms of genius 
 itself ; and that in any case it seems to constitute the very definition 
 of talent. 
 
 A. Victor Hugo's early years. The poet's family and the Hugo's 
 of Lorraine ; his mother a " Vendeenne " ; and, in this connection, 
 that the work entitled Victor Hugo raconte par un temoin de sa vie 
 is almost as untrustworthy as the Confessions of J.-J. Rousseau [Cf. 
 Eire, Victor Hugo avant 1830] . Hugo's early education : " With our 
 victorious camps I wandered over vanquished Europe, I traversed the 
 earth before traversing life ! " [Cf. Odes et Ballades : Mon enfance ; 
 les Rayons et les Ombres : Ce qui se passait aux Feuillantines vers 
 1813; les Contemplations : Aux Feuillantines] ; and that the defects 
 of this wandering education will leave their mark on the poet's work. 
 Hugo's first literary efforts ; his successes in prize competitions : at 
 the French Academy, 1817, 1819 ; and at the Floral Games, 1819,
 
 468 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 amongst humanity. And when we do not so live, we are 
 wounded in eternal fashion in our present life, which 
 amounts to saying that we suffer in our eternal life [Cf. 
 De rhumanite. Epilogue, 1840] . These are the doctrines 
 for which the word " Socialism " was at first the collective 
 designation, and tradition indeed ascribes to Pierre Leroux 
 the honour of having invented the term. Its vogue has 
 since been great, and its meaning has undergone manifold 
 corruptions, but at the outset it merely expressed the in- 
 tention of opposing the excesses of individualism. So far 
 as it was successful in this aim it did more than discredit 
 the principle of Romanticism ; it deprived it of its raison 
 d'etre, and rendered the very name synonymous with 
 egoism or dilettantism. 
 
 1820. Characteristics of these early productions ; and that if Le 
 Bonheur de Vetude and Les Avantages de V enseignernent much 
 resemble the work of Delille ; Les Vierges de Verdun or Mo'ise sur 
 le Nil are merely an improvement on the work of Lebrun or Jean- 
 Baptiste Rousseau. The Conscrvateur litteraire ; and that the doc- 
 trines upheld in this publication by Victor Hugo and his brothers, 
 explain and justify its title. The Odes of 1822. The influence of Sir 
 Walter Scott and the publication of Han d'Islandc, 1823. The second 
 series of Odes, 1824, and that they show the influence of Vigny's 
 Poemes antiques [Cf. the Chant du Cirque, or the Chant du, 
 Tournoi] ; and also the influence of Chateaubriand ; which is still 
 more apparent in the Odes et Ballades of 1826 ; and in the vehemence 
 of Hugo's Royalist inspiration. Cromwell and the preface to this 
 play, 1827 ; and how few ideas there are in it to which Stendhal 
 or Mme de Stael had not given expression before Hugo. Hugo's first 
 relations with Sainte-Beuve, 1827 ; and that the connection between 
 "Romanticism" and the "classic" pleiad dates from them. From 
 them dates as well the importance Hugo will henceforth attach to 
 the technical side of his art ; an importance at once observable in 
 the Orientales, 1829 [Cf . in particular Le Feu du del and les Djinns] ; 
 in which volume indeed the poet seems to have wished to show 
 Casimir Delavigne how he ought to have written the Messeniennes. 
 Marion Delorme, 1829 ; Hernani, 1830 ; Notre-Dame de Paris, 
 1831 ; the Feuilles d'automne, 1831 ; and that the Feuilles
 
 MODERN TIMES 469 
 
 It would not be difficult to show that history as well 
 was inspired at this period by the same spirit. It would 
 suffice to cite in proof Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins, 
 which in 1847 was breeding revolt, so to speak ; Michelet's 
 Revolution; and Louis Blanc's Revolution, the first volumes 
 of which belong to the same year. Should it be objected 
 that these works are of too political an order, though 
 politics have thrown light on history more often than his- 
 tory has served as a guide to politics, it would be enough 
 to mention Mignet, Tocqueville, or Thiers himself, to recall 
 the Histoire du Consulat or the Histoire des negotiations 
 relatives a la succession d'Espagne, 1835-1842. For it is 
 abundantly clear from the works of these writers that if 
 each of them has his personal conception of history, they 
 
 d'automne owe their inspiration to the Meditations and the Con- 
 fessions de J. Delorme in as great a degree as the novel owes its very 
 existence to Sir Walter Scott's Quentin Durward. 
 
 The Revolution of 1830 ; the preface to Marion Delorme ; and 
 that in celebrating in it "the three glorious days," Victor Hugo did 
 not so much abjure his Royalist faith, as obey the principle of his 
 lyricism; which is, and always will be, to go for inspiration to 
 current events, to be moved to song by all disasters as by all victories ; 
 and to be as much as possible the sonorous echo of popular emotion. 
 That adopting this point of view, there is no occasion to distinguish 
 between Hugo's dramatic and lyric work ; and the less so if the 
 lyricism in his plays be now the only living element they contain.- - 
 The Chants du crepuscule, 1835. His efforts to enter the Academy, 
 1836-1840 ; the Voix interieures, 1837 ; the Rayons et les Ombres, 
 1840. Victor Hugo becomes the recognised poet of " Bonapartism " ; 
 though in adopting this attitude he merely associates himself with 
 a new movement of French " national thought " ; which inspires 
 him some of his finest verses. He enters the French Academy, 1841 ; 
 and Louis Philippe's Government consoles him for the failure of 
 the Burgraves, 1843, by making him a Peer of France, 1845. 
 
 B. Victor Hugo's three manners ; and in the first place, that their 
 succession was far less " willed " by the poet, than determined by an 
 interior force of which he never rendered himself entirely the master ; 
 by the movement of ideas of his time ; and by circumstances.
 
 470 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 all of them firmly believe that there exists an historic 
 certitude, a truth it is possible to attain to ; a truth, too, 
 which, while it doubtless is not necessarily contrary to 
 the impressions we receive from facts, may happen not 
 to be in conformity with them. It is even in the name 
 of this truth that they contradict and combat each other, 
 that one after the other they rewrite the history of the 
 Eevolution each as he conceives it. They are conscious 
 that they are men, and subject as such to error ; that 
 they are imbued with prejudices derived from their birth, 
 their education, or the nature at the moment of their 
 interests. The very object of their method, however, is 
 to rid themselves of their prejudices or to guard them- 
 selves against error, and they pride themselves on being, 
 
 1. The lyric inspiration; and that even in his first volume, the 
 Odes of 1822, beneath a declamatory and old-fashioned phraseology, 
 his lyricism is recognisable in the already personal, energetic, and 
 combative character of his verse. That the Orientates do not belie 
 this character ; since the descriptions which are their glory ; and 
 the finest perhaps in the French language, do not correspond to 
 anything the poet has seen with his own eyes ; whether in the case 
 of his Egypt \le Feu du del] , of his Turkey \les Tetes du Serail] , or 
 of his Russia [Maxeppa] ; and are in consequence purely subjective. 
 The same characteristics are still more clearly discernible in the 
 Feuilles d'automne ; all the pieces in which, as Goethe has remarked, 
 are merely " occasional pieces " [Cf. Reverie d'un passant a propos 
 d'un Roi, or Dicte en presence du glacier du Rhone] ; and admissions 
 or confessions of the poet, who, though he does not as yet descend 
 into "the dreary depths of the gulf within," nevertheless confides 
 to us his loves, his memories and his regrets [Cf. Que Vimporte, 6 
 mon caeur, and mes lettres d 1 amour] . The Chants du crepuscule, 
 too, are full of his personality. It is observable, however, that his 
 lyricism is less personal in this volume as regards the matter than as 
 regards the manner, doubtless because the poet is conscious that the 
 very magnificence of his verse makes it unsuited for the direct expres- 
 sion of personal details, or because he no longer finds in such details 
 sufficiently rich material for his " virtuosity." The same tendency 
 is still more clearly seen in the Voix interieures or in the Rayons et
 
 MODERN TIMES 471 
 
 one is tempted to say they make it a point of professional 
 vanity to be, the mere impartial registrars of the past. 
 Here again, then, by a different channel, truth is being 
 readmitted into art ; or, to express the situation better, 
 and in terms that do not lend themselves to confusion, 
 the artist is subordinating himself to his subject instead 
 of claiming to dominate it. Thiers, when he is relating 
 the battle of Marengo, never imagines for an instant 
 that it is in him, Thiers, that the reader is interested, 
 any more than Tocqueville indulges in self-exhibition 
 when he attempts to descry the future of democracy. 
 The facts speak, or ought to speak, in their place, so that 
 with these writers history, falling into line with sociology, 
 philosophy, and science, sides against Romanticism. 
 
 les Ombres ; two of his finest collections of lyrics. In these works 
 his first manner attains to its final and definite expression. " His 
 soul . . . which the God whom he worships placed in the centre of 
 all things like a sonorous echo," responds within him to the songs, 
 the murmurs, and the tears of the universe. He now " scores " these 
 utterances, as a musician might ; that is he sustains, develops, and 
 amplifies their strains ; by the resources of a harmony which is the 
 outcome of the combined promptings of nature, history, and passion 
 [Cf. Sunt lacrimce rerum ; A I 'Arc de triomphe ; Fonction du 
 Poete ; Tristesse d'Olympio] . And it is for this reason, that if there 
 be elegies more touching than his, as are those of Lamartine ; or 
 more despairing songs, as are certain of those of Musset, there are 
 none more "lyric," or that comply more closely with the very defini- 
 tion of this branch of poetry ; in virtue of the very nature of their 
 primary inspiration ; of the spaciousness, the magnificence, and the 
 diversity of the " movements " which the poet finds to express his 
 inspiration; and finally in virtue of the "impersonal," general, and 
 external element he already introduces into his work. 
 
 2. The epic-satirical inspiration; and that if Victor Hugo had 
 already risen superior in the Rayons et les Ombres to the admixture 
 of egoism that is sometimes present in pure lyricism ; so far as it is 
 personal ; politics themselves ; and exile ; and solitude ; though 
 they had not detached him from his own personality, had never- 
 theless still further enlarged his conception of his art ; and given his
 
 472 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 Criticism, moreover, weary of the humiliating role to 
 which it has been subjected for a score of years, follows 
 suit. Sainte-Beuve himself, the former admirer, disciple, 
 and, as Heinrich Heine wittily termed him, " impresario" 
 of Hugo, is in revolt ; and his Port-Royal, which begins 
 to appear in 1840, his Chateaubriand, the date of which 
 is 1848, and his Causeries du lundi, which are started in 
 1849, breathe an exactly contrary spirit to his Portraits 
 contemporains. I do not refer to his recantations ! For 
 all of them he is not to be held responsible, since 
 although he has doubtless changed in the interval 
 between the Meditations and Raphael and Graziella, 
 Lamartine has changed still more ! It is more par- 
 ticularly his method, and with his method the object 
 
 originality its definite characteristics. The Cliatiments, 1852 ; and 
 that while the volume does little honour to Hugo's character; it 
 contains some of his masterpieces [Cf. I'Obeissance passive ; Toulon ; 
 VExpiatiori\ ; pieces in which not only is the relationship between 
 satire and lyricism even more apparent than in the work of the 
 indignant poet of the lambes ; but in which the transition is detected 
 as well from the lyric to the epic manner. At first sight these 
 features seem less observable in the Contemplations, 1856 ; but it 
 has to be noted that although the Contemplations were not published 
 until 1856 ; an entire volume of them was written prior to 1848 [Cf. 
 in particular A Villequier, and all the pieces relating to the death of 
 his daughter] ; while such pieces as Horror or Les Mages already 
 constitute a link between the poet's second and third manner. On 
 the other hand the Legende des siecles, 1859, is entirely characteristic 
 of his second manner ; which although still lyric or satirical [Cf . the 
 opening portion of La Rose de V Infante] ; so far as it shows Hugo 
 not to have forgotten his grudges or his hatreds ; is rather epic ; if, 
 for example, it does not appear that the poet had any other reason for 
 writing his Booz endorrni, and some other pieces of a like nature, 
 than the temptation to realise in them his visio'n of past times. He 
 does not describe for the sake of describing ; but the things he 
 describes interest him in themselves for what they are ; and because 
 they are ; and finally such as they were. He even concerns himself 
 with things that do not interest him personally at all ; an attitude
 
 MODERN TIMES 473 
 
 of his criticism, that has undergone a transformation. 
 He now proceeds on the lines of the natural historian, 
 or he even dabbles in physiology, and henceforth, when 
 his private grudges or his vanity are not at stake, he 
 does not claim for his impressions that they are his own, 
 but that they are in accordance with the truth. 
 
 He goes a step further, and coming to the conclusion 
 that in literature or art the distinctions between the 
 different branches and the hierarchy of talents are not 
 perhaps "what a vain populace thinks," he discerns the 
 permanent reason and the primary cause of this fact in 
 the diversity of the various " families of intellects." 
 Who is it has said that " life which is a tragedy for those 
 who feel, is a comedy for those who think ? " This being 
 
 which would accord with the very definition of epic description ; if 
 it were not that, as when writing the Orientates, Hugo remains too 
 indifferent to the "absolute truth" of these things; and continues 
 to represent them such as he imagines them ; without even being in 
 doubt as to the infallibility of his imagination. His attitude in these 
 respects is the same in the Chansons des Rues et des Bois, 1865 ; 
 which are a return to lyricism as regards the often boundless caprice 
 or " frolicsomeness " of their inspiration; the variety of their execu- 
 tion ; and the liberty he takes in them neither to accept nor respect 
 any restraint. 
 
 3. TJie apocalyptic inspiration. Solitary meditation, however, had 
 had another effect on the poet ; an effect it is attempted to convey 
 in speaking of his "apocalyptic" manner. Scarcely any other word 
 conveys the furious desire to " vaticinate " that takes possession of 
 him ; the deepening of the shadow in his work ; from which the 
 rays of light gleam forth, as from a picture by Rembrandt, with all 
 the more startling brilliancy ; and the way in which he is haunted 
 by the " unfathomable." These are the characteristics of the second 
 Legende des siecles, 1877 ; and of the third, 1883. To express the 
 element of hostility that resides in the nature which surrounds and 
 defies us; to express the still greater horror of annihilation; to 
 raise up terrifying visions before the mind's eye [Cf . I 'Epopee du Ver ; 
 Pleurs dans la nuit ; la Trompette du jugement] , the poet now dis- 
 covers unknown images and accents ; he reminds the reader of an
 
 474 MANUAL OF THE HISTOKY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the case, we are confronted at once with two clearly 
 separated classes, with two " families of intellects " it 
 might almost be said with two sexes. For will not a 
 woman always prefer Andromaque to the Misanthrope, 
 Zaire to the Barbier de Seville (I mean Beaumarchais' 
 work) or Hernani to Tragaldabas ? But if there are 
 families of intellects, which themselves are subdivided 
 into genera, species, and orders, does it not follow thai 
 neither our impressions nor our judgments are of any 
 value in criticism ? Whether the critic blames 01 
 praises, approves or condemns, it is not the sentence 
 or even the judge that is of importance, but solelj 
 the reasons on which the verdict is based. Further 
 
 ^Eschylus or an Isaiah ; and he turns his very obscurity to accounl 
 as a means of producing effect. Here, however, the truth is seer 
 of the famous saying that " between the sublime and the ridiculous 
 there is only a step " ; and Hugo oversteps this narrow borderline 
 in le Pape ; VAne ; Religions et Religion ; 1878-1880 ; works whicl 
 are unreadable ; whose obscurity is no longer even that behind whicl 
 we search for a meaning ; they are works which do not even procure 
 us the sensation of vastness or giganticness ; but that of emptiness 
 works whose only originality, if originality it be, is that they an 
 " frantically commonplace." The reason of this latter qualificatior 
 will shortly appear ; when it has been shown in how great a degree 
 the commonplace nature of certain of Hugo's ideas contributed to hit 
 popularity. It must further be pointed out that the succession o: 
 the poet's three manners must not be interpreted too rigidly ; since 
 even in VAne there are traces of the poet of the Orientales, just as 
 in the author of the Feuilles d'automne there are the beginnings o: 
 that of Religions et Religion. 
 
 C. The last years of Victor Hugo ; and of the very great politica 
 and social influence he exerted, not as a Peer of France ; or as 
 member of the Assemblies of 1848 and 1850 ; but as a writer ; bj 
 his CMtiments, 1852 ; by his Napoleon le Petit, 1853 ; by his 
 Miserables, 1862 ; or in other words by the persistence of his hatreds 
 and the perhaps unconscious skill with which he identified their 
 with the cause of " social progress." The Miserables ; and thai 
 originally the work was doubtless the outcome of a desire to surpass
 
 MODERN TIMES 475 
 
 on what does the value of these reasons depend if not on 
 the knowledge we possess or are capable of possessing 
 of the laws which govern the human mind ? The glory 
 of Sainte-Beuve lies in his having had a presentiment of 
 this simple truth, though he did not always have the 
 courage to apply it. But for the moment the presenti- 
 ment is sufficient, for others than Sainte-Beuve were 
 shortly to expand it into an entirely new conception of 
 criticism ; and thus it came about that the author of the 
 Confessions de Joseph Delorme, who had been one of the 
 stoutest supporters of budding Komanticism, became in 
 his maturity, as the author of the Causeries du lundi, its 
 most redoubtable antagonist. 
 
 in popularity the masters of the popular newspaper "novel"; the 
 author of the Memoires du Diable, or that of the Mijsteres de Paris. 
 Of the spirit hi which the Miserables is written; of the art with 
 which the worst popular prejudices are flattered in it ; and, in this 
 connection, that if Victor Hugo is not what is called a " thinker," his 
 ideas nevertheless have more significance than is usually attributed 
 to them. William Shakespeare, 1864 ; and that in connection with 
 more than one point criticism has nothing better to offer than some 
 of Hugo's literary judgments or intuitions. The Travailleurs de la 
 Mer, 1866; and that there is "depth" hi the book in places; as 
 indeed is natural enough ; since when a writer possesses, to the 
 degree hi which Hugo did, the gift of " verbal invention," it is 
 impossible that he should diversely associate words, without diversely 
 associating as well the ideas they express. It is impossible, too, 
 to treat the " commonplace," without touching on the most general 
 questions that interest humanity ; for example, it is impossible for a 
 writer of Hugo's calibre to develop the ideas contained in such words 
 as " independence," "liberty," or " fatherland," without bringing new 
 aspects of things into evidence [Cf. Quatre-vingt-Treize]. Finally, 
 when a writer's thoughts do no more than follow the current of 
 general opinion, the thoughts he expresses profit by the authority of 
 all those who have assimilated them. A clear example of this is 
 afforded by the poem Religions et Religion, 1880 ; which at bottom 
 is merely a popular expression ; a less subtle but sufficiently accurate 
 expression of the opinion of a Schleiermacher, or a Renan ; to the
 
 476 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 III 
 
 It would perhaps be stretching a point to include as 
 well among the adversaries of Romanticism either the 
 author of the Destinees, 1843-1863, or that of Emaux et 
 Camees, 1852. However, they may truthfully be termed 
 deserters from the declining school. Nothing was wanting 
 in the first of the two to make him the greatest of French 
 poets but certain of the defects of the second : the latter's 
 inexhaustible wealth of verbal invention, his constant 
 striving after the "picturesque" and his virtuosity. 
 Be it added that good judges had divined his talent 
 almost at the outset of his career : " Buchez and 
 
 effect that all "positive" religions are mere limitations; or 
 deformations ; or corruptions of the universal religion. 
 
 II est ! Mais nul cri d'ange ou d'homme, nul effroi, 
 Nul amour, nulle bouche, humble, ou tendre ou superbe, 
 Ne peut distinctement balbutier ce verbe ! 
 II est ! II est ! II est ! II est eperdument. 
 
 The foregoing remark brings us back to our comparison between Victor 
 Hugo's role and that of Voltaire ; and without insisting on that 
 "Deism"; the fortunes of which both of them imagined they 
 would establish the more solidly, in proportion as they maltreated 
 positive religions, three great differences are discerned between the 
 two roles. The first is all to the advantage of Hugo, who is the most 
 " extraordinary " of French lyric poets; and who in his masterpieces 
 shows himself the greatest writer of verse France possessed ; while 
 Voltaire has many superiors among French prose writers. On the 
 other hand, Voltaire possesses two qualities which Victor Hugo lacked : 
 a wide, varied, and substantial culture which even borders in some 
 departments on erudition ; and, secondly, he was indifferent to 
 none of the manifestations of the spirit of his time ; whereas Victor 
 Hugo's curiosity was never excited in the least degree by the 
 " scientific " and philosophic movement of his period. And it is 
 perhaps in this respect that he is a poet ; if all great poets have had 
 their attention fixed in a general way on the past ; but it is also for 
 this reason that while he apparently filled the same role as Voltaire,
 
 MODERN TIMES 477 
 
 his friends, relates Sainte-Beuve, had noted among 
 the Romantic school the commanding personality of 
 M. de Vigny and had endeavoured to recruit him." 
 The critic goes on to say that de Vigny declined these 
 advances, he being too proud, and rightly too proud, 
 ever to belong to any other school than his own, " but 
 from this moment he was brought to occupy himself with 
 certain social questions to a greater extent than he had 
 done hitherto " [Cf . Nouveaux lundis, vol. vi., p. 420]. 
 And the fact is that the Romantic element which is still 
 to be found in Stello, 1832, and Chatterton, 1835, has 
 greatly diminished in Grandeur et Servitude militaires, 
 while mere traces of it are all that subsist in the Sauvage, 
 
 he is not in an equal degree with Voltaire the " personification " 
 of his time. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Victor Hugo's works are easy to classify, and 
 overlooking his quite youthful productions which he disregarded 
 himself, comprise : 
 
 His Poems: Odes et Ballades, 1822, 1824, 1826, 1828; the 
 Orientales, 1829 ; Feuilles d'automne, 1831 ; the Chants du 
 crepuscule, 1835; the Voix interieures, 1837; the Rayons et 
 les Ombres, 1840; the CJidtiments, 1852; the Contemplations, 
 1856 ; the Legende des siecles [in three parts] , 1859, 1877, 1883 ; 
 the Chansons des Rues et des Bois, 1865; VAnnee terrible, 1871 ; 
 V Art d'etre grand-pere, 1877 ; le Pape, 1878 ; la Pitie siqjreme, 
 1879; I'Ane, 1880; Religions et Religion, 1880; the Quatre 
 Vents de V esprit, 1881 ; the Theatre en liberte, 1884. 
 
 His Plays [Cf. above : THE ROMANTIC DRAMA] . 
 
 His Novels : Bug Jargal, 1818, 1826 ; Han d'Islande, 1823 ; le 
 Dernier jour d'un condamne, 1829 ; Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831 ; 
 Claude Gueux, 1834 ; the Miserables, 1862 ; the Travailleurs de la 
 Mer, 1866; VHomme qui rit, 1869; and Quatre-vingt-Treize, 
 1874. 
 
 His Political Works : Etude sur Mirabeau, 1834 ; Napoleon le 
 Petit, 1852 ; Histoire d'un Crime, 1852-1877 ; and the four volumes 
 entitled Avant VExil ; Pendant VExil ; and Depuis VExil. 
 
 Finally : Litterature et philosophic melees, 1834 ; le Rhin, 1842 ; 
 William SJuikespeare, 1864 ; VArchipel de la Mancte, 1884.
 
 the Mort du loup, 1843, the Maison du berger, 1844, and 
 the Bouteille a la mer, 1854. Is it for this reason that 
 Sainte-Beuve, for his part, declares that these works 
 show "a decline"? It is the exact contrary that is 
 true. Vigny has left no finer verses, no verses more 
 typical of his genius, or which give a nobler idea of the 
 poet. The Mort du loup : 
 
 Seul le silence est grand, tout le reste est faiblesse ; 
 the Maison du berger : 
 
 J'ainie la majeste des souflrances humaines ; 
 the Bouteille a la mer : 
 
 Le vrai Dieu, le Dieu fort est le Dieu des idees ; 
 
 Since Hugo's death, eight or nine volumes of posthumous works 
 and two volumes of his Correspondence have been published. 
 
 His Complete Works less the Correspondence have been issued 
 in 56 volumes, in 8vo, Paris, 1885-1892, Hetzel. 
 
 IV. George Sand (Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, 
 Baroness Dudevant), [Nohant, 1804; f 1876, Nohant]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. George Sand, Histoire de ma vie, 1854-1855 ; 
 and Corres2)ondance, 1882-1884 [Cf. her early novels, Indiana, Valen- 
 tine, and later, Elle et Lui] . 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. i., 1832, 1833 ; and 
 Causeries du lundi, vol. i., 1850 ; Gustave Planche, in the Revue des 
 Deux Mondes for December, 1832, August, 1833, and October, 1834 ; 
 Comte T. Walsh, George Sand, Paris, 1837 ; A. Vinet, Etudes sur 
 la litterature francaise au XIX C siecle, article written in connection 
 with the preceding book ; Lerminier in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
 April, 1844 ; Charles de Mazade, ibid., May, 1857 ; O. d'Hausson- 
 ville, Etudes biographiques et litteraires, Paris, 1879 ; Caro, George 
 Sand, in the " Grands Ecrivams francais " series, 1887 ; Ernile 
 Faguet, XIX" siecle, Paris, 1887 ; F. Brunetiere, Evolution de la 
 Poesie lyrique, 1893. 
 
 2. THE WRITER ; and in the first place of the threefold contrast 
 afforded by the regularity of her production and the irregularity of 
 her existence ; the delicate brilliancy of her imagination and the vio- 
 lence of some of the opinions she championed ; and the impersonal
 
 MODERN TIMES 479 
 
 are strewn with lines which haunt our memories. The 
 sturdy admonition he opposed to the lamentations 
 with which the Eomanticists had wearied their contem- 
 poraries : "to complain, to weep, to pray, is equally cow- 
 ardly," has more especially been hearkened to. Finally, 
 by means of the symbol, which he restored to its original 
 use, the expression, that is, of the relationship, no less 
 certain than obscure, between the pure idea and plastic 
 form, all these pieces, or rather all these poems, brought 
 back poetry to a consciousness of its object and of its 
 social function. "I am merely a sort of epic moralist," 
 he has said of himself [Cf. Journal d'un poete, 1834], 
 and it would be impossible to describe him better, or to 
 
 character of her style and the individualist inspiration of her early 
 novels. 
 
 Extraction, family, and education of Aurore Dupin [Cf. Histoire 
 de ma vie] ; her marriage ; her first Letters [Cf . in particular letter 
 dated Bagneres, 28 August, 1825] . Her separation from her hus- 
 band [Cf. Letter of December 3, 1830, and Indiana] ; her residence 
 in Paris and her first literary efforts. Henri de Latouche and Jules 
 Sandeau. Rose et Blanche, 1831 ; Indiana, 1831 ; Valentine, 1832 ; 
 Lelia, 1833 ; Jacques, 1834 ; -and that the originality of these 
 works is not so much that they proclaimed the " divine right " of 
 passion, as that in consequence, amongst other merits [Rose et 
 Blanche must be excepted] of the freshness and poetic truth of the 
 background; the "bourgeois " and in particular the real character 
 of the plot ; and the fluent and copious style ; they definitely made 
 of the novel a form of literature " capable of being the vehicle of 
 thought." This had not been done since the Nouvelle Helo'ise, 
 1761, and since Corinne, 1807. But Corinne was placed amid 
 unusual conditions ; and Rousseau's novel offered, properly speaking, 
 no fictional "interest," while there is such an interest both in 
 Valentine and Indiana ; and whatever the social situation of George 
 Sand's heroines may be, there is at least nothing extraordinary about 
 their adventures. Can as much be said of their sentiments ; and in 
 particular of those which find expression in Jacques and Lelia ? If 
 as much cannot be said, if, on the contrary, these works ought to 
 be called personal or " lyric " novels, it results that it is for this
 
 480 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 determine better how and in what respect his influence, 
 to begin with, parted company with that of the Roman- 
 ticists, and ended by triumphing over it. 
 
 He had also said : "A book, as I conceive it, ought to 
 be composed, sculptured, gilded, cut, finished and filed 
 and polished like a statue of Parian marble," and it must 
 be admitted that he has fallen too short, in his finest 
 poems, of this artistic ambition. The honour of realis- 
 ing it was to belong to a writer who is still sometimes 
 regarded as the most uncompromising of Romanticists, 
 who was so in 1830, but who did not remain so, and who, 
 on the contrary, merely by the manner in which he trans- 
 formed the art of descriptive writing, might alone and 
 
 reason that they are Romantic, or even Byronian. It should be 
 added that since their Romanticism is unaccompanied by an exotic 
 background, and since they deal with contemporary life ; they are 
 Romantic in a different way from Cinq-Mars or Notre-Dame de Paris, 
 and the combination of all these circumstances sufficiently explains, 
 to say nothing of the author's sex, how it was that two novels, 
 Indiana and Valentine, should have been enough to render the name 
 of George Sand illustrious in two years ; a name rendered famous 
 a year later by Lelia ; and more famous still the following year 
 by what may be termed the adventure of the " loves of Venise." 
 
 Of a saying of the Duchesse de Bourgogne to the effect that 
 " under the reign of women it is the men who govern"; and how 
 signally it is borne out by the literary life of George Sand ; if from 
 Mauprat, 1837, down to the publication of the Histoire de ma vie, 
 1854-1855, the key to the history of her work is furnished by her 
 masculine friendships. The fact is, that for some fifteen or sixteen 
 years her " virtuosity," very different from that of Hugo, exer- 
 cised itself almost exclusively in giving artistic shape, to the ideas 
 which were suggested to her. The influence of Lamennais and the 
 Lettres a Marcie ; Spiridion ; les Sept cordes de la lyre, 1839. The 
 influence of Pierre Leroux and the socialist or humanitarian novels : 
 the Compagnon du tour de France, 1840, the Peche de Monsieur 
 Antoine, 1845. The influence of Chopin and of Liszt : Consuelo, 
 1842-1843. The influence of freemasonry : the Comtesse de Rudol- 
 stadt, 1844. The influence of Barbes and George Sand's role in the
 
 MODERN TIMES 481 
 
 unaided have evolved out of Komanticism the naturalistic 
 doctrines it contained in a dormant state. " I have been 
 to Constantinople," Theophile Gautier has said, "to be 
 a Mussulman at my ease ; to Greece, for the Parthenon 
 and Phideas ; to Russia, for the snow and Byzantine art ; 
 to Venice, for Saint Mark and the palace of the Doges " 
 [Cf. Bergerat, Theophile Gautier, pp. 126, 127]. Is it 
 not clear that Gautier, when he ceases thus to be a mere 
 traveller or tourist, and constitutes himself the historian 
 or the painter of the countries he traverses, adopts an 
 attitude which amounts to a resolve to put aside his 
 personality, so as to leave himself free to receive the 
 impressions the places he visits will make on him? 
 
 revolution of 1848. Still, amid the conflicting action of these various 
 influences, she is mindful of her native district of Bern ; and she 
 retains her love of nature ; and her taste for peasant manners 
 [Cf. La mare au diable, 1846 ; La petite Fadette, 1849 ; Francois le 
 Champi, 1850] . And the success of these novels, on the morrow of 
 the adventures of the Kevolution, has a twofold result : it reconciles 
 her with the general public ; on whom she had seemed disposed 
 to turn her back with a view to addressing herself exclusively to the 
 " populace ", while the general public, coming to regard her as a 
 great talent reclaimed from party spirit, is reconciled with her in turn. 
 For her part she profited in two ways by her connection with 
 socialism : in the first place she was brought to perceive the danger 
 of " individualism " ; and in the second place to understand that the 
 world is vaster than the little we can learn of it by our personal expe- 
 rience would lead us to suppose. We are not the only human beings, 
 and our ills are not the sum total of ills ; there are other and more 
 cruel misfortunes than to have made a loveless marriage like Valen- 
 tine ; or than to have found, like Lelia, that pleasure ends in disgust. 
 Hence the new character of the novels of her last period ; with 
 the exception of Elle et Lui, 1859, which is her rather tardy answer 
 to the Confession d'un Enfant du siecle. Jean de la RocJie, 1860 ; 
 the Marquis de Villemer, 1861 ; Tamaris, 1862 ; Mile de la 
 Quintinie, 1863 [a rejoinder to Octave Feuillet's Histoire de Sibylle] . 
 She does not abjure her ideas ; she is always ready to plead what 
 she believes to be the cause of liberty ; she is opposed to all moral 
 
 32
 
 482 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Neither Musset nor Hugo would have been capable of this 
 self-suppression. Moreover, as it is impossible for anj 
 brain to convert itself naturally, spontaneously, into a 
 "photographic dark-room," as it were, the principle 
 has for consequence that we shall begin by arranging 
 to keep our impressions as far as possible from the 
 influence of our personality an attitude directly opposed 
 to that of the Romanticists. Moreover, as the onlj 
 chance of this effort being successful lies in our exercising 
 perpetual attention in the choice of the means we shaL 
 employ to express our impressions, there results a 
 constant and scrupulous regard for style, an anxious 
 vigilance in the matter, which the Eomanticists were 
 
 or political restraint ; but the ardour of her apostolate abates ; anc 
 still more the ardour of her faith in revolt. Antonia, 1863 ; tht 
 Confession d'une jeune fille, 1865 ; Monsieur Silvestre, 1866 ; Lt 
 Dernier Amour, 1867 ; Mile Merguem, 1868. If she does not applj 
 herself to making her imagination " subservient " to her models ; she 
 nevertheless introduces much less of herself into her depictions o: 
 them ; and her interest is centred in the lifelike air, if not in th< 
 reality she lends them [Cf. her correspondence with Flaubert, anc 
 below the article FLAUBERT] . She experiences vaguely the retro 
 spective influence of the daily growing popularity of Balzac ; and o; 
 that " realism" which she helped to bring into existence. Her Ias1 
 works : Francia, 1871 ; Nanon, 1872 ; Flamarande, 1875 ; the 
 Tour de Percemont, 1876. If we do not allude to her plays, the 
 reason is that they can scarcely be said to be her work ; the rare 
 successes she met with on the stage, being due to the technical skil' 
 of those who collaborated with her. 
 
 Of the main defect of George Sand's novels ; and that apart froir 
 the naive immorality of certain of them ; it lies in the fact thai 
 while they have a realistic starting-point ; they all of them fall awaj 
 into vagueness as they continue or before they are concluded. This 
 feature may be expressed in other terms ; and in such a way as tc 
 include both the good and the bad qualities ; by saying that frorr 
 Indiana to the Marquis de Villemer, all George Sand's novels art 
 poems in prose, rather than studies of manners ; and it must be 
 added: "improvised" poems in prose.
 
 MODEEN TIMES 483 
 
 also without, at which, indeed, the}' had been a little 
 inclined to scoff [Cf. Lamartine, Lettre a M. Leon Bruys 
 d'Ouilly ', and Musset, Apres une lecture], and the 
 absence of which carries with it the penalty that even 
 their masterpieces have a certain air of negligence or 
 improvisation. With the author of Emaux et Camees a 
 generation of artists succeeds a generation of improvisa- 
 tors. To his name might be joined that of Theodore de 
 Banville, in virtue of his Cariatides, 1842, his Stalactites, 
 1846, and his Odelettes, 1856, were it not that too often 
 the art in these works leaves the impression that it has 
 been achieved for the sake of amusement or even of 
 a wager, and further that the author of the Odes funam- 
 
 3. THE WORKS. George Sand's principal novels have been men- 
 tioned in the course of the above notice. Her complete works form 
 over a hundred volumes [Michel Levy's edition] ; not including the 
 four volumes of the Histoire de ma vie ; and the six volumes that 
 have appeared up to now of her Correspondence. 
 
 V. Charles- Augustin Sainte-Beuve [Boulogne-sur-Mer, 1804 ; 
 
 f 1869, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Sainte-Beuve's own works : Portraits con- 
 temporains, vol. ii. ; Portraits litteraires, vol. ii. ; Causeries du 
 lundi, vol. xi. ; and the index volume of the Causeries ; Nouveaux 
 lundis, vol. xiii. ; Lettres a la Princesse ; and his Correspondence. 
 
 Gustave Planche, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, September, 1851 ; 
 Cuvillier-Fleury, Etudes Jiistoriques et litteraires, 1854; Alfred 
 Michiels, Histoire des idees litteraires en France au XIX" siecle, 
 1843, 1848, 1861, 1864. 
 
 J. Levallois, Sainte-Beuve, 1872 ; Pons, Sainte-Beuve et ses 
 inconnues, 1879 ; J. Troubat, Souvenirs du dernier secretaire de 
 Sainte-Beuve, 1890. 
 
 O. d'Haussonville, Sainte-Beuve, sa vie et ses ceuvres, 1875 ; 
 F. Brunetiere, VEvolution des genres, vol. i., 1889 ; and VEvolution 
 de la poesie lyrique, vol. i., 1894 ; Emile Faguet, Sainte-Beuve, in 
 the Revue de Paris, February, 1897. 
 
 2. THE WRITER. His extraction ; and that it would be useless to 
 note that he was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, if the circumstance had
 
 484 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 bulesques, 1857, too frequently seems to be making fur 
 of his subject, his public, and himself. 
 
 If all these influences be considered together, it is nol 
 surprising that towards 1850, between 1848 and 1855 
 the reaction already started against Romanticism shoulc 
 continue and be crowned with success in every brand: 
 of literature simultaneously. The politics of Romanti- 
 cism, of which the Revolution of 1848 was the bank- 
 ruptcy, are attacked at the same time as its ethics anc 
 its aesthetics. The Chdtiments, indeed, are applaudec 
 because, side by side with nameless scurrility, they con- 
 tain some of Hugo's finest verses; but for various reasons 
 some of them political and others, more numerous, literary 
 
 not procured him the patronage of Daunou, who belonged to th< 
 same town ; whose conversations imbued him with the spirit of th< 
 eighteenth century ; to whose influence he perhaps owed his admis 
 sion to the staff of the Globe, 1824 ; and on whose advice it was thai 
 he wrote his first work: the Tableau de lapoesie franqaise aw XVI 
 siecle, 1827-1828. 
 
 A. The Poet ; and his role in the Bomantic revolution. He con 
 trived, by connecting Romanticism with the Pleiad and Andr< 
 Chenier, to provide the innovators with a long line of ancestors ; 
 less illustrious, but dating further back than those claimed by th( 
 pseudo-Classicists. Having recognised in Ronsard [Cf. above th< 
 article RONSARD] , the greatest inventor of rhythms and the crafts 
 man who had handled them most skilfully in French literature, h( 
 taught the Romanticists in general, and Victor Hugo in particular 
 the power and virtue of form [Cf. the celebrated piece : 
 
 Rime, qui donnes leurs sons 
 Aux chansons . . . 
 
 or again, in the Pensees d'aout, the Epitre a Villemairi\ . Later, ir 
 the Confessions de Joseph Delorme, 1829 ; and in his Consolations 
 1831, he carried lyricism, so far as it is the expression of the per 
 sonality of the poet, to positively morbid lengths ; and in this respeci 
 he was one of the forerunners of Baudelaire. Finally in the Penseet 
 d'aout, 1837, as if convinced that lyricism thus conceived could onl^ 
 last for a limited time, finding that he had nothing left of interest t<
 
 MODERN TIMES 485 
 
 it occurs to nobody to imitate them. The prodigious 
 facility of the poet resembles incontinence, and the torrent 
 of his invention assuredly bears along in its course more 
 words or sounds than ideas! To the "unappreciated 
 woman " of the novels of George Sand, who herself is 
 reverting to the peasant heroines of the Mare au diable 
 or La Petite Fadette, or of her imitators, the school " of 
 good sense " is opposing the bourgeois comedies of Canaille 
 Doucet and Augier. The courtesan is stripped of the 
 poetic halo with which Romanticism had endowed her, 
 and in the place of Marion Delorme or of Lelia she 
 becomes Marguerite Gautier [Cf . the Dame aux Camelias, 
 1852], Suzanne d'Ange [Cf. the Demi-Monde, 1855], or 
 
 say in verse, he wrote poetry which is merely rather poor prose ; 
 but which nevertheless acclimatised in contemporary French poetry 
 a taste for the insignificant ; and sympathy with the mediocre. 
 
 B. The Critic. 
 
 1. From 1824 to 1837. This is the period of the Portraits 
 Utteraires and of the Portraits contemporains ; a militant and 
 active period, during which, when his criticism does not serve him 
 as a means to satisfy his grudges ; and to rank the authors he treats 
 with a view to the position to which he himself pretends as a poet ; 
 it is little else than the diary of his personal impressions ; and in 
 this sense purely Romantic. The nature, however, of his impres- 
 sions seems to indicate that he is already primarily concerned with 
 learning the conditions under which the works he deals with were 
 written ; while satisfaction at pointing out their defects ; the desire 
 to judge them ; or even the pleasure of enjoying them, are but 
 secondary considerations with him ; and thus it comes about that 
 from a purely subjective criticism, there is evolved and there is 
 already disengaged, a psychological criticism, whose tendency is 
 to subordinate the study or examination of the " works " to a know- 
 ledge of their " authors " ; and of their mode of life. Novelty at the 
 time of this style of criticism ; and that it was not without analogy 
 with the nature of the investigations which Balzac was declaring to 
 be the object of the novelist's art ; a fact which is perhaps the 
 explanation of the bitter hostility between the two writers Kara 
 concordia f rat rum I fraternal feuds being especially common in
 
 486 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Olympe Taverny [Cf. the Mariage d'Olympe]. A not 
 less significant example is that of a young writer [Octave 
 Feuillet] who, after beginning his career, towards 1845, 
 under the auspices of Eomanticism, parts company little 
 by little with his masters, and leaving them discreetly, 
 without fuss or hubbub, in a word politely, starts in Le 
 Village, 1852, in Dalila, 1853, in the Petite Comtesse, 1856, 
 a campaign he will continue until his death, no longer 
 merely against the courtesan, but against " passion " 
 itself. 
 
 In the meantime, from the solitary retreat where he is 
 toiling at the most laborious of masterpieces, another 
 writer reviews the glories of Eomanticism, according his 
 
 literature ; and nothing separating men more profoundly than the 
 circumstance that they are employing opposite means to compass the 
 same end. And the fact is that, in spite of differences, Balzac's 
 novels and Saint-Beuve's criticism are marked by the same kind oi 
 "indiscretion"; the same "anatomical" treatment or the same 
 "dissection" of the "subjects" ; the same calm audacity; while, 
 finally, they produce the same lifelike effects. Comparison, in this 
 respect, between the criticism of Villemain and the criticism of Sainte- 
 Beuve ; and how much more abstract, more unsubstantial, less keen 
 and less penetrating the first is than the second. 
 
 2. From 1837 to 1850 ; or from the lectures delivered at Lausanne 
 on the Port-Royal, to those at Liege on Chateaubriand and his literary 
 group. This is the really fruitful period ; that in which a recon- 
 ciliation is effected in Sainte-Beuve's criticism, freed from the tram- 
 mels of Eomanticism, between the criticism which "feels " and the 
 criticism which "explains " ; through the medium of a deeper and 
 more exact knowledge of history. The Port-Royal, and of its im- 
 portance in this respect. How its author pays simultaneous attention 
 to three matters : examination of works ; analysis of sentiments ; 
 and appreciation or judgment of ideas [Cf. in particular the chapters 
 devoted to Pascal] . How three qualities are combined to their 
 mutual strengthening in the work : the precision of the historian ; 
 the subtilty of the psychologist ; the decision of the judge [Cf . in 
 particular the chapters . on Montaigne, Saint Fra^ois de Sales, 
 Corneille and Boileau] . And how, from the example thus given, there
 
 MODERN TIMES 487 
 
 approval to none of them with the exception of Hugo, 
 complaining that Lamartine writes badly, blaming Musset 
 for having believed "neither in himself, nor in his art, 
 but in his passions," mocking at his " dandyism," and 
 finding fault with the "emphasis with which he sounds 
 the praises of sentiment, the heart and love " [Cf. Flaubert, 
 Correspondence, vol. ii., p. 110, 1852], His voice is echoed 
 by that of a poet : 
 
 Tel qu'un morne animal, meurtri, plein de poussiere, 
 La chaine au cou, hurlant au chaud soleil d'ete, 
 Promene qui voudra son cceur ensanglante, 
 Sur ton pave cynique, 6 plebe carnassiere. . . 
 
 Both Flaubert and Leconte de Lisle proclaim in reality 
 
 resulted three definite obligations for criticism : the obligation to 
 explain ; the obligation to classify ; and the obligation of tending, 
 by means of the interpretation of literary works, towards a "philo- 
 sophic" knowledge of the human intelligence. That for all these 
 reasons Port-Royal is beyond question one of the great books of the 
 century ; and the work of Sainte-Beuve one of the most original of 
 our tune ; as well as one of the most fertile in consequences. 
 
 3. From 1850 to 1870. The period of the Causeries du lundi and 
 of the Nouveaux lundis ; the most vaunted portion of Sainte-Beuve' s 
 work ; but not however the best ; since the author is too constantly 
 influenced in his appreciation of works and still more of men by 
 "topical" hatreds; since not one of his contemporaries dies 
 [Balzac, 1850 ; Musset, 1857 ; Vigny, 1863] without his using or 
 abusing the opportunity to settle his old quarrels with them ; and 
 since by dint of carrying his method to extremes he is brought to 
 concern himself almost exclusively with the men and scarcely at all 
 with the works. The truth is that towards 1860, the necessity of 
 defending his own originality against certain writers who claimed 
 to be his disciples, Edmond Scherer, Ernest Renan, and Taine 
 for example, forces him to lay stress on two points which he 
 declines to abandon. He establishes victoriously that what is 
 interesting in a literary work is in the first place the work itself. 
 He then establishes no less surely that no general considerations 
 are capable of explaining what is individual about a masterpiece ; 
 and that given "race," "environment," and "the moment," which
 
 488 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 that the world has had enough of "confessions" and 
 " disclosures." Nature and society, art and life, truth 
 and beauty invite the poet, the novelist, and the dramatist 
 to look beyond themselves, to open their eyes on the 
 universe around them. Everything is "material for 
 literature " with the single exception of what served the 
 Eomanticists as such. And while Flaubert, Feuillet, 
 Dumas, Augier, or Leconte de Lisle as the result of 
 study or observation are arriving at this conviction 
 almost unintentionally, Taine and Eenan appear to 
 strengthen it, to lend it the weight of their authority 
 and to establish it as a principle. 
 
 A writer is not always fully alive to the nature of his 
 
 are the same for all, the great problem is to explain how it is that 
 there has been only one Tartufe and one Pliedre ; one Voltaire 
 and one Rousseau ; one Eugenie Grandet and one Valentine. 
 Having made this demonstration, however, he grows indifferent to 
 his own principles ; as to the most pronounced of his former tastes ; 
 history proper attracts him more and more ; he takes his title of 
 " Senator of the Empire" seriously; and scarcely anything remains 
 of the author of Port-Royal in his Etude sur Jomini, for example, 
 or in his Essai sur Proudhon. 
 
 C. The Philosopher; and first of all whether this be not a 
 decidedly ambitious appellation for him ; so far at least as to 
 have a "philosophy" is to have a connected system; a general 
 view of things, or merely a " doctrine " [Cf. below the article TAINE] . 
 That in this sense, not only did Sainte-Beuve never possess a 
 "philosophy" ; but his great defect as a critic and as an historian 
 of literature, was his inability to rise above the "monograph." His 
 theoretical contradictions and his naturally versatile humour. But 
 that this very versatility and these contradictions imply a sort of 
 philosophy ; the principle of which is the perfecting of his taste by 
 the variety of the disciplines to which he subjects it ; and this 
 attitude is that to which the name of dilettantism is given. Sainte- 
 Beuve was the dilettante of criticism ; and it seems to have been 
 more particularly in virtue of this fact that he exerted an influence on 
 his contemporaries. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Sainte-Beuve's works comprise : (1) his Poems ;
 
 MODEBN TIMES 489 
 
 work, or to the real influences by which he has been 
 formed. Thus Renan would never admit, perhaps he 
 never suspected, the extent to which he was imbued with 
 the spirit of Auguste Comte ; and Taine, who gloried on 
 the contrary in being a Positivist though a Positivist 
 modified by the study of Stuart Mill was more than 
 astonished, was positively grieved when his attention was 
 called to the works for which his Essai sur Balzac, 1858, 
 and his Histoire de la Litterature anglaise, 1863, must be 
 held responsible. No doubt there is a distinction to be 
 drawn. The " naturalism " of Taine, as also that of 
 Flaubert, was a broader and in particular a more intelli- 
 gent conception of art than the realism, say, of a Courbet 
 
 Joseph Delorme, 1829 ; the Consolations, 1830; and thePenseesd'aoiit, 
 1837 ; (2) his Novel : Volupte, 1834 ; and (3) his Critical Works : 
 
 Portraits litteraires, 3 volumes ; 
 
 Portraits defemmes, 1 volume; 
 
 Portraits contemporains, 5 volumes ; 
 
 Port-Royal, 5 volumes in 8vo or 7 volumes in 8vo ; 
 
 Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire, 2 volumes ; 
 
 Causeries du lundi, 15 volumes ; 
 
 Nouveaux lundis, 13 volumes. 
 
 To the above may be added : his Tableau de la Poesie francaise au 
 XVI" siecle ; his Premiers lundis, three volumes issued after his 
 death and containing articles he had not collected himself ; his 
 Etude sur Virgile ; and two or three rather insignificant short tales. 
 
 Only three volumes of his Correspondence have been published as 
 yet, and scarcely anything of his famous " Notebooks." 
 
 THIRD PERIOD. 
 Naturalism. 
 
 1859-1875. 
 
 I. Alfred de Vigny [Loches, 1797 ; f 1863, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Journal d'un poete, edited by M. Louis Ratis- 
 bonne ; and the Notice preceding the Journal, Paris, 1867 ; Sainte-
 
 490 MANUAL OF THE HISTOBY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 or a Champfleury ; for example it did not proscribe the 
 "representation" either of beauty or of the past [Cf. 
 Salammbo, Herodias, la Legende de saint Julien] , in the 
 consciousness that to have done so would have been to 
 exclude from art the very notion of art. Again it was 
 all very well for the author of the Histoire des langues 
 semitiques, 1848, and of the celebrated Essai sur les 
 Religions de I'antiquite, 1853, to believe and to declare 
 that " M. Comte, not being a philologist, had no com- 
 prehension of the sciences of humanity " [Cf. I'Avenir 
 de la science, p. 148]. It is true that M. Comte was 
 not a philologist, and his style was bad, but Kenan's 
 " philology" bore a closer resemblance than he imagined 
 
 Beuve, Portra/its contemporains, vol. ii., 1826, 1835 ; and Nouveaux 
 lundis, vol. vi., 1864 ; Emile Montegut, Nos Morts contemporains, 
 1867 ; Theophile Gautier, Rapport sur les progres de la poesie, 1868 ; 
 Emile Faguet, XIX" siecle, Paris, 1887 ; Maurice Paleologue, 
 Alfred de Vigny, Paris, 1891 ; F. Brunetiere, Essais sur la litterature 
 contemporaine, 1891 ; and Involution de la Poesie lyrique, 1893, 
 vol. ii. ; Dorison, Alfred de Vigny, poete philosophe, 1892. 
 
 2. THE POETE. 
 
 A. The years of Romanticism. Vigny's extraction ; his educa- 
 tion ; and his military vocation. His first published verse : Helena, 
 1822, and Eloa, 1824 ; and, in this connection, of Andre Chenier's 
 influence on Alfred de Vigny. Character of his early verse, and how 
 visibly inspired it is by the eighteenth century [Cf. Montegut, loc. 
 cit.] ; but in particular how little Eomantic it is. The novel Cinq- 
 Mars, 1826 ; and Mo'ise, 1826. Vigny's personal relations with the 
 Romanticists ; and the part he took in the conflict with Classicism ; 
 with his Othello, 1829 ; his drama the Marechale d'Ancre, 1831 ; 
 and his " symbolical " novel Stello, 1832. Three at least of the charac- 
 teristics of Romanticism are met with in Chatterton, 1835 : striving 
 after " local colour " ; assertion of the " sovereignty of the poet " and 
 that of the "rights of the individual." Already, however, in his 
 Grandeur et Servitude militaires, published in 1835, Vigny appears 
 to have renounced the egoism of the Romanticists ; as too in the 
 portions of his Journal belonging to this period ; and since his 
 attitude in this matter constitutes the principle and nature of his
 
 MODEBN TIMES 491 
 
 to the " sociology " of the founder of Positivism, the 
 difference between them being not even one of method, 
 but lying in the particular application of the same 
 general method to matters so utterly dissimilar as, for 
 instance, the study of the functions of the liver and that 
 of the composition of the Bhagavata Pourana. This 
 will be apparent if, inserting a middle term between 
 two extremes, the work of Emile Littre be interposed 
 between that of Taine and that of Kenan : on the one 
 hand his treatise on the philosophy of Auguste Comte, 
 and on the other his writings on the history of the 
 French language. It will then be plain, that whatever 
 differences there be between the respective talents of 
 
 originality, the question of his exact rank among the Romanticists 
 becomes futile. 
 
 B. The philosopher; and, in this connection, of Pessimism in 
 general ; and that it is not the doctrine of death or inertia it has 
 been asserted to be ; but, on the contrary, a source of fruitful action ; 
 and in any case the principle of all moral elevation : Vigny's 
 Pessimism ; and that it is to rob him of what is best in him, to 
 look for its cause in the narrowness of his domestic life ; or in the 
 humiliations to which his pride was subjected ; or, as some " clever " 
 persons have done, in the physiological presentiment of the disease of 
 which he was to die [cancer of the stomach] . Vigny's Pessimism is 
 a philosophic doctrine ; based on the reasoned conviction of the 
 hostile attitude of nature towards man [Cf. the Maison du Berger] ; 
 on the isolation that is the consequence of the possession of 
 intelligence [Cf. Motise] ; on the corruption of human nature [Cf. 
 la Colere de Samson] ; and on the indifference of the Gods to our 
 sufferings [Cf. le Christ au Mont des Oliviers] . That in all these 
 respects Vigny's Pessimism is akin to that of Pascal ; and that 
 proof of this is furnished by the consequences that he deduces from 
 his Pessimism ; for the horror inspired him by the human state 
 changes into pity for his fellow men [Cf. his Journal from 1835 
 onward] ; this pity into love [Cf. la Flute] ; this love into the 
 resolution to strive to vanquish nature [Cf. la Sauvage] ; and 
 finally this resolution terminates in a cry of hope [Cf. la Bouteille 
 a la mer] . Haughty but real nobleness of this Pessimism ; and
 
 492 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Little, Taine, and Renan, and it may be maintained 
 that the excellent Littre was entirely without talent, 
 the three of them together constituted naturalistic 
 criticism, or rather, and as it may better be put, their 
 criticism gave " Naturalism " that doctrinal adhesion, con- 
 sistency and solidity which Romanticism had always 
 lacked. 
 
 It is this circumstance that makes it easy to-day to 
 distinguish the true characteristics of Naturalism, and to 
 perceive clearly that works so different in appearance as 
 the Poemes antiques, 1852, the Demi-Monde, 1855, and 
 Madame Bovary, 1857, have nevertheless, in the first 
 place, this in common, that they are what we call 
 
 that to appreciate its, worth, it is only necessary to compare it with 
 the realistic Optimism of Hugo ; the childish Optimism of Musset ; 
 and the vulgar Optimism of the author of the Dieu des bonnes gens. 
 
 C. The influence of Alfred de Vigny ; and that it is in opposition 
 on almost every point with the influence of Romanticism. Vigny 
 freed the poet from the slavish cult of his personality ; and from 
 the superstitious worship of nature. For the lyric "themes" of 
 Romanticism ; which could not be other than general or indetermi- 
 nate themes, and like those of pianists a pretext for the exercise of 
 virtuosity, he substituted precise " ideas " ; of which his fictions 
 [la Mort du Loup ; la Maison du Berger ; la Bouteille a la mer] are 
 merely the envelope ; and for this reason he was a true symbolist ; 
 and a great poet. Finally he wrote " poems " ; which have a begin- 
 ning, a middle and an end ; the development of which is proportioned 
 to the human importance of the idea they express ; and thus is not 
 solely measured by the caprice of the virtuoso ; or the " long-winded- 
 ness " of the poet. For all these reasons it cannot be too much 
 regretted, that Vigny too often shows himself deficient in certain 
 qualities that go to make the artist or even the writer. Still he is 
 nevertheless a very great poet ; and the author of some hundreds of 
 verses ; if there be any superior to which in French, they are few in 
 number. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. The Works of Alfred de Vigny comprise : 
 (1) His Poetry. He has himself sacrificed some of his earliest 
 pieces. What remains forms two volumes : the Poesies, divided into
 
 MODEEN TIMES 493 
 
 " impersonal " works. It is important to state exactly 
 what is meant by this epithet. It does not convey that 
 a Flaubert, a Dumas, or a Leconte de Lisle are absent or 
 severed from their work to such a degree that it is 
 impossible to gather from their writings their conceptions 
 of art, nature, and man. What is meant is that the 
 object of their observation, the matter of their literature, 
 is not they themselves ; that the man in them is subordi- 
 nate to the artist ; and more especially that they made their 
 originality consist in expressing, not things appertaining 
 to themselves, but things which before them had passed 
 unperceived. The radii of a circle were equal before the 
 figure had been drawn, and it was not Galileo who set 
 
 three books, the Livre mystique, the Livre antique, and the Livre 
 moderne, 1822-1826 ; and the Destinees, 1863 [the Destinees were 
 first collected and published under this title in 1863, but the majority 
 of the poems which compose the volume were written during the 
 years 1843, 1844, 1845 and 1854, and appeared at these dates in the 
 Bevue des Deux Mondes] . 
 
 (2) His Plays, including his translation [in verse] of the Merchant 
 of Venice, 1828 ; his adaptation [hi verse] of Othello, 1829 ; the 
 Marechal d'Ancre, 1831 ; Quitte pour la peur, 1833 ; Chatterton, 
 1835. 
 
 (3) His Novels: Cinq-Mars, 1826; Stello, 1832; Grandeur et 
 servitude militaires, 1835. 
 
 (4) His Journal, published hi 1867 by M. Louis Ratisbonne, his 
 literary executor ; and some Letters [Cf. Sainte-Beuve, Portraits 
 contemporains] , the most considerable series of which appeared in 
 the Revue des Deux Mondes for January, 1897. 
 
 There are two editions of his works, one in eight volumes in 8vo, 
 Paris, 1868-1870, Michel Levy ; and the other hi six vols. hi 12mo, 
 Paris, 1883-1885, A. Lemerre. 
 
 II. Pierre-Jules-Theophile Gautier [Tarbes, 1811 ; f 1872, 
 Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOUBCBS. Vte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Histoire det 
 ceuvres de Theophile Gautier, Paris, 1887. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux lundis, vol. vi., 1863 ; Entile Montegut,
 
 494 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the earth moving around the sun ! Similarly French pro- 
 vincial life existed before Madame Bovary, and the author 
 of the Poemes antiques invented neither the Gods of India 
 nor those of Greece, neither their legend nor even their 
 attributes. The unique ambition of these writers was to 
 present the object they were imitating " under its eternal 
 aspect," and to do so they concerned themselves solely 
 with what they believed to be its permanent charac- 
 teristics. 
 
 "Art," wrote Flaubert, "consists in representation, 
 and we ought to confine ourselves to representing " ; and 
 in another passage of his Correspondance : " Art should 
 have nothing in common with the artist." He declares, 
 
 Nos morts contemporains, vol. ii., 1865 ; Charles Baudelaire, I' Art 
 romantique, 1868 ; Emile Bergerat, Theophile Gautier, Entretiens 
 et Souvenirs, Paris, 1877 ; Emile Zola, Documents litteraires, Paris, 
 1881 ; Maxime du Camp, Souvenirs litteraires, Paris, 1882-1884 ; 
 and Theophile Gautier, in the " Grands Ecrivains francais " series, 
 Paris, 1890 ; Emile Faguet, Etudes sur le XIX e siecle, 1887, Paris ; 
 F. Brunetiere, Questions de critique, 1887 ; and I' 'Evolution de la 
 Poesie lyrique, vol. ii., 1893 ; Maurice Spronck, les Artistes litte- 
 raires, Paris, 1889. 
 
 2. THE ARTIST. The critics were long unjust to Theophile 
 Gautier ; reasons for this injustice ; the extent and diversity of 
 his work ; its negligent or improvised air ; and the scrupulous- 
 ness with which he confined himself to his "trade" of poet and 
 story writer. Pedantic indignation of Edmond Scherer in this 
 connection ; and the reproach he addressed Gautier that " he was 
 without ideas." It is the truth that Gautier was without political 
 or theological ideas ; but he had ideas about his art, or about 
 art in general ; very clear and very fruitful ideas ; which he 
 has expressed in very happy terms [Cf. his Notices on Balzac and 
 Baudelaire, his Rapport sur lapoesie, &c.] . It is for this reason that 
 his role, the importance of which it was possible to overlook thirty or 
 forty years ago, has been seen to have been considerable, in pro- 
 portion as the relations between and the common or contradictory 
 elements in Romanticism and Naturalism have been more clearly 
 perceived.
 
 MODERN TIMES 495 
 
 in other words, that nature and history lying before us 
 as models, and our momentary view of them being power- 
 less to prevent them being what they are, what they were 
 before our time, and what they will be after we have 
 passed away, we ought to employ the resources of art to 
 render the models with truth and fidelity. The imitation, 
 or, to use a stronger term, the reproduction of nature, 
 ought to be the object of art ; scrupulous following of the 
 model its method ; while its triumph will be the annihila- 
 tion of the personality of the artist in virtue of the truth 
 of his creation. Does one think of Shakespeare when 
 Othello kills Desdemona, or are readers of the Odyssey 
 concerned with knowing what manner of man was 
 
 Thus it is in his work [Cf. the Grotesques and Capitaine Fracasse] 
 that the affinities between Bomanticism and the school, not of 
 Ronsard, as Sainte-Beuve erroneously taught, but of the Scarrons 
 and the Saint-Amants,- come into view and assert themselves 
 openly ; and in this respect an entire portion of his work is nothing 
 more than an "illustration" or a "demonstration" of the Preface 
 to Hugo's Cromwell. The great ambition of Romanticism was to 
 combine the high-flown " sublirneness " of the Cid ; with the 
 extravagant comedy of Dom Japliet d'Armenie. It was Theophile 
 Gautier, too, who formulated the doctrine of " art for art " ; and 
 though the doctrine is open to discussion ; its first effects were 
 nevertheless excellent. The doctrine of art for art put an end 
 to everlasting self-contemplation on the part of the poet ; it again 
 confronted him with an " exterior world," the significance of which 
 had been disfigured by Romanticism ; and it reawakened in him 
 the sentiment of the power of style. That in this respect, and 
 taking into account the difference between the periods, there are 
 similarities between the role of the author of Emaux et Carnees and 
 that of Malherbe and Boileau ; and that he was indeed the legislator 
 of a new Parnassus. Finally it was Theophile Gautier, and not 
 Hugo ; or any other of the Romanticists ; who effected in the art 
 of description [Cf. Espatia, or, in prose, the Roman de la momie] 
 the " picturesque " revolution which Sainte-Beuve announced, or of 
 which he had a presentiment, but which he did not realise. " See- 
 ing " is an art ; and independently of the emotion they procure us,
 
 496 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Homer ? But these theories, though expressed in more 
 pretentious terms, a fashion set by Romanticism, are 
 easily recognisable as among those which formerly were 
 dear to the most illustrious Classicists ; and the truth is 
 that as regards the simplicity of its scheme and its force 
 of expression there is no novel more "classic" than 
 Madame Bovary. I am not aware that finer and again 
 I mean more "classic" verses exist than those of 
 Leconte de Lisle, and when I search for a work with 
 which to compare the Demi-Monde, after reviewing the 
 literature of the century I pass it by, and do not find 
 what I want until I come to the period of the Barbier de 
 Seville or of Turcaret. 
 
 there exists in things, and especially in human things, qualities 
 with which others, prior to ourselves, have endowed them. It is 
 these qualities that we ought to try to see in them ; and to present 
 " under their eternal aspect " ; without regard to ourselves or to our 
 pleasure. 
 
 That Theophile Gautier was more than once successful in this 
 endeavour ; and, in this connection, that it is strange that such 
 stories as the Roi Candaule, or Arria Marcella, or the Roman de la 
 momie are not held in at least equal esteem to Carmen or Colomba. 
 Theophile Gautier's travels ; and that if the date of the first of them 
 (1839, 1840) be kept in view, it would seem that they revealed to 
 him the nature of his talent. His three volumes of poetry : Albertus, 
 Espaifa, Emaux et Camees ; and that it is in them that the 
 " lack of ideas " with which he has been reproached is particularly 
 visible. It will be noted that the case of Malherbe is parallel, for 
 while Malherbe, like Gautier, is the author of a certain number of 
 very beautiful verses ; his value as a " critic " and a grammarian, 
 and as a " versifier," much surpasses his value as a writer. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. There is no edition of the Complete Works of 
 Gautier, and doubtless there never will be, for it would run to from 
 sixty to eighty volumes. His works comprise : 
 
 (1) His Poetry : Poesies, 1830 ; Albertus, 1833 ; the Comedie de 
 la mort, 1838. These three volumes, with Espaiia adjoined, were 
 published in 1845 under the title Poesies completes. There remains 
 for mention Emaux et Camees, 1852 ;
 
 MODERN TIMES 497 
 
 To say nothing, however, of the wealth and variety of 
 meaning which has come to be expressed by the very 
 word " nature " in the course of two hundred years, there 
 is a difference between the new and the classic conception 
 of art, and it lies in the fact that the standard by which 
 the truth of artistic representations is judged is hence- 
 forth neither " common sense " nor the pronouncements of 
 " society " nor considerations of " social interest " ; this 
 function is now filled by science, and the circumstance is 
 a second characteristic of the new Naturalism. Not that 
 which seems to be, but that which is, constitutes truth ; 
 and under certain rigorously defined conditions the indi- 
 vidual may be right and the universe wrong. What is 
 
 (2) His Fiction, the principal works being : Les Jeunes France, 
 romans goguenards, 1833 ; Mademoiselle de Maupin, 1835 ; For- 
 tunio, 1837 [published under the title of VEldorado] ; his Nouvelles 
 1845 ; his Romans et Contes, 1857 ; the Roman de la momie, 1858 ; 
 and the Capitaine Fracasse, 1863 ; 
 
 (3) His accounts of his travels, Tra los monies [His journey to 
 Spain] , 1843 ; Constantinople, 1853 ; Italia ; Voyage en Russie, 
 1867; 
 
 (3) His Critical Works : A. Literary Criticism, the principal being : 
 les Grotesques, 1853 ; his Rap2)ort sur les progres de la poesie, 1868 ; 
 the collection of anecdotic and biographical articles entitled : His- 
 toire du romantisme, 1874 ; and various Notices, of which the most 
 interesting are the Notice sur H de Balzac and the Notice sur Charles 
 Baudelaire ; B. Dramatic criticism, only a portion of which has been 
 published under the title Histoire de Vart dramatique depuis vingt- 
 cinq ans, 6 vols., 1858-1859, Paris ; C. His Art criticism. 
 
 He has also left some dramatic writings, more especially ballet 
 librettos, and a mass of occasional writings. 
 
 III. Emile Augier [Valence, 1820 ; f 1889, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Emile Montegut, Dramaturges et romanciers, 
 1878 ; Emile .Zola, Nos auteurs dramatiques, 1881 ; Rene Doumic, 
 Portraits d'ecrivains, Paris, 1892; H. Parigot, le Theatre d'hier, 
 Paris, 1893 ; Maurice Spronck, Emile Augier, in the Revue des 
 Deux Mondes, November 15, 1895. 
 
 33
 
 498 MANUAL OP THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 meant here? and are Flaubert's novels, Leconte de 
 Lisle's poetry, or Alexandre Dumas' plays " scientific 
 work " ? That they are such work is at any rate the 
 belief of the authors. They expressly state so. "Art 
 and science, wrote Leconte de Lisle, long separated in 
 consequence of the divergent efforts of the intelligence, 
 should tend henceforth towards a close union or even 
 absolute identification. The one has been the initial 
 revelation of the ideal contained in exterior nature ; the 
 other its luminous and reasoned explanation. But art 
 has lost this primitive spontaneity, and it belongs to 
 science to remind it of its forgotten traditions, which it 
 will revive in the forms that are proper to it " [Cf. 
 
 The student may further consult in connection with Augier, and 
 the other dramatic authors of this period, the dramatic criticisms of 
 Theophile Gautier in the Moniteur, of Jules Janin in the Journal des 
 Debats, and of Francisque Sarcey in the Temps. Also those of M. 
 Jules Lemaitre, which have been issued in volume form under the 
 title Impressions de theatre. 
 
 2. THE DRAMATIST. His first efforts. He is called the "lieu- 
 tenant " of Frangois Ponsard and the " School of good sense." That 
 if the author of La Cigue, 1844, of VAventuriere, 1848, and of 
 Gabrielle, 1849, was pleased to reconcile himself with Eomanticism 
 towards the close of his career, it is nevertheless a fact that all his 
 early pieces were directed against the Romanticists ; and Diane in 
 particular is merely Marion Delorme rewritten by a "man of good 
 sense ; " just as Gabrielle merely ridicules from a bourgeois point of 
 view the heroines of George Sand. It was as an adversary of 
 Eomanticism that Augier was first hailed by his admirers ; and if 
 his collaboration with Jules Sandeau ; the outcome of which was the 
 Chasse au Boman, 1851 ; the Pierre de touche, 1854 ; and the 
 Gendre de M. Poirier ; seemed for a moment to indicate that he 
 was reconciled with the Romanticists, it was not long before he 
 ceased to find himself at home in comedy of this sentimental and 
 average order. And finally it was by renouncing Romanticism and 
 declaiming against it, hi the Mariage d'Olympe, 1855, les Lionnes 
 pauvres, 1858, and la Jeunesse, 1858 ; that he achieved his 
 originality.
 
 MODEEN TIMES 499 
 
 Poemes antiques, 1852, preface to the first edition]. And 
 in truth if there exist in French literature poetry that 
 caa be called "scientific," is it not that of Leconte de 
 Lisle? Again, who has had a clearer vision of the 
 poetry of science than the author of the Histoire de 
 la Litterature anglaise ? Taine has boldly stated his 
 views : " Two ways are open to man to arrive at a 
 knowledge of the permanent and generating causes ; 
 the first is offered by science, by which he determines 
 these causes and these fundamental laws, and expresses 
 them in exact formulae and abstract terms ; the second is 
 offered by art, by which he manifests these causes in 
 perceptible fashion, appealing not only to the reason, but 
 
 It consists essentially in the rather brutal vigour with which he 
 championed certain ideas, whose defenders as a rule are wont to 
 display some hesitation or timidity, the ideas in question being in 
 point of fact as commonplace as they are unexceptionable ; Augier, 
 for instance, clearly demonstrated that " a good name is better than 
 riches," and that a courtesan does not recover her innocence because 
 she is stirred by a genuine passion. He has also proved that what 
 are called business men are often enough lacking in scruples [Cf. les 
 Effrontes] ; and that designing persons sometimes come to a bad 
 end [Cf . la Contagion] ; and all this, if it was not anti-romanticism, 
 was something else than Romanticism. Secondly, with a view 
 to introducing Realism into his work, he devised contemporary 
 plots ; the personages of which were imitated from those of 
 Balzac [Cf . les Effrontes, le Fils de Giboyer, Maitre Guerin] , or 
 of Eugene Sue [Cf . Lions et Benards] ; among them being two or 
 three whose characterisation is fairly vigorous. Moreover, after 
 Balzac and in imitation of him, he gave a novel importance to the 
 money question, making the play turn on it, instead of regarding 
 it, as Scribe regarded it, as a mere subsidiary dramatic expedient. 
 To complete the resemblance, he in general turned to account in his 
 plays the interests of every-day life ; industrial enterprise [Cf. les 
 Effrontes] , scientific discoveries or inventions [Cf . Un beau mariage ; 
 Maitre Guerin] , political events [Cf. le Fils de Giboyer] . Finally, 
 and here he parts company with Balzac, he adopted the attitude of 
 " a bourgeois of 1789 " ; the enemy of vain distinctions ; exclusively
 
 500 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 to the heart and the senses of the most ordinary man " 
 [Cf. Philosophic de I' Art, vol. i., p. 53]. It may be, how- 
 ever, that these arguments are specious rather than solid, 
 and were there but a single one to adduce, an example at 
 least would be desirable of art having "anticipated" 
 science. Still it must be admitted that it never occurred 
 to the Classicists to unite, solidarise or identify science 
 and art in this way, if indeed it ought not to be said 
 that they constantly insisted on their opposition to one 
 another; and the observation is of interest for its own 
 sake, and further because it leads up to another and a 
 more profound difference, and one not less characteristic 
 of " Naturalism." 
 
 respecting " personal merit " ; and anti-clerical after the manner of 
 Beranger [Cf. le Fils de Giboyer, Lions et Benards] ; and this 
 attitude largely contributed to his success. It is doubtless this 
 attitude too that his admirers propose to praise when they declare 
 him to belong to " the family of Moliere." 
 
 His dramatic merit proper, however, is not much superior to 
 that of Eugene Scribe ; while too much has been made of his merit 
 as a writer; of his "sturdy frankness'' and his "virile correc- 
 tion." His verse is curiously prosaic, except * perhaps in certain 
 passages of Philiberte or of the Aventuriere ; and his prose is 
 in general monotonous; though natural enough. His dramatic 
 expedients are often very artificial ; and his plots decidedly 
 fanciful [Cf. the Gendre de M. Poiricr, Mariage d'Olympe, Un 
 beau mariage, Maitre Guerin, les Fourchambault] . It does not 
 appear, moreover, that he even suspected the existence of the great 
 problems of life ; and thought is absent from his work ; which is 
 that, however, of a highly estimable man ; whose literary ambitions 
 did not outstrip his capacity ; and who cannot be better charac- 
 terised, in respect both to his shortcomings and his qualities, than 
 by comparing him with the author of Turcaret and Gil Bias. 
 
 2. THE WORKS. Apart from his plays Emile Augier's works are 
 restricted to two volumes of poetry : Poesies completes d'Emile 
 Augier, Paris, 1852, Levy ; and the Parietaires, Paris, 1855, Levy ; 
 and to some brochures of slight interest. 
 
 His plays comprise twenty-nine pieces, two of which, for unknown
 
 MODERN TIMES 501 
 
 For a third characteristic of contemporary Naturalism 
 is that to which it has itself given the name of " impas- 
 sibility," a term that must be held to signify not want of 
 sensibility, but the most complete indifference to what- 
 ever is not art or science. Is the man of science in his 
 laboratory moved to indignation by the poisons he 
 manipulates ; and what economic or moral value does 
 he set on the animals he dissects ? A fact in his eyes 
 is a fact and nothing more : he notes it, but does not 
 pass judgment on it. The attitude of the artist is 
 identical. And it is for this reason that if Dumas 
 fits, in whom there are traces of the Komanticism of his 
 father, has an opinion about Suzanne d'Ange [Cf. the 
 
 reasons, he eliminated from the complete edition of his dramatic 
 works : the Chasse au Roman, 1851 ; and the Meprises de V amour, 
 1852. 
 
 Several of his plays were written in collaboration with other 
 authors : with Musset, I'Habit vert, 1849 ; with Jules Sandeau, la 
 Pierre de touclie, 1853 ; the Gendre de M. Poirier, 1854 ; with 
 Edouard Foussier, Ceinture doree, 1855 ; the Lionnes pauvres, 1858 ; 
 with Eugene Labiche, le Prix Martin, 1876. 
 
 The plays of which he is the sole author are : in verse, la Cigue, 
 1844 ; Un homme de bien, 1845 ; VAventuriere, 1848 ; Gabrielle, 
 1849 ; Saplio [an opera, music by Gounod] , 1851 ; the Joueur de 
 -Hide, 1851 ; Diane, 1852 ; Philiberte, 1853 ; la Jeunesse, 1858 ; Paul 
 Forestier, 1868 ; and in prose ; the Manage dSOlympe, 1855 ; 
 Un beau manage, 1859 ; les Effrontes, 1861 ; le Fils de Giboyer, 1862 ; 
 Maitre Guerin, 1864; la Contagion, 1866; le Post-Scriptum, 1869; 
 Lions et Renards, 1869 ; Jean de Thommeraij [founded on a story 
 by Jules Sandeau], 1873; Madame Caverlet, 1876; and les Four- 
 chambault, 1878. 
 
 The last complete edition of his dramatic works [revised and 
 corrected, according to the old-established practice] is that of 1889, 
 in seven volumes, Paris, Calmann Levy. 
 
 IV. Octave Feuillet [Saint-L6, 1821 ; | 1890, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Mine Octave Feuillet, Quelques annees de ma 
 vie, 1894, Paris ; Souvenirs et Correspondences, 1896, Paris ? Eruile
 
 502 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Demi-Monde], Flaubert has none about Enirna Bovary, 
 or about Salammbo, or about Frederic Moreau [Cf. 
 V Education sentimentale], refuses to have one, and loses 
 patience when his opinion is asked. "As to giving my 
 opinion about the personages in my novels, he wrote to 
 George Sand, no, no, a thousand times no ! I do not 
 admit my right to an opinion. If the reader does not 
 draw from the book the moral that ought to be found in 
 it, either the reader is a blockhead, or the book is at fault 
 as regards exactness " [Cf. Correspondance, vol. iii.] . The 
 author of the Poemes antiques was of the same way of 
 thinking. " The poet, in his estimation, should look on 
 human things as a God might look on them from the 
 heights of Olympus, should reflect them unconcernedly 
 
 Montegut, Revue des Deux Mondes, December, 1858, November, 
 1862, January, 1868; Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux lundis, vol. v., 1863; 
 Jules Lemaitre, Les contemporains, 3rd series, 1887, Paris ; Ch. 
 Le Goffic, Les romanciers d'aujourd'hui, Paris, 1890 ; F. Brunetiere, 
 Essais sur la litterature contemporaine, Paris, 1891 ; Rene Doumic, 
 Portraits d'ecrivains, Paris, 1892. 
 
 2. THE NOVELIST. It is as a Romanticist that he begins his 
 career and as a dramatist ; writing in collaboration with Bocage : 
 Un bourgeois de Rome, 1845, and la Vieillesse de Richelieu, 1848. 
 His first novel, Bellali, 1850 ; and its resemblance to Balzac's 
 C ho nans on the one hand ; and on the other to the novels of 
 Jules Sandeau. The Scenes et Proverbs, 1851 ; Scenes et Comedies, 
 1855 ; and that the author of these works has been not inaptly de- 
 scribed as a "family Musset." His hesitations between budding 
 Naturalism [Cf. le Village, 1852] , and expiring Romanticism [Cf. 
 Redemption, 1849, and Dalila, 1853] ; and how he tries to conciliate 
 the one with the other by writing romantic (not " Romantic ") novels 
 [Cf. La Petite Comtesse, 1856, and the Roman d'un jeune homme 
 pauvre, 1858] . 
 
 His chief works. Histoire de Sibylle, 1862, George Sand's re- 
 joinder : Mademoiselle de la Quintinie ; M. de Cantors, 1867 ; Julia 
 de Trecceur, 1872 ; Le journal d'unefemme, 1878 ; La Morte, 1886 ; 
 Honneur d 1 artiste, 1890. Are Feuillet's novels "romantic" 
 novels ? and that the epithet romantic is synonymous with
 
 MODEEN TIMES 503 
 
 in his fixed pupils, and maintaining absolute indifference, 
 should endow them with form, that higher kind of life " 
 [Cf. Th. G-autier, Rapport, &c.] . Whether Leconte de 
 Lisle always realised his ideal is another question, but he 
 strove to attain to it, and his ideal in reality is that of 
 " art for art." The merit of the artist is to rise superior, 
 as an artist, to the agitations or occupations of his fellow 
 men; and while, as a man, he is constrained to live the 
 life of other men, he is an artist and a "naturalist" in 
 proportion only as he does not participate in this life. 
 The success and the vogue of these ideas was largely 
 due to the fact that, by a consequence whose close 
 connection with them will doubtless be perceived, they 
 reawakened in the writer a sense of the difficulties of 
 
 strange incidents ; arbitrary combinations ; systematic idealisation 
 of the characters ; and excessive sentimentalism ; it is not applic- 
 able to Feuillet's novels ; which, however, are " aristocratic " or 
 "society" novels; because the author himself was a member of 
 " society " ; a sphere of existence in which the development of 
 passion is not interfered with by the mean realities of life ; those 
 who belong to it not being prevented, by the necessity of earning their 
 living, from keeping a rendezvous ; and not being the slaves of the 
 exigencies of material existence [Cf. in this respect, the princes and 
 princesses of classic tragedy] . His novels in the second place are 
 idealistic novels ; because the duties of ordinary life are suppressed 
 in them ; because they owe their dramaticness in general to the 
 conflict between "passion" and "honour" [Cf. Alfred de Vigny, 
 Grandeur et Servitude militaires\ ; and because vanquished honour 
 and passion find no other refuge in them than in death [Cf. the 
 habitual denouements of classic tragedy] . Finally they are novels 
 with a purpose, their author showing himself constantly concerned 
 with the "rights" or the condition of women; with the dignity of 
 love and marriage ; and with the principle of social morality. 
 Comparison, in this connection, between Feuillet's novels and those 
 of George Sand ; and that ha reality, in spite of a certain apparent 
 analogy, they are more unlike than like. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. They comprise his Plays, the complete edition of 
 which in five volumes [Calmann Levy, 1892, 1893] includes all of his
 
 504 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the art of writing, and revived that respect for the 
 language and that religious veneration for style with- 
 out which nobody who has written in French has 
 left anything lasting. "The French genius," wrote a 
 good judge, " as represented by the writers of the pre- 
 sent day (1858), is regaining qualities it seemed to 
 have lost. Simplicity is taking the place of a confused 
 and pretentious jargon, clearness that of magniloquence. 
 Every writer now knows what he wants to say ; tirades 
 have ceased to pass muster ; there is an end to declam- 
 ation ; authors are no longer open-mouthed as if their 
 every word were about to shake heaven and earth" 
 [Of. J. J. Weiss, le Theatre et les moeurs : M. Alexandre 
 Dumas fils] . 
 
 pieces that have been put on the stage, among the number being some 
 of those contained in the two volumes : Scenes et Proverbes, and 
 Scenes et Comedies ; 
 
 And his novels : Bellali, 1850 ; La petite Comtesse, 1856 ; the 
 Roman d'unjeune liommepauvre, 1858 ; Histoire de Sibylle, 1862 ; 
 M. de C amors, 1867 ; Julia de Trecceur, 1872 ; Un mariage dans 
 le monde, 1875 ; Les amours de Philippe, 1877 ; the Journal d'une 
 femme, 1878 ; the Histoire d'une Parisienne, 1881 ; La Veuve, 
 1883; La Morte, 1886; and Honneur d'artiste, 1891. 
 
 V. Charles-Marie-Rene Leconte de Lisle [Saint-Paul, lie 
 
 de la Reunion, 1818 ; f 1894, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Charles Baudelaire's Notice in Crepet's Becueil 
 des Poetes franqais, vol. iv., Paris, 1865 ; Th. Gautier, Rapport sur 
 les progres de la poesie, 1867; Paul Bourget, Essais de psychologic 
 contemporaine, Paris, 1886 ; Maurice Spronck, Les artistes litteraires, 
 Paris, 1889 ; Jules Lemaitre, Les contemporains, vol. ii., 1893 ; F. 
 Brunetiere, I' Evolution de la poesie lyrique, vol. ii., 1893 ; and 
 Nouveaux essais de litterature contemporaine, 1895 ; Jean Dornis, 
 Lecomte de Lisle, Paris, 1895 ; Henry Houssaye, Discours de 
 reception, 1895. 
 
 2. THE POET. A Romanticist at the outset of his career. His 
 residence at Rennes, and La Variete, a literary review, 1840-1841. 
 He comes to Paris and writes for the phalansterian publications ;
 
 MODERN TIMES 505 
 
 It is possible, and at the present day it is imperative to 
 be even more precise. The insipid style a legacy from 
 the Ideologists or the Encyclopedists which is exhibited 
 ingenuously, without any sense of horror or consciousness 
 of its lamentable shortcomings in the prose of a Villemain 
 for example, and often even of a Guizot ; the license 
 which a Musset or a Lamartine who were proud of the 
 feat carried more than once to extremes ; the incoherent 
 metaphors which are almost a stumbling-block in some 
 of Hugo's masterpieces : 
 
 Quand notre dme en revant descend dans nos entrailles, 
 Cornptant dans notre cceur qu'enfin la glace atteint ; 
 Comme on compte les morts sur un champ de batailles, 
 Chaque douleur tombee et chaque songe eteint ; 
 
 his first poems ; Hylas, Niobe, Hypatie ; and his intervention in 
 favour of the abolition of slavery. He translates the Iliad. Publica- 
 tion of the Poemes Antiques, 1852 ; of the Poemes et Poesies, 1853 ; 
 and of the Poemes Barbares, 1862. Effect these poems produce on G. 
 Flaubert [Cf . his Correspondence, particularly towards 18521853] . 
 The Preface to the Poemes Antiques [suppressed in subsequent 
 editions] ; and its frankly anti-Romanticist declarations. 
 
 The poetic inspiration of Leconte de Lisle so far as it was derived 
 from the ancients ; and that it is anti-religious [Cf . Hypatie] ; and 
 marked by the Pagan love of pure beauty [Cf . La Venus de Milo] . 
 Resulting consequences : the theory of the impersonality of the poet ; 
 religious veneration for style; and the doctrine of art for art. 
 Hindoo antiquity in the poems of Leconte de Lisle [Cf. Sunja, 
 Bhagavaf] ; and that to this source must be traced the poet's 
 Pessimism ; his exotic tastes ; and his conception of a " naturalistic 
 and scientific " poetry. 
 
 Leconte de Lisle's poetic inspiration so far as it was due to exotic 
 influences ; and, in this connection, of the influence of the author of 
 Emaux et Camees ; and of that of the Orientates ; on the author 
 of the Poemes Barbares. The influence of the Orientalists, however, 
 seem to have been still more considerable, in particular that of 
 Eugene Burnouf [Cf . in Baudelaire's Notice, cited above, a very happy 
 comparison between Leconte de Lisle and Ernest Renan] . Variety 
 and beauty of the descriptive passages in Leconte de Lisle : his
 
 506 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the involved phrases and turns of expression which often 
 cause the prose of Sainte-Beuve particularly in his 
 Port-Boyal to be a model of preciosity ; the powerful 
 heaviness, but also, if I may so express myself, the 
 unmannerliness, the vulgar familiarity which make it 
 so difficult for some persons of delicate taste to read 
 La Cousin Bette, or the Lys dans la Vallee, these 
 defects are all of them absent from the Poemes barbares, 
 from the Histoire de la litterature anglaise, from Madame 
 Bovary, or from the Vie de Jesus, and are only lighted on 
 in the dramas of Augier and Dumas. 
 
 But this is not all, for the impression must not be lei't 
 that the Naturalists confined themselves in their writings 
 
 animals [Cf. le Sommeil du condor ; le Eeve du jaguar ; les Ele- 
 phants] ; his landscapes [Cf . le Bernica ; la Fontaine aux lianes] ; 
 his sense of the diversity of races [Cf. le Cceur d'Hialmar, la 
 Verandah, la Tete du comte] . That these descriptions are widely 
 different from those of the Bomanticists ; in virtue of the author's 
 regard for exactness ; of his endeavour to keep them free from all 
 trace of his personality ; of the intensity of the life with which he 
 instills them [Cf. la Panther e noire; les Hurleurs]. Whether it be 
 a fact that these characteristics bring his poetry into a line with 
 science ; and in what measure it is allowable to describe his poetry 
 as scientific? 
 
 Leconte de Lisle's poetic inspiration so far as it was derived from 
 Pessimism, and that this influence is the cause of the originality of 
 his work. Whether Vigny exerted an influence on Leconte de Lisle ? 
 or whether they both derived their Pessimism from the same 
 source ? That there is more nobleness in the Pessimism of Alfred 
 de Vigny ; and in that of Leconte de Lisle not more sincerity, but 
 a more communicative conviction. Leconte de Lisle suffers, too, 
 from his inability to rid himself of his rather narrow hostility to 
 Christianity ; and from his disinclination to express any pity for 
 " sorrowing humanity." That this callousness, however, must not 
 be imputed to his personal insensibility [Cf. le Manchy, Qa'in 
 V Illusion supreme] ; but to his resolve to give utterance in his 
 verse solely to the miseries of humanity ; and not to the miseries 
 of the individual ; and also perhaps to his conception of stj'le.
 
 MODEKN TIMES 507 
 
 to avoiding the defects of the Eomanticists. By associating 
 art more closely with the imitation of nature, Flaubert 
 and Taine, Leconte de Lisle and Kenan imparted to 
 style a degree of precision, of fulness, of solidity, or, to use 
 Flaubert's expression, of " density," in which it had long 
 been wanting. Certain magnificent verses of Leconte 
 de Lisle : 
 
 Le vent respectueux, parmi leurs tresses sombres, 
 Sur leur nuque de marbre errait en fremissant, 
 Tandis que les parois des rocs couleur de sang, 
 Coinme de grands miroirs suspendus dans les ombres, 
 De la pourpre du soir baignaient leur dos puissant, . . . 
 
 certain pages of Flaubert, the description of the agri- 
 
 Of the qualities of Leconte de Lisle's style ; and that there are no 
 "greater verses" than his; none more plastic; none more har- 
 monious. They are a little wanting, however, in ease, or in " air," so 
 to speak ; and also a little in variety. He would have been better 
 advised too had he avoided certain affectations of local colour ; which 
 do not add to the truth of his descriptions : while they tend to give 
 rather a pedantic idea of true " Naturalism." There is nothing more 
 " natural " in writing Phoibos instead of Phoebus in French ; and 
 neither the sentiment of antiquity ; nor the accuracy of distinction ; 
 nor the survival of a work of art are dependent on such minutiae. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Leconte de Lisle's works comprise : (1) his 
 Poems, arranged as follows in the definite edition issued by himself : 
 Poemes Antiques ; Poemes Barbares ; Poemes Tragiques. There is 
 further a volume of posthumous works, Derniers Poemes, published 
 in 1895 ; 
 
 (2) His translations of the Iliad, the Odyssey, Hesiod, ^Eschylus, 
 and Horace, which are spoiled by excessive literalness and seem to 
 have been " written for the booksellers." 
 
 (3) His Erinnyes, a mere adaptation from ^Eschylus, more 
 " .^Eschylean " than the original, which form part of the Poemes 
 Tragiques, but must be classed apart, as they have been repre- 
 sented on the stage. 
 
 VI. English Influence. 
 
 The English influence ; which had been undergone by everybody
 
 508 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 cultural show in Madame Bovary, or that of the forest 
 of Fontainebleau in the Education sentimentale, in- 
 numerable pages of Taine or Renan have impressed us 
 as work that is "definite" and "finished." It may be 
 questioned indeed whether they have not gone to extremes 
 in this direction, for when they reached the point of 
 believing, as Flaubert did in all seriousness, that an 
 " assemblage of words " has " a beauty of its own " inde- 
 pendently of what it expresses, were they not the dupes 
 of a veritable artistic hallucination ? I should be disposed, 
 for my part, to hold that they were. However, it was 
 their boundless faith in the virtue of style that recom- 
 mended them in the first instance to their contemporaries ; 
 
 to a slight extent since the beginning of the century ; and primarily 
 by Chateaubriand ; but which had been chiefly felt hitherto in 
 politics and history ; and in a somewhat vague manner ; begins to 
 act on more definite lines towards 1855 ; and by the intervention of 
 certain writers, Philarete Chasles, Emile Montegut, Taine, in three 
 principal directions. 
 
 1. By the writings of Emile Montegut ; who publishes in the 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, 1851-1858, a more thorough study of the 
 English and American novel than any foreign author has ever made 
 at any period of a foreign literature; a sort of "realism" at once 
 sentimental and caricatural ; is revealed to French readers. Dickens 
 and Thackeray are its principal representatives ; David Copperfield 
 or Vanity Fair become almost as popular in France as in England ; 
 after the appearance of Taine's admirable and well-known studies of 
 Dickens and Thackeray. 
 
 2. At the same time Darwin's celebrated book The Origin of 
 Species, 1858, appears in England and arouses considerable attention 
 everywhere. It is at once translated into French by Mile Clemence 
 Royer ; Flourens makes a pitiable attempt to refute it ; but it gives 
 an extraordinary impulsion to natural history studies ; and through 
 them to " naturalistic " ideas in art and criticism ; which seem in 
 consequence to enjoy added authority. In France, as in England 
 and in Germany, Darwin's book causes " biological science " to be 
 regarded as the typical science in the place of "mathematical 
 science."
 
 MODEKN TIMES 509 
 
 and the talent for writing for which they were admired 
 brought about the vogue of their aesthetic doctrines. 
 
 Certain of the critics, those of the academic and uni- 
 versity school, with Sainte-Beuve at their head, and 
 among his following, J. J. Weiss, Cuvillier-Fleury, and 
 Prevost-Paradol, had made, it is true, a show of resistance, 
 but they had not been listened to, and still less had their 
 lead been followed. On the contrary, the last of the 
 Komanticists themselves, Victor Hugo, George Sand, 
 and Michelet, were seen to incline towards Naturalism. 
 Thus there is no overlooking the fact that it is the 
 Poemes Antiques and the Po&mes Barbares that Victor 
 Hugo has imitated, imitated as he was able, as he 
 
 3. Finally, and to say nothing of Emile Montegut's translation of 
 Emerson's Representative Men, or of Taine's study of English 
 Idealism (I'ldealisme anglais), George Eliot's novels, Adam Bede, 
 Silas Marner, etc., are translated, and the attention is called to them of 
 the French public. The characteristic of these novels is, that they 
 are advisedly, deliberately, and staunchly " naturalistic," the author 
 having the advantage over all her contemporary novelists, Flaubert 
 included, of a considerable philosophic training. And thus it happens 
 that with her Naturalism, which is far from stopping short at the 
 surface of things, is introduced at the same time, for use in the near 
 future, the means of correcting and " idealising" it. 
 
 VII. Gustave Flaubert [Rouen, 1821 ; f 1880, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Flaubert's Correspondance, 4 volumes, 1887-- 
 1893, Paris, and preceding the first volume : Souvenirs intim.es [by 
 Mme Commanville, his niece] ; Guy de Maupassant, Etude sur 
 Gustave Flaubert, preceding the complete edition of Flaubert's 
 works ; Maxime du Camp, Souvenirs litteraires, Paris, 1882-1884. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. xiii., 1858, and Nouveaux 
 lundis, vol. iv., 1862 ; Saint-Rene Taillandier, in the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, 1863 (February) and 1869 (December) ; F. Brunetiere, Le 
 roman naturaliste, 1877 and 1880 ; Emile Zola, Les romanciers 
 naturalistes, 1881 ; Paul Bourget, Essais de psychologic contempo- 
 raine, 1883; Louis Desprez, I'Evolution naturaliste, Paris, 1883;
 
 510 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 knew how to imitate, but still that he has imitated in his 
 Legende des Siecles. Not that he ceased on this account 
 to be a Romanticist ! The Rose de I' Infante, or the 
 Raisons du Monotombo continue to be, are above every- 
 thing else the personal impressions and opinions aroused 
 in Hugo by his subject. Nevertheless he strove, as far as 
 his essentially lyric genius would allow him, to become 
 epic, impersonal, and objective ; and his efforts were 
 occasionally successful. As to Michelet, he too did not 
 abjure his method or refashion his "temperament." In 
 the last volumes of his Histoire de France he continued 
 only to concern himself with and to render in his prose 
 the lyric thrill, so to speak, which events aroused in him. 
 
 Maurice Spronck, Les artistes litteraires, Paris, 1889 ; Emile Hen- 
 nequin, La critique scientifique, Paris, 1888 ; J. Charles Tarver, 
 Gustave Flaubert, London, 1895 ; Bettelheim, Deutsclien und Fran- 
 zosen, Vienna, 1895. 
 
 2. THE NOVELIST. His extraction ; he is first attracted by 
 Romanticism ; his early friendships with Louis Bouilhet and 
 Maxime du Camp, his travels. His conception of art [Cf. his 
 Correspondence with his " Muse," Louise Colet] ; and that it was 
 originally the outcome of an excess of modesty: "Little streams 
 that overflow assume the airs of the ocean ; and to be the ocean 
 all they lack is dimension ! Let us remain a river, and be content 
 with turning our mill" [Cf. vol. ii., p. 190]. Flaubert's hatreds; 
 and, in contrast, his singular esteem for "that old stick of a Boileau." 
 Hesitations and first efforts : La Tentation de Saint Antoine. His 
 preoccupation with style ; and whether he did not carry it to lengths 
 which made it a mania ? 
 
 Unity of Flaubert's work ; and that whatever be said of Madame 
 Bovary or VEducation sentimentale ; is equally applicable to Sa* 
 lamtnbo or the Tentation de Saint Antoine. It is only the subject 
 that differs ; the methods remain the same ; and the conception of 
 art does not vary. The author's first concern is to abstract himself 
 from the reality he is depicting ; and to note in depicting it only 
 those features which will leave the same impression, on all those 
 who study it with equal closeness [Cf. on this subject Sainte-Beuve's 
 discussion with Flaubert concerning Salammbo] . But in the second
 
 MODERN TIMES 511 
 
 Still, in these very volumes, and more especially in the 
 Insecte, the Oiseau, the Femme and I' Amour, he made 
 the concession to Naturalism that he came to regard 
 everything as a question of what may be termed physio- 
 logical mysticism. In these works he is solely preoccupied 
 by natural history ; and henceforth the ultimate explana- 
 tion of things lies in some veiled pathological detail. 
 Shall I refer to George Sand? and shall I say that 
 after the Marquis de Villemer, 1860, or perhaps Monsieur 
 Silvestre, 1865, every fresh volume she adds to her work 
 detracts from rather than increases her fame ? Such is 
 unhappily the truth, but in her decadence she too, she 
 who was Valentine, who was Indiana, is bent on " getting 
 
 place the depiction ought to be typical, and not anecdotical; a 
 contrary condition to that observed by Komanticism ; since while 
 Romanticism singled out in character what may be called the " acci- 
 dental" or the "unique" [Cf. Notre-Dame de Paris, the Confession 
 dun enfant du siecle, Colombo] , character for Flaubert and Natu- 
 ralism, as for the science of his time, consisted in the element 
 which is durable and permanent in changing things. In consequence, 
 the experience of Emma Bovary may be treated hi the same way as 
 that of the daughter of Hamilcar; and both may be regarded as 
 embodying ; an entire " moment " of history ; an entire class of 
 women ; and an entire civilisation. This is what Flaubert means by 
 the " solidity of the framework." Thirdly, the work must be endowed 
 with " the higher life of form " ; by means of a style " as rhythmical 
 as verse and precise as the language of the sciences " ; whose power 
 is to some extent intrinsic or existent in virtue of itself ; " indepen- 
 dently of what is expressed " ; and whose inherent beauty has some 
 analogy with that of a line ; which is harmonious, graceful, and 
 voluptuous in itself. And Flaubert has complied with all these 
 exigencies, in Salammbo as in Madame Bovary, and in VEducation 
 sentimentale as in the Tentation dt Saint Antoine. 
 
 But all Flaubert's " realisations," with the exception of Madame 
 Bovary, have been spoiled by the intervention of the author of 
 Bouvard et Pec-uchet ; whose continuous irony is a perpetual breach 
 of the principle of the impersonality of the artist ; and, in this con- 
 nection, of Flaubert's Pessimism. Its origin is purely literary ; and
 
 512 MANUAL OF- THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 a closer grip of reality " ; she descends from her cloudy 
 heights, and with a modesty which does her honour 
 consents to learn from Flaubert. 
 
 There is one point, however, on which they are un- 
 yielding, and happily so, since it is the vulnerable point 
 of Naturalism. They do not admit that art should be 
 severed from life, or that the artist should retire from 
 the world and live in isolation. " Action ! wrote 
 Michelet in 1866, Voltaire in his Lettres anglaises 
 has uttered the mighty word, the modern Symbol ; Man's 
 object is action" [Cf. Histoire de France, vol. xvi., 1st 
 edition, 1866, pp. 426, 427] . George Sand, in turn, dis- 
 cussing her art with Flaubert, declares: "An author must 
 
 he is incensed against life and his fellow-men solely because they do not 
 understand art in the same way as he does [Cf. his Correspondence] . 
 That this point of view is only legitimate on the condition that he 
 who adopts it confines himself strictly to his art ; and renounces the 
 right to interpret or judge life, to do which is to go beyond his art. 
 Flaubert held that nothing existed outside art ; a belief that consti- 
 tuted his force ; but also, from another point of view, his weakness, 
 since there is more in life than art. Narrowness, in this respect, of 
 Flaubert's ideas ; and that they doubtless contributed to no slight 
 extent to make the development of Naturalism follow narrow instead 
 of spacious lines. And that if this disdain for all that is not art is 
 a characteristic of Romanticism, the fact explains the Romantic 
 element that is met with in work of the last representatives of 
 Naturalism. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Flaubert's works comprise : 
 
 (1) His Fiction : Madame J3 ovary, 1856 [in the Revue de Paris] , 
 and 1857, Michel Levy ; Salammbo 1862 ; V Education sentimen- 
 tale, 1870 ; the Tentation de Saint Antoine, 1874 [fragments of the 
 work had appeared in the Artiste in 1856 and 1857] ; Trois contes; 
 and Bouvard et Pecuchet, 1881 [posthumous and unfinished] . 
 
 (2) Two theatrical pieces : the Candidat ; and the Clidteau des 
 cceurs, 1879. 
 
 (3) Some short writings, of which the most important are the letter 
 to Sainte-Beuve concerning Salammbo ; and the preface to the Der- 
 nieres Chansons de Louis Bouilhet.
 
 MODERN TIMES 513 
 
 write for everybody, for all those who need to be initiated 
 . . . There is all the secret of our persevering labour and 
 of our love of art. Wliat is art without the hearts or the 
 intelligences to which it ministers ? " [Cf. George Sand, 
 Correspondence, vol. v., letter No. 616, October, 1866J .' 
 This is what Leconte de Lisle and Flaubert refused to 
 understand; and it is in the truth contained in this 
 lesson that Naturalism, after having transformed litera- 
 ture, found the great obstacle to its propagation. 
 
 For other novelists, and foremost amongst them Octave 
 Feuillet, the author of the Histoire de Sibylle, 1862, and 
 of Monsieur de Camors, 1867, have realised the truth in 
 question, and their influence in consequence has counter- 
 
 His complete works, less the Correspondence, have been issued in 
 seven volumes, in 8vo, Paris, 1885, Quantin. 
 
 VIII. Hippolyte-Adolplie Taine [Vouziers, 1828; f 1893, 
 Paris]. 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. xiii., 
 1857; and Nouveaux lundis, vol. viii., 1864 ; G. Planche, in the' 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, April, 1857 ; Edmond Scherer, Melanges de 
 critique religieuse, 1858 ; Emile Montegut, Essais sur la litterature 
 anglaise, 1863; Caro, VIdee de Dieu et ses nouveaux critiques, Paris, 
 
 864 5 Abbe Guthlin, Les doctrines positivistes en France, Paris, 
 1865 ; P. Janet, La crise philosopliique, Paris, 1865 ; F. Ravaisson' 
 Rapport sur les progres de la philosophic, Paris, 1868. 
 
 Paul Bourget, Essais de psychologic contemporaine, 1883 ; Emile 
 Hennequin, La critique scientiftque, Paris, 1888 ; F. Brunetiere, 
 I' Evolution des genres, vol. i., 1889 ; E. M. de Vogue, Le dernier livre 
 de Taine, 1894 ; G. Monod, Renan, Taine et Michelet, Paris, 1894 
 A. de Margerie, H. Taine, Paris, 1894 ; E. Dowden, Literary criticism 
 in France, Boston, 1895 ; G. Barzellotti, Ippolito Taine, Rome, 1895 ; 
 
 -E. Boutnrv, Hippolyte Taine, Paris, 1897. 
 
 2. THE EVOLUTION OF TAINE'S THOUGHT. Taine's birth and 
 training ; the years he passed at the Ecole Normale [Cf . some letters 
 on this subject in Guard's Prevost-Paradol, Paris, 1895] ; he begins 
 his career as a professor. The Essai sur La Fontaine, 1853 ; the 
 Essais sur Tite-Live, 1856 ; the Philosophes francais au XIX' 'siecle, 
 1857 ; and the Essais de critique et d'histoire, 1858. 
 
 34
 
 514 MANUAL OF THE HISTOBY OF FRENCH LITEEATURE 
 
 balanced that of the Naturalists. It was taken to heart, 
 however, still more profoundly by the dramatists, whose 
 art, as we have seen, disappears entirely if they lose touch 
 with the public. "How many simpletons are necessary 
 to form a public?" insolently demanded Chamfort. 
 What he should have said was: How many spectators 
 are necessary of every age and every social rank, who 
 are in no wise ' ' artists ' ' ? who have not the right to 
 be artists, and whom in consequence it is the function 
 of art to raise to its own level? And it happens in 
 reality that after the slight surprise caused them by 
 the doctrine of art for art, such writers as Feuillet, 
 Augier, and Dumas free themselves from its bondage, 
 
 That under the influence of the philosophy of Spinosa, Hegel and 
 Auguste Comte, and of history as conceived by Michelet, Taine's 
 first act was to " purge " criticism of all moral intention, and of 
 all aesthetic pretensions ; and to reduce it to mere natural history. 
 The theory of the race, the environment and the moment ; 
 and is it true that, as set forth by Taine, there is nothing new 
 about it except its exaggeration ? It is Gustave Planche and not 
 Sainte-Berrve who best appreciated the entire novelty of the method ; 
 which lay in the fact that though its elements existed on every 
 hand; its "synthesis" had not been effected; and still less 
 had anybody perceived its consequences. The application of the 
 doctrine ; and the Histoire de la litterature anglaise, 1863. 
 Criticism hi Table's eyes is "the natural history of intelligences"; 
 the artist and the poet being in a very slight measure representative 
 of themselves ; but rather the spokesmen at every period of an 
 entire species of men, sentiments or ideas. 
 
 Tame continued to adhere to this theory until 1865. At this 
 juncture, having been appointed " Professor of ^Esthetics and of the 
 History of Art"; and being the most conscientious of men; he 
 came to recognise that it is impossible to discuss works of art without 
 " judging" them ; or even to write their history without " classify- 
 ing " them. These new convictions are already visible in his Philo- 
 sophic de I'art en Italie, 1865 ; and more clearly so in his Voyage en 
 Italic, 1866 ; while they are openly affirmed in his Ideal dans I'art, 
 1869. It is in this volume that, after having exhausted all the
 
 MODERN TIMES 515 
 
 write " pieces with a purpose," and moralise to the top 
 of their bent. Feuillet, indeed, is less successful as a 
 dramatist than as a novelist, and I only mention him 
 in this connection for the sake of completeness. But 
 assuredly it is neither to " impassibility " nor even to 
 "impartiality" that Emile Augier lays claim in the 
 Effrontes, 1861, in the Fils de Giboyer, 1862, and still 
 less in Maitre Guerin, or in Lions et Eenards, 1869; 
 while Dumas, the bolder of the two, goes further still. 
 " We are lost, he cries in the Preface he writes in 1868 
 to his Fils naturel and dramatic art, that great art, is 
 about to degenerate into a thing of tinsel, spangles and 
 gewgaws ; it will fall into the hands of the mountebanks 
 
 "natural" means of fixing the rank of works of art; technical 
 capacity ; permanence and depth of the character expressed by the 
 works ; " convergence of effects " ; he lays down as the decisive 
 criterion, " the degree in which their character makes for good." 
 And the criterion is open to discussion ; but it is a criterion, and one 
 of a kind that no Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire would ever have invoked ; 
 since it tends to rank the fox or the hyena much " below " the dog; 
 and the " aesthetic " consideration is reintroduced into criticism by its 
 adoption. 
 
 In the meantime the events of 1870-1871, supervene; they are a 
 revelation to Taine. He publishes his Notes sur VAngleterre, 1872 ; 
 and conceives the plan of the great work of which the first volume, 
 VAncien regime, 1875, is perhaps his masterpiece. His study of 
 the Revolution acquaints him with a class of men he had hitherto 
 had but a slight knowledge of. He asks himself with an anxiety that 
 does him credit, if it be true " that a palace is beautiful even when 
 it is burning or especially when it is burning " ; and whether when 
 we meet with a " crocodile " amongst our fellow men, it is incumbent 
 on us merely to describe and admire him ? His honesty causes him 
 to reply in the negative; with the result that unintentionally he 
 reintroduces into criticism the " moral " consideration ; which 
 assumes a preponderating importance in the closing volumes of his 
 Origines, 1890-1892. He thus finds himself back at the point in the 
 circle from which he had started ; and he has employed forty years 
 of uninterrupted labour ; to reinstate in eclecticism the principle he
 
 516 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and become the gross amusement of the populace, if we do 
 not hasten to press it into the service of the great social 
 reforms and the great hopes of humanity." For his part, 
 suiting his action to his word, he will henceforth make it 
 his constant aim to contribute to what he designates by 
 the somewhat strange expression, " the rise in value of 
 humanity." Is it not a pity, under these circumstances, 
 that the " Naturalist " he had been in his earlier years 
 should too often clash with the moralist or moraliser he 
 had pledged himself to become ; that his always vivacious, 
 but at once violent and commonplace style should betray 
 to the very end the persons and places he had frequented 
 in his youth ; and that his virtuous women, and still 
 
 had most bitterly derided ; the principle, that is, of the subordination 
 of criticism and history to morality. 
 
 In the interval he has displayed admirable gifts as a writer ; or 
 even as a poet ; gifts that are only impaired by a certain artificiality. 
 The reader is too conscious " how" his finest pages were composed. 
 They are marred by too much rhetoric ; by too many obvious 
 artifices ; especially in his later writings ; and by effects of a 
 harshness and violence, that are not solely ascribable to the nature 
 of the subject. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. It is somewhat difficult to draw up a hard and 
 fast classification of Taine's works. With the exception of the Voyage 
 aux Pyrenees, 1835 ; of the Vie et Opinions de Thomas Graindorge, 
 1868 ; and of the Notes sur I'Angleterre, 1872, they are all of them 
 " critical and historical " works. 
 
 Essai sur les fables de La Fontaine [written to obtain his 
 Doctor's degree, 1853] , revised under the title La Fontaine et ses 
 Fables, 1860 ; Essai sur Tite Live, 1855 ; Les Philosophes francais, 
 1856 ; Essais de critique et d'histoire, 1858 ; Histoire de la litte- 
 rature anglaise, 1863, 4 vols. in 8vo, or 5 vols. in 12mo ; Nouveaux 
 essais de critique et d'histoire, 1865 ; Philosophic de I'art en Italic, 
 1865 ; De I'ldeal dans Vart, 1867 ; Philosophie de I'art en Grece, 
 1869 ; Philosophie de Vart dans les Pays-Bas [four volumes, after- 
 wards (1881) published in two volumes under the title Philosophie 
 de I'art] ; Voyage en Italic, 1866 ; De V Intelligence, 1870 ; the 
 Origines de la France contemporaine, 1876-1890 ; Derniers essais 
 de critique et d'histoire, 1894 ; Garnets de Voyage, 1896.
 
 MODERN TIMES 517 
 
 more his dialecticians, both of whom come to conclusions 
 that are less impeachable than the arguments they em- 
 ploy, should seem to take an unconscious or paradoxal 
 pleasure in celebrating the "hopes of humanity" in the 
 somewhat unvarnished language of his Suzanne d'Ange 
 or his Albertine de la Borde? " So much wit has never 
 been made to serve the purpose of rendering us stupid," 
 Voltaire formerly wrote to the author of the Discours 
 sur I'inegalite : and similarly it will be said in the future 
 that the cause of idealism has never been defended by 
 methods more naturalistic than those of the author of 
 I'Etrangere or of the Princesse de Bagdad. Impartial 
 critics will add, however, that these methods were the 
 
 IX. Ernest Renan [Treguier, 1823 ; 1 1892, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOUBCES. His Correspondence, only portions of which 
 have appeared as yet : Lettres a sa soeur Henriette, 1896, Paris ; and 
 Lettres a M. Berthelot, Paris, 1898 ; Ernest Renan, Souvenirs 
 d'enfance et dejeunesse, Paris, 1876-1882; Abbe Cognat, M. Eenan 
 liier et aujourd'hui, 1883, Paris. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux lundis, vol. ii., 1862; and vol. vi., 1863; 
 the works by Edmond Scherer, Abbe Guthlin, Caro, Janet, and 
 Ravaisson, referred to above in the article on Taine ; Paul Bourget, 
 Essais de psychologic contemporaine, Paris, 1883 ; Jules Lemaitre, 
 Les contemporains, vol. i., 1884. 
 
 A. Ledrain, Renan, sa vie et ses oeuvres, Paris, 1892 ; James 
 Dormesteter, Notice sur la vie et Vosuvres de M. Renan, Paris, 
 1893 ; G. Seailles, Renan, Paris, 1895 ; R. Allier, La Philosophic 
 d 1 Ernest Renan, Paris, 1895 ; Ch. Renouvier, Philosophic analytique 
 de Vhistoire, vol. ii., 1896, vol. iv., 1897. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER. His extraction ; his childhood ; 
 and that while there was perhaps something in him of the " Gascon " 
 and the " Breton," still his character, the nature of his intelligence 
 and even his talent were more especially the work of his sister Henri- 
 ette. His early studies ; the seminary ; and was his estrangement 
 from Christianity due to " philological " reasons ? It seems rather to 
 have been due to reasons of a " philosophic " order ; of which it 
 was not until later that he sought the justification in exegesis ; and
 
 518 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 best or the most efficacious that Dumas could have 
 employed at the time ; and will remember, when re- 
 proaching him with their occasional vulgarity, that in 
 the end they served the interests of art itself. 
 
 I would endeavour to prove this assertion, if I were 
 in a position to do so ; I mean if I had not been obliged 
 to decide that I would offer no appreciation of any 
 living author in this " Manual of the History of French 
 Literature." There can be no history of contemporary 
 matters ; the thing is a contradiction in terms ; we are 
 too close to the men or the works of our time, and we 
 lack the independence and the documents necessary to 
 
 much later still in natural history. The Avenir de la science, 1849 ; 
 and that this work would be entirely representative of Kenan, if, 
 at a later date, his popularity had not brought to the front, the 
 dilettante and the "trifler " in him, whose existence had long been 
 wholly unsuspected. 
 
 Kenan's early works ; Averroes et VAverro'isme, 1852 ; Histoire 
 generate des langues semitiques, 1857 ; Etudes d'histoire religieuses, 
 1848-1857 ; Essai sur Torigine du language, 1858 ; and that these 
 works are not the least remarkable of those he has left. Their 
 common characteristic is that they display the desire, on the part 
 of their author, to retain as much of "religion" as it is possible 
 to retain in the absence of belief in religion; an attitude which 
 would simply be that of Voltaire ; were it not in a still greater 
 measure that of Chateaubriand; on account of the sincerity of senti- 
 ment Kenan exhibits in this portion of his work ; and of the infinite 
 eharm of style with which he smoothes over the contradictory nature 
 of his enterprise. Another characteristic of these early works is their 
 solid erudition [Cf. the Livre de Job, 1858 ; the Cantique des Can- 
 tiques, 1860 ; and in particular the Discours sur I'etat des beaux-arts 
 au XIV e siecle] . Kenan's contributions to the Histoire litteraire de 
 la France. How all these works helped to extend to a sensible 
 degree the domain of literature, by including in it, thanks to the 
 power of style ; the results achieved by erudition, philosophy, and 
 exegesis. 
 
 Publication of the Vie de Jesus ; emotion aroused by this book ;
 
 MODEEN TIMES 519 
 
 judge them. However, I may point out in general terms 
 how considerable has been the influence of the ideas of 
 Dumas ; and to realise the fact it is sufficient to bear in 
 mind how numerous are the influences over which the 
 influence of Dumas seems to have triumphed at the 
 moment at which I write. 
 
 It has triumphed over the Dilettantism, which certain 
 belated disciples of Stendhal and Beaudelaire, impenitent 
 self -admirers, Eomanticists unbeknown to themselves, 
 attempted to restore to favour on the morrow of the 
 events of 1870-1871, as if the sole effect of these events 
 on literature had been to widen the breach between art 
 and life. I do not allude here to the ill-advised imita- 
 
 and the reasons for this emotion, 1863. The work was the first to give 
 the results of Biblical criticism stripped of all the pedantry of German 
 scholarship ; " sacred " history is brought down in it to the purely 
 human level of all other history ; and for the Divine personage of 
 the Gospels is substituted another personage ; real, and no longer 
 symbolical or " mythical " as was the Jesus of Strauss and the German 
 theologians. These characteristics are again met with in all the 
 volumes of the Origines du christianisme, 1863-1881 ; but as the 
 work approaches its conclusion ; Kenan's criticism comes more and 
 more to resemble that of Voltaire ; by reason of a certain disin- 
 genuousness in the interpretation of facts ; of a positive contempt 
 for humanity, which must be deceived if it is to be influenced 
 even for its good ; and of an affectation of levity totally out of place 
 in connection with a subject of such gravity. The work still dis- 
 plays some of the qualities of the author of the Etudes d'histoire 
 religieuse ; his art of evoking an entire series of ideas by a single 
 word ; the clearness of his style ; and an ease that will be at once 
 appreciated by comparing it with the metallic brilliancy of Taine's 
 p rose . still in the later volumes dilettantism begins to make its 
 appearance, the most regrettable bent of mind there is for an 
 historian ; so far as it leads him to regard his subject merely as 
 a source of self-satisfaction ; and as a pretext for displaying his 
 intellectual graces. 
 
 Renan's last works: Caliban, 1878 ; VEau de Jouvence, 1880; 
 the Preface to the translation of the Book of Ecclesiastes, 1881 ; the
 
 520 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 tions of Renan, of the Renan of the Antechrist, 
 1874, or of the Abbesse de Jouarre, 1886 : these writers 
 have overlooked the element of indestructible and un- 
 compromising dogmatism that underlies the jesting of 
 the master : Saltavit et placuit : he danced and he raised 
 laughter ! but there are two or three points that he never 
 abandoned, and these two or three points constitute the 
 whole of Positivism. I do not refer to the writers 
 who, nurtured on the Fleurs du mal, and full of admir- 
 ation for the portrait which Stendhal has drawn of 
 himself in the character of Julian Sorel, only demanded 
 of art that it should serve them as an instrument of 
 solitary pleasure, and thus confounded it, not merely 
 
 Pretre de Nemi, 1885 ; the Abbesse de Jouarre, 1886 ; the Histoire 
 d'Israel, 1887-1890. Exaggeration of Kenan's defects in these later 
 writings ; and whether they are not the outcome in the main of a 
 desire to show himself worthy of a popularity he had profoundly 
 despised during his laborious early years ? They exhibit, however, 
 that intellectual curiosity he retained to the very end ; the desire to 
 understand his tune ; and that religious veneration for science, 
 that is all that remained to him in the shape of religion. 
 Taine was similarly situated ; but by a contradiction that finally 
 characterises the two writers, whereas Taine, whose starting-point 
 had been pure " Naturalism," tended, almost from first to last, 
 towards the reconstitution of the principles of the moral life ; Renan, 
 whose starting-point had been a very lofty and very strict morality, 
 came, in his desire to make it broader, to disregard it, and to adopt 
 dilettantism as his rule of life. 
 
 His influence has been considerable ; as considerable as that of 
 any of his contemporaries ; particularly during the last years of his 
 life as being of a more general character, and exerted in connection 
 with more universal questions ; or with questions whose interest is 
 more universally felt ; than that of the problems of pure aesthetics 
 or art. He also did much towards amusing his contemporaries. 
 Finally he was prodigal of "confessions"; at a period when his 
 fellow- writers had ceased to indulge in " personal literature " ; and 
 he persuaded a generation of young men, that forty years of labour 
 and meditation had merely enabled him to arrive at conclusions at
 
 MODEEN TIMES 521 
 
 with its perversion, optimi corruptio pessima but 
 with intellectual dissoluteness and debauchery. Nobody 
 has protested more energetically than Dumas against 
 this confusion, which is among the most deplorable that 
 can be named, since it causes the name of art to serve 
 as a screen to the most egoistic of trades ; and nobody has 
 denounced more energetically the dangers and the anti- 
 social side of dilettantism. 
 
 He was no less energetic in his protests against Natur- 
 alism, more especially when this Naturalism, strangely 
 degenerated from the idea that a Taine or a Flaubert had 
 formed of it, became the exact opposite of what it had 
 promised to be [Cf. F. Brunetiere, Le roman naturaliste]. 
 
 which, according to his own expression [Cf. I'Ecclesiaste] , " a street 
 arab arrives off hand." 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Kenan's works may be divided into three principal 
 groups, according as they appertain to pure erudition, to the general 
 history of religions or of Christianity in particular, or to what we 
 should term philosophy, were it not necessary to distinguish in this 
 last group between the really serious works and those which are purely 
 fanciful. 
 
 (1) Works of pure erudition : Averroes et I'Averrolsme [written in 
 view of his degree] , 1852 ; Histoire generale et comparee des langues 
 semitiques, 1857 ; Essai sur Vorigine du langage, 1858 ; his Papers 
 in the Journal asiatique OP the Memoires de V Academic des inscrip- 
 tions; and his articles in the Histoire Utteraire de la France, 
 vols. xxiv. to xxx. 
 
 To the above should be added the important work entitled Mission 
 de Phenicie, 1865 ; and his contributions to the Corpus inscriptionum 
 semiticarum. 
 
 (2) Religious history. Etudes d'histoire religieuse, 1857 ; and 
 Nouvelles etudes d'histoire religieuse, 1884 ; two volumes, the second 
 of which contains some of Renan's early writings on Buddhism and 
 on St. Francis of Assisi. De la part des peuples semitiques dans 
 Vhistoire de la civilisation, brochure, 1861 ; Vie de Jesus, 1863 ; les 
 Apotres, 1866 ; Saint Paul, 1869 ; V Antechrist, 1873 ; les Evangiles, 
 1877 ; TEglise chretienne, 1879 ; Marc-Aurele, 1881, seven volumes, 
 completed by an index; Histoire du peuple d 'Israel, 1887-1892.
 
 522 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 It is true that in this instance other influences, whose 
 action still continues, singularly aided or amplified that of 
 Dumas. Foremost among the influences in question is 
 that of Schopenhauer, whose idealist Pessimism, differed 
 so widely and so happily from that vulgar Pessimism 
 which is a mere disguise for unsatisfied appetites and the 
 pride of life. Another of these influences is that of 
 George Eliot, of whose Naturalism it may be said that 
 it is an ethical or a sociological rather than an aesthetic 
 principle ; a circumstance that distinguishes it from the 
 purely artistic or impassible Naturalism of the author of 
 V Education sentimentale or Madame Bovary. There is 
 further the influence of Tolstoi and of Ibsen, of the 
 
 To the above should be added translations : of the Book of Job, 
 1858; of the Song of Solomon, 1860; of Ecclesiastes, 1881; and 
 the volume entitled Conferences d'Angleterre, 1881. 
 
 (3) Philosophic works. Essais de morale et de critique, 1860 ; 
 Questions contemporaines, 1868 ; La re forme intellectuelle et morale, 
 1871 ; Dialogues et fragments philosophiques, 1876 ; Melanges 
 d'histoire et de voyages, 1878 ; Discours et conferences, 1887 ; 
 VAvenir de la science, 1890 [written in 1848] . 
 
 The following works form a group apart : Caliban, 1878 ; I'Eau 
 de Jouvence, 1880 ; le Pretre de Nemi, 1885 ; 1802 : Dialogue des 
 marts, 1886 ; and VAbbesse de Jouarre, 1886. 
 
 The Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse, 1876-1882, together with 
 such of the Correspondence as has appeared, form a final category. 
 
 X. Charles Baudelaire [Paris, 1821 ; f 1867, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOURCES. Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. ix., 1859 ; 
 Theophile Gautier, Notice sur Charles Baudelaire and Rapport sur les 
 progres de lapoesie, 1868 ; Ch. Asselineau, Baudelaire, sa vie et son 
 ceuvre, Paris, 1869 ; Charles Baudelaire, souvenirs, correspondance, 
 bibliographie [by Charles Cousin and Spcelberch de Lovenjoul] , 
 Paris, 1872 ; Maxime du Camp, Souvenirs litteraires, Paris, 1882 ; 
 Charles Baudelaire's posthumous works and unpublished corre- 
 spondence, edited by M. Eugene Crepet, Paris, 1887 ; Paul Bourget, 
 Essais de psychologie contemporaine, 1883 ; F. Brunetiere, Histoire
 
 MODERN TIMES 523 
 
 Russian novel and the Norwegian drama, productions 
 the exact nature of which cannot be determined, as 
 they are too close to us, though it is clear that their 
 principal source of inspiration is " social pity." It has 
 been feared by some that the French genius would lose 
 certain of its qualities, and even the consciousness of its 
 power under the action, the apparently conflicting action, 
 of so many influences ; they have attacked these influences 
 in consequence, but how? Simply by declaring that, 
 before Tolstoi or George Eliot, French writers, notably 
 George Sand, but more especially and more recently 
 Alexander Dumas, had given expression to what it had 
 been imagined was most Russian in Tolstoi and most 
 " Anglo-Saxon " in George Eliot. 
 
 et litterature, vol. iii., 1887, and Nouveaux Essais, 1891 ; Maurice 
 Spronck, les Artistes litteraires, 1889. 
 
 2. THE BOLE OF BAUDELAIRE ; and that it is entirely posthumous. 
 Even the Fleurs du mal would have attracted scarcely any attention, 
 had it not been for the dubious popularity they acquired, owing to 
 the judicial proceedings of which they were the object. But his 
 death in 1867 having recalled attention to him, and removed the 
 scruples many persons would have felt in professing themselves 
 Ms admirers or disciples during his lifetime, it is from this date that 
 he exerted, and that he still exerts a real, and in the main a three- 
 fold, influence. He realised that morbid poetry, which had been the 
 dream of Sainte-Beuve's earlier years, and the principle of which is 
 pride in suffering from some unusual or anomalous disease. In this 
 way he discovered and gave expression to certain phenomena, whose 
 morbid character is to some extent atoned for by the keenness of the 
 sensations they procure, and also by the very brutality of the words 
 to which recourse must be had to express them. Finally, by his 
 efforts to express these phenomena, he inaugurated contemporary 
 symbolism, if this symbolism consists essentially in a confused 
 mixture of mysticism and sensuality. The question, however, arises 
 in connection with these " innovations " as to how far their author 
 was sincere ; and whether an entire school of writers has not been 
 the dupe of a dangerous mystifier. 
 
 3. THE WORKS. In addition to his translations of Edgar Poe, His-
 
 524 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 It is in this way that the influence of Dumas has also 
 triumphed over the doctrine of art for art, which, more- 
 over, he did not understand when he reproached it with 
 inculcating "the mere reproduction of facts," while he 
 understood it still less when with his peremptory assur- 
 ance he declared it " absolutely devoid of sense." The 
 author of the Poemes Antiques and the Poemes Barbares 
 was aware of what he was about ! Indeed, he had a 
 clearer view of his goal than Dumas, who wrote the Visite 
 de noces, while he talked of utilising the stage as a 
 moralising force. Still Dumas was right in recalling that 
 man is not made for art, but, on the contrary, art for 
 man : a point which nobody contests to-day. If the 
 
 toires extraordinaires, 1856 ; Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires, 
 1857 ; Histoires grotesques et serieuses, 1865 ; and to his Fleurs du 
 mal, 1857, there seems to be nothing worth mention unless it be his 
 Paradis artificiels ; and the very searching articles on various French 
 poets he contributed to Crepet's Becueil des poetes francais. 
 
 There is an edition in seven volumes of his complete works, Paris. 
 1868-1870, Michel Levy. 
 
 XI. The Influence of German Literature. 
 
 The German influence, after its introduction by Mine de Stae'l, 
 continued to make itself felt, but down to 1860 its effects were 
 chiefly seen in the writings of certain members of the University, 
 notably in those of Saint-Rene Taillandier. But from 1860 onwards 
 its importance increases, and it makes itself felt simultaneously in 
 three or four directions. 
 
 1. In philosophy ; through the medium of Ernest Eenan ; 
 Edmond Scherer [Cf. his study of Hegel in his Melanges d'histoire 
 religieuse, 1861] ; and Etienne Vacherot [Cf. la Metaphysique et la 
 science] ; Hegelianism comes into vogue, and there is endless talk 
 of " the identity of the contradictory " [Cf. Gratry, les Sophistes et la 
 Critique] ; a formula in wonderful accordance with the budding idea 
 of evolution. It is towards the same period that the Revue ger- 
 manique is founded ; and that Schopenhauer is discovered or redis- 
 
 vered [Cf. Foucher de Careil, Hegel et Schopenhauer, 1862, Paris, 
 and Challemel-Lacour, in the Revue des Deux Mondes T March, 1870] ,
 
 MODERN TIMES 525 
 
 painter or the sculptor be justified in concerning them- 
 selves solely with the realisation of character or beauty, 
 the case is not the same with the dramatist or the poet, 
 because they have recourse to words, and words express 
 ideas and ideas serve as causes or motives of action. 
 Dumas had an insight into this truth, though he ex- 
 pressed it somewhat confusedly : " All literature the aim 
 of which is not perfectibility, moralisation, the ideal, in 
 a word the useful, is a weakly, unwholesome, and still- 
 born literature." It may be regretted that he did not 
 express himself better, but at least he raised his voice, 
 and though to begin with he met with violent contra- 
 dictors, it was his view, and not that of the Leconte 
 
 whose doctrines, better understood, will later on, towards 1875, 
 renew the philosophic conception of love, and in consequence that of 
 life itself. 
 
 2. In erudition ; and more particularly in exegesis and philology ; 
 Strauss and Baur ; Bopp and Diez ; Mommsen and Curtius being 
 taken as masters. 
 
 3. In art and literature ; almost the whole of Schiller and Goethe 
 is translated at this period; the claims of Heinrich Heine are 
 enforced against the most illustrious of the Romanticists ; and 
 
 ." Wagnerianism " begins to gain ground both for musical reasons ; 
 and in consequence of the artistic doctrines that are deduced from it 
 [Cf. Ed. Schure, le Drame musical, Paris, 1875] . Henceforth, in 
 spite of some "patriotic" opposition, no influence is destined to 
 exert a more considerable action, for the reason that it is not 
 exclusively " musical " ; but philosophic ; and yet more because it 
 has provided up to the present, one of the principal elements of 
 resistance to be found in the entire domain of European thought ; 
 to the invasion of naturalism, and of a naturalism even more super- 
 ficial than coarse. 
 
 XII. Alexandre Dumas fils [Paris, 1824 ; | 1895, Paris] . 
 
 1. THE SOUECES. The dramatic criticisms of Jules Janin in the 
 Journal des Debats ; of Theophile Gautier in the Presse and the 
 Moniteur ; of F. Sarcey in the Opinion nationals and the Temps ; 
 of Jules Lemaitre in the Journal des Debats ; Weiss, Essais sur
 
 526 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FEENCH LITERATURE 
 
 de Lisles or the Flauberts, that was accepted in the 
 end. 
 
 The foregoing observations may be summed up by 
 saying that, after having been individualist in the 
 hands of the Romanticists, and impersonal in those of 
 the Naturalists, modern French literature, considered 
 as a whole, has again become social. And if, in the 
 guise of a conclusion, we express the wish that it may 
 continue to deserve this epithet, it is in nowise because 
 we ascribe to it some secret meaning or mystic value ! 
 Nor is it because we take our own personal opinion 
 as the arbitrary standard of the opinion of others. It 
 
 rhistoire de la litterature francaise, 1857-1858 ; Leopold Lacour, 
 Trois theatres, Paris, 1880; Emile Zola, Nos auteurs dramatiques ; 
 and Documents litteraires, Paris, 1881 ; Paul Bourget, Essais de 
 psychologie contemporaine, 1886 ; Paul de Saint- Victor, le Theatre 
 contemporain, Paris, 1889 ; Rene Doumic, Portraits d'ecrivains, 
 1892 ; and Essais sur le theatre contemporain, 1895-1897 ; H. 
 Parigot, le Theatre d'hier, Paris, 1893 ; and Genie et Metier, Paris, 
 1894. 
 
 2. THE MAN AND THE WRITER ; and that to understand Dumas fils 
 from either point of view, and still more to judge him, it must be 
 kept in view that he affected all his life to be in revolt ; an attitude, 
 however, whose independence was limited by that need of pleasing, 
 and of humouring opinion in order to please which is always the 
 stumbling-block of the dramatist. 
 
 A. The Realist ; and that to start with he was merely a descendant 
 of the Romanticists, and a weak imitator of his father, in the 
 Aventures de trois femmes et d'un perroquet, 1846-1847 ; in le 
 docteur Servand, 1849 ; and in le Regent Mustel, 1852 [Cf. J. J. 
 Weiss, loc. cit., Les Romans de M. Dumas fils] . These works are 
 equally wanting in imagination, style, and anything in the shape of 
 artistic intention ; and if anything is more striking than the prodigi- 
 ous ignorance of their author ; it is his self-sufficiency ; two legacies 
 of his "big child" and "good fellow of a father" [Cf. Un pere 
 prodigue] . The success of the Dame aux camelias, 1848 (the novel) 
 and 1852 (the play), shows him the true nature of his talent; 
 which lay in the imitation of what he had observed himself ; doubt-
 
 MODEBN TIMES 527 
 
 is that we have substantial reasons for adopting the view 
 in question the very reasons we have endeavoured to 
 make clear in this summary of the history of French 
 literature. For while dilettantism has certainly had the 
 happy consequence that by developing or exciting intel- 
 lectual curiosity it has sharpened its insight or widened 
 its scope, and while further it cannot be denied, and we 
 have been careful not to deny, that Naturalism has 
 rendered us useful and even precious services on at least 
 two or three occasions in the course of our history, at 
 the same time there is nothing to prevent a "social" 
 literature from appropriating the conquests of naturalism 
 
 less an inferior form of realism ; as is that of a Chamfleury or a 
 Courbet ; whose realism is solely due to the sterility of their inven- 
 tion; but is nevertheless a form of realism. Difference in this 
 respect between the realism of Dumas and that of Flaubert or Taine. 
 Diane de Lys constitutes a sort of return to Romanticism ; but 
 from the Demi-Monde onwards (1855), Dumas confines himself to 
 realism and the imitation of contemporary manners. The Question 
 d 1 argent, 1857 ; the Fils naturel, 1858, which is a portrait of Dumas 
 himself; the Pere prodigue, 1859, which is the portrait of his father; 
 VAmi des femmes, 1864 ; and V Affaire Clemenceau, 1866, are all 
 of them works in which the realistic characteristics dominate ; as 
 regards the nature of the plots ; the choice of the personages ; and 
 the familiarity of the style. There appears a further difference 
 between Dumas' " realism " and that of Flaubert or Leconte de Lisle ; 
 namely, his almost absolute indifference to form ; and his belief 
 that an author writes sufficiently well if he succeeds in obtaining a 
 hearing. Another difference is his tendency to discuss " problems " 
 and to moralise. 
 
 B. The Dramatist. It is under the influence of this tendency ; 
 a tendency encouraged by the direct personal influence of George 
 Sand ; by the less direct but not less unquestionable influence of 
 Michelet ; and by the desire to rival the in some sort political suc- 
 cesses of Augier [Cf. Les effrontes and the Fils de Giboyer] , that 
 Dumas invents a new type of drama, of which the Idees de madame 
 Aubray, 1867, are the first example. For while Augier continues to 
 undergo the influence of Scribe ; and moreover would be at a loss to
 
 528 MANUAL OF THE HISTOEY OF FEENCH LITEEATUEE 
 
 and dilettantism. On the contrary, the conquests 
 achieved by a social literature cannot be taken over by 
 dilettantism or naturalism, since the former is synonymous 
 with individualism, and the latter consists in the absolute 
 submission of the writer to his subject ; or more exactly, 
 in his acceptation of his subject. In his eyes phenomena 
 are what they ought to be, and when he has attained to 
 a comprehension of them, he esteems them not merely 
 legitimate, but "natural," and in consequence necessary. 
 In the second place, a " social " literature has the advan- 
 tage in the land of George Sand and Lamennais, of 
 Voltaire and Montesquieu, of Bossuet and Racine, of 
 
 throw it off; Dumas frees himself from it ; and each of his plays 
 becomes a " thesis," of which the personages are merely the spokes- 
 men ; and the plot the demonstration. In general the object of the 
 thesis is to demonstrate the iniquity of the Code [Cf . F. Moreau, Le code 
 civil et le Theatre contemporain] ; the causes pleaded more especi- 
 ally being the right to prove affiliation, the right of divorce, and the 
 identical responsibility of the man and the woman in cases of seduction 
 or adultery. The Prefaces to the complete edition of the Plays [that 
 of 1866-1870] ; and that it must not be overlooked that they are 
 posterior by ten years to the plays they precede, and that they 
 correspond to the new conception of his art adopted by the author of 
 the Idees de madame Aubray. 
 
 It was in conformity with these new principles, strengthened in 
 him by the spectacle of the events of 1870-1871 [Cf. Lettres de 
 Junius, 1870-1871] , that Alexandre Dumas wrote La Visite de 
 noces, 1871 ; la Princesse Georges, 1871 ; la Femme de Claude, 
 1873 ; three plays in at least two of which it does not appear that 
 the " thesis " is detrimental to the dramatic value of the work ; 
 but, on the contrary, the obligation of " demonstrating " has rid the 
 drama of several embarrassing conventions. They reintroduced into 
 the drama a simplicity of action Scribe had banished from it ; since 
 he trusted solely for success to the unexpectedness of his combinations. 
 They further introduced a passionate element, that would be 
 sought for in vain in Augier's comedies or dramas, in which it is 
 never clear why the personages act in this way or that rather than in 
 some other way. And finally, they restored to the drama, the
 
 MODERN TIMES 529 
 
 Montaigne and even of Eabelais, of being in conformity 
 with the traditions four or five centuries old of the French 
 genius. Omnia quce loquitur populus iste conjuratio est ! 
 Whatever does not express in the language of the 
 generality truths that interest or concern the generality, 
 as well as whatever is not clear, is not French ; 
 and it will be remarked that it is for this reason that 
 the majority of our Romanticists, and still more of 
 our Dilettantes are ignored by foreigners. England or 
 Germany have better writers of this class among their 
 native authors ! On the other hand, the socialisation of 
 literature, if I may venture on this expressive barbarism, 
 
 literary, psychological and moral importance, it had been almost 
 wholly lacking in for a century past ; for what is the significance of 
 the Aventuriere, or the Verre d'eau, or of the Tour de Nesle, or even 
 of Marion Delorme ? 
 
 C. The Moralist. Of the transformation of the " realist " into 
 the "moralist," of the Dumas of Diane de Lys or of the Dame aux 
 Cornelias, into the Dumas of VEtrangere, 1876 ; of la Princesse 
 de Bagdad, 1881 ; of Denise, 1885 ; and of Francillon, 1887. 
 That it must be confessed that it is a pity that Dumas, the moralist, 
 is sometimes wanting in good sense ; more often still in an adequate 
 knowledge of the questions he deals with ; and always in moderation. 
 The deficiencies of Dumas' early education are only too perceptible ; 
 even in his manner of stating the problems he treats [Cf . les Femmes 
 qui tuent and les Femmes qui votent] 1880, or again la Question 
 du divorce, 1880. After adapting them to the requirements of the 
 stage, he solves too off-handedly difficulties ; of which he is blind 
 to the complexity. He nevertheless did considerable good if only in 
 passing frankly and resolutely from " naturalism " to " idealism " ; 
 without effort and solely in consequence of the progress of his reflec- 
 tions. He was one of the first among his contemporaries, following 
 an attitude he adopted in writing the Idees de Madame Aubray and 
 maintained down to Francillon, to reunite art and life, which it 
 had been attempted to separate. Doubtless it is to be regretted that 
 of all his plays, those which are sure to survive the longest are his 
 "realistic" dramas, but this accidental contingency is no objection 
 against his talent as a dramatist ; or against " pieces with a pur- 
 
 35
 
 530 MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 has allowed us in the past, not only, as has been seen, 
 to resist foreign influence, and to assimilate merely 
 such foreign elements as could be made to serve the 
 turn of our genius, but to exercise in the world the 
 intellectual supremacy we have wielded more often 
 than any other people. Finally, if it be essentially 
 characteristic of a "social" literature that it tends, as 
 has been said, towards "the perfecting of civil life," or, 
 as we should say to-day, towards the progress of civilisa- 
 tion, what more could we add ? For four hundred years 
 our literature and even our language have enabled us to 
 promote both the greatness of France and the common 
 
 pose " ; or against ,the generousness of his effort, and still less 
 against the idea more generally accepted than ever at present 
 that art has " a social function." 
 
 3. THE WORKS. Omitting his early novels, which are now almost 
 unreadable, his works comprise : 
 
 (1) The Dame aux camelias (novel), 1848 ; and the Affaire Clemen- 
 ceau, 1886 ; 
 
 (2) His Plays, the last edition of which in 7 volumes, Paris, 1890- 
 1893, Calmann Levy includes : la Dame aux camelias, 1852 ; Diane 
 de Lys, 1853 ; le Bijou de la reine, 1855 (in verse) ; the Demi-Monde , 
 1855 ; la Question d? argent, 1857 ; le Fils naturel, 1858 : Un Pere 
 prodigue, 1859 ; V Ami des femmes, 1864 ; les Idees de Madame 
 Aubray, 1867; Une visite de noces, 1871; la Princesse Georges, 
 1871 ; la Femme de Claude, 1873 ; Monsieur Alphonse, 1873 ; 
 VFjtrangere, 1876 ; la Princesse de Bagdad, 1881 ; Denise, 1885 ; 
 Francillon, 1887. To the above are to be added two volumes entitled : 
 le Theatre des autres, in which he is responsible to at least as great an 
 extent as Augier for les Lionnes pauvres or as Barriere for les Faux 
 bonsJwmmes. The other pieces are le Supplice d'une femme [in 
 collaboration with Emile de Girardin] , 1865 ; Helo'ise Paranquet 
 [in collaboration with Armand Durantin] , 1866 ; le Filleul de 
 Pompignac, 1869 ; la Comtesse Romani [in collaboration with M. 
 Fould] , 1877 ; and les Danicheff [in collaboration with M. Pierre 
 Corvin] , 1879. 
 
 He also " recast " some of George Sand's pieces, the best known 
 being the Marquis de Villemer, 1864.
 
 MODERN TIMES 531 
 
 good of humanity. Who would not sacrifice to this 
 generous ideal something of his " individualism " and 
 the strange vanity of being alone in admiring and under- 
 standing himself? 
 
 (3) In addition to his novels and plays Dumas is the author : of 
 three volumes entitled Entr'actes, 187&-1879, and one volume entitled 
 Nouveaux Entr'actes, 1890, in which the majority of his brochures 
 and fugitive writings have been reprinted under his own supervi- 
 sion ; of la Question du divorce, 1880 ; and of Une lettre a M. 
 Rivet, depute, sur la recherche de la paternite, 1883. 
 
 THE END.
 
 Cfje (ft r 01) am 
 
 UNWIN BKOTIIERS 
 WOKING AND LONDON