CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF Arthur H. and Mary Harden Dean The original of tiiis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924015651155 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE BY C H. CONRAD WRIGHT A.B. (HARV.), M.A. (OXON.) ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF FRENCH IN HARVARD DNIVERSITY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AMERICAN BRANCH NEW YORK: 35 West Thirty-second Street LONDON: Henry Frowde 1912 All rights reserved Copyright, igi2 ^ BY OxFOitD University Press AMERICAN BRANCH ' MY MOTHER PREFACE THE lack of a: convenient and yet comprehensive history of French literature, beyond the range of skeleton outlines or compendiums of facts, has long been apparent from experience to the present writer. On the other hand, excellent works in French, such as those of Brunetiere or of M. Lanson, are written from a standpoint unfamiliar to the EngUsh-speaking reader or student, and take too much for granted. M. Lanson's book is, perhaps, the best one-volume history of French literature in existence, but foreigners often find it difficult to handle. An effort is here made to meet the needs of readers in a work going beyond simple outlines, yet not pretending to specialisation in every period — a thing which is impossible for one man now that we are, of necessity, either medisevalists or moderns. The book might, perhaps, more fittingly be called a "Uterary history of France," inasmuch as the relations have been emphasised of literature and social environment, and the Latin writings of the Middle Ages have been included. Accuracy has, of course, been sought as far as possible in view of the wide range of the subject. Yet the author does not aspire, as some do, to the merit of an absolutely independent judgment on every topic. On the contrary, he considers it the duty of the composer of a synthesis to rely, to a reasonable degree, on those who have spent months or years on individual writers whom he must perforce treat summarily. He sets himself down unhesitatingly as a "pickpurse of another's wit": the authorities from whom he has readily drawn will, it is hoped, be found accounted for in the bibliography. The writer on a foreign literature labors under one great dis- advantage: Chauvinism, rather than true patriotism, is apt to viil PREFACE take offence at an even occasionally unfavorable verdict and to pronounce the author an "exotic" or untrustworthy judge. Now, indiscriminate praise is not criticism. Moreover, each historian has a right, though a contemporary school denies it, to a definite standpoint. The present writer acknowledges a preference for the Classical and rationa,l in French literature, as in any literature, over the Romantic, the sentimental, and emotional. For that reason his sjmipathies go more to the seventeenth and to the eighteenth centuries than to certain movements and authors of the nineteenth. He cannot escape the conviction that the modern eccentrics, from the bousingots of the thirties to the dicadents of the eighties and nineties, are not characteristic of French common-sense, any more than the false convention of adultery in the novels and plays, or the revelations of certain contemporary "dionysiac" women-writers, are typical of French morals and manners. It should surely be the privilege of one who was largely educated in France, and has chosen as his Kfe-work the study and teaching of French litera- ture, to argue that an occasional apparently harsh judgment is, on the contrary, actuated by a deep sympathy for France and annoyance at seeing it misrepresented in the eyes of other peoples by some of its men of letters. The writer wishes to make it clear, at this prominent place in his work, that, in his opinion, French Hterature, taken as a whole, overtops in richness, artistic quality, and historical influence, all literatures since those of Greece and of Rome. It has, not merely intellectually but even linguistically, been of vastly greater value to English than the Teutonic sources of that language have been. In the Middle Ages its epic, its romance, its philosophy made France the intellectual centre of Europe; the French lyrics of the sixteenth century permeated, to a much greater degree than was formerly supposed, the poetry of the English Renaissance; the Classicism of the seventeenth century was the model for all European critics; in the eighteenth century the writings of Rousseau (for good or evil) and the theories of the political and social thinkers PREFACE IX created the temper of the nineteenth century; in the nineteenth century itself, French critics and sociologists have led the world — the Ust might be almost indefinitely extended. This is a constant pre-eminence which no other country can assert, and France can maintain its supremacy without annexing the pseudo- intellect of certain Romantic authors or demanding approval of the "Naturalists." For in the intellectual world the line of Henri de Bornier is true: Tout homme a deux pays, le sien et puis la France. I The final result of his labors is not what the author could have desired. There come, fijstly, to his mind the mediaeval Latin verses : Tot sunt doctores, quot veris tempore flores; Tot sunt errores, quot habet natura colores. Secondly, the "concatenati in ergastulo labores" of a teacher's life have often, as Sir Thomas Browne would put it, "con- tempered celerity with cunctation," without corresponding advantage to composition. It remains to thank those friends and colleagues whose scholar- ship has been at the writer's call. Professors E. S. Sheldon, C. H. Grandgent, and Irving Babbitt of Harvard University, have examined and corrected with painstaking care certain important sections; Professor Raymond Weeks of Columbia University has added to criticism practical advice and aid in coimection with the actual publication of the work. Not one of these friends would indorse all the views set forth in the following pages, and the author assumes responsibility for the mistakes contaiiied therein. But he desires to express to them his sincere gratitude for their generous aid, and to thank those other friends who have helped him in a minor degree with hints or suggestions. CONTENTS PART I The Middle Ages chapter page I The Origins of French and of French Literature . 3 II' The Epic 14 III Romance 28 IV Lyric Poetry 41 V History, Biography, and Chronicles 51 VI Fable Literature and Short Stories ...... 62 VII The Drama 71 VIII Philosophy 86 IX Erudition. Didactic and Allegorical Literature . 97 X The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries . . . . m PART II The Sixteenth Century I The Renaissance . . . . , 127 11 The Growth of Humanism . . • •■ • 135 III The Transition in Poetry. The Rhetoriqueurs. Lemaire. Marot 144 IV The Platonists . 155 V Rabelais . . 164 VI The Pleiade and its Theories . 174 VII The Pleiade and its Work 188 VIII The New Philosophy and the New Humanism. . . igp IX The Drama 209 X Reformers and Huguenots 220 xu CONTENTS CHAPTEE PAGE XI Montaigne ... 231 XII Authors of Memoirs. Historians and Political Writers 242 PART III The Seventeenth Century si) Transition Writers. The Reign of Henry IV . . 251 II The Reform in Poetry. Malherbe. His Friends and Foes . . .... . 261 III' The Reform in Prose and the Growth of Criticism. Balzac, The Academy, Vaugelas, Chapelain . . . 270 IW The Literary Ideals of Society: Their Exaggerations 276 ^ The Novel. The Epic. Satire. . .... 284 Wi. The Drama ' . 292 ■ j ifiVCORNEILLE. ROTROU QoS VIIfcdfPHiLo^oPHY. Descartes. Cartesianism 321 '^' Religion.. Jansenism. Port-Royal. Pascal . . ^32"' ;>' Religion. Morals and Education ... . . 345 -^iction 489 vii montesqiheu. political theorists, historians, / Moralists 495 ^HC' yOLTAIRE . .' 505^ IXyt^OUSSEAU 518 X Diderot and the Encyclopedia 536 XI The philosophe^Am) their Followers 546 XII BjJTFON and Saint-Pierre 557 Xni Eighteenth-Century Poetry 564 XIVV^ighteenth-Century Poetry (continued) 570 XV Beaumarchais. The Coming of the Revolution. . . 581 XVI The Revolution 587 PART V The Nineteenth Century I The Empire 601 II Madame de Stael 609 ,''B@^Xhateaubriand .... ... ... 616 IV \^SE Trend of Thought (1815-1850). Politics and Religion. Romantic Manifestations 627 V The Trend of Thought (1815-1850). Philosophers and Sociologists. .' 639 -''vJ^'^manticism 650 VIIvlteE Poets 666 VniVVKTOR Hugo 682 IXVThe Drama 691 Xv^icnoN 708 XI Historians, Critics, and Publicists 725 XII The Second Half of the Century. Sainte-Beuve, Taine, and Renan 738 xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER y PAGE Xm^CTION 7S7 XIV*''Tra; Drama 779 XV V^EXRY 790 XVI Philosophers, Historians, Orators, Critics, and Journalists 810 ./^i PART VI The Twentieth Century The Tendencies 827 V n The Writers 845 Bibliography 881 Index 939 PART I THE MIDDLE AGES A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE CHAPTER I THE ORIGINS OF FRENCH AND OF FRENCH LITERATURE AMONG those languages which have shared the intellectual and literary hegemony of Europe the most important belong to the Greek, to the Latin, or to the Germanic group. French is of Latin origin, and is historically derived with no solution of continuity, so that without undue paradox it might almost be said that the language of the French today is a form of late Latin. It is true that Virgil and Cicero would find it as difl&cult to make themselves understood on the boulevards as it would have been for an African or a Scythian in the Forum; but nevertheless there is an unbroken thread in the historical series of past ages, so that it is impossible to say precisely at what moment Latin ceased to exist in France and French took its place. We are restricted to general conclusions based on the changes in the sounds (Phonology) or in the form of words (Morphology), and we say that it was about this time or near that date, within half a century or so, that certain changes or developments occurred. French is, then, a Latin idiom. And what differentiates it from Enghsh, in which the majority of words is also of Latin derivation? The answer must be that in French it is not a question of vocabulary alone, but also of grammatical construc- tion, whereas the framework of Enghsh is Teutonic. But neither French nor Latin has always existed in the land. There was once a Gaul, and we still speak of the esprit gaulois 3 4 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE to designate the popular mocking humor of the French. The inhabitants of Gaul spoke languages of their own having only the remotest connection with Greek or with Latin, and the opening lines of Caesar's Commentaries are the locus classicus on this point and on the division of the soil between the Belgians, the Aquitanians, and the Celts or Gauls. These last occupied most of the territory, but their language has almost entirely disappeared, except in so far as modern Breton is indirectly connected with it through the British Isles. It is, however, in Brittany rather than elsewhere that we must seek traces of these old Gauls or Celts and of the languages spoken before the Roman conquest. The Bretons of Brittany came over at the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasions. The inhabitants of the province form a race apart and have not experienced the successive infiltrations of races and of languages which poured into the rest of the mainland. It is only of late years that the French government is succeeding by compulsory education, military service, and by anti-clerical legislation in breaking down the barriers of language. The character of the Celts thus studied is very different from, what the French now call the esprit gaulois. This is a compound result, coming from the agglomeration of different elements, instead of the esprit celtique described by Renan as mystical, melancholy, and dreamy: Cette race a soif de I'lnfini; elle le poursuit a tout prix, au-dela de la tombe, au-dela de I'enfer. When the Romans invaded Gaul they brought with them an infinitely superior civilisation. They established educational centres, taught law and new ways of commerce and government which replaced the primitive methods of the natives. The use of Latin was encouraged, and those among the Gauls who knew the conquerors' speech could aspire to the highest dignities in literature, war, and statecraft. Moreover, the Gauls, not so very remote from early rovers, had no written literature. Their THE ORIGIN OF FRENCH S chronicles and bodies of doctrine existed in the form of songs passed "on from generation to generation. The national priests, the Druids, were doubtlessly the only depositaries of learning and science, whic^ they transmitted orally to their initiates and novices, whose probation must have extended through years. Other popular war-songs may have been known to the people under the mnemonic form which rude poetry gives. AH traces of this literature have disappeared. The Romans, first by commerce and then by conquest, swept it away, as they very slowly but surely also did the language. The vocabulary of the modern successors of the Gauls contains only a handful of words of Celtic origin, many of them being geographical names. It is not to be supposed, however, that the Latin which took the place of Celtic speech was only the literary language of Rome in its purest form. The language chiefly used by the newcomers was popular Latin, sermo plebeius or rusticitas, the language of farmers, peasants, and soldiers, itself fairly at vari- ance with the Latin of literature, sermo urbanus or latinitas, though separated from it not absolutely, but by small differen- tiations, as the speech of a Yorkshire or a New England farmer varies from the language of Matthew Arnold or Emerson. The literary language was, to a marked degree, an artificial one, much influenced by Greek, for the Roman writers in drama and in philosophy had imitated the more intellectual Hellenes. Popular Latin was, on the contrary, more simple in construction and possessed a simple vocabulary. It was, above all, a more fickle and changeable speech. Thus, during the first four centuries of the Christian era we find in Gaul two Latins, one used by scholars as a written lan- guage, though already somewhat corrupted, the other the speech of the people. Both in time imderwent modifications, but it was the popular Latin which changed the more. Written Latin remained, with some changes, through all the Middle Ages as a means of communication for the scholars. It is often 6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE called learned Low Latin. Popular Latin changed so quickly that by the fifth century it deserves a new name : it is kftown as popular Low Latin or gallo-roman, from the fifth to the ninth century, under the dynasties of the Merovingians and early Carolingians. And the most important stage of the transition from Latin to gallo-roman was that beginning with the invasion of the Germanic tribes, particularly the Franks, in the fifth century. This Germanic invasion is very important, because it com- pletely changed the history of the land. From now on we must cease speaking of Gaul and call it the land of the Franks, what will later be France. The newcomers were not absolute barbarians, but their civilisation was inferior to that of the people whose domain they occupied. Therefore, just as the Romans had conquered Greece without imposing on it their language, so the Germanic invaders brought some of their manners and customs, but did not do away with the speech or civilisation of the vanquished people. They occasioned changes and additions, especially in the form of terms of war and of feudalism, but not to any extraordinary degree. Nevertheless, the period from the fifth century onward pre- sents a different aspect. The social organism is partly Latin, partly Germanic. The language is Low Latin instead of Latin. Certain tribes, especially at the north and east, try to keep their own speech and do so for a time, but are gradually obliged to choose between one or the other civilisation. It is the period of the Merovingian dynasty, when the various languages of which we have spoken are designated by such names as the following: Lingua teutonica, theotisca, francisca or Teutonic; Lingua romana, gallo-roman or popular Low Latin; Lingua latina, learned Low Latin. It is difficult to trace the historical changes which took place during this remote and Kttle known period, because of the lack of documentary evidence in the form of manuscripts, and we are often obliged to reason very hj^othetically. The general THE ORIGIN OF FRENCH 7 conclusion, however, ■ is that the popular Low Latin, on the whole, continues the tendencies of popular Latin, though with slow and successive changes. Many words disappear as un- necessary, others come in to fill a want. The, forms of grammar are simplified: the declensions and conjugations lose many of their classic distinctions. The verbs, in particular, are differ- ently organised, and by means of auxiliaries some Latin tenses are replaced by new constructions, as amabo by forms based on amare habeo. Finally, syntax also continues the tendencies of popular Latin and substitutes simple and analytic construc- tions for the synthesis of classical Latin. Of these tendencies we have some proofs, particularly in documents Hke the Glos- saries of Reichenau and Cassel of the eighth or early ninth centuries. The Glossary of Reichenau is a partial vocabulary containing words of learned Latin translated into somewhat more popvilar speech. The Glossary of Cassel translates gallo- roman words and sentences into Teutonic. We now reach another Hne of demarcation. The Mero- vingian dynasty has disappeared and has been replaced by the CaroKngians or Carlovingians. Charlemagne, who, in spite of his admiration for Latin culture, was himself more Germanic than Latin, and whose own native language was the lingua theoiisca, is dead, and the divisions have begun in the empire which resulted in the modern French and Germanic nations. Finally, in February, 842, we come into possession of a written document which accentuates many differences hitherto only suspected and which seems almost to belong to a new language. That is why people agree, though somewhat arbitrarily, in placing here the beginning of a new historical division of the language, which they call French, just as the kingdom of France begins with the treaty of Verdun in 843. This document con- tains the Serments de Strasbourg or so-called "bilingual oaths" of the grandsons of Charlemagne. Charles le Chauve and Louis le Germanique were allied against their brother, the emperor Lothaire. In support of this alliance they swore 8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE fidelity in presence of their soldiers. But as these spoke two different languages, the army of Charles le Chauve, coming from Neustria in the west, could not be understood by the soldiers of Louis le Germanique, who used the lingua theoHsca. It was therefore necessary to take the oath in the two languages, and it is one of these forms which is looked upon as one of the earliest examples of French, of which we are to survey the literature. The next early documents of importance were the sequence or cantilene of Sainte Eulalie (end of the ninth century) and the tenth-century poems of the Passion and the Vie de saint Leger. In the course of the vulgar Latin period there occurred a gradual division of the language, producing the later languages or dialect groups known as langue d'oil in the north and langue d'oc in the south, so-called because of the different ways of expressing "yes." The langue d'oil ^ is French in its various parallel dialectical forms, of which all but one gradually decline as literary media and become patois; the langue d'oc {hoc) consists of the various forms of Provencal speech used in the south and finding expression in the rich literature of the trouba- dours, but before long ceasing in all its branches to be a literary medium until the artificial recrudescence of the present day. Of all the divisions of either language the most important for our purposes is the language of the Ile-de-France, of Paris and the surroimding country. But such was not always the case, and in the Middle Ages, Champagne, Picardy, Normandy, ' Langue d'oil, in which phrase oil was at first two words meaning "yes, he" or "yes, they," gradually coming to stand for "yes," simply; it is the modern oui. The French originally said "yes, I," "yes, you," "yes, we," etc., where the pronoun was the subject of an unexpressed verb easily supplied from the question. Oil is thus an agglutination of two words accidentally standing close together, but not forming a compound and not syntactically connected. Old French also had a alone = "yes." The derivation may be briefly put as being from two Old French words, com- ing from Latin hoc, in vulgar Latin taking the sense "yes," -\- Ule, vulgar nil, meaning "he" or "they"; or hoc . Illi (with a period between the two words). THE ORIGIN OF FRENCH 9 all had abundant literatures, the study of which is part of our task. The growing preponderance of French is to be explained partly by the position of the kings. The Ile-de-France was their original domain, which they gradually increased, after the coming of the Capetian house at the very end of the tenth century, by attacking the feudal lords and taking possession of their territory. The struggle was a long and stubborn one, but by the end of the thirteenth century royalty wais victorious. The period from the ninth to the fourteenth century is that of Old French, a language of vast wealth of expression, with a syntax differing in several respects from the modern usage and a vigorous and resonant enxmciation. It became pre-eminent among the languages of Europe and spread its influence far and wide: ntunberless traces still remain in English. In the fourteenth century a new period begins: the distinction of two cases in nouns and adjectives hitherto preserved to a considerable extent, though it had already suffered severely, is now almost entirely lost. This has very far-reaching consequences on the order of words, which is obliged to conform more to a logical than to an artistic sequence. Indeed, all sj^ntax is affected. This second period, which lasts until the sixteenth century, is sometimes called that of Middle French, and is succeeded in turn by Modern French, from the seventeenth century on. The language during the second stage is far less picturesque and varied tmtil towards its close, though it receives in turn successive infiltrations of learned words introduced by scholars and translators, particularly in the fourteenth century, and of classical and Italian words brought in during the Renaissance. The learned writings of the Middle. Ages were preserved by the monks and clerks, but the mediimi of composition and transmission of popvdar literature during that period was the minstrel, who stood for all that books and libraries now give in the way of entertainment. The mediaeval minstrel is also undoubtedly the meeting-point of Latin and of Germanic tendencies. On the one hand, the Latin mimi had fallen in 10 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE repute and had degenerated into wandering mountebanks and buffoons, singing and plajdng tricks. On the other hand, the German invaders brought with them traditions of poetry as well as manners. Their minstrels or bards, if we may be allowed a word now somewhat in disfavor, led the songs of war and daring, perhaps destined to grow into the formal epic. The travelling minstrels of the Middle Ages between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries partly represent both traditions. Their standing is, however, a new one, and they are not all of a kind. They often went through the land wearing multicolored garb and entertaining nobility and populace in hall or in market- place with narrative and romance svmg to a plain and monot- onous rhythm on vielle or rote. These were the ioculatores, jougleurs, or jongleurs. Some composed their own poems which in transmission became modified by the linguistic tendencies of those who received them in different dialects or, on the other hand, by literary procedes or altered treatment, reshaping of plot, of metre, invention of new episodes or characters. Consequently, • we find, as we survey the field of mediaeval minstrelsy, the trouveurs or trouveres who composed and /sang songs, epic and sometimes lyrical, or even recited for the benefit of the common populace the too-frequently obscene fabliaux; then the common buffoons of a lower type who, as our modern jugglers or clowns, have inherited the name of the jongleurs. In the Provengal literature of southern France there was some- times a further differentiation, and the trobaire or troubadour, often of noble or even royal rank, composed his lyric songs which he left to joglars to spread abroad. But, on the whole, the great distinction in France is a twofold one: in the north the trouveres, who composed or sang the abundant epic, lyric, and satiric verse; in the south the more gallant and often aristocratic troubadours, who composed the complicated lyric melodies connected with their names. To these two classes must be added a third, consisting of wandering students or scholars, men of intellect but of dissolute life, idle hangers-on of THE ORIGIN OF FRENCH il universities, and more versed' in "wine, women, and song" than in austere philosophy. These so-called Goliardi — because of their mock bishop, the imaginary Goliardus — wandered through the land singing erotic or Bacchic verse in the rich neo-Latin rhymed metre, and adding to lyric poetry a wealth of song which, because of its unfamiliar language, has not been appreciated at its full worth, but which for melody, vigor, and dash deserves to rank with the best lyric light verse which the world has produced. There have been three revivals in French literature. Xhe first is connected with the name of Charlemagne, the second is that of the twelfth century, the third is the definite Renais- sance of the spirit of antiquity which has made its influence felt down to the present time. Much is owed to Charlemagne. After the fall of Roman authority, intellectual training and learning were during the Merovingian dynasty at their lowest ebb. Charlemagne, in whom culminated the growing power of Pepin's house, saw all the strength that could accrue to his government by encouraging learning. To his reign are due, therefore, not only a thorough political and religious reorganisation of the mighty empire, but a noteworthy scholarly activity. Charlemagne tried to dis- seminate knowledge and give greater fixity to the popular language as well as to Latin, the learned tongue which had become more and more debased. So he grouped about him men of rare attainments: Peter of Pisa, Paulus Diaconus from Italy, Theodulfus the Goth from Spain, but, above all, Alcuin from York, where learning flourished. Alcuin came to the continent about 781 and taught for fifteen years, with certain intervals during which he returned to England. About 800 he became abbot of Saint-Martin of Tours, where he died in 804. He wrote on grammar, rhetoric, morals, mathematics, music, and theology. In 787 Charlemagne issued an important proc- lamation or capitulary to the clergy on education, and with the help or at the instigation of Alcuin organised great schools throughout the empire. He favored primary schools, so far as 12 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE teachers could be provided for them, in the villages, higher ones in the monasteries and cathedrals; and in his own palace, and perhaps always travelling in his train, he kept a band of picked scholars, and students who were trained in the higher sciences so far as these went: the Palatine School. Admission to this was due not to rank but to merit. In his own immediate circle he had organised an informal Palatine Academy of his friends, academici Alcuin calls them. Here there was comparatively little formality or etiquette. The members were the princes, scholars, and dignitaries of the court, and even women belonged to the circle, which may have had its social side of love and intrigue as well as that of deep learning. Each member bore a pseudonym from classic or sacred antiquity: Charlemagne was David, who smote the Philistines and sang the psalms; Alcuin was Flaccus; and Theodulfus, Pindar. To Charlemagne and Alcuin are due not only the encourage- ment of lay literature, which flourishes with such names as that of Einhard, but more particularly the establishment of the tra- dition of learning in the Church, so that the schools of the monasteries and of the cathedral cities are the depositories of knowledge until the rise of the universities in the twelfth century. The old manuscripts were carefully recopied and disseminated, especially at Alcuin's own monastery at Tours, and the world probably owes an incalculable debt of gratitude to him for saving the great Latin authors. There were studied and copied not only the Fathers of the Church and the late Latin authorities who were to influence all mediaeval thought, hke Boethius, Cassiodorus, Isidore of SeviUe, and Martianus Capella, but the greater writers, Virgil, Cicero, Statius, and Lucan. After the reign of Charlemagne, imder Lotiis le Debonnaire, there is perhaps less original inspiration, but scholarship is not dead, and even during the new trials and tribulations of internal dissension and Norman invasion the torch of learning is handed on to men like Alcuin's pupil Rabanus Maurus, the German, and then to Walafridus Strabo, Servatus Lupus of Ferrieres, THE ORIGIN OF FRENCH 13 and Radbertus Paschasius. All through the often scoffed-at period from the ninth to the twelfth century there were hives of intellectual activity in monasteries and abbeys like Saint- Martin at Tours, Ferrieres in Gitinais, Saint-Germain-des-Pres, Saint-Denis, Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, Saint-Bertin, Fleury-sur- Loire, Saint-Ouen at Rouen, Jumieges, and Le Bee, the home of Lanfranc and of Anselm. Famous among the cathedral or chapter schools were those of Auxerre, Orleans (Theodulfus), Reims (Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II), Chartres (Ful- bert), and Paris. Indeed, it is at Paris in the twelfth century that the university grows up from schools like those of Saint- Victor, Notre-Dame, as well as the peripatetic school of Abelard. New monastic orders or congregations spring also into existence, like Cl\my (Odon de Cluny), followers of Saint Benedict, and later Citeaux with its offshoot Clairvaux, the home of Saint Bernard in the twelfth century. At the time of the second revival the new order of Dominicans in the thirteenth cdntury tried by their teaching and preaching to spread education through all classes and to counteract the mystical extravagances of their rivals the Franciscans. CHAPTER II THE EPIC THE early popular literature in France centres about the epic, that being its most influential and far-spreading, and at the same time its most original, production. As expressed in the chansons de geste it went deepest into the hearts of the people, and perhaps did more for the glory of mediaeval France than any other form of literary composition. The epic material divides, according to the usua;l classification repeated from Bodel's Chanson des Saisnes, into three branches: Ne sont que trois matieres a nul homme antandant: De France, de Bretaigne et de Rome la grant. We have here to deal only with the chansons de geste, songs of deeds (gesta), the manifestation of the warlike and feudal element of the race, as the stories of the Round Table and of antiquity are those of romance and of learning. The early history of the French national epic takes us back to the realm of hypothesis and of theory, into which it can scarcely be our province to go.' According to the hitherto current view the French heroic poems are the result of Germanic influences, or of the Germanic spirit in a Romanic mould and form, giving a result which is neither Celtic, Germanic, nor Roman, but a new compound. Tacitus tells us that among the Germanic peoples popular songs were much in vogue. With ' For a brief survey of the many theories concerning the origin of the heroic epic, cf. Voretzsch, EinfUhrung in das Studium der 'allfranzosischen Literatur, conclusion of Chap. Ill, and Becker, Grundriss der altfranzo- sichen Literatur, beginning of Chap. II. The "pilgrimage" theory is still more recent. H THE EPIC 1$ regard to the territory now called France, it is to be remembered that, though the population of this land was fairly homogeneous, except where lived the Basques and the Bretons, and though this homogeneity was in the first place one of a Latin civilisa- tion,, yet it was in time considerably modified by the Germanic invasions of the Franks, particularly in the borderlands of what was then France and of Burgundy, where the early epic was especially successful. The newcomers, belonging to a warlike and predatory race, fond of battle songs and of incitements to glorious deeds by the narrative of heroic achievements, brought with them this ten- dency to celebrate in song their mighty men. As they gradually took up the language of the cotmtry in which they settled, these songs, or new ones like them, were modified by the influence of popiilar Romanic or non-Teutonic versification: the travelling Teutonic bard, descendant of the scopas, and the cultured Gallo-Roman singer vied with each other in the early feasts and banquets when the two civilisations were blending. The more impressive songs of national tradition won the day, but they were influenced by the scholarly language and expression of the Gallo-Romans. Later, Neustria, the least Teutonic of the districts, becomes the home of the epic: the Gallo-Romans have accepted the Germanic offering and have made it their own. Just what form these early songs took, or at what period we need begin our hypotheses, is less significant. They may have been lyric or lyrico-epic poems in which the narrative element developed more and more as curiosity grew about the facts which everybody knew at first; or they may have started in the epic or narrative form contemporaneously with the event, or from oral tradition. Under the Merovingian dynasty there undoubtedly existed collections of rude and vmcouth narrative melodies of which we have faint traces perhaps in historical allusions, or in the later Floovant of the twelfth century, or in the Latin rendering of a few lines of a song or round concerning Clotaire's victory over the Saxons. This, a Latin Ufe of Saint i6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Faro by Hildegarius of Meaux in the ninth century tells us, was popiUarly sung {juxta rusticitatem) at the period in the seventh century contemporaneous with the events: De Chlotario est canere rege Francorum, Qui ivit pugnare in gentem Saxonum. It is quite likely that from such short rounds, if the theory be accepted, were gradually developed, without even the necessary disappearance of the original type, the longer chansons de geste. The starting-point of the French epic is, then, Teutonic in that it is historical rather than mythical, like so many legends of other antiquities.^ Its spirit, too, is the expression of a civili- sation based on the Teutonic ideal of war and feudalism, modi- fied by Christianity. It is the living, but generally anonymous, expression of a people's spirit and deserves, therefore, the name of national, particularly when the conversion of the barbarian Clovis fills the people with the sentiment of a new unity and of a nation grouped about its ruler. The theory of the lyrico-epic poems just set forth, which is connected chiefly with the name of Gaston Paris, is now opposed by the absolutely different view of M. Joseph B6dier. Even if not as yet accepted by the majority of scholars, it is evidence of an interesting and significant reaction against the old romantic views of folk poesy and popular epic which have held sway since the invention of the Wolffian theory concerning Homer, itself now the object of so many attacks. M. Bedier's theory, briefly stated, is that the epic legends were formed by the combined efforts of monks and jongleurs to edify and entertain pilgrims and merchants at the exhibitions of relics and fairs in the vicinity of abbeys or places of pilgrimage. He argues that no real proof or specimen remains of the so-called primitive epic. On the contrary, the chansons de geste really belong to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and are largely ' It is not to be inferred, of course, that there wer^ no mythical epics in the Teutonic languages; quite the contrary. THE EPIC 17 related to sanctuaries on the pilgrimage roads of Europe. He applies bis theory to various groups of poems, such as the cycle of Guillaume d'Orange which he connects with the abbey of Saint-Guilhem-du-Desert, not far from Montpellier on the way to Santiago; the poems on Girard de Roussillon belonging to the abbeys of V6zelay and Pothieres in Burgundy. Similarly, other poems are linked with the pilgrimage to Rome and the Italian highway, or with abbeys in northern France. Thus the chansons de geste are the result of conscious composition, even when built up from fragments, rather than of mere lisping in numbers. The French epic lasts for several centuries, and its influence spreads all over Europe. It is found in the form of long narra- tive poems divided into stanzas or laisses of varying length, and consisting usually, but not always, of decasyllabic verses. There may be a trace of lyric poetry in the refrain AOI of the Chanson de Roland. When the minstrels were in their glory and sang the laisses, these were constructed with assonance, an imperfect rhyme in which the vowels only neei^ be alike. Later, assonance gave way to rhyme. Indeed, rhyme had much to do with the decadence of th,e French epic; for, the fountain of inspiration not having been renewed, the later poems were often merely reconstructions of the earlier ones, in which lines were padded out for the sake of rhyme, otiose epithets were inserted, and redundant phrases recurred with exasperating frequency. At last, when in the fifteenth century the prose renderings became fashionable, it may be said that the epic no longer has any great value, though descendants of the old stories are still told to chil- dren today. The French epic spread all over Europe from cold north to sunny south, and, in the Renaissance, Boiardo and Ariosto played with the venerable legends. Of the primitive epic, if the traditional view is accepted, we have, as has been stated, no example. The early poems may have furnished much to the chroniclers and historians, such as Fredegarius and others. To some students of literature it may 1 8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE perhaps seem fortunate that the rougher and uncouth versions have disappeared. This enables us to begin our study at the period of greatest excellence and with some of the better epics of popular literature, foremost of which is the famous Chanson de Roland. Others of the earliest poems known are the Roi Louis, which is of feudal inspiration, the first 1979 lines of the Chanson de Guillaume, and the Pelerinage de Charlemagne, a short mock-heroic poem relating a trip of Charlemagne and his peers to Jerusalem and Constantinople, where their wild bragging and boasting are humorously described. These poems all belong to about the end of the eleventh century. The French epic is a composite formation consisting of a large number of poems, many yet remaining unpublished. Dealing, as they did, with national though often legendary heroes, and repeated as they were by countless poets, they grad- ually formed a vast corpus of tradition. Unconscious classifi- cation was introduced, and the material is presented to us in the shape of both families and cycles. Not only were the deeds of heroes told, but also those of other members of their families, so that we have epic genealogies and tales of fathers as well as of sons, enfances as well as chevaleries. Warriors belonging to different periods were linked together, and the most noteworthy form which the composite method takes is when the historic deeds of different members of a family are combined and attrib- uted to the most important member of that race. Thus most of the ancestors and successors of Charlemagne are united in one dominant character of epic literature who stands as the type of the imperial ruler. It is true that Charlemagne varies greatly according to the period at which the author is composing and ac- cording to the feeling which he represents — national or feudal; at times he is dignified and majestic, awing his opponents by his noble presence and even accomplishing miracles, at times he is cowardly and almost dishonorable. Still Charlemagne remains the hero of French epic. And we need no nobler por- trait of him than exists in the Chanson de Roland. Indeed, the THE EPIC 19 historical Charlemagne was canonised, though by an anti-pope, Pascal III. Those poems which make him ridiculous are feudal. The cyclic tendency may be superimposed upon the grouping by genealogies and is a convenient though not chronological method of rough classification of these poems. The old writers themselves set up three branches or gestes: of the King, of Garin de Monglane or of Guillaume, of Doon de Mayence. This classification is sometimes convenient, but it must not be cpnsidered exhaustive in any way, and modern scholars often group the works quite differently. Thus M. Gautier adds to these three cycles four other numbers, including the gestes provinciales, particularly of Lorraine and of Burgundy, the cycle of the Crusades, and two groups of miscellaneous poems belong- ing to the latest dates and quite unconnected with the previous groups. The spirit of the mediaeval epic finds its noblest embodiment in the majestic figure of Charlemagne. There is no need to ask his name : g.^^^ ^^ I'demandet, ne I'estoet enseignier. His father Pepin alone remains by his side, and Charles Martel even is swallowed into the personality of Charlemagne. Thus Mainet gives the story of Charles Martel attributed to Charle- magne. The emperor's life is beyond that of other mortals, his gigantic stature terrifies his foes who. Christians and infidels alike, tremble at his passage, as he goes by with flowing white beard ("I'emperere 'a la barbe florie") and followed by his twelve noble peers like the twelve apostles, among them the Nestor-like figure of duke Naimes and the inseparable compan- ions Roland and Oliver. Charlemagne with his sword Joyeuse is the protector of honor and justice and the embodiment of that love of country which did exist in the Middle Ages, though its birth is often placed at a much later date. At the same time there is an element of sadness about his character which adds to it a greater dignity still: Deus! dist li reis, si penuse est ma vie! 20 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE The epic material and the idea of Charlemagne were probably first drawn from writings almost contemporary with him, such as the works of the German monk of Saint-Gall and other biog- raphies. Some of the poems we possess deal with fantastical and apocr3rphal stories concerning the emperor's origin and child- hood: Berte au grand pied, Mainet, his expeditions against the Saracens of Italy (Aspremont) or of Spain (Roland) or against the Saxons. This last group is best exemplified by the Chanson des Saisnes, of the end of the twelfth century, by Bodel, which is influenced by the period and environment of the Romances of the Round Table. Charlemagne fought also his disobedient vassals, and in the feudal epic the anti-royal mood finds expres- sion after the end of the ninth century. Of such a spirit examples are Raoul de Cambrai, the cycle of the Loherains {Hervis de Metz, Garin le Loherain, Girbert de Metz, Anseis), and the famous stories of the Quatre fils Aimon, or Renaud de Montauban, one of these sons, and the magician cousin Maugis. Renaud de Montauban was playing chess with the nephew of Charlemagne. The nephew struck him, and Charlemagne would not give him satisfaction. Renaud killed the nephew, and rebellion followed, in which the sons of the powerful vassal were driven to seek refuge in the Ardennes and to rely for their safety on their good horse Bayard or on the wondrous deeds of their cousin Maugis of Aigremont. As the years went by through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there were remodellings of old legends and new accre- tions, until finally the epic cycles were constituted. In these cycles complete genealogies of famiUes were evolved, with ex- tensive ramifications in the different poems. The important ones were three in number: of the King, of Garin de Monglane or of the south, of Doon de Mayence or of feudalism. So the author of Deon de Mayence says: Bien sceivent li plusor, n'en sui pas en doutanche, Qu'il n'eut que trois gestes u reaume de Franche: Si fu la premeraine de Pepin et de I'ange, THE EPIC 21 L'autre apres, de Garia de Monglane la franche, Et la tierche si £u de Doon de Maience, Un chevalier vaillant et de grant sapience. The third cycle was little more than an omnium-gatherum and included much that would not go into the other ones. It contained the traitors, a branch much developed in Italy. The second cycle was largely a southern one, its heroes were south- erners, and it told of fights with the Saracens. It is an impor-' tant group and is known also by the names of Girart de Viane, Aimeri de Narbonne, and Guillaume au court nez. It is a vast genealogical collection of over one hundred and twenty thousand verses, telling in many poems of Garin de Monglane and his descendants, the forefather being tacked on later. Of all these heroes the most striking is Guillaume d'Orange, au court nez or au courb nez ("with the hook-nose"). The poem of Girart de Viane is also a good one and contains the famous fight of Roland and Oliver. In addition to these cycles may be mentioned a minor one, more distinctly historical in that it is based on recent events, the group of the Crusades. The source, instead of going back to remote ages, is often a modern one, though it is sometimes treated in the usual fantastic manner. This cycle is not so much one of national patriotism as of foreign warfare and of romantic adventure, at times vieing in fancy with the stories of the Round Table. The oldest poem is the Chanson d'Antioche, written not later than the middle of the twelfth century; it is knightly and historical in spirit. The Chanson de Jerusalem, written soon after, is more popular and legendary. A Uttle later the romantic spirit is developed in the stories of the Che- valier au Cygne and of Godefroi de Bouillon. The story of the swan-knight, indeed, became one of the greatest poetical motifs of modern times and is found in the folk-lore of Grimm's fairy tales as well as in the German versions of the Grail legend and the story of Lohengrin. Its accompanying m^tif of the innocent bride and mother persecuted and by a .cruel mother-in-law 22 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE accused of giving birth to a monster became also famous. Later, in the fourteenth century, this cycle of the Crusades fell into burlesque and parody, as in Baudoin de Sebourg. Such, after all, was the general fate of all the epic material. The stock topics of these poems, tournament, quarrel, challenge, fight, banquet, became more and more hackneyed, and are treated in a burlesque or flippant way, or else the stories are transformed into dull prose renderings. The old dignity of the primitive chanson de geste, which had something Hellenic about it, dis- appears: Charlemagne is no longer Agamemnon avai avSpCiv, or Naimes a Nestor, or Roland a brave Achilles. The long war with England scarcely brings out one or two flashes of poetry, such as the noble Combat des Trente, the contest of thirty Bretons and of thirty Englishmen. The well-meaning but prosaic Bertrand du Guesdin shows that the days of the epic are over. The French epic may perhaps best be understood by a more detailed study of three of its finest examples, the Chanson de Roland, Aliscans, and Hiion de Bordeaux.^ ~7 The song of Roland, the oldest and noblest of the existing poems, belongs in the form known to us to the last third of the eleventh century, or perhaps to the earliest years of the twelfth, though probably there were earlier versions. The minstrel Taillefer sang a song of Roland at the battle of Hastings. The present poem was perhaps written by a Norman, who may have come from Avranches or the Mont Saint-Michel, but whose name is unknown, that of Turoldus at the conclusion being perhaps only the copyist's signature. It contains four thousand ' It would be beyond the scope of the present work to enter into details concerning the very numerous chansons de geste. For further information about the poems, their contents, and bibliographical material, the inquirer may be referred to such introductory works as Gaston Paris's La HUerature {ranqaise au moyen-Age, or the chapter on the epic by L. Gautier in the history of French literature edited by Petit de JuUeville (Vol. I). In German very useful are Grober's Grundriss der romanischen PhUologie, II, i; Voretzsch's Einfuhrung; and Ph. Aug. Becker's Grundriss der altfran- zosischen Literatur. THE EPIC 23 and two decasyllabic verses, assonanced and divided into laisses. Its historical basis is slight : brief allusion is made in the chroni- cles of Einhard to the fact that in 778, when Charlemagne was returning from an expedition into Spain, his rear-guard was attacked, and among those killed was Hruodlandus, prefect of the borderland of Brittany. On this slight foundation is built a mighty tale of patriotism, treachery, and revenge. For seven years Charlemagne has fought in Spain, reducing the whole country except the city of Saragossa, whose king Marsile sends an embassy to treat of peace. Among the ad- visers of Charlemagne two parties are at variance, one led by Charlemagne's noble nephew Roland who wishes to fight, the other by Roland's stepfather, the traitor Ganelon, who hates him. When the French army starts for home, Roland is placed in command of the rear-guard, and about him gather all the noblest leaders of the army. But, as they are going through the defiles of the Pyrenees, they are attacked by a numberless host of Saracens. The army is massacred: four of the French are left, then Roland and Turpin alone; and finally Roland, after valiant efforts to summon help with his horn and to break his noble sword Durandal to prevent it from falling into the hands of the enemy, dies on the battlefield strewn with the bodies of the twenty thousand dead. Charlemagne hears the call for help, but arrives too late to save his nephew. On the. return home Ganelon is tried by feudal rites, champion against champion. He is torn asunder by horses, and Charle- magne, melancholy and careworn, bears the burden of his weary life. The poem of Aliscans,^ in the form which we possess, is a ' It might perhaps be more logical to analyse the newly discovered and recently published Chanson de GuiUaume, which probably represents an older version of the story. But the Aliscans still has the advantage of longer publicity. On the Chanson de GuiUaume, see P. Meyer in Romania (1903), and R. Weeks in Modern Philology (1904 and 1905) and in The lAbrary, London (1905). 24 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE rhymed version of about seven thousand lines by an unknown poet at least a century more modern than the Chanson de Roland, although again there must have been earlier texts. The style is much inferior to the poem of Roland, but it contains many fine passages. Its only historical basis is the struggle against the Saracens, in which memories of Charles Martel's victory at Poitiers in 732 are perhaps confused with the defeat of Guillaume de Provence in 793 by the Saracens. The poem belongs to the cycle of Garin de Monglane, and the hero is the epic Guillaume d'Orange or Guillaume au court nez, more probably the historical Guillaume, comte de Toulouse, who became Saint Guillaume de Gellone. The poem plunges at once into the action: A icel jor ke la dolor fu grans Et la bataille orible en Aliscans, Li quens Guillaumes i soufri grans ahans. It is the day of a great defeat in the plain of Aliscans, where Count Guillaume, in spite of heroic deeds of valor, is vanquished, and his noble nephew, the enfant Vivien, is killed. The count fights his way back to Orange, where his wife. Countess Guiborc, at first fails to recognise him, disguised as he is in pagan garb, vmtil his heroism proves that he is her husband. On hearing of the death of all his comrades, including Vivien, she bids him seek help from the emperor at Saint-Denis. Thither he hastens, is at first ill received, but by his anger cows the emperor into sending help. Guillaume returns, accompanied by a fantastic creature, Renouart, who in the second part of the poem occupies the centre of the stage. Renouart is an uncouth giant, the laugh- ing-stock of all, and relegated to the kitchen. But he is brave, and arming himself with only a tinel, a beam sharpened and polished, he returns with Guillaume, and in a second battle he performs the mightiest deeds, slaughters his foes, and delivers the prisoners. THE EPIC 25 This poem is a combination of the heroic and the mock-heroic type, and the fantastic deeds of Renouart must have delighted the sturdy brawlers of the days of chivalry. A third typical and famous poem is Huon de Bordeaux. At the close of the twelfth century the heroic vein of the chansons de geste . began to fail. The introduction of fantastic legends from the East by means of the Crusades, and the hostility of the feudal barons to their kings, had come about. Charlemagne was no longer the majestic monarch with beard as white as thorn in bloom whom the sim obeyed as it had obeyed Joshua cen- turies before. He was no longer "li reis poesteis" whom all honored as a personification of "dulce France." His twelve apos- tolic peers no longer refrained from speaking their minds in his presence; they even made fun of him to his very face. Finally, the flowery-bearded king developed an irrepressible temper and the queerest of tastes. An example of this transformation is found in Huon de Bordeaux, in which Auberon, better known to us as the Oberon of Shakspere, for the first time makes his appearance. The most ancient form of this poem in existence, by an author unknown to us, was written at the end of the twelfth or in the thirteenth century, at the time of the great vogue of the Romances of the Round Table. Its hero travels through magic lands on an extravagant errand, rescues on his way a beautiful cousin from a castle inhabited by a dreadful giant and defended by monstrous copper sentinels whose mur- derous flails cut down all who attempt to enter, and crosses the sea, like Arion, on a dolphin's back. The poem begins by relating how Huon and his younger brother Girard were waylaid and attacked by Charlemagne's favorite son Chariot, while on their way from Bordeaux to take the oath of allegiance to the emperor. Huon, having killed Chariot in self-defence, was condemned by his irate sovereign to make an expiatory joiurney to the court of the Admiral or Emir of Babylon. There he was to kiss the Admiral's beautiful daughter on the mouth, in presence of the whole court, and 26 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE bring home as proof of his journey a lock of the Admiral's beard and four of his teeth. Huon was obliged on his journey to pass through a wood belonging to the fairy king Auberon, who was "plus biaus que solaus en este." The beautiful dwarf conceived a strong friendship for Huon and presented him with a magic cup capable of furnishing wine to a whole army, but the contents of which glided from the lips of those stained by mortal sin. He also gave to Huon an ivory horn by which he could be summoned at the head of an army of a hundred thou- sand men. With the help of these magic implements and con- tinual aid from the fairy king Huon succeeded in his mission and brought home to France for his bride the fair princess Esclarmonde, as Jason found Medea. The quest of the Saracen princess is a familiar motif. On arriving at Bordeaux, Huon found that his brother Girard had turned traitor and had accused him of treachery to the emperor. Huon was on the point of being put to death when Auberon, appearing like a deus ex machina, disclosed Girard's wickedness. Thereupon Charle- magne reinstated Huon in his duchy, whence he was summoned later to Auberon's kingdom. The fairy king, feeling that his end was near, named Huon as his successor in his magic realm. It is obvious from a comparison of Huon de Bordeaux with earlier chansons de geste that the whole journey to the East, including the episodes of Auberon, is an addition to an earlier poem which consisted probably of the death of Chariot alone. The fairy king, who is of Germanic origin and connected with Alberich of the Ni^elungenlied, is a creature of the religious imagination, offspring of the age in which the marvellous held high sway and good works waited upon it. Auberon thus has a distinctly moral nature, is of beneficent character, and, al- though of purely imaginative origiii, is a king of fairyland only because possessed of magic powers. He works for righteousness as far as the activities of his time, not the cloistral piety, under- stood it. He has moral dignity, and his weaknesses are human, not elfish. He commands and protects chastity and truthful- THE EPIC 27 ness, and punishes lapses of virtue. He weeps like a Christian gentleman and not like a dewdrop-manufacturing fay, for he weeps for sin and suffering and not because a lily has blown down or the stars grown dim or love gone wrong. It is certain that if the romance did not state Auberon's height as that of a dwarf of three feet, no reader's imagination would coriceive him otherwise than as a tall young man, strong with valor and shining with beauty. No incident indicates possession of what the world now accepts as a dwarfish nature. Perhaps it was for this reason that he was represented not as a real dwarf, but as one who had ceased to grow when a beautiful child. He has nothing spiteful; as a man he is celibate, even anchorite, for he has not a queen, Titania remaining unborn until a later writer fathered her. He feels both pity and remorse, he loves Huon like a brother, and he falls into very human rages now and then, as any Christian gentleman may, but he is never a spiteful elf. CHAPTER III ROMANCE IN the Romances of the Round Table we come upon one of the most confusing and most discussed problems of medi- aeval French literature.^ The usually accepted view is that mainly of Gaston Paris: a Celtic origin and Anglo-Norman transmission. According to this theory Arthur was an early Cymric chieftain living in the fifth century, who fought against the Saxons. His tradition was preserved until the composition of the Historia Britonum, an anonymous work, of the ninth century attributed to a certain Nennius. Towards 1136 Geof- frey of Monmouth wrote his Historia Regum Britanniae, adapted about 1 150 by Wace in the Roman de Brut, containing Celtic tales concerning Arthur and a history of the British kings before the Saxon conquests,, from Brutus, grandson of ^neas. Geoffrey's history is by no means the only source of the Arthu- rian cycle and makes no mention of the Round Table or the Coming of Arthur. The material was transmitted by Breton lays in the form of songs and stories, carried perhaps almost simultaneously from Wales to England and from England to the continent by Welsh and by Anglo-Norman bards and story- tellers, as lays and poems. From the middle of the twelfth to the middle of the thirteenth century the stories spread in England and in France. The oldest poems are connected with the Tristan legend of Celtic origin and perhaps of English transmission, the fragments of Berol, not later than 1150, and of Thomas, not 'The various theories as to the origin of the Romances of the Round Table are set forth in Voretzsch's EinfUkrung, Chap. IX, Sect. 10. — The usually accepted view today is transmission from Brittany and also through Anglo-Norman. 28 ROMANCE 29 later than 1170, though the date of Berol is now sometimes placed in the last decade of the twelfth century .j The first French writer of importance is Chretien de Troyes who takes this material as his starting-point and, making use of octo- syllabic couplets, by the addition of much of his own invention develops his long and elaborate poems of polite society of the France of Louis VII and Philippe-Auguste. A partly discarded view increases the English share: the prose stories are ante-dated and put before the verse, though that is a very unusual order, and then attributed to Walter Map or Mapes. The Celtic side of the theory of Gaston Paris is increased by Celtic students. Through Geoffrey the French early became better acquainted with what they already knew. Zimmer, however, maintains that the Anglo-Norman-Celtic theory in this shape is totally at fault. The method of trans- mission to France from England is doubtful, and racial hate would prevent the passage from Wales to England. The true source is rather in Armorica or continental Brittany, whence the legends went both to the neighboring France and to Great Britain. The mention of Broceliande, for instance, is purely Armorican. Foerster's view is in harmony with the last, and he states the arguments against the Anglo-Norman theory more fully than any one else. He emphasises the idea that the French Arthurian poems are nearly original or modern and contain little of primitive tradition. The popularity of the Arthurian epic, then, as it appears, is mainly as an expression of a new social and literary ideal, given in works coincident with the decline of the chansons de geste, wherein the character of the ruler is diminished in importance and becomes merely a connecting-link for the romantic achievement of a knightly society of poetry and of the imagination. Of this society the setting or environment only is Celtic and the spirit is almost totally modem. Such a theory, it is obvious, very largely increases the part attributed to a poet like Chrdtien de Troyes. The unprejudiced reader finds it difficult to deny the impor- 30 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE tance of Celtic tradition, at least as a starting-point. The mystic sadness, the spirit of melancholy and brooding, the passionate love element, are all in harmony with what we are taught is to be found in the Celtic nature and are characteristic of the older fragments in our possession. It is true that in the hands of Chretien de Troyes the spirit of the matiere de Bretagne is very distinctly modified into an exemplification of the social graces and of courtly love. The Tristan legends belong to two groups, one represented by the Berol fragment and the other by the portions of the poems of Thomas, both reconstructed With the aid of foreign transla- tions by modern scholars. The story is one of the strongest examples of passionate and romantic love in literature. Certain elements resembling other myths, such as the stories of Theseus and of King Midas and the long ears, suggest influences from other races; but the gist of the tale, after all, depends on the masterful passion of the young couple Tristan and Iseult, a love which nothing can thwart, law or convention, a love which is one of adulterous passion, but purified by its own strength. It is about the origin of this motif that discussion turns. ' Tristan is the nephew of King Marc of Cornwall, sent to Ire- land to get the fair Iseult who is to be his uncle's bride. On the return journey they drink by mistake a magic potion which had been prepared by Iseult's mother to win King Marc's love. From that time overpowering passion holds them, iri spite of the duties of marriage or the sufferings of the lovers in their guilty wandering life. The element of romantic love is also found in the lays of Marie de France, who wrote about 1175. She was a French woman hving at the thoroughly French court of Henry II of England to whom her lays are dedicated, as her fables are to William Longsword, son of Henry and of Fair Rosamund. In this courtly society was felt the influence of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the spirit of the Provengal troubadours. Marie de France became familiar with the sentimental side of love to which her ROMANCE 31. sex made her susceptible and which she expresses in her lays. These are of Celtic origin, some perhaps Armorican, others Welsh. M. Bedier's theory of their transmission is that the travelling bards recited in bad French short narratives inter- spersed with simg interludes, as in Aucassin et Nicolette, and that Marie put the narrative part into literary form by versifying the tales, allowing the less easily adaptable lyrical, element to drop out. These tales, one of which, the Chevrefeuille, is con- nected with the Tristan legend, are stories of love among lords and ladies, a love more refined than in the rough passions of the chansons de gesie or the violent frenzy of the Tristan legend. They tell of the married woman who loves a knight and tells her lord that she goes to listen to a nightingale; whereupon the cruel husband snares one of these birds and throws the innocent and bleeding thing at his wife, who then sends it to her lover in token that they must no longer meet; the lady shut in a tower by a jealous husband and loved by a knight who visits her in the form of a beautiful bird (Yonec), as in the tale of the Oiseau bleu; the knight who by a chain of circumstances is led to marry two wives to both of whom he is faithful, who both love him and honor each other (Eliduc). Contemporary with and a little before Marie de France is Chretien de Troyes, the greatest author in the French Arthurian cycle and one of the most important writers in French literature, both for his influence and the qualities of his new style. Chre- tien was probably born at Troyes in Champagne and was well educated. His early writings, which have been mostly lost,i included adaptations and translations from Ovid and others upon unknown subjects, among them one on King Marc and Iseult la blonde, directly or indirectly connected with the Tris- tan legend. He travelled in England and died, according to > The anonymous Ovide moralise of the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, long attributed to "Crestien le Gouays," incorporates the story of Philomela under the name Philomena. This episode is now assigned to Chretien de Troyes. 32 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Gaston Paris, in 1175- when °^^y about forty years of age. Foerster makes him live longer. Those poems which have been preserved are, besides a doubtful Guillaume d'Angleterre, the romances Erec, Cliges, Lancelot or the Chevalier de la charrette, Yvain or the CheDalier au lion, and Perceval or the Grail poem. Chretien de Troyes made a deep impression on mediaeval romance. He is distinctly a stylist, composing works destined to be read at leisure or often reread aloud rather than, Uke the chansons de geste, to be sung by the travelling minstrels. His language, though often monotonous to the modern reader, shows a desire to produce a definite effect through choice of expression, an endeavor which sometimes falls near virtuosity and preciosity, pointes and plays upon words. Chretien plans his stories with definite plot and tries to keep curiosity awake by mystery in the development and by long concealment of the hero's real name. He is a psychologist in his study of emotion and his presentation of love which becomes the subject of analysis and dissertation and passes into court -gallantry, of which Chretien is the chief representative in the literature of Northern France. This feature of his writings he himself partly attributes to the influence of Marie de Champagne, daughter of that Eleanor of Aquitaine already mentioned in connection with Henry II, by her first marriage with Louis VII of France. It was through this princess that the spirit of the troubadours became fashionable in the north, and the code of gallantry of which we have a good example in the work De amore, written in Latin between 1180 and 1220 by Andreas Capellanus (Andre le Chapelain). This very unexpected work on the part of a cleric is connected with the now exploded theory of the judgments of the Courts of Love in the Middle Ages, in which some critics beUeved. It presents, at any rate, the theory that the true courtly love existing between man and woman is between the lady and her knight, even when the lady is married to another man. This is a form of adultery: thus the motif of the contemporary French novel is as old as the ROMANCE 33 Middle Ages. True love should be illegitimate and furtive, the lady is all powerful to indulge her whims, the knight must submit, for it is this love which will make him better. The exposition of this love-spirit varies in Chretien's different works and increases as he goes on writing. Ereq is a form of the Griselda story of the innocent and persecuted wife. Cliges tells of the love of a youth and a maiden faithful to each other, though the latter, Phenice, has been obliged to wed Cliges's imcle, the emperor of Constantinople. ■ She escapes at last by magic herbs which bring on a simulation of death, as in Romeo and Juliet. The general plot reminds one somewhat of the Tristan story, though the adulterous love of youth and maiden is toned down from passion to emotion to such an extent that Foerster looks on the whole poem as an "Anti-Tristan." The amorous dialogue ahd the amorous monologue, showing the influence of Ovid, and various forms of the psychology of love are here developed. The Chevalier de la charrette or Lancelot (finished by another writer, Godefroi de Lagny) shows pairficularly the influence of the prevalent theories of love, the amours of Lancelot and Guinevere, and the story of the knight obliged through love to degrade himself by riding in an imknightly cart. The Chevalier, au lion is stiU more fanciful on account of the enchanted wood of Broceliande, a magic foimtain, a mysterious knight, a trusty lion. It somewhat resembles the roman d'aventures in which a knight, after strange experiences, rescues a lady. Such is the spirit of Chretien de Troyes. In him we find a cultivated writer : Par les livres, que nous avons, Les fais des anciens savons Et del siecle, qui fu jadis. He expresses the tone of prevalent social ideals of chivalry: his hero will be preu and cortois and ready to do largess or to perform brave deeds. Love is his main topic: he writes for women and is fond of describing beauty and the adornments of 34 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the toilet. He scorns the lower classes: "uns cortois morz" is better than "uns vilains vis." His plots are imperfect accord- ing to modern views, but were well suited to the unsophisticated readers of his day. His style is often graceful, but sometimes falls into affectation and trifling. About the names and the scenery of Arthurian legend, which often plays a very insignifi- cant part in his poems, he built a world of romance. There the life, remote as it seemed, expressed the social ideals, though not always the actual realities, of the courtly set of which he was the poet. But still another work by Chretien has had the greatest influence on the modern imagination and has grown into one of the world's most cherished symbols of ideahsm : the Holy Grail. The origin of the Grail may go back to heathen folk-lore. In Chretien's Perceval the author, taking some earlier legend as starting-point, veils the meaning and form of the Grail for literary purposes in mystery, then dies before finishing his poem and explaining his secret. With his successors it is endowed with mystical qualities which the practical Chretien probably never intended, and becomes a wondrous stone of precious properties (Wolfram von Eschenbach), imparting life and immortality, the vessel in which Christ's blood was received as he hung upon the cross, or the dish used by him at the Last Supper. By an accretion of symbolism and idealism it has remained in litera- ture until the days of R. S. Hawker, Tennyson, and Wagner. Closely connected with it is the search for perfection, whether the desire for knowledge of a Faust or the quest for the blue flower of German Romanticism. Chretien's Perceval is a poem of chivalry. The hero is a youth brought up in retirement and ignorance by a widowed mother, to keep him from the dangers of knighthood and men clad in armor. But one day he sees noble beings with shining weapons, beautiful as angels. He is ambitious to follow and sets forth on his wanderings in spite of his mother who clothes him in, Unen and leather to make him ridiculous and bring him home. ROMANCE 35 Gradually he learns experience and is dubbed knight, being instructed in charity and piety. One of the counsels given him is to avoid asking too many questions. In the course of his adventures he learns true love by the rescue of a distressed damsel; he visits the Castle of the Fisher King, where pass before him in procession a wonderfiil sword, a lance dripping blood, a ten-branched candlestick, and the mysterious "graal," borne by a maiden. Perceval, whose name even to this point has not been revealed by the author, mindful of his mother's advice, does not dare to ask the significance of this Grail. The consequences are unfortunate, for the question would have healed the sufferings of the Fisher King. Chretien's hero has many other adventures, but the narrative was unfinished by its author. The poem received different continuations and endings in which Gauvain (Gawain) continues prominent, by Gaucher de Denain, Mennecier, and Gerbert. It is in the later parts that the Grail begins to acquire a mystic character and becomes the dish in which Joseph of Arimathea received the blood of Christ. Other writers dealt with the story of Perceval and the Grail. The most important was Robert de Boron at the beginning of the thirteenth century, who united the Grail stories more definitely with the Roimd Table. Robert wrote a Perceval, lost in its original form, which, often contradicting Chretien, told of the final winning of the Grail by Perceval and the end of the Arthurian world of legend. This poem was preceded by one on Joseph of Arimathea and the early history of the Grail, and one on Merlin. Finally, by other writers, the heroes were connected with the Quest for the Grail. Perceval gave way to Galahad, the chaste son of the guilty Lancelot. Some of these stories exist only in prose or in foreign renderings. Thus the Grail legend, made up of so many sources, tells in its French form the tale of the vessel used at the Last Supper, in which Joseph of Arimathea receives the blood of the Christ. It is brought to England .and becomes the object of the Quest, 36 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE as the Crusaders sought the Holy Sepulchre, by knights of whom the chief are Perceval and Galahad. The latter is the pure knight who achieves the Quest. The growth of the mystic symbolism in the successors of Chretien is obvious, and the superimposition of a monastic ideal of chastity over the inven- tions of the mundane poet is interesting. It has been well pointed out that in the Arthurian cycle "there was room for knights of the Holy Ghost and knights of a Lady's garter." The matter of Brittany centres about Tristan, Lancelot, and the Grail. The treatment ranges from sensual realism to mysticism. Chretien, the French society poet, tells the stories in a mtmdane manner. The most important poet who may be classed with Chretien de Troyes was his contemporary Gautier d'Arras, author of Eracle and Ille et Galeron. The matiere de Bretagne was not the only one to interest mediasval readers. A large portion of the subject of romance had a more directly literary origin and was based on antiquity. Greek and Latin history and legend, as well as Oriental folk-lore, formed the main content of this cycle, known as that of an- tiquity. As Arthur was the centre of .the Celtic romance, the literature of gallantry and courtesy, so Alexander stood forth in this cycle as the model of largesse, the generous lord of feudal life. Near him stand,, though with different characteristics, the companion figures of Caesar the conqueror and of Hector the pattern of virtues, modest, valiant, wise, and calm. With the exception of Virgil and Ovid this literature is almost entirely based upon authors long since relegated to second or even to lower rank. The name of Virgil kept much of the glamor which, as a prophet of the coming of Christ and a magician or oracle consulted through the sortes Virgilianae, he ha4. gained in the early Middle Ages. Statins, too, was honored partly because he was thought to have been a Christian, and the vehemence of Lucan pleased an age given to crudeness even in the midst of its refinement. Ovid, on the other hand, attracted ROMANCE 37 women by his tales of love and metamorphosis, and men by the opportunity which his stories afforded for moralising and instruction. The ^neid of Virgil, the Thebaid of Statius, the Pharsaiia of Lucan, and of Ovid the Heroides and the Metamor- phoses (as moralised by "Crestien le Gouays" and in Latin by Pierre Bersuire in the fourteenth century), are for our purposes the chief sources of this Uterature. But the Middle Ages added other works which at times almost outbalanced these writings. Owing to the trifling knowledge of Greek, Homer was only a name. There existed; however, two Latin texts of uncertain origin, but probably derived from some Greek originals, known as Dares Phry- gius and Dictys Cretensis. As preserved to us the Dictys narrative is the longer, but the writers of mediaeval epic may have known a still longer Dares lost to us. The two works purported to relate the siege of Troy from the standpoint of besieger and besieged. Dictys of Crete belongs to the invading host and Dares of Phrygia is in the beleaguered city. To the uncritical mind of the Middle Ages these narratiV'es by "eye witnesses," wretchedly composed as they are, seemed more credible than the works of Homer, writing a htmdred years or more after the events described. Thus Dares and Dictys are the starting-points of much of the Trojan material of the Middle Ages. A point of departure for the Alexander legend is the Pseudo- Callisthenes, a compilation going back to the first years of the Christian era and written in Greek in Alexandria, itself a com- pendium of legendary lore on the Macedonian conqueror and known in the Latin renderings of Julius Valerius (with its ninth century abridgment or Epitome), and "Leo archipresbyter," or the Historia de proeliis of the tenth century. Besides these there were, the so-called "Letter of Alexander to Aristotle" on the wonders of India, the "Correspondence" of Alexander ^nd Dindimus, king of the Brahmans, a brief rhythmic abece- dary poem on Alexander, and the Iter ad Paradisum. These 38 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE compilations are full of marvels, the Alexander material repre- senting a fantastic imagination quite as striking as the fairy devices of the Arthurian cycle and the mixture of realism and necromancy in the narratives of Thebes and Troy. For magic was believed in, and its use was not inconsistent with a realistic treatment in fiction. As a matter of fact, the people of the Middle Ages looked upon the antiquity of Greece and Rome as something very like their own times. They were people of strong individuality and appropriated the idea of antiquity or gave it a veneer of their civilisation by playing with the narratives of Eastern marvels brought to the Western world through the Crusades. The picture of life is then of the Middle Ages, and we pass among the knights and ladies of the twelfth century, amid buildings of that age, turreted castles and fortresses. Calchas is a bishop, warriors fight on horseback instead of in chariots. The greatest writer in this cycle was Benoit de Sainte-More of Champagne or of Touraine, who about 1160-1165 wrote the Roman de Troie and perhaps, a little later, a Chronicle of the dukes of Normandy. The Roman de Troie is a poem of about thirty thousand lines in octosyllabic rhyming couplets drawn from the sources suggested, and itself one of the most influential works of the Middle Ages. For, though the work of Benoit him- self was soon equalled in fame by a Latin rendering in the thir- teenth century by Guido delle Colonne of Messina, which spread through Europe and furnished material to Boccaccio, as well as the episode of Troilus and Cressida to Chaucer and Shakspere, the story of the loves of Troilus and the fickle Briseida, as Benoit calls her, is one of the great contributions to modern literature. The tale of the origins of Rome is continued in the Eneas, of about ten thousand lines, by an unknown author writ- ing almost at the same time as Benoit or perhaps a little before, who partly paraphrases Virgil and partly indulges his own fondness for anecdotes and descriptions. Another Roman narrative is the Jules Cesar of Jacot de Forest, written in the ROMANCE 39 second half of the thirteenth century, inspired by Lucan indi- rectly through a prose narrative of Jehan de Thuin. The Roman de Thebes, based on Statins and, until recently, often attributed to the author of the tale of Troy which it preceded by a few years, had certainly the merit of anteriority, and was perhaps the first to draw attention to the legends of the ancient world. The story of Alexander is told in a poem in lines of twelve syllables by Lambert le Tort and Alexandre de Bernay or de Paris and Pierre de Saint-Cloud. It was preceded by poems in ten syllables by the clerk Simon, and before that in Provengal by Alberic de Besangon or rather Briangon. From the version in twelve syllables comes the name of the modern Alexandrine metre. Many other legends, often love romances derived from an- tiquity or at any rate from Hellenistic and Byzantine Greece modified by the Orient, were popular in the Middle Ages. Some- times the tales were incorporated in the legends of hagiography, sometimes they were independent narratives. One of the most famous was the story of Floire et Blanchefleur, telling the love of two children, which has been called the "Paul and Virginia" of the Middle Ages. Another form of the same motif is one of the masterpieces of mediaeval literature, the "chante-fable" Aucassin et Nicolette, of the twelfth century or in the present form perhaps of the thirteenth, in prose inter- spersed with songs. Summing up our study of epic and romance, it may be said that French mediaeval narrative poetry is the expression of the r'ehgious, political, and social ideals of the time: Christianity, feudalism, and chivalry. The national epic is the embodiment of feudalism, in which the emperor Charles, representative of God and defender of the Faith, appears surrounded by his wise and brave peers, preux and sages, almost Uke Christ and the apostles, and no irreverence was thought. He protects his fatherland against the Saracen invader; his wisdom is infinite. In the Arthurian cycle the touch is lighter. We are in a 40 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE world of romance, of sentiment, intended for the delectation of women. The heroes are preux as before, but the ideal is cour- toisie. Arthur and his new peers of the Round Table are the knights of gallantry and devotion, of religious chastity and of mundane love or sensuality. They are noble in demeanor, brilliant in raiment, radiant in their glittering armor, and confi- dent in their loving heart and trusty sword. Many are knights errant whose duty is to win love by hard met adventure. The Grail brotherhood like the new Templars are knights of a True Faith, as Charlemagne was, but their worship is sophisticated and finds vent in symbols of deep mystery. At the same time the worship is of woman, who has encroached upon the devotion of man, just as in the Church the Virgin encroached upon the worship of God and of Jesus, though we shall not say with Michelet that "Dieu avait change de sexe." The service of chivalry is, therefore, partly religious in its fealty to the Church, in its ordination, its rites, and worldly in its cult of woman and her beauty. The ideal of the epic is masculine. The ideal of romance is feminine. This differentiation does not apply to the late chansons de geste, which become romantic too, nor is it so true of the cycle of antiquity which is, on the whole, exotic, except in so far as the memories of the Crusades made the Orient a home of adventure and of romance. In the stories of antiquity we have love, too, to which even the greatest succumb, as in the amorous misad- ventures of Aristotle and of Virgil. But to a writer like Benoit de Sainte-More love is a weakness and source of woe, as it caused the fall of Troy and brought tribulation to faithful Medea, to brave Achilles, and to the goodly knight Troilus. CHAPTER IV LYRIC POETRY THE origins of French lyric poetry are obscure/ and even the specimens of mediasyal literature preserved to us do not represent the early forms. We hear, but do not know much, of primitive satirical or religious songs. It is surmised that the lyric matter is largely derived from the early spring festivities, or celebrations of the renouveau called the chants de mai, of which, indeed, we have actual descendants in the popular May-day festivals and crownings of the May-queen known to children of today. It was suggested by Gaston Paris that in remote days spring songs and dances became popular among the maidens and married women who, indulging for a brief period in harmless and playful Saturnalia, sang of love and eman- cipation from convention and restraint, perhaps with a freedorn of speech which might seem surprising to those who forget the absence of reticence in olden times and the somewhat similar nature cult in the songs of the Athenian rural celebrations portrayed in the Acharnians of Aristophanes. These songs of spring, or reverdies, developed, if the theory is well founded, as a combination of dances and songs of May and calls to love by girls. Perhaps in some borderland between north and south, in Poitou or Limousin, in the vicinity of those districts where courtly life and love were to have their home, these songs gradually acquired a more aristocratic form and thus gave rise to the great outburst of courtly lyric poetry of the south, the "As in the case of epic and of romance the theories concerning the origins of lyric poetry may be found summarised in Voretzsch's EinfUh- rung, Chap. V. 41 42 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE songs of the troubadours, destined later to be carried all over the continent of Europe. The earliest choruses or rounds, of which we have no actual representatives, were cultivated all over France, but perhaps even more in the north than in the south. Then they rose to popvdarity in a new literary form in the south, whence they spread once more over the land. Leading authorities upon early lyrical poetry, such as M. Jean- roy, divide the literature into objective and subjective types. The former of these, more purely autochthonous in the north though modified by the south, retains the predominance of the feminine element, as in the old May songs, and includes character poems with a dramatic element or opposition of persons expressed or hinted at. The literature is more popular and woman is the centre. The subjective poetry expresses the emotions of the courtly and sophisticated troubadour as he thinks of the woman he loves. The point of view is that of the man. The objective poetry shows itself in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries under the form of partly narrative songs or musings upon deeds and emotions, called chansons d'hisioire because of the narrative element, or chansons de toile because they were spinning or weav- ing songs or ballads sung by women at their work; in dramatic songs setting forth some scene; and in the rounds or dance songs keeping up the traces of the old celebrations. Many of these poems deal with the woes of unhappy married life, of the delight of illicit love and longing for the lover. Of these a no- table form is the aube or song of separation at dawn of the lovers who listen with regret to the proclamation of morning by the lark or the watchman on the tower replacing the nightingale. This is the moiif which Shakspere, uses in the third act of Romeo and Juliet: Jul. Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: It was the nightingale and not the lark, That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree: Believe me, love, it was the nightingale. LYRIC POETRY 43 Rom. It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East: Night's candles are burned out and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops; I must be gone and live or stay and die. The atmosphere of these songs is akin to the sentimental ballad or romance still popular among the French, and famiUar in English in the songs of Thomas Haynes Bayley: Belle Yolans en ses chambres seoit, ^ D'un bon samit une robe cosoit, A son ami tramettre la voloit. En sospirant ceste chanson chantoit: "Diex! tant est dous li nons d'amor, Ja n'en cuidai sentir dolor." Perhaps the most attractive form of all is the pastourelle, originally the song of a shepherdess and developing into the story of her encounter with a knight who wooes her in the strain of: "Where are you going, my pretty maid?" Ce fut en mai, Au dous tens gai Que la saison est bele, , Main me levai, Joer m'en alai V Lez une fontenelle. En un vergier, Clos d'eglantier Oi une viele; La vi dansier Un chevalier Et une damoisele. This love the maiden usually scorns and, without the regrets of Maud Muller, remains faithful to her rustic swain. The song is often interspersed with some melodious trill or refrain. The 44 A HISTORY OF. FRENCH LITERATURE charming Jeu de Robin et Marion of Adam de la Halle is merely the drarrutisatioii of the pastourelle motif. The subjective poetry was permeated with the more aristo- cratic and courtly spirit of the troubadours whom the northern writers began to imitate zealously in the middle of the twelfth century. The points of contact between the north and the south had become numerous, whether by travel in France itself or by contiguity in the remote East during the Crusades. So the poetry of the north became, in the lyric as elsewhere, filled with the spirit of polite society, of courtly love and its scholastic code. The spirit was made known by a southerner descended from the troubadours, Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Louis VII and then of Henry II of England, from whom came in turn the troubadours Richard Cceur de Lion and Thibaut de Champagne. The daughters of Eleanor, Marie, wife of Henri de Champagne, and Aelis, wife of Thibaut de Blois, did even more than their mother. A sister of these princes, Aelis, also the wife, after Eleanor, of Louis VII, was of a kindred feehng. These ladies welcomed the troubadours at their courts and encouraged the northern poets to imitate them. Bernart de Ventadour and Bertran de Born were in favor at the court of Eleanor, and Marie received Rigaut de Barbezieux and suggested topics to Chretien. The current passed through Champagne, Picardy, Flanders, and Artois. Thus there sprang up an abun- dant literature of set worship in song. The earlier specimens were simple and graceful. But later, under the influence of the courtly love borrowed from the writings of Ovid, the Ars ama- toria, the Heroides, the loves of ^neas and Dido, the stories of the Metamorphoses, and developed under the influence of scholas- tic methods, codified later by Andre le Chapelain, there grew up a collection of poems full of exaggerations and subtilised conceits, of euphuism and preciosity, not merely of language, but of thought, for which Peire Roger and Folquet de Marseille were partly responsible. The imitation of Provence was as baneful as the Italianism of the sixteenth century. The code LYRIC POETRY 45 of Love, who is personified as a stern potentate with rigid laws, commands immediate and unquestioned sacrifice of self to the chosen lady, even of one's honor. This love, which is illegitimate and often furtive, a thing more easily imderstood when marriage was a matter of convenience without cpnsultation of aflSnities, is set forth with elaborate psychological analysis. All nature partakes in it, and the very birds sing and dispute of love. The courtly lyric develops certain forms of its own, such as the tenson and the jeu parti and others less remote from the popu- lar lyric, as the rondel and the ballette. The tenson and jeu parti were debates or contests in song in the amoebic strain and afforded good scope for satire and allusions not directly con- nected with love, or the treatment of love procedure and love dilemmas, or airopuu. The rondel with its repeated refrain, of which the modern forms of the triolet and rondeau descend, the ballette with set form, the inchoate lai and virelai (or rather vireli), with the irregularity connected later with the Pindaric style, were afterwards the favorite forms of poetry. Especially the ballade in the hands of Guillaume de Machault and Eustache Deschamps became pre-eminently the lyric form, until super- seded at the Renaissance by the sormet. The poets belonged to all spheres of life and sang in different moods of different things. There were Crusader's songs with warlike refrains and battle-cries of Oltree (Forward), there were willow-waily tunes of love, winter songs of good cheer, spring- time tunes of merry-making, or ballads of homesickness and love of coimtry. The often quoted song of Gace Brule: Les oisillons de mon pays Ai ois en Bretaigne; A lor chant m'est il bien avis Qu'en la douce Champaigne Les 01 jadis, reminds one of the modem "J'aime k revoir ma Normandie" of Fred6ric Berat or Chateaubriand's "Combien j'ai douce souvenance, Du joli lieu de ma naissance." These songs were 46 ■ A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE interspersed with refrains like "dorenlot," "triquedondaine," "dorenleu diva," or "valura, valura, valuraine," probably a relic of primitive dance songs. The names of the lyric poets are legion. Prominent among them were Audefroi le Bastart, one of the earliest authors of ballads of sentiment; Conon de Bethime, who was an orator and Crusader as well as a trouvere and a writer of romance, a con- temporary at the court of Marie de Champagne of Chretien de Troyes; the Chitelain de Couci, in legend the victim of his love for the Lady of Fayel and killed by a jealous husband who made his wife eat his rival's heart; Blondel de Nesle of Picardy, linked in story with the name of Richard Coeur de Lion; Gace Brule; Gautier d'Espinau or d'Epinal; Colin Muset, a "thir- teenth century Clement Marot"; Gilebert de Berneville; and Philippe de Nanteiiil. Gautier de Coinci, known for his Mir- acles de Notre Dame, wrote also religious pastourelles. High in rank were Thibaut IV de Champagne, king of Navarre in the beginning of the thirteenth century, the adorer, it was said, of Blanche of Castille, and Charles, count of Anjou and king of Sicily, brother of Saint Louis. To the bourgeois class belonged the poets of Arras, Jean Bodel, who also- wrote the Chanson des Saisnes, author of the pathetic Conge or "FareweU" to his fellow-townsmen when stricken by leprosy and obliged to with- draw from the world to a hving death; Adam de la Halle, the lyrical satirist of his native town. The puys (literary gather- ings) of Arras and other northern cities, with set competitions and prizes, tended to emphasise still more the written lyric and pave the way for the writers of the fourteenth century and the Chambres de rhetorique of Flanders and the grands rhetoriqueurs of later days. We must not forget, however, in the thirteenth century, one of the greatest poets of that time, the wandering minstrel and jongleur, the Parisian Rustebeuf. Little is known of his life, except that it was one of poverty and of distress. He was a versatile author who belongs to the history of the drama, of LYRIC POETRY 47 the fabliaux, of satire because of his participation as champion of the University of Paris and Guillatime de Saint-Amour in the quarrels against the religious orders. But, in particular, he stands out among the lyric writers for certain quahties which few of the conventional poets possessed. Whatever the form of his poem, whether a religious song, a cry to the Crusades, a complainte, a satire upon hypocrisy, a dispute,^ or a song such as the Dit des ribauz de Grieve, he has an individuahty which sets him apart from his contemporaries: Ribaut, or estes vous a point! Li arbre despouillent lor branches, Et vous n'avez de robes point, Si en avrez froit a vos hanches! Quel vous fussent or li pourpoint, Et li sorcot fourre a manches! * Vostre soler n'ont mestiei: d'oint: Vous fetes de vos talons planches! Les noires mouches vous ont point: Or, vous repoinderont les blanches! Rustebeuf, poor like Villon, though his vagrancy was forced upon him rather than of his choosing, has been compared to Villon for his personal touch: Je touz de froid, de faim baaiUe, Je sui sans cotes et sans Uz. The lyric poetry of medieval France was, however, not limited to French. That country was the home of abundant Latin poetry, religious and secular, clerkly and sometimes popular, in feeling if not in language. Though it could not claim the most magnificent hymn ever written, the Dies Irae of Thomas of Celano, stiU it was the land of one who has been called the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, and the most productive of hymn writers, the Breton mystic of the twelfth century, Adam de Saint- Victor. Moreover, Abelard, his rival Bernard of Clairvaux, Bernard of Cluny, Hildebert, and Peter Venerable are all noble names. 48 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE But France was also the chief starting-place of an abun- dant Latin literature more akin to the profane poems already described: the Goliardic poetry. Paris was the home of the great university,' and from Paris had spread the international guild of vagrant clerks or beggar scholars who wandered from town to town, sponging a living if possible from a Church digni- tary or mimicipal official with whose learning they claimed a freemasonry, or as willingly rioting in tavern or brothel with dice-box or wine-jug. The quotations here given are accom- panied by the versions of John Addhigton Symonds: Meum est propositum ' In the public house to die in tabema mori; Is my resolution; vinum sit adpositum Let wine to my lips he nigh morientis ori, At life's dissolution: ut dicant, cum venerint, That will make the angels cry, angelomm chori: With glad elocution, "Deus sit propitius "Grant this toper, God mi high, huic potatori!" Grace and absolution!" These men of more or less learning who begged and perhaps stole their living were the minstrels of clerkly society and the counterparts of the jongleur in the fabliau who, as he travelled, squandered his books in gambling and marked his passage by his pawned Ovid, Lucan, Juvenal, Virgil, and Statins. The poems roughly classed as Goliardic include, however, some by men of position who would have scorned to be classed among the va- grants, such as the Frenchmen Hugues d'Orleans (Hugues le Pri- mat), of the twelfth century, and Philippe de Greve, a chancellor of Notre-Dame in the early thirteenth; Serlo of Wilton, an Eng- lishman who taught in Paris in the twelfth century, and perhaps the English scholar Walter Map. The Goliardic poets belonged, indeed, to all lands and had that cosmopolitanism which thdr universal language made possible, so that the nationality of individual songs becomes a minor matter. They seem to have constituted an informal brotherhood, never a close-knit frater- nity, with an imaginary leader or chancellor, Golias, whence their LYRIC POETRY 49 name of Goliardi, derived perhaps from gula, perhaps from Goliath, a term which Bernard appKed to Abelard in opprobrium, but which they may have taken as a term of honor. The best poems were written between 11 50 and 1225. ' The Goliardic poets were full of the love of life expressed in pagan erotic verse. At times they composed moral, satirical, or political poems, but more often eating and drinking ballads or songs of nature and May-day pleasure . like the pastourelles, the knight becoming, however, the clerk: Exiit diluculo There went out in the dawning light rustica puella A little rustic maiden; cum grege, cum baculo, Her flock so white, her crook so slight, cum lana novella. With fleecy new wool laden. Sunt in grege parvulo Small is the flock, and there you'll see ovis et asella, The she-ass and the wether; vitula cum vitulo, This goat's a he, and that's a she, caper et capella. The bull-calf and the heifer. Conspexit in cespite She looked upon the green sward, where scholarem sedere: A student lay at leisure: "Quid tu facis, domine? "What do you there, young sir, so fair? veni mecum ludere." Come, play with me, my treasure I" Finally, in the poem De Phyllide et Flora, probably composed by an Italian, Goliardic literature has bequeathed one of the most graceful compositions in existence and unsurpassed by all the masterpieces in lighter vein on which so much praise has been lavished, from Aucassin et Nicolette to the Anacreontics of the sixteenth century. The poem in the form of a dihat tells how two maidens go forth into the country together. Phyllis loves a soldier and Flora a scholar. They discuss the relative merits of the clerk's and the warrior's life and then consult Love himself who pronounces judgment in favor of the scholars. The whole poem is a work of genius; Anni parte 'florida,' In the spring-time, when the skies caelo puriore, C'^*^ "I winter's mourning, so A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE picto terrae gremio, vario colore, dum fugaret sidera nuntius Aurorae liquet somnus oculos Phyllidis et Florae. And bright flowers of every hue Earth's lap are adorning, At the hour when Lucifer Gives the stars their warning, Phyllis woke and Flora too, In the early morning. Erant ambae virgines et ambae reginae, Phyllis coma libera, Flora compto crine: non sunt formae virginum sed formae divinae, et respondent facie, luci matutinae. Both were virgins, both I ween. Were by birth princesses; Phyllis let her locks flow free. Flora trained her tresses. Not like girls they went; but like Heavenly holinesses; And their faces shone like dawn 'Neath the day's caresses. Susurrabat modicum ventus tempestivus, locus erat viridi gramine festivus, et in ipso gramine defluebat rivus vivus atque garrulo murmure lascivus. In the tree-tops overhead A spring breeze was blowing. And the meadow lawns around With green grass were growing; Through the grass a rivulet From the hill was flowing, Lively, with a pleasant sound Garrulously going. Consedere virgines, herba sedem dedit. Phyllis prope rivulum. Flora longe sedit; et dum iedet utraque, ac in sese redit, amor corda vulnerat et utramque laedit, etc., etc. On the sward the maidens sat. Naught that seat surpasses; Phyllis near the rivulet, Flora 'mid the grasses; Each into the chamber sweet Of her own soul passes. Love divides their thoughts, and wounds With his shafts the lasses. Etc., etc. CHAPTER V HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND CHRONICLES THE earliest history deserving the name is to be found chiefly in the form of Latin texts drawn up under the auspices of the clerks in the monasteries. But these documents were for many years distinct from the popular Uterature, though not any more exempt from fabulous elements and errors. The popular historical material, indeed, has its starting-point in the brief songs concerning tribal or national heroes which perhaps grew up, as already described, into the chansons de geste. Then, too, in those days but little difference was made between the biographies of religious or of secular heroes, so that the numerous lives of the saints may well be placed under the head of what seemed historical literature. The earlier material is, naturally, for the most part anonymous. Later, in the long rhymed chronicles in the vulgar tongue we are apt to find them attributed to a specific author, and in the works of Villehardouin or Joinville the personality of the writer is distinctly traceable. It is not within the province of this book to go back in detail to the Historia Francorum by Gregory of Tours (540-594), con- taining mainly the events of his own age and told with pains- taking care in view of the uncritical period. Important as the ultimate source of mythical material on the origin of the Franks, to be used by poets as recently as the sixteenth century, was the history written in Burgundy in the seventh century by one or by three writers and known by the name of Fredegar (Frede- garius scholasticus) . The historical material was reproduced and continued in the Gesta regum Francorum, Neustrian histories SI 52 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE written in the eighth century, while, on the other hand, the Austrasian continuations of Fredegarius were composed under the inspiration of the rising family of Pepin, destined to become the Carolingian dynasty. There is a difference between the historiography, of the two periods. In the earlier times, aside from the lives of the saints, the writings were histories, as stated, and chronicles on the model of that of Saint Jerome. In the Carolingian period the lives of the saints often tend to a more historical nature, inas- much as they sometimes deal with political characters. Moreover, the writing of biography and annals is developed. The annals, of which the oldest are those of Saint-Amand near Valenciennes, are registers of contemporary events, first written by monks in monasteries in a very brief and abrupt form and. inscribed in the calendar of feasts or computations of Easter. Gradually they developed into continuous narrative. The most important were the Annates Laurissenses majores beginning in 741 and, after 830, continued in France upon the division of the empire by the Annates Bertiniani, chiefly by Prudentius of Troyes and Hincmar of Rheims. These names come from the monasteries (Lorsch and Saint-Bertin) where the manuscripts were found. There were also chronicles such as those of Freculphus of Lisieux and, more especially, biographies. Among these were the Vita Karoli Magni of Einhard, the lives of Hludovicus (Louis le Debonnaire) by Ermoldus Nigellus, who wrote in verse about 824, by Theganus about 837, and by an anonymous writer known as the "Astronomer." Nithardus, the first lay writer and one of the most original, though inspired by Sallust and especially by Suetonius, told about 844 of the dissensions of the sons of Louis, being himself a partisan of Charles le Chauve, who was his cousin. In the tenth century the only significant historians were Flodoardus and Richer, both of Rheims. Flodoardus was an annalist of his times and Richer described the early Capetian struggles. HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND CHRONICLES S3 With the advent of the Capetians history is for a while written mainly as biography or piecemeal local or monastic history, because of the development of feudalism and the quasi-inde- pendence of the principalities. It is only later, with the acqui- sition of power by the Capetians and the interest in the Crusades, that history becomes again broader in scope. Of general inter- est, however, are the histories of Rodolphus Glaber or Raoul Glaber, a mystic monk, born about 985, who v|3elieved in the coming of the Antichrist and the end of the world; of Helgal- dus (Helgaud), author of a life of King Robert; of Ademarus Cabannensis (Ademar de Chabannes), who composed chronicles. In the time of Louis VI the great minister and regent Suger wrote the life of the king. Odericus Vitalis (1075-c. 1143), an Anglo-Norman and author of an Historia ecclesiastica, is because of his good power of characterisation the best historian of the twelfth century. In the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries universal chroni- cles came again in vogue. Their chief model was the Chronicon or Chronographia of Sigibertus Gemblacensis (Sigebert de Gembloux, c. 1030-1112), covering from 381 to the author's time. Such was the chronicle of Robert of Auxerre, one of the best historical works of the Middle Ages because of the author's critical powers and sanity of judgment. It is a continuation of Sigebert down to 12 11. In some of the monasteries, like Saint- ■ Denis, compilations were made of previous writings which served as a basis for French works. Meanwhile, there grew up a vast literature in the vulgar tongue of historical intent, sacred and profane, and taking the form of: i. Lives of the saints and legends of piety; 2. chansons de geste, already treated in a previous chapter; 3. historical poems and rhymed chronicles; 4. prose histories and prose chronicles. The religious literature began undoubtedly as early as the historical songs and was, of course, originally in Latin only. In fact, the poems of Sainte Eulalie and of Saint Leger are the 54 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE oldest specimens in French in existence, if they can be called poetry. Saint L6ger was a victim of Ebroin, maire du palais. The life of Saint Alexius of the eleventh century, perhaps by Tibaud of Vernon near Rouen, is infinitely superior in merit. On the whole, however, these religious biographies are far from showing as much poetical worth as the popular legends which grew into the chansons de gesie. The latter were written by real poets or bards inspired with a certain rudimentary national spirit. The religious poems, on the contrary,- though they appealed to an even higher sentiment, were apt to be composed rather by clerks or under clerical influence and were more often transcriptions or remodellings of priestly legends. It is more particularly when the subjects were based on the lives of Ori- ental saints, where a greater imagination was brought into play and Christianity was intermingled with the supernatural legends of the. East, that we find works interesting as stories and having a value that their metre, usually in octosyllabic verse, could not give them. The story of Saint Alexius is precisely one of these: the narrative of a holy man who leaves his wife on the day of their marriage and, after long wanderings, returns to his father's house where he remains an unrecognised beggar dwelling in a kennel beneath the stairway for seventeen years, until he is at last discovered at the moment when he dies in the odor of sanctity. Thus, too, the legends of Saint George and the dragon or of Saint Christopher, the giant who bore the child Jesus across the stream, have passed into the literature of the Western world together with many other fabulous tales grafted on the material of religious worship, such as the travels of Saint Brendan, drawn from Celtic sources. Still later, authors told in rhyme the lives and deaths of modern saints, whose biogra- phies intermingle with historical narrative. Chief among these is the story of Thomas-a-Becket, by Garhier de Pont-Sainte- Maxence, a wandering scholar and contemporary of Chretien de Troyes, who tried to give an impartial yet vivid and dramatic narrative of his hero's life and death. HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND CHRONICLES 55 Above even the lives of the saints we must place the stories devoted to the Virgin Mary. The miracles of Our Lady are numerous and popular in all branches of literature in the Middle Ages. Particularly in the history of the drama they are the chief manifestation of the serious theatre during the fourteenth century. In the pseudo-biographical or historical genre the chief examples are the Miracles of the monk Gautier de Coinci, who died in 1236, author of a vast amount of moralised lyric verse and pious narratives, to the extent of thirty thousand lines, devoted to the Virgin and her kindly acts toward those who invoked her intercession. They are partly drawn from the Latin narratives of Hugo Farsitus (Hugues Farsit) in the twelfth century. These stories, though pure in their piety, are often extraordinarily unmoral in their direct conclusions. Often the wickedest criminal is saved if he only invokes the Virgin at the proper moment. But one of the best of these legends of the Virgin is not by Gautier de Coinci. It is the rather touching story of the Tom- beor Nostre Dame. He was an ignorant minstrel who, having become a monk, did not know how to honor the Virgin except by executing before her altar all the tricks and tumbles in which he was expert. When discovered in his unseemly tricks by the abbot, the Virgin descended from heaven to comfort him in his exhaustion after his performances in her glory. ^ Another story, found in many authors including Gautier de Coinci, is the mediaeval Faust-legend of Theophile who sells his soul to the devil for worldly gain and then, after years of evil living, is saved by repentance and the intercession of the Virgin. From heroes of religion the step is easy to heroes of secular legend and characters of history. The same jongleurs composed sacred and profane narratives, and as the French warriors began to travel, especially in the Crusades, interest in their achieve- ments arose and the desire to chronicle their deeds, often in a conventionalised form far remote from the truth. The adven- 1 Cf. Massenet's opera, Le jongleur de Notre Dame. 56 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE turous Normans, too, liked to hear of the victories of their chiefs and of the island which they had conquered. We have seen how the chansons de geste even may be looked upon as historical narrative for the benefit of those who did not know Latin. It is in Normandy that history in the vulgar tongue really begins. Connected with the achievements of the Anglo-Normans are the Estorie des Engles of the middle of the twelfth century, by Gefirei Gaimar, of which only fragments remain; the Roman de Brut, drawn from Geoffrey of Monmouth, carrying the origins of the English back to Troy, and the Roman de Rou, on the history of the Norman dukes, both by the Jerseyman Wace of the twelfth century; the chronicle of the same dukes by Benoit de Sainte-More; the anonymous life of Guillaume le Marechal, count of Pembroke and regent of England during the minority of Henry III. This recently discovered work is valuable, not so much for its hero as for its own merits of composition. The Crusades produced, among other works, the vast compila- tions in different versions called the Lime d'Eracles because Heraclius is named in the first sentence. Perhaps written in the Orient, it is based on celebrated Latin chronicles of William, bishop of Tyre (c. 1128-c. 11 90). The history of France is carried on in rhymed chronicles Uke those of Philippe Mousket from the siege of Troy to the middle of the thirteenth century. Prose made its appearance early in historical writing in French. Even an elementary desire for accuracy would show the advantages and greater Uberty which prose has over verse. As early as 1200 preference for it was shown, and Latin histories, too, were turned into French prose. It has already been pointed out that at Saint-Denis there had been put together long Latin chronicles called Historia - regum Francorum. These became the basis of the French translations and continuations known as the Chroniques de Saint-Denis, in time drawn up directly in French. The monks of Saint-Denis were looked upon during the rest of the Middle Ages as the official chroniclers of royalty. HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND CHRONICLES 57 The most famous monkish writers of Saint-Denis are Primat and Guillaume de Nangis. But much more interesting to the modern reader are the personal chronicles: Geoffroy de Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, author of the Conquete de Constantinople, was born about 1 1 50 and died soon after 1212. He took an important part in the fourth Crusade, which was planned by Pope Innocent IV against Egj^t and was swerved aside and directed against Constantinople, where the Latin empire was fotmded. Ville- hardouin, as an important official of the court of Champagne, took a leading position in the preparations for the Crusade, particularly in the negotiations at Venice by which the help of that state was acquired but the assistance of the Crusaders in turn lent for the conquest of Zara in Dalmatia. It was also partly due to the influence of Villehardouin that, after the death of Thibaut de Champagne, Boniface of Montferrat became the final chief of the expedition, which ultimately went to Constan- tinople. There has been much discussion with regard precisely to this change in the object of the religious war and the motives given by Villehardouin. His explanation is that all came by chance. It is more generally accepted today that there was treachery and that the Venetians, who had commercial relations with Egypt and hated the rivalry of the Greek empire, suc- ceeded in duping or in winning over to their side the leaders of the Crusaders. However this may be, there is an apparent sincerity in Villehardouin's oration pro domo sua which has until recently convinced most people! Moreover, there is, in the directness and picturesqueness of his narrative, an interest which carries one along through the stories of intrigues and the accounts of the cruel capture of Constantinople, the treachery to the traitor Alexis, and the establishment of the new Latin empire of Baldwin of Flanders. Boniface of Montferrat, his rival and Villehardouin's chief, had to be contented with the kingdom of Thessalonica, and Villehardoiiin became a feudal lord in the new hierarchy as marshal of Romania,. He never 58 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE returned home, and during the last years of his life he dictated the story of his adventures and the incidents in which he par- ticipated up to the death of his patron in 1207, after disputes between Boniface ,and Baldwin. From that time his life is practically unknown to us. He deserves a high place in French literature because of the vividness of his story-telling and the accuracy of his information, apart from his explanation of motives. These qualities lift him above the arid chronicler to the personal writer. He stands forth as an adventurer of the Middle Ages, but, though a soldier of fortune, one who felt enduring loyalty to his chief and honestly tried to carry out the bargain, good or bad, to which he had pledged himself. Henri de Valenciennes continued the work of Villehardouin. Robert de Clary describes the fourth Crusade also, from the point of view, not of the high chieftain like Villehardouin, but the mere Crusader, the helpless pawn in the game of intrigue. Jean, sire de Jomville, was born in 1224. Although this was but a few years after Villehardouin's death, yet, as the compo- sition of his own memoirs belongs to the end of a very long Hfe, there is an interval of almost a century between the two works. Joinville took part in the Crusades in 1248 and fought in Egypt, becoming gradually the intimate friend of Louis IX there and in Palestine, returning to Europe in 1254. But this experience of warfare was sufficient, and when Saint Louis planned the Cru- sade to Tunis, Joinville refused to accompany him. Even after the death of King Louis in 1270 Joinville occupied a position of influence and dignity in his old age when, being about eighty, he wrote, at the request of Jeanne de Navarre, wife of PhiHppe le Bel, his recollections of his hero and friend. He died in 131 7. Joinville's Histoire de saint Louis, completed in the early years of the fourteenth century, but not all written at the same . time, consists partly of personal history and partly of recollec- tions of the early reign of the king now many years dead. As a consequence the work is unsystematic and full of digressions, but none the less a valuable source of information as to the HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND CHRONICLES ' 59 character of the king, and at the same time an interesting narrative. Joinville had a good supply of notes, a marvellous memory or a strong literary imagination, perhaps all three, and was able to give vividness to events which ought to have been dim even in his own mind. Nevertheless he is one of those authors who makes us see the events he depicts and whom it is pleasant to know. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, though many forms of literature have deteriorated, the writing of history continues to improve. One can neglect verse chronicles like the Prise d'Alexandrie (1370) of Guillaume de Machault, or, as history, the biography of Charles V by Christine de Pisan, qr that of Bouciquaut attributed to her, or even the Latin and French prose chronicles, or the Latin Compendium of Robert Gaguin. The historical productions of Burgundian writers in the fifteenth century will also be considered in another chapter. But with the writings of Le Bel, Froissart, and Commines we come upon real history. Jean le Bel was a canon of Liege born in that town about the end of the thirteenth century. He travelled a good deal, and about 1357 began the composition of the history of his times, partly from personal observation and partly from hearsay. This he carried down to 136 1. His work was continued in the chronicles of Jean Froissart, canon of Chimay. This author was born about 1337 at Valenciennes, and also travelled a great deal. He bdgan by composing poetry and went to England where his compatriot Philippa of Hainaut was queen, to whom he carried a volume of his works. There he collected much information, and even went to Scotland. Afterwards he saw Italy, and then, when Queen Philippa was dead, he became the protege of Wenceslaus of Luxembourg and Guy of Blois, who in 1373 gave him the holding of Lestine-au-Mont. There he worked at his chronicles and at his tedious romantic poem of Meliador, which he took to the southern court of Gaston- Phebus of Foix. After Lestine he became canon of Chimay. 6o A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE The exact date of Froissart's death at the beginning of the fifteenth century is unknown. The larger part of the Chroniques of Froissart appears in several redactions, especially in the case of the first of the four books, for the author was in the habit of adding material, or even of changing portions, to suit new patrons or new views. His purpose was to tell the great deeds and feats of arms of the contest between England and France since the time of Edward III and Philippe of Valois until the madness of Charles VI, but many other countries and events are contingently involved in the narrative. Froissart has more than once been compared to a reporter or interviewer. He describes a complicated and troubled age, but tries to be accurate and honest. He incorporates into his first book the writings of Jean le Bel, and some of his most famous episodes, hke the story of the citizens of Calais, really belong to Le Bel. For the rest he adds all the information he could collect from any quarter, though he often errs from igno- rance of secret motives or from partiality, besides committing less pardonable sins against topography and chronology. At first he favors the English. His attitude is that of the aristocrat: as a result of frequenting the higher classes he falls into the way of scoffing at the common people as mere rihaudaille, good only to work and be killed. All his sympathy is with the brilliancy of court life, its gorgeous attempts at chivalry, its jousts and tourneys and artificial reproduction of the spirit of old romance, which the aristocracy of the dying Middle Age tried to bring about. . The ideals of this society, in bringing to life what had never really been, were often false and vain, and the deeds of heroism and lady-service were often grotesque, but all seemed natural to Froissart. Froissart deserves chief praise as a his- torian because of the same personal spirit which had marked Villehardouin and Joinville, though it does not manifest itself in quite the same literary mould. Froissart can make the reader see what he describes. HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND CHRONICLES 6i Philippe van den Clyte, seigneur of Commines, was born between 1445 and 1447. He was at first in the service of Charles le Temeraire, duke of Burgundy, but gradually took a dislike to his roughness and ungovernable temper and went over to Louis XI whose .friend and adviser he became, and who heaped on him favors and estates. After the death of Louis, Commines was for a time in discredit and actually imprisoned. He afterwards became a faithful follower of Charles VIII. He went on mis- sions to Italy, and in his last years, which were disturbed by financial difficulties, he composed his Memoirs. He died in 151 1. Commines's Memoirs form two parts or works. The first six books begin in 1464 and stop at the death of Louis XI in 1483, the last two describe the Italian expedition under Charles VIII in 1494-95. The intervening period is a blank. Commines differs from Froissart in that he is not a picturesque narrator but a philosophical historian. There is nothing personal in his writings: his self is effaced, his Memoirs are a general history. Instead of dwelling with pleasure upon the showy side of life, he analyses the events he has witnessed or with which he has dealt and tries to elucidate customs and institutions. His theory of life well becomes the friend of Louis XL It corresponds to the doctrine of Machiavelli that the end justifies the means. This theory he takes for granted, as though no excuse were needed for its corollaries in the shape of casuistry, mental restrictions, and equivocations. Commines even is constantly alluding to God and providence, and the will of heaven suffices to justify all kinds of unrighteous acts. In these respects he seems frankly immoral. On the other hand, he has the redeeming qualities of industry, loyalty to his master: it is often what the king wills that God wills. As a result, for good or bad, his works have had interest and value to certain great but crafty statesmen like Richelieu. Commines is not picturesque and interesting as Froissart, but he makes the student think more. CHAPTER VI FABLE LITERATURE AND SHORT STORIES FABLE literature was very rich in the Middle Ages, because fables were a convenient method of inculcating the moral lessons held so important. The old fables of Phagdrus, but not known as such, were current under the name of Romulus. There were also the fables of Avianus, often confounded with those of Phaedrus. As time went on, the collections were known especially as Isopets, from ^sop to whom so many were attrib- uted. The most famous, though not the only one nor the latest, is that of Marie de France in the twelfth century. These fables are not the most significant of Marie's writings. She says that she translated her Esope from the English, attrib- uting it originally to King Alfred, a confusion probably similar to that by which the Romulus of the fables was made out to be the emperor of Rome. It is scarcely possible to interpret the fables as Taine tried to do those of La Fontaine, as a picture of the times. We can, however, see that Marie de France has constantly in mind the application to her own days. What we see is mutual warfare, the oppression of the weak by the strong, the hostility of suzerain and vassal. Everybody has heard of the numerous legends connected with the fox, and, indeed, the folk-tales in which animals masquerade as men or act the part of human beings have been favorites with children, young and old, from the days of ancient India or Greece to those of modern Hterary composition. The col- lection known as the Roman de Renart had the widest vogue all over Europe, as we can infer, not only from the many poems, but also from the numerous grotesque bass-relief , carvings of ancient 62 FABLE LITERATURE AND SHORT STORIES 63 architecture and woodwork. The tales appear in various lands and languages among which differentiation is difficult. The French ones, as we possess them, take the form of a collaboration or of independent composition by many poets of different ages between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries, belonging mostly to Picardy, Flanders, Normandy, and Champagne, of whom only a few have left traces of their names: Richard de Lison, Pierre de Saint-Cloud, and a "priest of la Croix-en-Brie." Certain other Reynard poems, such as the Latin Ysengrimus of about 1 148 by Nivardus of Ghent, which may have been partly a model for the French poems as we have them, the Ger- man Reinhart Fuchs, written about 11 80 by Heinrich der Gli- chezare and derived from the French, or the Flemish Reinaert of the thirteenth century, form xmits. But the French stories are independent narratives grouped together in so-called branches of from a hundred to over a thousand verses and forming what the French call poemes a tiroirs. Among them there is some- times contradiction or repetition, and they offer a strange medley of fable, parody, and satire. The stories present the usual transfprmations to be expected as treatment gradually becomes more sophisticated. At first the authors merely imdertook to spin pleasant yarns or gabets in simple good- humored style and write something like fabliaux of animals: Or me convient tel chose dire Dont je vos puisse fere rire, Quar je sai bien, ce est la pure, Que de sarmon n'aves vos cure Ne de cors seint oiir la vie. - Later the animals were made to act like men or almost to become men, masquerading, indeed, beneath the names of animals, but with the same inconsistency of treatment as in Rabelais's giants, travelling on horseback, going to battle with hauberk and lance, and laying siege to Renart's castle of Malpertuis. And finally satire crept in, which in the purely literary productions of a later date, such as the Couronnement de Renart by an unknown 64 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE author, Renart le Nouvel of Jacquem^rt CJel^e of Lille in the second half of the thirteenth century, and Renart le Contrefet in the fourteenth, becomes entangled with the most complex and confusing allegory. Moreover, Renart le Contrefet is as full of science and undigested learning as the second part of the Roman de la Rose. The question of the origin of the French Reynard stories is a complicated one, but M. Sudre concludes that the material is often ultimately that of the ^sopic traditions preserved in Latin literature and transmitted to modern times by the clerks of the schools. But, having become commonplaces, they were transmitted orally without the original morals and so were used by the new purveyors of pleasant tales who saw in them the dramatic side rather than any other. The prime elements are, therefore, really twofold: on the one hand ^sopic fable, on the other folk-lore animal stories. The result, in the earlier "branches," omitting for the present any consideration of the later formal Renarts, is a vast and incongruous animal epic in which the chief character, like the jackal of India, is the fox or goupil, named Renart. Indeed, so popular did this hero become that his name took the place of goupil as the generic term for the animal. ^ Renart is at first only a practical joker and an unmitigated rascal, though proud of his vice ("Renart est molt de male escole"), a kind of Panurge, or to draw an example from real life, a Casanova. To this we must gradually add the h)^ocrisy of a diabolical humbug, so that the mediaeval renardie, called in Rabelais pape- lardie, is the counterpart of that character of which the most famous examples in modern French literature are Tartuffe and don Basile, and the paix Renart is a treacherous truce: ' For a somewhat parallel case in English of the effect of a name upon an expression, cf. "to curry favor," a corruption of "curry favel" {estriller favel, fauvel, or fauveau) from the French fifteenth-century satirical poem Fauvel, of which the hero was a chestnut horse whom people tried to propitiate. FABLE LITERATURE AND SHORT STORIES 65 J'ai este set mois toz entiers Parjure et escuminiez. Mes ce n'est mie grant peciez: Ja por escuminacion N'aura m'arme damnacion. Sire, g'ai este sodomites, Encore sui je fins herites. Si ai este popelicans Et renaie les cristiens. Je hax horn frans et debonaire. Renart's great foe is the wolf Ysengrin, his stronger but more simple-minded relative, against whofn he wages war, usually in the form of practical jokes. Some of the devices of Renart are to persuade Ysengrin to stick his tail through a hole in the ice to catch fish and leave it there until it is frozen in, or to induce him to descend a well in a bucket under the impression that he is going to Paradise, thereby pulUng up Renart in the other pail. The stories of the fox and the crow, of the fox and the cock (the Nun's Preste's Tale) are familiar. About these two central characters are grouped a series of other animals: there are the wives of Renart and Ysengrin, Richeut, or Hermeline, and Hersent, who are no better than their lords and swear Uke fishwives: "Se Tune est chate, I'autre est mite." Indeed, Renart's chief aim is to niisuse the wife of his "uncle" Ysengrin. But there is also the lion Noble, haughty and proud, with his wife Fiere, vain and susceptible; the cock Chantecler and his chief spouse Pinte; the cat Tibert, the ass Bernart the high priest, the bear Brun, the boar Baucent, the hare Coart, the snail Tardif, and many others. These persons, if not mutual enemies, are at least on their guard against each other, and they feel that man or animal must live without trusting other creatures. But all have their hand raised against the mutual foe Renart. The most important parts of the collection appear to be the Pelerinage Renart and the Judgment or Plaid in which Ysen- grin lays formal complaint before King Noble of Renart's crimes 66 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE toward his wife Hersent and his children. The animals argue for and against. Noble hesitates to summon Renart imtil Chantecler appears with his hens bringing the body of one of the ladies of his harem, dame Copee, killed by Renart. Noble sends for Renart who, after tricking various messengers, decides at last to come. He pleads in his own behalf, is condemned, but is allowed to expiate his crimes by going on a pilgrimage. This episode belongs to a more mature period of the cycle when the simple animal legends have grown into a parody of society. It is, says Paulin Paris, "la comedie d'un theatre dont les chansons de geste sorit la tragedie." We are present at a regular royal lit de justice of the king, in which the animal names do scarcely more than veil human characters. Indeed, it is this stage which has the greatest success and popularity in the development of the Renart stories. The style of the branches, as is natural in a composite work, is very uneven. In spite of long tirades and details which interrupt the action, there are good descriptive passages. The pseudo-epic tone in the enumeration of animals is striking, and the hearers must have laughed to hear of Renart from his tower gU3ang his enemies, or the bad French of the mock foreigner. In the second half of the thirteenth century we come to the Couronnement Renart by an unknown Flemish poet, an obscure allegory with more evident literary intent, in which Renart, now scarcely anything but a tricky man, moimts the throne by his scheming and puts himself in a position to oppress the poor. It encloses a violent satire and attack upon the mendicant orders which were growing so powerfiil. Renart, at one time, belongs to each order and is half Dominican and half Franciscan, wearing a party-colored garb, indicating his adherence to both cliques. Renart le Novel, by Jacquemart Gelee of Lille, at the end of the thirteenth century, develops the satirical side and had almost more success in later ages than the original Renart stories, because it seemed more human. It is in two parts, FABLE LITERATURE AND SHORT STORIES 67 animated by a somewhat different spirit, the second being more critical and satirical. The struggle against Ysengrin becomes secondary, and the chief importance is given to Renart's rebel- Uon against King Noble, the revolt of evil against good and the gradual perversion of the good. Allegory reaches a climax in the big ship in which Renart embarks: of this ship each part represents some vice or malice, and the crew are the wicked clergy ensnared by the wiles of Renart. Noble stands for the good, but a goodness easily duped. Renart ruins the king, seduces his wife, and perverts his son. Hence the author's purpose is evidently to show a portrait of his times and, under the veil of aUegory, to point out the vices of the Church and clergy of his day, particularly the rivalries of the Dominicans and Franciscans as well as of the Templars and Hospitallers. The royalty, which protects the people, succumbs beneath the wicked feudality represented by Renart, and the ambitious clergy are largely to blame because of their time-serving. As M. Houdoy says, this work was one of the first literary mani- festations of the Tiers-Etat. The work is almost as striking in the history of allegory as is the Roman de la Rose, and Renart has many of the characteristics of Faux-Semblant. In the fourteenth century we find a vast collection of about fifty thousand verses called Renart le Contrefet, by an imknown author or authors. It is an "imitation" or counterfeit of the old poem. We find ourselves, indeed, among the characters and episodes of the first branches,* but the author is a fond follower of Jean de Meun and adopts his method of constant dissertation. The work contains a history of the world and ample details of manners and customs in the fourteenth century. It therefore belongs to the t3T>e of encyclopedic didacticism in which the narrative is subordinated to the preaching. It, again, is a poem of sympathy for the poor and of hate for the nobles and expresses the bourgeois spirit of a somewhat enhghtened type. In the literature from the twelfth to the early fourteenth century an important but scarcely a valuable place is occupied 68 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE by the fabliaux. These verse compositions, brief narratives or rhymed anecdotes in octosyllabic metre as composed by the wandering jongleurs and itinerant Goliardic clerks, are an expression of the bourgeois spirit which grew more and more important and stood against the aristocratic society literature, though it need not be inferred that the courtly circles did not enjoy the faecal quality of the fabliaux. The travelling musi- cians, professional amusers, as well as gossip bearers and perhaps scandalmongers, dressed up for their welcome in town or house- hold, stories drawn from all sources, some transmitted from remote antiquity or the distant East, others perhaps based on personal observation ot experience. They were meant to while away an idle moment like the short story of the modern magazine. But, representing, as they did, the spirit of a class which was vulgar where it is now prosaic, and not having then even the saving grace of hypocrisy, they produced a deplorable result. In these so-called poems there is rarely a gleam of wit, refinement, or delicacy, hardly anything but filth, scatological or porno- graphic. They show the so-called esprit gaulois in its rankest form and have all its grivoiserie and mockery of accepted things without the quahties which, in the -case of Rabelais, raise it to the level of true art. One can easily enough conceive a litera- ture without ideals, but here is an idealism a rebours which produces the effect of the messe noire or the stews at a witches' sabbath. In jerky verse sprinkled at intervals with crude puns, though we may make allowances for the naivete of mediae- val punning, the rhymer jests at life about him. He has no method except to raise a laugh. This he does by making fun of prominent classes of people. Occasionally a rankUng sense of injustice and of oppression adds an element of hatred to the mockery. The chief butt of the writer of fabliaux is woman, who is represented as lewd, deceitful, cunning, and mulish. She appears as a Messalina of the bourgeois class or as a mere maquerelle. Her chief opportunity for lust and deceit is with the priest who is also shown as hypocritical and debauched in FABLE LITERATURE AND SHORT STORIES 69 his cohabitation with his concubine or pretresse. So we see the various classes of society, the chevalerie and more particularly the bourgeoisie with its stinginess and drunkenness. The peasant is so filthy that in one poem he faints at the smell of spices and is revived only by that of manure stuck imder his nose (le Vilain dnier). Or he is so siUy that, seeing hot iron cooled by saliva, he tries to cool his soup by spitting into that (le Vilain de Farbu). The stubborn woman, when beaten speechless to make her yield, continues to imitate by gesture what she cannot say {le Pre tondu). The pldest fabliau, Rickeutj is that of a common prostitute (1159). Have the fabliaux any merit at all? The single one of realistic observation, though, let us hope, as much overdone as the realism of the modern naturalistic school. Occasionally, too, there is a poem of a different character like the Vilain mire, which is the story of Moliere's Medecin malgre lui, or the Lai d'Aristote by Henri d'Andeli, a poem so often illustrated in the carvings of the Middle Ages. Aristotle warns Alexander against the wiles of women, but soon falls a victim himself and is driven saddled and bridled on his knees by an Indian courtesan. This episode seems to have descended through Otway's Venice Preserved and Taine's History of English Literature to the Comte Muffat of Zola's Nana. The fabliaux are for the most part anonymous. Rustebeuf, Henri d'Andeli, Philippe de Beaumanoir are among those whose works approach literature. Toward the end of the period of production certain fabliaux were written in the fourteenth cen- tury by professional court minstrels of Flanders, Watriquet de Couvin and Jean de Conde. Indeed, the Rubens-like "fatness" of the fabliaux was well in agreement with the Flemish spirit. These later prosperous story-tellers are very different from the vagrant jongleurs of earlier ages. They foretell, too, by their florid style and allegorising the coming Uterature of the rhetoriqueurs. The fabliaux, in spite of their defects to the modern reader, 70 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE were among the most popular of mediaeval productions. The little anecdotes are found in all literatures, and some of the most famous of the stories of Boccaccio and of Chaucer are based on the fabliaux. MoHere drew from them indirectly. The profes- sional humorist did not die with the Middle Ages, and the esprit gaulois is found with more art in Rabelais, in the Contes of La Fontaine, in the Contes of Maupassant, or even in the French comic papers of today. CHAPTER VII THE DRAMA THE theatre is an important point of contact between France and other countries of Europe; its origin and development are interesting as showing a close parallel with that of the Greek theatre. As in Greece, the mediaeval theatre grew out of the reK^ous celebrations. The ancient Greeks gradually developed, especially in their worship of Dionysus, a more complicated substitute for the originally simple songs in honor of the vintage deity. For the sake of variety the chorus was divided into responsive halves of alternating song; or dialogue came in, and a single speaker placed on a sort of stage held conversation with the chorus. Then the number of actors increased to three. Religious observance was in the same way the source of the French theatre. The mass is itself a sort of drama, in which incidents of the story of -Christ, as the Last Supper, are acted. For the sake of variety it early became the custom to introduce brief innovations in the form of dialogue between the priest and clerk, or other officiating persons. At first, then, the mass was varied by antiphonal >song and more particularly by the trope, a very brief dialogue, scarcely more than a mere continuation of the mass, which went back as early as the end of the ninth century. This may primitively have been mere sequelae or dragged notes of soiig which were gradually replaced by actual words and grew into dialogue. Thus developed the Hturgical drama, which is the second stage in the history of the theatre, originating in the Quern quaeriiis of the Introit of the Easter mass. The stages which this drama is supposed to have passed 71 72 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE through are fourfold : At first there was hardly any dividing line from the pure trope, the text was short, in prose, and made up of phrases drawn from Holy Writ. Then versification made its appearance, but timidly, and a few metrical fragments were inserted. Little by Little, through the influence perhaps of the Goliardic poetry, verse encroached upon the prose, the liturgy disappeared entirely, and the vulgar tongue came in. Finally, the treatment became such as to admit profane aiid even pagan images. The various festivals of the Church were thus cele- brated: the Adoration of the Magi, the Massacre of the Inno- cents, the Resurrection. The changes in the development of the drama were not mutually exclusive: the trope and the liturgical play both lasted on even after the regular drama was developed. Thus, as in Greece, each innovation came in gradually and without interrupting the unity of evolution, until finahy the treatment became very free, as is seen in the early liturgical dramas like the Prophetes du Christ; the Sponsus or Drame de I'Epoux, on the wise and foolish virgins, in the first half of the twelfth century, the oldest drama combining Latin and the vul- gar (southern) tongue; the plays of Hilarius, the pupil of Abelard, perhaps an Englishman and not very remote from the Goliardics; and the dramas of the abbey of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire. But the drama becomes more immediately interesting and modern when another step is taken and the play is transferred from the interior of the church to the public square or parvis before the sanctuary. The audience is now more numerous and the clergy give way to laymen or actors. This transfer to the exterior has taken place in the earliest drama — if ever really acted — in the vulgar tongue, the Anglo- Norman dialect. This is the Representation d'Adam {Repre- sentatio Adae) of the first half of the twelfth century. It is a play in three parts with but little interrelation and of which one is probably taken from a liturgical drama on the prophets. The first part tells the story of Adam and Eve : First, their life in THE DRAMA 73 Paradise, where are to be seen, the Latin rubric says, "odoriferi fructus et frondes, sint in eo diverse arbores et fructus in eis dependentes ut amenissimus locus videatur." We witness the temptation and the fall of Eve, the punishment of the sinners and their carrying off to hell by the demons amid the clattering of caldrons: "collident caldaria et lebetes suos ut exterius audiantur." A second act gives the story of Cain and Abel, and a third the procession of the prophets to announce the com- ing of the Messiah. The whole ends with a verse sermon on the fifteen signs of the last Judgment. The next plays of interest, apart from a fragmentary Resurrec- tion, carry us to the thirteenth century. Here we find the Jeu de saint Nicolas of Jean Bodel and the Miracle de Theophile by Rustebeuf, both belonging to the miracle class, and two other plays of a totally different nature: the Jeu de la Feuillee and the Jeu de Robin et de Marion of Adam de la Halle. In all these plays, however, we see a great deviation from the original liturgical drama. ' Jean Bodel and Adam de la Halle were both townsmen of Arras, a place famous for its prosperity. The Jeu de saint Nicolas is a very remarkable play somewhat on the lines of a drama of the Romantic school. The good saint and protector of youth saves a protege unjustly imprisoned for the theft of a treasure from a Mussulman king, a robbery really committed by a band of thieves. In the play we are carried from place to place at will and go from a palace to a tavern, from a Christian camp to a pagan army. We move among kings, executioners, and thieves. Great armies meet and fight — "Or tuent U Sarrasins tous les Crestiens" — we hear thieves' jargon and oaths even from Saint Nicholas and talk intelligible only to the con- temporaries of gallows' birds like CHkes, Pincedes, and Rasoirs. Theophile, in the play of that name, sells his soul to the devil and then, after seven years of wicked life, repents of his crimes and with the help of the Virgin Mary gets back his compact from the fiend. 74 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Ad^m de la Halle gives us the comic theatre. These plays were probably brought out before some puy or hterary society of the author's native city, but there is nothing to connect them with God or the saints. Indeed, they stand almost alone, and the Jeu de la Feuillee, at least, is more akin to Aristo- phanic comedy than it is to anything else in France at its own time. It is the author himself and his fellow-townsmen whom we see in the Jeu de la Feuillee. At the beginning of the play Adam tells his father that he is going to leave Arras and his wife Marie to go to Paris and become a clerk. Once he loved her, but now he is tired of her. But one cannot travel without money, and his father is an old miser who tries to avoid giving any on the score of his maladies. "No," says a physician, "your disease is avarice, and you are not the only one suffering from it"; and he points out sundry other citizens of Arras who have the same malady. Then in lively episodes introducing a mad boy, a travelling monk, and others, the poet is enabled to speak of many contemporary events with intensely personal satire. It happens to be a fairy night when fairies come to partake of a feast set for them beneath the foHage. We hear the passing of Hellequin and his escort, a mysterious king of mediseval legend and phantom huntsman whom people have tried to connect with the Italian Arlecchino and the German Erlen-Konig. His courier Croquesos bears a note of love for the fairy Morgue who appears with Maglore and Arsile. But Maglore has been slighted and, like the wicked fairy of story, she tries to avenge herself. Among the punishments Adam must stay with his wife. Finally, after one or two other episodes, the play ends with scenes of joyous eating and drinking. ' The Jeu de Robin et Marion is a dramatised pastourelle, the dialogue being interspersed with popular melodies probably borrowed by Adam from current song and inserted in his work. Robin and Marion are two rustic lovers: While Marion is singing, a knight rides by. He courts her, but shemocks him THE DRAMA 75 saying that she loves only Robin, and the knight rides away. Robin appears and plays with Marion. Then, as he is about to gather a. band of merry-makers, the knight returns and tries to carry off Marion, but without success. The rustic games begin, a wolf is driven from the flock, and the play ejids with a gay dance, a tresque or tresse, in which the party caper off hand in hand, singing, to the woods. This Jeu de Robin et Marion is the first example of a pastoral play and of a comic opera in France : much of it was sung, and it contains most graceful and charming lines, as for instance the opening verses: Robins m'aime, Robins m'a, Robins m'a demandee, si m'ara. Robins m'acata cotele d'escarlate bone et bele, souskanie et cliainturele, a leur i va! Robins m'aime, Robins m'a, Robins m'a demandee, si m'ara. It does not require much imagination to conjure up this scene of poetry and of rustic hfe, the games and sports upon the green, beneath the trees, in the afternoon or by moonlight. This play is one of the masterpieces of French literature. Indeed, it is surprising to find at the period these two isolated plays, the Feuillee and the Robin et Marion. The pastoral play is steeped in poetry. On the other hand, the irony of the Jeu de la Feuillee is somewhat in line with the spirit of the fabliaux, though it is even more personal and by its allusions reminds us of the old Attic comedy. The great period of the theatre in France does not come until the later Middle Ages: the fifteenth century is the time of its greatest vogue. But, as we have seen, the earlier centuries claim their share of attention, and the fourteenth century gives us some very interesting examples. It is customary in France to make the name mystery, a general one. The name miracle-play is generally reserved for 76 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE those portra)dng the miraculous interference of a saint, more particularly the Virgin, and manifested in a particular way. The Miracles de Notre Dame form a collection apart and are what has been left by the fourteenth century. These a;re forty plays, found in a single manuscript by an unknown author or authors belonging to the Ile-de-France or to Champagne and probably acted before some puy like the plays of Adam de la Halle. They are extraordinary productions in many respects: dull and tedious if we read them with an eye to depth of sentiment or psychological analysis, extremely interesting if we view them as expressions of the age and as material for the study of social customs. The sequence of incidents occurs without the least regard for what ought to take place. The problem is allowed to become more and more involved, and then, when the difficulties seem insurmountable, the Virgin appears as a dea ex machina and the troubles are done away with in a trice. A wicked sinner or a fair penitent, even the abbess of a convent, after committing the worst sins or immoralities, needs only to invoke the Virgin to be at once saved from the consequences of wrong-doing. The Virgin never inquires if help be deserved. It is enough to call upon her and she appears, often to do deeds very unworthy of the Mother of God. Of course the importance of the Virgin must not surprise us: her part in religion and in literature is only the counterpart of the worship of woman in chivalry and in the Romances of the Round Table. As the knight was supposed to invoke his lady and do all in her name, so Mary filled all hearts to the extent of overshadowing Christ if help were sought. Thus the Virgin plays no moral part, much as in the religion of the lower classes of Italy today, and is ready to save an abbess pregnant by a clerk, a woman who has murdered her son-in-law, a hermit who has seduced and killed a maiden. In these plays, and therein lies much of their interest, we mix with all ranks of society and all ages: we see all countries, for THE DRAMA 77 the sources from which the author draws are manifold and extend from the legends of the saints to the chansons de geste. We see kings of France, of Spain, of Scotland, of Hungary; emperors of Rome, Berthe the wife of King Pepin, Clovis and his baptism, noblemen, monks, nuns, clerks, saints, judges, bourgeois, and peasants. The author was no inventor, no analyst of character; he often gives a sombre picture of life — ■ he wrote at the time of the Hundred Years' War — and yet to the more sophisti- cated reader of today there is constantly a pleasant and amused surprise in the naivete, the anachronisms and inconsistencies of these plays, which are by their dramatic form prevented from falhng into the dilutions of the literature of the day. In Amis et Amilles, Amis runs a great risk from which he might escape by telling a lie. This he is incapable of doing; but he is ready to accept his friend as a substitute and vicarious liar. •In V Enfant donne au dyable a regular law suit takes place before Jesus as judge, in which Our Lady, acting as lawyer for one of the parties, wins her case. Finally, these plays are not without interest to the student of folk-lore, inasmuch as they often give forms of ramifjdng legends; thus the miracle of the Fille du roi de Hongrie, drawn from Philippe de Beaumanoir's Roman de la Manekine of the thirteenth century, involves the motifs of the father in love with his own daughter, the handless maiden, and the swan-maiden who gives birth to a monster or is said to do so by a jealous mother-in-law. This carries us from Apollonius of Tyre to Grimm's Handless Maiden, from Saint Oliva in Italy to the Man of Law's Tale and Gower's Confessio Amantis or Shak- spere's Pericles in England, to Peau d'dne in France. It connects with the Chevalier au cygne and even suggests the mysterious heroine of Maeterlinck's Pelleas et Melisande. Apart from the collection described, there are enough traces of other miracles to show that this kind of dramatic and literary composition was more prevalent than would otherwise be sup- posed, so that it was but a part of the fourteenth century reper- toire. And in the play of Griselidis, which tells the story of 78 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the patient Griselda, we pass beyond the hmits of the stories of Our Lady. But the fifteenth century is the period of the greatest splendor of the French theatre, a drama interesting to students of English hterature because it is more akin to the theatre of Shakspere than to that of the seventeenth century. The mysteries are now in full sway, and the profane or comic theatre comes into vogue, from the moralities at the end of the fourteenth century to the farces which continue the spirit of the old fabliaux. The religious plays had been constantly performed through the ages and had had as secular accessories various figured scenes like the mysteres mimes, dumb shows or tableaux vivants given on the occasion of some public function. After the middle of the fifteenth century especially, the term mystery designates the serious dramatic plays which had become more and more extended and complicated. It is customary nowadays to group these plays in cycles like the chansons de geste, but according to a different plan. There are three chief divisions: the cycle of the Old Testament; that of the New Testament, of Christ and the apostles; that of the saints. Finally, a fourth miscellaneous division contains semi- religious, historical, or legendary plays, some of which may never have been given. All this formed a vast collection or dramatic history of religion from the creation of the world to contemporary times, for the purpose not only of amusement, but also of interesting the audience in the important events of biblical history or of recommending some pious duty. Among the most important of these plays were, the Recueil du Vieux Testament of ,some fifty thousand verses, a sort of biblical encyclopedia from which actors drew incidents; the Mystere de la Natiinte, la Passion et la Resurrection by Arnoul Greban, of about thirty-five thousand lines; the Mystere de la Passion of sixty-five thousand and the Mystere de la RisurrecPion of twenty thousand, by Jean Michel; the Actes des Apdtres of Arnoul and Simon Greban (62,000 verses); \ht Destruction de THE DRAMA 79 Trcde by Jacques Millet (30,000 verses); the Siege d'Orlians (20,000 verses) ; and, in the sixteenth century, Gringore's Vie de saint Louis, of about seven thousand lines. These plays were, we have seen, for a long time given in the open air without the inconveniences of an enclosed auditorixim. The unities of time and of place were imknown. The unity of action might be the Hfe of the hero, who could appear as a child at the beginning of the play and as an old man at its close. The stage could represent at once all parts of the world. It was formerly believed that the stage rose perpendicularly like a house of several floors with the fagade removed, disclosing the interior and representing on different levels different places or, at least, heaven, earth, and hell. The evidence of minia- tures in manuscripts now corroborates another theory, that a vast stage was surrounded by different houses or mansions representing different places at once, so that the action could pass from one to the other. At the back and on a higher level was a platform representing Paradise, and in the direct fore- ground or at one side of the stage was a hideous and grimacing head conceahng a trap-door, whence the devils and demons emerged from hell. The whole disposition was perhaps an outgrowth of the days when the plays were given in the church and the rood-loft could be heaven and the cr3^t hell. The enormous edifices, which from simple beginnings often grew very elaborate, were erected at considerable expense by guilds, cor- porations, or even by a single citizen, with the sympathy and co-operation of the whole population. The play was annoimced many weeks in advance by a pubUc Cry, calling for volunteers for the long and tedious preparation. Just before the actual show there was a grand parade or Monstre, as today the travel- ling circus exhibits its animals and acrobats to the populace. When the great time came the whole town was deserted for a performance which sometimes lasted days at a time. And the whole audience was captivated by these long affairs, which it had taken months to prepare and which it sometimes took days 8o A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE to act, but not without keeping its rights of criticism. These it manifested if the play became tedious or the buffoon, the crazy woman, or the fool failed to intervene often enough to enliven a dragging play. In 1402 a society which became known as the Confrerie de la Passion received a charter from Charles VI enabling it to enact dramatic performances drawn from the Passion, the Resurrec- tion, or other holy subjects. This official attestation of dramatic literature marks an important epoch in the history of the French stage. Once in possession of their charter the Confrerie became so active that soon they were serious competitors to the Paris churches. They also varied their performances by combining with the comic corporations to give united shows known as pois piles. Jealousy and other motives made them move their headquarters several times, and they were estab- lished at the Hotel de Bourgogne when, in 1548, a decree gave- them definitely the monopoly of the stage, but forbade the acting in Paris of any sacred mystery. This date marks the end of the mediaeval drama. Nevertheless the brotherhood did not yet give way before the attacks of the Renaissance and of Humanism, but continued to play pieces drawn from the chansons de geste, as Huon de Bordeaux, or from the Romances of the Round Table. Moreover, religious plays were still allowed in the provinces, and even in om: own day religious performances are seen in the exhibits of the travelling showmen in France, the descendants of the old dramas. As for the mysteries themselves, their chaotic vastness is to the modern reader bewildering. Sainte-Beuve criticised them severely, comparing their successive scenes to a sort of inter- mittent frieze without unifying principle. But he viewed them from the strictly literary point of view and hence failed to do them justice. It is true that to the trained Classicist the confusion of these plays is distressing, though a Romanticist as Sainte- Beuve, when he wrote this, should have seen, like an Anglo- Saxon, their principle better. It is true that a great poet was THE DRAMA 8l lacking and that the mysteries were dull. We must remember, however, that they were plays and displays, treats to the eye as much as to the ear, performed with elaborate stage-settings and machinery, sometimes with five hundred actors, and were intended to charm by the show of rich colors and imposing groupings. They were, too, a representation of life as it was to the populace and not as the man of letters thinks that it ought to be. Beauty of verse was necessarily a secondary matter; something more striking was essential to instruct or amuse the vast throngs, by more noticeable metrical forms, bailads, triolets, or rondeaux, by the tragic and the grotesque. The kings must speak in proud and haughty language, using tags of Scholastic philosophy or fragments borrowed from the Latin poets. The biblical characters used paraphrase of Holy Writ, the people talked the slang of the streets. Nor was everything to be taken seriously: the antics of the buffoons, of the damned souls, ancestors of our clowns, or of the devils rushing among the audience with clattering pots and kettles made people laugh perchance more than at the moraUties which are classed among the comic plays. And modem readers, too, may find amusement in the anachronisms and the unsophisticated taste of the authors and spectators of these plays. The early history of the comic theatre is a httle more obscure than that of the mysteries: the subdivision into morahties, sotties, farces, monologues, and sermons joyeux makes the ques- tion a more complicated one. The comic spirit always existed in France, and we have seen that the jongleurs, who later degenerated into the jugglers, may have been the successors of the Latin kistriones. But the liter- ary form of the mediseval comedy had nothing to do with that of Rome. So far as the Church goes, we may perhaps find in the new religious SaturnaUa, like the parodies of sermons, the Feast of Fools and the Feast of Asses and the general scurrilous revelry of the inferior clergy in cathedrals or coUegiate churches on certain days, a prototype of the later representations of 82 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE fools or sots, as found in the Enfants sans soucy at Paris or in the countless provincial bands like the Mere-Folle at Dijon and the Connards of Rouen. The great Parisian societies were the Basoche and the Enfants sans soucy, forming corporations with elaborate hierarchies. The Basoche, Tnade up of clerks of the Parlement or Courts, was chartered in 1303 under PhiHppe le Bel as a brotherhood or kingdom with different ofl&cials and privileges. There were also the smaller Basoche of the ChS,telet and the Empire de Galilee. These societies played moralities and farces. The Enfants sans soucy, or Compagnons du Prince des sots, were derived perhaps from the Feast of Fools, and perhaps from the actors of the paradds or brief preliminary performances to attract attention to the main show. They were led by the Prince des sots and by the Mere-Sotte, and gave sotties, or farces played by "fools" wearing the traditional jester's costume: slashed doublet, party-colored garb, cap, and bells. Sometimes the societies co-operated and gave combined performances consisting of a sotiie to attract attention, a mono- logue or sermon joyeux, a mystery or morality, and ending with a farce. The profane theatre was at its height in the fiiteenth century, but lasted on with almost undiminished splendor, and, indeed, the farce continued until the seventeenth. The morality and the sottie, being distinctly mediaeval types, disappeared with the coming of the Renaissance. The morality was a sort of philosophical, or at least allegorical, play in which the vice to be chastised appeared in person on the stage instead of being, as in later comedy, embodied in a con- crete individual. This, however, did not seem a defect in the Middle Ages, and there was certainly in these plays a wide enough variety of subject-matter: some were purely moral or edifying, others religious, others satirical. Such, for instance, is the story of Bien-Avise et Mal-Avise, one of whom succeeds in the world by the various virtues of Raison, Foi, Contrition, THE DRAMA 83 Confession, and Penitence, until after death he is carried off to heaven. Mal-Avise, on the contrary, by a life spent with Oysance and profligacy in general, is directed to Male-Fin and ends in hell. Such, again, is the story of the Enfants de Maintenant who avoid Instruction and Discipline, frequent Luxure, lose all they possess, and pass from bad to worse until, after one has perished on the scaffold of Perdition, the other repents and returns to Discipline and his home. The sottie, which is purely French, was a dialogue in which the action grew more and more important and took on a political as well as a moral character. What must have stood most in its way was its uniformity. The same characters appeared and went through the same buffooneries, with only variations of dialogue and of the externals of plot, as in many of the American vaudevilles and light comedies of today. We can understand better, however, the significance of such a play as the Prince des sots of 1512, by Pierre Gringore (circa 1475-1538 or 39), written with the approbation of Louis XII against Pope Julius II, the enemy of the king of France. The king appeared as the Prince des sots, the pope as the Mere-Sotte, and the people as the Sotte-Commime. And by the action of the play Gringore set forth the political events of the time and the struggles of the king and of the pope at the period of the Italian wars. The farce had absolutely no moral, religious, or political aim: it was merely meant to amuse by dialogue or plot,, the latter drawn from the same fund of humor that had given the fabliaux to which the farces act in a way as successors. It was in France one of the most wide-spread and long-lived of the profane genres,^ appealing as it did to the humorous susceptibilities of the common ' Cf. in Gaston Paris, LittSrature franqaise au moyen-dge, § 134, mention of an early farce, Du gargon et de Vaveugle, played at Tournai near 1277. "Nous ne s^-urions pas sans elle qu'on jouait des farces au XIII° siecle ,(le mot farce lui-mgme n'apparait que plus tard), et elle permet de conjec- turer qu'au moins dans le nord de la France on en jouait des lors beaucoup, qui ne nous sent pas parvenues." 84 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE people. It expressed the esprit gaulois which has always been keen in the French mind. The subjects are inventions or rewritings of old stories current through the Middle Ages and deal by preference, as does the modern French farce or comedy, with adultery and deception. The stock characters are three in number: the warring husband and wife, who belong to the bourgeois or peasant class, and the village priest who makes up the menage a trois and deceives the husband by his intimacy with the wife. This topic was not confined to France, and Heywood's English play of Johan Johan the Husbande, Tyb the wife, and Syr Jhon the Priest is but one of numerous instances. The spirit of these French comedies is entirely one of cruel satire and mockery; they contain no touch of the sentiment or sentimentality which add a sugar-coating of decency to the prurience of some modern French plays. On the other hand, licentious as these plays are, and the language of many of them is extraordinary in its filth, modern French critics can scarcely point the finger of scorn at them. In the modern farce the phallic element in the shape of the bed of adultery is as omni- present as the callibistris of the mediaeval one. The old plays were more naturalistic in their language, things were called by name instead of. being named by innuendo. They were not more immoral. And the mediaeval farce is not without its frank fun: the humorous fool-coward or badin arouses many a harmless laugh, Hke that prototj^e of Moses with the spectacles in the Vicar oj Wakefield who lets himself be cheated out of his eggs. He had been instructed to give them only au prix du marche and so disposes of them to a man who calls himself the Prix du Marche. Indeed, in the Farce du Cuvier, a mother-in-law story, and in Pathelin we have two masterpieces. Maltre Pathelin is an impecunious and tricky lawyer who by his wheedling ways succeeds in getting a piece of cloth from a draper without pajdng for it. When, the same evening, the draper comes for his money, he is met by Pathelin's wife who tells him THE DRAMA 85 that her husband has been ill with fever for a long time. It also happens that the draper's shepherd has allowed some of the sheep to perish through neglect, and his master summons him before the judge. Pathelin is the shepherd's lawyer and advises him to play the fool at court and to answer all ques- tions by bleating like a sheep. At the trial the draper is bewildered by the stupidity of his shepherd and by the appear- ance of Pathelin who, he thought, was ill in bed. He acts in such a crazy way that the judge, after vainly endeavoring to make him talk about the sheep in question (this is the origin of the saying "revenons a nos moutons"), at last dismisses the case. However, when Pathelin claims pay from the shep- herd, the latter answers him by bleating Hke a sheep, and so the biter is bit. The two remaining genres are more quickly dealt with. The sermon joyeux is merely a parody of the rehgious ceremony, as the Venite potemus for the Venite adoremiis. The monologue, which has been compared with the modern lever de rideau, has not disappeared from the comedy of today. Its name is a sufl&cient explanation. The Franc-Archer de Bagnolet, once attributed to Villon, is a good Example. The bragging militia- man, a descendant of the miles gloriosus, boasts of his achieve- ments, until his courage oozes away at the sight of a distant scarecrow which he takes for the invading English army. Of these divisions of the drama the sotties and the moralities, which were peculiarly mediasval, passed away at the coming of the Renaissance. The farce remained with some modifications. And, in the seventeenth century, Moliire kept in many of his comedies the traditions of the old farces anA fabliaux. CHAPTER VIII PHILOSOPHY IT is often said that the period of Scholasticism connotes an age of intellectual darkness and of interminable verbal disputes. In truth, there is no time more significant by its broad range of thought, the depth and acuteness of its scholars, the important subjects which they examined. It is certain that during the decadence of Scholasticism its achievements were often ridiculous, yet under different names nearly all the prob- lems which excite interest today were then discussed : idealism, materialism, pantheism, mysticism, ontology, in metaphysics; free-will and the soul in ethics and psychology; and the ques- tions of morals and politics which remain unsettled even now. Moreover, it should not be inferred that the great thinkers held the extreme and irresponsible views often attributed to them. These were generally the exaggerations of disciples. The name Scholasticism is an embracing one and includes, indeed, all who have had to do with the schools from the days of the Carolingian scholars, in which connection the term is first used, until it implied not merely masters or students, but all clerks or scholars, and comprised within its limits theologians, philosophers, men of science. To the student of French thought the meaning of Scholasticism is above all important, inasmuch as it was in France that the movement found its growth and chief development. Its results, being expressed in Latin, were indeed universal, and many of its chief representatives were foreigners. And yet, because of the leadership of France in thought and the renown of its university, most of the foreigners hved or even settled there, and their M'ritings became as important as those of Frenchmen. 86 PHILOSOPHY 87 Hence it is unnecessary and even wrong to apply the test of nationality in studying this important French intellectual development. Another common misconception is to look upon the whole age as a single growth. In truth, extending as it did over many centuries, it represents distinct phases widely at variance with each other or at any rate easily distinguishable. For our pur- poses we may follow the common division into four periods: The first extended from the ninth to the twelfth century, at which time thought was fairly free and broad. The culmination of this stage was the second period, the great literary epoch of the twelfth century. The teachers in this age were Humanists well versed in the Latin authors and fond of the poets, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Juvenal, Seneca. Indeed, in Italy in the eleventh century the grammarian Vilgard, though his claims were judged heretical, placed Virgil, Horace, and Juvenal above Holy Writ. A third period is the thirteenth century, a time of technical philosophy. The metayhysico-logical question known as the doctrine of the Universals becomes important then. Until the end of the twelfth century this problem had ,been on the whole a literary one of grammar or, at most, of logic alone. The fourth age is one of involution, though it is also distin- guished by the so-called Nominalist revival. In a marked degree the metaphysical problems were, as subordinates or as coequals, linked with theology. The clerks or scholars were almost without exception churchmen. Hence the Chtxrch afEected by its influence all the problems of intellec- tual activity, logic and psychology no less than ethics. And even grammar was made a part of the philosophical S3aithesis, for the grammatical relationships, such as cause, manner, means, often seem, indeed, to suggest not merely relations of words, but of things or their essences. The early history of Scholasticism is, therefore, that of the gradual growth of learning in Europe after the Dark Ages, beginning with Alcuin and the Palace Schools of Charlemagne. 88 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE The first teachers, though theologians, were interested in learning mainly on its practical side, as an encyclopedic storehouse of knowledge. The first great philosopher is John Scotus Erigena or Eriugena, an Irishman born at the beginning of the ninth century, who became the head of the school of Charles le Chauve. Though hidden from us in the remote past, he seems nevertheless to have been a great thinker and the precursor of several impor- tant theological tendencies, for to him philosophy and theology become identical, and so they remained to a number of the Scholastic philosophers. To a great extent then, the philosophy of the first age of Scho- lasticism is theological rather than technically metapfhysical. Discussions were apt to deal with matters of faith, the questions of the Trinity and of Real Presence. Or problems were pro- pounded as, in the eleventh century, the famous ontological argument for the existence of God by Saint Anselm, the Italian abbot of Bee in Normandy and archbishop of Canterbury, which he proved by the very idea of periection, a proof afterward taken up by Descartes; or the same Anselm's doctrine of the Incarnation and Atonement, which in one way or another has affected Christian doctrine ever since. And certainly, Scotus Erigena at any rate shows the beginnings of important and even divergent tendencies. As a thinker using science and reason to justify faith he is one of the earliest precursors of rationalism and the liberty of thought of which Abelard is the most famous example, and even before that he leads to the heresies concerning the Eucharist of Berengarius in the eleventh century. As the translator of the pseudo- Dionysius the Areopagite and the heir of neo-Platonism from Proclus and Plotinus to the Alexandrine Fathers he opens the way for a numerous band of mystics. Mysticism is a yearning of the soul for the Divinity and, in its concrete form, a desire to attain directly by pure contemplation or passive quietism the heights from which the mind is separated by a pettifogging reason. As a logical result, if pushed too far, mysticism, partic- PHILOSOPHY 89 ularly when united with realism, may lead to pantheism. And so Erigena made possible not only the pantheistic heresies of Amaury de Bene and of David de Dinant in the twelfth century, but also, after Guillaume de Champeaux, the orthodox mysticism of Saint Bernard de Clairvaux, Hugues de Saint- Victor, and the Victorine school of mystics in the same century. It need not be wondered at, then, that Scotus Erigena in spite of his own orthodoxy was, by the very greatness of his genius and the sug- gestiveness of his ideas so fertile in consequences, in later ages looked upon as a heretic and an unbeliever. In the twelfth century a problem hitherto somewhat neg- lected becomes prominent: the theory of the Universals and the inquiry into the foundations of knowledge, a combination of Platonic problems and of solutions based on Aristotle's Organon, which was the only part of Aristotle's writings known before the end of the twelfth century. The most purely' Platonic form of the problem of the Univer- sals, by which the validity of knowledge and the truth of the external world are guaranteed, is the doctrine of Realism, which we should call in modern terminology a form of idealism. To the partisans of ultra-Realism the idea has a real value. It is more perfect than any object seen in concrete form, which is, indeed, but its inadequate copy. This Universal was the con- necting link of knowledge. In one respect, however, the Realists did not go so far as Plato, inasmuch as the idea did not neces- sarily have actual existence in some distant place (eV oipavCua Toirdu Voir-dit is certainly the most interesting. This long work in prose and verse, which may have been composed about 1363-4, is a sort of "journal amoureux du quatorzieme siecle" and may recall, says its editor, such a love as that of Bettina and Goethe. The book relates the amorous intercourse of the already one-eyed and gouty poet with a young girl named Peronnelle d'Armentieres who, before ever seeing him, fell in love with his verses and music. The genuineness of the events related has been questioned, but it is fully reasonable to think the work based on fact. It has then the personal quahty which we find in autobiographies and confessions, and is valuable because of the many sidelights it throws on the life and customs of the fourteenth .century. And the whole is interspersed with characteristic lais, ballades, chansons balladies, rondels, complaintes, etc. The metrical tendencies of Guillaume de Machault were carried on by his friend and follower Eustache Deschamps, who was born about 1345 and died toward 1465-7. This author is, in fact, the composer of the first of the numerous Arts of Poetry which follow in a constant succession during the next hundred and fifty years and are distinguished from the later ones of the Renaissance and after by the attention devoted to verse forms as opposed to the consideration of subject-matter. In fact, like all the works devoted to the seconde rhetorique (the first being prose), Deschamps's Art de dictier et de fere chanqons, balades, virelais, et rondeaulx is an elaborate discussion of metrical forms based upon the conception of the necessary coimection between music and verse. The importance of such a key to poetry for later writers may be readily imagined, and we need 114 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE not be charged with exaggeration in making Deschamps largely responsible for the metrical monstrosities of the following generations. In other respects Eustache Deschamps is very different from Machault. Though he has the same delight in sporting with versification, yet his general attitude is that of a poetical free- lance. He writes a satire of thirteen thousand verses, le Miroir de manage, to make fun of women and is ready to jeer and jibe at all the other fools of the world, courtiers, clergy, financiers, and many besides. He does not ask for much himself: he praises chiefly a quiet life and asks to be left undisturbed. He is not much versed in literature and takes the Policraticus of John of •Salisbury and the (Economics of Xenophon for men. His chief characteristic, in fact, is a lack of taste and a complete inability to refrain from writing. An anthology of his writings would contain many charming bits; the published edition is a mass of confusion. In the intellectual world there was in the fourteenth century an effort toward intellectual freedom. Charles V, le sage, was an enlightened patron of art and letters. He was no warrior, like so many of the kings of the time, but a cold and serious student, "ne vieux" as Michelet says, of feeble health, who died comparatively early of a strange unknown malady, perhaps the result of poison. Even Petrarch, who hated France and knew but little French himself, thought highly of King Charles, and Jean de Monstereul said of him that "cunctando restituit rem si non dixero ampliavit." He erected many important buildings, constructed bridges, increased the Louvre, protected men of letters, and was himself the owner of what was for the time a magnificent Hbrary. Some of his kinsmen, too, were patrons of letters, for the Valois dynasty was always inclined to protect literature. He read much himself, preferring serious works to poetry, and caused various translations to be made into French. So he had Raoul de Presles translate Saint Augustine, and Oresme translate Aristotle, and his appreciation of southern FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES 115 writers is shown by the fact that Jean Daudin translated for him Petrarch's De remediis utriusque fortunae. Thus Charles V was the Maecenas of a little group of scholars among whom the most important was Nicolas Oresme. This writer and the slightly older Bersuire were without doubt influenced to some extent by Petrarch and paved the way for Jean de Monstereul who has been called the first of the modern Humanists in France. Unfortunately, for some time he was destined to be the last. Pierre Bersuire, whose name is found with many spelUngs, had lived in Avignon where he knew Petrarch. He acquired a fondness for antiquity, probably from the Italian, and when he came to Paris as secretary to King John he wrote at his instigation a translation of the known portions of Livy. The admiration of Petrarch for Livy is well known. Next in time and greater in point of attainment was Nicolas Oresme, who may be called the first French man of science in the modern sense and another bond of connection with the Petrarchian influences, inasmuch as he was sent to Avignon in 1363. He was a favorite of Charles V who gave him many honors, and to the king Oresme never feared to speak his mind. Thus his treatise on money is a fearless exhortation to the king against debasing the currency, as was so frequently done in the Middle Ages, and the whole work contains the soundest views on financial matters. Oresme did not hesitate, either, to speak his mind against the astrologers who tried to hold the sovereign in the clutches of their superstition. Typical also of his ability not only to learn, but to assimilate and make of practical use the learning of the ancients, is the account to which he turned his own translations into French of Aristotle. For in his attacks against the astrologers he draws arguments from Aristotle, and in Aristotle too he found reasons to induce the king to allow the principle of election in the choice of chancellors. Finally, Oresme is to be named among those who most con- tributed to the preparation of the language for the Renaissance ii6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE movement by the additions which he, hke Bersuire, made to the vocabulary. These two writers, Bersuire and Oresme, represent the first stage in the unconscious effort toward a Renaissance, corres- ponding in the history of the ItaUan movements to a revival of learning: they are translators and one of them is a man of science. With the name of Jean de Monstereul in the early fifteenth century we come upon a real Humanist. Jean de Monstereul (1354-1418) was secretary of Charles VI, canon of Rouen, and provost of Lille. He travelled widely in Germany, England, Scotland, and in Italy where he came into contact with the ItaUan Humanists. He was killed during the broils between the Armagnacs and the Bourguignons. He wrote some works in French and much in Latin, including many letters. He was full of the ancients, at least the Latin writers, whom he read and appreciated. His favorite was Cicero, but he was very fond too of Virgil, Ovid, and Terence. Among the moderns he praises highly Petrarch, though he does feel patriotic indignation because Petrarch asserts that there are no orators or poets outside of Italy. He esteems highly, too, his "teachers" Pierre Manhac and Gonthier Col as well as his friend Nicolas de Clamanges. And it was his perhaps unconscious affinity with the new feeling of rationalistic Human- ism expressed in the pagan writings of his Italian friends which involved him in a most interesting literary dispute with Christine de Pisan and Gerson about the Roman de la Rose. In language Jean de Monstereul aims at care and finish. It is amusing to note his agony when he discovers that he has sent off a letter containing the comparative proximior instead of propior, though he does not escape certain other inelegancies, such as a fondness for guerra instead of helium. Above all he is fond of quoting his beloved authors and incorporating their language into his own. Jean de Monstereul is, then, one of the first Frenchmen to discern the true meaning of the Italian revival and to represent FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES 117 the type in his own country. Unlike the Humanists of the earlier ages he not only loved the ancients, but entered into their spirit; he not only quoted them, but made his allusions apposite and brought their teaching into relation with his own times. But with his death there was a new delay. Yet the period was by no means one of complete somnolence, as many have implied. We may, indeed, be surprised with Gaston Paris that such romantic events as the saving of France by a shepherd-girl or the epic-like expedition of Charles VIII to Naples should not have inspired new chansons de geste. We may fret at the gross realism and bourgeois spirit which came over life, literature, and art in the reign of Louis XI. Yet a closer investigation shows a steady infiltration of new elements or at least a preparation for such new quaUties. The realism even, inartistic as it is, is the expression of the love of life, still oppressed by the thoughts of death, but awaiting the joyous awakening which the Renaissance is to bring. Science also, though it clings to the old syllogism, is ready for a new age. And so, as we look over the names of the writers of the fifteenth century, we find many a hint of the coming days. Christine de Pisan is to the highest extent significant of Classical tendencies by the trend of her studies and her taste for style. Or we may say, too, that Alain Chartier, so admired by his contemporaries and by the rketoriqueurs, prefigures the appreciation of style by his choice as a model of Seneca, one of the deities of the Classical school. Martin Le Franc in his Champion des Dames is a partisan and advocate of women. Again, we may try to show that Charles d'Orleans was not only the last of the trou- veres, but the first modern poet as well, for in him we see the remnants of the Middle Ages coupled with hints of Italian perfection of style and the lyric personality of the Renaissance. Finally, we may perhaps justify those who call Frangois Villon, because of his lyric personaHty, the first poet of modern times and the precursor of the Renaissance. Christine de Pisan is one of the least read authors in French ii8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE * literature. Scoffed at as a dull compiler of an unoriginal, age, she gets a mere passing mention in most histories. As a matter of- fact, few authors met with greater praise in their day, few have had greater influence on their age, few are more distinguished by breadth of mind and diversity of interests. She was not a French woman, nor was she a native of Pisa: her family may have come from the little town of Pezzano in northern Italy, but she was born in Venice about 1363, the daughter of Thomas of Bologna — Boulogne la grasce, not only a centre of learning, but a place where the claims of women to knowledge were not scorned and where the beautiful Novella Andrea lectured to the students from behind a curtain, lest her charms should distract them from their work. Such traditions of her father's home may have influenced Christine's later life, though she came to France at the age of five, when her father was made astrologer to Charles V. But his predictions went wrong, his science was attacked by sceptics like Oresme. So when Christine was left a widow at twenty-nve, penniless through law suits and with three young children, she deter- mined to make her living by her pen. Then, too, the decay of learning troubled her. It did not take her long to evolve a Uterary theory. In studying the Roman de la Rose she explains that, Just as the Romans in their triumphs gave praise only to what contributed to the common good, so will she study the present work. Her purpose then is didactic and moral, and she seeks not only to magnify the glory of science, but to show that it is morally and intellectually beneficial. Hence her Enseignements moraux, though at times they fall into the Chesterfieldian strain, Tiens toy a table honnestement Et t'abilles de vestement En tel atour qu'cn ne s'en moque. Car on cognoist I'ceuf a la coque, continue the tradition of moralising which we can trace back to the Roman Stoics and bring down through the sententiae of FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES 119 the sixteenth century tragedians and the quatrains of Pibrac to the practical moralising of the seventeenth century and the develop- ment of a bonum which is utile. When she studies history it is also from the moral rather than the chronological point of view, and with due attention to the ordonnance. Her life of Charles V is built on a regular plan : the first book proves his courage or heart, the second his chevalerie, and the third his sagesse or sapience. Each point is proved by a definite plan of narrative, argument, and example, with material drawn from his biography to prove his good heart, from Vegetius to prove that he fulfilled the requirements of military valor, and from Aristotle to show his wisdom. Another striking example of Christine's tastes and Uterary inclinations is to be found in her Chemin de long estude. This is no prose chronicle, but a poem on the advancement of learning. The work, which is clearly influenced by Dante ("Vagliami il lungo studio e il grande amore"), describes a long journey taken by Christine under the guidance of the Cumasan Sibyl, as the latter led .^neas or as Virgil led Dante. They visit the spring of wisdom below Parnassus and then travel along the chemin de long estude to Constantinople, the Holy Land, Cathay, Arabia, India, Ethiopia, Armenia, the Pillars of Hercules, the Earthly Paradise. Though the Sibyl's geography is mixed she instructs as she goes. With the help of Imagination they scale the ladder of Speculation and pass to the fifth heaven or Firmament. There they behold Raison holding court and receiving a petition from the Earth directed against Richesse. There follow the pleadings before Raison of the four estates, Sagesse, Noblesse, Chevalerie, and Richesse. Each blames the others and the perfect man is sought. As the somewhat vague question at issue cannot be definitely settled, it is agreed to refer the matter to the king of Fra'hce. At this point Christine awakes, and lo! it was all a dream. These two works are t37pical of Christine de Pisan, the student and populariser of learning. But to accuse her of being a I20 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE professional blue-stocking is to misinterpret the character of an intelligent woman full of quick sympathies, and implies the neglect of a large part of her poetical work. Another and possibly still more striking proof of her living interests is found in the part taken by her in the controversy over the Roman de la Rose. Here we have no collection of erudite extracts, but a spirited defence of women against their slanderers and an attack on Jean de Meun as one of the chief offenders. Jean de Mon- stereul and Christine are, curiously enough since both were scholars, on different sides: he was impressed by the rationalism of Jean de Meun, Christine stands up for the dignity of her sex, not only against Jean de Monstereul, but against his hot-tem- pered and uncourteous friend Gonthier Col. With the help of Gerson Christine puts up a good fight and blames Jean de Meun for the over-free speech and deceitful arguments of Raison, the sophistry of la vieille, the irreligion of Genius and his attacks on women, in which she is one of the first to detect the natural- ism which was to become the paganism of the Renaissance. A somewhat different Christine is to be found in her lyrical writings. These are good, bad, and indifferent, some of them graceful ("Seulete suis et seulete vueil estre"), some of them verbose and long drawn out, as in the Livre du due des vrais amans. About many of them there is an atmosphere of melan- choly, sometimes personal, sometimes assumed; others give pretty pictures of deduit and soulas, in contrast with the actual woes and wars of the age. Her knowledge of nature is Hmited, and her idea of spring is confined to the May-day motif found in almost all the poets of the Middle Ages. But she is worth reading. Alain Chartier (circa 1390-circa 1430), though less inter- esting to us, was even more famous in his day, and the ancestors of Classicism in the sixteenth century also Iftoked back to him with admiration. In the Duchesne edition of 161 7 is the list, so often drawn upon by later writers, of the praises awarded to Chartier by his contemporaries and successors. Here we find FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES 121 the extract from Boudiet which tells of Margaret of Scotland pausing to kiss the sleeping poet and saying, in reply to the comments on his ugly looks: "Je n'ay pas baise I'homme, mais la precieuse bouche de laquelle sont yssus et sortis tant de bons mots et vertueuses paroles." Here is quoted the passage from Etienne Pasquier praising him as an "autheur non de petite marque" on account of the "gravite des sentences," and calling him "pere de I'eloquence frangaise" and "Seneque frangais." French Seneca he remained though few have read him since the sixteenth century, and in this epithet as well as the praise of his "sentences" we find the key of his importance. For in Seneca we have a model ever dear to the Classicist, one whose influence contributes to a stately, rather bombastic rhetoric, to be declaimed rather than read, where the author seems to be always acting. Therefore we may certainly attribute to Char- tier much of the impetus toward Senecan rhetoric afterward incorporated in the national Uterature. But Chartier need not be looked upon as a mere imitator. He has the customary respect for the then accepted masters of antiquity whom he advises one to study, Seneca, Homer, Virgil, Livy, Orosius, Trogus Pompeius, Justin, Valerius Maximus, Statius, and Lucan. But in his works in prose and verse he rises to originality and manifests a feeling of patriotism which touches a responsive chord in the hearts of modern French students of that period. In many respects Alain Chartier is the adept in allegory with whom we are becoming so familiar. In the Liwe de I'Esperance the characters of Melancolie, Entende- ment. Defiance, Indignation, Desesperance, etc. appear in a dream and do their best to bury the author's eloquence about the woes of France. In his light poems, the Lay de Plaisance, the Debat du Reoeille-Matin, the Lay de la belle Dame sans mercy, we meet with nothing new. The success of the widely imitated Belle Dame is but the occasion for the contemporary poets to burst into a new spasm of sentimental insipidity. Even in the Qurial he is perhaps cribbing outright the Latin work of au 122 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE obscure Italian Humanist, Ambrosius de Miliis. On the other hand, in the Quadrilogue invectif, so called because it is a discus- sion between four people, the invective carries the writer above his allegorical and abstract trappings, and the sincerity of his emotions makes him burst into really eloquent passages. To the historian of literary tendencies Alain Chartier is, therefore, at once a representative of a passing school and a force destined to exercise its influence upon the succeeding one. Quite as much cannot be said of the two remaining great authors, Charles d'Orleans and Frangois Villon. Charles d'Orleans (1391-1465), the father of Louis XII, was the aristocratic poet who dabbled in verse as an amusement. For twenty-five years he was a captive in England after Agin- court and, on his return to France, lived chiefly at Blois, grouping about him a band of sympathetic spirits. His writings had practically no influence on his times, inasmuch as they remained unpubUshed until the eighteenth century, but they are the work of a dilettante of genius, expressing incessantly the feeling of "nonchaloir" or epicurean detachment. They are almost entirely mediaeval poems, yet they are the most graceful expression of the Middle Ages, and this "troubadour du nord" shows what can be done with the ballade and rondeau in verses such as the famous poem on spring: Le temps a laissie son manteau De vent, de froidure et de pluye. Frangois de Montcorbier or des Loges, called Francois Villon or Frangois de Villon, was born in 143 1; the date of his death is unknown, but it was probably before 1465 or 1470. He is one of the great poets of French Hterature, but his influence on later generations was smaller than it might otherwise have been, because, though his spirit is modern, he is very closely wedded to the mediaeval forms of expression. Very different from the rhetoriqueurs, he is a personal poet and has been caUed the first one of the Renaissance. FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES 123 Though a master of arts of the university, Francois Villon lived to regret his neglected opportunities: H6 Dieu! se j'eusse estudiS, Au temps de ma jeunesse folle, Et a bonnes meurs dedie, J'eusse maison et couche molle! Mais quoy? je fuyoie I'escoUe Comma fait le mauvais enfant . . . En escripvant ceste parole A peu que le cueur ne me fent. He became a vagabond and ne'er-do-well, associating with drunkards, murderers, and low women, getting himself involved in murders and thefts, and being condemned to death, though afterward pardoned. Villon's writings, externally considered, continued the general tendencies of the Roman de la Rose and of the lyric school which sprang largely from Machault and Deschamps. He constantly uses the ballade as form of expression. On the other hand, his subject-matter is original and reflects, as no other poet of his day did, his own thoughts and those of his time: the lust of life overshadowed, as it was not during the Renaissance, by the thought of death and decay. The chief works of Villon were the Petit Testament and the Grand Testament in which he repeated a device favorite to some mediaeval poets of bequeathing imaginary legacies to friends and foes. The stanzas making up these poems are interspersed with ballades or an occasional rondeau. Of these the Ballade des dames du temps jadis with its refrain "Mais oil sont les neiges d'antan?" ranks among the most famous and most translated poems of French hterature. There is historical senti- ment in these verses; there is true religious feeling in the poem for his miother to Notre Dame, which has been compared with Heine's Walljahrt nach Kevlaar; there is satire in the Contreditz de Franc-Gontier, an answer to verses of Philippe de Vitry of the fourteenth century on the pleasures of rustic life; there is 124 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE filthy passion in the Ballade de la grosse Margot and the melan- choly of age portrayed in the Regrets de la belle heaulmiere, on the courtesan regretting the passing of her beauty. Still another famous poem of Villon, though not in the same collections, is the Ballade des pendus, supposed to have been written when Villon expected execution: La pluye nous a buez et lavez, Et le soleil desechez et noircis; Pies, corbeaulx, nous ont les yeux cavez, Et arrache la barbe et les sourcilz. Jamais, nul temps, nous ne sommes assis; Puis ga, puis la, comme le vent varie, A son plaisir sans cesser nous charie, Plus becquetez d'oiseaulx que dez a couldre. Ne soiez done de nostre confrairie, Mais priez Dieux que tous nous veuille absouldre! Several well-known poems formerly attributed to Villon are now denied him. The Jobelin, or writings in thieves' slang or Jargon, are more likely genuine. PART II THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER I THE RENAISSANCE THE sixteenth century marks a tremendous change in all the divisions of French intellectual life. In it we see the full advent of the Italian Renaissance and the spirit of intense liberty and reaction against dogmatic tradition for which it paved the way. As a result of this invasion of foreign elements which followed closely on what Michelet calls the "discovery" of Italy, the first half of the century, almost to the death of Francis I, is a period of the greatest turmoil. All kinds of elements are present, confused and interrelated, and so entangled that it is difl&cult to label any single author. Accordingly, historians are free to classify after their bias and emphasise the author or period which is to them most interesting. Thus, chronologically, we shall find the reign of Francis I impartially called the foreshadowing of the Renaissance or the first age of the complete Renaissance, and we shall begin our list of "new" authors with Lemaire de Beiges, 6r Marot, or some other. Again, if we try to map out the tendencies of the times, we shall be puzzled by the difficulty of drawing a dividing line between them and of assigning one writer to one class. Not only does the same name spring up in widely separated spheres of literary activity, but we are also unable to sever one order of writers from another: Reformers are sometimes Humanists, at other periods they are hostile to them; fellow- Humanists, too, show imexpected enmities, as in the quarrels of the Hellenists and Ciceronians, or worse yet, the jealousy of Erasmus and Bude. The impression produced, particularly by a glance at the reign of Francis I, is, then, one of turmoil, a restless thirst for 127 128 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE knowledge. The Renaissance, in throwing off the shackles of the Middle Ages, has given full vent to the freedom of the individual who seeks his enjoyment either in physical pleasure or in intellectual liberty. The man of the Renaissance, in Italy as in France, hved for pleasure and sought to surround himself with all that could caress his senses: art, architecture, music, not to speak of the good cheer and dive bouteille of Rabelais, and the lust for woman. The Abbey of Theleme is the allegory of the concrete life of the early Renaissance. On the intellectual side the Renaissance shows this same liberty, the spontaneousness of the ancient Hellenic world. The Reformers alone accepted a new. servitude, which they set up by their own vohtion. And this individualism is obvious everywhere, in politics and the conduct of nations, no less than in the many-sided activity of persons. In the sixteenth century disorder is as noticeable as the order and method of the next century. Here we come upon the versatile men of letters, at once physicians, jurisconsults, poets, and philologists. Others like to relate their own memoirs. Beginning, then, in the usual way, we shall say that the six- teenth century, in spite of its apparent incoherence and external ebulUtion, manifests a uniform tendency towards harmony. In other words, when once the French invaders of Italy saw the marvellous works of art and architecture in the South, as well as the poUshed prose and verse of Italian Uterature, and when they began to compare this perfection with the spiritless aspect of their own possessions; when they contrasted the union of spirit and matter in Italy with the formlessness (popular literature) and the excess of form {rhetoriqueurs and flamboyant Gothic architecture) of their own art, they realised that something was wrong and unconsciously set about remedying the defect, either by the use of new material or by the imposition of a new form upon the old material. The sixteenth century, then, reacts violently against authority and proclaims its own value, its own rights and prerogatives. THE RENAISSANCE '129 Concretely this reaction takes the form of the addition to the intellectual wealth of the French (such as a knowledge of Latin literature externally considered and without a true appreciation of its spirit) of a treasure found in Italy. This treasure was a better conception of Greek and Latin art and letters remoulded and somewhat modified by a sojourn'in Italy. Thus the tremendous awakening of individualism and the development of personaUty, — the "coming to self -conscious- ness," as Burckhardt calls it in the case of the Italians — which had been favored by circumstances in general, like the invention of printing and of gunpowder, the discovery of America and of Italy itself, led the French to attempt a new disposition of life and a judging of its accomplishments by a new standard. It was pre-eminently a rejection of the old standard of authority, — tradition. In thought Scholasticism was to be done away with; in prose literature we must discard the remodellings of the old chansons de geste; in poetry, the ballades and exhausted metres; in art, the involved Gothic. All these intellectual expres- sions had been the result of constant accretion, so that upon a slender basis of idea was constructed a large superstructure of form. The Renaissance took as many of the old ideas as were suitable, and endeavored, after the addition of new material, to get another harmony of idea and form. And because of release from author- ity, people had a greater liberty in the choice of a standard. Hence the division of movements in the sixteenth century, just as freedom of worship among the Protestants has multiplied sects in opposition to the single unified authority of the Roman Church. Some chose other models than Italy for actual imita- tion, though the prime factor in the awakening was Italy. One element soon severs itself from the others, the element of the Reformation, the purest idealism, less modified by Italy and antiquity. In this case the individual, rejecting the seem- ingly false and corrupt dogmas of a degenerate Church, sought help in the purer atmosphere of early Christian reUgion. This I30 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE was a return to the primitive Church, not a return to nature. To the Reformer nature is corrupt. On the other hand, another set of men of the Renaissance, under the guidance of Humanism, passed over the primitive Church and its conception of life as a struggle between a spirit and a corrupt body and revelled in the pagan harmony of mind and matter and the goodness of nature which that union implies. Consequently we see in many t)^ical representatives of the French as of the Italiap Renaissance, a total abandonment to nature and a following of its inclinations. And this, not with the mental reservation that such a course is wrong, but with the feeling that nature is good. But a yielding to nature and to its impulses cannot last forever, else the inevitable result will be demoralisation and decay. Hxunanity seems to be in need of some ideal, intellectual if not moral, either imposed from without or of its own creation, "si Dieu n'existait pas il faudrait I'inventer!" Hence the gradual development, along with the growth of the Renaissance, of rationalism. Rationalism, at first the liberty of reasoning, then transformed into the doctrine of the supremacy of reason, shows itself in the Reformation intertwined with a moral or ethical phase. In the other divisions of life and thought it remains a more purely intellectual conception, whose rights grow and increase until their authority seems no less absolute than that of mediaeval times. So that when we reach the reign of Louis XIV and the heyday of Classicism, we are again con- fronted with absolutism and despotic rules in taste as well as in lawgiving. To follow out this thought would, however, be anticipating. It remains to ask what was the guidance exercised by the Human- ists upon the men of the Renaissance. These men, when they avoided the mistakes of an Italianism, that was not far-sighted enough to look beyond the contemporary Italian Renaissance, were lovers of antiquity. There had been students of the- past, as we have seen, in the Middle Aiges. But the new Humanists, THE RENAISSANCE 131 of whom we have found a precursor in Jean de Monstereul, are of a different kind. They not only study the external qualities of antiquity, but they understand its spirit, and many of them know the literatiue of Greece as well as that of Rome. The Humanists, then, who were formerly men with a love for a misimderstood antiquity, now become men with a loving KNOWLEDGE OF ANTIQUITY. Increased familarity breeds a desire for a better imitation or assimilation of classical quali- ties. Hence the growth of Humanism coincides with the growth of taste, the search for artistic perfection, by imita- tion of the ancients. It involves most of the old classical ideals as xmderstood by the best interpreters of Classicism then in the world, the Humanists of the ItaKan Renaissance. Among these elements of Humanism which now emerge are the con- sciousness of the value of the study of man, the desire for glory, the reaUsation of the continuity of the old world into the new, the appreciation of the idea of beauty. In the first days of the French Renaissance Humanism is in the hands of technical scholars who, unfortunately, are apt to divide into hostile camps: the Hellenists or school of Bud#, and the Ciceronians or school of Bembo. As time goes on it extends its sway. For a while, even, it goes hand in hand with the spirit of the Reformation. All the important Reformers passed through the training of Humanism, and nearly all the early Humanists were in favor of a religious reorganisation. Indeed, their aims at first are quite similar: Reformers, as well as Humanists, substitute for author- ity freedom in inquiry, replace the old beliefs by a simpler and more rational dogma, and seek a broader and more accurate culture, by the study of original texts drawn from a wider range. This Humanism is to be contrasted with the modern literary Cosmopolitanism misnamed "Humanism," which tries to extract the substantifique mouelle not only from antiquity but from all races and ages. In the earlier part of the reign of Francis I we find the two groups of Humanists and Reformers united against the Middle 132 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Ages. It is only when the persecutions begin that the more militant and pugnacious follow Calvin, while those who are fond of a quiet life confine themselves to the study of language or extend their investigations into intellectual domains which do not encroach upon the realm of Faith. When Humanism spreads from technical scholarship into hterature, and when the spirit of Humanism at last takes hold of belles-lettres, as it does with the Pleiade, then we can at last say that Classicism is penetrating into French literature. The reign of Louis XH is, in literature at least, part of the Middle Ages. The wars of Charles VIII and of Louis XII have not produced their effect. Anne de Bretagne still delights in the poems of Meschinot; Cretin is high in favor. Lemaire de Beiges, who has travelled in Italy, alone shows inklings of the new art. The reign of Francis I is the dawn of the Renaissance. There is as yet no clear distinction of currents, but Reformation, Humanism and Italianism are mixed up in an almost inextricable confusion. We find, however, clear indications of a parting between the old traditions represented by the Church, the university and the law, and the new ideas typified by such men as Bude. The services of Francis I in favor of learning must not be esteemed too highly. Francis was personally brave, but not so brave morally. His intentions may often have been good, but he was not judicious in furthering them. Then, too, he was surrounded by many influences as unfavorable to learning as that of Bude was good. The opposition reached his very court, where the Cardinal de Tournon was jealous of any novelty and opposed all liberal moves. Beyond the court, the doctors of the Sorbonne no less than the jurists, such as Lizet who worked for the burning of Dolet, were reactionaries. So much so that the Sorbonne in 1535, in its opposition to what it considered heresy, extorted from the king letters-patent forbidding under penalty of death the printing of books in France and closing all THE RENAISSANCE 133 booksellers' shops. Such a measure, though rescinded, shows how little Francis was the pere des lettres and how much the new learning had to contend against. Francis, too, was partly Italian by education. His mother's favorites had been Octovien de Saint-Gelais, a Petrarchist, and the works of Italians, including Boccaccio. When king he imitated the hterary patronage of the Italian princes. Thus it was the task of the Humanists to guide hterature and learning between the Reformation and Italianism and to encourage the fondness for antiquity. But in the entourage of Francis distinctions are not clearly made and specialisation has not yet begun. And to a less degree this is a characteristic of the whole century . As Sainte- Beuve says: "On ne songeait pas a I'apanage du talent. On faisait des vers comme on fait de la mededne. Tout lettre faisait des vers. Ainsi les rimes de I'imprimeur Dolet, de I'avocat Sibilet, de Peletier du Mans, de Pasquier." Similarly in the circles of Francis and Marguerite were to be found Bude, Lefevre d'Etaples, and Marot. Throughout the reign of Francis I literature properly speaking is scarcely humanistic. The school of Marot, it is true, runs into that of the P16iade, if it should not be said rather to fade away before it, but Marot and Mellin de Saint-Gelais are not Human- ists. The most prominent features, then, in the reign of Francis I of the growth of that Renaissance tendency which is to become Classicism, are Italianism and Hiunanism striving for admission into French. The Italian influence is the starting-point of almost every movement. Literature and life are steeped, too, in an environment of art and culture brought northward from the peninsula. To this had contributed not only political ties, embassies and the kinship of princes, but the closer ties resulting from the sojourn of Itahans in France and of Frenchmen in Italy. The mediasval fortress was transforming itself into the chateau of Touraine, a northern counterpart of the Italian palazzo or country villa, while artists thronged to the court of 134 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE France, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, Primaticcio, Benvenuto Cellini. Nor should we forget to mention among the literary men Luigi Alamanni, who lived in France during a large part of the reign of Francis I. CHAPTER II TEE GROWTH OF HUMANISM IN the last years of the Middle Ages education had become totally unscientific. It seems even ludicrous to mention the two terms education and science together. Aristotle was the universal authority, and the Aristotelian method was the basis of all argumentation. Not only was he quoted in support of the most evident propositions, as that you cannot give to another what you do not possess, but everything was discussed by the syllogism. Such a method of study and of instruction could lead only to exaggerated disputatiousness which often veiled but little that was truly reasonable ("le raisonnement bannit la raison"). One is consequently not surprised to hear of violence as a method of persuasion. There were "Sorbonic" disputations lasting all day and degenerating into scrimmages. Teachers were proud of having their lecture-rooms resound with clamor, for this was considered to indicate intellectual vigor. A picture of univer- sity life in the early sixteenth century shows us, too, a dirty and sordid existence in unhealthy bviildings ruled by rigid masters. We remember Rabelais's scorn for the "college de pouillerie qu'on nomme Montagu," and Erasmus is no less vehement against the same college, where he was made ill by the rotten eggs, and the dirty bed in which he had to sleep. Progress had to come, and it came from without. The first modifications were, indeed, hinted at by Frenchmen who, though of Latin culture and mediaeval tradition, nevertheless rose above their fellows. Then several foreigners, not always teachers themselves, brought the new learning from Italy. A third generation shows scholars of not only French race but also 13s 136 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE French feeling, such men as Henri Etienne, Etienne Pasquier, and Jacques Amyot. As early as the days of Jean de Monstereul we have seen traces of Kterary perception. Other scholars, Pierre d'Ailly (1350-1420) and Gerson (1363-1429), were intelligently intimate with the classics. Nicolas de Clamanges (d. 1437) boasts of renewing the cultivation of letters and of eloquence. In the late fifteenth century the advance is still more clear, though culture is entirely Latin. Guillaume Fichet directed his efforts towards an emancipation of rhetoric from Scholasticism and helped the establishment of printing in Paris. His tendencies were seconded by his friend and admirer Robert Gaguin (1433- 1501), who prided himself on being "fichetista." He was familiar with the spirit of Latin literature, wrote in both French and Latin, and composed neat epistles. He, too, is not unde- serving of the name of Humanist. Such influences could not help causing a response in general instruction. By 1489 the faculty of arts decided that "poets" or teachers of the Humanities could lecture for an hour in the afternoon, and the Italian Fausto Andrelini is found at the university as professor of rhetoric and poetry. Three other Italians, Fihppo Beroaldo, Comelio Vitelli, and Girolamo Balbi, are there about the same time. Andrelini (1460-1518), of Forli, who had beeri a pupil of Pomponius Laetus, became so much a Frenchman that he seemed to lose all love for his native land. His works included Latin poems of love, friendship, piety, and morality and Epistolae proverbiales et morales. He was a friend of great people like Erasmus, and himself known as "poeta regineus et laureatus." He lectured daily, "multiplex et quotidiana interpretatio," particularly on Ovid and Virgil. Though he belongs to the Latin side of culture, yet he must be considered a formative influence of the early French Renaissance and its Himianism. But we are now at the moment when Latin Humanism is to be entirely renewed by the advent of Hellenism. THE GROWTH OF HUMANISM t^'j For the sake of historical completeness we must go back to ' 1456, when an Italian with a knowledge of Greek, a pupil of Chrys- oloras, named Gregorio Tiphernas of Citta di Castello, undertook to teach the language in Paris. In 1476 a native Greek, named George Hermonymus of Sparta, settled in Paris, where he tried to make his Uving by teaching and by copying manuscripts. He gave instruction to men of no less renown than Reuchlin, Erasmus, and Bude, though the last two cannot find epithets sufficiently opprobrious to heap upon his ignorance and greed. Reuchlin and Lefevre d'Etaples are much more friendly in their appreciations. Almost contemporary with Hermonymus was another Greek, Andronicus Callistus, a partisan of the philos- ophy of Gemistus Pletho, who enjoyed some reputation in Paris, though we have no very palpable evidences of his influence. The old order changes. Instead of foreigners of indifferent ability we come upon a Greek of inspiring influence, John or Janus Lascaris (1445-153 5). He was of imperial origin and attached himself to Charles VIII, coming to France with him after the Itahan expedition. He was not a pedagogue but a man of multifarious occupations. He organised the library of Blois, helped Bude in his studies, and became ambassador of Louis XII to Venice. Being now back in Italy he helped in the plans of Leo X for the estabhshment of the Greek college in Rome. This experience stood him in good stead when he was soon after ambassador from the pope to Francis I, who sought his advice in the plans for organising the proposed college of learning in Paris. But the great teacher is still to come. Girolamo Aleandro (1480-1542) had been proofreader for Aldus Manutius at Venice, where he knew Erasmus. He came to Paris in 1508 and opened courses in the following year, brushing aside another scholar, the meritorious but modest Francois Tissard. He taught Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and after a journey to Orleans he again lectured in Paris, where he created a furore, to audiences 138 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of a couple of thousand persons. Though a foreigner, he even became rector of the University, and it was only because of illness that he gave up teaching He afterwards rose to be papal nuncio and cardinal. Because of his great success and the high standing of his friends and pupils, Aleandro is of much importance in the history of French Humanism. Unfortimately, after he ceased his instruction, teaching fell back somewhat into the old ruts, until the efforts of Bude and of Duchatel succeeded in creating the rivalry of the royal lectureships. We now reach the great names of Humanism, Erasmus and Bude. Erasmus (1466-1536), though not a Frenchman, cannot be omitted in an account of French Humanism. He was the greatest man of the Renaissance, and by his, many acquaintances, his varied interests, his travels, he touches upon all sides of intellectual life. He is the universal wit, often compared to Voltaire, an active though a lazy teacher, advocating many reforms, famous as the author of satirical writings and works of scholarship. To the average reader the name of Erasmus possibly most naturally suggests his connection with the Reformation. To us he is no less important for his position in Humanism; in fact, his character was rather that of the student than of the militant Reformer. And in his relations to both movements he manifests the same tendencies and is an excellent example of the growing spirit of Rationalism which coincides with the rise of Classicism. With the Humanists he preaches intellectual freedom, and steadily refuses, whether from indolence or coward- ice, to compromise himself with the Reformers, leaving to Luther the task of hatching the. egg he had laid. To Erasmus the intellect should be left free to reason at its pleasure; henfce possibly the real cause of his aversion to the intolerant "dogma- tism of denial" of Luther. Erasmus thinks, moreover, that the revelations of religion have not added everything to Hfe that makes it worth living. He implies, particularly in the Adages, that modern man enhghtened as he is by the dispensations of THE GROWTH OF HUMANISM 139 Providence, may still learn much from the men of old who were gmded only by the light of reason. The rivalry of Erasmus and Luther is thus readily compre- hensible. His thinly veiled dislike of Bude, since they were both leaders in the same movement, must be ascribed to meaner motives and a more petty spirit. His connection with France was close, though he is at times uncomplimentary enough to France and the French ("merdas istas Gallicas"), and he was urged by both Francis I and Bude to return there and help in the establishment of the royal lectureships, but he never consented. Nevertheless, through his writings and his intercourse with distinguished Frenchmen the influence of Erasmus was felt by nearly aU scholars in France. His French rival, Guillaume Bude (1468-1540), was a true scholar and Humanist. He was the greatest Hellenist of his day in France, and stood high in favor with Francis I. He wrote, besides translations from Greek into Latin and many letters, studies upon philology and erudition and works in favor of the revival of learning. His most important books were the De Asse on Roman coinage, and the Commentarii linguae graecae marking the advent of accurate scholarship. Bude was not such a universal man as Erasmus, but he was more thorough. He biiilt more solidly and with more concrete results. To the modem student the importance of Bude Hes in the fact that his writings give evidence of the rise of that rationalistic spirit typical of the sixteenth-century Humanist. He was, too, more than anybody else, influential in bringing about the foundation of t;he royal lectureships, thus making possible the reform of the university and the overthrow of Scholasticism. Some of the most useful material for the imderstanding of Bude's position in the rise of Classicism is to be foimd, not in his longest productions, but in the minor writings, particularly his De sPudio litterarum rede et commode instUuendo. This work shows in a marked degree how greatly Bude contributed in the 14° A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE field of scholarship to the development of freedom of reasoning or the rationalistic spirit which encouraged the growth of French Classicism. His effort to revive the rationalism of Greek literature not only helped French scholarship, but made the spirit of Greek literature more accessible to men of letters. The gist of this work is that Greek literature contains a useful doctrine suitable for the refinement of life. It has true philos- ophy, which is the expression of himian reason based upon the knowledge of man and of his relations with God. Rational philosophy, then, is the result of experience, developed by study under the guidance of genius, which is needed to direct, and of which we have the noblest maijifestation in ancient Greece. Philosophy under this guidance will find expression in literature, eloquence and the other divisions of intellectual Mfe. Our efforts must, therefore, be to increase our knowledge of ancient Greece, its language, its literature, its eloquence, that is to say by the study of philology taken in the broader meaning, not with the restricted sense now given to the term. Bude, it may thus be seen, was one of the first in France to look beyond ancient Rome into Greece, and there to separate from the mere language those additional qualities which make Hellenism of permanent value to a modern world — a literature of pre-eminent beauty, which could be made of practical use as a model to pattern a new literature free from the curse of authority and at liberty to develop in a rational or reasonable manner. Such theories needed opportunities for application. Bude sought the ear of the well-disposed but fickle Francis I. It took his hardest efforts combined with those of Pierre Duch3,tel, later the king's reader, and of the Cardinal du Bellay to estab- lish and maintain a foxmdation destined to encourage the new learning. It was not imtil 1529 that the efforts of Bud6 and of his fellow-Humanists, seconded by Marguerite de Navarre, resulted in the foimdation of the royal lectureships. The foimdation dates from March, 1530. It was not a college, but merely an establishment of professors or lecturers, without THE GROWTH OF HUMANISM 141 even a permanent home. The title of college royal is not used until 1610, when a building was erected. It is now the College de France. The Reformers met with the greatest hostility from the whole university, and from the Sorbonne in particular, which could not view with equanimity the independent study of ancient texts. But the new learning had gained too strong a headway. Hence- forth there were lecturers supported by vigorous men without the university and a few advanced priricipals of colleges. Such was the course of Humanism in France during the first half of the sixteenth century, so far as scholarship is concerned. Along with the organiser Lascaris and the pedagogue Aleandro, we find the general moving influence of Erasmus and the more definite efforts of Bude to advance the study of Greek and the general cause of Rationahsm and of free inquiry. But even he, in one way, belongs to the preh'minary stage. He does not yet fully appreciate the value of French and the necessity, for the propagation of the humanistic spirit, of using the national language. He wrote, indeed, in French the work published later under the name of the Institution du prince, for Francis I, who did not know Latin, but his own opinion is that the ancient languages, Greek above all, Latin next, are alone suflScient to make man eloquent. The Humanists would have liked to make Latin not only the literary language, but also the spoken tongue of Europe. But they had one great obstacle to contend with. They wished to do away with the bad Latin of the Middle Ages and substitute for it a pure idiom. But the reason why the discarded Latin was un-Ciceronian was because it was a living language, keeping pace with ideas and customs. By going back to a classical language the scholars found themselves out of contact with modern times. Perhaps this obstacle may have hastened the desired end, and it is when the Humanists at last use French that, with the Pleiade, they take possession of national life. Even before the time of Bude, a fellow-Humanist, Claude de 142 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Seyssel, in 1509 had advocated the use of French for the vul- garisation of the sciences, though his work was not published until 1559. Indeed, throughout the first fifty years of the sixteenth century, a long list can be made of writings showing the gradual encroaching of the French language. And in 1539 King Francis, probably merely for political motives and to ensure the spread of the royal authority, did the Humanists 'a service which perhaps both he and they failed to appreciate, by enjoining in the decree of Villers-Cotterets the use of French in all legal documents. By this means the national language was forced into one of the most reactionary corporations of the kingdom. It must not be assumed that Bude was the only type of Humanist. Hellenism, presupposing a knowledge of Latin literature, is the fullest, bloom of Humanism. But French Classicism is rather Latin than Greek, and, even in the sixteenth century, those thoroughly familiar with Greek were in the minority. Even in the best of times translations from the Greek were often through the Latin. Etienne Dolet (1508- 1546), hanged and burned on a charge of heresy, was convicted for an alleged mistranslation of the Axiochus, then attributed to Plato, which he had got, not from the Greek but through the Latin. There were, then, Ciceronians as well as Hellenists, the school of Bembo as well as the school of Bude. The Ciceronians usually ignored Greek. Their hero was Cicero, outside of whose works there was no salvation. These were the people whom Erasmus mocked when he told of the exclamation of the youth, "Decern iam annos aetatem trivi in Cicerone," to which Echo answered ove. The leaders of Ciceronianism were the solemn Longolius (Longueil) who took Ciceronianism so seriously that he was never seen to smile, Villanovanus (Villeneuve), Sadeleto, the bishop of Carpentras, Dolet, and the astounding humbug ' ' This term refers of course to his personal boasting; his influence was great. THE GROWTH OF HUMANISM 143 Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558), who also saddled French Classicism with useless technicalities. And the Humanists were not a happy family. They imitated the vituperations of their Italian predecessors and were jealous among themselves. The Ciceronians hated the Hellenists, and there was hostility in the same camp, for Bude and Erasmus the Hellenists were not any too fond of each other, while Scaliger hated Dolet even more than he did Erasmus, who was to him "omnium ordinum labes, omnium studiorum macula, omnium aetatum venenum, mendaciorum parens, convidorum sator, furoris alumnus," as well as "scelestus, mentiens, insaniens, barbarus, blaterans." CHAPTER III THE TRANSITION IN POETRY. THE RHETORIQUEURS. LEMAIRE. MAROT AT the end of the fifteenth century and in the early years of the sixteenth, hterature was entirely under the sway of mediaeval ideas. The self-centred intellectual life, lacking in critical taste or discernment, had fed upon itself and had become as cedematous and "exsufflicate" as the flamboyant architecture which was its manifestation in another sphere. Of learning there was much, too much, a Latin learning, turgid and pedantic, which had permeated all conscious literature,- as opposed to the popular productions, like the mysteries and the farces, meant for the people at large. ' Thus just before the seething ferment and activity of the Renaissance, when literature becomes itself again, throwing off its shackles and admitting once more reason and thought, the spirit of individu- alism and lyric expression, we find the tendencies all towards involution and comphcation. It is the age of the grands rhetori- queurs, last effete descendants of a long line extending from Machault and Chartier. They represent, in its most compli- cated form, the dying literature of the Middle Ages, and their work has been compared to the recent literary schools, the ' The struggles of the king and commoners against the nobles had in many cases resulted in an extremely philistine or bourgeois spirit. But this element, together with the theatre, belongs to the side of the esprit gaulois and not to what will be the germ of the esprit classique. The ser- mons of Menot and of Maillard are also bourgeois in spirit, though learned in form, if delivered in Latin or even in macaronics. The story called the Petit Jehan de SaintrS also has much of the same plebeian attitude. 144 THE TRANSITION IN POETRY 145 decadents, who made up for want of meaning by plentiful metrical innovations and copious symbolism, corresponding to allegory. A study of the transition in literature leads one, then, first to the verbocination latiale of a number of partly foreign, partly French writers, many of them grouped about the court of Bur- gundy. These poetasters delighted in wild artifices of language and versification, yet they are far from being without importance, because, though they represent a dying tradition, they had influence on the new poets. Marot was distinctly guided by their style and versification, and Ronsard is in many respects only a successor of the rhetoriqueurs. The earliest name is that of Georges Chastellain (1404 or 5- 1475), chronicler or historiographer {indiciaire) of the court of Burgundy, who wrote voluminously in involved prose and did much in verse. His work was continued by Jehan Molinet (1435-1507). Among his productions were a prose rendering of the Roman de la Rose ("moraUse cler et net"), a treatise on poetry long attributed to Henry de Croy, and a continuation of Chastellain's chronicles. Two other names, Meschinot and Cretin, stand above the remaining writers, but far below Lemaire de Beiges, and with them we pass for a time away from Burgundy. Jehan Meschinot (1420-1491), a Breton, wrote much occa- sional verse deaUng with moral topics, religion and love, and political satires against the king of France. He is best known for his Lunettes des Princes, partly political and partly allegorical, which marvellous spectacles, given by Reason to the poet, consist of Prudence and Justice for eyes. Force for mounting and Temperance for bridge. Guillaume Cretin (d. 1525), is a connecting link between France and Burgundy and one of the great influences upon his younger contemporaries, who laud him to the skies. To Marot he is souverain poete franqois. Posterity has, indeed, rather sided with Rabelais, who sneers at him as Raminagrobis and introduces into his writings, to make fun of it, a sonnet by Cretin. But 146 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE posterity has been, in some respects, unjust. Looking through his writings we are surprised to see how many pages are innocu- ous and free from excesses of metre. It is only later that Cretin completely loses his head and falls into the divagations which have impressed themselves on people's minds. Meschinot had set a good pace when he composed a poem to be read in thirty- two different ways. But in many of his poems Cretin does not go beyond harmless exuberance of rich rhymes. They become disagreeable, however, when they take the form of rime equivoque ("le bon Cretin au vers equivoque ") or make unpleasant overflows. Then we find monstrosities: coquelu- chant rhyming with quoy qu'il cut chant, or rimes Equivoques and couronnees like the following: Frere et amy, si sonnettes sont nettes Et environ Alengon alle en son, Sonne vers moy chansonnettes honnestes, Et de ta fleur rendz pour legon le son, Ayme Cretin et boy son a boysson, II ne m'en chault comme j'aille en mangeaille. Si mieulx que pis y a plaine ma jaille. In Lemaire de Beiges we come upon a writer of a totally different kind. Sainte-Beuve rediscovering sixteenth-century poetry thought a few lines suf&cient for him. Today he deserves careful study as one of the important members of the early French Renaissance. Jehan Lemaire de Beiges was not a Frenchman. He was born in 1473 in the Low Countries, at Beiges or Bavay (now French territory). He was a nephew of Molinet, and perhaps his godson, if names go for anything. He was in the service of several princes, in whose memory he com- posed some of his important poems, having been first urged to write ,by Cretin, the friend of his uncle Molinet, though it is not improbable that he in turn influenced Cretin. Lemaire's most important service was that of Margaret of Austria, on whose estates he lived for some years at Pont d'Ain, enjoying, the friendship of literary and artistic circles in Lyons. He also THE TRANSITION IN POETRY 147 travelled a great deal in Italy. The end of his life, strange to say, is wrapped in darkness. He probably died about 1525, though according to some he lived on in madness until 1548. Lemaire is an important link between the Renaissance and the preceding ages. He shares certain characteristics of the previous epoch. On the other hand, he shows in much of his poetry what it had not, a lyric personality. The times were certainly propitious. The Northern world was ready for the new ideals from the South. Then, too, Lemaire lived near Lyons, the "second ceil de France," frequented by merchants, students on their way to and from Italy, printers, painters and men of letters. He himself visited the land of Petrarch and of Boccaccio. But he had qualities of his own which made him unconsciously cut loose from his predecessors. He is more direct, concise and sincere. He tries to make the metre subor- dinate. The most interesting works of Lemaire are the Epttre de Vgimant vert, the Temple d'honneur et de vertus, the Concorde des deux langues, the Couronne margaritique and the Illustrations des Gaules et Singularites de Troie. The Epitre de I'amant vert is an elegy in the first person, a lament by Margaret's pet green parrot, which had died during her absence from him. The Temple d'honneur et de vertus shows Lemaire with his face turned towards the past. It is a work in prose and verse to the memory of Pierre de Bourbon, and in both prose and verse it exhibits eccentricities of style. Take, for instance, a rhetorical outburst about, -ce petit traicte consolatoire: affin que vous veissiez voz oris dedans escriptz couleur de douleur plains de tous plaintz. Et que voz soulas qui sent las et voz rys qui sent peritz prissent quelque sourse (de ressource): Affin que I'honneur de Bourbon bon resplen- dist en triumphant, triumphast en florissant et flourist ^ accroissant par la diuturnite de tous siecles advenir. But passages like the following justify Lemaire's position as a graceful poet : 148 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Gentes bergerettes, Parlant d'amourettes Dessous les couldrettes, Jeunes et tendrettes Cueuillent fleur jolie, Framboises, meurettes, Pommes et poirettes, Rondes et durettes, Flourons et flourettes Sans melancolie. The Concorde des deux langaiges expresses the desire, by a description of symbolical temples of Venus and Minerva, to bring about union and harmony between the French and Italian languages as well as between the nations. How thoroughly convinced Lemaire was of the possibilities of French, fond as he was of Italian, is to be seen in the opening chapter of the Illustrations des Gaules, ih which he speaks of "ce langage Frangois que les Italiens par leur mesprisance accoustumee appellent Barbare (mais non est)." Thus Lemaire, like Claude de Seyssel, is a precursor of Du Bellay. The Illustrations des Gaules et Singularites de Troie was, in Lemaire's opinion, to be his magnum opus, and here he gave full vent to his faculties, as a historian. It was to be a noble chronicle, a history to satisfy the genealogical aspirations of the nations and princes honored by it, a monument of learning, a treasure-house of instruction to the young duke Charles, later the emperor Charles V. The author begins with Noah or Janus, "le bon pere Noe — " whose descent leads one through Ham, sur- named Zoroaster or Pan or Sylvanus or Saturn ; Osiris called Ju- piter and his wife called Ceres, and Hercules, king of Gaul, Italy, and Spain. This early history of religions brings one to the foundation of Troy at the end of the first book. The second is devoted to the Trojan legend, and the third relates the various migrations of the Trojan nobility and the common origins of the houses of France, Burgundy and Austria. Here the work stops, though Lemaire's plan had originally been far more extensive. THE TRANSITION IN POETRY 149 If we can pass over all the strange features of this work, anachronisms, the projection of current ideas into the past, we realise many new elements in literature. This is particularly evident in the episode of Paris and (Enone, where he lets his imagination play with the language and writes a tale in poetic, almost rhythmic prose. But he is important for matter as well as form. Even the mocker Rabelais found material in him; Marot is constantly indebted to him; Ronsard owes to him the inspiration of what was to be his own magnum opus, the Franci- ade; Pasquier calls him several times one of the great authors of the age. Two other poets of the old school, though best known because of greater sons, were not without importance, Octovien de Saint-Gelais (1468-1502) and Jean Marot (d. 1526). The former was a follower of the Italians and a friend of Louise de Savoie, consequently an influence in the education of Francis I. His translation of the Heroides of Ovid had great vogue. The latter was a rhetoriqueur, full, as he says himself, of "squalid and barbarous squabrosity." His most important poems are narratives or chronicles of expeditions, to which must be added a number of casual poems which had a distinct influence on Clement Marot. Jean Marot's son Clement is placed in various categories by the different writers who have dealt with him. If there had been no Pl^iade to mark a separation from the past he would be put among the important precursors of a new literary spirit, and there are even now critics who much exaggerate his Humanism. As it is, it is convenient to call him, like Lemaire de Beiges, a transitional writer. The fickleness of the poet's character has also enabled Catholics and Protestants alike to claim him for their own. Marot was chameleon-like and took the color of what he fed upon. By birth and training he was a disciple of the rhetoriqueur s. His character was, however, modified not only by the prevalent Italianism, but by many new influences visible particularly after 1525, but which do not justify us in ISO A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE calling him a true Humanist. His tendencies towards religious reformation are clear, through the influence of Marguerite de Navarre and of Renee de France, but here, again, he never dared to have very strong convictions. We may say of Marot, as compared with his most illustrious contemporary Marguerite, that where she partakes of the serious qualities which, in an incoherent state, are characteristic of the times of Francis I, Marot emphasises the light features typical of French style at its best. In this, as La Bruyere pointed out, he is often more modern than the later poets of the Pleiade. The writings of Marot are closely interwoven with his life. He was born between 1495 and 1497 at Cahors in Quercy, of a Norman father and a Southern mother, thus combining the traits of both races. Up to the age of ten, at least, this French poet knew no French, only the dialect of his native Quercy. After coming to Paris he wrote, in 151 5, his first important original poem, the Temple de Cupidon, influenced by the Roman de la Rose and the rhetoriqueurs, Lemaire's Temple de Venus, Molinet's Temple de Mars, Martin le Franc's Champion des Dames, and perhaps the Temple de Diane by a Jean Leblond. It is a graceful poem in easy swinging metre, not too complexly allegorical, though many of the characters of the Roman de la Rose make their reappearance. It is the quest of True Love. The youth seeks her at first unavailingly, until at last he comes to the temple of Cupid, where Zephyr sighs and Tityrus sings, and Pan and his shepherds tend their flocks to the sound of pipes and rippling streams. The sanctuary, to which Bel-Accueil admits sincere lovers, is described in gay ballad metre. On entering they behold an altar which draws the lover to it, sur- mounted by a fragrant cedar canopy. The saints are Beau- Parler, Bien-Celer and many others, the bells are tabors and dulcimers, the alms ladies' sighs and kisses, and for holy works one reads Ovid, Chartier, Petrarch and the Romance of the Rose. Within this shrine the lover still has to hunt for some time, until at last he finds love in the heart or choir {choeur) THE TRANSITION IN POETRY 151 of the temple in tHe company of a prince and lady whom we are to take for Francis and Queen Claude. The Epttre du Depounm and the Epitre au Roi are two other poems characteristic of Marot's early stage. The former is an entreaty to enter the service of Marguerite de Navarre. The epistle to the king is one of the worst examples of Marot's "Cretinism." It begins: En m'esbatant je fais rondeaulx en rithme, Et en rithmant bien souvent je m'enrime; Brief, c'est pitie d'entre nous rithmaiUeurs, Car vous trouvez assez de rithme ailleurs, Et quand vous plaist mieulx que moy rithmassez, Des biens avez et de la rithme assez: Mais moy, a tout ma rithme et ma rithmaille, Je ne soustiens (dont je suis marry) maille. In 1524 and 1525 Marot was in Italy with Francis, where he was taken prisoner at Pavia. After this he becomes more original and less an imitator of *' Cretin, Cretin qui tant sjavoit." Soon after his return from Italy he got into trouble. The Sorbonne was becoming active with the encouragement of Louise de Savoie. So Marot, who had somehow offended a mysterious Luna of whom he writes and had doubtless gained some tinge of the Reform in Marguerite's environment, was arrested at the instigation of a Dr. Bouchart and confined in the prison of the Chitelet, though he was soon transferred to more comfortable quarters and then released. During his imprisonment he worked at his edition of the Roman de la Rose and composed three of his best known poems: an epistle to Bouchart in which he protests that he is no heretic, the famous fable of the Lion and the Rat from which La Fontaine drew, and his Enfer. This last, suggested by such opposite poles of influence as Dante and Lemaire's Amant vert, relates some of his experiences in prison. Release did not get Marot out of trouble. At last he judged it 152 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE advisable to go out of reach of the Sorbonne and withdrew to the court of Marguerite at Nerac, and then to that of Renee at Ferrara. To this period are due the welcome to France of Queen Leonora and the justly famous Complninte, en forme d'eglogue on the death of Lomse de Savoie (1531), which Marot drew from Sannazar and was in turn imitated by Spenser in his Shepherd's Calendar. At the court of Ferrara Marot continued his writing. He composed his Masons on the Beau tetin and the Laid titin, an imitation of the Italian capitoli, which became the source of an abundant literature of Masons in France, and wrote several of his epistles du Coq-d-l'dne, incoherent letters on current events, a continuation of the mediaeval Jatrasies. Some writers think that to Marot was due the introduction of the spirit of the Reformation at the court of Ferrara. He returned to France by way of Venice, and at Lyons in 1536 he publicly abjured all his sinful ways of thought. It was soon after this that he composed one of his graceful poems, the Eglogue au Roy sous leS noms de Pan et Robin, full of autobio- graphical allusions and natiire touches. Towards the end of Marot's life came a long quarrel with Sagon, a former friend whom he had offended. The dispute, which was full of the most violent personal abuse, was par- ticipated in by all the important literary men of the day, and Sagon got decidedly the worst of it. Marot also dab- bled again in religious matters and, with the help of the scholar Vatable, began to translate the Psalms. At first they were well received by all, and hummed to popular tunes. But the jealousy of the Sorbonne being again aroused, Marot ran away to Geneva. There he got into trouble with Calvin and went to Piedmont, where he died in obscurity and disgrace in 1544. Marot was almost a great poet. He was at first enthralled by the rhetoriqueurs, and his beginnings are much below Lemaire's average. After 1525 his poetry is transformed and becomes THE TRANSITION IN POETRY 153 more personal, though he was always under the lure of the Italians like Tebaldeo, Olympo and Serafino dall' Aquila. But his thoughts rarely dwelt on matters of the deepest import. He was essentially a light French poet, ready to indulge his muse marotine, which disports itself through his_ many epistles and filthy rondeaux and epigrams. Those last are influenced by the Italian strambotti of writers such as Serafino or the epi- gram-sonnets of Tebaldeo. At the same time he had inklings of higher things. We must not, like Professor Henry Morley, make of him a martyr of the Reformation dying for his faith among the persecuted Waldensians. Nor, on the other hand, need we fall into the exaggerations of Lenglet Dufresnoy and his obscene tales of Marot as the lover of Diane de Poitiers and of Marguerite de Navarre. We need only say that Marot was like most men in a day when passions were not concealed; and, as with most poets, his emotions were stronger than his will. His associations led him among the Reformers, and his Balladin shows what his spirit was at the very end of his life, yet his convictions did not weigh heavily upon him and he was per- fectly willing to abjure his Protestantism. Above all he was an epicurean. The best proof that he was not a bard sublime was the weakness of his influence. He had, it is true, many followers, Charles Fontaine, Victor Brodeau, Jean de la Borderie, but only one deserves serious mention, Mellin de Saint-Gelais (1487-1558). Saint-Gelais was certainly not a great poet, but essentially a poete courtisan and, what he has been called, "I'Homere des vers d'album." Marot's own name for him was "creature gentille." But, though imimportant in himself, he is signifi- cant, in a history of French literature, because he is partly responsible for an element adopted, to its detriment,- by the Pleiade, Petrarchism. For this element, in the essence, Maurice Sceve is largely responsible. But the concrete form it took in French poetry is partly due to Mellin de Saint-Gelais, who is one of the claimants for the introduction into France of the sonnet, 154 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE a claim rightly belonging to Marot. But Saint-Gelais was re- sponsible for much of its vogue. He was an arch-Italianist, spent many years in Italy and translated for the first time into French the Sophonisha of Trissino, a play of the highest impor- tance in the history of the drama. CHAPTER IV THEPLATONISTS THE history of the Renaissance in France is closely inter- woven with that of Platonisnl/ which is, under various forms, one of the dominating influences of the age. Literary Platonism, and notably the expression of Platonic love, is a prominent feature in the study of nearly all the poets of the sixteenth century, whether precursors of the Pleiade, members of the group itself, or its successors. Philosophical Platonism, a modified form of the doctrine of Plato, was preached by all who were opposed to the Aristotelian Scholasticism. It repre- sents the spirit of liberalism, of rationalism, the, Renaissance spirit in general, which has its greatest exponent in Ramus and expresses the tendency which becomes in time the philosophy of Classicism. In the Pleiade, Platonism is a form of belles-lettres and merges into Petrarchism. The doctrine of Plato now, as in the Middle Ages, contributed much to thought, for of Petrarchism it is not yet time to speak. That specific form grows up, through Italian influences, during the first half of the sixteenth century, but does not acquire its full force until towards the end of that time. And the Platonism of Marguerite de Navarre has its own quality. It is not the theological adoration of Dante, it is not the love of chivalry, but a mixture of love, literature and religion, with a strong philo- sophical tendency, sometimes metaphysical, sometimes in an elementary way psychological. This came partly from the "In this chapter the term "Platonism" is used in a special sense, at variance with the pure Hellenic doctrine. It might even be called " pseudo- Platonism." IS5 IS6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE revival of philosophical Platonism which had taken place in Italy during the fifteenth century. In the case of Marguerite, in whom the religious element was strong, it took the form of eager mystical yearning. Leaving aside for the present the rationalistic Platonism of Ramus, and confining ourselves to hterary and social Platonism, we, therefore, find in it two elements. On the aesthetic side, older than Petrarch but very noticeable in him, it has those features with which we are now familiar, worship of some fair woman who represents the ideal. This form of Platonism ' is in opposition to the old spirit of the fabliaux and farces, and is more akin to the tendencies of the romances of chivalry. It has the same sensuous, sometimes erotic, element, and, as a result of the passage through the Italian Renaissance, it empha- sises the element of concrete beauty. At no period has the physical and intellectual sway of woman been greater than in the sixteenth century, when Louise de Savoie and Marguerite de Navarre made treaties of European importance, when Mar- guerite and Renee guided the Reformers, when Francis I thought no man deserving of respect who did not follow a mistress, when Henry II found an Egeria in Diane de Poitiers. It was the age when there was a recrudescence of the vogue of the prose romances of chivalry, and when the Spanish Amadis was trans- lated and permeated all court Hfe. The other element of hterary • Platonism is a metaphysical one derived mainly from the ItaHan neo-Platonists and the Florentine Academy. Its early history takes us back to Gemistus Pletho, who in the fifteenth century brought to Italy a grand but confused scheme of poetic neo-Platonism, to Cardinal Bessarion the great patron of letters, to Marsilio Ficino the guiding philosopher of the Florentine Academy and author of the Theologia Platonica, to the German mystic. Cardinal Nicholas Cusanus. By the majority of French people this doctrine was never taken very seriously. Only in the case of mystics, hke Marguerite, did it seem to afford help in solving the vague THE PLATONISTS 157 problems which troubled her, and for which she could find no other release. It was largely through Ficino that Marguerite knew Plato at all, and she knew him chiefly through the transla- tion of the commentary on the Symposium made at her request by Simon du Bois (Silvius, de la Haye) in 1546. On the other hand, the rediscoverer of the real Aristotle, Lefevre d'Etaples, at the instigation of Brigonnet, bishop of Meaux, published in 1 514 an edition of the works of the Platonist Cusanus. Thus the religious circle of Meaux, with which Marguerite was at one time closely connected, was itself much interested in Cusanus. We need not be surprised to find her borrowing from Ficino the celebrated definition of God, used by many writers, as a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circvimference is nowhere, while from Cusanus came the reiterated formula "Je suis Celui qui suis" (Exodus iii. 14), and the antithesis of Tout and Rien. Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549) was a woman of high intellectual ambitions and inclined to favor all that would promote the advancement of learning and of religion, though it will not do to make of her an out-and-out Reformer. Her high position enabled her to accomplish much, and her own aspirations led her to try to be a poet, — a vocation for which she was never fitted. Probably no writer ever lived whose works contain less poetry. As a rule they are merely metrical formulations of the vague metaphysics above mentioned. Page follows page of rhymed moralising in which there is not a single new or striking thought, in which the only value is for the study of sources and formative influences. After reading pages of mysticism like the Oraison de Vdme-fidele or the Triomphe de Vagneau we feel the truth of Marguerite's own words: Mes larmes, mes soupirs, mes criz, Dont tant bien je Sfay la pratique, Sont mon parler et mes escritz, Car je n'ay autre rh6torique. Mysticism is, indeed, the key to Marguerite's writings. In practical life she accomplished much, as her diplomatic achieve- 158 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE ments and her attempts to rescue Francis from captivity testify. But her own life was one of an unhappy marriage and disap- pointed loves for brother and daughter, ending at last in ^a con- sumptive's death. This Hfe of tears and sighs, characterised by a sweetness of disposition ("un nenny avec un doux sourire") and a gentle-heartedness which surprised her contemporaries, was not a normal one. Her thoughts are, at times, almost unbalanced in their broodings, and her hallucinations seem, by tradition, to have had their counterpart in morbid actions. The anecdotes are familiar of her eagerly bending over the deathbed of her maid of honor to discover the soul escaping from its prison, and of her making an appointment with a man at the grave of the woman he had loved, dead without his knowledge. Without attributing too much importance to possibly apocry- phal tales, we thus see that one of Marguerite's chief intellectual characteristics was an almost grovelling mysticism and upward yearning towards the Divine: Moy donques ver de terre, moins que riens, Et chienne morte, ordure de fiens. In its extreme form, as in the character of the bergere ravie de V amour de Dieu {Comedie jouee au Mont de Marsan), this yearn- ing uses the same erotic language, confusing sacred and profane love, which is to be noticed in many of the ItaHan saints, Et je seray sa mignonne, II Sera mon grand mignon, until it fades away into the quietism of the liberiins spirittiels, Quintin and Pocques, whom Marguerite received in her circle, to the disgust of Calvin. For a parallel to Marguerite in French Literature we shall have to wait until the days of Madame Guyon. But this attitude was merely spiritual. In private hfe the mystery-wrapped princess was energetic and practical. For Marguerite's education had included other elements than those which went to build up her mysticism. It had been THE PLATONISTS 159 largely Italian and had brought her into contact, not only with the older poets like Dante, but even more the modern writers who had treated the question of courtesy and poKte love. The Heptameron, for instance, brings us to that portion of Platonism which has not to the same extent fallen under the sway of metaphysics. Theories of courtesy remind one of Castiglione's Cortegiano, and the well-known definition of perfect love in the nineteenth tale of the Heptameron is characteristic. The Heptameron is the paradox of Marguerite's life. In addition to the Mir air de I'dme pecheresse, the Margiierites de la marguerite des princesses, and the recently published last works, of which the most important are some allegorical comedies, the Prisons de la reine de Navarre, and the Navire, she wrote, or probably wrote, a collection of dull stories in the spirit of the Decameron of Boccaccio. The work seems immoral today, and Queen Marguerite has been classed as an indecent writer. But this does not follow, if we make allowances for the differences in the times. She lived in a day of much greater frankness than the present. No charges can be brought against her personal character, and even Bonnivet, whom she probably loved in youth, was unable to seduce her, though Louise de Savoie winked at his intrigues. The Heptameron follows the general plan of the Decameron. Some travellers, caught by bad weather on their journey, while away the time by telling stories. The characters are perhaps drawn from life: the leader Oisile (Loise) may be. Louise de Savoie, Parlamente Marguerite herself, and Hircan her second husband, Henry d'Albret, king of Navarre. Dagoucin repre- sents the Platonic lover, Saflredent and Simontault stand for the ironical esprit gaulois. It is Parlamente who gives the definition of love: "J'appelle parfaicts amans, luy respondit Parlamente, ceulx qui cherchent, en ce qu'ils aiment, quelque perfection, soit beaulte, bonte ou bonne grice; tousjours tendans a la vertu, et qui ont le cueur si hault et si honneste, qu'ils ne veulent pour mourir, mettre leur i6o A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE fin aux choses basses que I'honneur et la conscience reprouvent; car I'kvae, qui n'est creee que pour retourner a son souverain bien, ne faict, tant qu'elle est dedans le corps, que desirer d'y parvenir. Mais a cause que les sens par lesquels elle en peut avoir nouvelles, sont obscurs et charnels par le peche du premier pere, ne luy peuvent monstrer que les choses visibles plus approchantes de la perfection, apres quoi I'ame court, cuidans trouver, en une beaulte extdrieure, en une grace visible et aux vertuz morales, la souveraine beaulte, grace et vertu. Mais quand elle les a cherchez et experimentez et elle n'y trouve point celuy qu'elle ayme, elle passe oultre ainsi que I'enfant qui, selon sa petitesse, ayme les poupines et aultres petites choses les plus belles que son ceil peut veoir, et estime richesses d'assembler des petites pierres; mais en croissant, aime les poupines vives, et amasse les biens necessaires pour la vie humaine. Mais quand il cognoist, par plus grande experience, que es choses terri- toires n'y a perfection ne felicite, desire chercher le facteur et source d'icelle. Toutesfois, si Dieu ne luy ouvre I'ceil de foy, seroit en danger de devenir d'un ignorant ung infidele philosophe. Car foy seulement peut monstrer et faire recevoir le bien, que I'homme chamel et animal ne peut entendre." About 1544 there appeared at Lyons a work called Delie, objei de plus haute vertu, by Maurice Sceve. This author, from certain points of view one of the important precursors of the Pleiade, was a leader of the group known as the Lyons School, which at the middle of the century gave literary fame to the city and gathered about Louise Labe, la belle cordiere, not only members pi the old school of Marot. but also partisans of the new Pleiade, Ponthus de Thyard and Olivier de Magny. Delie, which is supposed to be an anagram of I'ldee, was a model not only for the Platonism or Petrarchism of the Pleiade, but for numerous Delias, Ideas and Diellas of English literature. For Sceve was a Petrarchist or a follower of Petrarchists like Serafino dair Aquila as well as a Platonist, and in Delie he presents a composite of the two elements, which, in fact, at times almost coincide. Delie stands for some idealised lady whom the poet praises through most of the four hundred and forty-nine dizains THE PLATONISTS i6i which make up the volume. Whoever she was, she became, under the poet's pen, an intangible and unintelligible being. She took possession of him early ("Libre vivais en Vavril de mon age"), and his admiration for her charms rises from the description of soft graces and the feeling of chaste love until it becomes more and more involved in thought. The poet manages to work himself into such states of incomprehensibihty as the following: Deliberer a la necessite, Souvent resouldre en perilleuse doute, M'ont tout, et tant I'esprit exercite. Que bien avant aux hasards je me boute, Mais si la preuve en I'occurrente doute. Sur le suspend de comment, ou combien, Ne doy-je pas en tout preveoir si bien, Que je ne soye au besoing esperdu? Las, plus grand mal ne peult avoir mon bien, Que pour ma faulte estre en un rien perdu? It is on reading such passages that one agrees with what Etienne Pasquier said in the same century, "que, le lisant, je disois estre tres content de ne I'entendre, puisqu'il ne vouloit estre entendu." So much relates rather to the obscurity of the poem. Its language and vocabulary are at times Greek (antiperistase, hydraule,^ embolismal) , but one is more often reminded of Petrarch and his imitators. The general spirit of the verses shows that the poet has combined Petrarchian adoration with the vague metaphysics of his day. But with all his faults, Sceve marks an advance. His lines do not have the flippant flow of the muse marotine, and he is striving to express some idea, albeit " caliginous." In his erotic mysticism typical of the Lyons school, his philtered words merging on preciosity, and in the high col- oring of the love motif carried on through so many stanzas, one is often reminded of Rossetti's House of Life. Sceve reaches a higher idealism, Rossetti steers clear of incoherence. Maurice Sceve was one of many. His follower, a woman, 1 "L'humidite, hydraule de mes yeux." 1 62 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Pernette du Giiillet, many have been the real Delie. The "rhymes" of this gentille et vertueuse dame appeared in 1545 and outdo in obscurity those of Sceve. With more variety of metre she deals with similar subjects, including Parfaicte amytie. Antoine Heroet's Parfaicte amye is stiU better known. Stress has often been laid on the writings of Leon Hebreu (Leo Judaeus, Juda Abarbanel or Abravanel), a Spanish Jew who wrote in Itahan three dialogues on love. They were translated into French by Pontus de Thyard and by Denys Sauvage du Pare of Champagne. They consist of conversations between Philo and his Sophie (Philosophie) , respectively on the essence, universality and genealogy of love. They are a strange medley of philo- sophic talk involving definitions of the different kinds of Good, together with discussions of anatomy, astrology, poetry and fables or myths. The third dialogue brings us to final definitions of the rise of Love, how the Love of God for the imiverse and that of the universe for God came at the birth of the world, how Love is derived from Knowledge and Beauty, and has as object the delectation of the lover in the beauty adored. Much more attractive in its Platonism is another work, the Conte du rossignol of Gilles Corrozet (1547). It tells of a youth named Florent in love with a fair damsel named Yolande, who is, however, too modest to yield to his wishes. She thinks, too, that love, instead of feeding the baser appetites, ought to be an occasion ^, . . ,„ ,,.^ D avoir vertu, qui rhomme deifie, Estudiant en la philosophic De double nom, morale et naturelle. Hence she bids him seek wisdom. For three years he studies Aristotle, Cicero, Pliny and Plato, and then returns to Yolande. But she has one more strange request: Mais je vous prie autant que je puis faire, De me vouloir en un point satisfaire, Car femmes sont de sfavoir curieuses; < Puisqu'ainsi est qu'aux estudes fameuses THE PLATONISTS 163 ,? Avez este pour sciences apprendre, Ne vous soit grief me donner a entendre Que c'est que fait, quand de couple charnelle Le rossignol depart de sa femelle, Et, si cela de vous je puis sgavoir, Tous vos desirs de moy pourrez avoir. Florent consults his books in vain, but at last an old crone tells him that the male and female nightingale meet only upon a green branch, after which the male seeks a neighboring dry one, where he trims himself and then bathes in water. Florent bears this information to Yolande, who draws the moral: Amy, tous ceux qui se joignent a femmes En charnel acte et par amours inf ames Sont tout ainsi que rossignols plaisans, Sur rameau vert qui se vont deduisans En leur luxure et amour sensuelle. Puis, quand prend fin la volupte charnelle, Tombent soudain dessus le rameau sec, Laissans I'amour et le plaisir avec. Ce rameau sec pour sa signifiance Note d'honneur et d'amour I'oubliance, Ou tombent ceux qui, pleins de leurs plaisirs, Ont accomply tous leurs vilains desirs: Let Florent remember how the love- of Yolande has made him wise and good, and let him not^ like the nightingale, fall by a base love from the green to the withered branch. On hearing these words, Florent stood long as though turned to stone. Then his foolish love passed away, leaving him devoted to a chaste worship of his lady, which she accepted: Ainsi I'amour lascif et sensuel En un instant devint spiritual, Ferme trop plus qu'onques avait este Tant que raison vahquit la volupte.' ' Corrozet did not invent the story, but got it'from the Italian writer Caviceo. Cf. F. Gohin's edition of the works of Antoine Heroet, Introd. pp. xxx-xxxi. CHAPTER V RABELAIS FRANCOIS RABELAIS, the son of a prosperous notary of Chinon in Touraine, was born probably on the country estate of La Deviniere, in a house still standing, a few miles from Chinon, between 1483 and 1495, ^ ^^1 likelihood nearer the more recent date. The actual period of his death is also unknown, but it took place between 1552 and 1554. The prosperous abbey of Seuilly was less than a mile from his birthplace in the same parish, and there Rabelais presumably had his first school- ing, which tradition reports as having been continued at La Baumefte or La Basmette, near Angers. Our first definite knowledge of him is, however, as a Franciscan friar at Fontenay- le-Comte in Lower Poitou, where he and his friend Pierre Lamy, interested in the new learning, chafed at the ignorance of their associates and tried by correspondence to win the friendship of Bude. Rabelais at last succeeded in obtaining permission for a transfer to the neighboring Benedictine abbey of Maillezais. Geofiroy d'Estissac, the bishop of Maillezais, a see now moved to La Rochelle, was a friend of Rabelais, who probably saw much of him here and at Liguge, near Poitiers. We next hear of Rabelais as a medical student and bachelor at Montpellier a few years later, in 1530. He had meanwhile probably made a student's circuit of some of the chief French universities, and conjecturally had followed law courses at Bourges and Orleans. He had also, without permission, left the Benedictine Order and assumed the garb ol a secular priest. Settling at Lyons, Rabelais practised at the hospital and began his literary production. Leaving the hospital, again without 164 RABELAIS 165 authority, he went to Rome in the train of Jean du Bellay, the cardinal, in 1534. The brothers Gnillaume du Bellay-Langey and Jean du Bellay were both staunch friends and patrons of Rabelais. He made in all three trips to Rome, obtaining during one of them absolution from the. pope, Paul III, for his infrac- tions of monastic discipline. He became a regular doctor of medicine as late as 1537, and won some distinction by his ana- tomical lectures at Montpellier and at Lyons. In 1540 he was at Turin as physician to Du Bellay-Langey. After the latter's death he went for a time to Metz, then outside of France, where he probably was taking refuge in dread of persecution. His third visit to Rome was with Cardinal du Bellay in 1548. Fi- nally, in 1550 Rabelais received the hvings of Saint-Martin de Meudon near Paris and Saint-Christophe du Jambet near Le Mans. He resigned both posts a couple of years later, for reasons not perfectly clear, and died soon after. The most important works of Rabelais, and the only ones of interest to the modern reader, are his romances of giants, Gar- gantua and Pantagruel. There are many obscurities concerning the publication of these writings, and even the authenticity of some of them. The following exposition is, perhaps, a conserva- tive treatment of the questions involved: While in Lyons, Rabelais, who had the itching for authorship, either himself wrote as a pot-boiler, or came across and edited, a highly successful popular chap-book called the Grandes et ines- timables chroniques du grand et enorme geant Gargantua. Accord- ingly, at some date not earlier than 1532, he wrote a continuation to the Chroniques, developing in a more elaborate narrative the story of Gargantua's son Pantagruel. Afterwards, he rewrote and developed the story of Gargantua in an edition of 1535, or perhaps 1534, which is thus chronologically posterior but logi- cally anterior to the first book of Pantagruel, known as the "second book" of Rabelais. In consequence of the success of these writings Rabelais published a tiers livre in 1546 and a quart livre in 1552. The fifth and last book did not appear in 1 66 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE complete form mitil a number of years after Rabelais's death, in 1564. The authenticity of this last book is disputed. From a literary standpoint many parts are inferior, but there are as many contrary arguments, based on the contents, and it seems more natural to think that Rabelais left his work almost finished but unrevised. The writings of Rabelais are to the modern reader among the most difficult in French; therefore, though one of the most famous authors, he is one of those least read. His reputation for indecency also frightens many away. Consequently, the "enigma" of his works has been transferred to the author, and the interpretations or misinterpretations of Rabelais's character arid of his writings are most ludicrous. To the average educated reader in the sixteenth century his books were not more obscure than the Lettres persanes to the eighteenth century or Anatole France's lie des Pingouins to the modern Frenchman. Indeed, they were sometimes too plain, for Rabelais more than once felt it politic to tone down the directness of his allusions in order to avoid persecution. A similar common-sense interpretation of his personality is the most probable one. We reject, then, as fantastic the idea prevalent for many generations which made of Rabelais a drunken buffoon, involved in all kinds of escapades and undergoing traditional experiences sometimes borrowed from the adventures of his own heroes. It is no less ridiciilous to think of him as a deep philosopher veiling under symbohsm and allegory his solution of world mysteries. Rabelais was, indeed, a genius, but only the culmi- nation of the spirit of his time and place, and not a prodigy of a different species. To know Rabelais thoroughly means to know what the early sixteenth century was thinking and talking about, more than the knowledge of any other author of the century implies. Though little studied in detail, he deserves study more than any other author of his day except perhaps Montaigne. Montaigne explains later thought, Rabelais ex- plains that of his time. He was a vigorous, full-blooded rep- RABELAIS 167 resentative of the well-to-do middle class, coming from a thriving and characteristically French province, then intellectually one of the most representative. He possessed in the highest degree intellect, wit and humor, particularly that esprit gaulois, satirical and broad, many would say coarse, which tiie French acknowl- edge as characteristic of their popular mind. On this foun- dation was superimposed all the erudition of an age whose scholarship was vast and totally different from that of today. It was the antithesis of speciaUsation and aimed at being de omni re scibili; and of course, in its technical aspects, it was based on works long since totally discarded. In Rabelais this learning ranged from popular chap-book literature and the successors of the mediaeval epics and romances to the contemporary rhetoriqueurs, or from the classics of Greece and Rome to the modem Italian writers, in Latin, in macaronics or in the pure vernacular. It included all the technical book-learning of the schools, outgrowth of the mediaeval Scholasticism, as well as law and medicine, and above aU, the religious problems at that time troubling the minds of everybody. These were all familiar topics to the average educated reader of Rabelais, who would be at most puzzled now and then: a wild juggling with words, or a less familiar reference which, it must be confessed, Rabelais himself often got at second hand from the repertories of more systematic thinkers like Erasmus. With regard to the contents of Gargantua and Pantagruel we ought at most to say that he began them as humorous works, permeated with good-natured satire of contemporary foibles, but that as time went on, he put into his writings more mature reflection and made the substra- tum of his story more seriously intellectual. The narrative and its probable interpretation are approxi- mately this: Rabelais's hero Gargantua was, in name at least, borrowed from popular folk-lore. He was the son of the giant king Grandgousier, who varies in character from a monarch to a country squire. The iriighty land over which he ruled was a tiny district about Chinon and La Deviniere, and Rabelais 1 68 A fflSTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE gets much enjoyment in treating insignificant hamlets, meadows and river fords, the names of which are still in use, in the tone of martial and epic narrative. Gargantua's early education proved a failure, because it followed the fossilised methods of the old scholastic routine. It was only after going to Paris, under the escort of a new tutor, Ponocrates, whose theories are the result of the teachings of the Italian Humanists from technical authors like Vittorino da Feltre to writers on good manners like Castiglione, that Gargantua became very different from the usual product of the " Sorbonne-Donkey " (sorbonagre) training. Meanwhile war had broken out between the subjects of King Grandgousier and a neighboring monarch, King Picrochole, who seems to be a portrait of a member of the weU-known Sainte-Marthe family, with whom Rabelais's father had a . lawsuit. Gargantua returned home, and mighty battles and sieges took place in the quiet district around Seuilly and La Deviniere, ending in the victory of Grandgousier's forces. Heroic deeds, particularly in defence of the abbey of Seuilly, were performed by the frisky monk Frere Jean des Entommeures, a mighty eater and drinker and, from a literary point of view, a skit on the heroes of the old moniages of mediasval epic, who, like Renouart, did valiant deeds with a mere tinel.^ All the chief combatants were rewarded for' their achievements, and to Friar John was granted the foundation of the abbey of Th61eme, the antithesis of the old monasteries and convents, and the embodiment of the new social Platonism. Its architecture was the expression of the new Renaissance chateau, instead of the mediaeval fortress; no monk or nun was to be tolerated there, but it was to be the home of well-born lords and ladies together. (At Fontevrault, near Chinon, there were monks and nuns on the same abbey foundation.) Courtesy and well-mannered jol- lity reigned in this abbey, and when a gentleman had met the lady with whom bonds of mutual sympathy grew up, they went forth from the monastery to live a happy married life. Over ' Cf. p. 24. RABELAIS 169 the door was the inscription "Fay ce que vouldras," for, says Rabelais, people of free and goodly birth, well brought up, dwelling together in righteous intercourse, have by nature an instinct and prick which withdraws them from vice and impels them to virtue: "lequel ils nomment hormeur." Thus Rabelais expresses the idea of the Humanists, as opposed to the Calvin- istic Reformers, that nature is good. But it is not the prim- itive nature of Rousseau; it is rather the nature of well-bred gentlemen and ladies. The second book of Rabelais (the first of Pantagruel) has many resemblances to the previous one but is somewhat inferior. Pantagruel, son of Gargantua, now spoken of as king of Utopia, comes to Paris to study, after visiting many centres of learning in France, as Rabelais himself is supposed to have done. He acquires such fame as an upholder of theses that he is called on to settle intricate legal questions, which he does by brushing aside the glosses of the Bartholists and Accursians and judging by common sense: he defeats in a disputation a learned Englishman named Thaumast, supposed to be Sir Thomas More. He attaches to himself as companion Panurge, the faithful but tricky clerk, who embodies features of almost every picaro and cowardly rogue in literature and who is the anti-hero of the romance. Pantagruel returns home on learning that the Dipsodes or Thirsty Ones have invaded Utopia, and defeats them. The tiers lime, written a nimiber of years after the first two, shows the evolution of Rabelais's mind: there is less humorous narrative and more discussion. Moreover, the giant theme is now practically abandoned, and the characters are treated as ordinary human beings. The book is largely taken up with the imcertainties of Panurge, as to whether he should take unto himself a wife, and with the various forms of consultation he goes through. At last, he and Pantagruel, who is not married himself, decide to make a journey to consult the oracle of the Holy Bottle. They lay in a large supply of pantagruelion, a 170 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE plant in which commentators recognise hemp. The third book, with its discussion of the relations of the sexes, involves many questions of social Platonism and the position of women as treated in the sixteenth century. The quart livre, the form of which was partly suggested by Ludan, is the account of the trip to the oracle of the Holy Bottle of the priestess Bacbuc. It is without doubt based geo- graphically on the search for the Northwest Passage, though M. Lefranc has identified Rabelais's allusions with almost too great ingenuity. Finally, in the last book, after further adven- tures, many of which imply satire of religious disputes and of scholastic philosophy, the travellers reach the island of the Bottle, where they consult the oracle, and receive in answer the word "Trinch" (Drink). This brief summary may give an idea of the growth of Rabelais's mind, and his use of fiction to touch upon nearly all the topics discussed in his day. We can understand the circumstances which transform a rollicking satire, masquerading imder the form of a narrative of giants who live in Rabelais's own district, into a philosophical journey to symbolical places, in which the author himself takes part. It shows that Rabelais was,'^ after all, no fantastic thinker, but clung very firmly to the concrete, and that his criticism dealt with defects in the life of his time in religion, education, law or medicine, which met him face to face. More especially, to the modern student, the accounts of the education of Gargantua and Pantagruel, and the letter of Gar- gantua to his son are essential for the understanding of the Humanistic reform in education, and are usually studied in connection with Montaigne's essay on the bringing up of children. The reply of the oracle has a vaticinic vagueness, due perhaps to the iact that Rabelais may have intended to continue his narrative still further. But it does not take much ingenuity to read into it advice to drink deeply of learning as well as of wine, even though "de vin, divin on devient." Wine helps to RABELAIS 171 give cheer to one's attitude in life, for not only does Rabelais tell us at the start that "rire est le propre de Thomme," but his philosophy is what he terms "Pantagruelism," and this he defines as "certaine gayete d'esprit conficte en mespris des choses fortuites." To meet life^ cheerily and look on the better side of things, feeling that it is good to be alive and that the world is a place to enjoy, is what Rabelais preaches, a philosophy which is reproduced in the "Shandeeism" of Sterne's Uncle Toby. It is not to be expected, therefore, that Rabelais could feel much sympathy for Reformers of the Calvinistic type. His unpleasant monastic experiences and his aversion for the corrupt Ufe he saw about him made him incline to the new religion, and this friar, monk and priest was ever ready to criticise the degenerate condi- tion of his own faith. But he had no desire to be burned as a heretic: he was willing to go "jusqu'au feu eooclusivement." Consequently, he adopted the method of most Himianists, remained a Catholic, toned down the vigor of his earlier attacks on the Sorbonne and, with all sincerity, reviled the gloomy eisceticism of Calvin. Allusion has already been made to two of the chief difficulties in the enjoyment of Rabelais nowadays: his indecency and his tremendously rich vocabulary. The former is partly explainable, partly excusable, leaving at any rate only a smaller part to apolo- gise for. It must never be forgotten that the frankness of speech in the sixteenth century among men and women was extraordi- narily free: Marguerite de Navarre's writings are a proof of this; it must not be forgotten either, that even the French of today are much more ready to speak of bodily functions without any idea of "shocking" than the modern Anglo-Saxons, and that the readily accepted esprit gaulois contains manure. Any contemporary novel or boulevard play of scatology is said to "sortir d'une veine riche et savoureuse" or to "fleurer le franc terroir gaulois." As to pornography or- sexual indecency, we must remember that Rabelais's bourgeois class was never much affected by high ideals of women or the Platonism which he does 172 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE admit into his own writings, and that as a friar and monk he probably knew little of good women: "ni ne me soucie d'elle ni d'aucune autre," as he says of the death of Gargantua's mother Gargamelle. Moreover, as his life progressed, his opinion of women improved, and with the third book he holds them in more respect. Finally, it should never be forgotten that there is nothing decadent in Rabelais's obscenity. There is none of the insidious, unnatural and neurotic vice of many modern French writers. It either does not affect one, or its exaggerations may be tedious and even disgusting, but nobody was ever led by Rabelais into sin. At most he would tempt you to eat too much dinner or excuse yourself for getting drunk on a spree. Rabelais's vocabulary is a mark of his genius. He took delight in the mere sound of words and, not being hampered by any theories of classical restraint, he yielded partly to the pleasure of heaping up language, now inventing phrases, now borrowing local sayings from all the dialects known to him, now ransacking Greek and Latin with a Humanist's passion. Some chapters of Rabelais are but lists of terms. Thus Rabelais expresses in forms of genius the spirit of the sturdy, prosaic, practical, nimble-witted middle-class French- man, quick to detect shams and turn them inside out. There are more of these people in provincial France today than the foreigner quite realises, and it is they who make the true strength of the French race. There were, in the sixteenth century, other authors of tales long or short, belonging to the type of the writings of Rabelais . and the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre. Many of these works were influenced by the ItaHan stories which were trans- lated, as Bandello by Pierre Boistuau and Francois de Belle- forest (1559) or the PiacevoH notti of Straparola by Jean Louveau (1560). Jean Bonaventure des Periers (circa 15 10-1544), secretary of Marguerite de Navarre, was the author not only of verses and of satirical anti-religious dialogues influenced by Lucian, called RABELAIS 173 the Cymbalum mundi, which got him into trouble, but of the posthumous Nouvelles Recreations et joyeux Devis, consisting of brisk stories. Guillaume Bouchet (1513-1593 or 4) wrote the Serees; Noel du Fail (1526 [or 7]-! 591) wrote the Propos rustiques, the Baliverneries, ou contes nouveaux d'Eutrapel and the Contes et discours d'Eutrapel. Frangois Beroalde de Verville (1558-1612) was the author of the Moyen de parvenir, published about 1 610. CHAPTER VI THE PLEIADE AND ITS THEORIES SAYS Etienne Pasquier in the Recherches de la France: " Ce fut une belle guerre que Ton entreprit lors contre I'ignorance, dont j'attribue I'avant-garde a Sceve, Beze et Peletier, ou si le voulez autrement, ce furent les avant-coureurs des autres poetes. Apres se mirent sur les rangs Pierre de Ronsard, Vend6mois, et Joachim du Bellay, Angevin." Elsewhere he adds of Peletier that he was"le premier qui mit nos poetes frangais hors depage." These three writers, then, seem to stand out in Pasquier's mind. But they do not exhaust the Hst if we extend it to include not only the foes to ignorance, but the formative influences of the Pleiade as well. Such a hst must contain not only Lemaire or Heroet, but the leaders of the old school, Marot and Saint- Gelais, or even the prosaic verse of a minor rhetoriqueur like Jean Bouchet, traverseur des votes perilleuses (1476-c. 1558). Moreover, we must add to these old lists the name of Lazare de Baif. Even Theodore de Beze,, so much better known as a Reformer, is rather a symptom than an influence, and that in his earlier years. When studying at Orleans in his teens he wrote a nimiber of Latin erotic poems, many of them in praise of a certain Candida, inspired by Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid. Of these verses, many of which are but Latin Petrarchism, Beze was afterwards heartily ashamed. Nevertheless, the effort to unite Humanism and pure literature, even in Latin lyric verse, helps to pave the way for the Pleiade. The same credit may be given to the other great Latin lyric poets of the day: Jean Salmon Maigret (Macrinus), the "French Horace," Nic- 174 THE PLfilADE AND ITS THEORIES 175 olas Bourbon and Jean Visagier or Faciot (Vulteius, VoultS). The Latin poems of Du Bellay himself are among the best of the century. Jacques Peletier (1517-1582) is significant in the history of the Pleiade. He expounds its theories in his Ari of Poetry, and is actually one of the first to enunciate them as early as the dedication of his translation of Horace's Art of Poetry in 1544 and his own poetical works in 1547. Moreover, Peletier occupies an important place in the history of the ode and of the sonnet. He knew Ronsard and Du Bellay before they had met, knew Ronsard's early attempts to cultivate the Horatian ode and advised Du Bellay to study the ode and sonnet. Lazare-de Bait (i496?-i547) ambassador to Venice and high in favor with Francis I, had imbibed a love for Hellenism and antiquity in general under Lascaris and the Candiot scholar Marcus Musurus, and had translated Greek plays and written scholarly treatises in Latin. But his influence on the Pleiade was more personal. He was the father of Jean-Antoine de Baif, the intimate friend of Ronsard, and Lazare affectionately alluded to the two youths together as "mes enfants." It is at last with Ronsard and the Pleiade that French poetry becomes impregnated with Humanism, and that we find this installed in all parts of French literature and of the French Renaissance. By the installation of Himianism we are to under- stand the domination in belles-lettres of the qualities already studied in their learned form, the combination of the love for Greece with that of Rome and the desire to renew their power in modem literature. By the installation of the Renaissance we understand the sway of the spirit of individualism and of free emotion which finds its clearest expression in lyric poetry, with emphasis laid upon the self, or ego. The Pleiade was a small group of Humanistic poets aiming to introduce the Renaissance spirit of freedom in the sphere of letters, and seeking to accomplish this end by steeping French letters in antiquity. This goal was not to be reached by a ser- 176 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE vile imitation of classical forms of expression, for then the result would be a bastard Greek or Latin, but by assimilation of all that was good in those languages. Latin and Greek learning would be the tonic by which French would be strengthened and purified. The members of the Pleiade were, then, not technical Hellenists or Ciceronians. They were firmly convinced of the possibilities of French, and it was to express their opinion that Du Bellay wrote the Defense et Illustration de la langue Jranqaise. There has been much misunderstanding as to the purpose of the Pleiade, and as to the importance of this "manifesto." Superficial features have often led people into misinterpreta- tions. Only of late years a closer study of the sixteenth century enables us to correct our predecessors and see what the Pleiade really was about. ''' Thus some were misled by statements of Ronsard himself, such as: ^ . Ceux qm ces vers hront, S'ils ne sont et Grecs et Romains, Au lieu de livre n'auront Qu'un pesant faix entre les mains. Or take, again, the often quoted passage: Ah! que je suis marry que la langue franfoise Ne peut dire ces mots, conime fait la Gregeoise, Ocymore, dispotme, oligochronien. People seeing these words, as well as Du Bellay 's "nostre langue n'est si copieuse que la Grecque ou Latine," concluded that French was not good enough for Ronsard and Du Bellay, and that what they wanted was to turn French into a mere imitation of the dead languages. This is far from being the case, though in practice they did often fall into the very vices they were argu- ing against. It is true that they thought French less rich than Greek and Latin. But their remedy was, not to transform French into those languages, but to make French come to a fuller consciousness of its own possibilities. Greek and Latin are necessary only as a means to an end, and the Greek and THE PLfilADE AND ITS THEORIES 177 Latin literatures are more essential than the Greek and Latin languages. Thus the above quotations are explained : Ronsard does not want to write a pseudo-Greek (though he sometimes does write it), but his poems are so full of allusions to classical material that, as we should say, only a man with a liberal education can \mderstand them. And as for the words dispotme and oligochronien, he does not intend to introduce them into French, but merely regrets that French has them not. The Pleiade, then, was a group of literary men like so many which have been important influences in French literature. The title covered a vague number of writers united by common interests. But because of the name it is customary to consider the group as really made up of seven men. This list even varies a little. The usual emmieration is that of Ronsard's biographer Claude Binet, and includes Ronsard, Du Bellay, Jean-Antoine de Baif, Belleau, Dorat, Jodelle and Thyard. Dorat was merely a pedagogue, and Thyard was known in Hterature before the times of the Pleiade. For these two names we sometimes find stated those of Marc-Antoine de Muret and Scdvole de Sainte- Marthe. Binet adds Etienne Pasquier, Olivier de Magny, Jean de la Peruse, Amadis Jamyn, Robert Gamier, Florent Chrestien, Jean Passerat, Philippe Desportes, Jacques Davy Du Perron and Jean Bertaut. Etienne Pasquier, himself included in the above enumeration, adds Jacques Tahureau, Guillaume des Autels, Nicolas Denisot (known by his anagram of comte d'Alsinois), Louis le Caron, Claude de Buttet and Louis Desmasures. The name of the band was at first the Brigade during the days when Ronsard was a student. Then they called themselves or were called the Pleiade from the group of seven poets gathered at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Thus their two names symbolise two of the strongest influences on on the moulding of the Pleiade, Italianism , (brigata) and Alexan- drinism.i ' M. Laumonier has an important note, if we accept all his conclusions, in his critical edition of Binet's Vie de Ronsard (p. 219 ff.). He thinks that 178 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE The undoubted leader of the group was Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), born in the northern centre of France in the dis- trict of Vendomois. During his youth he travelled widely through Europe, partly as a page in households of rank, with the expectation of following a diplonaatic career. But deafness following illness at the age of sixteen made him change his plans, and he resolved to become a student of the classics. He put himself under the guidance of Dorat and entered the College de Coqueret with Jean-Antoine, son of Lazare de Baif, one of his patrons. Later Ronsard met Du Bellay and persuaded him to become one of the votaries of the Muses. In 1549 appeared the Defense, which met the opposition of the old school and criticism finding expression in the Quintil-Horatian of Barthelemy Aneau. But the Pleiade soon triumphed, and • through the reigns of Henry II, Francis II and Charles IX, Ronsard was the honored poet of the court and a very different one from Saint-Gelais. His position is testified to by the verses, now acknowledged to be apocryphal, attributed to Charles IX: Tous deux egalement nous portons des couronnes, Mais Roi, je la regus, Poete tu la donnes. the term Brigade was the current one during most of Ronsard's Hfe and that Ronsard was not responsible for the more specific term Pleiade, which was originally due rather to Huguenot writers. Ronsard did, as early as 1553, distinguish a smaller elite among the indeterminate Brigade, adopting the limitation of seven suggested by the name "Pleiade," and he mentions ("assez discretement d'aUleurs") in an elegy to La Peruse: Du BeUay, Thyard, Baif, Des Autels, JodeUe, La Peruse. On the death of the last writer Ronsard put BeUeau in his stead and afterward replaced Des Autels by Peletier, "Telle fut la vraie composition de la Pleiade frangaise, avec ses variations, de 1553 a 1560. Du BeUay mort, il est possible que Dorat 'poeta et interpres regius' ait passe pour la septieme etoUe aux yeux des huguenots, quand ils disaient ' messieurs de la Pleiade ' en parlant de leurs adversaires poetes. Mais, dans tous les cas, Binet, qui eut d'aUleurs grandement raison de compter Du Bellay parmi les 'sept,' eut tort de sacrifier Des Autels ou Peletier, pour pouvoir faire figurer Dorat dans ce nombre. Malheureusement son temoignage a prevalu." THE PLEIADE AND ITS THEORIES 179 From him he received several clerical benefices, though it has always remained a disputed point whether Ronsard was actually a priest or only a lay prior. Under the reign of Henry III, though still esteemed and famous, he was less a personal favorite of the reigning monarch. He spent much of his time in the country at his priories of Croixval and Saint-Cosme, at which latter place near Tours he died. And soon he fell into oblivion. Next in importance came Joachim du Bellay, gentilhomme angevin (1522 [or 4 or 5] -1560), one of those poets whose biog- raphies are intimately bound up with their works. Alfred de Musset on his mother's side was connected with the Du Bellay family, which also distinguished itself in the sixteenth century in the persons of Joachim's cousins the brothers Guillaume du Bellay de Langey, a diplomat, Martin, a judge and author of memoirs, Rene, a bishop, and the Cardinal du Bellay, with whom Joachim lived in Italy for about three years. This Italian journey was a turning point in his Hfe. Deafness, from which he as weU as Ronsard suffered, and resulting melancholy growing up in one shut in himself among the remains of a vanished civilisation, in the hotbed of a corrupt modem one, the enervating atmosphere of Rome, all this affected his life and poetry. It was in Rome that he wrote his Antiquites, to which is added the Songe or Vision, both dwelling on the past might of Rome and both imitated by Spenser. To the same influence are due the Regrets, in which, after the novelty of Italy has passed away, Du Bellay begins to long for home and the "douceur angevine." He feels himself an exile from home, and his Regrets have been compared to the Tristia of Ovid exiled at Tomi. He returned to France and languished imtil his death from over- work and ill health. Du Bellay was a poet with individuality which, as Sainte- Beuve said, had a peculiar quality of "intimiti." We feel in Du BeUay the element of personality and the outpourings of a human mind. We feel more sympathy for him than for Ronsard, i8o A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE who tried so much in so many ways. Ronsard was a poet of wider intellectual range; Du Bellay appeals to more readers. Jean Antoine de Baif (1532-1589) was Italian on his mother's side and was born in Venice. He travelled a great deal and was led by his recollection of the harmonious Greek reading of one of his early teachers, Angelo Vergecio, to spend much time tr3dng to remodel French prosody. He wished to introduce blank verse based on quantity as in ancient poetry, invented the vers baifin of fifteen syllables and attempted reformed spelling. By 1571, with the help of Charles IX, he had established an Academy or Conservatory for poets and musicians. Under the reign of Henry III this became the Academic du Palais for the discussion of philosophy as much as poetry and music, but Baif had wished to study the sounds of language, hence, as well as music, grammar, philology, and even dancing to revive the choral odes of tragedy. On account of Baif's complicated attempts at reform and the laughing verses of Du Bellay on the "docte, doctieur et doctime Baif," he has been considered the pedant of the Pleiade. But Baif's defect was rather an unscholarly haste than the pedant's involutions. Jean Dorat (i 501 or 2-1588) was the principal of the College de Coqueret, whither pupils came from all parts of Europe. The power of Dorat, which seems to have been extraordinary, was purely that of a teacher. His writings, chiefly in Latin, are of no value. Pontus de Thyard (1521-1605) published the first book of his Erreurs amoureuses soon after the appearance of the Defense and the Olive. He immediately joined the new group, on the Platonism of which he probably had an influence through his translation of Leo Judsus. His name is also connected with the early history of the sonnet in France. His devotion to Henry III won him the hostility of the Ligue, although he was a bishop. He was the last survivor of the Pleiade, of which he was one of the senior members, and of which he may be called the philosopher, though his philosophy was vague and misty. THE PLfilADE AND ITS THEORIES i8i Of Remy Belleau, le gentil Belleau, not much is known and his career was probably uneventful. He was an inseparable friend of Ronsard, born about 1527. His chief work was a trans- lation of Anacreon. He died in 1577. Finally Etienne Jodelle (1532-1573) was the dramatic writer of the Pleiade. The Defense et Illustration de la langue franqaise is the most important critical work in French in the sixteenth century, and, indeed, begins modern French criticism. Previous works, like the treatises of seconde rhetorique, had been mere descriptions of metrical forms. It is only with the Art of Poetry of Thomas Sebillet or Sibilet that we need pause to find anything new. And even this, though its date brings us down to the year preceding the Defense, and though it mentions some of the new genres which will beconje important, is nevertheless an exponent of the school of Marot, with its few innovations. Sebillet was a transition writer and ultimately went over to the new principles, but his work does not yet present them in a fully developed form. In fact, the Defense is in many respects a reply to Sebillet. Sebillet's favorites among modern poets are Marot, Saint- Gelais, Salel, Heroet and Sceve. Though he devotes a certain amount of attention at the opening of his work to questions which agitated the innovators, such as Art and Invention, still the j&rst book is mainly taken up with the discussion of points of prosody. Under this heading he finds greatest elegance in the rime equivoque, of which he takes as example Marot's preposterous "En m'esbatant je fay rondeaux en rithme." In the second book Sebillet discusses the various poetic types, his list containing a mixture of the old and the new: Epigramme, sonnet, rondeau, ballade, chant royal, cantique, chant lyrique or ode and chanson, epitre, elegie, dialogue (with its divisions 6glogue, moralite and farce), coq-a-l'^ne, blason, enigme, com- plainte, lai and virelai, version or translation. The theories of the Pleiade are set forth in the Defense, the preface of Du Bellay's Olive, Ronsard's Abrege de VArt poetique, the two prefaces of the Franciade and the Art poetique of Jacques 1 82 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Peletier. The preface to the Olive contains but little that is not in the larger work, and the prefaces to the Franciade are mainly connected with the epic genre. Peletier's composition is, in some respects, the most useful to the student of literary evolution, inasmuch as it gives, in systematic form, details of the various genres which are mentioned in an indiscriminate way in other writings. The gist of the argument of the Defense (1549) is: That the French language has been unjustly treated and deemed unworthy of comparison with the language of the ancients. Let us defend it (defense) ; That it may still be improved or ennobled (illustration). The French language, then, is not barbare. For, though it lacks much of the wealth of Greek and Latin, this is because it has been neglected. It may be much improved by the use of the classics of Greece and Rome. But we must not confine ourselves to a mere servile translation of these wntmgs. Let there be imitation, but let it be an intelHgent one, the absorp- tion of the qualities of the old languages, so that the results may be new and original. There is a proper use of Greek and Latin as well as an abuse of them, and it is because of a too servile cult of authors whom we cannot expect to equal in their own language that education is defective, the progress of science slower than it might be. Admire, then, and appreciate the ancients, but develop your own language. The second book attempts to show how French, particularly French poetry, may be improved and made a more fitting instru- ment for the expression of those qualities of which it is capable, and expounds with characteristic disorder the practical rules for the attainment of this goal. First comes a brief and imper- fect discussion of French poets, in which scarcely any get praise except the authors of the Roman de la Rose and Lemaire de Beiges. Du Bellay rebukes those who do not know how to draw from their own language all its merits. But natural quali- ties do not suffice, for long and patient toil is also necessary. THE PLfilADE AND ITS THEORIES 183 The poet must discard as well the old Uterary types and such Spiceries. He should turn to the epigram such as Martial wrote, the heart-moving elegies of Ovid, Tibullus and Propertius, the ode with the harmony of the Greek and Latin lyre, the epistle, the satire if kept free from the inept coq-d-l'dne, the sonnet which Petrarch taught, the eclogues of Theocritus, Virgil and Sannazaro, the tragedy and comedy long degraded by the farces and moralities. Above all, let the poet try the epic, revive the old French stories of Lancelot and Tristan or give to France a new Iliad or ^neid. In the composition of these new works many innovations may be permitted in French, such as old words revived or expressions wherein Du Bellay, as Estienne, sees a harmony between French and Greek. And in the use of his new terms the poet should seek skilled guidance, he should study science and even the mechanic arts, so that the terms may become familiar to him. But this must not prevent him from having a noble idea of poesy and from soaring high, even if he have but few readers. And Du Bellay ends with a last trumpet blast exhorting the French to write in their own language. Ronsard's views are in harmony with these exhortations to study the ancients and renew their spirit in French. In his brief sketch of the Art of Poetry he tells us that a prime requisite is to have noble conceptions. "Le principal point est I'inven- tion." This invention is due both to natural endowment and to the study of the ancients. The poet must study good authors, and to a knowledge of Greek and Latin he must add his own mother tongue, which he may use even to the extent of reviving archaic or technical terms and words borrowed from the various dialects. And like Du Bellay, Ronsard exclaims: " Those who first dared to abandon the language of the ancients to honor that of their own country were truly good children and not ungrateful citizens, worthy of being crowned upon a public stage with lasting memory of them and of their deeds from age to age." i84 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE The Art poMique of Peletier is more systematic than the Defense. It is the work of a more mature man whose mind was mathematical and logical. It was not openly recognised as the creed of the group, yet it contains the theories which the Pleiade put into practice. It appeared, moreover, in 1555, when the views had taken shape. It is divided into two books, of which the first deals with general topics concerning poetry, the second discusses the specific types. Thus, in the first book, the author begins with the antiquity and excellence of poetry, holding to its " celestial " origin and quot- ing "divine" Plato as saying that the poets are the interpreters of the gods when they are in their frenzy. Passing to the claims of nature and of art or practice, he tries to reconcile both. The poet must imitate nature and have his seasons. His study will be his winter, his invention his spring, his composition the summer, his fame autumn. Thus nature will be diffused through all his work, and art mingled with his nature. And in this con- nection he gives a list of those poets of his day who find favor with him: Saint-Gelais, Ronsard, Du Bellay, Maurice Sceve, Pontus de Thyard, Desmasures, Baif, Jodelle, H6roet, and Marot.i Peletier then takes up the subjects appropriate to poetry and discusses the difference between the poet and the orator. The favorite topics with poets have always been wars, love, la pastoralite, and agriculture, of which love has always been the chief in France and has been sadly overdone. He regrets that so few have followed Marot's example in composing eclogues (Ronsard was soon to do so), and proclaims wars to be the most 'His epithets are interesting, even in his queer spelling: Saint-Gelais, ''dous, facond, e ne aus oreilhes des Princes''; Ronsard, "sublime, e rapor- teur de la Poesie ancienne"; Du Bellay, "elegant e ingenieus"; Sceve, "grave e parfond an invancions"; Pontus, "net e sutil"; Desmasures, "propre e dilig'ant"; Baif, "studieus e fluide"; Jodelle, "impetueus e plein de chaleur Poetique." His high praise of Heroet and Marot is less specific. Marot had but the defect "de n'avouer voulu grand'chose." THE PLfilADE AND ITS THEORIES 185 dignified topic for poetry. Finally, he speaks of the broader scope of the poet's work over that of the orator, and hints strongly at a separation between the language of poetry and that of common speech. The other important sections of the first part are on imitation, translation and writing in French. The poet should steep himself in the great writers. Homer and Virgil for the epic, so that when they are incorporated in him he may add something of his own, and he should above all use his own language. The interesting portion of the second part is the classification of the genres. The comments on the epigram add nothing new. The sonnet must be noble in its conclusion, elaborately wrought and philosophical in its conception. "The name of ode," \says Peletier, "was introduced in our day by Pierre de Ronsard, to whom I shall not fail to testify that, while he was still very young, he showed me some of his composition in our town of Le Mans and told me even then that he planned this kind of writing in imitation of Horace : as he has since shown all French- men, and even beyond his first purpose, in imitation of the first of lyric writers, Pindar." The thing itself he acknowledges not to be new: the Psalms of Marot are true odes. This was the position of the author of the Quiniil-Horatian in his attack on Du Bellay. The epistle comes between the epigram and the true lyric poem. The elegy, once confined to melancholy topics, may now be cheerful and deals much w^th love. The satire is as yet not fully established and is of but httle consequence. Classi- cism here outgrew Peletier's view, to which he was perhaps inclined by the lack of dignity of Marot's coq-a-Vdne. Comedy is the mirror of fife and has but one resemblance with tragedy, the division into five acts. For the characters of comedy are of low degree, in tragedy they are noble; comedy has a joyous issue, tragedy ends horribly. But to Peletier the heroic poem is by far Ihe noblest. It is the ocean to which all other styles are but as rivers, and he discusses fuUy many of the qualities 1 86 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of Virgil, who is to him the master poet. Finally, the treatise ends with the conditions of the true poet. Along with natural endowments he must have that encyclopedic learning which to the sixteenth-century Humanist went hand in hand with true poetry. He must know astrology, cosmography, geometry, physics, philosophy, the art of war, as well as the naval and mechanical professions. Such is a brief survey of the chief theoretic writings of the Pleiade at the time of its advent to power. The central point is the doctrine of Imitation, Innutrition, Assimilation or whatever name we may give to this form of invention. It is the result of that inward chewing and digesting of books of which Bacon speaks. It is what Andr6 Chenier expresses by the following image in one of his fragments : Je veux qu'on imite les anciens; Comme aux bords d'Eurotas. . . . Lorsqu'une 6pouse est pres du terme de Lucine, On suspend devant elle en un riche tableau, Ce que I'art de Zeuxis anima de plus beau, ApoUon et Bacchus, Hyacinthe, Niree, Avec les deux Gemeaux leur scEur tant desiree. L'epouse les contemple; eUe nourrit ses yeux De ces objets, honneur de la terra et des cieux; Et de son flanc rempli de ces formes nouvelles, Sort un fruit noble et beau comme ces beaux modeles. It is almost the thought that the same poet utters in a more often quoted passage from a better known poem, V Invention: Changeons en notre miel leur plus antiques fleurs; Pour peindre notre idee empnmtons leurs couleurs; AUumons nos flambeaux a leurs feux poetiques; Sur des pensers nouveaux faisons des vers antiques. The poet, in fine, must saturate himself with antiquity so that his productions may be fairer and more noble, like their noble protot}^es. This doctrine has its literary and historical aspects. In its THE PLEIADE AND ITS THEORIES 187 deeper sense one might call it a form of the doctrine of reminis- cence" or avafivqa-ts dear to poets from Plato to Shelley and Wordsworth, that the spirit of an earlier existence makes itself felt anew at a later time. From the historical point of view it comes from Quintilian and more recently from Vida, who, along with Horace, is one of the chief foreign insplrers of Du Bellay's Defense. The theory of assimilation of what is good in antiqvdty goes hand in hand with the assiunption of the divine quality in poetry resulting from the divine origin of the poet. The thought rxms through the work of Ronsard and Du Bellay, particularly Ronsard's ode to Michel de I'Hospital, that the poet is inspired by ^ airo /xovo-fiv /mvui, that he is their interpreter, and the prophet of the Gods. But here comes the sad conclu- sion to the fine theories: Du Bellay cribbed the main ideas of the Defense itself from the Italian writer Sperone Speroni, and the sonnets of the Olive, instead of being inspired by the ancients, were mainly adapted from Ariosto and from living poets, whom he knew through easily accessible anthologies. CHAPTER VII THE PLEIADE AND ITS WOJRK THE theory of the Pleiade, stated in its briefest form, we have seen to be: Let us ennoble poetry. If necessary we may have two languages, one for poetry and one for prose. And this result would not have been inconceivable in French, as is the case to a certain degree in English, had not Malherbe made poetry prosaic in its vocabulary and style. This ambition of the P16iade was far from being a democratic one: it did not take into consideration all national Ufa. It accepted Hterature as the inheritance of an elite, the educated groups and court society of Paris. It continued the "odi pro- fanum vulgus" of Horace, the "seguite pochi e non la volgar gente" of Petrarch, the contempt of the Italian poets of the Renaissance for the popolaccio and canaglia. Says Du Bellay: Rien ne me plait, fors ce qui peut deplaire Au jugement du rude populaire. The effect of the Pleiade is to substitute for the literature of the Middle Ages another based on antiquity, becoming itself a sort of pseudo-antique. Even in the seventeenth century and the great days of Classicism, French literature preserved certain traits of unoriginaUty or of secondary genius to which is given the technical name of Alexandrinista. The efforts of the Pleiade involved the danger of falling into exaggeration, to which an imitative literature is Hable. When the first impetus was over and Ronsard himself was gone, there came a time which we can in a way compare with the days of the rhetoriqueurs. Only here, instead of an absolutely meaningless i88 THE PLfilADE AND ITS WORK 189 cult for. form which distinguished Molinet or Cretin, the poets of the end of the sixteenth century were beset with the Itahanism pervading the court and society and finding vent in a bastard Petrarchism. Nor is the result surprising. Italian influences had kept on increasing from the beginning of the century. Italian wars and marriages had spread the tendencies, and when Henry III in 1574 halted in Italy on his way back from Poland the stay was a revelation to him. So that French in the court circles became a pastiche of Italian, stuffed with foreign words and phrases. This was the tendency that Estienne attacked so violently. Since things were taking this course, one need not wonder that French poets, deprived of a great leader, should have dropped to an inferior level. And so a change was necessary if poetry was not to fall into exaggerations of expression fully as ludicrous as those of the fifteenth century. The sin is no longer the composition of poems to be read equally well backwards or upside down, but the indtilging in excessive antitheses, refine- ments of hyperbole and pointes, constant allusions in poetry to lips like coral or roses, set in cheeks of snow, encircling ivory teeth, to hair like gold, to eyes darting arrows or rays of fire which burn or blind all they touch. It was from this condition of literature that Malherbe came to deliver things, soon after the end of the Valois dynasty. The growth of rationalism had gone on, and it was preparing to impose its authority. The "fay ce que vouldras" of the abbaye de Theleme of the sixteenth century was to be replaced by the absolutism of the seventeenth. Malherbe was the high priest of the movement of repression in poetry, which ruthlessly cut away all the superabimdant wealth of the language of Ronsard and the tawdriness of Desportes, drawing the language back to the prose from which it had deviated, chastening that prose itself until the result was a calm and impersonal style, bereft of individuahty and lyric qualities, a fit medium for the lieux communs which constitute so much of the literature of igo A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Classicism. Malherbe, coming as the foe of Ronsard, plays the part of successor, and when he damns writers who, like Theo- phile, say. La regie me deplait, j'6cris confus6ment: Jamais un bon esprit ne fait rien qu'aisement, he is merely picking from the Classicism of Ronsard the elements deserving to be perpetuated and rejecting what seems to him transitory. The enemy of the Pleiade was its successor, and the work of both Ronsard and his companions and that of Malherbe were useful. But this is anticipating: the mistakes of Ronsard and of the first generation of the Pleiade, though numerous, are not so bad as those of Desportes and his followers. The most important divisions of the literature of the Pleiade, apart from the drama, which will be treated elsewhere, were the ode, the sonnet, the epic and the pastoral. Each writer gener- ally passed through a period of somewhat immature imitation, often of Petrarchism, before coming to his full development. The school was largely one of lyric poetry, Ronsard standing pre-eminent in the ode and Ronsard and Du Bellay in the sonnet. The two terms Anacreontism and Horatianism give us the key to almost all the lyric odes of the Pleiade. The majority cultivated the odelette rather than the ode. Here and there they sound, in imitation of Ronsard, what Olivier de Magny calls the "pindarique buccine." One of the most ponderous buccinators was Ronsard's own teacher Dorat, one of whose Pindaric odes is addressed to Ronsard himself. Early in life Ronsard became interested in the verses of Horace and took him as a model for his boyish compositions. This poetic mood appealed to him, for he returned to it more than once. About the middle of the century he had a passing attack of the Pindaric fever, lasting long enough for him to compose a handful of soaring odes. But when Henri Estienne published the Anacreontic poems Ronsard and his friends turned THE PLfilADE AND ITS WORK 191 with passion to the new models, and no one exclaimed more eagerly than he did: Loue qui voudra les replis recourb6s Des torrens de Pindare a nos yeux embourbes, Obscurs, rudes, fascheux, et ses chansons connues, Je ne sais bien comment, par songes et par nues: Anacreon me plaist, le doux Anacreon. Pindarism was, then, a temporary mood, though it affected Ronsard long enough to make his name by anagram "Rose de Pindare." It was the poetry of one discontented with the lyricism in a minor key of the late Middle Ages and early Renais- sance. It was the attitude of one seeking to stand in the new hfe as Pindar in the old world, half priest of man, half interpreter of the Gods, the embodiment of divine inspiration or ivOoua-uuriw^ uttering pruuxra a-efivd. < The experiment was to be made of imitating the odes of Pindar with a due share of novelty and invention. Ronsard had a precursor in the Italian poet at the court of Francis I, Luigi Alamanni, from whose Pindaric hymns he borrowed the scheme of strophe, antistrophe and epode, besides ideas as to the number of syllables. But Ronsard came to grief. In these odes he did not put into practice his and Du Bellay's theory on assimilation. With punctilious exactness he tried to reproduce every feature of Pindarism, whether in the poetry or the setting. The setting or movement of the ode was in the lyric action and the combination of the elements of dance, music and song. But in trying to reproduce the sentiment and sing the modern equivalents of the old demi-gods and heroes, Ronsard crammed his poems with historical and mythological allusions, resulting in a noble but quite superfluous disorder, what Malherbe, Perrault and Voltaire were ready later to call the "galimatias de Pindare." He concealed the arrangement of ideas and imitated the passion of those who were carried away by the divine frenzy. Pindar's frenzy was not entirely unconscious. But there was a difference between voicing the aspirations of Greek thought. 192 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE its underlying principles of patience, hope, quiet, fear of the divinity and avoidance of envy, and attempting literary con- structions not believed even by their author. Moreover, French metre was not adapted to Ronsard's purpose. The distinction of syllables is so slight that the ear with difficulty follows a com- plicated structure through the windings of the strophe and antistrophe. In short, Ronsard's Pindaric odes were neither French nor Greek. They had, however, a briUiant success in his own day. The longest and most ambitious was addressed to Michel de I'Hospital. In it Ronsard relates the birth of the Muses, their visit to their father Jupiter while he is staying beneath the ocean, and then the rise, progress and decline of poesy, the sway of ignorance and the final revival of learning at the birth of the great chancellor. This involved tale is interspersed with learned literary and mythological allusions. Fortunately, Ronsard is much more successful as an imitator of Horace and of Anacreon. Estienne's edition of the Anac- reontic poems in 1554 created a furore among the members of the Pleiade. Ronsard again led the way, Belleau translated the poems, and a luscious epicureanism of Cupids, roses and wine was the order of the day. And here the writer of the six- teenth century is in general most successful. He lets his verse float on under the spell of authors whom he may imitate without strain, Anacreon, MaruUus, Navagero, Secundus. And now it is that Ronsard and his fellow-poets put into practice with the most success his famous theory, and that we see them, as a result of the sympathetic study of the older poets, renew emotions and feelings and express them in words that are French. Even when Ronsard translates, as he frequently and openly does, his poems have a grace and originality of their own, though they remind one of the past on which they are built. Here we have possibly the best expression of Ronsard's talent and the nearest approach to the desired aim of the poet, the formation of new genres bor- rowed from the ancients, but created anew in the passage from one THE PLEIADE and ITS WORK 193 language to the other by the genius of a pcTet whom the Muses cherish. The varied metres of these poems are also among Ronsard's best contributions to French poetry. 1 The feelings at the basis of these odes is the old epicureanism, Ufe in the present and neglect of the future, with an occasional melancholy sentiment over the fleeting quality of youth and beauty and the passage of time. Ronsard's famous ode to Cassandre, "Mignonne, allons voir si la rose" is too famous in this connection to bear repetition. Above all, Ronsard is fond of nature. Although for so many years a court poet and the favorite of princes, he preferred, or feigned to prefer, his priory of Saint-Cosme or his smihng Vendomois. The little Loir be- comes his Anio, the fontaine Bellerie is his Bandusian spring and the forest of Gastine the country near Tibur. To a greater extent than with Du Bellay, Ronsard's emotions are expressed in borrowed terms, so that he seems the city man recognising the features that others have admired. To this extent he does not rise above Alexandrinism, but it is impossible not to acknowl- edge the charm of his invocations to forest and stream, to swallow and lark. The peculiarly Anacreontic qualities, interwoven with the Horatian ones, deal largely with the setting. Hence the source of the loves and doves, birds and bees of which the members of the Pleiade were so fond. One of the best examples is the story told both in the Anacreontic collection and by Theocritus, and imitated by Belleau, Baif, Ronsard and Olivier de Magny among others, of Love stung by a bee. When he runs weeping to his mother Venus she draws a moral which Ronsard thus expresses: Si donques un animal Si petit fait tant de mal, Quand son halesne espoinfonne 1 The attitude of M. Laumonier in his book on Ronsard's lyric poetry is that of a new Quintil-Horatian. He seeks to diminish the novelty of Ronsard's contributions and show him to be a successor rather than an innovator. 194 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE La main de quelque personne, Combien fais-tu de douleurs Au prix de luy, dans les coeurs De ceux contre qui tu jettes Tes homicides sagettes? Ronsard's nature phraseology is often of Italian inspiration; Belleau is one of the best nature painters, but his descriptions are objective; Du Bellay puts us in a more vivid relationship with it. In his poems we see more distinct and less hackneyed features of the landscape, the smoke rising above the country cottage or the fields and harvests. The poem of the countryman and the breezes, " A vous troupe 16gere," imitated from Navagero's Latin Vota ad auras is more natural than anything in Ronsard. In actual numbers it was the sonnet and not the ode that swamped the sixteenth century. Here the imitation of the Italian Petrarchists was most rampant, and the French sonnet writers became in turn the models for countless plagiarisms in English hterature. The French poets borrowed the name of the Amores of Ovid and wrote their Amours, a title used by Ronsard, Baif and Olivier de Magny, besides the Olive of Du Bellay and the Erreurs amoureuses of Pontus de Thyaird. They deliberately took a lady to adore, whether in a literary mood or with genuine feeling. Said Pasquier: "Lorsque nos poetes discourent le mieux de I'amour, c'est lorsqu'ils sontmoins atteintsde maladie." Ronsard wrote sonnets to Cassandre, Marie and Helene as well as to many others, Du Bellay to Olive, Baif to Meline and Francine, Belleau to Magdelon and Catin, Jodelle to Diane and Claire, Thyard to Pasithee. The P16iade drew largely for inspiration from the ItaKan Bembists, who represented, on the whole, a more polished form of Petrarchism than the school of Serafino and who had gone back to the sonnet in place of the stratnbotto. The characteristics of Petrarchism were: Forced metaphor and similes running into each other, so that often the original subject of interest was quite lost to view; constant allegory, THE PLfilADE AND ITS WORK 195 not of personified qualities as in the Middle Ages, but of hearts driven to and fro like barks in distress; over-indulgence in mythological allusions, so that the explanations of commen- tators seemed often necessary; repeated antitheses and, later, pointes; laments of the unhappy lover and complaints about the. cruel coquette who makes him suffer agony so long that he seems to take joy in his woe; elaborate and sensuous descriptions of the beauty adored."^ In spite of these defects many of the sonnets have great charm, particularly those of Ronsard to Helene de Surgeres. These date from his maturity, and represent a much quieter passion than the earlier ones. They often show, rather than a worship, the companionship of an older person for a young girl; they are more intellectual and give hints of the solemnity of approaching age. One of these sonnets, the famous "Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, a la chandelle," shares with the ode to Cassandre mentioned above the widespread thought of. youth and beauty passing like the rose, and renewed in modern literature the reminder of the immortality that the poet can give. Together with the Pindaric ode, the epic was Ronsard's most ambitious endeavor and his worst failure. Ronsard was unequal to the composition of the highest genres, yet the Franciade was the darling of his heart, and its completion was the dream of a large part of his Ufe. To the sixteenth century the epic was the result of long incubation, and the more laborious the poet, the more he seemed suited to express the epic qualities. Virgil was, therefore, generally a greater favorite than Homer, and 1 Cf. Vianey, Le Pitrarquisme en France (p. 22): "Tebaldeo fut, sans que la plupart d'eux s'en soient doutes, le pere de presque tous las sonnet- tistes frangais. C'est lui, en effet, qui inventa cette technique du sonnet que nos poetes ont empruntee a Du Bellay, celle qui, pour repeter un mot connu, ' fait le sonnet sentir son epigramme.' En d'autres termes, il ima- gina de construire tout le sonnet en vue de preparer, d'amener, de souli- gner, de renforcer le dernier vers, devenu la piece maltresse de I'edifice. Le sonnet de Petrarque etait quelque chose de bien plus delicat et de bien plus vari6." 196 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Ronsard, in spite of his own statements, has rather followed Virgil. But even truer models are the erudite Alexandrian Apollonius Rhodius and the modern Ariosto. The subject, the story of Francus and the origins of the French, Ronsard .took from Lemaire de Beiges; the treatment consisted in bring- ing together a medley of episodes drawn without assimilation from older writers, weighed down with pseudo-antique compari- sons and similes. Poor Ronsard was also under obligations, at Charles the Ninth's request, to draw lessons from the lives of all the kings of France to incline one to virtue and make one hate vice. The poet never reached this part of his work, for he stopped at the end of the fourth of his projected twenty-four books, but this was what he called having on his hands the burden of four and sixty kings. The moralising tendency of the epic grew with time, until in the seventeenth century we shall find it looked upon as one of the chief characteristics of the genre. Ronsard was far more successful in his eclogues. He had, it is true, the modern Humanist's misconception of pastoral poetry and looked upon it as "a dialogue between shepherds, treating, under the form of allegory, the death of princes, public calamities, mutations of states and the like." But of all poets the most sympathetic to Ronsard was the greatest writer of pastoral idyls, the Alexandrian Theocritus. Under his influence and that of his great disciple Virgil, together with the modern writers of eclogues from Petrarch to Sannazaro, Ronsard wrote poems to which great injustice has been done by modern critics. Here ■ we find some of his best work and passages which may well be placed beside his lighter odes. Here we find the same pleasure in nature which made him appreciate its sights and sounds and seize the apt though literary epithet. If we can lorget the "allegory of princes" and the characters who masquerade under the names of Orleantin, Guisin or Margot, and read for the beauty of the verse, we are sure to be rewarded. The eclogues of Baif and the Bergeries of Belleau are also among the best of their compositions. THE PLfilADE AND ITS WORK 197 Another literary phase of the P16iade deserves mention, though it usually does not stand by itself, because in it both Ronsard and Du Bellay wrote some of their best Hnes. In the Discours des miseres de ces temps Ronsard rises to a noble strain of rhetorical satire. He was a true patriot, sincere in his Catholic convictions, and the vision of his country rent by internecine strife drew from him remonstrance and dignified lament. Du Bellay alsa was a satirist in the modern sense, as we shall find satire in French Classicism. It has not the brutaUty of the mediaeval satire or the incoherence of the coq-d-l'dne and is influenced by Ariosto and Berni. In the Poete courtisan, sup- posed to be directed against Saint-Gelais, and in many passages of the Regrets we come upon-elements of true Classical satire. Indeed, the Regrets, without losing restraint, have a fierceness of invective against the vices of Rome which make the satire all the more potent. In the ItaUan poems of Du Bellay there is a pecuUar contrast between the hostihty against a modern decadent civilisation and of melancholy which results from brooding among the ruins of a past greatness. In this enjoyment of sadness among the remains of what has been great but is now brought low, and, in his lyric touch, De Bellay shows himself one of the truest Romanticists before the days of Romanticism. Ronsard's Hymns were much admired during his Hfetime. They are of various kinds and contain lyric, epic and didactic elements. Next to the seven poets grouped under the name of the Pleiade, OUvier de Magny (1530-1561) deserves the highest place, and he even far excels men like Dorat or Thyard. His Itahan sonnets corroborate the satire of Du Bellay, and his adaptations from Horace have all the grace of successful assimi- lation.' The downfall of the Pleiade is seen in the writings of Philippe Desportes (i 542-1606), known as the leader of what is called 'To these poets may be added Jacques Tahureau (1S27-1SSS) and Ronsard's page and proteg6 Amadis Jamyn (1538 or 40-1592 or 93). 198 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the second volee of the movement. With the decline of the Hellenism of Ronsard Itahanism became rampant and Des- portes is its chief example. The inspiration was no longer Pindar but Petrarch, or much rather the poor imitators of Petrarch. Desportes plagiarised imblushingly second-rate Italian poets unread today, like Pamphilo Sasso, Tebaldeo, Berardino Rota, Angelo di Costanzo, Luigi Tansillo, and in his sonnet lyrics shows the most culpable sins against good taste. Injiis highest inspiration he scarcely finds a greater model than Ariosto. His most voluminous collections were his love poems to Diane, Cleonice and Hippolyte. Here become rampant all the defects usually grouped under the name of Petrarchism, and as a salva- tion from such vices of style the advent of Malherbe was justified and welcome. Desportes cultivated, as well as the sonnet, the stances, which among the Italian poets were then supplanting the sonnet. Desportes is, however, not entirely without merit: his Bergeries have graceful touches, and his villanelle to Rosette deserves a place in every anthology of the best trifling verse. He was a favorite among the English poets who drew from the French, and Daniel owed to him his famous sonnet, "Care- ' charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night." CHAPTER VIII THE NEW PHILOSOPHY AND THE NEW HUMANISM NO period of French thought is more significant than the sixteenth century. Most historians, it is true, begin with Descartes, and fail to see in the previous age anything but a series of discormected thinkers, more important in other divisions of Uterature than in abstract thought. It is strange that histories of philosophy more recent than Brucker and Buhle give little if any space to a name as important as that of Ramus, who stands for the Rationalism of the sixteenth century and has his claim to honor as well as Descartes. A 'survey of the whole period leads one to say that the main feature of the new philosophy is the growth of Rationalism, taking rather the form of Platonism. In ethics the predominant manifestation is a stoical one. The Reason of the Middle Ages had not stood for much and had been a mere allegorical figure. By the sixteenth century the spirit of Rationalism, which is prominent in any age of learning, and which we see linked with the older Himianism of the twelfth century, again lifts its head. The recrudescence of the sense of human dignity, which went with the growing knowledge of antiquity, promoted the feeling of independence of the intellect face to face with the tyranny of external authority. In the first half of the century the liberty of reasoning is paramount and, by shifting the standard or test of judgment, it results in the modification of nearly all the divisions of intellectual life. In history and political science the way is opened for the natural interpretation of motives and causes. The fictions which had gone with previous historical study now disappear. Moreover, 199 200 A HISTORY OF FkENCH LITERATURE greater familiarity with the thought of the Greeks and Romans acted ^s a hberating tendency in the new conceptions of political theory. Thus, in the second half of the century, we can account, not only for the new historical method of Pasquier replacing in the Recherches de la France the ludicrous traditions of Lemaire de Beiges, but for the rise of Rationalism in politics, as shown by the writings of Hotman (Franco-Gallia, 1573); in law, as shown by the influence of Cujas; even the revival of ideas of political liberty expressed in the Contr'un of La Boetie. Indeed,- should we pass from the historical to the other sciences, we might by similar means explain the character of the writings and investi- gations of men like Ambroise Pare (1516?- 1590) the surgeon, and Bernard Palissy (1510-1589) the ceramist, though these last two were not technical Himianists or students of Greek and Latin. In religion there arose a tendency to submit all to the con- science and substitute new standards of authority. The substi- tute was as dogmatically imposed as what it replaced, and the ipse dixit of Calvin was as uncompromising as that which was rejected. Yet it was the effort of reason, and in other countries than France the new thought took varied forms. In ethics the same tendency prevailed to subject the question of duty or obligation to the conscience and to make morals part company from the ancient allies. As the question of duty could be considered independently from matters of faith, and as ancient philosophy gave students systems as inspiring as any- thing to be found in Christianity, it is not remarkable that the secularisation of morality in the sixteenth century shows wide divergences and a Uberty in strong contrast with the one reli- gious morality of Calvinism. This secularisation of morals reaches its closest approach to a lay sermon in the Humanistic tragedy of the Pldiade.i In the lyric poets the feeling found vent in the mitigated epicureanism already studied. In 1 Among the lay moralists one might also mention Guy du Faur de Pibrac (1529-1584) and his versified moral quatrains. THE NEW PHILOSOPMV Soi others the chaos of beliefs begets confusion worse confounded, and the epicurean tinges his morahty with metaphysical scep- ticism, as in the case of Montaigne. Finally, and this seems to be the most marked feature of the century, the system which had the greatest success was itself a kind of secular rehgion, a stoic theory based on Plutarch and Seneca, which presupposed a universal reason with immutable laws. Thus we find a new objective dogma only a few generations after the revolt against the old religious one. By this time, too, the Catholic reaction has begun, directly opposed in spirit to independence of reason- ing, and the development of the order of the Jesuits is an effort to obtain possession of this secular religion and twist it to other uses. In this way we can understand the fossilisation of the spirit of rationalism and see how free reasoning becomes the automaton "Reason" of many seventeenth-century writers. In the days of the Pleiade a corresponding philosophical manifestation, which indeed antedates the Pleiade, is found in the revolt of Ramus against Aristotelianism. Pierre de la Ramee or Ramus (1515-1572) early took a dislike to the Aristotelian logic taught in the university, and the study of Plato made the dislike more acute. He resolved to free himself by the Socratic method, and in 1536, at his examination for the Master's degree, he enunciated the bold thesis that Aris- totle's writings were all spurious and all wrong. In 1543 Ramus pubUshed two important works, the Dialecticae parfitiones and the AnsMelicae animadver stones. The former was a brief treatise on logic, the latter a virulent attack on the Aristotelian method. As a result Ramus was condemned as guilty of false- hood and slander. This did not prevent the success of his work on logic, afterwards definitely issued as the Dialecticae institutioms. Ramus held positions of honor in the university and was royal reader in eloquence and philosophy. For a number of years he taught grammar, rhetoric and dialectic, and advo- cated new ideas, some profitable and some not, such as the dis- tinction of the lettres ramistes (u and v, i and j), and took part in 202 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the great dispute of the pronunciations, kiskis and kankam versus quisquis and quanquam. Ramus's attacks on Aristotle estranged him from the Church and made him a Reformer; his independence of thought won him many enemies, among them Jacques Char- pentier, who caused his murder at the Massacre of Saint Barthol- omew. Ramus's reputation is fourfold: he was a mathemati- cian, a Humanist, a philosopher and a theologian. He represents the mathematical side in the two chief currents of Renaissance philosophy, the other being experimental, but both remaining imtil the following century, like their predecessors, a qualitative search for essences, rather than quantitative investigation, so that this anti-Aristotelian has still something of Aristotle. As a Humanist he belongs to the new class of men who believe in the dignity of French, and endeavor to make it a fit vehicle for the expression of the liberal arts; hence his Grammar and the French edition of the Dialectic. In his philosophy Ramus appeals from authority to reason, and seeks a new method: "Nulla auctoritas rationis, sed ratio auctoritatis regina dominaque esse debet." He had in mind a Renaissance of all individual sciences, a reconstruction of every sphere of mental activity, a substitution for all past hypotheses and beliefs, whether in small matters such as gram- mar or great things such as theology, of new results reached by a clearer and more accurate method. The tool employed was his Dialectic, a Humanist's logic which had the greatest vogue in Europe, and became in England the logic of the Cambridge Platonists, as opposed to the Aristotelianism which continued to prevail at Oxford. In his Dialectic Ramus proceeds largely by dichotomy, and his doctrine may be tabulated with great accuracy. As a preface to the affirmative or dogmatic exposition he sweeps away, in his polemical writings, the defective methods of the past, from that of Aristotle to his Scholastic followers. Moreover, Aris- totle was not the inventor of logic, since the faculty of thought is inherent in man. THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 203 Positive dialectic is the art of thought or reasoning, ars disserendi. It is based upon the assumption of three factors: nature, art and practice. Nature supplies the reasoning faculty, which, after it has given the precepts going to make up art, affords means to those who practise the arts of winning- greater knowledge of itself and famiUarity with its processes. Dialectic itself has two parts: invention (inventio) and judgment (judicium or dispositto). The former furnishes the arguments, the latter shows what to do with them. A judgment may be axiomatic or dianoetic. In the former case it is the statement of a proposition (enunciaium, enunciatio, pronunciatum, ponunciatio, effatum). In the latter case it presents the draw- ing of one proposition from another by the syllogism, or attain- ment of a conclusion {complexio or conclusio) from a major (propositio) by means of a minor (assumptio), and leads up to Method. The importance to us of the Dialectic of Ramus lies in the fact that Nature is to him not so much the nature which the modern man of science analyses with his implements ; it is rather nature as it appears in the works of the writers of antiquity. All his examples are drawn from them, his exposition of the processes of reasoning is based on their reasoning, his desire is to win the same victories of persuasion which were won by the poets and rhetoricians of the past. This is the significance of Ramus as the philosopher of the sixteenth century. On the one hand, he preaches the rational investigation of nature and sets forth the method by which this investigation may be made. Thereby he proclaims the freedom of the reason and, for the first time, fur- nishes an orderly progress or gradus by which reason can advance to a fuller knowledge of nature. On the other hand, this nature is a limited one : it is the antiquity upon which the new literature was based. The various logical examples are literary instances drawn from the poets and orators, the modes of the syllogism are constructed from the methods of reasoning of Cicero or Ovid, and the ways of thought of the ancient authors thus take the place 204 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of the universal processes of reasoning, with which, indeed, Ramus seems to make them coincide. It is the philosophical form of the movement which breaks with the Middle Ages, as Ramus broke loose from Aristotle, giving freedom to human reason and proclaiming the ancients as the true models for imitation. This is precisely his underlying thought when he undertakes to draw from their writings their means of argument and exposition in order to give them vogue.' Meanwhile, though the members of the Pleiade import the spirit of Humanism into literature, the technical Humanist does not disappear. Henri Estienne, though he criticises the Pleiade, is none the less a representative in scholarship of its tendencies and his aims are in many respects the same. He is also one of the most prominent of a new class of writers, comprising Amyot and Pasquier, who in contrast with the older Humanists like Bude now advocate the use of French. Not all the friends of the Pleiade write in French. Besides Dorat there are pedagogues like Marc-Antoine de Muret, for a time an intimate friend of Ronsard and Du Bellay, and some- times included in hsts of the Pleiade. But almost all he did in French was to annotate the Amours of Ronsard. Michel de I'Hospital is another intellectual giant. He, too, favors the new learning, and the Pindarism of Ronsard reaches its climax in celebrating the qualities of the chancellor. But Michel de I'Hospital, engrossed in the cares of state, took literature, so far as he was concerned, only as a scholar's pastime and wrote his poems in a learned language. Henri Estienne, Etienne Pasquier and Jacques Amyot have a different value. Henri Estienne (i 531-1598) belonged to one of the most distinguished families in the history of scholarship. Henri Estienne I and Robert Estienne, together with many others of ' The early attacks of Ramus on Aristotelianism are contemporary with the philosophical Platonism of the writings of Bonaventure des Periers with their rationaKsm and free thought. But Des Periers died so early that it seems umiatural to place him among the hew philosopher?, THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 205 the same name and their connections at various times, Josse Bade, Vascosan, Casaubon, form a worthy escort to the greatest of them, Henri II. Tribute is due to Robert Estienne, the father of Henri, whose Latin Thesaurus was a mighty under- taking and whose Greek and Latin pubhcations contribute to the progress of the ideals of the Pleiade. But Henri II surpasses his kin in learning and in achievement. He was a precocious student, an omnivorous reader, a prolific writer, an unwearied publisher, an unsurpassed intellectual planner. He prepared and published a Greek dictionary, still of considerable service. He brought out a score of editiones principes, among which his Anacreon profoundly affected the new school. His Plato is still the basis for the page references in all text editions. He was incessantly engaged in political and religious controversy, was harassed by business difficulties and driven by the melancholy of ill health into restless wanderings over a large part of Europe. Yet he found time to make some noteworthy contributions to literature, such as the Apologie pour Herodoie, the Traite de la conformite du langage franqais avec le grec, the Deux dialogues du nouveau langage franqais italianise and the Precel- lence du langage franqais. The Apologie pour Herodote purports to be a defence of Herod- otus from the charge of gullibility, on the ground that in modern times men have done things infinitely more incredible than what the ancient historian rela-tes. This is Estienne's pretext for the real purpose of the work, which is a violent attack on the vices of his day. His stories are, however, told with a certain gusto not to the credit of the purity of the author's thoughts; The ideas of Estienne's other writings are precisely those of the Pleiade: the harmony between French and Greek and the superiority of French. And this in spite of the fact that Estienne often criticises the Pleiade. The Conformite is typical of the Hellenist's argvmients. Not only is Greek the most perfect of all languages and the standard by which they must be judged, but French, as most closely approaching Greek in character 2o6 A fflSTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE and often in derivation, is itself to be placed above other lan- guages, more specifically Latin and Italian. The third book is the weakest but the most amusing, for in it Estienne tries to connect French words with Greek ones by fanciful etymologies and flimsy similarities. In the Dialogues du frangais italianise French is defended against Italian. Philausone, the "lover of Italy," converses in a lingua franca of Italian words with French endings, and Celthophile, the "lover of France," attacks the new and perverse manners of speech for which the Italian fashions and courtiers were chiefly responsible. The Precel- lence du frangais, though a mere projet, combines the spirit of the other two and is, on the whole, more readable. Estienne still directs his arguments mainly against Italian, and plans to prove that French is more serious, more gracious, more rich. Perhaps these ideas can be even better appreciated under the form which they assume in the writings of Etierme Pasqmer (1529-1615). Henri Estienne was a scholar of the accumulative type and his writings are patchy and filled with details of philology. Pasquier was a man with a broader power of synthesis and states the same theories with more effect. He, too, was a Humanist and a broad-minded man of the Renaissance. He was one of the most distinguished lawyers in the land; like most of his fellows he dabbled in poetry ("je sms avocat le jour et poete la nuit") and in his youth had written le Monophile, a prose and verse composition en the fashionable topic of love; he engaged in strife with the forces of reaction in the shape of the rising order of the Jesuits; above all, he wrote the Recherckes de la France, a work of great learning and still of striking interest, in which he not only studied the past history and institutions of France in a spirit of enUghtened rationalism, but gave much valuable information concerning the literature of his time. Illustrative passages are found both in the Recherckes and in the Letters, one of the first collections to be written in French, to show his beUef in the nobility of the mother tongue. Pasquier made himself the master of his books instead of being their THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 207 slave. This shows itself in his investigation of old sayings and customs from the standpoint of the rationalist: he does not hesitate to reject accepted views where they seem inadequate, he does not flinch before the rehabilitation of a character con- demned by history. It is interesting to find the same tendencies towards the appre- ciation of French manifested by one who was himself a profes- sional teacher of Greek. Louis Le Roy (Ludovicus Regius, 1510-1577) had been the favorite pupil of Bude, whose life he wrote. He expounded and translated Plato and Aristotle and lectured on Demosthenes. In his writings he tended to use the innovations in style of the Pleiade, and his lectures on Demosthenes were among the first to be delivered on a learned subject in French. Jacques Amyot (1513-1593) devoted himself to the task of improving the quality of translations from the Greek. The most important were his editions of the Lives and the Moral' Works of Plutarch, but he also published versions of the story of Theagenes and Chariclea of Heliodorus, of the pastoral of Daphnis and Chloe of Longus and an edition of Diodorus Siculus. With Amyot translation enters upon a new stage, or rather occupies a position of its own. Never were translations more numerous than in the sixteenth century, yet few were either inspiring or accurate. Amyot, it is true, mistranslates and has not the accuracy of the severe scholar. But he has the notion of style, knows how to produce the best effects of art, and man- ages to incorporate into French the spirit of certain authors who might otherwise have remained unfamiliar to the general reader. It is superfluous to recall to English-speaking people the effect which the works of Amyot had upon our literature. In the study of French it is interesting to note how he introduced the Hxmianistic spirit to the general reader, and made certain works of antiqiiity part and parcel of the French possession. In this way a mere translator had great power in moulding thought and action, and contributed to the material and form of seven- 2o8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE teenth-century Classicism. The content of the moral writings, the heroes of the biographies still known to us as "Plutarch's men," the type of lovers of Greek romance, are synthesised in the stoic hero of Corneille, the gracious lover of seventeenth- century society, fiction and tragedy. The Plutarchian concep- tion of the classic Greek, post-Hellenic and foreign to the truth as it really was, has probably influenced modern ideas of the ancients more than anything else. For this result Amyot is largely responsible. M. Brunetiere, with a literary picturesque- ness of exaggeration, makes him an ultimate source of the French Revolution, which sought to revive the heroes of anti- quity, to imitate them in speech and act, to copy them in thought and manner, to paint them, even, as David did, on canvas. If this be true, the same may be said of the austere Roman ideals of the American Revolution. For North's translation of Amyot made Plutarch as English as French, and was the source of much *of Shakspere's knowledge of antiquity. As for Amyot's direct influence upon his contemporaries, even men of action, we need only remember what Henry IV said of the Plutarch whom Amyot helped him to know. To him Plutarch "souriait toujours d'une fraiche nouveaute: I'aimer c'est m'aimer, il a ete I'instituteur de mon bas 4ge; il m'a 6te comme ma conscience, et m'a dicte a I'oreille beaucoup de bonnes honnStetes et maximes excellentes pour ma conduite et le gouvernement de mes affaires." CHAPTER DC THE DRAMA NO good results we're reached by the Pleiade in the drama, which was destined in the next century to become the best example of Classicism. The poets were here groping even more than elsewhere, and had not definitely formulated their ideal of the play. Above all, they did not understand what action is, in the modem sense, and their plays are mostly elegies. Yet these may not be judged entirely by modern standards, inasmuch as they were probably not, as least in Paris, acted in public, but were used for theatricals by amateurs in the courts of private residences or the colleges of the university. In the provinces the plays of the Humanists seem often to have been given more publicly by scholars or actors and in more equal competition with the mediaeval theatre. But in Paris, at any rate, the distinction is marked. The Pleiade desired to revive the tragedy of the ancients, but, as else- where, the t3^e was modified 'by imitation of Latin and Italian authors. Seneca was the common model of all moderns. The chief rival of the new school was suffering from the results of the decree of 1548 which ^rbade the acting in Paris of sacred mysteries. But the brotherhood of the Passion still held the monopoly of the stage. In Italy there had been at an early date symptoms in Latin of the Renaissance tragedy. There had been a Senecan play about 1314, the Ecerinis of Albertino Mussato. Its subject was drawn from contemporary history, the death of the tyrant of Padua, but the Achilleis, long attributed to Mussato, now assigned to Loschi, a century later, about 1389, has, like most 209 2IO A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Renaissance tragedies, a subject drawn from mythology. The Progne of Gregorio Corraro, about 1428 or 1429, was still more Senecan. In the fifteenth century such imitations were less .numerous, but the plays themselves of Seneca became popular in reproduc- tions, and they were learned by heart in the schools and some- times translated. The tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides were also better known. Finally appeared the Sophonisba of Trissino. In 1502 Galeotto del Carreto had produced an incoherent drama on the same subject, but the tragedy of Trissino, written in 1515 and pubhshed in 1524, is the first instance of a regular tragedy in the vulgar tongue. The Sophonisba topic, drawn from Livy and Petrarch, became one of the most popular in modem litera- ture and was employed in Italy by Alfieri, in France by Mellin de Saint-Gelais (an adaptation from Trissino), Montchrestien, Mairet, Corneille, Voltaire among others, in England by Marston, Lee and Thomson. Other early Italian plays, some of them on characters which grew as famous in literature as Sophonisba, were the Rosmunda and Oreste of Rucellai, the Tullia of Lodovico Martelli, the Antigone of Alamanni, the Dido of Alessandro de' Pazzi, the Orbecche, Dido and Cleopatra of Giraldi Cinthio, the Dido of Lodovico Dolce. Of all these poets Trissino was the nearest to the Greek, Cinthio did the most to promote the blood and thunder of Seneca. The French Humanists, as usual, asked how the Italians had solved their problems. Under foreign influences they trans- formed the private theatricals whicl^^they had been in the habit of giving in Latin. The acting of such plays had always been a pastime or pedagogical exercise in the universities. The most notable writer in the days immediately preceding the new movement was Ravisius Textor (c. 1470-1524), teacher at the College de Navarre and rector of the university at the beginning of the century. He composed a number of short Latin plays, in which Mors and Morbus are frequent characters, which may be classed as moralities, sotties and farces. About 1530 the THE DRAMA 2ii spirit of Humanism making itself more felt, the plays inclined to classical models, and were opposed to the old productions influenced by the Sorbonne. Such was the Christus Xylonicus, a "tragoedia" of Barthelemy de Loches (1537). But the most important name is that of the Scottish Human- ist George Buchanan (1506-1582). This great writer and scholar spent much time in France as a teacher and did his best to turn attention to the ancients and their plays, as he says "ut earum actione juventutem ab allegoriis, qiiibus tum Gallia vehementer se oblectabat, ad imitationem veterum, qua posset retraheret." He wrote four plays, two translations from Euripides, the Medea and the Alcestis, and two original ones, the Baptistes and the Jephthes. These plays, classical and regular in form and structure, may be considered, though written in Latin by a foreigner, as models for the early tragedy in France. Marc-Antoine de Muret wrote a Latin Caesar which had great vogue among scholars, and Montaigne tells us how, during his school-days, he acted successfully at Bordeaux in the plays of Buchanan and Muret. Meanwhile the Greek tragedies had become more widely known by translations into French like those of Lazare de Baif. The conception of tragedy was long thought to be based^ even to matters of detail, upon Aristotle. It is obvious, how- ever, upon consulting the Poetics, that the modern Humanistic tragedy is very different and is much narrower. The rules of tragedy, and they are rules instead of observations as in Aris- totle, come, not at first hand from Aristotle, but from the study of Seneca and of the mediaeval grammarians who wrote upon tragedy. In Italy people imitated the processes of Sen- eca. Then, as Aristotle became known, they tried to harmon- ise the. two, and the theorists read their rules into Aristotle from the experience of Seneca. To a certain extent theory followed the practice of the modern plays, but there was plenty of material for the formulation of rules in the writings of Horace, of the grammarians Donatus and Diomed, and of Vitruvius, as these 212 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE had been handed down through the Middle Ages. These rules were then taken as law by the authors of tragedies in Italy and France. The theory of the three unities does not appear in Aristotle. The only unity mentioned in the Poetics is that of action, and in practice the Greek tragedies did not observe the other unities. Aristotle did feel that, as opposed to the epic, the action of the drama should be concise and concentrated. His only hint of a unity of time is a chance observation that a tragedy tries to confine itself to one revolution of the sun or to exceed that limit but little: on iidXurra iraparai viro luav TrepioSov ■^Xiov etvoi ij fUKpov c^akkaTTtiv. TMs word TTuparai was made rigid law in- stead of being the registration of a tendency, and by the seven- teenth century it was translated in France as "doit." The meaning of "a revolution of the sun" also acquired varied and surprising interpretations. Of the unity of place there is no mention in Aristotle, though gradually the imity of action was made to follow from those of time and place, instead of being the only one of importance. The real pattern for the moderns was Seneca and his turgid, bombastic, bloodthirsty plays, typical in spirit of the fierce days of the Empire to which they belonged; permeated with a sententiousness which was to become an essential part of tragedy. So Ronsard says: "La tragedie est du tout didascalique et enseignante." Seneca probably did not know the Poetics of Aristotle, yet the tendency of these tragedies, or declamatory study plays, is to fall into a vagueness and indeterminateness of time and locality in harmony with the tendencies towards sim- plicity which Horace desires. The theories are, then, based on the Senecan practice, to which is added an attempted conciliation with Aristotle. Even Julius Caesar Scaliger, whose Poetics, published at Lyons in 1561, have been looked upon as the source of French Classical theory, or the connecting point between it and Aristotle, depends on the tradition of Seneca, and we find in literature before his THE DRAMA 213 time the contents of his famous definition. This is, after all, as good a summing up as we can find of the essentials of a Classical tragedy: "Imitatio per actionem illustris fortunae, exitu infelici, oratione gravi, metrica." Scaliger's main signifi- cance is in the emphasis he gives to the verisimile. The theory of vraisemblance becomes an important part of the discussions of Chapelain, Corneille and the abb6 d'Aubignac. The whole content of the above Scaligerian definition of tragedy is found in the post-classic period and the Middle Ages. A tragedy imitates some serious action dealing with kings and princes (^Uusiris fortuna) ; it begins cheerfully and ends sadly {eodtus infelix), whereas the procedure of comedy is the opposite; the style of tragedy must be noble [or alio gravis), whereas that of comedy is light and ordinary. Moreover, Scaliger's statement of the content of tragedy is thoroughly Senecan: "Res tragicae grandes, atroces, jussa regum, caedes, desperationes, suspendia, exilia, orbitates, parricidia, incestus, incendia, pugnae, occaeca- tiones, fletus, ululatus, conquaestiones, funera, epitaphia, epicedia."' Other tendencies are even more obviously inherited from the Latin and mediseval tradition. The moralising senten- tiousness is .found throughout the abundant Uterary material influenced by the Disticha Catonis, of which Christine de Pisan and Alain Chartier were but two of many purveyors. The dream motif, found in so many Italian and French tragedies down to Polyeucte and Athalie, was one of Seneca's ways of simpHfying the exposition, and is frequently fovmd in all litera- ture after the Somnium Scipionis, in the romances of chivalry, the Roman de la Rose, the Quadrilogue invectif of Chartier, the amusing parodies of serious romance in the Roman de Renart. On the whole, Seneca did much to make Italian and French tragedy unnatural. He taught it declamation, but he did, however, lead it to his own models, the Greeks. So far as the unities in modern times are concerned, the first author to deal with the question was probably Trissino. 214 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Other Italians who discussed these matters were Giraldi Cinthio, Minturno, Robortello and Castelvetro. It was reserved for Jean de la Taille (1533-1630) to make the statement for the first time in France in 1572 in the preface of his Saiil: "II faut toujours repr^senter I'histoire ou le jeu en un m^me jour, en un meme temps et en un meme lieu." Afterwards the unities received attacks from different authors and had quite fallen into disuse, when they were revived in theory and practice by Chapelain and Mairet in the seventeenth century. The plays themselves of the French Humanists are, almost without exception, beneath contempt. In 1552 the first French tragedy, Jodelle's Cleopdtre, was acted by amateurs who included Belleau. The play consists of a series of elegiac tirades with hardly any action. The same author wrote a Didon se sacrifiani even inferior in style to the other. Jean Bastier de la Peruse (1529-1554) wrote a Medee imitated from Seneca and revised by friends. Jacques Grevin's (1538-1570) Mort de Cesar was based on Muret's Latin play. Florent Chrestien (i 540-1 596) adapted the Jephthes of Buchanan. Jean de la Taille was the author of two Biblical tragedies, Saul le furieux (cf. Seneca's Hercules furens) and la Famine, ou les Gabaonites. His young brother Jacques de la Taille (d. 1562) was ridiculed for certain eccen- tricities of style in his Daire and for his Alexandre. The best writer of plays in the century was Robert Gamier, and- next to him came Antoine de Montchrestien at the threshold of the seventeenth. Robert Garnier (C.1545-C.1600) wrote a number of plays of the composite character, made up of elements drawn from various ancient models, and sometimes constituting parallel plots or separate actions, in which the characters do not meet, and having practically independent endings. The language, though sometimes falling into tawdriness of expression and overfulness of monologue or recitg,l, is not without charm, even if a borrowed one. Judging from the titles of Garnier's plays, we are apt to think he drew largely from the Greek. But the THE DRAMA 215 reaction against pure Hellenism was already setting in, and Garnier's Greek elements are often from Seneca. Seneca, and to a minor degree Euripides, followed in turn by late poets and historians as Lucan, Statius, Appian and Dion Cassius, such are Garnier's guides for plot. For thought and character the spirit of Plutarch pervades the whole. To the modern reader Garnier seems at his best in two plays which depart from his favorite mythology and ancient history. Les Juives, though still somewhat Senecan in treatment, is a Biblical drama on the misdeeds of the kings of Judah; Brada- mante, drawn from Ariosto, is a romantic love-play with a happy ending, and one . of the first of the tragi-comedies which will be so numerous in the next generation. But Garnier's contemporaries admired quite as much his other works, the tragedies Pofcie, Hippolyte, Cornelie, Marc-Antoine, la Troade, Antigone. He not only gave hints to the great French drama- tists of the seventeenth century, but he was the favorite of the group of English poets who clung to the favor and inspiration of- the Countess of Pembroke and brought over some of the spirit and method of the French Humanistic drama. Antoine de Montchrestien (c.1575-1621) was a Norman adventurer, whose wanderings took him as far as Scotland, and was killed in a religious brawl between Catholics and Huguenots. He wrote the first work to bear the title of "Political Economy" and haK a dozen plays. La Cartaginoise was a Sophonisba tragedy; Atnan was afterwards used by Racine when he wrote his Esther on the same subject; I'Ecossaise was a contemporary drama on the fate of Mary, Queen of Scots. The others were les Lacenes, David and Hector. Montchrestien's plays are lyric and declamatory in character, and his language is smoother and more polished, even if less vigorous, than that of Garnier. The history of comedy in the second half of the sixteenth century is perhaps more complicated than the results justify. It is often difficult to determine which formative influences predominate in given plays, and yet the comedies themselves 2i6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE are neither numerous nor meritorious. The reasons are obvious: The comic element is more closely linked with the popular spirit and, in its undifferentiated form, is somewhat similar in all lands. The boastful soldier of modern comedy is not necessarily the descendant of his Latin prototype, as the Franc-Archer de Bagnolet shows, and our contemporary plots based on the menage a trois are not solely due to the fact that mediaeval farces and fabliaux were fond of showing the husband deceived by his wife and the village priest. The task of differentiation is, then, more difi&cult than where, as in tragedy, we trace the genealogy of a mythological episode like the story of Antigone or note the recrudescence of an historical subject like Sophonisba. Therefore, the theories are unfair which make sixteenth-cen- tury comedies entirely Humanistic, that is classical, or entirely Italian, or entirely mediaeval French in their' origins. All elements undoubtedly combine, whatever the leanings in certain cases. This may be more safely said of comedy than of any other genre. Thus, the first comedy of the Pleiade, Jodelle's Eugene, may be constructed on learned lines by a Humanist, but its subject was an old and familiar one before the imitation of Greece and of Rome became fashionable. The new school did, indeed, begin in the usual way by transla- tions, and we read among other instances of Ronsard's transla- tion of the Plutus of Aristophanes while he was a student under Dorat. But such early works are insignificant compared with the acting of Jodelle's Eugene in 1552 along with his Cleopdtre. This comedy, regular in its five acts and division into scenes, and different from the old plays in its attempt to portray char- acter, tells the story of the idle and corrupt ecclesiastic Eugene and his intrigues with women. Soon after, Jacques Grevin gave his Trisoriere, probably a development of one known as the Maubertine, and his Ebahis. The former shows how the wife of a tr&sorier or tax-collector miscalculates in her love-intrigues and is discovered. The latter describes the dotard amours of Josse, an old merchant. THE DRAMA 217 the title coming from a scene of recognition or avayvwpuris at the end of which the knots of the plot are cut and all remain "ebahis." It is evident that, in spite of Italian tendencies, in which Grevin is a pioneer, in the person of Panthaleone the author has done his best to make fun of Italians and of French,- men Italianate. Jodelle and Grevin attack in their prologues the mediaeval theatre and frankly proclaim themselves partisans of the new tendencies. Moreover, Grevin enunciates as his definition of comedy: "Un discours fabuleux, mais approchant de verite, contenant en soi diverses manieres de vivre entre les citadins de moyen etat." Its purpose is to teach what is good and what is to be avoided in life, through seeing the good and the bad fortune of others. Meanwhile the influence of Italy and the mistaken worship of the school of Ariosto increased in the comic theatre. Plays were soon translated or imitated mainly from Italian models. Jean de la Taille, besides translating his Negromant from Ariosto, wrote the Corrivaux, the first prose comedy of the new fashion, which he proclaimed to be in imitation not only of the ancient Greeks and Latins, but also of recent Italian writers. His acknowledgment of this indebtedness is a novelty. Somewhat later, after Belleau's death, was published his Reconnue, influenced not only by Plautus, but also by incidents and char- acters drawn from Italy. Baif turned in the direction of the classics. His Brave is an adaptation of the Miles gloriosus, his Eunuque a version of the play of Terence. The comedies are modernised and the names and places are changed, but the Eunuque keeps more closely to the original. Other writers of miscellaneous comedies are Franfois d'Amboise, Frangois Perrin and Jean Godard. Odet de Tum^be's Contents is about the best because of its quicker movement and character drawing. But the most famous writer of all is Pierre Larivey (1535 or 40-c. 161 1), a priest and scholar of Troyes of Italian origin. 2i8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE He came from the family of Italian publishers the Giimti, of whose name his is a French rendering, and he published a number of comedies in prose, all imitated from the Italian, and the majority from works pubhshed by the house of the Giunti. Nine remain, published at two dates: in 1579 Le Laquais, la Veuve, les Esprits, le Morfondu, les Jaloux, les Ecoliers; in 161 1 Constance, le Fidele, les Tromperies. Each one is a close adapta- tion from its model, with such modifications as were necessary to make them more natural to French readers (for in all prob- ability they were not acted), and to justify a canon of the church for indulging in the secular pastime of comedy-writing. Larivey wrote with more snap than his contemporaries, although his pedants are as overdrawn and tedious as their predecessors or their successors, until Moliere transforms them into amusing physicians. Indeed, the worth of Larivey may be judged from the fact that from him Moliere did borrow many hints and make even close imitations. Such were the tendencies of comedy, the poorest manifesta- tion of the Pleiade and its followers. Hellenism is practically non-existent. The other elements, Latin, Italian and French, do not rise above the commonplace. There is certainly no classic restraint here: monologues over a page long are not uncommon; in le Fidele there is one of nearly five pages. Epi- thets and tirades such as the following from Eugene are frequent: A a, faux amour trop incertain! A a, fausse et trop fausse putain! A a, traitre abbe, abbe mechant! Moine punais, ladre, marchant De tes refrippes benefices! A a, puant sac tout plein de vices, M'as-tu ose faire ce tort? Theire is little effective character-drawing. We expect types, but there is not much to distinguish between the various dotards, intriguing women, valets, parasites, pedants and swashbucklers. Again, the stock episodes of Italian comedy are constantly THE DRAMA 219 repeated as well as types: girls disguised as boys, lovers' ruses, servants' devices. Many of these are found, it is true, in Moliere, but are there displayed with art. We may, however, say this in favor of the comedies of the sixteenth century: in these plays, many of them unacted, the authors did at least mould an external form to be used for later contents. The division into acts and scenes is introduced, the plot is usually raised in dignity from the peasantry of the old farce to the bourgeoisie, good models are sought in Plautus, Terence, and Ariosto, the plays give interesting pictures of the manners and morals of the age. Finally, an attempt was made to evolve a theory of comedy. CHAPTER X REFORMERS AND HUGUENOTS A HISTORY of the non-Catholic hterature shows great power and promise but comparatively little achievement, on account of the course taken by politics and national history. Almost without exception the Protestant writers were men of the greatest vigor and originality, of the most marked strength of expression. The Hebraic inspiration of many of them was capable of supplying France with new and rich material, had not the victory of Catholicism confined literature to the Latin tradition. Calvin is today looked upon by most historians of French literature as a great writer, but an isolated one without marked influence upon national thought. Had the Huguenots been victorious in the struggle he, rather than Bossuet, would have marked the standard of rhetoric. The early- Reformation is closely linked with Humanism, and the Reformers, ahnost without exception, were learned men. The earliest of them helped to disentangle Aristotle from the cobwebs of Scholasticism. This was Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples (d. 1536), or Faber Stapulensis, homuncio or homunculus as his contemporaries called him, "un petit bout d'homme" says Bayle, but a far greater man than his stature implied. Early in life he had travelled in Italy and had also steeped him- self in Hellenism; then, turning to Biblical work and even in a way forestalling Luther, in 1509 he brought out his Quincuplex Psalterium. His Latin commentaries of three years later on the Epistles of St. Paul may be looked upon as the first Protestant work in France and the expression of so-called Fabrisian Prot- estantism, from the author's name Lefevre or Fabri. In this REFORMERS AND HUGUENOTS 221 book he turned to the original word of Christ and the apos- tolic doctrine, and taught justification by faith. To him the sacraments had no magic power, and he attacked the celibacy of the priests, the liturgy, and fasts of the Catholic religion, but without assaiUng the constitution of the Church. Lefevre later translated into French the Gospels and then the whole Bible (1530). His teachings merged into those of Luther or were swept away by them, but he had a strong influence by arousing followers in France and Germany. . Thus, he was a friend of Marguerite de Navarre, who went as near the dividing line between the two faiths as is possible, and was the master of Brigonnet, the leader of the religious movement of Meaux, and of Guillaume Farel. Brigonnet's courage was not equal to his convictions, and the vague mysticism of Meaux had no effect except on the incoherence of Marguerite de Navarre. Guillaume Farel (1489-1565), on the other hand, was a militant leader, though his writings were insignificant and his teachings mainly verbal, and he became the founder of Protestantism in Switzer- land. Pierre Viret (1511-1571) took up the work with Farel and, by his teaching and writings, he paved the way for the despotism of Calvin at Geneva. MeanwhUe the turmoil of religious unrest was surging in France and involving, or soon to involve. Mar- guerite and Marot, and to bring about the execution of Berquin. Noel Beda and Pierre Lizet, narrow-minded in spite of their learning, represented the forces of reaction, the Sorbonne and the Parlement. The desire to popularise the Scriptures passed from Lefevre to one who deserves mention for his own sake, besides being the kinsman of Calvin, Pierre Robert or Olivetanus (d. 1538), the burner of midnight oil, oleum. He, too, translated the Bible and initiated his youthful relative to new ideas. Jean Cauvin or Calvinus, Gallicised back into Calvin (1509- 1564), was a Picardof a fairly good family and destined by his father for the Church. He was tonsured and received prefer- ment at a precocious age, but was never a full priest. He studied 222 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE if in Paris, leaving the College de Montaigu in 1528, the very year in which Loyola took up his residence there, and then, by his father's desire, began the study of law at Orleans and Bourges, though his interest in theology remained unabated and was fostered by the great Lutheran Melchior Wolmar, who also taught him Greek. Returning to Paris, he was implicated in the sensational affair of the address made by his friend, the rector Nicolas Cop, in 1533 before the university. This dis- course was heretical and was recognised to be inspired by Calvin himself, so that both men had to flee from the city. After various wanderings Calvin reached Bale, where in 1536 appeared the Latin version of his great Protestant work, the Christianae religionis institutio. This was accompanied by an important preface addressed to Francis I. A later edition was the basis of Calvin's own first translation into French in 1541. Calvin afterwards travelled in Italy, where Renee de France, duchess of Ferrara, came under his influence. Then, passing through Geneva, he was called on by Farel to help in the organ- isation of the new rehgion. Li 1538 their violence caused the banishment of both, but a couple of years later Calvin was recalled, and from then until his death, he ruled the city of Geneva with a despotic control, crushing the liberty of thought and action of all who opposed his views. Calvin and his party organised a theocratic government based on his interpretation of the traditions of the primitive Church, and destroyed with unsparing hand all who stood in his way. Calvin, like so many Frenchmen,, was inherently logical, and when he put his logic into operation he was as cruel as the later logicians who caused the massacres of the French revolution. Originally of a gentle and sympathetic character, but soured by ill health and over- work, dehumanised into a logical machine, Calvin not only showed himself cruel to his opponents in his own day, as when he put to death Servetus, for holding views different from his, and persecuted Castellion, but spread over future generations of followers yet unborn the curse of his gloomy creed. His was, REFORMERS AND HUGUENOTS 223 nevertheless, an impulse of vigor and energy, and the Huguenots of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well as the handful of French Protestants today, have always held an influence out of proportion to their niimbers. Those who left France at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes drained the country of much of its best force. This streng{;h of character was partly due to the redeeming quality of Calvinism, its founder's moral strain, and the emphasis laid on the conscience and duty. But these advantages were dearly bought. As a writer Calvin combined the traditions of the Humanist and the theologian. He was a master of Latin style and most of his writings were in that language. From Maturin Cordier the Latin scholar, from Wohnar the Hellenist, he had gained a knowledge of what the classics can give. An early work of his, a commentary on the De dementia of Seneca, was permeated with the spirit of ancient culture. As a French writer he takes the highest rank. Not only does he show that spirit of logic in which the Frenchman delights, but in his progressive appreciation of the needs of a change in language he keeps pace with the times. The later editions of the Institution de la religion chretienne, as in 1560, are as modern in style as the earliest is archaic. This style has simplicity as against the pomp of the Latin rhetoric of the Bossuet type. In spirit, this work of Calvin, of which all his other writings are but the elaboration and elucidation, is the glorification of God as interpreted by the word of Scripture. Face to face with the majesty of an all-powerful deity is the insignificance of man. God has, in spite of his goodness, allowed the fall of man, who has sinned by pride and disobedience, but is to be redeemed from this original sin by Jesus, through the mediation of the Holy Ghost. Yet the chosen ones among men are selected through the Grace of God; salvation is won by faith and not works, and God has condemned to eternal punishment those whom it has not pleased him to save. Such is the black Predestination of the Calvinistic thebry. At the same time the reasoning of 224 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Calvin has the vast superiority, at least so far as form goes, over most doctrines of the Schoolmen, of being a doctrine based on an attempted psychology of man rather than upon abstract entities. The doctrine has also its great moral or practical side. Yet his logical propensities and tendencies to a priori inference led him to conclusions against which every feeling cries out. Reason led him to unreason. But the Institution remains the first great work of reasoning in French, and that is Calvin's chief groimd for rank among men of letters. Theodore de Beze (1519-1605) is a much more sympathetic and, in many respects, a nobler character in the history of the Reformation than Calvin, though less widely known. After the literary escapades of his youth he became a follower of Calvin, professor of Greek at Lausanne, and after Calvin's death his successor as leader of the Church at Geneva. During his career he not only upheld the cause of his religion by his eloquence at the CoUoque de Poissy in 1560, which endeavored to bring about a reconciliation between the sects, but completed Marot's translation of the Psalms, now set to serious music and become the version of the Huguenots, and composed the religious tragedy of Abraham sacrifiant which, by its combina- tion of the sincerity of Christian spirit and the qualities of the ancient drama, is superior to the literary exercises of the Human- istic plays. He wrote also an ecclesiastical history of the Reformed churches during the period of their formation. Most of his other works are in Latin. That other Huguenot writers were distinguished, the names of Estienne and of Ramus show. Jacques Grevin, shortlived but, as we have seen, of varied aptitudes, wrote Roman sonnets in the style of Du Bellay's Regrets, and collaborated with Florent Chrestien in a contemptible and indecent attack on Ronsard, the Tombeau de Ronsard. Louis Desmasures composed a trilogy of religious plays on David. But the two greatest names in the history of poetry are those of Du Bartas and d'Aubigne. Both tried, though with limitations and deficien'cies, to sound the epic REFORMERS AND HUGUENOTS 225 strain. Both owed to their belonging to a vanquished religion the total oblivion which was the fate of one, and the partial neglect met by the other. Both were influenced by the school of Ronsard and continued its loftier notes as against the weak and affected Petrarchism of Desportes. But in the case of Du Bartas, at least, personal eccentricities of style made him as ridiculous in the. eyes of his contemporaries as Desportes was. Guillaume de Saluste, seigneur du Bartas (i 544-1 590), was a Gascon and spent an active life in the service of the Reformed religion either. as a poet, an ambassador to England and Scot- land, or a soldier, dying from the result of disabilities contracted in service. He was a man of learning whose Huguenot environ- ment had led him to extend his sympathy to Hebrew literature as well as those of Greece and Rome. Thus his culture, enlarged by travel, tended to be of the encyclopedic type, though the major part of his life, spent in the south of France, prevented him from coming into close contact with the more quickly moving intellectual activities of Paris. At one time his fame promised to outstrip that of Ronsard, but even in his life he lost touch with French literature. Soon after his death he was totally forgotten. In foreign lands, on the contrary, and particularly among the Protestants, he was for years considered one of the great geniuses of poetry. In Scotland King James VI trans- lated one of Du Bartas's works and commissioned the transla- tion of another, just as Du Bartas had himself translated into French a work by the royal hand. In England Joshua Sylvester's version of the Semaine was one of the great literary models of the Puritans, and the germ of a tendency to which the technical name is sometimes given of "Du Bartasism"; Milton probably owed to him the conception and various passages of his Paradise Lost; Cowley drew from Vn'm for his epic the Damdeis, and one of the earliest of the American poetesses, that "tenth Muse" Mrs. Ann Bradstreet, was characterised as the "Du Bartas maid." In Italy Tasso imitated him in his Sette giornate del mondo creato, and as recent a writer and as great a critic as 226 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Goethe thought him a master. Yet there has been no edition of his works published in France for three hundred years. One poet alone in France, Heredia, himself half foreign, took from an episode of Du Bartas' chief poem the title of his Trophies. The writings of Du Bartas began with a brief epic poem called Judith, telling the story of Holophernes, in which he imitated, he said in the preface, Virgil and Homer, though he was also influenced in parts by the reading of T^riosto. This poem afterwards appeared in a collection of the "Christian Muse" with the Triomphe de la foi and Uranie, a summons to relig- ious poetry. Late in life he wrote a poem on the battle of Ivr^. But Du Bartas's most ambitious effort was a continuation of the epic tendency begun in the Jtidith. He wrote a long poem on the creation of the world called the Semaine. This he planned to continue by a new one on the religious history of civilisation, in which the different epochs were to appear as days. Of this second work, which Du Bartas ambitiously intended to carry on to the Day of Judgment, only the first two days were finished, with fragments of the third and fourth. This conception was original so far as French poetry was con- cerned, though it was germane to the sixteenth-century notion that a speculum or encyclopedia of the sciences was a fit mediimi for the erudite poet. It is in the mediaeval bestiaries and lapida- ries that one sees precursors, though not ancestors, of much of Du Bartas's erudition; closer analogies are probably to be found with a late Greek poem of the seventh century, the Heoca- hemeron, and a work of Maurice Sceve less famous than the Delie, called the Microcosme. But Du Bartas's true inspiration for material is the Bible, with much besides contributed from his wide learning and treated in the epic vein now traditional. Du Bartas's matter is then original, and he treats it in a new way, not merely with the pagan allegory of the literary moralist, but with the higher ethical and religious teaching of the Hugue- not. He uses the trappings of mythology, but they are merely REFORMERS AND HUGUENOTS 227 verbal forms and do not lead us to the "Minerve sera la pru- dence et Venus la beaut6" of the seventeenth century. If Du Bartas's material is original, and so far he is called an "independent," he is in form and language a follower, unfortu- nately at times a caricature, of Ronsard. His great defect is a want of restraint and ignorance of the confines of taste. In vocabulary he carried to excess the Ronsardian tendency towards the manufacture of new words by compounding, by grafting (promgnement) , by trivial reduplications ("ba-battre," "flo- flotter"), by using Hellenic constructions of grammar. He is often muddled and inelegant in his metaphors and similes, as when he calls the sim the "grand dlic des chandelles." Above all, he has been scoffed at for a tendency which the greatest poets have not sought to avoid, the imitation in his verse of soimds. Such is the famous description of the lark: La gentille alouette avec son tire-lire. Tire lire a I'ire, et tire-lirant tire Vers la voiite du del: puis son vol vers ce lieu Vire et desire dire: "Adieu, Dieu; adieu, Dieu." This is but the " Brekekekkex-coax-coax " of Aristophanes or the "To whit, to whoo" of Shakspere, or the "Pour qui sont ces serpents qui sifflent sur nos t^tes?" of Racine. Or, again, his imitation of cannon, Et leur ton ton-tonnant erre et prompt rond le rend Du plancher etoUe, is no worse than the Homeric description of the jolt of laden mules: noXXa 8'a.vavTa Karavra TrapavTo. te h6)(jx,ia. t'^X^ov. Du Bartas had many a defect. He should at least receive greater credit than the French have allowed him for what he accomplished in the epic vein. Theodore x\grippa d'Aubigne (1552-1630), another Gascon Huguenot, has had a happier posthumous fame. Though 228 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE most of his works did not appear until well into the seventeenth century, yet they were in his mind or actually composed earlier, and are in every way jepresentative of the sixteenth century to which they belong. Agrippa d'Aubigne was a Southerner of the proverbial type, exuberant and boisterous in disposition, quick to take offence and rich in enemies, so that he was several times condemned to death, but a faithful friend to those he loved, like Henry IV. The latter's fickleness and apostasy of the Protestant cause he viewed with anguish and scorn, but he was his trusty lieutenant through years of fighting during the civil wars. He had been a precocious child and by his own account knew Latin, Greek and Hebrew at six, and translated the Crito of Plato at seven. We know that he was active mentally as a lyric and epic poet, a historian, a political and religious controversialist. Though d'Aubigne's title to fame rests today chiefly on his Tragiques, a remarkable combination of religious epic and satire, he began, as a simple follower of Ronsard and composed graceful little poems, with occasionally a really charming line in the prevailing moods of lyric song and with touches of his vigorous personality. The Tragiques reproduce, on the other hand, with fierceness and bitter invective, the oratorical strain of Ronsard's satire. But this is united with political philippic, lyrical and descriptive episodes. The result, with its bitter iambic mood and the vehe- mence of a Hugo writing the Chdtiments, merits by its Biblical and Hebraic inspiration to be called the outline of a Huguenot epic. The epic tone is not sustained throughout, but it is as deserving of that name as anything which French literature has produced since the Middle Ages. The poem was begim early and was on the stocks for much of the author's life, so that its final form may have been slightly modified by the swiftly chan- ging national literature. It is artificially partitioned out into seven books dealing with different phases of the wars of religion and the misfortunes of France : Miseres; Princes, on the debauch- REFORMERS AND HUGUENOTS 229 ery of the court; la Ckambre doree, on the traffic of justice; les Feux, on religious persecutions; les Fers, on civil wars; Venge- ances, on the oppressors of faith, and Jugement. Sweeping through the satire and invective is a current of religious and ethical teaching coming from the Bible and the Roman Stoics of the Silver Age. D'Aubigne is not a Hellenist; he belongs to the second volie, to use his own expression concerning the poets of the Pleiade, but it is to the Romans and not to the Italians that he turns, Hence Seneca, Lucan, Juvenal, and Tacitus are his models, and Catherine de' Medici is the Jezabel or the Messalina of modern France. The fondness for Tacitus shows itself in d'Aubigne's most ambitious prose work, the Histoire universelle, which is, however, mainly an account of the dvil wars from the point of view of the Protestant. This, like the Tragiques, is artificial in its arrangement; for, as the author himself explains, each book ends with the end of a war and a treaty of peace or "equipollent" thing, and after the treaty comes a chapter uniting the affairs of France to those of its four neighbors, and then foiur chapters for the four parts of the world, "in such proportion that should one take the chapters by parallel columns" one could obtain a history of all the world. Thus history was made to fit d'Au- bigne's narrative instead of his narrative history. The imitation of Tacitus is noticeable even to words and phrases, as in his Slimming up of Henry HI, "digne du royaume s'il n'eut point regne" (omnium consensu imperii capax nisi imperasset). D'Aubigne was clearly the same kind of a man as Tacitus shows himself, with fierce passion, ' smouldering hatred, bursting into violent outbreaks, cynical, satirical, and living in a similar epoch of upheaval. He was also influenced by the stately periods of De Thou's Latin Historia sui temporis based on Livy. There is much that is personal in the Histoire universelle. This is also seen in d'Aubigne's own memoirs or autobiography, the Sa vie d ses enfants, full of boasting and exaggeration, but useful as a human document. The satire appears in the political 230 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE invective of the Confession du sieur de Sancy, a mock self-justi- fication of the conversion of a religious turncoat Harlay de Sancy, and in the less personal Aventures du baron de Fceneste, written in the last part of the author's life and giving in a queer jargon, partly of Gascon dialect, pictures of court life, of the Catholic religion, in discourses between the Gascon Faeneste {aCvea-6(u), who cares for appearances, and the more serious Enay (elmi). In this style of writing d'AubignS was influenced by his coreligionist Estienne and the Apologie pour Herodote. CHAPTER XI MONTAIGNE MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE was born in 1533 3.t the manor of Montaigne between Saint- Emilion and Bergerac in Perigord. His father was a well-to- do citizen of Bordeaux, a former jurat and mayor, who after becoming wealthy in business aspired to become the squire of Montaigne, rather than Pierre Eyquem, trader in wines and fish. His mother came from a family of Portuguese Jews named Louppes or Lopez. Pierre Eyquem was, however, a man of intellect, anxious to give his son the best education; he had also learned in Italy to love the new learning of the Renaissance. He surrounded Michel's infancy with harmonious sounds of music and lured him on to knowledge by useful games. He even taught him Latin before his mother tongue. Michel was sent to school at the flourishing College de Guyenne at Bordeaux, where he came under the guidance of George Buchanan, Muret, Guerente, and Grouchy and under the general influence of the principal, Andre Gouvea, and of Maturin Cordier, the famous author of school colloquies. After finishing a training which, Montaigne regrets, scarcely Justified 1 by its results the trouble involved, he studied law in order to be a magistrate, served in the Cour des Aides of Perigueux and, upon its suppres- sion, in the Parlement of Bordeaux. There he became acquainted with Etienne de la Boetie, the author of the Discours de la Servitude volontaire or Contr'u7i, with whom he formed his deepest friendship and whose death in 1563 he mourned as one of. the griefs of his Ufe: "Si on me presse de dire pourquoi je I'aimais, je sens que cela ne se pent exprimer qu'en repondant: 231 232 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Parce que c'Stait lui, parce que c'dtait moi." Some years later Montaign^, at his father's request, translated the Theologia naturalis, a theological and metaphysical work based on Saint Thomas Aquinas, by Raymond de Sebonde, written in Latin diluted with Spanish expressions. In 1571, after marriage to a good wife, of whom however he has but little to say, and the death of his father, Montaigne gave up definitely an active career in the courts and withdrew to his estates to be a coimtry squire, and to cultivate his property or, perhaps even more, his mind. He collected about him what was,, in those days, a large library, selected from ancient and modern authors, histo- rians, his particular gibier, writers of epistles, moralists, and poets. This library he brought together in a quiet and retired room adorned with mottoes expressing his philosophic moods, such as ov8ev opinio, ov KaraXo/i/Savd), e-ire)(u>j CTKiirTOfWX. Each man, says he, must have a private arriere-boutique, a place of intellectual refuge from the disturbances of life. For eight or nine years he jotted down and wrote out, in the form of essays, his reflections on life or his experiences and published the results in two books in 1580. In these chapters the author's thoughts were set forth as they had occurred to him, rather as the expression of varying moods than as consistent argument or exposition. In 1580-81 Montaigne took a long journey, partly for the sake of his health. He visited Switzerland, Germany, and Italy and described his experiences in a journal not intended for publica- tion, discovered in the eighteenth century and printed for the first time in 1774. A portion of it is in Italian. During his absence, while at the baths of Lucca, he was chosen mayor of Bordeaux, a sign of the important position he held in public estimation, and was elected to a second term in 1583. It was during the later period that the plague broke out in the city, and Montaigne took the much criticised step of refusing to return to the stricken place on the ground that he could be of more service by keeping away. In a somewhat similar contingency. MONTAIGNE 233 in the following century, Rotrou stuck to his post at Dreux only to perish from the malady. After a trip to Paris, during which for political reasons Mon- taigne was imprisoned by the Ligue for the briefest period in the Bastille, he published in 1588 a new edition of his essays with six hundred interpolations, sometimes inconsistent with what had gone before, but mainly in the form of anecdotes, quotations, or personal experiences. There was also a totally new book, the third. There had been intermediate issues in 1582 and 1587 with very slight changes, and indeed, the impor- tant edition of 1588 was called the fifth, though we have no trace of a fourth. Montaigne died of a quinsy at his country manor in 1592, but the final edition of his writings had not appeared. He had gone on aimotating the text, and in 1595 his devoted admirer and fille d'alliance, Mile de Gournay, published with the help of Pierre de Brach the final collection of Montaigne's essays. This is full of new illustrative matter, but a number of quo- tations and references which were in the 1588 edition have disappeared. The motive of Montaigne in taking to writing may have been far more accidental than his fame suggests. Suppose a man of education and experience deliberately withdrawing from active life, but not from contact with books or from reflection upon the world. He jots down his observations in a somewhat discon- nected form, as a "fagotage de pieces decousues," and illustrates his comments by his reading or his reading by his thoughts. At first these thoughts are impersonal, though Montaigne is interested in the individual elements of character and of experi- ence: anecdotes and stories. Gradually, as he was left much to himself, the comments or essays acquired a more personal touch, Montaigne began to study himself and to register, with a not uncommon assumption of frankness, but rarely so thorough as in this case, all his fads and fancies, his qualities and defects: "C'est ici im livre de bonne foi, lecteur." Finally, it may be 234 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE confessed, Montaigne's speech reached a plainness which frightens some readers. The essays cannot, then, be examined as a consistent whole, and any attempt to find a logical scheme is foredoomed to failure. He had an esprit primesautier and a desultory mind, and the latest text represents the accretions of different periods, with pas- sages which contradict as much as they confirm other passages: " J'ajoute, mais je ne corrige pas," — though this is not strictly true. The additions have often passed from margin to text without connecting transitions, and a pronoun which in 1580 was near its antecedent noun may by 1588 or 1595 have been driven far from it by the insertion of a whole paragraph carrying the reader off on another tack. Consistency is not to be looked for in the mental attitude of Montaigne any more than in his grammar. More than one of the essays, says Etienne Pasquier, might well be called a coq- a-l'dne. He was a fureteur, an observer without a priori notions or generalisations, and his views on man varied as time went on, a'B he read or reflected. It has been customary to read into Montaigne the opinions of later writers who have studied him for corroboration or refutation, as Pascal. Or again, the generalisations as to the views of Montaigne have frequently ' been made from certain passages registered by him as the expres- sion of a passing mood. M. Strowski, one of the most recent students of Montaigne, trying to deal with his thought in the stages of its progressive development, traces a gradual transition from stoicism, through scepticism to the detached attitude of the unconcerned though interested observer known as dilet- tanteism. But the term dilettanteism must not be taken in too unfavorable a sense: Montaigue was not the superficial aesthete and mere hedonist. Perhaps the term "jouisseur" sometimes applied to him even generalises too strongly the epicurean side of his character. Brunetiere fittingly calls him an ever inquisitive man, a "curieux," rather than a dilettante. His attitude is more that of "Suave mari magno" than one of the dweller in MONTAIGNE 235 the ivory tower of superciliousness. To paraphrase Sainte- Beuve's dictum on Chateaubriand, that he was "an epicurean with a Cathohc imagination," Montaigne might perhaps be called an epicurean with a stoic imagination. It is, indeed, a truism that epicureanism and stoicism often merge into each other. Montaigne's first favorites were Plutarch and Seneca, partic- ularly the former. In the moral works of Plutarch seen through Amyot's translation, Montaigne amid the troubles of war- ravaged France seeks the tranquillity of soul and separation from unessential ties which may help him to encounter life, or the fortitude which may make him bear up tuider the thought of death: "Philosopher, c'est apprendre a mourir." Wife, children, wealth, and health are good, but not if they interfere with our happiness. Later, Montaigne passes through a stage which in his case is usually characterised as pyrrhonism or philosophic doubt. He is not an unbeliever, an agnostic, so far as the Church is con- cerned: he follows the ceremonies of the CathoHc religion and observes all its rites. But this did not go very deep: he was a Catholic as he was a native of Perigord. His study of man had brought about him a sort of disillusion and realisation of the vanity of things and the uselessness of seeking stability in judgment or conduct. Man is weak and impotent in his conclu- sions, he has taken upon himself a position of overlordship in nature to which he has no right to aspire, insignificant as he is and a mere phase in the flow of passing phenomena. The only sensible attitude is to stand aside without venturing upon conclusions, to seek an ataraxy or quiet of mind, to make no judgment stronger than eir^a — I refrain from judging. "Que sais-je?" is the motto of Montaigne. Finally, when he has enlarged his observation through travel and come into new contact with Ufe in the mayoralty, the ataraxy passes into dilettanteism. However, Montaigne's study still promotes the knowledge of man, and here is to be found his chief contribution to the literature of Classicism, He was one 236 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of the first psychologists of modern France, and the literature of the seventeenth century proclaims that the proper study of mankind is man. He recorded, as a psychological and moral observer, personal characteristics; wherein, however, the indi- vidual man is at one with the general man. The influence of Montaigne is again and again evident in such a writer as La Bruyere, and his attitude towards the problems of the world paves the way for the two greatest thinkers of the seventeenth century, Descartes and Pascal. They both, like Montaigne, are philosophers of doubt, and the writings of Pascal are perme- ated with sentences by Montaigne. But they both take steps in advance of Montaigne which enable them by different ways to escape from his satisfied irresolution. Montaigne's doubt is an end in itself, that of Descartes only a tool of rational criticism. If we do try to consider Montaigne's thought a little more as a unit and pick out the most valuable and characteristic material, his most positive statements, we find in him an extraordinarily vivid instance of self-portraiture, a striking exposition of the attitude of suspended judgment, some interesting suggestions on education, which may seem hackneyed today, but were at least in France novel enough in their time. The views of Rabelais and Montaigne upon education are again and again coupled together. "When I die," says Montaigne, "this book may help my kinsfolk and friends to keep alive their memory of me." The task has been performed for all of Montaigne's readers, who learn that he was below medium stature, stocky in build, of good health and constitution except for his sufferings from the stone, clumsy and unpractical, sluggish and easy-going, without keen ambition, forgetful and absent-minded, lacking in concentra- tion, — the defects which Montaigne proclaims would be too many to register. His imfriendly critics have deduced from his statements other charges: selfishness, lack of family affection except for his father, vanity and conceit in parading his mind before the reader and retailing his whims, whether he prefers MONTAIGNE 237 white wine to red or likes to sit with his feet higher than his head.' Many of these details are pardonable and have, indeed, a par- ticular interest to the numerous lovers of personal literature. In other cases one asks if Montaigne is not playing with himself and with the reader's credtiUty: "Je suis moi-mSme la matiere de mon livre: ce n'est pas raison que tu emploies ton loisir en un sujet si frivole et si vain: adieu done." Montaigne's ideal is the gentleman of culture and of position, the " country gentle- man" such as the English admire. Though he is not the city man of the seventeenth century, he anticipates the "honnete homme" of that age: he is intelligent, well-mannered, averse to pedantry or the pose of erudition, rather sceptical, guided by reason and common sense. But Montaigne is a conserv- ative and balks at novelty, whatever countenance it may assume. The ideas of the sceptic are to be found in the Apologie de Raymond de Sebonde. Montaigne's memory went back to the treatise which he had translated for his father, and it now served as a peg on which to hang his view's. Sceptical writers were not numerous, but they did exist in Montaigne's day. From the translation of the old writer Sextus Empiricus he certainly drew material. Raymond de Sebonde, in his Theologia naturalis, had argued that reason can prove religion. In the Apologie Montaigne undertakes to argue in Ra}miond's defence that it is right to support faith by human arguments, and that his arguments are as good as those brought against him. But he inconsistently wanders into a series of sceptical illustrations of his own. Montaigne attacks the opponents of Sebonde to show the importance of their reason in denying his views, and to assert the necessity of using all the arguments we can get. He tries to turn their theories against themselves by asking, if reason ' Somebody has applied to him the lines of Kipling: He is the jester and the jest And he himself the text applies. 238 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE does not lead to faith, whither does it lead? For reason is truly helpless, and we have no right even to doubt Christianity. Man, though so proud, is far from being the most important object in nature. In many respects man is no better than the animals. Can his efforts to attain virtue and truth be successful? The various philosophical sects produce only contradictory opinions, reason is unavailing to tell us the truth about God, the world, the soul, the body. Reason is not consistent with itself, and our own opinions vary from day to day. For the mind of man is obscured by all our passions and emotions, all the phases of our sensation, and man is a prey to appearances and the plaything of phenomena without the hope of attaining to true knowledge and the essence of things. God alone can help man if he will, and by him man will rise "abandonnant et renongant a ses propres moyens, et se laissant hausser et soulever par les moyens purement celestes. C'est a notre foi chretienne . . . de pre- tendre a cette divine et miraculeuse metamorphose." The most famous instance of Montaigne's practical advice, though it is not the most characteristic of his essays, is the chapter on the bringing up of children, De V Institution des enfants, written some time after the other, though it precedes it in the editions. His views are not original; he repeats the charges against the older education of the Humanists before his day, from Vittorino da Feltre to Vives, Erasmus, and Rabelais. To Montaigne, more particularly, mere erudition was a secondary matter, and he wished above all to see in the individual the development of power. One ought to form, not a grammarian or a logician, but a gentleman. The pupil should, therefore, be taught not so much facts as the cause of facts; memory is to be cultivated less than judgment. And, finally^ all the experiences of life may serve for the schooling of the boy: he is far more likely to gain profit from the uncouth language of taverns than from the artificially constructed syllogisms, whose sophistical quibbles are as likely as not to lead him astray through their fallacies, MONTAIGNE 239 From two such essays oije can scarcely infer the miscellaneous character of Montaigne's writings. All that he has seen and read appears at unexpected moments. As a result of this desul- tory method Montaigne is one of the most difl&cult authors to read, yet he has been one of the French authors most influen- tial abroad. Florio's translation made him known to ShaksperCj who uses so many phrases reminiscent of Montaigne's thought about the undiscovered coimtry or the sleep that rounds our little life, that some critics have maintained that Montaigne is Hamlet, and that the play is a protest against Montaigne's scepticism. This is ludicrous, but the passage in the second act of the Tempest on the ideal commonwealth is a mere para- phrase of one in Montaigne's essay on cannibals. Bacon's essays are influenced by him, and it is not impossible that the two authors once met. The pessimist Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy is in the spirit of Montaigne, as is the optimist Sir Thomas Browne in his Religio Medici and the anecdotes of the Vulgar Errors. The megalomania of Nietzsche as well as the self-aimihilation of the Frenchman Pascal have been influenced by him. Sterne's Rabelaisian moods have borrowed something too from the discursiveness of Montaigne, and the modern essa3dsts down to Hazlitt or Emerson have felt his power. Cen- turies ago Ben Jonson putihe matter concretely when in Volpone, speaking of the numerous borrowings from Guarini's Pastor fido, he said: All our English writers, I mean such as are happy in th' Italian, Will deigne to steale out of this author mainely, ' Ahnost as much as from Montaignie. The reason for this popularity is not far to seek; there is a close similarity between the frankness of Montaigne and the personal spirit of many English writers; the confessions of his own character and his self-portraiture have made him, Hke Pepys, an interesting human document apart from questions of literary merit. To the foreigner his revelations appeal in spite of 240 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE his incoherent style; to the Frenchman the flashes of eloquence with which his pages are from time to time scattered counter- balance much that is trivial and incongruous. The influence of Montaigne shows itself most strongly in two writers of the transitional period from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century: Guillaume du Vair (1556-1621) and Pierre Charron (i 541-1603), who was somewhat older but who borrowed from the other writer. Du Vair was a prominent prelate, high-minded magistrate and statesman during the Ligue, whose translations from the ancients and treatise on the decay of French oratory would have been creditable alone in his day, but who owfes his present fame to his moral writings. He continues the line of the French Stoics, but with a sturdier and broader feeling than in Mon- taigne's self-centred thought, and unites with stoicism the Christian "feelings of Providence, hope and resignation, and the immortality of the soul. Charron, borrowing unblushingly from Montaigne and Du Vair, is the disciple who systematises the master's theories and pushes them to still more extreme conclusions. He, like Du Vair, was a priest and a supporter of everything orthodox in his Traite des irois verites, the truth of God, the truth of Christianity, the truth of Catholicism. On the other hand the Traite de la sagesse is at bottom an exposition of philosophic doubt for the use, not of the man in the street who needs the prop of faith, but rather for the intellectual aristocrat whose ethics are based on the head rather than the heart. His search for tranquillity of soul brings him to a scepticism more dogmatic than that of Montaigne. It is now "Je ne sais" instead of "Que sais-je?" The moral qualities of prudence, justice, force, and temperance will be our lay guides in a world in which religion is secondary and in its manifestations often absurd and false. Carrying on the thought of Montaigne that we are Christians as we are natives of Perigord, he says: "La nation, le pays, la lieu, donne la religion; Ton est de celle que le lieu auquel on est ne et elev6 MONTAIGNE 241 tient: nous sommes circonds, baptises, juifs, mahometans, Chretiens, avant que nous sachions que nous sommes hpmmes." The effect of such teachings and the influence of this "orthodox sceptic" on the "libertins," the freethinkers, and unbelievers of the seventeenth century is obvious. CHAPTER XII AUTHORS OF MEMOIRS. HISTORIANS AND POLITICAL WRITERS THE sixteenth century, which is marked by so much individualism, is rich in personal literature in the form of memoirs. It has also much historical writing which, in many cases, merges into discussion of political or economic theory.' The civil wars and national contests set in motion a number of polemical works on religion, and pamphlets. Historical narrative was, to a considerable degree, impeded by the tradition of Latin. With few exceptions, the fashion of Livy prevailed, and sonorous high-flown Latin periods were the mode of expression for the most admired writers. The Italian Paolo Emilio of Verona, at the very threshold of the century, wrote De rebus gestis Francorum, something like the old Chroniques retold in classical language. Even the most important historian of the century, Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553-1617), wrote the Historia sui temporis or Thuana, covering the second half of the sixteenth century and published in 1604, in Latin on the model of Livy. This work was afterwards translated into French, but its original form was too deeply impressed upon it to permit it to become a living book. It was, however, to a noteworthy degree, the standard and model for historians even in French in the seventeenth century. D'Aubigne's important Histoire universelle, which is spoken of elsewhere, had also another model in Tacitus. Girard du Haillan (circa 1536-1610), though as royal historiographer he wrote annals of his time much like the old chronicles, was also one of those who used French. Vastly more interesting and more useful to the modern histo- 242 AUTHORS OF MEMOIRS 243 rian than the periods of De Thou are the numerous memoirs of the sixteenth century. Sometimes these verged on history, such as the Du Bellay memoirs. Guillaume du Bellay-Langey (1491-1543) wrote a Latin history of the reign of Francis I, the Ogdoades, so called because in eight books and after the plan of the decades of Livy. This he translated into French. Much of it was lost, and was replaced and filled out, after his death, in a new form by his brother Martin du Bellay. But still more valuable as literature are the writings of Monluc, La Noue, Brant6me, and Marguerite de Valois. Blaise de Monluc (1502-1577) was a Gascon endowed with the proverbial Gascon traits of exuberance and vagabondage. His brave and dashing character made him finally rise to the position of marshal of France, after achievements such as the defence of Siena in Italy against the imperial troops and his severe wounding at the siege of Rabastens. In this last contest he was. frightfully disfigured {lou nase de Rabastens) and obliged to resort to a mask. Monluc's memoirs are Commentaries, and he had those of Caesar in mind when he wrote them. They were composed largely from memory and are therefore neither strictly impartial nor accurate, and Monluc was as harsh and cruel a fighter as ever lived. The latter pages of this "soldier's Bible," as Henry IV called it, are full of bloodshed. Franjois de la Noue (1531-1591), called Bras de Fer because of his artificial arm, a Breton by birth, was a brave Huguenot warrior who, during a period of captivity in the Spanish fortress of Limburg, wrote his Discours poUtiques et militaires. These deal with more numerous subjects than the title suggests: some are a picture of France during the civil wars, others touch on economic or social questions; some are the writings of a moralist; and the twenty-sixth and last is a personal narrative, covering the years 1562 to 1570, sometimes alluded to separately as the Memoirs of La Noue. He is considered one of the dignified and human figures of a cruel age. Pierre de Bourdeilles, lay abbe de Brantdme (1540-1614), 244 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE whose home and abbey were in the vicinity of Perigueux, had spent nearly all his life in travelling over Europe or in the army and at court. He is the great gossip of the sixteenth century, who, to while away the time after a fall from horseback, wrote telltale biographies of the "grands capiiaines Strangers," the "grands capitaines frangais," the "dames illustres" and the "dames galantes," though these names do not correspond com- pletely to the ones which Brant6me chose. He also wrote some other minor works. Brant6me was not a professional man of letters, but he had the gift of the picturesque, and consequently his narratives and descriptions, though eminently unreal and profoundly biassed either favorably or unfavorably, afford a mine of information, often of tittle-tattle and slander concerning his times. It is in the pages of Brant6me that the picturesque historians and romantic novelists have often sought inspiration for their accounts of the teeming activity and the pageantry of the sixteenth century. Brantome's patroness Marguerite de Valois (1553-1615), the divorced first wife of Henry IV, dedicated her memoirs to Brant6me. They were written while she was in semi-exile at the castle of Usson in Auvergne. Her writings have little his- torical value, but are an interesting example of personal litera- ture and of feminine self-portraiture, for the purpose of defence and exculpation against unfavorable opinion, told with a good deal of vividness and elegance. Very different from a literary point of view are the Memoires- journaux of Pierre de I'Estoile (i 546-161 1). This daily record of events from 1574 to 161 1 is of the greatest use for understand- ing the history of the period between the death of Charles IX and that of Henry IV. L'Estoile's impartiality is equalled only by his curiosity and interest, and we may add his accuracy, but, except spasmodically, he has not the touch of the man of letters. The writers on political science and the theory of history become more numerous and more valuable to modern thought AUTHORS OF MEMOIRS 24S along with the growth of the spirit of rationalism. The down- fall of the principle of authority, together with the sifting of tradition and the clash of idea against idea, resulting in part from the rival thought of Catholics and Reformers, wrought a change in the study of institutions. One instance of this improvement has already been mentioned in the Recherches de la France of Etienne Pasquier. But other writers were no less significant. Important names in the reform of legal studies in the sixteenth century were Cujas and Hotman. Jacques Cujas (1522-1590), in spite of his great merits, was too technically a legist to obtain a place here, but Frangois Hotman (1524-1590) influenced general thought and discussion. The two occupy the chief position among those who, following the lead of the Italian Alciati, revolted against the old school of uncouth interpreters of Roman law, the Bartholists, disciples of Accursius and Bartholus, who used the glosses and formularies. Hotman, as a Huguenot, criticised also the errors of canon law and the papal decretals. Cujas and Hotman tried to set forth jurisprudence as a scientific system and not as a mere set of arbitrary rules. This end they sought by the historical method, and Hotman, in particular, by the application of philological and antiquarian studies. But Hotman is especially important as the author of the Franco- Gallia, published in Latin in 1573 and translated into French in the following year by Simon Goulard under the name la Gaule franque. Hotman, as a spokesman for the Huguenots, sought to establish a historical justification for the political aspirations of the Reformers, and tried to prove that in the old days of Gaul and under the Franks, there had existed free confederations and an elective monarchy. The Franco-Gallia was one of the chief sources of inspiration to the Huguenots. These argued the right to rebel against a despot and to establish a semi-independence or federative republic, almost an imperium in imperio in the King- dom of France, or to set up a constitutional monarchy in which the States-General should counterbalance the royal power. Its influence in the sixteenth century has been compared to that 246 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of Rousseau's Contrat social in the eighteenth, and even the Ligueurs and Jesuits, when they found themselves in the opposi- tion as the Reformers had been, unconsciously adopted their arguments in justification of the murder of an unrighteous tyrant. From the historical standpoint, also, Hotman's Franco- Gallia was significant in that it was, with the Recherches of Pasquier and the Antiquites frangaises of Claude Fauchet (1530-1601), one of the first important works to reject the Trojan legend of the origins of France. The Huguenots adopted also La Bo6tie's Contr'un, ou discours de la servitude volontaire, which a modern writer has inconclu- sively attributed to Montaigne. Though eloquent and well written, it is practically a schoolboy essay and is a declamation in favor of liberty based on the reading of ancient authors. Another work taken by the Huguenots as a source of political argument was the Latin Vindiciae contra tyrannos, published under the pseudonym of Junius Brutus and attributed both to Hubert Languet (1518-1581) and to Du Plessis-Momay (1549- 1623). This work discusses the questions of obedience to a ruler acting in opposition to the law of God or as an oppressor of his subjects, and argues that a foreign ruler is justified in coming to the help of his coreligionaries when they are oppressed by their own sovereign. The greatest pohtical scientist of the sixteenth century was Jean Bodin (1530-1596). His chief works were the Latin Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem, and the French Six livres de la repuUique, the latter of which has been called the most important book on pohtical science between the times of Aristotle and Montesquieu. He was also guilty of unexpectedly superstitious works, such as the Demonomanie des sorciers. The Methodus considers questions like the pleasure of historical study, its utihty for the knowledge of poHtics. It touches on the theory of physical causes, as the influence of climate and of the environment. These last ideas are taken up again in the RepuUique, so that Bodin is an important precursor of Montes- AUTHORS OF MEMOIRS 247 quieu and similar writers. The Republique, a defence of abso- lute monarchy, is in part a rejoinder to the Protestant arguments of Hotman, but it rises much higher than mere polemic to general theory. Bodin deals with the question of sovereignty, which is absolute and perpetual power. Hence Bodin is the mouth- piece of those theorists of the French monarchy as it did exist imtil the Revolution, a mitigated despotism in which an acknowl- edged authority ought to be tempered by justice, mercy, and toleration, or forms of natural and divine law. In Bodin's own day the members of the party which represented these ideas were called the politiques, and they corresponded to those who in modern times have been called the moderates or "centre." Michel de I'Hospital was in the sixteenth century an important leader of this set. The Satire Menippee, which takes its name from the Latin Menippean Satires of Varro, is the great political prose satire of its century. It was the product of writers belonging to the middle bourgeois group of politiqiies hostile to the Ligue and to the Spaniards, whom the Guises had called to their help. These authors, who saw in the reign of Henry IV the salvation of France, were six in number: Jacques Gillot, Pierre Le Roy, Pierre Pithou (1539-1596), Florent Chrestien (1540-1596), Nicolas Rapin (i 535-1608), Jean Passerat. Chrestien and Passerat are famous in other connections. To Le Roy is attrib- uted the general plan of the satire, and he probably wrote the beginning. There are identifications and surmises as to other portions of the work, but it is a collaboration in which the anon- 3rmity of each section was at least intended to hS preserved. The Satire Menippee, or De la vertu du catholicon d'Espagne et de la tenue des etats de Paris, begins with an address in the style of a vendor of nostrvuns on the virtues of the catholicon or cure-all. There follows an account of the convocation of the States and of the various addresses supposed to be made there, each one of which is composed to suit the character of the speaker. The longest is that of Claude d'Aubray, who speaks for the 248 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE bourgeoisie, supposed to be due to Pithou. It is also the most serious part of the satire and discusses the political condi- tion of France. The work ends with various miscellaneous compositions in prose and verse. The Satire Menippee cannot be appreciated today, because everything about is has become obsolete, but it is an important document in French literatiire. PART III THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER I TRANSITION WRITERS. THE REIGN OF HENRY IV BY the reign of Henry IV the Renaissance has wellnigh run its course and, as so often happens in France, the end of the century seems to coincide with a change in the national spirit and in the literary tendencies. Many of the important sixteenth-century writers still live, though in most cases they remain representatives of the past. Among those we have already dealt with, Pasquier, Brant6me, d'Aubigne, Mont- chrestien, Larivey, Du Vair survive the reign, and Charron is one of its writers. But the differences which separate the Classicism of the seven- teenth century from the Renaissance Classicism are already visible, though for a while French thought seems to be marking time. In the sixteenth century the prevailing mood was emi- nently individualistic. The great writers had, as we have seen, rejected mediaeval authority and traditions, and sought, with the guidance of the ancients and, unfortunately, also of the Italians, to express the fullest development of their natures. They had tried to substitute Plato or the real Aristotle for the false Aris- totle, or they had discarded the mediaeval genres for those of the ancients. In this way we explain the large amount of personal literature, from the abundant lyrical poetry to the wealth of memoirs, or the studies of self such as the essays of Montaigne. In more abstract thought the writers had been united only in one negative and destructive principle, but the liberty of each person had led hini to solve the problems of the world according to the bias of his own feeling. The moralist might equally well become a Christian or a pagan Stoic, the pure intellectual ration- alist a Catholic, a Huguenot, or ai, sceptic. Hence, besides 2SI 252 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Catholicism, there came the new religion of the Reformers, based at first on the Bible interpreted by the judgment of one's own conscience, though soon, in France at least, only by the judgment of Calvin's conscience; or scepticism, popular in Montaigne, philosophical in Sanchez; or neo-Platonism transmitted from Italy, with its outgrowth in the mysticism which peopled the world with gnomes, sylphs, angels, demons, and salamanders. Parallel with this tendency was the one to make science imagina- tive and in harmony with the poetical interpretations of the universe, the study of alchemy, astrology, magic, and the black arts, the search for the philosopher's stone. Thus the excessive liberty of the Renaissance became chaos, and there was no method in science. The "fais ce que voudras" of Rabelais might be placed over the home of every thinker. The Pleiade had endeavored to cultivate the types of literature, but, in. spite of its theories, it had failed to reach its ideals and soon lost all sense of judgment and appreciation of taste. Even Ron- sard in much of his work, Du Bartas and Desportes nearly everywhere, are lacking in what the French call gotlt. A reaction against this anarchy, which is distasteful to the French mind, arose early. Its aspects were political as well as intellectual. With the Counter Reformation began in Europe the revival of Catholic authority which culminated in France, after the civil wars, in the political unification under Henry IV, now a member of the Catholic Church. The Reason of the Infallible Church gradually replaced faith based on fallible individual conscience, just as the national state took the place of the quasi-independence in politics which the Huguenots wanted, or the treachery of the League. The minister Sully, by his administration and executive reforms, gave ballast to the brilliancy and Gascon lightheadedness of the king. Henry won the popular fancy by his picturesque sayings, the "panache blanc," the "poule au pot," or "Paris vaut bien une messe," and by dashing oaths, the venirebleus of a "roi vert galant." Sully did the work of centralisation or directed the king in TRANSITION WRITERS 253 finances, agriculture, commerce, public .works, and planned the "grand projet," the federation of nations and churches and the lowering of the house of Hapsburg, in which Henry was inter- ested more by his senile passion for the princesse de Conde than by anything else. Richelieu under Louis XIII continued the promotion of royal authority by htuniliating the nobility, which had hitherto preserved a semblance of feudal independence on their estates, but soon became the fawning courtiers of Ver- sailles, and by crushing the Huguenots. He augmented the prestige of France abroad and extended its territory by his participation in the Thirty Years' War, ended by the treaty of Westphalia. And above all, he aimexed men of letters by his patronage of writers and by the establishment of the Academy. Thus literature was made to enter into the state organism. Mazarin, with less genius but as much craft as Richelieu, con- tinued the work which the former had begim, and managing to play off against each other during the Fronde the nobles and the Parlement, who tried to balance royal authority, and defeating Spain by the treaty of the Pyrenees, he left at his death in 1661 the work of centralisation complete. The so-called school of 1660, the French Classical age, corresponds to the centralised government and the mitigated despotism of Louis the Great. In literature the same unification shows itself as in politics after the reign of Henry IV. Malherbe tried to introduce taste by doing away with the exuberance of the past generation and making poetry reasonable, meanwhile eliminating the personal element. By the tiirie of Boileau this taste or good sense (Je bon sens) is dignified with the name of "Reason," though it does not mean much more than before. In prose Balzac attempted the same task, though his tendencies were toward the grandiloquent and the rhetorical. Pascal was needed to give style depth and power. Chapelain tried to set the house of criticism in order by establishing the technical rules which distinguish and may produce good tragedies, comedies, and epics. Meanwhile, the partisans of liberty were not to pass 254 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE away without a struggle. They showed themselves in the protests of Regnier and of Mile de Goumay against the pruning of Malherbe, in the outbursts of Th6ophile in favor of liberty of expression. The irregulars of the early seventeenth century think themselves the Brutuses and Cassiuses of literary freedom, In religion these same writers are apt, under the name of liber- tines, to continue the tendencies of free-thought, pyrrhonism, or scepticism of many sixteenth-century thinkers, some of them of the lineage of Montaigne, and are dubbed by their enemies unbelievers and atheists. A libertine meant one who was free, like the wind, the "chartered libertine" of Shakspere, but as the members of the school were often without moral or religious principles, the new meaning given to their name was only too well deserved. Licentiousness made many of the libertines deserving of the name of poeies bachiques, as exuberance of style made some merit the name of "grotesques." In abstract thought the new tendency toward system was personified in Descartes, who had to carry the cult of reason beyond the stage of Ramus. That philosopher had foimd reason in Plato and in the writings of the ancients. Descartes ' thinks he finds it in one self-evident proposition or analytic judgment, which exists in the mind of man and which permits the construction of the whole internal and external world upon a firm foundation. Thus a new thought replaces the thought of the ancients, whether as interpreted by the Platonists of the school of Ramus or the old Aristotelians of the Scholastic type who still held the university, from which even the Hiunan- ists of the Renaissance had been unable to dislodge them. At the same time Descartes's new method not only does away with the chaos of unsystematic thought, but establishes a new physical interpretation of the world in place of the varied fanciful beliefs of the sixteenth-century men of pseudo-science. The result of these political, social, hterary, and philosophical changes finds expression in the reign of Louis XIV after his majority. Louis is the "roi-soleil," sol nee pluribus impar, TRANSITION WRITERS 255 surrounded by fawning courtiers and literary men. French literature is, to use Taine's expression, the liUerature de Ver- sailles. The king affects literature by his pensions and by the necessity of winning his favor to get into the Academy which, in tvurn, takes upon itself the right to control the language. He is at the same time the subject of apotheosis : Louis could almost say "Ut puto, Deus fio." The Catholic religion was supreme, and the Galileans would even have liked a quasi-independence of the king at the head of the Church, face to face with the pope. Considered in its deeper import, French literature of the school of 1660 presents features of which Cartesianism is one of the best, but not the only manifestation. The qualities of the esprit classique, its sympathetic historians tell us, are clearness of conception, precision of definition, and logical arrangement: "la clarte, la precision, la liaison des id6es." French literature becomes a generalised image of life, "la realite dont on a retranche les traits grossiers et superflus" (Nisard). Its char- acter is "la recherche et I'expression de la v6rite." Imagination is auxiliary to reason, and conformity to reason is conformity to truth; hence an essentially orderly and logical conception of everything, and a clear and logical expression in literature of such conceptions. It becomes, on the one hand, the rationalism of Descartes, on the other, the Art po&tique of Boileau; or, as M. Brimetiere expressed it in his work on nineteenth-century lyric poetry, it is "cette cormexion intime ou solidarite des id6es que I'on tire du rapport d'un traits m6taphysique de Male- branche, de I'lm de ces 'magnifiques palais d'id6es,' comme on aimait a en construire alors, — avec le palais lui-m6me et les jardins de Versailles, avec une tragedie de Racine, ou avec ime oraison fimebre de Bossuet. Meme savante et grandiose ordonnance du plan; m^me habile et heureuse disposition des parties, m^me art; m^me principe interieur et cache; m^me inspiration ou m^me ^me."^ ' Brunetiere borrows the inspiration of this passage from Taine: "Entre une charmille de Versailles, un raisonnement philosophique et theologique 2S6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE As opposed to the sixteenth century the new literature is governed, not from within by the personality of the writer, but from without. The lyrical element of the Pleiade is destroyed by Malherbe. Thought is imder the rule of reason, and in hterature Boileau identifies common sense or good taste with it: Aimez done la raison, que toujours vos ecrits Empruntent d'elle seule, et leur lustre et leur prix. It took, however, fifty years to prepare the siecle de Louis XIV, and in that half-century there is much that is at variance with this centralising force or hostile to it. And, first of all, it is well to see what was the condition of literature at the advent of Malherbe, in the reign of Henry IV. Apart from the authors whom it has been necessary to mention in other connections, the most famous names were those of Bertaut, Regnier, Cardinal Du Perron, Passerat. Saint Francois de Sales and Du Plessis- Mornay were also leaders among the CathoUcs and Huguenots respectively. Olivier de Serres by his Theatre d" agriculture continues the series of technical writers, among whom the surgeon Ambroise Pare and the ceramist Bernard Palissy had distinguished themselves a little earKer. To the modem student of literary theory Vauquehn de la Fresnaye is one of the most valuable of all. Jean Bertaut (1552-1611) has been immortalised by the couplet of Boileau linking his name with that of Desportes: Ce poete orgueiUeux [Ronsard\, trebuch6 de si haut, Rendit plus retenus Desportes et Bertaut. de Malebranche, un pr6cepte de versification chez Boileau, une loi de Colbert sur les hypotheques, un compliment d'antichambre a Marly, une sentence de Bossuet sur la royaut6 de Dieu, la distance semble infinie et infranchissable; nulle liaison apparente. Les faits sont si dissemblables qu'au premier aspect on les juge tels qu'ils se presentent, c'est-a-dire isoles et separes. Mais les faits communiquent entre eux par la definition des groupes ou ils sont compris, comme les eaux d'un bassin par les sommets du versant d'ou eUes decoulent." — Preface of Essais de critique et d'histoire. TRANSITION WRITERS 257 He was really a minor poet, though deified in his own day. After a career of court favor he ended his days as a bishop, occupant of the small see of Seez in his native Normandy, and the successor of another bishop, Claude de Moreime, who had also dabbled in verse. Bertaut ran through the stock literary forms: he was a Petrarchist, a court poet composing sonnets and ballets, a translator of the classics, and a paraphraser of the Psalms. He even tried once or twice to soar to the epic strain. He was a little more reserved in his poetry than his Italianist contemporaries and, indeed, shows greater restraint in the treatment of passion, impressing one as more a gentleman than Desportes. His style is less overladen with florid similes, but his delicacy and fastidiousness make him one of the first and greatest elaborators of pointes in the early seventeenth century. He shows pleasing sentiment in some of his descrip- tions of nature, a gentle melancholy in his elegiac verse which is sometimes in the key of Lamartine, but his work as a whole, though sympathetic, is weak and tedious. Mathurin Regnier (1573-1613), nephew of Desportes, made many trips to Italy and lived there for a number of years, but was in the latter part of his life a canon of Chartres. He is an intense partisan of the old literature against the encroachments of Malherbe and his reforms; at the same time he is one of the founders in France of the formal satire. In this way he belongs to two schools, to two times. We have had many evidences of satire in authors like Marot and Du Bellay. Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, too, wrote regular satires as a mere plagiarist of Horace and of the Italians. They were, moreover, almost contemporary in their actual appearance with those of Regnier. Regnier is, of course, by no means free from imitation, but he makes the qualities of the models more his own, so that he stands apart from all his predecessors. The direct classical influences upon Regnier, except Horace and Juvenal, are slighter than in those who were more strictly Humanists. But it is only natural 2S8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE that one who had spent so much tune in Italy should be full of the contemporary Italian writers. Regnier drew largely from poets such as Ariosto, authors of personal satirical epistles, and among his models were, in addition to Ariosto, men like Vinciguerra, Alamanni, Bentivoglio, and Sansovino. He drew, too, from Aretino and from the authors of capitoli and Bemesque satire, burlesque poems in which common or low things were treated in semi-heroic or eulogistic strain: Berni, Molza, Firen- zuola. As a true Frenchman, also, he went back to those who in his own language stood for the esprit gaulois, such as Rabelais. In his poems he gives a heedless view of hfe and character. He is a thoughtless epicurean debauche and takes a careless satis- faction in making fun, often obscenely, of what he sees about him. He is perfectly unmoral, heedless of art and style, using the common vulgar talk about him to describe hypocrites, prostitutes, conceited fops. Yet such is the vigor and originaUty of his language and analysis of character that he coxmts among the founders of a new genre, which showed its formal perfection in Boileau, its spirit in Moliere, but which was also responsible in the seventeenth century for many a minor satirical writer like Du Lorens. The most noteworthy satires of Regnier are his poems against Malherbe and his Macetie. The tone of the satire against Malherbe as a defence of the old school of poetry may be seen by the lines : Mais, Rapin, a. leur gotit, si les vieux sont profanes, Si Virgile, le Tasse et Ronsard sont des ines, Sans perdre en ces discours le temps que nous perdons, Allons comme eux aux champs et mangeons des chardons. Macette is often called a female prototype of Tartuffe. She is a descendant of inmunerable female panderers in literature, derived ultimately from Ovid's Amores and connected directly or indirectly with the Spanish Celestina, the courtesans of Itahan literature, and the maquerelles of the French Renaissance comedy. On this conception Regnier grafted the hj^iocrisy of a Faux- TRANSITION WRITERS- 259 Semblant of the Roman de la Rose. Macette has become pious the better to deceive her victims : EUe qui n'eut avant que pleurer son delit Autre del pour objet que le del de son lit, A change de courage, et confite en detresse, Imite avec ses pleurs la sainte pecheresse. Dormant des saintes lois a son affection, EUe a mis son amour a la devotion. Sans art elle s'habille, et simple en contenance, Son teint mortifie preche la continence. Clergesse, elle fait ja la legon aux prficheurs, EUe lit Saint Bernard, le Guide des Pecheurs, Les Meditations de la mere Therese, Salt que c'est qu'hypostase avec synderese. Loin du monde eUe fait sa demeure et son gite, Son ceil tout p6nitent ne pleure qu'eau b6nite. Jean Passerat (1534-1602), a scholar and a toper, one of the authors of the Satire Menippee, composed, besides more ambi- tious works like the Chien courant, many epigrams and light poems which bring one back to the gaiety of the verse of Marot and the love-songs of the early Pleiade. Cardinal Jacques Davy Du Perron (i 556-1618) was a windy and wordy nonentity. He, like Desportes, was a favorite court poet and brought Malherbe before Henry IV. He wrote, like Bertaut and Malherbe, semi-official panegyrics and elegies, but distanced all his friends and rivals by his eloquence and his successful logical argumentations. He gave the funeral oration of Ronsard and, in a controversy on the eucharist with the Huguenot theologian Du Plessis-Mornay, he won a noteworthy dialectical victory which almost broke his rival's heart. Vauquelin de la Fresnaye (1536-1606 or 08), a Norman judge who devoted his spare hours to poetry, passed through a phase of imitation in his Foresteries and his Satires, the latter unblushingly cribbed from Italian writers. His value today lies entirely in his Art poetique in three cantos, published at the 26o A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE very end of his life, but on the stocks for many years, and enun- ciating in didactic verse the theories of the Pleiade at a time when they had acquired definite shape. Indeed, the vogue of the Pleiade had already passed away. Vauquelin's conception of the literary types is, on the whole, that of Ronsard. The ode is serious and stately yet ornate, destined for the delectation of lords and ladies. Yet it is surpassed by the Anacreontic ode or odelette, "Pleine de jeu d'amour, douce et mignardelette." The epic portrays human life in all its variety, and Vauquelin's conception, in spite of his admiration for Ronsard and the scholarly poets, seems to admit a broader interpretation than the learned epic of which the Franciade was the tjpe. The drama is a more specific entity and is closely studied. Tragedy admits, as in Greece, only three actors and the chorus takes a part, yet the play is not confined to classical topics. Comedy portrays in easy metre a deed of vice, such as seduction, which can be remedied, for instance, by marriage. The Latin and Italian influences are here obvious. Tragi-comedy is a play portraying a tragic action, but with a happy ending. In this way Vauquelin deals with nearly all the forms culti- vated in his day, sonnet, pastoral, satire, epistle, didactic verse, including all the mi^or genres. His treatment is absolutely incoherent and unarranged, and is in this respect in marked contrast with the systematic treatise on poetry of Boileau. Yet, none the less, Vauquelin's conception of the history of literary genres is often more correct than that of the later writer. This very fact is considered a proof that, in spite of the numerous similarities in the two works, due probably to their imitation of common originals, Boileau did not use the work of the poet- lawyer of Caen when he composed his own code of poetry. CHAPTER II THE REFORM IN POETRY. MALHERBE. HIS FRIENDS AND FOES FRANgOIS DE MALHERBE (1555-1628) is the starting- point of seventeenth-century literature and one who must be held chief builder in poetry of the definite Classical theory. He accomplished his task mainly by destroying lyric poetry. He was a Norman of a Huguenot family, but himself a Cath- olic, well educated and travelled. He lived for a long time as secretary of the due d'Angoul^me in the south of France, where he wrote his first verses, an elegy on the death of a young girl, Genevieve Rouxel, as were his later and more famous verses to Du Perier. Thus at Ronsard's death he was an unknown -person in literature and under Italian influences. In 1587 came his Larmes de saint Pierre, an adaptation of the primitive version of the Lagrime di san Pietro of Luigi Tansillo and, like its model, an example of the worst kind of Italianate affected- ness and artificiality. But many years of his life, though unpro- ductive, were spent in reflection. It was not until 1605 that he was presented to the king and began a career of prosperous old age when, in spite of grief at the death of his son, he stood high in favor at court, was the oracle of his clique and the reformer of poetry. Malherbe was pushing and energetic, selfish and vindictive against people like Concini and Luynes, eager for preferment. He was salacious and nicknamed "le pere Luxure." His old age was devoted to the pruning of the literature represented by the school of Ronsard and more particularly of Desportes. He was not a poet himself, except in the most Umited degree, and «6i 262 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE he failed to understand the true meaning of lyric poetry as the expression of subjective emotion. Malherbe saw in poetry only the statement of general truths and glorified commonplaces. In this it is obvious that he was performing a salutary task for literature, even though he went too far, because poetry had departed from the true norm and was floundering in incoherence. Malherbe brought in dignity, though a stilted one, a highly polished prosody and phraseology. This was meritorious, inas- much as the ideas of the greatest literary men of the Classical age could take care of themselves. But certainly the high esteem in which Malherbe was held for centuries in French literature has been due as much to the praise of Boileau as to his own achievements. He was really the grammarian of poetry. He was argumentative, dialectical, fond of antithesis, rational, never sentimental. In many respects Malherbe's conception of lyric poetry, more particularly the ode, was that of the Pleiade, and Malherbe transmitted the mythological trappings of Pindarism from Ronsard to Boileau. When it came to questions of detail, out of stubbornness he usually took an opposite view. Thus, as to language he was diametrically at variance with the school of Ronsard. Instead of admitting two vocabularies, one for prose and one for poetry, as is the case to a certain degree in EngUsh, Malherbe ordained one language for the two, dis- tinguished only by rhyme and guided by popular usage. This did away with much that Ronsard had eagerly advocated: grafting of words, diminutives and compounds, borrowings from trades and dialects, Greek and Latin constructions. Malherbe half jestingly said that he took his vocabulary from the common laborers and street porters. Poetry was to be a work of art, and the poet's chief task in composition was a selective one, the chastening of his own muse and the cutting out of anything that might in any way jar the ear, the suppression of padding, bourres and chevilles, the avoiding of hiatus. Such is the doctrine which Malherbe taught orally and THE REFORM IN POETRY 263 recorded with insolent comments in the margins of his copy of Desportes. He was not always consistent, and at times he made the mistakes for which he blamed others, even after his early stage of Italianism. He boasted of driving "Gasconisms" from the court, but his critics say he "Normanised" it. He was a poet without poetical feeling and stands for the reaction against the excesses of sixteenth-century Italianism, of which reaction he was perhaps less a cause than an illustration. But he also stands for the transition from Middle to Modern French and from the loose language and constructions of the Renais- sance to the more "reasonable" ones of the seventeenth century. The most quoted poem of Malherbe is a consolation to a friend, M. Du Perier, on the death of his daughter, in the vein of stoic declamation, like the letter of Plutarch to his wife and that of Servius Sulpicius Rufus to Cicero on the ineluctability qf death: Mais elle etait du monde ou les plus belles choses Ont le pire destin; Et rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses, L'espace d'un matin.^ The stanzas are perfect in their rigidity, but the appeal to 1 Compare the lines on death with those in Gray's Elegy: The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour: — The paths of glory lead but to the grave. La mort a des rigueurs a nuUe autre pareilles; On a beau la prier, La cruelle qu'elle est se bouche les oreilles, Et nous laisse crier. Le pauvre en sa cabane, ou le chaume le couvre. Est sujet a ses lois; Et la garde qui veille aux barrieres du Louvre N'en defend pas nos rois. 264 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE reason or to general law is the kind of consolation that never healed grief.* The ode to Marie de Medicis is considered by some his master- piece in lyric verse, and his poems on the death of Henry IV and on the expedition of Louis XIII against La Rochelle stand out from the others. The procedure of Malherbe in composition is, then, slow elaboration. His verses are colorless and impersonal in form and content. He does not so much seek melody as the har- mony of impeccable construction. His verse must be exact, his language accurate, without a jarring or discordant note, but without vigor or positive beauty. Malherbe's chief positive feature is the Johnsonian enunciation of sententious maxims and platitudes which the poets of the past had already popu- larised. He was the "docteur en negative" of Balzac and Mile de Gournay. He stands for the calm and the whiteness of antique statuary as we now have it, not for the polychrome wealth which Hellenic art really possessed. Of ancient litera- ture he cared in Greek for but little except Lucian and Plutarch: he hated the "galimatias" of Pindar, says Racan. In Latin he liked the philosophical Seneca, Ovid, and especially Horace and Statius. Racan tells us that "Virgile n'avait pas I'honneur de lui plaire." ^ '"C'est consoler un philosophe que de lui justifier ses larmes, et de mettre sa douleur en liberte," Moliere wrote to La Mothe le Vayer on the death of the latter's son. The difference is, however, striking between Malherbe's poem and the one to Malherbe himself from Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, on the death of Malherbe's daughter. M. Allais quotes the lines: Pourquoi, Malherbe, dolent pere, Regrettes-tu ta fiUe chere, Puisque la belle infantelette Est ore aux cieux una angelette? T'est-il pas une grand' louange D'avoir ete pere d'un ange? ^ Fairness and candor compel the admission that the above judgment of Malherbe is not the only possible one and that his character and influence THE REFORM IN POETRY 26$ Malherbe was the centre of an admiring group of disciples, like Ben Jonson at the Mermaid Tavern or Dryden at Will's Coffee House. He did not admit too many of them at once into his intimacy. Two alone are to be picked out from the rest, Frangois Maynard (1582-1646) and Racan, and of these Racan was a much truer poet than his master. Honorat de Bueil, marquis de Racan (1589-1670), was in his long life destined to see the whole career of Corneille and the rise of Moliere and Racine. He was a distinguished seigneur in the army, where he served at the siege of La Rochelle, at court, and in literature. Yet he had an uncouth appearance at variance with the grace of his poetry. He lived for many years in later life away from Paris on his country estates, and even by the fastidious Boileau it was said that " Racan pourrait chanter au defaut d'un Homere." The writings of Racan are varied and fairly numerous. He filled a volume with his version of the Psalms and played the Boswell to Malherbe in a little set of biographical anecdotes in which he pays homage to his master: "M. de Malherbe de qui il a appris ce qu'il a temoigne savoir depuisde la poesie frangaise." But his chief distinction is to be found in the Bergeries and in sundry lyric poems of which la Retraite is the most famous. Les Bergeries is the best pastoral play in French. It is, as is usual with pastorals, an extremely involved drama, lacking may be judged in a different light. In the opinion of his defenders Mal- herbe not only performed a meritorious negative task in sweeping away the degenerate literature of the late sixteenth century, but his writings have majesty, nobility, and dignity.' Thus, for instance, Sainte-Beuve in his essay on Malherbe in the thirteenth volume of the Nouveaux lundis: "A Malherbe reservons la gloire et I'honneur de I'harmonie, de la fiert6, de la gravite, d'un haut sens et de la distinction dans la grandeur. . . . La probit6, quoiqu'il en soit, subsiste, mSme sous les defauts de Mal- herbe; son caractere prive, bien qu'6troit, est solide et suffit a porter, sans jamais fl6chir, sa grandeur lyrique." — See also De I'antipathie centre Malherbe, by Charles Dejob in the Revue internationale de I'enseignement, IS May, 1892 (Vol. XXin). 266 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE almost in unity of plot, yet containing here and there many a graceful line. The Retraite is an expression of the sentimental epicureanism of the Pleiade and of Desportes's shepherd songs, drawn ultimately from Horace, with some of the firmness and concision of Malherbe. It repeats the already hackneyed Uterary commonplace about the call of solitude, and distaste for the turmoil of the town, the feeling that this world is too much with us : Tircis, il faut penser a faire la retraite: La course de nos jours est plus qu'a demi faite. L'age insensiblement nous conduit a la mort. Nous avons assez vu sur la mer de ce monde Errer au gr6 des vents notre nef vagabonde; II est temps de jouir des d^lices du port. Such is, indeedj the characteristic of Racan's verse. He under- stands the softer moods of nature and sings the charms of a quiet landscape as one who has long lived in it, and whose life passes comforted by a dutiful wife in a peaceful home, but mildly saddened by sentimental recollections of earlier loves who disdained him. Racan was a personal poet such as Malherbe could never be, and in spite of his common exterior he was a true gentleman of letters. , The foes of Malherbe were as nimierous as his friends. There were the vigorous partisans of the past Hterature like Regnier and Mile de Gournay (1565-1645). This worthy fille d'alliance of Montaigne, who devoted her life to his posthumous fame, in her solitary spinsterhood scoffed at by the young blades in society and hterature, shows how quickly the fashions of the sixteenth century were fading. She is best known, apart from her edition of Montaigne, by her Ombre, later called the Avis ou Presents de la demoiselle de Gournay, miscellaneous writings of sixteenth-century prolixity of style and not very rich in valuable thought. As unlike Malherbe as Regnier and Mile de Gournay, but for different reasons, stood the group of libertins. Even when THE REFORM IN POETRY 267 these writers did not lay themselves open to charges of atheism and of profligacy, they represented in literature all that Mal- herbe opposed: liberty of thought and of expression. They did not want theories; hence we find among them a large group of heedless lyric poets and of bohemian tavern roisterers. They did not do much for the Classical ideal, but they showed that the lyric spirit of French literature might have been saved if it had been reformed by a broader-minded man than Malherbe. The most noteworthy of the Ubertins was Th6ophile de Viau (i 596-1626), a southerner who led an adventurous career. Huguenot by descent he was, though a convert pro forma to Ca- tholicism, persecuted by the Jesuits for his participation in the licentious Parnasse satirique and threatened with death. His attitude toward life and letters stands forth in the following lines : "II faut avoir de la passion non seulement pour las hommes de vertu, pour les belles femmes, mais aussi pour toutes sortes de belles choses. J'aime des beaux jours, des claires fontaines, I'aspect des montagnes, I'etendue d'une grande plaine, de belles forets, I'Ocean, son calme, ses vagues, ses nuages. J'aime encore tout ce qui touche plus particulierement les sens, la musique, les fleurs, les beaux habits, la chasse, les beaux chevaux, les bonnes odeurs, la bonne chere; mais a tout cela men desir ne s'attache que pour se plaire et non pour se travailler. Theophile is best known by his irregular tragedy, the Amours tragiques de Pirame et Thisbe, which Boileau ridiculed because of the lines: Le voila, le poignard qui du sang de son maitre S'est souille lachement; il en rougit, le trattre.' • This example of preciosity has been used to outweigh whatever good thing else there is in the play; though, as M. Jusserand points out in his work on the English novel, Gloucester in Henry VI says "See how my sword weeps for the poor king's death," and when Brutus stabbed Caesar the blood followed the dagger. As rushing out of doors to be resolved If Brutus so unkindly knocked or no. 268 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE The general spirit of Theophile's other verse, his stances, his odes, his elegies, is an appreciation of the soft and sometimes melancholy side of nature, though injured by the excesses of growing preciosity and by the obscenity into which he fell. Theophile was in spirit a poet of nature like Racan, but too often conformity to nature became with him jdelding to drink and debauchery. In this he is representative of the poetes bachiques. Notorious among these were d'Assoucy, Liniere, and Faret, pilloried by Boileau, the last of whom it has been said won immortality and scorn because his name had a convenient rhyme in cabaret; Jacques Des Barreaux, atheist and drunkard; Guillaimie CoUetet, the author of lives of the sixteenth-century poets, and his beggarly son Frangois. The greatest of the irregulars were Saint-Amant and Cyrano de Bergerac. Marc-Antoine de Gerard, sieur de Saint-Amant (i 594-1661), though a tavern poet, was a member of the Academy and a traveller to distant lands, England, Poland, Italy. He wrote grotesque poems or caprices, such as his Rome ridicule or Albion, and even his heroic and epic verse like the Mo'ise sauve was at times unconsciously grotesque when, to repeat the instance at which Boileau laughed, the astonished fish hastened to gaze from their walls of water at the Hebrews passing by them through the Red Sea. But in shorter and less ambitious poems, such as la Solitude or le Contemplateur, Saint-Amant shows the romantic touch of nature which is one of the characteristics of his school and which the Classicists discard. Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655), a follower of Gassendi, though not a Gascon himself had the Gascon tempera- ment and served in a Gascon military company, making himself the talk of Paris by his duels and brawls. His tragedy Agrippine contains the character of Sejanus who seemed to the people of To this may be added Crashaw's "Nympha [for lympha] pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit," ("The conscious water saw its God and blushed ") of the miracle of water turned to wine, or the " Unmannerly breech'd with gore" of Macbeth. THE REFORM IN POETRY 269 the time the mouthpiece of an atheistical author. His comedy le Pedant joue, though dull in itself, was important enough to give suggestions to Racine for his Plaideurs and to Moliere for his Fourberies de Scapin. His imaginary journeys to the moon and to the sun, stuffed with pseudo-science and a vehicle for disquisitions by fiction on manners and morals, were a model for Gulliver's Travels and Voltaire's Micromegas. His corre- spondence is in the worst style of fantastic preciosity. Cyrano was not a genius, but his intellectual boldness and unconyen- tionality made him push on beyond his contemporaries, and a little effort on the part of the modem reader enables him to read into Cyrano much that later knowledge has determined, and to see in him a forerunner of many doctrines of modern science and evolution. His nearest approach to majesty is in certain pas- sages of the Agrippine, where phrases on Ufe and death and the mystery of the hereafter have made some think that he knew and was influenced by Shakspere. The similarities do not, however, in all probability go beyond the influence of common models and inspiration. CHAPTER III THE REFORM IN PROSE AND THE GROWTH OF CRITICISM, BALZAC, THE ACADEMY, VAUGELAS, CHAPELAIN THE efforts of a professional stylist like Malherbe had their counterpart in prose. Since the seventeenth century itself it has been customary to couple the name of Balzac with that of Malherbe, as doing for prose what Malherbe did for poetry; "Malherbe et Balzac si savants en beaux mots," says Moliere in les Femmes savantes. This is to exaggerate Balzac's value, and his flatulent periods stand for little as compared with the work of Descartes or of Pascal. But in his own day he was perhaps even more esteemed than Malherbe. The contribution to seventeenth-century Classicism comes more from the dogmatic criticism of Chapelain and the efforts of the Academy, including Vaugelas, to give expression to the principles which Chapelain exemplified. Balzac is not, however, without importance in literature, and he did make some interesting contributions to the intellectual theories of his time. Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (1597-1654), after traveUing in his youth in Holland and Italy, withdrew to Angoul^me and to his remote estate of Balzac near there, where, except for a few visits to Paris, he spent the rest of his life. His weak health partly explains his solitude as "ermite de la Charente." But he was sought out as an oracle and elected a member of the new Acad- emy, which he attended only a few times. At the H6tel de Ramtouillet, where again he was but rarely present in person, his word was law and his ideas were conveyed by letters and by written discourses or dissertations addressed to Mme de Ram- bouillet. In addition to his correspondence and discours, 270 THE REFORM IN PROSE 271 Balzac's chief writings were the Prince, the Socrate chretien and the posthumous Aristippe. Through the sixteenth century, even or especially in Mon- taigne, prose had found expression in dragging and involved sentences, in which neither the meaning of the individual word was clearly defined nor the arrangement of parts consistent and logical. Balzac found the language as diffuse as Descartes did the thought. He became, as Sainte-Beuve calls him, the great epistolographer and builder of phrases. He polished his sen- tences and rounded out his periods, making of language a sonor- ous and rhythmic instrument, not musical but ponderous, measured, and majestic, aiming perhaps more at dignity than at meaning. It was the self-conscious iloquence or rhetoric of the Latinist. "Now that we are by ourselves," anecdote reports Balzac as saying, "we can talk without being on our guard against solecisms." The defects of such a style are obvious : its strained antitheses and metaphors. It was a sort of pompous "verbocination," and Balzac was accused of "philautia." Nevertheless, he did good in making writers consider how they said a thing, and Bossuet's style is the perfection of what is seen in embryo in Balzac. Aside from this, Balzac illustrated in his writings two impor- tant conceptions of the seventeenth century : the ancient Roman and the honnete homme or gentleman. The steadfast, cold patriot of Amyot and of Comeille appears in Balzac, and he also tries to analyse the polished man of the world of the days of Augustus and Maecenas, noble, dignified, courteous, the type of urbanite as opposed to rusticity, or to the vulgariU with the invention of which Mme de Stael is credited in the nineteenth century. So the chevalier de Mere said: "On pourrait ^tre fort homme de bien, et fort malhonnSte homme. II ne faut qu'Stre juste pour ^tre homme de bien, et pour ^tre honnete homme il se faut connaitre a toutes sortes de biens6ances et les savoir pratiquer." There is occasionally something Chesterfieldian about him. Balzac himself likens the honnete homme to the "highminded 272 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE man" or /ieyaXoi/oixos of Aristotle's Ethics, disdainful, preferring to do a service rather than to receive one, truthloving, never strong in his admirations, slow and dignified in demeanor, never excited. Thus to Andrew Marvell, Charles I was the true gentleman at the moment of his execution: He nothing common did nor mean Upon that memorable scene. But with his keener eye The axe's edge did try: Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite, To vindicate his helpless right; But bowed his comely head Down, as upon a bed. Such are the ideas which Balzac develops in his dissertations to Mme de Rambouillet on le Romain, De la conversation des Ro- mains, and Mecenas. The Prince is a survey of France under Louis XIII and an idealised portrait, full of flattery, of Louis le Juste. Aristippe discusses the court and the statesman. Literary improvement was also the object of the formal establishment of the Academy, though its origin was the result of chance. About 1629, Pellisson the early historian of the Academy tells us, various men of letters fell into the way of meeting regularly at the house of Valentin Conrart, the talented writer, who lived in bachelor quarters near the centre of the town. Among them were Godeau, Gombauld, Chapelain, Giry, Habert, Cerizay, and Malleville. The meetings were followed by a walk or by a collation. They were at first kept secret, but indirectly the news reached Richelieu, whose emissary Boisrobert tried to persuade the members to form a definite organisation for the advancement of letters. There were models in the numerous Italian academies of the Renaissance, such as the Intronati of Siena, the della Crusca of Florence, the Humoristi and Fantastici of Rome, the Olimpici of Vicenza, the Innominati of Parma, the Ardenti of Naples, and many others. Indeed, the Academic du Palais could still be remembered as a model THE REFORM IN PROSE 273 near at home, and the Academic florimontane of Savoy in the beginning of the seventeenth century was probably not forgotten. There was much hesitation in yielding, but in 1634 Conrart married, and the cardinal's pressure had its effect. By 1636 the Academy was organised, though the Parlement, jealous of Richelieu, did not ratify the charter until 1637. The members were men of contemporary importance, often forgotten today, but in the seventeenth century itself, Pascal, Descartes, and MoUere were never members. There was doubt as to a suitable name. Should it be " Academie des beaux esprits," or " Academie de I'eloquence," or "Academie eminente" in honor of RicheHeu? There was uncertainty as to an occupation, and the early meet- ings were taken up by lectures and addresses, as one on "le je ne sais quoi." Finally a definite plan was evolved comprising the study and codification of all the elements of French language and style. There was to be a dictionary to register the words, a grammar to classify expressions, a rhetoric, and a poetic. Of these the dictionary alone was carried out, and the first edition did not appear until 1694. The grammatical studies of Vauge- las took the place of the second scheme, and the worlds on rhetoric and poetry were never attempted. But the influence of the Academy since its foundation has been one of the strongest in the history of France, in organising and directing official literary theory, and in determining what is correct. Its effect has been at times reactionary; it has stood in the way of intellectual progress, it has often been fifty years behind the times. Its power has not been the less great. Claude Favre de Vaugelas (1585-1650), a native of Savoy, wrote the Remarques sur la langue frangaise (1647), ^^ which he taught good use as test of French, taking as norm the language of polite society, especially ladies, of the court and of the best writers. Vaugelas became the great authority of the seventeenth century, the more so that he was not, like other critics, a rigid dogmatist promulgating laws for eternity, but on the contrary a recorder of current speech. He admitted the possibility of 2 74 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE changes and was merely careful to select the expressions of those a priori likely to be persons of taste and refinement. Jean Chapelain (i 595-1674) was the recognised leader in criticism and considered, with scarcely any justification, a great poet as well. His own opinion may be seen in the list of pensions he drew up for Colbert. Corneille was to receive 2000 livres, Moliere 1000, Cotin 1200, Racine 800, and "Au sieur Chapelain, le plus grand poete franjais qui ait jamais ete et du plus solide jugement, 2000 livres." Chapelain was an example of efifort misplaced, for anything more prosaic among poets can scarcely be imagined. Still, he must be reckoned with decidedly in the history of the growth of Classicism. Chapelain, who was a man of education familiar with ancient and modern languages, began in literature by a preface in 1623 to the Adone of the Italian Marino, in which he formulated the theory of the epopee pacifique. He became a frequenter of the H6tel de Rambouillet, translated Don Guzman de Alfarache, took part in the gatherings at Conrart's, wrote an ode to Riche- lieu which earned for him the succession to Malherbe's place in favor. In 1632 he became secretary to the king. It was he who promulgated anew the theory of the unities, planned the diction- ary of the Academy, drew up the judgment of the Academy on Corneille's Cid. Rather unexpectedly we find him in 'his dialogue De la lecture des vieux romans, a conversation with Manage and Sarrasin, taking the defence of the old medieval romances. In literature Chapelain is found intimate with Mile de Scu- dery, as well as with the Hdtel de Rambouillet, and to her he is said to have suggested the carte de Tendre, for which she has been so much ridiculed. And in 1656, after years of incubation, appeared the first twelve books of his epic, la Pucelle. This application of the theories of the Humanistic epic, in which erudition and pompousness of detail took the place of poetry, was a great disappointment to his admirers: "C'est Men beau," said Mme de Longueville, "mais c'est bien ennuyeux." The THE REFORM IN PROSE 275 last twelve books were not printed until the nineteenth century, as a literary curiosity. Boileau turned loose the shafts of his ridicule on Chapelain, as a pedant and bore, but later chapters of this history will show that we cannot repeat Boileau's "Ma muse, laissons Chapelain pour la derniere fois." For, though uninspired by the divine fire, he is, for good or ill, important in the development of the Classical theory. As a critic he erected into law and dogma the analysed tendencies of the different literary types. Literature is thus treated as a science rather than an art, the individual genius of the great author is left in the background, and it is assumed that, by the study of rules drawn from the works of the master, one can become a poet. CHAPTER IV THE LITERARY IDEALS OF SOCIETY. THEIR EXAGGERATIONS CRITICS from Voltaire to Brunetiere have dwelt upon the "social" quality of French literature, its tendency to come from the contact of mind with mind and wit with wit, rather than from the lonely genius, and therefore to be at its best where the intellects of men and women meet. It is no less a commonplace to point out the tremendous influence women have had in French Uterature. The poetry of courtly love in the Middle Ages, and that of Platonic love in the sixteenth century, were much more definitely modelled by women than through the vague raptures of a poet singing to his mistress. In the eighteenth century the salons are all powerful. In the seven- teenth century women exercise almost as definite a sway. Even when the two sexes keep apart, the French tendency toward a grouping of talents and of common interests is striking, and the annals of French literary history are sprinkled with the names of schools, coteries, and cliques. In the seventeenth century the convergent tendency is shown as strongly as ever. The universalising of the literary spirit and the diminution of the individual element, for the sake of the more impersonal one approved by a general "reason" or a com- mon "good sense," could but be fostered by social intercourse. Mile de Scudery is quoted as saying: "Les plus honnStes femmes du monde, quand elles sont un grand nombre ensemble ne disent jamais rien qui vaille, et s'ennuient plus que si elles 6taient seules. . . . Au contraire, il y a je ne sais quoi, que je ne sais comment exprimer, qui fait qu'un honnfite homme rejouit 276 THE LITERARY IDEALS OF SOCIETY 277 et divertit plus une compagnie de dames, que la plus honnSte femme du monde ne saurait le faire." To this modest statement of Mile de Scudery on behalf of her sex it may be rejoined that, however influential the group of men gathered about Richelieu at the Palais-Cardinal or in the new Academy, these' coteries had their greatest charm when presided over by a talented woman like Mme de Rambouillet or Mile de Scudery herself. Mme des Loges (i 584-1641) was about the first to open a literary salon in Paris, as Mme des Roches had done at Poitiers in the sixteenth century. But Richelieu objected to the meet- ings at the house of a zealous Protestant, and she left the capi- tal in 1629. Mme de Rambouillet has won infinitely more fame. The marquise de Rambouillet (1588-1665) was a prominent lady of society, whose delicate health made her imable to put up with the coarse pleasures of a nobility largely trained in the traditions of the civil wars and the boisterousness dear to Henry IV. Her fastidiousness was shocked as well. She resolved, therefore, to withdraw from participation in the busy world, and to draw about her friends of refinement in sympathy with her own tastes and, above all, intellectual people. In order to provide a place of meeting she remodelled her town residence in the rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, and there, from the end of the first decade of the century, she welcomed people of talent, regardless of their rank and fortune. The staircase of the build- ing was set more in the middle of the house than was custom- ary in the architecture of those days, and it admitted one to various nooks and small rooms which facilitated the breaking up of a large company into informal circles. The hostess, as was the frequent custom then, received her friends reclining upon the bed in her own room, which in this case was decorated with blue draperies, and admitted the more favored friends to sit in the riielle or space between the bed and the wall. As it became fashionable for gentlemen and ladies in the literary set to replace their names by a more fanciful and fantastic nomenclature in 278 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE order to get away from the prosaic everyday world, Mme de Rambouillet was called Arthenice, an anagram of her name Catherine. These explanations are necessary to make us under- stand the numerous allusions to the "chambre bleue d'Arthe- nice," and when we hear, of reduits, alcoves, ruelles, and ronds liitiraires, we have names for the salons of which Mme de Rambouillet's was the chief, and in the alc&uistes and coureurs de ruelles we recognise the confirmed frequenters of society. In these gatherings, of which the H6tel de Rambouillet is probably as much an example as a cause, people spent their time in refined and witty conversation. It was necessary to be clever and graceful in language and demeanor. A constant topic was love in its various forms; but, inasmuch as love was conceived not as a grande passion, but as a refined and quintes- sentiated sentiment, eternal indeed in duration, but finding vent in harmless soupirs and flammes, it may be seen how love could always be discussed, though with a monotonous sameness. The sentimental guide was d'Urfe's Astree, of which the successive parts appeared at intervals of several years, and in the hero and heroine of which society saw the patterns of perfect lovers. In this way the ideal of the gentleman, which even in Balzac's hero has a certain aloofness, is softened, and the honnete homme becomes at the same time a galant homme. A list of the habitues of the H6tel de Rambouillet would be an almost exhaustive catalogue of the intellectual people of the day. Mere courtiers were neglected and took it out in laughing at Mme de Rambouillet's "follies." Others foimd reputation there more than elsewhere. During the long history of the Hotel one saw there Richelieu, Chapelain, Malherbe, and Racan, Balzac and Corneille when they came to Paris, Conrart and Vaugelas, the novelist Gombauld, the poets Godeau and Georges de Scudery, the gossip Tallemant, the epigrammatist Cotin. Among the ladies was Mme de Rambouillet's daughter Julie d'Angennes, for whom the marquis de Montausier sighed for THE LITERARY IDEALS OF SOCIETY 279 thirteen years before he won her and to whom he addressed on one of her birthdays the Guirlande de Julie, a garland of poems on different flowers by various poets. There were also, among others, Mile de Scudery, who soon ruled a salon of her own, and Mile Paulet, "la belle lionne," so called for her magnificent mane of tawny hair. When the NeapoUtan poet and adventurer Marino came to Paris in 161 5 at the invitation of Marie de Medicis and of Concini, he found respite from the composition of the Adone by radiating his wit and "conceits" upon the cercle of Mme de Rambouillet, until the fall of Concini and the coming of Luynes changed matters and he returned to Italy. It is customary to divide the history of the H6tel de Rambouil- let into three periods the dates of which must by no means be held rigidly. The first stretches from about 1618, when the bel air really began to take the direction of Mme de Rambouillet's house, to the end of the first quarter of the century. The second stage up to the time of Julie's marriage in 1648 was the period of greatest magnificence; the third covered the days of Mme de Rambouillet's old age and decline until her death. So far it has been possible to speak of Mme de Rambouillet's circle without mentioning the deformation of taste called "pre- ciosity" which is so often linked with its name. The Hotel de Rambouillet was not, in truth, the home of preciosity in the sense which Moliere laughed at, though the tendencies led thereto. In the earlier years the aims of the marquise and her friends were entirely praiseworthy. But people who began with a wish to " debrutaliser " language and manners ended by over-refinement. They wished to improve expressions and fell into the quest for expressions as an aim in itself. This was a tendency which all great languages have undergone at different times, and the pre- ciosity of France is constantly compared, though with distinc- tions, to English euphuism, Spanish gongorism, and Italian marinism. The process is shown by the history of the word precieux itself, which originally had a good meaning like the 28o A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE English "exquisite" and then degenerated into an "affected exquisite." In English a "precious stone" is very different from a "precious rascal," and the very word "precious" was dear to the modern representatives of preciosity, the aesthetes of the early eighties. The tendencies of preciosity in France were twofold. At first the desire was to avoid anything common or vulgar or even commonplace, and/ a chair was called "la commodite de la con- versation." Then the mere pursuit of the substitute became an end in itself, and the true name was necessarily replaced, by a substitute or a paraphrase as a matter of course. The result was sometimes less pleasing, and a glass of water became a "bain interieur." M. Brunetiere pointed out that the language of preciosity was somewhat akin in its processes of substitution to the vocabulary of slang; but we' must remember that pre- ciosity at least wishes for a noble substitute. Many of the figures of speech of preciosity have, indeed, becorrie part and parcel of French, ^ and in Moli^re's comedies even there were as many new-fangled expressions, not recognized as such today through familiarity, as there are ridiculous pre- ciosities. The true precieux wanted to scintillate and to surprise by his cleverness at each unexpected turn. Hence his most frequent device was the pointe, an intellectual play upon thought, though not necessarily an actual pun. When the writer became con- scious of his trick and carried it to the point of revelling in his own inventions for mere fim's sake and without any ulterior motive except satire, we com6 upon the methods of "burlesque." The copious burlesque literature of the early seventeenth century, as Brunetiere also points out, is an offshoot of preciosity rather than its enemy or reaction from it. The habit of social intercourse of which the H6tel de Ram- "Such as "cMtier son style," "briller dans la conversation." Pre- ciosity helped to improve spelling by cutting out redundant letters of the sixteenth-century grammarians. THE LITERARY IDEALS OF SOCIETY 281 bouillet is the type became prevalent, and every lady who , thought herself "du beau monde" or "en passe de I'^tre" tried to form a salon and manage a minor H6tel de Rambouillet. Mme de Sable did so, but especially Madeleine de Scudery (1607-1701) whose Saturday gatherings, over which she pre- sided under the name of Sappho ("les samedis de Sapho"), aimed at being even a little more literary than those of Mme de Rambouillet, but were somewhat less distinguished in tone, more bourgeois, and distinctly more precieux. This worthy lady, whose life took in the birth and death of Moliere, La Fontaine, Pascal, Racine, and La Bruyere, and whose works were translated into English, German, Italian, Latin, and, it is said, Arabic, had as particular intimates Pellisson, the historian of the Academy, called "Acante" or, because of his ugliness, the "Apollon du samedi," and Godeau, bishop of Vence, the "mage de Sidon." Then there were Conrart or Theodamas, Sarras^n or Polyandre, Menage, and Cyrano, and among the ladies Madeleine Robineau or Roxane who has risen to a new fame through Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. These ladies and gentlemen tinged their pastimes with a literary hue, and on the famous journee des madrigaux all composed poems, except Isarn, who was thought so clever because he wrote: Je pourrais bien faire sans peine Quelque fort m6chant madrigal, Mais pour ne le point faire mal Je veux un delai de quinzaine. The incarnation of the spirit of preciosity is found in the arbiter elegantiarum, the unofficial master of ceremonies of the H6tel de Rambouillet, Vincent Voiture (1598-1648). He was the son of a wine-dealer, without genius, but by his cleverness got on in society. The ladies jested at him and called him "Chiquito," but Voiture was the organiser of all the dances and excursions. Or he would play practical jokes, introduce a bear into Mme de Rambouillet's room, smear his face with 282 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE flour and "boo" at the ladies, make love to them, and write half-witty, half-obscene poems about them or adapt foreign conceits, like the following imitation of Lope de Vega: Ma foi, c'est fait de moi: car Isabeau M'a conjure de lui faire un rondeau, Cela me met en une peine extreme. Quoi! treize vers, huit en eau, cinq en erne! Je lui ferais aussitot un bateau. En voila cinq pourtant en un monceau, Faisons en huit, en invoquant Brodeau, Et puis mettons par quelque stratageme: Ma foi, c'est fait. Si je pouvais encore de mon cerveau Tirer cinq vers I'ouvrage serait beau. Mais cependant je suis dedans I'onzieme, Et si je crois que je fais le douzienie, En voila treize ajustes au niveau: Ma foi, c'est fait! Yet Voiture is not really to be sneered at. His poems and particularly his correspondence, at a time when Balzac was beating the bass drum, helped to preserve delicacy of style. His esteem in his own country is shown by the quarrel of the Uranistes and the Jobelins, partisans of the Uranie of Voiture and the Job of Benserade. All society divided into upholders of these rival trifles, and they even stood for cliques in the political intrigues of the Fronde. Voiture's fame abroad is shown by the epistle of Pope to Mrs. Blount: Sure to charm all was his peculiar fate, Who without flatt'ry pleased the Fair and Great; Still with esteem no less convers'd than read, With wit well-natured, and with books well-bred : His heart his mistress and his friend did share, His time the Muse, the witty and the fair. Thus wisely careless, innocently gay, Cheerful he play'd the trifle Life, away; Till Fate scarce felt his gentle breath supprest, THE LITERARY IDEALS OF SOCIETY 283 As smiling infants sport themselves to rest. Ev'n rival Wits did Voiture's death deplore, And the gay mourn'd who never mourn'd before; The truest hearts for Voiture heav'd with sighs, Voiture was wept by all the brightest eyes: The Smiles and Loves had died in Voiture's death, But that forever in his lines they breathe. CHAPTER V TEE NOVEL. THE EPIC. SATIRE OF the literary genres which marked the seventeenth century the drama was by far the most flourishing. Satire was prolific, but so intermixed with the burlesque and the grotesque that, except in Boileau, we have practically no writers of the Classic standard. The epic was abimdant but valueless. The novel, on the other hand, which as a modern type escapes the observation of the lawmakers, is at least historically, if not in- trinsically, of the greatest interest. It shares too, in the ideal and the burlesque strain, but throughout the first half of the century it is quite non-Classical. The length of the romances is, according to our notions, appalling. The tale is one of troubled love, wherein the senti- mental pride or hesitation of hero or heroine are often the chief obstacle to a imion for which, by rank and identity of feeling, the youths are fitted. Consequently the reader is treated to conversations and disquisitions on all kinds of loVe: passionate, tender, faithful, jealous, and what not. Usually it was the senti- mental galanterie which appealed to the good society of the day, where it spread through the success of d'Urfe's tender novel Astrte. The period described was legendary or semi-historical and the plot was interspersed with subsidiary episodes, conversa- tions, discussions, poems, letters, and word-portraits. In Astr&e the author, through imitation of the methods of his Italian precursors, stops the narrative upon the arrival of each new character to relate his entire biography up to that point. In the romances of Mile de Scud6ry we are treated to those madrigals, enigmas, bouts-rimes, letters, and portraits which are 284 THE NOVEL 285 the butt of Moliere's Precieuses ridicules and of Boileau's H6ros de roman. But the novel and society, taken together, throw most interesting light upon the thoughts of polite society in those days. Says Pierre du Ryer in les Vendanges de Suresnes: TJn homme de neant. . . . Pourvu qu'il sache un mot des livres de VAstrie, C'est le plus grand esprit de toute la contree. This work, the first great modern French novel, was begun in 1607 by Honore d'Urfe (1567 or 8-1625), but the last parts did not appear until after his death when they were com- pleted by his secretary Balthazar Baro. D'Urfe was a native of the remote district of Forez toward the centre of France and, hke all his contemporaries, travelled in Italy, in the pastoral literature of which country he found one of the chief inspirations of his own romance. For AstrSe is a compound of the neo-chivalry of the Middle Ages popular- ised in France by the Amadis de Gaule and the stories of Oriane and the beau tenebreux; of the Alexandrian pastoral romance renewed by Amyot's translations; and of the modem pastoral such as the Spanish Diana of Montemayor, the Arcadia of San- nazaro, the Pastor fido of Guarini, the Aminta of Tasso, even of minor works Hke writings of Luigi Grotto or the Filli di Sciro of Guidubaldo Bonarelli: Contemporaneous with the composi- tion of d'Urfe's novel came the influence of the sugary book of religious love and mysticism, the Introduction a la vie devote of d'Urfe's friend Saint Frangois de Sales. There is no necessary connection of direct influence between the two, but the similarity was realised even in those days, and Camus called Astree the "br6viaire des courtisans" and Saint Frangois's book the "breviaire des gens de bien." The scene of d'Urfe's novel is laid in his own Forez country on the banks of the winding Lignon. The period is the fifth century of the Christian era, and we are supposed to move in an 286 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE idealised world of shepherds and shfepherdesses, of knights and " nymphs," of druids and vestals, whose flutes and ribbons are not to be taken too seriously and in whom it is easy to recognise the people, the nobility, the clergy, and the nuns of the author's own time. There are even keys to the novel and, with more or less imagination, one is at liberty to read into the book the personal experiences of d'Urfe and to see in characters like Euric Henry IV, or in Galathee Marguerite de Valois. The plot relates the faithful and long drawn-out love of the trim young shepherd Celadon for the beautiful and loving, yet proud and jealous shepherdess Astree and the woes which grew from a misunderstanding. As Celadon is the faithful lover, so Hylas, " I'inconstant Hylas," is the type of the fickle breaker of hearts, and Sylvandre discourses upon Platonic love. This novel was a godsend to the seventeenth century. It gave writers of plays a rich mine of material from which to draw episodes, it supplied the H6tel de Rambouillet and polite society with countless problems of love casuistry to discuss. Celadon stood for the embodiment of grace and beauty in the heroes of romance and of the drama for a generation to come, and his name yet lingers in France as that of a light shade of green. Marin Leroy de Gomberville (1600-1674) or, to give him due honor, Thalassius Basilides a Gombervilla, one of the founders of the Academy, wrote at the period of renewal of interest in military exploits, after the reaction against the warfare of the sixteenth century typefied by the pastoral idyls of Astree, and at the time of explorations in the remote new world. The shepherds of Astree gradually yield in Carithee to knights. In Polexandre the scenes lie in distant lands; in la Jeune Alcidiane, written after Gomberville became a Jansenist, the influence of that sect is to be descried. The tone of religious morality is to be found in the tales of bishop Camus, of pseudo-history in Desmarets's Ariane. But the Gascon Gautier de Coste de la Calprenede (1609 or 10-1663) THE NOVEL 287 was the most famous writer between d'Urfe and Mile de Scudery, and in England translations of his Cassandre, Cleopdtre, and Faramond continued their French success until well into the eighteenth century. Richardson's Pamela put an end to their vogue. La Calprenede strengthens the historical romance at the time when Corneille in his tragedies is also turning to history. He cultivates the swashbuckler style associated with the Gascon, and the expression "her comme Artaban" is used by many a Frenchman today who has never heard of the Cassandre in which that proud Persian appears. The climax of the romantic novel is reached in the works of Mile de Scudery to whom her brother Georges lent the credit of his name. Ibrahim, ou Vlllustre Bassa turned attention to the Orient which seemed as remote and as imaginary as antiquity. Artamene, ou le Grand Cyrus told how the great conqueror of antiquity under the name of Artamene made love to his "belle Mandane," and finally Clelie described the tender romance of heroic lovers in the early days of Rome. The romances of Mile de Scudery have a quahty of modernity, in that she is supposed to be seeing the deeds of Conde in her novel of Artamene and to have meant Conde in describing Cyrus, as weU as incidents of the Fronde in Clelie. But they reach the climax of preciosity in style, and of artificial galanterie in love- making and in the conversation and literary occupations of her characters. The description by Madelon in les Pr.icieuses ridicules is no exaggeration of what romance was to Mile de Scudery: II faut qu'un amant, pour fetre agreable, sache debiter les beaux sentiments, pousser le doux, le tendre et le passionne, at que sa recherche soit dans les formes. Premierement, 11 doit voir au temple, ou a la promenade, ou dans quelque ceremonie publique, la per- sonne dont il deviant amouraux; ou bien Stre conduit fatalament chaz elle par un parent ou un ami, et sortir de la tout r6veur et melancolique. II cache un temps sa passion a I'objet aime, et 288 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE cependant lui rend plusieurs visites, ou Ton ne manque jamais de mettre sur le tapis une question galante qui exerce les esprits de I'assemblee. Le jour de la declaration arrive, qui doit se faire ordinairement dans une allee de quelque jardin, tandis que la com- pagnie s'est un peu eloignee: et cette declaration est suivie d'un prompt courroux, qui parait a notre rongeur et qui, pour un temps, bannit I'amant de notre presence. Ensuite il trouve moyen de nous apaiser, de nous accoutumer insensiblement au discours de sa passion, et de tirer de nous cet aveu qui fait tant de peine. Apres cela vien- nent les aventures, les rivaux qui se jettent a la traverse d'une inclina- tion etablie, les persecutions des peres, les jalousies confues sur les fausses apparences, les plaintes, les desespoirs, et tout ce qui s'en suit. Voila comment les choses se traitent dans les belles mani- eres; et ce sont des regies dont, en bonne galanterie, on ne saurait se dispenser. The novel of sentimental analysis was badly damaged by the satire of Moliere and of Boileau, and the psychological novel of Mme de la Fayette took its place. But there had been almost from the beginning a parallel current of realistic and satirical novels to offset the effect of the romances. Charles Sorel (1602-1674), whose spirit of satire caused Moliere to draw from him in many a play, wrote the Histoire comique de Francion, a picaresque novel before Gil Bias, as a reaction against the fantastic pastoral taking place in Nowhere- land. The action is now in the streets of Paris, the characters • are modern Frenchmen, and the scenes occur often in taverns and in places of ill-repute. People like Malherbe, Racan, Balzac, and Mile de Gournay appear in disguise in the pages. The Berger extravagant is a direct parody of the pastoral romance. Antoine Furetiere's Roman bourgeois is a realistic story of life among the middle classes and of petty legal bickerings. The Page disgracie of Tristan I'Hermite and the works of Cyrano de Bergerac must be mentioned in seventeenth-century fiction. Paul Scarron (1610-1660) wrote many nouvelles usually drawn from the Spanish, like les Hypocrites which helped Moliere in his Tartuffe, or la Precaution inutile paralleled in VEcole des THE NOVEL 289 femmes. But his chief work was the Roman comique, a narrative of life among travelling actors or "barn-stormers." This story has incorrectly been thought to describe Moli^re's wanderings through the provinces. But though it deals with a more obscure company, its characters have interesting individualities, and one of them, the townsman Ragotin, has entered the gallery of portraits of French dupes and butts. The book is invaluable in giving a picture of the life of itinerant comedians in the seventeenth century, such as Th^ophile Gautier tried to make poetical in his romance le Capitaine Fracasse. The title, in all probability, was meant by Scarron to signify the " story of actors " or "comedians," and not a "comic story." ' The epic genre supplies some of the worst examples of seven- teenth-century literature. It is, of course, foolish to repeat the hackneyed phrase "les Frangais n'ont pas la t^te epique" when we remember that in the Middle Ages France supplied epic poetry to all Europe. But in the seventeenth century the only form cultivated was the learned epic of the tradition repre- sented by the Franciade, though historical rather than purely mythological. The results were as unfortunate. Rules as rigid as for the drama were evolved, drawn from previous writers or inferred from them. Because tragedy was limited in time to a day it became fashionable to bound the epic by a year; in style it had to be rich in episodes and descriptions whether called for or not; in subject-matter it was, at any rate at first, consid- ered an historical or a semi-historical romance in verse with a moral aim, intended to inculcate ethical precepts. This was one of its chief inner differences from the prose romance. A noteworthy production of epics came about the middle of the century. They were of decidedly unequal length, the more ambitious aiming at Homeric proportions. Georges de Scudery's Alaric was almost a novel of preciosity in verse, with its "fes- tons" and " astragales" which roused Boileau's ire; the Clovis of Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin was a semi-chivalric poem; the 'So the modern Histoire comique of Anatole France. 290 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Pucelle of Chapelain, on Jeanne d'Arc, was versified history; the Childebrand, later Charles M artel, of Carel de Sain te- Garde made Boileau scold the author in his Art poetique as a "poete ignorant," though the latter had the easy retort that "Childe- brand" is no more cacophonous than "Achille"; Le Laboureur wrote a long Charlemagne and Pellisson an Eurymedon. Then there were religious or semi-religious poems by the Pere Lemoyne on Saint Louis, by Saint-Amant {Moise sauve), Godeau (Saint Paul), Perrault (Saint Paulin), and Coras. It is to be noticed that in nearly all of these poems the Christian religion enters the epic as a component part. The so-called merveilleux in the shape of prodigies by allegorical personages, or of magic, or of the supernatural known as the merveilleux Chretien were all indiscriminately used as incidents or accidents of the poems. But in Boileau's Art poetique and in the Traite du poeme epique of the Pere Le Bossu (1675) there is a somewhat different attitude toward certain elements of the epic. Boileau suggests nothing to make it more human and even tends to prevent it from touching the feelings by proscribing the merveilleux chretien, perhaps because of the austerity of his Jansenist proclivities. Boileau, too, looks upon the appropriate subject of the epic as fiction or fable rather than history. The epic poem "se soutient par la fable et vit de fiction." The work of the P. Le Bossu is an elaborate treatise in six books, defining the epic "un discours invente avec art, pour former les mceurs par des instructions deguisees sous les allegories d'une action rmportante, qui est racontee en vers d'une maniere vraisemblable, divertissante et m-erveilleuse." Hence the divinities, at least, of the story intro- duced as much allegory as appeared in mediaeval works like the Roman de la Rose, though they did not bear names as obviously indicating their roles. The author designates them as machines. Satire in the seventeenth century takes two forms, either the formal Horatian type or the uncouth burlesque. Unfortunately THE NOVEL 291 for the dignity of the genre the Horatian satire was marked rather by the grossness of Juvenal, and Regnier was outdone by writers Uke Courval-Sonnet and Du Lorens. They are, however, almost the only ones deserving mention between Regnier and Boileau. The burlesque satirists were numerous enough, and their writings show many of the forms of expression belonging to the tavern poets of the libertine set. The leading ones were Scarron and d'Assoucy. Scarron's most famous satirical work was a parody of part of the .^neid, le Virgiletravesti, in a style thought uproariously funny, but of which the following lines, rendering the passage in the second book in which ^neas begins his narrative to Dido ("Infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem"), may be a su^cient sample for readers of today : Voyant que la reine obstinee Prenait plaisir a se brfiler, Et ne pouvait plus reculer, n se releva la moustache, S'ajuste en son lit, tousse, crache, Puis se voyant bien ecoutg II dit avecque gravite: "O men Dieu! la f§,clieuse chose Que votre majeste m'impose! C'est justement m'egratigner Un endroit qu'on fera saigner." CHAPTER VI THE DRAMA WITH the plays of Garnier and of Montchrestien the tragedies of the Humanistic tradition cease to be of importance. But the national drama, in spite of the monopoly of the Hotel de Bourgogne, acquires greater variety and freedom, develops into varied and transformed genres,. axi6., before long, other temporary theatres and then a permanent rival one appear. As early as 1577 the Italian Gelosi had acted in Paris at the Hotel du Petit-Bourbon. They had as director at the passing of the century Niccolo Barbieri or Beltrame, and a famous and beautiful actress named Isabella Andreini. The Italian come- dians, whose sojourns in Paris were at first temporary and not until later permanent, gave plays in their own language and then, as Italian became less familiar in the seventeenth century, in French. They imported or composed specimens of the written comedy, commedia sostenuta, and especially of the im- provised comedy, commedia deU'arte, in which stock characters like the pedant, the pantaloon, the bully, filled in with improvisa- tion and horseplay a plot merely blocked out beforehand. When Moliere, during his youth and adolescence, was feeling the dramatic impulse stirring within him it was the comedy of the Italians that fed his hunger. There were Spanish actors off and on during the first half of the seventeenth century, but they were less popular, in spite of the vogue of the Spanish plays as models for French ones. Other actors came also from the provinces toward the end of the sixteenth century. By 1599 the Confr6rie de la Passion, 292 THE DRAMA 293 though still claiming a monopoly, had practically given way to Valleran Lecomte. His organisation, or its lineal successor, with occasional interruptions of several years at a time, became after 1628 the leading Paris company, the troupe royale, acting plays of all kinds. With flowery Bellerose and fat Montfleury, the actors, the theatre of the H6tel de Bourgogne was until the sec- ond half of the seventeenth century the great home of the drama. Another actor-manager known as Mondory, a vigorous and bombastic tragedian, was a rival of the actors of the Hotel de Bourgogne and out-Heroded Herod so well that once in playing the part in Tristan's Mariane he had a stroke of apoplexy. After various provisional abiding-places, .and winning success with Comeille's Mdite, he established himself at the Theatre du Marais about 1634. When he had to withdraw, the theatre deteriorated somewhat and was partly devoted to spectacular plays or pieces a machines. In spite of temporary rivals these two theatres were, until the advent of MoHere, the two great Paris playhouses. In the early decades of the century VaUeran Lecomte had with him a writer of plays named Alexandre Hardy (circa 1570- 1631 or 2). This man was a representative of the unhappy class of hired authors who accompanied bands of actors, ranking even lower than they did in social esteem, and for a few pieces of money writing play after play, discarded and destroyed as soon as the vogue was over. It was a sorry occupation for Hardy, obliged to turn out plays by the hundreds, one hardly dares to say how many for only thirty-three remain, and he had no chance to think of literary art. But he did have the oppor- tunity to gain practical experience of stagecraft and to use all material at his command without heed of a priori theories. In the plays of Hardy which have survived not a line deserves to stand as literature, but there is much that pleased the audi- ences of those days. Hardy drew from all sources, and the drama under his touch began to diversify into the great richness which it showed in the early seventeenth century. He sympathised 294 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE with the school of Ronsard and in his tragedies tried to turn the genre cultivated by the Humanists into acting plays by cutting out the choruses and intensif3dng the action. He showed him- self friendly, witliin bounds, to the very language of the Pleiade and indirectly drew from antiquity. When the literary drama of the first half of the seventeenth century is in the full tide of success it is differentiated into four kinds: tragedy, tragi-comedy, comedy, and pastoral, and for some years the pastoral is the favorite of them all. Racan's Bergeries and plays by Mairet, Isaac du Ryer, Nicolas Chrestien, Baro, Rayssiguier, Pierre Troterel, and Antoine Marechal all testify to its fame, either before the vogue of Astree had made itself fully felt or during its fame. There was a hybrid genre called tragi-comedie pastorale. Beyoiid these divisions the riotous farce and half-acrobatic comedy were no less popular in the horseplay of Turlupin and his Turlupinades, or of Gautier Garguille, Guillot Gorju, and Gros Guillaimie turning somer- saults with their faces smeared with flour, or in the exhibitions of Tabarin called taharinades in the booths by the Pont-Neuf . Finally, the opera and the ballet, of which so much is heard in the second half of the seventeenth century, antedate that time. There had been composite performances of dance and music \mder the Italianised court of the Valois dynasty in the sixteenth century. Mazarin, with his Italian proclivities, gave the Finta Pazza at the Petit-Bourbon in 1645 ^.nd afterward the Orfeo and the Ercole amante. The ballet was much in favor during the reign of Loviis XIV and the vogue of Mohere, and the king himself used to dance until he thought it too histrionic and Nero-like. This variety of dramatic expression shows that the French stage in the seventeenth century was far from being narrow and confined. Under the days of the Classical school of 1660 the tragi-comedy and pastoral, it is true, disappear, but even then the opera and spectacular play and the comedy of the Italians share the stage with the tragedy bare of song and of stage-setting. THE DRAMA 295 The simplification of the drama, often considered as depending merely upon theoretical writings, was not without its practical side. It will be remembered that the Hotel de Bourgogne had inherited the old traditions of the miiltiple or simultaneous stage-setting of the Middle Ages, in which several places were shown at once. In the comparatively restricted stage-area it became necessary not only to reduce the number of places represented, but, even then, the spectator by a convention was obliged mentally to choose the portion of the background suited to the part of the play being acted. This led to an uncon- scious desire for simphfication by means of the unity pr vague- ness of place, and the unity of time could grow up too. The , ready acceptance of the new rules was a concrete formulation of this feeling. The new dramatic theorists are Scudery, La Mesnardiere, the Academy, and especially Chapelain and the abbe d'Aubignac. The definition of tragedy given by Scaliger and quoted in a previous chapter still subsists, though it has come down less by direct influence than by the teachings of the Dutchmen Heinsius and Vossius. The former's De constitutione tragoediae of 1611 was admired by all who studied the stage. It was Chapelain who, according to PelUsson, one day emm- ciated to a surprised group of listeners, including Richeheu, the theory of the imities. This doctrine, which was no new thing, had, however, all the unexpectedness of a new invention. Chape- lain in his teachings also dogmatised on the aims and divisions of dramatic poetry. It has as goal the imitation of himian actions; its necessary condition is verisimilitude or vraisemblance; its perfection is to arouse admiration or merveille: In tragedy the poet imitates the deeds of the great who, without being too good or too bad, come to an unhappy end. In comedy he shows people of lowly or of moderate station who meet with a happy fate. Tragi-comedy is a tragedy with a happy ending. The pastoral, an invention of the Italians and a development 296 A fflSTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of the eclogue, is a sort of tragi-comedy imitating the deeds of shepherds, but in a loftier mood and with nobler sentiments than is appropriate in the eclogue. A play should properly consist of three parts: the com- mencement, the embrouillement, the developpement, and the spectator must be kept in suspense from the begiiming to the end. Of the five acts, the first initiates us to the characters; the second gives the rise of the trouble; in the third the plot thickens; in the fourth things verge toward despair; in the fifth the plot is resolved unexpectedly but with vraisemblance, whence result admiration and wonder. Frangois Hedehn, abbe d'Aubignac (1604-1676), was a can- tankerous critic with a scholastic logic-chopping disposition. In his Pratique du theatre, partly written by 1640, but not pub- lished until 1657, he undertook to set forth in detail all the possi- ble characteristics of a play. His dogmatism led him to enunciate all his statements as precepts and laws, whether or not based on broad observation by himself , and his predecessors. His rules are all the expression of "Reason," and he does not hesitate to condemn even the greatest of the ancients when he finds them at variance with what he takes reason to be. The more constructive part of the abbe d'Aubignac's criticism deals with vraisemblance which involves the theories of the unities of time and place. Vraisemblance is conformity with the feelings of the spectators and is of two kinds: action and representation. By the first the poet must make his subject harmonise with the customs of his audience, even at the risk of violating historical truth and local coloring; by the second the sentiments and the. actual sensations of the audience were to be reconciled. The action was not to last much longer, nor extend over much more space, than could be actually observed in the time of representation. Just how great the actual time and space could be was not so easy to determine. It was a mere irritation to an author like Corneille to say that the scene must not pass beyond "I'espace dans lequel ime vue commune peut THE DRAMA 297 voir \m homme marcher," and to assert that the "revolution of the siin" to which, according to Aristotle, tragedy tries to con- form, must be twelve hours was a gratuitous assumption. But a poet like Racine, who presents a concentrated psychological crisis as plot, will often be able to assvmie an even briefer extent of time. Regular tragedy is first represented by a work of Jean de Mairet (1604-1686), who stands for the rules in opposition to the irregular drama by Hardy or of plays like Theophile's Pirame et Thisbe. Mairet is an example of what may be called the "sudden blossomer," who wins a few victories when young and is never again able to come up to his reputation. When a mere stripling he drew from d'Urf6's Astree material for Chryseide et Arimant. This was followed by Sylvie and then by Silvanire, both tragi-comedies pastorales and the latter accom- panied by a preface dealing with the new theories, which Comeille says induced him to write his Clitandre in accordance with the nales. After the comedy les Galanteries du due d'Ossonne there finally came in 1634 the famous Sophonisbe. This tragedy has .to the modem reader scarcely any intrinsic merit and is of importance merely chronologically as the first concrete example of the new school. The regular drama was fostered by Richelieu, who was always endeavoring to make his power felt in literature and who had itchings for authorship. He patronised particularly the new The2,tre du Marais, where tragedy tried to rival the irregular drama under the favor of the king at the H6tel de Bourgogne. He chose as sub-Maecenas and director of patron- age the abbe de Boisrobert, more a playwright than a priest and author of the comedy la Belle Pladdeuse. He annexed a group of five authors, Boisrobert, Comeille, I'Estoile, CoUetet, Rotrou, among whom Comeille soon showed too much indepen- dence of taste to succeed, in order to write out the dramas like laCom&die des Tuileries and I'Aveugle de Smyrne which he planned. Finally, he centred all his hopes on the costly production of 298 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE his own Mirapie, in which he was helped by Desmarets de Saint- Sorlin and for which he built a new hall at the Palais-Cardinal, where he led the applause of the play. The most famous writers of tragedies, though they did not confine themselves to this genre alone, were Pierre du Ryer (1606-1658), author of Lucrece, Alcyonee, Saiil, Esther, and Scevole; Georges de Scudery (1601-1667), author of la Mart de Cesar and Didon; Tristan I'Hermite (1601-1655), author of Mariane, la Mart de Seneque, and la Mart de Crispe. In comedy the seventeenth century has not much to brag of before MoUere. At first few in number, the plays increase in quantity about 1640. Such as there are show the influence of Spain as well as of Italy, and antiquity is for a time in abeyance. The plays are elaborations of intrigue, without any understand- ing of character-drawing, though the familiar tj^es appear in the parasite; the pedant; the doting old man; the intriguing woman or maquerelle; the nurse, soon to be a suivante; the valet, a compound of the Latin slave, the Italian servant, and the Spanish criado and gracioso; the boaster, a descendant of the miles gloriosus and a kinsman of Rodomont and of the capitano Spavento, or of the Gascon swashbuckler like d'Aubigne's baron de Fceneste and La Calprenede's Artaban or the d'Artagnan and Cyrano of Dumas and Rostand. The capitaine Fracasse thundered at the Hotel de Bourgogne, and Matamore, the slayer of Moors, strode the boards at the Theatre du Marais. The plays themselves were often indecent in the extreme, and Mairet's Galanteries du due d'Ossonne was as broad as a modern French vaudeville. D'Ouville, a brother of Boisrobert, was one of the first to draw from Spanish sources; Cyrano de Bergerac's Pedant joue has the merit of actual portraiture; Rotrou kept up the classical traditions in his adaptations fromPlautus; Thomas Corneille and Boisrobert remodelled Spanish plays and at times came into competition, by the use of the same models, with Scarron. This last is the comedy writer whose plays, along with those of Rotrou and the Visionnaires of Desmarets de THE DRAMA 299 Saint-Sorlin, can be read with most interest today. Scarron, in his burlesque comedies or parodies, tries as elsewhere to turn to ridicule the heroic business which he thought overdone in the serious plays. He replaces the grand style of tragedy by mock- heroics and transforms its action into horseplay. In this he was helped by the low comedian Jodelet, who was soon to contribute to the success of Moliere's Precieuses and for whom Scarron wrote "several plays adapted to Jodelet's long and lank stature, his nasal voice, and his flour-smeared face. Jodelet, like a thin Sancho Panza, plays the coward's part, bringing discredit on nobility of character, turning it to ridicule by his baseness. In Jodelet, ou le maitre valet Scarron contributes to the type of the French valet, of whom MoHere gives greater examples in Mascarille or Scapin, and who becomes the Crispin of the eighteenth century; in Jodelet duelliste the soufflet of the Cid is parodied; in Don Japhet d'Armenie the fooHsh anti-hero constantly finds himself in scrapes, deceived by people, ducked with dirty water, or left hanging in the air when out love-making. It has been noticed that Scarron's grotesqueness is somewhat like one element of modem Romanticism. Hugo, of course, thought that the grotesque was an essential element of the drama, and don Cesar de Bazan is like a hero of Scarron with redeeming qualities. In language, too, there is occasionally a slapdash vigor about Scarron which recalls the Romantic panache. Desmarets's comedy les Visionnaires has practically no plot, but is a capital portrayal of fantastic characters or "humors." It is interesting for its types, which are more original than in most of the comedies of the time, and for the literary material which it contains. . We see in it not only the traditional capitan, but the crazy poet repeating the language of the Pleiade, the precieuse in love with a hero from history like Alexander the Great, the lady who thinks all men in love with her (prototype of Mohere's Belise in les Femmes savantes), and the one who dotes on the play, and discusses the unities. 300 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Tragedy and comedy are the two types destined for success. The pastoral, after a brief and brilhant career of glory, is swept away as irregular. The pastoral play in its origins is connected, not only with the Italian and Spanish romances already discussed in another chapter, but with the semi-dramatic dialogues and pastoral eclogues composed for reading as well as acting. It gradually grew more important and reached some vogue in the provinces, probably before it did in Paris, which in the sixteenth century and in the transition years to the seventeenth was often behind other great French towns. It is really not until the establish- ment in Paris of Valleran Lecomte's company of provincial players that the pastoral comes much into vogue and that Hardy composes some, among the multitudinous genres which he culti- vates. It takes for itself pre-eminently the love plot, as differ- entiated from the subject of tragedy borrowed from ancient history or mythology, from that of comedy based upon the ItaUan and then the Spanish intrigue, and from the tragi-comedy of wild adventure. The subject of a pastoral usually showed a series of characters of whom A loved B, B loved C, C loved D, and so on. There were stock r61es of shepherds, shepherdesses, the magician, the satyr; there were stock literary commonplaces, such as the praise of the country, the welcome of spring, the pleasures of the hunt, the eulogy of the golden age; there were traditional narratives and episodes, including the echo song, oracles, the discovery of long-lost children, disguises, and meta- morphoses. The pastoral, because of its thorough modernity and its lack of prototypes in antiquity, was at first free from the constraint of the rules. Later, with the growth of Classicism, the authors of pastorals readily accepted the imities to show themselves up to date. But this was almost coincident with the disappearance of the largely lyrical genre in an age turning in its best writers to realism and psychological analysis. As in so many circumstances Hardy, though no real man of letters, helped the development of the pastoral, giving in his THE DRAMA 301 own productions vigor and dramatic movement to a type which had been undecided and wavering. Similarly d'Urfe in his Astree, a novel, it is true, but belonging in every way to the pastoral school, made hterary form and expression necessary considerations. The result, indirect quite as much as direct, is seen in such a work as Racan's Bergeries, published in 1625, which is the starting-point in the production of the pastorals of the best period. It is to this period that belong Mairet's Sylvie, published in 1628, and his Silvanire, published in 1631, with its preface on regularity in the drama, and the Amaranthe of Gombauld, published in 1631. In spite of its monotony to us the pastoral play satisfied by its romance the idealists in literature. Moreover, at the period when the comedy of the Renaissance had lapsed and the new comedy was not yet vigorous, it not only bridged the gap, but helped to introduce sentiment in place of the lewdness of the old Italianate comedy of the Humanists. All the new writers did not take the lesson, but Corneille and Rotrou did, and Melite is practically a pastoral play of love in a seventeenth- century setting. When the pastoral disappeared as a genre its elements of adventure tended to merge in the tragi-comedy, which lasted for some years longer. Its purely pastoral, elements of shepherd song or love-duet passed into the pastoral ballets and intermedes, of which we have examples even in Moliere, and supplied plots to the newly developing opera. The tragi-comedy, though its name has become as archaic as that of the pastoral, has closer modern equivalents, and the Romantic drama and comedie heroique have often elements which were to be found in the old genre. The tragi-comedy was vague in content, and the definition as a play presenting kings and princes and with a happy ending did not account for the pos- sible varieties, in which there was mixture of tragic and comic elements, or in which tragic action occurred among people of low estate. 302 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE The tragi-comedy was still more than the pastoral at liberty to select a subject at random from popular stories or Spanish plays, and the plots vied with the novels in complexity and multifariousness of incident. Sometimes they were prolonged, into journees like the Spanish jornadas, representing wide space and time. In this and in other ways the tragi-comedy continued the laicised mystery-plays of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and it is the most direct popular successor of the mediaeval genres. The tragi-comedy is found as a name in the modern theatre as early as the middle of the sixteenth century : the first important example is the Bradamante of Garnier in 1580, the first author to cultivate it frequently and with success was as usual Hardy, and Frangois Ogier's preface to Jean de Schelandre's Tyr et Sidon was a declaration in favor of the liberty that the tragi- comedy required. The period of greatest success of the tragi- comedy was between about 1628 and 1648, and then came its disintegration and disappearance during the next quarter of a century. It had to contend against the levelling and unifying influence of Richelieu and the Academy as expressed by the rules, and it was this influence which frightened Corneille into changing the title of the Cid from tragi-comedy to tragedy and prevented him from using the name in later plays. But it had noted representatives in Georges de Scudery and Jean de Sche- landre, who in 1628 rewrote and turned into a tragi-comedy his Tyr et Sidon, originally published as a tragedy in 1608, and it had an illustrious representative in Jean Rotrou, who wrote a number of tragi-comedies among his varied dramatic compositions. The tragi-comedy disappeared as a separate genre for various reasons. Its liberty seemed licence to the partisans of regularity. So .it was either neglected entirely, or it lost much of its raison d'Stre by being regularised and brought nearer to tragedy. Finally, certain writers like Corneille, himself restless under the drastic divisions laid down by the rules, wrote plays such as Cinna and Nicomede, tragedies in all respects by the treatment THE DRAMA 303 of plot and psychological character studies, but which did not have an unhappy ending. What was good in the tragi-comedy was taken over, and the purely imaginative or romantic element fell out of fashion in the drama as elsewhere. So the name, at least, gradually disappeared. The first half of the seventeenth century was, in the drama as in other Uterary genres, essentially what would today be called a romantic age, though the French language expresses the idea more accurately by the word romanesque opposed to romantique. In this way we imderstand the tremendous vogue of the pastoral play and of the tragi-comedy as well as the general Spanish fashion in the drama. Corneille, during the period of his success, is always struggUng to reconcile his poetic fancy with the galling fetters of the growing rules. Aside from Racine, the perfection of whose genius has caused him to be looked upon as more tj^ical than he really was, the secondary writers tend to remain, within the bounds of the unities, roma- nesques and only partly Classical. Moreover, though forgotten today, they sometimes won victories as great as that of le Cid or of Andromaque. The greatest play of the whole century, from the point of view of popular success, was Timocrate in 1656, by Thomas Corneille (1625-1709), the. younger brother of Pierre Corneille. This author is, indeed, better than his brother or than Racine an example of the average quaUties which win immediate but not enduring fame. Thomas Corneille followed the fashions instead of guiding them, and taking in turn as models the successes of Pierre Corneille in his Timocrate, Berenice, Carhma, Stilicon, or Laodice, and of Racine in his Ariane, he fashioned them with the preciosity of language which Moliere hated and with the heroic-romantic plot current in the successful novels and even in some plays of Pierre. In justice to Thomas CorneiUe it should be added that in le Comte d' Essex, though he still imitates his brother, he does write an historical drama which has its own value. The recurring plot of the popular tragedy, as turned out by 304 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Thomas Corneille and the writers of his class until well into the second half of the century, centres on the concealed birth of the young hero who, though brave, victorious, and handsome, thinks his love for his beautiful princess hopeless until the mystery of his birth is vinexpectedly revealed and he ascends the throne in triumph. In Berenice the hero passes through four r61es in one day. The heroine is no less beautiful and haughty, weighing love against pride, but emotional and inevitably falling a victim to the hero's wooing. This sort of a plot is complicated by intercepted letters and portraits, jealous rivals, rebellions and mutinies quelled in a twinkUng by the brave hero. CHAPTER VII CORNEILLE. ROTROU PIERRE CORNEILLE (1606-1684) was born at Rouen in Normandy, and was all his life a good example of the qualities of his race and training, showing even in his writings many tendencies which characterise one springing from a famille de robe, or legal family, of one who had been a pupil of the Jesuits and had himself studied law. In his imeventful, even rather gloomy life spent partly in Rouen, partly in Paris, Cor- neille remained a sedate bourgeois. He was a pious church- warden, ill at ease in society and clumsy in handling the phrases of courtesy and flattery, once making himself ridiculous by the fulsome eulogy of his dedication of Cinna to the dishonest financier Montauron. One or two touches of romantic senti- ment are shown by his verses to the actress Mile du Pare, of Moliere's company, who scoffed at his middle-aged admiration. His old age was saddened by some financial difl&culties, though stories such as that of his waiting at the cobbler's until his one pair of shoes coxild be repaired have no foundation in fact. He was elected late in life to the Academy, and already saw himself distanced in popularity by Racine, a rival young enough to be his son. Yet Corneille need not fear comparison with any dramatic author in French hterature, and to a good many people today his tragedies are more attractive than those of Racine. His plays are not such subtle psychological studies as those of the younger poet; the language is a little more rough and uncouth, for he belongs to an older generation and does not have the smoothness and polish of the full French Classicism. But in the 30s 3o6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE vigor and imagination of his plots, the strong heroic characters he was fond of portraying, the sonorousness of his rhetoric, Corneille expresses the turmoil and romance of his days, and is likely to appeal to a modern age surfeited with psychological analysis. Corneille, it will be observed, wrote his masterpieces during the romantic days of the earlier seventeenth century, when French greatness was being moulded by the violence of Richelieu and the crafty vigor of Mazarin. It was an age of picturesque adventure on the part of undisciplined noblemen still untamed after the civil wars which had unified France, and of strong- minded heroines. The ideal of the novel might be the faithful and languishing lover, but in the Cornelian drama it was the majestic and great. In no case was it the wavering irresolution of a Hamlet, helpless before a sea of troubles. So the defect of Corneille is sometimes an overstraining of heroism, which tends to make his characters parodies" of human nature instead of real men and women. Corneille does not invent this quality in literature. It comes to him as a result of the Spanish influence which so totally supersedes in tragedy the Italian tradition. Spain was now present everywhere in custom and in costume. In spite of politics and warfare, in spite of ridicule at the Spanish boasting and exaggeration, which has indeed its counter-influence in the burlesque writers, Spain was all-fashionable in the court and society where ruled the Spanish princess Anne of Austria. All people of education knew Spanish, and all the writers of plays, as we have seen, drew from the drama of Spain. Corneille is the chief author whose copying is not a mere pastiche and who unites the French drama and the Spanish comedia. The Spanish drama was romantic in the extreme and charac- terised by its complicated plots and the stress which it laid upon love and honor. Romantic love did not appeal to Corneille, or perhaps the scandal aroused by his portrayal of it in le Cid, his chief exception in this respect, caused him, timid as he was, to be CORNEILLE 30? more wary. Certainly his early comedies have anything but fierce passion in the insipid galanterie which distinguishes them, in the readiness of lover and loved one to be off with the old and on with the new to suit the exigencies of a five-act play. The xomnl ieated plot he does Uk e. In Clitandre and the Illusion comique he lets himself loose m all kinds of wild devices. In the other early comedies, though he is more realistic, still he likes to mix up th ejntrigue, a tendency which never leaves him, and of his own plays he prefers the complicated ones. He points out with satisfaction that Heraclius must be seen more than once before it can be imderstood. ^Inparticular Corneille develops the feeling of proud and sen sitive hon.or^ J^e~pbint T,^ honnewr. He has to modify it a little in order to make it""accepSbIe~to the French, and tone down its primitive fierceness and brutality, which caused the Spanish hero to sacrifice all love and friendship to a cruel idea of honor, of which the chief element was a pride often, according to our views, misdirected. Corneille, accordingly, makes honor somewhat less emotional and passionate, and more in harriiony with French rationalism. The honor is reasoned out, and the poet, therefore, emphasises the marked feature of French life of the day, a strong will or volonte; for will power is needed to carry out the dictates of reason. It is this effort when overdone which makes the Cornelian hero or heroine tintrue to nature, and e^lains why Horace, Emilia, and Theodore are too superhuman or inhiunan to be sympathetic. The characters have,, too, an apparently selfish element, which again is less emotional than the Spanish honor, and is sometimes very cold-blooded. This is their gloire, a pride of honor which is frequently the result of weighing pros and cons. Horace, in a passage sometimes con- sidered a Cornelian crux, when he kUls his sister says, "Ma patience a la raison fait place," as though it were through reason that he jdelds to his fury, and Emilie's gloire determines her to kill Augustus, in spite of the years of kind treatment she has received from him. 3o8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Thus, the volonie in Corneille is an expression of that force of character which marks the age. In the drama it shows itself in a stoical psychology, which is partly hterary and classical in its origin, though it coincides in concrete manifestation with the Spanish violence. But in plays such as the Cid, Horace, Cinna, Polyeucte, it is directed towards the maintenance of a feehng of duty to which we should not always give moral approbation, and which, as the expression of a person's gloire, is very selfish. It has often been pointed out that Corneille's vertu is not so much what we call the fulfihnent of duty as something akin to the development of character named by the ItaUans virtu. Another Spanish characteristic with which Corneille is much in sjrmpathy is the swagger and dash of word and deed which the French call panache. The exaggerated hdbleur is Spanish in source (hablar), and Scarron made him ridiculous. But the telling of daring deeds in resounding speech has always appealed to the dramatic side of the French character, which likes this form of the picturesque, as manifesting the boldness, fool- hardiness, or pluck called crdnerie. It is success in achieving a vigorous sweep of sounding words which gives value to the bombast of a drama by Hugo, it is the dramatic picturesqueness of deed which pleases amid the artificialities of Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. When Charlotte Corday murdered Marat, she had in mind not only the liberators told of in Plutarch, but a heroine like the EmiUe of Pierre Corneille, whose collateral descendant she was. And when in her defence she quoted the line of Thomas Corneille, "Le crime fait la honte, et non pas I'echafaud," she was as much guided by the dramatic instinct as the actor John Wilkes Booth exclaiming after his murder, "Sic semper tyrannis." Notwithstanding the boldness of his characters, Corneille himself was timid and sensitive to criticism. They are ready to oppose their will to the whole world, but Corneille in the discours, the prefaces, and the examens with which he afterwards accom- panied his plays, is always trying to reconcile the Hberties he has CORNEILLE 309 taJcen or his unconscious violation of the rules before he knew them, with the pronunciamentos of the dogmatists. In many respects the theoretic writings of Corneille are a reply to the charges of such a critic as the abbe d'Aubignac. Corneille, with his fondness for complicated plots, found the unities a great hindrance and was always endeavoring to escape these conven- tions by means of other conventions. He began, moreover, to write at a time when the simultaneous stage-setting was in vogue and thus found difl&culty in the ex post facto introduction of a unity of place. The complication of action and the many things his characters had to do made the narrow* limit of time particularly galling. Corneille never foimd it easy to fall in with the technicalities of Classical theory. For this reason he is constantly hedging or suggesting conventions to get round the difficulty. In the Cid, as his own contemporaries pointed out, the hero has to cram three years of action into twenty-four hours and has to work through the night to do so. As to place, Corneille would like to asstmie as unity the confines of a whole city, like the convention of the Italian comedy of a street on which the houses open, or a vague and indeterminate time and place, "une chambre a quatre portes"; which is merely getting rid of the difficulty by a conjurer's trick. Except by some such straining of facts we cannot deny that the action of le Cid takes place in no less than four different places. In Cinna, Emilie ought certainly to do her conspiring out of Augustus's hearing, and the Cornelian convention causes both of them to come forth from their own rooms to utter their confidences in the public passage between. Corneille has a good deal to say in his writings concerning the aims and use of tragedy, which should be both pleasing and useful by its moral instructions, its portrayal of virtue and vice and their consequences, and its effect in purging the passions through pity and fear. But his efforts to bring Aristotle up to date, as an answer to his critics, are much less important in determining his development than the famous dispute over the 3IO A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Cid, which hurt his sensibilities so much and affected the com- position of his later masterpieces. Corneille began to write plays casually and without theoris- ing. He afterwards called his early comedies "des p6ch6s de jeunesse" and "des coups d'essai d'une muse de province," and critics of the conventional Classic tradition in later generations neglected them. This is unjust: they are not particularly in- teresting reading today, but they mark a great advance over contemporary plays; and by grouping them with le Menteur we are justified in saying that Corneille is as important in the history of comedy as in that of tragedy. It is he who gives us the comedy of manners and the beginning of the character-comedy. He is, however, as fond here as in his tragedies of the involved plot. The first play Milite, acted at Rouen in 1629, was brought to Paris by Mondory and won a great success. It was said to have been based on an actual incident witnessed by Corneille and the plot turned on the misunderstandings of lovers misled by false letters. The play was novel in that it avoided the current obscenity and strove to win its effects by portraying the life of the day. The love depicted is but a polite gallantry, and the style inclines in a marked degree towards preciosity. The play is quite inconsistent with the rules, which Corneille acknowledges he did not then know. Before the next play, Clitandre (1632), a tragi-comedy, Cor- neille had learned of them. In a most complicated work show- ing the beginnings of the Spanish influence, he undertook to write a play which should be regular according to the rules, but otherwise worthless, "in which endeavor" he adds, "I succeeded perfectly." It was followed in quick succession during the next few years by la Veuve, la Galerie du Palais, la Suivante, and la Place Royale. These comedies were full of the same fashionable insipid love as Milite, and the titles of two of them show their realism. The audiences were captivated at seeing incidents take place before the booths of the merchants, booksellers, and CORNEILLE 311 linen-drapers at the Palais de Justice, or in a public resort for gentility like the Place Royale. Corneille wrote part of the Comedie des Tuileries, which was followed by his first tragedy, Medee, in which may be already descried the bravura of CorneUan rhetoric. The year 1636 saw the Illusion comique and the Cid, unless the latter belongs to the beginning of 1637. The Cid is roughly classed among tragedies, inasmuch as its own category has disappeared. But to Corneille it was a tragi- comedy. He took the career of a half-legendary Spanish hero, as last depicted in Guillen de Castro's drama Las Mocedades del Cid and turned it into a concentrated French play, portraying the love of Rodrigue and of Chimene, and turning on the conse- quences of the insult which Chimene's father gives to the father of Rodrigue. There is a certain similarity with the position of Romeo and of Juliet between the two hostile houses, but the impelling forces of each character are more plainly defined. Instead of the blind sway of passion we witness the conflict of love and honor or duty, in solving which the author has some difficulty in softening a legend of Spanish bloodthirsti- ness and barbarism to the standard of seventeenth-century drawing-room ideals, in combining in the hero a Celadon and a matamore. To Corneille's contemporaries le Cid was not the beginning of a new epoch. It was merely the greatest tragi-comedy yet seen. What captivated the public was not only the romantic spirit from Spain, but the author's vast improvements in style : the play abounds in brilliant epic passages, in tender lyric utter- ances, in sonorous rhetoric. All Paris, said Boileau, was as much in love with Rodrigue as Chimene was. But Corneille had his jealous rivals and detractors, among them Mairet and Scud^ry. Mairet was impotently insolent; Scudery, egged on perhaps by Richelieu, who may have been jealous of Corneille's success and independence, wrote the Observations sur le Cid, in which he accused Corneille of composing a play without sufficient 312 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE mystery of plot, violating proprieties of morals and probabilities of action, full of defects of detail and of versification, and where meritorious unoriginal. The quarrel was finally submitted to the newly established Academy for judgment, and in 1638 ap- peared the Sentiments of that body, mainly drawn up by Chape- lain. The verdict was a compromise: in some places Corneille was justified, in others Scudery. But the summing up could not avoid the conclusion that the Cid had won deserved success by "la naivete et la vehemence de ses passions, la force et la deli- catesse de plusieurs de ses pensees et cet agrement inexplicable qui se m^le dans tous ses defauts." Corneille's sensibilities were sadly hurt by this verdict. He waited many months before bringing out Horace in 1640. This is one of his most regular and Classical tragedies, and, strangely enough, its only violation of the rules is a possible multiplicity of the sacrosanct unity of action. It shows the effect of the criticism he had received. He again has the difficulty of recon- ciling a legend of primitive days with modern sentiment and of winning favor for a murderer of his sister. He had not the help of the religious feeling which could excuse to the Greeks the sacrifice of Iphigenia by her father, or to moderns the story of Abraham and Isaac, nor was he writing for the rude seignetirs who could hear unmoved Guillaume, in the pgem of Aliscans, wishing to kill his sister Blanchefleur. His task was to take repulsiveness from an incident such as Brutus commanding the execution of his son. It must be acknowledged that he suc- ceeded very well. Though he had momentarily turned from Spain he preserved the grandiloquent rhetoric of his previous play, so that the action moves on an epic as well as a tragic plane. Nothing can excel the scene between Horace and Curiace, the narrative of the supposed defeat and the victory, the curses of Camille. The murder of Camille is revolting, but the tirades of Plutarchian stoicism make the barbarous Roman patriot more excusable, and we fail to realise that even young Horace's love of country does yield to his selfish pride. A certain stiffness CORNEILLE 313 of language, a slightly archaic method of expression, not without charm, tend in the same way. As with Horace, Au Cid persdcute Cirnia dut sa naissance. Without being so strikingly dramatic as the two previous plays, it marks an additional step towards the external simplicity of the brief Classical action and technical construction, and the inner complication of psychological motivation. The play is more modern, too, than Horace. The heroine Emilie seemed to many in the seventeenth century, as she did to Saint-Evre- mond, the true centre of the play, and was not merely a descen- dant of the heroine of a Spanish comedia, but, in her conspiracy against Augustus, a contemporary of the courageous yet heartless and intriguing women of the incipient Fronde, Mme de Chev- reuse or Mme de Longueville. At the same time, like the daughter of Mme de Rambouillet, she makes her lover Cinna wait her beck and call. He, in spite of his passions of ambition, pride, and honor, sighs like a furnace at her feet, languishes for his "belle inhumaine," and is the example of the urbane Roman gentleman, a pattern for the French "honnete homme" that we have seen analysed by Balzac and portrayed in the novels of the day. The elements of love and will which stand out in le Cid and Cinna reach the climax of their development in Polyeucte (1642 or 1643). This play verges on the ridiculous in the emphasis the author gives to what he is pleased to call "reason" as op- posed to feeling, yet he manages after all so well in keeping within bounds, though for the last time, that the drama is in many respects his best, and is certainly one of the most readable today. In language and style it equals Horace, it has less bombast than le Cid, the psychology is more keen than in Cinna. To Corneille's contemporaries who heard him read Polyeucte at the Hotel de Rambouillet it seemed faulty in portraying married love instead of the gallantry of courting and in bringing 314 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE upon the stage the mysteries of the Christian faith. There were a number of contemporary religious dramas by La Serre, Du Ryer, Desfontaines, Rotrou, and Baro, not to speak of the Latin plays of the Jesuits, but to a century which on the stage used the word temple to avoid saying eglise, the experiment was venturesome. And the imprecations of Stratonice seemed horrible: Ce n'est plus cet epoux si charmant a vos yeux; C'est I'ennemi commun de I'etat et des dieux, Un mechant, un infime, un rebelle, un perfide, Un traitre, un scelerat, un lache, un parricide, Une peste execrable a tous les gens de bien, Un sacrilege impie, en un mot, un chretien. The defect of the play to the modern reader lies in the monstros- ity of the will power of Polyeucte and Pauline. The seventeenth century even might prefer Severe as a polished gentleman, a model of good breeding and faithful devotion, the "parfait amant" that Pauline saw in him. The Cornelian grandeur and self-abnegation of Polyeucte's character make him in the face of martyrdom not only crave death but turn over his wife to his rival. Pauline is so constantly harping on her gloire and ringing the changes on the phrase "sur mes passions ma raison souver- aine," that one does not blame the dauphiness for saying: " Voila une tres honnete femme qui n'aime pas son mari." Yet the play is, after all, one of the most admirable that Corneille wrote. But henceforth defects tend to counterbalance merits in his tragedies: complication of plot and artificiality of character. This criticism does not, however, apply to la Mort de Pompee, which is but a series of dialogues and narratives. Le Menteur, drawn from the Spanish, was the greatest comedy yet written in France. Like Corneille's early compositions, it refrained from farcical horseplay and obscenity; like them it depended upon the portrayal of life and manners in Paris. But in addition it had the element of wit, and in Dorante and his father Geronte two persons whose characters stand out with CORNEILLE 315 solne individuality. The hero is a type not unfamiliar to the modern stage, a mixture of boldness and insipidity, with some- thing in him of young Marlowe of She Stoops to Conquer, finding it more easy to lie than to tell the truth. The Suite du Menteur has the defect of sequels. , Rodogune was one of sCorneille's favorite plays, but nowadays, even if we do not share Lessing's criticisms, it reads like a tear- ing Romantic melodrama, with its array of jealous women, of princely origin veiled in mystery, of goblets of poison. Corneille wrote the play to fit the climax of the last act, a striking one, and the action revojves about the person of Cleopitre, a sort of Hedda Gabbler pr White Devil, who does evil for evil's sake, and in whom the Cornelian volonte is transformed to violence. Her chief justification is that the same woman Rodogune had won away her husband's love and is now going to be her daughter-in-law. The violence of Rodogune, though directed to a better cause, is repeated in Theodore, vierge et martyre, a religious play brought about by Polyeucte. Even the seventeenth century could not put up with Theodore's unwomanly will and pride. In Herac- lius, more involved in plot than ever, we get one of the best examples of the imbroglio and concealment motif so popular in the novel and drama: Prince Heraclius is brought up in con- cealment as Martian, Martian is thought to be Leonce, and Martian-Leonce, led by mistake to believe himself Heraclius and loving Pulcherie, the sister of the real Heraclius, thinks he cannot marry her because she is his newly found sister. It was of such substitutions that Madelon, in Moliere's Precieuses ridicules, was thinking when she said: "Je crois que quelque chose un jour me fera voir une naissance plus illustre." Cor- neille picks out for particular commendation one of the most complicated passages of all as "une des choses les plus spirituelles qui soient sorties de ma pliune." Andromede is a mythological drama accompanied by music and song and spectacular transformation scenes, and is a transi- 3i6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE tion to the opera. Don Sanche d'Aragon is a story of conceated origins like Heradius and the novels: the prince of Aragon is brought up as a lowly fisherman's son, but becoming a famous warrior he wins the love of the queen of Castile and of his own sister the princess of Aragon. To this tragi-comedy Corneille gives the new name oicomedie heroique. The play is an excellent example of a Romantic drama, a good one too. There is a slight similarity with the subject of Hugo's Ruy Bias, and some of Corneille's contemporaries thought they recognised the loves of the adventurer Mazarin and of Anne of Austria. Nicomede appeared as a tragedy: we should call it a tragi- comedy, with certain nearly comic features. It is almost the last readable play of Corneille, and was followed in 1652 by Pertharite, a failure in the author's own day. Keenly hurt by his disaster, he withdrew from the. stage for several years and buried himself mainly with a translation of the Imitatio Christi. Then in 1659 he was persuaded to bring out a new play (Edipe, which in its time had great vogue but is now forgotten. Of the remaining plays, after la Toison d'or, a transformation play, in point of time Sertorius is the best (1662). But Sophonisbe, Othon, Agesilas, Attila, Tite et Berenice, Pulckerie, Surena, though often financially profitable, merely excited the epigrams of Boileau or were cast into the shade by the rising genius of Racine. Psyche, in 167 1, was a mixed play with songs and ballet written in collaboration with Moliere and Quinault. ~ From this survey of Corneille's career it is evident hoW little we can class him as a true Classicist. He is far more a type of the romantic age, in the French sense of romanesqtie, during which his best plays were written. He shows in language and construction the progress of his time towards the art of the later seventeenth century, but the Classical mould came to him only as a result of criticism, he was never at his ease within it, his Classical masterpieces are scarcely three or four in number, and the Classical plays of his maturity were the worst he wrote. He began with comedies of -preciosity and fashionable ga/aMtene, and CORNEILLE 317 tragi-comedies like Clitandre or the Cid. Even his earliest tragedy, Medee, has a turgidness which is Spanish and Senecan as much as Classical. After the Cid he tries to make Himself "Aristotelian," and the result is Horace, Cinna, Polyeucte, and Pompee. But he soon works off into the melodrama of Rodogune, the irregular and operatic play like Andromede, the tragi-comedy of Nicomede, the heroic comedy of Don Sanche. Corneille's portrayal of life is, on the whole, a romantic one. It is true that, except in le Cid, he does not make much of pas- sionate love, and his characters differ greatly from the beings of Hugo swayed by passion and fate: "I'amour d'un honnSte homme doit tou jours 6tre volontaire," he says in the dedication of la Place Royale. But in his conception of a plot he was strictly at variance with the Classical ideals and particularly the vrai- semblance of Chapelain and d'Aubignac. In the pteface of Hemclius he declares that "le sujet d'une belle tragedie doit ne pas etre vraisemblable." He is looking, then, not to depict the general and universal passions of human nature, but rather the exceptional and extraordinary. The reason directing his heroes and heroines, those "captains of their soul," is a super- himian and often unnatural one, which may excite la merveille but which belongs rather to the world of fancy and of romance than to reahty. Occasionally a Horace or a Theodore, or some characters of his later plays, become an unintentional burlesque of human nature. In a few plays he falls in with the Classical concentration of plot, but that is not his own bias. The gre atness of Corneil le is in his contrast of conflict ing outer and inner fo rces. They are primary forces on both sides, and his characters are not complex psychological studies, even if occasionally fond of casuistry and legal subtleness. They inspire the reader or spectator with admiration because, though not always vraisemblables, they seem heroic, and to the imagi- native mind thrilling. It is when by exaggeration or per- version of their greatness their generosite or magnanimitas is 3i8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE carried over to selfishness and brutality that Corneille shows deformation. Above all, the charm of Corneille is in his magnificent rhetoric. He is a master in French literature of heroic verse for narrative, description, imprecation; occasionally, as in le Cid and Poly- eucte, for the lyric and elegiac mood. Tirades such as the mono- logue of Don Diegue, the narrative of the fight against the Moors, the curses of Camilla, are unsurpassed. If Corneille had tried the sustained epic with enough strength of conviction to keep clear from the rules of the allegorical and moralising genre he would have accomplished what no other French writer since the Middle Ages could do. Jean Rotrou (1609-1650) is by far the best writer of tragedies of the seventeenth century next to Corneille and Racine, and the romantic non-Classical quality of his plays makes him appeal, in spite of his remoteness, to those English readers who can understand him. Even his countr3Tnen sometimes call him a French Shakespere. A good portion of his life is still obscure, and he seems to have undergone at certain periods many hard- ships, including perhaps the ungrateful position of a poete a gages, possibly as successor of Hardy at the Hotel de Bourgogne. After he had come to prosperity, the gallantry of his fate in sticking to his charge at Dreux during an epidemic, twhich he himself caught and of which he died, has given him a halo of picturesqueness. Rotrou was one of Richelieu's five authors. Though a few years younger than Corneille, Rotrou is slightly more archaic in expression than his contemporary. He is really the immediate successor of Hardy in the history of the French drama. His numerous plays have not all come down to us: thirty-five are left, consisting of tragedies, tragi-comedies, and comedies. They are drav(fn from all sources: Classical, Italian, Spanish, even from neo-Latin plays by the Jesuit father Louis Cellot. The first one, a comedy called I'Hypocondriaque, probably belonging to 1628, turns partly on the intercepting of letters, followed by madness. This subject Corneille used almost CORNEILLE 319 immediately, perhaps with intentional imitation, in Melite. The second play, la Bague de I'oubli, is one of the very first French plays taken from the Spanish. There was mutual ap- preciation and admiration between Corneille and Rotrou. In Rotrou's Saint-Genesi, Corneille is spoken of in flattering terms, and it is not unlikely that Rodogune has influenced Venceslas, (the rivalry of brothers), and that Cosroes stands between Rodogune and Heraclius on the one hand and Nicomede on the other: Cosroes goes back ultimately to the same source as Heraclius, the Annales ecclesiastici of Cardinal Baronius, through Cellot, and there are similarities with Rodogune. On the other hand, the similarity between Cosroes and Nicomede is'too strong to be denied. Rotrou was fond of revamping Plautus in his comedies and Lope de Vega in his other dramas. His best tragi-comedy, if Venceslas be called like le Cid a tragedy, is Laure persecuiee. His best plays are Saint-Genest, Venceslas, and Cosroes. Le veritable Saint-Genest, so-called by the author to distinguish it as the "real" play on the subject from a previous one by the Norman actor-author Desfontaines, a member of Moliere's early company, is one of the best tragedies in French literature. It is based on Lope de Vega's Lo fingido Verdaderp and the Sanctus Adrianus martyr of Cellot. Like Polyeucte, it is a re- ligious play, portraying an actor who is converted. Genest, while performing before Diocletian and Maximin the martyrdom of Adrian, ordered not long before by Maximin himself, is touched like Polyeucte with divine grace and meets the fate of martyrdom. Venceslas, drawn from the play of Francisco de Rojas y Zorilla, No hay ser padre siendo rey, tells how one brother kills another for love of a woman, who like Chimene calls for vengeance from King Venceslas, father of the yoimg men. He condemns his son, but pardons him at the solicitation of his courtiers. Then feeling his contradictory rule as father and king, he gives up the throne. Cosroes tells the story of the wicked queen Sira, a fiend like C16opatre in Rodogune, who conspires as Arsinoe in 320 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Nicomede, in favor of her son Mardesane in place of the earlier son Siroes of her husband Cosroes. With all his defects of incoherence and incomplete apprecia- tion of. character, Rotrou has, at least in these three plays, a vigor of expression, a dramatic intensity, which make him deserve a better lot than posterity has bestowed upon him. CHAPTER VIII PHILOSOPHY. DESCARTES. CARTESIANISM CARTESIANISM is the most important expression of seventeenth-century philosophy and science. Though it would be wrong to see in it, as some have done, the principles which made French Classicism, yet it is nevertheless, like Ram- ism in the previous century, the characteristic manifestation of thought. It shows the tendencies which distinguish the Classi- cal school; it has the same superior effectiveness in method and system.! ' The place of Cartesianism in modern thought and its relation to Classi- cism is an important question and can be satisfactorily determined only by bearing in mind two different phases. In one sense the philosophy of Descartes is non-Classical. He preached the scorn of antiquity as firmly as Ronsard had taught people to worship it; he was the father of the "moderns" in the great quarrel of the anciens and the modernes; his reason tended to undermine the religious feeling and conservative dignity of the seventeenth century and to provoke the rationalism of the eighteenth. If, particularly, we emphasise the dogmatic side of French Classicism, as the product of rules derived from technical theorists and Aristotelian commentators, then Descartes is not the philosopher of French Classicism. If, on the other hand, we consider Classicism more broadly as an intellectual temper instead of a collection of rules, then we must acknowledge the importance of the Cartesian method in promoting those qualities of "clarte," "ordre," "precision," "logique" of which French critics make so much. A comparison of any work of the sixteenth century with one of the seven- teenth is a convincing proof, e.g. the Art poUique of Vauquelin de la Fresnaye and that of Boileau. In this sense Descartes is symptomatic of the best manifestation of French literary Classicism. Some critics bring out the modernity of his rationalism, as Brunetiere in his essays on Descartes {Etudes critiques, Vol. Ill), on Jansenistes et CartSsiens {Et. crit. Vol. IV), on la Formation de I'idee de progrhs {Et. crit. Vol. V) . Others, as M. Lanson, 321 322 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Rene Descartes (1596-1650), a native of Touraine, was edu- cated chiefly at the Jesuit college of La Fl^che, where he was known as a youthful prodigy with great aptitudes for mathe- matics. While still a stripling he became convinced that the learning of the age was defective, and resolved to begin by dis- carding book knowledge, and to acquire instead a first-hand acquaintance with the world, either by undisturbed soUtary reflection upon its problems, or by viewing, as a disinterested spectator, the phases of its activity. After a period of solitude he volunteered for military service under a foreign prince, Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, and shared in Holland and in Germany in the incidents of the Thirty Years' War. Then he travelled for a while alone in Europe and, finally, in 1629, he settled down in Holland, which, because of its remoteness from France and the freedom and independence of its political and intellectual life, seemed to him a suitable abode for a philosopher. There he lived for a score of years, moving occasionally to keep away from his growing fame. "Qui bene latuit bene vixit" was his motto, and Descartes showed a queer antithesis of character in the boldness of his speculations and his timidity in giving them to the public. For his innovations touched all the problems of the cosmos, from God, — though he disclaimed any intention of interfering with faith, — to physics, astronomy, mathematics, physiology, and literary style. His chief works to the student of letters are the Discours de la Methods, the Meditationes de prima philosophia, so-called in opposition to the disputations of the Schoolmen, the Principia philosophiae, the Traite des passions de fame. Descartes's mature life is closely connected with the name of the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of that Elector Palatine who was one of the causes of the Thirty Years' War, and aunt of George I of England. She was an earnest student of philosophy imder the direction of Descartes, who kept up a correspondence in his History and his monograph on Boileau, emphasise the connection of Descartes and Classicism. PHILOSOPHY 323 with her, explaining for her the difl&culties in his system and writing for her some of his works. Finally, another woman of high rank, a dabbler also in philosophy, Queen Christina of Sweden, persuaded him to come to Stockholm. But Descartes, always a valetudinarian, was unable to stand the severe winter and the change in his habits, particularly the necessity of getting up at five in tlie morning to discuss philosophy with the queen instead of lying in bed to meditate. The consequence was that he died within a few months. To the French Descartes is the founder of modern philosophy, and they oppose his method to the incomplete systems of the Middle Ages and of the ^Renaissance on the one hand, and to the English empiricism of the Baconian school on the other. It is undeniable that Descartes marks an epoch in his country, and nearly all later philosophy was influenced by him, in spite of the opposition to one or another of his doctrines by the libertines, the Jansenists, or the Jesuits. Even Newton, to whom the science of the eighteenth century looked up, might not have developed as he did his mathematical discoveries concerning the imiverse, without the mechanism of Descartes's cosmology. We have seen the characteristic of mediaeval philosophy to be the authority of a misunderstood Aristotle. Ramus had de^ clared the rights of free reason, but had substituted the authority of Plato and the "method" of the ancient poets and thinkers. Other modem philosophers tried to solve the prcJblems of morals by the construction of Utopias or cities of the sun, in imitation of the Platonic Republic. Finally, others, like Montaigne, had weakened the world of certainty by their doubt. Descartes is even more a partisan of the freedom of reason than Ramus, he pushes doubt beyond Montaigne. The result enabled him to base knowledge on a firmer foundation than ever before, at the same time vastly broadening its scope, and to create the new dogmatism of a general impersonal Reason. Descartes, not despairing of ultimate certainty, undertook to reach it by systematic or methodic doubt. He explains his 324 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE course of procedure chiefly in his Discours de la methode pour Men conduire sa raison et chercher la verite dans les sciences. The results of past learning seemed ineffectual to him, and Descartes, unlike Ramus, scorned the contents of the ancient literatures. Even the syllogism, the corner-stone of mediaeval philosophy, is discarded as not increasing knowledge, inasmuch as the conclusion merely restates what is already contained in the premises. Mathematics and theology he excepts alone from his reprobation: Descartes wishes to remain strictly orthodox in religion, though largely as a concession to the exigen- cies of the time. He selected, he says, four guiding principles, the first of which is the important formula of the Cartesian revo- lution and indicates the substitution of reason for authority: Not to accept anything as true until clearly and evidently proved to be so. The other three rules were: To divide or analyse all difficulties as far as possible; to proceed in thought by synthe- sis from simple to complex; to make verifications and reviews at frequent stages of the investigation. Then, selecting certain provisional rules to guide him during his study and investigation of the world, which would enable him to live in harmony with it, he was ready to seek the ultimate certitude. He began by rejecting everything which could admit of the least doubt, as susceptible of falseness: the authority of the senses, of memory, even of necessary truths. Let us suppose, suggested Descartes in his famous hypothesis of the Dieu malin, that there is deceit in everything and that some wicked God takes pleasure in making me believe as a necessary truth what is not. Let us imagine that two and two do not make four, that the hill is not higher than the valley. There remains one fact of absolute certainty: whether I think correctly or incorrectly, I think. Hence I exist: Cogito, ergo sum. Descartes's opponents charged this argmnent with being log- ically false and with being a petitio principii or argument in a circle, inasmuch as "I think, therefore I am," necessitates the assumption "That which thinks, is,"_ Or to put it otherwise, PHILOSOPHY 325 "I think = I am thinking, therefore I am" merely means "I am, therefore I am," which is a pleonasm. But Descartes replied that it was an intuition or immediate apperception of consciousness, requiring no previous statement, syllogism or inference. And having at last reached one to him undeniable element of certainty, the existence of the self or thinker, he proceeds from it to reconstruct the certainty of God and of the world. The existence of God is susceptible of three proofs. The first two are nearly identical and are based on the consciousness of man's own imperfection. From the fact that man is imperfect and knows it, but can conceive some one more perfect than him- self, Descartes infers that this very idea of greater perfection must have come from one who is more perfect, or God, who possesses all the attributes contained in the idea we have of perfection. Secondly, my weakness and the imperfection of my existence, which I realise, show that I am contingent upon something more perfect and that I hold my being froni God. My dependency necessitates some independent being on whom I depend. The third proof is the ontological argument already used in the Middle Ages by Saint Anselm, that the idea of a perfect being implies the existence of a perfect being, just as the idea of a triangle involves the necessity of the triangle even though we cannot construct the perfect one. The existence of God once established, Descartes throws on him the responsibility for the outer world. The existence of the world depends on the idea of God, the truth of the world depends on the ti;uth of God. We have a feeling that certain notions come to us of external things. These things must be true, or Gk)d who caused the feelings would be deceiving us. But God in his goodness cannot wish to do this, so things are as they seem. Thus all rests on a firm foimdation, and opportunity for doubt or scepticism has passed away. The result which Descartes has reached so far is the estab- lishment of a rationalistic idealism dogmatically imposed, and 326 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE implying a dualism of mind and body. The philosopher's mathe- matical tendencies lead him to apply the laws of mechanics to the whole physical and physiological world, and so the universe is to be explained by geometrical and algebraic propositions. Scientifically this was a tremendous step in advance over the past, and though the details of Descartes's cosmology seem fanci- ful today and his vortices and subtle matter express exploded theories of a priori reasoning, yet he substituted law and order for chaos. To reject the old Scholastic "substantial forms," which explained nothing new, but replaced the cause of anything merely by another name ("the magnet attracts because it has a magnetic quality"), was a great progress. The world was now reducible to terms of mechanical law and susceptible to the accurate observations of true science. The same tendencies are exhibited in Descartes's theories of physiology and psychology. The body is a pure mechanism, but man differs from animals in that he has the soul which they have not. Animals have no feeling whatsoever and are well-organised machines: the cry in a dog's throat when he is apparently hurt is merely the reverberation of a resonant tube, the result of me- chanical effort externally applied. We now come to the weakest part of the Cartesian doctrine : How can we explain the parallel action of mind and body in man, or the action of mind on an inert body, inasmuch as they apparently stand apart in an absolute dualism? This question Descartes never did answer quite to the satisfaction of all his own followers, and it was to do away with the difficulty that Geulincx and Malebranche devised slightly varying theories of Occasionalism. Geulincx harmo- nised by God the corresponding actions of mind and body, Malebranche saw all in God, that is, made God the simultaneous cause of each action of mind and body. Leibnitz, a descendant of Descartes, solved the difficulty by his theory of pre-established harmony. It is obvious what an improvement Cartesianism marks over the previous age. For the first time an orderly method made PHILOSOPHY 327 itself felt in all expressions of thought. Even in literary form the result can be seen: Though Descartes's style is not partic- ularly clear or limpid, yet in prose the qualities of orderly ar- rangement, clearness, conciseness, accuracy of definition were appreciated as they never had been before, and French became, what it has remained, one of the best vehicles for the expression of abstract ideas and for criticism. Descartes put French prose under the guidance of reason, or was, at any rate, the greatest exponent of the tendency which the language was taking, just as Malherbe exemplified the same tendency in poetry. It should not be assumed, however, that the success of Car- tesianism was immediate or universal. It had to make its way against strong opposition, and its force was not fully felt in thought imtil the end of the seventeenth century. It underwent the most fertile transformations under Spinoza in Holland and imder Leibnitz in Germany. In France the effect was seen far more in Hterature and in life than in the University, where the old Scholastic logic and Aristotelian peripateticism maintained their sway with an astounding strength of inertia. It was rather in the drawing-rooms or the discussions of men and women of letters that the immediate manifestations of Car- tesianism were to be found. Philaminte, Belise and Armande, in les Femmes savantes, planning the establishment of an academy for the discussion of philosophy and talking of tourbillons and mondes tombanfs, were Cartesian to the backbone. So were Mme de Grignan, Mme de Sable or the duchesse du Maine in real life. The writers of the age were now permeated with the spirit of reason and the belief in the rule of an orthodox deity, at the same time that they saw in man and nature only mechanisms. But man was interesting because he was a rational mechanism. The romantic, mysterious, unanalysable aspects of nature they totally neglect. To Boileau, whose Art po&tique shaped by Cartesianism and the Port-Royal logic is the handbook of Classical theory, Nature is merely human nature. ■ - 328 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE The chief foes of the philosophy of Descartes were the liber- tines, the sect of his former teachers the Jesuits, and in some respects, owing to a different attitude towards the world, the Jansenists. Yet the most important Cartesian handbook, the Logic of Port-Royal, came from the Jansenists, and the Jansenist due de Luynes translated into French Descartes's Meditationes. The philosophical libertines were the partisans of freedom in thought in place of the dogmatism of Descartes. They con- tinued, too, the sceptical tradition of Montaigne and, instead of pushing on to certitude, rested in their doubt. When they did construct a positive science, it was as empiricists, or at any rate as opponents of theories of irmate ideas. Without falling in with the pedantic conservatism of the University and the Sorbonne, which were more hostile to them than to Descartes, they repre- sent, too, an aversion to what they considered the no less fanciful a priori reasonings of Descartes. The tendencies of the libertines became more productive of scientific results among their suc- cessors of the eighteenth century from Bayle to the Encyclo- pedists. For the present, though they number distinguished men like the physicians Gabriel Naude and Guy Patin, one alone erected a philosophical system worthy to attract disciples. This was Pierre Gassend or Gassendi, the teacher of Moliere. Gassendi (1592-1655) considered himself an orthodox Chris- tian, but he developed what the Church often considers a non- Christian doctrine, an empirical materialism. He was a follower of the epicureanism of Lucretius, believed that all proceeds from the sensfes, and he developed in physics a form of the atomistic theory. He never admitted the dogmatism of Des- cartes, and his afi&rmation never went beyond videtur. The superiority which Descartes attributed to the mind and to the innate ideas with which the mind was endowed, were to him lud- icrous. "Omens," and "0 caro," they termed each other. To Gassendi all ideas come from the senses; the mind is but an emanation from the body. These views were, it is true, far less original than those of Descartes, and their chief intellectual PHILOSOPHY 329 value lay in their artful eclecticism. But they were maintained by Gassendi with great strength, and his own value is indicated by his goodly following: Moliere, Chapelle, Bernier, Cyrano, and the epicureans of the second half of the century. The Jesuits were hostile to Cartesianism, and were its chief persecutors. Though they would have been horrified to find themselves classed with the libertines, they also tended in their metaphysical theories towards empiricism. They did not go to its usual consequences, determinism in morals. They derived their empirical tendency from their cormection with the orthodox Aristotelianism of the Schools, and maintained that "nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit prius in sensu." It seemed to them, too, that in creating his spiritualistic philosophy, Des- cartes was making the faculties of man encroach upon the domain of faith, and that the God of Descartes was in opposition to the orthodox deity. God an,d man stood apart, and it was sacrile- gious to make the conviction of God's existence depend upon the existence of the self. Their most skilful attacks were made by their partisan the learned bishop of Avranches Huet, who was indignant also at Descartes's scorn for the erudition of the ancients. The attitude of the Jansenists, in so far as they opposed Cartesianism, was a different one. The Jansenists were not so much metaphysicians as theologians, yet their creed was based on a fundamental principle of pessimism, of the corruption of human nature and the impotence of reason. Descartes was an optimist, whose reason opened the way for the theories of in- definite progress of the eighteenth century. But Arnauld and Nicole, in their work on logic, the Art de penser or Logique de Port-Royal, are Cartesians. This art of "conducting one's reason" expounds the Aristotelian syllogism, but extends the sphere of logic to method and the application of thought to the discovery of new truth. The greatest French disciple of Descartes in the seventeenth century, one of the greatest metaphysicians of modern French 330 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE philosophy, and one of the dearest writers of his day, was Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715). He was a priest of the order of the Oratoire, which had always sympathised with Cartesianism, and in its philosophical tendencies turned towards idealism. He was himself the example of pure reason, and so etherealised that, anec- dote says, he died from excitement over a discussion upon the existence of matter with the English idealist Berkeley. Male- branche sublimates still more the system of Descartes into a form of Platonism, at the same time turning it into a theology. God becomes the cause and author of all things; in him we live and move and have our being; our feeling and our ideas we "see in God." From the point of view of the understanding, God possesses all the intelligible ideas of all human beings, and through our union with God we see and feel in him external objects, not only as they appear to us in their concrete yet smaller truth, but also in their eternal principle. God holds in himself the "types" of all things in intelligible, but not in ma- terial, extension. This extension by the act of God manifests to us the concrete and material, though it is in itself neither concrete nor material. What makes us really sure of the out- side world is the evidence of faith and revelation. From the point of view of the will there is no connection between the two halves of the dualism of mind and body, inner and outer world, except by the continual intervention of God. Causation does not exist except in "occasional" causes at the constant instiga- tion of God. God and the soul we see direct and not by their ideas. Hence our notion of the soul, though truer than of things, is less clear, because God has not given us its archetype. This position of God and the relation of the mind to him en- larges the r61e of reason. It is reason that links human intel- lects with the common source, God. Reason is one and identical, the single wisdom or Word of God, theologically made vis- ible in Christ. Thus reason is universal, ai^d it is because we are all in spiritual union with God that we have the same rational and necessary truths. Reason guides us, too, not PHILOSOPHY 331 only intellectually but in morals and politics, for true reason cannot deceive. Thus in Malebranche the reason of Classicism has reached its apotheosis, and similarly the great Classical writers, Bossuet or Boileau, whatever the actual connotation they give to the term and however little they may agree with the details of Malebranche's philosophy, have the idea of universal reason. CHAPTER IX RELIGION. JANSENISM. PORT-ROYAL. PASCAL THE religious thought of a great part of the seventeenth century turns about Port-Royal and the disputes be- tween the Jansenists and the Jesuits. The chief spokesman for the Jansenists was Pascal. The older foundation of Port-Royal was a convent for nuns in a then secluded country district about six leagues from Paris, connected with the Cistercian order. At the end of the sixteenth century it had fallen into a condition of almost total decay. It contained only a few nuns, living not impeccable lives and ruled by a lady abbess even more worldly than they. In 1602 a young girl of eleven belonging to the Arnauld family was through in- fluence installed as abbess. She was to be famous later as the Mere Angelique. At first she felt no call to her vocation, but in 1608 she underwent several mental and emotional crises and became sincere in her religious faith. She immediately instituted numerous reforms in the establishment and so worked on the minds of all her kin that the whole Arilauld family of men and women became the props of Port-Royal and its new doctrine of Jansenism. In 1626 the convent was mq^ved to Paris as Port- Royal-de-Paris, the parent establishment at Port-Royal-des- Champs becoming a branch, to the neighborhood of which men of learning, known as solitaires, withdrew to live a half-hermit life of prayer, meditation and study. It was the life of simplic- ity and toil that was to distinguish the Oratorians and the Bene- dictines, that Dr. Pusey sought to institute in England in the Tractarian period, and that in spirit, though not in form, was akin to the community of Little Gidding, familiar to readers of 333 RELIGION. JANSENISM 333 John Inglesant, which the same seventeenth century saw in England. Meanwhile the doctrines of Jansenism were introduced by Du Vergier de Hauranne, abbe de Saint-Cyran (1581-1643), a friend of Jansenius, who became directeur spirituel of Port- Royal in 1636. Cornelius Jansen or Jansenius, bishop of Ypres, was the author of the Augustinus, published in 1640 shortly after his death, an elaborate study of the theories of Saint Augustine and a new enimciation of his doctrine of absolute fatalism, which had already been made by Calvin the basis of his religion, itself the source of the Hell-and-damnation theology of Jonathan Edwards. Jansenism and Calvinism, as forms of Augustinianism, are almost identical in their gloom and austerity and in their doctrme of Grace. It was in questions like that of the sacraments that they were at variance. Indeed, the Port- Royalists, illogically but as a matter of course, considered Cal- vinism a heresy. By the time Antoine Arnauld, "le grand Amauld" (1612-1694), wrote an apology of the Augustinus, Jansenism became inseparably linked with Port-Royal. The belief of the Jansenists turned on the question of Grace, as a consequence of the Fall of man. The sin of Adam involved aU mankind, which can turn to God only by the act of his Grace, the source of faith and irresistible. But God uses this Grace only to save a few by his imconditioned and unchangeable decree. All other men, in spite of good deeds, are predestined to eternal damnation and thdr will is utterly unable to choose. These views were opposed by the Jesuits, who admitted the necessity of Grace, but declared that man's will was free to choose or to reject Grace. If the Jansenists were Augustinians, the Jesuits were Semi-Pelagians. The Pelagian heresy in the early Christian Church had denied the condemnation of mankind in Adam's fall, and had declared the freedom of man to seek his own salvation. The Semi-Pelagians, among whom were the Jesuits and the majority of CathoUcs, felt that the Fall had not totally perverted but had injured man. In his weakness his will may 334 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE be helped by the Grace of God acting with it; though the actual salvation should be attributed not so much to one's own merit as to the effect of God's Grace. The Jesuits thought that Grace is granted to all and is therefore sufficient, but is made efi&cacious or inefficacious as man chooses. The Jansenists maintained that no Grace could be sufficient which was not efficacious. Consequently Grace acted regardless of the will of man. On the other hand, Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism put the be- ginning of his own regeneration in the power of a fallen being. To the Jansenists this destroyed the necessity and value of redemption. The history of Jansenism is one of a valiant struggle against opposition and persecution. The Jansenists, though sometimes worldly and self-seeking, were as a rule unbending, high-princi- pled men, averse to compromise. Their influence caihe rather from their vigor of conscience than from their numbers, and by their teachers they influenced some of the greatest men of the day, such as Racine and Boileau in literature, and constituted an important social set, including Mme de Longueville, Mme de Sable, the prince de Conti. Port-Royal was the home of good but intolerant men, and the convent itself the abiding-place of nuns of whom it was said that they were "pures comme des anges mais orgueilleuses comme des demons." Antoine Arnauld, author of the Frequente communion and nearly two score other volumes, was with Pascal the protagonist in the fight against the Jesuits, though his kinsmen Antoine Le Maitre and Le Maitre de Saci were among the many combatants. At the beginning of the eighteenth century persecution had performed its task: the convent was closed and the nuns dispersed. Before long Jansenism, which had always had a proneness to mysticism, degenerated among many into common superstition, and the extraordinary pathological manifestations of the convulsionnaires at the wonder-working tomb of the diacre Piris. The greatest of Jansenist prose writers was Blaise Pascal (1623- 1662), whose many-sided intellect touched almost every phase RELIGION. JANSENISM 335 of the life of his time. He was the youngest son of a distinguished representative of a famille de robe; and his sisters Mme Perier and Jacqueline were women of great merit, especially the latter. Blaise lost his mother at the age of three, and his father super- intended the boy's education with constantly growing amazement at his prodigious intellect, which showed an extraordinary apti- tude for mathematical discovery and scientific investigation. In his literary training Pascal grew to know among the moderns Montaigne, Saint Francois de Sales, Charron, Du Vair, and Corneille. Excessive mental activity working in a frail body had the inevitable result. Pascal became the prey to constant illness and melancholia. At this very inopportune time for the allevia- tion of his mental condition he got acquainted in 1646 with the gloomy doctrines of Jansen. At Rouen Pascal came to know books by Jansen, Saint-Cyran, and Arnauld through some medi- cal friends who attended his father after an accident. The whole family was affected, but Blaise the first and the most of all. He experienced a first conversion,- and soon showed his tendency to put faith above reason by his controversy with a priest of Rouen, the Frere Saint-Ange, who proclaimed that reason was sufl&cient to make one know the mysteries of religion. After a trip of Pascal to Paris a few months later, his sister Jacqueline tried to enter Port-Royal. Her father oppdsed the project and she did not carry it out until later, when she became a close tie between her brother and the sisterhood. Meanwhile Pascal's scientific investigations progressed in spite of constant ill-health. He had in his childhood composed a treatise on conic sections and, perhaps earlier yet, one on sound ; he had devised a calculating machine, and at Rouen had made experiments on atmospheric weight. In 1647 he pub- lished his Nouvelles experiences touchani le vide, and continued them in 1648, carrying on the endeavors of Galileo and Torri- celli. His entire scientific method, experimental and concrete, was very different from the a priori analytic method and meta- 336 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE physical system of Descartes, whose "subtle matter" amused Pascal. But it was still more anathema to the Jesuits, whose science was full of metaphysical and scholastic explanations by words and general terms, and who preferred to use the old state- ment that "nature abhors a vacuum" rather than the new scientific explanations of Pascal. During a visit of his family to Auvergne in 1649 Pascal re- mained in Paris, where for a time religion gave way to social interests. He became acquainted with certain men of fashion but of intellectual tastes, the due de Roannez, the chevalier de Mere, an example of the seventeenth-century honnete homme or man of the world, the sceptic and intellectual Ubertin Miton. These men helped Pascal to rub ofif some of his provincial modes of thought. By contact with them his style undoubtedly acquired polish. And perhaps he had a little love-affair. Mean- while he made practical inventions, such as an arithmetical machine, devised the hydraulic press, a dray for transporting weights, and afterwards hit on the notion of public vehicles like the modern omnibus. At one time or another of his life he worked out the theory of probabilities in games of chance, and foresaw the questions in pure mathematics of differential and integral calculus. At this period, then, Pascal in spite of con- tinual ill-health is in the full plenitude of his intellectual de- velopment, and besides his scientific works has composed a few interesting fragments, such as his discours on love, though the authenticity of this work is doubted. The discussion of Mon- taigne in the Entretien avec M. de Sad was perhaps written a few months after his second "conversion." This occurred in the autumn of 1654. If we neglect the old story of a carriage accident at Neuilly in which he nearly lost his life, the predisposing cause was a sermon, after which Pascal experienced the action of Grace, the inspiration of God, the joys of renunciation and of sacrifice. He withdrew to Port-Royal, ' • Nevertheless Pascal is not to be considered as specifically a "solitaire" as the majority of those who come under that designation. Some writers RELIGION. JANSENISM 337 and during the brief period which was left him to live, he tried to annihilate all consideration of self, and to seek faith and life everlasting through the consciousness of the inspiration of God. He wrote a brief and disconnected expression of his feehngs and carried it always with him sewn into his clothes as a sort of reminder or "memorial," miscalled by scoffers an "amulet." His mysticism was strengthened by the miracle of the Holy Thorn at Port-Royal which happened to his niece; his endurance was tried but not overcome by agonising ill-health. But he played a role in the history of Jansenism by his Letires provin- ciales, and planned a great "Apology" of Christian faith of which the Pensees are but fragmentary notes. At last he died in 1662 at the age of thirty-nine, one of the most universal geniuses the world has known. The question arises as to the sanity of Pascal. His detractors, such as Voltaire, have dwelt upon his hallucinations and the morbid asceticism or self-torture of his last years. It is true that he showed all the pathological s)Tnptoms of acute religious mania, with its emotional sensibility, its automatisms in the shape of convulsions, its luminous visions or photisms, leading to the ecstatic happiness of mystic feeling so entirely emotional and not to be rationalised. It was precisely this sweeping of the mind into the happiness of faith and belief, and the convic- tion of the truth of religion, that was to Pascal the action of the Grace of God. Yet the irrational sensibility is not inconsistent with the intellect, and in Pascal did not stand in its way. His religious life was, as with millions of men, purely emotional and divorced from the need of reason, though he did apply the calculation of probabilities to the truth of God. But his reason remained as keen in its discussion of the subtleties of the different kinds of Grace, of its power, and the hair-splittings of the science of casuistry. The brain which was responsible for all Pascal's even hint that Pascal repented of his heresies before he died. This is very doubtful and, anyhow, would not weigh against his earher Ufe. 338 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE discoveries and inventions may have been pathologically ab- normal: it was insane only as genius itself is by some writers considered insanity. It was in January, 1655, that the hostiUty between the Jesuits and the Jansenists reached an acute condition. A priest of Saint-Sulpice, the Pere Picote, refused communion to the due de Liancourt because he gave hospitality in his home to a Jansenist, the abbe de Bourzeys, member of the Academy, and allowed his granddaughter to be brought up at Port- Royal. Arnauld entered the fray, and, after the exchange of several docimients, he was rebuked and condemned by the Sorbonne. He appealed to Pascal for help, and the latter is- sued his first Provinciate on January 23, 1656. The polemic lasted until March, 1657; Pascal wrote eighteen letters and began a nineteenth. The author was full of a neophyte's enthusiasm and directed his sharpest satire against the Jesuits. The attack took the form of letters from a certain Louis de Montalte in Paris to a friend in the provinces, who may have stood for Pascal's brother- in-law M. Perier. The name Montalte may have been sug- gested by the fact that Pascal came from Auvergne, the country of the "high mountain," the Puy de D6me. The first letter appeared under the title of Lettre ecrite d un provincial par un de ses amis sur le sujet des disputes presentes de la Sorbonne. The whole collection was known as the Leiires de Louis de Mont- alte a un provincial de ses amis et aux RR.PP. jesuites sur la morale et la politique de ces peres. The first four letters deal with the question of dogma, to which the author returns in the last two letters. The others deal with the moral theories of the Jesuits. The whole dispute is but an episode in the great quarrel be- tween the two schools of thought. In 1653 the Jesuits had denounced the Augustinus and had brought about the con- demnation by Pope Innocent X of the famous five propositions which they asserted to be contained in it. With regard to these RELIGION. JANSENISM 339 propositions the Jansenists indulged in some quibbling worthy of casuistical Jesuits, and argued the distinction between the questions de droit et de fait, between the truth and falsehood of the opinions themselves, and whether they could or could not be found in the Augustinus. The pope, they maintained, could condemn the doctrines in themselves, but he was mis- taken in the fact of thinking them in the Augustinus. In this way they got round the papal infalhbility. Indeed, to support their other contention that their doctrines were not like those of Calvin, the Jansenists were forced to do a great deal of hedging. And Pascal, whether intentionally or not, at times misquoted his adversaries and exaggerated or strained their statements. But his metl^ods are common in such warfare, and it was the violence of his attack, the bitter sarcasm of his criticism, that overcame his foes and dealt them a blow in public estimation from which they have never fully recovered. If the Jesuits are today the most hated by the French of the Catholic orders, the byword for all that is treacherous, the embodiment to the radicals of everything evil in the constant struggle between clericalism and its enemies, it is to Pascal, even if he had a precursor in Etienne Pasquier, that the conception is chiefly indebted for its origin.^ The dogmatic discussion turned on the question of Grace, to which allusion has already been made. It is somewhat com- plicated, however, in Pascal's controversy by the middle position occupied by the Dominicans or Thomists, as they were called as followers of St. Thomas Aquinas. The chief point of dispute between the Jesuits and the Jansenists was on the sufficiency or efficacy of Grace. The Jesuits, Semi-Pelagians as the Jan- senists termed them, or Molinists as they preferred to be called because of their dependence on the doctrines of Molina, made efficacy hang on the free choice of the will. The Jansenists 1 For a judicious criticism of the influence of the Jesuits in France at all times, see the introduction by Gabriel Monod to the French translation of H. Bohmer's work on the Jesuits. 34° A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE thought that no Grace could be sufficient which did not carry with it its own efl&cacy, and therefore the only free will is that of God who imparts it. The Thomists, said Pascal, seem to be in agreement with the Jesuits by asserting a sufficient Grace given to all, but they are really in harmony with the Jansenists by requiring also an efficacious Grace which all do not receive. Thus their sufficient Grace does not suffice. A similar subtleness appears in the dif3ferent interpretations of the pouvoir prochain or "proximate power," a term which Pascal accused the Jesuits and Dominicans, or Molinists and Thomists leagued together, of using in order to cloud the issue, though they understood the word prochain differently. The Thomists agreed with the Molinists that sufficient Grace must be efficacious. They added, however, that even to one who has not full Grace there can be a "proximate power" of accomplish- ing good, just as a boat and oars are the "proximate power" for a man who wishes to cross a stream, but whose power is unavailing without those proximate concomitants. Pascal shows the same brilliancy in his attack upon casuistry. This was, the science teaching the solution of "cases" or prob- lems of conscience, in which the mind in its hesitation sought the assistance of an adviser's judgment. The problems result from the confficting opinions which exist concerning the moral quality of an action, and the task of the casuist was not merely to select the best, but quite as much to justify the different opinions on the ground of the "probability" of all the different views maintained by different authorities, and to make it lawful in good conscience to follow the less probable of two probable opinions. To the unscrupulous man the way was thus open for almost any course of action: he could justify nearly any pro- cedure by an explanation intended itself for quite another chain of events or set of circumstances. It was likely to degenerate from "probabilism" and ethical opportunism into a sort of religious Machiavellianism, a system for the justification of any crime which the agent might have committed or might want RELIGION. JANSENISM 341 to commit. The means were made to justify the end. The result of a thoroughgoing application of casuistry tends to do away with a fixed moral standard by weakening its certainty for the sake of the "probability" of any more attractive rule. Though the Jesuits were not the inventors of casuistry, there had been many writers on casuistry among them, and they found the flexibility of its teachings convenient in making their own doctrines attractive. To an austere and unbending Jan- senist like Pascal nothing could be more loathsome, and the names of Escobar and Sanchez stank in his nostrils. By a large number of quotations drawn from their writings, and in many cases separated from the context, he tried to show that the Jesuits were the apologists of every form of vice and immorality, that their writers were prurient-minded, and by inference profli- gates. At the same time he let loose his shafts upon their methods of "equivocation" and of "mental restriction," by which a person might pass himself off as appearing to say the exact opposite of what was in his mind or what were his real thoughts. In his attack Pascal was often unjust, and in the underlying motives both sides were obviously at fault. The doctrine of the Jesuits laid itself open to untold abuse by the unscrupulous; though the defence was that the treatises on casuistry were never intended for common use but only as a help to the spirit- ual adviser himself. The uncompromising attitude of Pascal would have made the workings of a moral law impossible by imposing it on humanity in its most unattractive forms. The Provinciales, as a contribution to contemporary polemics, are not, however, Pascal's chief claim to literary greatness. For some time he had had in mind the idea of writing an Apology or Defence of Christianity. To this end he made constant notes, and jotted down his reflections, sometimes brief to the verge of incoherence, sometimes redundant, nearly always eloquent. He died before he had even begun to arrange his material, and the fragments remain only in the shape of Pensees. 342 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Many editions have been published since then, but the group- ing and classifying has necessarily varied with the system of each successive editor. The Pensees are the summing up of Pascal's thought, and one of the great masterpieces of French literature. Much of the material has become so familiar that one often fails to recognise its profundity and its novelty at the time when these thoughts were new and unfamiliar to men. The effect of Pascal's work was to give depth to French literature, and nobility, separable from a stilted artificial dignity, to French style. The author adds, too, a personal emotion which places him apart from the Classical writers of his age. The starting-point of Pascal is the doubt at which Montaigne took his stand. Indeed, though the Pensees are to a great degree the confutation of the Essais, they are for that reason permeated with the whole doctrine of Montaigne, and Pascal would never have been what he was had it not been for the sixteenth-century writer. But Pascal was not a homo unius libri. He had steeped himself in the Bible, in the pessimism of St. Augustine and of Jansenius, in the mysticism of Saint Francois de Sales, in the stoicism of Du Vair, in the scepticism of Charron, in the rhetoric of Balzac. He had made himself a stoic in morals; he started from pyrrhonism in his general intellectual attitude. But the indifference of Montaigne was something with which Pascal could not remain satisfied. Not only did the cruder arguments, such as the calculation of probabilities, incline him to the belief in a God, but the very weakness and insignificance of man in front of an overwhelming nature made something rise up within him to protest against his despair and realise that the weight of terror can be relieved by faith. Man, having reached the conclusion that reason is unavailing for the solution of the mystery, throws himself into the outstretched arms of religion. There are three means of belief: reason, custom, inspiration. Christianity does not admit those who believe by reason alone: RELIGION. JANSENISM 343 the mind must open itself to proof, seek confirmation by custom, but offer itself by humiliation to the inspirations which alone can produce the true result. By accepting the truths of Chris- tianity and the expiation of original sin, we iinderstand our condition and see a cure for our wretchedness: "Le coeur a des raisons que la raison ne connait point; on le salt en mille choses. . . . C'est le coeur qui sent Dieu et non la raison. Voila ce que c'est que la foi; Dieu sensible au coeur, non a la raison." The Pensees are thus an effort to prove the necessity of Chris- tianity and the truth of God, starting from the insignificance of man and his consciousness that even then he is greater than the blind weight which seems to crush him: "L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c'est un roseau pensant." It may be possible, too, to conceive a man without hands, feet, or head, but a man without thought is inconceivable. Thus the stages of Pascal's argument, had they been drawn out, would probably have coincided with the phases of his own mental struggle: At first doubt and despair as well as terror, then the happy confidence of a comforting faith reached, not by inductive or deductive reasoning, but by the instant conviction which the mystic feels of the certainty of that in which he puts his trust. Mankind seems to the observer like a chain-gang of criminals condemned to death, each one in agony awaiting his turn. As man realises the vast spaces which close about him, ignorant of why and whence, and knowing only that he must die and pass to a still vaster unknown, he stands aghast. "Le silence eternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie." But the final conviction is that which Pascal had expressed in his "amulet": "Joie, joie, joie, pleurs de joie." No better idea is needed of the majesty of Pascal's concep- tions than the often-quoted passage in which man is shown standing between two immensities, the infinitely vast and the infinitely small. Above him appears the universe, great beyond the conception of mortal mind. Below him extends another universe, in which the slightest insect has all the rich complexity 344 A fflSTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of man. "Car enfin qu'est-ce qu'un homme dans la nature? Un neant a I'egard de I'infini, un tout a I'egard du neant, un milieu entre rien et tout." It is this attitude of Pascal in presence of the awfulness of the world that makes us realise the peculiar quality of his thought and its expression. The language of the Pensees is sometimes disconnected and jerky, hke notes hastily jotted down, often redundant, many a time unduly compressed. But it is per- meated with the spirit of constructive imagination and its lyrical utterances. The writer is a poet giving concrete form to his visions, as his eye ranges over the vastness of the infinite and he feels the consciousness of that which alone enables him to stand before it. Thus Pascal brought French writers into the presence of new problems and made familiar to them new vistas of thought. From the technical point of view, both the Provinciates and the Pensees contributed to the moulding of a pattern for French style. The Provinciates gave snap to a prose which had wan- dered from the incoherent looseness of the sixteenth-century syntax to the Johnsonian ponderousness of Balzac. The Pen- sees made possible the treatment of the deepest problems of thought in a language that a lajmian could understand, and in a style of deep austerity yet of poetic grace. The rhetoric of Corneille is the counterpart, though far superior, of that of Balzac; the language of Pascal has much of the smoothness that Racine introduced into tragedy. CHAPTER X RELIGION. MORALS AND EDUCATION THE seventeenth century, in spite of the apparent destruc- tion of Huguenot power, is characterised by much religious and ethical controversy. It is true that the chief philosopher of Classicism, Descartes, though he has much to say con- cerning the power and infinity of God, does not make him intervene very actively in the course of the world, and does not link metaphysics and theology closely together. It was this which made Pascal say: "Je ne puis pardonner a Descartes; il aurait bien voulu dans toute sa philosophie se passer de Dieu mais il n'a pu s'empecher de lui faire dormer une chiquenaude pour faire mettre le monde en mouvement." It is Malebranche, as we have seen, who makes the philosophy of Descartes theological. But there were plenty of manifestations of spiritual or imspiritual feeling. The orthodox scepticism of Charron con- tinued the Pyrrhonism of Montaigne, which shows its influence also in the religious unbelief of so many of the libertines or free-thinkers, whose intellectual independence led some of them to break the bonds of religion and of morals. They were often under the inspiration of Vanini, put to death at Toulouse, the home of bigotry and repression, in 1619. Like Descartes they proclaimed doubt, and like Descartes they were accused of unorthodoxy. But unlike Descartes, they rested in their doubt, and hence men like Theophile and Cyrano de Bergerac were charged with atheism. Theophile's religious inconstancy laid him open to the attacks of the Jesuits, and Cyrano in his cult 345 346 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of nature far outstripped his master Gassendi and seemed at times to justify the accusations. A diametrically opposite spirit is that of Saint Frangois de Sales (1567-1622), the venerated bishop of Geneva. He was a native of Savoy, but was educated by the Jesuits at Paris, who perhaps helped to develop in him his natural bias towards a flowery style. Becoming a priest against his father's will, he tried in the last years of the sixteenth century to convert the district of Chablais, a stronghold of Protestantism. He was unsuccessful, though by his gentle spirit he made some impor- tant conversions. His efforts to persuade Theodore de Beze were less fruitful. His first writings were a series of tracts, called the Controverses, and the Defense de I'etendard de la croix. Coming to Paris on an ecclesiastical mission in 1602, Saint Francois de Sales grew intimate with a set of people steeped in religious feeling, especially Mme Acarie, and with mystical tendencies. He gave up hoping to convert Protestants, and became the spiritual guide of Catholics towards a better faith. He directed his preaching towards this end, and delivered sermons full of honeyed sweetness, trying to destroy the pride of men, wherein he saw the source of their defects, and to encour- age the quest for perfection, which to him lay in a state of the soul. He won great power over women, and as the spiritual adviser of Mme de Chantal, a widow full of the feeling of mysticism, he established with her the order of the Visitation. The chief work of Saint Frangois de Sales is the Introduction a la vie devote. This book of Christian meditation, full of flowery imagery and the love of innocence, came as a happy reaction against the violences of sixteenth-century warfare. Its analysis of the conscience and inner devotion has made it a favorite work even among many Protestants. To the meditative and self- questioning mind it was a comfort and a consolation. His other great work was the Traite de I' amour de Dieu, setting forth the mystic love of God and teaching how we go to him, not because of his majesty, but because such is the true course of RELIGION. MORALS AND EDUCATION 347 our hearts led by the beautiful and the good. The quietism of Mme Guyon, the late form of seventeenth-century mysticism, is in germ in the writings of Saint Francois de Sales. In his analyses of feeling, Saint Francois tends somewhat to preciosity by making thought more supple and refined and full of delicate shades. In language and thought it is almost a commonplace to compare him with d'Urfe, for both writers give analyses of love and studies of the human heart. The love is much of the same kind in both, though the object be different, in the one the love of man and woman, in the other the love of the Creator and the created one: "Etre devot, c'est aimer, la foi et I'amour doivent devenir une seule et m6me chose." More- over d'Urfe and Saint Franfois are fond of the same gentle phrases and figures of speech. A more miHtant influence with a more concrete effect upon education and society was exercised by the Jesuits. This brotherhood had been founded in Paris in the sixteenth century by Loyola, and Frenchmen had always been prominent in it. The Jesuits aimed from the start at the control of education and were rivals of the University. They were opposed to the paganism of the Hmnanists, but instead of breaking with the Renaissance, they tried to turn it their way, and in 1564 es- tabKshed the College de Clermont. This school became in the seventeenth century the most powerful establishment of learning in Paris, with from two to three thousand pupils. There was great hostility against the Jesuits based on their greed for power and their political intrigues during the Ligue. The University and the Parlement were arrayed against them, and in the name of the Parlement Etienne Pasquier and Antoine Arnauld thtmdered against them. Banished for a time under Henry IV, then readmitted, they were accused of complicity in the crime of Ravaillac, who was putting into practice the theories of the Jesuit Mariana on regicide. But they won the victory, and all through the seventeenth century they were the con- fessors of royalty and of the nobility, the P. Cotton to Henry IV, 348 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the P. La Chaise and the P. Le TeUier to Louis XIV. In an age, too, when every family of importance had its spiritual adviser or directeur de conscience, the Jesuits made their power strongly felt. They were hated, as the quarrels with the Jansenists show, for their doctrines of casuistry and equivocation, and were blamed for much of the hypocrisy prevalent at the end of the reign of Louis XIV under the sway of Mme de Maintenon. The influence of the Jesuits was vast on education, and they modified its trend in many respects. The University, as we have seen, was addicted to unprogressive Scholastic ways, though the Latin grammar of Van Pauteren or Despautere, at which Moliere laughs, had taken the place of the mediaeval manuals. Logical disputations were still rife in philosophy and in theology. The Jesuits developed especially secondary education, as dealing with youth at the point of most effective contact for making their influence felt. The training, based largely on the Ratio studiorum of 1599, emphasised the spirit of emulation by the award of prizes, as in all modern French education, and the classes were organised by the selection of good scholars to act as overseers and monitors under the names of decurions, censors, praetors, and imperators. The teachers aimed at a full control of their pupils, keeping them to a large degree away from their families, but trying to make them men of the world and of society, versed in the social graces, in good breeding, and suav- ity of demeanor, such as should characterise the honnete homme. In mental discipline they developed the rhetorical side, and the Latin far more than the Greek elements of culture. There was constant writing in Latin, conversation in Latin, and the writing of Latin plays. Style was valued more than depth of erudition, so that even the study of philosophy became a discussion of formulae, almost as bad as the Scholasticism of the University and at variance with the spirit of Cartesianism. They also laid stress on the memory as much as on the reason. Here, too, they were at variance with the rationalism of Descartes. But many of the features of the Jesuit training, the study of rhetoric and RELIGION. MORALS AND EDUCATION 349 the encouragement of emulation, have marked French education up to the present time.^ Another form of training was given under the auspices of the order of the Oratoire, founded at the beginning of the seventeenth century by the Cardinal Pierre de BeruUe. The Oratorians were rivals of the Jesuits, but national and Galilean in their tenden- cies. They allowed far greater individual liberty and were intellectually more progressive, hence they S3Tnpathised more with Descartes. Malebranche, his greatest disciple, was a member of their order. The Jansenist schools of Port-Royal, though small as compared with the College de Clermont, and of brief duration, lasting from 1637 to 1 66 1, made in the century almost as deep a mark upon education as did the Jesuit colleges, Hke Clermont or La Fleche. In Saint-Cyran and Lemaitre they had noble in- spirers, in Lancelot, Nicole, Walon de Beaupuis, and Coustel great teachers, in Lancelot's Jardin des racines grecques and Arnauld and Nicole's Logic they gave books which influenced French education for many a generation.. The training which the Port-RoyaUsts gave allowed greater value to Greek than the Jesuits did, and it aimed rather at crushing than at encouraging emulation. In consequence, also, of the gloom of the Jansenist doctrines and methods, the general effect of the Port-Royal training was to develop self-analysis. ' M. Compayr6, in his Histoire critique des doctrines de I'Hucation, thinks that an important element in the constitution of the conventional moulds of French Classicism was the Latin translation of the Greek rheto- rician Aphthonius which was in universal use in schools. It set forth the various forms of rhetorical discussion, by an automatic but restrained and regular method, and was impUcitly followed. (But it was used in Germany without producing Classicism.) — For a description in form of fiction of the Jesuit influence on youthful minds in modern days, see Edouard EstauniS's I'Empreinte, CHAPTER XI RACINE IN Racine we get the culmination of Classic dramatic art in France. In breadth of genius he may be surpassed by MoHere, in depth of thought by Pascal, in richness of language by Corneille. But in the combination of melodious verse, of skilful dramatic construction, of the analysis of passions, Racine deserves the first rank. Jean Racine (1639-1699) was not bom until three years after the great victory of Corneille, whose successful rival he was des- tined to be. He was left an orphan in early childhood, and was brought up under the direction of his grandmother, a Jansenist. He spent a short time in the school of the Port-RoyaUsts,' under the guidance of Lancelot, Nicole, and Hamon. He finished his training at the College d'Harcourt, which was affiliated with Port-Royal, but gradually he fell away from the austerity of his masters and got familiar with fashionable people and with the unconventional life of actors and actresses. In 1660 his ode on the marriage of Louis XIV and Marie-Therese was rewarded with a gratification and pension. Racine, who had been educated on the whole for a religious Ufe, spent a year or more in remote Languedoc with an imcle, ' M. Masson-Forestier, who as a descendant of Racine's sister assumes a proprietary claim to the interpretation of his distant uncle, strongly denies the probability of any Port-Royal impress as well as any conversion after Phedre. But Racine's stay at Port-Royal, though short, was at an age more susceptible than the years of actual childhood to receive an intellectual impression. It is true that Racine in his native town had been under Jansenist influences from childhood long before entering the schools of Port-Royal. 35° RACINE 351 a canon at Uzes. But pining for the city, he returned to Paris. He became more and more known by poems on occasions such as the king's convalescence, received other gifts, grew intimate with Boileau and Moliere, the latter of whom brought out in 1664 his first play in spite of the protests of his Port-Royalist teachers and his Jansenist kinsfolk. The next play, Alexandre, in 1665, was followed by a rupture with Port-Royal, and Racine wrote some bitter and sarcastic letters which he later sincerely regretted. He also broke with MoUere in a way far from credi- table, by taking from Moliere Alexandre after he had had all the trouble of mounting and bringing it out, and giving it to the rival company at the Hotel de Bourgogne. Racine's first great triumph was Andromaque (1667). This was followed in quick succession by his only comedy, les Plai- deurs, (1668), and hy Britannicus (1669), Berenice (1670), Bajazet (1672), Mithridate (1673), Iphigenie (1674), and Phedre (1677). In the heyday of his success, for he had recently been elected to the Academy, he suddenly gave up writing plays and asso- ciating with actors, became reconciled with Port-Royal, married, and settled down to a humdrum life. The only exception was when, as historiographer of the king, along with Boileau, he had to make some uncomfortable journeys in the train of the royal armies. Finally in 1689 he wrote Esther, and in 1691 Athalie, both played at the girls' school of Saint-Cyr. Racine, who in his last months had somewhat fallen from royal favor, left besides his plays a few miscellaneous writings, of which the most important were the Cantiques spiriiuels, a short history of Port-Royal, and his correspondence. Racine occupies a different position from Comeille in the history of French tragedy, and, though he has much less to say about rules, he follows them more closely. He has, too, a distinct theory, which is the result of his Jansenist training and of his emotional temperament. Comeille we have seen to belong to the miUtant age of French Kfe, the day of vigorous wills, in which the ideal was to overcome the passions by strength 352 A fflSTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of will. Racine also is a disciple of reason, but the word has a different meaning with him. Literature must be reasonable and free from fantastic interpretations of character, complicated plots and impossible chmaxes. Reason appears, then, in the author rather than in the chief character, and the whole plot gains in naturalness and in vraisemblance. The hero or heroine might very well show the defeat of reason by the passions, and in this is shown the effect of Racine's Jansenism, especially in such a play as Phedre depicting fallen nature without the illumination of Grace. For Racine beheved, or tried to show, that human nature is corrupt, that the evil passions prevail. It is the victory of these passions that he portrays in the tragedies, and the one on which he dwells most frequently is love. Racine was easily excited by this emotion, and he had several liaisons with noted actresses like la Du Pare and la Champmesle. Women were what inter- ested him most, and he delighted in analysing their character. He had seen and studied the hotblooded and passionate southern women of Languedoc as well as the intriguing women of Paris. "Fair women full of Attic grace," says Jules Lemaitre, "but who lack the Grace of God." M. Larroumet points out that of the nine great tragedies of Racine, omitting the early Thebaide and Alexandre, six are named for women, and of the remaining three two could as well be called "Agrippine" and "Roxane" as Britannicus and Bajazet. We might add that it would not take much to change Mithridate into "Monime. " It is love, then, victorious over reason, that he portrays, the triumph of the bad over the good. This is why Racine is especially a character painter dealing with problems of passion, whereas Corneille is the poet of situations. And love is absent from only two of Racine's plays, for he usually saw in the chief character the favorite actress for whom he was writing, and people rightly quoted the saying, "Racine fait des tragedies pour la Champmesle." The analysis of character is precisely what makes the simplicity RACINE 353 of Racine's plays, so far as outer incident is concerned. They are not full of complicated events difl&cult to follow, which made the application of the rules such a task for Corneille. Racinetf chose by preference an "inner" action or problem of character! he is a psychological poet, and his plays are studies of individual^ etats d'dme or crises. They can consequently be brought down to the simplest form, and the unities of time and place no longer stand in the way. This does not imply lack of action, for to him a tragedy is "the imitation of a complete action in which several persons participate." The parts had to be properly imited, and when he had succeeded in linking the scenes together he used to consider his work practically done. But the action was where Racine's originality came in, his theory of invention being "Faire quelque chose de rien." He took his starting-point in an emotional crisis of a character of antiquity, except in Bajazet, and worked out the crisis, which was usually some form of love. Nothing can be more simple than such an action, and the only complication lies in the coming , and going of the subsidiary characters. Thus the plots of Racine are easy to sum up in a brief sentence. Whereas a play by Corneille demands considerable explanation, M. Janet points out that we can give the contents of Andro- maque almost as a mathematical formula. Inasmuch as Oreste loves Hermione, Hermione Pyrrhus, and Pyrrhus Andromaque,' but Pyrrhus is at times ready to play off Hermione against Andromaque, and Hermione does the same to Oreste and Pyrrhus, the plot may be represented by the action of the two movable points H. and P. (Hermione and Pyrrhus) between the fixed extremes O. and A. (Oreste and Andromaque) : O. ' ► H. ' P. < • A. Voltaire summed up Ber&nice as "Un amant et une maitresse qui se quittent," and Victor Hugo gave its action almost in the phrase of Suetonius on which it is based: ' This amorous sequence recalls the pastoral plots. . 354 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE ACT I Titus ACT II reginam Berenicen ACT III in Vitus ACT IV invitam ACT V dimisit. Such is the action of a Racinian play, which is characterised, as M. Robert shows in his PoUique de Racine, by: A simple yet majestic and not improbable story; characters on heroic scale; violence of passions; beauty of sentiments; elegance of expres- sion. All this is consistent with the Scaligerian definition of tragedy, and falls in perfectly with the requirements of the abbe d'Aubignac. If we turn next to a more detailed consideration of the indi- vidual plays, we can divide Racine's dramatic productivity into three periods: the first two plays, those from Andromaque to Phedre, and the last two. La Tkebaide, ou les freres ennemis, and Alexandre are distinctly youthful experiments: Racine has not acquired independence, and is content to follow the fashions in vogue. Love is as yet the galanterie of society and of romance. In la Tkebaide, Creon, the tyrant of Thebes, is the rival of his own son Hemon for Antigone's love, and seven characters of the play meet violent deaths. In Alexandre the -Macedonian conqueror is but a foolish suitor in love with Cleofile. With Andromaque Racine entered upon his period of glory. It was the time of Moliere's masterpieces Tartuffe, Don Juan, le Misanthrope, and poor Corneille was in the period of Attila. Racine here definitely strikes out for himself and seeks a reahstic portrayal of passion. Hermione is the jealous and neglected RACINE 355 woman seeking revenge, and the problem of the play is the crime passionnel frequent in French newspapers today. Racine's contemporaries saw such cases about them; Cleopatre and Rodogune were similar primal types, and there are likenesses between the plots of Andromaque and of Pertharite; but this was the first time that the psychology of such a character had been put upon the stage. Andromaque, too, was recognised as a Frenchwoman, with what Nisard called a "coquetterie vertu- euse," which, in spite of her fidelity to Hector's memory, made her understand the power of her sex over Pyrrhus. The latter is one of the most interesting characters of the play for a study of the development of male characters. Today this fierce barbarian of Epirus seems a curled Assyrian bull, too much at home in a drawing-room to be realistic. Racine, on the con- trary, had to defend his portraiture from the charge of brutality: "Pyrrhus n'avait pas lu nos romans; il etait violent de son nat- urel, et tons les heros ne sont pas faits pour etre des Celadons." Andromaque was quickly followed by les Plaideurs, a comedy. It was a light farce based in plot on the Wasps of Aristophanes, with hints from Rabelais, Cyrano, Furetiere and others, and envenomed by a personal grudge of Racine against the courts because of certain legal tribulations he had undergone. It was developed with some of the horse-play of the Itahan comedy, with characters peeping out of unexpected quarters or falling into holes, and themselves reproducing the Italian types: Isabelle and Leandre are of Italian origin even to their names, and rintime is the tricky servant, descended from the slave of Terence who helps his master to dupe the old father. Racine shows in this play that he could have succeeded in comedy had he tried. His sense of satire was keen, and his acrid character made his wit particularly biting. Britannicus is Racine's Macbeth, a play haimted with the premonitions of crime. It is one of the less "popular" of the- author's tragedies, but one of his most thorough psychological studies, portrajang the determination of crime in Nero, the 3S6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE anger of Agrippina at the loss of her power, the hypocrisy and intrigues of the evil counsellor Narcisse. Nero is not even the picturesque ruflSan of Suetonius and Tacitus, or, to be more modern, of Quo Vadis, posing in the circus and burning Chris- tians, and Racine confines himself to the actual contest of weak- ness against temptation and the resulting defeat. Birenice represents the climax of the Racinian method and manner, though it is not usually classed among his best plays.' Contemporary spectators saw in it the separation of Louis XIV from Marie Mancini, the niece of Mazarin, or, it was also asserted, the surmised love of Henriette d'Angleterre, supposed to have suggested the play to Racine, for the same king. The drama is, therefore, rather in the strain of tearful elegy than of strong passion. Berenice, Titus and Antiochus would have seemed like limp dish-rags to Corneille in his doughty days: Adieu. Servons tous trois d'exemple a runivers De I'ainour la plus tendre et la plus maUieureuse Dont il puisse garder I'histoire douloureuse. Yet when, if the legend be true, at Henriette's request Corneille wrote a play on the same subject, without knowing that Racine was engaged on it too, he could only be insipid. Berenice ends in tears, Bajazet in bloodshed. It is Racine's Othello, a drama of jealousy, of which the characters are inscru- table Orientals: Roxane was as mysterious to the French of that time as the Moor of Venice to the English. But, as already suggested, the French even today are prone in their literature to look upon woman as the plaything of passion and emotion rather than of reflection, whether she be a primitive barbarian or a twentieth-century nevrosee. Hence the character of Roxane, jealous and vindictive, stands forth from the rest of the play. Roxane has her foil in the Monime of Mithridate, the gentle and civilised woman surrounded by a half-barbarous people. The play is built upon the elements of love and patriotism. Iphigenie 1 See, on the other hand, M. Michaut's la Berenice de Racine. RACINE 357 rationalises a supernatural story of Greek mythology, and depicts . a new Antigone subordinating her love to law and duty, to. father and country; a jealous and treacherous rival, Eriphile; a proud father, Agamemnon, wavering between love and the call of the oracle; finally, the wild Achilles bubbling over with pride and stained with slaughter, yet in love. The characteristic contribution of Racine to the story is the part of Eriphile, of whom he said he found the hint in Pausanias, who becomes almost the pivot of the play. With Phedre we come to the turning-point of Racine's own career. This is the tragedy not only of jealous but of guilty love, or rather the struggle against guilty love; for it must be said in justice to Phedre that she tries to banish her incestuous desire until she thinks she can love Hippolyte without doing wrong. Taken all in all, Phedre marks the culmination of Racine's studies of passion. The chaste Hippolytus is swept aside from the centre of the play and even becomes the sighing suitor of an ingenue; for Racine could scarcely conceive of a hero not in love. "Que diraient les petits-maitres? " he replied to the Jansenists to justify the presence of the "charmante" Aricie. But Thesee, the king, and (Enone, the wicked nurse, as well as Hippolyte and Aricie, yield to Phedre, the unhappy and irresponsible woman, the slave of "Venus tout entiere a sa proie attacheie." Strange to say, it was this drama of unchastity which brought about a reconciliation between Racine and his former teachers of Port-Royal, who saw in Phedre a Jansenist play teaching a moral lesson. For it depicts human nature in sin because un- illumined by Grace, and the evil passions therefore necessarily triumphant, as in the austere creed of Port-Royal. This reconciliation alone might justify Racine in giving up tragedies, but there were other predisposing causes. His spite- ful character, together with his successes, made him many enemies. On this occasion the duchesse de Bouillon and her brother the due de Nevers, niece and nephew of Mazarin, with 3S8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Mme Deshoulieres worked up a conspiracy against him, the "cabala de Phedre." The poetaster Pradon scribbled off a rival Phedre, finished a few days before Racine's and systemati- cally boomed. Meanwhile they sought to damn Racine's play by a conspiracy of silence, and the quarrel degenerated into the "war of the sonnets," a series of most reprehensible productions for which everybody deserves censure. Whatever the reason, Racine conceived that his plays were evil. His conversion may have resulted partly from bitterness, or it may have been sincere and he may have seen a baneful influence in his own writings. For those were the days of plots and poisonings, of Mme de Briny;illiers and la Voisin; the times when Mme de Montespan sought the infamous Satanic rites of the abbe Guibourg to preserve the king's love ; when in spite of the majestic calm which historians of the seventeenth century have tried to throw about the age, jealousy and murder were ■ as rife as they ever have been, and when Racine's own name was by gossip coimected with the death of the actress Mile Du Pare. For years Racine attended to his family duties and the chroni- cles of the king's reign. Then at the request of Mme de Main- tenon he wrote a biblical idyl or sacred elegy, a combination of dialogue and cantata, called Esther. This was acted by the girls of Saint-Cyr, of which school Mme de Maintenon was the directress, in private theatricals before the king and selected guests. It was scarcely looked upon as a regular tragedy, but its lyric beauty pleased literary judges, the religious spirit found favor with Port-Royal and with Mme de Maintenon, who perhaps saw her own fortune in the story of the heroine. Finally, in 1691 Racine gave to Saint-Cyr another religious drama, Athalie, drawn from the Book of Kings. But he did not bear in mind the limitations of amateur actresses playing in a small room, and roles like the frenzied Athalie, the fanatical Joad, the wily and treacherous Mathan, the bluff general Abner, were far above their power. Few, except Boileau, recognised RACINE 359 the greatness of the play until it was publicly acted long after the author's death who never saw it properly given. Today we are justified in terming it Racine's greatest drama and the culmination of French Classicism. His poetry here reaches its supreme melody and harmony, and to the spirit of Christian and Hebrew religion he unites the majesty of the dialogue of Hellenic tragedy and the beauty of its choruses. Sainte-Beuve called the play the " couronnement de Port-Royal," and what speaks in it is, indeed, the spirit of Jehovah, the austerity of Calvinism and of Jansenism, of a jealous God who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children, rather than the friendly deity of Catholicism, whom the French call "le bon Dieu." In this consideration of the theories of Racine and the growth of his plays, little attention has been given to something else which differentiates him from his predecessors and contempora- ries. With him the French alexandrine reaches the perfection of combined strength and smoothness. Though using a limited vocabulary and consequently needing to produce his effects by shades of words rather than by richness of language, Racine excels Corneille in his discovery of the proper word. His rhetoric is less vigorous, less declamatory, . but it flows more smoothly from the tongue, and his lines cling to ^;he memory with a rhythm so delicate that a changed order or a substituted word turns the verse into prose.' Yet Racine does not fall into the weak softness of a Quinault. The Frenchman sees in Racine the culmination of his Classical school, because to the drama, which is the favorite literary type, Racine contributed beautiful poetry and gave a rational and realistic portrayal of universal or general passions and emo- tions. He was the great psychological poet and analyser of ' If the reader is tempted to make a practical test of Racine's art let him open Rostand's Aiglon at the scene in which the lectrice reads some verses from Andromaque (Act I, sc. vii), and let him note how, amid the stagger and lurch of the modern alexandrine, the smooth flow of Racine's verse seems in its beauty like the proverbial oasis in the desert. 360 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE character. His men and women, with slight allowances for custom and civilisation, are thought by his admirers to be men and women indifferently of the past and of today. His plots are carefully^ constructed works of art, clear and precise in their formulation, logical in their development, and present a single problem or crisis of human nature, treated in accordance with certain technical rules which are not all absolutely necessary, but the observance of which gives an added intellectual delight to the spectator. Many of these qualities the foreign reader finds it difficult to appreciate. The beauty of the verse is so subtle, the plot, which depends upon inner action expressed in words rather than upon external action such as the romantic Shaksperian drama often presents, is so remote from the Anglo-Saxon mind, that the alien is puzzled. So the admiration of Racine is usually taken on trust, and he is appreciated, unfortunately, only at an advanced stage of one's study. Racine is so far above his contemporaries that they sink into obscurity. Pradon is remembered only by the incident of Phedre. Thomas Corneille has received credit for his variety and fertility in other chapters. The sugary style of Philippe Quinault (1635-1688) was perhaps not without its effect on Racine himself. He wrote tragedies, and particularly "lyrical tragedies," often mythological, which are significant in the early history of the opera. They contain, the sentimental spirit of the pastoral and the novel, and were plays in which, as Boileau said, "Jusqu'i 'je vous hais,' tout s'y dit tendrement." The drama of Racine thus represents the flowering of the Classical play, but stands almost alone. The productive period is in Corneille's earlier time, and it is in the first half of the seventeenth century that the most vigorous and the most numer- ous plays are on the whole to be found. Campistron exaggerated the weak and sugary side of Racine. "Sur le Racine eteint le Campistron puUule," to quote Hugo. Temporary successes were won by the Amasis of Lagrange-Chancel, author also of RACINE 361 Philippiques or satires against the regent; the Tyndarides of Danchet; the Absalon of Duche. The best dramatist of all was La Fosse with his Manlius Capitolimis and Thesee. The former of these plays was an adaptation from the English of Otway's Venice Preserved, which itself had been drawn from the abbe de Saint-R6al's historical romance la Conjuration de Venise. In a previous chapter on the seventeenth-century drama mention was made of the earlier history of the opera and ballet under Italian influences and the protection of Mazarin. The first French opera was the Pomone of Pierre Perrin in 1671, and Moliere and Benserade developed the ballet. Lulli as com- poser monopolised the music and collaborated not only with Moliere in his ballets, but with Quinault in his"lyrical tragedies." Thomas Corneille and Fontenelle wrote operas, and at the begin- ning of the eighteenth century Houdar de la Motte wrote opera-tragedies and opera-ballets, in which he was looked upon as the successor to Quinault. CHAPTER XII MOLIERE JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN (1622-1673) was the son of a valet tapissier du roi. His mother died when he was young, his father remarried and the stepmother is more frequent than the mother in Moliere's plays. He was brought up by the Jesuits at the College de Clermont? and began the study of law, but the allurement of the stage had been on him since child- hood, when he had watched the Italian actors or the farces of the H6tel de Bourgogne. In 1643 he gave up his rights to in- heritance from his father, and, uniting his fortunes with certain members of a family of actors named Bejart, he took the name of Moliere and started the Illustre Theatre. He opened his quarters in a tennis court or shed on the left bank of the river. The company met with disaster, tried in vain to do better in more fashionable regions near the Place Royale, and in 1645 Moliere was jailed for debt. So a few months later, he and the Bejarts, in a reorganised company amalgamated with the troupe of Du Fresne, left Paris for a long tour of France. The name of Moliere himself disappears for a number of months. The journey lasted for many years. The company was at first a typical band of "barn-stormers," plodding from city to city, giving performances in buildings often ill-suited to the purpose, exposed to the scorn of thrifty but narrow-minded bourgeois. It acquired more prestige as Moliere gradually became famous. The itinerary of the company is traceable to a certain degree by entries in municipal registers, in nearly all the larger cities of the west and south. But Moliere at least was getting training in the study of human nature, for he was brought in much closer 362 MOLIERE 363 contact than if he had remained in Paris with the various types and classes who are depicted in his comedies. In 1652 the company, now well known, made its headquarters at Lyons, and there, in 1653 or 1655, Mohere brought out his first original written comedy, I'Etourdi, based upon an Italian original by Niccolo Barbieri. The company had been in the habit of acting tragedies by different authors, but Mohere had composed a number of farces on the plan of the commedia dell'arte, in which a part of the dialogue was left to the inspiration of the actors. Most of these have disappeared, but their titles sometimes ■ suggest later plays by MoHere : Gor gibus dans le sac may be a hint of les Fourberies de Scapin, and le Fagotier of le Midecin malgre lui: The two which have survived, le Medecin volant and la Jalousie du BarbouilU, suggest in their plots le Midecin malgre lui and Georges Dandin respectively. In 1656 MoHere gave le Depit amoureux at Beziers. He had the distinction of appearing before the prince de Conti, who had been at the College de Clermont with Moliere, though probably too far above him in rank to notice him, and who was later, as a Jansenist, to be a foe to Moliere and his plays. Moliere's ambition was to return to Paris. He succeeded in acquiring the patronage of Monsieur, the king's brother, and in 1658 his com- pany appeared before the king in a semi-priyate performance at the Louvre, playing Corneille's Nicomede and le Depit amoureux. Then a public performance was given in November at the H6tel du Petit-Bourbon, where Moliere's company alternated with the Italians, still gaining but little success with plays like Rodogune and Pompee. It was not until November 18, 1659, that he won instant fame by les Precieuses ridicules, with its innovation of modern, almost personal, satire. In 1660 came Sganarelle, but enemies came too in the shape of the rival com- pany at the Hotel de Bourgogne and the friends of those whom Moliere had attacked in his PrScieuses. As a result Moliere was imexpectedly ousted from his theatre during the king's absence for his marriage. After a delay for repairs, MoUere opened a new 364 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE theatre at the Palais-Royal, where Richelieu had played Mirame, with the Depit amoureux. This was followed by Don Garde de Navarre, a failure, and by I'Ecole des maris, which won an instant success. In 1662, at the age of forty, he made the mistake of marrying a young girl of nineteen, brought up in his company, whose frivolity and coquetry made his life wretched, though his own behavior was no better than that of the other actors of the day. In 1665 his company was allowed to call itself the troupe du roi, though the actors at the Hotel de Bourgogne were still the troupe royale. In 1673, after a brief but glorious career saddened by his experience with his wife and by the wasting of . constant ill-health, Moliere, whose fidelity to duty kept him from leaving his fellow-actors, was by a sort of tragic irony taken with a haemorrhage of the lungs at the fourth perform- ance of le Malade imaginaire, in which he had made a violent attack upon doctors, and died within a few hours. Moliere and his actors gave plays of all kinds, nearly all the chief ones of Corneille, and for the first time Attila and Tite et Berenice. They brought out Racine's Thebaide and Alexandre, and gave productions by Thomas Corneille, Scarron, Rotrou, Du Ryer, Boisrobert and others. • Moliere, like many comic actors, would have preferred fame as a tragedian, but he never succeeded very welL and thus he was described by his enemy Montfleury: II est fait tout de meme; il vient, le nez au vent, Les pieds en paren these et I'^paule en avant; Sa perruque qui suit le cote qu'il avance, Plus pleine de lauriers qu'un jambon de Mayence; Les mains sur les cotes, d'un air peu n6glige, La tete sur le dos comme un mulet charge, Les yeux fort egares; puis debitant ses r61es, D'un hoquet eternel s6pare ses paroles. / From the point of view of actual influences Molifere, to use the familiar phrase, "prenait son bien ou il le trouvait." Rules were a very secondary matter to him, and all sources were good moli{:re 365 if the result was a snappy comedy. The old fabliaux and farces indirectly contributed suggestions of plots, comedies by his predecessors from Larivey down gave him many a scene, Latin comedy was a model, the spirit of the Spanish play was in line with his farces. But, above all, he underwent the influence of Italian comedy both in its written and spoken forms. From it he took plots, very fully at first, then only incidents and scenes, as well as types of pedants, valets, soubrettes, harlequins and scaramoucheSj and names like Pandolfe, Mascarille, Scapin, Leandre, Valere, Horace, Isabelle and Zerbinette. The etourdi of the play of that name is the "scatter-brained fellow," the "Sir Martin Mar-all" of Dryden, of which play Pepys recorded that he never laughed so in all his life. The hero Lelie, with the help of his tricky valet Mascarille, wants to get possession of the woman he loves, but each time that Mascarille devises a plot, he spoils it by his etourderie, either revealing it too soon or to the wrong person. Or when he is instructed to tell a story he mixes up places: "En Turquie a Turin." Mascarille is the tricky servant, proud of his cleverness: Apres ce rare exploit, je veux que Ton s'apprete A me peindre en Ijeros un laurier sur la tete, Et qu'au bas du portrait on mette en lettres d'or: Vivat Mascarillus, fourbUm imperatort The Depit amour eux, also largely of Italian origin from a play by Niccolo Secchi, contains a form of the old travesty of a girl disguised as a boy which Shakspere used in Twelfth Night and As You Like It. The value of the play really comes from the scene of a lovers' tiff, such as Moliere used later in Tartufe. In another traditional scene master and mistress are imitated in a still more humorous tone by man and maid. Both I'Etourdi and le Depit amoureux fade into insignificance before les Precieuses ridicules, a one-act farce. Moliere made a bold stroke for success, and got what he wanted. He was not, it will be remembered, absolutely free from the figures of speech 366 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of preciosity himself, and has given permanence to more than one. But he hits a blow at foolish provincial women like those whom Chapelle and Bachaumont in their Voyage saw at Mont- pellier, and indirectly at the preciosity of Paris. Two gentlemen, rejected in marriage by the ignorant and affected girls Cathos and Madelon, because they do not make love according to the novels of Mile de Scudery, send their servants Mascarille and Jodelet disguised as noblemen to court the damsels? The vulgarity of the domestics passes for breeding, and the girls are dazzled by the fine language of the ruelles precieuses until a rude awakening comes. The satire in this play of the occupations of society did more than anything else to bring preciosity to the ground. Moliere's enemies were already numerous, and though Sgana- relle, in the play of that name, a character who henceforth replaces Mascarille, was a success, Don Garde de Navarre in 1661 fell flat. It was too serious and high-flown, though not more so than many romantic plays of the time, and strangely enough it was rather precieux, but Moliere used certain parts of it later in le Misanthrope. L'Ecole des maris (1661) brought new fame. The plot goes back ultimately to the Adelphi of Terence, with incidents which may be traced to Boccaccio, to Lope de Vega, to Hurtado de Mendoza, partly through Boisrobert and Dorimond. The brothers Ariste and Sganarelle bring up two girls to be their wives. Sganarelle, the jealous taskmaster, is the one to be deceived by his tricky protegee, whereas the older but kindly Ariste reaps the reward of happiness. There came next in the same year les Fdcheux, given at Fou- quet's great festival at Vaux just a few weeks before his arrest, and in it Moliere makes use for the first time of the ballet. It is what the French call a piece a tiroirs, a series of disconnected scenes and character studies depicting various kinds of bores and nuisances who might well be underground and who never would be missed. There is the petit marquis who interrupts thfe play, the gambler, the bragging huntsman (this character at the MOLIERE 367 king's suggestion), the pedant Caritides, who, unwiUing to be a "savant en us" like his fellow-pedants, decided to be a Greek "savant en es." Moliere acted the transformation characters of these successive fdcheux. L'Ecole desfemmes (1662) was, on the whole, the most popular success of Moliere's career. Its topic is to a certain extent that of I'Ecole des maris. Arnolphe, a middle-aged and in those days elderly man of forty, has trained the ingenue Agnes to be his wife, as Sganarelle educated Isabelle. The result is the same, though Agnes sins through lamblike ignorance and innocence, and the moral is the familiar one concerning youth and crabbed age. MoUere had himself just married Armande Bejart, and critics fond of parallels have pointed out the coincidence, though it seems unlikely that Moliere would so soon have foreseen his own troubles, or even so have proclaimed them. The motif of the play is an old one and appears in Italian and Spanish tales. Moliere perhaps borrowed a story of Maria de Zayas y Soto- mayor. El prevenido enganado. Scarron's la Precaution inutile and Dorimond's I'Ecole des cocus, ou la Precaution inutile are forms of the same story, which has given titles or subtitles to authors down to Beaumarchais. Pepys says, on reading The Fruitless Precaution in Enghsh: "And so home, where I fell to read 'The Fruitless Precaution' (a book formerly recommended by Dr. Gierke at sea to me), which I read in bed till I had made an end of it, and do find it the best writ tale that ever I read in my hfe." Moliere's enemies, fdcheux, prkieux, pedants and prudes, said that I'Ecole des femmes was prurient and indecent by its sugges- tions, as well as irreligious because its maxims of marriage were a parody of saintly writers (Gregory Nazianzen). Moliere answered them by a short comedy, la Critique de I'Ecole des femmes, which, like the Frogs of Aristophanes, is a literary play. Apart from its own brilliancy the comedy is valuable as giving what Moliere scarcely otherwise took the trouble to formulate, his theory of comedy: to please and to copy from nature. 368 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE "Lorsque vous peignez les hommes il faut peindre d'apr^s nature. On veut que ces portraits ressemblent; et vous n'avez I rien fait, si vous n'y faites reconnaitre les gens de votre siecle." Moliere aims, then, to be a realist henceforth as opposed to the writers of fantastic and unreal romantic plays or burlesque comedies. Without going out of his way to violate the technical rules he snaps his fingers at them: "Je voudrais bien savoir si la grande r^gle de toutes les regies n'est pas de plaire, et si une piece de theatre qui a attrape son but n'a pas suivi im bon chemin." The contest is continued in V Impromptu de Versailles (1663), aimed especially against the actors of the H6tel de Bourgogne whose friends Donneau de Vize and Boursault had attacked Mohere in plays. Here the action takes place, not in a drawing- room, but on the stage of Moliere 's own theatre among his actors and actresses. While rehearsing a play Mohere finds opportunity to parody some of his rivals and to restate his theory: "L'affaire de la comedie est de representer en general tous les defauts des hommes, et principalement des hommes de notre siecle." Moliere thus accepts the traditional view of the moral purpose of comedy {castigare ridendo mores), though we may ask ourselves privately whether he took that aim very seriously. In acting the effort should be towards simpUcity and naturalness. Mohere could not be sufficiently sarcastic at the bombastic declamatory style in vogue at the Hotel de Bourgogne, though it is plain that in tragedy at least the diction there met with greater favor at the time than did Moli^re's style. The actors of the H6tel de Bourgogne did not consider themselves defeated, and through the mouthpiece of Vize, VilUers and Montfleury retorted with the most shameful personal abuse. After a trifling but amusing comedy-ballet, le Mariage force, in 1664, Moliere, now high in favor with the king, wrote la Princesse d'Elide for the series of fantastic entertainments, les Plaisirs de Vile enchantee, which the king offered to his mispress MOLIERE 369 Mile de la Valliere. Such was the haste with which Moliere had to compose his play that the beginning only was in verse. On one of the later days of the festival Moliere played the first three acts of one of his greatest comedies, Tartuffe. This play pictures the hypocritf, and belongs to the series of types which French literature gives from the Faux-Semblant of the Roman de la Rose and the fox of the Roman de Renart, through the Panurge of Rabelais and the Macette oi Regriier, to the M. de Climal of Marivaux, the don Basile of Beaumar- chais, the Rodin of Eugene Sue. And who is not familiar with such English characters as Joseph Surface, or the Pecksniffs, Chadbands and Uriah Heeps of Dickens? Tartuffe is a religious hypocrite as well, and the play must have had its actualite, though it is not easy to say whom Moliere was attacking. He was by temperament and training a foe to rule and restraint: he belonged to a profession against which the clergy thundered as immoral and which did constantly violate the ordinances of the Church; he had been brought into contact when young with the theories of the libertins, accustomed to Justify physical pleasures and, like Rabelais, to look upon Nature as rgood; he was constantly goaded by the criticism of those who called his plays indecent. So it need not be wondered at that Moliere was irreligious in his attitude, though he had friends among the clergy. It is a futile task to decide whether he was trying in the play to represent a real man, and a thankless one to turn it into an attack upon a single sect. The allusions to the doctrines of casuistry and the subsidiary forms of equivocation and mental restrictions point to the Jesuits: the attitude of Tartuffe towards entertainments and personal adornments hints at the Jansenists; the frequent mention of a cabal may stand for the secret Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement or "Cabale des devots" which worked in secret and devious ways against the foes of the Catho- lic religion. M. Brunetiere, therefore, among others, called the play an onslaught on Christianity. It is much simpler to accept Moliere 's word that he is attacking religious hypocrites of all 370 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE kinds, and to take the play as a document in defence as much as an attack. But the clergy did take it as an attack against them' all, and the king, though friendly to Moliere, felt constrained to forbid the performances. Moliere finished the play and gave private readings, to Cardinal Chigi the papal legate, among others. He toned down the role of Tartuffe, as a directeur de conscience, from a priest to a layman, changed his name to Panulphe and tried to bring out the comedy as a new one named VImposteur in 1667. This was again forbidden by the judge, M. de Lamoignon, a petition to the king remained fruitless, and it was not until 1669 that the play was finally allowed and was acted in its present form. Meanwhile Moliere had brought out a series of plays: Don Juan (1665), VAmour medecin, le Misanthrope (1666), le Medecin malgre lui, Melicerte, la Pastorale comique, le Sicilien, Amphitryon (1668), Georges Dandin, VAvare (1668). Tartuffe contains borrowings from previous writers, such as Scarron, Sorel and Du Lorens, but it is, on the whole, the iriost original play so far written by Moliere, and as a character study comes into the great Classical school to which Moliere, in spite of his apparent independence, belonged. Goethe admired the art with which the first two acts converge towards the appearance of Tartuffe, who, though he does not appear until the third act, dominates the play; we all marvel at the way comedy and tragedy are blended, and Tartuffe, though he disgusts by the realism with which his character is set before us, is none the less a comic type. If Tartuffe is an attack upon Christianity, in Don Juan Moliere certainly did not present the happy results of atheism. But the play does continue the religious controversy marked by Tartuffe. Moliere took a subject which had arisen in Spain, but had won success in Italian plays and in French comedies by Dorimond and Villiers at the Hdtel de Bourgogne a few years before. He made his hero, however, not merely a heedless libertine and unbeliever, but he strengthened the atheism of MOLlfeRE 371 his predecessors until it dominated the play, and the hero utters the deep and bitter philosophy of one who denies. Don Juan is no longer merely the "inconstant Hylas," or even a reprobate of genius like Benvenuto Cellini. Rather like Retz he could say " Je pris le parti de faire le mal par dessein," or he was a Lovelace that literature was to produce and a Casanova that time was actually to bring forth. It is the complexity of Don Juan's behavior that made him a puzzle to the French and a fascinating figure to later writers. At the same time it is one of Moliere's hardest roles to play, hence the ambition but the despair of actors. The spectators of the Classical age were bewildered by a. play, really a tragi- comedy, in which the unities were neglected, and containing magic, fantasy and buffoonery. The thinker was allured by the almost impossible task of analysing the haughtiness and arrogance of Don Juan, his base villainy, his hypocrisy. But it remained for a German, Christian Grabbe, to pit Faust and Don Juan against each other in a play as rivals in love. In r Amour medecin MoUere begins the attack against physi- cians as hidebound conservatives and pedants which he is to continue in le Medecin malgre lui and Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, and which will culminate in le Malade imaginaire. Melicerte is an unreality, a "comedie pastorale heroique," borrowed froni the Grand Cyrus of Mohere's victim Mile de Scudery, the Pas- torale comique is a fragment, le Sicilien a pretty trifle in rhythmic prose. Le Misanthrope, on the other hand, vies with Tartuffe and Don Juan for the primacy among Moliere's plays. It is the perfect t}T>e of Classical comedy in form, and presents a study of character and of manners, wherein amid the environ- ment of a French society life we witness the workings of a prob- lem in the psychology of the hero's mind. The outer plot is of little consequence. In this play Moliere returns to the seriousness of Don Garcie de Navarre, and in many a passage borders on tragedy. His own life, saddened by hostile criticism, ill-health and an unhappy 372 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE marriage, had become embittered, and literary detectives have tried to pro'fre that the treatment of Alceste by the young co- quette Cehmene was an echo of Moliere's own married life. Be that as it may, le Misanthrope is Moliere's nearest approach to tragedy, however much it may have been acted by him in the comic vein. The grumbling of Alceste often irritates, his bluntness offends, in the discussion of courtesy versus sincerity we sympathise more with the pleasant Philinte and we are apt to term Alceste a mauvais coucheur rather than a misanthrope. The hastily written and involved language is also a drawback to its appreciation by the foreigner. But in a comparison between le Misanthrope and Wycherly's imitation the Plain Dealer the difference is seen between genius and brutality, and in Alceste's associates we have wonderful portraits of the men and women of the time: petits marquis or Fopling Flutters, coquettes and gossips like Celimene and Arsinoe. Amphitryon is a reproduction of the old comedy of Plautus which Shakspere used in the Comedy oj Errors and which Rotrou had imitated in les Sosies. Georges Dandin is a bitter comedy dealing with unhappy marriage, though no parallel can be drawn with Moliere and Armande. L'Avare, no less bitter, is a study of the miser and the dissensions which avarice brings into a family. It is ultimately based on the Aulularia of Plautus, with many borrowings from later coinedies. The humor of this play has an acrid taste, and there is hardly a sympathetic person in it. Father and children play a game of mutual deceit, and the forms which his passion takes are so grotesque that he does not produce loathing, as with the pere Grandet, or pity, as with Silas Marner, but merely amusement, — probably what Moliere intended. Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, a comedy-ballet, mocks the untravelled provincial who comes to Paris, and sets up to ridi- cule, as Rabelais did in his "ecolier limousin," the inhabitants of Limoges, where Moliere may have had some disagree- able experience. La comtesse d'Escarbagnas, a somewhat MOLIERE 373 later play, is a companion portrait of the provincial lady of quality. Meanwhile, after a trifling play called les Amants magnifiques, came le Bourgeois gentilhomme, the perfection of farce, containing also elements of comedy of character and of manners. M. Jour- dain, the vulgar bourgeois who wishes to associate with his betters in rank, is an amusing combination of M. Perrichon for conceit and of M. Poirier for ambition.^ Psyche was written in combination with Corneille and Quinault. In les Fourberies de Scapin Moliere modernises the Phormio of Terence under the influence of Italian Comedy: the slave becomes the tricky valet, the scene is at Naples, we hear of Turkish pirates and witness a good deal of the stage-business of the commedia deU'arte. Les Femmes savantes brings us back to the satire of women. The preciosity of Mile de Scudery is now a less burning question than the pedantry of blue-stockings, and the learned coteries of the end of the seventeenth century troubled Moliere more than the ignorance of ingenues like Agnis. Consequently he shows us the household of the worthy but weak-minded Parisian Chrysale, where all the women but one are crazy for knowledge and neglect household duties to discuss poetry and philosophy. The exception, Henriette, is Moliere's favorite among young girls: she is intelligent and witty, but more anxious to marry and have a home and children than to espouse pure philosophy. Finally, Moliere's last comedy, le Malade imaginaire, is a fierce attack by the dying writer, on the ignorant physicians whose archaic theories and methods were unavailing in his own own case. A Frenchmjin will tell you that Moliere is the greatest humorist of all times and will, as a rule, unhesitatingly place him above Shakspere. For this there is some justification: Shakspere has explored a whole realm of consciousness that Moliere has merely skirted, but in pure comedy he certainly does not excel 'Xe Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon of Labiche; le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier of Augier. 374 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE s Moliere. The French writer's chief defect is repetition and monotony: he harps too much on the same things, and his minor characters, at least, reappear too often under different names but in the same predicaments. Yet as a painter of the foibles of his age Moliere is unsurpassed. We may turn to him, therefore, as well as to any writer of his times to get a picture of seventeenth-century civilisation from one whose Ufe, up from the bourgeoisie through the .experiences of a travelling actor to royal favor, had given him the best opportunities of observation. There is bitterness in his view of men. A husband or father is apt to be truel (Harpagon) , or a dupe (Organ, Argan, M. Jourdain), or a weakling (Dandin, Chrysale). A woman is treacherous (Isabelle in VEcole des maris, Dorimene, Frosine, Beline), or a fool (Belise, the comtesse d'Escarbagnas, Cathos, Madelon). Old people in particular are his butt (Arnolphe, Harpagon, Argon, Geronte, Argan te). The young are more sympathetic, though their romance ends with the wedding day. Intelligence is likely to be found rather in the minor characters, the tricky valet (Mascarille of VEtourdi, Scapin), the impudent but sensible maid-servant or suivante (Toinette, Martine, Dorine) , the heavy but well-advised brother or brother-in-law called a raisonneur (Cleante, Ariste), what the irreverent modern world calls a bore or raseur. Nevertheless, in spite of the necessary exaggeration of the dramatist, Moliere the realist shows us the coquette, the gossip, the prude, intriguers, pedants, the corrupt or ignorant nobility and gentry, silly bourgeois and bourgeoises, an endless array of portraits. His virulence is concentrated on those who had done him most harm (snobbish and jealous courtiers), g,nd those who had done him no good (doctors). In the Fdcheux, the Critique de VEcole des femmes, the Misanthrope, Moliere tears to pieces the beaux, the bores and the boors of Versailles, and in play after play he makes onslaughts on the givers of rhubarb and senna, the advocates of purge and clyster, whose knowledge is based on Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen. MOLIERE 37S Thus we see Moliere's theory to be to give pleasure by a realistic or humorously exaggerated picture of the weaknesses of mankind. His own attitude varies slightly: at times, as in le Bourgeois" gmtilhomme, he merely bubbles over with humor, at other times there is an after-taste of bitterness or of sadness which is the reflection of Moliere's own existence. The comedy may end with a happy marriage, but the author cannot do away with the consciousness of the knavery of humanity. Moliere's life was saddened by constant disappointment and illness: it is not to be wondered at that his drama is affected by this. It was the tragedy of life amid its comedy that he tried to show in his three greatest plays, Tartuffe, Don Juan and le Misanthrope, which appear between earlier and later stages of farces and light plays. Moliere from first to last turned against the ideal and towards the realities of the world. His favorite woman is the ordinary Htoriette who is quite willing to be bete, or the sensible but unpoetical Eliante. He cannot be too sarcastic against those who soar after ideals like Cathos and Madelon, or chim&res like Belise. Even religion is to Moliere a useful safeguard rather than an ennobling element of life, and Nature much as Rabelais interpreted it is hfe's guiding principle. CHAPTER XIII BOILEAU. THE QUARREL OF THE ANCIENTS AND MODERNS BOILEAU performs for the literature of Classicism the task that was done by Sebillet, Peletier and Vauquelin de la Fresnaye in the sixteenth century. He expounds the theory of poetry at the culmination of the great school, and does so with such authority as to be called by his countrymen "le legislateur du Parnasse." To the Romanticists he seemed the embodi- ment of all that was flat, dull and prosaic; to the Classicists he was dignity, measure, reason, taste. The biography is brief. Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711), called by his contemporaries Despreaux to distinguish him from his brothers, was a bourgeois of Paris by birth, residence and dispo- sition. He has been charged with bringing down literature from heaven to earth and making it sink from the aristocratic heights of the Hotel de Rambouillet and the soaring strain of Balzac to the level of common people. After Boileau there was place for pedantry, but not for the romantic and emotional in which Mile de Scudery delighted. His family was connected in a small way with the courts, where his father was a clerk. Boileau's mother died when he was two years old and he had no knowledge of maternal love. He was destined for the Church and then for the law, but he gave up both plans, and after his father's death, in 1657, he lived in quiet independence to the end of his days. He remained unmarried, having no sentiment in his nature, was thrifty though not miserly, and cultivated men of wit and taste like himself: Racine, Moliere, La Fontaine, Furetiere, Chapelle. He passed his time in writing, in dining at the taverns to meet his friends, and was not averse to knowing 376 BOILEAU 377 the border people between austerity and license, la Champmesle, Ninon de Lenclos. Boileau gradually earned the king's goodwill, he received pensions, was appointed with Racine historiographer of the reign, became member of the Academy, a friend of the President de Lamoignon and the serious set. In his maturity he turned towards Jansenism, not so far as the dogma was concerned, but to its morals, which he contrasted with the subtlety of the Jesuits. His old age was saddened by loneliness and infirmities, deafness and dropsy, as well as by disputes with the Jesuits. In spite of the bitter sting of Boileau's satire it need not be thought that he was morose. On the contrary, with his friends he was cheerful and kind. Sainte-Beuve divides Boileau's career into three periods: the time of bold and boisterous satire before 1669, then a mature and critical stage to 1677, and finally, after the interruption caused by his duties as historiographer, the inferior old age. His chief writings are the Satires, the Epistles, the Art poetique, the mock-heroic Lutrin, and a number of epigrams and odes, in- cluding that unfortunate bit of Pindarism satirised by Prior, the Ode sur la prise de Namur. In prose he wrote the Dialogue sur les heros de roman which we have alluded to so often, a Dissertation sur Joconde, a trans- lation of Longinus on the Sublime with critical reflections, and a mmiber of letters, especially to Racine and Brossette. Boileau, who was glad to be thought the modern Horace' and whose chief works correspond to the genres of the Roman poet^ satires, epistles, art of poetry, was the author in whom formal > Cf. Regnard's epitaph for Bofleau: Ci-git maitre Boileau, qui v6cut de m6dire, Et qui mourut aussi par un trait de satire: Le coup dont U frappa lui fut enfin rendu. Si par malheur un jour son livre etait perdu, A le chercher bien loin, passant, ne t'embarrasse: Tu le retrouveras tout entier dans Horace. 378 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE satire and criticism culminate in French literature. He was a moralist as well as an assthetic critic. In the former role he was the literary friend of Port-Royal, and the reading of Boileau was popularly said to be the only diversion the worthy Jansenists allowed themselves. He was at variance with them concerning the drama, but he despised their common foes the Jesuits, and the melancholy of his last years has a Jansenist tinge. His last satire, De V Equivoque, . though poor in itself, is wholly in the spirit of Port-Royal. As a critic, Boileau is the type of the French genius in a narrow yet superior sense, when the reason is more trained than the imagination. He has but little appreciation for the romance of poetry, but preaches constantly clearness, precision, truth. He continues the work of Malherbe, brings verse and prose together, and promotes the realism of the Classical school. Boileau's theory is based on his bourgeois and somewhat narrow character, and was more useful in his own day than it might have been at other periods. He hated the bombast of the Spanish school, the floweriness of Italian Marinism, the fantasy of Mile de Scudery and the precieuses, the exaggerations of the burlesques. In all these forms of expression he .detected the lack of measure and of restraint. To give these qualities to literature was the task he undertook, and in so doing he was a judicious friend and critic of Moliere and helped to form the taste of Racine and of La Fontaine. He took as guide "Reason." By its help he judged and classified the various forms of poetry, trying them by the tests of clearness, accuracy, logic. All these qualities are supremely rational and may be said to belong to the dotnain of "universal reason." But the necessary conse- quence is an unimaginative and prosaic poetry, dealing with the same problems of investigation and analysis as prose, becoming in personal literature psychological, convinced that the study of mankind is man, trying to be truthful and in conformity with Nature. But this Nature, as just suggested, must, like Reason, be BOILEAU 379 taken in a limited sense. Boileau is a Cartesian in his use of reason, a populariser of the Discours de la methode in the em- phasis he gives to arrangement, accuracy, clearness. In prac- tice he applies it as a bourgeois of Paris. Nature is not, then, universal nature with its mountains, its solitude and all that inspires in man a feeling of vagueness and of the infinite : all that is at the bottom of modern lyricism and of romantic poetry in general. Nature is to him human nature or man. And the universahty of Boileau's Classicism is that he tries to study the general man with his general qualities, and not what is individual and particular: Man, rather than a man. This is why the Romanticists found Classicism dull and tedious, a literature of commonplaces and of general maxims, such as: Que la nature done soit votre 6tude unique; and. Jamais de la natiure il ne faut s'ecarter. Boileau's man, moreover, is not a man of all times and ages, but the one he knew best and thought he recognised among the ancients, the man of civiKsed life, the "urbane" Roman, or the Frenchman of Versailles and of Paris: Etudiez la cour, et connaissez la viUe. In all this is seen fhe bourgeois element, the failure to appreciate the poetical. Besides, the reason which is to judge is also a limited reason, that of Boileau, or at most of "common-sense." Literature is, then, the expression of reason acting on an imitation of nature. The more this imitation is guided by good sense, the more closely it will approximate nature, be true and have the perfection of beauty. Then we shall have the equation of the true, the beautiful, and the good, to akrjOis = to cu = t6 koXov. Rien n'est beau que le vrai, le vrai seul est aimable. Moreover, the inspiration of genius alone is not enough, but continual application is necessary also: Viugt fois sur le metier remettez votre cuvrage, Polissez-le sans cesse et le repolissez. 380 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE The final consequence of effort well applied is the noble, digni- fied style of Classicism: Quoi que vous 6criviez, evitez la bassesse. And the best model to Boileau is the one that aroused the admi- ration of the sixteenth-century Humanists, the ancients, because truths and passions are identical at all ages. The formula of Boileau fully stated is then: Reason, or good sense, guided especially by the precepts of antiquity, studies nature or human nature or man, particularly the civilised man of the court and of Paris. The more careful and realistic the study, the more it will be exact, true, natural, and the more the results will be beautiful. The realism or "naturalism" of Boileau usually includes the ordinary and insignificant, not the ugly and vile.' The value of Boileau's work is in defining the theory of Classi- cism so clearly that it became a model for Europe. His defect • was a narrowness in the conception of man and of nature. Yet he did, on the whole, distinguish the good from the bad, and with few exceptions his judgments have been ratified: most of his "victims," though with some notable exceptions like Ronsard, deserve their fate. The Art poetique dogmatically enunciates in four cantos the theory and the rules of poetry. The first canto deals with general ideas such as we have analysed, the second reviews the minor genres^ the third expounds the three great ones, tragedy, epic, and comedy, the fourth sets forth various general maxims and moral truths. By Boileau's time tragi-comedy had dis- appeared, but curiously enough he neglected didactic poetry (of which his poem is an example), the epistle which he culti- vated, and the fable and verse-tale such as made his friend La Fontaine famous. Lyric poetry, including the elegy, the ode and the sonnet, are all reduced to secondary types. Tragedy, according to Boileau, in order to win the approval * Cf., however, le Repas ridicule. BOILEAU 381 of "tout Paris," must please and touch, it must have a good exposition, follow the unities, be vraisemblable and increase in interest towards an unexpected climax. It may within bounds portray love, the heroes must be neither too good nor too bad, it should respect good manners and good morals, and in dic- tion avoid over-emphasis. This conception is not Hellenic but French, and the working out of its details excludes even parts of Comeille. The epic is conceived more narrowly still. It is the narrative of a long action "soutenue de fable et de fiction." The virtues shall be personified in order to interest and to instruct, the mysteries of the Christian faith must not be employed as the trappings of poetry, but must be replaced by the merveilleux paien. Here the Jansenist speaks, believing religion too lofty for profane verse. The hero must be "en valeur eclatant, en vertus magnifique," the subject simple, the narrative lively, the descriptions rich and noble. Above all, continual toil is needed. Boileau in this conception fails utterly to understand an epic such as the Iliad or the Chanson de Roland. He sees only the learned epics of his own day, not one of which has survived. Comedy is a studj^feof human nature, its passions and ages, as witnessed at court and in town. It must be noble and avoid the buffoonery into which even Moliere sometimes fell. It must be well constructed, after the pattern of Terence, and should please by reason alone. Apart from the Art poetiqtie the value of Boileau's works to the modern reader is comparatively small. His other writings have become nearly obsolete, except sundry passages which reiterate or illustrate the theory of the Art poetique, or which are interesting because of their allusions to his contemporaries. Moreover, their intrinsic merit is imeven. The Satires endeavor to continue Horace and Juvenal. At times they illustrate the theory of application and toil; at times they express the moralist viewing the follies of mankind; at times they are purely descriptive of bores and nuisances; at 382 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE times, again, Boileau tries to reproduce Juvenal's attacks on women. In his satires Boileau is eminently the bourgeois realist. The EpUres are somewhat more personal, either giving us information about Boileau himself or about those to whom he writes. Mingled with flattery of the king and encomiiuns on his military campaigns are epistles, such as that to Racine on ' the value of enemies, that on the beauty of truth (significant for the study of Boileau's aesthetics), or the praise of a quiet life. The Lutrin is a mock-heroic poem, the antithesis of Scarron's method of travesty, and belongs to the category of Tassoni's Secchia rapita and Pope's Rape of the Lock. In this poem Boi- leau relates in the style of Virgil a petty squabble which arose between some minor officials of the Sainte-Chapelle over the position of a lectern or reading-desk. Boileau was rather a critic than a poet, but he felt it necessary to use verse because his model Horace had done so. To the neophyte in French his lines have the monotony which some people discover in Boileau's English equivalent. Pope. To the Romanticist, or the emotionalist in general, his theories appear hackneyed commonplaces in verse, lackin^even the swing of a jingling metre. To these criticisms we answer that Boileau did not make claim to be a great poet, and was quite frank in ac- knowledging his troubles in finding rhymes or building a verse. And, though the ideas for which he stood are partly obsolete in modern literature, yet they stood the test of time and for many years imposed themselves on all intellectual Europe. Among the cut-and-dried critics of the seventeenth century, famous only in their own day, like Mambrun, Rapin, Bouhours or Le Bossu, one other, Saint-Evremond, stands out prominently near Boileau, Charles de Saint-Denis, sieur de Saint-Evre- mond (1613-1703), was during his early life a distinguished soldier and man of letters. Obliged to flee from France in 1661 for political reasons, he after a while settled definitely in London, where he remained nearly half a century and was buried in BOILEAU 383 Westminster Abbey. So, not only is he important in French criticism along with Chapelain and Boileau, but he has his place in the study of the relations of France and England. He was the guiding spirit of the duchesse de Mazarin's set in London and knew all the prominent Englishmen of the time. Saint-Evremond wrote a great deal: letters, historical and literary judgments, observations and dissertations. He was far less dogmatic than Boileau and did not pride himself so much on being a theorist as a gentleman of letters. In feeling he kept to the end of his life a preference for the literature which he had known when he lived in Francf;, the taste for Corneille rather than Racine. But he was a discerning critic, having, in spite of compliance with the then necessary treatment of critical elements such as Judgment and Taste as though they were Scholastic entities, some of the tendencies which incline to impressionism. He had the scepticism of the libertines in its literary aspect, with good-natured irony and sarcasm. There is no complete modern edition of Saint-Evremond's works, and, in his lifetime, much false material was manufactured and attributed to the absent writer by unscrupulous French publishers, but he is one of those who most deserve attention in the new study of French criticism. The Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns is one of the important manifestations of the intellectual activity of the Classical period, and the discussion had its echo in other coun- tries and at other times. It was to be expected that the expo- nents of Classicism, continuing the traditions handed on from the sixteenth century, should proclaim the greatness of the masterpieces of Greece and Rome. Boileau, seeing the effect of" the cult of antiquity in the works of his friend Racine, would be more than likely to find among the ancients the models for imitation. But the "lawgiver of Parnassus" did not have it all his own way, for there had arisen in the seventeenth century a group of writers proclaiming the value of their own period and its right to hold its own against the great men of the past. They were, 384 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE however, consciously or not, followers of one who represented in logical method, in psychology and, indirectly, in aesthetics, the ideas of Classicism, namely, Descartes. The general align- ment of forces involved, too, the amusing position in which Boileau found himself of praising the Ancients to the detriment of the Moderns, among whom he was one of the most important. Descartes was the great representative of the rationalism which was so important a part of the Classical theory. But the rationalism of Descartes was not supported by the cult of an- tiquity, and relied for its foundation on the independence of the thinker. As a consequence, Descartes was no worshipper of Greece and of Rome, and feigned to scorn the study of the dead languages. Similarly, Malebranche, after him, desired to sweep away all that the past supplied in order that the thinker might construct a new edifice from the beginnings. The men of the seventeenth century were more ready than we perhaps imagine to side against the past. The Classicism of that age was not as all-pervading as past historians have made out. For us Racine and Boileau overshadow the age more than they did for jealous rivals. The Latinism of the Jesuits, even much of the Hellenism of the Jansenists, were marked modifications from the antique view of life. In its various concrete forms the quarrel is one ever under discussion. Modern educational theories are full of the rivalry of the ancient and the modern languages and literatures, and of proclamations of the cultural value of scientific as opposed to literary study. To a considerable degree it is precisely this scientific attitude which accounts for many of the truths and fallacies in the posi- tion of the Moderns. Starting from the assumption of Des- cartes of the power of reason to progress in the construction and synthesis of thought, they believed that of necessity each age must be superior to those which have gone before because it possesses their knowledge and yet more besides. In the eight- eenth century, a scientific age, this theory, acquired still more BOILEAU 385 vogue in the belief which then existed in the indefinite perfecti- bility of man. But the theory is, as a matter of fact, truly applicable only to science. It appeals to those who understand how an invention may constantly be perfected. It is not a sufficient explanation of artistic superiority, or of those intellec- tual manifestations which go under the name of art rather than science. Art, not being mere accumulated and classified knowl- edge, depends on the excellence of a genius "qui n'a souvent qu'une voie" or upon the appropriate union of qualitativr rather than of quantitative elements. It is perfectly plausible to argue that the Greeks were greater artists than the moderns and their culture superior, and to oppose fixed standards to relativity and constant change. One of the first in France in the seventeenth century to take up arms in favor of the moderns was Richelieu's factotum the abbe de Boisrobert, who, without any appreciation of the deeper philosophical questions involved, in 1635 at one of the early meetings of the newly created Academy, delivered a tirade against antiquity. Boisrobert's attack was followed a score of years later by those of Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, who in sundry writings, especially in his Delices de V esprit (1658), was led by his religious conventionalities to cast opprobrium on the pagan literature of antiquity. The concrete form which the views of Saint-Sorlin took may be inferred from some of his verses: Nous qui d'invention ayant nos sources pleines, Dedaignons de puiser aux antiques fontaines, Nous parlons un langage et plus noble at plus beau Que ce triste latin qu'on tire du tombeau. Saint-Sorlin is ready to condemn the ancient poets brought face to face with the modern ones, and to him Malherbe, Balzac or Voiture are the masters: De Balzac I'eloquence et si noble et si pure Charmera toujours I'avenir, Et jamais par les ans les graces de Voiture Ne pourront se ternir. 386 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Many other writers, including the-abbe de Bourzeys, and the P. Bouhours, that distinguished Jesuit imbued with all the florid modernity of the order in its literary manifestations, took part in the discussion of the relative merits of the Ancients and Moderns. But the dispute assumed a more violent form in 1687 with the poem read before the Academy by Charles Per- rault on the Siecle de Louis le Grand. It was this poem which contained the famous lines: Je vois les anciens sans plier les genoux: lis sont grands, il est vrai, mais hommes comme nous; Et Ton peut comparer, sans crainte d'etre injuste, Le siecle de Louis au beau siecle d'Auguste. Boileau, in a passion, sprang to the rescue of an offended an- tiquity and heaped sarcasm on the growing party of Moderns in the Academy, the Topinamboux as he called them. Fonte- nelle and his uncle Thomas Corneille with the Mercure galant took rank with the Moderns, La Bruyere with the Ancients. Fontenelle in his Dialogues des marts, and especially in his Di- gression sur les anciens et les modernes, with many concessions but by application of the reasoning already hinted at, drew the conclusion that the Moderns are superior to the Ancients because they have had the same advantages and others as well. But Charles Perrault carried the matter before a wider audi- ence than the Academy in hisParalleles des anciens et des modernes, the publication of which extended over some time. In a series of dialogues discussing the different forms of artistic expression, such as architecture, sculpture, painting, eloquence or poetry, even sciences like medicine, Perrault maintained the freedom of the individual reason and rejected the principle of dogmatic authority. Perrault's views won favor by the plausibiHty and ingenuity of his theories and the fluency with which he expounded attractive but often superficial ideas. Boileau's reply to Perrault came in the Reflexions sur Longin, an indirect rejoinder, as though Perrault did not deserve a face- to-face encounter. Some time after the two rivals became BOILEAU 387 reconciled, but the questions they had discussed were not laid aside by the learned world. The writings of Houdar de la Motte and the letter of Fenelon on the occupations of the Academy brought out varying phases of the dispute. During the eighteenth century, as will be seen, the spirit of antiquity was gradually driven into the background by a modern cosmo- politanism and by scientific rationalism in literature, the full development of the Cartesian spirit. Where the doctrine of the Ancients continued to prevail, in the traditional aesthetic manifestations, such as certain forms of the drama, it degenerated into a devitalised and mechanical pseudo-Classicism. Certain critics still enunciated the laws of the school with eloquence and dignity, but its force was completely gone by the time the Romanticists rose against it. CHAPTER XIV PULPIT ORATORY. BOSSUET. BOURDALOUE THE oratory of the seventeenth century before the time of Bossuet and of Bourdaloue was sadly in need of improve- ment, both among the lay and the religious speakers. The pedantry of the sixteenth-century Humanists had lingered on in the erudition of the Sorbonne and of the courts of law, so that prelates and barristers delivered themselves of extraordinary combinations of Scholasticism and learning, sometimes com- bined with elements of triviality which resulted in wonderful anti-climaxes. Even the best lawyers, such as Lemaitre, later one of the leaders of Port-Royal, could not divest their style from the flowers of poetry and of mythology in pleading the commonest cases.- The address of ITntime in Racine's Plai- deurs, with its description of chaos preceding the creation of the world, is not too overdrawn a satire of a confused genre into which Classic restraint had not penetrated. The state of pulpit oratory was as bad." The question here was not of gaining a suit by erudition, but often rather of winning worldly favor and social esteem through flowery speeches. The mellifluous phrases of Saint Franjois de Sales became in the mouths of inferior preachers unutterably bad. Not that all tendencies were hopeless: the Oratorians kept up a nobler strain of language, as the Benedictines clung to the sincerity of cloistered erudition. But the rhetoric of the Jesuits tended towards floridness, the elaboration of metaphorical exegesis and indulgence in plays upon thought or pointes, — "le docteur en chaire en sema I'evangile," as Boileau said. Castillon saw a proof of the love of Mary in that Marie is the anagram of aimer. 388 PULPIT ORATORY 389 Preachers like Bossuet and Bourdaloue were destined to give real dignity and simplicity to public oratory. Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, the "eagle of Meaux," is deemed to mark the culmination of Classical prose rhetorfc; and, indeed, his grandiloquence, his solemnity of expression reminding one somewhat of a religious Daniel Webster, are the best specimen of the "literature of Versailles," and of what Matthew Arnold called the "Grand Style": — "when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject." ^ He was a native of Dijon in Burgundy, born in 1627 from the bourgeoisie, or, to be more precise, a famille de robe. He was from the earliest childhood destined for the Church, was ton- sured at eight, became a canon at thirteen. After brilliant classical studies under the direction of the Jesuits he was made a doctor of divinity, archdeacon and dean of Saarbriick and Metz, though he had, it is said, his brief fling in the borderland between society and religion, in the fashionable sets of Paris. At Metz he remained for half a dozen years, preaching and trying to convert Protestants and Jews. His sphere of influence next spread to Paris, where his fame grew as a religious orator, giving noted sermons and preaching a funeral oration, no longer in existence, upon Anne of Austria. In 1669 he was made bishop of the remote and tiny town of Condom in the south of France, but soon resigned the post on ' There is a striking passage on Bossuet by Joubert, to which Matthew Arnold alludes in his essay on Joubert: "Bossuet emploie tous nos idiomes, comme Homere employait tous les dialectes. Le langage des rois, des politiques et des guerri^rs; celui du peuple et du savant, du village et de r6cole, du sanctuaire et du barreau; le vieux et le nouveau, le trivial et le pompeux, le sourd et le sonore: tout lui sert; et de tout cela il fait un style simple, grave, majestueux. Ses idees sont, comme ses mots, varices, communes et sublimes. "Tous les temps et toutes les doctrines lui etaient sans cesse presents, comme toutes les choses et tous les mots. C'etait moins un homme qu'une nature humaine, avec la temperance d'un saint, la justice d'un 6veque, la prudence d'un docteur et la force d'un grand esprit." 390 A mSTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE being appointed tutor to the dauphin. This was the time of his first great funeral orations still in existence, those on the two Henriettas of France and of England, mother and daughter. Bossuet was more successful as a panegyrist than as a professor, for he had views, and the dauphin was too sluggish to under- stand theories and too lazy to put them into action. Instead of making the pathway to learning alluring and easy, Bossuet undertook to develop an intellect which did not exist and tor- tured the brain, while Montausier and the other tutors chastised the body of the royal pupil. As a result, the dauphin, once his education was completed, set to work to forget what he had studied. Very different was the effect of Fenelon's instruction on the dauphin's son, the due de Bourgogne. French literature has, however, benefited where the dauphin did not, by several works written for him: the Traiie de la connaissance de Dieu et de soi-meme, together with a logic and a treatise on the freedom of the will, the Politique tiree de I'Ecriture sainte and, most important of all, the Discows sur I'histoire universelle. Bossuet's literary fame was consecrated by his election to the Academy, and his religious greatness by his appointment to the chaplaincy of the dauphiness and the bishopric of Meaux. If his birth had been more noble and his enemies fewer, he would undoubtedly have received even higher ecclesiastical honors. He gave other great funeral orations after the death of Queen Marie-Therese, of the Princess Palatine, of the chancellor Michel Le Tellier and of Conde, and preached at the pathetic withdrawal of Mile de la Valliere into the convent. Meanwhile he had become the leader of the French Qiurch and directed the bishops of the Galilean movement when the clergy of France set forth their declaration in an important dispute between the king and the pope. The quarrel was one of the many phases of the rivalry between the head of the Church and the head of the nation, such as had gone on at intervals ever since the Middle Ages. Its efficient cause upon this occasion was a disagreement over the destination of the revenues of vacant ecclesiastical PULPIT ORATORY 391 holdings, the droits de regale, and the Gallican party argued that the king should be independent in his realm with only an infallible church, not an infallible pope over him. In his last years Bossuet's chief works were an Histoire des variations des eglises protestantes, the Meditations sur I'Evangile, and the Elevations sur les mysteres. He died in 1704. He had made himself leader of the clergy of his time by his eloquence and dignity as well as by the influence which his court position had given him. But this did, not prevent him from having some resounding discussions, particularly in his old age, and not always to his credit. One of these was with a rationalistic BibHcal student, Richard Simon, whose Histoire critique de VAncien Testament was a remote precursor of modern exegesis and scientific criticism. Another controversy was with the P. Caffaro, a Theatine priest of Italian origin, who had expressed views favorable to the drama. The vehemence of Bossuet's indignation and his Maximes et reflexions sur la comedie brought out a recantation from Caffaro. Still another and even more famous dispute was the lengthy quarrel with Fenelon over Mme Guyon and quietism, which resulted in Bossuet's Relation sur le quietisme. Bossuet gave a new form and value to the funeral oration. The French have always admired preaching, and one need only compare France and England to see how much more numerous religious discourses are in the former country from the days of the Latin sermons of the Middle Ages, the eloquence of Maurice de Sully, the mysticism of Gerson, through the Rabelaisian freedom of hortatory speeches by Menot and Maillard at the beginning of the Renaissance, to the new style of modern times. But all was not for the best when Bossuet came. For besides the great sermons of the Reformers who clothed Hebraic thought in classic phraseology, and by their austerity seemed almost desirous of frightening away rather than of attracting the vacil- lating in faith, orthodox Catholics, clinging to Latin tradition and Ciceronian rhetoric, fell more and more into the floridity df 392 A fflSTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the Jesuitical style and the general ornateness of an age yielding in one country to Marinism, in another to preciosity. In the Cardinal Du Perron and in his opponent Du Plessis-Mornay the two styles are opposed. In the seventeenth century the establishment of the new order of the Oratoire by Berulle and the rise of Jansenism tended to bring back austerity if not always simplicity, and the chari- table Saint Vincent de Paul, preaching to and for his foundlings, made the sermon an expression of tenderness and of natural- ness. But this analysis does not explain Bossuet: he stands apart with an intellect and expression of his own. His sermons were carefully planned, though not as a rule intended for publication by him. And though he allowed himself scope for digression and expatiation, he is the best representative of the dignified, sometimes ponderous, style of French Classicism. It is an improvement upon Balzac's written oratory, but a continuation of the tendencies of that author, whom, indeed, Bossuet consid- ered one of the best fitted to mould style. Bossuet never loses the consciousness of his dignity, and the anecdote is characteris- tic which tells of his refusing to rvm with the rest of a company caught in a shower because it was not seemly for a priest to make haste. Bossuet is the exponent of Classical rationalism, and even his love of the Saviour, it has been pointed out, comes from the head and not the heart. But in his sermons and panegyrics Bossuet sought the support of his wide reading: The Fathers of the Church, Greek as well as Latin, were from the start the marrow of his discourse, sometimes appearing with an almost pedantic ubiquitousness. Gradually, however, he simplified his rhetoric and polished his language, by veiling more satisfactorily hi? logical plan and toning down the exuberance of his erudition, acquiring thus force with simplicity. The perfection of Bossuet's oratory is found in his funeral orations, and there his superiority to his predecessors is marked. PULPIT ORATORY 393 For in this style of discourse bad taste had been most rampant. The orator undertook, in presence of a fashionable audience, to deliver an eulogy which was too apt to be a chance for self- display. It was likely to degenerate into stock terms of adula- tion, to show no true emotion. Bossuet, on the other hand, imbued with true religious feeling and a realisation of the majesty of death and the vanity of the world, approaches his subject with no less dignity and with greater spiritual nobility. His oration remains a ceremonious function delivered in public be- fore a large audience, including the kinsmen of the dead. Yet, in the midst of his eulogy, Bossuet never forgot the great laws of the world, the ways of Providence, the ineluctability of Death. If we call up before our eyes the vision of Bossuet delivering a funeral oration in sonorous tones and measured phrase before an audience of royalty and aristocracy, in an incense-laden atmosphere, under the stained glass and pealing organ, amid the rich ecclesiastical vestments of the Catholic ritual, we can realise what a place this form of oration occupied in an aristo- cratic literature, and understand how the periods of an orator proclaiming the majesty of God may be as t}^ical of the theat- rical grand siecle as the tragedies of Racine. The subjects of Bossuet's funeral orations belonged to the royal and noble old-world order which his phrases could so well commemorate with an almost rhythmic beat of drumlike Latin quotations from the Vulgate. Their careers, too, suggested how God raises and brings man low, and makes even the might- iest by trial and sorrow become a lesson to others. There was Henriette de France, daughter of Henry IV, who went to Eng- land as the queen of Charles I, only to see her husband murdered by an angry people and to be herself an exile in her native land. But her misfortunes were a good fortune, since they showed how her great heart rose above her sufferings. There was Henriette d'Angleterre, her daughter, who had been present at the previous discourse and who within a year followed her mother to the grave at the age of twenty-six, by a sudden and 394 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE mysterious death. This death cast terror on all who heard of it, and Bossuet felt it as a personal loss: "O nuit desastreuse! 6 nuit effroyable, ou retentit tout a coup, comme un eclat de ton- nerre, cette etonnante nouvelle: madame se meurt, madame est morte!" Thirteen years later came the commemoration of a l,onfely and neglected queen, Marie-Therese, who had lived a pathetic existence, seeing her children die one after another, her husband abandon her for his mistresses, and had at last been sacrificed to inefficient medical treatment. There was next a high moral lesson to be drawn from the career of Anne de Gonzague, the Princess Palatine, who after a wild career full of compromising adventures and affiliation with the libertins, had felt the power of Grace, and had devoted herself to a life of good deeds. There was Michel Le Tellier, neither a prince nor a great man but chancellor of France. Finally, in 1687, came the greatest and last of the orations, in honor of Conde, the brilliant general who had stirred up in France turmoil and re- bellion, but who was to Bossuet an example, in his death, of piety and devotion to God and to king. The sermons of Bossuet appeal today chiefly to the faithful and to students of rhetoric; the funeral orations, because of their historical importance and the pride and circumstance of their delivery, can appeal to all. But the rest of Bbssuet's voluminous writings have been borne along by the success of his greatest works. Bossuet was an orator more than a writer. Conven- tional admiration has consecrated the Discours sur Vhistoire , universelle, but "Great Heavens," cried Renan, "what a book, written as it was by an old-fashioned theologian, with which to teach to modern liberal youth the philosophy of history!" It was intended to train the mind of the dauphin to government, by pointing out the lessons which history teaches, showing the blessings of Christianity. For all is carried back to Providence, which is the underlying principle of Bossuet's philosophy, as Evolution is of modern science. The work is an attempt to generalise or "philosophise" history with the postulates of PULPIT ORATORY 395 religion as a foundation, and to explain the history of all man- kind as an interpretation of the laws of God. History does not prove religion, but religion explains history. The survey of mankind is incomplete as it stands, but it has, at any rate, the merit of lofty generalisation and the sweep of an eagle glance over the past of humanity. In the earliest editions it was not even divided into chapters, and carried one along by the majesty of its ordonnance. In the three parts Bossuet develops the epochs from Adam to Charlemagne; the course of religion through the ages; the succession and revolution of "empires." The survey is incomplete by its omission of the Oriental peoples, concerning whom Bossuet of course knew less than nothing; it has sins of commission by too liberal an interpretation of the legends and myths of old historians like Herodotus and Livy. The Discours sur I'hisioire universelle is largely dogmatic. The Politique tiree de Vhistoire sainte and the Histoire des variations des eglises protestantes are, on the whole, more controversial. In the former Bossuet argues the glory and divinity of that royal power for which Louis XIV stood in France. In the latter he upholds the unity and simplicity of the Catholic religion against the inconsistencies of the various heretical creeds, partly by a series of portraits of the leaders of Protestantism: Luther, Zwingh, Calvin, (Ecolampadius, Melanchthon, Cranmer, and others. Bossuet was an intense partisan of the established order; and in a civilisation permeated with the apotheosis of royalty he was not without the fawning attitude which the unquestion- ing acceptance of an existing regime is likely to carry with it. It would be incorrect to see in him merely a cringing courtier of Louis XIV, but he was convinced that heredity and absolutism, as most remote from anarchism, constituted the best order of government for France. Monarchy, as he conceived it, is the necessary bestowal by Providence of sovereignty with authority. The king must be irresponsible to man as the representative of divine Providence; his authority results from long tradition and 396 A fflSTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE is opposed to any violent mutation, such as the novelty of a re- public or the bestowal of power to the people would. involve. Bossuet's political theories were not drawn from Holy Writ alone, but were based also on Aristotle and on Hobbes, from whose portrayal of the primitive warfare of man against man Bossuet sought a remedy precisely in the undeviating continu- ity of a monarchy guided by the Infallible dispensations of a wise Providence. It was this attitude which led Bossuet to become the leader of Gallicanism and to support the royal power of his country even against the chief bishop of the Church. The French mon- archy was in the temporal world what the Catholic religion was in the spiritual world, but the former was as divinely ordained and was not to be unnecessarily humbled before the other. The monarchy stood for authority against the incoherences of revo- lution, the Catholic religion for the same unifying principle against the multitudes of heresies. Bossuet was a pugnacious Burgundian. Opposition to conserv- ative tradition was to him anathema, and the counter-dogmas of the Calvinists, the casuistry of the Jesuits, the quietism of Mme Guyon were by him treated with the same contempt. There could not be a more violent contrast to Bossuet than the sinuous and slippery intellect of Fenelon. Bossuet's greatness lies in the majesty of his style and the vigor of his intellect, de- voted to the support of a stationary rather than a progressive intellectual order. Bossuet was not the only famous preacher of his day. The great Jesuit father Louis Bourdaloue was even more than Bos- suet a single-minded shepherd of souls. Born at Bourges in 1632, his whole life was given to the Church and to study. At fifteen he ran away from home, not to seek adventure, but to enter the Jesuit order as a novice. From that time he won great favor as a teacher, in the Jesuit schools, of grammar, rhet- oric and philosophy, particularly of morals. Turning gradually by accident more than by design to preaching, from about 1669 PULPIT ORATORY 397 and 1670 in Paris he built up such a reputation that for great festivals and "stations" of the church, Lent, Passion, or Advent, he was engaged by the parish wardens for years ahead. His fame promised to outdo that of Bossuet. He was employed, too, on religious missions in various parts of France, particularly among the Huguenot heretics of Montpellier, and for forty years he was a busy confessor and eloquent preacher, to the disgust of the Jansenists, who prided themselves on the monop- oly of virtue and were angry at seeing a Jesuit rival as righteous as themselves and far more influential. Bourdaloue's life is summed up in the words of one of his biographers, the austere Protestant Vinet: "II pr^cha, il confessa, il consola, il mourut." He died in 1704. The interests of Bourdaloue differed essentially from those of Bossuet. The "eagle of Meaux" was taken up with the great designs of Providence, the history of humanity. Bourdaloue, on the contrary, was a moralist, and his sermons deal mainly with the corruption of manners in his day and with the remedy, a return to righteousness and purity of belief. With the direct- ness of a Menot or a Maillard, but without their coarseness of language, Bourdaloue placed before the society of his day the mirror of its vices. Nor were such lessons unnecessary or in- opportime. It is in a book like Anatole Feugere's study of Bourdaloue and his times that one realises what a whited sepul- chre was the stately society of the later seventeenth century under the nominal splendor of Classical dignity, and even under the sway of Mme de Maintenon, when vice was curbed through hypocrisy but not reformed. Even in Bourdaloue's own time his characterisations of the wicked seemed like vivid prose satires, and Boileau speaks of the portraits of Bourdaloue, which could be examples to some of the Caracteres of La Bruyere, though less abstract. In sermons such as those on hypocrisy and impurity he pulled aside the veil which masked the insin- cerity of the time, and we understand the fawning court of adulators at Versailles, where all the nobles wanted to be 398 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE operated on for the fistula like the king, where the women insisted on having seven months' babies like the dauphiness, where gambling ran riot and fortunes were lost in an hour at bassette, while the peasant was ground to the earth under oppressive taxation. In others Bourdaloue inveighed against the intellec- tual libertinage or unbelief and the looseness of sexual relations, the downfall of family affection which banished daughters to the convent and younger sons to the army. Not less appalling as a sjonptom of the times were the mysterious murders and poisonings, with which the names of famous criminals like the marquise de Brinvilliers or the fjemme Voisin were connected, which implicated even the highest in the realm, drawing Mme de Montespan into the obscene rites of Satanism and the black mass, and throwing, rightly or wrongly, the germ of suspicion into the mysterious death of Henriette d'Angleterre. That is why Anatole Feugere said that the sermon De Vimpurete and the Don Juan of Moliere cast a baleful light over this part of the century. And when one remembers the drunken riots in high life which before long were to show the regent and the duchesse de Berri brought home both of them dead drunk, one appreciates the phrase, "C'est au milieu de ces orgies que s'achevera le siecle des conversations delicates et de la galanterie decente, le siecle de la marquise de Rambouillet et de madame de la Fayette." Next to Bossuet and Bourdaloue the great preachers of the time were Mascaron, Flechier and Massillon. Jules Mascaron (i 634-1 703), an Oratorian and bishop of Tulle and Agen, was in his day considered the equal of Bour- daloue. He gave funeral orations for Anne of Austria, Henri- ette d'Angleterre and Turenne. He shows more clearly than most of his contemporaries the change in the style of oratory. Dignified in bearing, soft and smooth in tone, he was the popu- lar preacher of his day and catered to its tastes by yielding to preciosity and affectation. Gradually he became more serious, yet even to the end his orations were occasionally marred by plays of word or thought. PULPIT ORATORY 399 Esprit Flechier (1632-1710), bishop of Nimes, was also famous for his funeral orations, among which were those of Le Tellier and Turenne. They were carefully elaborated, and sometimes over-subtle. Jean-Baptiste Massillon (1663-1742), an Oratorian like Mas- caron, and the most modern of the group, is the one whose works have of the three best survived. He gave funeral orations, among them one in memory of Louis XIV, but especially the series of serinons forming the Grand CarSme and the Petit Careme. The smoothness of his style caused him to be dubbed the "Racine of the pulpit." CHAPTER XV FENELON FENELON was by birth a southerner, of more distinguished ancestry than Bossuet. Francois de Salignac do la Mothe-Fenelon (1651-1715) entered the Church and at an early age became the superior of the Nouvelles catholiques, a congregation of recent women-converts from Protestantism. His character was, indeed, in every way suited to make him the spiritual adviser of women. He could be conciliatory and insinu- ating in manner, yet he had a will tenacious and persistent to the verge of harshness. He remained for ten years in his posi- tion and was entrusted also with important missionary work among the Protestants of the southwest, in Aunis and Saintonge. From 1689 to 1695 he was tutor of the due de Bourgogne, son of the dauphin whom Bossuet had so unsuccessfully tried to train. Fenelon's problem was as difficult, though different and requir- ing a different method. Instead of being, like his father, dull and lyniphatic, the young duke was haughty and quick-tempered. Bossuet had given his pupil intellectual nausea; Fenelon under- took to soften a high-strung yet sensitive youth by gentleness combined with firmness. He made himself so thoroughly master of his pupil's will that the latter finally took scarcely a step without Fenelon's advice, and the curious phenomenon was observed of a general, a leader of men, consulting a priest as to his actions. It was for the education of his pupil that Fenelon wrote his chief literary works, the fables, the dialogues of the dead, and Telemaque. Fenelon's sermons are a less important part of his work than those of Bossuet or of Bourdaloue. Fenelon was intensely ambitious, and in the duke, who was looked on as 400 FfiNELON 461 the coming king of France, as well as in the powerful Mme de Maintenon he had good friends. But he came into opposition with Bossuet, and in the struggle between craft and strength,, victory was on the side of force. The cause of Fenelon's downfall was the part he played in the quarrel over quietism and his support of Mme Guyon. The seventeenth century was a time of religious manifesta- tions on the part of individuals or groups which are today termed pathological. It was the age of hallucinations such as those of Loudun which caused the death of Urbain Grandier; it was the period which produced the visions of Marie Alacoque and her worship of the Sacred Heart. Mme Guyon was the great mystic of modern France. Born prematurely in 1648, her childhood was marked by continued illness. It is to be supposed that her whole life was influenced thereby, for it was filled with hysterical crises, visions, hallucinations, morbid fears of hell, yearnings for sacrifice, softened at times by the writings of Saint Francois de Sales into a poetic and ecstatic vision of God. At the age of sixteen she was married to a man of thirty-eight with a temperament out of harmony with hers. She turned ■ more and more toward piety and finally experienced a definite conversion to the mystic love of God and a renunciation of the world. She saw in herself a bride of Jesus, like Saint Catherine or Saint Theresa, and in imagination lived out the impassioned love of the Song of Songs. She showed, meanwhile, symptoms of hysteria, trances, and swellings of the body great enough to burst her clothes. Such behavior horrified the placid and even-minded. People could not help connecting Mme Guyon's views with the excesses to which the teachings of other mystics had led through thinking that, the mind alone being of value, the body rnay freely commit every sin if only the soul is immersed in divine -contemplation. A recent impetus had been given to mysticism by the teachings of the Spaniard Molinos. Mme Guyon's actions seemed to 402 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE justify suspicions of immorality: she neglected her children and travelled with a priest, the Pere La Combe, who was her spiritual adviser and apparently had hypnotic power over her. She wrote the Moyen court on the efficacy of prayer, the union with God. Later she composed the Torrents spirituels. On Mme Guyon's return to Paris in 1686 she was at first persecuted and the P. La Combe was put into prison. But gradually she acquired influence even with Mme de Maintenon, and her doctrines were on the point of getting a footing at Saint-Cyr. It is easy to conceive what positions Bossuet and F^nelon would take. The former, with his vigorous rationalism and sound common-sense, was horrified by Mme Guyon's hys- terical manifestations, her miracles, and torrents of Grace. Fene- lon, with greater sympathy for the emotional temperament, sided with her. The result was a resounding squabble, beginning with Bossuet's Instruction sur les Mats d'oraison and Fenelon's Explication des maximes des saints. It did credit to neither contestant, but Bossuet seems to have been, if anything, more to blame. It ended by the rout of Fenelon. Bossuet had an agent at Rome, his nephew the abbe Bossuet. He was tricky and underhanded and succeeded in turning the current in favor of Bossuet who had also the royal influence on his side. Fenelon never seems to have been a favorite with Louis XIV, and from now on his influence at court was destroyed. He had mean- while been appointed archbishop of Cambrai, and the last seven- teen years of his life, from 1697 to 1715, were spent in semi-exile. He received the verdict of the Church with humility, whether sincere or feigned, and remained in his diocese, occupied partly with literary labors including the letter to the Academy, partly with new controversies against the Jansenists. He was perhaps desirous of regaining royal favor, but the death of tjie due de Bourgogne made his ambitions fruitless. Fenelon's character was at variance with his style. His imaginative writings have a gentle and almost rhythmic softness, and that amenity which certain critics deem characteristic of FfiNELON 403 the Greek spirit. In his descriptions of Calypso's isle in Telema- que and in similar passages, we note in the account of fragrant shrubs, of singing birds, and plashing streams the spirit which imagines Hellenism to be a life passed amid flowery meadows of cytisus and asphodel in a land of lasting summer where marble temples stand on every height. Fenelon's true character was uncompromising and mihtant. Yet he could veil his per- sistency and craft beneath the courtesy of the gentleman, the sympathy of the priest and of the spiritual adviser of women. Fenelon's most important work relating to women is the Traite de V education des filles. His ideal is neither the pricieuse nor the pedant at whom Moliere laughed. He wanted neither an affectation of bel esprit nor one of learning. But he felt that the women of his day were not well brought up when confined to elementary studies and accomplishments. His contention is that a girl should be fitted" for her mission in life, which is to be a good wife and house-manager. She need not be confined to the study of reading and writing and to embroidery, but these are tasks important in life and characteristic of woman. Her nature must be consulted in all things, but taught to avoid shift- lessness, extravagance, and vanity. Literature, history, Latin, music, painting are suitable feminine accomplishments when tactfully employed, and education should be confined to practi- cal things. All this may seem very primitive to the twentieth century, but Fenelon was ahead of his time in emphasising character, and in our age of unsexed women his ideal maiden, as she appears in the Antiope of Telemaque, is not without qualities: "Antiope est douce, simple et sage; ses mains ne meprisent point le travail; elle sait se taire et agir de suite sans empresse- ment; elle est a toute heure occupee, et ne s'embarrasse jamais, parce qu'elle fait chaque chose a propos; le bon ordre de la maison de son pere est sa gloire: elle en est bien plus omee que de sa beaute. Quoiqu' elle ait soin de tout, et qu'elle soit chargee de corriger, de refuser, d'epargner (choses qui font hair presque toutes les femmes). 404 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE elle s'est rendue aimable a toute la maison: c'est qu'on ne trouve en elle ni passion, ni entetement, ni legerete, ni humeur, comme dans les autres femmes. D'un seul regard elle se fait entendre, et on craint de lui deplaire; elle donne des ordres precis; elle n'ordonne que ce qu'on pent executer; elle reprend avec bonte, et en reprenant elle encourage. The "Hellenism" of Fenelon shows itself particularly in the works composed for the due de Bourgogne: Telemaque, the fables, the dialogues of the dead. He was half a poet and belonged to that school of writers of which Lemaire de Beiges had been an early instance. He had loved Greek literature from his school-days and was fond of the eurhythmy of Saint Franjois de Sales, or of Racine the student in his youth of Theagenes and Chariclea. At the same time Fenelon was not a Classicist according to the technical conception. He was Classical in being more Greek than a follower of the intellectual Alexandrinism, dogmatic in thought, geometrically rectilinear in expression such as it appears in the writers of the seven- teenth century and such as it is found, for instance, in Bos- suet whose florid pomp differs from the flowery limpidity of F6nelon. The work in which these qualities are best shown is Telemaque, a romance partly in imitation of the Odyssey, in which we see, not the return of Ulysses, but the adventures of Telemachus in search of an absent father. Shortly after the departure of Ulysses from Calj^so's isle the goddess gave shelter to the ship- wrecked Telemachus escorted by Minerva under the name of Mentor. He relates his adventures to Cal3^so and she feels love for him, but grows jealous of the attachment of the nymph Eucharis for him, and Telemachus, at Mentor's behest, sets forth anew. So the story continues with many an incident: Telemachus goes down to hell and sees the punishment of the wicked, he visits the Elysian Fields and sees the felicity of the righteous. After numerous adventures he returns to Ithaca, and Mentor, resuming the form of Minerva, gives him parting FfiNELON 405 counsels. The last sentences of the story are an extraordmary example of a perfunctory and hasty close. Telemaqm is a purely mythological and poetical romance with a moral purport. It may have its value in leading one to the study of Homer; it is worthless for the study of ancient customs. It was chiefly useful in so far as Telemachus, stood for the due de Bourgogne and Mentor for Fenelon himself. People even went farther and saw in Telemaque a satire of the times, or at any rate a premeditated contrast between the happy lands visited by Telemachus and France itself, humiliated by defeats at the end of the reign of Louis XIV. It may be unjust to seek too close a parallel, but Fenelon, the writer of the famous though anonymous Lettre a Louis XIV, in which he spoke his opinion with great boldness, and the author of an Examen de conscience des devoirs de la royaute and of the Tables de Chaulnes, advice for the due de Bourgogne, the result of conversations held at Chaulnes, may well have had in mind practical advice for his pupil. Fenelon stood with the party of malcontents whose favorite was the due de Bourgogne. The influences upon the composition of TeUmaque are numer- ous. The general spirit of the dialogues of Plato and the profuse imagery of neo-Platonism must have been always present to his mind. He got the suggestion of the work from the Cyropcedia of Xenophon, the romance of Cyrus's youth and education which tells how he learned to obey and to command, and from the Economics of the same Greek writer. The modern Latin romance, the Argenis of Barclay, has, on perhaps insuffi- cient groimds, also been suggested. Episodes and detail come from all quarters. And like many a predecessor, beginning with Homer and Virgil, Telemachus visits the lower world. But his trip results in moral edification. On the other hand, the pic- ture of the blessed in the Elysian Fields, enjoying sweet serenity, is an interpretation of the ataraxy which many think they see in ancient Hellenism influenced by one who sympathised with the beatitude of Mme Guyon's quietism. ., 4o6 A HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE TeUmaque was a romance intended for a comparatively mature period in Fenelon's pupil; the fables and the dialogues of the dead had been adapted to his earlier youth. The fables, unlike those of La Fontaine, in prose and with a much more conventionally edifying morality, are often graceful word pictures and idyls. The Dialogues des morts, borrowing the form of Lucian's writings, have also a moral end and inculcate lessons in political ethics. The TraiU de I'existence de Dieu is the work of a subtle philos- opher. The first part deals with the argument of final causes, leading to the conclusion that nature has an intelligent cause; the second portion is partly Cartesian in its methodic doubt directed to the proof of God, partly neo-Platonic in its theories of the unity and oneness of the Godhead. To the student of the technicalities of literary theory there is much of interest in the Dialogues sur Veloquence, and especially in the Lettre a V Academie which was written shortly before his death, ^he former of these works consisted of three dialogues apparently in Platonic style, but rather mechanical and so impersonal that the characters have no individuality. Fenelon's purpose is to criticise the preaching in vogue and to oppose it to the true spirit of Holy Writ and of the Fathers of the Church, with which the orator ought to be permeated. Without naming Bourdaloue, Fenelon takes him as an example of bad taste. Fenelon was himself a member of the French Academy and, though living at Cambrai, he was interested in its efforts to find something to do. In its early days Chapelain had suggested for it a comprehensive scheme ranging from a dictionary to treatises on rhetoric and poetry. Of these the dictionary alone had been carried into effect. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the Academy began to consider anew the possibilities of work. Among the material contributed to the discussion was the letter of Fenelon to the newly appointed secretary Dacier. This document, a development of a previous mtmoire, renews many of the suggestions of an earlier generation, but the FfiNELON 407 mental attitude of Fenelon is totally different from the dogmatism of the earlier Classicists. He advocates the speedy completion of the second edition of the dictionary for the benefit of strangers and for those who may wish to study the present condition of the language in future generations. An official grammar would give a standard to those who come from different provinces; an effort might well be made to give greater wealth to the lan- guage by new words and new verbal constructions: F6nelon misses the richness of sixteenth-century French and seems to hint at some of the experiments already attempted by Ronsard in adding words and expressions. He suggests, as had been done nearly a century before, a rhetoric and a work on poetics, but he goes farther in advising treatises on tragedy, comedy, and history. His observations on poetry and on tragedy are, on the whole, unfavorable to the writers of the modern age. He criticises the poetry of the seventeenth century as being monoto- nous in expression and subtle in thought. Tragedy he condemns for adding to the simplicity of the Greek plots the element of sentimental love, and he blames Corneille's (Edipe and Racine's Phedre for yielding to the bel esprit of the age. In comedy Fenelon makes concessions and places Moliere, in spite of his faults, high among poets. In the section on history Fenelon is ahead of his time in his desire to see impartiality, vividness, simplicity, the reproduction of historical coloring, and the study of institutions. In the concluding pages of his letter Fenelon touches upon matters at issue between the partisans of the Ancients and the Moderns in a way that hardly gives satisfaction to the resolute defenders of either side. Fenelon favored the Ancients, but his procedure was by concessions to achieve ulterior gains, and he conceded so much that it takes a knowledge of his whole position to realise where he really belonged. He begins by wishing that the Moderns could surpass the Ancients: even the best among these had their flaws. On the other hand, sequence of time does not make superiority. Gothic architecture, though later than 4o8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Greek art, is not better: Lucan does not replace Virgil, Seneca Sophocles, or Tasso Virgil and Homer. Therefore the men of today should not be too scornful of those who have gone before. In the Lettre a I'Academie Fenelon is at the same time a partisan of that antiquity so dear to hini and, in works like Telemaqtie, so obviously incorporated into his thought. Yet the appreciation of antiquity is to him a matter of feeling and of personal interpretation rather than the system dogmatically imposed by the critics belonging to the Classical school. So Jules Lemaitre sympathetically greets in him an impressionist. CHAPTER XVI THE WOMEN OF THE GRAND SIECLE SOCIETY shows a change in its ideals from the first to the second half of the seventeenth century, particularly in those manifestations where the influence of women is seen. The sentimental romantic vein is as persistent as ever it was in the early vogue of Astree, when the diversion of society was to discuss the art of galanterie. During the vogue of Mile de Scudery's novels and of the romanesque drama of the type of Thomas Corneille, the sombre, melancholy hero was the fashion. He had to have an air languissant, or as the young woman in the Precieuses ridicules expressed it, " sortir de la tout rSveur et melancolique." Meanwhile the emotional phases of the Jansen- ist influence had introduced more "sensibility" or feeling. The sturdy, masculine woman shown in literature by the stoical her- oine of Corneille and in life by the intriguing ladies of the Fronde yielded to the nevrosees of Racine. The amazons of the earlier generation turned to nursing vapeurs and to devotion, the emotional spasms of which Segrais called the "petite verole de I'esprit." The Grande Mademoiselle tried to combine virility and the "great passion" and, after putting into practice the galanterie of Corneille's early comedies, perhaps reacted on the heroines of his later plays, like Pulcherie. But women like Mme de Chevreuse, masquerading as a man and the embodiment of conspiracy, are more rare, and Mme de Longueville, one of the moving spirits of the Fronde, becomes the protectress of Port- Royal. The vigorous woman gave way to the palfe and anaemic lady of the salons, and the counterpart appeared in the works of fiction. 409 4IO A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE In 1669 the publication of the Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun flooded hterature with a new stream of sentiment, tjjough it was a truer and more sincere passion than the sublimated non- sense of the roman galant, and thereby exerted a salutary return to truthful analysis. The author of the Princesse de Cleves had contemporaries of more or less renown in Mile Catherine Ber- nard, a kinswoman of Corneille, in Hortense Desjardins (Mme de Villedieu), in Mile de la Force, in Mme d'Aulnoy, the writer of\ sentimental fairy-tales, and in Mme Durand. The women of the grand siecle varied in their interests and the quality of their charm, but their influence was nearly always exerted by social reunions. Each salon had its individual stamp according as its mistress was an Aspasia like Marion Delorme and Ninon de Lenclos or a bluestocking, but men passed freely from one to the other. In these salons reputations were made and unmade, cabals were set in motion, love intrigues planned, or discussions started concerning morals, religion,' and Cartesian philosophy. Vaugelas said that women were to be consulted in matters of language as well. It would be a long task to give a list of the social centres of the seventeenth century. They were, indeed, not all under the influence of women, for the formal and informal academies of men were important groups as well. We have seen, however, how the H6tel de Rambouillet threw into the shade its contem- poraries in feminine influence. But it soon had a vigorous rival in the Saturdays of Sappho, where preciosity and the lighter form of pedantry held sway, where madrigals were strung out, and where the amiable ecclesiastics of this "pepiniere d'eveques" paid court to Sappho. There were precieux gatherings of Mme de Fiesque, Mme de Choisy, Mme de Saint-Martin, and Mme de Maure. On the other hand, the reprobates of irreligion were to be found at Scarron's house paying their respects to Mme Scarron, later to be Mme de Maintenon. At the Hotel de Longueville she who had been called the most beautiful woman of her day exerted THE WOMEN OF THE GRAND SifiCLE 411 an influence political rather than literary; at the H6tel de Luxembourg the Grande Mademoiselle, author of extraordi- nary memoirs, when not seeking a husband, was the patron- ess of Segrais and Huet. Mme de la Sabliere, the friend of La Fontaine, had one of the most frequented salons of Paris. The love of this lady and of the marquis de la Fare was called a beautiful example of fidelity outside of marriage, until he aban- doned her and drove her to rehgion. At the H6tel de Bouillon the duchesse de Bouillon, a niece of Mazarin, with the help of her brother the due de Nevers and of Mme Deshoulieres, tried to ruin Racine by the cabale de Phedre and Pradon's tragedy. Even across the Channel in distant London another niece of Mazarin, the duchesse de Mazarin, grouped about her a handful of Frenchmen among whom was Saint-Evremond; and in her home criticism alternated with gambHng, and the duchess herself gave the example of squandering thousands at bassette. A complete study of the influence of women in the social life of Paris and of Versailles in the seventeenth century would, indeed, include the queens of the left hand of Louis XIV. Some of Moliere's comedies were for the entertainment of Mile de la Valliere; the tempestuous Mme de Montespan, whose sway marks the apogee of Louis's reign, favored an ungrateful Racine; Marie Mancini, a niece of Mazarin, was immortalised in Berenice. One, even, Mme de Maintenon, who became the king's lawful wife, made a name for herself in literature. One of the most famous of the salons and significant for its literary influence was that of Mme de Sable (1599^1678). She had belonged to the Rambouillet set and from about 1646 had had a salon of her own near the Place Royale. About 1659, imder the influence of Arnauld d'Andilly, she turned to Jansenism and established herself near Port-Royal in a seclusion which was far from conventual: she was visited by all the distin- guished people of the day, men like the prince de Conti, the chevalier de Mere, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, the abbe Esprit, women like Mme de Longueville. She was fond of letter- 412 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE writing and continued the genre which Balzac and Voiture had popularised and which Mme de Sevigne made famous. She composed maxims, and those of La Rochefoucauld were written under her influence and submitted to the general criticism of her friends. Victor Cousin went so far as to think that some of Pascal's Pensees were written for her or under her influence, as religious maxims. At any rate, the maxims issuing from Mme de Sable's circle forn^ a connecting link between the "portraits" so much in vogue in the seventeenth century and the generalised portraits or characters for which La Bruyere is famous. The maxims are syntheses of portraits and epitomes of character. Indeed, just as epistles had been the preoccupation of the H6tel de Rambouillet, madrigals that of Sappho's set, and portraits that of the Luxembourg, so under the influence of Mme de Sable the thought and the maxim were elaborated. Two other women, Mme de S6vigne and Mme de la Fayette, transformed two genres, the epistle and the novel respectively. Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, a granddaughter of the blessed Mme de Chantal, friend of Saint Frangois de Sales, was born in 1626 and was educated under the influence of Chapelain and of the sparkling and susceptible scholar Menage, who languished for her as he did for his other clever pupil, Mme de la Fayette. In 1644 she married the marquis de Sevigne who was killed in a duel in 165 1, leaving two children, Franfoise and Charles. The daughter became the wife of a battered widower, the comte de Grignan, lieutenant-general of Languedoc and of Provence. She followed him to his posts and for many years kept up a correspondence with her mother. The daughter's letters have disappeared, but those of Mme de S6vign6 to Mme de Grignan and to her friends have made her famous. She died in 1696. The predecessors of Mme de Sevigne in the seventeenth century had considered letter-writing a solemn composition prepared with one eye cocked at posterity, or else as a jeu d'esprit. Voiture had made letters a form of wit, but in the THE WOMEN OF THE GRAND SifiCLE 413 romances of Mile de Scudery they had been raised to an indi- vidual type. Everybody in those days wrote letters and the correspondence of MaUierbe, Descartes, Guy Patin among others has been preserved. Pascal's Lettres provinciales show what they become as a vehicle for literary expression; i^m/SSSh J^4ai«tei5S3rSH*w&fc5ate^lK)P!ej wrote. No collection has the importance or the interest of that of Mme de Sevigne. She was a woman of natural cleverness and of acquired train- ing, serious in her views of life as her early reading implies and as her sympathy for the writers of Port-Royal tends to show. Without being a Jansenist she was their friend and thought that "jamais personne n'a ecrit et n'a anatomise le coeur humain comme ces messieurs-la." She had sententious tendencies, and her intimacy with La Rochefoucauld turned her toward aphorisms in the midst of her letters. But the present value of Mme de Sevigne's letters is in the picture they give us of hfe in the seventeenth century. Like La Rochefoucauld and Saint-Evremond she had seen the change from the first to the second half, when the irreconcilable and half independent nobles became fawning hypocrites chafing under Mme de Maintenon. It was this world, with its gossip and scandals, its jealousies and petty ambitions, that she de- scribed in her letters. But in spite of her frequent moralising, she does not set herself up as a moralist. She merely gossips to her daughter or her friends at headlong speed; hence her familiar and sometimes careless expression. Nevertheless, there is in her letters a striving after literary effect, whether conscious or unconscious. This is at times exasperating, as in the letter on Lauzun and the Grande Mademoiselle, where she delays so long by all kinds of devices the actual statement of her "extra- ordinary" news that the reader gets impatient. But nothing could excel the vividness of the famous and even hackneyed letters describing the practical joke played by the king on his courtier whom he led to condemn a poem by the royal pen, or 414 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the account of the suicide of the steward Vatel who felt disgraced at the prospect of seeing his dinner go wrong. The account of the execution of Mme de Brinvilliers is as striking as the scene itself must have been. Mme de Sevigne had a sense of humor; she liked to gossip and tell anecdotes. Above all, she had a s)Tnpathetic character: she was fond of her friends and they were fond of her. The adjective "bon" is with her almost overdone, and her fidehty to the fallen Fouquet or to her scapegrace' cousin, the undeserving Bussy-Rabutin, is much to her credit. Hence the friendly touch of her writings, relieving them from the stilted- ness which marks so many of the writers of the grand siecle. Only in her occasional callousness to the sufferings of others, such as the peasants or the condemned marquise de Brinvilliers, does the unconcern of the seventeenth-century women of rank crop out. The terms of endearment lavished on Mme de Grignan often seem excessive to the Anglo-Saxon mind, but the contentment which Mme de Sevigne manifests at life in the country, usually a place of gloomy exile to her contemporaries and especially to her cousin Bussy, shows a simplicity of disposi- tion with which few of the intriguing women of her day can be credited. Mme de Sevigne is, indeed, in marked contrast with he» daughter, whose reserved character combined with a fondness for abstract thought and Cartesian philosophy, has caused her to be held up to undeserved ridicule as a woman without feeling and of the kind whom Moliere satirises in the Femmes savantes. Marie de la Vergne, or as she is known in literature, Mme de la Fayette (1634-1693), was worshipped by the susceptible Menage in Latin vers de societe under the name of Laverna. Of her husband hardly anything is known and she had practically nothing to do with him. On the other hand, her name was for years bound up with that of La Rochefoucauld, whose cynical old age ^he cheered and softened. She was a favorite at court, the companion of Henriette d'Angleterre, the friend of scholars THE WOMEN OF THE GRAND SifiCLE 415 and men of letters like Huet, the Humanist and bishop of Avranches, or Segrais, who like La Rochefoucauld became in part her collaborator or at least her literary mask. Mme de la Fayette wrote a couple of personal historical works, the Vie d'Henriette d'Angleterre and the Memoir es de la cour de France pour les annees 1668 et i66g. The former, of which the composition was instigated by its heroine and even drawn up imder her personal observation, is a frank revelation of the feeUngs of the thoughtless but well-loved English princess. The Memoires de la cour de France are not very important. It is in the history of the French novel that Mme de la Fayette was destined to be famous, though she always refused to acknowledge the authorship of what she had written. In 1662 she had published anonymously an historical novel called la Princesse de Montpensier, in which she anticipated her later masterpiece and placed the setting in the same sixteenth century. Zayde of 1670, drawn from the Spanish and published under Segrais's name, for it was not convenable for a lady of quality to write under her own name, was composed in the older romantic style from which Mme de la Fayette was herself to release French literature. Finally, in 1678, appeared the Princesse de Cleves which Mme de la Fayette wrote, undoubtedly assisted by La Rochefoucauld, but the authorship of which they both denied. This novel gave a severe blow to the Scudery romances in ten volumes. It was a brief story showing for the first time the true analysis of a woman's heart. The princesse de Cleves, in spite of her love for the due de Nemours, remains faithful to her husband. The story represents, like a Cornelian drama of the best type, the conflict of love and duty; like a Racinian play it has truth of analysis. A concise story quickly moving to a climax, it is the highest example in prose fiction of French Classicism. Said Mme de la Fayette herself: "Une periode retranchee d'un ouvrage vaut un louis d'or et un mot vingt sols." Mme de Maintenon (1635-1719) was the granddaughter of 4i6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the Huguenot poet Agrippa d'Aubigne, the daughter of his worthless son, and was born while her father was in prison at Niort. Later the widow of Scarron, whom she married for protection, she became the governess of the children of the king and Mme de Montespan. After the latter's fall from favor and the death of the queen she was, at the age of nearly fifty, married to the king and for almost thirty years more kept him. somewhat under her influence. Mme de Maintenon was less brilliant than Mme de Montes- pan, and her remarkable rise was partly due to the reaction in the king's taste from the tempests of the one to the calm of the other. Her convictions were not very firm : she leaned in turn toward Jansenism and quietism; she did not protest at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the persecution of her former coreligionaries. She was, indeed, even untrue to them. What did particularly characterise her was her solemnity. She, who as Frangoise d'Aubigne had been called "Bignette" and witnessed as a spectator the wild life of Scarron's friends, became to Louis XIV la Raison and Voire Solidite. Her vocation was really that of a school-teacher, and her predilection for instruc- tion had dried away sentiment in her nature and turned her into a hard and gloomy woman who seemed to care more for esteem than love. Mme de Maintenon wrote letters and various pedagogical Entretiens, Proverbes, and Conversations. These works were composed for the benefit of the school of Saint-Cyr which she directed. This was an establishment for the education of impecunious girls of noble rank. They were withdrawn for years from their famiUes and returned only when their education, obviously a matter chiefly of charity, was complete. The original plan was for a secular school, a novel idea at a time when the education of young women was entirely entrusted to convents. Later Mme de Maintenon yielded to criticism, and in 1692 the maison de Saint-Louis, as it was called, was transformed into a convent of Augustinian sisters. For a long time Mme de THE WOMEN OF THE GRAND SifiCLE 41? Maintenon's interests were wrapped up in Saint-Cyr, and she found in it a field of experiment for her theories of education and even of the physical regime of girls. The Memoirs of Mme de Motteville (1621-1689), though not "published until the eighteenth century, have the same personal value as the letters of Mme de Sevigne. The literary tradition was even more strongly marked in her fam.ily, as she was niece of the poet Bertaut, and her value for the period she treats in most detail, the times of Anne of Austria and the Fronde, is greater than that of the better known cardinal de Retz writing entirely with personal bias. The femmes savantes pride themselves on including in their sex the scholar Mme Dacier (1654-1720), the most learned woman of her times, daughter and wife of illustrious savants, editor of many editions of the classics, ardent defender of the Ancients in the great quarrel. Mme Deshoulieres (1637 or 8-1694) was one of the later pre- cieuses, when preciosity was rather literary affectation than the cult of individual words and was passing into pedantry, and according to Boileau, . . . une precieuse, Reste de ces esprits jadis si renommes, Que d'un coup de son art MoKere a diSames. She exerted considerable influence in literary coteries and was one of the leaders in the cabale de Phedre^ but her fame is chiefly due to her numerous pastoral idyls and odes as well as her more ambitious dramatic attempts such as the tragedy of GensSric. Mme Deshoulieres's poetry deserves the epithet of "woolly" both for form and content. It is full of soft moralising, replete with billings and cooings about spring, flowers, or the bleat- ing of her "cheres brebis" ("Helas! petits moutons, que vous etes heureux"), and tender thoughts of love, carrying one back to Astree and the banks of the Lignon. Her adjectives are "agreable" or "charmant." It is all very pretty, but too cloying to have good taste or value. Yet, at any rate, in a 41 8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Cartesian age of brutality to animals she was fond of cats and dogs. Her "philosophy" was one of epicurean disenchantment. Mme d'Aulnoy (d. 1705) wrote a novel, Hippolyte, comte de Douglas, influenced by Mme de la Fayette, and Memoirs of the court of Spain, the result of a trip, but she is chiefly known by her fairy-tales which, along with those of Perrault, have entered into the world literature of childhood. CHAPTER XVII MEN OF THE WORLD. SCHOLARS, JOURNALISTS AND MORALISTS THE intellectual life of the seventeenth century was not con- fined to circles under the influence of women. There were other academies besides the Academic frangaise, and plenty of informal gatherings of men. The cabaret, like the English coffee- house or the later French cafe, was the resort of congenial spirits, and the libertines of the earlier generations gave vogue to such taverns as the Pomme de pin, the Pressoir d'or, the Croix de Lorraine or the Fosse aux lions. Little bands of friendly men of letters met, as Boileau's chums did at his home in the rue du Vieux-Colombier, or at the Mouton blanc, to gossip over meals as at the dinners chez Magny in the nineteenth century. Or, again, the Academic frangaise had minor sisters in less regularly constituted companies. The abbe d'Aubignac at the Hotel de Matignon, the scholar Menage, the Protestant Henri Justel, the abb6 Bourdelot were a few of those who aspired to be the guides of taste or the mentors of less distinguished admirers. The modem hackneyed phrase "cher maitre" had its seventeenth- craitury equivalents, and later admirers gathered "Ana," collec- tions of witty and erudite remarks by the deity, such as the Menagiana. In all this the nature of French literature in the seventeenth century is the more clearly brought out to be the result of conversation as much as of solitude and reflection, the product of social life among the men as much as among the women. Men of letters all hovered about the men of the world. Even among the clergy and scholars a worldly ideal was apt to prevail. Single-minded devotion to study existed, it is true, among the recluses of Port-Royal like Arnauld and Nicole, or 419 420 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE among the erudite Benedictines, whose labors have always been the glory of their order, such as Mabillon. Then there were hard-working librarians like Etienne Baluze, the director of Colbert's collection, or Du Cange, the author of the dictionary of late Latin, or editors of texts like Andre Dacier, the husband of Mme Dacier, and Bernard de la Monnoye, the Burgundian, who also dabbled in hterature, his most enduring monument being the chanson de La Palisse. But other scholars were at the same time men of the world. The type of these was Gilles Menage (.^gidius Menagius, 1613-1692), one of those whom the seventeenth century called "savants en us," the original per- haps of Vadius in MoHere's Femmes savantes, the author of observations on the French language, of Latin verses, and the master of miscellaneous erudition ranging from Greek, with a smattering of Hebrew, to Italian and the fads and fancies of academies such as the Delia Cruscans. His younger contem- porary and correspondent the Norman Daniel Huet (1630-1721) spent many years in secular environments before he became priest, and, in 1680, bishop of Avranches. He was an omnivo- rous reader, an encyclopedic and inquisitive mind who plarmed and directed the Delphin Classics, besides making Greek and Latin verse, philosophical and religious treatises and literary essays. He was a sturdy partisan of the Ancients in the quarrel with the Moderns, and even in his own century clung rather to the aesthetic tastes of the early part of the age than to those of full Classicism. This was the period which had also been represented on the borderland of erudition by the translator Perrot d'Ablancourt (1606-1664), whose editions, gentlemanly rather than scholarly in style, won the name of the "belles infideles." The clergy furnished its quota of writers who went even further into bel esprit. The abbe Charles Cotin (1604-1682) was learned, but was misguided enough to imagine himself a poet and a writer of vers de societe. He was perhaps unduly held up to ridicule by Moliere as Trissotin, just as Boileau, pilloried him for MEN OF THE WORLD 421 his sermons. The Pere Bouhours (1628-1702), though a Jesuit father, was a drawing-room favorite and a smooth and insin- uating scholar, a purist in word and manner. This did not save him from disputes with Menage, but in his Entretiens d'Ariste et d'Eugene he tried with grace and unctuousness to promote the cause of the Moderns in the great dispute. The seventeenth century saw the rise in France of what has become one of the greatest influences in modern society, the newspaper. The founder of journalism was an energetic and resourceful physician of Louis XIII, Theophraste Renaudot (i 584-1653), a protege of Richelieu. He started the first pawn- shop in France and the bureaux d'adresse, information or public- ity centres as well as intelligence offices, which, with respect for authority, he justified by Aristotle and Montaigne. In 1631 he issued the first number of the Gazette, which was planned to be a weekly record of foreign and national events. It was supple- mented by the Nouvelles ordinaires de divers endroits. Renaudot had, in spite of violent opposition, a monopoly of this method of publicity, and after some changes of title, the publication became in 1672 the Gazette de France, a name which it has kept to this day. The Fronde was responsible for the publication of thousands of grotesque and vicious political squibs in octosyllabic jingling metre directed chiefly against Mazarin and known as Mazarin- ades. They were anonymous, but Gondi, the future cardinal de Retz, was responsible for some of them. These libellous broadsides were peddled through the streets and kept alive the hostility to Mazarin. The form of the Mazarinade's was not without its influence on the rhymed letters of Loret. He was a penny-a-liner who de- vised a scheme of writing weekly letters in the same burlesque metre recording the doings in Paris. They were addressed to Mile de Longueville, the duchesse de Nemours, his patroness, to whom he read them, and had at first a circulation of a few copies. Soon, however, they were printed and spread more widely. Loret's 422 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE letters cover the period from 1650 to 1665, and he found means to write over four hundred thousand verses. These are in no sense high art: they are often the grinding of a Grub-street hack, each one characterised by some laboriously applied adjective, as sensible, foldtre or goguenarde, and concluding with such a phrase as: Ecrit le vingt et cinq de mars, Ayant mange des epinards. Loret had at first no regular name for his compositions, and various ones were used, but they became known in time as the Muse historique. After his death there were several imitators and successors, the chief of whom was Robinet.^ Another publication, more in the style of a review, was the Mercure galant, founded in 1672 by Donneau de Vize (1640-1710), the critic, dramatist, and foe of Moliere. In an earlier part of the century there . had already been a short-lived annual called the Mercure Jranqais. Donneau de Vize afterwards took as collaborator Thomas Corneille. The Mercure aimed at com- bining politics, literature and society, and it ranged from news of marriages and deaths to accounts of sermons and of meetings at the Academy. After 1678 it became a monthly, and during the eighteenth century it had a long and honorable career, bear- ing the names of Mercure de France and Mercure Jranqais, and counting among its contributors Voltaire, Marmontel, RajTial La Harpe and Chamfort. Still another periodical has, like Renaudot's Gazette, survived until today, the Journal des savants, founded in 1665 by Denis de Sallo, a counsellor of the Paris courts. At its inception this periodical was not a technical review, but was intended to popu- larise and disseminate knowledge of recent literary eyents. It had the distinction of leading the way for numerous imitations at the passage from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century 1 Compare the modem Gazette rim&e of the contemporary versifier Raoul Ponchon, pubUshed in the periodical press such as le Journal. MEN OF THE WORLD 423 in France and abroad, particularly at Amsterdam, the clearing- house of French literature, such as Bayle's Nouvelles de la Re- publiqtte des lettres, the various Bibliotheques of Leclerc, and the famous Memoires pour servir d Vhistoire des sciences at des beaux- arts of the Jesuits of Trevoux, known as the Journal de Trevoux. Contemporary history was well provided for by various records, and the numerous memoirs of the seventeenth century, like those of Bassompierre, of Mme de Motteville, the Grande Mademoiselle, Gourville, not to speak of Retz and Saint-Simon, give ample knowledge of the social life of the time. Serious historians, such as Mezeray, the author of a history of France, were rare : the Livy-like periods of De Thou's Latin history had spoiled the taste for history in the vernacular. Louis XIV took as chroniclers two poets, Racine and Boileau. Gossips of ,the pattern of Tallemant des Reatix or Bussy-Rabutin were, after all, more deserving of the name of men of letters, and were, in spite of their slanders and backstairs gossip, more interesting. Both among men of letters and men of the world the same types recur: a gentlemanly exterior veiHng a blackguard's disposition, combined with the 'cultivation of good letters and its expression in witty memoirs or souvenirs of Hfe among people of quality. jean Corbinelli, of Italian origin, who lived over a century from 1615 to 1716, the friend of Retz, La Rochefoucauld, Bussy and Mme de Sevigne, was an example of the epicurean man of letters and drawing-room philosopher; but the "honnete homme," the modem gentleman and new Ka\os Kayado^ was the chevalier de Mere, who influenced La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere and Mme de Maintenon, and with the somewhat more advanced libertine Miton helped to form the atticism of Pascal. The chevalier de Mere (1610-1684) by his writings and attitudes illustrated the good manners of the day. The "honnete homme" tended in morals to some form of hedonism. He was eloquent in con- versation and in letter-writing, charming to ladies and their professed though selfish admirer, but guided by his reason rather than his emotions. Hence he would be undisturbed by 424 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE hazardous contingencies, free from sordid money worries, one in whom self-culture has become cultivated selfishness. In a word, the honnete homme, according to La Rochefoucauld, one of the best instances, is "celui qui ne se pique de rien." Paul de Gondi (1613-1679), better known as the cardinal de Retz, of Italian origin, was an instance of the political and social intriguer. His policy was, however, not so much flattery of the powers in control as persistent opposition. He early set himself against Richelieu, and then became the rival of Mazarin. His ruling passions were ambition and vanity, to which he sub- ordinated everything. To be in the public eye, "monter sur le the§,tre," in his own words, was his aim. He was proud to consider himself a French Catiline: "Je pris, aprds six jours de reflexion, le parti de faire le mal par dessein, ce qui est sans com- paraison le plus criminel devant Dieu, mais ce qui est le plus sage devant le monde." He tried to make his way by the help of women, and though he was unfeeling enough with them, his greatest annoyance was when, including the queen, they failed to be charmed by his ugly, misshapen though sprightly little person. A libertine, both moral and religious, he was truly masquerading under false colors in seeking preferment, and when he sided with the Jansenists, a pamphleteer said that before being a Jansenist he would have to become a Christian. Yet this was the man who tried to supplant Richelieu, and ultimately became bishop-coadjutor, cardinal and archbishop of Paris. The cardinal de Retz began his literary career early by writing the Histoire de la conjuration du comte de Fiesque. The Memoirs were not composed until after 1671 towards the end of his life, but by language, style, and subject-matter they belong to the first half of the century, particularly the period of the Fronde. They come down to 1655. He was, in truth, one of the leaders of that civil war, a parody of the Ligue. He levied a regiment dubbed, from his being bishop in partibus of Corinth, the "regi- ment de Corinthe," and met defeat in his first encounter, nick- named, his "First Corinthians." At times he backed Mazarin MEN OF THE WORLD 425 in hopes of the red hat, he was ready to murder Conde, was imprisoned, ran away to Italy, participated in the papal con- clave and once received eight votes for the papacy. After the death of Mazarin he quieted down somewhat, and, soon retiring somewhat under compulsion from the archbishopric of Paris, he received the abbey of Saint-Denis. During the last years of his life he unexpectedly tried several times to get rid of the cardinalate and devoted himself to the task of paying off his enormous debts, as well as to the composition of his extraordinary memoirs. There could be no more vivid document than these. Retz was, according to his own story, a foul villain and hypocrite, and the person who appears in the worst light in his pages is prob- ably their author. They are full of lies and misstatements, and are, therefore, untrustworthy for events or the interpretation of motives. But Retz was true to one person, himself, and so the work is a remarkable portrait. His style has the picturesque- ness of modern journalism, his language is easy-flowing though slovenly and confused. For that very reason his memoirs rep- resent to the quick the hot-headed, meddling rake whose career he tries to portray. Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy (1618-1693), the kinsman of Mme de Sevigne, was as great a liar as Retz, but in a different way. He was a soldier and courtier who lived the usual profli- gate life of men of his position, and to please his mistress Mme de Montglat, wrote his Histoire amour euse des Gaules, a collection of scandalous gossip about the men and women of his time. It was secretly copied and published by another jealous woman, Mme de la Baume, with dire consequences to the author. After imprisonment at the Bastille he was exiled for many years to his country estates in Burgundy, where he suffered agonies in being cut off from Paris and the court. The Histoire amour euse is not remarkable Uterature, but its small talk is interesting to the explorers into the hidden portions of high life. Even more in the style of journalistic gossip are the Histori- 426 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE ettes of G6deon Tallemant des Reanx (1619-1692). This writer belonged to the middle rather than to the upper classes, but being well off he was able to amuse himself by writing gossip about prominent people. Tallemant was not so spiteful as Bussy, but he was just as fond of scandal. He had seen much of society, at the Hotel de Rambouillet where he had had his entrees, and among the more materialistic and plebeian circles of the capitalists and the bourgeoisie. His writings, therefore, tell much about the seventeenth century in undress; though with an eye for the picturesque and a nose for scandal, he was as likely to put down hearsay as truth, if he could only violate proprieties. With La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) we come again to the grand seigneur and to the honnete homme. Francois, prince de Marcillac and later due de la Rochefoucauld, shows the trans- formation of the seventeenth-century nobleman from the semi- feudal fighter to the courtier dwelling in town, occupied with social trifles, ignorant of country life and convinced, like Masca- rille, that "hors de Paris il n'y a pas de salut pour les honn^tes gens." La Rochefoucauld had fought in the Fronde, he ended his life as a man of fashion, though a valetudinarian. As prince de Marcillac he spent his youth under arms. He intrigued against Richelieu, fought the Spanish in Flanders, became the partisan of Anne of Austria, intimate with Mme de Chevreuse. After the death of Richelieu and Louis XIII, he gradually turned against Mazarin and, as the lover of^Mme de Longueville, helped to direct the conspiracies and fights of the Fronde. He describes all the strange doings of those times in his Memoirs, in the style of Tacitus, which he began about this time. Little by little, wearying of Mme de Longueville or finding her no longer useful for his ambitions, he became her enemy. After the Fronde La Rochefoucauld joined the ranks of the fine wits. Under the influence of Mme de Sable's circle and such frequenters of it as Jacques Esprit, he began to write his MEN OF THE WORLD 427 Maxims, which were circulated anonymously, criticised, and repolished. These are the quintessence of the esprit de socieie of the period: "universal" character-sketches on a small scale, thumbnail aphorisms in lapidary style. The maxims of La Rochefoucauld purport to be the epitome of universal morals, but they are only the views of the cynical and selfish roue who has lost all illusions by his experience with the men and the women of the Fronde. Yet he wishes to remain the polished man of the world and honnete homme. This idea of self he em- bodies in his own description or portrait^ composed with the pseudo-frankness of that style of literature: "J'ai quelque chose de chagrin et de fier dans la mine. . . . Je suis melan- coHque, et je le suis a un point que, depuis trois ou quatre ans, a peine m'a-t-on vu rire trois ou quatre fois. . . . J'ai de I'esprit et je ne fais point difi&culte de I'avouer, car a quoi bon fagonner la-dessus? . . . J'ai toutes les passions assez douces et assez reglees. . . . L'ambition ne me travaille point." The moral philosophy of La Rochefoucauld presupposes the natural selfishness and wickedness of man, and therein it har- monised with the ideas of Port-Royal, to the environment of which he belonged. La Rochefoucauld was never a Jansenist, but the Jansenists were not displeased to find a layman express- ing their ideas of the corruption of mankind. His first "moral reflection" is enough to give the keynote of the whole work: "Ce que nous prenons pour des vertus n'est souvent qu'un assemblage de diverses actions et de divers interets que la fortune ou notre Industrie savent arranger, et ce n'est pas toujours par valeur et par chastete que les hommes sont vaillants et que les femmes sont chastes." Towards the end of his life La Rochefoucauld became intimate with Mme de la Fayette. Though far younger than he was and herself in delicate health, she coddled his gout and gathered about him a new circle of Hterary people. He, in return, helped her in her writings and perhaps, under her soft influence, toned down the acrimony of some of his maxims. Yet these remain 428 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the embodiment of clever bitterness. It was Retz who called La Rochefoucauld one who "n'a jamais et6 guerrier, quoiqu'il iHt tres soldat, qui n'a jamais et6 bon courtisan quoiqu'il eut bonne intention de I'etre, qui a toujours eu du je ne sais quoi en tout." To the modern critic La Rochefoucauld is the ambi- tious man soured by disappointment. Jean de la Bruyere (i 645-1696) was an insignificant bachelor- dependent and tutor in the family of the Condes, who for years scarcely looked beyond the bounds of his protector's household and less often still beyond the walls of Paris, yet who posed as the analyst of human character and made his contemporaries believe him the universal moraUst. In so far only as he inter- prets the limited Classicism of the seventeenth century can La Bruyere be considered a writer for all men, yet one single vol- ume has made him immortal among the French. This work belongs, too, to the years of weariness rather than of vigor of "the reign of Louis XIV. La Bruyere was of the bourgeoisie. His life, up to the age of forty, is scarcely known at all. He may have been educated by the Oratorians, for he knew Greek as few but the pupils of the Oratorians and the Jansenists did; he certainly was a lawyer and held a post in the financial administration at Caen in Nor- mandy. In 1684 he entered the Conde household, living espe- cially at Chantilly, as private tutor of the young due de Bourbon, grandson of the great Conde. This boy, at the age of sixteen, was married to Mile de Nantes, the natural daughter of the king and Mme de Montespan, so that La Bruyere had two pupils instead of one. For the rest of his life he remained a retainer in the Conde family, though before long the actual tutorship of the children ended. La Bruyere made good use of his oppor- tunities, narrow as they were, and this harmless old bachelor, disdainfully treated by the gentlemen of quality who frequented the H6tel de Conde, was all the time taking notes for his book of character-studies. In 1688 there appeared anonjonously a volume of translations MEN OF THE WORLD _ 429 from the Greek of the Characters of Theophrastus, the disciple and successor of Aristotle. It was accompanied by a number of original moral studies, and in various editions, which rapidly followed, these were developed and increased. In reality, this work is partly a development of the portrait-writing already fashionable, combined with the moralised philosophy of "max- ims" and "thoughts." In part it is influenced by the vogue which "characters" had had ever since Casaubon's Latin trans- lation of Theophrastus in 1592, and the French translation in 1610 of the Characterisms of Virtues and Vices of Bishop Hall, the English imitator of Theophrastus. The result was literary fame for La Bruyere, and ultimately his election to the Academy, where he took sides with the par- tisans of the Ancients. Not only in his discours de reception but in various pages of his writings. La Bruyere gave utterance to judgments upon authors which justify us in classing him among literary critics of an observing rather than of a constructive nature. The end of La Bruyere's life, like its beginning,, was so unevent- ful as to cause little record. He was a friend of Bossuet, who had brought about his admission into the Conde family, and sympathy with Bossuet perhaps led La Bruyere to side with him against a fellow-Hellenist Fenelon and to write some dia- logues on quietism. But the authenticity of these, which ap- peared posthumously under his name, has been doubted. La Bruyere's views of life are those of the wizened but not necessarily morose celibate. He was not moved to laughter or tears, he was neither Heraclitus nor Democritus. It was said of him, "il lui a manque de pleurer." In literary criticism he was sanely but resolutely conservative, and in his reactions tended to tone down militant ideas and give them social amenity. Consequently, as an expression of the literature of konnetes gens, the studies of La Bruyere, less bitter, though far from entirely benevolent, than the maxims of La Rochefoucauld, appealed to those who based their observations of life on the Classicism of 430 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE France. Addison certainly underwent the influence of La Bruyere. The Hterary ancestry of La Bruyere's Caracteres carries us back ultimately to Theophrastus, but his work is far more de- veloped than its model and more personal. The characters of Theophrastus had something of the impersonality of the few types described by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics; La Bruyere, while feigning to depict universal types, depends largely on the observation of his contemporaries, who tried to give keys to his writings. He even sought to innovate boldly in decorous Classicism by realistic details, mentioning how a person spits or snores. He added a little of the elegant cynicism of a La Rochefoucauld. In his critical attitude La Bruyere stands for a Classicism between that of Boileau and that of Fenelon. He is free from the dogmatism of the one; he has not the supple quality of Fenelon's letter to the Academy. In his judgments upon the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries one notes sundry diver- gences from Boileau. He appreciates the sixteenth century better, would like to revive some of its vocabulary, and sees the good in Ronsard. As regards his contemporaries. La Bruyere accomplished the uncommon feat of enunciating verdicts which, almost without exception, posterity has ratified. Under the in- fluence of Plutarch's Lives he somewhat affected the artificial parallel or comparison of authors. La Bruyere's moral views .take most vivid form in the essay De rhomme. He admires that other student of man, Mon- taigne, and borrows over a score of his observations; he partakes of Montaigne's detached pyrrhonism, but does not go to its extremes. Rather, like La Fontaine, he is the moralist who observes. Hence, though the identification of his characters is not always possible, some were portraits of men of his time. In the literary fop Cydias people recognised his enemy the "discrei" Fontenelle, in the warrior ^mile they saw the great Conde, in Th^obalde Benserade. The very titles of the essays carry one MEN OF THE WORLD 431 through the society of the day. The defect of La Bruyere to the modem reader is that the matter is cast in such general form that personal interest is now wanting. His writings have neither the abstractness of an ethical treatise nor the concreteness 6f a drawing from life. When he tries specifically to rival Moliere, in opposing Onuphre to TartufEe, his failure is marked. In religion La Bruyere is an orthodox believer. He regrets the decadence of pulpit eloquence even among the contempo- raries of Bossuet and Bourdaloue, and in the chapter Des esprits forts opposes the views of the sceptics with arguments based on Descartes and Malebranche. He attempts a Cartesian proof of the existence of God with the inference, " Je pense, done Dieu existe," and in the wake of Pascal supports his reasoning by considerations of the insignificance of man and the majesty of Nature. The doings of the Fronde had had their chronicler in the cardinal de Retz; the last years of the reign of Louis XIV were described by the due de Saint-Simon. Louis de Saint-Simon was born only in 1675, and did not die until 1755, but his memoirs really stand for the seventeenth century. Saint-Simon belonged to a family of quality, which had, how- ever, only recently won royal patronage under Louis XIII, and, with a certain sensitiveness as to his prerogatives, he had all the arrogance of caste. After a period of military service he became a courtier at Versailles, and during the rest of the king's life he was never absent from the roimd of petty ceremonies which made up the court routine. But his aversion gradually increased for his royal master and the smug flatterers of the latter's old age, who scorned Saint-Simon's fertile but to them inopportune projects of political reform. After the death of Louis XIV, Saint-Simon, except for an embassy to Spain, failed to acquire even tmder the more favorably disposed regency the influence he desired. At the death of the regent in 1723 he withdrew from all active participation in affairs, and until his own death many years later he passed for a dissatisfied and haughty old nobleman, 432 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE buried in books and left stranded from a previous generation. Meanwhile he was drawing up his memoirs. These he first began in 1694 when still a youth, but for some years he contented himself with a scrappy collection of' material, until he took it into his head to develop Dangeau's Journal. This was an accurate but soulless record of facts, public and private, kept for thirty-six years by the marqiris de Dangeau. If was about 1730 that Saint-Simon came into possession of Dangeau's diary through a friend who was the writer's grandson. Hot-tempered and prejudiced, he was irritated at the medioc- rity of Dangeau's mind and his mechanical registration of facts. So Saint-Simon, about 1740, began the final version of his own memoirs, which were not published until 1829. Taking Dangeau as foundation, he goes over the same ground, sometimes copying, more often developing or inserting additional information, the result of more acute observation. All his life Saint-Simon had with alertness judged the characters of his fellows. This is, indeed, the weak as well as the strong point of Saint-Simon. His dislikes and prejudices, together with the lapses of memory natural to one writing many years after the events themselves, combine to make the memoirs constantly open to suspicion. Saint-Simon was a good hater, as his invectives show. On the other hand, the writings of Saint-Simon, enlivened by anecdotes, have a picturesqueness that rarely appears among more sober memoirs. In vivid and often crude language he dashes off pen portraits of people with what must often be scan- dalous caricature, but which makes the men and women stand before us. Consequently, Saint-Simon is remote from the dignity of good form in his day. Together with the haughti- ness of the semi-feudal seigneur, he has the touch of a modern Realist; or at any rate, with his plausible gossip and falsehood, he is a pseudo-Realist with a Romantic vocabulary of vitupera- tion. Yet he is no stylist, and his language is slipshod. Saint-Simon's memoirs give us a picture of life imder the Grand Monarque very different from the grace which the MEN OF THE WORLD 433 partisans of the old regime threw over it. It is a rich mine of material for those iconoclasts who like to upset tradition. ' One cannot read Saint-Simon without thinking of the passage in Henry Esmond: I have seen in his old age and decrepitude the old French King Lewis the Fourteenth, the type and model of knighthood — who never moved but to measure, who lived and died according to the laws of his Court-marshal, persisting in enacting through life the part of Hero; and, divested of poetry, this was but a little wrinkled old man, pock-marked, and with a great periwig and red heels to make him look tail — k hero for a book if you like, or for a brass statue or a painted ceiling, a god in a Roman shape, but who more than a man for Madame Maintenon, or the barber who shaved him, or Monsieur Fagon, his surgeon? I wonder shall History ever pull off her periwig and cease to be court-ridden? CHAPTER XVIII LA FONTAINE AND THE POETS THE poetry of the Classical age, outside the didactic or ethical literature of the drama, criticism and satire, was not abundant. The critic in the seventeenth century scarcely conceived that aspect of poetry which seems to us most impor- tant: the description and appreciation of nature. Said Saint- Evremond: "Un discours ou Ton ne parle que de bois, de rivieres, de pres, de campagnes, de jardins, fait sur nous une impression bien languissante, a moins qu'elle n'ait des agrements tout nouveaux. Ce qui est de I'humanit^, les penchants, les affections, les tendresses, cela trouve naturellement au fond de notre ime a se faire sentir." Scarcely two or three poets were professed writers on nature. One was Mme Deshoulieres, whom we have already considered and who expressed herself in the stock phraseology of previous pastoral literature. The other one alone. La Fontaine, knows nature at first hand, and is recognised to be, with Moliere, the least conventional poet of the Classical school. Jean de la Fontaine was born at ChS,teau-Thierry in Cham- pagne in 1 62 1. All his life he seemed to suffer from a sort of moral ataxia. He was utterly unable to govern himself and remained a child, the bonhomme La Fontaine. He went first to the religious seminary of the Oratoire, then left it to become his father's successor as mattre des eaux et forets, married a young girl, Marie Hericart, only to disregard her and pay more atten- tion to literature and to other women than to his wife. La Fontaine began by translating the Eunuchus of Terence: he had a hking for Latin literature, and his fondness for Ovid 434 LA FONTAINE AND THE POETS 435 comes out in many of his poems. Becoming a hanger-on of Fouquet, then the wealthy and influential surintendant des finances, he wrote miscellaneous light poems, but more particu- larly the pensioner's tributes, such as the Songe de Vaux and the EUgie aux nymphes de Vaux. La Fontaine's sloth made him dilatory in completing his literary tributes to an expectant patron, but at least one must credit him with fidelity to Fouquet after the latter's fall. He passed under the protection of the duchesse de Bouillon, and joined also the little group of friends consisting mainly of Racine, Moliere, and Boileau. The last two had no little influence in chastening La Fontaine's style. He wrote the first ones of his Conies, indecent anecdotes in verse drawn from such sources as Boccaccio and the fabliaux. Then in 1668, when he was forty-seven, appeared the first six books of Fables, later continued by other books. He was for a while under the protection of Mme de la SabU^re, and when her time came to withdraw from the world and devote herself to piety, she took, said she, but three things with her: her cat, her dog, and La Fontaine. After her death, the story goes, M. d'Herr vart went to ask the poet to come to live with him. "I was just on my way to your house," answered La Fontaine. He was elected to the Academy in 1683, at first in preference to Boileau, but the king adjourned his admission until Boileau had been taken in. He died in 1695 after, an opportune re- pentance. During his later years an effort had been made to take him to England, where were the duchesse de Mazarin and Saint-Evremond, but the plan came to nothing. This heedless and absent-minded bonhomme created or renewed a whole literary genre, though outside the bounds of Classical regularity and rather in what the French call the gaulois vein. Marot, Rabelais, Moliere, La Fontaine, all express the popular spirit, humorous, satirical, sometimes indecent, untouched by Aristotle and Seneca. The Contes, in their filth, equal Rabe- lais. The fables, on the other hand, are for the most part grace- ful: a short narrative in which animals usually play the part 436 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of men, but in some of which only human beings appear. He relates the anecdote succinctly and precedes it by a moral, or draws one from it. But the moral of a fable by La Fontaine is not of the nature of Sunday-school instruction. It is the result of observation of the times, and is dictated by self-interest. By doing this or that, you will win success, avoid disaster. La Fontaine merely records life as it is in his . . . ample com6die a cent actes divers, Et dont la scene est I'univers. In the fables La Fontaine was at times original; more often he retold an old story whose genealogy went back to the ^sopic stories or even to the remote Orient. He had had predecessors, the oldest being probably quite unknown to him, in such writers as Marie de France, Marot or Baif. Though Marot's le Lion et le rat is far superior to La Fontaine's rendering of the same story, yet no other writer of fables in France reaches his general level. His little legends, "figurines" they have been called, seem spontaneous and easy, yet they were carefully elaborated. It was Mme de Bouillon who called La Fontaine a "fablier," as though his writings came without efifort or study, growing like the apples on their pommier. But La Fontaine himself asserts that his writings are the result of elaboration: Ce qui m'etonne est qu'a huit ans Un prince en fable ait mis la chose, Pendant que sous mes cheveux blancs, Je fabrique, d force de temps, Des vers moins senses que sa prose. He takes a subject and fills it in with the accessories of a work of art, considering even the effect of a single line, its rhythm, its length or brevity, and aiming to insinuate the precept without too much annoyance: Une morale nous apporte de I'ennui: Le conte fait passer le precepte avec lui. In considering La Fontaine, who had so much more to do LA FONTAINE AND THE POETS 437 with the outside world than his contemporaries, the question arises as to his love of animals and of nature. It has been main- tained with some plausibiUty that he had no knowledge of natural history or of the characteristics of animals, because he often describes them as his predecessors did and attributes to them the traditional traits of mediaeval fable and satire: the fox has the wiliness and cruelty of Renart; the cat is a hypocrite, " Grippeminaud le bon ap6tre;" the bear is a dull-witted fool who, trying to crush a fly on his sleeping friend's face, takes a big stone and smashes in his skull. Moreover, La Fontaine's menagerie is not a varied one: a handful of domestic animals, with an admixture of less familiar beasts, such as the Hon, the elephant, the ape, whom he knew mainly through literature. La Fontaine was no seventeenth-century Buffon, though we are told that he was given to idling away his unnumbered days watching an ant-hill or the movement of birds. It matters little, therefore, for literary purposes, if he is convicted of making a grasshopper live all summer instead of a few weeks, or the ant selfish instead of social in its habits, or a fox eat cheese, or a suckling lamb go unaccompanied to a brook. He certainly did care for animals, though he may not have progressed far in accurate knowledge of them, and he defended them against the Cartesians, who, as Malebranche did, maintained that animals are mere machines. To the Cartesians the idea of God was involved in the question of the soul of animals : If animals have a soul, God does not exist. For if they had a soul, they would suffer, and suffering being the punishment of sin, they would be punished unjustly. But there is no unjust God, hence animals have no souls. lis disent done Que la bfete est une machine; Qu'en elle tout se fait sans choix et par ressorts: Nul sentiment, point d'ame; en elle tout est corps. Telle est la montre qui chemine A pas toujours egaux, aveugle et sans dessein. Ouvrez-la, Usez dans son sein: 438 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Mainte roue y tient lieu de tout I'esprit du monde; La premiere y meut la seconde; Une troisieme suit: elle sonne a la fin. Au dire de ces gens la bete est toute telle. On the contrary, in the partridge luring the hunter away from her young, La Fontaine sees no mere reflex but an active intelligence. As to outer nature, La Fontaine differs from most of his contemporaries. Those were the days of the landscape archi- tecture of Le N6tre and the gardens of Versailles and Marly, when lawns {tapis verts) and 'trees were arranged to imitate drawing-rooms, when the geometrical figure with straight lines was considered the ideal of beauty, when quiet Port-Royal seemed a solitude and desolation. But La Fontaine understood real nature; not, it is true, wild mountains like the Alps or broad rivers. But he did know the delights of a smiling country side, the fertility of the Ile-de-France with the aurore, the thym and the rosee. And he knows more of all trees and flowers than do the coiurtiers of Louis XIV. Yet it was one of the nature lovers of the eighteenth century, Rousseau, who vehemently attacked La Fontaine's fables on the ground that, thought and reflection having brought woes upon mankind, it is unbecoming to attribute to animals the defects of humanity and set bad examples to children, who are too immature to understand them. But La Fontaine saw in animals lessons for men: "Je me ser- d'animaux pour instruire les hommes." Taine, in his study of La Fontaine, sees men themselves and thinks that La Fontaine is, like Boileau, a satirist of his age. This is, perhaps, carrying the idea rather far. But it is none the less true that his animals, consciously or unconsciously, act as the men of the time. In the lion is to be seen the king, grave and severe, bored by the etiquette of Versailles, but conscientiously carrjdng out his tasks. Several animals stand for the courtier as he appears in Saint- Simon, obsequious and insincere. Then there is the rustic LA FONTAINE AND THE POETS 439 provincial hobereau, the bear, or the fly playing the busybody and fdckeux like the petit marquis pi Moliere, or the thrifty bour- geois ant, and many more besides. La Fontaine's fables are in irregular metre, vers libres, wherein he is more original than in his choice of subjects. Instead of using the monotonous alexandrine of Boileau's one or two ex- periments in fables, his metre has the freedom which suits his subjects:, he is "volage".in verse as in love. He sterns to have no rule but harmony: A long and heavy verse suits a long drawn out description, a quick and skipping line suits a brisk subject. In language, too, La Fontaine goes beyond the bounds of seven- • teenth-century Classicism and often uses the richer vocabulary of the sixteenth-century writers. La Fontaine, though the greatest, was not the only fable writer of his time, whether in prose or verse: there were Benserade, Furetiere, Perrault, Fenelon, the P. Bouhours. Menage and the P. Bouhours wrote them in Latin. Aside from the writings of La Fontaine already mentioned, his chief works were comedies and lyrical plays, miscellaneous compositions on Cupid and Psyche or Adonis, besides verse epistles, elegies, odes, chansons and similar trifles. The other so-called poets do not amount to much, and their numbers diminish as the century goes on. Brebeuf is chiefly known by his translation of Lucan's Pharsalia. Isaac de Ben- serade's life stretches through nearly the whole century (1612- 1691), he had written plays, had been the friend of Richelieu and Mazarin, had composed ballets during the minority of Louis XrV, and had participated in the great poetical war with Voi- ture, with his Job against his rival's Uranie. But it was not until 1674 that Benserade became a member of the Academy, and not until 1676 that he pubhshed his version of the Meta- morphoses of Ovid turned into rondeaux. It will be remembered that Mascarille in Moli^re's Precieuses was turning the histor>' of Rome into madrigals. Jean Regnault de Segrais, another long-lived author (1624- 440 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 1 701) and a poetaster also, was a meritorious composer of that "po6sie galante et enjouee," which with its smooth flow, its gentle flattery or satire, its playful tenderness, its trifling with love, its general atmosphere of good breeding, made it seem to the people of the period to have reached a permanence that the shifting standards of time have completely upset. Segrais was for a time secretary of the Grande Mademoiselle, and after- wards the friend of Mme de la Fayette, lending her. his name for the publication of her books. He wrote some short stories or nouvelles, but his best work is to be found in his pastoral poem of Athis and in his free imitations or translations of Virgil. Chaulieu and La Fare are usually linked together in literary" history. They are insignificant writers, but good representa- tives of the lighter vein which had earlier shown itself in the tavern poets, and which now, polished by the influences at work, expressed the epicureanism and trifling of the libertine society of the Temple. PART IV THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER I THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE thought of the early eighteenth century is expressed by men like Bayle and Fontenelle. These writers stand for the rationalistic, the mathematical interpretation of science which existed in that age. In the early seventeenth century the philosopher had been the physicist, whether materialist like Gassendi, empiricist like Pascal, a priori reasoner like Descartes. In the second part of the seventeenth century the spirit of the age tended to lay emphasis on the mathematical side, though with a gradually new diathesis as a result of truer. study of the laws of universal mechanics following the investigations of Sir Isaac ' Newton. In France in the eighteenth century the whole con- ception of science was permeated with mathematics. Writers no longer prided themselves on the pomp of their sententious periods or on an easy conversational style, but rather on a brief, sharp phrase known as the style coupe, in which each word had its definite connotation and was almost a mathematical symbol.* The result was helpful to clearness of expression, but it was disastrous to the manifestation of the half lights and tones of poetical thought which seeks a wealth of figurative language that the eighteenth century could not give. The mathematical propensity even made its way into the realm of the emotions, ' Toward the end of the century, it is true, among the descriptive poets and lyrical pseudo-Pindarists thfere was a particular fondness for a style criS consisting of alliances de mots, the conjunction of startling and unex- pected words, presenting often false metaphors and incomplete similes but intended to awaken suggestions of other poets, to represent the incoherence of lyric enthusiasm, or merely to Spater. 443 444 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE and love was spoken of in terms of arithmetic and geometry. It was Voltaire's friend Francesco Algarotti, author of dialogues upon Newton's philosophy {Newtonianismo per le dame), who spoke of love decreasing in the ratio of the square of time and the cube of distance, and Mme de Staal-Delaunay told of the admirer who used at first to take her to walk round the sides of a square, but later cut diagonally across the ground, whence she inferred that his love had diminished in the ratio of the hypotenuse to the sides of a right-angled triangle. ' Algarotti's work is an indication of another tendency of learning — the popularisation of science and its adaptation to non-technical readers. Erudition was apt to be turned into dialogue, per- haps with a lady of fashion, and so Fontenelle's exposition of astronomy is in the form of conversations with a marquise. This was not the only philosophical manifestation proceeding to a large degree from Cartesian rationalism. The quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns was but an instance of the feeling of ' constant progress toward indefinite perfectibility in thinkers ranging from the , abbe de Saint-Pierre to Condorcet and the Ideologists. The spirit of the age being scientific and facilitat- ing the idea that learning is a constant accretion, it resulted that the moral and political theories were stamped with the notion of rational amelioration. The feeling of the perfectibility of man is the successor of the realisation of the dignity of man, the "coming to self -consciousness," of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Still another form of thought had its origin in earlier tradi- tions, though it came, not from Descartes alone, but from the opposite school as well. This was the rejection of authority which Classicism had imposed on aU the categories of the mind. 1 So Houdar de la Motte: A la geometrie en vain je veux toucher: Depuis qu'en ses mysteres j'entre, J'apprends seulement que vous ^tes mon centre, Et que je tourne autour sans pouvoir I'approcher. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 445 Under Louis XIV anything irregular in literary theory was frowned upon, and religious unconventionality was persecuted in the Jansenists as in the Huguenots. The new tendency, taking in its acute manifestations the form of philosophical doubt, went back to the school of Montaigne. It had been upheld by the libertines, from the tavern poets to the irreligious epicureans of Ninon's group and of the Temple. The spirit of denial was again raised to the dignity of a philosophical creed by Bayle whose system was to have no system. The result of these tendencies away from the concentrated and dogmatic Classicism made the eighteenth century more compre- hensive in its views of life and sympathetic in its relations with other countries. Instead of being a period of narrow national- ism, even if admired by other nations, it became an age of inno- vation and of experiment, of cosmopolitanism, during which authors borrowed without reserve from beyond the frontiers and extended sympathy to all doctrines.' It went far beyond not only the literary conservatism of the previous century, but also the confines of revealed religion, and opened the way for materialism, scepticism', and atheism. In technical belles lettres alone, lyric poetry (such as it was)* tragedy, or criticism, the Academy, packed with mediocre bishops, abbes, or pedants like d'Olivet and Batteux, asserted the old authority of cut and dried rules. The seventeenth century Classicism had become a mere pseudo-Classicism, nominis umbra. On many subjects the eighteenth century was as mistaken as the seventeenth had been, for its theories were based on as insecure foimdations: erroneous assumptions as to the laws of human nature or social organisms.* Results in the eighteenth 1 "Le dix-septi^me siecle voyait Versailles, le dix-huitieme voit la terre." (Michelet, Introduction to la Regence.) ^ M. Lanson, who has of late devoted much time to the eighteenth cen- tury, is now inclined to think that the a priori tendencies of the eighteenth century have been exaggerated, and modifies his history of French Utera- ture accordingly, in the eleventh edition. But he rather destroys his own 446 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE century did not coincide with the Utopian hopes or did so, in the Revolution, only by the help of the guillotine. Though the eighteenth century is so different from the seven- teenth, the transition was normal. It began with social reaction against restraint. The gloomy days of Louis XIV were over, and the court, throwing off the mask of hj^Docrisy, revelled imder the regency in unbridled license of thought and morals. In literature the cynicism and cold-blooded selfishness of the past and present age find vent in hardness and unsentimentality, with an assumption of smartness and epigrammatic satire. In thought the cult of reason spreads to all spheres of intellectual activity. Cartesianism becomes less orthodox and theorises to its full satisfaction. The descendants of the libertines also state views deviating more and more from tradition. Thus it is not necessary to look to England alone for the origin of deism or unbelief, inasmuch as we can find in French writers like Bayle, Saint-Evremond, or Fontenelle, in less famous ones like Richard Simon, as well as in obscurer works, indications of a rationalism which paves the way for the rejection of revelation and the proclamation of deism.' By 1715 or thereabout Cartesianism, scepticism, epicureanism, as well as Protestant independence of Judgment, had produced an attitude of hostility to dogma of which deism was the expression. Only a few immediately went on to atheism. The majority were satisfied with a feeling of toleration for all beliefs and a sense of the underlying unity of religions. At the same time morals were gradually separated from religion and secularised. Heterodox thinkers established their case by also adding (p. 628): "On ne savait pas encore tout ce qu'il faut de patience, de scrupule, de precaution, pour se procurer une observa- tion bien prise. On crut observer et Ton supposa. On fabriqua des idees, et Ton crut operer sur des faits. On prit une ideologic pour un corps de v6rites d'exp6rience." ' On such works as la Terre Australe of Gabriel de Foigny and the His- toire des Sivaramhes, cf . Lanson in the Revue des Cours et Conferences, March 12 and April 2, 1908. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 447 ethics on heterodox principles, on a social or a rational basis rather than on divine legislation. Hence the talk of the "morale des honn^tes gens" or of systems reasoned out for the common good and constructed according to the inventor's bias by a priori principles or by a posteriori observation of the defects of existing institutions. The result is the philosophes. They do not represent a single group or even necessarily stand for technical philosophic thought. The term no longer implied sequestered students of metaphysics. The eighteenth-century philosophers were rather men of the world, writers of plays, novels, and poems. The title was the common denomination assumed by all the partisans of advanced thought and those who proclaimed the right of reason to rebel against authority. Less numerous in the first half of the century, they became, as they rallied round the Encyclo- pedia, a vast and widely differentiated group of thinkers united chiefly by their opposition to the Church. They united in their contempt the "superstitions" of the past, like the cult of the Sacred Heart and the mysticism of Marie Alacoque, or the contemporary manifestations of religious frenzy, such as the excesses of the Jansenist convulsionnaires. They gradually grew more powerful even in the Academy, where under Duclos and d'Alembert they overpowered the devots as they called their foes. Epic contests were fought over important elections, and tmfortunates such as Le Franc de Pompignan were made the scapegoats of bigger issues and the playthings of greater men as in les Quand of Voltaire and les Si and les Pourquoi of Morellet. In this struggle between the philosophes and the devots all the great arguments were used which the men of the Revolution repeated, and all the abuses were uncovered which the Revolu- tion planned to correct. It has, therefore, been customary to attribute to the philosophes the chief cause of that outbreak. On the other hand, some writers have tried to deprive them of any such important part on the ground that the economic evils of the old regime were notorious before the great days of the 448 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE philosophes, and that there were threats of revolution as early as 1753. It is none the less true that there was no revolution then and that the real one would not have come in the form it took had it not been prepared by the philosophes.^ In the sphere of pure letters the condition was different and the content of the literature of the imagination dwindles greatly. There was little place for it in an age which prided itself on rationalism and effervescence. It was Voltaire who called the French the "whipped cream of Europe." The aim of the French, then as now, was to be the centre to which civilisation converges, and they could no longer, as in the seventeenth century, entirely give without taking. M. Faguet says that the seventeenth century had been religious and French, the eighteenth century was neither religious nor French. But the influence of France on other countries was largely due to the literature of the preceding century. Its diffusion had been aided by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which drove broadcast over Europe more than four hundred thousand of the most industrious and intelligent Frenchmen. Many went to England and, sometimes starting as hackwriters, acquired reputations, as did Desmaizeaux the editor of Saint-Evremond, Motteux the translator of Rabelais, Boyer, Leclerc the jour- nalist, Rapin Thoyras the historian, Coste the translator of Locke. The Dutch colony was no less important and played a significant part in disseminating thought. The French themselves travelled to England. Destouches, Montesquieu, and Buff on went there; the abbe Prevost lived in 1 The influence of the philosophes upon the Revolution is well expressed by Albert Sorel in his work on I' Europe et la R&oolution franqaise (Vol. I, p. 204) quoted by Charles-Brun {Le Roman social en France au XIX ^ sikcle): "Les philosophes apportent a la revolution que les fautes-du gouvemement ont pr6paree, des chefs, des cadres, une doctrine, una direc- tion, I'entrainement des illusions, I'irresistible elan des esperances. lis ne creent pas les causes de cette revolution, ils les manifestent, ils les animent, ils les passionnent. Us les multiplient, ils en precipitent le deve- loppement." THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 449 England and did his best to popularise its thought in his own land. Similarly Voltaire discovered Shakspere, studied Newton, came in contact with the English deists, and wrote his Lettres anglaises, the most important document in the early growth of eighteenth-century philosophism. To this movement the introduction into France of freemasonry contributed not a little. Other authors, Rousseau, though he went to England late in life, and Diderot, who never went, were as important in the history of the English influence. Diderot was permeated with England in his scientific writings and in his fiction and dramas drawn from Sterne, Richardson, and Lillo. Rousseau was no less steeped in the deism of Pope and the sentiment of Clarissa Harlowe when he wrote the Nouvelle Heloise and Emile. The "homme sensible" ready to burst into tears was the favorite in fiction and in life.* Robinson Crusoe had been translated almost as soon as published; the essays of Addison and Steele were read by the moralising bourgeoisie; finally, the poets, Thomson, Gray, Young, the Ossianic literature, all became popu- lar in France and encouraged the cult of descriptive poetry, the love of nature, and the feeling for melancholy. English phrases, ' Mme. Dupin de Francueil, the grandmother of George Sand, tells of meeting Rousseau for the first time: "J'aperfois un petit homme assez mal vetu et comme renfrogne, qui se levait lourdement, qui machonnait des mots confus. Je le regarde et je devine; je crie, je veux parler, je fonds en larmes. Jean- Jacques, etourdi de cet accueil, veut me remercier et fond en larmes. Francueil veut nous remettre I'esprit par une plai- santerie et fond en larmes. Nous ne pflmes nous rien dire. Rousseau me serra la main et ne m'adressa pas une parole. On essaya de diner pour couper court a tous ces sanglots." (Quoted in Doumic's George Sand.) Similarly, Ginguene, the historian of Italian literature and poet, wrote in his Diary, as late as the first Empire: "j'ai fait, pour le jour de naissance de mon cher petit James, une piece de vers qui a touche ceux qui I'ont entendue ou lue, parce que j'etais moi-meme tres touche en la faisant. Ce cher enfant, quand je la lui ai recitee a table, s'est leve de sa place et est venu se jeter dans mes bras en fondant en larmes. Ma femme, ses amies, tout le monde pleurait, et moi aussi." (Quoted by Potez: I'Elegie en France avant le romantisme.) 450 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE customs, and fashions were all in vogue, and even French formal gardening after the style of Le N6tre lost favor before the sim- plicity of the jar din anglais with meandering and shady paths, arbors, and grottoes or "temples." * Meanwhile in England the school of Boileau was still powerful, and the translations of novels as old as those of La Calprenede were read until the days of Richardson. French influence was strong in Spain and in Italy. The Spanish Academy imitated the Academie franfaise; Goldoni lived in Paris; Alfieri, though he disliked France, was influenced by French thinkers. From Russia the empress Catherine sent for Diderot, and Frederick the Great had at Berlin Voltaire, Maupertuis, and La Mettrie. Germany, however, which had, through the school of Gottsched, been saturated with the doctrines of Boileau,* was destined in the second half of the eighteenth century to repay its debts. Through Winckelmann it modified the conception of antiquity. It contributed Grimm to French literature and spread the reputation of Gellert, Haller, and Gessner, particularly the last. Haller increased the knowledge of nature, Gessner popularised scenes of rustic virtue and simplicity. Meanwhile, greater writers like Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland had far less vogue in France. Goethe's Werther was the most read book of the great writers. In spite of this new state of literature, far different from that of the reign of Louis XIV, the rule of France in intellectual matters seemed so established that in 1783 the Berlin Academy offered its famous prize for an essay on the reasons for the uni- versality of French, which Rivarol won with his Discours sur I'universalite de la langue frangaise. ^ The American Revolution introduced a temporary fad of Americanism and the cult of the " embattled farmer." Society played " boston " and men wore coats d la Franklin. 2 Intellectually, Gottsched is to be classed with d'Aubignac or Rymer rather than with Boileau. CHAPTER n BAYLE AND FONTENELLE BAYLE and Fontenelle were two philosophers of the transi- tion age, the first of whom worked quietly and with little concern for popularity, but achieved a more permanent effect, the second was the femme de chambre of a feminised science dressed out in frills and furbelows. Pierre Bayle was born in 1647 at Le Carla, on the slopes of the Pyrenees, where his father was a Protestant minister, and died in 1706 at Rotterdam. During his youth he was for about eighteen months a convert to Catholicism, but returned as a result of dehberate criticism to his previous creed. Because of his lapse from the official faith he became practically an exile and spent the rest of his life abroad, at Geneva, Sedan, and in Holland. There he was the chief literary and critical influence of the generation, though he never evolved a constructive system. During his period of wandering Bayle was a private tutor in several noble families and at the Protestant academy of Sedan occupied the chair of philosophy until the institution was closed by the king. In 1681, at Rotterdam, he was made professor of philosophy and history at the Ecole illustre, founded practically for him and the theologian Jurieu. From this date begins his great literary activity. At Sedan, Bayle had published some philosophical treatises on ethics and physics still tinged with the h3T)otheses and methods of Cartesianism. At Rotterdam he first showed the bias of his criticism in the Pensees sur la comete, suggested by the appearance in 1680 of a comet which had caused an outburst of popular superstition. These prejudices he attacked, showing 4SI 452 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE how they are rooted in the credulity of man, the blind respect for authority and tradition, but yield before rational criticism. More particularly he seized on the belief that comets are divine omens as an occasion to attack miracles and to maintain that atheism is no worse, than idolatry: nothing hinders the atheist from being a righteous man; faith and morals are not necessarily correlative. In this work Bayle already shows two of the most marked tendencies of his thought: destructive criticism and the separation of morals from religion. This work was followed by the Critique generale de I'histoire du calvinisme de M. Maimhourg. The P. Maimbourg had fought the reformed religion with great violence, but Bayle, instead of refuting his arguments individually, attacked relig- ious intolerance and the sectarianism which hindered it from seeing any good in its opponents. Thus Bayle rose above his own coreligionaries who were, on the whole, as intolerant as the Catholics. He himself tried to discredit his adversary by a sceptical attitude to his representative assertions and argued that true religion must not bring constraint to bear on those who are not of the same belief. This eloquent outburst in favor of religious freedom, followed soon after by some Nouvelles lettres, came not long before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and persecutions which hastened the death of his own brother. In 1684 Bayle began the publication of a monthly periodical, the Nouvelles de la Republique des lettres, destined to be a regular review of the important new publications, particularly in history, philosophy, science, and religion. By means of this journalistic undertaking, which he continued alone until 1687, Bayle ac- quired an importance which his secluded life otherwise never would have given, and he entered into communication with nearly all the distinguished men of the day. The persecutions in France caused the publication in 1686 of Ce qu£ c'est que la France toute catkolique sous le regne de Louis le Grand and of the Commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles BAYLE AND FONTENELLE 453 de Jesus-Christ, " Contrains-les d'entrer." The one speaks for the liberty of. conscience, the other renews arguments already made against conversions by force. Unfortunately the unortho- dox liberality of Bayle's views brought down on him the fury of his fellow-Protestants led by his former friend, the sectarian and vindictive Calvinist Jurieu. Their quarrel was niarked by bitter publications in the course of which Jurieu accused Bayle of athe- ism. Finally, Bayle was deprived of his salary and his position. It was a serious blow to Bayle, yet it enabled him to devote his undivided attention to his great Dictionnaire historique et critique. This, indeed, is not the only one of his remaining works — his controversies involved a voluminous correspon- dence and writings like the Continuation des pensees diverses, the Reponses aux questions d'un provincial, the Entretiens de Maxime et de Themiste — but it is the most elaborate and engrossing of all. Bayle gave up various offers of protection which might have stood in the way of his independence and spent his re- maining days mainly in the composition of the dictionary. Already in 1692 he had published a Projet; in 1697 appeared the first volume of the work, which he continued and which was enlarged and republished several times after his death. It was mainly historical and biographical rather than a; synthesis of the sciences like the later Encyclopedia, and took partly as its start- ing-point the historical dictionary of Moreri. This enabled him to use more insidiously but more tellingly than ever his critical and sceptical method. Bayle did not merely heap up the results of indefatigable study; he gradually passed from the mere rectification of mistakes in his predecessors to the state of mind which made him try to undermine the theories of those among his subjects for whom he lacked sympathy. The method of criticism is an indirect one, and the author's attack was often hid- den in apparently insignificant detail, but it consistently advanced the claims of rationalism and opposed, as based on insufficient authority, many forms of custom, tradition, and prejudice. It is obvious that Bayle's theories are not systematic, but 454 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE appear in many different places. To draw a system from liim the student must undertake a process of logical co-ordination upon which Bayle himself scarcely ventured. His process was one of consistent denial, but he necessarily let inconsistency creep in: like Montaigne, Bayle complained of a lack of mem- ory. Plutarch' and Montaigne had been Bayle's favorite read- ing in youth, and it is the pyrrhonism of Montaigne carried to the extent of mental irresolution which characterises his work. Yet, inasmuch as the one principle that he firmly manifests is that of contradiction, his work does have a scientific foundation. In his writings on dogmatic religion and the restraints it imposes he was the advocate of moral and intellectual tolerance. In his historical studies he again tested authority and tradition. In both spheres' he manifested a scepticism of the reason, which is a form of criticism, in order to overthrow cruelty and error. Bayle meets every affirmation, as did Montaigne, with a demand for evidence; yet to him even evidence may be fallacious, and truth itself, because of bias or party-spirit, is often only relative. Truth is rather to be found in the facts of history rationally interpreted than in the a priori reasonings of metaphysics, where a dogmatic first principle is veiled in imaginative accretions. Bayle here took a contrary stand from the Cartesians to whom an ontological proof of the existence of God was more valid than a concrete fact of history. In religion Bayle was against the excessive dogmatism both of the Catholics, with their doctrine of the infallibility of the Church, and of the Calvinists, with their doctrine of the infallibility of Holy Writ. By this last attitude he angered Jurieu, and by both attitudes he opens the way for modern religious exegesis in which Richard Simon had stirred up the wrath of Bossuet. Bayle was undoubtedly led in his hostility to prejudice partly by the religious persecutions of his own times. Religious specu- lation seeming otiose, he tried to substitute 'a new principle. This he found in the sphere of practical morals. Belief in a creed was unessential: society could exist without religion. The BAYLE AND FONTENELLE 455 true principle is moral righteousness. It followed that no "truth" should be imposed by constraint, that the conscience should be free, that tolerance of all sects should prevail every- where, that morals rest on a secular instead of a religious basis. It followed also that even atheism could have its locus standi. Hence Bayle was himself accused of atheism, though he was neither atheist nor believer, but merely a critic approaching all problems with a practical bias and with the tool of destructive reason. He does lead in others, by denying the intervention of a personal God in human affairs, to the deism which stamps the philosophy of the eighteenth century, and for which Bayle is so largely responsible. He helps to lift philosophy to a position co-ordinate with religion and hostile to it. He popularises philosophy and makes it accessible to literature. The philo- sophes found a rich mine in Bayle, and he gave Voltaire not only a wealth of information, but set a model for his religious satire. It is in the dictionary that Bayle's unsystematic erudition and mocking fancy find especial vent. Wherever tradition has resulted in judgment or opinion he uses his subtle sarcasm. By an anecdote, a note, a quaint and amusing example, he shows how history is vitiated by preconceived theories. He ranges from ancient to modern history, destroying the vanity of nations or the pride of individuals, and emphasising the fateful results which often derive from an insignificant cause. But it is in relation to the Bible that Bayle becomes truly malicious. He delights to point out contradictions, to show the opposition between miracles and the laws of nature, even, by an article such as that on David, to prove the immorality of the Bible. He dwelt on the immoral side of his topics with a certain gloating pleasure which has caused him to be charged with filthiness of mind, but which may be only the cerebrations of a recluse leading a life of chastity. ^ ' Bayle said it was in order to sell his works more easily, and there is no filthiness in his correspondence. The literary obscenity of Gibbon is influenced by Bayle. -, 4S6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE If Bayle influenced thought in its deeper phases, his contem- porary and survivor the centenarian Fontenelle, whose memories in the middle of the eighteenth century carried him back to the grand siecle, was an instance of the populariser who gave the twist to outer forms of current opinion. Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657 — 1757) was a Norman and a nephew of Corneille. His health all his life was frail, which necessitated discreetness of regime, and the effect seems to have shown itself in his character: he was known as "le discret Fon- tenelle." He was the graceful wit and polished man of the world who found constant favor in the drawing-rooms. Fon- tenelle began his career practically by journalism in connection with his uncle Thomas Corneille's Mercure galant. He also collaborated with Thomas Corneille in a couple of operas, Psyche and Bellerophon, but when he tried a tragedy, Aspar, and a comedy, la Comete, his failure was ignominious. Not dis- couraged he wrote the Dialogues des marts, a far more serious bit of literary and philosophical thought, followed, however, by the frivolous Lettres galantes du chevalier d'Her . . ., which had a greater success than their insignificance deserved. Now in full vogue he contributed to Bayle's periodical, among other writings, a Memoire sur le nombre neuf or a satirical and alle- gorical Relation de Vile de Borneo, or he wrote his more ambitious Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes (1686), the Doutes sur les causes occasionnelles directed against Malebranche, or the His- toire des oracles (1687) based on a Latin work of the Dutchman Van Dale and foreshadowing the eighteenth-century satirical irreverence. He composed also various eclogues. Fontenelle's ambitions to become a member of the Academy were compHcated by his sympathies with his uncle Thomas Corn- eille and the party of the Moderns {Digression sur les anciens et les modernes) . But his name was more closely connected with the Academy of Sciences of which he was made life-secretary, and of which he wrote the history as well as the Eloges of the various members who died. And such a list is far from exhausting the BAYLE AND PONTENELLE 45 7 fecundity even of Fontenelle's later years when he wrote his life of Corneille, his Reflexions sur la poetique, besides many other miscellaneous productions all through his hfe. Fontenelle showed people how to be superficial with grace. Everything is possible, he ijvould say, and everybody is right. For that reason he had a wide influence in literature, philoso- phy, and science. So La Bruyere described him: "Entrez dans son magasin, il y a a choisir; prose ou vers, que voulez-vous? Cydias reussit egalement I'un et I'autre." He gave forth his wares with due consciousness of his dignity; he did not know what emotion was, but passed serenely and undisturbed through life. He was the philosophical squire of dames such as Mme de Lambert, Mme Geoffrin, and Mme de Tencin, and J.-B. Rousseau said of him: II n'est caillette en honnete maison Qui ne se pame a sa douce faconde; En verit6 caiUettes ont raison, Cast le plus joli p6dant du monde. Fontenelle's literary tastes carried him back almost to the Astree and, beginning as a Norman provincial, he haunted the midway heights of novels such as the Grand Cyrus or the plays of Thomas Corneille. His pastorals and eclogues are full of bel esprit. He had no conception of poetry, except as a fantastic juggling with pretty tags and phrases, a task which he thought on the whole less worthy than writing in prose, the better vehicle for expressing man's nobler task of philosophising. As a prose writer himself, Fontenelle, lacking in inspiration and feeling, was again weak in the forms which call for those qualities. It was only as a disembodied critic that his views on poetry, though unacceptable today and bad in their application, have at any rate the authority of clear and systematic reasoning. In the quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns he restates the com- mon view of the Modems that if trees today are as great as those of antiquity and our brains as rich in convolutions as those of Homer or Plato, we are today better than they were. 4S8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE As a philosopher the Cartesian Fontenelle carries the spirit of rationalism to logical conclusions scarcely imagined by the founder of the system. It is not merely that the abstractions which masquerade under the names of mortals in the Dialogues des marts are pure rationalists, but in his latent scepticism as well as in the frank criticism of the Origine des fables and the Histoire des oracles Fontenelle helped to pave the way for the positive unbelief of the philos'opkes. But it was as a philosophical scientist that Fontenelle was in his day most admired. He could expound cosmology so that the man in the street, or rather the marquise in her salon, could understand. Thus he contributed to make the scientific and the non-religious attitude prevalent in social as well as in learned circles and to spread the feeling that geometrical reasoning could ultimately unlock all the secrets of the universe. All this was fatal to the imagination and contributed to the dryness of the literature of the eighteenth century. But it was almost as potent as the influence of Bayle in creating the incredulity of the age, the irreverence of Voltaire, the unbelief of the Encyclopedists. CHAPTER III THE ESPRIT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE SALONS. JOURNALISTS THE influence of women is no less marked in the eighteenth century than it had been in the seventeenth, and the salons reach a still greater development,, passing as time goes on through at least three phases. In the early part of the century the salons retain some of the stilted dignity of the age of Louis XIV, which finds expression in the subtle analyses of Mme de Lambert's set, called by unfriendly critics her " lambertinage. " This gave way about the middle of the century to a more restless intellectualism, fond of paradox and eager for philosophical and religious novelty. Finally, towards the advent of the Revolu- tion, the salons were given over to political dissertations. More particularly in the second half of the century the salons and the cafes reflected the great questions imder discussion by the philosophers, the economists and the patriots, who successively sought the millennium, the philosophers by enunciating the progress to perfection, the economists by seeking to remedy current defects, and the patriots by trying to sweep away the whole of society in order to replace it by a new one. It was not long before the esprit de sociMi became more than a mere drawing-room appurtenance. The social manifestations spread from the narrow and intellectual aristocracy to the nation at large; clubs and public gatherings were devoted to efferves- cent conversation. Galiani called Paris the "Coffee-house of Europe": we are told that as early as 171 5 there were over three hundred cafes there. There were the cafe Procope, the caf6 of the veuve Laurent, the cafe Gradot, the cafS du Parnasse, the cafe de la Regence. Coffee-drinking was wide-spread, and Vol- 459 46o A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE taire's cups of coffee are as famous as Dr. Johnson's tea. The cajes took th'e place of the seventeenth-century cabarets and afforded a meeting place for men of letters before or after the play. The more frequented were the centres of different cliques, and were a nursery for the development of sophistry and paradox. The convivial and epicurean poets also had their gastronomic and bibulous literary societies, such as the Caveau, particularly the first one founded by Piron and Crebillon fils and the second one of Marmontel and Pelletier. Every matter had to be dealt with wittily, and, as philosophy encroached upon everything, the intellectual strain was great. Montesquieu's Esprit des lois had to be brilliant enough to Justify Mme du Deffand in calling it "de I'esprit sur les lois." The wit of the eighteenth century, whether expressed in an epi- gram by Piron or an anecdote by Chamfort, was brisk and sparkling, but essentially sarcastic and mechant, without respect for equals, without reverence for superiors. Even in its most mellow form it finds a typical illustration in the heedless epicu- reanism of the abbe de Lattaignant's farewell to the world: J'aurai bientot quatre-vingts ans, Je crois qu'a cet age il est temps De dedaigner la vie. Aussi je la perds sans regret, Et je fais gaiment mon paquet: Bonsoir, la compagnie. J'ai goute de tous les plaisirs: J'ai perdu jusqu'aux desirs; A present je m'ennuie. Lorsque Ton n'est plus bon a rien On se retire, et Ton fait bien: Bonsoir, la compagnie. In their loftier flights the intellects of the eighteenth century took delight, after the time of Bayle, in the assumption of liberty and toleration, and showed intolerance only for Christianity. Society was full of unfrocked and apostate priests, or of abbes ESPRIT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 461 who, still bearing their titles, were atheists and materialists at heart. As Voltaire in his CEdipe attacked the priests, so Montes- quieu expressed his satire by his Letires persanes, or the abbe de Saint-Pierre planned reconstructions of society and projects of perfect peace. These schemes were facilitated by the tendency to consider man as an abstract entity and not as something at least partly influenced by his environment. Consequently he could be theorised upon at will, regardless of the real conse- quences. In this we have an excellent instance of the French tendency for a priori generaUsation. The Club de I'entresol, in the earlier half of the century, met to discuss moral and politi- cal questions under the presidency of the abbe de Saint-Pierre (expelled from the Academy for his Discours sur la Polysynodie, a project for reforms), to read French and foreign gazettes, to talk about the freer government of England, and to converse with those who had been to that happy land. Thus, years before the Revolution, the seed of discontent was being uncon- sciously sown in a soil more and more ready for the labors of the economists and the iconoclasts. The type of the early period was the salon of Mme de Lambert (1647-1733), a bureau d'esprit which after 1710, when she was already elderly, became such a centre of intrigue and influence that it was called the "antichambre de I'Academie." The intel- lectual atmosphere was dignified, the moral tone eminently proper, except in so far as some of its frequenters were in thought inno- vators. Mme de Lambert had two distinct sets meeting on different days of the week, the one of people of quality, the other of literary men and women. At Mme de Lambert's were to be seen Fontenelle, the president Henault, the marquis d'Argen- son, Mme Dacier, Mile Delaunay (Mme de Staal-Delaunay), but the divinity of the group was Houdar de la Motte. Mme de Lambert herself did a little writing, such as the Avis d'une mere a son fils, the Avis d'une mere a sa fille, not to mention miscellaneous Reflexions, Discours, letters, and so forth. The propriety of Mme de Lambert's salon was a conscious 462 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE reaction against the laxness of many other notorious groups. There was, for instance, the libertine set of the Temple, where the prior Philippe de Venddme had his famous suppers with boon companions like Chaulieu, the "Anacreon du Temple," or the youthful Voltaire and many of the ancestors of eighteenth- century irreligion. Often these were the friends of Ninon de Lenclos, now old and subdued but still vivacious. There was the "Court of Sceaux," where the dwarfish duchesse du Maine, granddaughter of the great Cond6, maintained a rival spend- thrift court to further the prospects of her husband, son of Louis XIV and Mme de Montespan, and to oppose the Orleans regent. The duchesse du Maine's desire to have brilliant people about her made her tend to a neo-Preciosity, and her group at Sceaux became a kind of H6tel de Rambouillet, where under Malezieu and the abbe Genest the divertissements remind one of the amusements presided over by Voiture seasoned with Car- tesianism and astronomy. Mme de Staal-Delaunay was for many years in thie service of the duchesse du Maine, and wrote memoirs. At the salon of Mme de Tencin intrigue was mixed with philosophy. She was a renegade nfln, mistress of the regent, friend of Matthew Prior, Bolingbroke and d'Argenson, and mother, by a liaison with the chevalier Destouches, of d'Alem- bert, whom she heartlessly abandoned. She was the author of some novels, especially the Memoires du comte de Comminges. Her neighbor the bourgeoise Mme GeofErin succeeded in gather- ing Mme de Tencin's social inheritance, and at her home in the rue Saint-Honore she made herself one of the important women of France. Fontenelle was her guide, Marmontel her factotum and the abb6 Galiani a permanent "meuble" in her drawing- room. Her house became such a cosmopolitan centre, which strangers to Paris delighted to visit, that she afterwards went in triumph to see the king of Poland, once her protege and pupil in society. Horace Walpole at first admired her until he went over to her chief rival, Mme du Deffand. Yet, in spite of all ESPRIT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 463 this vogue, Mme Geoff rin remained rather commonplace in her temperament and manner, and her language kept a plebeian frankness: "Ma tSte me pete et mon coeur brule," she said to express her excitement. Her temper was not good, she squabbled with her husband and her daughter, Mme de la Ferte-Imbault, who objected to her mother's friendship for the Encyclopedists and tried to have a more orthodox establishment of her own. The marquise du Deffand, the lady of distinction who saw in Mme Geoffrin only a "caillette," as Mme Geoffrin saw in her a "mechante bSte, " was one of the wittiest and bitterest women of her time. After the usual career of galanterie and intrigue she became an intellectual leader, though blind at fifty, in her home in the rue Saint-Dominique, where her friend and coun- sellor was the president Henaiilt, a discreet and polished person, a lady's man and writer of memoirs. Mme du Deffand kept up a voluminous correspondence with great men, especially with Voltaire and Horace Walpole, the latter of whom she rather worried by her sentiment and emotionality. The greatest shock to Mme du Deffand's pride was when her protegee, now supposed to be her niece, Julie de Lespinasse, the natural daughter of Mme d'Ablon, was found to be receiving in Mme du Deffand's own house before she was ready for the evening, and was fast becoming a favorite. Banished from the house. Mile de Lespinasse soon had her own set among the philosophers, chief of whom was d'Alembert, with whom she lived for the rest of her life. It is not simply as the leader of a salon that Mile de Lespin- asse is famous. She is one of the great examples of eighteenth- century sensiblerie and emotionality, such as we connect with the names of Richardson and Rousseau. She was tempera- mentally neurotic, a cirebrale and nivrosie, suffering convulsions and dosing herself with opium. Though d'Alembert was ready to sacrifice all for her, she had two love-storms under his eyes of which he remained in ignorance through her life and of which her letters are the monument. When nearly thirty-six 464 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE she conceived a violent passion for a consumptive young Spaniard, the marquis de Mora, twelve years younger than she was, and for the comte de Guibert, a fascinating but not particularly clever man. Of these heart-tempests the record appears in the letters of Mile de Lespinasse, which are a strange mixture of emotional abandon and of self-consciousness. Letter-writing was, indeed, the passion of the age: Horace Wal- pole tells of the couple in Paris, who, living together, wrote letters to each other and threw them over a screen put across the mid- dle of the room. One of the most interesting writers from the romantic standpoint, though she died (1733) the year after Mile de Lespinasse was born, was Mile Aisse. She was a young Cir- cassian slave, her name being perhaps a corruption of Haidee, bought as a child of about four in Constantinople by the French ambassador to Turkey M. de Ferriol. He brought her to France and entrusted her education to his sister-in-law Mme de Ferriol, a sister of Mme de Tencin and scarcely the. best of chaperons. M. de Ferriol had intended her for himself, but after his death she fell in love with the young chevalier d'Aydie, himself a dashing and romantic character on whom Voltaire based the sire de Couci of his Adelaide du Guesclin. Later she broke the liaison and gave herself to piety, but her letters are documents for the understanding of an emotional nature in an age of growing sentiment. Cleverness was not to be found in the women's salons alone. Helvetius, whose widow Franklin wanted to marry, had his circle; the baron d'Holbach, the "maitre d'h6tel of philosophy," kept open house for the clan of religion haters and welcomed all innovators. Chief among the wits was the abbe, later cardinal de Bernis, diplomat, statesman and poet, favorite of Mme de Pompadour, whose flowery verses, such as the Quatre saisons, caused Voltaire to dub him "Babet la bouquetiere," from a fair and florid flower woman of the day. There was also to be seen the abbe Galiani, the Neapolitan dwarf. He came to France as secretary of embassy, and for years was the life of the drawing- ESPRIT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 465 rooms Dy his southern animation, which made the Teutonic Grimm call him "Harlequin-Plato," as Marmontel called him "Harlequin^Machiavelli." He was a better talker than writer, but he dabbled in all forms of intellectual expression : his sportful treatise, Dialogues sur le commerce des hies, made all women dis- cuss economics. After leaving Paris in 1769 he began his cor- respondence, chiefly with Mme d'Epinay. Even in his native Naples he felt in exile, but his writings remained full of French wit and Itahan animation. But one of the greatest salons in the eighteenth century was again that of a woman, Mme Necker. Daughter of a poor Swiss pastor named Curchod and courted in youth by Edward Gibbon, she was the wife of the banker and minister Necker and mother of Mme de Stael. She was a social climber and worked to establish herself in Paris, to which end her husband's position contributed. Thus it may be seen that in numerous conversational centres and in no less numerous memoirs and letters we have every chance to know the intellectual attitude and the gossip of the eighteenth century. Nor was this all: The nouvellistes, news- gatherers and ancestors of our journalists or reporters, gathered together indiscriminately fact and gossip for their "nouvelles a la main." At the home of Mme Doublet de Breuillepont or de Persan the habitues of "la Paroisse" devoted themselves ■systematically to the collection of small talk, which Louis Petit de Bachaumont edited first, and afterwards Pidansat de Mairobert and Moufle d'Angerville, which is known as the Memoires secrets de la Republique des lettres or Journal de Bachaumont, extending from 1762 to 1787. The Correspondance secrete known under the name of Metra is also one of the chief sources of information about the gossip of the time. Though the most briUiant and noisy talkers of the eighteenth century belonged as a rule to the set of philosophers and Encyclo- pedists, these did not have it all their own way. Their enemies included the most important journalists of the time, capable of 466 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE driving Voltaire himself frantic. Chief among them were the abbe Desfontaines and Freron. The quarrels of Desfontaines and his imprisonments occupy a prominent place between 1725 and 1745. He was pre-eminently the polemical critic. After having contributed to the Journal des savants, he founded in 1730 with the abbe Granet the Nou- velliste du Parnasse, like most of the journals of the time in the form of letters. This being stopped, he started the Observations sur les ecrits modernes (1735-1743), in which he fought Voltaire with irony and malice. This being also suppressed, he began the Jugements sur quelques ouvrages nouveaux, which he continued until his death in 1745. Freron began his training with Desfontaines. His journal- istic publications were the Lettres de madame la comtesse de . . . (1745), the Lettres sur quelques ecrits de ce temps (1749) and the Annie litter aire (1754). For twenty-five years Freron attacked the anti-religious party in all its manifestations, literary as well as philosophical. Voltaire, so eager otherwise to main- tain the liberty of speech, loathed Freron: Un jour, au fond d'un vallon, Un serpent mordit Jean Fr6ron. Que pensez-vous qu'il arriva? Ce fut le serpent qui creva. CHAPTER rV TRAGEDY IN the eighteenth century there is little novelty in tragedy, and such as there is, is not in the direction of real strength, though the drama seems popular as never before. Even private individuals of influence had their amateur stages for the per- formances of theatricals, and they and their friends participated in these. Mme du Maine had her theatre at Sceaux, Voltaire had his with Mme du Chatelet at Cirey or with his fat niece Mme Denis at Paris, Marie-Antoinette used to have perform- . ances at the Little Trianon. Among the professional authors some tried to continue the tradition of absolute regularity, and twisted their material to suit the imities. Others, including Voltaire, often weighed their plays down with undramatic material and made them polemical works in favor of a doctrine rather than good acting tragedies. The drama became an interpreter of philosophy in the sense, not of metaphysical reflection, but of theorising on the defects of society and on their remedies. Or, as Voltaire aim Crebillori both did, the writers developed the melodramatic and claptrap element. Crebillon tried to terrify by the horrors he portrayed, and Voltaire became almost "Romantic" in the nineteenth-century sense in his effort to startle. Prosper Jolyot, known under the name of Crebillon (1674- 1762), represents the decadence of the drama after Racine's psychological plays, in which the external action had been so reduced to an internal one as to cause a reaction in the other direction. Plays were written in the style of the secondary dramatists' like Thomas Cbrneille, a kind of melodrama full of 467 468 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the devices of the old seventeenth-century romancers such as La Calprenede. The essential element was the situation, which was made as extraordinary and unusual as possible, a substitution or a case of mistaken identity. Or, as in Atree et Thyeste, he tried to horrify by the picture of implacable family hatreds. Crebillon wrote nine or ten tragedies, of which the most famous is Rhadamiste et Zenobie. He was for many years dramatic censor. Apart from that his friends did him the unkind turn of trying to oppose him to Voltaire, whose dislike he naturally incurred. Houdar de la Motte was forty-eight when he gave his first tragedy, les Machabees, in 1721, after long and mature reflection on the theory of the play, but the only one deserving mention is Ines de Castro (1723). In spite of somewhat revolutionary theories, his plays are insipidly Classical, flat in prosody and expression, with abstractions for characters. Yet Houdar de la Motte thought himself a bold innovator in his subject of Ines drawn from Portugal and portraying conjugal love, in his minor novelties, such as many characters instead of the conven- tionally small number, and in his efforts to make the confidants more important and to diminish the monologues. Voltaire, prolific in everything, was an abundant writer of plays, amounting in number to over fifty, of which more than half were so-called "tragedies." The quotation tnarks are used advisedly, for the tragedy of Voltaire had already deviated from what it was in the seventeenth century and the strict prescrip- tions of the rules. Voltaire's ideal of dramatic art is still Racine at his best, as in Athalie or Iphigmie, and he criticises Corneille from the standpoint of one to whom the canons of the abb6 d'Aubignac are the test of art. In theory he does not for a moment favor innovations. None the less, in practice Voltaire diverges widely from these ideal standards and makes the drama take a decided step beyond the seventeenth-century types. Voltaire was not a poet TRAGEDY 469 and could not rely on beauty of versification to carry his plays through. Scarcely a line in any one of them impresses the reader as noble poetry, and to one already acquainted with the literature of the preceding century the plays of Voltaire seem a patchwork crazy-quilt of quotations or tags of verse. They impress only by an occasional pungent aphorism or rhetorical tirade, and to the spectator of Voltaire's own day they had the additional interest of actuality, as in political pamphlets, because of the references which could be traced behind the actor's words. Thus deprived of the quality which contributes so much to the literary value of a play, Voltaire fell back on the presenta- tion of action, and in this his dramas are noteworthy. He had the art of thrilling the spectator by sudden climaxes, by the un- expected advent of the appropriate character, by the shocks to the sensibilities which excite the onlooker and do not give him time to reflect on the improbability of the various coincidences. In brief, Voltaire was gifted by nature and by actual experience as actor and amateur manager with the knack of dramatic per- ception, which he often carried to genuine melodrama. In the best plays the plot speeds on with a vigor of action which Voltaire had in mind when he told Mile Dumesnil that she must have "le diable au corps." In his presentation Voltaire was often, like Corneille, burdened by the unities, and we find him throwing them overboard. In many plays the scene is left undetermined and vague, in others, like Brutus, la Mart de Cesar, the scene changes, and in Semiramis it even does so in the middle of an act. Or by the throwing open of a door or similar device a new scene comes forward to the spectator {Merope, Mahomet). The unity of time when technically observed is often violated by the impossibility of conceiving so many events as occurring within twenty-four hours. Of this Rome sauvee is an example, containing as it does conspiracies, meetings of the senate, the defeat and death of Catiline. Comeille's activity in le Cid is thus . equalled or outdone. ._ . - - . 470 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE In another respect Voltaire departs from the simplicity of the old tragedy. Racine had neglected the ancient world only for far-away Turkey: Voltaire takes his plots at will from all ages and from all lands, the legend of Thebes, the history of Rome, the Crusades, China, the New World, all is grist to his mill. And with an admixture of philosophical tirades or con- temporary allusions Voltaire must have appeared a bold inno- vator in many ways. Some of his actors made slight attempts at modernisation: Le Kain appeared with bare arms and Mile Clairon without hoops and stuck her arms on her hips. Mean- while the noblemen had been banished from the stage. So, though it would be going far astray to call Voltaire an ancestor of the Romanticists, yet as a writer of melodrama full of action and contrasts there is a likeness between his plays and theirs. Marked differences are the rich versification of the later school contrasted with the insipid imitatiop of seventeenth-century style in which Voltaire expressed himself, and the consistency with which Voltaire tries to maintain the distinction of genres, in so far that tragedy and comedy shall be kept separate and not united by the conjunction of solemn and grotesque in which Victor Hugo delighted. Much of the spirit of innovation in Voltaire is to be traced to an influence as strong upon him as that of Spain upon Corneille, namely England and the plays of Shakspere. Theoretically, Vol- taire admired the regularity of such a drama as Addison's Cato, with its strict observance of the rules, its rejection of comic ele- ments, the dignity and noble rank of its characters. Practically, Voltaire was permeated not only with the philosophy of Locke and Shaftesbury and the science of Newton, but, much more than he was willing to confess, with the art of Shakspere. In the beginning he was proud of being the first to make the English poet known to the French, and boasted of the effect produced on him by thp speeches of Brutus and Antony in Julius Caesar, or the terror inspired by the ghost of Hamlet's father, and acknowledged that to the English theatre he owed the thought TRAGEDY 471 of putting on the stage the royal and princely names of France. Gradually, however, he seemed to regret what he had done to advance the cause of Shakspere in France. Partly, perhaps, to conceal the true source of some of his own borrowings, he turned violently against the English dramatist, whom he char- acterised as a buffoon and a merry-andrew, and began to ridicule the plays, even distorting their contents in his hostile criticisms. Yet it remains true that Voltaire drew from Hamlet the idea of the ghost in Eriphyle, though he tried to palm it off on the shade of Darius in the Persae of ^schylus, and in S emir amis; from Julius Ccesar parts of la Mart de Cesar; from the death of Gloucester in King Lear that of Lusignan in Zaire; from Macbeth parts of Mahomet; from Othello the main idea of Zaire. The first dramatic success of Voltaire was his CEdipe (1718). In this play the author, who is afterwards led to attack the emphasis given to sentiment in tragedy and to try experiments in tragedy without love, gives an insipid lover to the Theban queen Jocasta in a former suitor Philoctetes, and the two dis- course as an anaemic Pauline and Severe of Polyeucte. The true importance of the drama lies in its maxims and philosophical tirades: Nos pretres ne sont pas ce qu'un vain peuple pense, Notre credulite fait toute leur science. Perhaps Voltaire and his friends, lacking historical perspective, and seeing immoral and atheistical priests like cardinal Dubois in their own day, were not so much to be blamed for supposing that the misfortunes of civilisation in all ages had come from a corrupt and intriguing clergy. (Edipe and two other less successful plays, Artemire (1720) and Mariamne (1.724), still belong to the old tradition. The English influences show themselves with the next four: Brutus (1730), a new form of the motif treated in Corneille's Horace, duty to country above love of kin; la Mart de Cesar (1731), in three acts and without women, a concentration of Shakspere's 472 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE play into a psychological crisis linked with Caesar's death; Eriphyle (1732) and Zaire (1732). In Zaire, which remains one of the great plays of Voltaire, the jealousy of a new Othello is somewhat subordinated, after the style of French tragedy, to the crisis of love and duty in the heart of the heroine. In the days of the Crusades, the sultan Orosmane loves Zaire, one of his captives, who returns his love. On discovering, however, that she is by birth a Christian and daughter of the captive prince Lusignan, she sacrifices love to religion. Orosmane, ignorant of the true cause and jealous of her behavior to her newly found brother Nerestan, kills her and then, on finding his mistake, kills himself. Alzire (1736) takes the spectator to Peru, amid exotic scenes and romantic imbroglios; Mahomet (1742), a drama of super- stition and fanaticism, has enriched the French vocabulary with the name seide, taken from one of its characters, in the sense of a fanatical partisan like a Mormon Danite. Into this play Voltaire introduced militant warfare against those forms of rinfdme which he was trying to crush. Merope (1743) was one of Voltaire's greatest victories. The subject is his favorite one, a parent or child in danger of death by the hand of the other, as in (Edipe, Eriphyle, Brutus, la Mart de C&sar, Mahomet, Semiramis, Oreste. Moreover, it enabled him to develop his desire for romantic drama without the romantic love so much overdone by the degenerate successors of Racine. The subject has been a favorite one with modern writers from Voltaire's model Mafifei to Alfieri q,nd Matthew Arnold. Voltaire shows a mother wishing to avenge a son whom she thinks murdered, and' about to kill that son himself whom she takes for the murderer. Semiramis (1749)) a new version of Eriphyle^ is a combination of the tragic relationship of Orestes and Clytemnestrain iEschylus and of Hamlet and his mother in Shakspere. The latter's play is the true source for Voltaire, for here the ghost of the father appears to prevent an incestuous marriage between Semiramis TRAGEDY 473 guilty of her husband's death and her son, who is finally the agent of the justice which kills her for her crimes. Voltaire's ghost, however, appearing in full daylight in bright array amid hosts of people, was indeed a sorry parody of the mysterious spirit of the night who showed himself to the lonely watchers^ on the terrace at Elsinore, and Lessing and Schlegel, in their works on the drama, wax merry at the expense of Voltaire's spectre. Of the numerous remaining plays by Voltaire, I'Orphelin de la Chine (1755), has the interest of its pseudo-Oriental environment; another, Tancrede{ij6o), was by its hovelty one of the greatest successes of the author. In a new metre of vers croises was presented a drama of French chivalry permeated with the spirit of knighthood and romance. The other compositions, though often acted, were merely contributions to Voltaire's political and philosophical contests. His latest ones, Irene and Agathode, the former the last one given in his lifetime, were temporary triumphs because of the author's age and position, but had no permanent merit. An excellent description of tragedy, as it had become under the influence of Voltaire, is to be found in a satire by the poet ■ La Muse de Sophocle, en robe doctorale, Sur des treteaux sanglants professe la morale. La, souvent un sauvage, orateur apprSte, Aussi bien qu'Arouet, parle d'humanite; La, des Turcs amoureux, soupirant des tnaximes, Debitent galamment S^neque mis en rimes; Alzire au desespoir, mais pleine de raison. En invoquant la mort, commente le PhMon; Pour expirer en forme, im roi, par biens6ance, Doit exhaler son ame avec une sentence; Et chaque personnage au theitre produit, H6ros toujours souffle par I'auteur qui le suit, Fflt-il Scythe ou Chinois, dans un traite sans titre, Interroge par signe, ou r^pond par chapitre. The chief tragedies, apart from those of Voltaire, were Denys 474 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE le tyran and Aristomene by Marmontel, and Iphigenie en Tauride by Guimond de la Touche. Jean-Frangois de la Harpe (1739- 1803), wrote a series of purely regular and academic tragedies, mostly failures except Warwick, Gustave Wasa and Philoctek. He deserves far higher rank as a critic and lecturer during twelve years at the Lycee upon literature and dramatic art, the basis of his published Cours de litterature. De Belloy's Siege de Calais won its success because it was a patriotic play coming at an opportune time after the Seven Years' War. In many of the late eighteenth-century tragedies there is little except the form to distinguish them from the contemporary drame spoken of in the next chapter. Jean-Frangois Duels (1733-1816), himself a sentimentalist and ignorant of English, made the strange attempt, when the devital- ised Classical tragedy still held sway and the world was steeped in sentiment, to turn Shakspere into French. He had to use the translations of La Place and Le Tourneur, and transformed the plots and sometimes even the names of characters in those plays which he adapted. Duels was imbued with moralising and was the friend of Thomas, the rhetorician and eulogist of virtue and of virtuous men. Consequently, the Shaksperean r61es become characters to point a moral or illustrate a virtue: Hamlet is changed into a model of filial piety, and, like a second Cid, avenges his father's death upon Claudius, here the father of Ophelia, the woman he loves. The different persons utter moral platitudes in sounding alexandrines and elaborate peri- phrasis to their confidants and confidantes, or tell their stories in narrative instead of by action. But, emasculated as these plays were, they sometimes seemed too daring for the audiences of the time. Not only Voltaire had got over his infatuation for the English "clown" or Gilles Shakspere and fiercely inveighed against Duels, but some people balked at the ending of Othello, and he provided the play with an alternative happy conclusion; he was himself timid about the propriety of bringing upon the stage a crazy king like TRAGEDY 475 Lear, and hesitated before portraying wild scenes with precipices and storms. Ducis's Shaksperean plays were Hamlet, Romeo et Juliette, Lear, Macbeth, Jean sans Terre and Othello. One of his original plays, Abufar, has some foreshadowings of Romantic melancholy. The success of Ducis shows that French theatre-goers were ready for a change, and that the Romantic drama was impending. The innovations of Ducis, mild as they seem today, were in their time marked ones. CHAPTER V MISCELLANEOUS DRAMATIC FORMS: REGULAR COMEDY, THE COMEDY OF THE ITALIANS, THE TEARFUL COMEDY AND DRAME BOURGEOIS; THE THl^ATRE DE LA POIRE; OPERA IN the seventeenth century the theatrical genres had been reduced to two, tragedy and comedy, or three if we include opera. In the eighteenth century they again became more numerous. Everybody tried to write comedies, often for private acting, and the vogue for society trifles of this kind was as great as the mania for portraits in the seventeenth century. In addition to the Classical comedy of plot or character there came about the comedie larmoyante and the drame bourgeois. Finally there arose a hybrid form of song and dialogue, partly of popular origin because of its imitation of the Italian light comedy and its starting-place at the big Parisian fairs. It had to struggle against the musical monopoly of the opera; But gradually the comedie-vaudeville or vaudeville acquired a standing of its own and developed into the opera-comique. As Racine marked the climax of seventeenth-century tragedy, so Moli^re's competitors were dwarfs beside him and he seemed to leave no heir at his death. But the condition was not quite so bad as in tragedy, and in mere numbers the writers were plen- tiful. The comedies of Thomas Corneille were enjoyed. Then there were Mohere's immediate rivals as actors or writers for the rival H6tel de Bourgogne. There was Montfleury the younger, son of the famous fat tragedian and instigator of fierce slander against Moliere; there was Boursault, no less hostile to Moli^re and the victim of his satire in the Impromptu de Ver- sailles; there was Hauteroche, whose Crispin medecin, a farce upon doctors, is one of the few plays still worth mentioning; 476 MISCELLANEOUS DRAMATIC FORMS 477 there were the actor-writers Villiers and Rosimond, and par- ticularly Moli^re's young protege, the famous and conceited Baron, whose Homme A bonnes fortunes, a don Juan character, is also above the average. There were Chappuzeau, Poisson, and Gilbert; and Quinault wrote some comedies also. On the whole the contemporaries of Moliere treat comedy rather in the style of Corneille's earher writings, either as plays of compli- cated intrigue or as society gallantries, without real insight into character. After Moliere's death, indeed, there was a slight lull, and then at the dividing line between the two centuries and in the early eighteenth we meet with two noteworthy authors, Regnard and Dancourt, not to speak of the masterpiece of the novelist Lesage, Turcaret. Jean-Frangois Regnard (1655-1709) had an adventurous life which led him all over Europe from Italy to Lapland, and for a time he was a prisoner of the Barbary corsairs. Afterward he settled definitely in Paris and devoted himself chiefly to the writing of comedies. He was a man of superabundant vitality, and his plays, though insignificant- as character studies or por- traits of tj^es, are full of animation. None the less Regnard's titles indicate characters. The laughter aroused is sometimes the result of forced situations, as in le Distrait, or of horse-play, as in les Folies amoureuses. Regnard began by comedies for the Italian actors, prose farces. His first important play, le Joueur, is a satire of the passion for gambling which reigned in all circles. But the author is not so much occupied with the moral as with the humor of the situations, as he portrays the dissipated young gambler who sacrifices even his mistress to his passion. Le Distrait is again an amusing but overdrawn picture of a man so absentminded that he forgets what he is doing, asks for arti- cles that he is wearing, and talks to the wrong person so obtusely that it is impossible to make him listen to reason. Democrite is an unsuccessful attempt to portray the misanthrope who by 478 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE his laughter scorns the follies of mankind. Les Folies atnou- reuses, one of the best, is full of. the wild tricks of the frisky young heroine Agatha who deceives her doting old guardian by her mad disguises and still madder yarns. The Meneckmes is a revival of that comedy of Plautus from which the Comedy of Errors is drawn. In the Latin comedy, however, the two brothers are unaware of the similarity of name and appearance; in Regnard's play one of them is the unscrupulous adventurer who takes advantage of the likeness to deceive his rustic brother. The Legataire universel is the last, and in many respects the best, of Regnard's writings and shows the efforts of a crowd of dishonest people to get the inheritance of an old man. Regnard is often ranked second only to Moliere among the comic authors of France. Though his plays may have seemed in their day wildly comic, they are far beneath Moliere's as types. Regnard is at his best in portraying the harum-scarum reprobates of Italian tradition, whom he makes at least somewhat more sympathetic by his exuberant animation. Dufresny was responsible for the original idea of Regnard's Joueur, but his own Chevalier joueur is far inferior. His Esprit de contradiction and Coquette de village, the latter with its representation of peasant dialect, are still fairly amusing. Dancourt (1661-1725) is an example of the "smart" play- wright. His comedies, such as la Poire Saint-Germain, les Bour- geois de qualite, la Femme d'intrigues, le Chevalier a la mode, are caricatures of passing events and fashions set forth in brisk and witty dialogue, but without the quality of permanence. Dan- court is praised for his success in portraying, not merely single types, as in the comedies before his time, but classes of society. In Lesage's Turcaret (1709) we come to one of the master- pieces of the eighteenth century. It is a play directed against the farmers of revenue, or traitants, who were intensely hated at this period for the dishonest ways in which they, made fortunes by handUng government taxes. It was a period of wild specu- lation which culminated in the Mississippi scandal of John MISCELLANEOUS DRAMATIC FORMS 479 Law. With hints from Mohere's Comtesse d'Escarbagnas and Bourgeois gentilhomme, he portrayed the duping of the dishonest financier by people even more unscrupulous than himself, who play upon his vanity and amorous weakness: Recevez ce billet, charmante Phillis, Et soyez assuree que mon ame Conservera toujours une eternelle flamme, Comme il est certain que trois et trois font six. As Turcaret sinks, the tricky valet Frontin rises in the world, the embodiment of independence and irreverence on the part of the third, or even of a fourth estate. "Voila le regne de monsieur Turcaret fini, le mien va commencer." We have heard a great deal of the presence of Italian actors in France ever since the sixteenth century, and how they finally established themselves definitely in Paris. The comedies, which grew into a combination of written plot and improvisation, were at first given in Italian. As time passed and the knowl- edge of Italian diminished in France coincidently with the change to Spanish influences at court and in literature, the actors gradually introduced a French element into their plays, the proportion of which increased until the Italians were serious rivals of the French actors. Finally, Frenchmen took to writ- ing plays for the Italians, among them Regnard, Dufresny, and Nolant de Fatouville, a bitter satirist. The characters, a dozen in number, bore stock and traditional names risabelle, Marinette, Octave, Cinthio, Scaramouche, Ar- lequin, Mezzetin, Pascariel, Pantalon, le Docteur. The plays, ■^hich were apt to be extremely coarse, were farcical and satiri- cal, sometimes parodies of French tragedies, full of travesties and horse-play. Or again, they gave comedies of manners, portrayals of contemporary characters with their weaknesses and vices. The violent personal satire of the Italians made opposition against them bitter. At last, in 1697, their theatre was closed 48o A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE and they were dismissed from the capital: they had been too free with Mme de Maintenon. Under the regency after the death of Louis XIV they were readmitted, and in 1716 the troop of Luigi Riccoboni or Lelio began to perform in Paris, contain- ing among its members the talented actress Gianetta Benozzi or Silvia. They first tried to give Italian plays, but as these did not take, they gradually turned again to French, keeping in their new comedies the traditional Italian names, Lelio, Silvia, Mario, Arlequin, and so forth. Jacques Autreau was their first collaborator, but the greatest was Marivaux, whose famous comedies were composed for the Italians and adapted to the art of Silvia. Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux (1688- 1763) was a prolific but heedless writer, the author of over thirty plays and half a dozen stories, the chief of which remained unfinished, as well as of a good deal of miscellaneous journalism. He marks a new.stage in comedy and in fiction. His influence in the latter was perhaps the more considerable; in the former he shows the greater art. In such plays as the Jeu de Vamour et du hasard and les Fausses confidences there is little elaboration of plot or complication of intrigue. The world in which the actors move is a realm of fantasy, the characters flit before the imagination without making any definite impression except that of grace and charm. Their whole action centres about the awakening of love, when youth and maiden feel the first touch of sentiment before strong passion has come. The comedies of Marivaux are romantic, but widely remote from the atmosphere of violent emotion which in the following century characterised technical Romanticism. Marivaux had a good deal of feminine sensitiveness, which indeed seems to have shown itself in his emotional • susceptibility and timid disposition. To this was added a subtle psychological feeling enabling him to analyse the hearts of young lovers and to develop a new style and lan- guage for the expression of these experiences. Therefore, Mari- vaux gives to the heart the chief place in his plays, and he is MISCELLANEOUS DRAMATIC FORMS 481 the eighteenth-century counterpart of Racine in comedy. He is the inventor of what is known as marivaudage, a sort of meta- physics of the heart told in a language so individual that jesters said the place for Marivaux was not in the Academie frangaise, but in the Academy of Sciences, as the maker of a new language. The style of Marivaux shows preciosity of thought and euphu- ism of language, though iiot carried to the extent of neologisms or of invented phrases. All his characters, servants as well as mistresses, possess the power of ringing the changes upon their sensibilities, of trifling with pretty metaphors, of turning their feeling into bubbles of wit and airy nothings. In so doing Mari- vaux was to a certain degree following the traditions of the Italians for whom he wrote, but even those specifically composed for French players show us dainty soubrettes like Lisette, the witty valets Arlequin and Dubois, no less than graceful ladies such as Silvia. The name which it is customary to couple with Marivaux is Watteau, whose graceful figures move in a world as unreal as that of Marivaux, and his Embarquement pour Cythire is often referred to as an apotheosis of the spirit of Marivaux. The society in which they lived was the same, corrupt at heart, but wearing an external air of grace and leisurely refinement. It is often possible to read a perverted thought in Marivaux's speeches, but no actually unbecoming phraseis used. The Jeu de I'amour et du hasard is a good example of Mari- vaux's ever recurring treatment of the surprises and disguises of love. Silvia and Dorante are destined to marry, but each one, wishing to know what the other is like, assumes the disguise of soubrette and valet respectively, not knowing that the other has thought of the same device, while Arlequin and Lisette masquerade as master and mistress. So Araminte and Dorante of les Fausses confidences are drawn together. Angelique in I'Ecole des meres is Marivaux's ingemie, somewhat like Moliere's Agnes of I'Ecole des femmes whom the author has in mind, but not so niaise. 482 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Other characteristic plays by Marivaux are la Surprise de I'amour, le Legs, I'Epreuve, and a fairy comedy, Arlequin poli par I'amour. In the eighteenth century there grew up a dramatic form standing between tragedy and comedy and uniting the moderate social ranks of comedy with the serious problems of tragedy. This was called the comedie larmoyante and later the drame bourgeois. Tragedy itself had been carried off to a world of stage conventions, so that the modernity of Racine had disap- peared. On the other hand, with many authors comedy was tending to diverge from Moliere's traditions and to assume the form of emotional sentimentalism and moralisation in action. This is what Destouches was doing in plays such as the Philo- sophe marie, or even le Glorieux. The reaction went farther when people tired of the portraits of scoundrels in Regnard and Dan- court and began to think that man is by nature good and that, if he has deviated from virtue, he can be restored to righteous- ness by playing upon his instincts and touching his emotions. It was Nivelle de la Chaussee who first deliberately constructed plays on this principle, unless we consider Destouches to have anticipated him. Voltaire, too, wrote tearful comedies: V En- fant prodigue and Nanine, but tried to differentiate them from the simple comedie larmoyante, as a "mixed type" containing humor and pathos together. Pierre-Claude Nivelle de la Chaussee (1691 or 2-1754) did not take up literature until he was forty. He did some miscella- neous work, even in the drama, including a poor tragedy, besides coarse contes in verse and his comedies larmoyantes. It is en- tirely on these last that his reputation rests, and even they are not remembered individually today. La Chaussee hit upon the notion that many experiences of everyday life afford undeveloped dramatic possibilities. The chief element was pathos: anything contributed which brought out emotional crises, such as the perversion of natural affection by jealousy, misunderstanding, or the impediment of unsym- MISCELLANEOUS DRAMATIC FORMS 483 pathetic and rigid laws. He made the mistake, according to the modern view, of undue complication of plot. The portrayal of character fell into the background, and the people of his plays have absolutely no individuality by which they can be remembered: men are either good or bad, the virtuous one or the villain. Whatever psychology is to be found in La Chaus- see depends on the quality of the emotions and the feeling that nature is good, that love is a sign of virtue, that the cosur sen- sible overcomes all obstacles, that lack of restraint is a symptom of the force of a good man. All this, as M. Lanson the biogra- pher of La Chaussee points out, brings him into relation with Rousseau. The great merit of La Chaussee is his skill in the planning of climaxes. But the names of individual plays such as la Fausse-antipathie, le Prejuge a la mode, Melanide, or Pamela do not mean much to the general reader. Diderot's connection with the theatre was both theoretical and practical, and the beginning of the drame bourgeois is dated from the publication of le Fils naturel in 1757. His theory, set forth particularly in the Entretiens avec Dorval and the Discours sur la poesie dramatique, was that the theatre is too remote from life as a result of excessive conventions; that the various "con- ditions" of life, such as the father, judge, or physician, are as significant as the portrayal of actual character (though this tended to the creation of artificial types) ; that poetry may give way to prose in the interest of naturalness; that the drama should reproduce the pantomime of the actor. Diderot con- ceives new genres which shall be neither the old tragedy nor the new comedy, but which shall stand as a portrayal of tragic emotions in ordinary life instead of among heroes. His idea is of a tragidie domestique et bourgeoise and commie serieuse. In the Paradoxe sur le comedien he argues that the actor's part should be intellectual rather than emotional. Diderot's actual plays, le Fils naturel and le Fere de famille, as well as the comedy Est-il bon, est-il mechant? were unsatisfactory productions, but his innovations were big with consequences. 484 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE The drame is differentiated from the comedie larmoyante, from which people do not always distinguish it, by its more distiiictly middle-class characters and its social purport.' It was a vehicle for the moral instruction and edification of the bourgeoisie and for the presentation of its virtues as opposed to the vices of the nobility and the privileged classes. In other words, the im- portance of the drama coincided with the rise of the ranks which were to gain power at the Revolution and it was often a means of philosophical propagandism. Authors used it for the expression of their theories on all subjects, political, religious, and social. Especially it underwent the influence of contem- porary sensibility and developed a lachrymose morality resting on the current misconception of psychology, by which man is supposed to be in his true nature virtuous and beneficent. Hence it came that villains were whitewashed and restored to purity by a sudden repentance, or that the "voice of nature" {la voix du sang) was the most potent dramatic device. Love, the emotion which found expression in that "voice," could overcome the greatest obstacles of time or space, so that the sudden recognition or dvayvtapurK of the drama, accompanied by the welling-up of a new-found love for long lost kinsfolk, threw into the shade any solution of a comedy of Moliere and foretold the melodrama, which is descended from the drame bourgeois. Diderot, the chief initiator of the drame, was greatly influenced by England and particularly by such plays as Lillo's London Merchant and Moore's Gamester. These plays portrayed mid- dle class life, but their tone of crude realism had to be toned down in French counterparts, for those were the days when French bourgeois decency, at least in the theatre, looked askance at the coarseness of English literature, precisely inverting the modern attitude. As a result of their priggish morality and sentiment as well ' M. Gaifie, in le Drame en France au XVIII" sikle, defines it: "Un spectacle destine a un auditoire bourgeois ou populaire et lui presentant un tableau attendrissant et moral, de son propre milieu." MISCELLANEOUS DRAMATIC FORMS 485 as their now outworn theses the eighteenth-century dramas are for the most part .unreadable today. The majority of them, being in prose, have no additional charm of style and the few in verse belong to a prosaic age. The chief prose writers were Diderot, Sedaine, Beaumarchais, and Sebastien Mercier, and the best play, though officially a comedy, is Sedaine's le Philo- sophe sans le savoir. At the end of the seventeenth century, when the Italian actors were under the ban, the theatrical shows at the fairs of Saint- Germain in winter and of Saint-Laurent in summer reaped part of the benefit. The actors in the booths, to a certain degree acrobats, tried to replace the Italians and even to use their topics. They and the French actors of the official theatre objected and caused obstructive measures to be passed. In 1707 all shows containing>dialogues were prohibited. The actors of the fairs had to resort to subterfuges, a mohologue supported by the pantomime of silent performers, or successive speeches by persons following one another upon the stage. Finally they devised the scheme of interspersing pantomime with songs written to popular tunes and displayed to the audience on placards from the stage. Thus the audience did the singing. Such was the beginning of the op&ra-comique or operetta, inter- spersed with satirical songs or vaudevilles; for soon the songs were restored to the actors on the stage. ^ Among the numerous authors who contributed to the theatre ' The vaudeville, of which so much is heard in French dramatic literature and which Boileau thought important enough to mention in his Art poUique in the seventeenth century, was originally a satirical song. The etymology has usually been attributed to a corruption of "Vaux de Vire," songs of the vales of Vire in Normandy. These were satirical drinking songs by the Normans Olivier Basselin and Jean le Houx in the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries. Another derivation is from "Voix de ville." By the eighteenth century a vaudeville is an original song of which the tune has become popular and is applied to other words, or the term is used indis- criminately for the two songs. The verse of the chorus or of the first verse placed at the beginning to indicate the tune was called the timbre, and the 486 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE de la Foire were Piron, Pannard, Favart, and, above all, Lesage who began to work for it at the age of forty-three. He gave himself to the task with great ardor, sometimes helped by d'Orneval and Fuselier. The pieces foraines of Lesage were brisk plays, often in one act, and could be plot performances or character sketches. The former would bring together Leandre and Isabelle, separated by a misunderstanding, the second would be a series of portraits, a piece a tiroirs. Longer plays might contain romantic ad- ventures interspersed even with magic and fairy devices or allegorical personifications. The characters were usually the traditional ones borrowed from the Italian comedy which the actors at the fairs had tried to annex, Arlequin, Scaramouche, Mezzetin, le Docteur. To these is added Pierrot, a French and more innocent Pulcinella. A large number of the plays of Lesage are devoted to the adventures of Arlequin, who changes character in different plays as his environment varies. The last outgrowth of this tradition is to be found in the arlequinades of Florian at the end of the eighteenth century, intended, however, for the regular theatre. In these plays Harlequin becomes, in spite of his conventional variegated garb, an ordinary mortal, experiencing the troubles of real life and, facing its trials in the mood of the comedie larmoyante and the drame bourgeois. The author makes him run the gamut of senti- mental love, of married love, of paternal love, with the anxieties of an innocent and simple man. The plays of Florian, as we shall see his other writings to be, were soft and tender. Vigor is not to be sought in them, but they are among those few produc- tions of minor writers whose archaic grace and languid, though perhaps over-tearful melancholy, can attract a different age. tune was called the fredon (Font, Essai sur Famrt). Later and down into the nineteenth century a vaudeville was a comedy interspersed with songs of this character. With the greater modern development and differentia- tion of operetta and comic opera, the songs dropped out of the vaudeville, which is now merely a farce with an improbably complicated plot. . MISCELLANEOUS DRAMATIC FORMS 487 The rise of the comic opera is connected with the name of Charles-Simon Favart (1710-1792) and of his wife Mme Fayart. She' was one of the most graceful and natural actresses of the century, in spite of the unfavorable opinion of Grimm, and the plays of the husband and the acting of the wife made an indissoluble whole. Favart began by writing vaudeville plays about 1732. In the early fifties there is a gradual transformation, until by 1762 his plays have become operas-comiques, that is to say comedies in which the vaudevilles were replaced by original songs or melodies called ariettes. The best plays of Favart of different kinds, for he did not intentionally keep his species distinct, were: la Chercheuse d' esprit, Acajou, Bastien et Bastienne (a parody of Rousseau's Devin du village), les Ensorceles, Ninon a la cour, Annette et Lubin, les Trois sultanes. The comic operas of Favart are all sentimental plays of vil- lage life in which we see the growth of love between rustic couples, Bastien and Bastienne, Jeannot and Jeannette, Colin and Lison, Alain and Nicette. The innocence of the plays was . sometimes a very conscious one, and the lines had equivocal meanings for the sophisticated, powdered, patched, and painted seigneurs and ladies of the eighteenth century. But it was pretty to see sweet little maidens reclining on the grass, receiv- ing nosegays from sweet little youths or singing songs such as in Bastien et Bastienne: Je r'gard' si mes manches Sont blanches, Si ma coUerette Est bien faite, Si j'ai lace dret Mon corset, Si mon jupon Fait bien le rend, Et si mes sabots Sont biaux. The regular opera had a plentiful vogue in the eighteenth 488 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE century, as the great rivalry between the "Gluckistes" and the "Piccinistes" shows, but its history gradually becomes more interesting to the student of musical history or even of politics than to the student of hterature. Michel Sedaine (1719-1797) wrote several operas of which the most famous was Richard Ccsur de Lion (1785) with music by Gretry and containing Blondel's famous song, "Richard, 6 mon roi, I'univers t'abandonne." The interest in the Middle Ages, presaging one of the tendencies of Romanticism, was being aroused by the studies and writings of the comte de Tressan, Lacurne de Sainte-Palaye, and Legrand d'Aussy. The operas of Sedaine were light and airy, and grace- ful in spite of their superficiality. Marmontel also wrote operas. Sedaine is better remembered today for his serious comedy, le Philosophe sans le savoir, which contained the sentiment of the contemporary drama, in which it might be classed, without its overdone lachrymose tendency. Similarly, Alexis Piron (1689- 1773) left only one work of permanent value, the verse comedy la Metromanie,^ on the passion for writing poetry. But in his • own day he was the rival and, in the opinion of many people, the equal of Voltaire. His adventurous life was sprinkled with wit and buffoonery, he left behind him' a tradition of countless epigrams, and he accomplished a tour de force for the theatre de la Foire in the monologue comic opera of Arlequin-Deucalion. He wrote also stories in verse and tragedies. The reputation of Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gress^t (1709- 1777) is based now only on his comedy le Mechant and his frolicsome tale in verse of Ver- Vert, the parrot piously brought up in a convent of nuns, who learned to swear. But the English poet Gray admired his play Sidnei. ' The eighteenth century produced a Musicomanie by Audinot, a Milomanie by Grenier, and a Dramomanie by Cubieres. CHAPTER VI FICTION THE fiction of the eighteenth century is a mirror of the manners of that age. The greater writers, it is true, have their originality and creative leadership, so that Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Lesage, Marivaux, or the abbe Prevost stand by themselves. But in the average writers are found the char- acteristic libertinism of thought and expression, the fondness for sensual allusions and insinuations, the contempt of woman except as an incitement to lust. At the same time, in many writers this is disguised imder a vapid sentimentalism and moralising intended to make the indecency more spicy. There is open indecency in Voltaire, there is veiled indecency in Rous- seau, but the type of the licentious and voluptuous writer is the now almost forgotten Crebillon^k (1707-1777), Whose immoral Sopha posed as a "conte moral." It was fashionable to write short stories or feigned correspondences, under pseudonyms or an easily solved anonymity, which were either frankly imagi- native, or satirised contemporary manners and institutions. As the century advanced and corruption became more unabashed, successes were won by the novels of Restif de la Bretonne (1734- 1806), whose Paysan perverti and Monsieur Nicolas, ou le cceur humain devoile are instances of his numerous works giving a picture of the life of his day and of the writer's mind. Restif had also some of the sarcasm of Voltaire and the aspiration for social reforms of Rousseau, combined with a realism which gives him some value, so that he need not be considered as a licentious writer alone. Similarly Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803), the author of the Liaisons dangereuses, was a brave general who 489 490 . A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE could make the excuse that his pictures of vice purged the passion through horror, and Louvet de Couvray (1760- 1797), who wrote the ADentures du chevalier de Faublas, could count to his credit courageous action in politics as a member of the Giron- dist party. But the marquis de Sade (1740- 1814), author of Justine and Juliette, did nothing better than give his name to a form of erotic madness. Fortunately this chapter can be devoted to other and better writers. Alain-Rene Lesage (1668- 1747), born in Brittany, passed a very uneventful life. He was a good husband and father, con- scientious in his work and making his living by his pen, although he was too proud to curry favor with people of influence. He began his literary career with the Lettres d'Aristenete, a transla- tion. With the exception of Crispin rival de son maitre and the masterpiece Turcaret his dramatic contribution went to the theatre de la Foire. His reputation in fiction rests on le Diable boiieux (1707) and Gil Bias, the publication of which was spaced from 17 15 to 1735. The Aventures du flibustier Beauchene is a romance of adventure; Guzman d'Alfarache, Estevanille Gonzales, le Bachelier de Salamanque belong to the same Spanish tendency as Gil Bias and the Diable boiteux, and are instances of the interest still felt by the French for Spain since the beginning of the seventeenth century. The Diable boiteux, based originally on a work by Guevara as a starting-point but with an original development, is a satire of contemporary French life masquerading under a Spanish exterior. The devil Asmodee, opening the roofs of the city, shows to Cleophas the life that is going on within. Gil Bias is the great French example of a picaresque novel, the biography of an adventurer and soldier of fortune. Much ink has been wasted to show that Lesage in this work was pla- giarising a Spanish model. It is in reality an absolutely original book. The hero is a youth of lowly origin, brought up by an uncle, a canon. He sets forth to make his way in the world and, after various rises and falls, reaches at last a haven of pros- FICTION 491 perity. The narrative, in the first person, details the misad- ventures in a naif way, with as much solemnity as the successes, so that the book is a masterpiece of well-proportioned humor. The style is natural and renders a romance of adventure in a realistic manner. The story belongs to the category of romans a tiroirs and the main narrative is often interrupted by the subordinate biographies of secondary characters and by excur- sions into literary criticism. As foils to the hero stand his friend the decadent and bohemian poet Fabrice, follower of Gongota; the valet Scipion, a compound of audacity and smat- terings of erudition; the adventurers Rafael and Ambroise, who end a career of crime imder the ban of the Inquisition. The novel, with its array of pages crammed with incident, strewn with unexpected encounters, gives one a broad survey of all society from royalty down to the ignorant Dr. Sangrado who made as many widows and orphans as the siege of Troy, or to the abodes of thieves and prostitutes. Often, too, under the Spanish names are to be found allusions to French people: Gabriel Triaquero may be Voltaire, and the parallel of Lope de Vega and Calderon stands for one between Corneille and Racine; Alonso de la Ventoleria is the conceited but talented actor Baron, the favorite pupil of Moliere. Lesage's hero, a weak and unprincipled youth, but neither better nor worse than the average man of his day, became the prototype, if not the ideal, of many a similar adventurer in France from Marivaux's Paysan parvenu to Balzac's Rastignac and Maupassant's Bel- Ami, and in England to the heroes of Smollett and Fielding. He had parallels in real Ufe in adventurers who rose to power such as the cardinal Dubois. Marivaux began his literary experiments with silly parodies: Pharsamon, ou les FoUes romanesques, an imitation of Cervantes and a skit of the Scudery type of novel; travesties of the Iliad and of Telemaque. But in his long, though unfinished, Mari- anne in eleven parts, he wrote the autobiography of a woman who, at an early age, finds herself unprotected in Paris and a 492 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE victim of hypocrites ■ and schemers. M. de Climal trying to win Marianne plays the part of Tartuffe and is the rival of his own nephew Valville, himself unworthy of Marianne. This is the book which is supposed to have impelled Richardson to tell of the rewarded virtue of Pamela, though M. Texte denies the influence of Marivaux on Richardson. In both cases the story is of a wrongly persecuted maiden, though the treatment is different, and the heroines are representative of their two coun- tries. Marianne is a more cultivated woman than Pamela in her middle-class environment. Modest and innocent as she is made out to be, she realises, like many heroines in French fiction, the power of her sex. When obliged to expose her injured foot, she blushes at the necessity, but is not . displeased to show her lover how pretty it is: she is a compatriot of the "coquette vertueuse," Andromaque. The Paysan parvenu like Marianne is an unfinished story, a sort of autobiographical picaresque novel, telling of the rise of the peasant Jacob de la ValMe. This work was a model for Fielding's Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, but his works, though more vigorous than the novel of Marivaux, are coarser and more boisterous in their whole action. However, they show the same psychological analysis of character in addition to borrowing specific incidents from both novels of Marivaux. The sentimentality and tearfulness of Marivaux are a model for Sterne in his Tristram Shandy and more especially in the Sentimental Journey, where emotional incident is expatiated upon and revamped ad nauseam. Finally, another connecting-link between Marivaux and Eng- land is found in his Spectateur frangais, on the model of Addison's Spectator. But this, as well as sundry other journalistic experi- ments of Marivaux, had more immediate success than per- manence. His indolence made him no person to continue an experiment once begun, and his career is scattered with other unfinished tasks besides his two long novels. The abbe Antoine-Frangois Prevost, Prevost d'Exiles (1697- FICTION 493 1763), did vastly more for literature than for the Church. Inter- larding novitiates with the Jesuits and the Benedictines by military service, his volatile and susceptible temperament made him constantly dissatisfied and more fond of writing fiction than of toiling over the Gallia Christiana, until finally he fled to Eng- land. There he became imbued with the spirit of religious and political liberty, deeply interested in the literature, and earned his living by writing and teaching. This love of liberty was not diminished by residence in Holland, where in 1731 appeared the Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut before a new and briefer stay in England. Then, returning to France, he lived there almost uninterruptedly for the rest of his life, partly as chaplain of the prince de Conti, chiefly as an inde- pendent member of the secular clergy, writing books for a living and viewing religion much more as a deist than as an orthodox clergyman. The story that he was killed by the knife of a surgeon who thought him already dead from apoplexy is without foundation. The abbe Prevost is one of the first important instances of the professional book manufacturer and Grub-street writer. Though he composed over a hundred volumes at the smallest estimate (it is true that the average size of a volume in those days was small) , a single one only, the tale of Manon, has made him famous with posterity. He was a journalist and reviewer in his periodical, le Pour et le Centre, treating miscellaneous topics, often English literature; he wrote novels in a moralising strain, such as the Memoires d'un homme de qualite, of which Manon Lescaut was originally an episode; in the semi-philo- sophical mood, like his Cleveland, supposed to be the natural son of Cromwell; of Vicar-of- Wakefield sentiment, such as the Doyen de Killerine; of love-emotion, like the Histoire d'une grecgue moderne fotmded on the story of Mile Aiss6; or of semi- science, like the Histoire des voyages, a collection of narratives of adventure by land and sea. The importance of Prevost in Frenth literature is twofold: he 494 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE made Richardson known and he invented or recreated the novel of sentiment and emotion. Prevost translated not only less popular authors like Hume and Middleton, but also Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe, and Sir Charles Grandison. His versions or adaptations, coming from an already noted man of letters, made Richardson still more popular and undoubtedly were responsi- ble for the cult of Richardson and for the Richardsonesque novel in France in the second half of the eighteenth century. Pr6vost's novels generally had sombre plots, steeped in com- plicated and melodramatic incidents masquerading under a pseudo-realism. But in Manon Lescaut there is simple narrative, mingled with passion, of the love of the young chevalier des Grieux for the wayward courtesan Manon, who in spite of her fondness for him is led by her longing for luxury to successive acts of infidelity. By its portrayal of the sufferings love in- volves and the realism of its narrative (probably based on some experience of Prevost himself), the story has won a place in the first rank. It is often rated among the novels of dubious moral- ity published in modern editions de luxe, but the seeker after the obscene will waste time in reading it. Manon was a. fille.de joie who ruined the life' of Des Grieux, but the tale is innocuous compared with what literature produced then or has produced since. CHAPTER VII MONTESQUIEU. POLITICAL THEORISTS, HISTORIANS, MORALISTS THE eighteenth century was an age of political theorising, and its greatest writer on political science was Montes- quieu. Charles-Louis de Secondat, born in 1689, was originally called baron de la Brede from the name of his birthplace, near Bordeaux. He was educated by the Oratorians at the College de Juilly, became councillor of the Parlement of Bordeaux and, by inheritance from an uncle, baron de Montesquieu and president of the Parlement of Guyenne, a post in which he took but little interest. On the other hand, he was engrossed in many literary and scientific schemes; at first in a somewhat desultory way, much after the fashion of Montaigne, whom Montesqueiu resembled in more than one trait of character, as well as in their southern race. The Lettres persanes were his first work of importance, printed anonymously in 1721 and issued, as were the Considerations and the Esprit des lois, under the name of pubhshers of Amsterdam and Cologne, in the latter case with the convenient attribution to the imaginary Pierre Marteau. None the less, the true authorship was known, and Montesquieu won ail the fashion- able success that such a work of social satire could achieve in the salons of Mme de Lambert and Mme de Tencin. It has been suggested that, in connection with a flirtation or affair with Mile de Clermont, sister of the due de Bourbon, Montesquieu wrote for her his Temple de Gnide, a peche de jeunesse in which the antiquity of Hellas was united with the morality or immoral- ity of the regence. After one unsuccessful attempt Montesquieu 495 496 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE was elected to the Academy but, offended at his reception, he had little to do with that body and travelled extensively for three years through Europe. He made an important visit to England, where he was introduced by Lord Chesterfield, and his membership in the Royal Society helped him in much of his subsequent work: he always kept up his interest in England and the English. On returning to La Brede he spent there the rest of his life, managing his estates, cultivating his English garden (not the sentimental jardin anglais) , co-ordinating in his books the results of his travels, reading and reflection, and whiling away, there or at Paris, the blindness of his last years. His Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur et de la dicadence des Romains appeared in 1734, the Dialogue de Sylla el d'Eucrate in 1745, the Esprit des his in 1748. His last works were unimpor- tant, except an Essai sur le goM destined for the Encyclopedia. Some of his minor writings have been exhumed from the family archives only in the present day. Montesquieu died in 1755- The Lettres persanes represent "one of the two distinct charac- ' ters present in. Montesquieu. There was in him a satirical and sensual side, as well as sympathy with stoicism. The former found expression in the pretended correspondence of Usbek and of Rica, the philosopher and satirist, who are in turn aspects. of Montesquieu's criticism. The Lettres persanes were suggested by the Amusements serieupc et comiques of Dufresne, and the accounts of travels in the Orient by Tavernier and Chardin, and were placed in a setting which appealed to a lover, like Montesquieu, of the Thousand and One Nights, recently translated. They are largely comments on French life and civilisation by a Persian supposed to be travelling in Europe, and having the gift of seeing it as others do. The book was artfully adapted to create a scandal by its frank criticism, which made it "sell like bread" as one of Montesquieu's friends pre- dicted. The author disliked the results of the reign of Louis XIV, its nagging despotism, the resulting hypocrisy. But it MONTESQUIEU 497 took a good deal of boldness, even under Louis XV, to laugh at a king who "had a minister of eighteen and a mistress of eighty" and preferred "un homme qui le deshabille ou qui lui donne la serviette lorsqu'il se met a table a un autre qui lui prend des villes ou lui gagne des batailles" (Letter xxxvii), or to make fun of those two magicians, the king who, when he needs money, tells his subjects that "un morceau de papier est de I'argent, et ils en sont aussit6t convaincus," and the pope who makes people believe that three are one, that bread is not bread and that wine is not wine (Letter xxiv). Nor was Montesquieu any more sparing in his satire of the people at large, and the famous passage on the curiosity of the Parisians (Letter xxx) is one of a series of jests at the inhabitants of Paris, as hadavds and gobeurs, from Rabelais's Garganiua to the present period. At the same time it is undeniable that many of the letters come from a corrupt mind, or, at any rate, are the product of a perverted age. They are full of veiled allusions and contain too much about eunuchs and similar topics to please a healthy Philistinism. The Considerations have been called a detached section of the Esprit des lois published beforehand, yet certainly they are an independent work. Montesquieu is one of those who kept alive the popular conception of the Roman in the transmission to the American and the French Revolutions, and he saw in him the general laws of human nature that the Classicists had portrayed in their literature. Many have been the attempts to draw analogies between the Considerations and Bossuet's Discours sur VHisloire universelle, but, as M. Barckhausen points out, their agreement is practically only where there can be only one opinion. Yet undeniably the broad sweep of generalisation and the outlook over the ages show much that is similar in the two authors, though one explains by the divine and the other by the human. Montesquieu, however, expresses himself in the choppy language, the brief paragraphs, and with the piece- 498 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE meal treatment of the eighteenth century. Among his actual sources or instigators were probably the sixteenth-century his- torian of Rome Flavio Blondi and the late Roman writer Florus. To this might be added the stoicism of Plutarch, the narrative of the rise of Rome in Polybius, that of its decline in Tacitus. Among the causes by which Montesquieu explains the greatness of Rome were the equality of early citizens and their common share in war, patriotism and the sanctity of the oath, obedience to the laws, even the civil contests which turned every person into a soldier but ceased in the presence of a common foe, tolera- tion of the faiths and customs of conquered peoples. On the other hand, Rome fell by its own size, which magnified civil troubles into wars, by the fighting in distant lands, by the incorporation of so many foreign nations, the corruption of later years, the tyrannical government of vile emperors. The Considerations are one of the best instances in literature of the specious explanation of the concrete facts of history. The bias of an author's intellectual preferences, the grouping of his arguments, the method of classifying or of interpreting facts, all give a glow of assurance to what might by a different author be grouped or interpreted in a different way. None the less, Montesquieu's work is a noteworthy example of mature reflec- tion, of judicious reasoning and, it would seem, on the whole of correct inference. The Esprit des lois was Montesquieu's magnum opus to which he devoted a score of years of study and to which he sacrificed his eyesight. It was the quintessence of his original thought, "prolem sine matre creatam." Yet it has much of the fine manners and elegant flippancy upon which the eighteenth century prided itself as the climax of literary good taste. Some of the chapters have the inconsequence of chapters in Tristram Shandy. But these are only matters of external form, and the Esprit des lois deserves its rank as the greatest work of its age on political philosophy; aiming, as it did, to survey all peoples and all ages, to classify all forms of government, to explain the MONTESQUIEU 499 meaning and effect of all institutions. Montesquieu's hobby- horse subject, from which he liked to draw his material, was the English government. He classified political constitutions under three heads, republic, monarchy and despotism; dependent on the guiding principles respectively of public virtue, of honor and of fear. Thus, at the very outset, Montesquieu illustrates the characteristic French tendency to parcel the world into categories, and to make exhaustive classifications which do not always exhaust or in which overlapping varieties find no place. Yet no charge would have hurt Montesquieu more than this. He prided himself on an unbiassed judgment, on careful observation and unprejudiced inference. There can be no better evidence of this than his attempt, more fully developed by later writers, to express the influence of climate and of environment on national characteristics. He also preached liberty and tolerance, and in general those feelings which the new spirit of the times was developing. Consequently Montesquieu's work became one of the import- ant influences which bore on the development of the American Constitution. He was the interpreter of the principles at the basis of the English government, and when the framers of the Constitution undertook to draft that document and to express by it the same fundamental concepts of political liberty, it was from the Esprit des lots that they drew much of their material. In a long chapter of the eleventh book Montesquieu analysed the English "constitution," which he considered so wise. Chief among its provisions, ensuring the equilibrium and adjustment of parts, was what Montesquieu developed in his theory of the division of powers into the executive, the legislative and the judicial elements. This theory was in part as old as Aristotle, and had been touched upon by as recent an author as Locke, but Montesquieu, with the spirit of drastic classification already alluded to, made the theory more rigid than the facts in England justified. Accordingly the drafters of the American Constitu- tion, wishing to ensure perfect political liberty, established the Soo A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE tripartite division of powers in all Montesquieu's completeness. ' Hence the absolute differentiation between the President, the Congress and the Supreme Court. A natural consequence, illustrating the difference between England and America, appeared in that when the Cabinet officers (not ordained by the Constitution) were established, they were not, as in England, given seats in Congress, but remained advisers to the President. One may perhaps carry still further the influence of Montes- quieu on American institutions and say that, though the condi- tion of the colonies made a federal union of small republics the most natural form of government, it was not without importance that Montesquieu declared federalism to have the advantages of most monarchies and republics combined.'' The Chancellor Daguesseau (1668-1751) is often compared, because of his upright character, to the great sixteenth-century chancellor Michel de I'Hospital. He was less successful in the executive post of chancellor than as a magistrate, because his judicial temperament made him see both sides of a question to the point of vacillation. His style was the heavy and stilted rhetoric fashionable in the seventeenth rather than in the eighteenth century, and, indeed, Daguesseau stood more for the old school of thought and manners against the radicalism of the philosophes or the flippancy of the regency and following years. It was during one of his forced retreats from authority, for his executive career was not uncheckered, that Daguesseau composed some of those writings which place him among the ' Montesquieu's observations of England referred to a single consoli- dated state, and not to a federation. H. Taylor {Origin and Growth of the American Constitution) attributes the first idea of such an application to a federal government to the writer Pelatiah Webster. 2 It may not be amiss, in connection with Montesquieu, to recall the name of the abb6 Du Bos (1670-1742). Montesquieu attacked very strongly the theory of the pacific occupation of Gaul by the Franks in Du Bos's Histoire critiqiie de I'etablissement de la monarchie fran^aise dans les Gaules. He was also the author of important Reflexions critiques sur la ■poSsie et la peinture. — . - _ MONTESQUIEU $01 moralists. But all his addresses, such as his Mercuriales (because spoken on Wednesdays) or harangues before the court or Parle- ment, deal with the ethics and morals of the jurist and with questions about justice in its varied aspects. Charles RoUin (1661-1741) would probably never have entered literary history had it not been for work accomplished after he had reached the Psalmist's age. Through his long life he wa« an iadustrious and modest member of the University, "I'abeille de la France." He won professorships, principalates and rectorships of the University by his learning, was fond of his quiet garden with its fruit and flowers, was at times under official disapprobation because of his adoption of Jansenism and his opposition to the Unigenitus bull of Clement XI in 17 13, condemning one hundred and one Jansenist propositions supposed to exist in the Reflexions morales of the Pere Quesnel of the Oratoire. Later RoUin's Jansenism led him to excuse the excesses of the convulsionnaires of Saint-Medard. His lifelong interest had been the classics, and in 1730 he published the first volumes of his Histoire ancienne, completed in 1737. Then, nothing daunted, he began an Histoire romaine which he did not live to finish, but which was completed by his friend Crevier, the author of an important history of the Univer- sity. Thus, after his seventieth year RoUin produced twenty volumes. The task was less formidable than historical writing would be today, for he did scarcely more than paraphrase in an easy, somewhat monotonous style the old historians, but the feat remains none the less a remarkable one, and RoUin's history was among the chief sources of information to students of antiquity in the eighteenth century. His only other important work was a Traite des etudes, of significance merely from a pedagogical standpoint. Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues (17 15-1747), seems out of place in the early eighteenth century. Born just at the outbreak of wantonness following the reign of Louis XIV, and growing up in a selfish and satirical age, burdened through all 502 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE his brief life by ill-health and poverty, he presents a rare picture of cheerfulness and of a serene and judicial outlook. The active years of his life were spent in military service, and so little was his training a literary one that his early study had scarcely gone beyond Plutarch, Seneca and such classical moral- ists read in translations. He fought as oflScer under the marechal de Villars and the marechal de Belle-Isle, and in 1742 shared in the dreadful sufferings of the latter's army retreating from Prague by forced and circuitous marches to avoid capture. Both of Vauvenargues's legs were frozen, and he had to leave the army with blighted ambitions and glory unachieved: It was he who wrote, "Les feux de I'aurore ne sont pas si doux que les premiers regards de la gloire." His application to enter the diplomatic service was neglected because he had no friend among the women of the court, he became disfigured by smallpox, almost blind, con- sumptive, and died soon after the publication of his volume of writings, which fell flat, before the completion of his thirty-second year and with his new ambition for literary glory unfulfilled. His chief works consisted of an Introduction a la connaissance de Vesprit humain, various moral, critical and literary reflec- tions, "characters" and maxims. His life was, on the whole, a lonely one, though his character was sympathetic: he lost his most intimate friend, an officer named de Seytres, though this was partly compensated for by Fauris de Saint- Vincens and his kinsman the marquis de Mirabeau, father of the orator. Vol- taire, too, discovered the ability of Vauvenargues and encouraged him with sincere praises. Vauvenargues the moralist comes into juxtaposition with authors like Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere and Rousseau, and he differs from them all. He had in common with Pascal long days of physical suffering and, what Pascal did not have, blighted ambitions. Yet hfe did not present itself to him as a vale of tribulation and of sorrow, and man's reason did not seem to him that helpless bit of worthlessness that it was to Pascal. There is in Vauvenargues less a feeling of awe than in Pascal, MONTESQUIEU S°3 and there is in him even more moral grandeur, the avrapKew. of the Stoic. None the less Pascal was an important influence on him. He could not sympathise with La Rochefoucauld's cold-blooded cynicism. As opposed to La Bruyere, whom he admired, Vau- venargues aimed less at a portraiture of man fitted into his environment than at a more abstract treatment. With Rous- seau he has more in common than with any of the others because of the weight he gives to the emotions apart from reason, and he has been called a precursor of Rousseau. Vauvenargues's real literary influences were Pascal, Bossuet and F6nelon. The influence of Pascal was sometimes by way of reaction, as had happened with Pascal and Montaigne. In Bossuet he admired the grand style, which he fortunately did not try to imitate too much; to Fenelon he was drawn by that author's sympathy and amenity. These two epithets applied to Vauvenargues himself help to explain much in him; the phrase of Marmontel, "coeur stoique et tendre" perhaps does so even better. His sphere of interest was the moral man who stood alone without the help of revealed religion, for Vauvenargues was a deist. But the imperative which replaced religion came from a mitigated stoicism: It was not the calculating reason of his contemporaries, whether reacting against Jansenism or as out-and-out materialists. Reason, to him, was subordinated to feelings, to sentiment: "les grandes pensees vieiment du cceur." This phrase of Vauvenargues is perhaps the keyote of his philosophy. Though he thus paved the way for a sentimentalist such as Rousseau, and though his critical attitude points to impression- ism and the absence of a standard of judgment, Vauvenargues himself never lost sight of the golden mean. The model charac- ter he has in mind has discarded reason directed to egotistical and self-centred purposes and acts by the impulses of its truer and higher nature. Virtue consists in the practice of benevolent impulses. Thus, though the collocation of names may seem paradoxical, Vauvenargues has something in him of the doctrine 504 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of Rabelais's abbaye de Theleme that people have "un instinct et aiguillon qui toujours les pousse a faits vertueux et retire de vice." The virtuous man is he whose character is the expression of such feelings. And it is in action, bold and constant action, that they have their manifestation. CHAPTER Vm VOLTAIRE FRANgOIS-MARIE AROUET, the youngest of five child- ren, was born at Paris, and not at ChS,tenay as was once supposed, in 1694. His father was connected with the law and his mother died when he was a mere child. He was a precocious youth and won high praise from his Jesuit teachers at their great school the College de Clermont, where the future apostle of theism and the arch-foe of reUgion became a pupil. Voltaire, as he was later to be called, never lost his friendly feeling; in spite of religious hostilities, for his former teachers, the P. Poree, the P. Tournemine, the P. Thoulier, the P. Le Jay. But towards an elder brother Armand, an ardent Jansenist, "le fanatique," his attitude became one of almost open enmity. The name Voltaire, under which he is famous, was perhaps derived from a small estate belonging to his mother, perhaps it was merely a rough anagram of "Arouet 1. j." (Arouet le jeune). Though destined to live more than eighty years, Voltaire was, as a child, weak and sickly. He was, however, full of life and animation, and he soon distressed his friends and teachers by dallying with the irreligious epicureans of the Temple. Ninon de Lenclos in her old age detected his extraordinary ability and left him money to buy books. To remove him from certain influences his father sent him to Holland, but there he fell in love with an intriguing French girl, Olympe (Pimpette) Dunoyer, and had to- come home again only to renew old acquaintanceships. He made new ones, however; he became an attorney's clerk and in the ofl&ce met Thieriot, who was long to be his inseparable but not always worthy friend. After getting into trouble by 5°5 So6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the composition of a sensational poem called le Bourbier Voltaire was imprisoned in the Bastille in 171 7 for a verse satire on the regent written really by an obscure author, known as the J'ai vu ("J'ai vu ces maux et je n'ai pas vingt ans") as well as for a Latin composition called Puero regnante. He made use of the imprisonment to plan his epic poem on the Ligue, known later as the Henriade, and to finish his play (Edipe, begun several years before and brought out with tremendous success in 1718. From this time on, Voltaire's dramatic triumphs, with a few exceptions, come rapidly. Some years later, in 1725, Voltaire, now famous as a man of letters and satirist, offended the chevalier de Rohan, who had him thrashed with sticks ("voltairiser," said his delighted foes) by half a dozen bullies in the street. This kind of experience, strangely enough, generally injured the victim's reputation as well as his back, by making of him a laughing-stock. Voltaire not only failed to get satisfaction but he was again put in the Bastille. On his release, in 1726, his disgust at his experiences, and perhaps the consciousness that absence might be salutary, made him long for a freer air. He took his famous journey to England, were he made valuable friendships, Falkner, Boling- broke, Congreve, Pope and Gay, and imbibed much of the philo- sophical spirit of rationalism which was to serve him in his religious controversies in later years. He found out the phil- osophy of Locke, the poetry of Pope, with whose vanity and irascibility he had much in common, the satire of Swift, the dramatic art of Shakspere, and began the accumulation of his vast fortune by the commercial success of the Henriade. After his return to France at the end of less than three years he showed that his power of satire and invective had only been sharpened by absence: he made the critics furious by the Temple du goUt, a work half in prose and half in verse, and angered people in general by the praise of England in the Lettres an- glaises or Lettres philosophiques, virtually the outline of his philos- ophy and that of the age. They were an indirect criticism of VOLTAIRE 507 French society and of absolute government and praised the empiricism of Locke and the scientific spirit of Newton to the detriment of metaphysics and of revelation. A little while before, in 1731, Voltaire's first great prose work, the Histoire de Charles XII, had shown that he was capable of serious his- torical investigation. In 1733 Voltaire became intimate with the marquise du ChS,telet, a learned woman of tastes in sympathy with his own, and went to live with her at her country estate of Cirey, in Champagne, settling there definitely in 1736. The "divine Emilie" had a vigorous intellect, great scientific and philo- sophical aptitudes, knowledge of languages and literature, and a fierce passion for study: Mais je vois venir sur le soir, Du plus haut de son asphelie, Notre astronomique Emilie, Avec un vieux tabKer noir Et la main d'encre encor salie. Her reading ranged from Lucretius and Virgil to Milton and Locke, but above all she was the priestess of Newtonian science. At Cirey Voltaire spent many happy years, diversified by squabbles, with Mme du Chatelet. Together they studied and experimented in natural philosophy, acted plays and entertained visitors or found delight in managing the estate. To this period are due, besides several dramas, the Elements de la philo- sophie de Newton, the Essai sur les moeurs, the first of his clever stories, Zadig, and the disgraceful Pucelle, the poem on Jeanne d'Arc, whose birthplace, Domremy, was only a few leagues distant from Cirey. In 1746 he succeeded, after several unsuccessful efforts, in getting elected to the Academy. In 1749 Mme du Chatelet died, and Voltaire's grief was much lightened by the discovery that her fondness for him had yielded to a love-affair with the dashing officer and poet, the marquis de Saint-Lambert ("un clou chasse I'autre, ainsi vont les choses de ce monde"). Voltaire returned to Paris, where he found himself less in 5o8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE favor in high circles than formerly. His familiarity annoyed Louis XV, and his ingratitude offended Mme de Pompadour, who had been kind to him. He avenged himself by the composi- tion of some of his most brilliant satirical stories, and in 1750 he 'decided to accept the invitation of Frederick the Great, who for a long time had been urging him to come to Berlin. Frederick was deeply in love with French literature, he composed in French and had ^surrounded himself with a band of Frenchmen. Voltaire therefore went to live near the king at Berlin and Potsdam. For a time they were as intimate as a king and an ordinary mortal can be, but matters soon began to take an unfavorable turn. Another Frenchman and former friend of Voltaire, Maupertuis, a native of Saint-Malo, was president of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He became involved in a dispute with a scholar named Konig, in which Voltaire took Konig's part and attacked Maupertuis in a satirical pamphlet, the Histoire du docteur Akakia et du natif de Saint-Malo. Various other bickerings , including money squabbles with a Jew named Hirsch, made him leave Prussia in 1753, disgusted with his royal patron and subjected even to petty indignities by an offi- cial underling at Frankfort. None the less Voltaire's Prussian experience proved almost as useful as his English trip in enlarging his intellectual horizon. He had, moreover, done some important literary work, including the publication of the Steele de Louis XIV, and various philosophical contributions. After a brief period of wandering, Voltaire, whose opinions were becoming more and more outspoken and who even thought . of emigrating to Pennsylvania, settled in a country home in Switzerland, near the Lake of Geneva, called les Delices. In 1760 he went to live on the direct limits of the two countries, the chateau of Ferney, where he spent the rest of his life, with his niece, fiissy and vain Mme Denis, as housekeeper. Residence in Ferney was a convenient way of escaping the restricting laws of both nations. Voltaire made it a manufacturing centre, a resort for his many friends, and a busy laboratory of books VOLTAIRE 509 which he continually poured out, plays, stories in prose and verse, literary commentaries, philosophical and theological treatises. Even greater was his activity towards the annulment of certain miscarriages of justice and unrighteous condemnations, such as those of Calas, Sirven, De la Barre, and Lally-Tollendal.^ He also expressed sympathy for the dead English admiral, Byng, executed "pour encourager les autres." Never in history did an old man and almost confirmed invalid ("je suis ne tue") show more intense industry. In 1778 he was persuaded to come to Paris to enjoy the triumph of old age, but the change of regime and the festivities to which he was subjected soon killed him. Voltaire is one of the extraordinary characters of literature. Hardly any one except Erasmus, with whom he has been com- pared, has caused more discussion or been more variously inter- preted. To the conservative Catholic he is pre-eminently the sjTubol of irreligion and of immorality. To the liberal he was long the embodiment of the spirit of freedom and resistance to a narrow dogmatism. He made his mark in almost every division of literature in his age, and won an honorable if not an honored name. ^ Voltaire was not a deep liiinker, but he accomplished more than many such because he gave vogue to inert and ineffective ideas. He was mainly a populariser, a journalist in spirit, a critic of the passing manifestations of life and thought. He gave intelligibility to philosophy, wit to prose, and elegance to poetry. His distinction is his universality. If not a deep thinker Voltaire was a violent and a positive one, at least for the time being. It was the vigor of his religious views which made him a bugbear to the orthodox believers, who 1 Calas, a peaceable Protestant of Toulouse, had been unjustly con- demned for the murder of his son. Sirven was another persecuted Hugue- not. The young chevalier de la Barre had been cruelly put to death for irreverence to reUgious images. LaUy-Tollendal was the unfortunate commander who lost India to the French nation. Sio A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE attributed to him an atheism which he never maintained. His mobility of intellect made him at times inconsistent: "Je suis assez semblable aux girouettes qui ne se fixent que quand elles sont rouill6es." He seems to maintain directly opposite views on the freedom of the will. But he does not vary in his belief in the truth of God and the falsity of revealed religion. Vol- taire is not an atheist, but a theist or deist * (he does not distin- guish), convinced that there is a divinity that shapes our ends. Ce systeme sublime a rhomme est necessaire; Cast le sacre lien de la soci6te, Le premier fondement de la sainte equite, Le frein du sc61erat, resp6rance du juste. Si les cieux depoullles de son empreinte auguste Pouvaient cesser jamais de la manifester, Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait I'inventer. On the other hand, all creeds evolved to satisfy mankind's need for the concrete in religious life are false and mischievous. The deity is to Voltaire a species of unknown God, and the manifestations of Christianity are as untrue as those of the most ignorant paganism. He is ready to sign himself " Christmoque " and to open hostilities against Christ's followers. He detests the moral gymnastics of the Jesuits, but he loathes the Jansen- ists more. The spirit of narrow conservatism aroused Voltaire's ire, and every manifestation of it in the shape of religious intol- erance and persecution he lumped together under one name, uttering against it the battle cry, "Ecrasez I'lnfUme." Yet Voltaire was a conservative in everything except religion. Goethe called Voltaire the end of the old and Rousseau the beginning of the new. Voltaire had experienced plenty of social intolerance himself and the arrogance of the haughty seigneur who had had hiiji thrashed in the street. The spirit of rebellion against this he • A theist is considered a- little less radical than a deist and less rabid against the ideas of a personal God and of revelation; cf. Oxford Dictionary s. V. Deism and Deist. VOLTAIRE SI I applied to all things. His tools were those of the English philosophers: the common-sense of Locke, the reasonings of Bolingbroke, and the spirit of civil liberty. These, together with the science of Newton, gave stability to his earHer epicu- rean indifference and enabled him to attack his foes with an irrefutable logic, partly inherited from Bayle, himself the pre- cursor of the English deists. He did not care, as a rule, to go into the deeper problems of imaginative metaphysics, but confined himself to the inconclusive but no less irritating method of a strictly literal interpretation of his opponents' statements. Thus most of Voltaire's arguments lack the dignity of respect- ful hostility, many of them are but petty dialectic, yet they would invariably sting to madness. Nevertheless, even here Voltaire was not the worst of his kind, and to some eighteenth- century atheists a theist was almost a bigot. The result of Voltaire's criticism was a purely destructive one. In its practical manifestation in the world of politics it accom- plished some great good in rehabilitating the memory of victims of persecution, but even that was an undoing. In the sphere of morals he upset by Candide the smug optimism of those who, like Leibnitz or Pope, thought that all is for the best in the best of worlds, or that whatever is is right.' Against this view the poem on the Lisbon earthquake is an eloquent protest: O malheureux mortels! 6 terre deplorable! O de tous les mortels assemblage effroyablel D'inutiles douleurs 6ternel entretien! Philosophes tromp6s qui criez: Tout est bien, Accourez! Contemplez ces mines afiEreuses, Ces debris, ces lambeaux, ces cendres malheureuses. The general lowering of idealism Voltaire carries through consistently on the basis of a Newtonian instead of a Cartesian rationalism. Not only do the supernatural and the miraculous disappear from religion and faith, but their manifestations are directly taxed with being the humbug of deceivers or of tricky priests. Thus the portrayal of Mahomet as an impostor 512 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE might suggest that Christ was one. The whole metaphysical realm becomes unnecessary, and Voltaire is content to be a sceptic as regards the various keys to the mysteries of the world which cannot be explained by scientific reasoning. His argu- ments on the soul and the origin of knowledge are consistent with these fundamental premises. He is, on the whole, in agree- ment with the Encyclopedists that there are no innate ideas and that man is a mere machine. This attitude seems to banish the necessity of a demiurgos, but says Voltaire: L'univers m'embarrasse, et je ne puis songer Que cette horloge existe, et n'ait point d'horloger. There is a "Dieu remunerateur et vengeur," ' at least to make morals respected, and Voltaire believes in natural religion. Such is the underlying thought of the DicHonnaire philosophique.^ What leads us to believe in God is not sentiment, but the logical necessity of some beginning for the universe. Voltaire even conceives of a kind of adoration for the logical or scientific laws on which the universe rests, and for that reason the one metaphysician for whom he does feel some sympathy is the pan- theist Spinoza, whose God may be conceived as the world-order endowed with divinity. In consequence Voltaire's theology remained inconclusive except as a weapon against the Catholic church, and therein men found it useful in the years which ' Rois, si vous m'opprimez, si vos grandeurs dedaignent Les pleurs de I'innocent que vous faites couler, Mon vengeur est au del; apprenez a trembler. ^ Natural religion is to Voltaire belief in God and the practice of virtue. All dogmas are an excrescence devised by the priests with intent to deceive. Of the believer in this religion he says: "Faire le bien, voila son culte; Stre soumis a Dieu, voila sa doctrine. Le mahometan lui crie: 'Prends garde a toi si tu ne fais pas le pelerinage de la Mecque! — Malheur a toi, lui dit un recoUet, si tu ne fais pas un voyage a Notre-Dame de Lorette!' II rit de Lorette et de la Mecque; mais il secourt I'indigent et il defend I'opprime." — Dictionnaire philosophique, s. v. TMiste. VOLTAIRE 513 prepared liie great Revolution. The dry light of its destructive reasoning could not satisfy the sentimental and emotional. On the other hand, its sarcasm and irony, so expressive of the French temperament, the spirit of the frondeur, ever prone to see the ludicrous side and to destroy by mockery, has always appealed to the radicals and free-thinkers who have so often controlled the thought of France. But it was the realm of morals that, after all, appealed most to Voltaire. Regardless' of its ultimate postulates, morality was to him theoretically what it is to all good men — truth, honor, and general righteousness. Consequently all forms of political persecution anger him as much as religious intolerance, and he admires the good fortune of a nation like England which is its own master, instead of being subservient to a despot's whim. The vast array of Voltaire's writings in prose and verse are but the expression of these views. Though they are often incon- sistent in individual cases, the underlying spirit is the same: intellectual destructiveness, social and literary conservatism. Voltaire's greatest monument, though its vastness makes it less effective, is perhaps his correspondence. Throughout his long life he kept up a constant stream of letter-writing with his friends and foes of high rank and low degree. More than ten thousand of these letters are published, and they are far from exhausting the number he must have written, for others are often discovered or referred to. Scarcely one of them is valuelesF and nearly all are highly useful, whether to throw light on political, social, or literary theories, or merely as examples of clever satire and epistolary polemic. To his niece Mme Denis, when she is not keeping house for him, he describes the inci- dents of his daily life, or in the famous letter of the Mais he shows his growing discontent with the court of Frederick the Great; to Horace Walpole he writes on literary criticism. Frederick, Catherine of Russia, Diderot, D'Alembert, Helvetius, Vauveiiargues, Marmontel, Rousseau, La Harpe, D'Argenson, 514 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Algarotti, Maffei, Goldoni, Mme de Graffigny, Mme du Deff- and, these are but a few of his many correspondents. Nor were these letters, in spite of their cleariiess and fluency, exercises in style: "I am writing my thirtieth letter today," says Voltaire on one occasion. And many of them were written or dictated when most persons would think themselves too ill to hold a pen or guide a thought. The chief historical works of Voltaire are his Histoire de Charles XII (1731) and his Steele de Louis XIV (1751), the Essai sur les mceurs et Vesprit des nations (1756), to which may be added the Histoire de Russie (1759). Herein lies, again, one of his fruitful achievements: he is among the first to conceive history as material for the formulation of general ideas and no longer as a mere register of reigns of kings, filled with battles succeeding each other in chronological sequence. Voltaire tries to deduce the underlying principles which explain the past and give due proportion to hidden motives as well as to concrete phenomena.' His historical studies aimed also at accuracy and were the result of patient research. The books on Charles XII and on Louis XIV were based on direct investigation and the questioning of eye-witnesses. The first is largely a biographical narrative of a dashing military hero, written, it is true^ by an interpreter of character rather than of strategy. The second is a survey of the arts and sciences as well as of history. It is Voltaire who, to a great extent, gave the reign of Louis XIV its pre-eminent rank in French intellectual tradition. The com- position of the history of Russia was made more difl&cult by his ignorance of the country and of the language. The Essai sur les mceurs is, in the main, an exposition of the tendencies 1 "Chez toutes les nations I'histoire est defigur6e par la fable, jusqu'a ce qu'enfin la philosophievienne eclairer les hommes; et lorsque enfin la philosophie arrive.au milieu de ces tenebres, elle trouve les esprits si aveu- gles par des siecles d'erreurs qu'elle peut a peine les detromper; eUe trouve des ceremonies, des faits, des monuments, etablis pour constater des men- songes." — Essai sur les mceurs. ^ VOLTAIRE 515 and feelings of the human race at the different periods of its history and of the lessons to be derived therefrom. The literary criticism of Voltaire is scattered through all his prose and poetry, including the Dictionnaire philosophique, the Siecle de Louis XIV, and the correspondence, and particularly the Commentaire sur Corneille. The criticism of Corneille, whose works Voltaire edited in order to provide a dowry for one of Corneille's kinswomen, is a curious instance of carping at a great author for not submitting to petty fashions of taste and of language, many of which had not been accepted when the plays were composed. Voltaire's attitude is that of the ultra-conserva- tive pseudo-Classicist. Smoothness, regularity, clearness appeal to him, and innovations terrify. Racine and Boileau are his deities, the former for his perfect language, the latter for his rigid intellectuality in taste and criticism. He is an instance of the divergence of attitude often noticed in men between their literary views and their theories of political or social action. The ■ modern reader finds perhaps greatest pleasure in Vol- taire's prose stories, his contes, romans, and nouvelles. These almost always conceal satire in the narrative. The Oriental apologue was much in vogue in the eighteenth century and Voltaire contributed to its popularity, but the reader of his stories knew that they applied to the time in which they were written. Zadig, ou la destinee (1747), the story of a righteous man of Babylon who falls from prosperity to poverty and comes back to wealth, shows that the ways of Providence are hidden from us. Micromegas (1752), suggested by Cyrano de Bergerac and Gulliver's Travels, is an "histoire philosophique," the adven- tures of an inhabitant of the star Sirius who travels among the planets and surveys the philosophical systems of mankind. It is directed against Catholicism and opposes astronomy to St. Thomas Aquinas and the anthropocentric view\ Candide (1759) is an attack on the optimism of Leibnitz; Jeannot et Colin shows the excess of feminine influence in education; Le Monde comme il va satirises French life and Paris manners; 5i6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE L'Ingenu and la Princesse de Babylone are less specific in their general mockery. The so-called Melanges contain all kinds of writing from the Lettres philosophiques , Voltaire's important survey of the English people, to essays, notes, or fragments on matters of religion or science. This is far, however, from exhausting the activity of Voltaire. His verses are as miscellaneous as his prose writings, and in most cases as deserving of study. His epic poem, the Henriade, is a semi-historical account of the wars of religion in the sixteenth century and the deeds of Henry IV. As inspired poetry it is dull, as historical narrative in verse it is often vivid and pic- turesque. The Pucelle, Voltaire's most discreditable work, is the reverse of this medal. Philosophical poems are the Dis- cours sur I'homme, the Poeme sur la hi naturelle, and the Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne. The general ideas of his prose writings are here often repeated in striking phrases. In addition to all this achievement, Voltaire found time to write miscellaneous verses of all kinds, epigrams, odes, sonnets, and madrigals, the grace and wit of which have done as much to make his reputation permanent as many of his more ambitious works. And he never rested in his production of the one or the other kind: his enemies were numerous, his wit was caustic, they hated him and he them; so that his biography is largely colored by his fierce controversies with rival scholars, poets, and journalists from Maupertuis to Jean-Baptiste Rousseau and Jean-Jacques, Le Franc de Pompignan, Freron, La Beaumelle, Desfontaines. Voltaire, though not an enigma, is a queer mass of contradic- tions: a coward, he did some heroic deeds; a foe to religion, he made religion and the world more honest; a sneering satirist, he helped to bring about mercy and tolerance; a dramatic conservative, he suggests the melodrama and "spectacle"; an apostle of destruction, he made possible, though he had no share in it, the reconstruction of French society. Though a VOLTAIRE 517 leering cynic,* a "singe de genie" as Hugo called him, with the "hideux sourire" of which Musset speaks in Rolla,^ he was kind to his friends and gentle with many an ungrateful and undeserving person. Though vain and conceited he did some of the most courageous and altruistic deeds of his time. ' You are so witty, profligate and thin, At once we think you Milton, death and sin. — Young, author of the Night Thoughts. ' Dors-tu content, Voltaire, et ton hideux sourire Voltige-t-il encore sur tes os decharn6s? CHAPTER IX ROUSSEAU JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU was born in Geneva in 1712, but his family was ultimately of French descent. His mother died at his birth and he was left to the care of his father, an emotional and unpractical man, whose sensitive temperament was inherited by his younger son Jean- Jacques. Together they used to whimper over the high-flown fiction of the seven- teenth-century novelists or read the biographies of Plutarch until the morning sun shone in at the window. Various incidents of Rousseau's youth tended to make him self-centred and morbid, and finally he ran away from Geneva when he was sixteen, abandoning his master, an engraver to whom he was appren- ticed, and began his wanderings. He found himself before long in the house of Mme de Warens, a young and attractive Cath- olic convert, at that time twenty-nine years of age, intelligent and sympathetic, but eccentric as regards morality and social obligations. For many years, with interruptions, she and Rousseau lived in a strange intimacy, at times shared with a third, though they always knew each other as "maman" and "petit." Mme de Warens undertook to have Rousseau converted to Catholicism and sent him to a monastery at Turin, where he was put through a mechanical process and then ejected into the street. For some time, except for intervals spent with Mme de Warens, Rousseau was a wanderer over the face of the earth, filling all kinds of occupations from lackey in a family to hypo- chondriac roadside wanderer or music-master, in the latter position at first covering himself with ridicule. S18 ROUSSEAU 519 In 1738 and 1739 took place the residence at les Charmettes, near Chambery, where Rousseau and Mme de Warens, not alone as he asserts in his Confessions, but in coinpany with another lover of hers, named Wintzenried, lived a rustic and "idyllic" life amid the country flowers and sounds. Rousseau devoted also more time to study than he had hitherto done, and in 1740 he became private tutor at Lyons in the family of M. de Mably, brother of the writer Mably and of Condillac. Here the future theorist on education failed again, and in 1741 he went to Paris to make his fortune by his invention of a new system of musical notation. After meeting with failure in this, he managed to get the position of secretary to the French ambassador at Venice. Dismissed by him in disgrace after various quarrels, Rousseau fell into deep poverty and formed a liaison with an ignorant and vulgar servant girl, Therese Levasseur, with whom he lived for many years before he even made a pretence of marrying her, and who inflicted on him the burden of her family. Rousseau sent his own five children, as they were born, to the foundling asylimi and never knew anything more of them. He managed, however, to keep his head above water and had more friends than his susceptible and emotional nature would lead one to expect. He was slow and reserved in conversation, possessing only that esprit d'escalier, as he called it, which enabled him to conceive the proper reply, what he ought to have said, when he was on his way down-stairs. His very timidity and gaucherie won him the sympathy of several distinguished women. He got to know important men of letters as well, D'Alembert, Grimm, Diderot. The latter is, indeed, indirectly connected with Rousseau's first famous literary achievement. One liot summer's day in 1749, while walking to Vincennes to see Diderot, then in prison, Rousseau read in the Mercure de France that the Academy of Dijon offered a prize for a dissertation on the subject "Si le progres des sciences et des arts a contribue k corrompre ou a 6purer les moeurs." He experienced a violent mental and emotional crisis, his theories of life took form, and he wrote the 520 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Discours sur les lettres et les arts which won the prize in 1750 and made him famous, though success turned his head. He thought the assumption of a brusque and insolent demeanor would be in keeping with his theories of the corrupting influence of civilisa- tion. He posed as a new Alceste in Moliere's Misanthrope. So he dressed himself roughly, chose to earn his living by copying music, and was rude to everybody. In spite of his pride and assumption of boorishness, which involved him in literary disputes, Rousseau's popularity con- tinued. He wrote a successful opera, the Devin du village (1752), an unsuccessful comedy, Narcisse, and in 1754 a new essay by which he tried without avail to win a second prize from the Dijon Academy, the Discours sur I'origine de I'inegalite parmi les hommes, published in 1755. A friend, Mme d'Epinay, the author of important memoirs, offered him a cottage known as the Ermitage in the forest of Montmorency, and there she installed her "bear" in 1756 in the solitude of the country. Rousseau lived there in content- ment for some time, in spite of Therese's aversion to a rural life, until a violent passion for Mme d'Houdetot, the sister of Mme d'Epinay and mistress of the Saint-Lambert whose name is connected with Voltaire and Mme du Chatelet upset his peace. Mme d'Houdetot, though lacking beauty, was vivacious and interesting, but she felt no particular fondness for. the uncouth manhater and womanlover. Her good-nature made her humor him until Rousseau was driven almost crazy. He quarrelled with all his friends, Grimm, Diderot, and Mme d'Epinay, and broke with them, leaving his cottage in 1757. His hostility to Grimm and Diderot lasted until the end of his life. He never ceased accusing them of conspiring to destroy his good name and happiness, and he became an enemy of the Encyclopedists. For a time Rousseau remained in the neighborhood at Mont- morency, ultimately under the protection of M. and Mme de Luxembourg, and wrote his Lettre a d'Alembert sur les spectacles in answer to some statements favorable to the drama in an ROUSSEAlJ 521 article which the latter had written in the Encyclopedia. This was followed by Julie, ou la nouvelle Heloise (1760), a half bio- graphical novel, at least so far as Rousseau's emotional life with Mme d'Houdetot was concerned, and reeking with sentiment. It created a perfect furore: once the book had been opened the reader was unable to put it down unfinished. It was followed in quick succession by the Contrat social and by Emile (1762). The latter of these two books was considered by the authorities subversive of religion, and the Parlement and ministry, though with no serious hostiUty or intention of injuring Rousseau, but as a counterblow to the expulsion of the Jesuits and to show impartiality, decreed his arrest. Rousseau withdrew, though without concealment, to Switzerland. His own country was less lenient than France had been and he went to Motiers, where he was under the government of the king of Prussia. He re- mained there in peace for over three years until new polemics, particularly the Lettres ecrites de la moniagne in answer to the Lettres ecrites de la campagne of the Genevan Tronchin, and con- taining a violent attack against the state and its religion, caused even the people of Motiers to turn against him. Rousseau was stoned by them and fled to a lonely little island in the Lake of Bienne, afterwards going to England at the invitation of David Hvune. Rousseau, who had become practically insane, soon thought that Hume was a scoundrel desirous of making him ridiculous, and fled from the home which had been offered him. He left England, and after many wretched wanderings he re- turned to Paris in 1770. He had, meanwhile, married Therese and written his extraordinary Confessions. During the last eight years of his life he dwelt in the rue Pl^triere, now rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, again earning his living by copying music, and for a time apparently somewhat mollified towards man and friendly to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. He wrote during this period his Dialogues (Rousseau, juge de Jean- Jacques) (1775-6) and the Reveries d'un promeneur solitaire (1777-8). Finally his health, physical and mental, both gave way 522 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE entirely, and on July 2, 1778, he died of a stroke of apoplexy, though many have absurdly maintained that he committed suicide. Jean- Jacques Rousseau, like Voltaire, is one of the paradoxes of literary history. His life was full of antitheses and his influ- ence was the opposite of what might have been expected from him. He lived for years in open violation of moral laws and was the victim of erotic madness, yet he preached virtue; he sent his children to the foundling-asylum and wrote on how to bring up the young; through pride or timidity he did his best to injure his own reputation, yet he became, with Voltaire, the most famous man of his century; he was brutal to his friends, yet they were often kind to him to the verge of unreason; he was inordinately selfish and taught altruism; he declared civi- lisation to be a failure, yet his teachings revolutionised theories of government; he was an idler and often a ne'er-do-well, yet ,he inspired one of the most important literary movements in France and in Europe. He saw visions and had dreams which his idleness made it difl&cult for him to carry out, a task he left to others. They put into practice his seemingly wild cerebrations. Rousseau was never wholly sane and he ended in insanity. He had a constitutional infirmity which caused him all his life actual physical suffering or the morbid fear of it. It took the external form of the dread of persecution and the roving ten- dency of the "dromomaniac." The whole environment of his boyhood, as well as his ancestral influences, had emphasised his einotions rather than his judgments. His reading of novels and the false heroics of Plutarch were unsuited to the development of his peculiar character. The various adventures of his youth and his wanderings made him more and more the prey of fancies than of cold reason. It was, however, particularly after the disas- trous outcome of his unpalatable love affair for Mme d'Houdetot that he became crazy and looked upon himself as the victim of human hostility. The intense exaggeration of his ego which ROUSSEAU 523 made him in his own eyes the centre of the world made him write in his Confessions: "Les planchers sous lesquels je suis ont des yeux, les murs qui m'entourent ont des oreilles; environne d'espions et de surveillants malveillants et vigilants, inquiet et distrait, je jette a la hkte et furtiveinent sur le papier quelques mots interrompus qu'a peine j'ai le temps de relire, encore moins de corriger." He thought himself the victim of the Jesuits, the Jansenists, and the philosophical sect. To a cer- tain degree he was attacked by Grimm, Diderot, and Mme d'Epinay, and the memoirs of the latter were modified in a way more unfavorable to him as their hostility increased. But Rousseau's susceptibility saw only foes, and even those who, like Hume, tried at first to be kind to him met with vituperation. Meanwhile, as sometimes happens in one of self-analysis and unhealthy brooding, he manifested a fondness for communi- cating to the world at large the inmost secrets of his nature, of undressing his soul as well as his body, and of exhibiting at the bottom of his heart the "slumbering hog." Yet Rousseau must have had good qualities, inasmuch as he had such devoted friends. When in his right senses he must have had an open heart and a sympathetic mind. Mme de Latour worshipped him, as Peronnelle d'Armentieres did Guil- laume de Machault, though she met him but once or twice; even the gruff old Scotsman Lord Keith, with whom he sought refuge after the publication of the Central social drove him from France, became his friend and protector. Rousseau is the chief in France of the so-called sentimental- ists. He gave new vogue and a new form to that emotionalism which, as James Russell Lowell pointed out, had had its first representative in the modern world in Petrarch. He brought a reaction against the rigid dogmatism of the Classical school and its effort to judge everything by an outside standard. He was, in one way, the first of the impressionists, a new Protagoras to whom man is the measure of all things. He discarded the old idea that certain definite rules preside over the composition 524 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of each kind of literary work, and for the rule of the absolute in taste he substituted relativity. In life and its literary expression the same condition shows itself. When man passes from liberty to the constraints of civilisation he undergoes a perversion. Both the psychological and the social process are a kind of degeneration of which the transition is reflection. The happiest state, therefore, as well as the best, is the state of nature, before civilisation has made its injurious consequences felt, when ignorant man lived in peaceful and unreflective bliss. The consequence of this was the ultra-personal note in Rous- seau's writings, the tendency to magnify the emotions, to dwell on the sufferings of the hero as an interpreter of the author, to confuse often mere vehemence of "sensibility" or feeling with virtue. Nature was identified with this and came almost to mean God. Egotism became the marked quality of the litera- ture written under the influence of Rousseau, and of the hero of the Romantic school, the abnormally developed, selfish emo- tionalist brooding over his woes, fancied or real, suffering from the mal de Rene or the mal du siecle, and various forms of fatty degeneration of the feelings. These emotions could be, as in Rousseau's own case, of the amorous nature and the expression of a life, like his, amenable to women, in a society strongly dominated by the feminine element. Though Rousseau's life is such a paradox, there is general consistency in his writings, which have a constructive as well as a destructive side and try, while showing the abuses of society, to point out, in ways often seemingly unpractical, how man may be brought back to nature and made better. The first proclamation is in the Discours sur les lettres et les arts, already mentioned, of which the sudden inspiration has been related according to Rousseau, but wherein unfriendly critics have, without foundation, suggested that Diderot told him he could gain greater notoriety by maintaining a paradox. The theory of the Discours is that the uncouth savage, whom we ROUSSEAU 525 now know to have been at war with his neighbor, ignorant and brutal as a wild beast, was without the vile defects of treachery, deceit, and arrogance which are so apparent in our modern civi- lisation. Rousseau apparently believed, like the ancients, in an early Golden Age, or that uncivilised man was on a level with our first parents before the Fall. Every effort of man to advance has been like the opening of Pandora's box by the misfortunes it has produced; Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, all found that civilisation only weakened them and made them a prey to ruder but stronger civilisations. The old Persians, the Scythians, the Germans, the primitive Romans, the savages of America, the Swiss, the Spartans, all proclaim the advantage of simplicity and a primitive life. The arts and sciences were born of idleness and encourage it; they are a waste of time, and bring about corruption of society and of taste, through the unfortunate rise of inequality among men, which is the con- sequence of the pursuit of knowledge and the distinction of talents. The topic of inequality is further pursued in Rousseau's second Discours. This essay on the origin of inequality is a direct sequel to the previous one. Rousseau maintains, as before, that the primitive unreflecting age was the best, and ventures upon a purely imaginary portrayal of those happy days, a picture so different from the views of Hobbes and of the English school which had hitherto been in vogue. "On n'a jamais employe tant d'esprit I, vouloir nous rendre betes," said Voltaire sarcastically, "il prend envie de marcher ^ quatre pattes quand on lit votre ouvrage." ^ In the state of nature, then, men lived without virtue or vice, and each step towards 1 So Palissot in his satirical comedy les PhUosophes in which he lumps Rousseau indiscriminately with the Encyclopedists: Pour la philosophic, un gofit a qui tout cMe, M'a fait choisir expres I'^tat de quadrupede; Sur mes quatre piliers men corps se soutient mieux, Et je vols moins de sots qui me blessent les yeux. 526 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE perfectibility has been a retrogression, until human society has been converted into a state of warfare. The first step was the establishment of law and property: "Le premier qui, ayant enclos un terrain, s'avisa de dire: Ceci est a moi, et trouva des gens assez simples pour le croire, fut le vrai fondateur de la societe civile. Que de crimes, de guerres, de meurtres, que de miseres et d'horreurs n'eut point epargne au genre humain celui qui, arrachant les pieux ou comblant le fosse, eut crie a ses semblables: Gardez-vous d'ecouter cet imposteur; vous 6tes perdus si vous oubliez que les fruits sont a tous, et que la terre n'est a personne." The second step was the establishment of the magistracy, and the third the growth of arbitrary power. Thus have deviated rich and poor, strong and weak. This work is even more paradoxical in its conclusions than the first, since it goes counter to all explanations of society and argues for a dissolvent which, all experience shows, would lead to anarchy. Rousseau is one of the precursors of modern anarchy, as he is in other writings of modern socialism. The Lettre a d'Alembert sur les spectacles was a reply to d'Alem- bert's article on Geneva in the Encyclopedia which had advo- cated the re-establishment there of dramatic performances. Rousseau, of course, remained Swiss and un-French in much of his religious feeling and his political ideas. The letter is in a strain of puritanical moralising, and denounces the best play as deleterious in effect: the emotions which tragedy awakens are transitory, comedy teaches ridicule of worthy things. More- over, the theatre is a resort of vanity, if not of vice. Poets and playwrights are as useless as those learned men who contributed to the unhappy progress of civilisation. In contrast with this condition of affairs Rousseau, imbued with his recollections of En nous civilisant nous avons tout perdu: La sant6,"le bonheur,et mSme la vertu. Je me referme done dans la vie animale; Vous voyez ma cuisine: elle est simple et frugale. {II tire une laitue de sa poche.) ROUSSEAU 527 Plutarch, describes the pleasures and sports of simple village-life, and games and rivalries like those of the old Spartans.' These idyllic visions the Convention tried to realise by instituting holidays and republican festivals. Julie, ou la nouvelle Heloise is Rousseau's most important romance. It deals with the topic which had already had two illustrious examples in the French literature of the seventeenth century, Polyeucte and the Princesse de Cleves, the fidelity of a woman for her husband in spite of her love for another man. Rousseau's development is, however, very different, and his chief inspiration is rather Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe, that epistolary romance of sentiment which he imitates partly as to form and partly as to content. The story tells, as in the old one of Abelard and H61oise from which it takes its name, how young Julie d'Etanges is loved and seduced by her tutor Saint- Preux. Her father is unwilling to let her marry a plebeian and she becomes the wife of the sedate and elderly M. de Wolmar, while Saint-Preux, in despair, departs for long travels. On his return, M. de Wolmar, who has learned the truth, calls Saint- Preux to his house and, to show confidence in his wife and her former lover, encourages their friendship and lets them meet with absolute freedom. Julie, who has become a perfect mena- gere, finally dies with words of love for all upon her lips, leaving her lachrymose friends to mourn her loss. Thus, with a different ending, the subject of Julie and of Clarissa Harlowe is love yielding to duty. Further than that, in this novel also in letters, the characters of Julie and of her cousin Claire are reproductions of Clarissa and of Miss Howe. But la Nouvelle Heloise is not a mere literary adaptation. It is also deeply stamped with Rousseau's own emotional experi- ences. It was during its composition that Rousseau knew '"Plutarque surtout devint ma lecture favorite; le plaisir que je prenais a le relire sans cesse me gu6rit un peu des romans; et je pr6f6rai bientot Agesilas, Brutus, Aristide, a Orondate, Artamene et Juba." — Confessions, Book I. S28 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Mme d'Houdetot, and she with others of his acquaintance entered the romance. Julie herself had something of Mme d'Houdetot and of Mme de Warens. Wolmar and the English friend and counsellor, mylord Edouard Bomston, were undoubt- edly influenced by Saint-Lambert. But Saint-Preux is above all Rousseau with his combination of sentiment and of erotic feeling. He is timid and clumsy except when carried away by passion. Julie is a strange example of conscious chastity, and the love-scenes are supposed to present an ivresse de volupte combined with modesty. • The general effect of reading Julie today is one, partly of tedium at the discourses on varied topics from education to housekeeping, with which the latter portions are to a consider- able degree interspersed, partly of surprise that this eminently physical novel, of wliich portions are steeped in "3,cres baisers" and suggestive episodes, should have been looked upon as a lesson in morality. But account must be taken of the standards of the age; the menage a trots of Voltaire, M. and Mme du ChS,telet did not surprise people any more than did the one which Rousseau dreamed of between himself, Mme d'Houdetot and Saint-Lambert, or the one which he has represented in Julie, M. de Wolmar and Saint-Preux. Moreover the phrases of chaste amorousness with which the whole book is smeared seemed less hackneyed and unreal than they do today and were a wholesome reaction against the indecency of much of eight- eenth-century social life. The Contrat social and Emile are Rousseau's constructive works, the one dealing with the political rights and duties of the grown man, the other with the training of the child. The Contrat social was, indeed, the document on which the princi- ples of the French Revolution were based. The documents of the Tiers-Etat and of the States-General renewed the principles of Rousseau upon liberty, public duties, and the responsibility of oflScials. Indeed, the French Revolution carried the author's precepts to their logical conclusion, it is true, but far beyond his ROUSSEAU 529 definite statement. Not only did the Contrat social become the guiding principle of the Jacobins in rigidity of theory and action, but the spirit of this and of Emile led Robespierre to his cult of the Supreme Being and the theatrical religion of sentiment which he opposed to the cult of Reason of the Voltairearl atheists. The rhetoric of Rousseau and his terminology inspired many of the catch-words of the Revolution, such as "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," the use of "citoyen" and the rhetorical declamation in which the artificial spirit of Plutarch's heroes was made to do service for the new liberty. As time went on, the theories of the social contract, by their application to economic instead of purely political contingencies, grew into the fundamental law of modern socialism and co-operation. Thus Rousseau is re- sponsible for the theories both of the No-State and of the All- State, besides the intermediate form of the cantonal or communal small state of which Sparta, primitive Rome, and old Geneva were suggestions to Rousseau himself, and which the Paris insurrectionists in 1871 tried to carry out from the point of view of the smaller entity.^ The Contrat social is an instance of reasoning based upon purely a priori assumptions. Its inspirer was partly Locke and his teaching that men are born free, equal, and independent, and the idea of the origin of sovereignty in a compact or contract, partly Hobbes and his view of the omnipotence of authority. On the other hand, it need not be forgftten that Hobbes be- lieves in the wickedness of man and Rousseau in his primitive goodness. The Contrat social starts from the assumption that there was a moment in the history of society when a social compact became necessary in the mutual relations of the individual to himself and to his fellow-men. Hence the contract by which each one became a part of the Sovereign State or People. Of this People 1 M. Edme Champion's book on Rousseau and the Revolution is an attempt to whitewash Rousseau and make him guiltless of its ex- cesses. S30 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the citizen or subject forms a part retaining equal rights of association, but obliged to yield under penalty, even of death, in each case where the will of the individual or of the minority comes into conflict with that of the majority. For 'the majority expressed, by form of law, the General Will of the inalienable and indivisible sovereignty of the people. The all-powerful state takes the specific form of different kinds of government, such as monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy. The views on religion expressed in the Contrat social are identi- cal with those of Emile. This is a pedagogical romance in five books dealing with the education of Emile, the child of nature, who is to be brought up by new methods at variance with the old ones of rigid discipline and of over-emphasised memory- worship. The fifth book deals with the bringing-up of Sophie, destined to be Emile's companion. Rousseau was not the first to preach innovations in education. Rabelais had done it; so had Montaigne, whom Rousseau had read; so had Locke, whom he knew as well. Scevole de Sainte- Marthe had also anticipated him in his Paedotrophia, which advocated the bringing-up of children at the breast. But Rousseau, more than all others, wrote at the psychological moment of reaction against the neglect of children in France and the relegating of children to nurses by frivolous and thought- less mothers. The presentation in Emile of a human being face to face with the contingencies of life to be overcome shares the influence of Robinson Crusoe, just as the book in turn influenced an abun- dant literature of which the moralisations of Sandford and Merton or the universal adaptability of the characters in the Swiss Family Robinson are instances. More than that, the writings of Rousseau, especially Emile, revolutionised thought in England and, above all, in Germany: Kant, Jacobi, Fichte, Herbart, Schleiermacher all felt the power of Rousseau in their views on sentiment, religion within the limits of reason, individualism. Goethe and Schiller, Herder were literary disciples. In peda- ROUSSEAU 531 gogy Basedow, Lavater, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Jean Paul Richter are all inspired by Rousseau, to whom we owe even the germ of modern kindergartens. Emile, the hero of the book, is brought up as a child of nature and learns to be a free man under the guidance of a friendly tutor. Every effort is made to develop his true character according to his strength by contact with the things which he shall study, under guidance it is true, but by the effort of his own judgment and reason. Instruction from the printed text comes late: at twelve years of age Emile scarcely knows what a book is and his education has been negative. Even during adolescence, Rousseau thinks, instruction should be by obser- vation instead of from text, the pupil should be led to work out his own science and learn how to make his own living by some handicraft. Carpentering is the best of trades, as being useful and artistic. (The wisest of men was a carpenter's son, Rous- seau suggests elsewhere.) Books are useful only in so far as they are of value for moral instruction. Guidance is by example, and often by elaborately devised incidents intended to be of educational value. ^ The fourth book of Emile is largely taken up by an exposi- tion of Rousseau's religious creed. This was partly suggested by the English deists, partly by their common sources back to Plato, partly by personal influences, like the vague pietistic mysticism of Mme de Warens, which subordinated everything outward to inner feeling. It may be summed up in the words: Existence of God and immortality of the soul. When young Emile has almost reached manhood without having yet studied speculative problems or learned that he has a soul, the vicaire Savoyard one day leads him to the top of a hill overlooking the Po and there, as they gaze upon the vast beauty of nature, the older man explains his religious philosophy, which is a form of deism. There is mind, there is matter, and matter is guided > It was as disciples of Rousseau that the princes of France learned trades and that Louis XVI was a locksmith. -532 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE by the laws of an intelligent spirit or God. This is all that we need to afl&rm positively; our subjective feeling tells us that there is a God and the dogmas and creeds of revealed religion are so useless as to be an absurdity. Religion is not taught by books: "Tou jours des livres!" Close books and go forth to see the proofs of God in nature. Not that Rousseau scorns Chris- tianity; there remains in the mind of the traveller through both Protestantism and Catholicism a fondness for the spirit of charity and mercy, yet the knowledge of God does not come from the text of the Bible and Christ is the sweetest, the most polished, and the wisest of men: ^ "Une des choses qui me char- ment dans le caractere de Jesus n'est pas seulement la douceur des moeurs, la simplicite, mais la facilite, la gr&ce, et meme I'elegance. II ne fuyait ni les plaisirs, ni les fetes, il allait aux noces, il voyait les femmes, il jouait avec les enfants, il aimait les parfums, il mangeait chez les financiers. Ses disciples ne jelinaient point; son austerite n'etait point factieuse. II etait a la fois tres indulgent et tres juste, doux aux faibles et terrible aux m6chants. Sa morale avait quelque chose d'attrayant, de caressant, de tendre; il avait le coeur sensible; il etait homme de bonne societe. Quand il n'eut pas et6 le plus sage des mortels, il en eut ete le plus aimable."^ {Leitres ecrites de la montagne.) Thus Rousseau's religion is a natural religion, wherein God is worshipped in the heart as a God of peace and goodness. This may seem today reasonable enough, but in his time his scorn of creeds and of miracles made his views appear as destructive of faith as the religion of Voltaire, and brought about his perse- cution. This deism, it is indeed true, could in its logical con- sequences lead not only to the cult of the Supreme Being of Robespierre, but to vague pantheisms, perhaps spiritual, perhaps. 1 Rousseau hedges as to his divinity. 2 This passage might have been written by Renan. Indeed, Rousseau paves the way for the aesthetic Christianity of Chateaubriand and Renan. ROUSSEAU 533 civil or social, in which the notion of God could be sublimated into a mere moral law or categorical imperative of conscience, without any element of reverence for a divinity, whether the Theophilanthropy of a Lar6velliere-Lepeaux or the fraternalism of the modern socialists. About the time that Rousseau's wanderings and tribulations of his later life began, he started the composition of his Con- fessions. The indications of his morbid self-consciousness, the "hypertrophy of the self" as it has been called, show themselves and the work is one of the chief examples of nakedness in litera- ture: "J'ai devoile mon interieur tel que tu I'as vu toi-m^me, Etre eternel. Rassemble autour de moi I'innombrable foule de mes semblables: qu'ils ecoutent mes confessions, qu'ils rougis- sent de mes indignites, qu'ils gemissent de mes miseres: que chacun d'eux decouvre k son tour son cceur au pied de ton tr6ne avec la meme sinc^rite, et puis qu'un seul te dise s'il I'ose, je fus meilleur que cet homme-la." The work is far from being an accurate autobiography; the author's memory or feeling play him false ; he antedates by two years and misrepresents his life at les Charmettes; the first books are full of idyls of the youthful wanderer, yielding to the pleasures of gaiety, or of no less sensuous and tearful meditation upon the harmonies of nature and the sweetness of sympa- thetic women; the last ones are tinged with insanity and the morbid melancholy of one who thinks that friends have turned against him and that all men are ready to betray him. Again and again crop out cynicism and a pathological desire to exhibit the sins of mind and body which have caused the Con- fessions to be classed among books recommended only with caution. The madness of Rousseau shows itself also in Rous- seau, juge de Jean- Jacques, in which Rousseau defends Jean- Jacques against a Frenchman's attacks, but it is a madness full of method which makes the work useful for an understanding of his character. The Reveries d'un promeneur solitaire, on the contrary, though written still later, manifest a return to outer 534 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE nature and a serenity of temperament which is, in a certain degree, a relief. Such are the chief works o"f the unhappy Jean- Jacques, and they explain his character. He was, at any rate in his later life, insane, and he was a moral pervert, yet he was a genius. He suffered among other things from a disease of the will-power, yet he incited countless men to action; his life was one of in- difference to the codes of respectability, yet he preached virtue, chastity, and the observance of simple and housewifely qualities among women: "Non, Julie, non, femme respectable, vous ne verrez jamais en moi que I'ami de votre personne et I'amant de vos vertus"; he failed as a private tutor, yet he revolutionised the education of the young. Should one seek a single key to Rousseau, it may perhaps be found in the word "Nature." Rousseau magnified the nature of the individual and of society, as opposed to the result of cultivation and of training. His whole character was moulded by sensation: " Je sentis avant de penser; c'est le sort commun de I'humanite; je I'eprouvai plus qu'un autre." Man by himself and non-dependent is good; civilisation has been a wrong: "L'homme est ne libre, et partout il est dans les fers." The transition from freedom to slavery is that from the absolute to the relative, from the independent to the dependent, from nature to culture, from the happiness of simplicity to the unhappiness of reflection and the relations which unite one man with another. Though Rousseau's writings try to save collective civilisation, his life was one of egotism. He, more than anyone, magnified the self and made it the centre of interest, until in the literature of the Romanticists it manifested itself in the subjectivity of lyric poetry or the broodings of a gloomy hero at war with the cosmos. Finally, be it added, Rousseau sees simple man in the envi- ronment of simple nature and in communion with it. A road- side wanderer, as he had been, he brought literature back to the outdoor world and, for the first time, made it understand the beauty of country sights and sounds, the majesty of the ROUSSEAU 535 mountains and waterfalls of the Alps in his own Switzerland and Savoy.' To Rousseau is largely due the transition from the arti- ficial psychological analysis of an exhausted Classicism to nature- rhapsodies and descriptions. In the hands of his disciples it became the cult of exotic description and of la couleur locale. ' Haller's poem on the Alps, in German, was the first important instance before Rousseau of interest in the poetry and sentiment of the Swiss mountains. CHAPTER X DIDEROT AND THE ENCYCLOPEDIA DENIS DIDEROT was born at Langres in 1713, of a good tradesman's family, which for many generations had been engaged in the manufacture of cutlery. His father was a kind and loving man who saw to his son's education, but was grieved when the young man refused to take up a definite pro- fession instead of becoming a man of letters, and turned him adrift. For many years Diderot suffered great poverty, but he was of a sanguine temperament, and even married in 1743, though in no condition to support a wife. Unfortunately the marriage was not happy and Diderot was not a faithful husband. In 1749 he underwent a three months' imprisonment at Vincennes because of a case of feminine^ spite, on the ground of the irre- ligion of his writings, particularly the Lettre sur les aveugles. In this Diderot does advance from deism to atheism, and ex- presses views which he puts in the mouth of an English professor of Cambridge, Sanderson, who was blind, and whom Diderot makes to argue on the basis of his own blindness against God and final causes. The most important event of Diderot's life, in that it consumed his best years, was the editorship of the Encyclopedia. At one period (1773) he made a trip to St. Petersburg, invited there by the Empress Catherine, who had been extremely generous to him and had at one time, to help him, bought his library, leaving it in his possession and appoint- ing him librarian with a salary. On his return from Russia he made a stay at The Hague. He died in 1784. Diderot was a man of extraordinary diversity of genius. His brain was always seeing and foreseeing relations, reaching ahead of his contemporaries and suggesting theories, which he often 536 DIDEROT AND THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 537 did not take the trouble to develop himself, but wherein later generations have corroborated him. His versatility, as often happens, stood in his way and made him ready to see all sides of a question or to pass from one to another before he had exhausted each topic.^ To the editorship of the Encyclopedia and to the composition of romances, satires, plays, and literary or artistic criticism Diderot added important contributions to the growth of philosophy, and in many respects anticipated the modern theory of evolution. By a not uncommon fate, however, Diderot's works most read today are writings which he looked upon as relatively mere trifles, or which were not actually published by him. As the Encyclopedia shows, Diderot in his cosmology does away with any intervention of revealed religion: Christianity is atrocious in its dogmas, preposterous in its sects and schisms, gloomy in its ceremonies. Rationalism, the freedom of reason- ing, is the only principle to be used in spite of its fallibility, and though it may lead to scepticism and atheism. In fact, the first step towards true philosophy is incredulity. The value of meta- physics is thus destroyed, and philosophy becomes a natural science or a study of the higher laws of physics from which uni- versal principles may be generalised. Knowledge is relative to our intelligence, man rationalises on the data of science, and philosophy is a form of what will later be called positivism, a materialism which refrains from theorising upon the ultimately unknown. Final causes, so dear to the older philosophers, and man at the centre of a universe leading up to him, are banished; man is considered as a stage in a continuous nature made up of facts, by synthesis based on the question How and not Why. 'Like Voltaire (cf. p. 510), Diderot was something of a weathercock: "Les habitants de mon pays ont beaucoup d'esprit, trop de vivacitd, une inconstance de girouette. ... La t^te d'un Langrois est comme un coq d'eglise en haut d'un clocher, elle n'est jamais fixe dans un point. . . . Pour moi, je suis bien de mon pays." Quoted by Caro, La Fin du dix- huitieme sihde. 538 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Now nature is in a constant change under the influence of circum- stances, a modifying environment which varies the organs. Here Diderot expresses views which are in one way as old as the flux of Heraclitus, but which are more familiar as set forth in Darwinism. He does it, moreover, before Lamarck, so often mentioned as the precursor of modern theorists on the trans- formation of the species. As a man of letters, Diderot's chief merit rests today on his Salons, his chief popularity on his stories. In the Salons he invented a new method of art criticism. In 1759 he began writing about the paintings in the public exhibition held either annually or every two years. His method was to judge, not by canons of taste, but by interpretation, and though he never had the opportunity of Italian travel and consequent training in the observation of masterpieces, though his experience was confined to a school of trifling and of prettiness, no one was better able than he to explain the sentimental pictorial moralising of Greuze, the domesticity of Chardin or find fault with the insincerity of Boucher. No one excelled him in understanding the literary meaning of a picture. A dialogue called le Neveu de Rameau is now one of Diderot's most quoted works, though its true text was not known until many years after his death. It is a dialogue between Diderot and the nephew of the composer Rameau, a good-for-nothing parasite, the example of cold-blooded selfishness and corruption, but giving forth constant flashes of common-sense. At the same time it contains elements of deep satire of the various literary opponents of the Encyclopedists, and, indeed, of human nature in general. Jacques le fataliste et son maitre is an instance of the Anglo- mania of Diderot. It is the result of Laurence Sterne and his Tristram Shandy, but without the successful humor of the Engr lish writer and with almost greater obscenity. The narrative, full of digressions and of general diffuseness, tells of the journey of Jacques and his master, with their conversations. One or DIDEROT AND THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 539 two episodes have snap, such as the story of Mme de la Pom- meraye and the marquis d'Arcis and her vengeance on him for his faithlessness, by making him wed a worthless woman, but most of the work is ponderous and gross, an overdoing of Sterne; Jacques and his master represent Corporal Trim and Toby. Jacques and his master have hobby-horses like Uncle Toby, and Jacques's reiterated "II etait ecrit la-haut" is an imitation of Trim's justification by King William. La Religieuse is inspired by Richardson, though he would have been shocked by it. It is a novel told in letters of a young girl, Suzanne Simonin, of ille- gitimate birth and thrust into a convent, who, anxious to escape from her prison, relates to a kind benefactor, the marquis de Croismare, the story of her persecutions by the depraved abbess. The frank descriptions of vice have caused the book to be usually classed among obscene works, and it has but little value. By a supercherie on the part of Diderot and some fellow-conspirators the letters were palmed off as genuine on the nobleman to whom they were addressed. The other significant works of Diderot are, besides his cor- respondence particularly with Mile Volland, the Eniretien avec d'Alembert, the Reve de d'Alembert, the refutation of Helvetius's book on man, and the Bijoux indiscrets, an obscene tale. Indeed, Diderot's imaginative writings were unbridled in their obscen- ity, just as his plays weary by their overladen sentiment and oppressive morality. Diderot is important, then, in French literature as one of the universal geniuses, to be compared with Voltaire for his multi- farious interests, to be placed above Voltaire for his power of synthesis, but is inferior in grace of style, in wit, in many of the qualities which cause books to be read after the author's death. Diderot's most ambitious efforts were connected with the prog- ress of sciences destined to advance still further beyond his stage. His other writings were, in many cases, neglected and published only years after his death. The scientific movement of the eighteenth century is illus- S40 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE trated by the history of the Encyclopedia and of its collaborators. The age was, in France, pre-eminently one of scientific progress, when the limits of the intellectual world were extended and the methods by which the conclusions were reached were all trans- formed. Yet, obviously the germs of the new tendencies are to be found in the previous period. The seventeenth-century Cartesianism, with its generalisation from mathematical principles, had led to a cosmology based on mechanics. In the eighteenth century the influence of New- ton's philosophy gave vogue to new theories of observation in the place of hypothesis. The attitude of thought in the seven- teenth century had been a static one: the universe was con- ceived as a completed whole of which reason has worked out a knowledge. The world was a kingdom guided by the enlight- ened despotism of a monarchical deity. Literature was an effort to approach certain definite models, according to distinctly enunciated rules. In the eighteenth century the centre of intellectual gravity is displaced. A new world is conceived of, in which there is free- dom from God's laws, if not denial of him, and at the same time it is felt that thought is not in a stationary condition, but in one of continuous change towards an ultimate goal of perfection, it may be indefinitely remote, but towards which the human mind advances as science progresses. Obviously the chief element of intellectual interest has been transferred from art to science. Perfection lies, not in a past model of completed excellence giving aesthetic pleasure, but in the coming perfection of a grow- ing structure. Of this movement the Encyclopedia is the repre- sentative and it finds expression in rebellion against dogma and the intolerance of the church, in cultivation of the liberties and rights of man, his senses, his reason. When kept within the bounds of moral action or under the guidance of standards of righteousness, such a movement can only be salutary; un- fortunately, in divorcing religion and morality, the common underlying principles are apt to be forgotten. DIDEROT AND THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 541' The Encyclopedia was planned at a time when English in- fluences were omnipotent in France, and was itself based upon an English work. Consequently the work is tinged with the influence of English thinkers; at any rate in scientific method. In pure thought Bayle was the ancestor of both Frenchmen and Englishmen.' But it was Bacon who looked upon nature as something to be investigated, not in and for itself, but to make it serve as a tool. Therefore, though the Encyclopedists work with reason as Descartes did, yet they use it rather as Bacon, and try to classify the sciences, discarding errors. Other Englishmen, however, besides Bacon, contributed to the development of the scientific spirit and method of the Encyclopedia: Hobbes em- phasised the part that the state bears in the organisation of life; Locke taught the French to reject innate ideas and become historians of the human mind empirically considered, explaining ideas as emanating from the senses, besides preaching tolera- tion; Newton, finally, discarded the physics of Descartes and enunciated the theory of gravitation which helped do away with the vortices of Cartesianism. The French Encyclopedic was a fit successor to the great sur- veys of learning which had characterised another great encyclo- pedic age in the thirteenth century, of which the Speculum of Vincent de Beauvais is one of the chief examples in France. In 1728 the Englishman, Ephraim Chambers, published a work in two volumes called "A Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences." This work, though on a small scale and entirely compiled by Chambers himself, met with great success. About fifteen years later Mills, an Englishman, and Sellius, a German, planned its translation into French and entered into negotiations with the French bookseller Le Breton. The pro- ject was complicated by a quarrel over the privilege of publica- tion, and before this was settled one of the translators was dead and the other had given up the task. Le Breton carried the work to one abbe Gua de Malves and then to Diderot. The '542 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE latter, with his universality of interests, welcomed the work but persuaded Le Breton to enlarge its scope tremendously, and in 1746, with the co-operation of other Paris booksellers, a new encyclopedia of knowledge was planned on a large scale, under the editorship of Diderot. He secured the protection of Chan- cellor Daguesseau and the assistance of d'Alembert, who wrote the famous Discours preliminaire. The first volume appeared in 1751, and for years the publication went on under the guidance of Diderot, in spite of constant difficulties, some due to jealousy, some to the concrete obstacles of a gigantic task of bookmaking. The Jesuits were angered by its religious views and they were irritated by this new competitor to a dictionary of their own, the Dictionnaire de Trevoux. The Jansenists, once the oppo- nents of oppression, not to be outdone by their rivals, also turned against Diderot and persecuted his friend the abbe de Prades, who was suspected of having written the theological articles. In 1752 the first two volumes were by royal decree suppressed, though this interdict was soon removed. Volume after volume was now issued in almost yearly succession, in spite of the reactionaries. The excitement was increased by d'Alembert's article on Geneva in the seventh volume, in which he praised the Protestant clergy to the detriment of the Jesuits and the Jansenists at home, and by the contemporary publication in 1758 of Helvetius's materialistic work De I' esprit, which was unjustly coupled with the Encyclopedie. Finally, Rousseau's Lettre a d'Alembert was a violent rejoinder to the view on the drama set forth in the article on Geneva. Thus hostility was growing up among those who represented, or ought to have represented, the same liberalising tendency. Moreover d'Alembert fell ill and, discouraged, gave up his col- laboration, so that Diderot was obliged to continue the general editorship unaided for seven years longer, writing articles, re- modelling those of others, directing the compositors and the- engravers of the plates. Finally a last blow was struck him by his own publisher, who, after Diderot had prepared the ten DIDEROT AND THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 543 concluding volumes which were to be put forth in a single issue, went through the proofs without his knowledge and mutilated all the articles which seemed likely to offend the authorities. In this way much of the material was, in Diderot's opinion, utterly ruined and his interest in the work destroyed. However, the last volume of letter-press appeared in 1765 and the volumes of plates a few years later, in 1772, a total of twenty-eight volumes. To Diderot, then, more than to anybody else is due the credit for bringing to a conclusion this gigantic task. But he had assistants in perhaps fifty or sixty contributors, a "societe de gens de lettres" as they called themselves, who wrote one or numerous articles and who ranged in reputation from fame to obscurity. Montesquieu, though he contributed personally only one article, on taste, is the source of inspiration for most of those dealing with institutions; Voltaire was a prolific writer for a period after 1755; Rousseau was in sympathy with the work until his quarrel with Diderot and his polemic with d'Alem- bert and wrote on music; Marmontel's views on literature took the place of Boileau's theories; Buff on and Turgot assisted; and a more obscure but no less meritorious helper, the chevalier de Jaucourt, toiled as unremittingly as Diderot himself at all kinds of miscellaneous and uninteresting but necessary hackwork, and was overcome with grief when the great labor was done. The Encyclopedia had a twofold purpose, one object being perhaps more consciously felt than the other by the editors themselves. It was, in the first place, a vast dictionary of the arts and sciences, in which the whole body of human learning was described. Secondly, it was, in spite of incoherence and inconsistencies of fact, the mouthpiece of the philosophy which replaced the old metaphysics by the new psychology of a politi- cal and social entity. It displaced the older theories of the reasoning soul that were based upon logical conceptions and explained the mysteries of matter by intuitions; it interpreted mind by matter and went no further in dogmatic affirmation S44 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE than experience justifies; it did away with externally imposed religion and thus led the way, in its ultimate logical conclusions, to pure materialism. In the chief Encyclopedists themselves things did not go so far, and their attention was directed rather to the defects of civilisation in their own age. For that reason the articles of the Encyclopedia are often destructive criticisms of the faults of society, the abuses of government, and a plea for more enlightened ideas of institutions based on toleration, sympathy, and the various manifestations of justice. Positive sciences, such as physics and the practical applications of mathe- matics, were esteemed as conducive to social well-being; dog- matic theology was to be replaced by a religion of humanity. The Encyclopedia was preceded by a prospectus and accom- panied in 1751 by d'Alembert's famous Discours preliminaire, containing an exposition of the order in which the various branches of human knowledge arose and the history of the prog- ress of learning in modern times. It was an attempt to give a synthesis of the field of knowledge. The defect was in being based on as definite assumptions as those of Cartesian philos- ophy, and in proceeding by a rationalism as artificial as any. According to the Discours preliminaire the origin of knowledge is in the senses; from sensation come ideas. We learn, firstly, our own existence and then the existence of external things, including the body, which is so intimately connected with us that we realise it by a,n irresistible feeling. Yet d'Alembert experiences the same difficulty that all philosophers have in distinguishing ego and non-ego and in differentiating between phenomenon and noumenon. Once the elements of our dualism are linked, d'Alembert is able to pass from theory on the origin of knowledge to its prac- tical application. Our acquaintance of external things rests on their utility or harmfulness. By such means arise relations between men, the use of language, the organisation of society with its injustice, and by antithesis justice and the aspirations of the spiritual as opposed to the material life. By the same DIDEROT AND THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 545 principle of utility have come applied and pure sciences, such as agriculture and medicine on the one hand, mathematics on the other. In this manner d'Alembert constructs the realm of knowledge, classifying the sciences by the faculties of the mind which they bring into play. Having set forth the logical connection of the divisions of learning, the author gives a historical survey of their growth and progress as a preparation for the specific articles of the dictionary. So far as literature is concerned, with the exception of some articles on art, philosophy, and aesthetics, the Encyclopedia is worthless. So far as science goes, all its information has been superseded by the progress of that knowledge to which it was such a potent aid. Its value in its own time was, however, tremendous, and it was of assistance in pointing out defects in the social organisation and criminal legislation of the country, and in showing the way to the indefinite perfectibility which was a fundamental tenet of its philosophy. Social inequality, unfair privilege, judicial incompetence, superstition, all these were vices which the Encyclopedists laid bare under the knife of reason, and their attacks helped pave the way for the Revolu- tion. They were never free from the defect of exaggerating the power of reason to explain, even in matters where the imagi- nation rightfully plays a part. But the Encyclopedists are the best exponents of their age and of its tendency to scientific improvement. CHAPTER XI THE PHILOSOPHES AND THEIR FOLLOWERS THE philosophes, the "Cacouacs" as Moreau called them, were the army of thinkers whose views were expressed as a rule by the Encyclopedia. They were a miscellaneous set not necessarily philosophers, without essential connection or mutual coherency, who set forth their ideas' either in salons such as those of Mme Geoflrin, Mile de Lespinasse, Mme d'Epinay, and the baron d'Holbach, or in their indiscriminate technical and non- technical writings. They were the intellectual revolutionaries whose theories made more easy the later social and political cataclysm. They were the foes of tradition and routine, voicing their opinions with surprising independence and outspokenness, for they came at a time when dissensions of all kinds had weak- ened the prestige of royalty and of religion. Their desire was to replace the rule of monarchy by that of humanity and the priesthood of God by that of science. The two whose influ- ence has been most far-reaching in its effect on later thinkers were Condillac and Helvetius, the former as a semi-metaphy- sician and a psychologist, the latter as a political moralist and sociologist. The abbe Bonnot de Condillac (17 15-1780) was a voluminous writer on various topics, some of his works having been composed for the instruction of his pupil Ferdinand of Parma, the grandson of Queen Marie Leczinska. The most important is the Traite des sensations. Condillac is significant for his theories on the origin and growth of ideas, derived by him from transformed sensation, a transformation which he endeavored to illustrate. He tried to reduce the human understanding to a single principle, 546 THE PHILOSOPHES AND THEIR FOLLOWERS 547 that of perception, or sensation made conscious by attention. Condillac's famous illustration is the comparison of man to a statue in which sensations should be successively awakened: smell, hearing, taste, touch, sight. He neglected to realise that in human beings sensations are simultaneous. Condillac was influenced by Locke, though he pushed Locke's theories still far- ther, and, as a mathematician, he applied the exact methods of Descartes. Condillac, it is plain, was a leader of the sensationalists, a school which tends towards an anti-religious attitude, because the need of a divine cause is diminished. He was himself a priest and, in general feeling, a theist, and many of his original followers conceived themselves orthodox. But, as his system won success, it influenced thinkers who went farther than he was willing to go; the tendencies of Condillac are to be found, not only among many of the Encyclopedist school, but in Helvetius, in Condorcet and the Ideologists, and in the nineteenth-century scientific positivists, whether in France or in England. Claude-Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771), of German descent, was farmer-general of taxes and chamberlain of the queen, instead of physician as his ancestors had been. He was a well- to-do epicurean man of the world, who aspired to literary renown; so, after dabbling in poetry, he gave up his position and spent seven years in the composition of his work De I'esprit. This was a new and popular interpretation of character and of morals, full of anecdotes, turning political morals into a form of experimental physics, and entirely free from any intervention of religion. The book created great excitement and was publicly condemned, inasmuch as the author's attacks on despotism seemed to savor of Use-majesty, and the ethics of self-interest shocked the sentimental altruists of the type of Rousseau. Even Diderot argued against Helvetius and tried to hold his Encyclopedic skirts free from contamination. Helvetius, the political moralist, owed something to the psy- chologist Condillac, deriving, like him, ideas from sensation; 548 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE much to their common master Locke, both psychologist and moraUst; and more or less to Hobbes, La Rochefoucauld, and Fontenelle. These names point to a system of egoism and, in- deed, Helvetius's ethics are based on self-interest, and political morals rest on the needs of the general welfare. He thus anticipates modern utilitarianism: Beccaria and Bentham were to a great degree directly indebted to him. But in his own day Helvetius aroused bitter hostility by maintaining that the motives of action rest entirely on self-gratification and pleasure. All virtue, altruism, beneficence, come from selfishness. Helvetius wrote also a posthumous work, De I'homme, which carried on the theories of De I'esprit and studied man in the social environment. He maintained that character is influenced by external circumstances; consequently he is led to deal with legislation and education. He goes far enough as a sensation- alist to contend that the five senses are equal in men at birth, and that all differences depend on outer forces which may attract or deter them; hence the all-importance of training. Thus Helvetius is a political moralist, whose altruism rests on an anti-idealistic foundation. As such he not only leads to the English utilitarianism of Mill, but he was in his own country the precursor of the Ideologists, who drew much of their inspira- tion from his works and from discussions in the salon of Mme Helvetius. Helvetius has a more important place than the ■ neglect of his writings seems to imply in the intellectual ancestry of modem French political reformers and social theorists, as the precursor of systems which, since Comte, have been called positivist sociologies. Julien Offray de la Mettrie (1709^1751), a physician, was one of the first materialists and is known by his theory of the Homme- machine. He held that the dualism of mind and body is to be explained from the side of the machine, of which feeling and intellect are but the result. This is a materialistic version of the old scholastic and Aristotelian theories that the soul is the THE PHILOSOPHES AND THEIR FOLLOWERS 549 "form" of the body. The radicalism of La Mettrie's views brought upon him the most violent abuse. The abbe Guillaume-Frangois Raynal (17 13-1796) published, only a few years before the Revolution, an Histoire philosophique et politique des etablissements et du commerce des Europeens dans les Deux-Indes, which undertook to show that the times were out of joint, as well as how to set them right. It was full of miscellaneous and nondescript information, and followed the fashion in vogue of rationalising legends of history and mythol- ogy into historical human actions. Though one of the immedi- ate precursors of the revolutionary spirit, he was terrified at the steps then taken, made enemies for himself, and died in poverty. The baron Paul-Henri-Thiry d'Holbach (1723-1789) was a philosopher of German birth, rich, clever, and worldly, who gave expression to as violent a form of atheism as can be imagined. His most important work, the Systeme de la nature, published in 1770, was too much even for Voltaire and won for its author in later times the name of the "Marat of religion." It is a frank exposition of materialistic views, a Naturalism which was to replace current religion and cosmology. Science is derived from experience, matter lasting from eternity is in constant motion, and acts by laws which we call Chance only when we are not sufficiently acquainted with them. Man is part of the world-mechanism and there is no such thing as free will. The soul disappears when the body dies as a clock ceases to strike when it is broken. God is merely a superficial device of an ignorant and childish theology. An additional feature of the Systems de la nature was the author's violent assault upon political government, its injustice and cruelty, its hostility to nature. Charles Pineau Duclos (1704-1772), who began his career by indecent writings and remained indecent in character all his life, became none the less life-secretary of the Academy, histori- ographer of France, and a general friend of men of importance, yet with sufficient originality and independence to give him a value of his own, even greater than that of his printed books. 550 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE His chief works were an Histoire de Louis XI and the Considera- tions sur les moeurs de ce siecle, which were called considerations on manners by one who had spent his life in a cafe, with the Memoires secrets sur les regnes de Louis XIV et de Louis XV. D'Alembert was the illegitimate son of Mme de Tencin/ abandoned by her on the steps of the church of Saint- Jean- Lerond soon after his birth in 171 7. Left to public charity he was baptised Jean-Baptiste Lerond and brought up by foster parents, though his father, the chevalier Destouches, watched over him and procured his admission to the College Mazarin. The source of his name d'Alembert is not known. He was a learned and retiring scholar, fond, above all, of mathematics and natural philosophy. He held high distinctions in learning as member of the Academy of Sciences, as successor of Duclos to the life-secretaryship of the French Academy, as friend of Frederick the Great and of Catherine of Russia. His chief writings, apart from his contributions to the Encyclopedic and his eulogies of deceased academicians, were scientific, on refrac- tion, on integral calculus, on the winds. He was the friend of Mme du Deffand, Mme Geoflrin, and Mile de Lespinasse. This last woman he loved for many years and grieved pathetically for her death. He died in 1783. Jean-Frangois Marmontel (1723-1799) was educated for the priesthood and was really the abbe de Marmontel, but he grew too liberal and became a professional writer and journalist and editor of the Mercure. When the Revolution broke out he seemed too moderate and was denounced by Marat. He wrote numerous plays, valuable memoirs, many articles for the Encyclopedia published as the Elements de litterature, pseudo- historical romances such as Belisaire and les Incas, and Contes moraux. Marmontel is the representative of the Encyclope- dists in literature and in popular morals. Like so many of them he believes in the perfectibility of human nature and teaches its improvement by ethical instructions. His romances contain ' Cf. p. 462. THE PHILOSOPHES AND THEIR FOLLOWERS 5^1 dissertations on civilisations and manners, immersed in an artificial narrative-setting, and advocating liberalism in thought and religion and hostility to fanaticism. The stories are told in a mellifluous, at times semi-rhythmic and soporific prose and present almost every conceivable misconception as to the meanings and motives of laws and customs. The baron Friedrich-Melchior Grimm (17 23-1 807) was a Gallicised German who became so much at home in his new language as to belong to French literature. He was the friend of Diderot, first the friend and then the foe of Rousseau. He is best known for his Correspondance litteraire, covering a period of a great many years, and consisting of periodical reports on the literary, philosophical, and critical events in France. It was sent to foreign rulers desirous of knowing what was happening in the intellectual world, especially the duke of Gotha, whose minister at Paris Grimm was. The abbe Andre Morellet (i 727-1819) was a free lance of the Encyclopedists and a friend of Voltaire, who called him the abbe Mords-les ("bite them")- None of his numberless writ- ings is worth recalling today, but he was in his own time an invaluable recruit of the philosophes. There were several thinkers whose similar theories tended to make them seem to their contemporaries one group having a single aim. These were the Economists, often called the Physio- crats, from the term Physiocratie devised by one of them, Dupont de Nemours. The founder of the school was the doctor Quesnay, physician to Mme de Pompadour. His chief tenet was that wealth is all derived from the soil, for commerce and manufactures are sterile and merely transport or transform products without increasing the true riches of a nation. Therefore agriculture should bear the burden of taxation, but it should receive every encouragement as the great source of prosperity to the state. Quesnay wanted an alliance of the monarchy and the peasant classes. The enfant terrible of the group was the marquis de Mirabeau, "I'ami des hommes," father of the orator, rich in 552 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE incoherent humanitarianism, who pleaded for a greater interest in the cultivation of the soil on the part of the nobility. Quesnay's fellow-economist Gournay is responsible for the phrase so much used by later economists, "laissez faire, laissez passer"; for this school was one of individualists who wished to do away with restrictions upon competition and rivalry, and judged that in absolute liberty only can prosperity be built up. Gournay was not so decided as Quesnay in placing agriculture above manu- factures as the source of wealth, and advocated the development of commerce and trade. Many of these thinkers, like Quesnay, believed in a strong government, but that was because they did not trust the wisdom of parliaments and felt that a benevolent despotism could best bring about the necessary improvements. Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations was deeply influenced by the Physiocrats. The greatest of the Economists was Jacques Turgot (1727- 1781), one of the best men of all times. He was educated for the priesthood, but feeling that it would be contrary to his conscience to continue that career, he turned from it and, after holding some legal functions, chiefly as mattre des requetes, he was in 1761 sent as intendant to the district of Limoges. There for thirteen years he ruled the finances with the greatest wisdom and benevolence. In 1774 he became minister of the new king Louis XVI and tried to put his theories into practice, seeking to improve the financial condition of the government by cutting down expenses. But Turgot had many enemies, chief among whom were the comte de Provence and the queen, whose thought- less extravagances he opposed; he was also too rigid in applying his theories and suffered from bad health. He retired in disgrace and was replaced by a reactionary regime, but not until he had proved that he desired the regeneration of France. Among the important measures, wise or not, of his rule were the abroga- tion of the corn laws, the suppression of the con&e or obligation to manual labor due to the state, the abolition of the jurandes and maitrises or closed guilds and corporations of master-arti- THE PHILOSOPHES AND THEIR FOLLOWERS 553 sans. Thus Turgot gave to France liberty of labor, though he carried the principle of individualism so far as to prohibit the right of association of any kind to employers and workmen. One of Turgot's earliest works was an address as prior at the Sorbonne, Sur Us progres successifs de I'esprit humain, in which he formulates laws of the philosophy of society and the mutual interdependence of its successive ages. In this work he pre- dicted, a generation before the event, the secession of the American colonies. Other important writings were his Lettres sur la tolerance, the Memoire sur les prets a I'interet et sur Vusure, and the Reflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses. The doctrines of the Physiocrats have perhaps their best literary expression in Condorcet's Esquisse d'un tableau kisto- rique des progres de I'esprit humain. The marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794) was an instance of those who, brought up under religious influence, react against it to the extent of virulent hostility. He was a noted mathematician, an admirer and disciple of Voltaire, a follower of Montesquieu's political theories, a friend of Turgot. In the days of the Revolution he ardently tried to lead humanity to a greater degree of happiness. But he was a student rather than a tribune, he lacked the demagogue's art of leadership, and when the Jacobins passed beyond him he was proscribed and obliged to flee. For months he hid in the house of a kindly woman in Paris; then, thinking he had trespassed too long on her kindness, he escaped from her home, was captured by his enemies, and, it is surmised, poisoned him- self to avoid a worse fate. During the months of enforced seclusion, knowing that his enemies were hunting him to put him to death, Condorcet, like Boethius at work on the Consolation of Philosophy, spent his time in writing his survey of the perfectibility of the human race. Full of a fervent belief in the amelioration of mankind, he carried the teachings of the Economists, theoretical as with Quesnay or practical as with Turgot, into the sphere of politics and morals. He took the method of Montesquieu and the 554 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE conception of Turgot on human progress and threw the idea into futurity, maintaining that even periods of cruelty and barbarism are but incidental and not total obstacles in the onward progress. The advance which mankind was to make, according to Con- dorcet, was to be grouped under three heads: the destruction of inequality among men, the advance of equality in a given people, the amelioration of man himself. Thus Condorcet bears a great name among the priests of humanity. Many other leaders of the French Revolution were as convinced as he of the perfectibility of human nature, and what seem to us the atrocious crimes of the Terror were to the Jacobins merely a Caesarian operation for the safe delivery of the millennium. The abbe de Mably (i 709-1 785), an elder brother of Condillac, was the socialist among the philosophes, to many of whom he was hostile. The Economists, as individualists and believers in property, were diametrically opposed to him. His fondness for antiquity and his idealisation of ancient Greece and Rome made him see better times in the past than in the future. He was a prophet of woe, not only to his own country, but to the new-born American republic. Mably's theories varied. In his earlier writings, like the Parallele des Romains et des Frangais, he believes in a strong monarchy. Later he is the interpreter of socialistic theories ultimately drawn from Plato's Republic and Laws, and, perhaps unconsciously and much to Rousseau's disgust, influenced by that writer's views. In such works as the Entretiens de Phocion and De la legislation he is the partisan of justice, of equality, advocates the socialistic state, the community of wealth, and would like to see the modern world brought back to the condition of ancient Sparta, or of Sparta as he interprets it. In spite of the impracticability of Mably's views he became one of the deities of certain revolutionists, particularly in the Jacobin party, and wild demagogues like Marat mouthed the humanitarian platitudes of Mably. Moreover, he and his THE PHILOSOPHES AND THEIR FOLLOWERS 555 fellow-socialist Morelly were the inspirers of Babouvism, the doctrines of Francois-Noel Babeuf (Gracchus Babeuf), who tried, even after the Thermidorean reaction, to carry to logical conclusions the political, more than economic, socialism of Robespierre. His conspiracy to bring about the establishment of a communistic republic, based on an agrarian law like that of Caius Gracchus and the equal distribution of land, resulted in his execution in 1796. The culmination of eighteenth-century philosophism may be seen in the almost forgotten, yet characteristic figure of Volney (1757-1820). His family name was Chassebceuf, but his father, objecting to its bucolic coimotation, called his son Boisgirais, and the latter afterwards took the name of Volney. He travelled for at least three years in the Orient, through Egypt and Syria, studying the past and the present, and publishing the results in his Voyage en Egypte et en Syrie. He took part in the political proceedings of the early Revolution, and in 1791 published the Ruines, ou Meditations sur les revolutions des empires. At the moment when old France was dying and a new world was springing up, this work seemed to contain the sum of reflections upon the passage of glory and the evanescence of power. Dis- heartened at the excesses of the Terror, Volney went to America for a time, but was disappointed in the new republic. Returning to France he grew weary of the struggle and settled down as senator and count of the Empire, opposing only moderately the ideas of Napoleon. Volney's chief works were the Ruines and the Catechisme du citoyen franqais. The former, permeated with much of the sentimental contemplation of ruins dear to the romantic tem- perament, aims, however, not merely at passive meditation, but at drawing from the past such lessons as may profit mankind in its progress towards happiness. He finds that the secret of human misfortunes lies in man's ignorance and selfishness, by which he has abandoned natural religion. A state falls into decay when its laws are vicious and its government corrupt, or 556 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE when despotism deprives citizens of their liberty and the priestly- impostors of religion deceive them by their falsehoods. But, looking forward into the future, Volney foresees the advent of perfect justice, when liberty and equality shall reign, as they were to have done in the Revolution. Thus Volney has all the humanitarian aspirations of the philosophes, the belief of many of them in an ultimate regenera- tion, their hostility to priests as hypocritical agents of lying relig- ions, their biassed interpretations of the facts of history and their a priori generalisations as to the moral order in the future. Ardent, generous, and self-sacrificing to the point of heroism as some of them were, yet their theories, by a curious contrast, are often based on materialistic rather than idealistic foundations, and the extent of altruism to which most of them go is to explain virtue as a form of enlightened self-love. ^ •For a picturesque sketch of an imaginary follower of the philosophes in fiction, cf. the character of M. de Lessay in Anatole France's Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard. CHAPTER XII BUFFON AND SAINT-PIERRE GEORGES-LOUIS LECLERC (i 707-1 788), later called comte de Buffon after an estate inherited by the family, was a Burgundian. With the exception of some short periods spent in European travel, his life centred entirely about his studies at his home at Montbard and his duties as director of the Jardin du Roi or Jardin des Plantes in Paris. He devoted him- self to his work with the concentration of a Gibbon or sought recreation at the salon of Mme Necker. His literary produc- tion consisted of the enormous Histoire naturelle, the volumes of which stretched from 1 749 to the time of his death and included such subjects as the Theorie de la terre, the Histoire naturelle de Vhomme, the Quadrupedes, the Oiseaux, the Mineraux, and later the Efoques de la nature. To this must be added the famous Discours sur le style, his address upon admission to the Academy. Buffon had various collaborators, particularly Gueneau de Montbeillard, Daubenton, and the abbe Bexon, upon whom he impressed his ideas and style. Buffon is the great naturalist and philosopher of nature in the eighteenth century; but, quite in the spirit of the age, he refuses to divorce science from the art of expression. For that reason he has his place among the stylists and men of letters of his time. His true position is that of a literary man trying to write entertainingly, and as accurately as he knew how, on nature. He never neglected what seemed to him the best presentation of his material, and in view of its importance and dignity he adopted a rather ponderous method of expression. But the story of his composing only in full costume with lace cuffs is merely a jest, 557 5S8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE and Bufion was, for his day, a thoroughly sound and painstaking student of the natural sciences. BufEon tried to steer his course midway between preconceived ideas and observation. He had behind him centuries of scholar- ship, during which the tendency had been to classify by tradition, or by artificial genera dependent on theories of final causes or the perfectibility of man. Being by nature rather the literary man working at natural history than the empirical observer, he often ventures upon conclusions more picturesque than scien- tific, in whici the imagination outran what the facts warranted. Yet Buffon, it must be repeated, was a painstaking student, and his descriptions, accurate or not, bring vivid pictures before the eyes of the layman reading about nature, or portray the unity of plan which Bufion saw extending from man through beasts to inanimate things. In his general views on the world he could sympathise both with the hypotheses of Descartes and the scientific method of Newton, whom he translated, or the psychol- ogy of Locke. Buffon was a man of science so vastly superior to his predeces- sors, and he hinted at so many ideas which others developed, that his name may still be respected by naturalists, even though his works be valueless. To the student of literature he is impor- tant because of his ideas on style and his examples of it in his descriptions of members of individual species. For it is there he best illustrates the "lace-cuff" attitude and supplies what seem to be almost seventeenth-century "characters" or "portraits" applied to the beasts. Thus the lion "a la figure imposante, le regard assure, la demarche fiere, la voix terrible; sa taille n'est point excessive comme celle de I'elephant ou du rhinoceros; elle n'est ni lourde, comme celle de I'hyene ou de Fours, ni trop allongee, ni deformee par des inegalites, comme celle du chameau; mais elle est, au contraire, si bien prise et si bien proportionn6e, que le corps du lion parait etre le modele de la force jointe a I'agilite." This is not unlike La Rochefoucauld on himself: "Je suis d'une taille mediocre, libre et bien proportionn^e. BUFPON AND SAINT-PIERRE 559 J'ai le teint brun, mais assez uni ; le front eleve et d'une raison- nable grandeur; les yeux noirs, petits et enfonces, et les sour- cils noirs et epais, mais bien tournes. . . . J'ai quelque chose de chagrin et de fier dans la mine : cela fait croire a la plupart des gens que je suis meprisant, quoique je ne le sois point du tout." Sometimes Buffon's descriptions verge on pointes and preci- osity of expression. Thus he writes on the goose: Independamment de la bonne qualite de sa chair et de sa graisse, dent aucun autre oiseau n'est plus abondamment pourvu, Toie nous fournit cette plume delicate sur laquelle la mollesse se plait a reposer, et cette autre plume, instrument de nos pensees, et avec laquelle nous ecrivons id son eloge. Buffon's writing most valued today is his speech upon elec- tion to the Academy, generally known as the Discours sur le style, from which is drawn the famous quotation "le style est I'homme meme," often misquoted "le style, c'est I'homme." In this address Buffon argues that the style of a writer is what stamps his work with its value and makes it his own. The thoughts with which he deals may be common property; it is by his style that the author is differentiated from others. Thus the skilful writer's ideas will be duly marshalled in effective array, expressed in dignified and noble style, and properly set in motion through accuracy of tone and richness of coloring. Buffon did much to promote the neo-Classic cult of general terms. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre is today the author of one book alone, yet that was, as so often happens, at first only an incident in his literary career. The author of Paul et Virginie was born at Le Havre in 1737. He was not the only eccentric member of a family which included a crazy brother and a morose and misanthropic sister, in the peculiarities of both of whom he at different moments participated. His nature was pre-eminently romantic: in his youth he browsed over the Lives of the Saints and dreamed of their distant hermitages and Thebaids, no less than of the remoter desert island where Robinson Crusoe dwelt. 560 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE This latter work aroused in the youth a desire to visit the ends of the world, and he took a trip on a relative's vessel to the West Indies, only to return disappointed. His education, when he finally began to take it seriously, was scientific; the result being to warp his poetic visions into a grotesque pseudo-science. He studied engineering and entered military service, but aban- doned it before long. Then his roving disposition and his Utopian schemes led him to Russia and Poland, in which latter country he was jilted by a lady of title, Marie Miesnik, perhaps with more injury to his vanity than to his heart. It was not long before he set off in 1767 on an expedition, nominally to establish a new community in Madagascar; but when Saint-Pierre discovered that its real purpose was slave- trading, he deserted at the ile de France (Mauritius), where he moped and dreamed for many months. However, the journey was of direct literary value to him in his Voyage d Vile de France printed in 1773 when he was thirty-six. Saint-Pierre had now become a rather well-known person, frequenting salons like that of Mile de Lespinasse, or quarrelling with the philosophes, but, above all, falling under the permanent influence of Rousseau. With that writer he had many a trait in common, even to morbid suspicion of his fellow-men and temporary insanity. But his friendship with Rousseau inspired a brief study devoted to the master, and he did more than any one else to transmit Rousseau's influence in pure literature. In 1784 appeared the Ettides de la nature, which brought the author forward again as the opponent of the materialists and as an advocate of faith in an age of irre- ligion. To a later edition of this work Bernardin de Saint-Pierre added the episode of Paul et Virginie, on which his fame now rests. This was soon followed by the Voeux d'un solitaire and the Chaumiere indienne. The author had now entered into glory: he was worshipped by young women, two of whom, two score or more years younger than himself, he successively married; he was appointed to an official post at the Jardin des Plantes, and lectured at the Normal School. Even during the Revolution BUFFON AND SAINT-PIERRE 561 he retained influence. His last important work was the Har- monies de la nature. He died in 1814. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre is not only a disciple of Rousseau, but an ancestor of Romanticism, to which he hands on certain definite characteristics. The love of nature which Rousseau had shown for the scenery of the Alps and the Swiss lakes now manifests itself as an interest in the exotic scenery of the ile de France, with its strange vegetation and unfamiliar birds. When Saint-Pierre was there he spent much of his time in the novel occupation of studying the landscape and taking notes, rather than in devising Utopias as the goal of a constant perfectibility, and in his descriptions he mingles everywhere an undercurrent of sensuous emotion which transforms nature into something vibrating in unison with the writer's and spectator's feelings. He had undergone the influence of Gessner's idyls, with their virtuous spouses, meditative and philosophical old men, and dutiful offspring. He had read Ossian and Captain Cook's travels and had combined the windy resonance of the one and the concreteness of the other into accounts of sonorously named flora strange to the French: the benjoin, the colophane, the mangUer. To Bernardin de Saint-Pierre the deist, all nature gradually assumed, if not an actual anthropomorphism, at any rate an adaptation to the needs of human beings, with an exag- geration of final causes turning the cosmos into an obsequious valet de chambre of man, guided largely by principles of harmo- nies and contrasts. In his later writings, when the actual memories of his travels had become remote, at the same time that the needs of the lecturer had caused him to smear every- thing with a veneer of imitation-science, his interpretations of the beneficence of nature become ludicrous: dogs are in color markedly light or dark, so that they may readily be seen in any part of the house, and fleas are brown, so that they may be distinguished on white stockings. 'Thus Bernardin de Saint- Pierre reads into the universe a poetical interpretation of mechanics, physics, or natural history as full of false analogies 562 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE as the word-formulas of the old astronomy or alchemy. The elephant's big head is in aesthetic contrast with his small tail; on the other hand man has a solar harmony because his face is round like the sun. Saint-Pierre was one of the worst in- stances of the a priori generaliser in the realm of sentimental science. But Saint-Pierre's title to fame rests entirely today on Paul et Virginie. This little work, which has caused as many tears to flow as any story written, is the account of two children brought up according to nature amid the remote landscapes of the lie de France. Men and women in the dirty European towns were captivated by the descriptions of life in a landscape peopled with cardinal birds and parrots, among heavy-colored and perfume-laden flowers, where "amiable" children played and were fed by their mothers on oranges, pomegranates, bananas, dates and pineapples; women, in particular, were touched by the author's emotional sensiblerie, his apostrophes to love and virtue, his dithyrambs on the innocence of a life of nature as opposed to the depravations of society, his threnodies on separa- tion and death. Saint-Pierre's morality is so prurient that his Virginie drowns rather than throw off some of her clothes in a shipwreck; none the less the work was a salutary reaction against the vicious literature of the day. As not unseldom happens, a writer of weak susceptibility to the opposite sex, of a Pecksnififian virtue which made him oppose, as immoral by its cruelty, the phrase suggested to illustrate the word appartenir in the dictionary of the Academy, "II appartient a un pere de punir ses enfants," — such a writer became the mentor of a new generation. His deism was even more indeterminate than that of Rousseau; at the same time, his personal touch, his cult of local color, the luUing flow of his sentences, the aromatic melancholy in which the scenes of his story are placed, helped to mould the literature which was to be transformed into Romanti- cism. By the aid of a long life, wherein age and a partial and biassed biographer enabled the selfishness, fortune-hunting, BUFFON AND SAINT-PIERRE 563 vanity, moroseness, and morbidness to be forgotten, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre became to succeeding generations the advocate of righteousness, the lecturer on morals at the Normal School, and the writer over whose idyl people shed tears of "sensibility." Under the influence of authors such as Saint-Pierre,, Florian, or Berquin people wept as naturally as they ate and drank. CHAPTER XIII EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY THERE is plenty of poetry so-called in the eighteenth century, yet little of it deserves to survive. It was either a drawing-room ornament and weapon for success, a vehicle for smartness or sentimentality, a form of wit in the shape of epigrams, versified stories, and madrigals, or else the means of expounding topics apparently most foreign to poetry, in the form of didactic or descriptive treatises. The vocabu- lary and expression are essentially flat; the rhymes are barely sufficient; the words, except in the odes where certain "Pin- daric" innovations are attempted, are not distinguishable from prose; the topics treated, at any rate in a long poem, would be better placed in a work of erudition. The art of the eighteenth century gives one a good idea of much of the poetry: there were many frills and furbelows, smirks and quirks, but poetry, set forth in dainty books with vignettes and culs-de-lampe, was as untrue to life as the Em- barquement pour Cy there of Watteau. Even the epicureanism of loves and roses was without the passion of the sixteenth- century anacreontic poetry, but belonged to the age of boudoirs and of powder, paint, and patches, of Boucher and Vanloo. The favorite poet of the poets was Ovid, and temples of love or friendship, built in flowery parks overlooking silver lakes, were in the pages of the versifiers the scene of joys quickly fading and soon renewed; for constancy was not the poet's ideal. It was only as the century advanced and people tired of the same- ness of this poetry that sentiinent reappeared here as elsewhere. The cloying virtue of Salomon , Gessner's Theocritean idyls of 564 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY 565 nature in Switzerland and Germany had their effect. There came, too, melancholy, a counterpart of the tearfulness of the comedie larmoyante. It was encouraged by the brooding litera- ture of England, some of which, was translated, Young's Night Thoughts and James Hervey's Meditations among the Tombs, both translated by Le Tourneur, or Pope's Eloisa to Abelard, adapted by Feutry and Colardeau: In these deep solitudes and awful cells, Where heav'nly-pensive Contemplation dwells, And ever-musing Melancholy reigns. What means this tumult in a vestal's veins? Thus poetry gradually took up and used for years new topics of loneliness, gloom, ruins, deserted monasteries, and the stage- setting of the later "bas romantisme" was gradually evolved. But Romanticism swept away the empty lyrics and Gessner- idyls which had outserved their time, just as it overthrew a decadent tragedy. How little poetry at the beginning of the century meant to some poets themselves may be seen in the theories of a typical man of letters of the early period, Houdar de la Motte (1672- 1731), already mentioned as the friend of Mme de Lambert. He was considered a philosopher and universal wit, and dabbled in all kinds of literature with equally indifferent superiority. The "philosophers" had not yet become specialists in systematic scepticism, and La Motte was merely a clever literary critic and a passable writer. Like the others, he sniffed at authority and tested all doctrines with an assumption of open-mindedness often carried to the point of paradox for the sake of being different. But preachings were apt to be bolder than practice. To poetry La Motte gave little other purpose than to be agreeable, perhaps an antertainment for ladies, though he con- sidered it a vehicle for the manifestations of reason. It had no place for the emotions, inasmuch as the chief element of taste was the critical faculty. Later in life he went so far as to pro- 566 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE claim the futility of poetry and versification and the invraisem- blance of poetical imagery. Carrying further the argument that a tragedy may be in prose and yet be a tragedy, he attacked the tyranny of rhyme in general and composed la Libre eloquence, "ode en prose." In the quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, La Motte naturally sided with the latter. Subservience to the authors of antiquity meant to him abdication of the rights of reason and of the privilege of emulation in the place of servile imitation (La Motte wrote an ode on Emulation), as well as the denial of intellectual progress. Preserving this attitude of the mild literary revolutionist. La Motte argued that poetry should open its arms to the sciences, mental, moral, and natural, as manifestations of reason. As contributions of his own to poetry, apart from some anaemic tragedies, he wrote odes in the style of Boileau, with the same conventions of rhetoric and vocabulary that appeared in all determined imitations of the Pindaric frenzy. He wrote number- less verse-trifles, forms of poesie legere, and eclogues as examples of what he called "elegance champetre": Sur la fin d'un beau jour, rassembl6s sous des h^tres, Des bergers s'amusaient a des discours champStres; Quelques belles entre eux se melant a leur tour, L'entretien fut plus vif et tourna sur I'amour: Tous les aulres sujets et les plus Strangers Conduisent Id. bientdt, et surtout des bergers. La Motte was the author also of fables, artificial and wooden in character, often the personification of abstract terms like Imagination and Memory. But the worst of his productions was probably his remodelling of the Iliad, abridged to twelve cantos and brought down to the taste of the period. La Motte's chief rival and foe was Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1670- 1741), exiled from France for a literary scandal of which he may have been innocent, who soared even more vigorously EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY 567 than his master Boileau in the latter's ode on the capture of Namur. He wrote sacred odes, or profane ones full of mythol- ogy applied to modem events, lyric cantatas, epigrams of which not the least bitter were directed against La Motte. Yet it must be said that Rousseau was probably the best lyric poet of the century before Chenier. Louis Racine (1692 -1763) came out of due time and in many respects he belonged more to the seventeenth century than to the eighteenth. Born as his 'father, the great Racine, was passing from middle to old age, and brought up among the in- fluences of Jansenism and the Oratoire, he remained all his life solemn and unable to mix with his fellow-men. Most of his poetry was too religious for his age, and liis poems la Grace and la Religion, permeated with Saint Augustine, Pascal, Bossuet, and Malebranche, could not be popular. Even the philosophi- cal passages of his verse were to the public taste vitiated by their religion. Louis Racine's lyric poetry, including his sacred odes, was insignificant, but his chief prose writings, the memoirs of his father, the criticisms of his plays, the studies of poetry and the drama, all have value. Jean- Jacques Le Franc, marquis de Pompignan (1709- 1784), had the misfortune to arouse the hostility of Voltaire and was buried beneath the satire of the philosophers. He was, however, the best lyric poet between Jean-Baptigte Rousseau and Chenier. Le Franc de Pompignan wrote Poesies sacrees based on the Psalms, which have dignity and force, some odes, including one on the death of J.-B. Rousseau, and a couple of tragedies, of which Didon alone has been preserved. Clinchamp de Malfilatre (1733- 1767) is best remembered today by Gilbert's line, "La faim mit au tombeau MalfilS,tre ignore," which is, however, not to be taken literally. He was a good writer, a lover of antiquity, but quite devoid of initiative and hence neglected even in his own day. He tried descriptive and classical poetry, including translations, particularly Narcisse dans I'lle de Venus. 568 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE, Nicolas- Joseph-Laurent Gilbert (1751-1780) is usually men- tioned in connection with Malfil^tre, whom he resembled at least in the brevity and misfortunes of his life. He has also often been compared to Chatterton, though the story of his death from privation has no real foundation and is chiefly due to his own famous verses: Au banquet de la vie, infortune convive, J'apparus un jour, et je meurs: Je meurs et sur ma tombe, ou lentement j'arrive, Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs. Gilbert lives by the ode from which these lines are drawn, the whole of which is pervaded with a gentle melancholy that nine- teenth-century lyric writers like Lamartine or Musset have not surpassed, and by two vigorous satires, one of which, le Dix- huitieme Steele, is the best possible take-off of his own times. Gilbert is one of the true poets of his age and would be rated higher were his literary baggage greater. Charles-Pierre Colardeau (1732-1776), though almost entirely forgotten today, is important as a transmitter of the English influences and by his share in developing in modern France three things: the heroide, imaginary verse-letters, a form ultimately ascending to Ovid and renewed in the eighteenth century by the adaptation of Pope's epistle and the vogue of letters in the prose romances; descriptive or technical poetry, which as yet had hardly been written, except by Louis Racine, but was destined to have such popularity; and the idyl or eclogue, also destined to have great prominence again in poets like Chenier. Colar- deau put sentiment into verse and was one of the few of his immediate time to do so. The chevalier Claude- Joseph Dorat (i 734-1 780) is the model of the eighteenth-century light poet, of the type whose works still remain in graceful editions with illustrations by Eisen or Marillier. He was a musketeer, had the usual disputes with Voltaire, wrote insignificant tragedies and comedies, tried to EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY 569 edit a paper called the Journal des dames, and died in poverty. His reputation rests, however, not on these, but on his trifles: heroids of the kind introduced by his friend Colardeau, epistles and stories in verse, didactic poetry and satires, and, last but not least, the Baisers, adaptations of the Basia of the Dutch Latin poet Secundus, and epigrammatic fables: Usant de tout, je ne hais rien, Pas mfime le don de la vie, Qui n'est pas le souverain bien. Je cheris un tendre lien, L'amour vrai, Tamitie discrete, Et i'aime mieux dans ma retraite, Badiner comme Lucien, Que de gemir comme Epictete. Pierre-Joseph Bernard (1708-1775) received the epithet of "gentil" from Voltaire and is always called Gentil-Bernard. He was a drawing-room poet, prosperous in money matters and mediocre in ability, spending his time, says Marmontel, in calling one lady Hebe, another Flora, and a third a nymph or one of the Graces. His deity was Ovid and, in addition to miscellaneous verse and an opera, Castor et Pollux, he wrote an Art d^ aimer in three cantos and a story in verse of Phrosine et Melidore. The chevalier Stanislas de Boufflers (1738-1815), after an ad- venturous life, settled down in old age to be a prim librarian. ^^ It was Boufflers's poetry that Chamfort called "meringues and whipped cream." ' CHAPTER XIV EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY (CONTINUED). AS the eighteenth century progressed, certain tendencies aheady pointed out increased. On the one hand the Kght and trifling poetry continued in vogue and the poetasters revelled more than ever in epigrams. On the other hand there was a greater production than before of the learned didactic and descriptive poems by authors such as Delille, Saint-Lambert, and Roucher. This was partly increased by the desire of critics to harmonise the underlying principles of art and literature, and by the confusion of description and narration. Finally, there is an awakening of sentiment and emotion. Examples of the didacticism are to be fpund in travesties of Thomson's Seasons, the Mois of Roucher, or the Saisons of Saint-Lambert, of whom Gilbert wrote: Saint-Lambert, noble auteur, dont la muse pedante Fait des vers fort vant6s par Voltaire qu'il vante. But the most noteworthy writer was the abbe Jacques Delille (i 738-1813), who, though a layman anci unhappy in marriage, held his titfe from a clerical living. He is the chmax of unadul- terated pseudo-Classicism and the glorification of its methods. His death threw the French nation into mourning; his body lay in state for three days, and his funeral might be compared with those of Voltaire or Hugo. Today hardly a person in a hundred thousand has read through one of the important poems of DeUUe. He began his career by a translation of Virgil's Georgics, which, S7° EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY (Continued) 571 on the recommendation of Voltaire, won him an election to the French Academy and a professorship at the College de France. There followed other agricultural poems in an urban style, a "style citadin" as Rivarol called it, les Jardins; I' Homme des champs; les Trois regnes de la nature; as well as translations of the Mneid and Paradise Lost and "intellectual" poems, V Imagination and la Conversation, which are on the whole better, inasmuch as a city man is more at home in describing social life or versifying La Bruyere than, in explaining a nature which he knows only through Bufifon. The one thing for which Delille is now remembered is his proneness to periphrasis. His poetry consists mainly of enume- ration and descriptions, and he adopts everywhere elegant and flowing circumlocutions almost as roundabout as the terms of preciosity. Pseudo-Classicism had definitely abolished the spe- cific and the concrete. So the French equivalent for the "cup that cheers but does not inebriate" is: Le feuillage chinois, par un plus doux succSs, De nos dJners tardifs corrige les exces, Et, faisant chaque soir sa ronde accoutum6e, D'une chere indigeste apaise la fumee. All this was the delight of his contemporaries. When Delille wrote of the scenes of his childhood, in the tone of the Old Oaken Bticket, C'est id que Zephyr de sa jalouse haleine Effajait mes palais dessines sur I'ar^ne; C'est Ik que le caillou, lance dans le ruisseau, Glissait, sautait, glissait et sautait de nouveau. Un rien m'int6ressait; mais avec quelle ivresse J'embrassais, je baignais de larmes de tendresse, Le vieiUard qui jadis guida mes pas tremblants. La femme dont le lait nourrit mes premiers ans, Et le sage pasteur qui forma mon enfancel Souvent je m'6criais: T6moins de ma naissance, T6moins de mes beaux jours, de mes premiers d6sirs, Beaux lieux, qu'avez-vous fait de mes premiers plaisirs? 572 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the editor of a contemporary edition (1802) exclaims: "Je plains le lecteur a qui il n'echappe pas une larme k la lecture de ces vers." The new sentimentalism in poetry shows itself in Parny and Bertin, both of them natives of the distant ile Bourbon in the Indian Ocean. ^ Evariste de Parny (1753-1814) wrote chiefly poesies erotiques in a soft and lazy tone which is something like a Lamartine before his time, and with an Eleonore to Lamartine's Elvire. The other works of this "TibuUe frangais" were worth- less. He had all the irreverence and unbelief, and some of the indecency of his age, but his voluptuous lyric verse makes him a distant precursor of the new Renaissance. Antoine de Bertin (1752-1790) was a friend of Parny, with whom he had much in common. There was something more of the feeling for nature in his verse than in that of his fellow- Creole. The climax of emotionalism is reached towards the end of the century, even when the horrible cruelties of the Revolution were being perpetrated. This came not only from Rousseau and Diderot, but also from Gessner, who in England had his effect as well on Cowper, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Byron. Gessner by his Death of Abel inspired the literature of remorse; by his rustic idyls he renewed the fondness for prose and verse pas- torals, transforming the love-motive of previous eclogues into the moral emotions. The subjects, immersed in the sticky sen- timentality of German molasses-literature, fell in with the pre- vailing fashions of Rousseau-rusticity, 2 and the country became the home of purity, inhabited by virtuous shepherds and be- nevolent sages. We get different phases of these literary ten- dencies in manifestations ranging from what Horace Walpole 1 This was an age of exotic poets, Parny, Bertin, L6onard, Chenier; a phenomenon repeated a hundred years later in Heredia, Moreas, Viele- GriflSn, Stuart Merrill, etc. 2 The pastoralism of Gessner and the nature-absorption of Rousseau must, however, carefully be distinguished. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY (Continued) S73 called the "encyclopedic Arcadia" of Saint-Lambert's Saisons to the revivals of Arcadia in real life in the hamlet and lake of Marie-Antoinette's Petit-Trianon. And the dwellers in these Arcadias were of the tearful type, wearing dresses "en sou- pirs etouffes," trimmed with "regrets superflus" and "plaintes indiscretes." The idyls of Gessner were not only translated, but inspired the idyls of Nicolas-Germain Leonard (i 744-1 793), who was born in Guadeloupe in the West Indies, and those of Arnaud Berquin (1749-1791), whose name has produced the word ber- quinade, to express an insipid and goody-goody kind of literature. A vastly better writer than these was Florian. The chevalier de Florian (1755-1794), half Spanish and a protege of Voltaire and of the pious due de Penthievre, served for a time in the army, but is much more important as a man of letters in comedy and romance. Today he is chiefly remembered by his fables. His novels Numa Pompilius, Gonzalve de Cordoue, and especially the more purely pastoral ones, Galatee and Estelle, are a last effulgence of the old sentiment of the As tree com- bined with Spanish plots and the new Gessnerism. Estelle and Nemorin are perfect lovers, like Astree and Celadon, and wander through fanciful landscapes in a Dresden china world. It is very pretty, but there is too much of it, and one can but be amused at Lebrun-Pindare's epigram on Florian: Dans ton beau roman pastoral, Avec tes moutons pele-m6le, Sur un ton bien doux, bien moral, Berger, bergere, auteur, tout b^le. Only praise can be bestowed on Florian's fables, which rank above any others in !^rench literature since those of La Fontaine. It must not be forgotten that fable literature was produced in abundance during the eighteenth century by Dorat, Colardeau, Piron, and many others. Every man of letters aspired to write a successful tragedy, a comedy contes, and fables. Those of 574 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Florian, partly original, partly imitated from the Spanish, verge on the conte moralise. They belong to what we call the Sunday- school type, and have much of the "How-big-was-Alexander- Pa?" air about them. Like La Fontaine's fables they are inspired by the observation of contemporary society, but it is in order to show the advantage of virtue, the blessings of medi- ocrity, the sin of vanity, selfishness, and irreflection. To the casual reader, Florian's fables are often indistinguishable from those of La Fontaine. It is particularly interesting to note that in the last decades of the eighteenth century, when pseudo- Classicism has run its course, there comes a reaction towards real antiquity, a return towards true sources of inspiration in the past. This period forms an interlude between the days of Classicism and of Roman- ticism, and includes the Revolution and the reign of Napoleon I. At certain moments the three schools, old, middle, and new, are contemporary rivals, and some authors may be classed from different standpoints in more than one school. But generally false antiquity stands in opposition to the real. Many things contributed to make antiquity fashionable. We have enumerated the tendencies proceeding from Rousseau, together with the influences of the historical writings of Montes- quieu, RoUin, and Mably, and the academic eulogies of the now forgotten rhetorician Thomas. Then acquaintance with the remains of the ancients had actually increased. In the second half of the century, the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneuni were begun, the comte de Caylus published his Recueil d'anti- quites, and the abbe Barthelemy his Voyage dujeuneAnacharsisen Grece, which had occupied thirty years of his life. It purported to be the narrative of the travels of a young Scythian through the civilised Hellenic world, and included in its pages all the learning of the age concerning the social life of the ancients. Unfortunately the erudition of the late eighteenth century was usually wasted in small details and lacked any true appreciative synthesis. Meanwhile poets and scholars were interested in EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY (Continued) 575 Brunck's anthology of the Alexandrian poets. German critics like Winckelmann had turned the art of the ancients into a new conception for the modern world, and the operas of Gluck seemed to open a vision of antique beauty and harmony which appeared to many to be Greek tragedy in its majesty and simple dignity. In French art this return towards antiquity found ex- pression in the works of Vien and of David, with his Serment des Horaces modernised in his Serment du Jeu de Faume. Archi- tecture reproduced the temples and buildings of Greece and Rome, women wore flimsy Greek costumes, and the authorities fostered games and sports, parades and festivals, which mark the scenic side of the Revolution. Lebrun was in poetry one of the representatives of the move- ment towards antiquity, but the only author, of genius was Chenier. Andre Chenier, son of a French father and of a Greek mother, and first cousin 'once removed of Adolphe Thiers, was born at Constantinople in 1762, and was guillotined at the age of thirty- two, with his fellow-poet Roucher among twenty-six others, under the Terror in 1794, two days before the fall of Robespierre. He served in the army, travelled much, though he never saw Greece, lived the wild society life of his day with many love affairs, and spent several unhappy- years as secretary of the French legation in London. During the Revolution he took part in politics as a member of the Societe des amis de la Con- stitution, opposing the violences of the advanced parties, and, before his execution, undergoing several months' imprisonment at Saint-Lazare, where he wrote some of his most enduring verse. Chenier's poems have come down to us in the most incomplete manner,. Hardly one of his works was finished and published at his death. What he did give forth, as the ode on the Jeu de Paume and the fierce Hymne sur Ventree triomphale des Suisses, gave little hint of Chenier's originality in its traditional "Pindar- ism." Nearly everything remained incomplete in portfolios, sometimes merely as fragments of two or three lines, suggestions 576 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE and hints for development, or as passages to be inserted in other works. It was not until 1819 that his writings became known to the public, and then only in a somewhat garbled version by a "literary" editor, H. de Latouche. Later editions by Becq de Fouquieres and Gabriel de Chenier have increased variety rather than unity. "^ Andre Chenier has often seemed a problem in literary history and has been variously classed as a Classicist or a precursor of Romanticism. He belonged precisely to the transition age, when any originality could be twisted into different interpre- tations; consequently, writers like Sainte-Beuve, on the quest for eponymous heroes to Romanticism, made much of Ch6nier. On the other hand he exhibits almost every tendency of his age. Perhaps it is more true to call Chenier a Classicist of the type of the sixteenth-century humanists. Chenier presents some remarkable coincidences with Ronsard, though he did not like him, and though he did not, as Ronsard, have the good fortune to found a school. Moreover, if Ronsard was great enough to seem both a Classicist and a Romanticist, the same may be said of Chenier. Both were steeped in ancient learning, their interests were much in the same fields of literature, and their theories were in many respects similar. Chenier did not, like Ronsard, try to develop a new poetic vocabulary, but we occa- sionally find in him a Ronsardian compound. Of both it may be said that only the possession of classical culture can enable one to appreciate them to the full. The theory of the Pleiade expressed in the Defense was, as has already been pointed out in the chapter on the sixteenth-century 1 It is useless to worry over the incompleteness of Chenier's works. A poet who at thirty-two had written so many fragments and completed so little would have gone on doing precisely the same thing through a long Moi, je suis ce fondeur: de mes ecrits en foule Je prepare longtemps et la forme et le moule; Puis, sur tous a la fois je fais couler I'airain: Rien n'est fait aujourd'hui, tout sera fait demain. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY (Continued) 577 school, identical with Chenier's early views concerning imitation or assimilation: Ami, Phcebus ainsi me verse ses largesses; Souvent des vieux auteurs j'envahis les ridiesses. Plus souvent leurs ecrits, aiguillons genereux, M'embrasent de leurs flammes, et je cree avec eux. -Nor is it wise to go as far as M. Faguet in his monograph on Chenier and infer that Chenier's later attitude, "Sur des pensers nouveaux faisons des vers antiques," carries one further away from Ronsard, inasmuch as that poet's Petrarchism was in his day certainly trying to make use of "des pensers nouveaux." 1 Chenier, by sentiment or, as people have said, by atavism, was a Greek, though with results Hellenistic rather than Hellenic, and in many respects modern. The classical taste is visible, not only by the allusions in his poems, but by the copiousness of his annotations, which remind one of a Muret commenting the Amours de Cassandre. Yet Chenier appreciates more the Alexandrian and diminutive side of antiquity than its grander phases. The Theocritean eclogue, the idyl, or among the Romans Catullus, TibuUus, and Propertius, mean more after all to him thaii Homer, Virgil, or Lucretius, however much he may borrow from the greater writers. He had studied all writers from .iEschylus to the Latin poets of the Renaissance, but it is easy to see which appealed to him most. One need only turn over at random Chenier's elegies and bticoUques to come upon line after line recalling Theocritus and the Greek and Latin lyric ^ Chenier's views of Invention, Et sans suivre leurs pas, imiter leur exemple, Faire en s'eloignant d'eux avec un soin jaloux, Ce qu'eux-memes ils feraient s'ils vivaient parmi nous, carry beyond the bounds of Du Bellay's Difmse the boldness of novelty. But the result, in Chenier as in Ronsard, was often crazy-quilt patch- work. Chenier was on the lookout for passages to copy. In a note to VAmerigue he says: "Quand j'aurai lu son po^me je verrai s'il y a quelque chose a traduire." 578 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE poets. He had a vividness that other poets of his time had not, but with sometimes a finical touch, which on the one hand betokens the accurate scholar, on the other the literary Alexan- drian. Take, for instance, one of the most famous of Chenier's poems, the Jeune Tarentine, suggested to him by a funeral epi- gram in the Greek Anthology by Xenocritus of Rhodes, in which the melody of Hellenic names, the allusions to mythology and ancient rites are united in a harmony that Ronsard never excelled: Elle est au sein des flots, la jeune Tarentine; Son beau corps a roule sous la vague marine. Tethis, les yeux en pleurs, dans le creux d'un rochet Aux monstres devorants eut soin de le cacher. Par son ordre bient6t les belles Nereides L'61event au-dessus des demeures humides, Le portent au rivage, et dans ce monument L'ont, au cap du Zephyr, depose moUement. Puis de loin a grands cris appelant leurs compagnes, Et les nymphes des bois, des sources, des montagnes, Toutes, frappant leur sein et trainant un long deuil, RepSterent: "Helas!" autour de son cercueil. Such was the influence of antiquity in Chenier; but he had another strain which showed him a resultant of the influences of his time. The lackadaisical emotionality of Gessnerism is to be found in Chenier as much as in Parny or Bertin, though some- times veiled by the antique setting. The "pathetic fallacy" of nature (a nature usually known through books), the pleasure of tears are all in Chenier. He already has some of the morbidness of Romanticism, without its egotism. He had, too, the licen- tious strain of his time, and planned, like Ovid, an Art of Love. Though he died young, he never went to Heaven wearing the white flower of a blameless life either in his existence or his poetry. His untranslatable Greek verses written in London prove this. Ch6nier most clearly combines the tendencies of Alexandrin- ism and of the eighteenth century in I' Invention, and particu- EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY (Continued) 579 larly the fragmentary Amerique and Hermes. The poets of the Ptolemies were fond of didactic treatises, and we have already noticed the numerous poeticised treatises of the eighteenth century. The Hermes was to have been a cosmological epic, composed by a follower of BufEon and the Encyclopedists. Towards th6 end of his short career, Chenier awoke from his dreams and took his part in attacking the crimes of the Revolu- tion. Like Ronsard in the Discours sur les miseres du temps he felt called on to cry out in the wilderness, even though it brought him into opposition to his own brother, Marie- Joseph. But the fierceness of his lambes, such as the poem signed "Archiloque Mastigophore," outdoes in violence the rhetoric of Ronsard. It is to the experiences of his imprisonment that we owe the poem looked upon as the summing-up of his genius, the ode la Jeune cap- tive, which expresses the favorite topic, the pathos of early death. Here is the dignity without the stiltedness of Malherbe's Stances a Du Perier, the melancholy which would have made Gilbert the great poet of his generation, the rich harvest drawn from antiq- uity, without the erudition which make the poems of a humanist unintelligible to one not educated in the classics: Mon beau voyage encore est si loin de sa fin! Je pars, et des ormeaux qui bordent le chemin J'ai passe les premiers a peine. Au banquet de la vie a peine commence, Un instant seulement mes levres ont presse La coupe en mes mains encore pleine. Je ne suis qu'au printemps, je veux voir la moisson; Et comme le soleil, de saison en saison, Je veux achever mon annee. Brillante sur ma tige et I'honneur du jardin, Je n'ai vu luire encor que les feux du matin, Je veux achever ma journee. In the days of civil strife, Ecouchard Lebrun or Lebrun- Pindare (i 729-1807) attempted to soar on waxen wing and. wrote odes in the grand style in honor of Voltaire, Buffon, S8o A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the old regime, the Revolution, and Napoleon. His "beau desordre" pleased better writers and influenced Chenier. But Lebrun had not the temperament of a Pindar or a Tyrtaeus : his life was sordid and disgraceful, and his mean temperament found vent in spiteful epigrams. "Lebrun," wrote a contem- porary, "squatting in bed with dirty sheets and a dirty shirt, surrounded by Virgil, Horace, Corneille, Racine, and Rousseau, and fishing for words from the one and then another to compose verses which are but a mosaic." It was only in two odes that French revolutionary Pindarism reached the pitch that stirs men's souls. The one was the dith3T:ambic Chant du depart by Marie- Joseph Chenier, the other the world-famous Marseillaise by Rouget de Lisle; and even this latter poem owes much of its success to the tune. The language is turgid and the figures of speech verge on fustian. The consumptive poet Charles Millevoye (1782-1816) may be called a transition writer between the eighteenth-century sentimentalists and the nineteenth-century Romanticists. He was influenced in his elegies by Chenier, and in turn influenced Lamartine. He tried multifarious composition: translations, elegiac, didactic, satiric, and heroic poems, and cultivated forms of the ballad or romance, a sentimental lyric passage verging on song. His expression of melancholy and premature death as found in his most famous poems, tTie Chute des feuilles and the Poete mourant, pleased the lyric writers of the succeeding gen- eration. His fondness for the Middle Ages and his mediaeval ballads were akin to what is known as the genre troubadour, and also harmonised with the cult of the Middle Ages among the Romanticists. CHAPTER XV BEAUMARCHAIS. THE COMING OF THE REVOLUTION THE flower of eighteenth-century comedy is found in the two most famous works of Beaumarchais. This strange character is an embodiment of the new spirit of the age and a precursor of the Revolution and the revendication of the rights of man. At the same time he is an excellent example of the parvenu, the arriviste, not without something of the adventurer or picaro. Pierre-Augustin Caron, born in 1732, was the son of a watch- maker and for some years practised that trade himself. He had great mechanical skill, and some clever devices, including a diminutive watch for Mme de Pompadour, gained him admis- sion to Versailles. There his musical talents and improvements to the harp charmed the daughters of Louis XV. By lucky marriages with two widows and by a tactful service to the financier Paris-Duverney, he found chances for successful speculation. As he became wealthy, he tried to rise in the social scale by the purchase of official posts, just as he had al- ready assumed the name of Beaumarchais. There was always in Beaumarchais something of the nouveau riche judging rank in terms of money: "Nobody," said he, "can deny my noble rank, because I hold a receipt for it." Beaumarchais became a restless participant in every activity and was always drawn to novelty, whether in literature, mechan- ics, or commerce. He had the knack of acting at the spectacu- lar moment and of getting himself talked about. An experience in Spain, where he went partly to protect a sister betrayed by Clavijo, gave rise to plays on Clavijo, including that of Goethe; S8i S82 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE by secret missions to England to buy off blackmailers of Mme du Barry and by inventing heroic and romantic adventures in the government service in Germany he strengthened his posi- tion with the authorities. He fought successfully for author's rights and remuneration against the encroachments of the actors of the Comedie-Frangaise. By serving as an interme- diary between the French government and the American insur- gents for the furnishing of supplies under the firm-name of Rodrigue Hortalez and Company, he built up a vast fleet of ships, almost a private navy, of which one vessel, the Fier Rodrigue, actually took part in a naval battle. But in these American transactions Beaumarchais made a far from profitable venture, and only in 1835 his family received from the United States government 800,000 francs for claims which in 1793 had been acknowledged for 2,280,000. "Date obolum Belisario," he wrote in his later poverty-stricken days. His enthusiasm also led him to sink thousands in a vast and unremunerative edition of Voltaire, published at Kehl. Voltaire's works could not be issued then in France, though they were admitted with the connivance of the authorities. Thus Beaumarchais had his tribulations and hardships: his enemies accused him of poisoning his first two wives, he had unpleasant law suits and squabbles with the comte de la Blache, nephew and heir of Paris-Duverney, and the due de Chaulnes who had insulted him, which quarrels caused his imprisonment. He had to struggle against King Louis XVI himself in behalf of the Manage de Figaro, and his enemies banded together to de- stroy his triumphs by satires and epigrams or by actual violence. He had troubles with Mirabeau, and by his interference in the matrimonial disagreements of the Kornman family he gave a chance to the tricky lawyer Bergasse to injure his standing. Finally, at the time of the Revolution he was accused of duplic- ity in transactions connected with the purchase of guns, and during his absence from France on public service his property was confiscated, his third wife imprisoned, and he was classed THE COMING OF THE REVOLUTION 583 among the emigres. He underwent poverty during his exile, but when he died in 1799, after his return to France, he still had a considerable fortune. This long biography of Beaumarchais is necessary because his dramatic hero Figaro is in many respects the embodiment of his own character. The plays of Beaumarchais are, indeed, not his only literary work, nor do they always have an unbroken success. In 1773, as an offshoot of his quarrel with the comte de la Blache, Beaumarchais, temporarily imprisoned during his dispute with the due de Chaulnes, became involved in one with the conseiller Goezman, agent of the hostile chancellor Maupeou, who was intrusted with the drawing up of a report on the case. Beaumarchais accused Mme Goezman of retaining part of a bribe which ^e had sent in order to have judgment given in his favor. The matter was an unsavory one, but it took on a larger political aspect as a contest between partisans and foes of Mau- peou, and Beaumarchais received the help of many friends. For the same political reasons the outcome of the case struck both the Goezmans and Beaumarchais with official censure, but he put the laughers on his side by his Memoires: by his irony and wit, by his caricatures he made his enemies the laughing-stock of France. Though the distance is remote, these writings have been compared to the Frovinciales of Pascal. But it is as a dramatist that Beaumarchais marks an epoch, though some of his plays have now merely historical importance. He follows Diderot in the composition of the emotional play, scattered with dissertations and discussions, and the theory of which he repeated after Diderot in his Essai sur le genre drama- tique serieux. His Eugenie (1767), of which the scene was first placed in France and then transferred to England to avoid wounding susceptibilities, deals with the story of wronged inno- cence and introduces the stock character of the noble deceiver. "Get ouvrage," said Beaimiarchais, "enfant de ma sensibilite, respire I'amour de la vertu et ne tend qu'a 6purer notre theatre et en faire une ecole de bonnes moeurs." Similarly les Deux 5^4 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE amis (1770) has a plot involving a question of honor carried to the point of absurdity. Toward the end of his life he brought out a mediocre "philosophical " and political opera Tar are (1787), though it was really written much earlier, and in 1792 his drama la Mere coupable had a vogue which outlived the author. But his great successes were the Barbier de Seville (1775) and the Mariage de Figaro (1783). In his plays Beau- marchais, seeking "le nature!," carried the minutiae of stage directions and stage settings to extremes, in the dramas partic- ularly by various jeux d'entr'acte in dumb show. He would often group a stage scene with its actors after a famous picture. Beaumarchais first wrote the Barbier as a parade, then as a comic opera for the Italian actors, interspersed with tonadillas or interludes in song, the taste for which he had acquired in his Spanish trip. They refused it, whereupon he rewrote it as a comedy, but it was only after further modifications that it won success. The plot is the familiar one of the young girl, the doting guardian, the dashing lover, and the resourceful, rogue, here a barber, who helps to trick the old man. The Barbier de Seville enriched French drama with the charac- ter of Figaro. In many respects he is the counterpart of the tricky valet Mascarille of Moliere's Etourdi, with much of the gracioso and the picaro. But in reality Figaro is Beaumarchais, in his wit, his good-nature, his trickiness, his outpouring of spirit in song, his boldness of speech. He has the gaminerie of the Frenchman at sport, making fun of all that is held in venera- tion. Rosirte, the heroine, is no mere ingenue, but quite willing to trick her suspicious guardian Bartholo. Count Almaviva is the gay lover; the hypocrite don Basile is the butt of the play: "Qui diable est-ce done qu'on trompe ici? Tout le monde est dans le secret!" he plaintively asks when he is himself the victim. In the Folle journee, ou le Mariage de Figaro, Figaro has im- bibed the new revolutionary spirit. Count Almaviva, married to Rosine, neglects her and longs for the soubrette Suzanne whom Figaro intends to marry. The whole play is one of mad THE COMING OF THE REVOLUTION 585 intrigue, filled with surprises, disguises, and night concealments, with puns, philosophical disquisitions, song, and bitter sarcasm. Of this the long monologue in the fifth act is an instance. Figaro, instead of being as in the previous play the agent of the count, now fights for himself against Almaviva and embodies the spirit of the people face to face with the noblesse. Instead of being a light-hearted adventurer, Figaro is now a philosophe: " Qu'avez-vous fait pour tant de biens? Vous vous ^tes donne la peine de naitre, et rien de plus; du reste homme assez ordinaire! Tandis que moi, morbleu! perdu dans la foule obscure, il m'a fallu deployer plus de science et de calculs, pour subsister seulement, qu'on n'en a mis depuis cent ans a gouverner toutes les Espagnes!" Yet Figaro has not lost his old persiflage: "Diable! c'^st une belle langue que I'anglais, il en faut peu pour aller loin. Avec God-dam, en Angleterre, on ne manque de rien nulle part." Two other characters have helped to make the play immortal, Brid'oison and Cherubin. Don Guzman Brid'oison, a relative by name of the conseiller Goezman and a descendant of Rabe- lais's Bridoye who decided cases by the cast of dice, is the stupid, stuttering judge, uttering platitudes ("On est toujours le fils de quelqu'un"), and a slave to routine: "La forme, voyez- vous, la fojme! Tel rit d'un juge en habit court, qui-i tremble au seul aspect d'un procureur en robe. La forme, la-a forme!" Cherubin is the boy reaching puberty and troubled with the feelings of sex. The sight of a woman or even of a ribbon or fan arouses in him love. He has the beauty of the unformed youth, the polissonnerie of the overwise adolescent. Beaumar- chais, who emphasised the need' of a woman to play the part, saw in him an androgynous nature. He is one of the insidiously immoral characters of his age, yet less irritating than the smug hero of Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie. Beaumarchais is thus, in his life and writings, the epitome of his time, when the privileges of the seventeenth century were passing away, when an adventurer could rise to fame S86 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE and fortune by his talents, when the definite overthrow of caste and of nobility was at hand, when the spirit of argument and of dissertation was in the air. But these serious quali- ties, or defects, were lightened by a ceaseless cascade of wit and epigram, in such abundance as occasionally to become cloying. CHAPTER XVI THE REVOLUTION THE Revolutionary period judged by literature is an ending and not a beginning. Almost all its authors are the aboutissement of earlier influences, so that many of them, Chenier, Delille, Lebrun-Pindare, Condorcet, or Volney, have already been dealt with. The new period originates little except in political oratory and journalism. The French fondness for taUc was not going to die away with coming liberty. The salons became more than ever the centres of political discussion. Though no other women equal Mme Necker or Mme Roland, the inspirer of the Girondists, still Mme de Beauharnais, Mme Helvetius, Mme de Condorcet, Mme de Sabran show that women are as powerful as ever. Under the Empire Mme de Stael, Mme de Genlis, Mme Recamier, Mme Bacciochi, Mme Joseph Bonaparte, Mme Suard, Mme de Beaumont hold sway. But conversation between intimates was no longer sufficient, nor wafe France to be governed by harangues in the street or the Palais-Royal. The new parliamentary government, the Assem- blee Constituante, the Assemblee Legislative, and the Conven- tion gave an opportunity to new statesmen and demagogues, budding tribunes and consuls to air their rhetoric and interlard plans for Utopias with attacks on their opponents. Meanwhile the newspapers gave publicity to their speeches, spread their theories, or outdid the worst yellow journals of today by their abusiveness. Spoken and written eloquence before the latter part of the eighteenth century had been, as a result of the Classical tradi- S87 588 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE tion, ponderous and majestic in style. The lawyer wanted to impress the judges by his learning, the preacher had the tradi- tion of Bossuet behind him, the speaker at the Academy con- sidered the Ol3Tnpian attitude becoming to an immortal addressing immortals, the winner in a competition before the same body could not expect success unless his eloge conformed to academic standards. All this was now changed. The chief members of the Constituante were, it is true, lawyers and had acquired their self-possession in the courts or, like Robespierre, before local academies such as that of Arras. They continued it in the clubs and masoriic lodges. But big halls of debate now made a call upon new forms of eloquence and greater physical strength, while the presence of the ignorant mob in the galleries, including the impassioned tricoteuses, forerunners of the petroleuses of the nine- teenth-century Commune, made it often necessary for the orator to imitate Cleon rather than Pericles. ' The ideas of the legislative bodies in the Revolutionary days cannot be understood without some knowledge of the teachings of Montesquieu and of Rousseau, of the Encyclopedists and the Economists, of Raynal and Mably, of the rhetoric of Thomas. The Assemblee Constituante, rather a reforming than a subver- sive body, was largely influenced by the constitutional inter- pretations of Montesquieu; the Legislative and the Convention, having swept away, it was thought, the whole past of France, ' See the cry of revolt against all forms of the cult of antiquity in Ber- choux's poem beginning "Qui me delivrera des Grecs et des Remains? " and especially the lines: Les Grecs et les Romains, m^les dans nos querelles, Sont venus presider a nos oeuvres nouvelles; Bient6t tous nos bandits, a Rome transportes, Se sont cms des heros pour etre revoltes; Bientot Paris n'a vu que des 6nergumenes, De sales Cicerons, de vilains Demosthenes, Mettant I'assassinat au nombre des vertus, Egorgeant leurs parents pour faire les Brutus, THE REVOLUTION ■ 589 tried to bring to earth the hallucinations of Rousseau which Robespierre imposed with the guillotine. The Constituante, again, expressed a nobler intellectual and moral attitude than did its successors. Its members were not yet such embittered doctrinaires or shrieking demagogues. Many were visionaries who thought that philosophy could cure national ills, but the majority were patriotic citizens. The decay of the successive assemblies came from exhaustion and disillusion. The great orator of the Constituante was Mirabeau, although Robespierre was already a member. Gabriel-Honore de Riquetti, comte de Mirabeau (1749-1791) was hideous in appearance and weighted down by a scandalous past. When he rebuked his brother, fat Mirabeau-Tonneau, for his drunkenness, the latter replied: "Why do you complain? It is the only family vice you have left me." In his youth he had poured out a con- stant stream of miscellaneous writings, often potboilers. His liaison with Mme de Monnier is commemorated by his Lettres a Sophie, a private correspondence not intended for publication. His great days were the last two years of his life, when he was a member of the Tiers-Etat. Mirabeau was an example of the southern politicians who so often, especially under the third Republic, have shouldered out the more reasoning northerner. They may be patriotic and sincere, but their opportunism and lightning changes of con- science can sometimes be justified only by Olympian clouds of rhetoric. Mirabeau's policy was, on the whole, consistent: he was a conservative in temperament rather than a republican and wished to save the monarchy and reconcile it with the rights of man. When he died the Assembly went into mourning and buried him in the Pantheon as a patriot, yet he depended en- tirely on ruse and Machiavellian methods for the attainment of his purpose. Leader in an assembly calling for. independence and self-abnegation, Mirabeau was secretly in the pay of the king. But after all, Mirabeau's chief preoccupation was neither king nor country but self, and he was most eloquent when de- 590 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE fending himself against attack or imposing himself on his audi- ence by the power of his shaggy and bristling head. Mirabeau was a double-dealer "even to the composition of his speeches: at least eighteen of those he delivered were written for him, and Rivarol called him a "sponge soaked with other people's ideas." But the genuine orator is found in his own improvised speeches. Even here, however, he was not the raging lion that the imagi- nation of Lamartine and Hugo has turned into a tradition, but calm and grave, making sometimes a hesitating exordium and gradually winning such self-possession that he could incorpo- rate into his speech a note handed to him during its delivery or annihilate an adversary by a phrase ("silence aux trente voix," to Barnave and his group). There could not be a greater contrast with Mirabeau than Maximilien Robespierre (i 758-1 794), the bourgeois lawyer of Arras who, after resigning a judgeship in early life in order not to condemn criminals to death, became, as leader of the Jacobins, the chief headsman of France. Sallow in looks and puritanical in principle, the "sea-green incorruptible" of Carlyle, unsociable in disposition and vain in temperament, he had among men hardly a true friend in the world. Shifty in policy and averse to committing himself, a traitor to his fellows, he had at least one consistent trait, fanaticism. Robespierre was not a ready orator like Mirabeau, his speeches were often labored perform- ances, paraphrases of Rousseau, tumid with moral platitudes, monotonous and academic, abounding in indefiniteness, the language of a mystic and, at times, of a dreamer. If such is the case, how can one explain Robespierre's power? Firstly, it did not last long; secondly, it was backed by the guillotine; thirdly, he had, with all his treachery, a definite scheme for which he worked with the strength of fanaticism. He was the pontiff of Rousseau and the enforcer of his doctrines. To Robespierre the spirit of Voltaire, Diderot, and the Encyclo- pedia was anathema: "I'atheisme est aristocratique." He was a deist like his master, and his festival of the Supreme Being, THE REVOLUTION 591 at which he officiated as chief priest, was a putting into practice of the religion of the vicaire Savoyard. Most of all, Robe- spierre's power rested for a time on the proletariat which he led in the class war of the Revolution. By putting himself at the head of the sans-culottes against the aristocrats, as the modern laboring man fights the capitalist, and by endeavoring to replace the old government by a new one in which the state was every- where omnipotent over the individual, Robespierre brought socialism from theory into politics. ^ A more sympathetic character is Georges Danton (1759- 1794), the "Mirabeau de la populace." Here again was a Caliban in looks, whose "Medusa-head" could go with Mira- beau's hure; here again was a magnificent improviser, exuberant in language, though even more brutal and abusive. But Danton cared less for himself than did Mirabeau and more for his fellow- men. Unlike Robespierre he did not base religion and politics on vague phraseology about virtue, but on practical contin- gencies in the estaolishment of justice between man and man. Where Robespierre was the doctrinaire, Danton was the doer; often incoherent, cruel, and misguided, but better intentioned and less hypocritical. For this he paid with his life: though a Montagnard like Robespierre, he was executed by him as too moderate. Danton is one of those who emerge from the tur- moil of discussion about the Revolution with the reaction most in his favor. He stands for the practical application of the theories of the eighteenth-century philosophes without so much of Robespierre's twist of tyrannical Rousseauism. The other orators of the Revolution, though numerous, rank after those mentioned. Among the Jacobins there was Saint- Just (1767-1794), executed at the age of twenty-seven in the reaction against the Terror. In his brief career he showed the 1 "Robespierre must take his place permanently in history as the prime exponent in actual politics of the cardinal SociaUst principle of the class war." — W. Lawler Wilson, The Menace of Socialism. But Robespierre's socialism is as yet only administrative and not economic. 592 A HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE cold heartlessness of Robespierre together with the audacity of Danton and combined some of the moralising fanaticism of the one with the eagerness for action of the other, though inclining to the side of Robespierre. The chief sympathy of the student today goes out to the group of Girondist orators, because of their fate. They were far from being all southerners from the Gironde, though the meridionals were their real leaders. In spite of their numbers they were weaker than the Jacobins of the Mountain, because they had less cohesion in their views and were a party of rela- tive moderation rather than of persecution. Though Rousseau- ists, they were followers more of the vague side of Rousseau, the sentimental humanitarianism of> his morals, and the unde- fined anti-dogmatic deism of his religion. As a party of nega- tion rather than of construction they had little help to offer for the reconstruction of France, and to the brutal Jacobins they seemed supercilious dreamers deserving only scorn for their impotent liberalism, their thoughts of a government where the philosopher might be king, a government that should represent France rather than the Paris mob. The Girondists had poor strategy and no generalship. They were not helped by their chief leader, \ergniaud (1753-1793), a brilliant improviser, but apathetic and indolent in his fatalism. The other great orators of the Girondist party were Guadet, Gensonne, Brissot, and Buzot, whose name is linked with that of Mme Roland, the "Egeria" of the party. This young and beautiful wife of one of the ministers of the Republic, inspired by Plutarch and stoicism as well as by Rousseau, guided the ministerial policy of her husband and the feelings of her set. After the downfall of the Girondists, for which she was par.tly to blame by discouraging an alliance with Danton, she went to the guillotine with the firmness of her philosophy, and spent the last days in prison in writing her memoirs to justify her friends and to defend herself against calumny. The spoken word was far from being the only means of com- THE REVOLUTION 593 munication open to the Revolution. Modern journalism in France really dates from that period and becomes one of the chief methods of publicity for the polemists. The eighteenth century had been the time of political pamphlets, sometimes appearing with a certain amount of regularity like periodicals. During the Revolution these became more numerous, especially in 1789 and 1790. Within five years about a thousand news- papers, usually shortlived, had appeared, displacing each other in turn, bearing the names of Journal, Gazette, Courrier, or mere fantastic titles. They were often incorrectly written, badly printed, violently personal, and in their worst examples descended to the lowest grade of gutter abuse. The transcendent role in virulence was played by Marat and Hebert. The former, a seeker for notoriety, pubUshed the Ami du peuple to stir up dis- cussion and arm one citizen against another, until he himself was slain by Charlotte Corday's knife, and his corpse, stripped to the waist, was carried to the grave amid flaring torches and a theatrical display which would have delighted his vanity if he could have known it. Hebert, in the Pere Duchesne, poured out a steady stream of filthy language ("Grande colere du Pere Duchesne," etc.) against the "royal, ogre" and "pig" Louis XVI, or the "infamous Austrian" and "she-wolf" Marie- Antoinette. The royalist party had, in the early days, a mouth- piece not much less cynical, but at any rate with some cleverness in such a paper as the Actes des Apotres of Rivarol and his friends. One newspaper, the Journal des Debats, started in 1789 as a mere record of public discussions, grew under the Empire into a general newspaper, and is still published at its original home in the rue des Pretres-Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. A single jour- naHst only, Camille Desmoulins, deserves extended mention as a contributor to literature. Camille Desmoulins (1760-1794) is usually remembered standing on his table in the Palais-Royal and stirring up the populace to the frenzy which resulted in the fall of the Bastille. As a matter of fact, he was a poor orator and stammered. On the 594 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE other hand, the vigor of his writing, in spite of its incoherence, is great. A man of education and refinement, he turned to the advocacy of violence and became a partisan of lynch-law, call- ing himself "procureur-g6neral de la lanterne" after the public street-lanterns from which victims could be suspended. A nihilist like Voltaire, he led the attacks against the Austrian queen or against Louis Capet — for to him was due that namfe — or against Brissot and the moderate Girondists. The time came when Desmoulins, like Danton, repented of violence and tried to counsel mercy to his old school-friend Robespierre. Nothing availed and Robespierre, who had been a witness at the signing of Desmoulins' marriage contract, sent him to the guillotine. Desmoulins' chief newspapers were the Revolutions de France et de Brabant and then the Vieux Cordelier. The former was a periodical of abuse, the latter one of protest, aimed directly at Hebert and the advanced revolutionists, indirectly attempting to win over Robespierre. The third number, denouncing the Terror in the style of Tacitus, is deemed his masterpiece. But in spite of his vigor Desmoulins was not a careful writer; his pathetic farewell to his beloved wife Lucile sinks from the sublime to the ridiculous: "Console-toi, veuve desolee! L'epitaphe de ton pauvre Camilla est glorieuse: c'est celle des Brutus et des Caton, les tyrannicides. . . . Pardon, chere amie, ma veritable vie, que j'ai perdue du moment qu'on nous a separes! Je m'occupe de ma memoire. Je devrais bien plut6t m'occuper de te la faire oublier, ma Lucile, mon bon loulou, ma poule!" The prominent men of the Revolution were not all orators or journalists alone. The abbe Emmanuel Sieyes (1748-1836), though a member of the Etats-Generaux and the Convention, was more often silent than a speaker. President of the Direc- toire and responsible for Napoleon's coup d'etat of the eighteenth of Brumaire, he became one of the three consuls, count of the Empire, ambassador, and president of the Senate. His import- THE REVOLUTION 595 ance rests on his work in the committees of the Constituante and his fame on his great pamphlet on the Tiers-Etat, "really all, hitherto nothing, seeking to be something." By this document Sieyes may almost be said to have precipitated the Revolution, just as he later made Napoleon. Sieyes was an a priori theorist, a metaphysician drawing up constitutions, inapt at government, yet holding important positions and responsible for great changes such as the trans- formation of the Etats-Generaux into Assemblee Nationale, and the division ol France into departments. Nicolas Chamfort (i 741-1794) was at first an author of plays, but is remembered today by his witticisms and satirical anec- dotes. Soured by his illegitimate origin and by his natural bias, he was cynical and misanthropic, like an eighteenth-cen- tury La Rochefoucauld, and love, friendship, marriage were never free from his gibes. Chamfort's biting tongue got him into trouble, and trying to escape a second arrest he shot him- self, cut his throat, stabbed himself, and opened his veins before he managed to put an end to his life. Antoine Rivarol (1753-1801), the embodiment of brilliancy in conversation, in prose epigram, and tabloid satire, was not merely a journalist as already stated, supporting royalty in the Journal politique national and the Actes des ApStres, but a paro- dist and a slayer of conceited literary small fry. His Petit almanack de nos grands hommes pilloried poets capable of such stanzas as: ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^^ II lui coupa le cou d'un coup de coutelas! Nor was he afraid of bigger game, such as Delille. He trans- lated Dante, he competed successfully before the Berlin Academy with an essay on the universality of the French language, he wrote an elaborate prospectus for a dictionary he never prepared. Chamfort and Rivarol are almost the last examples of the esprit of the eighteenth century and of its salons: graceful, polished, irreverent, unmoral, unreal, based on but a partial 596 • A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE and a partisan knowledge of mankind. They were Voltaire and Beaumarchais reduced to epigrams. There have been men like them before and since, but the environment being different, the result has been other. The drama of the Revolution gave practically nothing worthy of commemoration in spite of a great vogue which nothing diminished. The theatres were packed as usual, we are told, on the night of events like the execution of Marie-Antoinette. Over a thousand plays were given in ten years, but they were almost entirely pieces de circonstance, written as the mouthpiece for political theories, or to replace public harangues. In spite of the political revolution they remained Classical in form, but , are often scarcely to be differentiated from "dramas." A pop- ular tirade, regardless of its literary value, was sure to win applause, and it was only necessary to surround it with senti- mentality or persecuted innocence to make the audience gush into tears. The dramatic motive was subordinate to the political aim, and the structure of the play had no consequence. Marie- Joseph Chenier wrote in 1789 a Charles IX which purported to be a "national" tragedy and a "lesson to kings," and of which Danton said: "Figaro a tue la noblesse, Charles IX tuera la royaute." In fact, nearly all of Chenier 's plays are diatribes against the old regime. Henri VIII shows up the cruel and imbecile tyrant, Jean Calas attacks religious fanaticism, Caius Gracchus is against the nobles, and Fenelon against convents. The Ami des lois of Louis Laya in 1793, an attack on Robe- spierre, Marat, and the demagogues at the time of the king's trial, caused the canons of the authorities to be aimed at the. theatre, and the actors imprisoned. In comedy matters were not quite so bad. The Chateaux en Espagne and the Vieux celibataire of Collin d'Harleville may still be read with pleasure; the Philinte of Fabre d'Eglantine, a sequel to the Misanthrope of Moliere to bring out Rousseau's idea of Philinte as a selfish man, gets a borrowed interest. And the Revolutionary period popularised, in addition to its pre- THE REVOLUTION 597 cursors Figaro and Arlequin, certain humorous types not for- gotten today, Nicod^me, a simple but canny peasant (this type has degenerated into an "innocent"), and Madame Angot, the fishwife grown rich and, hke Monsieur Jourdain, aping her betters. The play Madame Angot, ou la poissarde parvenue of Maillot and the Madame Angot au sir ail de Constantinople by Aude are the ancestors of the modern Fille de Madame Angot, that most successful of operettas, first played in 1873. PART V THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER I THE EMPIRE THE liberator Napoleon soon proved a tyrant: literature and oratory languished under the censorship and threats of imprisonment.^ The discourses of politicians were no longer heard, and Napoleon alone was free to harangue his troops and tell them how "forty centuries looked down on them from the Pyramids," or disguise in the language of moderation and statesmanship the lawlessness of the usurper. One group of men Napoleon could not crush: these were the philosophers, the Ideologists, whom he scornfully called the ideologues. They were no new invention, but the successors and disciples of Condillac, Helvetius, and the philosophes; and Condorcet, and Volney, whom we have already studied, belong to the line of filiation. But under the new regime, these "nebu- lous metaphysicians," as Napoleon also called them, still inspired by the principles of freedom which the' Revolution had failed to establish, represented the spirit of liberal opposition in politics, literature, and philosophy, or the rights of reason untrammelled by imperial discipline. Their influence, too, made itself felt in many of the newly-established scientific schools and bodies: the Normal, Central, and Polytechnic schools, the Institute. At the Normal School, established under the Convention, the lecturers had included Volney, no less than Saint-Pierre and La Harpe, and the mathematicians Laplace, Lagrange, and Monge. The periodical of this school of thinkers was the Decade philosophique, and the social centre was the group of Auteuil, gathered about the widow of Condorcet and her sister, the wife of Cabanis. The school, it may be seen, stands for the anti-religious attitude. 6oi 6o2 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE The chief Ideologists were Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy. Cabanis (1757-1808) a doctor, the friend of Franklin, the author of the Rapports du physique et du moral, far from being a "nebulous metaphysician," swept away metaphysics, disclaimed any real knowledge of first causes, and devoted himself to physiology and psychology. Studying the relations between the body and "soul," with emphasis on the former as more accessible to direct experiment, he united them and made physiology and psychology one. He described the relation, by what was perhaps even to him only a figure of speech, in saying that "the brain digests impressions and secretes thought," and^its function is to produce images and group them, just as the stomach acts and reacts on food for the production of tissues. Destutt de Tracy (1781-1864), of Scotch origin and a collateral descendant of the Jansenist Arnauld, had the hard-headed logical aptitudes of both origins. His interest is in logic and the prob- lems of knowledge, in his Elements d'ideologie, his Grammar, and his Logic, but he still rested philosophy on physiology. Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy are but the most prominent representatives of a whole scientific school occupied with the various divisions of the intellectual life, so that Daunou, Fauriel,"- Ginguene, Raynouard in historical research, J.-B. Say in eco- nomics, helped to introduce a better method into their fields of study. The Ideologists are neglected today, but they belong to the genealogy of positive science. Cabanis was the creator of physiological psychology in France, and he and De Tracy were the precursors, not merely of worn-out creeds, such as the phrenology of Gall and Spurzheim, but of more vital systems of evolution and of positivism. The Ideologists did not represent the only philosophical 'Daunou (1761-1840) initiated Sainte-Beuve into both the literary and the philosophical traditions of the eighteenth century, and Fauriel .(1772- 1844) into historical method and the widening of knowledge and sympathy of the nineteenth. Fauriel occupied somewhat the position of a French Herder. Cf. Portraits contemporains, Vol. IV. THE EMPIRE 603 school of their time. Without going so far as the mystic Saint- Martin, the "philosophe inconnu" as he called himself, the translator of Jacob Bohme and follower of Swedenborg, there were opposed to them those thinkers, critics more than men of science, called the Traditionalists. They stood for the reaction against the French Revolution and a return to the spirit of Catholicism. Like those French thinkers who at the end of the nineteenth century announced the bankruptcy of science, they proclaimed at its beginning the failure of eighteenth-century philosophism, but attacked it with its own tools of argumentation and reason. The chief of these thinkers were the comte Joseph de Maistre and the vicomte de Bonald, between whom there were great similarities, though their conclusions were independently reached. Joseph de Maistre (1754-1821),- though a great name in French literature, was not a Frenchman and came to Paris only once in his life for a brief period. A native of Savoy and an ofl&cial of the king of Sardinia, he spent nearly fifteen years as minister of his sovereign in Russia. His life was not a happy one: whether by his own fault or not, he was constantly strug- gling against injustice and feick of appreciation on the part of the king. He might seem to have about him something of the "man with a grievance," did not the brilliancy of his conversa- tion and the amenity of his correspondence testify to wit and graces. His disappointments seem, however, to h^ve soured his view of life, and his theory is one of cruelty and inhumanity. Maistre is the chief religious medisevalist of modern times. To him, much as in the old allegorical interpretations, the world is a gross representation of the celestial reality. The spirit of modern times was to him anathema, and men of science called forth his curses. His treatise on Baconian philosophy is a mass of vituperation and abuse. An intellectual descendant of the old Scholastic and rigidly argumentative theologians, though his Soirees de Saint-Petershourg take the form of fluid Platonic entretiens, he places religion above everything else. God rules the world by the principle of authority, not regulating 6o4 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE every action, but leaving to men a certain freedom that sins may be the better punished. For by chastisement men's sins are atoned. The individual may suffer unjustly, but he is a part of humanity undergoing retribution for collective misdeeds. And so Maistre comes to justify warfare and the executioner, as the agent of God, the judge, applying the lex talionis. As God is the source of authority, on him depend the repre- sentatives of sovereignty: the monarch in the temporal, the pope above the monarch in the religious sphere. Maistre is the firm partisan of kingship against any form of government which, Uke republicanism, implies a solution of continuity; he is in his treatise Du Pape the leader in doctrines of " ultramontanism " and papal infallibility. Thus Maistre is the great religious reactionary of modern times, and he did more than any one else to create the state of mind which resulted in the proclamation of papal infallibility in 1870. It is obvious how, at every step, Joseph de Maistre is opposed to the spirit of the eighteenth century: to the anti-religious Voltairianism, to Rousseau's doctrines of the independence of primitive man and the free contract. He is no less hostile to what seemed to him to verge on heresy in the Catholic church, Gallicanism {De I'eglise gallicane), or the even worse Jansenism. The other important Traditionalist was Louis de Bonald (1754- 1840), a cut and dried logician, who undertook to prove every- thing by a sort of rule of three in which the terms were cause, means, and effect. Bonald considers man as passive, a tabula rasa without innate ideas, just as the most pronounced Condil- lacian would have done, but the active cause is God instead of sensation. The world is created by God and in the image of God. Thus Bonald is nothing but an inverted eighteenth- century philosophe, replacing by the word "God" and thus ranging himself as a spiritualist, all that the others had attrib- uted to matter. Under the Empire criticism had to be subordinate to the censorship. The reaction against the Revolution necessitated THE EMPIRE 605 conservative judgments and the rul^ of the old Classical spirit expressed in the grand style. Independence of mind, such as that of Mme de Stael, encountered persecution. Moreover', by a peculiar but not unparalleled manifestation, the fiercest political iconoclasts tended to be literary conservatives. There- fore, Marie- Joseph Chenier, the former Jacobin, was entrusted by the Academy with the drawing-up of an orthodox Tableau of literature since 1789. The legislative bodies were reduced to impotence, the bar and the pulpit had to re-echo the praises of Napoleon. The newspapers were closely watched and the Journal des Debats, become Journal de VEmpir-e, was alone smiled upon by authority. Among critics occupied in rhetorical compositions on the beauties of the seventeenth-century litera- ture, or in reviling the audacity of the scientists, only Geoffroy and Fontanes stand in the first rank, though Hoffman, Dussault, Feletz had reputation in their day. Julien-Louis Geoffroy (1743-1814), who had begun his career as the successor of Fr6ron in the Annie litter aire, became the dramatic critic of the Journal des Debats and the founder of the feuilleton criticism of current dramatic literature. He was a dry and narrow as well as vicious critic, a partisan of the seven- teenth century, and particularly of Corneille, perhaps partly because Voltaire had ventured to criticise that poet in his Commentaire.^ Louis Fontanes (1757-1821), who had begun his career by mild-marmered but not unmeritorious meditative poetry, became finally Grand Master of the University and dispenser of Napo- leon's literary favors. Joseph Joubert (1754-1824), the friend of men like Fontanes and Chateaubriand, of women of talent like Mme de Beaumont and Mme de Vintimille, the valetudinarian and recluse, left at his death many papers, from which in 1838 a posthumous volume ' Napoleon himself Uked to lay down the law with regard to the drama besides listening to his favorite actor Talma, and would analyse the Cornelian heroes from the standpoint of the imperial usurper. 6o6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of fragments afterwards enlarged, the Pensees, was gathered. Joubert is but little read by the French, and is perhaps more appreciated by the cultivated English-speaking people as a result of Matthew Arnold's essay. But as a moralist he deserves a place after Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, and Vauve- nargues, and his wise judgments place him high among the inter- preters of literature. His preferences were for the seventeenth century, with reservations, as opposed to the eighteenth. The production of novels in the Empire days was large. Napoleon was a prolific reader of literature of a certain kind, Ossianesque in Vagueness and sentimental in plot. He could not stand Mme de Stael or Chateaubriand for political reasons. "More novels ending in A!" he said when Atala appeared; "take it away!" But writers like Ducray-Duminil flourished. This author, after composing placid stories for the young, fell under the influence of translations of Mrs. Radclifle's novels, such as the Mysteries of Udolpho. His chief books, Victor, ou I' enfant de laforet and Ccelina, ou V enfant du mystere, had tremen- dous vogue. Ducray-Duminil's stories had the usual para- phernalia of the English "School of Terror," ruined houses, mysterious bells, strange disguises, imprisoned heroines, murders, and the like, all embalmed in moralisings and virtuous instruc- tions. Mme Cottin's no less eminently moral but calmer stories such as Elisabeth, are still known to old-fashioned English readers. There were, however, novels of a different character. Pigault- Lebrun was the counterpart of Ducray-Duminil from the stand- point of popularity in "improper" Uterature. Mme de Kriidener, the Russian Swedenborgian mystic, was the author of Valerie, pubUshed in 1803, and through her influence over the emperor Alexander of Russia, the instigator of the Holy Alliance. Xavier de Maistre, the brother of Joseph de M'aistre and himself a general in the Russian service, wrote several works of fiction under the influence of Sterne, such as the Voyage autour de ma chambre, and the Lepreux de la vallee d'Aoste. THE EMPIRE 607 Poetry and the drama ran in a very thin stream under the Empire. Mechanical tragedies patterned after Corneille and Vol- taire were galvanised into life by Talma, or by Mile Georges and Mile Mars, and then only if they passed the censorship. They were of the type of literature that the irreverent Romanticists were to call "vieille perruque," because of the wigs of the old fogey conservatives faithful to the fashions of their youth, or "pompier," because the heroes of Classical painting and play, with their Greek or Roman helmets, fatally suggested a French fireman's headpiece. Nepomucene Lemercier's Agamemnon in 1797 marked the real climax of the Classical school. But its mechanical side in its degeneracy may be seen in Brifaut's play, originally intended to be a Spanish drama named t)on Sanche, and for political considerations due to the war in Spain, modi- fied under orders from the censor, transferred to Assyria and changed without difficulty into Ninus II. The greatest popular success of the period was Raynouard's TempUers, in which the author drew his subject from French history instead of from antiquity. Luce de Lancival's Hector was another epoch-making play. Lemercier's Pinto is looked upon as a precursor of the historical comedy and Romantic drama, though he hated the Romanticists. His Christophe Colomb caused riots and deaths at the performance because of some bold rhymes and epithets. The specific comedy writers were Picard, Alexandre Duval, and Etienne. The poets were numerous and voluble : they had nothing to say, and said it at great length. The Classicists wrote solemn epics drawn from national history, as became the bards of imperial heroism, or poured forth verses to order for state func- tions. Delille and his school gave out their descriptive poetry and drawing-room treatises on agriculture. In lyric and elegiac verse, though there was little vigor and originality, there was less pretence. The dreamy sentiment of Millevoye, already discussed, and of Chenedolle (i 769-1 833), precursors of Lamar- tine, was in vogue. Chateaubriand complained of the way 6o8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE in which Chenedolle ransacked him for motives and inspiration. Often the lyricism found expression in the genre troubadour, ballads and songs of pseudo-mediaevaUsm, of which we have an example in English in some of the songs of Thomas Ha3Ties Bayly: Gaily the troubadour Touched his guitar, As he came riding Home from the war. One writer, the marquis de Surville, even tried the experiment of Chatterton and of Macpherson, and wrote a large collection of archaic stanzas which were published as the authentic produc- tions of a fifteenth-century ancestress, Clotilde de Surville, and caused great discussion. Macpherson's Ossian itself, still accepted without controversy, found a translator in Baour- Lormian (1770-1854), who likewise, in his Veillees poetiques et morales, inspired by Young, developed the willow and cypress melancholy which was an element of the milder form of Romanticism. Fortunately all poetry was not given over to gloom. The witty Classicist Andrieux (1759-1833) wrote, among other things, comedies, verse stories, and fables, of which the Meunier de Sans-Souci remains in all anthologies. Arnault (i 766-1834) was another ambitious playwright who won a name with posterity rather for his epigrammatic fables. The "Caveau moderne," a successor to the eighteenth-century associations, had as chief founder Desaugiers (1772-1827), the greatest song writer along with Beranger; and his Monsieur et Madame Denis and Paris a cinq heures du matin belong to the undying repertoire of the French chanson. CHAPTER II MME DE STAEL GERMAINE NECKER (1766-1817) or, to give her the name under which she won fame, Mme de Stael, was the daughter of the Swiss banker Necker, who made fruitless attempts to reform the finances of France, and of his wife, renowned by her salon. As a girl she was an excellent example of the infant phenomenon of her sentimental environment. She was the emotional disciple of Rousseau, as Mme Roland was the heroic one. The elopement of Clarissa Harlowe, she afterwards said, was the principal event of her youth, the reading of Werther being another turning-point. At the age of ten she wanted to marry her mother's former lover, Gibbon, in order to keep so much genius in the family, and spent much of her time discussing love with the guests at her mother's gatherings. This compound of brains and emotion was, by her ambitious mother, married to the Swedish envoy in Paris, the baron de Stael- Holstein. After a while they lived together only at intervals; Mme de Stael was too intellectual for her husband, but she did him the service of paying his debts. The prominence of her family and her position, as well as her fondness for talking and dabbling in politics, kept Mme de Stael in hot water all her life; she incurred the violent hatred of Bonaparte, who delighted in persecuting her and banished her from Paris. He was thoroughly justified in so doing, from his point of view, for Mme de Stael was a most potent anti-Napoleonic force in Europe. But it was torture to one who longed for the excitement of the capital. In spite of her fine estate at Coppet, near Geneva, where people came to see her, she was restless and unhappy: 609 6iO A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the "infernal quiet" of Coppet she called it. She travelled in Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden, and England; she expected more then once to go, willingly or unwillingly, to America; she tried to establish herself in various places in France, gradually diminishing the prohibited radius of forty leagues from Paris, but was as constantly expelled. Mme de Stael's name is intimately connected with that of Benjamin Constant, who for years hung about her skirts. Nei- ther found in the other the perfect lover; there was constant irritation, and yet they could not separate; he called her an "homme-femme" in anger at her mastery over his weakness, and she, with corresponding petulance, when a widow, exclaimed: "Rather than lose him, I'll marry him." She did not, because he stole a march on her and got another wife, but her desire for love was at last satisfied by a pretty boy named Rocca, nearly twenty years younger than herself, whom the world looked upon as her cicisbeo, but to whom she was secretly married in 1811.1 Mme de Stael was the most brilliant woman of her time and the most wonderful conversationalist; her writings do not contain a tithe of her wealth of ideas. She was an intellectual hurricane, "a thunderstorm, an earthquake," said Constant; "la science en jupons," said Joseph de Maistre. Most men fled before her arguments, consequently hated her; Schiller said, upon leaving her, that he felt as though he had recovered from a severe illness. She requested Fichte to expound in fifteen minutes his philosophy, which it had taken him years to evolve, and before he had finished she told him that his ego reminded her of Baron Munchausen pulling himself across a stream by his own coat-sleeve. Unfortunately Mme de Stael was over- conscious of her genius: "I understand all that deserves to be understood," she told Crabbe Robinson; "what I do not under- 1 Personally Rocca was a dashing and heroic officer who had been nearly shot to pieces in military service. Mme de Stael married what was left of him. MME DE STAEL 6ii stand does not deserve comprehension." And, as she was not beautiful, her enemies made fun of this mascuHne woman travel- ling over Europe, dressed as her own heroine Corinne, wearing a showy turban,^ carrying a spray of laurel, talking volubly, escorted by Benjamin Constant, and looking for some one to love. This irreverent but necessary description of Mme de Stael does not detract from her greatness; though writing was no pleasure to her she produced some of the most noteworthy books in French, and is looked upon as the most important influence in moulding the literary temper of her time and the following generation. Her chief works were her treatises De la litter ature consideree dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales, and De I'Allemagne, her novels Delphine and Corinne, as well as the posthumous Considerations sur la Revolution franqaise and Dix annees d'exil. Mme de Stael's early writings show the almost undiluted influence of Rousseau. In her first books, the Lettres sur Jean- Jacques Rousseau, the Essai sur les fictions, and the treatise De I' influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations, the author, suffering from the emotional crisis of the Revolution, develops a reaction against the rationalistic methods of reflection of the pseudo-Classicists, appeals to nature and impulse, proclaims the right to voice the passions and impart them to others. Delphine was to be the expression of this itat d'dme. On the other hand, the work De la litterature is under the influence of eighteenth-century philosophy and expounds the doctrine of perfectibility. To Mme de Stael the human mind is in constant progress and she tries, as a Montesquieu might do, to evolve philosophical considerations on its history and on the parallel connection between politics and letters. Written, 1 " Elle etait vetue comme la sibylle du Dominiquin, un chale des Indes autour de sa tete, et ses cheveux, du plus beau noir, entrem^les avec ce chile." — Corinne, Book II, chap. i. 6i2 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE though not published, in the revolutionary glow, the book declares that, under the freedom of republican institutions, literature will prosper more than ever. But this partly dis- carded theory is not what makes the importance of the book. The author looked still further and saw a new source of strength in the northern nations. Though Mme de Stael was already familiar with England, she as yet knew little of Germany at first hand. But as a Swiss and a Protestant, she belonged both to the Latin and the Teutonic culture, an antithesis, as she herself said, between the French taste and the northern senti- ments which undermined her life. None the less it enabled her to distinguish the separate tendencies and formulate a theory which, though not entirely satisfactory, proved fertile in its suggestiveness. This was the doctrine of southern and northern literatures expressive of the two different peoples: the one a literature of art and form, the other a literature of personal feeling, with original qualities, such as the deeper view of life, together with enthusiasm and tenderness. To Mme de Stael one of the chief reasons of the "superiority" of northern writers is the Protestant religion of the north opposed to the Catholicism of the south. The attempt to broaden French culture, whether one call it Cosmopolitanism, Germanisation, or Europeanisation, was continued in her book De I'Allemagne. Individual German authors had been read before Mme de Stael's time; she made Germany known. Her book has been called the most masculine product of the faculties of woman. That statement may per- haps stand, though we need not forget that a great German critic, August Wilhelm Schlegel, was for years a tutor in Mme de Stael's family and she had every opportunity to eviscerate him. But at a time when Napoleon was trying to crush the German spirit, Mme de Stael proclaimed to his face the qualities of the people, analysed their civilisation, literature, art, philosophy, morals, religion, and "enthusiasm," and declared the need of a regeneration of the French mind by contact with the northern MME DE STAEL 613 race. It was a sort of call to self-consciousness of a sleeping people oppressed by a foreign tyrant. The book had also ex- traordinary effect in bringing about a change in the succeeding French Romanticism. Mme de Stael did much to make the French less traditionalists, leading them to welcome the portrayal of personal feeling, whencesoever it came, and to adopt, at least for a time, a mentality as well as a sentimentality, compounded from England and Germany, grafted on Rousseau. Thus she is one of the most important characters in the early history of Romanticism in France. In the un&oishedConsiderations sur la Revolution JranqaiseMme de Stael sought to defend her father's ministerial policy, to show how the Revolution had been a failure because of the warring of parties, followed by tyranny instead of the establishment of true revolutionary principles. Harmony could come only by a return to the original aims for which the Revolution was started : a constitutional monarchy based on liberal foundations. This could be taken as a warning to the government of Louis XVIII. The book was one of the important contributions to the ideas of the school of French liberal statesmen and theorists during the Restoration and the reign of Louis-Philippe, known as the doctrinaires (Royer-CoUard, Guizot, Charles de Remusat, etc.). It might be supposed that a firm believer in progress would be a consistent optimist. But Mme de Stael's emotions were separate from her theories and were those, soon to become so familiar, of the lonely soul pining for sympathy. A generation later this feeling found expression in the femme incomprise, at war with her social environment. This phase of Mme de Stael's character is represented by her novels. Delphine and Corinne are works of semi-autobiographical analysis, again testifying to the influence of Rousseau. Delphine, a novel in the form of letters, tells the story of a beautiful young woman whose actions are, by a chain of circumstances, constantly mis- interpreted by public opinion and by the man she loves, until at last both have waded through weeping to the grave. The 6 14 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE novel made its readers cry as copiously and, though the setting of the plot was on the whole a vague one, still the identification of Talleyrand with one of the female characters and the discus- sion of burning questions such as divorce made the novel a sensation. Corinne is far more interesting to the modern reader. The character of Delphine was Mme de Stael as she saw herself, Corinne was Mme de Stael as she would have wished to be. It was the result, also, of her Italian journey and the reaction of the wonderful southern land on a lover of art and romance. The fairly slender plot, again portraying the conflict of love and of social obligations, is set in an Italian frame. The heroine is the intellectually superior woman kept from her lover by the rigidity of Anglo-Saxon worldly considerations. For the reader of Mme de Stael's own day Corinne not only opened new floodgates of tears, but it also did the service of interpreting Italy anew to the modern world: in terms of senti- ment, it is true, but that did no great harm immediately after the mock-stoic misinterpretations of the eighteenth-century thinkers. Corinne and Oswald visiting the Campagna, the Appian Way, and the tomb of Caecilia Metella illustrate once more the influence of ruins on the imagination, as they had impressed Sulpicius Rufus amid the glories of decaying Greece, Petrarch, Du Bellay, and Chateaubriand in this same Rome, Gibbon planning at sunset on the Capitoline hill his history of the decline and fall, Volney at Palmyra, and the Romantic poets after Mme de Stael. In her book the touch of feminine senti- ment has almost lyric and elegiac expression. For that reason one readily forgives a guide-book aspect, as of the tourist per- sonally conducted by a disciple of Schlegel, Winckelmann, Lessing, and Goethe,^ and Corinne can be enjoyed by the visitor 1 " Je vous fais passer, dit Corinne a ceux qui I'accompagnaient, sur les bords du lac d'Arverne, puis du Phlegethon, et voUa devant vous le temple de la sibylle de Cumes. Nous traversons les lieux- celebres sous le nom des Delices de Bayes, mais je vous propose de ne pas vous y arrSter dans MME DE STAEL 615 to Italy now. In its own time it roused the greatest enthusiasm, and today, though the tradition of Clarissas and of Malvinas has passed away, an occasional Corinne still shows how the memory of a heroine of fiction has been handed down from, grandmother to mother and daughter. fflf Corinne stands for Mme de Stael, the Adolphe (1816) of Benjamin Constant (i 767-1830) represents him in his rela- tions with her, she bearing the name of Ellenore. Mme de Stael's man is the conventional lover; not so with Constant. Adolphe is an important document in the series of semi-autobio- graphical romances. Though the characters are intentionally made misleading, it is easy to read between the lines the restless as well as selfish intimacy of Constant with Mme de Stael, together with hints of other among his amorous experiences. The story is really the mental analysis of a man who has become weary of the woman he loved, but does not know what to do and has not strength of mind to come to a decision. The acute- ness of the psychic dissection and the truthful reproduction of the hero's states of mind make the book an important document for the study of character, a striking example of the early nineteenth-century irresolution, but it is not stimulating reading. It illustrates the indecision characteristic of Constant, the prod- uct of a rigid Swiss Calvinism, but one who, having lost his faith during an era of disenchantment, suffered from the morbid condition which is apt to be the result of such a mental and moral evolution. ce moment. Nous recueillerons les souvenirs de I'histoire et de la poesie qui nous entourent id quand nous arriverons dans un lieu d'ou nous pourrons les apercevoir tous a la fois." — Corinne, Book XIII, chap. iii. CHAPTER III CHATEAUBRIAND CHATEAUBRIAND is, with Ronsard and Hugo, an ex- ample of the vicissitudes of literary renown. During his lifetime no one in the universe more nearly reached deifica- tion. Yet no sooner was he gone than unfortunate circum- stances connected with the publication of his memoirs, and the unfavorable criticism of Sainte-Beuve-, backed up by his insid- ious footnotes, destroyed a reputation which has only recently been recovered. Chateaubriand was, after all, the founder of Romantic literature and the most important figure of the first half of the nineteenth century. Chateaubriand was not a normal being, and Romanticism, which had its ultimate source in the lunatic Rousseau, had, as father, one whose melancholy, stamped on his school, came near being pathological. He was the son of a morbidly taciturn man, and one of his sisters became insane and probably committed suicide. Franfois-RenS de Chateaubriand was born in 1768 at Saint- Malo in Brittany. When not at school at Dol, Dinan, or Rennes, he spent his time in the gloomy parental manor of Com- bourg, a prey to childish visions and dreams, oppressed by the melancholy and ennui from which he was never free, and which led him to think of suicide. His only consolation was the sym- pathetic companionship of his sister Lucile, a creature more morbid and unfit to live than he, but who awakened in him his hterary taste. It was she who went insane. In 1786, just before his father's death, he became an ofiicer in the army, but a few years later, restless and impatient and with something of 616 CHATEAUBRIAND 6 1 7 the wanderlust of Rousseau about him, he started in 1791 to America to discover the Northwest Passage. This journey to the United States lasted less than a year, in- cluding the sea voyages, but it is one of the great dates in French literature. It marked the true awakening of the man of letters; it disclosed a new source of local coloring which set the fashion and gave Chateaubriand material that lasted him through hfe. The whole trip has been the subject of harsh criticism: it has been incorrectly denied that he ever could have seen General Wash- ington, and it is difficult to believe that he could have made the long expeditions he indicates to the West and the Mississippi valley. On the other hand, if he had remained near Niagara, as it has been suggested he did, he could have found there as much material for literary treatment as in the south where the scenes of his stories lie. As to his crazy American flora and fauna, he was no scientific observer but an imaginative writer who put into nature what he thought should be there. So Americans may smile in reading of the Meschacebe (Mississippi) rolling past meadows where dwell green snakes, blue herons, and pink flamingoes, or on which young' crocodiles go sailing down on floating islands of pines, oaks, and water-lilies, past forests with trees bound together by festooned creepers, where stagger bears drunk with grapes, or where green parrots with yellow heads mingle with cardinals, humming-birds, and hissing serpents. The judicious will conclude that Chateaubriand's imagination, like his landscapes, was tropical, and will admire his descriptions, not for their exactness but for their beauty. The ferret-critic will also add that he had read the Pere Charlevoix's Histoire ei description de la Nouvelle France, William Bartram's Travels, and Beltrami's Pilgrimage. One night in the wilderness Chateaubriand came upon a tattered newspaper in English, telling of the flight of the king and the incident of Varennes. A royalist nobleman and parti- san of the king, he gave up his journey and returned at oncie to France, reaching home permiless. He soon let his family marry 6i8 A mSTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE him to a young woman for, whom he felt no predilection, but who proved to be of the saintly type, and who lived almost as long as he did, forgiving his infidelities and neglect, the whims and manias of a man of genius. Within a few months Chateaubriand joined the army of the emigres, and before long, wounded and diseased, weakened by fever and smallpox, he found himself in 1793 a penniless refugee in London. There the proud aris- tocrat, sometimes actually hungry, made a precarious living by hackwriting, translating, or teaching, called " Shatterbrain " by his pupils. Meanwhile he worked at the Natchez and the Essai historique sur les revolutions, an attack on the Revolution and the doctrines of perfectibility, which was published in 1797. The Natchez, left for years in a trunk in London, at least so the author said, did not appear until long after. So far, Chateau- briand's philosophical attitude had verged on scepticism, and the last chapter of this book was entitled: Quelle sera la religion qui remplacera le Christianisme? But his pious mother's grief on reading the book, followed by her death and that of his elder sister Julie, caused an emotional crisis in him: "J'ai pleure et j'ai cru." As expiation, he wrote the Genie du Christianisme, a panegyric of the moral and poetic beauties of Christianity. It appeared in 1802 on the eve of the establishment of the Con- cordat with the pope, and seemed the justification and conse- cration of the religious revival. It was well timed and from that moment Chateaubriand was the most famous man in France. He had already- won much renown in 1801 by the episode of Atala, drawn from the as yet unpublished Natchez, and then incorporated in the Genie du Christianisme. This was soon followed by Rene, of which the external history was similar. Napoleon, anxious to win over influential people, appointed Chateaubriand secretary of the embassy at Rome, and then minister to the Swiss Valais. At this moment took place the execution of the due d'Enghien. Chateaubriand resigned and became Napoleon's fierce enemy. To occupy his leisure, he planned a sort of prose epic in glorification of Christianity. This CHATEAUBRIAND 619 was the Martyrs, for the preparation of which he made a journey to the Orient, described in the IHneraire de Paris a Jerusalem. The Aventures du dernier Abencerage, published much later, was another fruit of this journey. Chateaubriand again found a psychological moment for his political pamphlet De Bonaparte et des Bourbons, and became prominent in politics under the Restoration; he was peer of the realm, ambassador to Berlin, to London, delegate to the Congress of Verona, minister of foreign affairs, and responsible for the war of intervention in Spain, ambassador to Rome. But he never hesitated, with many varying moods, to follow the impulses of his conscience, if that can be distinguished from his vanity: "Bourbon par honneur, royaliste par raison et par conviction, je suis republi- cain par gout et par caractere." So it came about that after many ups and downs, Chateaubriand faced an old age of com- parative poverty, cheered not so much by the Solicitude of his wife as by his intimacy with Mme Recamier and by those friends of her salon at the Abbaye-aux-Bois who remained faith- ful in his declining years. He died in 1848. Years before he had begun the writing of the Memoires d'Outre-tombe, intended for*;, posthumous pubhcation as his message to posterity. But much leaked out before his death, and the final piecemeal pub- lication in a newspaper fell flat amid the stirring events of the Revolution of 1848. Chateaubriand was one of the great poseurs and one of the worst liars and plagiarists in literature, but he had qualities which partly justified him, and he influenced his times as per- haps no other man since Rousseau. He is the father of Roman- ticism and contributes to it a large part of its definite content: "le sachem du romantisme," this portrayer of the Indians has been called. Kindly and sociable in prosperity, yet haughty in adversity, with something of the English reserve acquired by his sojourn in England, suffering from an incurable ennui ("j'ai le spleen, veritable maladie, tristesse physique"), he seemed to take pleasure in his gloom; at one exceptional moment, after a 620 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE treatment at the baths of Cauterets, he wrote: "I did my best to be melancholy, but could not." Thus he seemed the type of the man destined to be the hero of the Romanticists, burdened with a curse, and drawing after him disaster. The story of Rene, who stands for Chateaubriand himself, and of the morbid love of his sister Amelie, in whom people recognised the un- happy Lucile, gave rise, under the name of mal de Rene or mal du siecle, to the pessimism which stamped itself on the literature of the whole following generation, — a melancholy much more acute than the sentimental meditations hitherto in vogue. A kindred contribution of Chateaubriand was general emo- tionalism. This he was far from originating, but he gave it a greater place in literature. His perceptions were almost entirely aesthetic, the reaction from impression.. There was little real reflection in his nature. This, combined with his artistic tem- perament, made his life a series of emotional adventures, and his writings the expression of these experiences, sometimes magni- fied by the imagination. Rene wanders through Italy with a "sainte et poetique horreur," Chateaubriand responds in feeling to the majesty of primitive nature at Niagara, to the desolation of the Roman Campagna, to the glory of the Acropolis, the memories awakened by the Holy Land. The journey to Amer- ica came, of course, at the most impressionable period of his life; it was, moreover, the discovery of a new world to imaginative and descriptive literature. Hence, Chateaubriand is, following Saint-Pierre, the most important author in the development of local coloring, so useful to the Romanticists, and of the com- munion with nature or conflicts between man and his social environment. As Chateaubriand's imagination roamed over time and space, and he felt the poetry of Gothic art and the beauty of cathedrals, he opened up by the Genie du Christian- isme the Middle Ages to the dramatists, the novehsts and the historians. Finally, by his religious feeling, he inspired his fellow-c^juntrymen weary of the unbelief of the eighteenth cen- CHATEAUBRIAND 621 tury and disheartened by the failure of its substitutes for Chris- tianity.^ Chateaubriand is the counterpart of the influence which in England, as mediaeval Romanticism, produced the Oxford Movement, High Church ritualism, and Puseyism. What more specifically differentiates Chateaubriand from many other great writers is that, instead of being a mere mouthpiece for the moods of his contemporaries, he was the leader and instigator. If we turn to a more direct consideration of the content of Chateaubriand's mind, our praise must be qualified. Intellec- tually considered, he was not remarkable. Consumed by an extraordinary vanity and the resulting self-assurance that im- poses on so many people, he was gifted with a wonderful poetical expression, which found vent in prose, and has put his descrip- tions among the most beautiful in the French language. More- over, coming with all their sonorousness and richness of coloring as a heightened contrast to the blank platitudes of a decayed Voltairianism, they were, to his contemporaries, vistas opened into a beautiful world of which pprsons had never suspected the existence, except in exotic works not accessible to all, like Ossian. Chateaubriand, as -a disciple of Rousseau, was the example of the egoist who saw his life and the world-ijfe as vast heroic poems. Not only is the Martyrs a prose epic, but the Memoires d'Outre-tombe, and all the writings where the personal element so constantly enters, are a series of epic scenes of which Chateau- briand is the great hero. He exposes himself in becoming draperies and suitable surroundings to the pity of all people, heedless of the suffering he may cause to the women who come under his influence, his wife, Charlotte Ives, the English clergy- man's daughter, Mme de Beaumont, Mme de Custine, Mme de Duras, Mme de Mouchy, Mme R6camier. His life was one of aesthetic self -preoccupation, not taking the form of rigid analy- 1 The question of the sincerity or literary pose of Chateaubriand's reUgious attitude has been the subject of much discussion. See the abbe Bertrin's la SincSriti religietise de Chateaubriand. 622 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE sis but merely of vague yearnings and wailings, in which he never lost sight of the stage-setting: he took much thought as to his own burial, whether it should be in a Roman sarcophagus, or, as he finally decided, on a storm-beaten island in Brittany; yet he never knew what became of his sister Lucile's body. In the same way the Memoire^ d'Outre-tombe are not to be compared with the Confessions of Rousseau, since in them Chateaubriand appears only in his best light: "II ne faut presenter au monde que ce qui est beau." Taking, then, Chateaubriand's work as a whole, and disre- garding slight differences of chronological periods, we may come to this judgment upon his achievements: He finally swept away the ideals of Classicism in form and content, and substituted for a literature of rationalised generali- sations from the reading of ancient authors, a new literature, emotional and passionate, based on individual experience and on new sources of inspiration: the remote wilderness of distant con- tinents or the remote days of past history. Rousseau and Saint-Pierre had pointed the way, but Chateaubriand won the victory. He rescued the French language from inanition and made it poetical and imaginative, bringing into it new figures and similes drawn ^rom a wider field of vision and expressed in a less hackneyed vocabulary. Of the Itineraire he said: "J'allais chercher des images, voila tout." The "orage de mon coeur, est-ce une goutte de votre pluie?" was to take the place of the "brule de plus de feux que je n'en allumai" of the Classical lover. He narrowed, it is true, almost to the one form of taedium vitae the outlet of the poet and novelist, but he opened outlooks upon regions where men were seen suffering from the same sorrows. He not only stimulated the study of history, at least in its pic- turesque aspects, but disclosed the beauty and consoling power of a religion which had been scorned and neglected. There is much that is unnatural in Chateaubriand's nature: there is something theatrical, however chivalrous and even . quixotic, in the actions of his own political career; his savages are sophis- CHATEAUBRIAND 623 ticated beings voicing his own sentiments, and Chactas in Europe is no untutored barbarian ignorant of civilised feelings. The Natchez or Iroquois of Chateaubriand is as untrue as the Huron of Voltaire or the Inca of Marmontel. Not least among Chateaubriand's services was to show that the Christian faith need not be considered as either the teaching of knaves and fools or a tool for tyrannical oppression. His nature was fitted for this interpretation and the conciliation of the beautiful and the good: it was Sainte-Beuve who called him an epicurean with a Catholic imagination. Hence in the Genie du Christianisme he proceeds, on the principle that "there is nothing beautiful which is not divine," to point out the beauties of the Christian faith, to show the poetry of its dogmas and ceremonies, and the relations of art and literature to religion: Sainte-Beuve calls him also the "avocat poetique du christian- isme." And Chateaubriand said himself: "Where Mme de Stael sees perfectibility, I see Jesus." In the Martyrs he writes the great Christian prose epic, as the Memoires d'Outre-tombe are the lay epic of his own times, once again reacting against the trappings of Classicism by opposing the merveilleux chretien to the merveilleux paien which the school of Boileau had admit- ted only. So he tells the story of the young lovers in the days of Diocletian, Eudore and Cymodocee, the one a Christian, -the> other daughter of a pagan priest, whose love ends in martyrdom. He accompanies their tale with semi-historical descriptions and episodes seemingly irrelevant but beautiful in themselves, as in Book VT. The result is a mixture of Homer and Milton, sometimes with Bossuet added, of history and of geography. It is often diffuse and verbose, but it has about it the glow bf the sublime rhetorician. It should, however, be remembered that this aesthetic and sensuous glorification of Christianity did not add a particle to its moral strength, and Chateaubriand is the ancestor of those who found their faith not on religion but on religiosity, and to whom rites and ceremonials are the essence rather than the symbol of their behef. 624 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Chateaubriand was a master of the art of writing. To the Classicist and to the unimaginative critic he seems lush, turgid, and bombastic, but to those who are susceptible to the harmony of words and who can visualise the scenes which his imagination called up, Chateaubriand will always be a great name. He was no slapdash writer; many of his passages were rewritten more than once, and some of the extant episodes are examples of over- wrought literary method, a pseudo-epic verging on unconscious parody. There is no knowing how much Chateaubriand was indebted to the keen judgment of his faithful friends Fontanes and Joubert: perhaps to one of them was due the elimination of solecisms of taste, such as calling God in the early editions of the Genie du Christianisme, the "eternel celibataire des mondes." It was Mme de Beaumont who said, however, and posterity can at least understand what she meant: "Le style deM.de Chateaubriand joue du clavecin sur toutes mes fibres." He was guilty of many lapses from good taste, and was responsible for ridiculous exaggerations on the part of his disciples, and Sainte- Beuve saw to it that these should not remain unknown. But, for good or evil, he was a Titan in his influence, and the time has passed when it is permissible to scoff at him. Not that he was pleased with his literary descendants of the Romantic school: he wanted to remain alone in his glory. Moreover Chateau- briand was, in reality, a traditionalist, and so, opposed to his disciples. His position in French literature is not unlike that of Byron with regard to Pope. A spirit kindred to Chateaubriand's world-weariness is to be found in Senancour's Obermann (1804), though its author was jealous of Chateaubriand and disliked him intensely. Etienne Pivert de Senancour (i 770-1 846) had many reasons for being unhappy, but he made himself more so. His sensitive youth was darkened by Jansenist family influences, he married un- happily, he was all his life a struggling writer and journalist, lonely, and, as is often the case, valuing least the book on which his fame now rests: for his Reveries sur la nature primitive de CHATEAUBRIAND 625 I'komme are less important. Obermann can hardly even be called a novel, but in the form of letters, partly describing wan- derings through Switzerland and the forest of Fontainebleau, the author pours forth his disenchantment and expresses the premature senile decay of the resolution. What plot it con- tains is probably in part fiction, in part a revelation of tempera- ment and of feeling, rather than of incident. Yet, none the less, Senancour was not whoUy pleased when, after long neglect, Obermann was "rediscovered" by leaders, of the generation of 1830, like Sainte-Beuve, who wished to republish it unmodified. Only then did it have its true vogue, never a widely popular one. At his death Senancour was a quite forgotten man.^ Disheartening and discouraging as the book is in itself to read, it is like Constant's Adolphe, which it preceded, an important human document and study of a type of mind, more rarely found now but none the less occasionally met, what Philarete Chasles is quoted as calUng an "intellectual and moral eunuch." The names Senancour and Obermann are now used practically interchangeably . Senancour had the temperament of a Rousseau, from whom he got the title of his Reveries and similar egoism. His self loomed large and he magnified his sufferings: "Peut-Stre quelques jours paisibles me seront-ils donnes: mais plus de charme, plus d'ivresse, jamais un moment de pure joie, jamais! et je n'ai pas vingt et un ans!"^ He yielded to the cult of sensation, coffee, opium, reaping the corresponding fatigue. Intellectually he had inherited the destructive traditions of the eighteenth- century philosophers (going back beyond them to Montaigne), • Amiel represents among modem jyriters in French most truly the kindred paralysis of the will. Matthew Arnold has made Amiel almost as well known in England as in Francp. The type of personal nar- rative, half fiction, half truth, though with different postulates and environment, may be illustrated by Gissing's Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. 2 Cf . quotation from Hugo's Marion Delorme, p. 701 . 626 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE including the irony^ of Voltaire and scorn for the current religion of the people, Catholicism. Senancour was a man of religious temperament left without a religion, and his struggles were often those between scepticism and religious feeling, as he hopelessly endeavored to create for himself a satisfactory creed, moral and social rather than meta- physical. His inclinations led him to a mystical Spinozistic pantheism, and he found a kindred feeling in Saint-Martin. But everjrwhere his mysticism left him disquieted, instead of resting, like many moral hedonists and epicureans, in a self- satisfied ataraxy. Thus Senancour is a connecting-link between such opposite tendencies as eighteenth-century philosophism and nineteenth-century Romanticism. 1 Irony was to Senancour the mark of the superior mind: "Le mepris du philistin, I'amour du macabre, le delire metaphysique, toutes choses a la mode dans las ateliers de 1830, Obermann en a pu etre pour sa bonne part responsable.'' — J. Merlant, Senancour. CHAPTER IV THE TREND OF THOUGHT {1815-1850). POLITICS AND RELIGION. ROMANTIC MANIFESTATIONS THE period from 1815 to 1850 was one of complete recon- struction in all the spheres of French existence. The Revolution had destroyed the old civilisation, and its successor, the Empire, had merely testified to the instability of a substi- tute. The rest of the half-century was, therefore, mainly taken up by the search for a new balancing principle to maintain the governmental centre of gravity; a new literary expression to replace the exhausted Classicism; new religions and philoso- phies for the consolation of other generations; and, finally, pew schemes for the renewal of society and the happiness of mankind. The period was one of numberless experiments, and ma'iy fail- ures. The theories of innovation were, to an important ^gree, founded on the imaginative impulses ultimately traceable to Rousseau, and corresponded to those which, in iiie^ literary- aspect, will be studied in a later chapter unde^/pe name of Romanticism. Romanticism is, in truth, in its full concept^^i much more extensive than is assumed by ordinary histOT*^^ of literature. Even after 1850 it often merges into Reali/- instead of being antithetical to it, as it is to ClassicismV^^ occupies fully as important a part of the nineteenth cerr'^y ^^ Classicism, the School of 1660, did of the seventeentl; Romanticism is primarily, as was >^ ^^se with Rousseau, the cult of the untutored nature, and/w"ter who exalts the in- stinctive or, as the psychologist A^d say, the subliminal self, to the detriment of reason and,^^cti°"' is, at heart, a Roman- 628 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE ticist. To him the individual "creative imagination" is more important than the general rules of art.^ After the political upheaval of the Revolution and the assertion of the rights of man in politics and in literature, the tendencies of the Romantic impulsives divided and diverged. Some, especially those inter- ested in the past or future history of humanity or of a people, evolved a social mysticism, partly under the influence of the German pantheists or philosophers of Becoming and Flux. The mysticism was often divorced from the Christian faith and became a religion of humanity. To this tendency belonged the socialists and political or moral Utopians. The historians some- times even sank the individual in the mass, as in the poetic vision of Quinet, or endowed the crowd with divine instinct and spirit- ualised the mob, as in the accounts of the Revolution of Michelet, Lamartine or Louis Blanc. The social and religious humani- tarians, such as Fourier, Leroux or Lamennais, were in the same way Romantic visionaries and seers into the future, and th6 political orators of the Revolution of 1848 were steeped in Rom\ntic lyricism. To these people, the poet was the /oiuo-Taymyds, the insjiirer, endowed by nature with the task of leading the 1 The grea,t Classical critics, like Boileau, admit the necessity of inspira- tion, thoi^h they do not dwell upon it much: C'»st en vain qu'au Parnasse un temeraire auteur l^nse de I'art des vers atteindre la hauteur: S line sent point du ciel I'influence secrete, Si so astre en naissant ne I'a forme poete, Dans i,ji ggjiig gtroit il est toujours captif ; Pour lutojigbus est sourd et Pegase est retif . — Art poetique. In the above quotatio "genius" is referred to in "I'influence secrlte" and not m genie. lo ti neo-Classicists Genius was an infinite capacity for taking pains, under the ,-^^^^^ ^f ^^^^^^. ^^ ^^^^^ , Not only could the beauty of nature be a consoling influence to him, instead of the blind ^nd cruel force that it seemed to Vigny, but he had something of the feeling of Pope that "whatever is, is right." Thus he says in his poem to Byron : Ah! loin de t'accuser, Baisa plutot la joug que tu voulais briser, Descends du rang des dieux qu'usurpait ton audace; Tout est Men, tout est bon, tout est grand d, sa place; Aux regards de celui qui fit Timmensite L'insacta vaut un monde: ils ont autant cout6! Lamartine 's love of nature is sincere and deeply felt: nature is in harmony with the soul. Not merely did he\ as Theophile Gautier said, discover the soul of man by his Meditations, but man is to him almost one with his environment. It is not necessary to go-so far as to call Lamartine^^as has been done, a pantheist, but in many respects he has b^n truthfully likened to at least Wordsworth among the English Lake poets. To him the whole world is permeated with a spiritual life, which is not God but of which God is the key; Rien ne m'expliqua, et saul j'expUque I'univers; On croit me voir dedans, on me voit a travers; Ce grand miroir brise, j'eclaterais encore; Eh! qui peut separer le rayon de I'aurore? THE POETS 669 The parallel with Wordsworth may be pushed still farther than the action and reaction of nature and the soul. Lamartine, too, was a so-called "philosophical poet," and, like Wordsworth, he was a pseudo-Platonist. The Mort de Socrate, one of the most beautiful though not the most original of Lamartine's poems, is largely a paraphrase of the Phcedo of Plato; and in other poems Lamartine writes on immortality, has his recollections of trans- migrations in the past ("L'homme est un dieu tombe qui se souvient des cieux"), as well as presages of the future ideal: Lieux ou le vrai soleil eclaire d'autres cieux, Si je pouvais laisser ma depouille a la terre, Ce que j'ai tant rSve paraitrait a mes yeux. La je m'enivrerais a la source ou j'aspire; La je retrouverais at I'espoir et I'amour, Et ce bien ideal que toute ame desire, Et qui n'a pas de nom au terrestre s6jour. The Meditations are far from being merely communion with nature. Their chief pathos lies in the poems to Elvire and le Lac, in which Lamartine invokes the memories of the woman he had loved and lost. The Nouvelles meditations and the Harmonies poetiques et religieuses added on the whole nothing new to Lamartine's poetry. Jocelyn was an idealisation of an experience of the abbe Dumont, a tutor of his youth. This long narrative poem tells the love of a pure-minded priest for a girl, Laurence, with whom he is thrown by the proscriptions of the Revolution, and his renunciation. The Chute d'un ange, of no less than eleven thousand verses, and much inferior to Jocelyn, was in the mind of the author to form with it part of a great poetic cycle. As a Biblical epic it has fine tirades, but it is too flabby to bear close scrutiny, and its story of an angel who becomes a human being through love of a mortal woman weakens its power. It is, however, an im- portant example of the numerous poems composed by the more spiritual Romanticists on angels of pity and love, which have 670 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE sometimes been called the "Seraphic School," as opposed to the "Satanic School" of the Byronians. Lamartine was, indeed, the chief poet of the French spiritualists, who held aloof from the wild excesses of the grotesque authors, and who had their counterpart in the philosophy of men like Victor Cousin. The Mart de Socrate was also an expression of this feeling, which took the form of a vague deism and hostility to the eighteenth- century rationalism and the contemporary materialism. A ten- dency to mysticism was perhaps confirmed by his experience with Lady Hester Stanhope, whom he saw in the Orient, and who predicted to him a great political future, which prediction he lived to fulfil. The prose writings of Lamartine are pre-eminently lyrical and rhapsodical. In the brilliant descriptions of the Voyage en Orient one gets the same glamour as in the best parts of the Chute d'un ange. In the Confidences and the Nouvelles confi- dences there is an excessive quantity of personal epanchements , among which Graziella stands forth as the best episode. Trans- formed from the cigarette-maker into a fisherman's daughter and worker in coral, she is placed in the framework of the Nea- politan bay and its islands. The beauty of that southern land- scape is ever recurrent in the thoughts of Lamartine. Paul et Virginie, Atala and Graziella are three very different stories, but they must be read together if one wishes to understand the growth of emotionalism in the Romantic school. The Histoire des Girondins is inaccurate and worthless as history or criticism, but its lyrical tone was almost as effective as poetry. Lamartine's position in French literatiyre and in French his- tory is a noble one. He appears to have been one of the most chivalrous and unselfish men that public life produced in his time. He more than once effaced himself in 1848 when a more egotistical course of action would have brought him glory. He was inspired with a desire to bring about greater happiness to all classes of the nation, yet without so much of the sloppy and unreasoning sympathy of Hugo. He tried to execute the re- THE POETS 671 forms of the new Revolution without the cruelties of the first one, and succeeded in abolishing the penalty of death to pre- vent the possibility of a new Reign of Terror. As soon as Lamartine lost his influence, a decline was visible in the country to political brutality and demagogy. As a man of letters, Lamartine has suffered most with poster- ity from his inability to restrain his pen. His poetry, at its best, was dignified and noble, and without the stilted artificial- ity of the old school; it was clear and limpid, so that each word was a mirror into the writer's soul. Yet there was too much of it, and it was enervating in its softness. No poet has written more graceful and touching lines, no poet has written so much monotonous, mellifluous and meandering metre. In prose, where the writer was relieved from the necessity of rhyme, the stream of placid narrative wearies the nerves. But Lamartine, at his best, whether in a mere trifle like le Papillon or discoursing upon the immortality of the soul in the Mart de Socraie, was a poet such as France had not had since Chenier, and he was free from Chenier's Alexandrian prettinesses : Cependant, dans son sein son haleine oppressee Trop faible pour preter des sons a sa pensee, Sur son livre entr'ouvert, helas, venait mourir, Puis semblait tout a coup palpi ter et courir: Comme, pret a s'abattre aux rives paternelles, D'un cygne qui se pose on voit battre las ailes. Entre les bras d'un songe il semblait endormi; L'intr6pide Cebes penche sur notre ami, Rappelant dans ses yeux I'ame qui s'evapore, Jusqu'au bord du tr6pas Tinterrogeait encore: Dors-tu? lui disait-il; la mort est-ce un sommeil? II recueillit sa force, et dit: C'est un reveil! — Ton ceil est-il voile par des ombres funebres? — Non, je vols un jour pur poindre dans les, t6nebres. {La Mort de Socrate.) Alfred de Vigny (i 797-1863) was the truest philosopher of those poets of the Romantic school who aspired to be "philo- 672 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE sophical." Belonging to a family of quality and ranking as count, he entered military service in the king's household, in which he served from 1814 to 1828, but rose to be only captain. His promotion was slow because of his solitary and moody dis- position. He spent most of his life in retirement, in what Sainte-Beuve called his "tour d'ivoire," writing and publishing little as compared with his contemporaries. In 1842 he entered the French Academy, his reception being marked by a rather brutal speech of M. Mole in welcome. Vigny's works consist of two volumes of poetry (one containing the poems published between 1822 and 1826, the other the posthumous Destinies of 1864, with many poems that had appeared separately), several plays (adaptations of Shakespere, and the Marechale d'Ancre and Chatterton), his prose writings, Cinq-Mars, Stello, Servitude et grandeur militaires, and fragments of his journal. Alfred de Vigny belonged to the generation of men disheart- ened by the disasters which the Revolution had involved, and suffered from the mal du siecle. But he never could have been happy anyway. No one seemed born more to the possibility of happiness: brave and handsome, distinguished in letters and known as the "poet-warrior," he could have won any worldly success. But the weight of an inexplicable gloom overhung his nature. His sensitiveness was such that he shrank from his fellows and had scarcely a friend. Yet there was a great differ- ence between the soul-sickness of Vigny and that of Chateau- briand, the creator of Rene. For where Chateaubriand was purely selfish, Vigny professed to be filled with pity for other mortals in pain, and realised "la majeste des souflrances hu- maines." Byron was, as usual, a great influence on him, but he softened the curses of Cain into the pity of Eloa. Immersed so much in his solitary thoughts, Alfred de Vigny gradually evolved a vague philosophic creed of which his writings are the expression: he was an idealist, but became in time devoid of faith or of systematic belief. To Vigny, the world was full of symbols, and his literary method was usually to exemplify in THE POETS 673 some figure a philosophic thought. Thus, a Platonist and a student of Malebranche, as well as an admirer of the stoical Julian the Apostate, he had, under the influence of writers like Strauss, author of the famous life of Jesus, gradually rationalised God, or reverence for God, out of his mind. If God does exist he is a tyrant, the torturer of suffering mortals, whose cruelty can best be met with hate, or with stoical indifference: S'il est vrai qu'au jardin des saintes Ecritures, Le Fils de I'Homme ait dit ce qu'on voit rapporte, Muet, aveugle et sourd au cri des creatures, Si le del nous laissa comme un monde avortd, Le juste opposera le dedain a I'absence, Et ne repondra plus que par un froid silence Au silence eternel de la Divinite. ' {Mont des OUviers.) To Alfred de Vigny the poet is a prophet and a preacher to man- kind, but he bears with him in his genius a fatal gift which makes his priesthood a curse to him. Vigny's " chief writings represent the gradual growth of his intellectual moods and his fierce stoicism of despair. The poem of Moise (1822) expressing this loneliness of leadership is,, in its sweep of Biblical' language, one of the most impressive poems in the French language, if we can forget that Vigny is, in a way, putting himself on a pedestal: Des tombes des humains j'ouvre la plus antique, La mort trouve a ma voix une voix prophetique, Je suis tres grand, mes pieds sont sur les nations. Ma main fait et d6fait les g6nerations. — H61as! je suis, Seigneur, puissant et solitaire, Laissez-moi m'endormir du sommeil de la terre! If Moise has about it some of the grandeur of Michael Angelo, it must be confessed that the no less admired Eloa strikes one as a coryphee of the corps de ballet trying to be Michael Angelo too. It belongs to the Seraphic School and antedates Lamartine's Chute d'un ange, but its pseudo-Miltonian Satan and its virgin angel Eloa are too soft and dainty, so that the impression is of 674 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE an opera more than an oratorio. It is the author's chief poem of pity: Eloa is an angel born from a tear of Christ shed by the tomb of Lazarus. She hears of the fallen angel suffering in the darkness, and out of compassion goes to his help, until gradually she yields to him and falls the victim of Satan. The other chief poems of Vigny have their symbolic meaning. The Mort du hup, though it has as hero a scarcely sympathetic beast of prey hounded by dogs, embodies the lesson of stoicism "souffre et meurs sans parler"; the Maison du berger is stoicism softened by pity; the Colere de Samson expresses the anger of man betrayed by woman, as Vigny felt that he had been by the actress Mme Dorval; the Mont des Olivier s is the cry of revolt against God and the world; the Bouteille a la mer is a glorifica- tion of science and voices the idea that an author's book is like a bottle cast into the ocean, containing a message for mankind. Of Vigny's prose writings the most important are described elsewhere, but Stello and Servitude et grandeur militaires, like the poems, are works of disillusion. The former deals largely with Girbert, Chatterton, and Chenier as types of poets dead before coming to the full fruition of their power. Stello, who gives his name to the work, is a contemporary of the literary pessimists of the day, viewing life with ironical scepticism. Servitude et grandeur militaires, of which one of the sketches, la Canne de jonc, contains the famous "dialogue inconnu" of Napoleon and PiUs VII at Fontainebleau, is the result of the disappointment of Vigny's military career. Alfred de Vigny, if less worthy of admiration as a man than Lamartine, was the most dignified of the French poets of his day. Though, in the last analysis, his poems are as personal as any outpouring of others, he produced the impression of not speak- ing of himself. He was also the best composer, in the sense that his poems have a beginning and an end, instead of being like those of Lamartine, inchoate and uninterrupted lamentations which could stop equally well at any given point. Never widely popular, he had many qualities in individual poems which more THE POETS 675 successful advertisers, like Hugo, used to greater effect after him {le Cor). Perhaps at the present moment Alfred de Vigny, the poet, is appreciated as he rarely was in his lifetime. Alfred de Musset (1810-1857) personified more than any other man of his time the lyric poet. He did not hide himself from his fellow-men like Vigny, nor did he unite poetry with as many other things as Hugo or Lamartine. His life was one of storm and stress, and his whole existence revolved about love. He was at first the spoiled child of his generation, playing with Romanti- cism but refractory to it, aspiring to be a philosophical poet because he had done well in his school-studies and could bandy about the important names, jesting in the spirit of the Parisian gamin at things held in respect by others, but pardonable in most of his proceedings by the ingenuousness of his wickedness. Musset is perhaps the most characteristically French poet of his century. It is true that he underwent many foreign influ- ences, but he took only what was consistent with the French spirit. The licentiousness of the Italian story-tellers and the cynicism of Byron fell in with the moods of one who was steeped in the eighteenth-century profligate literature of writers like Crebillon fits and Voltaire. Polished by a dandylike-manner, the grivoiserie of the esprit gaulois shows itself in Musset in the flippancy of the esprit parisien, which has also become known as the "wit of the boulevards"; for Musset was eminently a city poet, in spite of his second-hand literary descriptions of nature. He posed as a bold, bad man, and tried, like the young Romanticists, to bewilder somebody, in his case to epater the Romanticists themselves, to "flabbergast" the professional "flabbergasters." He poked fun at the moon {Ballade a la lune) topping the steeple like "a dot on an i," which moon from Ossian to Lamartine had been the hall-mark of sentiment; or he reduced the prosody of Romanticism to absurdity by his metrical flippancy of rhyme and overflow.^ Meanwhile he 1 Henri huit, reverend, dit Mardoche, fut veuf De sept reines, tua deux cardinaux, dix-neuf 676 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE feigned a cosmopolitan acquaintance with lands he had not seen, putting Barcelona in Andalusia {I'Andalouse), or tried to com- bine sentiment and sin [Rolla), and, above all, to be the weary Don Juan of high life. This was, in part, a Byronic pose, but it was consistent with the boulevardier type which it helped to mould. Then, after he had jested at everything, Musset's turn came to pay the penalty. This runaway from Romanticism which had harbored him and to which, in spite of his admiration for Racine, he really belonged, underwent his emotional crisis. He met George Sand in 1833; they fell madly in love though she was six years older, and these two hypersensitive temperaments experienced the torture of living through the exaggerations and discords of the Romantic passion.^ They went to Italy; at Eviques, treize abbes, cinq cents prieurs, soixante- Un chanoines, quatorze archidiacres, cinquante Docteurs, douze marquis, trois cent dix chevaliers, Vingt-neuf barons Chretiens, et six-vingts roturiers. (Mardoche.) ' "L'amour romantique, c'est la religion de ramour ou plutot I'amour de ramour." — Lasserre, Le Romanlisme frangais. "Cette conception de Tamour, en son fond veritable, n'est que la passion du 'moi ' portee a son paroxysme, I'idolatrie superstitieuse de la personnalite reduite a ce qu'ellc a de plus mesquin et parfois de plus grossier, I'appetit de la jouissance, la forme aigue, exacerbee, si Ton aime mieux, de I'eternel individualisme." — Maigron, Le Romantistne et les mceurs. Cf.: O Muse! Que m'importe ou la mort ou la vie? J'aime et je veux palir; j'aime et je veux souffrir; J'aime, et pour un baiser je donne mon genie; J'aime, et je veux sentir sur ma joue amaigrie Ruisseler une source impossible a tarir. {La Nuit d'ao-At.) Doutez, si vous voulez, de I'etre qui vous aime, D'une femme ou d'un chien, mais non de ramour meme. L'amour est tout, — l'amour et la vie au soIeU. Aimer est le grand point, qu'importe la maitresse? Qu'importe le flacon, pourvu qu'on ait I'ivresse? (La Coupe et les lewes.) THE POETS s 677 Venice they were ill, the Italian physician Pagello who cared for them came into their lives and they tried tripartite love. There followed jealousy, reconciliations, and all the storms of Hugo and Dumas put together. Finally, after many months of agony, George Sand's vigorous subliminal bourgeois-n&ture threw off her emotions in an attack of liver-trouble, except as material for abundant literary "copy." Musset's happiness, however, was irretrievably wrecked. Though at i&rst he had been disposed to shoulder the blame for their incompatibility of temperament, he began to feel under the goading of friends that he had been tricked by an unfaithful woman. He sought consolation in debauchery and died slowly as his youth left him. But to the immediate results of the crisis we owe the greatest of Musset's writings and those which make him one of the most noteworthy poets of his age. For though his passions seem impossible to our prosaic generation, yet they expressed all his life and soul. In spite of their defects the four Nuits and the Lettre a Lamar- tine, which are the result of the Italian journey, must give their author enduring fame. Rolla, written just before the trip to Venice, was as important in its day as an expression of the mal du siecle; but, in spite of the beauty of individual passages, the in- coherence of its subject and the illogical abuse of Voltaire because a profligate commits suicide in a house of ill-fame after having squandered his money, make the poem somewhat ludicrous. On the other hand, the poetic dialogue of the Nuits, especially the Nuii de mat, as well as the later Souvenir, contain all the beauties that elegiac poetry can give. The metaphors are in- coherent, the thought is often vague, but there is in them a deeper suffering than in Lamartine's mopings, a beauty of language partly drawn from Chenier, partly from Lamartine himself, but really characteristic of Musset alone. The differ- ent feelings of gloom, despair, consolation, all pass before us, and we need not be surprised at their effect on a generation less sophisticated than ours, on the emotional- temperaments of the French of his time. 678 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE It is useless to deduce a philosophy from Musset's writings. His only note is love with its disappointments and sufferings. It is true that his disillusions pass to his religious faith, for which he blames Voltaire and the eighteenth century (Rolla and VEspoir en Dieu), so that nothing is left to him but a transfor- mation into seriousness of his early playful cynicism. And in this deeper mood there is the additional strain of limpid and harmonious verse, which is a sufi&cient rejoinder to the charge that the French have no poetry. Musset's plays are treated elsewhere. His numerous prose writings include the Confession d'un enfant du siecle, also devoted to the affair with George Sand, several graceful contes and short stories, and some critical essays, including the satirical letters of Dupuis and Cotonet on contemporary foibles of Roman- ticism and humanitarianism. Theophile Gautier (1811-1872), whom we have seen as a leader of the militant Romantic cohorts, deserves a place of his own in French literature. Trained to be a painter, he kept to the end of his life the painter's attitude, the vision of forms and colors. Even his early poems were, except Albertus, for the most part less eccentric than those of his companions, and he soon saw the amusing side of Romanticism himself, when he wrote the Jeunes-France in prose. During his busy life, often harassed by money troubles, he was a prolific composer of all kinds of literature, grinding out wearily his dramatic feuilletons for the newspapers, especially the Presse of Emile de Girardin or the Moniteur, writing novels and stories in which his sensual nature and his mischievous desire to scare the conventional aroused scandal, describing travels to picturesque lands, Spain, Italy and the Orient, or elaborating his most noteworthy verse collection Emaux et Camees, and becoming one of the deities of the new school of poetry, the Parnassians. Gautier's anti-Classical sympathies led him back to the early seventeenth century, so different from the age of 1660. Not only did he try to rehabilitate some of the neglected authors of THE POETS 679 that period in les Grotesques, but he wrote the engrossing Capi- taine Fracasse (begun early but published much later), in which we are shown the adventures of a band of seventeenth-century wandering actors and see the influence of Scarron's Roman comique. Mademoiselle de Maupin, again, makes us think of the seventeenth-century amazons, travelling over the country disguised as men. It was the work of a stripling of genius (1835) in whom passions were not yet calm, and we need not be sur- prised that it outraged . placid citizens and is still classed as dangerous reading. Gautier's training as a painter shows itself in his accounts of the lands he visited. There was something Oriental in his temperament, and Spain and Italy stand forth in vivid colors, more truly than Russia, which he also described but less con- vincingly. The same quality appears in Emai^x et Camees (1852). Gautier had now developed the theory of "art for art's sake," and each of the fairly brief poems forming the collection is a highly wrought jewel, clearly cut and elaborately polished, sometimes a mere description, but in which the words have the value of pigments. The Goncourts, in their diary, call Gautier "le sultan de I'epithete." The doctrine of art for art's sake was a natural attitude for Gautier to assume, but it was destined to lead to a very different literature from that of the Romanti- cism amid which he evolved it. It meant no longer Kcense; unfortunately there was no guiding principle as in Classicism, and the result in secondary authors was too often eccentricity. It meant in many writers the scission between art and morality, yet in Gautier, at any rate, it meant the partial objectifying of literature out of the Romantic chaos of subjectivity and emo- tionalism. For Gautier was less rich in creative imagination or personal feeling than in descriptive fancy. The antithesis of Gautier was Pierre- Jean de Beranger (1780- 1857), who belonged to a slightly older generation and who was the embodiment of the bourgeois mentahty. Moreover, he dropped the "de" of his name. He devoted himself to the 68o A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE chanson, and wrote political, sentimental, semi-philosophical and shady epicurean songs, expressing the "lower middle-class" and popular spirit of his age. His first writings brought him into connection with the Caveau presided over by Desaugiers. Gradually Beranger took up political topics and voiced the feelings of the partisans of liberty. At first this meant opposi- tion to the Empire and the contrast of a quiet life with the gaudy show of imperialism {Le roi d'Yvetot); later it meant hostility to the Bourbons, restored through the defeat of the French and by the aid of foreign armies. Napoleon was now to Beranger the former leader of the victorious French armies. Still later it meant, under Louis-Philippe, whose advent Beranger- had welcomed, hostility to the selfishness of the moneyed classes and appeals to charity, pity for the oppressed and the love of human- ity. Beranger is iu accord with the humanitarians of his time. At the first glance Beranger's songs seem thin in substance and flat in expression; their sentiment is now threadbare and their winks at impropriety {La Gaudriole) are commonplace. This is the philistine view, recognising only what is philistine in Beranger. He was not a great poet and never endowed French literature with striking phrases, for his language belonged to the tradition of the washed-out Classical school. He may have been a Tyrtasus of shopkeepers, but even M. Calicot could be a patriot.! Beranger was thus the leader of the moderately- lettered people in the fight against the political obscurantism of the Restoration and the religious ultramontanism of the Congre- gation and of the Jesuits, as well as the arrogance of the "mar- quis de Carabas" of the old nobihty. He made the sigh of fond recollection or the tear of sentiment come a little more easily, and cast a little glow of emotion about the memory of an old coat or a yellowing letter or about his old mistress,^ — ' Cf. infra, p. 705. 2 Compare La bonne meille with Ronsard's sonnet to Helene to appre- ciate the difference between the aristocrdtic literature of the sixteenth century and the literature of democracy. THE POETS 68 1 things not very difficult to do; and his ideas did not soar much above an easy-going epicureanism. But his quavering melody was as tuneful as the claptrap stage-thunder of Hugo's buman- itarianism. Nor was Beranger a coward : he vmderwent perse- cution and imprisonment without yielding from his principles. Beranger's deity was the "Dieu des bonnes gens." This God was a familiar and undignified individual, quite ready to swear "Que le diable m'emporte," and leniently disposed to wink at lapses against rectitude; consequently Beranger has been charged with materialism and irreligion. None jthe less, his faith in a beneficent deity was a consistent one, and he saw in God a kindly father, "le bon Dieu, "rather than a cruel Jehovah. The great poets need not make us lose sight of others less famous, even if, like Felix Arvers (1806-1851), they have won immortality by a single sonnet, or like Mme Marceline Des- bordes-Valmore (1786-1859) and Mme Amable Tastu (1798- 1885), they are but tearful female sentimentalists. Auguste Barbier (1805-1882) is remembered for his lambes, poems of fierce lyrical and political invective connected with the Revolu- tion of July, 1830. Auguste Brizeux (1806-1858) wrote rustic idyls of Brittany. Hegesippe Moreau (1810-1838) was a poet of poverty and suffering; Victor de Laprade (1812-1883) was a scholar poet, yet not a pedant but a philosopher. CHAPTER VIII VICTOR HUGO VICTOR HUGO (1802-1885), far from being of noble origin as he tried to make people believe, was of thoroughly plebeian descent; his mind, instead of being Messianic and big with prophecy, was that of an inflated and conceited bourgeois; his language, says Juan Valera in his Cartas americanas , was that of a French Gongora. His father was a general of the Empire whose duties led him much about Europe, and Hugo in his youth was at times on the wing, at times living in Paris with his mother and his brother. His parents did not always get on well to- gether, and Hugo suffered from want of consecutive training; when with his mother, he had no training at all. The conse- quence was that, with the exception of a brief period of prepar- ation for the Polytechnic School, he had no real education. To the very end of his days he remained superficial and inexact, talking of much and knowing little, fond of elaborate and in- coherent allusions in his prose and verse, such as impress at first sight but do not stand scrutiny. The most noteworthy experience of Hugo's impressionable age was a sojourn in Spain, where his father was a military governor. This journey affected more than one of his great writings, such as Hernani and Ruy Bias, and he would even have us believe that his conception of the grotesque as an element of life was stirred by the sight of the papamoscas, the monster who strikes the clock in the interior of the cathedral of Burgos. When still younger he had gone to Italy. Hugo took to literature at an early age and proved himself an infant phenomenon in the conventional moulds, enough so to 682 VICTOR HUGO 683 win from Chateaubriand, Hugo maintained, the name of "en- fant sublime." Hugo's ambition was to be "Chateaubriand ou rien." He wrote, but did not publish, a first draft of Bug-Jargal. Meanwhile, however, Hugo was developing, and his Odes^et ballades, which appeared in successive collections from 1822 to 1828, marked a tremendous advance along a path of lyrical expression in which Lamartine had opened the way. Victor Hugo was in his youth a sincere royalist, first of the Voltairian type like his mother, then of the Chateaubriand Chris- tian style. So the first poems of Hugo which have any value are inspired by the personal touch of Lamartine and the Catholic medisevalism of Chateaubriand. To a minor extent, also, the patriotic verse of Casimir Delavigne may be looked upon as a formative influence upon Victor Hugo. But he had already come to his own, and the imagination and vigor of lyrical ex- pression were due to himself and to nobody else. He had seen that the beauty of an ode does not lie in apostrophe or periphrasis, but in the idea itself of the poem. Moreover, he realised the need of originality instead of the imitation of conventional commonplaces. Hugo's success and happiness seemed assured: he was married, decorated, admired by the Cenacle. He had published Han d'Islande, and now brought out Bug-Jargal. The new influences, towards which Hugo tended, in spite of his hedging, were now so marked that he took the definite step and became the leader of the Romantic school. With Cromwell and its preface, he burned his bridges behind him. In January, 1829, appeared the Orientales, in which by a remarkable power of visualisation, built partly on memories of his days in Spain, and partly inspired by the philhellenic sympathies of Europe, he made the Orient stand out in his verse as in a picture, with sonorous rhyme and brilliant coloring. This work practically concludes Hugo's .first poetical period, and marks the transition to his dramatic interest. Marion Delorme was forbidden by the censor because Louis XIII and Richelieu were thought tb suggest the king and the clergy, but in 1830 the victory of 684 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Hernani on the stage marked the triumph of Romanticism. The royalist had, moreover, undergone an evolution : in politics he had become a liberal, in sentiment he harked back to the pomp of Napoleon. The miseries of the Empire were already forgotten, its victories only were remembered, and the mono- logue of Don Carlos in Hernani is permeated with Bonapartist feeling. In 183 1 appeared the novel Notre-Dame de Paris, one of his greatest books, yet a belated and grudging fulfilment of a pub- lisher's contract, and the lyrical and personal, more reflective Feuilles d'automne. The same year Marion Delorme was played, and until 1843 Hugo used the stage as a yehicle for his theories: "Le theatre est una tribune, le theatre, est une chaire," he said in the foreword to Lucrece Borgia. The other important plays were le Roi s'amuse, Marie Tudor, Angelo, Ruy Bias, and finally les Burgraves, inspired by a journey to the Rhine which he described in prose. The failure of this play caused Hugo's withdrawal from the stage. The Chants du crepuscule had ap- peared in 1835, the Voix interieures in 1837, ^^^ Rayons et les ombres, containing the famous Trisiesse d'Olympio in the strain of Romantic melancholy, in 1840. In both series of works there is a similarity in the underlying principles,' but with a different expression, meditative in the poems, mihtant in the plays; in both kinds of writings the author is influenced by the surround- ing philosophical and social tendencies leading towards the amelioration of the nations. Hugo thinks that the world needs preaching to and that the poet is meant to be the preacher. Gradually developing his spirit of humanitarian benevolence, he makes his plays vehicles for a pseudo-philo- sophical symbolism. The characters represent ideas, their contrasts mean the antithesis of forces or of principles. This, again, explains why they do not satisfy other generations hav- ing other ideas. The failure of the Burgraves was a great shock; so was the accidental drowning of a daughter and son-in-law in the Seine. VICTOR HUGO 685 For ten years Hugo's literary production almost ceased, but his conception of his duty towards mankind led him to take an active part in political life, as a member of the House of' Peers. After moving to the support of the Orleanist constitutional monarchy, he became, with the Revolution of 1848, a republi- can, but rather jealous of his rival poet Lamartine, who had made himself more prominent. As a republican, Hugo favored the return to France and presidential candidacy of Louis-Napoleon. Perhaps disappointed at failure to obtain reward in the shape of a cabinet position, he turned violently against the Prince- President, and at the time of the coup d'etat he had to flee the country. During the whole of the Empire he remained in exile, even refusing amnesty, first at Jersey and then at Guernsey in -the Channel Islands. The motives of Hugo's hostility to Napoleon and conversion to republicanism had been personal rather than political, yet the years of his absence are among the most creditable and dignified of his career. In spite of an ever- growing vanity which made him imagine himself an apocalyptic seer and prophet to humanity, placed on a rock-bound coast in the midst of the raging ocean, like the first Napoleon at St. Helena, seeking to express his misty metaphysics in a foggy symbolism, nevertheless solitude, leisure and communion with nature enriched his literary activity. The megalocephalous Hugo is found in the work purporting to be criticism, called William Shakespeare, written to accompany a translation by his son, in which," through his apotheosis of the world-poets as interpreters of God, one may read the name of the author. He himself considered the work the epitome of his philosophy. Napoleon le petit, written in Belgium, in prose, and the Chati- ments in verse, were fierce satirical invective against Napoleon, recalling the spirit of the Tragiques of d'Aubigne. The Contem- plations, on the other hand, are full of beauty. They have their starting-point in the memory of the daughter lost by drowning years before, and exile and loneliness deepened the personal touch of all the poems. I bo, in which the angry bard under- 686 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE takes to drag comets by the tail and outroar the thunder,' shows that his conception of his mission and his hate of Napoleon have not changed. The cuhnination of Hugo's genius as a poet is the Legende des siecles, a series of epic fragments drawn from the history of humanity. The Chansons des rues et des hois were trifling and sometimes undignified. In prose les Miserables tremendously increased Hugo's fame, particularly among foreigners unable to read his verse, and con- sequently unaware that, to the French, Hugo is a poet rather than a prose writer. Les Miserables was a prose epic of modern society thrown into the form of a novel. The characters repre- sent the antitheses dear to the author, the incidents follow each other with the melodramatic claptrap of his plays, the plot affords a vehicle for his sociological theories based on the Utopias of the day, and all is drowned in a flow of words. The Travail- leurs de la mer was a story of the Channel Islands besprinkled with the contents of a dictionary of the Guernsey dialect. L' Homme qui rit is impossibly unreal. After the fall of the Empire, Hugo returned home. He engaged in politics without much success. He published, how- ever, some of his good works: in verse the Annee terrible, dealing with the disasters of his country, a continuation of the Legende des siecles and VArt d'etre grand' pere; in prose Quatre-vingt- treize, which as a novel stands next to les Miserables, and the ' Je siiis le poete farouche. Le songeur aile, I'apre athlete Au bras nerveux, Et je tralnerais la comete Par les cheveux. Jusqu'aux portes visionnaires Du del sacre; Et, si vous aboyez, tonnerres, Je rugirai. VICTOR HUGO 687 Sistoire d'un crime, an account of the coup d'etat, actually com- posed years before. The last writings of Hugo, with the exception of the Quatre vents de Vesprit, did not add anything to his glory. Nor did numerous posthumous volumes. His death in 1885 was an occasion of national mourning, and his funeral recalled that of Voltaire, — or that of Delille. Then came the inevitable re- action among the critics. But it is generally admitted that he was the greatest French poet of the nineteenth century. Nearly all of Hugo's literary creations may be explained by the principles of antithesis or of distortion, whether by mere exaggeration or by actual modification of form. He can view no object, animate or inanimate, through the whole cosmos without contrasting it with its contradictory or its opposite. The characters of a dramatic poem are put up against each other, young versus old, bandit versus king, hero versus villain. Napoleon le petit and the Chdtiments set forth, throughout, the contrast with Napoleon the Great. Life itself consists, as we have already learned, of the antithesis of grotesque and tragic, the ugly and beautiful, whether moral or physical. The prin- ciple of opposition is even carried into Hugo's sentence-structure : "Et Calvin crie: ordure! et Pyrrhon crie: ebauche!" The famous "Ceci tuera cela" of Notre-Dame de Paris is almost the algebraic formula of his phrase. ^ The result of this splitting of everything in two not only produced a mechanical pendulum-like swing of action in the plot of novel or drama, but it also ruined his psychology. The 1 "Hesiode, Esope, Sophocle, Euripide, Platon, Thucydide, Anacreoa, Theocrite, Tite-Live, Salluste, Ciceron, Terence, Virgile, Horace, Pe- trarque, Tasse, Arioste, La Fontaine, Beaumarchais, Voliaire, n'ont ni exa- g6ration, ni tenebres, ni monstruosite. Que leur manque-t-il done? Cela. Cela, c'est I'inconnu. Cela, c'est I'infini. Si Corneille avait cela, il serait I'egal d'Eschyle. Si Milton avait cela, il serait I'egal d'Homere. Si Moliere avait cela, il serait I'egal de Shakespeare." — William Shake- speare. A seventeenth-century writer would merely have said: "Les plus grands ecrivains ont un je ne sais quoi que les autres n'ont pas." 688 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE characters are either extraordinary mixtures of incompatible traits, or they pass from one pole to another with acrobatic agility. The foulest man or woman, a Triboulet or a Lucretia Borgia, is purified by a single quality, fatherly or motherly love. Moreover, the transformations of character are hidden from us in their operation. Hugo seemed to think the psychological analysis of a mental process (which to Racine would have been the whole play) as improper as a murder coram populo to the old tragedians. Don Carlos, in Hernani, modestly retires into the tomb of Charlemagne to change his mind, and when the time came for Jean Valjean in les Miserables to be transformed, he wept, but, — "Combien d'heures pleura-t-il ainsi? Que fit-il apr^s avoir pleure? Ou alla-t-il? On ne I'a jamais su." Hugo did not even see the elements of his antitheses as other people do. He looked at the world through a magnifying glass by which everything was enlarged and distorted. Gigantic figures hovering in space, bottomless abysses in mind and matter loom large in his verse, and he thought in superlatives: — j'ai pris, 6 Lions, dans rimmensite L'habitude du gouflfre et de I'eternite. A visit to the Hugo museum in Paris shows how his mind was obsessed by the abnormal and how much he amused himself through life by drawing fantastic castles and giving form to the unreal and the caricatural. Yet, in spite of his exuberant imagination, prone to indulge in buffoonery, Hugo was quite without a sense of humor. His characters sometimes say amus- ing things, but they do not realise that their actions are some- times more humorous than their words. Even if Hugo's vision did not distort objects, he tried to see them as symbols, but looked for the concrete rather than the abstract like the Classicists. The symbols were supposed to be the embodiment of some idea or the incarnation of some passion. He personified metaphors and reasoned through imagery rather than through ideas. One picture calls up another, one image VICTOR HUGO 689 suggests a part of another, so that the reader is dazzled by the splendor of the kaleidoscope, tricked by the factitious antitheses and specious epithets, bewildered by the extraordinary wealth of vocabulary that no French writer except Rabelais has ever equalled, until he yields unconsciously to the writer's personality. For this personality dominates all Hugo's writings, subjective or objective, and it was by its vigor that he imposed himself as leader of a school he did not originate, and made himself appear the guide of his fellow-men, when he was really only re-echoing what others had said. M. Faguet points out that his political views were always a little behind rather than ahead of the times. But his physical vitality was extraordinary and his ego domi- nated the poetry of his time, as he was determined that it should, even though he was a colossus with feet of clay, or what Doudan called a "Michael Angelo in terra-cotta." The earlier poems of Hugo were not necessarily unveilings of the heart and have little to do with love. The composer was largely engaged in destroying the hackneyed commonplaces of the pseudo-Classical ode, and in treating contemporary inci- dents in a new prosody; or in writing ballads of the Middle Ages; or, finally, in imagining what would be the beauty of an Orient that he had never really visited. But pseudo-Classical barrenness was in danger of falling into disorderly profuseness of description. In the Feuilles d'automne the tone changes to one of greater intimite, yet it is to be noticed that this chief of the Romanticists does not become truly personal until after the school is fully formed. It was after 1830, and particularly at Guernsey, that Hugo's poetry became reflective and elegiac, inspired by his own grief, his communion with the majesty of surrounding nature. It was at Guernsey that his wrath against Napoleon broke out into invective, that he wrote his best work in the epic, that he formu- lated his creed and enunciated more distinctly the poet's r61e. To Hugo, as to Ronsard, the poet is the bard sublime, kindled with the enthusiasm of genius, and fitted to preach to mankind 690 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE lessons of moral uplifting and of social regeneration. The poet's mission is akin to that of the priest, and his field is much the same, except that he is not bound by the dogmas of a specific religion. Hugo became in time a vague deist, verging on a pantheist: he was constantly preaching God and seeing God everywhere. With extraordinary naivete and vanity, he looked upon himself as almost the creator of a new morality of justice, righteousness and benevolence. His resounding manner makes one forget for a time the commonplaceness of his moral dis- coveries. He was, in short, the spokesman of a generation still struggling with the problems of scientific progress and con- vinced, as in 1830 and 1848, that the millennium could be hastened by legislative action and the extension of the franchise. Hugo was an optimist who in youth caught the moral rheumatism of Romanticism. He was the moralist, also, who came near being expelled from the House of Peers for a rather unsavory affair (Mme Biard), and whose memorial in Paris, the museum' in the place des Vosges, is as full of souvenirs of Mme Drouet, the actress, as of his wife. But unfavorable criticism of Hugo must cease when we con- sider him as an epic writer. His lyric verse, magnificent as it is in its impetuosity and grand imagery, is sometimes blemished by anti-climax, undignified vituperation, uncouth language. But Hugo is unsurpassed in the heroic vein, where gradations are not expected, where the ponderous is more in place than the delicately subtle, where the antithesis runs less risk of being comic, where the dramatic climax is not melodramatic, where the rich imagery and swinging verse carry author and reader along impetuously. The poenis Aymerillot and the Manage de Roland renew the strain of mediaeval chivalry; those on Na- poleon I, as VExpiation, show the martial greatness and the disasters of the great figure of the modern epic; others, like la Conscience, are not so very far beneath the majesty of Michael Angelo. CHAPTER IX THE DRAMA THE most successful contribution of the nineteenth century to dramatic literature was the melodrama, of which the Romantic drama of Dumas and Hugo was but an outgrowth or a passing phase. The melodrama came partly from the drame bourgeois and fought and vanquished the Classical tragedy. As literature in the nineteenth century became, with the advance of democracy, more popular and catered to a wider and proportion- ately less cultivated society, it was destined to undergo funda- mental modifications. Tragedy, appealing only to a minority of educated people, was doorried. The populace needed some- thing else. It wanted to see on the stage other characters than declaiming kings and emperors. It wanted violent emotions and violent humor. It wanted an obtrusive display of moral aphorisms. The play had to be no longer even bourgeois but plebeian. The theory of the melodrama proceeds, then, from that of the drame bourgeois, from Diderot, Beaumarchais and Sebastien Mercier vulgarised. The form was affected by certain circum- stances connecting it with the old fairs of Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent. About 1759, Nicolet, a manager of marionnette shows at the fairs, started an establishment in the boulevard du Temple for miscellaneous exhibitions, such as trained animals, rope dancers and the like. Success coming, he got more spa- cious quarters and brought out ambitious shows, light plays and pantomime-harlequinades, and then vaudeville-comedies, as di- rector of the "grands danseurs du roi." During the Revolution the theatre was known as the Gaite, and it began, by 1795, to 6gi 692 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE give, as well as gay plays like Madame Angot, more serious and even sombre ones destined to be the melodrama, which by 1809 monopolises the theatre. The chief rival of Nicolet was Audinot, a hair-dresser turned actor, who began at the fairs. He gave pantomimes, parodying the Italian actors; then, moving to the boulevard du Temple, he organised the Ambigu-Comique for the presentation of amhigus or medley-plays of dialogue, song and dance, and sub- stituted children actors for puppets in his marionnette-panto- mimes. Thus the two managers developed and complicated their per- formances, so that Nicolet, imitating the opera, accompanied the action and gestures of his performers with appropriate musi- cal airs and phrases; and Audinot's dialogue-pantomimes had become elaborate scenic displays. The manners of the two neighboring theatres grew closer, the musical-spectacular per- formances, not having like tragedy old traditions behind them, developed in accordance with the tastes of the audience and became the melodrama. The melodrama was, then, originally a play free or not from the unities (Pixerecourt was usually careful to preserve them), depending partly for its effect on elaborate scenery and musical accompaniments; free, also, to deal with any sort of adventure in any station of life. It was a lyrical prose drama with music executed by the orchestra in the place of song.i » The term mSlodrame was the designation of a monologue of Rousseau, Pygmalion, in 1775, in which the declamation was accompanied by musical measures, and a few other examples followed by different authors, becoming gradually more compUcated. (For names cf. Gaiffe, le Drame en France au XVIII' siecle, pp. 237-8.) "Remplaeons les h6ros antiques par des per- sonnages modernes, tout en conservant la musique de scene, nous aurons le MModrame bourgeois, dont le premier et curieux exemplaire parait etre I'Eleve de la nature de Mayeur de Saint-Paul, joue chez Nicolet en 1781. II ne s'agit plus que de le porter d'un a trois actes, d'en multiplier encore les incidents et les personnages, pour aboutir a Ccelina, ou I'enfant du mystere." Meanwhile the historical spectacular pantomime at Audinot's THE DRAMA 693 The audiences of these popular theatres, who had gone through the horrors of the Revolution, required strong entertainment with heavy emotions of pity and fear. Their novels, by Ducray- Duminil or translations of Mrs. RadcHfife, had accustomed them to having their nerves racked. They needed exaggerated lan- guage too.' As Nodier said, Andromaque's "Je ne I'ai pas encore embrasse d'aujourd'hui " had to be for them, "Je ne I'ai pas encore presse dans mes bras maternels." At the same time, much as the French of the seventeenth century had turned by reaction after the wars of the sixteenth to the pastoral scenes of Astree, so at the dawn of the nineteenth century, people wanted their horrors tempered by a strong moral strain. It was for such audiences that the authors of melodramas wrote their plays containing the now traditional four stock characters : the hero, the persecuted heroine, the villain and the comic charac- ter. The chief of these authors were Guilbert de Pixerecourt (not Pixerecourt) (1773-1844), the "Corneille of the boulevards," Caigniez, the "Racine of the boulevards," Ducange and Cuve- lier de Trye. The theatres of the boulevard du Temple became so numerous, and so many were the murders there committed on the stage, that it was currently known as the "boulevard du Crime." The plays of Pixerecourt more closely approach literature than do those of the other melodramatists, though his aim was to please the pit, and he took his task seriously as a teacher of morality. No greater comphment was paid him than by the man who tried to dissuade a friend from committing a crime by saying: "Tu n'as done jamais vu jouer une piece de Pixere- court?" He took as inspiration the plays of Sedaine and the treatise Du theatre, ou nouvel essai sur Vart dramatique of Sebastien Mercier. For years Prxer6court poured out a stream of one hundred and twenty plays, of which fifty-nine melo- dramas, the most successful being Victor, ou V enfant de la for it; theatre had the same musical accompaniments. After the two types had coalesced, the music ultimately disappeared. (Gaiffe, op. cit.) 694 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Ccelina, ou V enfant du mystere (both drawn from Ducray-Duminil) ; la Femme a deux maris; I'Homme a trois visages; Robinson Crusoe; le Chien de Montargis; Latude, ou trente-cinq ans de captivite. Thus the type of melodrama which Pixerecourt represents is a play of rapid exposition and movement, proceeding by the unexpected climaxes which we now call "melodramatic"; it relied on declamation of moral platitudes to evoke tears like the sentiment of its prototypes in fiction ("Vive le melodrame oii Margot a pleure"); it called for elaborate local coloring, repro- duction of historical and realistic details (for which Pixer6court often quoted authorities); it tried to show the various elements of life, by uniting the comic and the tragic. All these features are to be found in the Romantic drama. The Romanticists, in their opposition to tragedy, really took the melodrama and gave it a literary form, though they made more free with the unities. The beautiful heroine, the melancholy lover, fond of the words "fatal" and "funeste," the villain, the comic character appear in the drama as in the melodrama.^ Of course the Romantic drama did not destroy the melodrama; it even proved less long-lived, for the melodrama still is popular. In its simpler form and gradually losing the accompaniment to music, the melos, it became in time more violent and less bent on inculcating virtue. Pixerecourt not only denied the obvious connection between himself and the school of Victor Hugo, but lamented that in the genuine melodrama people preferred rape, incest and parricide to sentiments of delicacy and probity. ^ > "Ainsi s'ebauche, peu a peu, le type du niais, qui fera bientdt le plus bel ornament du M61odrame selon la formule de Pixerecourt, Caigniez et consorts. Nous tenons par un bout la chaine qui conduit k la pre- face de Cromwell, a Triboulet et a don C6sar de Bazan." (Gaiffe, op. cit. p. 480.) 2 Similarly Brazier, objecting to the Romanticists, said: "Ainsi petit a petit, le vieux melodrame s'est vu dechiquete par lambeaux; et en quel- ques annees, il a fallu que les tyrans, les chevaliers, les enfants de cinq ans muets et courageux, les brigands, les vieillards venerables, etc, cidassent THE DRAMA 695 By 1830 and the days of the Monarchy of July, the popular prose melodrama had become decidedly violent. At theatres like the Ambigu, the Gaite and the Porte Saint-Martin, where Frederick Lemaitre and Mme Dorval won fame, old-fashioned melodrama in an environment of crypts and castles, of mys- terious letters and ghosts, had yielded to a more realistic melo- drama placed in modern times, in which the villain became the historical bandits Cartouche or Mandrin (the French Dick Turpin) , or the Paris murderer living among prostitutes, or even the Jesuit, against whom political agitation was at that time so great (Ducange's le Jesuiie). The new leaders of the melo- drama were Frederic Soulie, Benjamin Antier, Anicet-Bour- geois, Theodore Nezel, Joseph Bouchardy, the former member of the Cenacle, Charles Desnoyers. From them the mantle was transmitted to writers like Adolphe Dennery, and finally in our own time to Sardou. Plays like the Deux orpkelines of Dennery and the Deux gosses of Decourcelle still testify to the vigor of the melodrama after Hugo's plays had come and gone. The chief purveyor of the melodrama of violence was Fred- eric Soulie (1800-1847), whose novels were of the same character. A most prolific writer, he delighted in heaping in his plays horror upon horror. The only one which has survived, la Closerie des le pas aux adulteres, aux homicides, aux parricides, aux fratricides, aux infanticides, et a toutes les horreurs en ides. Le moyen-ige a deborde partout comma un torrent, et au lieu de mes bonnes tirades de m61odrames, bien ronflantes, bien sonnantes . . . au lieu de: Monstre, tu recevras le juste chitiment du a tes horribles forfaits! . . . Sc616rat! apprends que tot ou tard le crime est puni et la vertu r6compensee. . . . Gardes! qu'il soit charg6 de fers, et plong6 dans un cachot diis a son rang. . . . AUez, ^ous m'en repondrez sur votre tSte! Vous n'entendrez plus que ces mots: Mignons, compagnons, ma dague, Truands, Maugruants, souffreteux, malediction! . . . pi tie! . . . damnation! . . Arriere, a la hart! a la rescousse, enfer! . . . C'est tout a fait une nouvelle langue, je doute fort que les cuisinieres qui mangent des pommes au parterre, que le gamin qui croque des noisettes a I'amphitheatre des troisiemes loges, puissent jamais se fourrer ce vocabulaire dans la tete." — Chroniqties des pelits tkSdtres de Paris (1837). 696 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Genets (1846) is less violent. It is intended to wring the emo- tions, but although it presents a world of sin and creates the character of the vampire-courtesan L6ona, nevertheless the vir- tuous foils of vice are sympathetic rather than tedious and the characters still have some life. The self-conscious parody of this literature stands forth in Robert Macaire, created by Frederick Lemaitre. The Auberge des Adrets (1823) was a blood-and- thunder melodrama by Antier, Saint-Amand and Paulyanthe, which seemed too foolish even for the Ambigu audiences until it occurred to Frederick Lemaitre to act in the tone of farce the parts of the two villains Robert Macaire and Bertrand, leaving the rest of the play absolutely serious. The result was one of the famous triumphs of the century, which was continued in the sequel Robert Macaire. Here the villain, no longer a beggarly and disreputable murderer, but a prosperous promoter of shady financial schemes, deceiv- ing his victim M. Gogo, embodied the satire of the reign of Louis-Philippe and personified the Antichrist of M. Prudhomme. The Romanticists with unconscious sympathy turned to the methods of the melodrama, because it seemed to give a wider view over life, and because its methods interested the larger audience of spectators who now claimed to be judges, in place of literary academies. Appeal could no longer be made to the reason, it had to be to the emotions. The wider, also, the range of appeal, the more effect the new political and social doctrines might have. Instead of analysing general passions, as did the Classicists, the Romanticists purported to create sympathy for suffering and to preach humanitarianism and democracy. They often failed to do so, and Dumas hardly tried anything else than to voice rebellion. Various influences, besides that of Chateaubriand, encouraged an orientation towards the Middle Ages. Some writers of tragedy were cultivating historical plays drawn from the national annals. Lebrun's Cid d'Andalousie was a transition play, and Soumet's la Fete de Neron was a Romantic treatment of a Classi- THE DRAMA 697 cal subject. Casimir Delavigne's les Vepres Siciliennes, Marino Faliero, Louis XI, and les Enfants d'Edouard were timid but praiseworthy attempts to conciliate the two theories. Mean- while the novels of Scott caused a furore, and after the publi- cation of Ludovic Vitet's semi-dramatic historical scenes on the Barricades, the Etats de Blois and Henry III, history seemed an essential part of literature. In 1822 some English actors had given performances in Paris, but had failed. Shakespere was hooted as an "aide-de-camp of Wellington." But by 1827, times had changed, and the acting of Kean, Kemble, Macready and Miss Smithson caused a passionate interest in England and English literature. The strongest impulse in the new drama was given by Alexandre Dumas (1803-1870), who, take him all in all, was one of the most important initiators in the dramatic litera- ture of the nineteenth century. Alexandre Dumas, the son of a mulatto general of Napoleon fallen into disfavor, grew up among many hardships, and, com- ing to Paris, obtained a position as clerk in a government office. Though without any systematic education, he determined, after much miscellaneous reading, to make his way in literature, and succeeded, partly by his purely physical vigor, in becoming one of the greatest purveyors of imaginative plays and romances that the world has ever seen. He was captivated by Schiller, Byron, Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper, as well as by the older dramatists of his own and other lands, from ^schylus, through Shakespere and Corneille, to Goethe and Beaumarchais. The results of all these elements working in his unconventional temperament came forth in his dramas. The devices, the tru- quage of his plays are those of the contemporary rhelodrama, but Dumas's contribution lay in emphasising certain characters and in popularising certain problems. The glorification of passion and the spirit of revolt against the social laws he shares with his fellow-Romanticists. In 1829 Dumas's fiist successful play was acted, Henri III et sa cour, written in prose. Based on the chance reading of a 698 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE passage in the old memoirs of Pierre de I'Estoile, the play set forth the life of the sixteenth century as backgrpund for the story of adultery, which henceforth holds its grip on the French stage. This work is an important link between the melodrama and the Romantic drama. In 1830 Christine was given, a new historical drama set in a seventeenth-century environment and developed from an earlier attempt by the author. The murder of Monaldeschi at Fontainebleau by the queen, of Sweden is the climax towards which the play is constructed. In 183 1 came Antony, a drama of "manners" and not of his- tory. The period is modern, the action sombre, dealing with seduction and murder. The chief character, Antony, is the wild Byronic hero-villain, the volcanic lover, the social rebel. A mysterious but proud foundling, who has grown up with an intense bitterness for his fellow-men, this Satanic charmer stops runaway horses, leads astray the married woman who has fallen his victim, and, when the discovery comes, kills her instead of himself with the thrilling but unreal explanation: "Elle me resistait, je I'ai assassinee!" Antony, with its modern setting, is the prototype of the nineteenth-century social drama or problem play.^ Charles VII chez ses grands vassaux (1831), written in verse, presents the "homme fatal" in the person of Yacoub the Arab; the "problem" is one of jealousy, by which the woman Beren- gere is driven to and fro between her husband and her lover, as ' "Antony est le prototj^e de tous les aventuriers, grands d6biteurs de phrases, grands depecheurs de discours et grands faiseurs de gestes, qui sevissent sur la France depuis cent ans, qvii s'empardrent du f6minin pour venir a bout de tout le teste, et en qui d'ordinaire il n'y a rien de grand que I'opinion qu'Us ont d'eux-memes. Antony est le h6ros essentiel du drame moderne." — H. Parigot, Alexandre Dumas. The actor Bocage, who created the part, helped to give concrete form to the type. "Sa figure bl6me, ses sourcils 6pais, sa charpente osseuse et ses longs chevevix noirs faisaient delui leplus magnifique ' beau tenebreux.' . . . Chacun voulait copier Antony et ce n'6taient que jeunes gens p§,les aux longs cheveux noirs." — S6che et Bertaut, I'Evolution du thSdtre contemporain. THE DRAMA 699 Hermione in Racine's Andromaque between Pyrrhus and Orestes. Richard Darlington, of the same year, turns on the revelation that the chief character is the son of the public executioner. La Tour de Nesle (1832) caps the climax of the historical melo- drama of mystery and crime. Here are gloomy medieval towers, postern gates, secret panels, ambushes, a criminal queen, corpses flung into the river, flashes of lightning in the storm, and curses. Angele (1833) and Kean (1836) bring us back to modern times. In the former we have one of the first examples of the man who reappears much in French literature, making his way with the help of women, the type that takes us by the Monsieur Alphonse of Dumas the younger to Maupassant's Bel-Ami. In Kean the author built on the life of the English actor who had died a couple of years before, and whose blend of genius and debauch- ery seemed to Dumas sublime in its independence of the social law. During the rest of his life Dumas wrote a great quantity of other plays, historical or fantastic, often dramatisations of his own novels, including some historical comedies of merit such as Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle and the Demoiselles de Saint- Cyr, but those already mentioned are the most significant. Dumas organised the Theatre-Historique for the exploitation of his style of. drama. Alexandre Dumas was the inspired genius of claptrap melo- drama for the benefit of the semi-cultivated audiences, a grade higher than the patrons of Frederic Soulie. The vigor of his own physical nature would have enabled him to galvanise a dramatic corpse. His sense of the picturesque made him ap- preciate the best scenic effect. His originality made him, for good or evil, endow the stage with dramatic topics and theses. On the other hand, Dumas's want of discipline led him into what now seem grotesque exaggerations: his medieval horrors are tawdry to the trained reader, his heroes make us laugh at their curses on the world and their agony heaped up thick: "Deman- dez a un cadavre combien de fois il a vecu," exclaims Antony when asked how many times he has loved. Dumas was physi- 700 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE cally too healthy to feel the pessimism of his characters, and they are as amusing as his own efforts to be pale and consvimptive. But in his own day the heroes of his plays swept all before them. Victor Hugo stands for the most ambitious expression of the Romantic school, endeavoring to strengthen the poetical element and appealing to literary taste rather than to the emotions alone. It is for their lyrical quality that Hugo's plays deserve study today. He was inferior to Dumas in dramatic sense and character analysis, though he uses all of Dumas's tricks: secret doorways, undying hates, poisons, murders, and the accompan- iments of stage terror. But his fatal habit of forced antithesis, his lack of a sense of the ridiculous, his fondness for making characters the mouthpieces for theories, prevent the plays from being anything but caricatures of human nature. None the less, Hernani is one of the most important historically of French plays, and the "Battle of Hernani" marks the triumph of the Romantic school. Cromwell was not really intended for performance, and so escapes criticism from a dramatic standpoint. It was a sort of chronicle play constructed as a melodrama and aiming to por- tray manners and customs. Hernani is an excellent example of Hugo's virtues and vices. It is a beautiful poem and a grotesque picture. It re-echoes impressions received from Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Byron's Bride of Abydos, Scott's Kenilworth. The long monologue of Don Carlos, paralleled in other plays, filled with a pompous pseudo-philosophy, is the consequence of Hamlet's "To be, or not to be," stretched to the breaking-point to prove to the Classicists that the new school could do without the con- fidant of tragedy. The hero is opposed to the " honnete homme " of Classicism as the man of impulse. He is a heroic Mandrin or Cartouche, or even like Fra Diavolo, the famous brigand whom Hugo's father had captured in Italy. By his behavior he makes us think of the character in Dryden's Palamon and Arcite: THE DRAMA 701 He raved with all the madness of despair, He roared, he beat his breast, he tore his hair. The heroine Doiia Sol has absolutely no character, except to worship a lover who bullies her, and to deceive her uncle, who has himself peculiar ideas of his duty towards his king. Yet eighty years after it was written, Hernani can still make an audience at the Theatre-Frangais weep. The counterpart of Hernani in Marion Delorme, the story of the courtesan rehabilitated by love, is Didier, a Romantic version of Moliere's Alceste: Seul, a vingt ans, la vie etait amere at triste; Je voyageai; je vis les hommes et je pris En haine quelques-uns et les autres en mepris; Car je ne vis qu'orgueil, que misere et que peine Sur ce miroir terni qu'on nomme face humaine; Si bien que me void, jeune encore et pourtant Vieux, et du monde las comme on Test en sortant, Ne me heurtant a rien oil je ne me d6chire; Trouvant le monde mal, mais trouvant I'homme pire. In le Roi s'amuse Hugo depicted the contrast in the jester Triboulet, degraded by his physical deformity and ennobled by love for his daughter, and that between Triboulet, defender of his daughter's honor, and the profligate monarch Francis I. Lucrece Borgia, in prose, is the climax of the Hugoesque melo- drama of terror, filled with incest and murder, but wherein maternal love is the purifying influence in the she-monster's heart. In Marie Tudor he transforms the haughty English queen into a woman smitten with love for an Italian courtier. Angela accumulates all the crimes and villainies which could not find place in Lucrece Borgia. With Ruy Bias we return to a drama of higher poetic quality, like Hernani, though no less unreal. A Spanish nobleman, to avenge himself on the queen who has scorned him, pushes his valet Ruy Bias at court under an assumed name, until this servant masquerading as a nobleman becomes prime minister 702 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE and wins her love. Here the antithesis is between the social ranks, and shows the hopeless love of queen and plebeian. Les Burgraves, though containing fine epic passages, was Hugo's dramatic Waterloo in 1843. The plays of Victor Hugp present an ensemble of gorgeous pictures, of magnificent scenery and costume, a swinging and sonorous verse, a series of startling episodes. These unexpected incidents, on which the author relied so much, are precisely what make the chief weakness of his plays : he proceeds on prin- ciple, in order to be different from the Classicists, to bring about the opposite of what we should naturally expect from the cir- cumstances. Consequently, his characters are a gallery of exceptions acting as psychology teaches that they cannot nor- mally act. On the other hand, the plot has to be planned with factitious antithesis and clock-work climax. Historically the plays are interesting today, not as documents concerning the epochs they so signally fail to portray, but be- cause they show us the author's own political attitude voicing his times. A democratic feeling predominates every where : the king is invariably corrupt or pusillanimous. Virtue and hero- ism belong to the lowly, whether outlaws Uke Hernani or menials like Ruy Bias. The ruler is great only as emperor, in which case the memory of Napoleon is thought of in contrast with the weakness of Charles X or the triviality of Louis-Philippe. Ruy Bias invokes the memory of Charles V, and that same monarch is regenerated in Hernani when he steps from royalty to empire : Ai-je bien depouille les miseres du roi, Charlemagne? Empereur, suis-je bien un autre homme? Puis-je accoupler mon casque a la mitre de Rome? Aux fortunes du monde ai-je droit de toucher? Ai-je un pied sur et ferme, et qui puisse marcher Dans ce sentier seme des mines vandales, Que tu nous as battu de tes larges sandales? Of the Romantic dramatists Alfred de Vigny deserves to be taken the most seriously from an intellectual standpoint, though THE DRAMA 703 his production was small. His interest in the English models showed itself in his verse translations and adaptations of the Merchant of Venice and Othello, the latter played in 1829. An historical prose drama, the Marechale d'Ancre, of which the scene was laid in the early seventeenth century, failed to draw, but Chatterton (1835) marks one of the great dates in the history of the French stage. This was an emotional play modernised and relieved of its pageantry. Vigny's own words on the plot are: "C'est I'histoire d'un homme qui ecrit une lettre le matin et qui attend la reponse jusqu'au soir; elle arrive et le tue. — Mais ici Taction morale est tout. . . . Le Poete etait tout pour moi; Chatterton n'etait qu'un nom d'homme." Vigny portrays a sensitive poet unable to meet an unsympathetic fortune and driven to suicide because he cannot degrade himself to a menial position. He is the embodiment of the author's own sentimentality; or, as the hero of the play expresses it: "Les hommes d'imagination sont eternellement crucifies; le sarcasme et la misere sont les clous de leur croix." Chatterton is also a drama of unhappy love, but this love is vastly different from the turbulent passions depicted by Dumas and Hugo. The year of the failure of Hugo's Burgraves saw the success of Lucrece by Frangois Ponsard (1814-1867), marking the short- lived victory of the "ecole du bon sens." Theatre-goers, tired of the tawdrihess and bombast of most of the Romantic plays, thought that Ponsard was restoring the old Classical qualities without' the wooden conventions. For that reason they ap- plauded as simplicity and purity what was mainly a colorless style. Lucrece owed its success to its opportuneness, and much the same can be said of Ponsard's other serious dramas, Agnes de Meranie (1846) and Charlotte Corday (1850). The Romantic drama does not monopolise the theatre, and comedy escapes to a fair degree its control. Scribe, though he composed many plays and operas with the pseudo-historical plots dear to the Romanticists, was the embodiment of the bourgeois spirit. The vaudeville enjoyed high favor under the 704 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE form of a gay comedy slightly satirical, interspersed with brief songs set to popular tunes. Nearly all the important writers of light plays produced vaudevilles, from Desaugiers the song writer to Scribe. By the side of the vaudeville there were two other chief types, the light comedy of manners in prose and the elaborate comedy in verse. The latter was the goal of a writer's ambition, but it was more artificial and less realistic. For that reason it gradually died out, though it is fairly popular up to the middle of the century. It is frequently overlooked that this early comedy was often as daring as the realistic comedy of the later nineteenth century. Here, again, the dominating influence of Scribe and the fact that his theatre was, on the whole, proper, or skilled in skimming over danger spots, make us forget that writers even then shocked the bourgeois. It is true that the reserve of language was greater. But we see the young husband tricking his rich and elderly wife {le Jeune man of Mazeres), the satire of Christian chastity {le Presbytere of Casimir Bonjour), love screened by the mask of a third character (le Chandelier of Musset), adultery in George Sand, who was partly responsible for the increased vogue of that subject in the drama. Finally, many writers (the novelists were as guilty) liked to portray the corrupt and semi-tragic side of Parisian life, thus anticipating one of the chief devices of the following and more notorious generation of writers. Casimir Delavigne (i 793-1843), in comedy as in tragedy, was cautious and safe. His best play in the light vein was VEcole des vieillards belonging to the series of "Schools" inaugurated by Moliere, in which the old husband's honor, jeopardised by the young wife's lover, is finally triumphant. Mazeres, Empis, with poorly written but dramatic plays, and Casimir Bonjour, with more ambitious ones in verse, won numerous successes; WaflSard and Fulgence are rescued from oblivion by a single comedy, le Voyage a Dieppe, which still holds the boards; Theo- dore Leclercq wrote graceful little "proverbs" which influenced Musset. But the most famous was Scribe. THE DRAMA 705 Eugene Scribe (1791-1861) was as prolific, alone or in collab- oration, as the Lope de Vegas or the Hardys of previous cen- turies, and his productions were to be counted by the hundreds. He began with vaudevilles, he continued with comic operas {Fra Diavolo) and comedies of incident, or with grand opera {les Huguenots) and historical or social comedies. Scribe was devoid of literary skill and he purposely subordi- nated style to dramatic action. He had no general ideas except the everyday morality of the class he represented. But he was more gifted than any other writer with the sense of theatrical effect. He was unequalled in finding solutions to apparently insoluble problems. He seems old-fashioned today chiefly be- cause writers since his time have become more cynical and biases, making Scribe appear in comparison ingenuous. But he cre- ated one enduring type in the linen-draper's assistant M. Calicot, aping mihtary ways and costume, in a play which nearly caused him to be mobbed by the angry prototypes. In Bertrand et Raton he represents the political intrigues of his time; in le Verre d'eau, an historical comedy, he shows important results produced by a trifle, an overturned glass of water; Adrienne Lecouvreur, with Legouve, still draws tears by its sentiment; Bataille de dames, with Legouve, is an example of brisk dialogue and quick action. But, none the less, the plays of Scribe best remembered today are those operas and comic operas which owe their fame in part to the composer; as, besides those already mentioned, la Dame blanche, la Muette de Portici, la Favorite, Robert le Diablej le Chalet, la Juive, le Domino noir, le Prophete. Scribe is the embodiment of the self-satisfied materialism of the reign of Louis-Philippe. Honor and bravery meet their immediate reward in the hard cash of a rich marriage; the scene is the world of bourgeois mediocrity, in which the heroine is the fluttering-hearted, brainless ingenue. Alfred de Musset's comedies appeal vastly more to the student of literature, though they never had the popular success of Scribe's plays and were not originally written with the object of 7o6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE performance in view. Mussel's first play in 1830, la Nuit venitienne, was a failure, and in his discomfiture, he concluded to write only plays' to be read, as in an armchair, the Spectacle dans un fauteuil. Here he was free from conventions and the restrictions of time and space. He followed the same plan throughout his prose Comedies et proverbes, and it was only by the enterprise of the actress Mme Allan-Despreaux that Mus- sel's plays saw the footlights, some of them twenty years after their composition. An example of the purely fanciful in Musset is A quoi revent les jeunes filles, in which Shakspere and Marivaux are blown together into a soap-bubble. The comedy shows the awakening of love in the souls of the young twins Ninon and Ninette and the efforts of their sentimental father to give them a taste of romance before their humdrum life begins. In his masterpiece, On ne badine pas avec I'amour, which was influenced by the bitter experience with George Sand, we are shown the tragedy of love and the retribution which comes to those who trifle with it. The sombre side is contrasted with the fantastic characters of pedantic tutor, shrewish governess and drunken parish-priest, as well as by the fanciful comments of the villagers acting the part of an ancient chorus. These plays are alien from the ^merican mind, but are full of beauty. Musset's attempt at a Hamlet-play is Lorenzaccio, wherein the youth ambitious to liberate Florence from its tyrant, first shares his vices, the better to control him, until at last these vices cling to himself. Ilj[iefaMlJmrr_derien is again pure marivaudage and Un caprice pure wit. There are plenty of other plays by Musset of unequal value. Fantasia, le Chandelier, II faut qu'une parte soil ouverte oujermee, and the scenes are sometimes as whimsical in their geography as the fancies which the writer expresses, but they are all tragic comedies of love. Such is almost the only way to classify them, because by quaint unreality and the amalgam of influences from the Elizabethan dramatists of England to the eighteenth- THE DRAMA 707 century sentimentalists of France and the irony of the same period, they defy classification by types. The authors treated in this chapter are far from exhausting the list of writers of comedy: Balzac, in his Mercadet, and George Sand, in her Frangois le Champi and le Marquis de Villemer, tried to do in the drama what they were doing in the novel; Jules Sandeau won fame with Mademoiselle de la Seigliere, and with le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier in collaboration with Emile Augier ; Ponsard had, in I'Honneur et I'argent, one of the last triumphs of the "ecole du bon sens," and gave one of the last important examples of the " swallow-tail " comedy in verse. CHAPTER X FICTION THE novel, during the Restoration and the Monarchy of July shows varying tendencies. The historical romance, after a brief career of brilliancy, degenerates and takes refuge in the Jeuilleton. The romance of personal emotion, sometimes autobiographical, which was the traditional form, still shows some examples, or merges into the lyrical romances such as those of George Sand. That writer contributes to the develop- ment of the sociological, sometimes socialistic, novel, which again, in the hands of less gifted writers like Sue, betakes itself to the same roman-feuilleton style. On the other hand, the growth of Realism is seen in the psychological- Stendhal, and in Merimee and Balzac. The Romantic school practically created the historical novel. Here again an important contribution came from abroad, es- pecially from Sir Walter Scott. The American James Feni- more Cooper, who himself had much of Scott, both by his marine stories and his Indian tales influenced French authors from Balzac {les Chouans) to Sue, and, later, Gustave Aimard. But the prodigious development of historical fiction between 1820 and 1830 was the result of Scott. He not only made the Middle Ages less remote than in the epic treatment of Chateau- briand, but, by bringing in imagination, gave greater concrete- ness to the portrayal of the past. By picturesque description, use of local coloring, avoidance of generalised paraphrase, in- troduction of direct conversation, Scott made imaginary or remote characters vivid and real. 708 \ FICTION 709 Consequently the anti-Classical revolutionaries drew abun- dantly from Scott. Nodier, who had visited Scotland, published in 1822 his Trilby, a short story, which was perhaps the first direct imitation in France of Scott. The first important work was Alfred de Vigny's Cinq-Mars (1826), though the vicomte d'Arlincourt had already written some historical novels accord- ing to the traditions of the Radcliffe story of mystery. Alfred de Vigny attempted to reconstruct the spirit of the past. In preparation for his work he read two- or three hundred volumes dealing with the first part of the seventeenth century. Then taking as hero the ambitious young Cinq-Mars, who attempted to supplant Richelieu, he surrounded a story of his life and of his love for Marie de Gonzague with a picture of the society of the times, introducing among the characters every historical personage he could think of. The result was a mosaic of incidents and of descriptions, in which Vigny flattered him- self that he was making the old times live anew, but in which he made historical accuracy yield to the needs of the plot. But Vigny was not gifted with the power of creating such charac- ters and tended to make them symbols for ideas, distinguishing between the truth of art and the truth of facts. The result was, consequently, cold and monotonous, and Cinq-Mars lacks the dash which enabled Hugo or Dumas to carry through works really no more meritorious. Merimpe, in his Chronique du regne de Charles IX, went to work in a different maimer. No less realistic in his treatment of local coloring than Vigny but lacking the pedantry of supei;- abundant erudition, he carries the reader's interest more easily; moreover, the imaginary characters are more pliable to the reader's fancy. Merimee's Chronique is the source of the operas les Huguenots and le Pre aux clercs. In Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris we find the author's charac- teristic virtues and vices. The novel is supposed to express the spirit of the civilisation of the late Middle Ages, as embodied in the great cathedral, centre of its life and spirit. Its story is 7IO A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the development of the idea of fate illustrated in the word ANAFKH carved in one of its towers. Thus there is the usual substructure of anthropomorphism and symbolism. The charac- ters are embodiments of the Hugoesque antithesis: Esmeralda, the gypsy foundling, brought up among vice and corruption, is purity; Quasimodo, the grotesque hunchback, is the true knight; Frollo, the priest and man of God, has the sinful heart, and Phoebus, the handsome captain, has in his soul the vice that Quasimodo wears on his face. The story is carried through a vast turmoil of incident and of language, until the reader, like the author, loses a sense of proportion. The book produces a wonderful impression, and mediaeval Paris seems to rise before the eye, though it is only Hugo's Paris that we see. Notre-Dame de Paris is one of the greatest novels of the Romantic school. Alexandre Dumas acknowledged himself a populariser. He was a wholesale purveyor of romances, sometimes scarcely more than planning what his collaborators wrote. Auguste Maquet was the chief assistant in what was dubbed the firm of "Alexandre Dumas & Co.," among whom were Paul Meurice, Lockroy, Leuven, Anicet-Bourgeois. Sometimes a story by Dumas was only a paraphrase or rewriting of a previous work of history or fiction, and the famous Trots mousquetaires, drawn from Courtilz de Sandras, practically comes under this heading. But though he had not the historical method of Vigny, he had the historical imagination, and so his novels often have what the models lack. They sin from the defects of the author: they are melodramatic, the style is technically bad, and diluted by spaced-out sentences and brief lines because Dumas was paid for his feuilletons by their length. ' But readers will never be lacking for the Trois ' Dumas was not the only writer of fiction who contributed to the dilution of style during the heyday of the feuilleton: "Un de mesamis, ditProudhon, reprochait un jour a Nodier les longs adverbes qui emaillent sa prose diffuse et 14che; il repondit qu'un mot de huit syllabes faisait une ligne at qu'une ligne valait un franc." — Quoted by A. Cassagne, la Thiorie de I' art pour I'art. FICTION 711 mousquetaires and its sequels Vingt ans apres and le Vicomte de Bragelonne, or the sixteenth-century tales les Quarante-cinq, la Dame de Monsoreau, la Reine Margot, or the tales connected with Cagliostro and the queen's necklace. In the Comte de Monte-Cristo, Dumas draws still more on his imagination and creates a hero based on the Bjn-onic tradition of the mysterious being and on the apotheosis of himself. Unfortunately, grotesqueness and exaggeration were sharp- edged tools for less gifted writers, and the Romantic novels were swamped by second-rate imitations by authors like Paul Lacroix (le Bibliophile Jacob), Roger de Beauvoir and Frederic Soulie. By the development of the "atrocious" side in the shape of vice and horror, they debased the novel from literature to the story of crime, and threw open the door to the cheap feuilleton style corresponding to our dime-novel literature. Henri Beyle (1783-1842), who sought to appear more dis- tinguished under the pseudonym of Stendhal, was an author of strong individuality but of little vogue iii his own time, who has since been resurrected. "I shall be read," he said, "about 1880," and the prophecy came true. His temperament, in- tellectual and physical, was that of a thorough-going materialist: he was a pupil of the Ideologists, and thought as a successor of Helvetius and d'Holbach would think. The spiritual was meaningless to him: "God's single excuse," he declared, "is that he does not exist." The only thing in life for him was the satisfaction of the senses : not the degenerate pleasures of modem deliquescents, but a fine brutal indulgence. He scorned what he considered the smug inertia of the French of his day, bowing hypocritically to virtue and making love wait on the notary and the marriage contract. He contrasted it with the fierce and unrestrained passions ol his beloved Italians, and called the latter's temperament energy or courage. But this "courage" took the form of sensuality, for Beyle saw in love the sum total of all enjoyment: "L'amour a tou jours ete pour moi la plus grande des affaires, ou plutdt la seule." So Beyle, who was an 712 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE eternal poseur, posed in his writings as the exponent of what has been called "Beylism," a brutal cult of self overriding all obstacles, moral or otherwise, for the sake of pleasure. Con- ventionality he loathed, heaped ridicule on the prudery or begueulisme of his times, and the cult of "good form": "Dans la vie commune, le begueulisme est I'art de s'offenser pour le compte des vertus qu'on n'a pas; en litterature, c'est I'air de jouir avec des gouts qu'on ne sent point. ... On dit que la pruderie est la vertu des femmes qui n'en ont pas; le begueulisme litteraire ne serait-il point le bon gout de ces gens que la nature avait faits tout simplement pour ^tre sensibles a I'argent, ou pour aimer avec passion les dindes truffees?" Stendhal succeeded so well in carrying out his views that when Alfred de Musset and George Sand met him on their way to Venice, his coarseness was too much for them. Stendhal's two most important novels, le Rouge et le noir and la Chartreuse de Parme, illustrate his theories, in so far as his heroes are anti-heroes. The Julien Sorel of le Rouge et le noir is a heartless fortune-seeker, taking to clerical "black" instead of the military "red," because under the Restoration the clergy had replaced the Napoleonic military as source of power,' and seducing two women who have loved him. A true specimen of Beylism, he is at war with society like a Romantic hero, but rather because he is bad, and not society, as with the Romanti- cists. Or rather, he thinks it bad because it inculcates restraint and deceit. In the Chartreuse de Parme, the hero Fabrice is an Italian Julien Sorel, who, after a period of youthful enthu- siasm, betakes himself to a life of intrigue and of ecclesiastical hypocrisy. Stendhal belongs to no school of his time. He has certain Romantic traits because of his abnormal and eccentric charac- ters, because of the stress he lays on love, especially the amour- passion (as in his book l' Amour), and because in his Racine et Shakespeare his hatred for the stilted conventionality of the 'Bayle had the obsession, the "hantise" of Napoleon. FICTION 713 seventeenth century, with its formal rules of literature and society, caused him to heap ridicule upon it to the consequent benefit of modern literature. On the other hand, as no Roman- ticist does, he analyses character. He proceeds by the infinitely small, and sees details rather than whole bodies, but his method is a psychological one, a study of facts, or of the facts of sensa- tion. In that sense he is a ReaUst, and his description of the battle of Waterloo in the Chartreuse de Parme is traditionally opposed to Victor Hugo's account in les Miser ables, the former following the individual participant in a mighty contest of which, ,as a mere unit, he knows not the mea'ning, the latter dealing with big masses only. In his study of minute detail to the neglect of the general plot, Stendhal compares himself to the painter studying a,necorcheoi skinless figure of the artists' studios. This tendency to analyse and express sensations comes out in his works on Italy, which he knew so well, such as Rome, Naples et Florence and Promenades dans Rome. They are accompani- ments to a study of Italy by the most acute of observers, by one whose erudition may be at fault, but who has an unerring appreciation for human associations in the past. It takes a peculiar cast of mind to care for Stendhal. His novels are tedious and prolix, his style is dull and colorless. Yet upon Realists like Balzac or later writers of the psychological school like Paul Bourget, the influence of Stendhal has been considerable, and even a constructive critic and philosopher like Taine owes something to him, in the cult for the "petit fait significatif." Prosper Merimee (1803-1870) is sometimes called a transition between Romanticism and Realism. He wrote some things which may come under the heading of Romantic literature, but in temperament he was as different as any one could be. A poUshed man of the world, with a slight affectation of Anglo- Saxon placidity, he had nothing in comnion with the hysterics of the Jeunes-France. A functionary of the ministry of Fine Arts and inspector of historical monuments, as well as a senator 714 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE under the Empire and a lifelong friend of the empress Eugenie, whom he had known when she was only a Spanish countess, he had his entrees to learned and social gatherings. Reserved in disposition and pose, and feigning a detachment from all things but his cats and his bric-a-brac, he left a voluminous correspon- dence, parts of which have been published, revealing his inner life more than that of most persons. Thus it appears that the imperturbable gentleman had a dirty mind and a susceptible heart. Merimee's connection with Romanticism was scarcely more than a pastime. In a day when literary impersonations after , the earlier example of Ossian were popular, he manufactured the Theatre de Clara Gazul, the dramatic production of a supposed Spanish actress and writer. The trick was successful and the writings won great applause. Then, with increasing audacity, Merimee transposed "Gazul" into "Guzla" and published a false collection of Illyrian songs, which once more imposed on the public. But as local coloring seemed so easy to manufac- ture, Merimie evidently thought he had enough of it. Except for the Chronique du regne de Charles IX, his other imaginative writings are in a style of impeccable reserve. Even in Colomba and Carmen, stories of Corsican vendetta and of Spanish jeal- ousy, the picturesqueness is subordinated to the observation and calm registration of fact. For Merimee was one of the first writers to be influenced by Stendhal and to approach the objectivity of the Realists. The most striking note of Merimee's style is his irony, not a frisky irreverence, but a calm scepticism and disbelief in enthu- siasms and sentiment, a scorn for mankind, which presented French writers with a new "attitude." Apart from his fiction, in the list of which one may also men- tion the stories Tamango, Mateo Falcone, I'Enlevement de la redoute, le Vase itrusqiie and la Vinus d'llle, M6rim6e wrote various works on art and history and did much to make Russian literature known in France. Of his letters, published after his FICTION 715 death, the most famous portion are the Lettres a une inconnue, now known to have been a Mile Jenny Dacquin of Boulogne- sur-Mer, with whom he kept up for a long time a correspondence, sometimes philandering, but none the less of great value as a human document and for the moral and intellectual history of Merimee's epoch. The Lettres a une autre inconnue (Mme Przedziefka) are less significant. Aurore Dupin, baronne Dudevant, always known now by her pseudonym of George Sand (1804-1876), was on her father's side descended from Maurice de Saxe. Her mother was a fast woman of common birth,, so that she was a cross between high and low strains of blood, and suffered from her bringing up amid the wrangling of a vain and vulgar mother and a proud and domineering grandmother. The result was that she followed her own course, roaming the countryside of her native Berry, often so immersed in her fancies that people thought her a fool, or undergoing crises of reHgious mysticism at the Convent des Anglaises in Paris, where she went to school. At sixteen she was married to the baron Dudevant, a well-meaning but coarse and narrow-minded country squire addicted to drink and an- cillary loves. For a long time the wife chafed under the yoke, which she finally threw over and went to Paris to live a free life with her husband's consent. It was not until much later that she sought an annulment of her marriage. She spent her time as a literary bohemian, often disguised as a man, and soon won a reputation by her books. She first Uved with Jules Sandeau, and wrote in collaboration with him her first novel, Rose et Blanche. From him she took her literary name, George Sand. In 1.833 came her trip to Italy with Alfred de Musset, which she afterwards wrote up in Elle et lui, and her infatuation for Pagello. She had various other affairs, usually with men younger than herself, which often influenced her work. Chief among these was one with the musician Chopin (see Lucrezia Floriani). She was also the disciple of Michel (de Bourges), who pleaded for her at the annulment of her marriage, of Lamennais and 7i6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Pierre Leroux, as well as the friend of Liszt and Sainte-Beuve, the adviser of Dumas the younger and Flaubert. Merimee she hated, and she could not sympathise with' Balzac. After 1839 her time was spent in her native country place, at Nohant, in Berry, where the stormy petrel became a bourgeoise, less sedate perhaps than has been her reputation, but occupied, when not writing, with her housekeeping and the amusements of her grandchildren. The stock division of George Sand's literary productivity is into four periods: firstly, the novels attacking society, partic- ularly the institution of marriage, and setting forth the claims of the femme incomprise; secondly, those written under the influence of philosophical and sociological Utopians; thirdly, the lyrical and pastoral romances; fourthly, the slightly ideal- ised novel of manners. George Sand was the embodiment of the spirit of Rousseau. To an intensely sensitive and emotional nature and the feeling of her own unhappy marriage, she added, like the poets, Byronic revolt and the moral malady of the age of Rene and Obermann, and turned against the ordinances of man. In the incoherent reading of her youth she had dabbled in a vast amount of litera- ture from the great poets to the eighteenth-century innovators. The result was a seething mass of unsystematic ideas. So though she rarely undertakes, of malice prepense, to formulate a theory, her stories are susceptible of resolution into argument. In Indiana and Valentine, which seemed to the readers of the thirties the cUmax of immorality, George Sand asserts the rights of love, free and unrestrained. Passion is irresistiljle, and the woman who is unhappy and generally misunderstood in marriage is justified in breaking the ties of slavery which keep an ego from its affinity. Thus George Sand was following Rousseau in attacking society. It was in the same spirit that she pro- claimed the emancipation of woman, and that, in her lyrical, flowery and hyperbolical prose, she, as her critics said, idealised adultery. In Lelia, which followed and definitely won fame for FICTION 717 George Sand, and the plot of which seemed partly to anticipate the experience with Alfred de Musset, she introduces in full force the Romantic despair of living and the delight and grand- eur of suffering. Between the vampire of love Lelia and the courtesan Pulcherie pass the figures of the poet Stenio doomed to suicide, and of Trenmor the regenerate convict, like Jean Valjean later. Jacques'h the drama of tragic renunciation, in which the magnanimous husband kills himself that his wife and her lover may be happy. Mauprat is less specifically a roman a these and is correspondingly superior. It portrays the taming of a wild and savage hero by the woman he comes to love. George Sand's second literary period began about 1840. She fell under the influence of the regenerators of society, and her stories either portray her friends or give concrete form to their theories. She did not linger much over the parodies of religion of the Pere Enfantin and the Saint-Simonists, but she became infatuated with the democracy of Lamennais, until they grad- ually fell apart over theories concerning the equality of woman with man {Lettres a Marcie); she was swayed by the volubility of Michel (de Bourges), the sallow and bespectacled demagogue and his plans of social reconstitution drawn from Babeuf and Rousseau; she wrote in support of Agricol Perdiguier^ the Compagnon du tour de France, with its loves of proletarian heroes and ladies of high rank, and its glorification of plebeian virtues, much to the distress of the bourgeois. But the most important of these influences came from Pierre Leroux, whose obscure pantheistic humanitarianism she undertook to interpret. Spi- ridion is a mixture of the ideas of Lamennais and Leroux, and develops a deistic rehgion to replace Christianity. The shapes of an eternal Becoming and death are but transformations of 1 Agricol Perdiguier (Avignonnais-la-Vertu) was a journeyman carpenter who wrote the Livre du compagnonnage for the defence and improvement of the old Compagnonnages or jpurneyman's trades-unions, whose ramifica- tions spread over France like freemasonry and foreshadowed the modern syndicates. It was the sociaUstic side which appealed to George Sand. 7i8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE substance and a migration. In the Sept cordes de la lyre, a sort of philosophical drama copied from Faust, George Sand sym- bolises by the harmony of the strings of the lyre the harmony to which humanity should be tuned. Meanwhile, through Liszt and particularly Chopin, the in- fluence of the musicians began to mingle with the visionary pseudo-philosophy. Constielo is the story of a beautiful Venetian singer driven from home to avoid the persecution of an unwel- come lover and sent to the mysterious castle of Rudolstadt in Bohemia. There she becomes the deathbed bride of the count, who, like a good disciple of Leroux and of his theories of the transmigration of souls, passes away after telling her that he is to return to the world in a new birth. He will then be calm, strong and delivered from the memory of his past existences by which he has been tortured and punished for mg,ny centuries. In the sequel, the Comtesse de Rudolstadt, the socialism of Leroux and Michel (de Bourges) again gets the upper-hand. The book is a hodge-podge of disquisitions on occult sciences and free- masonry, which was to George Sand the symbol of a mystical brotherhood for the regeneration of humanity. The count comes to life, having been in but a lethargy or catalepsy, and with her husband Consuelo goes through the world preaching the happiness of mankind. Socialism, in a less mystical and more concrete form, reappears in the next two important works. In the Meunier d'Angibault, an attack on the inequalities of birth and fortune, the penniless hero refuses to marry the rich woman who loves him until she has got rid of her fortune, that they may follow together the new religion of brotherhood. In the Peche de Monsieur Antoine she pleads Fourieristic communism. George Sand welcomed the Revolution of 1848. She edited the Bulletins de la Republique under the auspices of Ledru- Rollin, she admired Louis Blanc and the agitator Barbes. But with the coup d'etat and the downfall of her hopes, though she had occasional revivals of enthusiasm for the mysticism of Bal- FICTION 719 lanche or of Jean Raynaud," she devoted herself chiefly to the composition of pastoral romances, among which her master- pieces are to be found. Already in 1846 she had published la Mare au diable, and this was followed by la Petite Fadette and Franqois le Champi. In these graceful works George Sand does not try to reform the universe, but depicts scenes of her native province in their sylvan beauty, ^nd peoples them with the slightly idealised figures of the rustics with whose life she was so well acquainted. In the characters of Germain the "fin labou- reur" and little Marie of la Mare au diable, or the bessons (twins) Landry and Sylvinet with the sprite-like Fanchon Fadet, George Sand has enriched the literature of rural France with its most poetical pages. These outweigh all the declamations of the previous novels. But the disciple of Rousseau is still to be seen in them. Finally, in the years after i860, George Sand turned to novels of a less individual character. Such are Jean de la Roche and le Marquis de Villemer. Les Beaux messieurs de Bois-Dore brings back the spirit of d'Urfe's Astree. This is a very incomplete list of George Sand's chief works. One of her most useful bequests to posterity was her highly valuable correspondence. She produced over a hundred vol- umes with incredible facility of improvisation. A friend called her a "robinet," or faucet, to be turned on at will. She reflected almost passively the intellectual influence of the numerous men of genius with whom she came in contact, although morally she sometimes sucked their strength away. Her lyrical, though clear and limpid, style was an expression of the Romantic spirit. Yet her idealism has a strong stamp of the sensuahEm of her youth, at times soaring to God in a mystic adoration of earthly love which seems a parody of Marguerite de Navarre, at times 1 Jean Reynaud was originally a Saint-Simonist, but he cut adrift from the materialism of Enfantin; author of Terre et del. He believed that, in after life, beings pass from planet to planet without losing personaKty, and acquire a progressive perfectibility like that of science. 720 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE expressing itself in the amorous maternity of Rousseau's "ma- man," Mme de Warens. Her actual faith passed from Cathol- icism to the hatred of revealed religion, at any rate the Catholic one, and a belief in a vague deistic religiosity, which could harmonise with most creeds, including those of the Utopians. Though she is comparatively little read nowadays, her impor- tance is considerable, both for the fame which she won in her own day, and for the putting into circulation of theories about woman and the relation of the sexes. These popularised the treatment of such topics in the problem plays of the next literary generation. Honore de Balzac (i 799-1850), like some other writers with imposing names, was of humble origin and came from a family in southern France originally name^ Balssa. His burning ambition from youth was to be a famous writer, and his whole life was given up to Herculean labor, partly to win glory, partly to pay off huge debts which his bad business manage- ment and extravagance brought upon him. Overwork finally killed him. He had been educated for a solicitor's career and afterwards established business concerns as printer in which he sank a great deal of money, but where he got some of the experience of life and of financial methods described in his novels. Balzac's first writings were utterly unoriginal and are corre- spondingly forgotten today. He could only begin by elaborate and fantastic plots in the style of the popular writers of his youth, from Pigault-Lebrun and Ducray-Duminil to the primitive English models of the School of Terror such as Maturin. As he progressed he took as examples Scott or Cooper, and, in fact, Balzac, though the leader of the Realists, never entirely fell away from certain Romantic tendencies, and was always ready to dabble in the mysterious and supernatural, whether Sweden- borgianism or plain Mesmerism. He had an imagination which worked on a huge scale, and the hallucinations of his creative genius, stimulated by the black coffee on which he kept himself FICTION 721 alive, had a parallel in the distorting mirrors through which he saw the world of his workaday life. With growing fame and constant improvement, Balzac con- ceived, about 1834, the idea of a portraiture of the society of his times, by a vast creation of characters appearing in his different books and connecting them. As La Fontaine had seen in his fables representing life an "'ample comedie a cent actes divers," and as Dante had written the "Divine Comedy," so Balzac wished to construct a Comedie kumaine. He united as far as possible the books already written, and so systematically worked out the careers of his new creations that it has been possible to publish a biographical dictionary of Balzac's men and women, in which their Uves, drawn from different novels, appear before us with full consistency. A number of the books which were to fit into the scheme Balzac never lived to write. Balzac did not confine himself to one scene or to one class of society, or even to one part of France, but subdivided the Com- edie humaine into scenes from private life, scenes from provin- cial life, scenes from political life, scenes from military life and scenes from country life. Others among his works, which do not enter well into this classification, purport to be "philosoph- ical studies" or "analytical studies." The total production of Balzac is an enormous one for an author who died compara- tively young, even omitting the numerous productions of his yoiuiger years, historical novels like les Chouans, philosophical tales like la Peau de chagrin, Rabelaisian tales, such as the Contes drolatiques, or the self-describing Physiologie du manage* Yet Balzac's composition was a difficult one, and he achieved his results only by constant erasures and modifications of his proof-sheets. The result shows itself in a labored and sometimes unreadably tedious style. None the less, by his portrayal of character, Balzac must be rated among the great novelists of the nineteenth century, and his language, in spite of its dislo- cated nature, is a powerful expression for his thought. Balzac's chief topic is the world of intrigue, especially business 722 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE intrigue, and he excels at showing the perversity of villains who destroy position, character and happiness. In the Cure de Tours we see a harmless priest a prey to jealousy and spite, in Ursule Mirouet co-heirs scheming for a fortune. Like Thack- eray, Balzac is weak in portra3mig virtue or innocence, and a quality is apt to be in him exaggerated into a defect. Like Dickens, his characters stand forth as types. Old man Goriot's love for his unworthy daughters in le Pere Goriot is the parody of Lear, and the Mme de Mortsauf of le Lys dans la vallee makes one weary of virtue. Balzac excels on the other hand in the portrayal of vice, and though here again we get exaggeration or, at any rate, exceptions from the normal, the effect remains impressive, and we have enduring characters in misers like old Grandet or Gobseck, in the spiteful old maid Mile Gamard of the Cure de Tours, in the jealous Cousine Bette, in the moral degenerate Hulot or the society sponge le Cousin Pons. The convict Vautrin, even though partly modelled on the ex-criminal Vidocq, carries Realism to the extent of Romantic exaggeration, and makes us think of some of Hugo's symbolic figures, like Jean Valjean, hovering over society. Balzac is most at home describing financial operations, as in Eugenie Grandet, or Cesar Birotteau (his Silas Lapham). This enables him to use his documentary method, the detailed re- production of procedure. The same method applied to concrete objects accounts for much of the tediousness of Balzac: a nar- rative is apt to be almost all description or enumeration, to the Complete neglect of the plot. Thus we see in' what way Balzac stands at the dividing line between Romanticism and Realism. His early reading and the potency of his imagination inclined him to the fantastic and supernatural, and to the exaggeration or distortion of normal types. But his desire to reproduce the concrete fact and to visualise the scene or object in print, makes him the best painter of French manners of the Restoration and the reign of Louis- Philippe among the bourgeoisie of town and country. For that FICTION 723 reason, in spite of many wearisome pages, such as the almost unreadable and yet convincing detective story, Une tenebreuse affaire, Balzac must always remain one of the most necessary authors of French literature. He was a leader for the whole succeeding generation of documentary or Realistic novelists. The broadening of the patronage of fiction brought about the feuilleton, the serial story of the periodical press. This has been hinted at above in connection with the historical novel. Stend- hal spoke of fiction as divisible into "romans de salon" and "romans de femme de chambre," and the latter kind found an outlet in papers like the Presse of Emile de Girardin. In that journal was published in 1842 the Mysteres de Paris of Eugene Sue (1804-1857), with its scenes of low life and of vice, and its thesis, that modern civilisation crushes the toiling classes and drives the iimocent into corruption and immorality. The book expresses the. spirit of Fovu:ierism. Le Juif errant attacks the Jesuits and their intrigues, in the person of the treacherous hypocrite Rodin. Eugene Sue was the writer .who most closely approached literary art, but he had minor compeers in Frederic Soulie, with his Memoires du Diable, full of filth and crime; in Ponson du Terrail, whose dark villain Rocambole is a degenerate descend- ant of Byron through Dumas, and whose style is illustrated by the phrase attributed to him, "His hands were cold and clammy, like those of a snake;" in Paul Feval, whose customary coarse- ness has . made people forget that he could write imaginative works Hke la F&e des greves. In Paul de Kock, who might well deserve the onomatopoetic adjective "cocasse" and whose popu- larity equalled that of Hugo, France had a writer with a wild exuberance of humor which made his risque stories innocuous. He was the voluble mouthpiece in his generation of the esprit gaulois. The tradition of the feuilleton has continued to our day, and Sue and Soulie have had successors in the favor of the concierges in writers hke Xavier de Montepin, Emile Richebourg or Alexis 724 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Bouvier. Emile Gaboriau and Fortune du Boisgobey gave new renown to the detective novel which the French got originally from Edgar Allan Poe, and the M. Lecoq of Gaboriau had his fame long before Sherlock Holmes. The sociological novel is not separable from the feuilleton. Apart from George Sand's books, Sue's stories have sociological tendencies in corroboration of the Utopians. They distinctly helped to bring on the Revolution of 1848, and Sue's Sept peches capitaux, like the Mysteres de Paris, is influenced by the paradoxes of Fourierism, and argues the goodness of the deadly sins. This style of novel reaches its climax ■ in les Miser ables of Hugo, in which the author reeks with humanitarianism, and with his usual love of antithesis shows transformation scenes of character by which villains are transformed into angels, and in which the sinner and prostitute are so glorified, as the victims of an unjust world, that we begin to think them more full of good qualities than the righteous. Among writers of second rank the name of Gerard de Nerval (1808-1855) has already appeared in our account of the heroic days of Romanticism to which he belonged through his whole career of genius or insanity, ending in a mysterious death, murder or suicide. Maurice de Guerin (1810-1839), poet in prose and verse, interpreter of the moods of nature and of relig- ious feeling, is, like his sister Eugenie,more read about than read. Alphonse Karr (1808-1890) was the Aristophanes or Merry- andrew of literary journalism, and Emile Souvestre (1806- 1854), like Brizeux, was a writer about Brittany. CHAPTER XI HISTORIANS, CRITICS, AND PUBLICISTS ONE of the chief benefits of Romanticism to the student of literature was to make historical writing interesting and a part of literature itself, as it never had been before and has not been since. In earlier generations histories had tended, with exceptions like those of Voltaire or the Benedictines, to be dull chronicles, or paraphrases conventionally recorded, or imitations of Livy or De Thou, or a priori generalisations. Thierry sets forth the defects of the older rhetorical historians in his Lettre sur I'histoire de France and the Dix ans d'etudes kistoriques. At the present moment history has become nearly divorced from literature, and the historians construct works almost as technical as a catalogue, a bibliography, or a treatise on physics. It was the prerogative of the Romantic age to produce works which were, with varying degrees of accuracy, almost always readable. It is true that they were partly the result of something as scientifically reprehensible as the histor- ical novel. In other instances they were vitiated by theories of metaphysics and by cosmologies imported from Germany, which country in the nineteenth century has exercised much influence on certain French thinkers. By many French people, after Mme de Stael's time, that land was looked upon as the home of pacific and simple-mannered but erudite folk devoted to cornflowers and mental culture, steeped in meditative and ideahstic sentiment. This conception of their neighbors' spir- itual and intellectual temper was what the French termed "Germanism," and an important borrowing by some great writers was a vague pantheistic interpretation of historical evo- 72s 726 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE lution. At any rate, for writers as varied as Cousin, Quinet, Michelet, Taine, and Renan, Germany was the great source of inspiration. It took the war of 1870 to shatter the delusion that the •Germans were unpractical poets and scholars.' The leader in historical writing in modern France was Augustin Thierry (i 795-1856), the blind and paralysed author, whose achievements in the face of obstacles make him one of the heroes of literature. Thierry gave life to history, and his great inspirers were Sir Walter Scott and Chateaubriand, to whom he was indebted for the stirring of his historical imagination. He him- self relates how in his school-days the account of the Franks in the Martyrs so aroused him that he marched up and down repeating, "Pharamond! Pharamond! nous avons combattu avec I'epee!" Augustin Thierry (his brother Amedee was a reputable his- torian also) had the faculty of evoking from the texts as he read .them, or as they were read to him, the life and manners of the period. He was not free from bias and preconceived ideas, and his early intimacy with the socialist Saint-Simon had awa- kened in his mind notions of liberalism and sympathy for the people, which underly his study of the freeing of the communes and the rise to power of the Third Estate {Essai sur la formation et le pr ogres du Tiers-Etat). He saw the Revolution of 1848 in his own day, with the advent of the proletariat, give the lie to his theories on the civil progress of the bourgeoisie. Thierry's chief work is the Histoire de la conquete de VAngleterre par les Normands, in which, instead of following the victors to the conquered land, he places himself, to express his theory of the "antagonism of two races," rather at the standpoint of the gradually submerged people. His other important work is the Recits des temps merovingiens , the reanimation of the old ' A pontiff in France of Germany and a believer in the superiority of the Germanic race was the comte de Gobineau (1816-1882). He had some effect on Renan, but was not much known in his own land as a writer until recently. HISTORIANS, CRITICS, PUBLICISTS 727 sixth-century chronicles of Gregory of Tours, so that the archaic narratives spring into the vividness of a romance by Scott. Thierry was the chief of what has been called the "picturesque school," sometimes the "impressionistic school," of those who tried to make the past live again. No one was more anxious than Thierry to be accurate and to replace the rhetoric of the seventeenth and eighteenth-century historians by the method of documentary proof. Two things detract from his value to modern scientific historians: firstly, his imagination led him, at any rate in the works written after his blindness, to warp by his reconstruction the probable truth in his mental vision of the past; secondly, his almost feminine sensibility led him to side with the losing cause and to view its downfall as an epic, or to read into history his own sociological prepossessions shaped by a poet's touch. If Thierry represents the sg,ne use of the imagination in history, Quinet and Michelet embody rampant Romanticism, the former as a philosopher of history, the latter as a narrator. Edgar Quinet (1803-1875) was the great exponent of German ideas in France, where, like Pierre Leroux and Michelet, he interpreted history under the form of a vague symbolic panthe- ism. Quinet was a man of poetic and mystical temperament who had fed on Chateaubriand, of quick" feehng, and of great power in rapid though hazardous philosophical intuition or synthesis. He travelled in Germany and feU under the spell of Herder and of his interpretation of the philosophy of history, the process of studying the world-development as an organic whole. This was precisely a pantheistic conception, a meta- physical and poetical theory of historical evolution, in which the eye ranged over the vastness of humanity, casting upon it a network of law. That law enunciated the immanence of the divine will throughout the universe, where all the forms of being are a manifestation of God. In temperaments like those of Quinet, Michelet, or Leroux, such methods of interpretation pieant the substitution of the imagination for the reason and 728 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the confusion of symbol with fact.' In Quinet the pantheistic law was, instead of divine immanence, rather one of free moral and social progress, which he preached with apostolic fervor. Thus the "perfectibility" of the Revolutionaries and of the Ideologists spiritualised was undergoing intimations of a dynamic immortality, in an evolution similar to that which the spirit of the times made Darwin apply from without to the selection of species. History became the mirror of the universal soul of mankind, free to act, though linked by countless relations to the rest of the world, and gradually evolving the reign of liberty and justice under the guidance of the supreme will. Quinet's first writings, then, reflect Herder and the German influence. The Essai sur Herder (1827) was followed not long after by Ahasverus, a symbolic prose poem of the Wandering Jew and of humanity in search of the ideal. Napoleon, an epic belonging to the period of Napoleonolatry of the Monarchy of July, and Promethee, also in verse, proclaiming the victory of freedom over determinism. A spiritualist and theist, but with anti-Catholic inclinations, Quinet plunged into political discussion, and on becoming pro- fessor at the College de France he broke out, conjointly with Michelet, into virulent attacks, in his lectures, against the Jesuits, which caused turmoil and riots. Later, after the Romantic movement had passed away, Quinet, in his numerous historical and critical writings, underwent the influence of the new scien- tific movement, which he always interpreted through the re- fraction of his poetic temperament, in books like la Creation (1870). His liberal aspirations in political reform concerning ' "L'esprit pantheistique pouvait se definir: usurpation par I'imagina- tion et le sentiment du role de la raison, defaut d'embarras en presence des questions supremes, il suffisait qu'on tranchS.t par intuition, inspiration ou passion, les problemes les plus etendus que proposent la nature et I'his- toire, pour tomber dans des idees bien -apparentees aux idees germaniques, sans besoin d'avoir medite pour cela les Fichte ou les Schelling." Las- gerre, le Romantisme Jranqais. HISTORIANS, CRITICS, PUBLICISTS 729 the democratic state and its relations with education and the Church have been partly realised, in a less generous spirit, by the France of today. But Quinet himself, because of political animosities and the incoherence of his powerful intel- lect, reflecting itself in his style (he has been compared to Carlyle), has been rather neglected by historians of French literature. The name of Quinet is scarcely separable from that of Jules Michelet (i 798-1874), another historian with a poetic imagina- tion and the most popular writer of the "picturesque school." Michelet's poverty-stricken experience in youth was pathetic, but, though it weakened his constitution, it did not stunt the enthusiasm of his historical studies or the fierceness of his attacks against those whom he deemed the foes of liberty. He had made his trip to Germany before Quinet his, and had learned to admire Herder and Hegel. But the author who particularly gave him his start in philosophical thought was the eighteenth- century Neapolitan writer Vico, a broad generaliser before Herder upon history and its epic manifestations, one who viewed men as emblems, and facts as symbols in the world-progress, and one who conceived history as a series of three successive stages marked by chara,cteristics constantly renewed in rotation. Michelet, who translated Vico's book under the title Frincipes de la philosophie de I'histoire, looked upon history as an epic (his favorite poet was Virgil) or a drama, and as a resurrection in which even inanimate objects and places are inspired with symbolic existence and men are manifestations of the spirit of the age: Jeanne d'Arc personifies patriotism and embodies the masses. This pantheistic attitude did not hinder him, at any rate in his later writings, from accounting for the greatest changes in actual history by the minutest causes, such as a king's fistula. , Michelet's first original books were a Pricis de I'histoire moderne and an Histoire romaine, but his great work was the Histoire de France. He began with a series of volumes on the Middle Ages 730 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE in which he conscientiously, studied the old documents; but far from leaving them to speak for themselves alone, he recreated the men and manners of the past and stamped upon all his potent imagination, so that it became history in the shape of romance. The Middle Ages were the favorite hunting ground of the Ro- manticists, as we have seen, and they aroused Michelet's imagi- nation, until his glowing style made the old times speak again in the narrative of action, and in the description of art and architecture, even of geography. Michelet had treated the Catholic Church sympathetically, but he gradually passed to a new attitude toward it, partly as the result of the attacks of Louis Veuillot. Simultaneously with Quinet, he assailed the Jesuits vigorously in his public lectures at the College de France. He was becoming more and more a believer in the religion of humanity and the democratic mysticism which took hold of so many people at the approach of the mid-century. He now saw in the Middle Ages the wrongs and sufferings of the common people. Not only did he interrupt his story at the end of the Middle Ages to publish his works on the Jesuits, on le Pretre, la femme et la famille, and le Peuple, but he passed over to modern France and wrote the Histoire de la Revolution, the victory of the people and the coming of Law and Justice. This he did among days, first of hope and then of discouragement, during the preparation and the failure of the democratic outburst of 1848. When Michelet returned to the history of the intervening years, from the Renaissance to the end of -the old regime, it was in a different spirit. His imagination had now run away with his scholarship, and his dithyrambic sympathy became iambic rage. In a style no longer poetical, but abrupt, involved, and jolting, he tore to pieces the lives of the kings and queens of France, looking for the basest interpretations of motives, yield- ing to literary exaggeration, preferring the melodramatic to the rational explanation, and dwelling with uncalled for emphasis on sexual and obstetrical details. In place of the imaginative- HISTORIANS, CRITICS, PUBLICISTS 731 ness of his mediaeval visions the history of France was now largely explained by physical operations. The mixture of poetry and physiology is found also in. those books in which his wife collaborated to some degree, the rhapso- dies partly written during retirement in the country on VOiseau, VInsecte, la Mer, la Montagne. In these works Michelet's natural history is that of a "nature faker," and the pantheistic visions of the divine spirit permeating everything transport to the animal and mineral kingdoms the philosophy of emotional humanitarianism with which the times were instinct. Zoology and geology became poetry, and Buffon or the Saint-Lamberts and Delilles of decayed Classicism have their Romantic antithesis in this prose lyricism of nature. Of works like l' Amour ' and la Femme, as well as the effort to continue the history of France during the enfeeblement of old age, nothing should be said. Michelet, taken all in all, is the most entrancing French historian: far more than any other he makes the dead past seem living. His poetic prose is not simple reading for the foreigner, but it is intense and thrilling, though its stimulus represents the greatest dissolvent of Classical taste. The reverse of the apocal}^tic, mystical, and pantheistic view of history of Michelet is to be found in the rigid and dogmatic writings of the doctrinaire Guizot, who could more truly lay claim to. representing a "philosophical" school. Michelet turned to the imaginative metaphysics of Germany, Guizot to the prosaic constitutional theories of England. But the cold pedagogue who loved principles and not anecdotes was not .impeccable in his systematic conclusions, any more than the excitable Michelet or any more than his precursor Montesquieu. None the less his desire to determine the great reasons of events 1 "La sensibilite et I'optimisme du XVIII* siecle, dont Michelet fut le plus fidele continuateur, y vaticinent avec una romantique fren6sie. Las ' harmonies da la nature ' y sont axphqueas et celebreas an phrases sursau- tantes et fievreusas. Cala fait songer a un Bernardin de Saint-Pierre un peu epilaptique." — Jules Lemaitre, les Contemporains, f serie. 732 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE and to discover the guiding principles of history gave it higher dignity as a science than did the poetry of Michelet. His chief writings, often heavy and colorless in style, were the Essais sur I'histoire de France, the Revolution d'Anglelerre, the Histoire generate de la civilisation en Europe, the Memoires pour servir a I'histoire de man temps, and the Histoire de France racontie a mes petits-enfants. Frangois Mignet (1796-1884) employs, on the whole, the same historical methods as Guizot. He wrote various studies of Spanish history, but his most important work was the Histoire de la Revolution, in which his rigid classifications and deduc- tions gave to his work the appearance of a strongly fatalistic interpretation. Adolphe Thiers is the exponent of the narrative school, and his Histoire de la Revolution, followed by the Histoire du Consulat et de V Empire, are to be contrasted, if for nothing else, for their detailed treatment with the concision of Mignet's philosophical exposition of the Revolution. Thiers felt that the historian should put himself in the background, and not seek to impose attention either by an eccentric style or by artificial grouping of facts. He wished to narrate events in order, as they happened, and be the perfect recorder or journalist. Consequently his style is easy, sometimes to the extent of looseness, but clear and business-like. As a historian, his work is of value in spite of his commonplace bourgeois ideals. Thiers's treatment of Napo- leon and his victories was to a considerable degree responsible for the renewal of interest in the Napoleonic legend as a reaction against the flatness of the reign of Louis-Philippe. Henri Martin (1810-1883) had most of Thiers's defects with-* out his quaHties. His Histoire de France has usually been con- sidered a standard work, but it was, as first planned, too big an undertaking for the author, and in style it hardly rises above respectable mediocrity. It was originally written as a pub- hsher's enterprise at rapid speed which precluded careful study, but the author spent much of his Ufe afterward in correcting HISTORIANS, CRITICS, PUBLICISTS 733 and improving his work. Martin was a follower of, Jean Rey- naud, and he had imbibed his ideas of the unity of God and his fad concerning the influence of the druids on the French national character, but without the mysticism of the master. Louis Blanc, the socialist and disciple of Rousseau, contributed to the downfall of Louis-Philippe by his rhetorical Histoire de dix ans and the first volumes of his Histoire de la Revolution frangaise, which were in many ways party pamphlets rather than impartial history. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) is of special interest to Americans because of his work on American democracy, which in turn became an important text-book to the participants in the European popular tendencies culminating in the mid-century movements. Tocqueville was of aristocratic lineage and on his mother's side was a descendant from Malesherbes,* the eighteenth-century statesman. In 1831 he took, with a friend Gustave de Beaumont, a trip to America to make an investigation of the American penitentiaries for the government. A more serious result of the journey was the study of la Democratic en Amerique, in preparation for which Tocqueville travelled all over the young republic observing every phase of its civilisation and customs. The work is neither history nor simply political philosophy, but deduces from the study of America results applicable to the author's own land. He could, he felt, investi- gate the effect of pure democracy in the United States in order to fit the results to a land where many counteracting forces come into play. Tocqueville is a fatalist and accepts as inevitable, even at that early day, the full advent of democracy, but he desires to warn it of its dangers and to teach it to ward off despotism. Some of his conclusions with regard to America have been vitiated by unlooked for causes, but they were based on keen insight of the times in which he wrote, and many could still be of profit to the present democracy of his own country. The concluding volumes of the work, published some time later, are more abstract and general in their reasoning. 734 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Tocqueville deserves mention not only as a philosophical observer of other lands, but as a philosophical historian of his own country. VAncieh regime et la revolution traces the causes of the Revolution and shows it to have been, in spite of the violence of the outbreak, the necessary conclusion of the nation's experience. For centuries matters had tended to the elimination of obstacles, of which royalty was the last and seemed most prominently objectionable. Tocqueville is a cold and unimpassioned writer, but his state- ments are based on direct observation, and he carefully eschewed second-hand authorities, so that he produces the conviction of absolute sincerity. He belongs to the tradition of men like Montesquieu, but is without the latter's flippant hors-d'ceuvre. The name of Abel Villemain (1790-1870) takes us from his- tory to literary criticism, or rather of literature in its historical setting. Villemain, who along with Guizot and Cousin was one of the most influential teachers in the France of his time, carried into practice some of the suggestions of Mme de Stael in her work De la litterature. He endeavored to present the author in his social arid intellectual setting, often as its result. He did so in picturesque and gracefully ornate language, which be- tokened the rhetorician and public lecturer as much as the writer, but which made him the leader of a school. Villemain's chief work was the Tableau de . la litterature franqaise au dix- huitieme siecle. Saint-Marc Girardin (1801-1873) was of smaller calibre but widely popular in his day at the Sorbonne, where his Cours de litterature dramatique was a rambling exposition of moral senti- ments in all ages of civilisation and an excuse for good-humored satire of the Romanticists. Desire Nisard (1806-1888) was the chief relic of the pure Classical tradition in criticism and the fierce rather than the good-humored foe of the Romanticists. In his Histoire de la litterature franqaise he acknowledges no great period but the seventeenth century, and dogmatically asserts its qualifications HISTORIANS, CRITICS, PUBLICISTS 735 in the presentation of universal types. He analyses the esprit dassique, with its qualities of clearness, precision, and logic, and illustrates it by the great authors of the age of Louis XIV, passing hurriedly over the earlier and the later periods. The Restoration and the reign of Louis-Philippe are important in the development of journalistic criticism and periodical litera- ture, especially of the cheap newspaper. The Conservateur litteraire, started by Victor Hugo and his brother in 1820, was the first organ of the Romanticists, and the short-lived Minerve franqaise looked favoringly on their efforts, but the Muse fran- qaise, also short-lived (1823-1824), is more closely connected with the movement. The Gloie, founded in 1824, was at first a review of new books and of lectures, and, without being a partisan, encouraged the Romanticists as attempting the hbera- tion of literary art. Its doctrines, said the programme of the paper, were "Uberte et respect du gout national. . . . Lais- sons tenter toutes les experiences et ne craignons de devenir Anglais ni Germains." By 1830 the Globe became a liberal daily. Among more distinctly poKtical papers the National, founded in 1830 by Thiers, Mignet, and Armand Carrel, waged war against the government of Charles X and helped on the Revolution of July. Carrel (1800-1836), one of the great liberal journalists of the century and the admirer of America, was killed in a duel by Emile de Girardin. Under the reign of Louis-Philippe the power of the newspapers increased greatly. ^ Carrel soon passed to the opposition and continued until his death a vigorous onslaught on the govern- 1 "La victoire de juillet etant en grande partie la victoire de la presse francaise, celle-ci devait naturellement en recueillir le benefice." — H. Avenel, Sistoire de la presse franqaise. The same author quotes Nette- ment's Bistoire de la litt. fr. sous le gouvernement de juillet on this period, "ou tout le monde devint journaliste: I'evgque, le grand seigneur, le magis- trat, le mUitaire, le savant, I'ancien pair de France, I'ancien depute, I'etudi- ant sortant des bancs de I'ecole, tous etendaient la main pour saisir le levier de la presse periodique, alors si puissant." 736 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE ment for being retrograde and not living up to the people's expectations. The Journal des Debats was the chief supporter of the government and the spokesman for the bourgeoisie in power, with contributors such as Saint-Marc Girardin, Silvestre de Sacy, Cuvillier-Fleury, Philarete Chasles, Michel Chevalier. Many of Jules Janin's feuilletons for the Journal des Debats form his Histoire de la litterature dramatique. The Constitution- nel, a dying newspaper, was bought by Dr. Veron, who built up success by the publication of Sue's Juif errant and later, under the second Republic, supported Louis-Napoleon. Dr. Veron's Memoires d'un bourgeois de Paris contain much about the literary, social, and political life of his day. The Gazette de France and the Quotidienne were legitimist opposition papers. The Globe became the organ of the Saint-Simonists; Lamennais with Lacordaire directed the short-lived Avenir; Louis Veuillot, the "Catholic Juvenal," was editor of the Univers. Nor must one forget the pamphlets which Cormenin published "under the name of "Timon." , Meanwhile there arose the cheap newspapers with a large circulation, the "journal a quarante francs," as against the old papers costing eighty francs a year. Such were the Presse of Emile de Girardin and the Siecle. These papers relied on ad- vertisements and the feuilleton to raise a large circulation, and Emile de Girardin gathered about him as regular contributors Balzac, Dumas, Theophile Gautier, Sue, Scribe, Soulie, Sandeau, and his own wife Delphine Gay, who wrote the Lettres parisiennes. Among comic papers the Charivari and the Caricature pilloried Louis-Philippe as the pear-headed king. Apart from the daily and weekly press there were reviews such as the Re-oue des Deux-Mondes, raised by Frang;§is Buloz from mediocrity to a position even above that which it now holds. That autocratic editor gave an opening to talent, but made the greatest of his contributors feel his whip. His chief literary critic was the somewhat cantankerous Gustave Planche. The Correspondant, first estabUshed in 1828, has also lasted, with HISTORIANS, CRITICS, PUBLICISTS 737 some interruptions, until today and has always been a literary organ of the Catholics. Under the second Republic there was a vast outbreak of ephemeral periodicals, some of them the mouthpieces of indi- vidual men of letters, such as the Peuple constittiant of Lamen- nais, the Ere nouvelle of Lacordaire, the Evenement of Victor Hugo, the Cause du peuple of George Sand, who also wrote many of the Bulletins de la Republique of the minister Ledru-Rollin. In the Peuple Proudhon set forth with great vehemence his philosophic anarchism. CHAPTER XII THE SECOND HALF OF THE CENTURY. SAINTE-BEUVE, TAINE, AND RENAN THE advent of the second Empire brought great changes in French society. They had in turn their repercussion in Uterature, where the exaggerations of Romanticism had aheady become wearisome. The political idealists had also suffered disenchantment in the failure of the Republic of 1848, founded on the true, the beautiful, and the good, and the coming to naught of the humanitarian sociological Utopias. To many it seemed best to throw off responsibility, and to settle down to a life of materialism and of careless enjoyment under a benevolent despot. This materialism Napoleon III undertook to foster as contribut- ing to the splendor of his reign. The French, and particularly the Parisians, were to be amused at all costs, and Napoleon III did more than any other ruler to give Paris the reputation for gaiety or frivolity which it has never lost, and which has perhaps been its misfortune as much as its good luck. The city was "beautified" and made more convenient, at the expense of much of its picturesqueness, by the prodigious activity of Baron Hauss- mann. The rebuilding made money flow into private pockets, though at the cost of national indebtedness. Meanwhile, showy court and popular entertainments, international exhibitions, and the advent from abroad of pleasure-seeking millionaires or "nabobs," of the type now called "rastaquoueres," made the Parisians more self-centred than ever, by convincing them that the boulevards of the Ville-Lumiere were the navel of the earth. ■■ • "La campagne, c'est bon pour les petits oiseaux," (Nestor Roqueplan); quoted by Arthur Meyer, Ce que mes yetix ont vu, p. 191. 738 SECOND HALF OF THE CENTURY 739 The wit of the boulevards was the ideal of men of letters, and the esprit parisien, to which the gaminerie of the Musset dandyism had led up, was cultivated by all who could be wittily cynical and irreverent and express the spirit of burlesque and parody called la blague. The Figaro, the Vie parisienne, and the Nain jaune were newspapers giving voice to this form of wit; Aurelien SchoU, Nestor Roqueplan, and the naturalised German, Albert Wolff, were princes of chroniqueurs, and story-tellers like Gustave Droz, in Monsieur, madame et bebe, made the spirit of Crebillon fils modern. The Parisian newspapers in general were as narrow as their readers. Their meagre accounts of foreign campaigns were filled with panegyrics of the emperor as the liberator of nations, and the readers were entertained rather with legends of Fair Women, the marquise de Gallifet, the duchesse de Morny, the duchesse de Malakoff, of demi-mondaines like la Paiva, of bacchantes Uke Pomare, Celeste Mogador, or Rigolboche who danced the cancan at the Jardin Mabille. The second Empire was the age of the glorified courtesan or "femme entretenue," and Cora Pearl was the envy of more proper and virtuous bour- geoises than one might perhaps imagine. The young bohemian writers a la Murger thronged to the Brasserie des Martyrs on the slope of Montmartre,' and in the last years of the Empire the Cafe de Madrid was the home of political discussion. The Cafe Foy, the Cafe Riche, and Tortoni outshone those of the eighteenth century, and the "Librairie nouvelle" was a rendez- vous for men of letters. On the stage the Gallicised German composer Jacques Offenbach developed the operetta or opera- bouffe, and in Hector Cremieux's Orphee aux enfers made the gods of Olympus dance the cancan, or continued the parody in Meilhac • and Halevy's la Belle Helene. La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein by the same authors, which satirised drawing-room generals, and Genevieve de Brabant by Jaime 1 CatuUe Mendes introduced the Brasserie des Martyrs into his play Glatigny. There is a chapter on it in Philibert Audebrand's les Derniers jours de la hoMme. 740 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE and Trefeu made the actress Hortense Schneider the most talked-of woman in Europe. Meanwhile, the literary school of Realism and of Naturalism stood near the devotees of pleasure, like the warning slave near the Roman general in his triumph. It need not be supposed that intellectual life stopped its course. The university vegetated and the provincial faculties slumbered, Cousin's anaemic eclecticism remained the official state philoso- phy; but the scholar and historian Victor Duruy, as minister of Public Instruction, accomplished what he could for higher and secondary teaching, and with Merimee did the hard work on Napoleon's life of Julius Cassar. Napoleon was a good-natured but not very well informed patron of letters, but the empress had Merimee as a mentor, and the princesse Mathilde was a more cultured hostess at her salon even well into the third Republic. The convivial and conversation-loving men of letters continued to haunt places like the bohemian salon of Mme Sabatier, "la Presidente," or to group in unofficial cenacles as at the famous dinners in the Restaurant Magny, where met Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Renan, Flaubert, Gautier, Paul de Saint- Victor, Berthelot, and Turgenev. Here wit sharpened wit, and enough ideas were lavished over the banquets to supply a stoUd nation Uke the English for several generations. We get a faint reproduction of these symposia in the Goncourt diary. The Napoleonic splendor crumbled like a house of cards after the battle of Sedan, and the French had to add a new failure to the series of disillusions which had followed each other since the great Revolution. Few, except the proletarian demagogues arid their followers, were now inclined to deny Flaubert's ejacula- tion that even that declaration of liberty and the rights of man had been a gigantic failure. ^ So there followed a period of acedia in the nation impoverished by the war of 1870 and the ' " Nous pataugeons dans I'arriere-faix de la Revolution qui a ete un avortctnent, une chose ratee, un four, quoi qu'on dise." — Flaubert's correspondence during the Prussian war. SECOND HALF OF THE CENTURY 741 Commune, humbled before the eyes of the world and bereft of two of its fairest provinces. Some physiologists have thought they detected a trace of physical weakness, as of arrested growth, in the generation born of mothers who suffered mentally and sometimes physically amid the horrors of the annee terrible. The national mentality became embittered and later found expression in the pessimistic and sordid Naturalism. On the other hand, even among the merry wits the French blague be- came less good-natured. The political animosities engendered by a parliamentary regime, and the rise of a proletariat jealous of the moneyed classes, did not contribute to a stable equilibrium of mutual respect. Naturalism was dead and buried long before 1900, but national crises like Boulangism, the Panama scandals, Jew-baiting and the Dreyfus case, as well as religious warfare and the disestablishment of the Church, have destroyed the coherence of literary movements and proved favorable to contemporary mediocrity.' Three significant names express the most important influences in the literature of the second half of the nineteenth century: Sainte-Beuve, Taine, and Renan. Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869) was in many respects the greatest literary critic France has produced. Yet his ambition was to be rather a poet and novelist, a creator instead of a commentator. His Joseph Delorme, a specimen of what has been called "biUous poetry," had, we have seen, more significance as a precursor of a peculiar kind of later poetry of the Baudelairian type than its own merits deserved. His other chief collections of verse, the Consolations and the Pensees d'aoHi, gradually took the direction of the prosaic verse and ' A brief movement of neo-Christianity in the early nineties did not have fruition. It was connected with the names of Eugene Melchior de Vogiie, Paul Bourget, and was coincident with the papal encyclical of 1892 and the rallying to the RepubUc of the comte de Mun, etc. It had its literary repercussion in the "mysteries" of Maurice Bouchor and the Samaritaine of Rostand. 742 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE commonplace description of which Frangois Coppee marks the culmination. The Livre d'amour was a rather indecent revela- tion of his love-affair with Hugo's wife, half-divulged while all the persons concerned were living. The novel Volupte was a similar instance of moral undressing and the revelation of "chastetes menteuses," and belongs to the category of Rene, Obermann, and the like. But these works date from the early half of his career. Sainte-Beuve's first achievement was his critical study or Tableau of sixteenth-century literature, written under the in- fluence of the Romantic movement and, in spite of the false- ness of its premises, still a suggestive work. Sainte-Beuve passed through almost all the emotional impulses of his genera- tion, and by the second Empire he had rallied to Bonapartism, for which he was violently attacked by the young students and hooted out of the lectureship to which he had been appointed at the College de France. His appearances as senator were almost the only interruption, in his later years, from the absorb- ing and Herculean toil to which he had devoted himself by the composition of his weekly critical article, forming the general collection of the Causeries du lundi and the Nou- veaux lundis. During the first' part of his hfe he had issued various volumes of Critiques and Portraits, which have much interest, but his fame rests particularly on his weekly con- tributions to the Constitutionnel and the Moniieur officiel as well as upon his Port-Royal and on Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire. The history of Port-Royal consisted originally of lectures delivered at Lausanne, in Switzerland, in 1837-1838, when he was dabbling in reHgious thought, Calvinism, and Methodism. He began the study in a spirit of intense sympathy for the persecuted mystics, and the early volumes also contain valuable digressions on the general literary history of the seventeenth century. Before the last volume was ultimately published in 1867, Sainte-Beuve had tired of hair-splitting theologians and SECOND HALF OF THE CENTURY 743 narrow-mindexi nuns, and the tone verges on hostility rather than on sympathy. The Chateaubriand was the outcome of a similar series of university lectures at Liege, in Belgium, in 1848. This work has an unfriendly tone throughout. Sainte-Beuve had always had pleasant relations with Chateaubriand and had been welcomed by Mme Recamier at the Abbaye-aux-Bois. But at that mo- ment he was embittered by the apparent failure of many of his hopes and ambitions as compared with those of some of his contemporaries. His spleen vented itself on Chateaubriand, who had just died, and by showing that author in an unfriendly light he did his reputation a damage from which it took two generations to recover. Sainte-Beuve's thought covered in his lifetime an extraordi- nary range. Beginning as a medical student and an embryo scientist he was at first a follower of the eighteenth-century philosophers and the physiologists. Then, becoming a Romanti- cist and a friend of Hugo, he went through a spirituaUstic stage. After this he dabbled successively in Saint-Simonism, in Men- naisianism or the theories of Lamennais, in republicanism with Armand Carrel, in advanced socialism with Proudhon, and skirted Protestantism. By the time of the Revolution of 1848 his ardent interest in new causes had faded away into disappoint- ment, and he soon settled down to the humdrum existence of writing and study. When he died he was a libre penseur or agnostic. The period 1832 to 1837 is perhaps the most signifi- cant for its intellectual richness and the consequent effect on his later life. In literary criticism Sainte-Beuve, one of the greatest of critics, is one almost without a definite theory. He does not admit this, and in his essay on Chateaubriand in defence of his book, he sets forth his idea as to what criticism should be. It should be a sort of "histoire naturelle des esprits," a semi- scientific name which went well under the second Empire and fell in with the method of Taine. But instead of confining him- 744 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE self rigidly to three elements, like Taine who follows him, Sainte- Beuve wished to study every phase of the subject's personality or surroundings, to view him not merely in his race but in his immediate environment, his parents, his brothers and sisters, his children; in the different groups of friends and contempo- raries through which he passes; in the moments of rise and fall of his talent; in his attitude toward religion, nature, women, money; in his weaknesses or vices; in his disciples and intellec- tual posterity. The method was, then, one of universal curiosity: there never was a more inquisitive nature than Sainte-Beuve, and the numerous persons whom he offended in the course of his life charged him with indecent prjdng and paying "off grudges when his opponents were dead and unable to answer. Balzac, who hated him, said: "La muse de M. de Sainte-Beuve est de la nature des chauves-souris. . . . Sa phrase moUe et lache, impuissante et couarde, c6toie les sujets, . . . elle tourne dans I'ombre comme un chacal, elle entre dans les cime- tieres, . . . elle en rapporte d'estimables cadavres." A simi- lar passage in the Goncourt diary says: "Quand j'entends Sainte-Beuve avec ses petites phrases, toucher a un mort, il me semble voir des fourmis envahir un cadavre; il vous nettoie une gloire en dix minutes, et laisse du monsieur illustre un squelette bien net." These are violent and unmerited words. It is true that Sainte-Beuve says somewhere himself that he gave up poetry and took to criticism and ripping up corpses ("eventrer des cadavres"), but he was no ghoul, only a Peeping Tom, especially of women. Sainte-Beuve's method applies admirably to the study of secondary characters, and his sure judgment, his untiring indus- try and thoroughness make him the safest vicarious reader of all the minor personages of literature and history, whom the ordinary man can scarcely find time to study. With the greatest authors he is not always so successful: his sinuous appreciation fails to lift the individual above his contemporaries, and the shaded style with its unsystematic qualifications and rectifi- SECOND HALF OF THE CENTURY 745 cations — a sort of marivaudage, said Lamennais — becomes inconclusive. He is especially weak at general classifications covering whole periods or "nations, and is at his best in individual portraits. Too often the reader does not distinguish the wood because of the trees, and the great genius remains undefined. None the less, a complete study of Sainte-Beuve's works is itseK almost a hberal education in knowledge and in taste. Sainte-Beuve did not create a genuine school. His method was too indistinct and his formulas were too vague, so that those who pretended to imitate him most closely, lacking his keenness and psychological analysis, tended to degenerate into anecdote and the description of trivial incidents. Of late the method has been applied to Sainte-Beuve himself, with dire con- sequences to hi? personal reputation. But if Sainte-Beuve was unsystematic, Taine was over-systematic. Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893) is the great philosophical critic and historian of the second half of the nineteenth century. He does not stand in the first rank as a constructive metaphysician, but he had more effect on his times than more inventive talents. He was in youth an instance of the bold thinker, and at the Ecole normale he distinguished himself in one of the most bril- hant classes of that school. His advanced views, however academic his method, got him into trouble with conservative ofl&cial examiners, and his intellectual career was made difficult by failure at examinations. During his adolescence Taine evolved a systena, and it remained his weakness that he never got beyond it. To the very end of his life he insisted on making every fact enter under the headings of his categories, or if it did not, he neglected it. As a result his conclusions appear at first sight singularly plausible, even irrefutable; but it often does not take long to come upon an objection. None the less, Taine must not be called a sophist or said to be intentionally given to making the worse appear the better reason. Nobody could be more sincere, yet he could see things only in one way. 746 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Taine is an example of the dogmatic classifier, the systematic and methodical thinker, in which respect he is a good representa- tive of the esprit classique that he says so much about in his study of the origins of contemporary France, though he does not, like his fellow-critic, the Hterary historian Nisard, express an unqualifiedly favorable judgment. Taine was a psychologist, whether of individuals or of races, but his psychology came from sources very different from the metaphysical postulates on which it rested. In psychology Taine was a descendant of Condillac and the materialists, in metaphysics he came from the same German imaginative thinkers who inspired the historians of the Romantic school. The ultimate source of Taine's cosmological theories is to be found in the pantheist Spinoza, with whose geometrical method of thought he, the French logician, had also so much in common. But they were modified by contact with the German thinkers like Herder and Hegel, and even Goethe, who had transformed the static mechaiusm of the Spinozistic pantheism into the dynamism of a living organism. Taine was particularly inter- ested in the history of society, and in the philosophy of Becoming of Hegel he found suggestions for his own theories of the de- pendence of historical moments on previous stages of human development, as well as the interrelation of the simultaneous parts of one civilisation expressed perhaps in remote phases of intellectual and social activity. Thus each people has its char- acteristic historical periods, tj^efied by some peculiar and epoch- making interior quality. This German in-forming spirit of an age is what Taine makes so much of as the faculte maitresse. Such a method of treating history by transforming nations into concrete bodies guided by the simplest laws has had in its day a wide vogue, and Taine got hints from the English writer Buckle as well as from the Germans. It has an appearance of simplicity which is sometimes misleading. It is often true enough, within limits, to say that "tout se tient" in a given period; it is less so to assume that one generation will pro- SECOND HALF OF THE CENTURY 747 duce another by mere development and not be modified by counteracting causes. It will be observed that, so far, we have dealt with ultimate postulates and assumptions as to history. The next logical step is to analyse the data accounting for a given people or historical age and to explain its psychology. Taine, pre-eminently a psy- chologist, again illustrates the tendencies of the esprit classique, and he aims at e^laining the psychology of a race as well as that of an individual. Taine's psychology, of the tj^e of Condillac, is opposed to intuitionaUsm. It is modified by contact with the English nominalists, such as John Stuart Mill, with whom he shared the theory that all our general ideas are reducible to signs or tokens. It was also akin to the positivism of Comte approached through Mill and Buckle. Comte, if he did not directly influ- ence Taine, at least corroborated him in the feeling that psy- chology must rest on physiology, and not on the arbitrary, pigeon-hole classification of the parts of the mind employed by the thinkers of the school of Cousin or of his Scotch protot)^es. It was as a psychologist that Taine undertook to analyse the factors which determine the faculte maitresse of an individual or a nation, and to classify it as the result of the influence of time, environment and race {moment, milieu, race). He had had many precursors in attributing effect to one or the other of these elements, whether Bodin, Montesquieu, Stendhal, Comte, Augustin Tliierry, or even Sainte-Beuve, but the rigid combination into this form of deterministic cause and effect is due to Taine. Determinism is also the key-word to Taine's ethical theory. His passion for classifying and for logical simplification on one principle made him consider even human activities as mere modes or forms of one single nature, which we haye seen to be ultimately pantheistic. He connected nature, its history or development as a historical process, the cognition of its scien- tific laws, and the moral study of those human beings who are 748 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE a part of it. In other words, Taine ran together and confused metaphysics, psychology, physiology, and ethics as forms of science and made man seem the victim of the most rigid fatal- ism; a fatalism of which Taine did not fully accept the conse- quences, for, though his austere and gloomy nature saw in humanity the baser man or gorilla, he denied the charges of pessimism and of misanthropy and maintained the spiritual and moral responsibility of the individual. Taine's defenders have argued that he was a pessimist only as an observer of past history; as a philosopher he had the cult of the religion of science. The growth of knowledge and of true science would lead to the amelioration of man's condition, though Taine had very little hope even in that direction, far less than his more enthusiastic and optimistic predecessors. Meanwhile his best course of moral action seemed to him a stoical resignation after the fashion of Marcus Aurelius and obedience or passive yielding to the .laws of nature, a process which since the days of the Greek philosophers has been called ataraxy {arapaiia). Finally, it must not be forgotten in a survey of Taine's thought that he was an aesthetician as well as a psychologist. He was professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and travelled in Italy. His philosophy of- art is again influenced by Hegel's historical attitude, but his chief preoccupation is to classify or judge from the standpoint of the rigid and gloomy historical moralist, to describe, on the other hand, in the most vivid and concrete form. For Taine, in spite of his propensity toward logical classifica- tion, saw everything through the evocation of images, and the picturesqueness of his whole style, historical and philosophical, is due to the distinctness with which he visualised the "petits faits significatifs, " the union of which was to prove his theory. The gist of Taine's method lies, therefore, in the theory of the three factors, time, place, and environment, which determine the chief faculty. This faculty once distinguished serves to explain the character or characters under discussion. The SECOND HALF OF THE CENTURY 749 defects of the method have been so often pointed out and are so obvious that one hesitates to repeat them, were it not that its apparent clearness and simplicity made it for a time have many believers. The theory of the three factors leaves unac- counted for the personality of the individual genius, and could lead one logically to conclude that every person born at the same time and place and of the same race as La Fontaine would be a genius similar to him. Nor can a complex human character be explained in every case by a single dominant factor. Finally, the gathering of "petits faits significatif s " in support of a theory 1 led to the giving of similar weight to facts of very different intrinsic importance and to the neglect of other equally signifi- cant contradictory facts. Taine's writings are numerous and varied. His most impor- tant discussion of the human understanding is contained in his work De V Intelligence. In an eariier study, les Philosophes franqais au XIXe siecle, he had pulled to pieces the vapid eclec- ticism of Cousin and the conventional philosophers; in l' Intelli- gence he enunciated an advanced sensationalism, according to which ideas are signs or images of recurrent or surviving sensa- tion. He wrote various works on the philosophy of art in dif- ferent countries and on travel in the Pyrenees and in Italy, in which his powers of description are put at the service of his theories of moral, historical, and esthetic appreciation. His ideas of the three factors and of the chief faculty to explain men and societies come out in his studies of La Fontaine, of Livy, and particularly in his Histoire de la litterature anglaiie, an extraordinarily plausible and yet . an impossible analysis of English character and of its reproduction in the great writers. The imaginary life of Frederic-Thomas Graindorge is a work of social satire and moral comment. But Taine's most important historical study is les Origines de la France contemporaine. As he is dealing with his own country the excellences and mistakes of the study are the more signifi- cant. To him the spirit of the French Revolution is the last 7 so A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE expression of the rigid esprit classique, an explanation now recognised to be grotesquely inaccurate. On the other hand, his fierce and almost vindictive attitude toward the mob leaders of the Revolution, due in great part to his own distress at the sight of similar violences of the Commune while he was writing, had at least the good result of stripping off the halo of idealism which modern demagogues had tried to throw over even the Jacobins and Terrorists. To the technical historian his misuse of authorities and his lack of training in the study of documents make his work an object of mistrust. Taine, though not a great creator, was a great even if defective interpreter, and he impressed his ideas on many of his genera- tion. Not only did he make theories of positivism or materialism current, but he suppHed critics and historians with a method so simple that they were able to reproduce it with monkey-like fidelity. Finally, his influence passed into belles-lettres: the Realists are counterparts of Taine and the NaturaHsts are his disciples. The gloom of Taine was in harmony with the pes- simism of the Realists, and his determinism was adopted by Zola and his school, who repeated Taine's custom of collecting facts as material for their works, and with him believed in the absolute dependence of the moral life upon the physical life and the environment. Their application of Taine's theory led them to employ in fiction the methods of the physiologist. Taine was far from approving disciples such as Zola, because the pretence of scientific impartiality enabled them to suppress morality and adduce a pseudo-scientific excuse for their pornog- raphy. None the less his influence on them cannot be denied. Ernest Renan (1823-1892) shares with Taine the position of the most pervasive literary influence during the second half of the nineteenth century. He is especially significant as the representative of an intellectual temper, to which the name of Renanism is given. Renan was born of mixed Breton and Gascon stock in the little out of the way cathedral town of Treguier in Brittany. SECOND HALF OP THE CENTURY 751 Sensitive and feminine in feeling, he was destined by his mother and elder sister Henriette for the priesthood. His diligence in study won the attention of his teachers and he became a pupil of the seminary of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris, directed by the great ecclesiastic Mgr Dupanloup. At the higher schools of Issy and Saint-Sulpice he pursued the study of Semitic languages and history, gradually finding it more difficult to accept without questioning the religious attitude of his masters. Finally, in 1845, Renan, encouraged by his sister, left the seminary and gave up his prospect of a career. Fame came to him, however, very rapidly. He won his doctorate in 1852 by a thesis on Averroes et I'Averroisme, dealing with the Aristotelianism of the Arabs of the Middle Ages, and composed important works on the philology of the Semitic languages and the history of religions. During an exploring expedition to Phoenicia in 1860-1861, Renan, now married, lost by fever his sister, whose self-sacrificing nature he afterward commemorated in Ma sosur Henriette. Appointed in 1862 professor of Semitic philology at the College de France he was revoked soon after as an indirect consequence of the scandal created by the Vie de Jesus and received the post again only after the Franco- Prussian war. During the last years of his life bis publications, his lectures, and his tardily developed propensity for society made him the intellectual lion of Paris. If Taine is the nineteenth-century embodiment of the esprit classique or its modern equivalent tinged with doctrines of evolution, Renan, originally a follower of Rousseau, may not in- appropriately be called the philosopher of neo-Romanticism, of impressionism as opposed to dogmatism, of intellectual egoism. Absolutely at variance with the spirit of French Classicism, he was more at home in a dreamy, half-sensuous spiritual environ- ment such as he found in memories of his native storm-beaten Brittany or in the mystical side of the Catholic Church and in its cathedrals and ritual. But, being deprived of a definite object of worship, he was constrained to replace it by a lay cult and by the 752 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE religion of science seen particularly under the manifestations of history and the growth of language. Renan's interest in history was first awakened by reading Michelet, but he became specifically the interpreter of a some- what shapeless philosophy based on the ideas of the German thinkers, who to him possessed the key to the secret of the uni- verse. In so far as Renan had lost faith in the supernatural he was a positivist of the type of the anti-metaphysical Comte. On the other hand, not only had he imbibed the critical spirit of Kant, but more particularly ideas of Herder and of Hegel. With Herder he believed in a life of humanity developing in obedience to an inner autonomous instinct, with Hegel he assurjied the immanence of the absolute, namely the growth of God in the world instead of his being an outer cause. Fichte, Schelling, and various German philologists were influences on Renan. For he could thus justify history as that form of science account- ing for the progress, evolution, or "becoming" of the world. To know things is to know their transformations, hence the historical method is the method of individual sciences and of science in general. Science is itself a religion, and the truest philosopher is he who has knowledge. The direct influence of Hegelianism in detail on Renan must not, however, be exaggerated, for Hegel was a metaphysician and Renan was not. It was one of general spirit rather than of matters of detail. Renan, as a liberal of 1848, was a believer in progress. In its concrete manifestations this meant the organisation of humanity in accordance with the conclusions reached by philology, which Renan interprets not as the science of words and syllables, but as the whole intellectual expression of the historical laws of mankind. Spiritually, progress implies the advance of the idea of God toward its fulfilment. Humanity creates reason, the Absolute is created in reason, God is the category of the ideal toward which the world tends, God is never complete but always in progress-, and man's immortality is, in so far as he par- SECOND HALF OF THE CENTURY 753 ticipates in the general rather than in the individual," becoming" of God. Thus Kenan's philosophy shows itself as a somewhat inde- terminate creed suitable for a man of letters rather than for a technical metaphysician or logician, yet reproducihg, with an inclination toward the study of history, the different doctrines then in vogue of fieri, of which Darwinism has been the most celebrated instance in the nineteenth century. Renan recorded the ideas of his youth in VAvenir de la science, written in 1848, but which he actually left unpublished until 1890. This work contains, however, in germ the philosophy of his life and the ideas which he expressed in all his miscellaneous writings. An exposition of Kenan's thought is bound to lend him an appearance of rigidity which he never possessed, for no more fleeting will-o'-the-wisp ever existed. Though he never ceased to practise accuracy of study and industry, though he was more proud of his Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum than of his other achievements, yet he was always ready to welcome and to enjoy every new phase of thought. A certain priestly unctuousness of disposition, which never left him even though his seminary days grew remote, inclined him to meet his critics with conces- sions rather than "with objections; his sympathy and universality of interests, and yet his ironical consciousness of the incomplete- ness of his own and of his adversaries' arguments, made him in a discussion a more ready eclectic than Cousin, in admitting the grain of truth to be found in any system; his mental suppleness led him sometimes to embark at random upon a current of thought without consideration of the conclusion, knowing that at any rate he could attain something plausible. This attitude of mind or etat d'dme bears the name of Dilettanteism, a term almost always interpreted in English in a sense less favorable than Kenan deserved. In his case it meant universal interest, but was not inconsistent with thoroughness and accuracy. It is only in the minor dilettantes, or at most in the Renan of his 754 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE last years, that superficiality is implied, and it corresponds perilously with the intellectual dandyism of people like Barbey d'Aurevilly. Then, indeed, Renan, unconsciously disillusioned at the non-materialisation of his hopes of progress and dis- heartened after the war of 1870 at the shattering of his ideals about Germany, took the attitude of the artist pleased by his sensations, admiring the spectacular show of history, and even began to picture God as the supreme dilettante enjoying the universe. Moreover, the artist was an aristocrat in tempera- ment : the importance of knowledge in the world made it essential that the philosopher alone should be king (Romantic mepris du bourgeois) , and that the ordinary commonplace individual should be of no importance. The feeling of the priesthood of science made him see in the lay pontiff's role the same superiority as in the spiritual director of religion, and scorn ignorant democracies or the vulgar quest of money and the materialism of peoples such as the Americans. For weal or woe the influence of Renan in modern France has been very great. To the smaller number, the scholars and the intellectual elite to which he himself belonged, he is important among those who have given the history of religions standing among the sciences; to the majority he represents and is largely responsible for an attitude of mind frequently met with in the second half of the nineteenth century. Renanism by its brilliant intellectuahsm pleased jugglers in words and ideas; by its sacer- dotalism freed from religion it tickled the aesthetic taste; its irony, refusing to take opponent or self too seriously, was a more aristocratic form of blague. Finally, the attitude of de- tachment, becoming a disintegrating force in religion and morals, encouraged at any rate the so-called creed of "je m'en fichisme," or "Don't-care-a-damn" philosophy of discouragement and disillusion, found among the " fin-de-siecle " attitudes. Not that Renanism was necessarily fatal to all men: some typical Renanists have taken militant parts in national politics during struggles such as the Dreyfus case, some from aristocrats have SECOND HALF OF THE CENTURY 755 become socialists and proletarians. But this has been an evolution beyond pure Renanism. The studies of Renan included not only the history of all ages, but mythology, linguistics, philosophy, poUtics, and literary criticism as well. His chief works to the student of letters were, besides those already mentioned, the history of early Christianity, of the people of Israel, the Drames philosophiques, and the Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse. The Vie de Jesus, first volume of the Origines du Christianisme, was largely composed during the journey to the East, when the author was without many books of . reference. It caused a tremendous scandal by its interpretation of Christ and the transformation of him from a divinity into the "charmant docteur" and an amiable human being. Nowadays the book is interesting chiefly as a sort of historical romance into which, amid the environment of a Holy Land seen by the romantic interpreter of nature, the author places beings whom Christi- anity has worshipped for centuries, but who become the embodi- ments of Renanism or the butt of its irony. Jesus is an ignorant Syrian peasant, honored as the creator of the greatest of religions, yet not exempt from occasional deceit to further his ends and even having, as Renan says in a later volume {V Antichrist) , "le don de sourire de son oeuvre. " The other volumes of the series, with perhaps more accurate erudition, bring the history of the early Christians down to the times of Marcus Aurelius. Through- out them all there runs, nevertheless, the subjective strain. If Jesus has in him much of Renan himself, the author sees in St. Paul, the "laid petit Juif," abrupt and dogmatic, the antithe- sis of everything, sympathetic, and he likes to think of him also convinced at last of the vanity of his dogmatism and awakening to disillusion. The Histoire du peuple d'Israel, written after the story of the rise of Christianity, between 1887 and his death, rationalises the Old Testament history and continues, as in the previous work, the analysis of ethnic psychology. To Renan's later years, between 1878 and 1886, also belong 7s6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the Dialogues philosophiques, {Caliban, I'Eau de Jouvence, le Pretre de Nemi, I'Abbesse de Jouarre), which are the most char- acteristic examples of his dilettanteism or jugghng with con- tradictories and antinomies. The last one expresses a rather unpleasant awakening of the sexual obsession from which Renan had always bragged of immunity. The Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse, haphazard recollections of legends heard in child- hood, of youthful experiences, and of travel, are among the most attractive of Renan's writings. Ernest Renan was one of the greatest masters of French litera- ture. Vivid and picturesque in expression without loss of clear- ness and limpidity, he deserves immortality if only for his style. The neo-Romanticist was in this respect a pure Classicist. CHAPTER XIII FICTION REALISM, which took the place of Romanticism, is the literary equivalent of the imperial age of materialism which we have described, and Naturalism is its acute form. Realism was the product of a period which had gradually got rid of the ideal, which called itself scientific and found its ex- pression in positivism rather than in the poetry of metaphysics. The Naturalist prided himself on employing the methods of science, on introducing physiology into fiction, on being a disciple of Taine and of Claude Bernard. In the beginning the Realists contented themselves with ob- serving life, as a reaction against the fantastical literature of their predecessors, and the doctrine of "liberty in art" under- went modifications. But they were often Romanticists at heart, as Flaubert or Zola, and Dumas fits' s first great play was the Romantic rehabilitation of the courtesan. Some writers, follow- ing Gautier, took a fastidious and almost finical pleasure in reproducing objects, a method which was termed "art for art's ' sake. " It was the impassive objectivity of the Parnassians. Others, like Dumas fils, hitched to their method a theory of morals and affected to teach man to be better by showing the evil consequences of vice. To read a novel describing sin was to have an effect similar to vaccination against smallpox. The fallacy in this method of reasoning lies in the fact that the excitement of the senses is pleasurable and -^requires a stronger prophylactic than a book. All cannot resist the ordeal of St. Anthony. The actual experience of the Naturalistic writer illustrates 757 758 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE what has been said. Posing first as a copyist of nature, he finds that the masterpiece of artistic realism is more difiicult to accom- pUsh than he had supposed, that Flaubert, with a life of toil, wrote only one^ Madame Bovary. Desirous of avoiding the me- chanical daguerrotype or photograph in his reproduction, he is led to portray the abnormal, the real but exceptional, convinced that thus he can attract attention. So he haunts the hospital and the Salp6triere, the dramshop and the brothel and dwells among the lowest passions of humanity, until, as with the hero of Musset's Lorenzaccio, they cUng to him like the shirt of Nessus. Thus Zola loses all sense of proportion, and with his proneness to exaggeration he piles up descriptions of vice until he can see in humajiity no atom of goodness: "Voila done ce qu'il faut constater: notre analyse reste toujours cruelle, parce que notre analyse va jusqu'au fond du cadavre humain. En haut, en bas, nous nous heurtons a la brute. Cartes, il y a des voiles plus ou moins nombreux; mais quand nous les avons decrits les uns apres les autres, et que nous levons le dernier, on voit toujours derriere plus d'ordures que de fleurs. " {Le Roman experimental). "La' bete humaine est la meme partout, " he says later in the same book. Similarly, the Goncourt brothers become so morbid that one of them records in his diary his inabihty to see in marriage anything but "I'image d'un monsieur et d'une dame dans leur Ut, la conjonction corporelle par-dessus les blonds petits cheveux de I'enfant; et I'enfant arrive a me faire I'effet d'un phallus dessine sur les murs. " There is no greater writer than the sane Realist. He not only sees life as it is, but in his descriptions and choice of incident must make artistic selection; hence his task is more difficult than that of the old Romanticist who used the incidentals of the grotesque or the exotic, more difficult than that of the modern Idealist who can let his fancy play without control. There is no worse perverter of art and nature than the French Naturalist, because, as Meredith says of St. Simeon Styhtes, he "sees only the hog in Nature and then takes Nature for the hog." Naturalism FICTION 759 had the pessimism and exaggeration of the unreal Romanticism and was, in some cases, hypocritical besides. Balzac is frequently called the founder of Realism. But if we remember that he had in him something of the Romanticist, that owing to his days and nights of continuous toil his actual experience of real life was small and his characters were due to his constructive imagination, that his work was over by 1850, then we shall call him rather an ancestor of Realism as Chat- eaubriand was the forefather of Romanticism. Balzac's literary acolyte Charles de Bernard (1804-1850), author of Gerfdut, a study of literary and artistic life, belongs also to the preliminary period. The Vie de boheme of Henry Murger (1822-1861) gave an immortal picture of student life in the old Latin Quarter, and the exploits of Rodolphe and Schaunard, of Mimi and Musette have lived on even to Puccini's opera. Murger's bohemians were the unpractical and impecunious children of the rebels of 1830, who had considered themselves the masters of creation. But, though having the same scorn of the bour- geois, they had undergone the decadence which was the lot in real life of Gerard de Nerval: the doublet of Gautier had become a threadbare coat and unblacked shoes. Murger had the bad effect of making callow French students take themselves too seriously and of lending a glamour of senti- ment to silly liaisons. The greatest novel of Realism was written by Flaubert, and even he had in him much of the Romanticist. There were, however, other influences operative in France. The drift toward Realism had its wider aspect in the influence of the scientific movement in England as well as in France, expressed in works such as Darwin's Origin of Species, and the novels of the English ReaUsts Dickens and Thackeray, weU known in France through translations and the studies of Emile Montegut, not to speak of Taine's history of English literature (1863). Realism had made its appearance in art in such paint- ings as Courbet's Enterrement d Ornans. (1851). Thought in 760 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE all its forms became impregnated with the spirit of positivism, and the later Naturalists sought corroboration of their views in Comte, Littre, Spencer, or Bentham. Meanwhile there was a writer named Edmond Duranty (1833-1880), said to be a natural son of Merimee, scarcely remembered now except for the praise given him by Zola in his Romanciers naturalistes. He composed several novels, of which the best is le Malheur d'Henriette Gerard, a her- oine something after the type of Emma Bovary, and for a year or two (1856-1857) he edited a militant anti- Romantic review called le Realisme. Duranty defined his doctrine of Realism as "la reproduction exacte, complete, sincere, du milieu social, de r6poque ou Ton vit, parce qu'une telle direction d'etudes est justifiee par la raison, les besoins de I'intelligence et I'inter^t du public, et qu'elle est exempte de tout mensonge, de toute tricherie. " Zola, as an insignificant publisher's clerk, knew Duranty and doubt- lessly got in part from him literary theories to which he tried to give scientific corroboration. Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was a well-to-do Norman and spent the last thirty-four years of his life, except for brief absences, in his country house on the Seine at Croisset near Rouen. His age was burdened with loneliness and a dreadful malady, epilepsy or "hysterico-neurasthenia," which made him dread to go abroad. He was by nature inclined to the melancholy and morbid gloom usually connected with Romanti- cism, and he made Kfe harder than it need have been by the toil which he spent on his style, laboring to eliminate blemishes which no one else would have perceived.* It was the tragic irony of this bourgeois-hsX^r's life that it had almost all the elements of bourgeois method. Flaubert's correspondence is full of allusions to his laborious composition, his "gueulades " '"Des in6taphores on passe aux assonances, — une assonance, au dire de Flaubert, devant etre evitee, quand m6me on devrait passer huit jours entiers a y arriver." — Goncourt diary. Vol. I. p. 178. FICTION 761 as he toilingly transformed a rough outline into a finished com- position, declaiming at the top of his voice the sentences he composed and writhing in physical agony: "My throat is raw from having yelled all the evening in writing." This is what he called "les aflres du style." Yet Flaubert was naturally a slovenly writer, as his slangy, disconnected, and off-hand letters to George Sand go to show. Madame Bovary (1857) is perhaps the greatest work of fiction that the nineteenth century has produced. It is purely objective and attains the impersonality which Flaubert advocated, but which even he himself rarely acquired. Flaubert, the son of a physician of the Rouen hospitals and brought up in a scientific environment, was interested, in physiology and believed that the human soul was to be studied "avec I'impartialite qu'on met dans les sciences physiques." The author should stand aside and watch the "determinism of facts." In Madame Bovary Flaubert lets pass before the reader's eyes the scenes and inci- dents of a small Norman town. In place of the long-winded disquisitions of George Eliot's Middlemarch he refrains from judgment, and we see the people of Yonville for ourselves. In the character of M. Homais, the local apothecary, incarnation of a provincial Joseph Prudhomme, half-educated and convinced that his superficial Voltairianism is the last word in philosophy, Flaubert has depicted to perfection the mentality of that narrow- minded bourgeoisie with which France, like other countries, was filled and which had not even the advantages of Paris. Mme Bovary herself is the portrait of the sentimental woman of that same class. Emile Montegut called the whole book a Don Quixote of Romanticism in which the author ridicules the romantic frenzy, and he draws a parallel between its effect and that of the PrScieuses ridicules on preciosity. Emma Bovary, common- place and vulgar by nature, yet yearning for emotion, is tied down in marriage to a still more mediocre but self-satiSfied country physician. In her quest for a true lover she falls lower and lower in adultery until her suicide. The novel was accused * 762 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of immorality and was the object of a sensational prosecution by the authorities, in which Flaubert was acquitted. Though undoubtedly written, in spite of his lawyer's rhetoric, without moral aim and merely as a picture of life — and Flaubert maintained that "art has no morality" — it may be considered a less perverted work than many of its Romantic predecessors, less repulsive than the Naturalistic novels of Zola and the Gon- court brothers, and the most truthful picture ever made of mediocrity in France. The contrast is noteworthy between Madame Bovary and Salammbd, a magnificent failure, laboriously evolved and tedious. From modern France we are carried back to ancient Carthage where, on the basis of a brief journey of exploration, Flaubert tried to reconstruct a vanished civilisation of which practically nothing is known. But erudite description could not give Ufe to a literary skeleton. Nobody cared for the loves of Salamm.b6, daughter of Hamilcar Barca and priestess of Tanit, for the Lybian mercenary Mathos, and Salammbd, far from' having the interest of an historical novel by Scott, has not even that of a Kingsley's Hypatia. Flaubert made a return to Realism with the Education senti- mentale, in the chief character of which, Frederic Moreau, we get the male counterpart of Mme Bovary. His various amorous experiences do not end in Emma's tragedy but in a flat medi- ocrity, which is again more painfully effective than the filth of the Naturalists. La Tentation de saint Antoine, a sort of opium dream which was long in Flaubert's mind but did not appear until 1874, is once more an instance of erudition appUed to the imagination. Among his short stories Un cceur simple is the portrayal of the uninspired but pathetic fidelity of an old Norman servant; Hirodias, on the contrary, with its ornate Orientahsm, is the ultimate source of Oscar Wilde's Salome and the opera of Strauss. A third story is the Legende de saint Julien V Hospitalier . Flau- bert's last unfinished book, Bouvard et Peciichet, is a work of FICTION 763 decadence, the caricature of his cruel portraits of the narrow- minded bourgeois. Thus Flaubert proves to be a cross between the Romanticist and the Realist, or a Romanticist by temperament reacting against his own nature and producing the masterpiece of the opposite school. Fanny, by Ernest Feydeau (1821-1873), was a novel published in 1858 which, though now neglected, had for a time an extra- ordinary vogue. Coming immediately after Madame Bovary and exemplifying the same differentiation between art and morality, it is one of the important examples of the early Realistic school, though the author, like Flaubert again, had a Romantic imagination, and the book seems as much an experience as Constant's Adolphe. The subject is a youth's frenzied jealousy against the husband of the mature woman whom he loves, and its passionate voluptuousness combined with crudeness of detail cause it to be classed as a work of "poetic Realism." Edmond de Goncourt (182 2-1896) and Jules de Goncourt (1830-1870) were two fussy bachelors who thought themselves the creators of Naturalism, or at least the surviving brother took for them the credit of having been such. In reality their out- look on life was in the highest degree limited and they saw only the surface of things : an impressionistic description of unpleasant details did not give them the right to consider themselves the leaders of a new movement or, as it is expressed in their diary, the John the Baptists of "la nervosite." This aloofness from the world they feel, at times, themselves: "Puis entre nous et ce monde, 11 y a un fosse. Notre pens6e vivant au-dessus des choses bourgeoises, a de la peine a descendre au terre-a-terre de la pensee ordinaire, tout entiere alimentee par les basses realites de la vie et la materialite des evenements joumaliers. Oui, nous sommes de ce monde, nous en avons le langage, les gants, les bottes vermes, et cependant nous y sommes depayses et mal ^ I'aise, comme les gens deportes dans une colonic, dont les colons n'auraient que les dehors a notre portee, mais Fame a cent lieues de la ndtre." 764 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE For a long time their interest was in the art and manners of the eighteenth century and of the Revolution, and Edmond de Goncourt became enamored of Japanese art, so that their whole litejary spirit was the meticulous observation of externals, the taste for bric-^-brac and bibelot. Their talent had the minute- ness of water-color artists unexpectedly applied. For instead of confining themselves to the period of Watteau and Boucher, they turned in fiction to modern times and dreamed of books which should be "une clinique medico-litteraire de ces maladies de foie, de cceur, des poumons, si liees et si attenantes aux sentiments et aux idees du malade, et presenterait toutes les rev- olutions de Vkme dans la souffrance du corps." So these self- centred nervous valetudinarians undertook to portray human passions by studying the infinitely minute and recording the tiny anecdote. The chief result, apart from the pathological characteristics which their novels share with those of the other chief Naturalists, was the ecriture artiste. This was really the reverse of Flaubert's method. Where he labored to avoid the dissonance of three prepositions in "de I'eau de fleur d'oranger," the Goncourts, on the contrary, thought that style must cor- respond to the passing thrills or sensations and be as incoherent, nervous, and spasmodic as they. The resultant effect is, none the less, a strikingly artificial one, because, far from being imper- sonal like that of the true Realist Flaubert, it is the most personal style imaginable and seems to express a new preciosity of emo- tion, something like that "civet-cat style" which John Addington Symonds criticises in Walter Pater, though it is a preciosity of nervous fussiness instead of an Alexandrian mannerism. Thus the Goncourt brothers present the peculiar contrast of writers by temperament fastidiously aloof from the world who try to portray its most degrading aspects. The solution to the puzzle lies in the morbidness of their nature. The gradual degeneration of a faithful and trusted servant to prostitution, the progress of consumption, the phases of insanity, are topics in which they delight. The undressing of the minds of their FICTION 765 characters is equalled only by the nakedness of the diary, especially that of the surviving brother. The novels of the Goncourts were written in common, each one composing the same incident first by himself and the results being moulded into one, so that until the death of Jules their work cannot be separated. Their chief novels are Sceur Philo- tnene, a story of the hospitals; Renee Mauperin; Germinie Lacerteux, the servant sinking to degradation; Maneite Salomon, the Jewish artist's model playing the human vampire's part; Madame Gervaisis. Edmond de Goncourt wrote alone la Fille Elisa, another study of prostitution; les Preres Zemganno, which has some true pathos because, under the story of the two insepa- rable acrobats can be read the tragedy of one Goncourt bereft by death of his brother; la Faustin; and Cherie. For many years their novels sold poorly, but the production of their play Henriette Marechal in 1865 was the occasion of literary mani- festations which, though the play was a failure, gave them notoriety and pecuniary success. The grenier of the Goncourts was the resort of a band of disciples, and the surviving one left the money resulting from the sale of his artistic collections to found an academy of ten, the Academic des Goncourt, which has provided an increase of income and an annual dinner to a set of writers a little below the calibre of the Academie franjaise, but which has had no effect on French literature. ! If we call Flaubert the greatest Realist, Zola is the greatest Naturalist, though he is one of the dullest writers in French literature. He is also one of the most consistent in his literary theories. Zola, who had read Claude Bernard's Introduction a Vetude de la medecine experimentale and Dr. Lucas's Traite de I'Heredite naturelle, called his novel the "roman experimental," he asserted its method to be based on Claude Bernard so closely that it is often sufficient merely to replace the word "medecin" by "romancier," and he defined it as follows, in contrast with the idealistic novel: 766 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Nous montrons le mecanisme de I'utile et du nuisible, nous degageons le determinisiM des phenomenes humains et sociaux, pour qu'on puisse un jour dominer et diriger ces ph6nomenes. En un mot, nous travaillons avec tout le siecle a la grande oeuvre qui est la con- qugte de la nature, la puissance de rhomme decuplee. Et, voyez, a cote de la n6tre, la besogne des ecrivains idealistes, qui s'appuient sur I'irrationel et le surhaturel, et dent chaque elan est suivi d'une chute profonde dans le chaos metaphysique. C'est nous qui avons la force, c'est nous qui avons la morale. (Le Roman experimental.) The writing of fiction is, therefore, an impartial physiological study of individual and collective phenomena. Apart from the question of morality which, by concession, may be left out of consideration as a mask of Anglo-Saxon hj^ocrisy, modern French Naturalism, like that of Zola, is reprehensible, because both morbid and obscene. The burlesque and libertine Realist? of the early seventeenth century were as obscene as Zola, but they were not disintegrants; the Jansenist Racine was as gloomy in his determinism as the "homme hypo- condre" Zola, yet he did not overstep the reserve of his Classicism. It took a nineteenth-century author and a spirit at times akin to Zola, Jean Richepin, to render the idea of fate or it^oipa by the delicate comparison of life to a drunken prostitute reeling through " ■ Rien, nulle part, ne reste coi. flots de Teternelle houle. La Vie est une putain solile Qui dans I'espace hurle et roule Sans savoir comment ni pourquoi. Zola interprets gaiety only as.polissonnerie (" Je ne me sens pas gai du tout, pas aimable, pas polisson, incapable de chatouiller les dames") and thinks that the more bestiality he describes, the more he is unveiling the hearts of men, the more he is trying to "chercher en eux la bete, ne voir meme que la b6te" (Preface of TMrese Raquin). It is not necessary to consider Zola a porno- graphic writer for money-making alone, like many of his followers: he seems not to have understood mankind otherwise. FICTION 767 Yet Emile Zola (1840-1903), together with this gigantic pessimism which links Naturalism to the Romantic school, had the magnificence of a Romantic imagination. He admired HJugo and was never free from what his dissentient apostles of the Manifeste des Cinq called an "enflure hugolique." In early youth he planned a nebulous philosophical epic poem of humanity in the spirit of Quinet, Leroux, and Fourier, and he ended his career by socialistic and proletarian novels harking back again to the ideas of Fourier, Cabet, and Considerant. In between he composed the vast prose epic of human bestiality called les Rougon-Macquart, permeated with scorn and contempt for the workman and peasant. Zola's early life was a hard struggle against poverty, after- ward followed by a period as clerk of the publisher Hachette. His first work was the Contes a Ninon (1864); his first novel la Confession de Claude. He became a critic of Uterature and art {Mes Haines and Man Salon) as a defender of Realism and Impressionism. In 1867 came his first important novel" Therese Raquin, but it was not until much later that his friendships developed into the group of Medan, where Zola had his country house, a school composed chiefly of Paul Alexis, Henry Ceard, Leon Hennique, J.-K. Huysmans, and Guy de Maupassant, authors of les Soirees de Medan. Other followers of Zola, now or later, were Edouard Rod, Octave Mirbeau, Paul Margueritte, Gustave Guiches, the two brothers who wrote under the name J.-H. Rosny, Lucien Descaves, Paul Bonnetain. It was the last five, counting the Rosnys as one, who in 1887, on the publica- tion of la Terre, cut loose from Zola in a sensational manifesto. Just before the fall of the Empire Zola began to plan his series of novels which were to be for the second Empire what Balzac's Comedie humaine had been to the first half of the century. They developed into a succession of onslaughts on the society of the fallen reign, in theory a scientific study of heredity, in fact .an a priori and artificial scheme. The problem was to show the "histoire naturelle et sociale 768 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE d'une famille sous le second empire," in the morbid taints in- fecting all the descendants of one crazy and degenerate Adelaide Fouque of Plassans (a name disguising the town of Aix in Provence where Zola spent some of his youth), in the different spheres of life to which they belong: public official, peasant, miner, workman, bourgeois, soldier, scholar, artist, servant, harlot. Beginning with la Fortune des Rougon, published in 187 1, the series extended through twenty volumes to le Docteur Pascal in 1893. Among the most important were le Ventre de Paris; VAssommoir, on drink; Nana, on the courtesan, a book which a wit said made Naturalism into " Nanaturalism " ; Ger- minal, on mines and strikes; la Terre, on the life of the peasantry, and the climax of unnecessary obscenity; le Reve, an attempt to show that Zola could be pure; l' Argent; and la Debacle, the masterpiece, on the Franco-Prussian war. After the Rougon-Macquart series Zola wrote the trilogy les Trois villes, portraying the influence of the priesthood among the ignorant pilgrims of Lourdes, in Rome, centre of Catholicism, in Paris. After his brave intervention in the Dreyfus affair- on the side of Justice by the famous letter to President Felix Faure, known as J'accuse, Zola, now turning toward the proletariat which he had once vilified, planned four social gospels in the form of novels: Fecondite, against race-suicide; Travail, on the amelioration of the artisan's life; Verite, founded on the Dreyfus case. The concluding volume, Justice, was never written. As the years go by, Zola's novels, always ponderous, are becoming more and more unreadable. They were the result of diligent note-taking carried to the extent of tediously minute description (Rome is a guide-book of eight hundred pages), and the tenacious quest for filth wearies even the most assiduous seeker after it. Zola's perception of smell, particularly the bad smell or stench, is extraordinary. Zola most closely approaches grandeur when he is least real- istic and draws near to Romanticism. At times his characters, in spite of minute documentation (the "document humain"), FICTION 769 become symbols, and Nana in the episode of the horse-races hovers over the scene as the enthroned courtesan who typefied the vice of the second Empire. The description of a crowd or a collective force sometimes approaches epic grandeur, except where Zola's lack of humor made him, as it did Hugo, occasionally step over into the ludicrous. In Germinal or la Debacle the mob is shown with potent force, and le Ventre de Pahs, on the Central Markets, incarnates the materialism of physical suste- nance, just as Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris is the emblem of mediaeval mysticism. Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), the protege of Flaubert, the disciple of Flaubert and Zola, is next to the author of Madame Bovary the greatest of the school. Gifted with great physical strength, but having the potential germs of inherited mental disease, he ruined his health by overwork, and sensuality, and drugs like opium, haschisch, and cocaine, until madness and the strait waistcoat ended in general paralysis. Much of his work deals with his native Normandy and its peasants whose vices he knew far better than he did their virtues. His literary career began with the short story Boule de Suif, a reminiscence of the Franco-Prussian war, contributed to Zola's Soirees de Medan, and he became a master of the nouvelle, in which often 'the esprit gaulois of the old fabliaux reappeared in more artistic form. Nevertheless, Maupassant was not, like Flaubert, a slave of style, so that he is one of the most impersonal of all the great Naturalists, and his productivity was very great during the eleven years (1880-1891) which mark his literary fame. Yet the collec- tions of tales called la Maison Tellier, Mademoiselle Fiji, and les Contes de la becasse, which often seem to have as main object to scandalise the conventional, are almost equalled by such novels as Une vie, Bel- Ami, Mont-Oriol, Fort comme la mort, and Notre cceur. Pierre et Jean, written later, has a touch of feeling unknown to the earlier novels. They are for the most part gloomy and brutal, are full of the obsession of sex, and as reeking with smells as the works of Zola. But such a work-as Bel-Ami 770 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE is as vivid a picture of Paris as Madame Bovary is of provincial life. Georges Duroy or "Bel- Ami" is the nineteenth-century picaro or paysan parvenu, selfish and heartless and, like Dumas's Monsieur Alphonse, making his way with the help of women. Une vie is the story of a woman deceived by all in whom she has centred love and trust. The gruesomeness of Poe is surpassed by the greater realism of the short stories written as Maupassant half realised the coming of the madness which killed him : Lui ?, le Horla, and Qui sail? They describe different forms of hallucination: the first, the terror of the externalisation of self seen as another being, what one of his biographers calls by the psychological term of "autoscopy," of which, it may be added, we get a rudimentary form in Musset's "etranger v6tu de noir qui me ressemblait comme un frere" Qa Nuit de decembre); the second, the diary of a man going insane and persecuted by the dread of a super- natural and mysterious personality merging itself into his own; the third, a portrayal of the hallucinatory fear which accom- panies insanity, and which, under one form or another, was ever present to Maupassant. Maupassant is unsurpassed as an artist among modern French writers of fiction, but his art was to profess to have none and to record, without philosophical comment or aesthetic arrange- ment, the events of sordid lives. His greatness lies in the impression he produces of absolute truthfulness, the best test of realism. Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) was a Realist, also, but one of a different character, in whose works there entered a strain of sentiment akin to the procedure of the English ReaHsts, and he was often, but not to his liking, compared to Dickens. His characters, like those of Dickens, have their Homeric epithets or idiosyncrasies which are taken as their key-note. They ^and out, again, like those of Dickens, as types which can be used to describe persons in real life. Moreover, Daudet had the humorous touch of Dickens and wrote his comic masterpieces FICTION 771 on Tartarin, which rank with the adventures of Mr. Pickwick and his friends, as he wrote his David Copperfield in le Petit Chose. He is the great chronicler of those who have failed in life. Daudet was a southerner, born at Nlmes, and ground down in early youth by hard poverty, which he describes in le Petit Chose and in the autobiographical Trente ans de Paris. He began his money-earning career as a pion (usher) in a school. Coming to Paris at eighteen to make his way in literature, he was more than once near starvation. But the due de Morny, brother of Napoleon III, took an interest in him and thereafter his path was smooth. Daudet's first volume was a collection of poems, les Amoureuses, but he turned to fiction, writing either charming short stories such as the Lettres de man moulin and the Contes du lundi, dramas like VArlesienne, or novels such as le Petit Chose, the Tartarin series, Froment jeune et Risler aine, Jack, le Nabob, les Rois en exil, Numa Roumestan, I'Evangeliste, Sapho, rimmortel. Le Petit Chose is the pathetic story of Daudet's own experiences as an undersized and persecuted school usher and of his early days in Paris; Froment jeune et Risler aine contains the immortal character of Delobelle, the ■ old actor living in a stage world of his creation, and of Sidonie Chebe, the vain and empty-headed Parisian girl; Jack is the story of the neglected son of an irresponsible mother and intro- duces us in the gymnase Moron val to a sort of Dotheboys Hall; Les Rois en exil and le Nabab are pictures of Paris the resort of dethroned kings and of naif millionaires. In Numa Roumestan is shown the loquacious southerner: it is a satire of Gambetta, Just aS' in le Nabab the due de Morny appears. L'Evangeliste is a study of religious fanaticism; Sapho is the usual painful story of the consequences of illicit liaisons; and VImmortel satirises the Academy which Daudet never succeeded in entering. In the Aventures §rodigieuses de Tartarin de Tarascon and in Tartarin sur les Alpes Daudet writes the satirical prose epic of his fellow-southerners, boastful, wildly untruthful, but con- 772 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE vinced of the sincerity of their own imagination and bubbling over with animation and language. These two books alone place Daudet in the first rank of humorists; Port-Tarascon is inferior. Very different is the impression produced by I'Arle- sienne, the play over which hovers the figure, never actually seen, of the wicked woman of Aries who breaks up the happiness of a family and causes the suicide of the luckless boy who loves her. Then there is pathos in stories like le Siege de Berlin or la Derniere classe, and unbridled mirth in the sermon of le Cure de Cucugnan. Thus Daudet is a Realist, but not an impersonal one. He makes abundant use of the note-book, as they all do, but the human touch is not absent from his synthesis. He has neither the cold-bloodedness of Maupassant, nor the brutality of Zola, nor the incoherence of the Goncourts. Ferdinand Fabre (1830-1898) is little read as compared with the other writers of the Realistic school, yet he is one of the noteworthy authors of his generation. His stories deal largely with life in the comparatively unvisited Cevennes country, and his plots centre about the intrigues of priests, in describing whom he is unequalled except by Balzac in le Cure de Tours. L'Abbe Tigrane is a marvellous character study of ambition, and Mon Oncle Celestin has the truth of personal experience. Other clerical novels by Ferdinand Fabre are les Courbezon, Lucifer. Le Chevrier and Xaviere are rustic idyls. Realism did not draw to itself all the men of letters of the second half of the nineteenth century, though the other writers are far less united in theory and purpose. Victor Hugo continued his production of Romantic fiction, and les Miserables with the succeeding novels belong to this period. The artist Eugene Fromentin (1820-1876) author of Un ete dans le Sahara, wrote also Dominique, a novel of sentimental analysis and psycho- logical experience in autobiographical form,' in which the feeling of Rousseau is staged in the painter's setting. The most prominent of the "idealistic" or sentimental writers FICTION 773 was Octave Feuillet (1821-1891), the noveKst of high life during the second Empire and the favorite of Napoleon III and of Eugenie. He composed works of all sorts: early Romantic plays in collaboration, proverbs, which made one of the Goncourts call him the "Musset des families" (a pun on the name of the periodical le Musee des families), comedies, and novels. The perpetual subject of his writings is love, which is set forth with all the refinement of Mile de Scudery's novels or of eighteenth- century marivaudage. He is a city novelist of fashion and of good maimers, and nature plays with him a minor part. His language is reserved, his characters are apparently refined, his morals "proper," and he was the favorite author of sentimental women of his time and a pillar of the respectable Revue des Deux- Mondes. But his plots sometimes had an insidious charm, and his pictures of charming but perverse hothouse heroines of a drawing-room Romanticism were scarcely inspiring models for the frivolous women of his day. Feuillet's most famous novel, the Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre, is, however, of a different kind and portrays th'e im- poverished but proud nobleman obliged to earn his living, the haughty maiden whom he loves, the wicked and jealous one who loves him, all placed in a setting of romantic Breton scenery, with lonely towers and gloomy woods. But Monsieur de Camors portrays the nineteenth-century Don Juan, and M. de Chevrial in the play Un roman parisien is the picture of the wveur. Other novels are Julie de Trecaeur, Un manage dans le m^nde, les Amours de Philippe, la Morte, and Honneur d'artiste. Victor Cherbuliez (1829-1899), of Swiss origin, began by an artistic and archaeological fantasy, Un cheval de Phidias. His chief novels, le Comte Kostia, Meta Holdenis, Miss Rovel, ridee de Jean Teterol are clever, well constructed, and well written, and have about every quality but conviction. He was more successful as a willing philosophical observer and dialectician. ' Edmond About (1828-1885), a brilliant journalist, critic, and 774 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE novelist, had something of Voltaire's wit, though he did not show it in all his novels. Le Roi des montagnes is a most amusing satirical story of adventure in Greece, and the stories forming the Manages de Paris and the Manages de province are graceful. His other best known works, Tolla, I'Homme a I'oreille cassee, le Nez d'un notaire, le Roman d'un brave homme, vary in quality and interest. Emile Erckmann (1822-1899) and Alexandre Chatrian (1826- 1890), who collaborated under the name Erckmann-Chatrian, wrote stories of their native Alsace during the great Revolution, the first Empire, or the Franco-Prussian war in a fantastic, sentimental, or idyllic tone, and attacked war and military display. Their most famous novel is VAmi Fritz, but their plays, le Juif polonais, known in English as The Bells, and les Rantzau, had tremendous success. Ludovic Halevy (i 834-1 908) evidently tried to atone for the levity of his collaborations with Henri Meilhac by his sentimental stories, Un mariage d' amour and I' Abbe Constantin. The series on the Cardinal family, Monsieur et Madame Cardinal, les Petites Cardinal, la Famille Cardinal, on the young ladies of the corps de ballet and their disreputable parents, take us back to gaiety and mirth. A study of the nineteenth century would not be complete without consideration of the three eccentrics, Barbey d'Aure- villy, Villiers de ITsle-Adam, and Huysmans. They are symp- tomatic of certain literary phases of their age which they set in clearer relief than more conventional figures do. More- over, Barbey and Villiers were not without considerable in- fluence, in attitude at least, upon the "decadents" of the fin-de-siecle. Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808-1889) was an impecunious bohemian, novelist, journaUst, and critic, and the permanent embodiment of the actor on parade as well as the connecting link, across a generation, between the old Romantic egotists and the neo-Romantic individualists who, especially in poetry, FICTION 775 followed after the Parnassians. He posed as an intellectual aristocrat (legend had it that he was descended from Louis XV) and as a fashionable dandy, though his costume grew more grotesque and his manner more extraordinary. He expressed, at different periods, almost diametrically opposed views as he ranged from incredulity to mystical Catholicism, from liberalism through Bonapartism to monarchism. His voluminous criti- cisms have no value of interpretation, but are examples of bril- liant irony and vituperation, showing by stinging epigrammatic phrases the failings of his victims. He prided himself on having his hand against every man, on being an iconoclast, an ereinteur, or as he called it, a "sagittaire." He was the mediaeval paladin, the "constable of France of letters" fighting modern Philistinism. In early life Barbey d'Aurevilly had known and sympathised with troubled spirits Uke his intimate friend Maurice de Guerin and the latter's sister Eugenie, and was held in check somewhat by his friend, the publisher Trebutien, of Caen. Later, under the influence of drugs and the growing megalomania of the Byronic rebel, he developed an attitude of "artistic" Roman- ticism, which we should call eccentric or decadent. His rigid mediaeval Catholicism, after the order of Joseph de Maistre and Bonald, became a neurotic perversion of faith and a belief in Satanism, in the Devil as an active force set up against God, an attitude finding expression in symbohsm, psychological and sentimental. All this may seem to verge on -lunacy, yet Barbey d'Aurevilly found admirers and followers, not only in persons like Huysmans, but also among the coteries of the Symbolist poets and the adepts of the "advanced" reviews, such as the Revue blanche, la Plume, and le Mercure de France. Barbey d'Aurevilly's writings spread over a wide field and include his miscellaneous literary, dramatic, and artistic criti- cisms, some poetry, confessions or memoranda of the Rousseau order ("vomitoria" of the soul), a study of dandyism and Beau Brummell. But his chief significance as an influence lies rather in his not very numerous works of fiction. They are steeped 776 A HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE in the atmosphere of his native Normandy, but particularly they exemplify the spirit of the perverse and an amoralism which at least once brought him in danger of prosecution. The chief ones are V Amour impossible, Une vieille mattresse, I'Ensorcelee, le Chevalier des Touches, Un pretre marie, and les Diaboliques. Augu^te Villiers de I'lsle-Adam (1838-1889) was all his life a fantastic and mystical dabbler. A wonderful improviser, a brilliant talker like Barbey d'Aurevilly, he often became the dupe of his own whimsical imaginations. This impecimious bohemian in threadbare clothing boasted that he was descended from a grand master of the Knights of Malta, and on the strength of it wanted to be a candidate to the throne of Greece on the death of King Otto. Villiers de ITsle-Adam fell under the influence of occultism and mixed together in his admiration Poe, Hegel, and Wagner. He lived among the monks of the abbey of Solesmes and published Isis, a mixture of occultism and of the symbolism of religion that is also to be found in Barbey's Pretre marie. His other chief works were Elm, Morgane, VEve futkre, and Axel. Much of his life was spent in poverty and obscurity, for Villiers de ITsle-Adam belonged to the elect whom the philistine could not appreciate. None the less, his work occasionally verged on genius, and he is a significant figure in the last years of the nine- teenth century. Though not an author of wide influence, -he must not be neglected. Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) illustrates the pathological degeneration of Naturalism beyond the brutality of Zola and the morbidness of the Goncourts into the hallucinations of an inverted existence. He was an extraordinary cross between Naturalism and decadent Romanticism. Beginning as a direct follower of Zola and a contributor to the Soirees de Medan of a description of diarrhoea {Sac au dos) and works such as Marthe and les Sceurs Vatard of similar distinction, he before long evolved to A rebours, the narrative of one Des Esseintes who experi- ments in every anti-natural sensation which he can devise. FICTION 777 From this book Oscar Wilde drew mucK for his Picture of Dorian Gray. Huysmans's lOve for filth merges into an ardor for every sterilising form of nervous corruption surrounded by an atmos- phere of mysticism. He delights in describing out of the way jewels, remote shades of color, incongruously juxtaposed sensa- tions. The progress toward the abnormal went on through his succeeding works, such as Ld-bas, dabbling in the morbid Satanism of Barbey d'Aurevilly and the worship of the Devil, until at last Huysmans or his hero Durtal went f rorn the aesthetic mysticism to a sort of Christian mysticism or Catholic sacerdo- talism {En route, la Cathedrale, Sainte-Lydwine de Schiedam, I'Oblat), in which the drama and ritualism of religion were upper- most. He experimented in the life of the Trappists, withdrew for a time to the Benedictine monastery of Liguge near Poitiers, where centuries before the robust and healthy Rabelais had stayed. Rabelais and Huysmans, what a contrast! Huysmans is the dyspeptic, brooding over physical discomforts and transmuting a mysticism of the stomach or intestines into physiological language: the dysentery of Sac au dos is replaced by the "dysenteric soul." He can think. of no function of the body or soul as healthy, nor is there one gleam of cheer in his writings. The miscellaneous minor writers of the later nineteenth century are numerous: Arsene Houssaye (1815-1896), a fluent polygraph, began as a bohemian Romanticist with Gautier and Nerval, produced all his life miscellaneous novels and pastel-criticisms, contributed much to journalism, and during the second Empire was for some time director of the Theatre-Franjais and thus influential in the dramatic world. Henry Greville (Mme Alice Durand) (i 842-1 902), the daugh- ter of Jean Fleury, a French professor established in Russia, spent many years of her life there and was a proUfic .author of eminently proper novels of life in Russia and in France. Her most famous story is Dosia, of which the heroine is a Russian; 778 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Frankley may interest Americans as the result of a visit to the United States. Leon Cladel (183 5- 189 2) combined in his stories of southern France the brutality of the Realists with the search for form of the Parnassians. His novels are vigorous, but labored in expression through mannerisms and contortions of style in which Baudelaire's influence can be seen. Emile Pouvillon (1840-1906), also a novelist of life in southern France, described in short stories or in novels like Cesette, les A.ntihel, and Jep the country more poetically than Cladel did. Andrl Theuriet (1833-1907) was the romancer of life in the coun- try and in small towns of eastern France, such as the Ardennes. Louis Ulbach (1822-1889) wrote a large number of stories, indistinguishable though not without interest. Louis Enault (1824-1900) was, again, a meritorious writer of the second class, whose unimpeachable stories made Zola call him "la pommade de I'ideal, le sirop du romanesque." Hector Malot (b. 1830) is known chiefly by Sans Famille. It seems hardly fair to neglect two story-tellers who have given great delight to the young: Mme de Segur and Jules Verne. La comtesse de Segur, nee Rostopschine (1799-1874), wrote many tales, such as Un bon petit diahle for Hachette's Bihliotheque rose illustree, a children's series which took its name from the famous eighteenth-century modernisations of ancient fiction in the Bihliotheque bleue of the comte de Tressan. Jules Verne (1828-1906), the author of "extraordinary voyages" to the moon,- the centre of the earth, in a balloon, under the seas, around the world, on a comet, and elsewhere, has delighted hundreds of thousands of boys of all countries. His scientific veneer is termed misleading, his style is the negation of style, but his imagination anticipated more than one great discovery and he did his humble task well. CHAPTER XIV TEE DRAMA DURING the second half of the nineteenth century the tendency toward Realism is obvious in the drama as in fiction, and about 1880 many writers swing to Naturalism. During the second Empire the most successful authors were Augier, Dumas fils, Feuillet, Sardou, Labiche, and Meilhac and Halevy. They represent different phases of the new Parisian civilisation and satirise, either angrily or good-humoredly, the weaknesses and vices of that carnival time. They are incUned to pose as the moralist and preacher, for the new drama purports to castigare mores. They theorise on problems or theses as much as a Diderot did and with such skill in dramatic technique as often to conceal the hollowness of the plot or the. fallacy of the argument. For this skill they were in no small degree indebted to the much abused Scribe. Emile Augier (1820-1889), along with the younger Dumas and Labiche the best dramatic portrait-painter of his times, began by adhering to the short-lived school of Ponsard, and it was he who more particularly gave it the turn to the "lyrisme du pot-au-feu. " Nor was he without touches of expiring Romanticism. He was still groping his way and had not yet found his dramatic formula which was to express in prose the better middle-class virtues. Augier saw the wea:knesses of the bourgeoisie, but he was always at heart, in the best sense of the term, a bourgeois. Augier was not in the slightest degree a poet, although his earliest plays are in verse, beginning with la Cigue in 1844. The scene was laid in antiquity as was that of le Joueur de flute a 779 78o A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE few years later. During a decade Augier continued to write in verse, but with le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier he gave it up except for two later plays, la Jeunesse and Paul Forestier. The most significant of the early period were VAventuriere, an indirect attack upon the Romantic heroine, of which the scene was laid in the Itahan Renaissance; Gabrielle, a protest against the break- ing up of family life through adultery excused by sentiment. It showed the discovery by the woman who deemed herself "incomprise" that the husband was nobler than the seducer, and won for Augier from the Academy a prize for its lesson in virtue. Philiberte is full of pretty eighteenth-century prattling, but the setting is an accessory. Le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier, written in collaboration with Jules Sandeau and usually considered the greatest modern French comedy of character and of manners, represents the contrast between the impecunious aristocrat married to the daughter of a rich bourgeois of the reign of Louis-Philippe and his vain and pushing father-in-law. Neither person is a carica- ture and the play does not end with the triumph of either side; therein lies an important explanation of the truthfulness of Augier's Realism. Augier, having gained self-confidence, became more outspoken and his critics complained of his immodesty in the choice of subjects. Thus le Mariage d'Olympe is a picture of the courtesan made respectable by marriage, but in spirit falling back to her degradation through the "nostalgie de la'boue" and punished by a pistol shot. It is a retort to the Romantic rehabilitation of the lost woman and a rejoinder to plays like la Dame aux camelias. Les Lionnes pauvres created above all a scandal by its picture of a married woman yielding, through vanity, love of finery, and need of money, to adultery. The later comedies of Emile Augier belong to the category known as la comedie sociale, in which the study may still be of types, but rather as the results of general social vices which the play attacks. The new development did not even prevent the THE DRAMA 781 identification of personal characters, inasmuch as Louis Veuillot was pilloried in the Deodat of le Fits de Giboyer and suggestions of Guizot and Mme Swetchine were asserted. In les Effrontis Augier showed the shameless scramble for wealth, in le Fils de Giboyer clerical meddling in politics. Maitre Guerin, which has elements again of the comedy of manners, portrays the crooked country lawyer. In la Corruption Augier attacks the spirit of general irreverence, of what we have alluded to more than once as la blague; Lions et renards renews the anti-clerical campaign. After the war came Jean de Thommeray, a patriotic play. Finally, Madame Caverlet is a plea in favor of divorce and les Fourchambault is on the natural child. Thus Emile Augier tried to show his fellow-citizens the dangers to which they were Hable from financial trickery and loss of moral convictions and ideals. He did so in some of the best con- structed plays of the nineteenth century, which present many of its most noteworthy literary types: Poirier, Vernouillet, Guerin, and Giboyer, the bohemian journalist, or d'Estrigaud, the new Don Juan. Augier is the one to whom of all their modern dramatists the French are most ready to attribute the good sense of Moliere. Alexandre Dumas the younger (1824-1895) began to write plays after Augier did, but he found his footing more rapidly and influenced not only the whole French drama, but in some cases his vigorous and independent fellow-author. He is the chief creator of the modern comedy of manners. He is also the great example of that constant phenomenon in recent French drama, the moralist who shocks everybody. Sarcey criticised Dumas as speaking "sur la scene de choses qui, dans I'ordre moral, font sur I'imagination un effet . . . medicinal. " Such was, evidently, Dumas's theory of the purgation of the passions. Dumas the younger, as his father's son, began by poetry and Romantic fiction, but before long he turned to contemporary Realism. His novel, la Dame aux camelias, was on the hackneyed subject of the rehabilitated courtesan, but she now appeared in 782 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE a modern setting and was drawn from actual life. When a few years later, in 1852, before Augier's Gendre de Monsieur Poirier, he dramatised the subject, he gave the first important example of the new Realistic comedy, and Paris was to him, as to the pseudo-scientists of fiction, the "grand creuset ou il semble que Dieu fait ses experiences. " (Preface of la Femme de Claude.) With Diane de Lys and le Demi-Monde Dumas's success was firmly established. The latter, the result, like so many of his comedies, of experience, portrayed the woman adventuress on the outskirts of society who tries to win position and reputa- tion. La Question d' argent shows the corrupting influence of money. There followed le Fils naturel, Un pere prodigue, I'Ami desfemmes. Dumas's plays were now undergoing a transformation. Instead of being pictures of character or manners alone, they became didactic and deserve the name now so famiUar of "prob- lem plays" or "pieces a these, " what Dumas called the "theatre utile. " Les Idees de Madame Aubray, in 1867, is the first marked example of this tendency and preaches by example forgiveness to the woman who has sinned. La Princesse Georges discusses pardon by the wronged wife, and la Femme de Claude the man's right to kill the woman. In a pamphlet, I'Homme-Femme, pub- lished just before the latter play, Dumas inveighed against the faithless female and uttered the cry, "Tue-la. " Monsieur Alphonse pictures the rascal trying to make his way in the world by means of women, neglecting the one whom he has wronged in order to get another's money. L'Etrangere carries one out of reahty into a world of over-men and monstrous over-women. Dumas is here, as to a certain degree in la Femme de Claude and la Princesse de Bagdad, the victim of his own exaggerated theories. The last importarit plays, Denise and Francillon, become more natural. Dumas wrote various plays in collaboration, the most famous of which are les Danichef and the revision of the Marquis de Villemer, besides a c[uantity of miscellaneous prefaces and THE DRAMA 783 pamphlets in which he set forth his theories. His novel l' Affaire Clemenceau acquired new fame when dramatised much later. Dumas's theories were asserted in preface or play with alter- nately the frenzy of a Pere Duchesne and the persiflage of a boulevardier of the second Empire. Dumas is as rich in allusions to Holy Writ as a negro revivalist, and at times this biblical octoroon rages against the faithless woman as the she-ape with whom Cain must have mated in the Land of Nod ("la guenon du pays de Nod") and justifies her murder, at times the Uagueur of his comedy discourses on the demi-mondaine as a "peche a quinze sous, " apparently good, but at heart slightly tainted and therefore sold cheaper by the greengrocer than the sound "pfiche a vingt sous." The parabasis of the old Greek comedy, which in Moliere was represented by the raisonneur, is in Dumas furnished by the society ironist and modern Gallic who some- times gets on one's nerves. Dumas is also fond of the veneer of science which has been fashionable in many writers since the advent of the post-Romantic days. He defines love, in the preface of Une visite de noces, by the physiological dictionary and in VEtr anger e analyses the corrupt and dissolute man as a "vibrion. " In spite of Dumas's preaching and moralising upon adultery in a language compounded from physiological terms and the Apocalypse, he is not thinking of the woman so much as of the man, who represents to him intelligence and superiority in the warfare of the sexes. "Les femmes ne se rendent jamais au raisonnement, pas meme k la preuve; elles ne se rendent' qu'au sentiment ou a la force." {L'Homme-Femme.) Dumas's eter- nal subject of adultery follows the line of fiHation from his father's Antony. George Sand had acclimated it in a poetical form in fiction in the "femme incomprise," Dumas ^/5 made the "eter- nelle Messaline" no less familiar from the man's standpoint. From them the modern drama and fiction have copied again and again, until we have returned to the conditions of the medi- eval farces and fabliaux, and, as M. Faguet says, the husband, 784 A mSTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the wife, and the lover have become "les trois unit6s modern style." Meanwhile Feuillet, in the plays dramatised from his novels, was showing a conventional and proper society in which the sentimental protagonists were scarcely more moral at heart than the courtesans or declassees of Dumas. There has rarely been a more successful writer for the stage than Victorien Sardou (1831-1908) and no writer who has more consistently subordinated his talent to popular taste or to the needs of a favorite actress like Sarah Bernhardt. His fertility was equalled only by his versatility : he wrote vaudeville-comedies, vaudevilles, melodramas, comedies historical and satirical, plays tragical-comical-historical, scenes indivisible, and works unlimited. In every one he reaches the audience, either by prestidigitation of plot, in plays humorous as les Pattes de mouche or serious as Dora, by the satire social or political of la Famille Benotton or Rabagas (a caricature of Gambetta), by the boisterous farce of Divorgons, by the frenzy of la Tosca, by the spectacular melodrama of Theodora. Other important plays by Sardou are Nos intimes, les Vieux garqons, Nos bans villageois, Patrie, la Haine, I'Oncle Sam (a satire on America), Daniel Rochat, Fedora, Madame Sans-Gene, and Thermidor. The greatest humorist of the nineteenth century was probably Eugene Labiche (1815-1888). Undisturbed by theories and desirous only of raising a laugh, he poured forth a long series of farces and vaudevilles, including a few real comedies of character and of manners. He did not consider his works literature, and it was only at the instigation of Augier that, late in life, he published a selection of his best plays. And yet le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon, portraying the vanity of the bourgeois, is as good as Moliere's Bourgeois gentilhomme. Labiche is an example of the espriP gaulois, but though sojnetimes broad to the English taste, he is without the indecency of the contemporary composers of Palais-Royal farces. Posterity . can always turn to Labiche's plays for pictures, slightly exaggerated, of the THE DRAMA 785 middle-class types of his time. His chief plays were : Un chapeau de paille d' Italic, le Misanthrope et I'Auvergnat, l' Affaire de la rue de Lourcine, le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon, les Petits Oiseaux, la Poudre aux yeux, Celimare le bien-aime, la Cagnotte. While Labiche was writing farces Henri Meilhac (1832-1897) and Ludovic Halevy collaborated in the production, chiefly with Offenbach's music, of operettas and opera-bouffes, comedies interspersed with song, the quintessence of Parisian blague: la Belle Helene, la Grande Duchesse, la Vie parisienne, la Perichole. They also wrote farces or vaudevilles such as Tricoche et Cacolet, le rot Candaule, Toto chez Tata, and la Cigale, an occasional genuine comedy, la petite Marquise or Fanny Lear, or a play with a touch of pathos, such as Froufrou, portraying a light-headed and inconsequential but not wicked little woman. They also dramatised Merimee's Carmen for Bizet. Meilhac and Halevy are eminently " Second Empire. " It did not take long for both Dumas and Augier to appear old- fashioned and artificial. They who had seemed Realists in their time were accused of continuing the Scribe tradition of the "piece bien faite" and of laying stress on conventional climaxes, claptrap tirades, and repartees. Especially, Dumas's stock characters and inevitable theories were criticised in the name of a more radical reahsm and of a return to life, just as the Roman- ticists and the Realists themselves had done. The melodramatic Sardou, the darling of the mediocre-minded, was included in the reprobation, and the vehement defence by the bourgeois critic Sarcey of the technically correct play did not prevent a forward evolution. The leader of the new tendency toward Naturalism, Henry Becque (183 7-1899), was at first treated almost as a literary Ixmatic, and his plays did not have much popular success. His bitter experiences embittered his work. He wrote a handful of plays, of which only two, les Corbeaux (1882) and la Parisienne (1886), have survived, but they are among the most noteworthy of the contemporary drama because of the direction at which 786 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE they hint. An unfinished play, les Polichinelles, did not become publicly known until 1910. Becque's notion was to neglect plot and to place before the spectator a section of experience, a "tranche de vie," in all its incoherence. This was the direct antithesis of the "piece bien faite. " Becque, with his gloomy view of life, seeing no particle of goodness or cheerfulness, is the initiator of the "theatre rosse, " the wicked and cruel drama. Les Corbeaux portrays the vicious people who swoop down like birds of prey on a family left helpless by death, and la Parisienne shows the lover as much installed in the family as the husband, and the woman who cares nothing for her lover but merely deems it the natural thing to have one, to take a second when tired of the first, to relapse to the first when tired of the second. Becque's plays have a cynical humor which crops up unexpectedly (Trapa irpoa-SoKiav) and is painful instead of diverting. Becque's tendencies were developed still further and with emphasis on the comedian's art by Andre Antoine, who as a young and unconventional actor founded the Theatre-Libre in 1887. It was an only semi-pubUc undertaking, depending on subscribers and thus escaping the censor. Between its founda- tion and 1896 it had various ups and downs, its chief success being from 1888 to 1893. But it had great influence on the development of the whole French drama, and many of the present prominent writers began at the Theatre-Libre. Antoine wished to innovate in everything and transformed the conventions of stage-setting and of declamation, thereby doing a service to the stage and freeing it from the routine of Conservatoire methods. On the other hand, he carried to exaggeration the theory of the "tranche de vie" and, under pretext that the drama should portray all of life, he welcomed plays so salacious as to horrify many of those who could stand Naturahsm in fiction. The dramatisation of the Goncourt's la Fille Elisa brought about interpellations at the Chamber of Deputies. 1 There came 1 The Theatre-Libre had a good effect in destroying artificial stage con- ventions in acting. It had a bad effect: firstly, in dislocating the drama THE DRAMA • 787 before long a reaction of weariness on the part of the public, and the Theatre-Libre disappeared. Antoine had not banished the fantastic play or verse drama and had even hospitably ventured into Symbolism and the exotic theatre of Scandinavia and Russia. But-the genre rosse, spreading to other theatres, suffi- ciently disheartened seekers after amusement to make them welcome all the more enthusiastically the idealistic Cyrano de Bergerac when it was played in 1897. It should not be supposed, indeed, that the poetical, fantastic, or ideahstic drama had been entirely non-existent during the days of Realism and NaturaHsm. The early romantic intoxica- tion of Tragaldabas by Hugo's follower Ayguste Vacquerie (1819-1895) was ruined by its own exaggeration as well as by the inopportunity of its appearance in 1848. He was more successful with his adaptation, with Paul Meurice, of Antigone and with trifles like Souvent homme varie. Paul Meurice (1820- 1905), another disciple of Hugo, adapted and dramatised plays, under pretext of presenting a "tranche de vie"; secondly, in breaking down the reserve which had hitherto kept the horrible and indecent from the public stage. To the Theatre-Libre we can attribute the indirect cause of eccentric theatres hke the Grand-Guignol, with its performances of one- act plays of alternate mirth and madness, and plays such as those which make up Andre de Lorde's Theatre d'ipouvanie, outdoing Poe's Black Cat or Monsieur Valdemar. The Theatre-Libre led the way to the public performances of fascal plays, like the Ubu roi of Alfred Jarry in 1896, few in number but with a worse effect: " Ubu estun des beliersqui renverserent cette digue; maintenant elle est rompue; I'eau fangeuse coule a pleins bords; les obscenites de nos bas vaudevilles, de nos revues, toute cette salete librement epanouie, je crois bien que tout cela date A' Ubu. . . . Alfred Jarry fut a ce point de vue un novateur. Son oeuvre a revolutionne les moeurs du theatre en y introduisant la plus basse licence. D faut done lui reconnaitre une petite importance historique; elle n'en saurait avoir d'autre, car ce n'est, repetons-le, qu'une charge d'atelier uniquement desti- nee a faire hurler le bourgeois. Elle deposera dans la memoire des hommes ime date et un nom; on ne la jouera, ni ne la lira; mais on se rappelera Ubu le pere en voyant les innombrables petits Ubus nes de lui." — A. Brisson, le TMdtre, troisieme serie. 788 A HISTORY- OF FRENCH LITERATURE such as Hamlet with Dumas, and wrote by himself Fanfan la Tulipe and Struensee. Theodore de Banville, the tight-rope rhymer, wrote a number of plays, of which the brief Gringoire in prose, on the ugly poet who wins a fair girl's love, alone remains famous. By Louis Bouilhet the Conjuration d'Amboise was the most successful. Francois Coppee captivated the senti- mental by poetic trifles such as le Passant, in which Sarah Bernhardt first won fame as an actress, and le Luthier de Cre- mone, the emotional and religious by le Pater, and the patri- otic by Severo Torelli or Pour la Couronne, dramas of conspiracy, treachery, and retribution. Henri de Bornier (1825-1901) will be long remembered, though by one only of his plays. Les Noces d'Attila, le Fils de I'Aretin, and France d'abord have merits, but yield to la Fille de Roland. This drama is a compound of the spirit of Corneille and of Hugo, a cross between early Classicism and Romanticism : the heroism of Corneille, the picturesqueness of Hugo, with less lyrical beauty, with truer psychology. As a dignified and patriotic play, permeated with true poetic feeling, even though the verse be occasionally prosaic, it should always deserve high esteem. Among the miscellaneous writers of ^ the period the long-lived Ernest Legouve (i 807-1 903) shared some of Scribe's successes, such as Adrienne Lecouvreur and Bataille de dames. Theodore Barriere (1823-1877) dramatised Murger's Vie de boheme, portrayed in les Faux bonshommes types of bourgeois selfishness and hypocrisy, and in les Filles de marbre produced the character of Desgenais the raisonneur who practically gave his name ("un desgenais") to that type in modern comedy such as we find him in Dumas. The great success of Adolphe Belot (1829-1890) was le Testament de Cesar Girodot. Edmond Gondinet (1829- 1888) wrote many farces in the strain of Labiche. Jules Moinaux (1815-1895) gave vaudevilles and farces, especially les Deux sourds. Alexandre Parodi (1840-1901), a Greek by birth, com-- posed Classical tragedies in the Romantic spirit. Edouard THE DRAMA 789 Pailleron (i 838-1 899) wrote, besides a trifling bit of marivaudage called VEtincelle, one of the best comedies of manners of the nineteenth century, le Monde oil Von s'ennuie, a companion piece to the Femmes savantes as a satire of fashionable literary coteries and their fads.' The professor beloved by ladies is supposed to be a portrait of Caro, the philosopher and lecturer. • See also Sain t-Evremond's lesAcademislesa.nd'Paiissot'slesPhUosophes. CHAPTER XV POETRY DURING the third quarter of the nineteenth century poetry undergoes the same experience as prose and becomes less Romantic or, at any rate, assumes that form of neo-Romanticism expressed by the study of art for art's sake. It was not to be expected that Victor Hugo should change his attitude, nor did he, but in nearly all other writers the subjective strain became for a time less marked except in some of the women sentimentalists. Mme Louise Colet (1810-1876), the friend of Cousin and Flau- bert, was a poetess of the school of Lamartine. Mme Blanche- cotte (1830-1897), also of the school of Lamartine, wrote of withered illusions and disappointed hopes. Louisa Sieffert (1845-1877), again, was the poetess of lost happiness and Rayons perdus. On the other hand, even a militant Romanticist such as Theophile Gautier was becoming more objective in Emaux et Camees. Louis Bouilhet (1822-1869), a friend of Flaubert, was the author of sundry plays, mostly in verse, such as Melanis, a Roman tale, and Festons et Astragales. Of these the latter, though the title is borrowed from Boileau, reminds one of such a heading as Emaux et Camees and shows, in a minor key, some of the transitional tendencies: exotic scenes and cult of objective form. The most significant writers of the new objective poetry and the models of the younger generation were Gautier, Theodore de Banville, Baudelaire, and Leconte de Lisle. The theory of art for art's sake was partly the result of reaction against the industriaUsm of life becoming more accentuated as the century progressed and against the belief that art should be made useful and subordinate to other aims. The poets were 790 POETRY 791 successors to the Romanticists and can be called neo-Romanticists in so far as they had the same attitude of aristocratic superiority to the common herd of mortals, of unwillingness to consider their work practical, of Romantic pessimism, and of fondness for local coloring. But the heart-nudity of Lanmrtine or Musset and their followers now palled and was replaced by an objective treatment, even though no less the result of experience. On the other hand, the pursuit of art, which meant labor instead of an unbridled inspiration, resulted in some cases in exaggeration and became a disease of thought, just as seventeenth-century preciosity had been a disease resulting from the cultivation of language for language's sake. Leconte de Lisle preserved harmonious reserve, but in artificial writers like Baudelaire it became the direct quest of the unnatural and complicated sensa- tion, in familiar things of the decadent instead of the healthy, in remote or exotic things of the extraordinary instead of the natural. Thus the artist is interested in the neurotic person or newose instead of the no less melancholy poitrinaire, and Gautier talks about "le gout des femmes jaunes, vertes, " while Baudelaire has to admire a negress because normal people prefer white women. Theodore de Banville (1823-1891), a "cuisinier poetique" as a critic called him, was the author of the Cariatides, the Stalactites, and the Odes funambulesqties, poetry in which the Romanticist's fondness for rhyme has become the writer's ch'ief cult, so that he is always endeavoring to surmount some obstacle of verse, and the effect is often that produced by an acrobat who has just performed a difl&cult task. By queer "overflows," or out of the way rhymes, or throwing the rhymed stress on unimportant conjunctions (as "Dostoiewski" rhyming with "ce n'est pas nous qui") Banville delights in experiments in verse forms almost as complicated as the feats of the fifteenth-century rhetoriqueurs. His following, not inconsiderable even now, is chiefly among certain neo-precieux and dramatic poets. Yet he had another side sometimes overlooked, and the swinging 792 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE metre of Banville's verse occasionally recalls the anacreontics of Ronsard and of the Pleiade. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) introduced into French, literature the important influence of Poe whom he translated, but is chiefly known for the Fleurs du mal which, continuing the morbid Romanticism of Sainte-Beuve's Joseph Delorme combined with soUcitude for form, was responsible for the vogue of the genre macabre and the cult of the "horrible" that minor "bold and bad" poets have since imitated in their pessimism. Victor Hugo wrote to Baudelaire that he had endowed French literature with a "frisson nouveau," and this thrill or shudder consisted in gloating, in highly wrought and elaborated language such as pleased Theophile Gautier, over death and decay, and in invoking complicated sensations of drugs, "spleen," corpses, vampires, bad smells, madness, despair. The grotesques and arabesques of Poe become hallucinations, yet Baudelaire's horrors lose much of their effect by seeming overdone and pur- posely written, Au milieu des flacons, des etoffes lamees Et des meubles voluptueux, ' Des marbres, des tableaux, des robes parfum6es Qui trainent a plis somptueux, Dans une chambre tiede ou, comme en une serre, L'air est dangereux et fatal, Ou des bouquets mourants dans leurs cercueils de verre Exhalent leur soupir final. Baudelaire was one of the first in France to praise Wagner's music, and he was among those who in poetry gave vogue to Symbohsm. Alfred de Vigny employed symbols but did not leave a disciple. Baudelaire, on the other hand, at least prepared the way for the Symbolists and dicadents who built their theory of poetry on the element of suggestion and the relations between things and the soul, precisely such as they professed to see in the music of Wagner. POETRY 793 Charles Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894), a native of the ile Bourbon or ile de la Reunion, a grand nephew of Parny, was the deity of those who reacted against the Romantic "exhibitionism," against the consumptive school of Lamartine or the absinthe school of Musset. His feeling is expressed in the lines of les Montreurs: Dans mon orgueil muet, dans ma tombe sans gloire, Duss6-je m'engloutir pour I'eternite noire, Je ne te vendrai pas mon ivresse ou mon mal. Je ne livrerai pas ma vie a tes huees, Je ne danserai pas sur ton treteau banal Avec tes histrions et tes prostituees. Leconte de Lisle was never a popular poet and he made but little effort to court favor, but he has always had a following among thinkers and was looked upon as a master by the Par- nassians. A Creole by birth, with some of the Celtic dreaminess of his Breton ancestry, he was ineffective in action, yet vigorous in thought. The straitened circumstances of a long period of his life may have inclined his thought to pessimism, but did not make his theories spasmodic, fitful, and yielding. In youth Leconte de Lisle's sympathies were aroused by the sight of suffering slaves in his native island, and in France he was at first a follower of the humanitarian socialists, an admirer of Fourier, a believer in the harmonising principles of life such as are set forth in the Sept cordes de la lyre of George Sand, and he was by her writings initiated to a pantheistic mysticism, spiritual yet anti-religious so far as dogma is concerned. Gradually, as Leconte de Lisle's reading became more exten- sive, he was influenced by Hindoo philosophy and Hellenic art. His Romantic-Germanic pantheism took the form of a Buddhist pessimism strengthened by the downfall of the liberalism of 1848 and the apparent social enervation which his whole life witnessed. Reacting against the present civilisation and the religion which has created it, Leconte de Lisle turned for refuge 794 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE to the beauty of Greece and the perfection of its art. He did not see in Hellenism the goal that can be reached, but an ideal that one may cling to as a consolation, even though one's yearn- ing be overhung with the tragic consciousness of unfulfilment. This pessimistic and anti-Christian attitude became impassive- ness and impersonality. Individual feeling was veiled, so that at most the narrative or myth was an indirect symbolic interpre- tation of the poet's feeHng. Leconte de Lisle's style is sculptural, with a touch of epic majesty, in which the chilliness of a learned epic is relieved by memories of exotic landscapes in the ile Bour- bon and by study of the poets of India or of Greece. An ap- proach to pedantry is to be found in the habit of transliterating instead of translating classical names, as though Akhilleus were more appropriate than Achille, or Khiron than Chiron. This tendency becomes a superfluous idiosyncrasy when Cain is changed to Qain. Leconte de Lisle made prose translations, the literalness of which affected his style, of Homer, Hesiod, .iEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Theocritus, and Horace. His chief collections of poetry were the Poetries antiques, Poemes barbares, Poemes tragiques. His play, les Erinnyes, was an adaptation from ^Eschylus. Leconte de Lisle's fellow-native of the ile de la Reunion, Auguste Lacaussade (1817-1897), the translator of Ossian and of Leopardi, the author of poems about the scenery of his native island, has been overshadowed by the fame of the greater creole poet. It was Leconte de Lisle's friend Louis Menard (1822-1901) who initiated him to Hellenism. Menard was a brilliant and many-sided but ineffective person. He was versed in chemistry and discovered collodion, but got no credit because it was soon after independently discovered by an American with the similar name of Maynard; he dabbled in philosophy and reformed spelling and was an advanced socialist. Menard's works com- prise studies of Greek religion and philosophy, and moods including the Reveries d'un paien mystique. In Hellenic civilisa- POETRY 795 tion he saw perfect brotherhood, and his own personal philosophy was a stoic calm. It is not exaggeration to say that the aesthetics of the Parnassian school go back ultimately to him, and he has not inaptly been termed the Boileau of the brief classical renaissance. The Parnassians were a group of miscellaneous poets who reacted against the Romantic efEusiveness. They had no common programme, but represented a tendency toward objectivity and equilibrium in art as opposed to subjective extremes. For this reason they were dubbed "les Impassibles" and called by the irreverent the " travailleurs de Lemerre," with a pun on the title of Hugo's novel, because their works were published by Alphonse Lemerre, or "les fo-ormistes," after Beaumarchais's Bridoison ("la fo-orme, toujours la f6-orme"). Like every literary school of the nineteenth century they were ambitious to rival the earlier Romanticists in notoriety and be a new set of Jeunfes-France. They met at the home of the marquise de Ricard, mother of one of them, Louis-Xavier de Ricard (1843- 191 1), author of Ciel, rue et foyer, at that of the bohemian adven- turess Nina de Callias, in Lemerre's bookshop, or at the Brasserie des Martyrs. The invention of the name Parnasse was claimed by Catulle Mendes in memory of the seventeenth-century collections of poetry such as the Parnasse satirique. Others attributed it to the philologist Charles Marty-Laveaux who edited the poets of the Pleiade for Lemerre. Catulle Mendes as early as i860, when scarcely eighteen, had tried to start a periodical called the Revue fantaisiste, to which Gautier, Banville, and Baudelaire, among others, contributed. A little later Mendes's friend Ricard was publishing a struggling weekly called VArt, to advocate care and finish in hterature, in opposition to the loose style of Lamartine and Musset on the one hand and the colorless language of Ponsard on the other. Mendes persuaded Ricard in 1866 to transform the unsuccessful periodical into a collection or volume of poems to be pubUshed in parts by Lemerre under the name of Parnasse contemporain. 796 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE The contributors were thirty-seven in number and included such writers as Gautier, Banville, Leconte de Lisle, Louis Menard, Vacquerie, and Baudelaire.' The first Parnasse was followed by two other volumes in 1871 and 1876, but the first is the significant one. The Parnassians always denied that they had necessarily anything else in common than "une formule," and their union was one of protestation against the bombast of Hugo, the whines of Lamar tine, and the commonplaces of song- writers such as Beranger. They added that genius was no excuse for bad grammar. Thus the Parnassians were partisans of "I'art pour I'art," their works were intellectual rather than emotional, and their aesthetic theory approached sculpture or painting. The drum-major of Parnassus was Catulle Mendes (1842- 1909), a brilliant and erotic Jew from Bordeaux, Catulle son of a father named TibuUe. His early poems are not only clever imitations of the style of other poets, but often perfect in work- manship. Later he wrote, besides the Legende du Parnasse contemporain, miscellaneous criticism, and stories or novels whose very titles are meant to excite the senses. Toward the end of his life Mendes was largely occupied with the drama and in Scarron and I'lmperatrice came under the influence of Rostand. Glatigny, a "drame f unambulesque " (1906), was an attempt to immortalise his fellow-poet, the bohemian Albert Glatigny (1839-1873), a travelling actor and extraordinary improviser ' A list of the other contributors shows the membership of the original Parnasse: Heredia, Francois Coppee, Catulle Mendes, Leon Dierx, ' Sully Prudhomme, Andre Lemoyne, L.-X. de Ricard, Antony Deschamps, Paul Verlaine, Arsene Houssaye, Leon Valade, Stephane Mallarme, Henri Cazalis, Philoxene Boyer, Emmanuel des Essarts, Emile Deschamps, Albert Merat, Henry Winter, Armand Renaud, Eugene Lefebure, Edmond Lepelle- tier, Auguste de Chatillon, Jules Forni, Charles Coran, Eugdne Villemin, Robert Luzarche, Alexandre Piedagnel, Villiers de ITsle-Adam, P. Fertiault, Francis Tesson, Alexis Martin. — Among the contributors to the second Parnasse were Louis Ratisbonne, Ed. Grenier, Anatole France, Andre Theuriet, Jean Aicard, Georges Lafenestre, Gabriel Vicaire, Albert Glatigny. POETRY 797 in the moods of Theodore de Banville. Mend^s called him the ' ' original Parnassian. " The most objective poet in the whole Parnassian group was Jose-Maria de Heredia (1842-1905). He wrote one volume of sonnets, not brought together in book form until 1893, les Trophies. Heredia, half Cuban, half French, and impeccable in manner and dress, so that his less conventional associates called him o avOpairoi toS koo-juoC ("the man of the world"), was no less impeccable in his sonnets. The poems range over the history of civilisation and are highly wrought medallions from the past. They are dazzling pictures, and the closing tercet, to which the whole sonnet is subordinated, suggests a wider vision which the poem opens up. Heredia is one of the masters of French sonnet literature. Sully Prudhomme (1839-1907) began among the Parnassians, but, though he preserved the cult of plastic beauty, he became a philosophical poet. He is not, however, a mere rh3Tning metaphysician, and his verse ranges from the sentiment of le Vase brise to the deeper tragedies of thought. Sully Prudhomme had undergone in youth an unhappy love experience, and the rest of his recluse life was saddened by it, though he viewed love later in a calm mood of idealisation and saw in it rather sacrifice than selfish passion. His intellectual masters were Lucretius, Marcus Aurelius, Alfred de Vigny, and Pascal, which means that he was an observer of the philosophy of cosmic science, a stoical pessimist face to face with the "espaces infinis" yet conscious of the strength of the " roseau pensant." The austerity and remoteness of many of Sully Prudhomme's poems, no less than the rigidity of his prosody, prevent him from being a writer known to the many and veil the tenderness of his feeling. Unfortunately, some of his later writings do not keep a proper balance and are philosophy more than poetry. In 1902 he was awarded the Nobel prize. His chief writings are Stances et poemes, Solitudes, Vaines tendresses, la Justice, le Bonkeur, Testament poetique, and la Vraie religion selon Pascal. 798 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Frangois Coppee (1842-1908), whose name was Francis Coppee, came under the influence of the Parnassians through CatuUe Mendes, but he very soon deviated from their "impassibility" and was the exponent of sentiment. His first play, le Passant, reacted against the Offenbachian blague; his little pictures in verse of the pleasures, and more particularly the sorrows, of life among the poor of Paris made people call him derisively a "lakiste de faubourg," as though he were an equivalent of the Lake School in city life, and portrayed the Idiot Boys, the Goody Blakes, and Reveries of poor Susan of the Paris working quarters. In this respect Coppee is a Realist; in the descriptive parts of his city elegies he preserves the training in prosody received from contact with the Parnassians, but he has the Romantic sentiment of sympathy for those who undergo the trials which his own youth had experienced. His merits are a vividness which makes his poems useful documents and a clever use of the pathetic or pseudo-pathetic rejoinder and conclusion. His chief collections of poetry were the Reliquaire, les Intimites, les Poemes modernes, les Humbles, les Recits et les elegies, Arriere saison, les Paroles sinceres, etc. Poems such as la Greve des forgerons and la Benediction contain a dramatic element which counterbalances the lachrymose tendency and makes them suited for declamation. Toward the end of his life Frangois Coppee made an unfortunate incursion into politics in connection with the Dreyfus case. Eugene Manuel (1823-1901), who be- longed to a slightly older generation than Coppee, was also a poet of sympathy and patriotism. Henry Cazalis (i 840-1 909), who usually wrote under the name Jean Labor, was a physician whose training led him to realise the insignificance of life, and whose interest in Eastern literatures, in Buddhism, and in Omar Khayyam made him the portrayer of majestic pessimism in the poems of I'lllusion, so that he is one of the most significant of the Parnassians. An earHer writer, Mme Ackermann (1813-1890), was no less a pessimist, but her pessimism had a little more vindictive- POETRY 799 ness, which some might call a touch of feminine spite against the cosmos.* The inevitable reaction came against the Parnassians and the commonplace muse of Coppee. In the mid-eighties the cry arose among obstreperous innovators that poetry was either too impassive and objective or too philistine in its simplicity, while the Hugoesque Romanticism was played out. These innovators were apt to be of the long-haired eccentric type, and partly as a pose they reverted in the direction of Baudelairian morbidness and Uterary compUcation. The introduction written by Gautier for an edition of les Fleurs du mal, comparing Baudelaire's style to that of the decadence of the late Roman empire, seemed 1 Among the minor Parnassians must be mentioned: Albert Merat (1840-1909), a poet of Paris scenes, who committed suicide in old age from mere spiritual loneliness amid new Uterary generations; Leon Valade (1841-1883); Louis Ratisbonne (1827-1900), translator of Dante; Gabriel Vicaire (1848-1900), the poet of that district of France called la Bresse (Emaux bressans) and author in 1885, with Henri Beauclair, of the Dili- quescences d'AdorS Floupette, a famous collection of parodies of the decadents, just as the Parnassiculet contemporain (1866) of Daudet, Paul Arene, and G. Mathieu had been a no less famous skit on the Parnassians. Other poets were Joseph Autran (1813-1877), author of poems of seafaring and rustic Ufe; Josephin Soulary (1815-1891), through his cult of form, espe- cially in the sonnet, in many ways a precursor of the Parnassians; Amedee Pommier (1804-1877), who had almost as much verbal skill as Theodore de Banville though less renown, a poet of satire, parody, and burlesque, as in his Enfer directed against those who have reduced hell to a state of mind; Edouard Grenier (1819-1901); Andre Lemoyne (1822-1907), a poet of landscapes; Armand Silvestre (1837-1900) who, after composing charming poems as a young Parnassian and follower of Banville, became in after life a writer of indecent novels and short stories for the daily press; Paul Arene (1843-1896), a clever journalist and miscellaneous writer in prose and verse. We class as chansonniers Pierre Dupont (1821-1870), the bard of the farmer and ploughman, and Gustave Nadaud (1820-1893), author of Je ne verrai jamais Carcassonne and creator of the character Pandore in les Deux gendarmes, who ratifies all that his superior says: "Brigadier, repondit Pandore, Brigadier, vouff avez raison." 8oo A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE appropriate to a period in which the expression "fin-de-siecle" was becoming common, as though the approaching end of the nineteenth century was to mark the close of a civilisation. People spoke, too, of Byzantinism in memory of the fall of Con- stantinople. So the jeunes, as they were called, dabbled in over-ripe poetry expressed in the contorted language charac- teristic of an over-civilised and hence moribund literature. They were too often poets of neurotic city life who knew little or nothing of true nature, who haunted the cafes and the brasseries. For a short time the decadents were merely a party of protest, without any definite mark except the eccentricity which the Frenchman always assumes to scandalise the bourgeois. Soon the theory of Symbolism was devised and the decadents and Sym- bolists appeared as one party, though such was the individualism of these latter-day Romanticists that each man was really a law unto himself. In general. Symbolism was a method of evocation or of double suggestion, somewhat akin to tendencies more familiar to English poetry, whether in the Lake School or the pre-Raphaelites, in which an object is thought of in terms of another linked with it by some bond of union which the poet descries. We have seen in France a logical Symbolism in Alfred de Vigny, and even Leconte de Lisle occasionally let a suggestion of personal feeling be shown in some poetic figure. But the Symbohsts got their method chiefly from Baudelaire who used a great deal evocation and the correspondances of varied sensations, and through him they go back to Sainte-Beuve and the poems of Joseph Delorme, such as les Rayons jaunes.^ ^Edmond de Goncourt says in his diary in 1889: "Les decadents, quoiqu'ils descendant un peu de mon style, se sont tournes contre moi." This refers partly to the "ecriture artiste." Similarly, in a brief biographical sketch of Paul Adam we read: "Son premier ami de lettres fut Robert Caze, le romancier de FUle d soldals et de Grand'mtre, qui peu d'ann6es plus tard devait si malheureusement trouver la mort dans un duel survenu a la suite d'une polemique litteraire. Robert Caze etait alors celui des POETRY 8oi Symbolism differs from allegory, which had had such favor in France, in being infinitely more fluid. Where the allegory of the Roman de la Rose or of Mile de Scudery was a personification of qualities or a consistent parallelism. Symbolism vaguely hints at partial likenesses or is a composite of different suggestions or a string of mixed metaphors. Take, for instance, the sym- bolism of Albert Samain's graceful description of the soul: Mon ame est une infante en roBe de parade Dont I'exil se reflete, eternel et royal, Aux grands miroirs deserts d'un vieil Escurial, Ainsi qu'une galere oubliee en la rade. Aux pieds de son fauteuil, allonges noblement, Deux levriers d'Ecosse aux yeux melancoliques Chassent, quand il lui plait, les betes symboliques Dans la foret du rgve et de I'enchantement. The Symbolists, then, proposed to replace thfe objective de- scriptions of the Parnassians and to react against the materialism of the Realistic novelists by the reintroduction of ideas. But these ideas could be, and more properly were, indeterminate, and their effect, as opposed to the plastic art of the Parnassians, was that which music produces, or as Verlaine puts it in his Art poetique: Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise Ou ITndecis au Pr6cis se joint. Hence the Symbolists always compared their art to music; they were usually ardent Wagnerites and maintained that poetry, like music, can suggest different thoughts or s}Tnbols to different people. Moreover, its meaning ought not to be clear • on the jeunes ^crivains naturalistes sur qui Ton fondait le plus d'espoirs. Paul Adam rencontra chez lui une pl6iade de poetes et d'artistes que la ceI6- brite devait accueillir plus tard: Henri de Regnier, Jean Moreas, Francis Viele-Griffin, Jean Ajalbert, J.-K. Huysmans, Camille et Lucien Pissarro, Raffaelli, Signac, etc. Ce fut du salon d'un romancier naturaliste, disciple prefere d'Edmond de Goncourt, que partit le mouvement litteraire qui allait devenir le symbolisme." — Marcel Batilliat, Paid Adam. 8o2 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE surface. The next step was an endeavor to do away in prosody with the regular beat of verse and to replace it by vague rhythm and by rhymes that were scarcely more than assonance. Thus all rules disappeared, the poem was reduced to the indetermin- ateness of melodious sound in a "psychic" instead of a syllabic verse, and for the first time writers in numbers used the irregular vers libreA The school represented the undoing of French art and the last stage of late Romantic impressionism. The Symbolists were not particularly numerous, ■ though they were noisy and eager to establish reviews such as la Plume in which to air their theories. Some seriously thought that they were renovating the theory of poetry. Others probably saw the humorous side and rejoiced, as the heroic Romanticists of 1830 had done, in the chance for new fumisteries or practical jokes on the conventional. Adolphe Rette (b. 1863) saw what was comic in his own symbolism and expressed it in lines which might be the burlesque interpretation of the soul, where Samain's lines are serious. They show how much the material of Symbolism was a literary mosaic, influenced by nebulous Northern topics, such as strange princesses, mysterious forests, peacocks, swans, or the wonder-world of Grimm's fairy tales: Mon ame est un velin que hante Tout un peuple bariole: Melusine, Aude, Violante Et Mab au rire constelle; Puis encor — fantdmes qu'enleve Un Eros chevauchant un bouc — Quelques Lilith, deux ou trois Eve: 7 am a little copy-booh. ' Poets, ignorant or neglectful of the spirit of French verse, tried all kinds of innovations: a Peruvian, Delia Rocca de Vergalo, began to write poetry without capitals at the beginning of the lines; a Pole, Marie Krysinska, boasted of acclimatising the vers libre, though Jules Laforgue and Gustave Kahn are more rightly considered its initiators, and the American Stuart Merrill was more true to Walt Whitman than to Boileau. POETRY 803 Elfe blanc, toi nixe mechante, Et toi kobold scandalise Par leur allure equivalente, Et toi, promise a mon baiser, Fleur oil la lune a mis sa seve, Enfant des djinns bleus, Lalla Rookh, Illustrez un songe soeve: / am a little copy-book. As time went on and the jeunes became middle-aged, their literary attitudes grew less rabid : the Symbolists generally got over their mistiness and became, on the whole, like other people, though their intellectual and metrical debauch left some traces in their poetry. By the new century the school had quite disintegrated.! The deities of the decadents were Verlaine, Mallarme, and to a minor degree, ViUiers de ITsle-Adam and Huysmans. The life of Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) was a tragedy: the alliterative parallel of Verlaine and Villon is constantly made, he compared himself to Poe, and a comparison with James Thomson, author of the City of Dreadful Night, springs to one's mind. Absinthe and evil passions made Verlaine sink from comfort to destitution, a quarrel with the poet Arthur Rimbaud,^ who was the passion 1 The Symbolists maintained, as usual, that their poetry implied a return to life. "C'est un retour a la nature et a la vie, tres accentue, puisqu'il s'agit pour I'ecrivain qui veut creer, de se consulter lui-meme en sa propre intelligence, au lieu d'ecrire d'apres une tradition livresque, qui est le plus souvent, pour les debutants de toutes les epoques, la tradition mise a la mode par les demiers succes." — Kahn, Symbolistes et decadents. They sometimes argued that their individualism was social or universal. Gustave Kahn, in the same book, puts it in the style of preciosity by saying that the poet "ne fait au fond que syllabiser son moi d'une fagon assez profonde pour que ce moi devienne un soi, c'est a dire I'ame de tous." 2 Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) was a wanderer like Verlaine, but destined to greater prosperity, since before his death he had become a colonial trader in Abyssinia. He made a fleeting passage through poetry, and his bizarre works cause him to be looked on as one of the precursors of the decadents and Symbolists. His most famous poem is the Sonnet des voyelles, attribut- 8o4 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE and nightmare of his life, caused his imprisonment in Belgium for eighteen months, and his last years were spent in oscillation between the caje and the charity hospital. Yet Verlaine probably came nearer to genius than any other poet of his time. Totally lacking in equilibrium and self-control, he in turn wrote lewd poems and verses permeated with devotion. He began as a Parnassian, but gradually passed to subjective ironical or senti- mental verses, of which the melancholy is expressed in a vague and half formless metre appealing above all to those who thought poetry needed dislocating. The influence of Baudelaire and the intimacy with Rimbaud led him to make poetry a sort of versified music, the lulling flow of which were to suggest the emotion. Without doubt his slothfulness encouraged these lapses from the orthodox labored prosody. Verlaine's chief works were the Parnassian Poemes saturniens, the Fetes galantes, the transitional poems la Bonne chanson, Romances sans paroles, Sagesse, Jadis et naguere. The poems of his last years, often erotic babblings, represent the decline of his genius. Verlaine is a pre-Symbolist. Stephane MaUarme (i 842-1 898), professor of English in a Paris lycee and translator of Poe, was the object of apotheosis by the young Symbolists. He was pre-eminently the poet of the obscure and "abscons" and deliberately veiled his thought so successfully that his few verses are probably the most unin- telligible ever written in French, even outstripping Maurice Sceve and the rketoriqueurs before that poet. Yet MaUarme actually began as a Parnassian. His poetry reaches the inde- terminateness of music and is but rhythmic sound. Mallarme's best known work is VApres-midi d'unfaune. ing colors to the different letters and illustrative of color audition. Ver- laine gave posthumous fame to another poet, Tristan Corbiere (1845-1875), author of the Amours jaunes, whom the new school professed to admire because of his inchoate verse, his melancholy life, and his consumptive's death. Charles Cros (1842-1888), author of monologues and of le Coffret de santal was also admired by the Symbolists for the strange quality of his small collection of verse. POETRY 80s One of the best and least freakish of the Symbolist poets was Albert Samain (1858-1900), though he died too soon to give his full measure. He tended to unite a Northern symbolism with Southern subjects and came closer than most of his fellows to the older art of Chenier. His chief works were le Jardin de I'lnfante, les Flancs du vase, and Polypheme, a tragedy. Henri de Regnier began much in the same way, but he has outKved the Symbolist school. The chief theorists of Symbolism were Gustave Kahn (b. 1859) who emphasised the vers litre; Charles Morice (b. 1861), whose Litterature de tout a I'heure heralds the poetry of "synthesis" in the form of abstraction, dream, and symbol; Rene Ghil (b. 1862), a follower of Mallarme's eccentricities, who sets forth in his Traits du verbe an incoherent theory of verbal instrumen- tation, and with a great pretence of science purports to show the harmony of poetry and music. The poems of Ghil have often an astonishing look, with blank pages, or irregular lines beginning at random on the sheet with or without capitals.^ A small revolt from the Symbolists was led in the early nineties by Jean Moreas, followed by Raymond de la TailhMe, Maurice du Plessis, Hugues Rebell, Ernest Raynaud, and Charles Maurras. This was the so-called "Ecole romane frangaise." Jean Moreas (1856-1910) was a Greek named Papadiamantopoulos, which name he exchanged for a geographical patronymic from the Peloponnesus or Morea as more amenable to French pronuncia- ' Among the minor Symbolists were Jules Laforgue (1860-1887), whose matter and manner may be summed up in his line: "Ah! que la vie est quotidienne!" or his laments on the "etemullit6" of the world; Ephraim Mikhael (1866-1890); the Americans Stuart Merrill (b. 1863) and Francis Viele-GrifEn (b. 1864). Then there are the writers of the Belgian literary revival, led by CamilleLemonnier(b. 1845), and for the most part Symbolists: Emile Verhaeren (b. 1855), impressionist, interpreter of Ibsen and Wagner, called a spasmodic or "paroxystic" poet; Georges Rodenbach (1855-1898), poet and novehst of sleepy Flemish cities, such as "Bruges la morte"; Max Elskamp (b. 1862); Andr6 Fontainas (b. 1865); Albert Mockel (b. 1866). Maeterlinck belongs rather to the history of the drama. 8o6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE tion. He entered at first fully into the Symbolist movement. Then he declared the necessity of returning to the Romanic tradition as against Northern mistiness and wrote verses in imitation of those of the Pleiade, reviving archaic terms in a very artificial manner. Finally, renouncing whimsical experi- ments, he showed himself a genuine poet by returning to the traditions of his fellow-Hellene Chenier and professed to rescue French verse from the aberrations which had followed the advent of Romanticism. His chief works were le Pelerin passionne, les Cantilenes, les Syrtes, les Stances, and the play Iphigmie. The "jeunes" contained enough freaks and mystifiers ("fu- mistes") to give an opportunity for mockers to enjoy themselves and to allow Max Nordau to accuse the whole movement of expressing a form of degeneration. The cultivation by some writers of naif modes of expression or of popular ballad refrains and metres was called childish and half-witted, and the allitera- tive tendency, drawn from the English, of such a writer as Stuart Merrill seemed to recall, along with other devices, the excesses of the late fifteenth century. None the less, the Sym- bolist movement had, through its normal representatives, good effects: it opened certain possibilities for a prosody tending to become rigid and fossilised through the Parnassian cult of form or timidity in trying anything new. And by emphasising the sense of mystery it saved poetry from falling into a common- place rehash of versified morals and metaphysics, or banal descriptions of life such as those of Coppee. An interesting, though minor, manifestation of the late nine- teenth-century poetry is what may be called the school of Mont- martre, consisting chiefly of chansonniers.^ Its membership 1 It is an interesting evidence of the local flavor of Paris that the differ- ent quarters have had their characteristics. The individuaUty and fasci- nation of the bohemian and artistic Montmartre is well known, as it is expressed, for instance, in Gustave Charpentier's opera Louise, and joins hands across the river with the student spirit of the Latin Quarter. Fran- cisque Sarcey, the dramatic critic, would comment on the presentation of an Odeonplay as being too "rive gauche"; that is to say, heavier and slower POETRY 807 was a varied one of clever and irresponsible cafe haunters, some Symbolists, some belonging to a set calling themselves the Hydropathes and meeting in a brasserie of the boulevard Saint- Michel. Rodolphe Salis set up a hterary cabaret in the beginning of the eighties on Montmartre, to which he gave the name of le Chat noir in memory of Poe and Baudelaire, and it was not long before the hill, the "butte sacree," was sprinkled with bohemian, artistic, and literary taverns. The "gentilhomme" Salis and his set manifested thq usual disdain for the bourgeois, dubbed the "epicier, " and the Chat noir had its tiny theatre and newspaper. The result was a grouping of minor poets who sang or declaimed their works, and who developed a common tradition.^ Their songs were sometimes cheerful, sometimes than one would expect to see at a theatre on the boulevards of the right bank. The parochialism of the quarters is illustrated by Gustave Kahn {Symbolistes et decadents) when, speaking of the early days of the Symbolist movement, he says: "Tout cela un peu bousingot [cf. p. 663], mais ce n'est la faute de personne, si les ideas nouvelles germent dans les cerveaux jeunes, et que la jeunesse est un peu rive gauche [i.e. immature]. Lutece et les Deliqiiescences [cf. p. 799] sont tres rive gauche et pour cela fort in- completes comme document a consulter. Car enfin, il y a deux rives. Ces jeunes gens ne s'en doutaient pas trop, et I'un d'eux, Stanislas de Guaita, a donne la note exacte d'un certain etat d'esprit, quand, apres avoir enumere dans une preface a un volume de vers, tons les nouveaux poetes existant a sa connaissance, doutant de son universalite il termina en disant: il y en a peut-etre d'autres, mais je ne les connais pas; en tout cas, ils ne viennent pas a men cafe." The modern underground railways are destroying the individuality of the Paris quarters, and Montmartre is chiefly a show place of vice for foreigners. 1 Chansonniers pleins d'irreverence Envers les pouvoirs etablis, Bardes hautains et mal polis, De qui deja I'exuberance S'affirmait chez les imprimeurs Et sous la voute odeonesque; ' Sur la galere chatnoiresque Nous etions quatre-vingts rimeurs. » The galleries of the Odeon theatre, with their booksellers' stalls. 8o8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE lugubrious, more frequently than not off color, but always sarcastic, lampooning the government and social conventions. Among the poets of Montmartre have been Emile Goudeau (1849-1906), author of les Fleurs de bitume; Jules Jouy (1855- 1897) who died insane, one of the creators of the chanson macabre; Victor Meusy (b. 1856); Maurice Mac-Nab (b. 1856); Fursy (Henry Dreyfus) (b. 1866), a specialist in chansons rosses; Xanrof (L6on Fourneau) (b. 1867); Jehan Rictus (Gabriel Randon) (b. 1867). The taverns are still numerous on Montmartre, but for the most part their glories have departed and the enter- tainments are apt to be, as at the music halls and cafes concerts, monotonous revues or embryo musical comedies, in which two chief characters, the compere and the commere, marshal an array of satellites who crack jokes and sing songs about important people and events. The two most significant figures of literary Montmartre have been Bruant and Rollinat: Aristide Bruant (b. 185 1), who directed the Cabaret du Mirliton, wrote his songs and monologues in argot or slang, which will be as unintelhgible to future generations as Villon's johelin. His subjects are drawn from the scenes of misery and vice of the congested city {Dans la rue and Sur la route) . Maurice Rollinat- (1846-1903), who even antedates the founda- tion of the Chat noir at which he was one of the performers, C'etait un melange hermetique Des prodnits les plus discordants; Symbolistes at decadents Y coudoyaient I'art romantique; De Krysinska les yeux charmeurs Y representaient le beau sesque.i Sur la galere chatnoiresque Nous etions quatre-vingts rimeurs. Ahmand Masson. I Sexe. POETRY 809 was the one who most nearly approached genius. By a strange contrast this poet of city vices had a strong love for the country, especially for his native Berry and the haunts of his fellow-writer, George Sand. Yet he outdid the horrors and Satanism of hjs masters, Poe, Baudelaire, and Barbey d'Aurevilly. The N^roses are a wild collection of poems on disease and corruption, nor is it to be wondered at that RoUinat died insane: Quand on aura f erm6 ma biere Comme ma bouche et ma paupidre, Que Ton inscrive sur ma pierre: — "Ci-git le roi du mauvais sort. Ce fou dont le cadavre dort L'affreux sommeil de la matiere, Fremit pendant sa vie entidre Et ne songea qu'au cimeti^re. Jour et nuit, par toute la terre, II traina son coeur solitaire Dans I'epouvante et le mystere, Dans I'angoisse et le remord. Vive la mort! Vivelamort!" CHAPTER XVI PHILOSOPHERS, HISTORIANS, ORATORS, CRITICS, AND JOURNALISTS A STRIKING phenomenon of the nineteenth century has been the secession from literature of science after science. In the sixteenth century the poet and scholar were one, in the seventeenth century Cartesianism was a subject for discussion in literary drawing-rooms, in the eighteenth century astronomy or natural history belonged to literature, in the early nineteenth history was linked with the historical novel and with sociological Utopias. Subjects successively branched off until, with few exceptions, as in the systems of Taine and Renan, philosophy, history, natural history, astronomy became purely technical. A bond of connection remains, however, when philosophical theories penetrate literature indirectly or in 'a popularised form: the theory of evolution, influenced both by empirical theories of Positivism and by the idea of the processus of historical growth, again ventures into criticism in its application by Brunetiere to literature. Or the theories of Claude Bernard are employed with false analogies by the "Naturalists," and a literary generation prides itself on being "scientific." In philosophy the two great antithetical currents of Positivism and Idealism or Spiritualism remained long in presence. Posi- tivism, continuing the general tendencies of Comte, took hold, through the influence of writers like Taine, of the popular fancy, or with experimentalists of the type of Theodule Ribot (b. 1839) of men of science. Ribot, professor at the College de France, director of the Revue philosophique, and author of important works such as I'Herediie psychologique, was the initiator in France 810 PHILOSOPHERS, HISTORIANS, AND ORATORS 8ii « of the study of pathological manifestations and similar appHca- tions of experimental psychology. Among the spiritualists Cousin long remained the traditional and conventional authority, and Paul Janet (1823-1899) inherited some of his influence on education. Elme Caro (1826- 1887) was the popular orator for ladies and professor at the Sorbonne, of the Catholic party, as well as a distinguished literary critic. Felix Ravaisson (1813-1900), author of a thesis on VHahitude and of a Rapport sur la philosophie en France au XIX^ siecle, ranked high among the idealistic technical philosophers. Etienne Vacherot (1809-1897), as the radical wing of the spiritu- alists and a former disciple of Cousin, was a more technical writer than Taine in most of his books on the relations of metaphysics and science, and shocked people by his views on the non-existence of God except as an ideal without reality. The Pere Gratry (1805-1872), an Oratorian, was Vacherot's great opponent in the controversy on God. When Cousin's Eclecticism was exhausted, thinkers who did not want to go over to materialism found refuge in a new critical philosophy or neo-Kantism. Jules Lachelier (b. 1832), a man of practically one book expounding a teleological theory of in- duction, has had far greater influence than his literary production implies on French university students and normaliens. Renan called him "I'inventeur du mouvement tournant le plus sur- prenant des temps modernes depuis Kant." The builder of the most complete system was Charles Renouvier (1815-1903). Certain significant parts of Renouvier's philosophy fitted in with the liberal reaction in the third Republic against monarchy and imperialism, and his anti-CathoHc attitude satisfied the Protestants and agnostics who, without being materialists or perhaps even Darwinian determinists, were eager to laicise the French government and education, and who for many years after the resignation of Mac Mahon had an influence in pohtics and education greater than mere numbers would lead one to suppose. Renouvier's actual school was, however, a small one. 8i2 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE • The philosophy of Renouvier was a neo-Kantism. He called it first a neo-criticism, later a new monadology, and finally Persorialism, as different and sometimes mutually inconsistent parts of his doctrine were uppermost in his mind. He undertook to pursue the method of Kant to even more logical extremes. Not only he wished to bring thought back to Kantian accuracy from the vagueness of the post-Kantian romantic metaphysical pantheists, Just as once before Descartes had given a method to France, but he wished also to do away with some glaring inconsistencies of Kant's philosophy, such as Kant's restoration for all real purposes of the noumenon, the thing-in-itself {Ding an sich), which criticism had just determined to be unknowable. Renouvier undertook to get rid of the absolute and to confine himself to pure phenomena, thereby borrowing much from the traditions of the English thinkers of the school of Hume down to those of a French positivist like Comte. He saw, therefore, only positive phenomena or representations, but he bridged the chasm which had worried philosophers ever since the creation of the Cartesian dualism by arguing a double aspect to each of these representations, that which represents and that which is repre- sented; Just as, to use a figure which Sainte-Beuve employs in another connection, a hollow is the thing most like a hump. Renouvier thus created subject-object monads which unite in themselves by a sort of Leibnitzian harmony, as different aspects of the same things, what had been looked upon as distinct subjects and objects. The representations of Renouvier are linked together by relations or categories and do not depend upon a substance or soul, but upon what is at most a law of personality: this is all we can assert that the "ego" amounts to. As to other selves, if we cannot prove their existence, we cannot prove their non- existence, and we have a right to assume them. Such a method might seem to lead to the ultra-phenomenalism of some of the rationaUsts, but Renouvier, nevertheless, by denying the idea of the infinite, found place in his philosophy PHILOSOPHERS, HISTORIANS, AND ORATORS 813 for the unifying principle of causation and, unexpectedly, for the ideas of free-will and of an absolute beginning. This people may be justified in calling God, and so Renouvier did ultimately caU it. Himself an opponent of Catholicism and of revealed religions, he encouraged the French libres penseurs to adhere to the reformed religion; not necessarily because of belief in the tenets of Protestantism, but in order to avoid creating new and weak churches. His ethical principles were stoical in tendency and rested on justice rather than on sjmipathy or mercy. Renouvier expressed his views, besides by his books, in the Critique philosophiqtie and the Annie philosophique, old and new. He was succeeded in the direction of the latter by his chief disciple Frangois PiUon (b. 1830). Sociology, a science created by Comte, has become a favorite study, but many sociologists have been influenced by the English evolutionists of the Spencerian school. Emile Durkheim (b. 1858) conceives society as a real "entity" with its own laws; Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904), of a more imaginative and even poetical temperament, made the bases of society rest on the individual and in his studies emphasised the intuitive side. His most important writings are connected with the theory of imitation and with criminality as a form of social psychology. Tarde was an opponent of Lombroso's theories of a criminal type and considered crime as a social, not an anthropological result. A transition from philosophy to sociology is also found in Jean-Marie Guyau (1854-1888), a stepson and first cousin once removed of Fouillee, by whose "idees-forces" he was somewhat influenced. Guyau's well filled life was ended by consumption at the age of thirty-three, yet he had already made himself by his writings an influence among young men, who sought to con- ciliate evolutionary science with ideaUsm and to avoid the eccentric egotism of many contemporary assthetes in literature and art. To Guyau life is instinct with a vital principle which tends toward solidarity in place of an isolated development. Life is social by essence, and the obligation of morality rests on 8i4 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the principle "je puis, done je dois"; its sanction depends on the freedom or autonomy of one's own action, and morality becomes the disinterested love of humanity. Future religion will be an irrehgion of liberty, with a negation of dogma and no supernatural sanction, and will consist in solidarity with the cosmos. Art is the aesthetic of beauty blossoming amid social sympathy. Guyau was the poet-philosopher of idealistic irre- ligion or religion without dogma and of an attempt to merge socialism and individualism. The moralists of the last two generations have, to an important extent, dealt with questions of education and have been rather statesmen or pedagogues than observers such as La Bruyere. Ximenes Doudan (1800-187 2) ^^^.s, indeed, been compared with La Bruyere, but it was partly because, like him, he was a private tutor; in the De Broglie noble family. The Swiss professor Henri-Frederic Amiel (1821-1881), burdened with Schopen- hauerian pessimism, is known by his posthumous Journal intime, revealing a soul made ineffective through excessive introspection. On the other hand, action is born from the spoken or written words of those who tried to make the third Republic rest on the firm foundation of education. Victor Duruy reorganised secondary instruction under the Empire and encouraged higher studies by the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. Jules Simon (1814- 1896), the former secretary and follower of Victor Cousin, having become minister of Public Instruction and pursuing the dreams of Duruy, began the educational reforms which have been so important since the fall of the Empire, particularly as to free and obligatory instruction. Jules Ferry (1832-1893) and Paul Bert (1833-1886) advocated in Parliament reforms such as the laicisation of instruction. Octave Greard (1828-1904), university teacher and vice-rector of the Academy of Paris, did not confine himself to problems of superior instruction, but was an authority on primary and secondary teaching as well. One of the accomplishments of the third Republic has been to moderriise instruction, even at the great risk of injuf- PHlLOSOPHEiRS, HISTORIANS, AND ORATORS 815 ing its cultural classical value, and to transform the university from a home of easy pubhc lectures to a resort of international scholarship. In history few writers, apart from Taine and Renan, are really men of letters. Taine has been the ideal of many historians for the authority of his utterances, but they have tried to pursue a more scientific and unbiassed method. Erudition has, more- over, replaced style. Speciahsation has become so great that the important histories of general subjects now tend to be co- operative and collaborative. The most original historian, next to Taine and Renan, was Fustel de Coulanges (1830-1889) who came from the school of Guizot. To him, as against Taine and Renan, history was an end in itself, a pure science. His literary production is divided into two halves. During the first period, of which la Cite antique is the best known work, he endeavored to give large historical syntheses. They are based, it is true, on the careful study of original documents, but by his intentional neglect of what his contemporary writers had said, he exposed himself to the charge of incomplete knowl- edge and of bias. In answer to these attacks he changed his own method and became a no less painstaking but more ingenu- ous methodical plodder. Fustel de Coulanges's sole ideal was truth and accuracy. In the latter respect he was liable to error because of his lack of equipment as a palaeographist. But he is the t3rpe of historical sincerity, especially when even the slight tendency to synthesis due to the early German historians had given way to the cult of the text. His chief work, apart from the Cite antique, was the Histoire des institutions politiques de Vancienne France. Among the other important historians of the second half of the nineteenth century there was Gaston Boissier (1823-1908), a somewhat miscellaneous writer, studying the spirit of different ages or individuals, such as the times of Cicero, the Roman Empire, or great men and women of French literature. Albert Sorel (1842-1906), a pupil of Taine, dealt with the Franco- 8i6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Prussian war, the Orient in the eighteenth century, or Europe and the French Revolution. Albert Vandal (1853-1910) wrote on the times of Napoleon. The leading contemporary historians, Aulard, Langlois, Lavisse, Monod, and Seignobos are scholars primarily and men of letters in a subsidiary sense. During a large part of the second Empire political oratory was crushed under a benevolent Csesarism, and the bar and the pulpit were the chief outlets for eloquence. Mgr Felix Dupan- loup (1802-1878) and Cardinal Lavigerie (1825-1892) were great names in the Catholic Church, and the latter tried to help the policy of Leo XIII to bring the Church and the Republic together. Later, the P. Henri Didon (1840-1900) tried the dangerous task in France of uniting liberalism and Catholicism. Athanase Coquerel (i 795-1868) was one of the founders of^ liberal Protestantism. The P. Hyacinthe Loyson (b. 1827)^ a monk excommunicated for the philosophical liberalism of his views, declared that he remained no less a Catholic and tried to organise, without much success, a Catholic Gallican church. Political eloquence under Napoleon III was at first chiefly confined to a small band of opposition orators known as "les Cinq," but the policy of "I'empire liberal" after 1867 made speaking more general. Jules Favre (1809-1880) and Ernest Picard (1821-1877) were the consistent foes of the Empire; Emile Qllivier (b. 1825) went over to the "empire liberal" and was at the head of the ministry near the outbreak of the Franco- Prussian war. Eugene Rouher (1814-1884) was the chief spokesman for the emperor. In the early days of the third Republic Thiers, as head of the government, defended his policies before the National Assembly. Buffet (1818-1898) and the due de Broglie (1821-1901) were conservative leaders. The great tribune of the generation was Leon Gambetta (1838-1882), a characteristically voluble south- em orator. He opposed the Empire, took a leading part in the patriotic resistance during the war, and devised under the Republic the policy of opportunism, of general advance by adap- PHILOSOPHERS, HISTORIANS, AND ORATORS 817 tation to circumstance. Gambetta was noted for picturesque phrases summing up an idea or a situation: "le clericalisme, voil^ Tennemi," or "se soumettre ou se demettre." But his general style was loose and flabby, except as the projection outward of his physical vigor. A greater constructive states- man than Gambetta was Jules Ferry, though he did not possess the former's readiness of speech and was the victim of much poUtical injustice. Charles de Freycinet (b. 1828), the "little white mouse, " has been the great trimmer of politics. Challemel- Lacour (182 7- 1896) had the temperament of a philosopher of pessimism and was a scholar in politics. Mgr Freppel (1827- 1891), bishop of Angers, was a clerical leader in the Chamber of Deputies. At the end of the nineteenth century, during the turmoil of the Dreyfus case, when France was rent in twain by dissension, the nation was saved by the patriotism of Rene Waldeck- Rousseau (1846-1904), a former political lieutenant of Gambetta, who had, however, left politics to become a leader of the bar. The, secret of Waldeck-Rousseau's power lay not merely in his intellect, but in his ability to remain cool amid the frenzied attacks of political opponents. In carrying out his policies he was sometimes less rigid than in formulating them, and they were dragged from his control by more radical politicians. The history of criticism is closely linked . with journalism, inasmuch as most critics found expression in newspapers and reviews. Others belonged to the university world. Sainte- Beuve was the leader of his generation, Theophile Gautier the unwilling slave of the pen. Paul de Saint- Victor (1825-1881) was a Romantic enthusiast; Edmond Scherer (1815-1889) on the contrary, was the cold analyst of intellects, generally lacking in enthusiasm, and prone to interpret life and literature in a tone of pessimism; J.-J. Weiss (1827-1891) was a journalist and dramatic critic somewhat fickle in his attitude; Emile Mont6gut (1825-1895) made English literature known in France; and the vicomte Eugene Melchior de Vogiie (1848-1910) by his book 8i8v A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE on le Roman russe in 1886 revealed Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and set the vogue in France of Russian literature and its religion of human suffering. He was also important in initiating the moral movement called " neo-christianisme. " Among dramatic critics Francisque Sarcey (1828-1899), a brilliant normalien turned lecturer and theatrical reviewer for the Temps, long enjoyed an already passing fame. Sarcey dwelt too determinedly on the formal structure of a play and admired a "piece bien faite," even though its climaxes were claptrap and melodramatic. He was the mouthpiece of the average-minded theatre-goer of bourgeois temperament, tending to follow rather than to lead, jovial and good-natured in his criticism, and known to all Paris as "Uncle Sarcey." The most noteworthy critic of his generation and ranking in general prominence next to Sainte-Beuve, though at some distance from him, was Ferdinand Brunetiere (1849-1906). After failing as a student to obtain admission to the Ecole normale and therefore never holding a degree higher than the insignificant baccalaureat, Brunetiere lived to see himself lecturer at that school, member of the Academy, director of the Revue des Deux-Mondes, and the most talked of critic in France. He represents the dogmatic school, as opposed, to his rivals of the impressionistic tj^e, such as Jules Lemaitre and Anatole France. He was a successor of the Nisard tradition in glorifying the seventeenth century. But he strengthened his judgments by comparison with other European literatures, so that his classifi- cations rest on a broader foundation than the age of Louis XIV. Nevertheless, Brunetiere's first-hand knowledge of modern literatures outside of his own appears to have been small, and his familiarity with, for instance, Italian literature seems to rest largely on the manual of De Sanctis. Brunetiere early gained admission to the pages of the Revue des Deux-Mondes, with the conservatism of which he was in sympathy, and he proceeded to overturn many false gods, beginning with the Naturalists whom he flayed in le Roman PHILOSOPHERS, HISTORIANS, AND ORATORS 819 naturaliste. The acerbity of his manner and his numerous controversies made him countless enemies, and though most of his victims deserved their fate, one cannot help occasionally sympathising with the vanquished and deeming the victor lacking in magnanimity. Yet Brunetiere was not tilting against windmills at random. His theory was a consistent one and was a method of objective criticism for the classification, explanation, and judgment of works, particularly as expressions of general ideas. He did not seek pleasmre in a book or value it because of "sweetness" or "charm," but because of its worth in ideas. Consequently, the great men to him were those of the seventeenth century as the exponents of reason, and among them such writers as Boileau, or Bossuet. Though Bninetiere was at variance with the philologists in valuing a work for its content and not for its linguistic problems (he knew little of the Middle Ages), and at variance with the historians in valuing it for its own meaning instead of its chrono- logical significance chiefly, his critical method was not a static one and soon acquired an historical form, though of a peculiar kind. He undertook to apply the methods of science then in vogue to the study of literature and to trace the evolution of literary types, thus posing as a follower of Darwin and Haeckel. The problem was, then, to take the different genres, such as criticism itself or lyrical poetry in the nineteenth century, and show how the apparent entity was moulded and transformed. The method involved a certain amount of selection on a priori or artificial groimds to meet the theory and the arbitrary omission of some names for the reason that, though intrinsically interesting, they were unimportant in the evolution. It some- times meant undue emphasis as well as neglect. In consequence, Brimetiere's critical method is already becoming obsolete. On the other hand, when Brunetiere ,studies an individual author or a single period, and when he avoids unwise generalisa- tions based on insufiScient knowledge, he is unequalled in eliciting 820 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE a true interpretation. He occasionally skilfully traces the filia- tion of ideas between one generation and another, and picks out the influences which illustrate his evolutionary theory. In the history of the Renaissance Brunetiere made some interesting discoveries and proved the real value of certain neglected or misinterpreted personalities. Consequently his work on the sixteenth century is suggestive, but not definitive. In the study of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries he is unequalled, though his attitude toward the latter period is rather hostile; in the nineteenth century his prejudices sometimes impair his Judgment, but he is everywhere a doughty opponent. He fought not Hke a knight of chivalry, but as some doctor irrefraga- hilis of Scholasticism. Brunetiere's lack of sympathy with radicalism and his respect for tradition led him to become a constantly greater intellectual conservative and to draw closer to the CathoHc Church. During and after the Dreyfus ailair he argued the bankruptcy of science, the necessity of belief. He suffered in consequence persecution from an anti-clerical government which dropped him from his position at the Ecole normale when it was merged into the university and prevented his selection as professor at the College de France. But his militant temperament was unbroken. Brunetiere's style corresponds to his character: it is vigorous and effective, yet ponderous and clumsy in its actual expression. His sentences are often long and involved, broken up with qui and que, as was frequently the practice of seventeenth-century writers, and his favorite shibboleths, such as "que si" and "comme qui dirait" are often irritating. Brunetiere's works include many volumes of essays collected under general titles as Etudes critiques, Histoire et litterature, Questions de critique, etc; studies in application of his theory, like V Evolution de la critique, les Epoques du theatre franqais, and I'Evolution de la poesie lyrique en France au dix-neuvieme siecle. He wrote also an important one-volume manual of French hterature and the first volume of a larger Histoire de la litterature PHILOSOPHERS, fflSTORIANS, AND ORATORS 821 classique, dealing with the sixteenth century. Others among his miscellaneous titles were various Discours academiqties and Discours de combat and a study of Balzac. Under the benevolent despotism of the second Empire the press was successfully gagged and velleities of opposition were sup- pressed. The Moniteur Universel, which included among its contributors Gautier, Merimee, and Sainte-Beuve, was one of the leading papers and a semi-official organ. The Constitutionnel also had Sainte-Beuve on its staff. Louis Veuillot led the ultra- clerical party in the Univers. The Journal des Debats was the sober and intellectual opposition newspaper with brilliant con- tributors forming a sort of club under Edouard Bertin and including Renan, Taine, Ernest Bersot (18 16-1880), Emile Des- chanel (1819-1904), Saint-Marc Girardin, Jules Janin, Silvestre de Saojr (1801-1879), Edouard de Laboulaye (1811-1883), JohnLemoinne (1815-1892), and Prevost-Paradol. These vari- ous writers belonged for the most part to the university as well as to journalism. Prevost-Paradol (1829-1870), one of the most brilliant, after long opposition to the Empire rallied to it just before the war, was appointed minister to Washington, and committed sxiicide there. During the earlier part of the Empire Emile de Girardin's Presse and the Steele were democratic organs. In 1861 an older sheet, the Temps, which had lapsed, was revived by Auguste Nefftzer. It became and has remained, with the Debats, the chief organ of conservative republican and solid opinion in France, heavy and respectable, with Protestant inclinations, not widely read but much quoted. In 1863 the first "journal a un sou," the Petit Journal, dubbed the "journal des concierges," was founded, an event which was destined to revolutionise journalism and deteriorate the quality of the gen- eral press. Toward the end of the Empire the Journal de Paris, under J.-J. Weiss and Edouard Herve, drew to itself some of the opposition strength. After i860 the press had greater liberty. The freedom from stamp tax enjoyed by literary papers favored their growth considerably. Chief among those of the em- 82 2 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE pire were the Figaro, la Vie parisienne, and le Nainjaune. The Figaro appeared in 1854. It was founded by Jean-Hippolyte Cartier (181 2-1879), calling himself H. de Villemessant, who by his choice of collaborators gave it a smart tone, part literary, part social, part theatrical, which it has generally tried to main- tain, on the principle that Paris is more important than the rest of the world and that the rest of the world is chiefly interested in the small doings of Paris. The Vie parisienne, of Marcelin (Emile Planat), a still more smart and semi-literary weekly, began in 1862. Aurelien Scholl's Nainjaune (1863) was literary, satirical, and political. At the end of the Empire the foul-mouthed and vituperative Henri Rochefort, the marquis de Rochefort- Lugay become proletarian, started the Lanterne, a series of pamphlets of vehement .political satire, but not yet the daily Lanterne which he founded in 1876. Journalism played an important part under the third Repub- lic. In the Republique franqaise Gambetta and his aids, includ- ing Eugene SpuUer, advocated opportunism; Edmond About was the life of the XIX^ Siecle; the Soleil under Edouard Herve upheld in a dignified manner Orleanist monarchical principles; Paul de Cassagnac was a virulent Bonapartist in le Pays and VAutorite; the Evenement and the Voltaire had a transitory influence;- Emile de Girardin fought the government of Mac Mahon and the threatened coup d'etat of May 16, 1877, i^ ^"^ France; the Gaulois, an old sheet reanimated by Arthur Meyer, tried to be a pseudo-Figaro and the organ of the Faubourg Saint- Germain. Meanwhile the Petit Parisien imitated the success of the Petit Journal as a "journal a un sou." In 1880 Clemen- ceau preached radicalism in the Justice; Rochefort used filthy language in the Intransigeant ; and the Gil Bias made a specialty of risque stories and pornographic literature. The Republique franqaise, was the organ of Jules Meline and the protectionists. The Matin, the military and anti-foreign Eclair, the Journal ranged from the simple gathering of news to a pretence of literary journalism. PHILOSOPHERS, HISTORIANS, AND ORATORS 823 The Dreyfus agitation between 1895 and 1899 stirred French journalism through and through. The Figaro lost much of its power by advocating the revision of the verdict of the first court- martial which had condemned Dreyfus. The anti-Semitic troubles were largely fomented by Edouard Drumont and la Libre Parole, in which he called for the massacre of Jewish Capitalists and of Jews in general. The Echo de Paris was the organ of the "nationalist" society called the Patrie franqaise. The Assumptionist fathers preached a Holy War in the various local editions of la Croix, the "bonne presse." More violent partisans of justice than the timid Temps and Debats were Clemenceau's Aurora, in which Zola published his famous letter "J'accuse, " and transitory sheets like les Droits de rHomme. Still later Jaures's socialistic Humanite, Henri Berenger's Action, and the Petite Republique have catered to the "advanced" political parties. The royahst Leon Daudet in the Action franqaise, the anti-military writer Gustave Herve, and the Ishmael of journalism, Urbain Gohier, have been talked about. During the last few years French journaUsm has deviated more and more from any claim to literature. Only the Temps and the Debats maintain a semblance of literary and dramatic criti- cism; the other numberless dailies content themselves largely with paid puffs and log-rolling notices; the feuilletons tend to be more and more sensational and cater to the concierge as much as to the bourgeois. The reviews have been in proportion no less numerous. The Revue des Deux-Mondes still leads in dignity and ponderousness followed by minor companions such as the Revue de Paris, the Nouvelle Revue of Mme Adam (Juliette Lamber) , the old clerical Correspondant, the new Mercure de France, the mouthpiece of the literary unconventionals, the weekly Revue bleue, and others, too numerous to mention. PART VI THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CHAPTER I THE TENDENCIES THE opening decade of the twentieth century seems, like so many corresponding periods in previous ages, to mark in some respects a new beginning or a new state of affairs. The most important force affecting it was probably the Dreyfus case, remote from literature as that political dispute seems to be. It had as much influence in producing internal cleavages as a civil war, and the victim was only a symbol in a much greater contest. The begiiming of public discussion over Alfred Dreyfus was at the very end of 1894, when this Jewish captain, attached to the general staff, was erroneously and 'illegally convicted by a court-martial, upon evidence supplied to the court without the knowledge of the defendant's counsel, and sentenced to depor- tation to French Guiana for supplying information to the Ger- man military attache at Paris, a crime really committed by one Major Esterhazy. It was not " long before doubts began to arise in the minds of some who, Hke Colonel (afterward General) Picquart, had witnessed the trial or who, like Scheurer-Kestner, became interested in it, and vigorous efforts were made to secure a retrial. Unfortunately the matter was dragged into politics, until Dreyfus's name became chiefly a rallying cry.. Though anti-Semitism had hitherto not been very violent in France, prejudice against the Jews had grown up owing to jealousy of their financial influence, and this feeling was fanned into hate by Drumont with his book la France juive and his paper la Libre Parole. There was also jealousy against the Protestants for having acquired an intellectual pre-eminence in 827 S28 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the universities beyond their numerical importance. On the other hand, the army was to an undue degree ofi&cered by men brought up in clerical schools, as a result of the Jesuits' usual poHcy for obtaining power. In the present case they had the post of vantage in objecting to reopen a "chose jugee" and held the "nationalists" or jingoes in control by calling attacks on the court-martial attacks on the army and the national prestige. Thus the Dreyfus case divided France into two camps, often splitting families and turning relations into enemies. One party included the liberals and partisans of justice, among whom was a band of much ridiculed "intellectuels," writers and university professors, who were taunted much as the " scholar in politics" has been laughed at in America. The other party was made up of the conservatives, the clericals, the jingoes, and the -unthinking majority, dazzled by the tirades of the generals and morbidly afraid, as Frenchmen of all times have been, of traitors. The socialist party, which was at first not disposed to interfere, finally sided with the Dreyfusites, and in time (1906) breyfus was rehabilitated, though the long agony, includ- ing the Zola trial and the second condemnation by the Rermes court-martial in 1899, produced bitternesses which time is only now healing. The result of the trouble was to make religious discussion more prominent than ever. The Dreyfusites, as anti-clericals, o» acquiring control began to make reprisals, and the advanced radicals and socialists, who had occupied an important tactical position, reaped the chief advantage. The disestablishment of the Church followed and a displacement of the centre of gravity of French politics toward what is called the Left, the radical- socialists and the socialists. Hence, besides religion, sociaHsm or other forms of the labor question have been the great subjects under discussion during the decade, and the whole intellectual life has been influenced by them. Moreover, the election of Pius X to the papacy and his new policy of obscurantism made the religious problems, such- as Modernism, more acute. 'THE TENDENCIES ^29 The growth of syndicalism and the advocacy of strikes have made social problems no less prominent and, according to the xisual French tendency, efforts have, been made to work out general principles for them. For, not only should we by this time be convinced of the Frenchman's aptitude for general ideas, but ^philosophy is mo're systematically taught even in French rsecbhdary ischook than in England or America, and Fr&ch ;pliilosQphy 'is repfesenteci by active teachers and peda- Igq^i^. The (direction 'of 'French 'thought during the last few jjs^fs.has bte'eh 'toward '"scieritific rather than literary ideals and 'towarci coirective or 'sociological impulses. Pure literature has sune'red. For -oiiee schools have split up and disorganised, so that -it is '^difficult to indicate a dominating principle in bellds- lettres. A good deal has been contributted to this end 'thfbugh the all- pervading influence of a new philosophy somewhat dissolvent of standards of taste. This is Pragmatism, so closely connected with the name of the late Professor William James of Harvard, 'whose reputation in France is almost as great as it is in his own country. Pragmatism, which is largely the result of dissatis- faction with science for not solving the problems it planned to master and not bringing us any nearer to the key to the un- known, is a revolt against rationalism and intellectualism in general, against Hegel and the cult of science which in France prevailed after the decline of Cousin's eclecticism. It is a return to a form of the old pre-Socratic doctrine of Protagoras that "Man is the measure of all things," and justifies the use as truth of that which at any time seems best to explain the difSculties. As a philosophy of values which pay, it is a kind of utilitarianism transferred from ethics to epistemology, but in its Americah form it remains, as its name implies, practical and scarcely ven- tures to penetrate beyond the changes of what may perhaps long remain unknown. And as a frank acceptance of shifting standards and a philosophy of flux, Pragmatism could be made to account for varying social and mental phenomena. Hence 830 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE we find it taken as an explanation for many French tendencies of the last decade, and most of those which are not directly connected with it proceed from principles indicative of a general spirit of the times akin to it. The great contemporary equivalent of the pragmatic tendency in France is the philosophy of Bergsonism, though M. Henri Bergson (b. 1859) denies any direct influence upon him of the philosophy of William James. Certainly there is a kinship between a philosophy like Pragmatism, in which the criterion is a practical one and truth is made and remade, and a philosophy of flux and metaphysics of constant change. Both are a revolt against the positivistic and scientific inteUectuaHsm which, like all other systems, had failed to solve the problem of the relation of mind and matter and had, in so many people, led to scepticism. So novel and unexpected is Bergson's solution that, particularly since the publication of his Evolution creatrice in 1907, his enthusiastic admirers have compared his revolutionary influ- ence in thought to that of a new Kant, himself a Copernicus of pure thought. Bergson's desire is to bring together the two antithetical elements of the world, those of life and matter, and unite them in a single synthesis. For that reason the terms used to charac- terise the various tendencies of philosophical discussion meet in his system in a jumbled reconciliation of freres ennemis. In so far as he believes that the ultimate reality is psychic, he is an idealist; in so far as he believes that knowledge can grasp reality and overstep the intellect, he is a realist. In fact, one of the chief differences between Pragmatism and Bergsonism is the pretence of the French philosophy to grasp the absolute itself. Bergsonism goes beyond criticism and imdertakes to annex the acquisitions of science, whether biology, psychology, or geology, into a new philosophy explaining their changes. It is hostile to the old doctrine of substances, essences, or "things in themselves." It sees everything in constant change or evo- lution. But this evolution is neither an idealistic and logical THE TENDENCIES 831 Hegelian antithesis of ego and non-ego coalescing in a superior synthesis, nor an external Darwinian mechanism, in which matter is the victim of its environment. It is a theory of vital- ism, in which the changing act of evolution is hfe itself — a creative evolution, moreover, which produces not only the intellect but things, and thus does away with the dualism which has troubled philosophers from Descartes until now. The stages of Bergson's development are seen in his three chief works, the Essai sur les donnies immediates de la conscience, Matiere et memoire, and VEvolution creatrice. He began as a mathematician influenced by Boutroux's book De la contingence des lots de la nature, the theories of the mathematician H. Poin- care on the relativism of the laws of science except as conventions, and Renouvier's attacks on Kant's supra-temporal and change- less ego. He thus became convinced of the insufficiency of mathematical, abstractions, as in geometry and mechanics, and the tendency to conceive time in terms of space. Time seemed to him not divisible into static sections, but to be a real psycho- logical experience of duree reelle and a dynamic process. The geometrical static world, has no reaUty. Next, taking his stand in consciousness, he attacked the clearness of mathematics and the control. of intellectualism, and asserted that all is activity and that, consciousness creates the. world. Finally, in VEvolution creatrice Bergson gave the metaphysics of his system: The essence of things is a great creative and life- giving impulse .(etow vital), which is mind or consciousness, and of which knowledge is only a part. This creative evolution produces, on the one hand the intellect, on the other hand things, which are inverted conditions of the resultant of one force. Everywhere, except in man, the vital impulse has, in varying degrees, become stiffened and congealed into forms and mecha- nisms. In knowledge there are two elements, intelligence and instinct. Intelligence, possessed by man alone, enables him to jjium.ph over mechanism, but has impaired his instinct, which is a divergent direction of the impulse of life. For instinct 832 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE', does not precede intelKgence, but goes with it and is more pro-, found, so that the intellectual Hfe is a smaller and really less significant part of the whole. Instinct, makes us grasp and, through intuition, lay immediate hold upon what static science cannot understand: the interdependent, non-divisible, ever transformed, ever "becoming" reaUty, lying not in space but in continuous time. Of this reality the intellect can acquire only temporary and artificial cross-sections, which deal with rela- tions and not reaUties, and which are, moreover, retrospective and not progressive as hfe really is. The categories which men use in reasoning are less accurate than the direct instinct of ants. Thus the essence of Bergson's philosophy is the cult of the instinctive. It is a poetic metaphysics- which answers a strong though passing feeling of our time, but it can make no appeal to those who are unwilhng to deny the pre-eminence of reason. It is a theory for the emotionalists, the impulsivists, in a word for those who represent the tendencies of neo-Romanticism. It is also a theory of pure relativism. The ease with which Bergsonism adapts itself to nearly all the active tendencies of today has made it extremely popular among those interested in new religious, ethical, social, political, or aesthetic questions. Ev6n the socialists talk of the Man ouvrier akin to the elan vital, and advocate strikes, not merely for the purpose of extorting better terms from the bourgeoisie, but as manifestations of the deep intuitions of solidarity among the proletariat. Ethically, it has encouraged those who, during the period of anti-clericalism accompanying the disestabUshment of the Church, were looking for a Justification for lay morality. Here it falls in with the tendencies of unconscious pragmatists. The French lay sociologist gets over moral and religious insta- bility by the idea of a social organism which may impose its own sanctions, whether of law, public opinion, conscience, or reason: Durkheim, an extreme positivist, argues that God is society, and society furnishes to morals all the support one gets from revealed religion. THE TENDENCIES 833 The orthodox Catholic Church, welded to immutable dogma, could not, of course, be expected to welcome Pragmatism. Indeed, long before the new philosophy became fashionable, it had practically committed itself, under the influence of Leo XIII, to neo-Thomism. This was a revival of Scholasticism, in the form given to AristoteUanism by Saint Thomas Aquinas, the greatest theologian of the Church. But it did not remain rigidly mediaeval: it tried, on the contrary, to admit scientific thought and progress, even including laboratory methods. Belgium, among French-speaking countries, has been a home of neo- Thomism, which has flourished particularly at Louvain. In France itself it was difficult to uproot Descartes and Cousin from the seminaries, but neo-Thomism has had active defenders. The movement has been upheld by the active Revue Thomiste. Other thinkers, not always more acute, but at any rate more venturesome, have introduced into their theories ideas akin to Pragmatism and have incurred corresponding papal displeasure, which extends in the case of the ex-abbe Loisy even to excom- munication. Their tendencies are often lumped together under the name of Modernism, though the name is not accepted by all, and their views have different shades. Religious restlessness had been somewhat prepared in the last years of the nineteenth century by a passing phase of "Ameri- canism." This was a movement toward liberalism in practical morals, emanating originally in the United States from the teachings of Father Hecker, founder of the Paulists, and desirous like Lacordaire of reconciling the Church and democracy,. Ameri- canism emphasises those features which have always been prominent in modern American religious life: activity and good works, with less stress on dogma. It spread to France in the early nineties, partly by the influence of Archbishop Ireland of St. Paul, who had himself been educated in France and harked back to the political liberalism of Lamennais and of Monta- lembert. But the movement was frowned 'on by the Vatican. Moreover, a doctrine preached by a democratic priest in frock- 834 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE coat and trousers was hardly likely to prosper in a country which lays stress on ceremony and conceives a bishop only with robes, violet stockings, and an amethyst ring. The abbe Klein, the abbe Lemire, and a few laymen were, rightly or wrongly, reckoned among those who stood for the Americanist tendency. Catholic liberalism scarcely remained as an active force except in the small group called le Sillon, led by Marc Sangnier, which was finally condemned by Pius X in 1910. Though French Americanism dwelt upon action, it expressed a feeling of restlessness which had its counterpart in thought in the significant Modernist movement of the early twentieth century. The modernist, like the pragmatist, is a relativist, and his desire is to adapt dogma to scientific progress by various theories of transformism. Bergson confines liimself to a spiritu- alistic metaphysics, but the modernist approaches the problems of history and seeks for an answer. He exemplifies a method, an orientation, not a static creed, and he looks back to Cardinal Newman, the liberal who wanted to keep religion in touch with life, as the great precursor of Modernism within the Church. He likes to consider dogma, not as an immutable doctrine, but as a varying body of lessons which represent the different needs and aspirations of the ages. To be a Catholic for the modernist is to repeat the creed, not merely as a person confined to one time, but as one who forms part of a great Church which has lived through centuries of change and in its plasticity is responsive to thought and expressive of each generation. The modernist accepts the whole past of the Church, good or bad. Some modernists incline to a symbolic Christianity and a religion without dogma, just as there was no dogma in the religion of Christ's day. To speak of a Messiah coincided with the feelings of the Jewish prophets, to speak of a Logos satisfied the neo- Platonists; our age has a right to use some other term and speak of a Saviour or Revealer. ' Some of the tendencies of the modernists may be even more technically expressed, though they occasionally overlap. There THE TENDENCIES 835 is the attitude of the fideist, allied to Bergson and connected with Poincare, though not identified with either. This is the feeling that science is arbitrary and that the laws of nature are only recipes for gaining control over phenomena. Hence the necessity of faith to establish what reason cannot prove. In so far as Pascal in the seventeenth century beUeved that God was "sensible au coeur, non a la raison," he was a fideist. The fideist, such as Edouard Le Roy, is not hostile to science, but considers it subordinate to faith. The immanentists, such as Maurice Blondel and the P. Laberthonniere, think that religion is not external but immanent, that the answer to this inner feeling is the fact of God, that it is awakened and developed in us by living the dogma in its evolution and experiencing even the contradictions of Christ's own life. The symbohst is a true pragmatist in that he thinks that the objects of faith are varying symbols and approximations of religion. So Loisy considers Christ less' the representative of a doctrine than the initiator of a religious movement which has evolved in harmony with civilisation. To Loisy the resurrection of Christ is not a matter of history but of faith, God is the author of the Bible only as he is the architect of St. Peter's or Notre-Dame, and the fourth Gospel expressed what Professor James might have called a "variety of religious experience." Important theologians, philosophers, and historians among the French modernists, some of them laymen, some of them priests, have been the abbe Loisy, Mgr Duchesne, Mgr Batifiol, the abbe Houtin, the P. Laberthonniere, Maurice Blondel, Georges Fonse- grive, Edouard Le Roy, and Wilbois. Most of them have been cautious enough to make exceptions safeguarding CathoHc dogma. The abbe Loisy and the abbe Houtin have gone farthest. The abbe Alfred Loisy (b. 1857), a former pupil of Mgr Duchesne, took the lead in the renovation of exegesis. One of the first sensations was created by an article of Mgr d'Hulst on the biblical question in the Correspondant in 1893. The new heresy was at first called concessionism, inasmuch as the bibUcal 836 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE critics were said to be making concessions to rationalism. After- ward it was named Loisysm before receiving the more general term of Modernism. An article by Edouard Le Roy in la Quinzaine in 1905, Qu'est-ce qu'un dogme? carried the discussion from history into philosophy. A decree of Pius X {Lamentabili sane exitu) in 1907 condemned sixty-five modernist propositions, and an encyclical (Pascendi dominici gregis) followed soon after. The discussion over Fogazzaro's // Santo was an episode of Italian modernist controversy, and the fate of Father Tyrrell in England is well known. In the sphere of education the last decade has not been one of uncontested progress, though the problems dealt with by the French are merely those which other nations have encountered. In secondary instruction a strong effort has been made to "modernise" education by reorganising the curriculum and putting the modern languages on a level with the classics. By the so-called reform of 1902 a number of "cycles" or courses' of study were introduced, with the immediate consequence of almost wiping out Greek and of greatly diminishing the study of Latin. Under pretext of making education more democratic and popular, utilitarian and 'practical, the literary and human- istic studies were pressed into the background. The result is already appearing in complaints by teachers and examiners that students no longer know how to write their own language, and the "crise de I'enseignement secondaire" is a frequently dis- cussed topic. A similar unrest appears in higher education and one also hears of the "crise de la Sorbonne." Undeniably the third Republic has been the salvation of the universities. Not only has it reorganised the local faculties into independent universities, but it has supplied buildings and apparatus. Thus the spirit of the professors has changed: instead of aiming to be merely popular lecturers before mis- cellaneous audiences, they have become eager for the advance- ment of learning. The result shows itself in the great increase in the number of foreign students who resort to Paris. THE TENDENCIES 837 But the charge is also brought that the scientific spirit is undermining literary culture. Unfortunately the discussion is complicated, as it is not in this country, by religious and political considerations, in the rise of which the Dreyfus case played again, a not inconsiderable part. The courageous " intellectuels " ■who, for reasons of intrinsic justice, were the first and foremost partisans of the revision of the trial were largely professors of the Sorbonne, the Ecole des Chartes, the scientific schools of Paris, and also of the provincial faculties. The political condi- tions which split France in two tended to draw them to the anti- clerical party and to side with the advanced groups of radicals or even of socialists, to the laboring men and the proletariat having no tradition of culture, and to whom education is merely a means of making a living. Education in a democratic state, it was said, was very properly going to the people. Greek and Latin were -of less value than sociology. Moreover, humanistic subjects, especially Latin, the language of the priests, came at least unconsciously under the ban, because they suggested the wordy rhetorical studies which had been cultivated by the Jesuits and had so long controlled education: aesthetic apprecia- tion, the "critique admirative" of literature was indissolubly bound up with a system which went back to the opponents of Pascal. Finally, the new methods were ultimately borrowed from Germany and, though MM. Liard and Lavisse have been their chief sponsors and promoters in France, they had an earlier advocate in Renan (intellectual aristocrat though he was), the bugbear of the clericals; consequently their representatives were anathema to the latter and to the obstreperous bands of royalists and reactionaries, who broke up lectures by the intel- lectual internationalists in the name of the recently beatified Jeanne d'Arc.^ All this helps to explain why the French uni- versities tend to join hands with the proletariat. They were •A"cainelot du roi," manifesting against a professor of the Sorbonne, might not analyse his feelings so fully, but the various causes are inter- mingled. 838 A raSTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE encouraged in this tendency by a radical government which liked to have free speech all on one side and which, by adminis- trative decree, legislated Brunetiere out of his office at the Ecole Normale because he was considered too reactionary.* The results have not, it is afl&rmed, been encouraging to the friends of true literature, which consists neither in historical study. alone, nor in mere superficial aesthetic appreciation. Not only do students arrive at the Sorborme- ill-trained in their own language, less familiar than formerly with the Latin on which it is based, and encouraged to slovenliness by the numerous grammatical, mistakes {tolerances) which are no longer counted ^gainst thjem, but many of the teachers do not react against this state, of affairs. They are no longer interested in the judg- ment and valuation of an author or his work: it reminds them too much of the somnolent university life during the second Empire. Their single method is the German historical • one. This is applied, not only to history itself whence it has banished generalisation and synthesis in favor of the collecting of docu- ments, but also to literature. The methods of the German medisevaUsts have spread from the Ecole des Chartes and from those trained under the Germans to the study of all literature. The cult of the card-catalogue, the collecting ol fiches or "ficho- , ^ The sincerity of the attacks on the Sorbonne is in part vitiated by the political animus of the critics. They belong largely to the noisy band of royalists forming the group of the Action- franqaise. and having as mouth- piece the newspaper of that name, organ of Leon Daudet, Charles Maurras, 9,nd Pierre Lasserre. In addition to their^ attacks on the scholarship of the university, they have sworn hatred against the Romantic school, because the Romanticists were, after the first period, for the most part liberals and republicans. They preach a return to what they call Classicism, but it is a neo-Classicism rather than the, true, seventeenth-century spirit.' The literary men of the Action franqaise, even wfeeni positivists, are "tradition- alists" of the type of Joseph da Maistre and use the. vituperation of Veuillot. Their political policy, based on the continued assumption of the guilt of Dreyfus, has four bugbears: Jews, Protestants, freemasons, and "meteques" or metics, i.e. new settlers in France, who are supposed not to inherit the national traditions. THE TENDENCIES 839 manie, " rages as violently in France as it does in America, and the French doctorate dissertations are becoming burdened with imdigested and indigestible material. The quahties of which the French were so proud, clearness, order, and precision in presentation, are now relegated to the background in favor of the tasks of the intellectual mechanic: catalogues, bibliographies, and critical apparatus. The new order of things, which has come about mainly in the last ten years, has its chief representative in Gustave Lanson, the most eminent living French professional scholar in the teach- ing of the history of modern literature. A significant instance of M. Lanson's own transformation is seen in his famous history of French literature. In the first edition, pubUshed in 1894, he devoted much attention to the thinkers of French literature and to the analysis of ideas. In the preface to the eleventh edition (1909) he regrets not having given more attention to writers "qui n'attachent de prix aux idees qu'en raison des faits qu'elles expriment et de la prise qu'elles donnent sur les faits." Fearful of departing from the historical method in his own case, and scien- tifically desirous not to deprive the student of the successive stages of his own thoughts, even when they have changed, he refrains from remodelling the text to any extent, and adds notes to indicate the variations of his opinions.^ In politics the first decade of the twentieth century has been marked by a progress to radicalism and socialism, though politicians on assuming responsibiUty have sometimes become more moderate. Among the orators or holders of office, Combes has been the modern Jacobin, Jaures the loquacious southerner wasting his great ability in demagogy, Clemenceau a Warwick of cabinets before becoming himself prime minister. Henri ' " Mais, dans les matieres de sentiment et d'opinion, il m'a paru qu'il serait dangereux de me bomer a substituer un jugement a un autre: il y aurait de quoi d^router les jeunes gens qui rencontreraient des affirmations diff^rentes, selon qu'ils prendraient cette 6dition ou I'une des precedentes. II m'a paru meilleur de leur montrer moi-mtoe en quoi j'ai vari6." 840 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Brisson has posed as the austere Roman, Alexandre Ribot has been the rigid moderate, the comte de Mun has been a good defender of the Catholic opposition, and Leon Bourgeois and Raymond Poincare have distinguished themselves. Aristide Briand, the socialist who carried through the separation bill, become later moderate, has the gift of Waldeck-Rousseau of remaining absolutely calm in the stormy tufeul't of debate in the Ghiiiiber of Deputies. In pure literature thdi^e is very 'little 'to 'record, and the 'terMericJ^ has beefi to the disintegiratidii k:^ lite'raty ischdols, ',partidulk!ril,;y in poetiry, without very oJia^ked individual works 'to 'i'epWce 'tridfh. At one time a great deal was heard about de'rtain new ^schools destined to replace the Parnassians or 'the Symbolists and to conceive a new relation of art and life: the Natufism (not Naturalism) of Saint-Georges de Bouhelier, the Humanism of Fernand Gregh, the Integralism of Adolphe Lacuzon. Of these writers, only Saint-Georges de Bouhelier is active in maintaining his individual shibboleth, and most writers have had to work out their separate salvation. The novel has languished: plenty of novels have appeared, but few will survive. Jean-Christdphe by Romain Rolland, which has been one of the most talked of and is planned to include ten volumes, is scarcely a technical novel. Anatole France, who in reputation stands head and shoulders above his contemporaries, cannot evolve a good plot in fiction and is driven to ironical apologues or semi-critical and satirical disquisitions. Some authors have shown talent in "writihg -up" political or social problems in the form of fiction: questions of socialism, militarism, clericalism, a number of which have only a passing inteirest. Others, under the pretext of pointing out moral evils, have continued to cultivate the vein of the Naturalists, though with less ability than Zola and Mau- passant and in such a way as to obliterate the line of demarca- tion between the pontiff and the pomographer (Charles-Henry Hirsch, Charles-Louis Philippe). Another fashion, encouraged by the success of Quo Vadis and of Pierre Louys's lascivious THE TENDENCIES 841 Aphrodite, has been the composition of stories of antiquity which, under the excuse of artistic reconstruction, replace the Romantic morbidness of Rene and Mignon by decadent vices, Antinous and Latin orgies, or exotic and curious loves (Eelicien Champsaur, Jane de la Vaudere). A more praiseworthy tendency has been the movement of "regionahsm," a feel- ing that the Hfe of Paris is not the only interesting one, and a desire to depict provincial life and local scenes. This continues the tendencies, though not the immediate influence of great masters like Ferdinand Fabre (Rene Bazin, Henry Bordeaux) . A distinct tendency seems traceable among certain writers, though often indirectly as much as by immediate contact, to the influence of Nietzsche. His writings were known early in France, at least by hearsay, and some of his books were soon translated and published by the firm of the Mercure de France, which caters to the non-academic in taste. Moreover, the anti- morahsm of Nietzsche was, in a way, akin to the scorn of phiUs- tine conventions of the Romanticists of 1830, and appealed to those in the Une of filiation from them. Another Romantic tendency has had a recrudescence since the vogue of Tolstoy and the Russian novelists: a sympathetic emotionahty and sensibility, sometimes carried to an extreme, as when Charles-Louis Philippe is led to call a woman of the street a "pauvre petite sainte." Add to this the not uncommon analysis of emotions, whether violent and overriding law and restraint, or testifying to lack of will power. This may take the form either of purported confessions or of technical novels (Andre Gide, Emile Clermont in Amour promts). So it may be seen that the lineage of Rousseau, Benjamin Constant, Senancour, Amiel, has its representatives today. The great difference between Romanticism and the neo- Romanticism of the twentieth century lies in the hterary setting. Mediaevalism is, of course, dead and is replaced by pictures of modem Ufe in often sordid and vicious environments. This is 842 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE partly the result of the passage through hterature of the Naturalists. Perhaps the most marked feature of the decade in literature has been the pre-emption of fiction and poetry by women. Into these fields they have carried an intense emotionality and sub- jectivity (Comtesse de Noailles). The reaction against restraint, a form of the modem emancipation of French women, has led some of them to extraordinary results, and the work of women has included surprising examples of internal and external nudity (Myriam Harry, Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Rachilde, Renee Vivien).! Women have done little of corisequence in the drama, which in spite of the increasing competition of cafes-concerts and music- halls, affords the chief outlet for the talent and ingenuity of French writers. In this genre, again, one fails to detect a new literature. The greatest success of the generation, Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), was soon shown by Jules Lemaitre to be, on the contrary, a return to old-fashioned procSdes. Clever writers of clever plays have been numerous, but as yet neither an Augier nor a Dumas fils has shown himself. Many of the writers have treated social problems, as the novelists have done (socialism, ' Lest this appreciation of contemporary literature be deemed unfavor- able and marked by what the French call "exotic judgment," it may not be , amiss to quote the literary journalist and reviewer of books for le Temps, M. Gaston Deschamps, on modern new works. Subjects: "La debauche d'egoisme, d'ibsenisme, de nietzscheisme, de neurasthenie, d'aboulie, et si j'ose m'exprimer ainsi, de 'maboulisme ' [imbecility] qui envahit les salons et les ateliers, la vUle et le th6itre, la vie et les livres." — Characters: "La categorie des impulsifs, des fous dangereux, des voleurs incoherents, des faussaires incoercibles, des banqueroutiers d6traques, des poHticiens devoyes ou des impStueux erotomanes dont la litterature d'imagination a vSritable- ment abus6 dans ces dernieres annees." [Le Temps, March 5, 1911). M. Deschamps's critical judgments are sometimes derided as superficial, but we have here a statement of fact. It is a crying shame that, with so many good things in their land to write about, the French should persist in injuring themselves in their own eyes and in those of foreigners, when they are often borrowing from foreigners in so doing. THE TENDENCIES 843 clericalism, finance, race antagonism, the relation of the sexes), and with the greater vividness which the stage permits. Yet so far as plot or psychology are concerned, they have given few new topics: the husband, wife and lover (the convention of bourgeois adultery) are as popular as in the days of the medieval fabliaux, and the climaxes are apt to be clever truquage. If we try to analyse the significance of the contemporary French drama we find that, aside from the smaller poetic cur- rent (Rostand, Rivoire, Zamacois), there are at least four ten- dencies: the social, the selfish, the morbid or neurotic, and the humorous or ironical. The first came into new vogue after the passing of Naturalism at the Theatre-Libre, when Antoine turned to foreign writers and Paul Fort and Lugne-Poe founded the Theatre de I'CEuvre. Symbolism had its period on the stage; Hauptmann, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky became familiar names, and philosophical, moral, social, and psychological ideas were more than ever developed in the actors' tirades: Brieux and Paul Hervieu in the first rank, Emile Fabre and others in a second, have shown how inefiicient human laws jolt in their workings and how unkind human nature causes suffering to others. This is the theatre which Rene Doumic designates as the "theatre de predication sociale." The selfish play is the modern equivalent of the Romantic rebellion against society. Assuming to be up to date by invoking Nietzsche, it passes over the Baudelairian pose of the last generation of being bold and bad in order to shock convention, and goes back, by means of the superman, above convention and better than society, to declama- tions reminding us of an exaggerated George Sand in favor of free love and the "droit au bonheur" (Pierre Wolff in le Lys, Romain Coolus in I' Enfant cherie etc.). The neurotic play serves no purpose except by dwelling on vicious instincts, to make life appear gloomy and human nature foul (Bataille, Bern- stein, Mirbeau).' These last two groups comprise what has '"Et I'auteur dramatique sait que la passion, I'ambition, la jalousie, I'envie la soif du lucre, ferment les ressorts eternals de I'activite humaine, 844 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE been termed the "thelltre mufle," a mujle signifying a cad. Finally, the ironical play ranges from good-natured satire of the times sprinkled with the latest Parisianisms, to the "moral nihilism" of some of Lavedan's comedies. que les puretes et les noblesses menent tout droit a la beatitude et qu'un etre lilial et contemplatif ferait un fichu personnage au theatre.'' — H. Bernstein, quoted by A. Brisson in k Thedtre, deuxieme serie. CHAPTER II THE WRITERS A SATISFACTORY classification of contemporary authors seems impracticable, and it is better to present them in alphabetical order. Nor can any list be exhaustive or satisfy everybody. The names comprised in the present chapter are, with some exceptions, chiefly confined to the novelists, the dramatists and the poets. All the members of the Academy have been included honoris causa, though it is well to remember that a fair percentage of the present Academicians are not primarily men of letters.^ Adam, Paul (b. 1862). Originally a naturalistic novelist, con- demned to fine and imprisonment in 1885 for Chair molle. Then he became a symbolist and was connected with symbolist reviews, le Symboliste, la Vogue, la Revue independante. Since the decline of Symbolism he has written all kinds of miscellaneous stories. Paul Adam is a chaotic, frenzied and voluptuous, as well as a prolific, writer. He has great wealth of imagination and rich- ness of imagery. He not long since visited America, discovering it, as somebody said, like a "Christophe Colomb presse." Among his many works are le Mystere des Joules, la Force, Basile ' It must be borne in mind that the scale of treatment, in this chapter, is out of proportion to the rest of the book. Many authors, now in the pubKc eye, will be forgotten as soon as dead, just as others are constantly springing into notice. It has not been deemed necessary to include writers who have earned a season's renown only, by winning one of the numerous prizes awarded in the French literary world. The inclusion of many obviously second-rate authors is justified in that they are often among the first met by the inquisitive foreigner. 845- 846 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE et Sophia, VEnJant d'Austerlitz, Vues d'Amerique, le Trust, le Rail du Sauveur. AiCARD, Jean (b. 1848). Member of the Academy; a south- ern poet and novelist, fond of writing about Provence. His most famous play, le Pere Lebonnard, won celebrity when taken up by the Italian actor Novelli. His novels include le Roi de Camargue, le Pave d'' Amour, Notre-Dame d' Amour. His recent stories, Maurin des Maures and I'lllustre Maurin, are humorous pictures of meridional character, something in the spirit of Daudet's Tartarin. Allais, Alphonse (1855-1905). Probably the most noted professional humorist of his day. Ancey, Georges, pseudonym for Georges Mathiron de Cur- nieu (b. i860). A dramatist who began at the Theatre-Libre, a cruel satirist. His best-known play, Ces Messieurs, portrays the underhanded influence of the clergy. Other works include: Monsieur Lamblin, I'Ecole des veufs, les Inseparables, Grand'- mere, la Dupe, I'Avenir, Athenes couronnee de violettes. Angellier, Augtjste (1848-1911). A poet much admired in academic circles, and himself a professor at Lille; author of an important prose study of Robert Burns. Baeres, Maurice (b. 1862). Member of the Academy. A writer who has undergone several transformations. He began among the groups of Latin Quarter "posers" including Moreas and Laurent Tailhade. Under the influence of Renan's dilet- tanteism and Taine's deterministic psychology and of a certain Romantic emotionahsm, he took up at first the attitude of the intellectual aristocrat and egotist, which has been called Bar- resism. This was a cult of self, which also included a delight in self-torture with emotional pin pricks. But, a native of Lorraine, Barres has always had a sentiment of patriotism made more intense at the sight of the lost provinces; so that, gradually taking up politics, he became a defender of "la tradition fran- gaise," a regionalist, a "professeur d'energie." He was also a "nationalist," being one of the first to use the term, and an THE WRITERS 847 anti-Dreyfusite. The unifying principle of his thought has, therefore, been termed Nationalism, defined as reaction against foreign barbarians, against foreigners in the social order, against barbarians in the intellectual life. To the Anglo-Saxon mind Barres bases his reasons too much on general principles to make them easily applicable to contingencies and become a ready guide. His works include: Sous I'ml des Barbares, Un homme libre, le Jardin de Berenice, Huit jours chez M. Renan, Unejournee parlementaire (play), Du sang, de la volupte et de la mort, les Dera- cines, VAppel au soldai. Scenes et doctrines du nationalisme, Au service de VAllemagne, le Voyage de Sparte, Colette Baudoche. Bataille, Frederic (b. 1850). Poet and professor in a lycee, who began as a village schoolmaster; writes particularly about family and academic virtues. Bataille, Henri (b. 1872). A dramatist of the ultra-deca- dent and morbid character, one of those influenced by Ibsen. He has great skill with lulling phraseology (he began with poetry), and a gift of psychological analysis, but he devotes his talent largely to unhealthy emotions, to subtile playings upon what is perverted without being openly indecent. Bataille is troublant. His chief plays are, Maman Colibri, la Marche nuptiale, Poliche, la Femme nue, le Scandale, la Vierge folk. Bazin, Ren£ (b. 1853). Member of the Academy. A novel- ist, particularly of provincial and rustic life. He began to write with a conscious desire to react against the brutal Naturalism in vogue at the time, and he has sometimes treated tragedies as great as those of the naturahsts without overstepping reserve. Bazin has not, however, sought the artificial idealism of George Sand's country stories, but has remained a realist. Occasion- ally he is unduly biassed by his CathoHcism, and, once or twice, he verges on the namby-pamby. His novel, la Terre qui meurt, describing the migration from the land to the cities, is one of the best works of contemporary French fiction. Other import- ant stories of Rene Bazin are : Ma tante Giron, Une tache d'encre, les Noellet, la Sarcelle bleue, Madame Corentine, De toute son 848 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE dme, les Oberle (the consequences to the Alsatians of the Franco- Prussian war), Donatienne (the downfall of a peasant woman transplanted to Paris), I'Isolee (on the religious question and the expulsion of the nuns), le Ble qui live. M. Bazin has written descriptions of travel in southern Europe. Beaunier, Andre (b. 1869). A journalist, critic, and novel- ist. Among his works may be mentioned: les Dupont-Leterrier (a story dealing with the Dreyfus case), la Poesie nouvelle, le Roi Tobol. Berenger, Henry (b. 1867). Novelist Q' Effort and la Proie), journalist and moralist, belonging to the group of free-thinkers. Author of I'Ame moderne, I'Aristocraiie intelleduelle, la Conscience nationale, la France intellectuelle. Bergerat, Emile (b. 1845). Son-in-law of Theophile Gau- tier ; novelist, dramatist, critic, poet (Banvillesque) and journal- ist (under the name of "Caliban" in the Figaro). Among his best-known plays are: la Nuit bergamasque, Plus que Reine, la Pompadour, a dramatisation of le Capitaine Fracasse. Bernard, Tristan, assumed name of Paul Bernard (b. 1866). Humorous and sometimes sardonic satirist of modern life; writer of stories such as the Memoires d'un jeune homme range, but especially of uproarious farces and comedies, such as V Ang- lais tel qu'on le park, Daisy and Triplepatte. Bernstein, Henry (b. 1876). A brilliant dramatic author, belonging to the same generation as Bataille; but where Bataille prefers the insidious method, Bernstein hkes violent and clap- trap, sometimes brutal, ways of shaking the spectator's nerves. He is as pessimistic as Bataille and as fond of wallowing in vice. Adolphe Brisson characterises his plays thus: "Pas un rayon de soleil sur ce fumier; dans ce cloaque, pas une fleur: ni la fleur de I'ideal, ni la fleur du sacrifice; partout le morne assouvisse- ment des appetits, le rut sans allegresse, la mort, le neant." His chief plays are le Detour, le Bercail, la Rafale, la Griffe, le Voleur, Samson, Israel, Apres moi. Bertheroy, Mme Jean, pseudonym of Mme Berthe-Corinne THE WRITERS 849 Le Barillier (b. i860). Authoress of historical novels of ancient life, vaguely reminding one of Bulwer's Last Days of Pompeii, but with a lyrical and flowery touch; la Danseuse de Pompei, la Beaute d'Alcias, les Vierges de Syracuse, les Delices de Manioue, le Colosse de Rhodes, le Mime Bathylle. Berteand, Louis (b. 1866). A professor and novelist. His writings include: la Fin du classicisme et le retour a V antique, and stories such as Pepete le bien-aime and I'lnvasion. BissoN, Alexandre (b. 1848). Author of exhilarating farces and vaudevilles, and of melodramas. Among his most success- ful light plays are le Depute de Bombignac, les Surprises du di- vorce, la Famille Pont-Biquet, le Controleur des wagons-lits, to which may be added the emotional melodrama la Femme X . . . Bl^mont, Emile (b. 1839). Early Parnassian poet and critic; has also written dramatic trifles. One of those who introduced Whitman and Longfellow to France. Bois, Jules (b. 1870). Novelist, dramatist, student of occult- ism and psychic manifestations; author of studies on le Satan- isme et. la magie. His most ambitious play, la Furie, in pedestrian verse, is a peculiar attemf)t to modernise Euripides and Seneca, by depicting a prehistoric Hercules fur ens influenced by occultism and magnetism, as well as by twentieth-century political theories. BoNNAito, Abel (b. 1883). Poet, author oi les Familiers, verses about animals. Bordeaux, Henry (b. 1870). Critic and novelist. In criti- cism a pupil of Bourget and of Taine, fond of psychological analysis. As novelist a psychologist as well, but not a describer of bric-a-brac, too, like the psychologist Bourget; a realist who has avoided pornography and the neurotics of Parisianism; fond of narrating lives and characters of his native Savoy in a calm manner, which the boulevard critic is apt to term heavy and provincial. None the less, a writer of distinction. Chief vol- umes of criticism: Am^s modernes, les Ecrivains et les mceurs; chief novels: le Pays natal, la Vie sans retour, la Peur de vivre, 8so A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE V Amour en fuite, le Lac noir, la Petite Mademoiselle, les Roquc- villard, les Yeux qui s'ouvrent, la Robe de laine, la Neige sur les pas. BoTREL, TH:fioDORE (b. 1868). A poet of Brittany. BoucHOR, Maurice (b. 1855). A former adept in the Riche- pin method of scandalising {Chansons joy euses), later an idealist and a symbolist, a sort of mystic pantheist and exponent of views set forth in religious "mysteries" and poems; now devotes him- self to social work in popularising literature among the working classes, and to the encouragement of popular or folk poetry itself. BoTJH^LiER, Saint-Georges de (Georges de Bouhelier- Lepelletier) (b. 1876). Poet, critic and dramatist. Founder of the "mouvement naturiste" of emotion instead of observation, as with the naturalist; it is a kind of pantheism of the modern world, expressive of the "hieroglyphic significance" of men's doings and the "divine action" in which each one participates. This wordy programme of an immature rhetorician simmered down in time to a more definite theory: Saint-Georges de Bouhelier desires to show the unappreciated hero in the toils of every-day existence, to treat the gloom of life's tragedies in the tone of mysticism, with effects of heightened contrasts. His early plays were vague and indistinct in their symbolism; the later ones are pessimistic, reflecting the general spirit of Ibsen, but have become more lucid: le Roi sans couronne, la Tragedie royale, le Carnaval des enfants. He combines elements of Realism Romanticism and Symbolism. BouKAY, Maurice, pseudonym of Maurice Couyba (b. 1866). Poet and composer of songs, professor, writer on art and aesthet- ics, politician. BouRGES, El^mir (b. 1852). Member of the Goncourt Academy. Pessimistic novelist: le Crepuscule des dieux, Sous la hache, les Oiseaux s'envolent et les fleurs tombent, la Nef, etc. BouRGET, Paul (b. 1852). Member of the Academy. Orig- inally a pessimistic unbeliever, now a Catholic. He first made his reputation as a critic in the Essais de psychologie contem^- THE WRITERS 851 oraine, in which he adapted to his uses the scientific method of Claude Bernard and Taine, and analysed in typical representa- tives of hterature the characteristic tendencies of the second half of the nineteenth century, such as pessimism, dilettanteism, cosmopolitanism {Essais and Nouveaux essais de UUerature contemporaine) . His mind was kept awake not merely by study, but by travel in Italy {Sensations d' Italic), England {Etudes anglaises) and America {Outre-tner) . As a noveUst he has apphed the same method of analysis and of character portrayal, harking back to Stendhal as a master. He developed the psycho- logical novel of inner description, as opposed to the realistic or naturalistic novel of outward description, and is often compared to Henry James. Indeed, the two occupy a somewhat similar position. But Paul Bourget's novels deal very largely with the topic of adulterous love, and he likes to place his characters in elegant or "smart" social sets of Europe, or to unfold his plots in fashionable drawing-rooms or in garqonnieres full of expensive furniture. Thus he has developed a literary fastid- iousness of style and intrigue which his admirers call aristocrat- isme, and his detractors Renanian dilettanteism or snobisme; which word, however, does not always have the English sense, but often implies mainly the cultivation of new social fads. Paul Bourget desires pre-eminently to be the moralist of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and of Catholicism and "the anti-revolutionary spirit, implying in the term "moralist" a psychological analysis of morals rather than their judgment. His numerous novels include: Cruelle enigme, Un crime d'amour, Andre Cornelis, le Disciple, V Emigre, Un cceur de femme, la Terre promise, Cosmo- polis, Un scrupule, Une idylle tragique, I'Etape. Paul Bourget has also written some plays, such as la Barricade, le Tribun, which deal with the menaces of sociaUsm and of trades-unions, etc. BouTELLEAU, Georges (b. 1846). Journalist, poet, story writer and author of plays. BouTROUX, Emile (b. 1845). One of the leading philosophers 852 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE of today. His chief works are De la contingence des lois de la nature and De Videe de hi naturelle dans la science et la philoso- phie contemporaines . His important theory is that contingency is at the bottom of nature, that the necessity of natural laws is relative, that in nature there are stages or degrees, in each of which a new element is added to the previous stage: life to matter, consciousness to life, etc. The second work classifies the laws in a relative hierarchy. Though an empiricist, M. Boutroux is not a determinist. BoYLESVE, Ren£ (b. 1867). A minor novelist, often of pro- vincial life; author of le Bel avenir, Mon amour. Beieux, Eugene (b. 1858). Member of the Academy. An intensely serious dramatist who takes up in succession vices and defects of contemporary civilisation and presents them in a heavy yet vigorous manner: political corruption, judicial influence, divorce, gambling, neglect of children, even sexual disease, etc. La Robe rouge, on French legal procedure and magisterial ambi- tions, is_ one of the strongest modern plays. Other important ones are: Blanchette, I'Engrenage, l' Evasion, les Trois filles de M. Dupont, les Avaries, le Berceau, Resultat des courses, les Rem- plaqantes, les Hannetons, la Franqaise, S.imone, la Foi. Brisson, Adolphe (b. 1863). Dramatic critic of le Temps, successor of his father-in-law Francisque Sarcey, and of Gustave Larroumet. Caillavet, Gaston-Armand de (b. 1869), and Robert de Flers (b. 1872) are inseparable collaborators of numerous successful comedies for tb : ^oritemporary stage, among which are to be mentioned I' Amour veille, le Roi (a satire on modern Parisian manners and democratic politics), VAne de Buridan, le Bois sacri, Papa. Capus, Alfred (b. 1858). A novelist, and more especially an author of plays of witty Parisianism, sometimes a little off- color, but without the vicious pessimism of certain of his con- temporaries. His works, plays and stories, include: Qui perd gagne, la Bourse ou la vie, la Veine, les Deux ecoles, la Chatelaine, THE WRITERS 853 Notre jeunesse, I'Adversaire (with Emmanuel Arene), Brignol et sa fille, Monsieur Piegois, I' Attentat, les Passageres, les Deux hommes, VOiseau blesse, Un ange, Robinson. Chantavoine, Henri (b. 1850). Professor of French litera- ture, poet and literary critic. Charmes, Francis (b. 1848). Member of the Academy. Publicist, politician and journalist; successor of Brunetiere as editor of the Revue des Deux-Mondes. Claretie, Jules (b. 1840). Member of the Academy. Pro- lific journalist, novelist, dramatist and miscellaneous writer; director of the TheELtre-Frangais. Claudel.Paul (b. 1868). An author of comments of travel and of imacted dramas much admired by some of the inner set of the Mercure de France. Cochin, Denys (b. 1851). Member of the Academy. Poli- tician and writer on scientific subjects: he has been a partisan of Pasteur against the theories of Herbert Spencer and has pub- lished collections of his speeches, particularly on foreign rela- tions. CooLUS, Romain, pseudonym of Rene Weil (b. 1868). A suc- cessful dramatist belonging to the "theatre amoral," with such plays as l' Enfant cherie, Une femme passa, and les Bleus de I'amour. CouLEVAiN, Pierre de, pseudonym of Helene Favre de Coulevain. A cosmopolitan authoress fond of describing English and American life, or, in Sur la branche, the woman without a home who wanders " on the wing " through Europe, observing the world and commenting on its ways: Noblesse americaine, Eve victorieuse, Sur la branche, I' He inconnue (England). COURTELINE, Georges, pseudonym of Georges Moinaux (b. 1861). A writer of humorous stories, often of miUtary life, and short grotesque comedies verging on buffoonery, but which embody the ridiculous side that the French bourgeoisie likes to laugh at in itself. Among his works are: Un Client serieux, les Gaites de VEscadron, le Train de 8 heures 47, les Ronds de cuir, 8s4 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Boubouroche (the most admired), la Paix du manage, la Comer' sion d'Alceste (more serious). Croisset, Francis de, pseudonym of F. Wiener (b. 1877). A Belgian by birth, author of miscellaneous plays, one of which, CMrubin, in verse, caused much scandal and was withdrawn from the Theatre-Frangais after the general rehearsal. CuREL, Francois de (b. 1854). A dramatist who began at the Theatre-Libre, and has never been a widely popular writer. His ideas have become more abstract with the progress of time and his "philosophy" is inconclusive. He is versed in Crebil- lon-like horrors of fear and passion modernised to a nineteenth or twentieth-century taste in psychology. His plays are fre- quently unpleasant, and the impression produced is chaotic, yet none the less, he is an author not to be made light of. His plays include: VEnvers d'une sainte, l' Invitee, V Amour brode, la Figu- rante, le Repas du lion, la Nouvelle idole, les Fossiles, la Fille sauvage, le Coup d'aile. Daudet, Mme Alphonse (Julia AUard), has written verses, criticism and recollections of her husband. Daudet, Ernest (b. 1837). Brother of Alphonse Daudet; novelist, historian and, to a minor degree, dramatist and jour- nalist. Daudet, Leon (b. 1868). Son of Alphonse Daudet: novelist (les Kamtchatka, les Morticoles, le Voyage de Shakespeare), and nationalist-royalist journalist. Decourcelle, Pierre (b. 1856). Author of numerous novels and melodramas, such as les Deux gosses. Delarue-Mardrus, Mme Lucie (b. 1880). Poetess and novelist characterised by a liberal moral decolletage. Many of her novels and poems deal with the life of the rustics and fisher- men of her native Normandy and the coast near Honfleur. Delbousquet, Emmanuel (1874-1909). A member of the so-called group of Toulouse; poet of the Landes of southern France. Deroulede, Paul (b. 1846). Nephew of Emile Augier and THE WRITERS 855 great-grandson of Pigault-Lebrun ; author of military poems, such as the Chants du soldat and Poesies militaires ; took an active part in politics during and after the Dreyfus case, and was in exile for five years (1900-1905). He is an instance of the dra- matic though sincere patriot, always conscious of effect and straining after display; a good sample of the Cornehan character transplanted to nineteenth-century real Ufe. Descaves, Lucien (b. 1861). A writer of considerable talent, who, like a number of his contemporaries, won his first success by a novel which raised a scandal. Descaves was a follower of Huysmans, but signed the manifesto of the "Five" against Zola. Shortly after, he published Sous-Ofs, which brought about a storm, not only by its pictures of vice, but because it was charged with being an attack on the army. His play at the Theitre-Libre, les Chapons, depicting the selfishness of two bourgeois during the Prussian war, raised a similar storm in the Senate. Descaves's best work has been done in collaboration with Maurice Donnay, and la Clairiere, on the futility of com- munistic experiments, deserves high praise. Oiseaux de pas- sage deals with the life of Russian agitators in Paris. Deschanel, Paul (b. 1856). Member of the Academy. Publicist and politicianj orator and author of books on public affairs. Desjaedins, Paul (b. 1859). Writer on morals {le Devoir present, etc.); founder of societies for ethical culture, and the discussion of contemporary questions. A neo-Christian indi- vidualist. Despax, Emile (b. 1881). An elegiac, romantic and symbolic poet, author of la Maison des glycines. DiERX, L£oN (b. 1838). A Parnassian, coming, like Leconte de Lisle, from the ile de la Reunion; quiet, dignified, and unob- trusive in style; was elected by his fellow- writers "prince of poets," on the death of Stephane Mallarme. DoNNAY, Maurice (b. i860). Member of the Academy. ^Beginning his career at th? bohejnian Chqi noir he hg-s won, 9, 8s6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE seat under the cupola of the Institute. His early writings were the quintessence of Parisian espit, what has been called the Hellenism of Montmartre, but it is the Hellenism of Phryne and Lysistrata and not of Sophocles or Plato. As befits his rise in dignity, Donnay's later plays have been more serious. His numerous writings include: Phryne, "le Chat noir a Athenes," irreverently dedicated to the "late Patin," who was the type of the conventional classical pedagogue; C hires mesdames (dia- logues); Lysistrata, Amants, Douloureuse, V Affranchie, le Tor- rent, Education de prince, la Bascule, V Autre danger, le Retour de Jerusalem (containing a caricature of Max Nordau), la Patronne, Parattre. La Clairiere was written in conjunction with Descaves. DoRCHAiN, AuGUSTE (b. 1857). Poet and dramatist, very suc- cessful in winning academic recompenses; a delicate and grace- ful sentimentalist; author of la Jeunesse pensive and Vers la lumiere. His chief plays are Conte d'avril, inspired by Twelfth Night, Rose d'automne and Pour I'amour. DouMic, Rene (b. i860). Member of the Acadenjy. Liter- ary historian and critic and author of numerous volumes on miscellaneous writers and dramatists. A faithful contributor to the Revue des Deux-Mondes where, particularly under the Brunetiere regime, he maintained the solemn standard of that periodical. M. Doumic is a conservative in literature and in religion, but he is, taken as a whole, one of the more profitable guides to French literature for a foreigner, because of his direct- ness of interpretation and freedom from fuss and feathers. Among his works are a history of French literature. Portraits d'ecrivains, De Scribe a Ibsen, Ecrivains d'aujourd'hui, les Jeunes, Essais sur le theatre contemporain, Etudes sur la litterature fran- qaise, le Theatre nouveau. Duchesne, Mgr Louis-MARiE-OLivrER (b. 1843). Member of the Academy. Director of the French Archaeological School at Rome; -(vriter on early church history; one of the writers who have gone near the verge of modernism yet have managed to keep their skirts clear ; author of a critical edition of the Liber THE WRITERS 857 pontificalis, and of works on the early history of the Catholic church (Histoire ancienne de I'Eglise). Ernest-Charles, Jean (b. 1875). Journalist, literary and dramatic critic; expresses himself in a very self-conscious style. EspARBES, Georges d' (b. 1864). Author of military and warfaring novels and stories of which the scenes are placed in different ages: la Legende de Vaigle, la Guerre en dentelles, le Tumulte, etc. EsTAUNiE, Edottard (b. 1862). Novelist, author of rEm- preinte (the best), depicting the influence of the education of the Jesuits, la Vie secrete, etc. Fabi£, Francois (b. 1846). Poet of local and rustic life, par- ticularly of his native Rouergue. Fabre, Emile (b. 1870). Vigorous and talented dramatist, fond of portraying on the stage the movement of crowds and the confusion of multitudes. His plots usually turn on the corrupt- ing influence of politics and money. His chief plays are: Comme Us sont tous, I' Argent, la Vie publique, les Ventres dor is, la Maison d'argile, Timon d'Athenes, les Vainqueurs. He has dramatised Balzac: la Rabouilleuse, Cesar Birotteau. Faguet, Emile (b. 1847). Member of the Academy. One of the important contemporary critics and a professor at the Sorbonne. He belongs by inheritance and training to the educational profession, and wrote a thesis for the doctorate on French tragedy in the sixteenth century. He has published excellent literary studies on the authors of the last four centuries, and particularly three volumes on the Politiqties et moralistes du XIX' Steele, as well as monographs on individual authors, and a brief history of French Uterature. Even this list is very far from exhausting M. Faguet's activities, inasmuch as he has written dramatic criticisms, and pours forth a continuous stream of lectures, essays and books on every describable topic, literary and otherwise, from Plato or Nietzsche to anti-clericalism and the ten commandments. M. Faguet is one of the most fertile writers in modern French literature, and one of the most abund- 8s8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE ant in suggestions; though he seems averse to dogmatism or undue system and the postulation of all-embracing ideas. He prefers the study of individuals and his sympathies incline towards the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. His method is usually interpretation, which he even carries to the extent of constructive criticism: he likes to imagine what an author would have said, if he had written on this or that subject. As a result, M. Faguet is an illuminating, and yet not always intelligible, guide : the reader is often at a loss to know whether the critic is interpreting what the author in question did say, or what he might have said. Add a tendency to be occasionally paradoxical, in order to discover or bring out a hitherto unob- served phase, and a somewhat careless and even slangy style, enlivened by epigrammatic characterisations, and one begins to realise the merits and demerits of M. Faguet. He must count as one of the most "necessary" critics to the student of French literature, but as one who, through excessive and unconsidered writing, often imparts insignificant information and whose criticism runs the danger of becoming only clever chatter. Farrere, Claude, pseudonym of Frederic Bargone (b. 1876). A naval officer and imitator of Loti's exotic stories, with greater violence of plot. His chief novel is les Civilises. Fauchois, Rene (b. 1882). A dramatic writer, author of Beethoven and of la Fille de Pilate, a "modern style" religious play, in which Pilate's daughter falls in love with Jesus and undergoes sympathetic convulsions as he experiences his Passipn. (Compare the mysticism of St. Theresa in Catulle Mendes's la Vierge d'Avila.) Feydeaxj, Georges (b. 1862). Son of Ernest Feydeau and author of innumerable off-color but highly successful vaude- ville-farces, belonging to the repertoire of theatres, such as the Nouveautes: Champignol malgre lui, l' Hotel du libre-echange, la Dame de chez Maxim, Occupe-toi d'Amelie, etc. Flers, Robert de. Cf. Caillavet. Fort, Paul (b. 1872). Author of Ballades frangaises in THE WRITERS 859 rhythmic prose, or which, even if rhymed or assonanced, are not divided into stanzaic form; one .of the most effective results of the vers libre movement, though the verse runs into prose. FouiLLEE, Alfred (b. 1838). A philosopher who aims to make morals enter into positive science, by the theory of "idees- forces," which considers ideas as having an active force instead of being in themselves inert. His theories are in part influenced by the study of Plato. He has also written on national morals and psychology. ' France, Anatole, literary name of Anatole-Fran^ois Thi-' BAULT (b. 1844). Member of the Academy. The chief living prose writer of France. He began his career as a Parnassian minor poet, and as editor of editions or writer of prefaces. The son of a bookseller and brought up among books, he was from the first surrounded by an atmosphere of literature, but when made a Hbrarian of the Senate he probably spent more time on his own reading than on his clerical duties. His first noteworthy success came with le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, which still remains, at least abroad', his most popular work, the story of a simple old recluse and book-worm and a young orphan, daughter (in later editions, granddaughter) of his former sweetheart. Ana- tole France is wonderfully successful in recalling sights and scenes of childhood, and the semi-autobiographical Livre de mon ami (see also parts of Pierre Noziere) is an excellent reconstitution. But Anatole France did not confine himself to personal litera- ture. A great fureteur and browser in the byways of literature, he was fond of seeking plots in unexpected quarters, ranging from the mediaeval nun of Gandersheim Hrotsvitha {Thais) to stories of the Italian Renaissance {le Puits de Sainte-Claire) , or even modern Florence {le Lys rouge). He has never been a great inventor in fiction, and his most characteristic work has been in the shape of reflection or comment. This appears in le Jardin d' Epicure and I'Etui de nacre, and more especially in two important series of volumes. The first consists of to Rotis- serie de la reine Pedauque and les Opinions de Jerome Coignard, 86o A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the second is the Histoire contemporaine, composed of I'Orme du mail, le Mannequin d' osier, I'Anneau d'amithyste and M. Ber- geret a Paris. In the former, under the influence of the irony of Renan, the sarcasm of Voltaire, and some of the setting of Diderot, Anatole France, in a spirit of jesting and kindly irrev- erence, represents the adventures of a reprobate and Rabelais- ian but semi-philosophical monk and his faithful follower Jacques Tournebroche, interweaving the narrative with quasi-magic and astrology. In the latter series, the publication of which coin- cided largely with the Dreyfus affair, he represents modern France in the usual spirit of ironical disenchantment. L'His- toire comique, dealing with the life of actors, was more bitter; Crainqtiebille (one of the author's best short stories, and giving its title to a collection) and Sur la Pierre blanche have a prole- tarian or socialistic bias. L'lle des pingouins is a new satire of French history in the tone of Voltaire. In the earlier part of his literary career, Anatole France was, for a time, literary critic of le Temps, and his criticisms were collected under the title la Vie litteraire. More recently he has written a study of Jeanne d'Arc, in which he has rationalised her spiritual experi- ences in the tone of Renan, to the indignation of the clerical party. The most important of his poetical compositions is les Noces corinthiennes which, with the accompanying verses is in the style of Alexandrian Hellenism frequently found among the Parnassians. Anatole France never cared much for literary criticism, and he made only a fleeting passage through it, being too unsyste- matic to submit to the routine of journalism. But he must, none the less, be noted as an important example of the dilettante and impressionist critic, the amused observer of passing events, and the chronicler of his own reactions among the works of literature: " Criticism, as I understand it, is like philosophy and history, a kind of novel for the benefit of enlightened and interested minds, and every novel is, rightly considered, an auto- biography. The good critic is he who describes the adventures THE WRITERS 86 1 of his soul among masterpieces. To be frank, the critic should say: 'Gentlemen, I intend to speak of myself about Shakespere, Racine, Pascal, or Goethe.' " Thus Anatole France is primarily a disciple of Renan, but he intermingled with this attitude the mocking spirit of the eight- eenth-century philosophers. Averse to the rough scrambles of ambition, a worshipper of beauty in art and literature, he long remained an intellectual aristocrat, facing life with dissolvent yet not uncharitable criticism. Similarly, different phases of Anatole France himself are seen in the heroes of his novels or imaginary chronicles: Sylvestre Bonnard, the abbe Coignard and M. Bergeret. An unexpected but, after all, not illogical transformation took place in Anatole France as a result of the Dreyfus case. This fastidious contemner of modern hfe came forward at once as a partisan of liberty and freedom of speech. He rariged himself among the "intellectuels" who spoke, wrote and fought for Justice against persecution, and for the revision of the military condemnation of the Jewish captain. The intellectual anarchist was not to be silenced by browbeating and the glitter of mili- tary uniforms. Consequently, he entered the arena as a radical, and, his sympathies since then have been with the victims of society or of tradition. This made him join the anti-clericals in- the religious controversy preceding the disestablishment of the church, and side with the radicals and socialists. Anatole France, like the humanists of the past, is steeped in borrowed thought and language. He unconsciously repeats expressions of others; he even plagiarises himself. His lack of constructive ability makes his style in many of his works a loping commentary. Yet in intrinsic grace and easy taste no contemporary French author equals him. He is in this respect the true heir of the great master of style, Renan. FEAPrfi, L£oN (b. 1863). Novehst and story writer, whose speciality is the study of the children of the poor and the working classes of Paris. His best known work is la Maternelle. 862 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Gandillot, Leon (b. 1862). Author of frisky vaudevilles like those of an emancipated Labiche. Vers Vamour is more ■ serious. Gautier, Mme Judith (b. 1850). The first woman elected to the Goncourt Academy; daughter of Theophile Gautier. Without ever having visited the Orient, she has specialised in exotic subjects. Her chief books are: le Livre de jade (prose poems), le Dragon imperial (Chinese), le Marchand de sourires (Japanese play), Iskender (Persian), memoirs called le Collier des jours. One of the first partisans in France of Wagner, as was her divorced husband, CatuUe Mendes. Geffroy, Gustave (b. 1855). Journalist and miscellaneous writer, art critic and traveller. Chief work of fiction: I'Ap- prentie. GiDE, Andre (b. 1869). A distinguished though not widely read author; an aesthetic egotist, who has undergone far-ranging influences, drawn from different literatures rather than from life, and ranging from Rousseau to Oscar Wilde and Nietzsche. He scarcely lays claim to being a novelist, and his works are of interest more for the author's attitude than for the plots. The chief ones are: les Cahiers d' Andre Walter, aesthetic and senti- mental meditations, le Voyage d'Urien; les Nourritures terres- tres; I'Immoraliste, the story of a life turned to the cult of self; la Ports etroite, Protestant asceticism; Isabelle, a gloomy story of Normandy, in which the hero, drawn like the troubadour Rudel, to an unseen woman, is disenchanted when he meets the reality. Plays: le Roi Candaule, Saiil. Criticisms: Pretextes, Nouveaux pretextes. GouRMONT, Remy DE (b. 1858). Paradoxical and cerebral impressionist, dabbler in mysticism, symbolism, occultism, aestheticism. Author of le Latin mystique, Esthetique de la langue Jranqaise, la Culture des idees, and of critical essays called le Livre des masques. Gregh, Fernand (b. 1873). A meritorious poet, originally a follower of Verlaine; author of numerous volumes, among which THE WRITERS 863 are la Maison de I'enfance and I'Or des minutes. In 1902 he,,tried to start an art of "Humanism," to take the place of the Parnas- sian chilliness and the symbolistic self-centredness. GuERNE, VicoMTE DE (b. 1853). A late Parnassian poet; disciple and literary executor of Leconte de Lisle. GuiLLAUMiN, Emile (b. 1873). Author of stories of rural Ufe, including la Vie d'un simple, one of the best descriptions of the dull and uneventful hfe of a French peasant, written in the first person. Much more can be learned about country life from such a work than from all Zola or George Sand put together. GuiNON, Albert (b. 1863). Dramatist. His most noted play, Decadence, contrasts the degenerate nobility and the money-making Jews. Gyp, pseudonym of the Comtesse de Mirabeau de Martel (b. 1850). A descendant of Mirabeau-Tonneau, brother of the great Mirabeau; author of smart, slangy stories too numerous to record, suited to the Vie Parisienne newspaper, in which the fashionable worldly sets are portrayed. Hanotaxjx, Gabriel (b. 1853). Member of the Academy. Historian and politician; has written studies of Richelieu and of the third Republic. Haratjcourt, Edmond (b. 1857). Originally a symbolist poet; one of the leaders of the Hydropathes in the early eighties. A poet of pessimism, a novelist and writer of plays. Chief poems: les Vikings and le Dix-neuvieme siecle; chief plays: la Passion, a "mystery," Don Juan, Jean Bart. Harry^ MYRLA.M, pscudonym of Mme Perrault (b. 1875). Writer of exotic stories and descriptions of the East, the extreme Orient, Tunis, etc. La Conquete de Jerusalem is an extremely vigorous and masculine story, permeated with hatred for the chilliness of Protestantism. Some of her later writings are unnecessarily erotic. Mme Myriam Harry was born at Jerusa- lem of stock partly Polish, partly English; partly German, and partly Jewish. Haussonville, Comte de Cleron d' (b. 1843). Member of 864 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE the Academy. A writer on literary, social, historical, and polit- ical topics. He should be distinguished from his father (1809- 1884), also a historian and Academician. Hermant, Abel (b. 1862). Novelist and dramatist, much addicted to the malicious wit of the Vie Parisienne character, and quite unprincipled in his attitude towards the world. A number of his works are in the form of dialogues, and one of them, les Transatlantiques, is an amusing take-off of Americans seen from the French point of view. Many bear the general heading, Memoires pour servir a Vhistoire de la societe, of which les Grands bourgeois is perhaps the cleverest, reminding one to a certain extent of Anatole France's Histoire contemporaine, though the smartness is more strained. Other works are: le Cavalier Miserey (a succes de scandale), Souvenirs du vicomte de Cour- piere, Monsieur de Courpiere marie, le Cadet de Coutras, Trains de luxe (a companion piece to les Transatlantiques on South Ameri- can nabobs or rastaquoueres) , les Confidences d'une biche, la Biche relancee. Abel Hermant has little ability in the construction of plots, his talent lying entirely in external observation; hence his plays are generally weak; among them are: Id Meute, I'Empreinte, I'Esbrouffe, les Jacobines, and dramatisations of some of his works of fiction. He likes to take an incident of current talk or gossip and make it the subject of "novel-memoirs": impecunious French noblemen seeking American heiresses, or anti-masonic agita- tions and the scandals connected with the career of Syveton, the professor who became politician. Herold, A.-Ferdinand (b. 1865). Grandson of the com- poser Herold; miscellaneous writer and dramatic critic; began as one of the symbolist school; many of his writings are suggested or inspired by his classical or Oriental studies. Hervieu, Paul (b. 1857). Member of the Academy. One of the most serious of French writers. His earlier works, chiefly novels, were ponderous studies of contemporary manners and of their cruelty: Feints par eux-memes, V Armature (dealing with the influence of money as a "frame- work" of society). His THE WRITERS 865 more recent writings have been plays, belonging to the category of problem plays. They are technically well constructed and every word tells, but they are painfully gloomy pictures of life and vigorous attacks on the injustice of the laws which govern society. Paul Hervieu is usually the advocate of woman. Les Tenailles shows the misery of a couple linked together in unhappy marriage; la Loi de, Vhomme also portrays the injustice of the marriage law; la Course au flambeau ("quasi cursores vital lampada tradunt"), his masterpiece, shows each generation of humanity sacrificed to the selfish one which follows. Other plays are: les Paroles restent, VEnigme, le Dedale, le Reveil, Theroigne de Mericourt, Connais-toi. HoussAYE,. Henry (1848-1911). Member of the Academy. Son of Arsene Houssaye; writer on Greek art and history, on the Napoleonic era, miscellaneous essayist. HouviLLE, Gerard d', pseudon3Tn of Mme Henri de Regnier (b. 1875). Daughter of Jose-Maria de Heredia; poetess and novelist. HtTMiERES, Robert d', (b. 1868). Poet, translator from the English, theatrical director and author of plays of a bloody and sensual character, such as la Marquesita. Jammes, Francis (b. 1868). Poet of southern France, advo- cate of a return to nature; expresses himself, in his attempts to be simple, in a rather eccentric form. KiSTEMAECKERS, Henry (b. 1872). A successful writer of fiction and dramatist of Belgian origin, whose works have not any marked individuality. Lafenestre, Georges (b. 1837). Curator at the Louvre, professor at the College de France, Parnassian poet, writer on art,, author of monographs on La Fontaine, Moliere. Lamy, Etienne (b. 1845). Member of the Academy. His- torian and formerly a deputy in the early days of the third Republic; a Catholic republican, and sometime editor of le Correspondant. His chief works have been studies of the second Empire and of France in the Orient. 866 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Langlois, Hippolyte (b. 1839). Member of the Academy. French general, and writer on military questions. Lanson, Gustave (b. 1857). Professor of French literature at the Sorbonne and, since the death of Brunetiere, the chief influence in France in directing the work of students in French literature. His method is now essentially one of historical and bibliographical research (cf. p. 839), and he enunciates the dictum that the best way to begin the study of Hterature is to ponder over the studies in historical method of C.-V. Langlois, the historian, of MM. Seignobos and Monod. In addition to his history of French Hterature, he has written studies of Nivelle de la Chaussee, Bossuet, Boileau, Corneille, Voltaire, and various volumes of miscellaneous studies, among which one of the most suggestive is I'Art de la prose. Lavedan, Henri (b. 1859). Member of the Academy. An author, chiefly of humorously cynical pictures of Parisian life, especially among the fast set and those who live only for sport and enjoyment. On the other hand, he has written some serious and moraUsing plays. To the first category belong especially le Nouveau jeu and le Vieux marcheur, "romans dialogues," the dramatisations of the same works, as well as le Prince d'Aurec, Viveurs, le Marquis de Priola (the aristocratic libertine and modern Don Juan). Different are Catherine, Varennes (histori- cal drama in collaboration with G. Lenotre), le Duel and le Gout du vice. Le Duel is Lavedan's masterpiece and represents the struggle between two brothers, one an atheist physician, the other a priest, to obtain control of a woman who has confided to the priest the love by which she is drawn to the other brother. Lavedan's works are extremely clever. Lavisse, Ernest (b. 1842). Member of the Academy. His- torian and professor; editor of important co-operative histories of Europe and of France, to the latter of which he has contrib- uted a valuable study of the seventeenth century. Leblond, Marius (b. 1877) ^.nd Ary (b. 1880). Two brothers who always work in collaboration. They come from the lie THE WRITERS 867 de la R6umon, the birthplace of Leconte de Lisle. They are authors of stories and, particularly, of literary and social en- quetes or investigations. Le Braz, Anatole (b. 1859), Professor at the university of Rennes, poet and student of Breton legends and customs. Le Goffic, Charles (b. 1863). Breton poet {Amour breton, le Bois dormant), novelist {le Crucifie de Keralies, la Payse, Ventose, etc.), and critic, as well as author of econonaic studies and of brief works on versification and modern French Hterature. Lemaitre, Jules (b. 1853). Member of the Academy. A normalien and professor who has become a general critic and ultra-modern man of letters. His first important work was a thesis on the immediate successors of Moliere in French comedy, but his reputation was made by les Contemporains, volumes of individual studies of French writers. To these must be added the ten volumes of Impressions de theatre, dramatic criticisms contributed for a number of years to the Journal des Debats. M. Lemaitre wrote some contds, and, at two periods of his career, successful plays: at first, Revoltee, le Depute Leveau, Mariage blanc, Flipote, I'Age difficile, le Pardon, la bonne Helene, VAinee, and more recently Bertrade and la Massiere. For several years M. Lemaitre gave up literature to engage in miUtant politics during the nationahst and anti-Dreyfus campaign. He has since then returned to Hterature, and has pubhshed volumes on Rousseau, Racine, and Fenelon, as an outcome of lectures given on those authors. M. Lemaitre belongs to the school of Renan, and he is charac- terised by the epithet "impressionist." Particularly in his earlier years he disdained to use literature except to express the reaction upon himself of authors, for the purpose of entertaining readers who might enjoy his cleverness. He is the wittiest of critics, and plays with ideas to such an extent that one is in doubt when to take him seriously. He delights, as in his criti- cism of Tartufe, to prove one side, and then turn round and prove, with as much conviction, the other side, just to show his 868 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE ability as a juggler. Eminently nationalist in spirit as in poli- tics, M. Lemaitre represents the literary Frenchman of the most brilliantly inquisitive, but indolent and epicurean type. The Dreyfus agitation, though in some ways an unfortunate episode in his career, has in other respects given a more serious tone to his criticism and a less frivolous pose. Le Roy, Eugene (1836-1907). One of the few writers who have avoided the notoriety of Paris life. His Jacquou le Cro- quant is an important novel and a reconstruction of a peasant's life in olden days, in the earliest part of the nineteenth century. Lesueur, Daniel, pseudonym of Mme Jeanne Lapauze (b. 1862). Prominent novelist and author of many volumes, in- cluding I'Invincible charme, la Force du passe, Mortel secret, and Nietzscheenne. Lichtenberger, Andre (b. 1870). NoveHst and sociologist, fond of historical stories reconstituting past ages: la Mori de Corinthe, les Centaures, la Folle aventure. Among his other works are Mon petit Trott and la Petite sceur de Trott. Li^GEARD, Stiephen (b. 1830). A poet still somewhat under the spell of Lamartine. LoisY, Alfred (b. 1857). For his position in the modernist movement cf. p. 835. He was a pupil of Mgr Duchesne, and, like Renan, grew at variance with the dogma of the church. But instead of leaving it he was excommunicated for his views. His chief works have been: le Quatrieme Evangile, les Evangiles synoptiques, I' Evangile et VEglise, Autour d'un petit livre, Simples reflexions sur le decret du Saint-Office et sur I'encyclique. His religious attitude may be judged by the following extract from I' Evangile et VEglise: "Les conceptions que I'Eglise presente comme des dogmes re-v;i«les ne sont pas des verites tombees du ciel et gardees par la tradition religieuse dans la forme precise ou elles ont paru d'abord. L'historien y voit interpretation de faits religieux, acquise par un laborieux effort de la pensee theologique. Que les dogmes soient divins par I'origine et la substance, ils sont THE WRITERS 869 humains de structure et de composition. II est inconcevable que leur avenir ne reponde pas a leur passe. La raison ne cesse pas de poser des questions a la foi, et les formules traditionnelles sont soumises a un travail perpetuel d'interpr6tation oii la lettre qui tue est efficacement contr61ee par I'esprit qui vivifie." LoTi, PiEEKE, pseudonym of Julien Viaud (b. 1850). Member of the Academy. An ofl&cer in the French navy, who has trav- elled far and wide through the Orient and has described it in his numerous novels of exotic sensation. He is gifted with intense power of reproducing feelings and the effect of scenery: an absolute emotionalist, he belongs to the lineage of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and of Chateaubriand. His word paintings of the ocean are striking. As a rule, his plots are insignificant and character analysis is almost wanting in him, his whole theory of life being voluptuous enjoyment disturbed only by the dread of old age, ugliness, and the dulling of the sensibilities. This is apt to cast a sensuous and melancholy dreaminess over his work. Morals and positive religion do not exist in his creed. The novels to which his reputation is due were chiefly those whose heroes love native women "somewhere east of Suez," in Japan, the South Seas, etc. Loti's women are all primitives. His most powerful novel is undoubtedly Pecheur d'Islande, describ- ing the existence of Breton fishermen who sail to the northern waters; but his pages picture Turkey, China, Japan, Palestine, the isles of the Pacific, India, Persia, the Senegal colony, the Basque country, Egypt: le Manage de Loti, le Roman d'un spahi, Mon frere Yves, Pecheur d'Islande, Madame Ckrysantheme, le Roman d'un enfant, Ramuntcho, la Troisiemejeunesse de Madame Prune, les Desenchantees, la Mart de PhilcE. LoxJYS, Pierre (b. 1870). High-priest of nudity, and advo- cate of it for literature, art, and the stage; author of Aphrodite, la Femme et le pantin, les Chansons de Bilitis (pretended transla- tions from the Greek), les Aveniures du roi Pausole. Mael, Pierre. A collective pseudon}Tn for two authors, Charles Causse (1862-1904) and Charles Vincent (b. 1851), 870 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE who have been wholesale manufacturers of novels rather than novelists. Maeterlinck, Maurice (b. 1862). A Belgian writer, hence accused by some French critics of having an exotic savor to his style. In youth he came into contact with les jeunes and the fantastic nature of Villiers de I'lsle-Adam, and was influenced by Poe and Ibsen. He expressed at first a vague symbolism, covering a mysticism not of ecstacy but of pessimism. He sur- rounded his plays with the paraphernalia of gloom dear to the old School of Terror, but not rationalised as in Mrs. Radclifle; remaining, on the contrary, still more mysterious in their in- definiteness, over which hangs the fear of the hereafter. His plots unroll in gloomy castles amid melancholy cries and wailing prayers : it is like The Fall of the House of Usher mixed up with Grimm's fairy-tales grown nervous. Some of them were called "drames pour marionnettes." They lend themselves to ridicule and parody, but they have had • great influence, and some of them have reached the consecration of the opera. Since the extinction of s}nnbohsm, Maeterlinck's plots have become, in a certain sense, more conventional though no less fanciful. His chief works are: Serres chaudes (poems), to Princesse Maleine, a Shaksperian imitation which, with the praise of Octave Mir- beau, originated his fame, I'lntruse, les Aveugles, Pelleas et Melis- ande, Alladine et Palomides, la Mort de Tintagiles, le Trisor des humbles (essays), Aglavaine et Selysette, la Vie des abeilles, l' In- telligence des Fleurs, Ariane et Barbe bleue, Sceur Beatrice, Monna Vanna, and I'Oiseau bleu. Magre, Maurice (b. 1877). Poet, originally a member of the so-called "group of Toulouse," author of plays, of poems of sympathy for the unfortunate {la Chanson des hommes), and of personal poems {les Lewes et le secret) of unexpected frank- ness on the poet's part in revealing the secret side of one's nature. Maindron, Maurice (1857-1911). Historical novelist, fond of the sixteenth century. Among his works are: le Tournoi de THE WRITERS 871 Vauplassans, Saint-Cendre, Blancador Vavantageux, Monsieur de Clerambon. MAiGUERiTTE, Paul (b. i860) and Victor (b. 1866). Their most important works have been written in collaboration on the war of 1870, in which their father, General Margueritte, was killed: le Desastre (to be contrasted with Zola's la Debacle), les Tronqons du glaive, les Braves gens, la Commune. These works have had success, but they are neither history nor novels. Their plays, such as le Cosur et la loi, V Autre, Prostituee, contain a free treatment of social problems. They began by writing sepa- rately. Paul Margueritte wrote novels {Pascal Gefosse) and pantomimes, and Victor Margueritte, poems and light plays. Their collaboration began after 1889 but has again ceased for the present. Marinetti, F.-T. (b. 1878). Eccentric, anti-traditionalist Franco-Italian writer, born in Egypt; advocate of a literature of "futurism." Marsolleau, Louis (b. 1864). Poet {les Baisers perdus), journalist and vaudevillist, author of comedies in verse. Masson, Frederic (b. 1847). Member of the Academy. His- torian of the life and times of Napoleon, fond of raking together every kind of material, no matter how insignificant, concerning his subject. Mauclair, Camille (b. 1872). Poet, critic, novelist, lecturer, general sesthetician of great power of immediate reaction, but intensely modern in all his interests, an emotionalist. Matjrras, Charles (b. 1868). Journahst and critic, one of the foimders with Jean Moreas of the Ecole romane frangaise; now a critic, nationaUst, and anti-repubhcan writer, and a leader of the band which has fought Romanticism in the reaction towards a " Classical" or neo-Classical tradition. But M. Maur- ras's Classicism would under difficulty be recognised by a seven- teenth-century writer, and consists largely in a reaction against Romanticism, and opposition to any literary, social, or political phase which seems im-French, because lacking in clearness, 872 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE precision and the perfection of completeness. " L'esprit classique ne cessa de r^peter en grec, en latin, en frangais, en italien, en provengal, non seulement pour, les peuples qui boivent a la coupe de notre mer, mais pour tout citoyen du monde, non seulement en art, mais dans les sciences et les industries, dans les arts de la politique et meme de la vie, ce grand, cet uniforme et invariable conseil de realiser avant toute chose, et pour cela de definir, de pr&ciser, d' organiser." Mezieres, Alfred (b. 1826). Member of the Academy. Critic and politician, writer on Shakspere, Petrarch, Goethe, Mirabeau, etc. MiLLE, Pierre (b. 1865). Semi-humorous journalist, critic, and story-teller. MiRBEAU, Octave (b. 1848). One of the most foul-minded writers that literature has produced; yet he deserves mention for the brilHant and vigorous play, les A f aires sont les a£ aires. MoNT^GUT, Maurice (b. 1855). Journalist, rhymer and voluminous author of novels and short stories. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Comte Robert de (b. 1855). A poet of Baudelairian preciosity and cultivator of paradox, the sort of person in whom one would seek the original of Huysmans's Des Esseintes or the peacock of Rostand's Chantecler. Author of les Chauves-souris, la Clef des odeurs suaves, les Hortensias bleus, les Perles rouges. (Cf. the title of Robert Hichens's Green Carnation and its skit of Oscar Wilde, the cultivator of similar paradoxes.) MoEEAU, Emile (b. 1852). Dramatist, fond of historical plays, such as le Proces de Jeanne d'Arc. Moselly, Emile, pseudonym of Emile Chenin (b. 1870). Professor and man of letters; writer on Lorraine; made his reputation chiefly with Jean des Brebis, ou le liwe de la misere. MuN, Comte Adrien-Albert de (b. 1841). Member of the Academy. Writer on religion and politics, member of the Chamber of Deputies, champion of the Catholic cause. Nesmy, Jean, pseudonym of Henri Surchamp (b. 1876). THE WRITERS 873 Poet and novelist, who writes chiefly about the country of Limousin. NoAiLLES, COMTESSE Mathieu de. Ultra-emotional poetess and novelist of Roumanian origin, rather derided by good critics ("une pr6cieuse d'aujourd'hui"), but having many admirers. Her works include le Cceur innombrable, VOmbre des jours, les Eblouissements, la Nouvelle esperanc'e, le Visage emerveille, la Domination. NoLHAC, PiEKRE DE (b. 1859). Curator of the museum at Versailles; poet, critic and humanist; writer on Petrarch, Erasmus, the Pleiade and the art and history of the times of Louis XV and Louis XVI. NoRMAND, Jacques (b. 1848). Author of poems, novels, monologues and plays. His best known play^ are MusoUe, written with Guy de Maupassant, Monsieur et madame Dugazon, and VAmiral, a pretty comedy dealing with the Dutch tulip craze. Ohnet, Georges (b. 1848). A much derided but highly successful novelist. The dramatisation of his novel le Maitre de forges was one of the great successes of the last generation. Ollivier, Emxle (b. 1825). Member of the Academy. At the downfall of the Empire, to which he had just rallied, Emile Ollivier withdrew from politics, and has devoted the last years of his life to the publication of an elaborate history of I'Empire liberal. Peladan, Josephin (b. 1859). Eccentric writer who formerly dabbled in occultism and Rosicrucianism, calling himself the Sir M^rodack. He still remains somewhat fantastic in style and critical attitude. Pellissier, Georges (b. 1852). Critic and professor, has composed many works on literature, from a thesis on Du Bartas to a brief history of French literature, as well as studies of the literary currents in the nineteenth century, miscellaneous essays, etc. Peyrebrune, Georges de, pseudonym of Mme Eimery 874 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE (b. 1848). A novelist who has contributed many serials to the Reviie des Deux-Mondes and the Revtie de Paris. Le Cas du Lieutenant Sigmarie is one of her most successful works. Philippe, Charles-Louis (1876-19099. A writer whose reputation has been chiefly posthumous. The hardships of his life brought him into contact with many painful phases of existence. He belongs to the lineage of Rousseau and Tolstoy, and his stories border on confessions. His chief dif&culty is the formulation of a plot sufficient to carry the narrative through. His chief works are: la Mere et V enfant, Bubu de Montparnasse (a combination of intense Naturahsm and of sentiment), le Pere Perdrix, Marie Donadieu, Croquignole. Plessis, Frederic (b. 1851). A professor and academic poet; author of la Lampe d'argile. PoiNCARE, Henri (b. 1854)* Member of the Academy. Mathematician. PoiNCARE, Raymond (b. i860). Member of the Academy. Statesman and orator. PoMAiROLS, Charles de (b. 1843). Po^t and critic, admirer of Vigny, Lamartine and Sully Prudhomme. Porto-Riche, Georges de (b. 1849). -^ dramatist, mainly interested in love and its sufferings, whence his admirers are fond of comparing his treatment with that of Racine. He is, however, a Racine of the nerves. Author of la Chance de Fran- goise, I'lnfidele, Amoureuse, le Passe, le Vieil homme. Prevost, Marcel (b. 1862). Member of the Academy. A novelist who has devoted himself almost entirely to analysis of the feelings of women; in that sense he is what the French term a "moralist." Some of his stories anticipate the present tendency of women writers themselves to disclose the secret feelings that rarely leave the heart. His notoriety was won by books like Mademoiselle Jaufre, Lettres de femmes, les Demi- vierges and le Jardin secret. Among his other works are les Vierges fortes. Monsieur et madame Moloch, Lettres a Franqoise, Lettres a Franqoise mariee. THE WRITERS 875 QuiLLAED, PiEiuRE (b. 1864). A poct, crftic, and scholar, who belonged to the former group of Merrill, Mikhael, Ghil, etc. Rameau, Jean (b. 1859), pseudonym of Laurent Lebaigt, poet, novelist and fantastic rhymer. Reboux, Paul (b. 1877). Author of exotic novels: la Maison de danses (Spanish), la Petite Fapacoda (Italian). Regnier, Henri de (b. 1864). Member of the Academy. A poet, conteur and dramatic critic. One of the promoters of symbolism, a former follower of Mallarme, a friend of Verlaine; he has now become much more conventional. He has written many novels and tales in the style of the libertine story-tellers of the eighteenth century, from Crebillon fits to Laclos, and volumes of poems, such as Jeux rustiques et divins, les Medailles d'argile, la Cite des eaux, la Sandale ailee, le Miroir des heures. Renaed, Jules (1864-1910). A talented but bitter writer, known chiefly by Foil de carotte, the story of a little red-headed child, ill-treated and repressed, and le Plaisir de rompre, a one- act comedy, on the parting of a couple who have loved each other, a tabloid up-to-date Berenice. Revel, Jean, pseudonym of Paul Toutain (b. 1848). A Nor- man writer who has described his native province of the present and the past, in a somewhat elaborate and mannered language. RiBOT, Alexandre (b. 1842). Member of the Academy. Orator and statesman. RiCHEPiN, Jean (b. 1849). Member of the Academy. A soldier during the Prussian war, then a rover, sailor, porter, and travelling actor, said to have Turanian blood. He began as a follower of Baudelaire, on the brutal side, by the sensational Chansons des gueux, for which he was imprisoned, and les Blas- phemes, but he has since then toned down. His novels began also by pictures of atrocities. His plays, such as Nana-Sahib, Monsieur Scapin, le Filibustier, Far le glaive, Vers la joie, le Chemineau, les Truands, etc., are of great richness of versifica- tion, and le Chemineau (portraying the vagabond) contains deli- cate poetry that one would never have expected after his 876 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE original hair-raising verse. Richepin is the bard of the vaga- bond and rover. His son, Jacques Richepin, is also a man of letters. RrvoiRE, Andr£ (b. 1872). A poet and dramatist (// etait une bergere, le Bon roi Dagobert). Rod, Edouaed (b. 1857-1910). A Swiss, and for seven years professor at the university of Geneva, influenced by his com- patriot, the philosopher Secretan. He was at first a Naturalist, but overcame the tendency. He was fond of analysing the con- sciences of Protestants or of his fellow-Swiss, and was a psycho- logical novelist. He cultivated Schopenhauer, Leopardi, Ibsen and Tolstoy, and was considered by some French critics a rather heavy pessimist. Author of la Course a la mart, le Sens de la vie, les Trois casurs, Stendhal, les Idees morales du temps prisent, la Sacrifiie, la Vie privee de Michel Tessier, les Roches blanches, Ld-haut, le Menage du pasteur Naudie, I'Ombre s'etend sur la montagne, le Glaive et le bandeau. RoLLAND, RoMAiN (b. 1866). A Iccturer at the Faculty of letters of Paris, a writer on music, author of a few historical plays, and esjJecially of Jean-Christophe, a voluminous biographi- cal romance describing the youth and adolescence of a musician and the development of his soul. Romain Rolland has been influenced by Ibsen and Tolstoy, and his desire is the creation of a "democratic" art. RosNY, J.-H., collective pseudonym of Justin (b. 1856) and Joseph-Henry (b. 1859) Boex. They wrote so long together, forming one literary individuality, that people rarely differen- tiated between them. Their style grew labored and involved, abounding in neologisms and recondite terms drawn from the arts and sciences. Their subjects range from prehistoric days and the mammoth age, to present-day sociology and socialism, or to works of future scientific discovery. Among their best known writings are Nell Horn (Salvation Army), le Bilateral (French socialism), les Xipehuz (prehistoric), le Termite, Daniel Yalgraive, Vamireh (prehistoric), Sous le fardeaii. Of late they THE WRITERS 877 have tended to part company as collaborators. The elder Rosny has also written some works under the pseudonym "Enacryos." Rostand, Edmond (b. 1868). Member of the Academy. The most talked of poet and dramatist of today. He won some reputation at an early age by a volume of poems, les Musardises; by the pretty comedy, les Romanesques, a medley of Musset and Shaksperian fantasy served up with the settings of Watteau; la Princesse loiniaine, a dramatisation of the story of Geoffroy Rudel; la Samaritaine, a religious play on Jesus and the woman of Samaria. In December, 1897, when scarcely thirty years of age, he became famous all over the world by Cyrano de Bergerac, a "comedie heroique," resuscitating the half -forgotten poet of the seventeenth century, and surrounding him with a halo of sentiment, idealism and romance. The play was hailed, in reaction against the naturalistic drama, as the beginning of a new epoch in literature, and the sanest critics, including Faguet, went delirious. It was soon pointed out by Lemaitre that the merits of Cyrano de Bergerac were rather beauties revived than created, that the play was full of Hugo, Banville and Gautier's Capitaine Fracasse. The plot has its real foundation in an old vaudeville, played in 1836, called Roquelaure, ou Vhomme le plus laid de France, by de Leuven, de Livry and Lherie. It is Romanticism brought up to date and touched with a Uttle new sjTnbolism in the character of Cyrano, the unappreciated lover, and in the heroism of his "panache." It purports to be a partial reconstitution of the spirit of the times portrayed, and is steeped in the preciosity of that period. In this style, M. Rostand, as an incomparable virtuoso of language and of rhyme, revels to the utmost. Hardly any one can read the play without being captivated by its magnificent swagger, by the animation of its scenes, by the poetry of its lines, by its sentiment, by the suffering love of Cyrano for Roxane, by the vigorous or graceful climaxes, by the wonderful, even though occasionally strained, wit with which it is sprinkled. At the same time Cyrano 878 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE is not a masterpiece of the first rank, but the best of the second order. L'Aiglon, which followed Cyrano and which had as hero the son of Napoleon I (" L'Angleterre prit I'aigle et I'Autriche I'aiglon," to quote Hugo), was very far from reaching the merits of the previous play. The drama is long and rambling, and its alexandrines carry to excess the dislocation already visible in Cyrano de Bergerac. The much-advertised and long-postponed Chantecler again proved that M. Rostand had reached his high- est level in Cyrano. It is full of Banvillesque tight-rope poetry, evanescent modern Parisian wit, often sinking to the commonest slang. It contains an occasional fine lyrical passage, such as the hymn to the sun, but it proved on performance to be ex- tremely tedious, both because of the lagging plot and the dis- guise of the characters as birds and beasts, by which their movements were constrained and their voices made inaudible. Edmond Rostand wishes to be thought the poet of bravery in quest of an tmattainable ideal, and made more noble by its heroic paradox: "Frisez votre moustache, meme si vous n'en avez pas," as he told the pupils of his old school, the College Stanislas. And in his inaugural speech at the Academy he defined as follows the term panache, the key word of Cyrano: "Le panache, c'est I'esprit de la bravoure. Oui, c'est le courage dominant a ce point la situation qu'il en trouve le mot. Toutes les repUques du Cid ont du panache, beau coup de traits du grand Corneille sent d'enormes mots d'esprit. Le vent d'Espagne nous apporta cette plume; mais elle a pris dans I'air de France une legerete de meilleur gout. Plaisanter en face du danger, c'est la supreme politesse, un delicat refus de se prendre au tragique; le panache est alors la pudeur de I'hero- isme, comme un sourire par lequel on s'excuse d'etre sublime." Mme Rostand is the poetess Rosemonde Gerard. RoujON, Henry (b. 1853). Member pi the Academy. A journalist and art critic, author of essays and of Miremonde, a novel, THE WRITERS 879 Segur, Marquis Pierre de (b. "1853). Member of the Acad- emy. Historical biographer of characters chiefly in the eight- eenth century, such as Mme Geoffrin and Mile de Lespinasse. SouzA, Robert de (b. 1865). Symbolist poet and writer on the theory of the vers libre. Tailhade, Laurent (b. 1857). Po^t with some of the vir- tuosity of Banville combined with Gascon exuberance; author of "Aristophanic" poems. Clever but fantastic journalist and miscellaneous writer, dabbler in Plautus and mor^e out-of-the- way writers and works, such as Petronius or the Epistolm obscur- er um virorum. Thureau-Dangin, Paul-Marie-Pierre (b. 1837). Mem- ber of the Academy. Historian of the Catholic school; has written on the monarchy of July and on the Catholic revival in England (Newman and the Oxford movement). Tinayre, Marcelle. The leading woman writer of today. She has a rich and pictorial style and analyses love with a tone of sensuous moralising which may sometimes trouble Anglo- Saxon prudery, but which is reserve itself compared with the writings of many others. Her chief books are : Avant l' amour, la Ranqon, Helle, VOiseau d'orage, la Maison du peche, la Vie amoureuse de Franqois Barbazanges, la Rebelle, I'Amour qui pleure, I'Ombre de I'amour, la Douceur de vivre. TiNSEAU, Leon de (b. 1844). Author of numerous novels and stories, lightly written with a touch of sentiment and romance. Vanderem, Fernand, pseudonym of Fernand-Henri Van- derheym (b. 1864). Chronicler of Parisian manners in novels and plays: Charlie, la Patronne, la Cendre, les Deux rives, la Victime, le Calice, les Fresnay, Cher maitre. Vaucaire, Maurice (b. 1864). Poet, noveUst and dramatist, who began with the Theatre-Libre and the Theatre-Antoine. Veber, Pierre (b. 1869). Novelist, draraatist, and dramatic critic; smart and cynical. ViOLLis, Jean, pseudonym of H. Ardenne de Tizac (b. 1877). Poet and novelist of southern France. 88o A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE VogM, Vicomte Eugene Melchior de (b. 1848-1910). Member of the Academy. Diplomatist, novelist, critic; and writer on Russia. Vogue, Marquis Charles-Jean ■ Melchior de (b. 1829). Member of the Academy. Archaeologist and diplomatist. Willy, Colette. Writer and actress. Originally collab- orated with her now divorced husband "Willy" (Henry Gauth- ier-Villars) in writing a series of popular but somewhat reprehensible stories, the adventures of Claudine. Her best work is la Vagabonde, the biography of a music-hall performer. Wolff, Pierre (b. 1865). A dramatist who treats the Ro- mantic topics of the rehabilitation of the courtesan or the hard- ships of the social laws in the style of a modern Realist, but with an element of strong sensiblerie. He will make you weep indifferently over illegitimate children, fast women, or girls who cannot get husbands. Author of le Secret de Polichinelle, le Ruisseau, I'Age d'aimer, le Lys, les Marionnettes. Yver, Colette, pseudonym of Mme Antoinette Huzard (b. 1874). Novelist, authoress of Comment s'en vont les reines, Princesses de science, les Dames du Palais. Zamacois, Miguel (b. 1866). Originally an art student and merry jester at the Chat noir, now a journalist, and dramatist of the school of Rostand; author of sentimental and pretty, poetical plays such as les Bouffons and la Fleur merveilleuse. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY SECTION I GENERAL INDICATIONS I. HISTORY OF LITERATURE A. — General Works L. Petit de Julleville (Editor), Histoire de la langue et de la litUraUire franQaise, des origines A igoo; 8 vols., 1895-1899. Chapters of unequal merit by different authorities, but on the whole, of great value. G. Lanson, Histoire de la litterature franqaise, nth edition, 1909. The best one-volume manual. F. Brunetiere, Mamcel de I'histoire de la littSrature franqaise, 2nd edition, 1899. Valuable, but difficult to use, because constructed in accordance with the author's theories of literary evolution. Suchier imd Birch-Hirschfeld, Geschichte der franzosischen Literatur von den altesten Zeiten his zur Gegenwart, 1900. A valuable history, both scholarly and popular, in one large volimie, containing a fuU treatment of the Middle Ages. Nisard, Histoire de la litt&ralure franqaise, 4 vols., 1844^1861. Old- fashioned and antiquated, but valuable for understanding the formerly prevalent spirit of French literary criticism. F. Godefroy, Histoire de la littSrature franqaise depuis le XV I' sitcle jusgu'd nos jours, 9 vols., 1859-1881. Contains much information with extracts, but should be used with caution, and is not much referred to by historians. The above-mentioned works are, perhaps, the most significant, but others will be found useful: E. LintUhac, PrScis historique et critique de la litterature franqaise, 2 vols., with bibUographies, a "cram-book" for French students. — E. Faguet, Histoire de la litt&rature franqaise, 2 vols., discursive but sug- gestive. — G. PeUissier, Histoire de la littSrature franqaise, i vol., clear and concise. — R. Doumic, Histoire de la littirature franqaise, i vol., clear and concise. — C. Gidel, Histoire de la littirature franqaise, 5 vols. — L. Claretie, Histoire de la littirature franqaise, 4 vols., anecdotes and gossiping Utera- ture. — P. Albert, Histoire de la littirature franqaise, s vols., disconnected chapters, but useful. — In EngUsh must be mentioned the somewhat old- fashioned history by H. Van Laun and the more recent works of G. Saints- 883 884 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE bury and E. Dowden. In German Heinrich Junker's Grundriss der Geschichte der franzbsischen Literatur contains bibKographies useful to the student. Great help in working up certain special authors and topics will be derived from F. H6mon, Cours de litterature in nine volumes, or thirty-one separate parts, a series of manuals for the use of French students preparing for exami- nations. No one investigating topics in modern Uterature should fail to consult the tables of contents of the numerous volumes of essays by such writers as Sainte-Beuve, Brunetiere, Doumic, Faguet, Lemaitre, etc. There are two volumes of indices to Sainte-Beuve: one comprising the Causeries du lundi, the Portraits defemmes and Portraits litteraires, by Pierrot; the other comprising the Premiers lundis, the Nouveaux lundis, and the Portraits contemporains, by Giraud. The essays of E. Scherer are suggestive; the psychological essays of P. Bourget are involved. For various studies on modern subjects, see V. Du Bled, La socUtS frangaise du XVP au XX' Steele, 8 vols., since igoo. A convenient one-volume manual of the French drama is Petit de JuUe- viUe, le Theatre en France. A more ambitious but popular work is E. Lin- tiUiac, Histoire gSnerale du thidtre en France, in course of publication, to consist of about eight volumes. More scholarly is the Geschichte des neueren Dramas by W. Creizenach, dealing with the European drama in general, of which the first part of the fourth volume appeared in 1910. The EngUsh translation from the Danish of Mantzius's History of Theatrical Art is inter- esting for the study of the stage itself. The volume on Moliere has also been translated into French. The Middle Ages in France are dealt with by Petit de JullevUle, les Mystires, 2 vols., 1880; the same, Repertoire du thidtre comique au moyen-dge, 1885. An introductory manual is Mortensen, le Thedtre franqais au moyen-dge, French translation by Philipot, 1903. The student should keep in mind the connection between history and literature by such a work as Cirot, Dufourcq, et Thiry, Synchronismes de la littiratwre frangaise, in forty-four charts. ' The student of the Middle Ages will use the essential Grober's Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, 1902, which makes unnecessary the various other encyclopedias and methodologies of the Middle Ages of Korting or Neumann, etc. The special student of periods later than the Middle Ages, particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, will use: La Croix du Maine et du Verdier, Bibliotheques frangaises, edited by Rigoley de Juvigny, 6 vols., 1772-1773. Useful for the minor authors of the sixteenth century and their bibliographies. Niceron, Metnoires pour servir d, I'histoire des hommes illustres dans la republique des lettres, 43 vols., 1729-1745. Volumes X, XX, and XXX contain an index to the each ten volumes, and from Vol. XXXI on there is a general index in each volume to all the volimies published as the work progressed. Biographies and bibliographies. BIBLIOGRAPHY • S85 Abb6 Goujet, Bibliothhque franqaise, ou histoire de la litierature frangaise, 18 vols., 1740-1756. Vols. IX -XVIII deal with the poets. The odd- numbered volumes, beginning with Vol. I, contain, at the beginning, tables of authors' names for each series of two volumes; the even-numbered volumes contain, at the end, bibUographies for the corresponding volumes. A. BaiUet, Jugements des Savants, 8 vols., 1 722-1 730. L. Moreri, Grand dictionnaire kistoriqtie, 10 vols., 1759- Referred to for genealogical information. P. Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique. The best edition is that of •1720 in four volumes. Bayle's dictionary was begun as a supplement to Moreri. It received supplements itself by Chaufepie, 4 vols., 1750-1756, and Prosper Marchand, 2 vols., 1758-1759. The most recent edition of Bayle, edited by Beuchot, 16 vols., 1820, incorporates some of the supple- mentary matter but omits other parts. Freres Parfaict, Histoire du thSdtre frangais, 15 vols., 1745-1749. Con- tains biographies, and summaries of plays in chronological order. Begin- ning with Vol. IV there are alphabetical lists of plays, authors, and actors mentioned in each volume. In Vol. IX there is a chronological hst of plays down to 1665, which is continued in each volume thereafter. The modern drama begins in the second half of Vol. Ill (sixteenth century), after which the contents are: Vol. IV, 1601-1632; Vol. V, 1633-1638; Vol. VI, 1639- 1645;' Vol. Vn, 1646-1653; Vol. VIII, 1654-1660; Vol. IX, 1661-1665; Vol. X, 1666-1669; Vol. XI, 1670-1676; Vol. XII, 1677-1685; Vol. XIII, 1686-1695; Vol. XIV, 1696-1708; Vol. XV, 1709-1721. B. — The Middle Ages Histoire littSraire de la France, par les religieux benedictins de la Congre- gation de Saint-Maur, continu6e par des membres de I'lnstitut, 32 vols., 1733-1898, to be continued. Contains elaborate monographs on diflferent authors, bringing French literature down to the fourteenth century. {Table des quinze premiers volumes, by Rivain, 1875.) G. Grober, Franzosische Literatur in his Grundriss der romanischen Philo- logie, Vol. II, Pt. i, 1902. G. Paris, la LittSrature frangaise au moyen-dge {XP — X I V siecle), 4th edition, 1909. The most useful introductory manual in French. G. Paris, Esquisse historique de la littirature frangaise au moyen-dge, 1907. A different work from the previous one; a brief survey of the whole mediaeval period. C. Voretzsch, EinfUhrung in das Sttidium der altfranzSsischen Literatur (Sammlimg kurzer Lehrbiicher der romanischen Sprachen und Literaturen), 1905. A valuable introductory work with important bibhographies. Ph. Aug. Becker, Grundriss der altfranzSsischen Literatur (Sammlung romanischer Elementar- und Handbiicher, edited by Meyer-Liibke), 1907. The first part has appeared, dealing with the beginnings and the heroic epic. 886 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Interesting chapters on mediaeval topics can be found in the volumes of miscellaneous essays by G. Paris: la Poisie du moyen-dge, 2 vols.; Pobmes et ligendes du moyen-dge; Ugendes du moyen-dge. A history of the somewhat unexplored literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by F. Heuc- kenkamp is announced in the series containing Voretzsch's EinfUkrung, and one on the fifteenth century by Fr. Ed. Schneegans in the same series as Becker's Grundriss. C. — The Sixteenth Century Darmsteter et Hatzfeld, Le seizihne siicle en France, often reprinted. Contains literary history, biographies, grammatical survey, and extracts. Very useful, but needs to be brought up to date. A. Birch-Hirschfeld, Geschichte der franzosischen Literatur, 1889. Only the first volume was pubKshed, dealing with the periods of Louis XII and Francis I. H. Morf, Geschichte der neueren franzosischen Literatur, 1898. Only the first volume was published, dealing with the sixteenth century (bibliogra- phies) . A. Tilley, The Literature of the French Renaissance, 2 vols., Cambridge, England, 1904. The most complete general survey of the period. The same author published in 1885 an introductory essay under the same title, dealing with the earliest period of the Renaissance. F. Brunetiere, Histoire de la litterature franQaise classique, 1908. Only the first volume has appeared, dealing with the sixteenth century. H. Guy, Histoire de la poisie franqaise au XVP siicle. Vol. I, 1910. E. Faguet, le Seizikme siicle, etudes litteraires, 1893. The Bulletin de la Sociite de I'histoire du Protestantisme franqais is con- sulted chiefly f6r information concerning the sixteenth century, but is useful for other periods. The same is to be said of Haag, la France protestante, 1846-1858. A second edition, 1877-1888, did not progress beyond the letter G. Valuable suggestions may still be obtained from Sainte-Beuve's Tableau kistorique et critique de la poisie franqaise et du thedtre frangais au XVI' siicle, 1828; last edition, 1876. Among other older useful works, but to be used with much caution, are Philarete Chasles's Etudes sur le seizikme siicle en France, Saint-Marc Girardin's la Littirature franqaise au XVI° siicle, L. Feugere's Caractires et Portraits litt&r aires du XVI' siicle, and les Femmes Poetes au XVP siicle. D. — The Seventeenth Century F. Lotheissen, Geschichte der franzosischen Literatur im siehzehnten Jahrhundert, 4 vols., 1878. Pere Longhaye, Histoire de la littSrature franqaise au XV IP siicle, 4 vols., 1894-1896 ; clerical views. BIBLIOGRAPHY 887 J. Demogeot, Tableau de la littirature fratiQaise au XVII' sikle, avant Corneille et Descartes, 1859. Robiou, Essai sur I'histoire de la litUrature et des nueurs pendant la premiere moitii du XVII' sihcle, 1858. A. Tilley, From Montaigne to Molibre, or the Preparation for the Classical Age of French Literature, London, 1908. E. Faguet, le Dix-septihme siecle, etudes littSraires, 1885. Valuable suggestions are to be found in the pages of Sainte-Beuve's Fort- Royal and in Voltaire's Sikcle de Louis XIV. See also the student's hand- books: Horion, Explication du thidtre classique; Vial et Denise, Idies el Doctrines littSraires du XVII' siecle; and Hervier, les Ecrivains franqais jugSs par leurs contemporains. E. — The Eighteenth Century H. Hettner, Geschichte der franzosischen Literatur im achtssehnten Jahr- hundert, sth edition revised by Morf, 1894. Villemain, Tableau de la litt&rature franqaise au XVIII' sihcle, 4 vols., 1828. A. Vinet, Histoire de la littirature fransaise au XVIII' siecle, 2 vols., 1853. E. Faguet, le Dix-huitiime siecle, itudes littSraires, 1890. Useful suggestions may be found in Edmond Scherer's Etudes sur la lit- tSrature au XVIII' sitcle; Prosper de Baranite's Tableau de la littSrature franqaise au XVIII' siecle; Ernest Bersot's Etudes sur le XVIII' siecle. The LycSe, ou Cours de litterature ancienne et moderne of the eighteenth-cen- tury author La Harpe is useful as presenting the attitude of that age. See also the modem student's handbook of Vial et Denise, IdSes et doctrines littSraires du XVIII' sihcle. F. — The Nineteenth Century G. PeUissier, le Mouvement littSraire au XIX' sihcle, 1889. J.-P. Charpentier, la LittSrature franQaise au XIX' sihcle, 1875. A. Michiels, les Idees littSraires en France au XIX' sihcle, 2 vols., 1862. G. Braiides, Die Hauptstromungen der Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhun- derts, 6 vols., 1872-1891. There is an EngUsh translation, and a French one of the volume on the Romantic school. E. Faguet, le Dix-neuvihme sihcle, Studes littSraires, 1887. E. Faguet, Politiques et moralistes du XIX' sihcle, 3 vols., 1891-1899. Brunetiere, Evolution de la poSsie lyrique au XIX' siecle, 1889. C. Le Goffic, la LittSrature framaise au XIX' sihcle, 1910. Very concise, but mentions minor as well as major authors. F. Strowski, Histoire de la littSrature franqaise au XIX' sihcle. Announced for the end of 191 1. Les CSlSbritis d'aujourd'hui, a series of over forty brief biographies and critical studies, edited by E. Sansot-Orland, R. Le Brun, Ad. van Bever. It may be useful to consult J. Lemaitre, les Contemporains, 7 vols., 1885- 1899. A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE G. — The Modern Drama Dramatic criticism in the nineteenth century may, to a certain extent, be followed in the collected feuUletons and criticisms of Jules Janin, Eistoire de la liltSrature dramatique, 6 vols., 1853-1858; TheophUe Gautier, Eistoire de I'art dramatiqiie en France depuis vingt-cinq ans, 6 vols., 1858-1859; A. Vitu, les Milk et une nuits du thedtre, 9 vols.', 1884-1893; J.-J. Weiss, le Thidtre et les mosurs, 1889, and Trois annSes de th&dtre (1883-1885), 4 vols., 1892-1896; Francisque Saxcey, Quarante ansde thedtre, 8 vols., 1900-1902 ; Jules Lemaitre, Impressions de Ihidtre, 10 vols., 1888-1898; Emile Faguet, Notes sur le thidtre confemporain, 7 vols., 1889-1895 and Propos de thSdtre, 5 vols., 1903-1910; Rene Doumic, De Scribe d Ibsen, 1893, Essais sur le thedtre contemporain, 1896, and le Thidtre nouveau, 1908; A. Brisson, le Thidtre, frequent volumes since 1906. Yearly manuals of dramatic production are StoulUg, Annates du thedtre et de la musique, and Soubies's Almanach des spectacles. The doings of the Th6atre-Fransais are chronicled in annual volimies by Joan- nides. The modern theatre is studied in the Revue d'art dramatique; the current drama may be followed pictorially in the monthly le Thidtre or journalistically in the daily Comcedia. The weekly paper I' Illustration publishes occasional supplements, Vlllustration thedtrale, containing the text of all the important new plays brought out in Paris. The texts of the chief plays of the French drama down to the nineteenth century (including its first decades) can be foimd in several older collections or ripertoires containing innumerable volmnes. Among the chief ones are the RipeHoire giniral, 1821-1825, in over two hundred volumes, partly edited by Lepeintre and published by Dabo; the Ripertoire giniral of 1813, published by Lebel of Versailles; the Ripertoire giniral of NicoUe, 1818; the Repertoire of Petitot, pubUshed by Foucault, 1817-1820; the Repertoire of Firmin Didot, 1821— 1825. The titles of other plays may be found in the Catalogue de la bibliotheque du dut de la Valliire, by Guillaume de Bure, 6 vols., 1788 (the books in this collection are chiefly at the Bibhotheque de 1' Arsenal, in Paris) ; the Catalogue de la Bibliothhqu^ de M. de Soleinne, by le Bibhophile Jacob, 5 vols., 1843- 1845. " Ce catalogue, extremement complet, dispenserait presque de toute autre investigation bibhographique, si I'ordre adopte n'y rendait les re- cherches fort difficiles, et si la confusion qui y regne, n'en diminuait le prix. La Table des Auteurs est fort rare, et la Table des Pieces, qui rendrait d'inap- preciables services, n'a jamais ete pubUee. Pour les pieces jouees en pro- vince, ou non representees, le Catalogue Soleinne fournit des references qu'on chercherait vainement aUleurs." (Gaiffe, le Drame en France.) For titles of modern plays, see the Catalogue giniral des muvres , drama- liques et lyriques faisant partie du repertoire de la societe des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques. The third decennial catalogue covers the period Jan. i, 1899 — Feb. 28, 1909. The chief publishing-house of plays in the nineteenth century, untU rivals BIBLIOGRAPHY 889 have sprung up, has been the firm bearing the successive names of J.-N. Barba (1780-1839), Christophe Tresse (1839-1845), Nicolas Tresse (1845- 1871), veuve Tresse (1871-1885), Tresse et Stock (1885^1896), P.-V. Stock. In 1816 the firm incorporated the rival house of Dabo (see above, Repertoire of Dabo). n BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND JOURNALS A. — General Worxs^ E. G. W. Braunholtz, Books of Reference for Students and Teachers of French. A Critical Survey, London, 1901. A brief pamphlet, but a useful introduc- tory work for the beginner. A. Schulze, Ueber einige Hilfsmittel franzosiscKer Bibliographie, in Archil) fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen, Vol. XCIX. An article laying some stress on German works. J.-Ch. Brunet, Manuel du libraire, 5th edition, 6 vols., 1860-1865. The most important French bibhography, containing mention of peculiar, rare, curious, and general books. The sixth volume contains a systematic index. G. Brunet et P. Deschamps, SuppUment au Manuel du libraire, 2 vols., 1878-1880. Graesse, le Tresor des livres rares et precieux, 7 vols., 1859-1869. G. Lanson, Manuel bibliographique de la litt&raturefranQaise moderne {1300- I goo). The most convenient student's manual, appearing since 1909. Three volumes (sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries) have been issued. The student of special authors will find it convenient to consult the cata- logues of the Bibliotheque natioriale and of the British Museum, which should be found in good hbraries. Qi the former forty-one volumes had appeared in 1910, only down to the letter D. The latter consists of a CaUdogue, 1881-1900, and of a Supplement, 1882-1399. See also the Catalogue des livres composant la bibliothhque po&iqtie de M. Viollet le Due, 1843. B. — Anonymous Books and Pseudonyms Quirard, Supercheries littSraires dSvoilles, and edition, 3 vols., 1879. Barbier, Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes, 3d edition, 4 vols., 1872-1879. G. Brunet, Supplement to the two previous works, 1889. Weller, Die fqlschen utid fingierten Druckorte, 1864 (French part: Diction- naire des ouvrages franqais portant defausses indications des lieux d'impression et des imprimeurs). Weller, Lexicon pseudonymorum, 1886. G. d'HeiUy, Dictionnaire des pseudonymss, 1887. ' Among bibliographies of bibliographies, the older ones of Petzholdt, 1866, and of Vallee, 1884-1887, have been mainly superseded by Stein, Manuel de biblio- , ^raphie generate, 1897. 890 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE F; Drujon, les Livres d clef, 1888. See also, for the Middle Ages: A. FraxMia, Dictionnaire des noms, surnoms et pseudonymes latins de I'histoire lUUraire du moyen-dge, iioo d 1530, 1875. C. — Biographical Dictionakies and Encyclopedias In addition to works already mentioned, such as Moreri and Bayle, there are two old-fashioned but sometimes useful dictionaries: the Biographic universelle of Michaud, 45. vols., 1843-1865, and the Nouvelle biographic gen&rale- of Hoefer, 46 vols., 1852-1866 (on these two works cf . R. C. Christie, Biographical Dictionaries in Selected Essays). More recent are: Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel, 17 vols. — La Grande Encyclopedie, 31 vols., 1886-1902. — Nouveau Larousse illustrS, 8 vols., not identical with the Larousse mentioned above. — Current events and new books are recorded in the Larousse menstiel illustre. — Jal, Diction- naire critique de biographic et d'histoire, Errata et supplement pour tous les dictionnaires historiques, 1872. — Vapereau's Dictionnaire des littSratures and Dictionnaire des contemporains need revision, but are useful. D. — Early Printed and Rare Books The student of French literature rarely has occasion to consult the reper- tories of incunabula and early printed books recorded in the various works, "annals," "repertories," and their supplements, of Maittaire, Panzer, Hain, Copinger, Reichling, and K. Burger. Nor is the more specifically French, la France littiraire au XV' sihcle of G. Brunet, 1865, of very great service to him. His interest begins with the important Histoire de I'imprimerie of A. Claudin, 3 vols., 1900-1904, significant for the study of Humanism. He will find similar information for the study of the scholar-printers of the sixteenth century in the studies and bibliographies of A.-A. Renouard and Ph. Renouard. Further technical repertories are Delalain, Essai de Bib- liographie de I'histoire de I'imprimerie typographique, 1903; G. Lepreux, Gallia typographica, 1909, "repertoire biographique et chronologique de tous les imprimeurs de France depuis les origines de I'unprimerie jusqu'a la Revolution." Other useful bibUographies are: Beaulieux, Catalogue de la R6serve XVI' sihcle de la hibliothbque de V Uni- versity de Paris, 1910. F. Lachevre, Bibliographic des Recueils collcctifs de poisie publiSs de 1577 d 1700, 4 vols., 1901-1906. J. Le Petit, Bibliographic des principalcs Sditions originales d'Scrivains du XV' au XVIIP si&cle, 1888. E. Picot, Catalogue des livres composant la hiUiothhque de feu M. Ic baron James de Rothschild, 4 vols., 1884-1897. The amateur bibliophile will find a first aid to book-coUecting in Rahir, la Bibliotheque de I'amateur, 1907. The monthly catalogues of the Librairie Morgand have considerable bibliographical value. BIBLIOGRAPHY 891 E. — The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centueies Qu6rard, la France UtUraire, 10 vols., 1827-1829, with a Supplement, 2 vols. Qu6rard, Maury, Louandre, et Bourquelot, la Littgrature frangaise contem- poraine, 6 vols., 1842-1857. Laporte, Histoire littirairedu XIX^ sihcle, 7 vols., 1884-1890, "suppl6ment de Bnmet, Querard, Barbier, etc." G. Vicaire, Manuel de V amateur des livres au XIX' siMe, 7 vols., in course of publication since 1894. H. P. Thieme, Guide bihliographique de la UMrature frangaise de 1800 d. igo6, 1907. A convenient voliune containing many references to periodical literature. L.-P. Betz, la Litterature comparSe, 2d edition, 1904. R. Fedem, Repertoire bihliographique de la litterature frangaise des origines a igii. Issue of parts begun at Leipzig in 191 1. For publications since 1840 the most important bibliography is Lorenz, Catalogue g&neral de la librairie frangaise, continued by Jordell, 22 vols. The Lorenz is divided into two series of volumes : one series contains the catalogue of authors, the other indices. In the first series the titles of books are classed alphabetically by authors' names, and these names are usually accompanied, as in the France litteraire of Querard, by brief biograph- ical notices containing dates, pseudonyms, etc. Mention of works indicates size, nmnber of volumes, editions, dates, publishers, pubUcation price. Anonymous books and collections are entered alphabetically, omitting the article. The volumes of tables include a shghtly briefer alphabetical hst by contents. The distribution of the volumes is as follows : — Auteurs: 1840-187S, Vols. I-VI; 1876-1885, Vols. IX, X; 1886-1890, Vol. XII; 1891-1899, Vols. XIV, XV; 1900-1905, Vols. XVIII, XIX; 1906-1909, Vols. XXI, XXn. Matitres: 1840-1875, Vols. VII, VIII; 1876-1885, Vol. XI; 1886-1890, Vol. XIII; 1891-1899, Vols. XVI, XVII; 1900-1905, Vol. XX. Le Soudier's Bibliographie frangaise, 10 vols., 1900, is a collection of pub- lishers' lists, accompanied by an index of authors' names and a systematic index. It is continued at intervals of five years by a second series, consisting of index of authors, index of titles, index of topics: tome I, 1900-1904; tome II, 1905-1909, in two volumes. For the newest works and for announcements there are several pubUcations more or less complete, among which it sufiices to mention: la Bibliographie de la France (journal general de rimprimerie et de la librairie), containing information supplied by the government copyright department, pubUshed since 181 1, weekly, has an annual supplement of school books in September; le Mimorial de la librairie of Le Soudier, smaller and cheaper, continuing the Bibliographie frangaise, sufiicient for the ordinary student, weekly, or in the still more abridged form of a monthly Bulletin ; the Bulletin mensuel des ricentes publications frangaises, new additions to the Bibliotheque nationale; 892 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Jordell, Catalogue mensuel de la librairie franiaise, monthly subject-list with annual index; la Bibliographie mensuelle (monthly, with the exception of August and September); Polybiblion, a monthly bibliographical jour- nal of orthodox religious tendencies, contains reviews of books, bib- liographies of important French and foreign books, and summaries of periodicals. N.B. — The ordinary student can, in a general way, keep up with the progress of scholarship by following the bibliographies of current publica- tions in such periodicals as the Revue d'histoire littiraire de la France, the Zeitschrift fur franzosische Sprache und Literatur, the Zeitschrift fUr romanische Philologie (annual but several years in arrears). The Remie d'histoire liiteraire publishes a selected bibliography of literary articles in the daily and weekly press. The Annates des lettres JranQaises is a handy annual volume consisting of a literary and dramatic calendar. For French periodicals in general consult Le Soudier, Annuaire desjour- naux, revues et publications periodiques parus d Paris, or the Annuaire de la presse frangaise et etrangire. > University theses are recorded in : Mourier et Deltour, Catalogue et analyse des theses latines etfrangaises, etc., annual, but no longer issued. Catalogue des theses et ecrits acad&miques, published annually under the auspices of the Ministry of Public Instruction. A. Maire, Repertoire alphabetique des theses de doctorat-is-lettres (1810- 1900), 1903. As German dissertations often deal with French subjects, the following may be mentioned, even though not always confined to literature: H. Varnhagen, Systematisches Verzeichnis der Programmabhandlungen, Dissertationen und Habilitationsschriften, 2d edition, revised by Joh. Martin, 1893. R. Klussmann, Systematisches Verzeichnis der Abhandlungen, welche in den Schulschriften sdmtlicher am Programmaustausch teilnehmenden Lehran- stalten erschienen sind, 4 vols., 1889-1903. Jahres-Verzeichnis der an den deutschen Universitaten erschienenen Schriften, since Aug., 1885. BiUiographischer Monatsbericht Uber neu erschienene Schul- und Universi- tatsschriften, since 1889-1890. See also: Catalogue des dissertations et Scrits academiques provenant des ^changes avec les universites itrangeres et regues d la Bibliothtque nationale, annual. F. — Reviews and Journals The periodical reviews are far too numerous to mention in full, and the best ones are generally useful both as critical journals and as bib- liographical surveys of contemporary articles. Among the important ones are: BIBLIOGRAPHY 893 a. — FRENCH *. — Technical Journal des Savants, general erudition. Index (1859-1908) by J. Tissier. Romania, the leading organ for the study of Romance Philology. Index to the first thirty volumes by A. Bos, 1906. Bihliothhque de VEcole des chartes. Revue des langues romanes, gives much attention to Provencal. Annales du midi. Revise d'histaire littiraire de la France, deals with hterature since the begin- ning of the Renaissance. Its current bibliographies include mention of articles in the best weeklies and even dailies. Index to first four volumes (1894-1898) by Maurice Toumeux, 1900. A new index is in preparation. Revue des etudes Rabelaisiennes, now deals not only with Rabelais, but with general questions concerning the first half of the sixteenth century and the early Renaissance. Revue critique d'histaire et de littirature, devoted entirely to critical reviews of new works of erudition. Index (from 1866 to 1890), 1895. Reime universitaire, besides general articles and reviews often contains useful bibliographies of stated authors studied in connection with French official examinations, such as the licence and the agrSgation. Revue des cours et conferences, summaries of important lectures delivered by professors at the Sorbonne, the College de France, etc. Bulletin du bibliophile et du bibliothicaire, for the collecting of valuable books. Index (from 1834 to 1906), 19017. L'Intermidiaire des chercheurs, a French Notes and Queries. Index of the years 1864-1896. Revtte critique des livres nouveaux, somewhat less technical than the Revue critique. Bulletin italien, relations between French and Italian literatures. Revue hispanique, relations between French and Spanish literatures. N.B. As a guide to the contents of the above-mentioned periodicals, see Maire, Catalogue de toutes les tables genirales de matihres des Revues et Societes savantes, announced in 191 1. ii. — General Revue des Deux-Mondes, the heavy-weight of French hterary reviews. Revue de Paris. Le Correspondant, conservative. La Nouvelle Revue. La Revm, the French Review of Reviews. Revue bleue, revue politique et Htteraire. Rome hebdomadaire, light and easy articles. Mercure de Frounce, organ of the unacademic and unconventional sets. 894 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Chronique des lettres franQaises, not a very significant periodical, but useful because of the attention it devotes to minor authors and poets. The most serious dailies are the Temps and the Journal des Dibats, both of which contain useful literary and dramatic articles. There is a weekly edition of the Journal des Dibats called the Hebdo-Dibais. b. — AMERICAN AND ENGLISH Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. Modern Language Notes, brief investigations. Romanic Review, down to the end of the sixteenth century. Modern Philology. Modern Language Review, English. C. — GERMAN Archiv fUr das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, modem literature in general, still often called after its founder Herrig's Archiv, though edited by A. Brandl and H. Morf . German, French, and English topics. Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie, contains important annual bibh- ographies. Zeitschrift fur franzosische Sprache und Literatur, modem French, original articles, reviews, bibliographies. m. HISTORY A. — General Works The most interesting history of France on a large scale remains that of Michelet; Henri Martin's work is long-winded. The Histoire gin&rale of Lavisse and Rambaud is a general survey of European history somewhat akin to Petit de JulleviUe's history of literature. The Cambridge Modern History (bibliographies) begins with the Renaissance. The standard history is now the co-operative Histoire de France, depuis les origines jusqu'd la Revolution, edited by Lavisse, in eighteen volumes (9 tomes). Interesting to the general reader is I'Histoire de France racontie d, ious, in course of publica- tion in six volumes, edited by Fr. Funck-Brentano, and written by MM. Funck-Brentano, Batiffol, J. Boulenger, Stryienski, and Madelin. Duruy's school Histoire de France, in two volumes, though written long ago, is an interesting introduction. The new Histoire Larousse, in two volumes, is popular and pictorial. G. W. Kitchin's History of France (3 vols.) is in English. The short Histoire de la civilisation franqaise and Histoire de la civilisation contemporaine en France of Rambaud take up another side of history but are no longer quite new. BIBLIOGRAPHY 895 B. — BlBLIOGRAPfflES G. Monod, Bibliographie de I'histoire de France, 1888. C.-V. Langlois, Manuel de bibliographie historique, 1901-1904. U. Chevalier, Repertoire des sources historiques du moyen-dge. "Bio- bibliography," second edition, 1905-1907 and "Topo-bibliography," 1894 and fpU. A. Potthast, Bibliotheca historica medii aevi, Wegweiser durch die Ge- schichtswerke des europaischen Mittelalters, 2d edition, 2 vols., 1896. H. Bresslau, Quellen und Hiljsmittel zur Geschichte der romanischen Volher im Mittelalter, in Grober's Grundriss, III, iii. Les Sources de I'histoire de France, Part I, from the beguming to 1494, A. Molinier, 6 vols., 1901-1906 (Index, the sixth volume, by L. Polain). This work connects closely literature and history. Part II, the Sixteenth Cen- tury (1494-1610) by H. Hauser, in course of pubhcation. Later periods are in preparation. The relation of history and literature in new publications can be followed in such periodicals as the Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Charles, the Reme his- torique, the Renme des questions historiques, the Remie de synthase historique, the Revue d'hisloire moderne el contemporaine. See Briere et Caron, Reper- toire methodique de I'histoire moderne el contemporaine, 1899 and foil. IV. PHILOSOPHY The important philosophical works are mentioned .in the bibUography of the chapters. But see the important bibliographies in Ueberweg-Heinze, Geschichte der Philosophic, 9th edition, 1902-1903, loth editiQ.n (Modem Philosophy), 1906-1907. The relations of hterature and philosophy in current hterature may be followed by means of such periodicals as the Revue philosophique and the Annie philosophique. V. HISTORY OF THE LANGUAGE A. — Grammar and Syntax Consult supra, under History of Literature and Bibliography. Also, for the Romance languages in general: Diez, Romanische Grammatik, somewhat old-fashioned, French transla- tion by G. Paris and Morel-Fatio. Wilhelm Meyer-Liibke, Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen, 3 vols., 1894-1899, French translation by Rabiet and Doutrepont. For French in particular: Nyrop, Grammaire historique de la langtie franQoise, 1899-1908, 2nd edi- tion of Vol. I, 1904. 896 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE F. Brunot, Histoire de la langue fratiQaise des origines d igoo, in course of publication since 1905. Darmsteter, Cours de grammaire hisioriqtie, edited by Muret and Sudre, a readable study. For Old French: Schwan-Behrens, Grammatik des AUJranedsischen, Sth edition, 1909. For the sixteenth century: Darmsteter et Hatzfeld, le Seiziime Steele, the most convenient student's manual (cf . supra p. 886) . Benoist, la Syntaxe franqaise entre Palsgrave et Vaugelas, 1877. Livet, la Grammaire et les Gramrnairiens au XVI' sihcle, 1859. Thurot, la Prononciation Jranqaise depuis le commencement du XVI' sibcle, 2 vols., 1 881-1884. The last three works are not for begiimers. For the seventeenth century: Haase, Franzosische Syntax, etc., particularly the French translation by Obert, la Sfntaxe franqaise au XVIP siecle, 1898, important. For the eighteenth century: Gohin, les Transformations de la langue franqaise de 1740 d, 178Q, 1903. A. Francois, la Grammaire du purisme et V Academie franqaise, 1905. For the nineteenth century : Horluc et Marinet, Bibliographie de la syntaxe du Franqais (1840-1005), 1908. An interesting and useful elementary study 6f style in modern French is Lanson, I'Art de la Prose, 1909. B. — Dictionaries Etymological dictionaries of the Romance languages: Fr. Diez, Etymologisches Worterbuch der romanischen Sprachen, 5th edition, 1887. G. Korting, Lateinisch-romanisches Worterbuch, 3d edition, 1907. Old French: F. Godefroy, Dictionnaire de I'ancienne langue franqaise, 10 vols., 1881- 1902 (abridgment by Bonnard et Salmon, i vol., 1901). Sixteenth century: R. Cotgrave, French and English Dictionary, 16 11. Nicot, Tresor de la langue franqaise, Paris, 1606; Rouen, 1618. Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Richelet, Dictionnaire de la langue franqaise ancienne et moderne, 3 vols., 1728. Dictionnaire de Trevoux, 8 vols., 1771. E. Huguet, Petit Glossaire des classiques franqaise du XVIP siicle, 1907. Consult also the glossaries and lexiques of the series of the Grands Ecrivains de la France. BIBLIOGRAPHY 897 Modem French: E. Littre, Dictionnaire de la langue franqaise, 1863 ff., 4 vols, and supple- ment, remains, on the whole, the standard dictionary. There is an abridged edition by Littre and Beaujean. Hatzfeld, Darmsteter et Thomas, Dictionnaire general de la langue frangaise du commencement du XV IP sibcle a nos jours, 2 vols., no date, smaller than Littr6, but tends to displace it in many respects, especially for etymologies. Dictionnaire de VAcademie franqaise, 8th edition, 2 vols., 1878, standard for orthography, etc., but not very generally used. The various Larousse dictionary-encyclopedias (cf. supra) are useful but less authoritative. Lesaint, Traite de la prononciation franqaise, 3d edition, 1890, though issued in Germany, is useful for the confusing pronunciation of French nouns, especially proper names. For slang and unconventional French, the latest works of value are: De- lesalle, Dictionnaire argot-franqais et frangais-argot, 1896; H. France, Dic- tionnaire de la langue verte, 1907 ; A. Bruant, Dictionnaire frangais-argot, 1905; A. Barrere, Argot and Slang, a French-English Dictionary, London, 1889. Cf. L. Sainean, V Argot ancien (1455-1850), 1907. VI. PROSODY Convenient elementary handbooks are: Le Go£&c et Thieulin, Traits de versification frangaise. Quicherat, Petit traite de versifi-cation frangaise. L. E. Kastner, History of French Versification, Oxford, 1903. The more advanced student will proceed to: A. Tobler, Vom franzosischen Versbau alter und neuer Zeit, sth edition, 1910; French translation by Breul and Sudre, 1885. Becq de Fouquieres, Traits gSnSral de versification frangaise, 1879. Clair Tisseur, Modestes observations sur I' art de versifier, Lyons, 1893 (rare). M. Souriau, Evolution du vers frangais au XVIP siecle, 1893. SECTION II SYSTEMATIC BIBLIOGRAPHY Preliminary Note The following bibliography is not exhaustive but selective. It is intended to designate, for the benefit of foreign students working at long range, the most useful critical and bio- graphical studies concerning the authors and topics mentioned in the text. For the sake of conciseness these indications are limited to the author's name, the title (sometimes, abridged), and the date of publication. Place of publication and number of volumes are usually omitted: the vast majority of works were issued in Paris. This bibliography does not do away with the necessity, for advanced investigation, of consulting such works as Lanson's Manuel de hibliographie, though it often specifies books not there recorded. It should also be considered, along with the titles specified in the preceding general bibli- ography, as including the chief authorities used in the preparation of this history. PART I CHAPTER I See the various philological and historical works recorded in the General Bibliography, especially: Brunot, Hist, de la languefr.; E. Lavisse, Hisl. de France. — G. Renard, la Methode scientifique de V histoire littSraire, 1900. — H. Taine, on the "esprit gaulois" passim, e.g. in La Fontaine et ses fables, 1853. — E. Renan, Essai sur la poesie des races celtiques, in Revue des Deux- Mondes, 1854. — G. Michaut, le Genie latin, 1899. — ■ A. Fouillee, Psychologie du peuple Jranqais, 1898. — E. Freymond, Jongleurs und Menestrels, Halle, 1883. — E. Faxsd, les Jongleurs en France au moyen-dge, 1910. — E. K. Chambers, The Mediceval Stage, Oxford, 1903. — A. Ebert, Histoire ginirale de la liiterature du moyen-dge en Occident (French translation), 1883-1889. — L. Maltre, les Ecoles &piscopales et monastiques de I'occident depuis Charle- magne jusqu'd Philippe-Auguste, 1866. — Mullinger, The Schools of Charles the Great, London, 1877. — L. Havet, Qus doivent A Charlemagne les classiques latins? in Reou^ bleue, 1906. — A. F. West, Alcuin, New York, 1892. CHAPTER II L. Gautier, I'Epopee nationale, in Petit de Julleville's Histoire de la litt. frangaise, Vol I, (1896). — L. Gautier, les EpopSes frangaises, 2nd ed., 4 vols., 1888-94, and Bibliographie des chansons de geste, up 'to 1890, i vol., 1897. — E. Langlois, Tableau des noms propres de toute nature compris dans les chansons de gestes imprimees, 1904. — G. Paris, Histoire poUique de Charle- 898 BIBLIOGRAPHY 899 magne, 2nd ed., 1905. — P. Rajna, le Origini dell' epopeafrancese, Florence, 1884 (cf. G. Paris in Romania, Vol. XIII). — C. Nyrop, Storia dell' epopea francese, etc., translated from the Danish byE. Gorra, Turin, 1888. — G. Kurth, Histoire poitique des Merovingiens, 1893. — P- Paris, les Chansons de geste, in Hist. litt. de la France, Vol. XXII. — J. Bedier, les LSgendes epiques, 1908 ff. — J. Bauquier, Bibliographie de la Chanson de Roland, 1877. — E. Seelmann, Bibliographie des altfranz. Rolandsliedes, 1888. — F. Lot, I'Element historique de Garin le Loherain, in Etudes d' histoire du moyen-dge, dSdiees a G. Monod, 1896. — L. Jordan, Die Sage von den vier Haimons- kindern, 1905. — A. Jeanroy, Etudes sur le cycle de Guillaume, in Romania, Vols. XXV and XXVI. — R. Weeks, Etudes sur Aliscans, in Romania, Vol. XXX. — H. Suchier, Recherches sur les chansons de Guillaume d'Ofange, in Romania, Vol. XXXII. — On Htion de Bordeaux: G. Paris, Poemes et Ugendes du moyen-dge, 1900, and Romania, Vol. XXIX. — A. Longnon, I'Element historique de Huon de Bordeaux, in Romania, Vol. VIII. — Counson, la Legende d'ObSron, in Revue generate, Brussels, 1903. — H. Pigeonneau, le Cycle de la croisade et de lafamille de Bouillon, 1877. — O. Rohnstrom, Etude sur Jehan Bodel, Upsala, igoo. — E. Langlade, Jehan Bodel, 1909. Editions: Gormond et Isembard {le Roi Louis), ed. R. Heiligbrodt, Roman- ische Studien. — Karls Reise (Pelerinage de Charlemagne), ed. Koschwitz, 1904. — La Chanqun de Guillelme, ed. Suchier, 191 1. — Chanson des Saisnes, ed. Menzel und Stengel, 1906. — Chanson d'Aspremont, ed. Guessard et Gautier, 1855. — Raoul de Cambrai, ed. P. Meyer et A. Longnon, 1882; — Garin le Loherain, ed. P. Paris, 1833-36. — Hervis de Mes, ed. Stengel, 1903. — Renaus de Montauban, ed. Michelant, 1862. — Doon de Mayence, ed. A. Pey, 1859. — Aimeri de Narbonne, ed. Demaison, 1888. — Girart de Viane, ed. P. Tarbe, 1850. — Chanson d'Antioche, ed. P. Paris, 1848. — La Conquite de JSrttsalem, ed. Hippeau, 1868. — La Chanson du Chevalier au cygne et de Godefroi de Bouillon, ed. Hippeau, 1874-77.*— Editions of the Chanson de Roland: Th. Miiller, la Ch. de Roland, 1878; E. Stengel, Das altfranz. Rolandslied, 1900. — English translations, by J. O'Hagan (verse) London, 1880; by Isabel Butler (prose), Boston, 1904. — Aliscans, ed. Guessard et Montaiglon, 1870 (Anciens poetes de la France). —Huonde Bordeaux, ed. F. Guessard et C. Grandmaison, i860 {Anciens poetes de la France). The general reader may consult Lord Berners' English translation, published e.g. in the Tudor Translations, or Gaston Paris's French edition. CHAPTER III G. Paris, les Romans de la Table-Ronde, in Hist. litt. de la France, Vol. XXX (1888). — W. Foerster, Introd. to his ed. of Chretien de Troyes's Lancelot, 1899. — G. Paris, Tristan et Ysetdt, in Revue de Paris, 1894. — A. Bossert, la Legende chevaleresqtie de Tristan et Iseult, 1902. — J. Bedier, les Lais de Marie de France, in Reme des Deux-Mondes, 1801. — Wilmotte, I'Evolution 900 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE du roman frangais aux environs de 1150, (Proceedings of the Academie royale de Belgique, 1903). — Borodine, la Femme et I'amour au XII' slide d'apris les poemes de Chretien de Troyes, 1909. — H. Emecke, Crestien von Troyes als Personlichkeit und als Dichter, 1892. — O. Schulz, Die Darstellung psycho- log. Vorgange i.d. Romanen des Kristian von Tr., 1903. — E. Martin, Zur Gralsage, 1880. — A. Nutt, Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, London, 1888. — E. Wechssler, Die Sage vom heiligen Gral, 1898. — W. W. Newell, The Legend of the Holy Grail and the 'Perceval' of Chretien de Troyes, Cam- bridge, Mass., 1902. — On Andr6 le Chapelain, see G. Paris, Romania, XII. p. 524 ff; G. V&ni, Journal des Savants, 1888, pp. 664 ff, 727 ff. — A. Graf, Roma nel medio eoo e nelle immaginazioni del medio evo, Turin, 1882. — Comparetti, Virgilio nel medio eoo, 2nd ed., 1896. (There is an English translation of the first edition.) — J. Tunison, Master Virgil, Cincinnati, 1888. — L. Sudre, Publii Ovidii Nasonis Metamorphoseon libros quomodo nos- trates medii osvi poetoe imitati interpretatique sint, 1893. — N. E. GrifiSn, Dares and Dictys, Johns Hopkins Univ. diss., 1909. — C.-V. Langlois, la Societe franqaise au XIII' sitcle d'aprts dix romans d'aventure, 1904. • — Joly, Benoit de Sainte-More et le Roman de Troie, 1870-71, Introd. and text. — P. Meyer, Alexandre le Grand dans la litterature franqaise du moyen-dge, 1886, studies and text. — On Floire et Blanchefleur, G. Huet, Sur I'origine de Floire et Blanchefleur, in Romania, 1899; cf. Romania, 1906, p. 95; Journal des Savants 1901, p. 707; Revue de philologie franqaise, Vol. XIX. — For the general reader: P. Paris, les Romans de la Table-Ronde, 5 vols., 1868-77; J. Bedier, le Roman de Tristan, 1900. The general reader may also turn to the versions and adaptations of Miss Jessie Weston; also William Morris's Old French Romances. See W. MacCallum, Tennyson's Idylls and Arthurian Story, Edinburgh, 1894; H. Maynadier, The Arthur of the English Poets, Boston, 1907. Editions: Thomas, Roman de Tristan, ed. Bedier, 1902. — Beroul, Roman de Tristan, ed. E. Muret, 1903. — La Folic Tristan, ed. Bedier, 1907. — Marie de France, Lais, ed. K. Warnke, 1900. — Chretien de Troyes, Sdmt- liche Werke, ed. W. Foerster, 1884-99 (Cliges, Yvain, Erec, Lancelot). Also text editions of Cliges, Yvain, Erec. — Perceval le Gallois, ed. Potvin, 6 vols., 1866. — Robert de Boron, le Roman du Saint Graal, ed. F. Michel, 1841. — Le Saint Graal, ed. Hucher, 1875. — The prose Joseph of Arimathea, ed. G. Weidner, 1881. — The prose Merlin, ed. Paris et Ulrich, 1886. — Gautier d' Arras, Eracle, ed. Loseth, 1890; Ille et Galeron, ed. Loseth, 1890, ed. Foerster, 1891. — Andre le Chapelain, Andreae capellani regit Francorum de amore libri tres, ed. Trojel, Copenhagen, 1892. — Dares and Dictys, ed. F. Meister, 1872 and 1873. — Benoit de Sainte-More, le Roman de Troie, ed. Constans, 1904. — Enias, ed. Salverda de Grave, 1891. — Le Roman de Thebes, ed. Constans, 1890. — Floire et Blanchefleur, ed. E. du Meril, 1856. — Aucassin et Nicolete, ed. Suchier, 1903. BIBLIOGRAPHY 901 CHAPTER IV Jeanroy, les Origines de la poesie lyrique en France au moyen-dge, 1889. — G. Paris, les Origines de la poesie lyrique en France au moyen-Age, in Journal des Savants, 1889-1892. — P. Paris, les Chansonniers, in Histoire litt&raire de la France, Vol. XXIII, 1856. — G. Raynaud, Bibliographie des chansonniers fratiQais des XIIP et XIV' sikies, 1884. — P. Meyer, De Vinfiuence des troubadours sur la poisie des peuples romans, in Romania, Vol. V. — Bartsch, Romanzen und Pastourellen, 1870. — L. F. Mott, The System of Courtly Love studied as an introduction to the "Vita Nuova" of Dante, Boston, i8g6. — L. Cledat, Rutebeuf, 1891. — A. Stimming, Provenzalische Literatur, in Grober's Grundriss. — Diez, Die Poesie der Troubadours, revised by Bartsch, 1883. — Diez, Leben und Werke der Troubadours, revised by Bartsch, 1882. — P. Meyer, Des rapports de la poisie des trouvhres avec celle des troubadours in Romania, Vol. XIX. — J. Anglade, les Troubadours, 1909. — J. H. Smith, The Troubadours at Home, New York, 1899. — Faral, les Jongleurs, of. supra. Chap. I. — P. S. Allen, Mediceval Mimes, in Modern Philology, 1910. — E. du Mdril, PoSsies populaires latines du moyen-Age, 1847.^ — Hubatsch, Die lateinischen Vagantenlieder, 1870. — C.-V. Langlois, la LitiSrature goliardique, in Revue bleue, 1892-1893. — T. Wright, Latin Poems attributed to Walter Mapes, 1841. — Carmina Burana, Stuttgart, 1847. — W. Meyer, Fragmenta Burana, 1901. — J. A. Symonds, Wine, Women and Song, London, T884. — G. Hue?, Sur I'origine du pobme de Phyllis et Flora, in Romania, Vol. XXII. CHAPTER V See references to historical implements in the General Bibliography: Potthast, Chevalier, and especially Molinier. — G. Monod, Etude critique sur les sources de Vhistoire carolingienne, in Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, 1898. — Vie de saint Alexis, ed. Paris et Pannier, 1872. — Forster, le Tombeur de Notre Dame, in Romania, Vol. II. See English translation by Wicksteed, Our Lady's Tumbler. — A. Debidour, les Chroniqueurs, 1892. — Paris et Jeanroy, Extraits des chroniqueurs Fran^ais, 1892. — Ville- hardouin, Conquite de Constantinople, ed. Natalis de Wailly, 1874. — Joinville, Vie de saint Louis, ed. N. de Wailly, 1875. —On Jean le Bel, W. P. Ker, Froissart, in Essays on Medieval Literature, 1905. — Mme Darm- steter, Froissart, 1894. — Works of Froissart: Ed. Luce et Raynaud, nine vols., 1869-1894; Poems, ed. Scheler, 1871; Meliador, ed. Longnon, igoo. English translations by Lord Berners and by Thomas Johnes. — Works of Commines: Ed. Dupont, 1840; ed. Chantelauze, 1881. 902 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE CHAPTER VI Hervieux, les Fabtdistes latins, 1893-1894. See also G. Paris in Journal des Savants, 1884-1885. — Jacobs, The Fables of Msop; I, History of the jEsopic Fable, London, 1889. — A. Joly, Marie de France et les fables au moyen-dge, in M6moires de I'AcadSmie de Caen, 1863. — Die Fabeln der Marie de France, ed. Warnke, 1898. — Lenient, la Satire en France au moyen-dge, 1877. — Rothe, les Romans du Renard, examinis, analysis et compares, 1845. — Fauriel, le Roman de Renart, in Hisloire litt&raire de la France, Vol. XXII, 1852. — Potvin, le Roman du Renard, 1861. — P. Paris, les Aventures de maitre Renart et d'Ysengrin, son compere, 1861. — Jonck- bloet. Etude sur le Roman du Renart, 1863. — E. Martin, Observations sur le Roman de Renart, 1887. — Sudre, les Sources du Roman de Renart, 1893. — G. Paris, le Roman de Renard, in Journal des Savants, 1894-1895. — Willems, Etude sur I'Ysengrinus, 1895. — Roman de Renart, ed. Martin, 1882-1887. — Houdoy, Renart-le-Nouvel, 1874. — Edition of Renard le Contrefait in preparation by G. Raynaud. — J. Bedier, les Fabliaux, second ed., 1895. — J.-V. Le Clerc, les Fabliaux, in Sist. litt. de la France, Vol. XXIII. — C.-V. Langlois, les Fabliaux, in Revue bleue, 1891. — Brunetiere, les Fabliaux en France au moyen-dge, in Etudes critiques, Vol. VI. — Montaiglon et Raynaud, Recueil ginSral et complet des fabliaux des XIIP et XIV' siecles, 1872-1890. CHAPTER yil See the titles on the mediseval theatre in the General Bibliography, espe- cially Petit de Julleville and Creizenach. — G. Cohen, Histoire de la mise en scene dans le tMdtre religieux franqais du moyen-dge, igo6. — D. C. Stuart, The Development of Stage Decoration in France in the Middle Ages, New York, 1910. — L. Gautier, les Tropes, 1887. — Coussemaker, Drames liturgiques, i860. — Petit de JulieviUe, In ComSdie et les mceurs en France au moyen-dge, 1886. — Petit de Julleville, les Comidiens en France au moyen-dge, 1885. — J. P. Jacobsen, la Comedie au moyen-dge, in Revue de philologie franqaise, 1909. — -H. Guy, Adam de le Hale, 1898. — Monmerque et Michel, le TMdtre franqais au moyen-dge, 1839. — Recueil de farces, moraliiSs et sermons joyeux, ed. Le Roux de Lincy et Michel, 1837. — Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, ed. E. Langlois, 1896. — Miracles de Notre Dame, ed. G. Paris et Robert, 1876- 1893. — Ed. Fournier, le TMdtre franqais avant la Renaissance. Mysthres, moralites, farces, 1872. — Text of mediaeval plays in Viollet le Due's Ancien tMdtre franqais, Vols. I-III. — E. Picot, la Sotie en France, in Romania, Vol. VII; E. Picot, les Monologues dramatiques, in Romania, Vols. XV, XVI, XVII; E. Picot, les MoralitSs polSmiques, in Bulletin de la Soc. hist. Protes- tantisme, 1887, 1892, 1906. — E. Picot, Recueil giniral des soties, 1902 fi. — Oulmont, Gringore, 1911. — Gringore, CEuvres, 2 vols., 1858. — Recueil de farces, ed. Picot et Nyrop, 1880. — Pathelin, ed: 1904 (Soc. des textes modemes); 1908 (F. E. Schneegans). BIBLIOGRAPHY 903 CHAPTER VIII H. O. Taylor, The Mediceval Mind, 191 1. — Grober, Uebersicht iiber die lateinische Literatitr, in Grober's Grundriss. — M. Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 1911. — Ueberweg-Heinze, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, Part II, ninth edition, 1898. See especially the bibliographies. — B. Haureau, Histoire de la philosophie scolastique, 1872-1880. — F. Picavet, la Scolastique, in Remie internationale de I'enseigne- fnent, 1893. — F. Picavet, Esquisse d'une histoire gSnSrale des philosophies mldievales, 1904. — M. de Wulf , Histoire de la philosophie mSdiSvale, Louvain, I goo. — W. Turner, History of Philosophy, Boston, 1903. — Kanlich, Ge- schichte der scholast. Philosophie, 1863. — Stock, Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, 1864-1866. — Prantl, Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, 1861- 1870. — Townsend, Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, 1881. — R. Lane- Poole, Illustrations of the History of MediavaJ Thought, 1884. — Saint-Ren6 Taillandier, Scot Erighne et la philosophie scolastique, 1843. — Alice Gardner, John the Scot, London, 1890. — R. W. Church, Saint Anselm, London, 1870. — R. S. Storrs, Bernard of Clairvaux, London, 1894. — Vacandard, Vie de saint Bernard, 1897. — F. Picavet, Roscelin, philosophe et thiologien, 191 1. — E. Michaud, Guillaume de Champeaux, 1868. — Ch. de R6musat, Abilard, 1845. — Vaughan, Thomas of Aquino, 1871-1872. — Eicken, Geschichte und system der mittelalterl. Weltanschauung, 1887. — Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages (English translation), 1900. — Langlois, la Vie en France au moyen-dge d'apres quelques moralistes du temps, 1908. — C.-V. Langlois, la, Connaissance de la nature et du monde au moyen-dge, d'apres quelques contes franQais a I'usage des laics, 191 1. — J. B. Schwab, Johannes Gerson, 1858. — A.-L. Masson, Jean Gerson, 1894. — Abbe Lafontaine, Jehan Gerson {1363-1420), 1906. — Tschakert, Peter von Ailli, 1877. — Henri d'Andeli, (Euiires, ed. H6ron, 1881. CHAPTER IX J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, Vol. I, Cambridge, Eng-, 2nd ed. 1906. — Denifle, Die Universitdten des Mittelalters bis 1400, 1885. — H. Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages^ Oxford,. 1895. — Thurot, De l' organisation de I'enseignement dans I'Universite de Paris au moyen-dge, 1850. — Luquet, Aristote et I'UniversitS de Paris au XIII' sitcle, in Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des hautes etudes, sciences religieuses, 1904. — A. O. Norton, Mediaeval Universities, Cambridge, Mass., 1909. — Paetow, Arts Courses at Mediteval Universities, in Pub. of the Univ. of Illinois, 1910. — Male, I'Art religieux du trdzikme si^cle en France, 1902. — Schaarschmidt, Johannes Saresberiensis, 1862. — John of SaKsbury, new edition of the Policraticus, edited by Webb, Oxford, 1909.— Espenberger, Die Philosophie des Petrus Lombardus, 1901. — M. Baumgartner, Die Philosophie des Alanus de Insulis, 1896. — Daunou, Vincent de Beauvais, in Hist. litt. de la 904 A HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE France, Vol. XVIII. — Bourgeat, Vincent de Beauvais, 1856. — Boutaric, Vincent de Beauvais et la connaissance de I'antiquitS classique au XIII' sitcle, in Revue des questions historiques, 1875. — Lecoy de la Marche, la Chaire frangaise au moyen-dge, 1868. — L. Bourgain, la Chaire Jranqaise au XII' sibcle, 1879. — Walberg, le Bestiairp de Philipe de Thailn, 1900. — Lauchert, Geschichte des Physiologus, 1889. — L. Pannier, les Lapidaires frangais du moyen-dge, 1882. — Lanson, Un naturaliste au XIIP siecle (Jean de Maun), in Revu^ bleue, 1894. — E. Langlois, Origines et sources du Roman de la Rose, 1890. — Editions of the Roman de la Rose: Meon, 1814; Michel, 1864; Marteau, 1878-1880. English translation in verse by F. S. Ellis, London, n. d. CHAPTER X Le Clerc et Renan, Discours sur I'itat des lettres et des beaux-arts au XIV siecle, 1865. — J.-P. Charpentier, Histoire de la Renaissance des lettres au XV' sihcle, 1833. — Guillaume de Machault, le Livre du Voir Dit, ed. P. Paris, 187s; Prise d' Alexandrie, ed. Mas Latrie, 1877; (Euvres, ed. Hoepffner, 1908; ed. Chichmaref, 1909. — Sarradin, Mustache Deschamps, 1879; E. Hoepffner, Eustache Deschamps, 1904; (Euvres, ed. Saint-HUaire et Ray- naud, 1878-1894. — Petit de Julleville, Reports of lectures on Charles d' Orleans, Villon, Martin Lefranc, in Bulletin des Cours et Conferences, 1894-1895; on the literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Revue des Cours et Conferences, 1895-1896. — F. Meunier, Nicole Oresme, 1857. — E. Bridrey, Nicole Oresme, etude d'histoire des doctrines et des fails Sconomiques, 1906. — A. Thomas, De Joannis de Monsterolio vita et operibus, 1884. — A. Thomas, le Nom et lafamille de Jehan de Monstereul, in Romania, Vol. XXXVII, 1908. — A. Piaget, Martin Le Franc, Lausanne, 1888. — Robineau, Christine de Pisan, 1882. — F. Koch, Leben und Werke der Chris- tine de Pisan, 1885. — R. Thomassy, Essai sur les ecrits politiques de Christine de Pisan, 1838. — F. Beck, les Epitres sur le Roman de la Rose von Christine de Pisan, 1889. — Piaget, Christine de Pisan et le Roman de la Rose, in Etudes romanes dMites a Gaston Paris, 1891. — Christine de Pisan, (Euvres poetiques, ed. Roy, 1886 S; Chemin de long itude, ed. Piischel, 1881. — Delaunay, Etude sur Alain Chartier, 1876. — G. Joret-Desclosieres, Alain Chartier, 1897. — Hannappel, Die Poetik Chartiers, 1881. — Chartier, (Euvres, ed. Duchesne, 1617; le Curial, ed. Heuckenkamp, 1899. — Beaufils, Ettide sur la vie et les poisies de Charles d'Orleans, 1861. — P. Champion, Vie de Charles d'Orlians, 1911. — Charles d'0rl6ans, (Euvres, ed. ChampoUion-Figeac, 1842; ed. d'Hericault, 1874. — Campaux, Franqois Villon, 1859. — Longnon, Etiide biographique sur Villon, 1877. — G. Paris, Franqois Villon, 1901. — Villon, (Euvres, ed. Longnon, 1892. Enghsh translation in verse by John Payne, London, 1892. — Doutrepont, la Litt&rature d la cour des dues de Bourgogne, 1909. Soderhjelm, la Nouvelle franqaise au XV' sibcle, 1910. BIBLIOGRAPHY 905 PART II GENERAL See the titles mentioned under the General Bibliography, and also: L. Feugere, Caracteres et portraits litt&raires, 1849. — A. Vinet, Moralistes des XVI' et XVIP siecles, 1859. — A. Desjardins, les Sentiments moraux au XVP siecle, 1887. — Lenient, la Satire en France au XVP siecle, 1866. — A. H. Upham, The French Influence in English Literature from the Accession of Elizabeth to the Restoration, New York, 1908. — Sidney Lee, The French Renaissance in England, London, 1910. — P. Toldo, Etudes sur la po&sie burlesque de la Renaissance, in Zeitsch. fur rom. Philologie, Vol. XXV. — Montaiglon et Rothschild, Recueil de poSsies frangaises des XV' et XVI' siecles, 13 vols., 1855-1878. — W. Pater, Gaston de Latour (an unfinished romance), London, 1896. CHAPTER I ' J. A. Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy, London, 1877 ff. — Burckhardt, Die Ctdtur der Renaissance in Italien, revised by Geiger, 1885 (French and EngUsh translations). — P. Schaff, The Renaissance, New York, 1891. — Ph. Monnier, le Quattrocento, itude sur le XV' siecle litteraire italien, 1901. — E. Gebhart, les Origines de la Renaissance en Italic, 1879. — J. Texte, les Origines de la Renaissance fran^aise, in Reme des Cours et Conf., 1893-1894. — Rathery, Influence de I'ltalie sur les lettres frangaises depuis le XIII' siecle jusqu'au regne de Louis XIV, 1853. — F. Flamini, Le Lettere italiane alia corte di Francesco I, in Studi di storia letteraria italiana e straniera, 1895. — J. Texte, V Influence italienne dans la Renaissance frangaise, in Etiides de litt. europeenne, 1898. — R. de Maulde La Claviere, Louise de Savoie et Frangois I", trente ans de jeunesse, 1895. — E. Picot, les Frangais italiani- sants au XVI' siecle, 1906-1907. — H. Hauvette, Alamanni, sa vie et son tBuvre, 1903. — P. Laumonier, Luigi Alamanni, son influence sur la PUiade frangaise, in Rev. de la Renaissance, 1903. CHAPTER 11 G. Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums, revised by. Lehnerdt, 1893. — Sandys, Harvard Lectures on the Revival of Learning, Cambridge, England, 1905 (see, above, the same author's History of Classical Scholarship). — H. T. Peck, History of Classical Philology, New York, 1911. — P. de Nolhac, Petrarque et I'humanisme, second edition, 1907. — J. Philippe, Introduction de I'imprimerie d Paris, 1892. — A. Claudin, Histoire de I'imprimerie, 1900-1904. — Massebieau, les Collogues scolaires du XVI' silcle, 1878. — W. H. Woodward, Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance, Cambridge, England, 1906. — Roherti Gaguini Epistolce et 9o6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Orationes, ed. Thuasne, 1904. —J. Paquier, I'Humanisme et la R&Jorme: J. AUandre, 1900. — Geiger, Fausto Andrelini, in Vierteljahrschrift fur Kultur und Lilteratur der Renaissance, No. i, (1885). — E. Egger, I'HellSn- isme en France, 2 vols., 1869. — E. Legrand, BiUiographie helUnique des XV' et XVI' sitcles, 1885-1906. — A. Lefranc, Histoire du Collige de France, 1892. — Van der Haeghen, Bibliotheca Erasmiana, Ghent, 1907. — Erasmus, Epistles, translated by F. M. Nichols, London, 1901-1904. — H. Durand de Laur, Erasme, prScurseur et initiateur de Vesprit moderne, 1872. — G. Feugere, Erasme, 1874. — J. A. Froude, The Life and Letters of Erasmus, 1894. — Rebitte, Guillaume Bude, 1846. — L. DelarueUe, Guillaume Budi, 1907. (See Le Fevre, in Remie de syntMse historique, 1907.) — L. Delaruelle, Ripertoire analytique et chronologique de la correspondence de Guillaume Buds, 1907. — R. C. Christie, Estienne Dolet, 2d edition, London, 1899. — Lenient, De bello Ciceroniano apud recentiores, 1855. — R. Sabbadini, Storia del Ciceronianismo, 1886. CHAPTER III See General Bibliography, especially Guy, Hist, de la poSsie au XVI' sitcle. — G. Pellissier, De sexti decimi saeculi in Francia artibus poeticis, 1882. — E. Langlois, De artibus rhetoricae rhythmicae, 1890. — E. Langlois, Recueils d'Arts de seconde RhStorique, 1902. — Hecq et Paris, La poetique frangaise au moyen-dge et a la renaissance, Brussels, 1896. — H. Chatelain, Recherches sur le vers franqais au XV' siecle, 1908. — Samouillan, Olivier Maillard, 1891. — G. Perouse, Georges Chastdlain, Stude sur I'histoire poli- tique et UMraire du XV' siecle, 1910. — A. de la Borderie, Jean Meschinot, in Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Charles, 1895. — Meschinot, les Lunettes des Princes, ed. 0. de Gourcufi, 1890. — F. Thibaut, Marguerite d'Autriche et Jehan Lemaire de Beiges, 1888. — Ph.-Aug. Becker, Jean Lemaire, der erste humanistische Dichter Frankreichs, 1893. — Ph.-A. Becker, Nachtrdge zu Jean Lemaire, in Zeitsck. fiir ram. Phil., Vol. XIX. — Lemaire de Beiges, CEuvres, ed. Stecher, 4 vols., Louvain, 1882-1891. — H. Molinier, Octbvien de Saint-Gelais, 191 1. — Ehrlich, Jean Marots Leben und Werke, 1902. — Ch. d'Hericault, Introduction to CEuvres choisies de Marot, 1867. — H. Morley, Clement Marot, and other Studies, 1871. — E. Scherer, Marot in Etudes sur la littSrature contemporaine. Vol. VIII. ^ O. Douen, CUment Marot et le Psautier Huguenot, 1878. — H. Guy, Defontibus Clementi Maroli poetae: antiqui et medii aevi scriptores, 1898. — E. Voizard, De disputatione inter Marotum et Sagontum, 1885. — P. Bonnefon, le Dif&rend de Marot et de Sagon, in R. d'hist. litt. de la France, 1894. — Marot, CEuvres, ed. Lenglet- Dufresnoy (Gordon de Percel), 4 and 6 vols., 1731; ed. Lacroix, 1824; ed. Jannet, 4 vols, 1868-1872 (the most convenient); ed. Guiffrey, 1876-1881 (the best, but incomplete, only Vols. II and III). — E. Rodocanachi, RenSe de France, 1896. — Torraca, Gl'Imitatori stranieri di Jacopo Sannazaro, BIBLIOGRAPHY 907 Rome, 1882. — H. Molinier, Mellin de Saint-Gelais, 1911. — L. Delaruelle, Un diner litUraire chez Mdlin de Saint-Gdais, in R. d'kist. Hit. de la France, Vol. IV. — Saint-Gelais, (Euvres, ed. Blanchemain, 3 vols., 1873. CHAPTER IV Bourciez, les Mceurs polies et la litUrature de cour sous Henri II, 1883. — A. Lefranc, le Platonisme en France d I'epoque de la Renaissance (1500-1550), in Revue d'kist. litt. de la France, 1896. — R. de Maulde La Claviere, les Femmes de la Renaissance, 1898. — On Platonic love, see Saint-Marc Girardin, Cours de liUSrature dramatique. Vol. II. — J. A. Symonds, The Conception of Love in Plato and Dante, in Contemporary Review, 1890. — E. Baret, De VAmadis de Gatde, 1873. — A. Faiinelli, Dante e la Francia, 1908. — A. Maiy F. Robinson, Marguerite of Angoultme (also French edition by the same, Mme Darmsteter), 1899. — A. Lefranc, Marguerite de Navarre et le Platonisme de la Renaissance, in Bibliothkque de I'Ecole des Chartes, 1897-1898. — A. Lefranc, les Idees religieuses de Marguerite de Navarre, 1898. — E. Paturier, les Sources du mysticisme de Marguerite de Navarre, in Revue de la Renaissance, Vols. V and VI. — Marguerite de Navarre, Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses, ed. F. Frank, 4 vols., 1873; VHeptamSron, ed. F. Frank, 3 vols., 1879; I'Heptamiron, ed. Le Roux de Lincy and Montaiglon, 4 vols., 1880; les Dernikres poSsies de Mar- guerite de Navarre, ed. A. Lefranc, 1896 (cf. review by G. Paris in Journal des savants, 1896). — F. Brun'etiere, Un precurseur de la Pliiade, Maurice Sceve, in Etudes critiqties. Vol. VI. — A. Baur, Maurice Schve et la Renaissance lyonnaise, 1905. — Maurice Sceve, Dilie, 1862. — Pernette du Guillet, Rimes, 1864. — A. Cartier, les Poetes de Louise Labi, in Remce d'kist. litt. de la France, 1894. — Louise Labe, (Euvres, ed. Boy, 2 vols., 1887. — Heroet, CEuvres poStiques, ed. Gohin, 1909. — GiUes Corrozet, le Conte du rossignol, in Anciennes poisiesfr. (A. de Montaiglon), Vol. VIII. CHAPTER V Revue des Etudes Rabelaisiennes, quarterly since 1903. — V.-L. Bourrilly, Elat prisent des travaux sur Rabelais, in R&o. hist. mod. et contemp., 1906. — H. Schneegans, Der heutige Stand der Rabelaisforschung, in Germanisch- Romanische Monatsschrift, Vol. I., 1909.^?. Plan, Bibliographie Rabelai- sienne {1532-1711), 1904. — E. Gebhart, Rabelais, la Renaissance et la RSforme, 1877. — P. Stapfer, Rabelais, 1889. — R. Millet, Rabelais, 1892. — C. Whibley, Literary Portraits, London, 1904. — A. Tilley, Franqois Rabelais, 1907. —J. Fleury, Rabelais et ses ceuvres, 1877. — A. Heulhard, Rabelais, ses voyages en Italie, son exil & Metz, 1891. — L. Thuasne, Etudes sur Rabelais, 1904. — F. Plattard, I'CEuvre de Rabelais, 1910. — L. Thuasne, Villon et Rabelais, 191 1. — F. Arnstadt, Rabelais und sein Trait6 d'Sducation, jg;^2. — A. Lefranc, les Navigations de Pantagruel, 1905. — A. Tilley, 9o8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Rabelais and Geographical Discovery, in Mod. Lang. Review, Vol. II. — E. Huguet, Etude sur la syntaxe de Rabelais, 1894. — Works of Rabelais: Variorum edition, Esmangart and Johanneau, 9 vols., 1823-1826; Burgaud des Marets et Rathery, 2 vols., 1857; Montaiglon et Lacour, 3 vols., 1868- 1872; P. Jannet, 7 vols., 1873-1874; Marty-Laveaux, 6 vols., 1868-1903; Moland, i vol., 1881 ; in preparation, Ed. de la Sac. des Etudes Rabelaisiennes, MM. Lefranc, Boulenger, Clouzot, Dorveaux, Plattard, Sain6an, about 8 vols. — Translations: Urquhart and Motteux, first complete edition, 1708, often reprinted; W. F. Smith, London, 1893. The German transla- tion of Gottlob Regis contains voluminous notes. — H. Schneegans, Gesckickte der grotesken Satire, 1894. — P. Toldo, Contributo alio studio della novella francese del XV e XVI secolo, 1895 (cf. G. Paris in Journal des savants, 1895.) — A. Cheneviere, Bonaventure des Periers, sa vie et s^s poesies, 1885. — Des Periers, CEuvres, ed. Lacour, 1856; Cymbalum mundi, ed. Frank, 1873. — S. Rabinowitz, Guillaume Bouchet; ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der franzo- sischen Novelle, 1910. — G. Bouchet, les Series, ed. Roybet, 6 vols., 1873- 1882. — N. du Fail, Propos rustiques, ed. A. de la Borderie, 1878; Contes et discours d'Eutrapel, ed. Hippeau, 2 vols., 1875; Baliverneries et contes d'Eutrapel, ed. Courbet, 2 vols., 1894. — B6roalde de Verville, le Moyen de parvenir, ed. Royer, 2 vols., 1896. CHAPTER VI Dditiae C. poetarum Gallorum, coUectore Ranutio Ghero (J. Gruter), 3 vols., Francfort, 1608. — Hamon, Jean Bouchet, 1901.^ — C. Juge, Jacques Peletier du Mans, 1907. — H. Chamard, De Jacobi Peletarii Cenomanensis Arte Poetica, 1900 (cf. P. Laumonier in Revue de la Renaissance, Vol. I). — Peletier, Art poetique, iSS5- — Peletier du Mans, CEuvres poStiques, ed. Seche and Laumonier, 1904. — L. Pinvert, Lazare de Baif, 1900. — On the composition of the Pleiade cf. A. Tilley in Mod. Lang. Review, April, 191 1. — Binet, Vie de Ronsard, ed. Laumonier, 1910. — P. de Nolhac, le Dernier amour de Ronsard, in Nouvelle Revue, 1882. — L. Mellerio, Lex- ique de Ronsard, 1895. — Laumonier, Tableau chronologique des auvres de Ronsard, 1911. — Ronsa^rd, (Euvres, ed. Blanchemain, 8 vols., 1857-1867 (text of 1560); ed. Marty-Laveaux, 6 vols., 1887-1893 (text of 1584); a critical edition announced by Laumonier for the Societe des textes modernes. — Les Amours de P. de Ronsard, ed. Vaganay, 1910. — H. Chamard, Joachim du Bellay, 1900. — Sainte-Beuve, Du Bellay in Nouveaux lundis, Vol. XIII. — W. Pater, Du Bellay, in Studies in the History of the Renaissance. — P. Villey, les Sources italiennes de la Difense, 1908. — L. Le Bourgo, De J. Bellaii latinis poematis, 1903. — Du Bellay, (Euvres, ed. Marty-Laveaux, 2 vols., 1866-1867; ed. Chamard, (Soc. des textes modernes), in course of publication; Defense et Illustra- tion, ed. Person, 1878; ed. Chamard, 1904; ed. Seche, 1905. — P. de Nolhac, Lettres de Du Bellay, 1883. — J. Bellaii poematum libri quatuor, BIBLIOGRAPHY 909 1558. — Aug6-Chiquet, Jean-Antoine de Baif, 1909. — E. Fr6my, Un pr&curseur de I'Acadimie franqaise, I'Acadimie des derniers Valois, 1887. — H. Nagel, Das Leben J. -A. de Baifs in Arckiv fur das Studium def neueren Spr. und Litt., Vol. LX. — H. Nagel, Die Werke J. -A de Baifs, in Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Spr. Und Litt., Vol. LXI. — E. S. Ingraham, The Sources of les Amours of J. -A. de Batf, Univ. of Pennsylvania dissertation, 1906. — Baif, (Euvres, ed. Marty-Laveaux, s vols., 1881-1890; les Mimes, ed. Blanchemain, 1880; les Amours, ed. Auge-Chiquet, 1909. — P. Robiquet, De J. Aurati vita, 1887. — -Dorat, CEuiires, ed. Marty-Laveaux, 1875. — A. Jeandet, Pontusde Tyard, i860. — Pontus de Thyard, (Euvres, ed. Marty- Laveaux, 1875. — H. Wagner, Remy Belleau und seine Werke, 1890. — BeUeau, (Euvres, ed. Gouverneur, 3 vols., 1867; ed. Marty-Laveaux, 2 vols., 1877-1878. — Jodelle, CEuwes, ed. Marty-Laveaux, 2 vols., 1868-1870. — Rosenbauer, Die poetischen Theorien der Plejade, 1895. — H. Zschalig, Die Verslehren von Fabri, Du Pont und SibUet, 1884. — Sebillet, Art poUique, ed. Gaiffe, 1910. — C. Dejob, Marc-Antoine Muret, 1881 (cf. review by P. de Nolhac in Revue critique, June 19, 1883. Name should be "de Muret "). — Mark Pattison, on Muretus, in collected Essays, London, 1889. — A. Hamon, De Scaevolae Sammarthani vita et latine scriptis operibus, 1901. — Longuemare, les Sainte-Marthe, 1902. — H. Hartmann, Guillaume des Autels, 1908. — .C. Jug6, Nicolas Denisot du Mans, 1907. — Marc-Claude de Buttet, (Euvres poitiqties, ed. Jacob, 2 vols., 1880. CHAPTER VII Marty-Laveaux, la Langue de la Pleiade, 2 vols., 1896-1898. — A. Couat, la Poesie alexandrine, 1882. — Faguet, V Alexandrinisme, in Propos lit- 'tSraires, Vol. 11, 1904. — J. Voigt, Das NaturgefUhl in der Litteratur der franzosischen Renaissance, 1898. — M. Jasinski, Histoire du sonnet en France, 1903. — Vaganay, le Sonnet en Italic et en France au XV P siecle, jQO_j_ — p. Laumonier, Ronsard poete lyrique, 1909. — H. Guy, les Sources franqaises de Ronsard, in Revue d'hist. litt. de la France, 1902. — Gandar, Ronsard consider^ comme imitateur de Pindare et d'Hamere, 1854. — Vianey, le Modele de Ronsard dans I'ode pindarique, in Revue des langues romanes, 1900. — Delboulle, Anacreon et les poemes anacrSontiques avec les traductions et imitations du XV P siecle, 1891. — Stemplinger, Das Fortleben der Horazi- schen Lyrik seit der Renaissance, 1906. —J. A. Symonds, The Pathos of the Rose, in Essays Speculative and Suggestive, London, 1890 (cf. H. Guy, "Mignonne, allons voir si la rose,". . . Reflexions sur un lieux commun in Remie philomathique, 1902; Joret, la Rose dans I'antiquitg et au moyen-dge, jgpj). Lange, Ronsards Franciade und ihr Verhaltniss zu Virgils Aeneide, J887. — Vianey', I'Arioste et la Pleiade, in Bulletin Italien, 1901. — Pieri, PHrarque et Ronsard, 1895. — Vianey, le Pgtrarquisme en France, 1909. — Vianey, I'Arioste et les Discours de Ronsard, in Revue universitaire, 1903. — Perdriz'et, Ronsard et la Rgforme, 1902. — J. Favre, Olivier de Magny, 1885. 9IO A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE — 0. de Magny, (Euwes, ed. Courbet, 6 vols., 1871-1881. — H. Chardon, la Vie de Tahureau, 1885. — Tahureau, PoSsies, ed. Blanchemain, 2 vols, 1870. — J. Tahureau, DMogms, ed. Conscience, 1871. — A. Jamyn, (Euwes, ed. Brunei, 2 vols., 1879. — Desportes, CEuvres, ed. Michiels, 1858. — A. Lang, Ballads and Lyrics of Old France, verse translations, London, 1872. — C. H. Page, Songs and Sonnets of P. de Ronsdrd, verse translations, Boston, 1903. — G. Wyndham, Ronsard and la PUiade, verse translations, London, 1906. CHAPTER VIII W. E. H. Lecky, The Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, London, 1886. — Dr. M. Broussais, Ambroise Pari, sa vie, son ceuvre, igoo. — S. Paget, A. Pare and his Times, 1897. — E. Dupuy, Ber- nard Palissy, 1902, — Cougny, Pibrac, sa vie, ses Scrits, 1869. — Pibrac, Quatrains, ed. Claretie, 1874. — Waddington, Ramus, 1855. — J. Owen, Ramus, in The Skeptics of the French Renaissance, 1893. — Dupr6-Lasale, Michel de L'Hospital avant son SlSvation au paste de Chancelier de France, 1875-1899. — L. Clement, H. Estienne et son ceuvre franqaise, 1898. — L. Feugere, Essai sur Estienne, 1853 (republished in Caracttres et portraits littiraires). — Mark Pattison, on Estienne, in collected Essays, London. 1889. — • G. Traccomaglia, Contributo alio studio dell' italianismo in Francia, Vol. I (H. Estienne e gli italianismi), 1907. — Works of Estienne: Traits de la conformity dufrangais avec le grec, ed. Feugere, 1853; Apologie pour Hirodote, ed. Ristelhuber, 2 vols., 1879; Dialogues du langage franqais italianisS, ed. Ristelhuber, 2 vols., 1885; PrScdlence du franqais, ed. Huguet, 1896. — L. Feugere, Essai sur Etienne Pasquier, in his edition of CEuvres choisies, 1849. — Wenderoth, E. Pasquiers Poetische Theorien und sein Thdtigkeit als Literar-historiker; cf . Herrig's Archiv, Vol. CXII. — Dupont, De Stephani' Pasquerii latinis carminibus, 1898. — Becker, Loys Le Roy, 1896. — A. de Blignieres, Amyot, et les traductions franqaises du XVP siecle, 1851. ^ R. Sturel, Amyot tradtccteur des Vies Pardlleles de Plutarque, 1909. CHAPTER IX W. Cloetta, Beitrdge zur Litteratur-Geschichte des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, 1890-1892. — - A. Ebert, Entivickelungs-Geschichte der franz. Tragodie, 1856. — Creizenach, Geschichte des neuren Dramas, 4 vols., 1893-1910. — E. -Faguet, la J'ragSdie en France au XVP siicle, 1883. — G. Bapst, Essai sur I'histoire du thtdire en France, 1893. — J. W. Cunliffe, Early French Tragedy in the light of recent Scholarship, in Journal of Comp. Literature, 1903. — G. Lanson, les Origines de la Tragidie classique en France, in Rev. hist. litt. de la France, 1903. — Haraszti, la Literature dramatique au temps de la Renaissance, in Rev. hist. litt. de la France, 1909. — G. Lanson, l'Id6e de la Trag&iie avant Jodelle, in Reo. hist. litt. de la France, 1904. — E. Rigal, la Mise en scbne dans les tragidies du XVP siicle, in Rev. hist. litt. BIBLIOGRAPHY 91 1 de la France, 1905. (Reprinted in De Jodelle a Molihre.) — Bohm, Einfluss Senecas auf die in der zeit von 1552 his 1562 erschienenen Tragodien, 1902. — Massebieau, De Ravisii Textoris Comoediis, 1878. — Vodoz, le Thidtre latin de Ravisius Textor, Winterthur, 1898. — P. Hume Brown, George Buchanan, Humanist and Reformer, 1890. — D. Macmillan, George Bwhanan, Edin- burgh, 1906. — George Buchanan, Glasgow Quartercentenary Studies, 1907. — J. E. Spingarn, History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, second edition, 1908. — J. Ebner, Beitrag zu einer Geschickte der dramatischen Einheiten in Italien, 1898. — G. Saintsbury, A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe, 1900-1904. — E. Lintilhac, De J.-C. Scaligeri Poetica, 1887; cf. by the same, Un Coup d'Etat dans la Republigue des lettres, in Nouvelle Reiiue, i8go. — S. Hoffmann, Die Dramen Jodelles, in Herrig's Archiv, Vol. LII. — J. de la Peruse, CEuvres poitigues, ed. Gellibert des S6guins, 1867. — L. Pinvert, Jacques Grivin, 1899. — J. Gr6vin, C6sar, ed. Collischonn, 1886. — Baguenault de Puchesse, Jean et Jacques de la Taille, 1899. — A. Werner, Jean de la Taille und sein Saill le furieux, 1908. — Jean de la Taille, CEuvres, ed. R. de Maulde, 4 vols., 1882. — Bernage, Robert Gamier, 1880. — H. Chardon, R. Gamier, 1905. — Schmidt-Warteh- burg, The Influence of Seneca on Gamier, Cornell dissertation, 1888. — C. Searles, The StageabUity of Garnier's Tragedies, in Mod. Lang. Notes, Vol. XXII. — R. Gamier, (Euwes, ed. Foerster, 4 vols., 1882-1884. —A. Joly, Antoine de Montchretien, 1865. — G. Lanson, Antoine de Montchrestien, in Reme des Deux-Mondes, 1891 (or in Hommes et liwes, 1895). — Montchres- tien, CEuvres, ed. Petit de Julleville, 1891; la Reine d'Ecosse, 6dition critique par les eleves de I'Ecole Normale, 1905. — E. Chasles, la Comedie en France au XVI' siicle, 1862. — A. Baschet, les Comidiens italiens d la com de France, 1882. — P. Toldo, la Comedie franqaise de la Renaissance, in Reo. hist, litt.- de la France, Vols. IV and V. — E. Rigal, les Personnages conventionnels de la comedie au XVI' siMe, in Rev. hist. lilt, de la France, 1897. (Reprinted in De Jodelle d, Molihre.) — M. Sand, Masques et boufons, 2 vols. i860. — O. Fest, Der miles gloriosus in der franzosischen Kombdie, iggy. — J. Macgillivray, Life and Works of P. Larivey, Leipzig, 1889. — G. Wenzel, Pierre de Lariveys Komodien und ihr Einflus auf Moliere, in Herrig's Archiv, 1889. — Viollet Le Due, Ancien thidtre franQais, 10 vols., 1854-1857. — E. Fournier, Le Thedtre franqais au XVI' et XVII' sihcles, 1871. ^ CHAPTER X Sayous, les Ecrivavns franqais de la Riformation, 1881. — H. Hauser, Etudes sur la Riforme franqaise, 1909. — Graf, la Vie et les Merits de Jacques Lefhre d'Etaples, Strasbourg, 1842 (see also, Graf, Jacobus Faber Stapu- lensis, in Zeitsch. fur die historische Theologie, 1852). —J. Barnaud, Jacques Le Fivre d'Etaples, son influence sur les origines de la Reformation franqaise, 1900. -- Bevan, Vie de Guillaume Farel, 1885. — Ph. Godet, P. Viret, 1896. — Barnaud, Pierre Viret, 1911. — Bungener, Calvin, sa vie, son ceuvre et. 912 A HISTORY 6F FRENCH LITERATURE ses icrits, 186,3. — A. Lefranc, la Jeunesse de Calvin, 1888. — Doumergue, Jean Calvin, 1897-1911. — W. Walker, John Calvin, New York, 1906. — Johannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Baum, Cunitz and Reutz, 59 vols., 1863-1900, (Corpus Reformatorum). Bibliography, Vol. LIX. — A. Erichson, Bihliographia Calviniana, igoo. — Calvin, Institution de la religion chretienne, ed. Lefranc et Chatelain, 191 1. — H. M. Baird, ThSodore de Beze, New York, 1900. — Maigron, De Theodori Bezae poema- atis, 1898. — Theodore de Beze, Abraham sacrifiant, in Crapelet, PoSsies des XV° et XVP sikcles, 1830-1832. — Beze, Juvenilia, ed. Marchand, 1879. — H. Becker, Louis des Mazures, in R. de la Renaissance, Vol. I. — Louis des Masures, Tragedies saintes, ed. Comte, 1907. — G. Pellissier, la Vie et les ceuvres de Du Bartas, 1882. — H. Ashton, Du Bartas en Angleterre, 1908. — P. Weller, Sylvesters englische Uehersetzungen der religiosen Epen des Du Bartas, 1902. — Postansque, Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne, 1854. — Rdaume, Etttde historique et littiraire sur A. d'AubignS, 1883. — Sainte-Beuve, D'AubignS, in C. du lundi, Vol. X. — H. C. Macdowall, D'AubignS, in Henry of Guise and other portraits, 1898. — W. Winckler, Th.-A. d'AubignS als Dichter, 1906. — H. Pergameni, la Satire au XVI' sitcle et les Tragiques d' Agrippa d'Aubigne, 1881. — Van Bever, D'AubignS, essai de bibliographie, in Bull. soc. hist, protestantisme, 1905. — D'Aubigne, (Euvres (without the Hist, univ.), ed. Reaume et de Caussade, 6 vols., 1873-1892; Histoire uni- verselle, ed. De Ruble, 9 vols., 1886; les Tragiques, ed. Lalanne, 1857; les Tragiques, ed. Read, 1872; les Tragiques, Livre I, critical ed. Bourgin, Foulet, Garnier, Maitre, Vacher, 1896; le Baron de Fceneste, ed. M6rimee, 1855- CHAPTER XI On recent literature about Moiitaigne, see two articles by V.-L. Bourrilly in Rev. d'hist. moderne, 1907. — Sainte-Beuve, Montaigne, in C. du lundi. Vol. IV, and Nouveaux lundis, Vols. II and III. — Brunetiere, Essay on Montaigne in Elides critiques, Vol. VIII. — T. Malvezin, Michel de Mon- taigne, son origine et safamille, 1875. — P. Bonnefon, Montaigne et ses amis, 1892. — P. Bonnefon, Montaigne, I'homme et I'ceuvre, 1893. — Stapfer, Montaigne, 1895. — P. Stapfer, la Famille et les amis de Montaigne, 1896. — M. F. Lowndes, Montaigne, 1898. — G. Guizot, Montaigne, 1899! — E. Champion, Introduction aux Essais de Montaigne, 1900. — E. Dowden, Michel de Montaigne, 1905. — F. Strowski, Montaigne, 1906. — F. Strowski, De Montaigne d, Pascal, 1907. — V. Giraud, les Epoques de la pensie de Montaigne, in Revue des Deux-Mondes, 1909. — Miss Grace Norton, The Early Writings of Montaigne and Studies in Montaigne, 2 vols., New York, 1904. — Miss Grace Norton, Montaigne, Boston, 1908; The Spirit of Mon- taigne, Boston, 1908. — P. Villey, les Sources et I'ivolution des Essais de Montaigne, 1908. — P. Villey, les Livres d'histoire moderne utilises par Mon- taigne, 1908. — P. Laumonier, Montaigne pricurseur du XVIP siicle, jn Rev. hist. litl. de la France, Vol. III. — Feis, Shakespeare and Montaigne, London, BIBLIOGRAPHY 913 1884. — J. M. Robertson, Montaigne and Shakespeare, 1909. — Villey, I'ln- fluence de Montaigne sur Locke et Rousseau, 1911. — J. Texte, la Descendance de Montaigne, Sir Thomas Browne, in Et. de litt. europSenne, 1898. — F. Dieckow, John Florios englische Ueberseizung der Essais Montaignes, und Lord Bacons, Ben Jonsons und Robert Burtons Verhdltniss zu Montaigne, 1903. — CEuvres: Ed. Leclerc, 5 vols., 1826-1828; ed. Louandre, 4 vols., 1865-1866 (ed. variorum); ed. Dezeimeris et Barckhausen, 2 vols., 1870 (text of 1580, two books); ed- Motheau et Jouaust, 7 vols., 1886 (text of 1586, additions of 1595 in footnotes); ed. Courbet et Royer, 5 vols., 1872- 1899 (text of 1595); ed. Strowski (edition municipale de Bordeaux), 4 vols., 1906 ff. (reprint of Bordeaux copy). Journal de voyage, ed. d'Ancona, 1889; ed. Lautrey, 1906. — Translations, by John Florio, 1603, and Charles Cotton, 1685, both frequently reprinted. W. C. Hazlitt's edition is based on Cotton. Journal de voyage, translated by W. G. Waters,' 3 vols., 1903. — E. Puech, Maturin Cordier, 1896. — Cougny, Guillaume du Vair, 1857. — R. Radouant, Guillaume du Vair, 1907. CHAPTER XII H. Harrisse, le President de Thou et ses descendants, 1905. — V. L. Bourrilly, Guillaume du Bellay, 1904. — Courteault, Blaise de Monluc, 1907; Cour- teault, Un cadet de Gascogne au XVP siecle, 1909. — Sainte-Beuve, Monluc in C. du lundi, Vol. XI. — Monluc, Commentaires et lettres, ed. de Ruble, 5 vols., 1864-1876; Commentaires, edition critique, P. Courteault, Vol. I, 1911. — H. Hauser, Franqois de la Noue, 1892. — L. Lalanne, Brantdme, sa vie et ses Scrits, 1896. — L. Pingaud, Brantdme historien, in Revue des quest. hist.. Vol. XIX. — Brantdme, CEuvres, ed. Lalanne (Soc. de I'hist. de France), 12 vols., 1864-1882; (Euvres, ed. Merimee et Lacour, 11 vols., 1858-1892. — Ch. Merki, la Reine Margot, 1905. —Marguerite de Valois, M&moires el lettres, ed. Guessard, 1842. — Pierre de I'Estoile, Memoires-Journaux, ed. Brunet, ChampoUion, Halphen, Lacroix, Read, Tamizey de Larroque, Tricotel, 12 vols., 1875-1896. — Flint, The History of the Philosophy of History, Edinburgh, 1893. —J. N. Figgis, Studies of Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius, Cambridge, England, 1907.— K. Glaser, Beitrage zur Geschichte der politischen LitteraPur Frankreichs in der zweiten Hdlfte des XVI Jahrhunderts, in Zeitsch. fur franz. Sp. und Lit., Vols. XXXI-XXXIII. — E. Armstrong, The Political Theory of the Huguenots, in Eng. Hist. Re- view, 1889. — G. Weil, les Theories sur le pouvoir royal en France pendant les guerres de religion, 1892. — F. Mealy, Origines des idees politiques libSrales en France, 1903. — R. Dareste, Essai sur Franqois Hotman, 1850. — Dareste, F. Hotman, d'apris sa correspondance inidite, in Remie historique, 1876. — Biocaille, Etude sur Hotman, la Franco-Gallia, 1902. — L. Feugere, Etienne de la Boitie, 1845. — La Boetie, (Euvres, ed. Bonnefon, 1892. — P. Mous- siegt, Hotman et Duplessis-Mornay, Theories politiques des RSformis au XVP siecle 1899. — A. Waddington, I'Auteur des Vindiciae contra tyrannos, in 914 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE Revue historique, Vol. LI, 1893. — H. Baudrillart, Jean Bodin et son temps, 1853. — Fournol, Bodin predScesseur de Montesquieu, 1896. — J. Franck, Zur Satyre MenippSe, in Zeitsch. fUr pans. Sp. und Lit., Vols. IV, V, and VI. Girard, Passerat et la Satire MinippSe, in Revue historique, Vol. XXIX. — Satire MSnippie, ed. Tricotel, 2 vols., 1877-1881. PART III GENERAL See the titles mentioned in the General Bibliography, and also: Vinet, Moralistes des seiziime et dix-septieme siicles, 1859. — Prevost-Paradol, Etudes sur les moralistes franQais, 1865. — N.-M. Bernardin, Hommes et nuzurs du XVIP Steele, 1900. — L. Charlanne, I'Influence franqaise en Angleterre au XVIP sibcle, 1906. — A. H. Upham, The French Influence in English Litera- ture, New York, 1908. CHAPTER I F. Robiou, Essai sur I'histoire de la literature et des maurs pendant la premihre partie du XVIP sihcle, 1858. (Only one volume appeared). — Ch. Dejob, De I'Influence du Concile de Trente sur la litt&rature et les beaux- arts chez les nations catholiques, 1884. — Philippson, la Contre-Rivolution religieuse au XVP sihcle, 1883. — Cournot, Considerations sur la marche des idSes dans les temps modernes, 1872. — H. Vaschalde, Olivier de Serres, sa vie et ses travaux, 1886. — E. Jung, Henri IV Scrivain, 1855. — Abb6 Grente, Jean Bertaut, 1903. — Bertaut, (Euvres, ed. Cheneviere, 1891. — J. Vianey, Mathurin Regnier, 1896. — H. Cherrier, Bibliographie de M. Regnier, 1884; H. Cherrier, JVoto bibliographiques sur Regnier, in Bulletin du bibliophile, 1908. — Regnier, (Euvres, ed. Courbet, 1875; ed. Lacour, 1876; Macette, ed. Brunei, 1900. — E. von Mojsisovics, Jean Passerat, sein Leben und seine Personlichkeit, 1907. — Passerat, (Euvres, ed. Blanchemain, 2 vols., 1880. — Abbe Feret, le Cardinal Du Perron, 1877. — Abb6. Grente, Qtiae fuerit in Card. Davy Du Perron vis oratorica, 1903. — Lemercier, Etude litteraire et morale sur les poisies de Jean Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, 1889. — J. Vianey, Vauquelin de la Fresnaie, in Revue des Univ. du midi, 1895. — Korval, I'Art poHiqus de Vauquelin de la Fresnaie und sein Verhaltniss zu der Ars Poetica des Horaz, Vienna, 1902. — Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, les Diverses poisies, ed. Travers, 1869; (Euvres diverses, ed. Travels, 1872; Art poitiqtte, ed. PeUissier, 1885. CHAPTER II F. Brunetiere, I'Evolution des genres, la critique, 1890. — E. Faguet, report of lectures on French literature (1600-1620) in Rev. des Cours et Con}., 1893- 1895. — Sainte-Beuve, Malherbe, in Nouveaux lundis, Vol. XIII. — Due de BIBLIOGRAPHY 915 Broglie, Malherhe, 1897. — G. Allais, Malherbe et la poSsie frangaise d la fin du XVI' sihcle, 1891. — F. Brunot, la Doctrine de Malherbe, d'aprhs son commentaire sur Desportes, 1891. — Covinson, Malherbe et ses sources, 1904. — Malherbe, CEuvres, ed. Lalanne, 5 vols., 1862. — C. Drouhet, le Poete Francois Mainard, 1909. — L. Arnould, Racan, 1896. — Racan, (Euwes, ed. Tenant de Latour, 2 vols., 1857. — M. Schiff, Mile de Gournay, 1911. — Kathe Schirmacher, TMophile de Viau, 1897. — C. Garrisson, ThSophile et Paul de Viau, 1899. — F. Lachevre, le Prochs du pobte Thiophile de Viau, 1909. — Theophile, CEuvres, ed. Alleaume, 2 vols., 1856. — Th. Gautier, les Grotesques, 1844. — Durand-Lapie, Saint-Amant, 1896. — Schonherr, Saint-Amant, in Zeitsch. fiir franz. Sp. und Lit., Vol. X. — Saint-Amant, CEuvres, ed. Livet, 2 vols., 1855. — P. Brun, Savinien de Cyrano Bergerac, 1893. — H. Diibi, Cyrano de Bergerac, sein Leben und seine Werke, in Herrig's Archiv, Vols. CXIII and CXIV. — P. Juppont, I'CEuvre scientifique de Savinien de Cyrano, 1906. — Cyrano de Bergerac, CEuvres diverses et facStieuses, ed. Jacob, 1838; les Histoires comiques des Stats et empires, etc., ed. Jacob, 1858. CHAPTER m A. Bourgoin, les Mattres de la critique au XVII' siicle, 1887. — Sainte- Beuve, on Balzac, in Port-Royal, Vol. II. — H. Vogler, Die literaturgeschicht- lichen Kentnisse und Urteile des J.-L. Guez de Balzac, 1906. — Declareuil, les Id&es politiques de Guez de Balzac, 1908. — Balzac, CEuvres choisies, ed. Moreau, 2 vols., 1854. — Bourgoin, Valentin Conrart, 1883. — Pellisson e.t A'Olivtt, Histoire de f Academie franqaise, edited by Livet, 1858. — P. Mes- nard, Eistoire de I'AcadSmie franqaise, 1857. — D. M. Robertson, The French Academy, London, 1910. — On Vaugelas, see Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux lundis, Vol. VI. — Vaugelas, Remarques, ed. Chassang, 1880. — Fabre, Chapelain et nos deux premieres Acadlmies, 1890. — MiiUian, Jean Chapelain, eine biographisch-kritische Studie, 1894. — Fabre, les Ennemis de Chapelain, 1899. — G. Collas, Jean Chapelain, 191 1. CHAPTER IV Roederer, MSmoire pour sernr A I'histoire de la sociSfS polie en France, 1835. — V. Cousin, la SociSte frangaise au XVIP sihcle d'aprh le Grand' Cyrus, 1858. — E. Faguet, report of lectures on Preciosity (1630-1660) in R£vue des Cours et Conf., 1895-1897. — Livet, Pr&cieux et Precieuses, new ed., 1896. — Somaize, le Dictionnaire des PrScieuses, ed. Livet, 1856. — V. Cousin, la Jeunesse de Mme de Longuemlle, 1853; ^i^^ <^e Longueville^ pendant la Fronde, 1859. — F. Nunziante, II cav. Marino alia corte di Luigi XIII, va. Nuova 'Antologia, 1887. — C. W. Cabeen, Vlnfiuence de G.-B. Marino skr la litt&rature frangaise de la premihre moitie du XVIP sikle, 1904. — A. Morel- Fatio Ambrosio de Salazar et I'itude de I'espagnol en France sous Louis XIII, gi6 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 1901. — G. Lanson, Etudes sur les rapports de la littirature fran^aise et de la litUrature espagnole au XVII' sik:le (1600-1660), in Reme d'hist. litt. de la France, 1896, 1897, and 1901. — R. Kerviler, Antoine Godeau, 1879. — A. Cognet, Godeau, 1900. — H. G. Rahstede, Wanderungen durch die fran- zosische Literatur: Vincent Voiture, 1891. — E. Magne, Voiture, 1911. — Voiture, CEuvres, ed. Ubicini, 1855. CHAPTER V P. Morillot, le Roman en France depuis 1610 jusqu'd nos jours, 1892. — Korting, Geschichte des franziisischen Romans, im' XVII Jahrhundert, 1885. — Lebreton, le Roman au XVIP sUcle, 1890. — Brunetiere, le Roman franqais au XVIP si&cle, in Et. critiques. Vol. IV. — On French novel, see introd. of T. F. Crane's ed. of Boileau, les HSros de ronmn, Boston, 1902. — V. Cherbuliez, I'Ideal romanesque en France de 1610 A 1816, 1911. — G. Rey- nier, le Roman sentimental avant I'Astrie, 1908. — Waldberg, Der empfindsame Roman in Frankreich, 1906. — W. Kuchler, Zu den Anfangen des psycholo- gischen Romans in Frankreich, in Herrig's Archiv, 1909. — Saint-Marc Girardin, Cours de littirature dramatique, 1872. — N. Bonafous, Etudes sur I'Astrie, 1846. — B. Germa, I'Astrie d'Honori d'Urfi, 1905. — Reure, la Vie et les ceuvres de Honore d'Urfi, 1910. — On d'Urf6, see report of lectures by A. Lefranc, in Rev. des Cours et Conferences, 1905. — Michaut, Notes on d'Urfe, in Revue des Cours et Confirences, July, 1909. — E. Montegut, En B.ourbonnais et en Forez, 1880. — Charlotte Banti, I'Amintas du Tasse et I'Astrie de d'Urfi, 1895. — Saint-Marc Girardin, Index de I'Astrie in Rev. hist. litt. de la France, 1898. — R. Kerviler, Marin Le Roy de Gomberville, 1876. — H. Rigault, Camus, in Vol. IV of CEuvres computes. — Abbe Boulas, Camus, evique de ,Belley, 1879. — A. Bayer, Jean Pierre Camus, 1906. — R. Kerviler, /. Ogier de Gombatdd, 1876. — Lydie Morel, Jean Ogier de Gomhauld, tieuichkiA, 1910. — ^ Rathery et Boutron, Mile de Scudiry, 1872. — E. Roy, la Vie et les ceuvres de Charles Sorel, 1891. — Ch. Sorel, Histoire comique de Francion, ed. Delahays, 1858. — P. Morillot, Scarron et le ginie burlesque, 1888. — E. Magne, Scarron et son milieu, 1905. — H. Chardon, la Troupe du Roman comique divoilie, 1876. — Boislisle, P. Scar- ron et FranQoise d'Aubigni, 1894. — H. Chardon, Scarron inconnu et les types des ■ personnages du Roman comique, 1904. — J. Duchesne, Histoire des pohmes epiques du XVIP siecle, 1870. —R. Toinet, Quelques recherches autour des poemes heroiques ou epiques franqais du XVIP siicle, 1899 and 1907. — Pere Delaporte, le Merveilleux dans la littirature frangaise sous le regne de Louis XIV, 1891. — H. Ch6rot, Ettide sur la vie et les ceuvres du P. Le Moyne, 1887. — • Abbe Vissac, De la poesie latine au sibcle de Louis XIV, 1862. — V. Fournel, la Littirature indipendante, 1862. — P. Olivier, Cent poetes lyriques, precieux ou burlesques du XVIP sihcle, morceaux choisis et notices, 1898. BIBLIOGRAPHY 917 CHAPTER VI E. Rigal, le Thidtre frangais avant la p&riode classique, 1901. — E. Rigal, De Jodelle d. Moliere, 191 1. — Despois, le Thedtre franqais sous Louis XIV, 1874. — G. Lanson, le Thedtre classique au temps de Hardy, in Revue bleue, 1891, or Hommes et livres, 1895. — E. Rigal, Alexandre Hardy et le thidtre franqais d, la fin du XVP et au commencement du XVII" siecle, 1889. — A. Hardy, Thedtre, ed. Stengel, 1884. — Tabarin, (Euwes, ed. Aventin, 2 vols., 1858. — H. Breitinger, les Unites d'Aristote avant le Cid de Corneille, 1879, — Souriau, De la convention dans la tragedie classique et dans le drame roman- tique, 1885. — Dannheisser, Zur Geschichte der Einheiten in Frankreich, in Zeitsch. furfrdnz. Sp. und Lit., 1892. — Ch. Arnaud, Etude sur la vie et les ceuvres de I'abbe d'Aubignac, 1887. — G. Bizos, Etude sur la vie et les osuvres de Jean de Mairet, 1877. — Mairet, Silvanire, ed. Otto, 1890; Sophonisbe, ed. VoUmoller, 1888; Sylvie, ed. Marsan, 1905; Galanteries du due d'Ossonne, in Fournier's le Th. Fr. au XVP et au XVIP siecle. — F. Tenner, Fr. Le Metel de Boisrobert als Dramatiker und Nachahmer des spanischen Dramas, 1907. — E. Magne, Le plaisant ahbS de Boisrobert, 1909. — K. Philip, Pierre du Ryers Leben und dramatische Werke, 1906. — N.-M. Bernardin, Un precurseur de Racine: Tristan L'Hermite, 1895. — E. Hofmann, Franqois Tristan L'Hermite, i8g8. — Tristan L'Hermite, Th6dtre, ed. Girard, 1904- 1907. — Fournel, le ThSdtre au XVIP siecle, la comSdie, 1892. — E. Mar- tinenche, la Comedia espagnole en France de Hardy d, Racine, igoo. — Stiefel, Die Nachahmung italienischer Dramen bei einigen Vorldufern Molieres, in Zeitsch. fiir franz. Sp. und Lit., 1904. — R. Kerviler, Desmarets de Saint- Sorlin, 1879. — A. Reibetanz, Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, 1910. — Dannheisser, Zur Geschichte des Schaferspiels in Frankreich, in Zeitsch. fur franz. Sp. und Lit., 1889. — J. Marsan, la Pastorals dramatique en France, 1905. — H. Carrington Lancaster, The French Tragi-Comedy (1551-1628), Baltimore, 1907. — G. Reynier, Thomas Corneille, 1893. — Jean de Schel- andre, Tyr et Sidon (text of 1608), ed. Haraszti, 1908; (text of 1628) in Ancien Thidtre Franqais of VioUet le Due, Vol. VIII. — A. Batereau, Georges de Scudery als Dramatiker, 1902. — W. Harvey Jellie, les Sources du thedtre anglais a I'Spoque de la Restauration, 1906. CHAPTER VII E. Picot, Bibliographie CornBienne, 1876; Le Verdier et Pelay, Additions a la Bibliographie Cornelienne, 1908. — G. Lanson, Corneille, 1898. — Brunetiere, Corneille, in Etudes crit.. Vol. VI. See also les Epoques du thedtre franqais. — P. H. Frye, Corneille, the neo-classic tragedy and the Greek, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1908. — On Corneille, see Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, ani Schlegel, Vorlesungen ilber dramatische Kunst und Literatur. E Rigal, Corneille et I'ivolution de la tragedie en France, in Reo. des langues romanes, 1895 (reprinted in De Jodelle d Moliere). — Lisle, Essai sur les 9i8 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE thlories dramaliques de Corneille, 1882. — J. Lemaitre, Corneille el la poUique d'Aristote, 1888. — J. Boehm, Die dramatischen Theorien CorneUles, 1900. — J. Segall, Corneille and the Spanish Drama, New York, 1902. — Huszar, Corneille et le thidtre espagnol, 1903. — E. Deschanel, le Romantisme d-es dassiques, 1883. — A. Gast6, la Querelle du Cid (documents), 1899. — D. F. Canfield, Corneille and Racine in England, New York, 1904. — Gode- froy, Lexique de la langue de Corneille, 1862. — CEuvres de Corneille, ed. Marty-Laveaux, 12 vols., 1862-1868. — Rotrou, (Euvres, ed. Viollet le Due, 1820. See T. F. Crane's ed. of Saint-Genest and Venceslas, Boston, 1907, with full introd. and bibliographies. — Jarry, Essai sur les oeuvres dramaliques de Jean de Rotrou, 1868. — H. Chardon, la Vie de Rotrou mieux connue, 1884. — L. Person, Histoire de Venceslas, 18S2. — L. Person, Histoire du veritable Saint-Genest, 1882. — Buchetmann, Rotrous Antigone und ihre Quellen, 1901. — Steffens, /. de Rotrou als Nachahmer Lope de Vegas, 1891. — Stiefel, Unbekannte italienische Qicellen Jean de Rotrous, 1891. On the chronology of Rotrou's works, the same in Zeitsch. fur f ram. Sp. und Lit., 1893, 1907; on his sources, the same writer, ibid., 1901, 1906. CHAPTER VIII Liard, Descartes, 1881. — A. Fouillee, Descartes, 1893. — E. S. Haldane, Descartes, his Life and Times, London, 1905. — O. Hamelin, le Systbme de Descartes, 1910. — Krantz, Essai sur I'esthStique de Descartes, 1882. — G. Lanson, le H&ros cornSlien et le Genereux selon Descartes, in Hommes et livres, 1895. — G. Lanson, I'lnfhience de Descartes dans la littiratMre franqaise, in Revue de mStaphysique, 1896. — F. Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophie cartSsienne, 1868. — Descartes, (Euvres, ed. Adam et Tannery, 1897 ff. in course of publication. — Perrens, les Libertins en France au XVIP sikle, 1899. — R. Grousset, (Euvres posthumes, 1886. — Thomas, /a Philosophie de Gassendi, 1889. — G. J. Brett, The Philosophy of Gassendi, London, 1908. — Jacques Denis, Sceptiques ou libertins de la premibre moitie du XVIP Steele: Gassendi, Gabriel NaudS, Gui-Patin, Lamothe-Levayer, Cyrano de Bergerac, in the MSmoires of the Acad6mie nationale des sciences, arts et belles-lettres of Caen, 1884. — P. Pic, Guy Patin, 1910. — Olle-Laprune, la Philosophie de Malebranche, 1870. — H. Joly, Malebranche, 1901. CHAPTER IX A. Maulvault, Ripertoire alphabUique des personnes et des choses de Port- Royal, 1902. — Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, Mth edition, 1888-1891. (In seven volumes with elaborate index.) — Racine, AbrSgS de l' histoire de Port- Royal, ed. Gazier, 1909. — Dufosse, MSmoires pour servir d Dhistoire de Port- Royal, ed. Bouquet, 1876-1879. — E. Romanes, The Story of Port-Royal, 1907. — M. F. Lowndes, The Nuns of Port-Royal, 1909. — Abbe Fuzet, les Jans&nistes du XVIP siicle, leur histoire et leur dernier historien, M. Sainte- BIBLIOGRAPHY 919 Beuve, 1877. — Paquier, le Jansinisme, 1909. — Maynard, Pascal, 1850. — Nourrisson, Pascal, physicien et philosophe, 1885. — J. Bertrand, Blaise Pascal, 1891. — E. Boutroux, Pascal, 1900. — V. Giraud, Pascal, third edition, 1905. — V. Giraud, Blaise Pascal, ittides d'histoire morale, 1910. — Viscount St. Gyres, Pascal, 1909. — H. R. Jordan, Pascal, 1909. — Strowski, Pascal et son temps, 1907-1908. — Scherer, la Religion de Pascal, in Etudes de litt. contemp.. Vol. IX. — Droz, le Scepticisme de Pascal, 1886. — SuUy Prudhomme, Za waie religion selon Pascal, 1905. — H. Petitot, Pascal, sa vie religieuse, 1911. — A. Gazier, Les derniers jours' de Pascal, 1911. — (Euwes, ed. Brunschvicg {Grands ecrivains de la France), in course of publi- cation. Prow«c«z/ei, ed. MoHnier, 1891; ed. Faugere, 1886-1895. Pensies, ed. Faugere, 1844; ed. Havet, 1851; ed. Molinier, 1877; ed. Michaut (manuscript arrangement), 1896; ed. Brunschvicg (students' edition), 1897; ed. Gazier, 1906; The Provincial Letters, ed. De Soyres, Cambridge, England, 1880. — V. Cousin, Jacqueline Pascal, 1853. CHAPTER X F. Strowski, Saint Franqois de Sales. Introduction d I'histoire du senti- ment rdigieux en France au XVIP slide, 1898. — H. Cherot, Saint Frangois de Sales et la pridication au XVIPsiicle, 1900. — Saint Frangois de Sales, (Euvres, edition de la Visitation d'Annecy, in course of publication since jgp2. — G. Compayre, Histoire critique des doctrines de I'iducation en France depuis le XV P Steele, 1881. — Jourdain, Histoire de V University de Paris au XVIP et au XVIIP sik:le, 1888. — Douarche, I'Universitt de Paris et les JSsuites, 1888. — E. Boysse, le TMdtre des Jesuites, 1880. — Nourisson, fe Cardinal de Berulle, 1859. — Lallemand, I'Education dans I'ancien Oratoire de France, 1898. — Mgr Perraud, VOratoire en France, 1865. — Carre, les pedagogues de Port-Royal, 1887. — F. Cadet, I'Education a Port-Royal, 1887. — E. Paradis, la PSdagogie jansiniste comparie d la pidagogie catholique, 1910. — G. Hodgson, Studies in French Education from Rabelais to Rousseau, Cambridge, England, 1908. CHAPTER XI A. Pereire, Bibliographic Racinienne, announced in 191 1. — Taine, on Radne, in Nouveaux essais de critique et d'histoire, 1865. — P. Monceaux, Racine, 1892. — G. Larroumet, Racine, 1898. — J. Lemaitre, Jean Racine, 1908 — P Robert, la PoUique de Racine, 1890. — Le Bidois, la Vie dans les tragedies de Racine, 1901. — Steinweg, Kompositionsstudien zu Racines Tragodien 1909. — G. Michaut, la BirSnice de Racine, 1907. — Deltour, les Ennemis de Racine au XVIP sitcle, 1859- —Abb6 Delfour, la Bible dans Racine, 1893. — Brunetiere, les Ennemis de Racine, in Etudes critiques. Vol. I. See also les Epoques du thidtre franqais and Histoire et littSrature, Vol. H. — Masson-Forestier, Autour d'un Racine inconnu, igii. — (Euvres de Racine, 920 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE ed. Mesnard, 8 vols., 2 albums, 1865-1870. — P. Janet, les Passions et les caracthres dans la litterature du XVIP siide, 1888. — Hausding, Campistron in seiner Bedeutung als Dramatiker, 1903. CHAPTER XII Bibliography of Moliere by Desfeuilles in Vol. XI of Despois et Mesnard edition, 1893; P. Lacroix, Bibliographie MoliSresque, 1875; Currier and Gay, Catalogue of Molibre Collection in the Harvard Library, 1906, (contains an index of Monval's le Moliiriste, 10 vols., 1879-1889). — Mahrenholtz, Molihres Leben und Werke, 1881. — G. Larroumet, la Comedie de Moliere, 1887. — H. M. Trollope, Moliire, London, 1905. — H. C. Chatfield-Taylor, Life of Moliere, New York, 1906. — E. Rigal, Molibre, igo8. — B. Matthews, Moliere, New York, 1910. — M.-J. Wolff, Moliere, der Dichter und sein Werk, 19 10. — Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, Vol. I (Dernitres recherches sur la vie de Molibre); Vol. IV, (to Philosophic de Moliere); Vol. VII {la Langue de Moliere); Vol. VIII {les Epoques de la Com&die de Molibre). See also les Epoques du thedtre frangais. Chaps. IV and VI. — L. Moland, Moliere et la comSdie italienne, 1867. — S. Griswold Morley, Notes on Spanish Sources of Moliere, in Publications of Mod. Lang. Ass. of America, Vol. XIX. — Mar- tinenche, Moliere et le theatre espagnol, 1906. — Huszar, Molibre et I'Espagne, 1907. — R. Allier, la Cabale des Devots, 1902. — A. RebeUiau, Un ipisode de I'histoire religieuse du XVIP sibcle. La Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement et la contre-rSformation catholique, in Revue des Deux-Mondes, 1903 ; idem, la Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, in Remce des Deux-Mondes, 1908. — G. de Grandmaison, la Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, in le Correspondant, 1911. , — Gendarme de Bevotte, la Legende de Don Juan, 1906. — • D. H. MUes, The Influence of Moliere on Restoration Comedy, New York, 1910. — Livet, Lexique de la langue de Moliere, 1896-1897. — (Euvres de Moliere, ed. Despois et Mesnard, 13 vols., 1873-1893; see alsoLivet's editions to certain separate plays, as le Misanthrope, Tartuffe, le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, les Femmes savantes, etc. — V. Fournel, les Contemporains de Moliere (texts), 3 vols., 1863-1875. CHAPTER XIII G, Lanson, Boileau, 1892. — Sainte-Beuve, Portraits litUraires, Vol. I; Port-Royal, Vol. VI; Causeries du lundi, Vol. VI. — Brunetiere, article Boileau in the Grande EncyclopSdie. — Brunetiere, I'Esthetique de Boileau, in Etudes crit., Vol. VI. — F. A. Geissler, Die Theorien Boileaus, 1909. — Revillout, la Legende de Boileau in Rev. des langues romanes, 1900- 1905. — (Euvres, ed. Berriat Saint-Prix, 4 vols., 1830; ed. Gidel, 4 vols., 1873; ed. Pauly, 2 vols., 1891; see also Dialogue des Heros de roman, ed. Crane, Boston, 1902. — Merlet, Saint-Evremond, 1869. — L. Curnier, Saint-Evremond, 1875. — W. Melville Daniels, Saint-Evremond en Angle- BIBLIOGRAPHY 921 terre, 1907. — Saint-Evremond, Introduction to the Giraud ed. of (Euwes choisies, 1866. — H. Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, 1859. — Brunetiere, VEvolution des genres, la critique, 1890. — On the quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, see: Rigault, Histoire de la querdle des Anciens et des Modernes, 1859; Nisard, Hist, de la litt. franqaise; Brunetiere, VEvolution des genres, la critique, chaps. IV and V, and his essays on Descartes et la litt. jr., Jansenistes et Cartesiens, la Critique de Bayle, la Formation de Vidie de progrhs, in the various voliunes of the Etudes critiques. — G. Saintsbury, History of Criticism, Edinburgh, 1900-1904. — On Charles Perrault see articles by P. Bonnefon in the Remie hist. litt. de la France, 1904, 1905, and 1906. — Doncieux,/e Phe Bouhours, 1886. — Th. Rosset, Bouhours continuateur de Vaugelas, and Bouhours thSoricien du style classique, in Annates de I'Universite de Grenoble, 1908. CHAPTER XIV Jacquinet, les Pridicateurs du XVIP siecle aiiant Bossuet, 1885. -r- Hurel, Orateurs sacris d la cour de Louis XIV, 1874. — Abbe Urbain, Bossuet, BibUotheque des bibliographies critiques, 1900. — Abbe Verlaque, Biblio- graphie raisonrde des muvres de Bossuet, 1908. — Remie Bossuet, 1900 if. — Freppel, Bossuet et I'Sloquence sacr&e au XVIP siecle, 1893. — G. Lanson, Bossuet, 1895. — RebeUiau, Bossuet, 1900. ■ — Brunetiere, la Philosophie de Bossttet, in Etudes crit., Vol. V; article Bossuet in la Grande EncyclopSdie, (or in Etudes critiques, Vol. VI). — Abbe VaDlant, Etude sur les sermons de Bossuet, 1851. — Gandar, Bossuet orateur, 1866. — Abbe Lebarq, Histoire critique de la prSdication de Bossuet, 1888. — Abbe de la Broisse, Bossuet et la Bible, 1890. — Crousle, FSnelon et Bossuet, 1894. • — Abbe Bellon, Bossuet, directeur de conscience, 1895. — R6beUiau, Bossuet, historien du protestantisme, 1909. — E. Longuemare, Bossuet et la sociSti frangaise sous le rhgne de Louis XIV, igio.^ (Euvres, ed. Lebel (Versailles), 43 vols., i8i5flf.; ed. Lachat, 31 vols., 1862-1864; (Euwes oratoires, ed. abb6 Lebarq, 6 vols., 1890-1896; Correspondance, ed. Urbain et Levesque, 1909 ff. — Bernus, Richard Simon, Lausanne, 1869. — Margival, Essai sur Richard Simon, 1900. — Griselle, Bourdaloue, Bibliotheque des bibliographies critiques, 1900. — Revue Bourdaloue, 1902-1904. — Sainte-Beuve, Bourdaloue, in Causeries du lundi. Vol. IX. — Brunetiere, Bourdaloue, in Etudes crit.. Vol. VIII. — Belin, la SociStS franqaise au XVIP siecle, d'apres les sermons de Bourdaloue, 1875. — A. Feugere, Bourdaloue, sa predication et son temps, 1881. — Lauras, Bourdaloue, sa vie et ses ceuwes, 1881 . — De Menorval, la Vie d'unjSstdie, 1897. — H. Cherot, Bourdaloue inconnu, 1898. — Cherot, Bourdaloue, sa correspon- dance et ses correspondants, 1899. — E. Griselle, Bourdaloue, histoire critique de sa predication, 1901. — Castets, Bourdaloue, la vie et la predication d'un religieux au XVIP siecle, 1901-1904. — (Euwes, ed. Guerin, 4 vols., 1864; ed. Delhomme et Briquet, 6 vols., 1900. — Lehanneur, Mascaron, 1878. — Brunetiere, on Flechier, in Histoire et litterature, Vol. III. — Abb6 Fabre, 922 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE FUchier oraieur, 1885. — Bruneti^re, on MassUlon, in Etudes crit., Vol. II. — Ingold, I'Oratoire et le JansSnisme au temps de Massillon, 1880. — Pauthe, Etudes religieuses, kistoriqtces et litteraires: Massillon, sa prSdication sous Louis XIV et Louis XV, 1908. CHAPTER XV Brunetiere, article on Fenelon in la Grande EncyclopSdie; also Etudes crit., Vol. II. — Bausset, Histoire de F&nelon, 4 vols., 1808-1809. — Gosselin, Histoire litttraire de F&nelon, 1843. — P. Janet, Fenelon, 1892. — J. Lemaltre, Finelon, 1910. — Boulve, De I'Hellenisme chez Fenelon, 1898. — E. de Broglie, Fenelon d, Cambrai, 1883. — Matter, le Mysticisme en France au temps de F&nelon, 1865. — Crousle, Fenelon et Bossuet, 1894-1895. — Cagnac, Fenelon, directeur de conscience, 1901. — A. Delplanque, Finelon et la doctrine de I' amour pur, 1907. — Cagnac, F&nelon, Siudes critiques, 1909. — E. Griselle, Fenelon, etudes historiques, igii. —Reime F&nelon, 1910 £f. — (Euwes, ed. Gosselin et Caron, 22 vols., 1820 ff.; Correspondance, 11 vols., 1827-1829; Table, i vol., 1830. — Guerrier, Madame Guyon, sa vie, ses doctrines et son influence, 1881. — T. C. Upham, Madame Guyon, New York, 1858. CHAPTER XVI E. Gosse, The Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun, in Seventeenth-Century Studies, 1897. — A. Barine, la Jeunesse de la Grande Mademoiselle, 1902. — A. Barine, Lauis XIV et la Grande Mademoiselle, 1905. — A. Renee, les Niices de Mazarin, 1858. — L. Perey, le Roman du grand Roi, Louis XIV, et Marie Mancini, 1894. — V. Cousin, Mme de SabU, 1854. — Aubenas, Histoire de Madame de SivignS, 1842. — Sainte-Beuve, on Mme de Sevigne, in Portraits de femmes; Causeries du lundi. Vol. I; Nouveaux lundis. Vol. I. — G. Boissier, Madame de SSvigne, 1887. — VaUery-Radot, Madame de SSvigni, 1889. — Lettres de Mme de SSvignl, ed. Monmerque et Mesnard, 14 vols, and album, 1862-1866; Lettres inedites, ed. Capmas, 2 vols., 1876. — Comte d'HaussonvUle, Madame de La Fayette, 1881. — Taine, on Mme de la Fayette, in Essais de critique et d'histoire, 1858. — Due de NoaOles, Histoire de Mme de Maintenon, 1848. — Geffroy, Mme de Maintenon d'apres sa correspondance, 1887. — Haussonville et Hanotaux, Souvenirs sur Mme de Maintenon, 1902-1905. — Read, la Petite-fille d'Agrippa d'AubignS, in Bulletin de la Societe de I'histoire du protestantisme. Vols. XXVI and XXXVII. — Greard, I'Education des femmes par les femmes, 1886. — Rousselot, Histoire de I'education des femmes en France, 1883. — Sainte-Beuve, Madame Deshoulilres, in Portraits de femmes. CHAPTER XVII A. Franz, Das literarische Portrdt in Frankreich im Zeitalter Richelieus und Mazarins, 1905. — Mile Samfiresco, Minage polSmiste, philologue, poke, 1902. — De Gournay, Huet, Mque d'Avranches, 1855. — Mark Patti- BIBLIOGRAPHY 923 son, on Huet, in collected Essays, 1889. — Hatin, Histoire politique et littSraire de la presse en France, 1859. — Hatin, Bibliographie historique et critique de la presse pSriodique franqaise, 1866. — F. Roubaud, TkSophraste Renaudot, 1856. —E. Hatin, Thiophraste Renaudot, 1883. — Gilles de la Tourette, TkSophraste Renaudot, 1884. — J. Loret, la Muse historique, ed. Ravenel, de Pelouse, and Livet, 4 vols., 1857-1878. — Les Continuateurs de Loret, ed. Rothschild, 2 vols., 1881-1888. — O. Langheim, De Visi, sein Leben und seine Dramen, 1903. — Sainte-Beuve, on the Chevaher de Mer6, Portraits Utteraires, Vol. III. — D. Zevaco, VHonnite hontme au XVIP sitcle, in Rev. de phil. franq. et de litt.. Vol. XXV. — M. Topin, le Cardinal de Retz, 1863. — A. Gazier, les Dernitres annies du Cardinal de Retz, 1875, — Chantelauze, le Cardinal de Retz et I'affaire du chapeau, 1878. — Retz, (Euvres, ed. FeUlet, Gourdault et Chantelauze, 10 vols., 1870 ff. — E. Gerard- Gailly, Bussy-Rabutin, sa vie, ses osuvres et ses amies, 1909. — Sainte-Beuve, on Bussy-Rabutin, Causeries du lundi. Vols.- HI and XHI. — TaUemant des Reaux, Historiettes, 10 vols., 1840. — Bourdeau, La Rochefoucauld, 1895. — (Euvres de La Rochefoucauld, ed. Gilbert et Gourdault, 3 vols., 1868-1883. — P. MoriQot, La Bruybre, 1904. — H. G. Rastede, Ueber La Bruyhfe und seine Charaktere, 1886. — E. Allaire, La Bruyere dans la maison de Condi, 1886. — Lange, La Bruyhre critique des conditions et des institutions sociales, 1909. — (Euvres de La Bruyere, ed. Servois, 3 vols., 1865-1878. — G. Boissier, Saint-Simon, 1892. — Sainte-Beuve, on Saint-Simon, Causeries du lundi. Vols. Ill and XV, Nouveaux lundis. Vol. X. — Taine, on Saint-Simon, in Essais de critique et d'histoire. — Cheruel, Saint-Simon considirS comme historien de Louis XIV, 1865. — E. PUastre, la. Religion au temps du due de Saint-Simon, 1909. — (Euvres de Saint-Simon, ed. Cheruel,' 20 vols., 1856- 1858; ed. Ch6ruel et Rggnier, 22 vols., 1873-1886; ed. Boislisle, in course of publication, 1879 ff. CHAPTER XVIII Sainte-Beuve, on La Fontaine, in Portraits littiraires. Vol. I, and Caur series du lundi, Vol. VII. — H. Taine, La Fontaine et ses fables, 1853. — Walckenaer, Histoire de la vie et des ouwages de La Fontaine, 1858.— Samt-Marc Girardin, La Fontaine et les fabulistes, 1867. —E. Faguet, La Fontaine, 1889. — G. Lafenestre, La Fontaine, 1895. — P. de Remusat, La Fontaine naturaliste, in Rev. des Deux-Mondes, 1869; Doutrepont, La Fontaine naturaliste, in Zeitsch. fur franz. Sp. und Lit., 1896. — (Euvres de La Fontaine, ed. Girard, Desfeuilles, Regnier and Mesnard, 11 vols., 1883- jggj — Br6dif, Segrais, sa vie et ses ouwages, 1863. — A. Gast6, Notes sur Segrais, 1887. 924 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE PART IV CHAPTER I Barni, Histoire des idees morales et politiques en France au XVIIP sihcle, 1866. — Aubertin, VEsprit public au XVIII" sitcle, 1873. — Brunei, les Philosophes et I'Acadimie franqaise au XVIIP sihcle, 1884. — L6vy-Bruhl, History of Modern Philosophy in France, Chicago, 1899. — G. Boissier, r Academie franqaise sous Vancien regime, 1909. — Bnmetiere, les Philosophes et la Revolution Jranqaise, in Histoire et littSrature, Vol. I. — Brunetiere, la Formation de I'id&e de progrhs, in Etudes crit.. Vol. V. — Brunetiere, Etudes sur le XVIIP siecle, 1911. — Crousle, Lessing et le goUt frangais en Alle- magne, 1863. — Danckelmann, Batteux, Rostock, 1902. — Lanfrey, I'Eglise et les philosophes au XVIIP sihcle, 1857. — F. Rocquain, I'Esprit rivolu^ tionnaire avant la Revolution, 1878. — H. See, les Idees philosophiques du XVIIP sihcle et la litterature pr&riwlutionnaire, in Revue de synthhse historique, 1903. — H. See, Revue ginirale de I'histoire des idees politiques en France, XV IP et XVIIP sihcles, in Revue de synthhse historique, 1903. — M. Roustan, les Philosophes et la societe franqaise au XVIIP sihcle, 1906. — Lanson, Origines et premihres manifestations de I' esprit pkilosophique dans la litterature franqaise, in Rev. des Cours et Conferences, 1908-1909 and 1909-1910. — A. Lecoq, la Question sociale au XVIIP sihcle, 1909. — J. Delvaille, Essai sur I'histoire de I'idee de progrhs jusqu'd la Jin du XVIIP sihcle, 1910. — -A. Sayous, le Dix-huitieme sihcle d I'Stranger, 1861. — Joret, Des rapports intellectuels de la France avec I'Allemagne avant 1789, 1884. — Siipfle, Geschichte des deutschen Kultureinflusses auf Frankreich, 1886. — Rossel, Histoire des relations litt&raires entre la France et I'Allemagne, 1897. — Texte, Rousseau et les origines du cosmopolitisms littSraire, 1895. See also articles in Revue des Cours et Conferences (189 5- 1896), and in Petit de JulleviUe's Littirature franqaise. Vol. VI. CHAPTER II Fr. Puaux, les Pricurseurs franqais de la tolSrance, 1881. — Sainte-Beuve, on "Bayle, in Portraits littSraires, Vol. I. — Lenient, Etiide sur Bayle, 1855. — Brunetiere, on Bayle, in Etudes critiques. Vol. V. — Betz, P. Bayle und die Nouvelles de la Rhpublique des Lettres, 1896. — L. Dubois, Bayle et la tolerance, 1902. — W. Bolin, P. Bayle, sein Leben und seine Schriften, 1905. — A. Cazes, P. Bayle, 1905. — Delvolve, Essai sur P. Bayle, 1906. — Laborde- Milaa, Fontenelle, 1905. — Maigron, Fontenelle, 1906. CHAPTER III E. et J. de Goncourt, la Femme au XVIIP sihcle, 1877. — Feuillet de Conches, les Salons de conversation au dix-huitihme sihcle, 1882. — Sainte- Beuve, Madame de Lambert, in Causeries du lundi, Vol. IV. — E. de Broglie, BIBLIOGRAPHY 925 les Mardis et les mercredis de la marquise de Lambert, in le Correspondant, 1895. — Sainte-Beuve, la Duchesse du Maine, in Causeries du lundi. Vol. III. — A. Barine, Princesses et grandes dames (duchesse du Maine), 1907. — Ge- neral de Piepape, la Duchesse du Maine, 1910. — M. Masson, Mme de Tencin, 1909. — L. Perey, le President Hinault et Mme du Defand, 1893. — Lion, le President Hlnaidt, 1903. — Sainte-Beuve, Abbe Galiani, in Causeries du lundi. Vol. 11. — P. de Segur, le Royaume de la rue Saint-Honore : Mme Geqffrin et safiUe, 1897. — P. de Segur, Julie de Lespinasse, 1906. — Sainte- Beuve, Mademoiselle AissS, in Portraits littiraires, Vol. IV. — Sainte-Beuve, Cardinal de Bernis, in Causeries du lundi. Vol. VIII. — F. Funck-Brentano et d'Estrees, les Nouvellistes, 1905. — Funck-Brentano et P. d'Estrees, Figaro ■ et ses deuanciefs, 1909. CHAPTER IV Dutrait, Etude sur la vie et les auwes de Cribillon, 1895. — Deschanel, le ThSdtre de Voltaire, 1886. — Holzhausen, Die Lustspiele Voltaires 1888. — H. Lion, les Tragedies et les theories dramatiques de Voltaire, 1896. — J.-J. OUi- vier, Voltaire et les comediens inter prUes de son thidtre, 1900. — Jusserand, Shakespeare en France sous I'ancien r&gime, 1899. (There is an Enghsh edition.) — Lounsbury, Voltaire and Shakespeare, New York, 1902. CHAPTER V L. Fontaine, le Thedtre et la phUosophie au XVIIP sihcle, 1878. — J. Le- maitre, la Comedie apres Moliere et le thedtre de Dancourt, 1882. — Desnoires- terres, la Comedie satirique au XVIII' siecle, 1885. — Lenient, la Comedie au XVIIP siecle, 1888. — G. Lanson, la Comedie au XVIIP siecle, in Hommes et livres, 1895. — Toldo, Etudes sur le thedtre de Regnard, in Reme d'hist. litt. de la France, 1904-1905. — Barberet, Lesage et le thSdtre de la Foire, 1887. — Campardon, les Spectacles de la Foire (isps-iygi), 1877. — M. Albert, les Thedtres de la Foire, 1900. — N.-M. Bernardin, la Comedie italienne et le thedtre de la Foire, 1902. — O. Klinger, Die Com&die italienne in Paris nach der Sammlung von Gherardi, 1902. — G. Lanson, Nivelle de La ChaussSe et la comSdie larmoyante, 1887. — F. Gaiffe, Etude sur le drame en France au XVIIP siecle, 1910. — Font, Essai sur Favart, 1894.— R. RoUand, I'Opera avant I'OpSra,. in Revue de Paris, 1904. — E. Schure, Histoire du drame musical, 1907. — E. Guieysse-Frere, Sedaine, ses protec- teurs et ses amis, 1907. — Gunther, I'CEuwe dramatique de Sedaine, 1908. — P. Chaponniere, Piron, 1910. CHAPTER VI Lebreton, le Roman au XVIIP sihcle, 1898. — L. Claretie, Lesage roman- cier, 1890. -^ Lintilhac, Lesage, 1893. — Brunetiere, on Lesage, Etiides crit.. Vol III. — G. Lanson, Etude sur Gil Bias, in Hommes et livres, 1895. — 926 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE J. Fleury, Marivaux et le manvaudage, 1881. — Larroumet, Marivaux, 1882. — G. Deschamps, Marivaux, 1897. — Brunetiere, on Marivaux, Etudes crit., Vols. II and III; Epoques du thSdtre franQais. — H. Harrisse, I'Ahbi Privost, 1896. — Schroeder, I'Abbi PrSvost, 1899. — Brunetiere, on the abb6 PrSvost, Etudes critiques, Vol. III. CHAPTER VII Caro, la Fin du dix-huitihme sibcle, 1880. — Vian, Histoire de Montesquieu, 1878. — Brunetiere, on Montesquieu in Etudes crit., Vols. I and IV; Questions de critique, Vol. I. — A. Sorel, Montesquieu, 1887. — Zevort, Montesquieu, 1887. — H. Barckhausen, Montesquieu, ses idies et ses xuwes, 1907. — Faguet, Politique comparle de Montesquieu, Voltaire et J.-J. Rousseau, 1902. — J. Dedieu, Montesquieu et la tradition politique anglaise en France, 1909. — Churton Collins, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau in England, 1908. — Braunschvicg, I' Abbe Duhos renovateur de la critique au XVIIP sitcle, 1904. — Fert6, Rollin, 1902. —J. Barni, les Moralistes franqais au XVIII' sHcle, 1873. — Paleologue, Vauvenargues, 1890. — Sainte-Beuve, on Vauve- nargues, Causeries du lundi. Vols. Ill and XIV. — John Morley, Critical Miscellanies, 1886. — P. Nebel, Vauvenargues' Moral-Philosophie mil be- sonderer BerUcksichtigung seiner Stdlung zur franzosischen Philosophie seiner Zeit, 1907. CHAPTER VIII Bengesco, Bibliographie des ceuvres de Voltaire, 1882-1890. — G. Des- noiresterres, Voltaire et la societe au XVIIP si'ecle, 1867-1876. — J. Morley, Voltaire, 1874. — J. Parton, Life 0/ Voltaire, Boston, 1881. — J. Mahren- holtz, Voltaires Leben und Werke, 1885. — E. Champion, Voltaire, 1892. — Faguet, Voltaire, 1894. — Nourrisson, Voltaire et le Voltairianisme, 1896. — K. Schirmacher, Voltaire, 1898. — L. Crousle, la Vie et les ceuvres de Voltaire, 1899. — S. G. Tallentyre, The Life of Voltaire, 1903. — G. Lanson, Voltaire, 1906. — S. G. Tallentyre, The Friends of Voltaire, 1906. — (Euvres de Vol- taire, ed. Beuchot, 70 vols., 1828 S.; ed. Moland, 50 vols., 1877-1882, index by Pierron, 2 vols., 1885. CHAPTER IX E. Asse, /.-/. Rousseau (BibUotheque des bibliographies critiques), 1901. — Annates J can- Jacques Rousseau, 1905 ff. — J. Morley, Rousseau 1873. Mahrenholtz, Rousseau, 1889. — H. Beaudoin, la Vie et les (euvres de Rous- seau, 1891. —A. Chuquet, Rousseau, 1893. — H. Hoffding, Rousseau und seine Philosophie, 1897. — Nourrisson, Rousseau et le Rousseauisme, 1903. — Frederika Macdonald, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a new Criticism, 1906. J. Lemaitre, Rousseau, 1907. — E. Faguet, Vie de Rousseau,' igii. — J. R. Lowell, Among my Books. — E. Ritter, la Famille et la jeunesse de BIBLIOGRAPHY 927 Rousseau, 1896. — L. Ducros, /.-/. Rousseau, de Geneve d fErmitage, 1908. — E. Champion, /.-/. Rousseau et la Revolution franQaise, 1910. — Bruneti- ere, la Folie de Rousseau, in Etudes critiques, Vol. IV. — F. Mugnier, Mme de Warens et Rousseau, 1891. — Perey et Maugras, Madame d'Epinay, 1881- 1883. — H. Buffenoir, la Comtesse d'Houdetot, sa famille, ses amis, 1905. — J. Texte, Rousseau et les engines du cosmopoUtisme litteraire, 1895. — Momet, le Sentiment de la nature en France de Rousseau A Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, 1907. — A. Schinz, Rousseau, a Forerunner of Pragma- tism, 1909. — Bernubi, Tolstoi continuateur de Rousseau, in Annales J. -J. Rousseau, 1907. CHAPTER X Rosenkranz, Diderots Lehen und Werke, 1866. — Avezac-Lavigne, Did- erot et la sociite du baron d'Holbach, 1875. — Scherer, Diderot, 1880. — J. Morley, Diderot and the Encyclopedists, 1891. — J. Reinach, Diderot, 1894. — L. Ducros, Diderot, 1894. — A. CoUignon, Diderot, 1895. — Caro, la Fin du dix-huitieme siicle, 1880. — C. S. Baldwin, Diderot and Sterne, in Pub. of Mod. Lang. Assoc, of America, 1902. — Rocafort, les Doctrines litteraires de I'EncyclopSdie, 1890. — Brunetiere, les Origines de I'esprit encyclopldique, in Etudes sur le XVIIF siecle, 1911. — P. Duprat, les Encyclopidistes, 1865. — L. Ducros, les Encyclopedistes, 1900. CHAPTER XI Lanfrey, I'Eglise et les philosopkes, 1857. — Th. Funck-Brentano, les Sophistes franqais et la revolution europSenne, 1905. — J. Fabre, De Bayle d Condorcet, 1910. — Baguenault de Puchesse, Condillac, 1910. — A. Keim, Hdvetius, 1907. — Damiron, Etude sur la philosophie de d'Holbach, 1851. — Lebourgo, Vn homme de lettres au XVIII' siecle, Duclos, 1902. — J. Bertrand, D'Alembert, 1889. — Lenel, Marmontd, 1902. — Scherer, Mdchior Grimm, 1887. — A. Mazure, les IdSes de I'abbi Morellet, 1910. — G. Weulersse, le Mouvem^nt physiocratique en France de 1756 d 1770, 1910.' — G. Schelle, le Docteur Quesnay, 1907. — G. Schelle, Vincent de Gournay, 1897. — G. Schelle, Dupont de Nemours et I'Scole physiocrate, 1888. — Paul Janet, Histoire de la science politique dans ses rapports avec la morale, 1887. — J. Morley, Turgot, in Critical Miscellanies. — Leon Say, Turgot, 1887. — G. Schelle, Turgot, 1909. — J. Morley, Condorcet, in Critical Miscellanies. — Robinet, Condorcet, 1893. — Alengry, Condorcet, 1903. — V. Advielle, Babeuf et le Babouvisme, 1884. CHAPTER XII J. Haas, Anfdnge der Naturschilderung im framdsischen Roman: Rous- seau, Saint-Pierre, Chateaubriand, in Zeitsch. fUr franz. Sp. und Lit., 1903. Merlant, le Roman personnel de Rousseau d Fromentin, 1905. — Lanessan, 928 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE CEuvres de Buffon (the Introduction), 1883. — Flourens, Buffon, histoire de ses travaux et de ses idSes, 1850. — Lebasteur, Buffon, 1888. — A. Barine, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, 1891. — F. Maury, Etude sur la vie et les osuvres de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, 1892. CHAPTER XIII Faguet, la Poesie frangaise depuis 1700, reports of lectures, in Remie des Cours et Conferences, 1898-1899 and foil. — P. Dupont, Houdar de la Motte, 1898. — Petits poUes du XVI IP siicle (Bemis, Bertin, Bonnard, Boufflers, Desforges MaiUard, Gentil Bernard, Gilbert, Cresset, Lattai- gnant, Malfilatre, Piron, Vad6), 12 vols., 1879-1886. — J. Weiss, Nicolas Gilberts Saiiren, 1896. — Laffay, le PoHe Gilbert, 1898. — Desnoiresterres, le Chevalier Dor at et les poetes Ugers au XV IIP sihcle, 1887. CHAPTER XIV Sainte-Beuve, on DeUUe, in Portraits littiraires, Vol. II. — H. Potez, VEUgie en France avant le romantisme, 1898. — Baldensperger, Gessner en France, in Revue hist. litt. de la France, 1903. — Bertha Reed, Influence of Gessner on English Literature, Philadelphia, 1905. — Baldensperger, Young et ses 'Nuits' en France, in Etudes d'histoire Uttiraire, 1907. — R. Rosieres, la Litterature anglaise en France de 1750 d, 1800, in Recherches sur la poisie contemporaine, 1896. — R. Rosieres, la Litterature allemande en France de 1750 A 1800, in Recherches sur la poSsie contemporaine, 1896. — L. Claretie, Florian, 1888. — G. Renard, I'Influence de I'antiquitS classique au XVIIP siecle et au commencement du XIX", Lausanne, 1875. — L Bertrand, la Fin du classicisme et le retour a I'antique, 1898. — S. Rocheblave, Essai sur le comte de Caylus, 1887. — Faguet, Andre Ch&nier, 1902. — Haraszti, la Poesie d' Andre Chenier, 1892. — Sainte-Beuve, Ecouchard-Lebrun in Causeries du lundi. Vol. V. CHAPTER XV H. Cordier, Bibliographic de Beaumarchais, 1883. — L. de Lomenie, Beaumarchais et son temps, 1856. — Lintilhac, Beaumarchais et ses osuvres, 1887. — A. Hallays, Beaumarchais, 1897. CHAPTER XVI Caro, la Fin du XVIIP siecle, 1880. — Ferraz, Histoire de la philosophic pendant la Revolution, 1889. — A. Lichtenberger, le Socialisme et la revolu- tion franqaise, 1899. — D'Haussonville, le Salon de Madame Necker, 1882. — GuUlois, le Salon de Madame HelvStius, 1894. — Guillois, la Marquise de Condorcet, 1896. — Ph. Godet, Madame de Charribre et ses amis, 1906. — Aulard, les Orateurs de I'AssembUe Constituante, 1882. — Aulard, les Orateurs BIBLIOGRAPHY 929 de la Revolution, (Legislative, Convention), 1885. — A. Chabrier, les Orateurs politiques de la France, 1888. — Bord, la Franc-Maqonnerie en France des origines A 181 5, 1909. — L. and C. de Lomenie, les Mirabeau, 5 vols., 1878-1891.— E. Rousse, Mirabeau, 1891.— Hatin, Histoire de la presse franqaise, 1859-1861; BiUiographie historique et critique de la presse franqaise, 1866.— P. d'Estrfes, le Pere Duchesne, 1908. — Pellisson, Chamfort, 1895. — Lescure, Rivarol, 1883. — Lebreton, Rivarol, 1896. — Welschinger, le TUdtre de la RSvolution, 1881. — A. Lieby, le ThSdtre de Marie-Joseph ChSnier, 1901. — Ch. Cestre, la Revolution franqaise et les poeles anglais, 1906. PART V CHAPTER I V. Giraud, Principaux courants de la littSrature franqaise au XIX' sihcle, in Renme des Cours et Conferences, March, 1900. — M. 'Albert, la Litterature franqaise sous la Revolution, VEmpire et la Restauration, 1891. — G. Merlet, Tableau de la litterature franqaise de 1800 a 1815, 1878. — Jullien, Histoire de la poesie d I'epoqtte imperiale, 1844. — F. Picavet, les Ideologues, 1891. — E. Caro, Du mysticisme au XVIII" siecle (Saint-Martin), 1852. — J. Galley, Claude Fauriel, 1909. — Cogordan, Joseph de Maistre, 1894. — J. Morley, on Joseph de Maistre, in Critical Miscellanies, 1871. — Lescure, Joseph de Maistre et sa famille, 1892. — F. Descostes, Joseph de Maistre avant la Revolution, 1893. — PauUian, Joseph de Maistre et sa philosophie, 1893. — M. des Granges, Geofroy et la litterature dramatique sous le Consulat et VEmpire, 1897. — M. Arnold, on Joubert, in Essays in Criticism, first series. — PaUhes, Du nouveau sur Joubert, 1900. — M. Souriau, Nepomucene Lemercier et ses correspondants, 1908. — C. Bellier-Dumaine, Alexandre Duval et son ceuvre dramatique, 1905. — Baldensperger, le Genre troubadour, in Etudes d'histoire litteraire, 1907. — Th. Gerold, Zum' genre troubadour' um 1780, in Archiv fiir das Studium der neueren Sprachen, Vol. CXXVI. CHAPTER II Lady Blennerhassett, Frau von Stael, 1887-1889. (There are French and Enghsh translations.) — A. Sorel, Madame de Stael, 1890. — E. Ritter, Notes sur Madame de Stael, 1899. — C. Dejob, Madame de Stael et I'ltalie, 1890. — P. Gautier, Madams de Stael et Napoleon, 1903. E. Ollion, les IdSes phUosophiques, morales et politiques de Mme de Stael, 1910. — G. Rudler, Bibliographie critique des ceuvres de Benjamin Constant, 1909. — G. Rudler, la Jeunesse de Benjamin Constant, 1909. — De Lauris, Benjamin Constant et les idees liberates, 1904. 930 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE CHAPTER III Lescure, Chateaubriand, 1892. — Pailhes, Chateaubriand, sa femme et ses amis, 1896. — V. Giraud, Chateaubriand, 1904. — Giraud, Chateaubriand, etudes litteraires, 1907. — Sainte-Beuve, Chateaubriand et son groupe lit- tiraire, i860. — Brunetiere, le Mai du siecle, in Histoire et litterature, 1884- 1886. — Brunetiere, I' Evolution des genres, Chap. VI. — J. Bedier, Articles on Chateaubriand in America in Revue d'histoire litt&raire, 1899, 1900, 1901, or in Eludes critiques, 1903. — E. Dick, Quelques sources ignorees du Voyage en Amerique de Chateaubriand, in Remie d'hist. litt., 1906. — E. Dick, Plagiats de Chateaubriand, Berne diss., 1907.— Article by P. Martino in Reirue d'kist. litt., with bibliography, 1909. — A. France, Lucile de Chateaubriand, 1894. — A. Bardoux, Madame de Beaumont, 1884. — A. Bardoux, Madame de Custine, 1888. — A. Bardoux, Madame de Duras, 1898. — A. Le Braz, Au pays d'exil de Chateaubriand, 1908. — E. Bire, Les dernieres annies de Chateau- briand, 1902. — Memoirs d'Outre-tombe, ed. Bire, 1898. — Levallois, Un precurseur, Senancour, 1897. — J. Merlant, Senancour, 1907. — G. Michaut, Senancour, 1910. CHAPTER IV Nettement, Histoire de la litterature franqaise sous la Restauration, 1858. — Nettement, Histoire de la literature franqaise sous le gouvernemeni de juillet, 1859. — Jeanroy-Felix, Histoire de la litterature pendant la Restauration, 1888. — Jeanroy-Felix, Histoire de la litterature pendant la monarchie de juillet, 1888. — T. R. Davies, French Romanticism and the Press, Cambridge, England, 1906. — Desgranges, la Presse litteraire sous la Restauration, 1907. — Faguet, Politiques et moralistes du XIX' siecle, 1891-1899. — A. Carrel, Essai sur la vie et les osuvres de P.-L. Courier, in the (Euvres of Courier, 1834. — J. Reinach, les Condones franqais, 1893. — SpvtHer, Royer-Collard, 1895. — J. Simon, Thiers, Guizot, Rimusat, 1875. — A. Bardoux, Guizot, 1894. — P. de Remusat, A. Thiers, 1889. ^E. Zevort, Thiers, 1892. — C. Huit, la Vie et les ceuvres de Ballanche, 1903. — Spuller, Lamennais, 1892. — Mercier, Lamennais, 1893. — A. Roussel, Lamennais, 1893. — Boutard, Lamennais, sa vie et ses doctrines, 1905-1908. — P. Janet, la Philosophie de Lamennais, 1890. — ■ Ricard, I'Ecole menaisienne, 1883-1884. — Monta- lembert, Lacordaire, 1862. — D'Haussonville, Lacordaire, 1895. — Vicomte de Meaux, Montalembert, 1897. — Lecanuet, Montalembert, 1895-1907. — K. O'Meara, F. Ozanam, New York, 1867. — A. Ozanam, Vie de F. Ozanam, 1879. — B. Faulquier, F. Ozanam, 1903. CHAPTER V H. Taine, Philosophes franqais au XIX" siecle, 1857. — Ravaisson, Rapport sur les progrts de la philosophie en France au XIX' sitcle, 1868. — M. Ferraz, Etttde sur la philosophie en France au XIX' siecle, 1877. — BIBLIOGRAPHY 93 ^ M. Couailhac, Maine de Biran, 1905. — G. Michelet, Maine de Biran, 1906. — Paul Janet, Victor CoiAsin et son asuvre, 1885. — J. Simon, Victor Cousin, 1887. — Barthelemy Sainte-Hilaire, Victor Cousin, 1895. — Levy-Bruhl, la PhUosophie de Victor Cousin, 1900. — Olle-Laprune, Thiodore Joufroy, 1899. — T. Kirkup, History of Socialism, fourth edition, London, 1909. — Sudre, Bistoire du communisme, 1856. — E. Fourniere, les TMories social- istes au XIX' siecle. De Babeuf d Proudhon, 1904. — J. Gros, le Mouve- ment littiraire socialiste depuis 1830, 1904. — , A. J. Booth, Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism, London, 1871. — Paul Janet, Saint-Simon et le saint- simonisme, 1878. — Charl6ty, Histoire du saint-simonisme, 1896. — G. Weill, I'Ecole saint-simonienne, son histoire, son influence jusgu' A nos jours, 1896. — Levy-Bruhl, la Philosophic d'Auguste Comte, 1900. — H. Bourgin, Fourier, contribution d I'itude du socialisms frangais, 1905. — H. Bourgin, Victor ConsidSrant, son muvre, 1909. — J. Prudhommeaux, Icarie et son fondateur, Etienne Cabet, 1907. — P.-F61tx Thomas, Pierre Leroux, 1904. — On P. Leroux, see also Revue des Deux-Mondes, May 15, 1906. — M. Golliet, Louis Blanc, sa doctrine, son action, 1903. — A. Des- jardins, P.-J. Proudhon, 1896. — Droz, P.-J. Proudhon, 1909. CHAPTER VI Cjrprien Desmarais, Essai sur les classiques et les romantiques, 1824. — G. Michaut, Pages de critique, 1910. — G. Renard, la LittSrature et les arts, chapter in la Methode scientifique de I'histoire littSraire, 1900. — Asselineau, Bibliographic romantique, 1873. — Th. Gautier, Histoire du romantisme, 1874. — P. Lasserre, le Romantisme frangais, 1908. — E. SeiUiere, le Mai romantique, 1908. — C. Lecigne, le FUau romantique, 1910. — L. Maigron, le Romantisme et les mmurs, 1910. — J. Texte, Etudes de littSror- ture europ&enne, (The Lake School in France, and the German Influence), 1898. — Esteve, Byron et le romantisme frangais, 1907. — L. Seche, le CSnacle de la Muse frangaise, 1908. — M. Salomon, Charles Nodier et le groupe romantique, 1908. — A. JuUien, le Romantisme et I'iditeur Renduel, 1897. — A. Delvau, Gerard de Nerval, 1865. — Gauthier-Ferrieres, Gerard de Nerval, 1906. — Sainte-Beuve, on Aloisius Bertrand, in Portraits littiraires. Vol. II. — J. Chasle-Pavie, Aloysius Bertrand, in Revue de Paris, 191 1 . — J. Claretie, PUrus Bord, le lycanthrope, 1865. CHAPTER VII E. Pelletan, Lamartine, 1869. —E. Ollivier, Lamariine, 1874. — C. de Pomairols, Lamartine, 1889. — E. Rod, Lamartine, 1893. —E. Deschanel, Lamartine, 1893. —E. Zyromski, Lamartine, poUe lyrique, 1897. — M. Citoleux,"/o Po&sie philosophique au XI X" siecle: Lamdrtine, 1905.— E. Sugier, Lamartine, 1910. — Quentin-Bauchart, Lamartine homme poli- tique, 1903. — C. Alexandre, Souvenirs sur Lamartine, 1884. — F. Reyssie, 932 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE la Jeunesse de Lamar iine, 1891. — Chamborand de P6rissat, Lamartine inconnu, 1891. — L. Sech6, Lamartine de 1816 d, 1830, igo6. — A. France, I'Elvire de Lamartine, 1893. — R. Doumic, Lettres d'Ehire d, Lamartine, 1906. — P. de Lacretelle, les Origines et la jeunesse de Lamartine, 1911. — M. Paleologue, Alfred de Vigny, iSgi. — Dorison, Alfred de Vigny, poete philosophe, 1891. — L. Seche, Alfred de Vigny et son temps, 1902. — E. Dupuy, la Jeunesse des romantiques (Hugo and Vigny), 1905. — Lauvriere, Alfred de Vigny, 1909. — L. Seche, Alfred de Vigny et son temps, 1902. — Dorison, Un symbole social, A. de Vigny et la poSsie politique, 1894. — A. Barine, Alfred de Mussel, 1893. — L. Seche, Alfred de Musset, 1907. — P. Lindau, Alfred de Musset, 1877. — C. Maurras, les Amants de Venise, 1901. ^ M. Clouard, Bibliographie des ceuwes d' Alfred de Musset, 1883. — E. Richet, ThSophile Gautier, 1873. — M. Du Camp, TMophile Gautier, 1890. — Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Histoire des ceuwes de ThSophile Gautier, 1887. — N. Peyrat, Biranger et Lamennais, 1861. — P. Boiteau, Vie de BSranger, 1861. — J. Janin, Beranger et son temps, 1866. — Causeret, Biranger, 1894. — A. Boulle, Biranger, 1908. — Brivois, Bibliographie de I'ceuvre de Biranger, 1876. — J. Boulenger, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, 1909. — Abb6 Lecigne, Brizeux, 1898. — E. Bire, Laprade, 1886. CHAPTER VIII A. C. Swinburne, Essay on Victor Hugo, London, 1886. — E. Dupuy, Victor Hugo, I'homme et le poete, 1887. — L. Mabilleau, Victor Hugo, 1893. — C. Renouvier, Victor Hugo, le pobte, 1893. — F. Brunetiere (editor), Victor Hugo, prepared by pupils of the Ecole normale, 1902. — Mme Hugo, Victor Hugo raconti par un timoin de sa me, 1868. — E. Bire, Victor Hugo et la Restauration; Victor Hugo avant 1830; Victor Hugo apris 1830; Victor Hugo apres 1852; 1869-1893. — G. Simon, I'Enfance de Victor Hugo, 1904. — A. Guiard, la Fonction du poete, itude sur Victor Hugo, 1909. — Renouvier, Victor Hugo, le philosophe, 1900. — G. Duval, Dictionnaire des mitaphores de Victor Hugo, 1888. — M. Souriau, edition of the Priface de Cromwell, 1897. — E. Rigal, Victor Hugo, poete ipique, 1900. CHAPTER IX N. Brazier, Chronique des petits thidtres de Paris, 1837 (reprint by d'HeyUi, 1883). — P. Ginisty, le Milodrame, 1910. — M. Albert, les Thidtres des boulevards, 1902. — H. Beaulieu, les Thidtres du boulevard du Crime, 1905. — Th. Muret, VHistoire par le thidtre, 1865. — C. Nodier, Introduction to the Thidtre choisi of Pixerecourt, 1841-1843. — Marsan, le Milodrame et G. de Pixericourt, in Remie d'histoire litt. de la, France, Vol. VII. — A. Virely, Pixericourt, 1909. — Le Roy, I'Aube du thidtre romantique, 1902. — P. Nebout, le Drame romantique, 1897. — C. Latreille, la Fin du thidtre romantique et FranQois Ponsard, 1899. — H. Parigot, le Drame d' Alexandre BIBLIOGRAPHY 933 Dumas, 1898. — P. et V. Glachant, Essai sur le th&dtre de Victor Hugo, 1902-1903. — E. Sakellarides, Alfred de Vigny auteur dramatique, 1902. — Lafoscade, le TMdtre d^ Alfred de Musset, 1901. — Lenient, la Comedie au XIX' siicle, 1898. — Desgranges, la Comedie et les mceurs sous la restaura- tion et la monarchie dejuiUet, 1904. CHAPTER X J. Merlant, le Roman passionnel de Rousseau d Fromentin, 1905. — Gilbert, le Roman en France au XIX" siecle, 1896. — Charles-Brun, le Roman social en France au XIX' siecle, 1910. — A. A. Paton, Henri Beyle, London, 1874. — E. Rod, Stendhal, 1892. — H. Cordier, Stendhal raconte par ses amis et amies, 1893. — A. Chuquet, Stendhal-Beyle, 1902. — A. Filon, M&rimee et ses amis, 1894. — A. Filon, M&rim&e, 1898. — M. Tourneux, Prosper Merimee, sa hihliographie, 1876. — F. Chambon, Notes sur MerimSe, 1903. — -L. Pinvert, Sur Mirimee, 1908. — E. Caro, George Sand, 1887. — W. Karehine, George Sand, 1899-1901. — R. Doumic, George Sand, 1909. — L. Buis, les Theories sociales de George Sand, 1910. — A. Le Roy, George Sand et ses amis, 1903. — P. Marieton, George Sand et Alfred de Musset, 1897. — M.-A. Leblond, George Sand socialiste, in Revue socialiste, 1904. — M. Barriere, I'CEuwe d'HonorS de Balzac, 1890. — E. Bir6, Honorl de Balzac, 1897. — Mary Sanders, Life of Balzac, London, 1904. — A. Le Breton, Balzac, 1905. — Brunetiere, HonorS de Balzac, 1906. — F. Lawton, Balzac, London, 1910. — P. Flat, Essais sur Balzac, 1892; Nouveaux essais, 1895. — G. Ferry, Balzac et ses amis, 1888. — Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Histoire des (Buvres de Balzac, 1886. — Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Autour de Honore de Balzac, 1897. — Hanotaux et Vicaire, la Jeunesse de Balzac, 1903. — Cerfbeer et Christophe, RSpertoire de la Comedie humaine, 1887. — A. Lefranc, Maurice de GuSrin, 1910. CHAPTER XI Valentin, Augustin Thierry, 1895. — R. Heath, Quinet, His early Life and Writings, London, 1881. — C. Cestre, Introduction to edition of France et Allemagne, 1908. — Chassin, Edgar Quinet, 1859. — Correard, Michelet, 1887. — G. Monod, Jules Michelet, 1905. —J. Simon, Mignet, Michelet et Henri Martin, 1889. — G. Lanson, la Formation de la mUhode historique de Michelet, in Rpoue d'histoire moderne, 1905. —L. Cazamian, Introduction to edition of I'Oiseau, Oxford, 1907. —W. Robertson, Introduction to edition of la Mer, Oxford, 1907. — H. Avenel, la Fresse frangaise depuis ijSg jusqu'd nos jours, 190x5. CHAPTER XII R. Fath Infltience de la science sur la litterature dans la deuxieme moitiS du XIX' siecle, 1901. — Levallois, Sainte-Beuve, 1872. — Haussonville, Sainte-Beuve, 1875. — G. Michaut, Sainte-Beuve avant les lundis; 1903. — 934 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE G. Michaut, Etudes sur Sainte-Beuve, 1905. — J. Bourdeau, la Psychologic et la philosophie de Samte-Beuve, in Compte rendu des sSances de I'AcadSmie des sciences morales et politiques, 1905. — G. M. Harper, Sainte-Beuve, New York, 1909. — L. Sech6, Sainte-Beuve, 1904. — G. Monod, Renan, Taine, Michelet, 1894. — A. de Margerie, Taine, 1894. — E. Boutmy, H. Taifie, in Annales de I'Ecole des sciences politiques, 1897. — V. Giraud, Essai sur Taine, Fribourg, 1901. — Barzellotti, Ippolito Taine (French translation by Dietrich, 1901). — Aulard, Taine historien de la Revolution frangaise, 1907. — P. Neve, la Philosophie de Taine, Louvain, 1908. — A. Laborde-MUal, Hippolyte Taine, 1909. — M. Grant Duff, Renan, London, 1893. — R. Allier, la Philosophie d'Ernest Renan, 1895. — G. Seailles, Ernest Renan, 1895. — Mary Darmsteter, Ernest Renan, 1898. — I. Babbitt, Introduction to Souvenirs d'enfance ei dejeunesse, Boston, 1902. — G. Sorel, le Systkme historique de Renan, 1906. — H. Parigot, Renan, 1909. — Strauss, la Politique de Renan, 1909. CHAPTER XIII G. Pellissier, le Mouvement litteraire contemporain, igoi. — David-Sauva- geot, le Rialisme et le naturalisme, 1889. — E. Zola, le Roman expirimental, 1880. — E. Zola, les Romanciers naturalistes, 1881. — F. Brunetiere, le Roman naturaliste, second edition, 1892. — G. Renard, Etudes sur la France contemporaine {le Naturalisme), 1888. — R. T>onmic, Ecrivains d'aujourd'hui, 1894. — M. Du Camp, Souvenirs littSraires, 1882-1883. — J. C. Tarver, Gustave Flaubert, London, 1895. — E. Faguet, Flaubert, 1899. — Levy- Bruhl, Flaubert philosophe, in Remie de Paris, 1900. — Dumesnil, Flaubert, son heriditS, son milieu, sa methode, 1905. — R. Descharmes, Flaubert, sa vie, son caracttre et ses idees avant 1857, 1909. — E. and J. de Goncourt, Journal, 9 vols., 1887-1896. — P. Alexis, Emile Zola, 1882. — Massis, Comment Emile Zola composait ses romans, 1906. — H. Martineau, le Roman scienti- fiqus d'Emile Zola, 1907. — E. Lepelletier, Emile Zola, 1908. — Lumbroso, Souvenirs sur Maupassant, Rome, 1905. — Maynial, la Vie et I'ceuvre de Maupassant, 1907. — P. Mahn, Guy de Maupassant, sein Leben und seine Werke, 1909. — Deries, Octave Feuillet, 1901. — Gonse, Fromentin, 1880. — Grele, Barbey d'AurevUly, 1902. — E. SeilUere, Barbey d'Aurevilly, 1910. — H. Chapoutot, Villiers de I'Isle-Adam, 1908. — E. de Rougemont, VUliers de I'Isle-Adam, 1910. — C. Lemire, Jules Verne, 1908. CHAPTER XIV B. Matthews, French Dramatists, New York, 1881. — R. Doumic, Por- traits d'icrivains, 1892. — H. Parigot, le Thedtre d'hier, 1893. —A. Filon, De Dumas i Rostand, 1898. — H. Parigot, Emile Augier, 1894. — P. Morillot, Emile Augier, igoi. — H. Gaillard de Champris, Emile Augier et la comidie BIBLIOGRAPHY 935 sociale, 1910. — Seche et Bertaut, VEvolution du thedtre contemporain, 1908. — Thalasso, le Thidtre-Libre, 1909. —J. Ernest-Charles, le Thidtre des poetes, 1910. — See especially the General Bibliography. CHAPTER XV Th. Gautier, Rapport sur le progres de la poesie depuis 1830, 1868. — C. Mendes, le Mouvement poStique fratiQais de 1867 d, igoo, 1903. — J. Huret, Enqi^te sur I' Evolution litter aire, 1891. — G. Pellissier, le Mouvement litter aire contemporain, igor. — Canat, Du sentiment de la solitude morale chez les romantiques et les premiers Parnassiens, 1904. — Cassagne, la Thiorie de I'art pour I'art en France, 1906. — E. Vigid-Lecocq, la Poisie contemporaine {i884-i8g6), 1896. — Van Bever et Leautaud, Pottes d'aujourd'hui, 1900. — A. Beaunier, la PoSsie nouvelle, 1902. — G. Walch, Anthologie des poetes franqais contemporains, 1906. — La VUle de Miremont, le Pokte Bouilhet, 1888. — E. Frere, Louis Bouilhet, 1908. — Th. Gautier, Introduction to Baudelaire's poems, 1868. — Asselineau, Baudelaire, 1869. — C. Cr6pet Charles Baudelaire, 6tude revue par Jacques Crepet, 1908. — A. Patterson, r Influence de Poe sur Baudelaire, Grenoble, 1903. — Calmettes, Leconte de Lisle, 1892. — M.-A. Leblond, Leconte de Lisle, 1906. — J. Dornis, Leconte de Lisle, igog. — J. Vianey, les Sources de Leconte de Lisle, 1907. — C. Men- des, la Legends du Parnasse contemporain, 1884. — Ph. Berthelot, Louis Menard et son oeuvre, 1902. — M. Barres, on Louis Menard, in le Voyage de Sparte, 1906. — R. Canat, la Renaissance de la Grece antique {1820-1850), 1911. — Zjnromski, Sidly Prudhomme, 1907. — M. Citoleux, Madame Ackermann, 1906. — M. Guyau, I' Art au point de mie sociologique, 1890. — M. Nordau, D&genSrescence (French translation), 1894. — C. Morice, la LitUrature de tout d I'heure, 1889. — TeUier, Nos poetes, 1889. — Byvanck, Un Hollandais d Paris en i8gi, 1892. — A. Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Literature, London, 1899. — Kahn, Symholistes et decadents, 1902. — Rette, le Symholisme, 1903. — A. Schinz, Literary Symbolism in France, in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 1903. — E. Lepelletier, Paul Verlaine, 1907. — P. Berrichon, Vie de Rimbaud, 1897. — L. Bocquet, A. Samain, sa vie et son ceuvre, 1905. — Valbel, Chansonniers et cabarets artistiques, 1895. — L. de Bercy, Montmartre et ses chansons, 1902. — B. Millanvoye, Anthologie des poites de Montmartre, 1909. CHAPTER XVI Janssens, le Nio-criticisme de Charles Renouvier, Louvain, 1904. — Ph. Bridel, Ch. Renouvier et sa philosophic, Lausanne, 1905. — A. Fouillee, la Morale, I'art et la religion d'apris M. Guyau, 1889. — Asian, la Morale selon Guyau, 1906. — H. Leyret, Waldeck-Rousseau et la troisieme Republique, 1908. — E. Lovinesco, /.-/. Weiss, 1909. — G. Stirbey, /.-/. Weiss, 191 1. — A. Meyer, Ce que mes yeux ont mi, 191 1. 936 A HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE PART VI CHAPTERS I AND II Qui ttes-Tous? Anrmaire des contemporains, 1910. — J.-H. Retinger, Histoire de la litterature franQaise du romantisme A nos jours, 1911. — Casella et Gaubert, la Nouvelle LittSrature {i8g5-igos), 1906. — E. Gilbert, Dix annees de roman Jranqais, in Revue des Deux-Mondes, 1908. — Abbe Bethleem, Romans d, lire et remans d proscrire (amusing clerical judg- ments), 1906. — Abbe Bethleem, les Pieces de theatre (amusing clerical judgments), 1910. — G. Walch, NouveUes pages anthologiques, 1910. — H. Hoffding, Philosophes contemporains (French translation), 1906. — V. Giraud, les Mattres de I'heure, 1911. — L. Maury, Figures litteraires, 1911. — P. de Coubertin, I'Evolution frangaise sous la troisikme RepuUiqiie, 1896. — J. E. C. Bodley, France, London, 1898. — G. Hanot.aux, Histoire de la France contemporaine, 1 903-1909. — J. C. Bracq, France under the Republic, New York, 1910. — -J. Reinach, Histoire de V Affaire Dreyfus, 1901-1911. — B. Frankfort, Guide dans le mdquis de V Affaire Dreyfus, 1904. — R.-L.-M. Histoire sommaire de V Affaire Dreyfus, 1904. — H. Dutrait-Crozon, PrScis de I' Affaire Dreyfus, 1909. — G. Pellissier, l' Affaire Dreyfus et la litterature frangaise, in Etudes de littirature et de morale contemparaines, 1905. — W. L. George, France in the Twentieth Century, London, 1908. — Articles by MM. Lalande and Le Roy in Philosophical Review, 1905 and foil. — W. James, Pragmatism, New York, 1907. — ■ M. Hebert, le Prag- matisme, 1908. — A. Chide, Pragmatisme et intellectualisme, in Revue philo- sophique, 1908. — G. Cantecor, la Philosophic nouvelle et la vie de I'esprit, in Revue philosophique, 1903. — See bibhography of Bergs'on literature in F. L. Pogson's translation, Time and Free Will, London, 1910. — G. Rageot, Review of I'Evolution cr&atrice, in Revue philosophique, 1907. — W. James, The Philosophy of Bergson, in Hibbert Journal, 1909. — H. Weldon Carr, The Philosophy of Henri Bergson, in Hibbert Journal, 1910. — R. Gillouin, la Philosophic de M.' Henri Bergson, in Revue de Paris, 191 1. — C. Bougie, Syndicalistes et Bergsoniens, in Revue du mois, 1907. — S. Reinach, Orpheus, histoire generale des religions, 1909. — M. de Wulf, Introduction d, la philosophic nio-scolastique, 1904. — J. L. Perrier, The Revival of Scholastic Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century, New York, 1909. — A. Houtin, r Americanisms, 1904. — P. "Sabatier, la Separation des iglises et de Petal, 1906. — J. E. C. Bodley, The Church' in France, London, 1906. — Faguet, I'Anticlericalisme, 1906. — A. Loisy, Simples riflexions sur le decret du Saint-Office, 1908. — A. Loisy, I'Evangile et I'Eglise, 1908. — "Catholici," Lendemains d'encyclique, 1908. — C. Guignebert, Modernisms et tradition catholique en France, 1908. — P. Sabatier, les Moder- nistes, 1909. — G. Gentile, // Modernismo e i rapporti tra religione e filosofia', 1909. — -A. Fewkes, Modernism, in Hibbert Journal, 1909. — E. Dimnet, The Crisis in the Growth of French Royalism, in The Nineteenth Century, 1911. BIBLIOCRAPHY 037 — L. Liard, I'Universiti de Paris, 1909. — G. Lanson, la Methode de I'hisloire littiraire, in Remte du mois, 1910. — P. Leguay, la Sorbonne, 1910. — "Agathon" (H. Massis and A. de Tarde), VEsprit de la nouvelle Sorbonne, 191 1. — A. Poizat, Classicisme et catholicisme, 191 1. — P. Descoqs, A travers 'eeuvre de M. Maurras, 1911. — L. Laberthonniere, Positivisme et catholi- lisme, 1911. * INDEX OF NAMES INDEX OF NAMES Compiled by W. R. Spofford. Italic figures indicate the chief references. Ab^lard, 13, 47, 49, 72, 90, gy, 102, 327 Ablancourt, Perrot d', 420 Ablon, Mme d', 463 About, Edmond, 773, 822 Acarie, Mme, 346 Accursius, 245 Ackermann, Mme, 798 Adam de la Halle, 44, 46, 7S-7B Adam de Saint- Victor, 47 Adam, Mme, 823 Adam, Paul, 800, 801, 845 Addison, 430, 449, 470, 492 Ademarus Cabannensis, S3 A£lis de Blois, 44 Afilis, wife of Louis Vn, 44 jEschylus, 472, S77, 687, 697, 794 /Esop, 687 Agricol Perdiguier, 717 Agrippina, 356 Aicard, Jean, 796, 846 Ailly, 95, 136 Aimard, Gustave, 708 Aisse, MUe, 464, 493 Ajalbert, Jean, 801 Alacoque, Marie, 401, 447 Alain de Lille, loi, 103, 109 Alamanni, Luigi, 134, 191, 210, 258 " Alberic de Brianf on, 39 Albertino Mussato, 209 Albertus Magnus, 91, 92, 96, 99 Alciati, 245 Alcuin, II, 12, 87, 96 Aleandro, Girolamo, 137, 141 Alembert, d', 447, 462, 463, 513, 519, 526, 542. S43, 544. 545. 550 Alexandre de Bemay, 39 Alexander the Great, 36, 37, 39, 299 Alexander of Hales, 92 Alexander of Russia, 606 Alexandre de Ville-Dieu, 95, 100 Alexis, 57 Alexis, Paul, 767 Alfieri, 210, 450, 472 Algarotti, 444, 514 AUais, Alphonse, 846 Allais, Gustave, 264 Allan-Despr^aux, Mme, 706 Amaiu7 de Bene, 89 Amboise, Franjois d', 217 Ambrosius de Miliis, 122 Amiel, 625, 814, 841 Amyot, Jacques, 136, 204, S07-S08, 235, 271, 28s, 631 Anacreon, 191, 192, 687 Ancey, Georges, 846 Andr£ le Chapelain, 32, 44 Andrea del Sarto, 134 Andreini, Isabella, 292 Andrelini, Fausto, 136 Andrieux, 608 Andronicus Callistus, 137 Aneau, Barthflemy, 178 Angdlique, Mere 332 Angellier, Auguste, 846 Angelo di Costanzo, 198 Aiigennes, Julie d', 278, 279, 313 Angouleme, due d', 261 Anicet-Bourgeois, 695, 710 Aime of Austria, 306, 316, 389, 398, 417, 426 Anne deBretagne, 132 Ansehn, St., 13, 88, 325 Anselm of Laon, 90 Antier, Benjamin, 695, 696 Antoine, Andr6, 786-787, 843 Aphthonius, 349 Apollonius Rhodius, 196 Appian, 215 Arc, Jeanne d', 507, 729, 837, 860 Ardenne de Tizac, H., 879 Arene, Emmanuel, 853 ArJne, Paul, 799 Aretino, 258 Argenson, marquis d', 461, 462, 513 Ariosto, 17, 196, 197, 215, 217, 219, 226, 258, 687 Aristophanes, 216, 227, 367 Aristotle, 40, 91, 95, 96, 100, loi, 109, 115, "9. 135. 157. 201, 202, 204, 207, 211, 212, 941 942 INDEX OF NAMES 246, 2SI. 271. 297, 309, 323. 374. 3q6, 421, 429, 430. 43S. 499 Arliacourt, vicomte d', 709 Amauld, Antoine, 329, 333, 334, 335, 338, 347. 349. 419. 602 Amauld d' Andilly, 411 Arnault, 608 Arnold, Matthew, s, 389, 472, 606, 625 Arouet, Armand, 505 Arvers, Fdlix, 681 Assoucy, d', 268, 291 "Astronomer," The, 52 Aubignac, abbfi d', 213, 215, S96-S97, 309, 317, 354. 419, 4SO. 468 Aubign^, Agrippa d', 224, ZB7-S30, 242, 251, 2g8, 416 Aude, 597 Audebrand, Philibert, 739 Audefroi le Gastard, 46 Audinot, 488, 692 Auger, 658 Augier, 373, 707, 778, 779-781, 782, 784, 78s, 842, 8S4 Augustine, Saint, 333, 342, 567 Augustus, 271 Aulard, 816 Aulnoy, Mme d', 410, 418 Autels, Guillaume des, 177, 178 Autran, Joseph, 799 Autreau, Jacques, 480 Avenel, H., 735 Avianus, 62 Aydie, d', 464 B Babeuf, sss, 717 Bacdochi, Mme, 587 Bachaumont, 366, 465 Bacon, 239, 541 Bade, Josse, 205 Bait, Jean-Antoine de, 17s, 177, 178, 180, 184, 193, 194. 196, 217, 436 Balf, Lazare de, 174, 175, 178, 211 Balbi, Girolamo, 136 Baldwin of Flanders, S7 Ballanche, 63B, 718 Baluze, Edeqne, 420 Balzac, Guez de, 253, 264, S70-S7i, 278, 282, 288, 313, 342, 344, 376, 38s, 392, 412 Balzac, Honors de, 491, 656, 659, 707, 708, 713, 716, 7Z0-7SS, 736, 744. 7S9. 767. 772, 821, 8S7 Bandello, 172 Banville, Theodore de, 788, 79°. 791-79Z, 795, 796, 797. 799, 877, 879 Baour-Lormian, 608 Barante, 632 Barb&s, 718 Barbey d'Aurevilly, 664, 754, 77^-776, 777, 809 Barbier, Auguste, 681 Barbieri, Niccol6, 292, 363 Barckhausen, 497 Barclay, 405 Bargone, Fr£d£ric, 858 Bamave, 590 Baro, Balthazar, 284, 294, 314 Baron, 477, 491 Baronius, Cardinal, 319 Barres, Maurice, 8Jfi-8Jt7 Barrifere, Theodore, 788 Barry, Mme du, 582 Bartas, Du, 224, m5-SS7, 252, 873 Barthdlemy, abb6, 574 Barth61emy de Loches, 211 Bartholus, 245 Bartram, William, 617 Basedow, 531 Basselin, Olivier, 485 Bassompierre, 423 Bataille, Fr^d^ric, 847 Bataille, Henri, 843, 847, 848 Batiffol, Mgr, 835 Batilliat, Marcel, 801 Batteux, 44s Baudelaire, 661, 778, 790, 791, 79S, 79s, 796, 799, 800, 804, 807, 8og, 875 Bayle, 220, 328, 423, 443, 445, 446, 457- iB6, 4S8, 460, sii, 541 Bayly, T. H., 43, 608 Bazard, 644, 645 Bazin, Ren6, 841, 847-848 Beau Brummell, 775 Beauclair, Henri, 799 Beauhamais, Mme de, 587 Beaumarcbais, 367, 369, 485, B81-B86, 596, 687, 691, 697. 795 Beaumont, Gustave de, 733 Beaumont, Mme de, 587, 605, 621, 624 Beaunier, Andri, 848 Beauvoir, Roger de, 711 Beccaria, 548 Becker, Fh. Aug., 14, 22 Becq de Fouqui&res, 576 Becque, Henry, 785-786 B£da, Noel, 221 B^dier, Joseph, 16, 31 B^jart, 362 Bijart, Armande, 367 Bellay, Cardinal du, 140, 165, 179 Bellay, Guillaume du, 165, 179. 243 Bellay, Joachim du, 148, 174, 175, 176, 177, INDEX OF NAMES 943 178, 179-180, 181, 182, 183, 184, i8s, 187, 188, igo, igi, ig3, ig4, igs, ig7, 204, 224, 2S7. S77, 614, 6s3 Bellay, Martin du, 179, 243 Bellay, Renfi du, 179 Belleau, 177, 178, 181, 192, ig4, 196, 214, 217 Belleforest, Fraii;oi3 de, 172 Belle-Isle, mar^chal de, 502 Bellerose, 2g3 Belloy, de, 474 Belot, Adolphe, 788 Beltrame, 2g2 Beltrami, 617 Bembo, 131, 142 Benedict, St., 13 Benolt de Sainte-More, 38, 40, 56 Benozzi, Giannetta, 480 Benserade, 282, 361, 430, 439 Bentham, 548, 760 Bentivoglio, 238 B6ranger, 608, 679-681, 796 B^rat, FrSd&ic, 45 Berchoux, 588 Berengarius, 88 B&enger, Henri, 823 Bergasse, 582 Bergerat, Emile, 848 Bergson, Henri, 8S0-83S, 83s Berkeley, 330 Bernard, St., 13, 47> 49. 89, go, 105, 239 Bernard de Chartres, 89 Bernard of Cluny, 47 Bernard, Catherine, 410 Bernard, Charles de, 759 Bernard, Claude, 757, 76s, 810, 851 Bernard, Tristan (Paul) 848 Bemardin de Saint-Pierre, 521, 669-663, 601, 620, 622, 6so, 6si, 666, 731, 869 Bemart de Ventadour, 44 Bernhardt, Sarah, 784, 788 Bemi, 197, 258 Bernier, 32g Bemis, Cardinal de, 464 Bernstein, 843, 844, 848 B&oalde de Verville, 173 Beroaldo, FilipiJO, 136 B&ol, 28, 30 Berquin (sixteenth century), 221 Berquin, Amaud, 563. S73 Berri, duchesse de, 398 Berryer, 635 Bersot, Ernest, 821 Bersuire, Pierre, 37. "5. "6 Bert, Paul, 814 Bertaut, 698 Bertaut, Jean, 177. S66-S67, 259, 4i7 Berthelot, 740 Bertheroy, Mme Jean. See Le Barillier, Mme Berthe-Corinne Bertin, 572, 578, 650, 666 Berlin, Ed., 821 Bertran de Bom, 44 Bertrand, Alolsius (Louis), 655 Bertrand, Louis, 849 Bertrin, abb£, 621 B£rulle, Pierre de. Cardinal, 349, 392 Bessarion, Cardinal, 156 Bezon, abhi, 557 Beyle, Henri. See Stendhal. B^e, Theodore de, 174, 224, 346 Biard, Mme, 6go Binet, Claude, 177, 178 Bisson, Alexandre, 849 Bizet, 78s Blanc, Louis, 628, 648, 718, 733 Blanche de Castille, 46 Blanchecotte, Mme, 790 BUmont, Emile, 849 Blondel, 488 Blondel, Maurice, 835 Blondel de Nesle, 46 Blount, Mrs., 282 Bocage, 698 Boccaccio, 38, 70, 112, 133, 147, iS9i 366, 43s Bodel, Jean, 14, 20, 46, 73 Bodin, 246-247, 747 Bohme, Jacob, 603 Bohmer, H., 339 Boethius, 12, 95, 100, 109, 5S3 Bo£tie, Etienne de la, 200, 231, 246 Boex, Joseph-Henry. See Rosny, J.-H. Boex, Justin. See Rosny, J.-H. Boiardo, 17 Boileau, 253, 255, 256, 257, 258, 260, 262, 26s, 267, 268,v27s, 284, 28s, 288, 289, 290, 291, 311, 316, 321, 322, 327, 331, 334, 3SI, 3S8, 360, 376-387, 397, 4I7. 4i9, 420. 423, 430. 43S. 438, 439. 45°. 48S. S^S. S43. S66, 567, 623, 628, 790, 795, 802, 819, 866 Bois, Jules, 849 Bois, Simon du, 157 Boisgobey, Fortun6 du, 724 Boisrobert, 272, 297, 298, 364, 366, 385 Boissier, Gaston, 815 Boistuau, Pierre, 172 Bolingbroke, 462, 503, 5" Bonald, Louis de, 603, 6O4, 630, 639, 77s Bonaparte, Mme Joseph, 587 Bonarelli, Guidobaldo, 285 Bonaventure, St., 93 Boniface of Montferrat, 57 Bonjour, Casimir, 704 Bonnard. Abel, 849 Bonnetain, Paul, 767 944 INDEX OF NAMES Bonnivet, isg Booth, John Wilkes, 308 Bordeaux, due de, 631 Bordeaux, Henry, 841, 849 Borderie, Jean de la, 153 Borel, Petrus, 663 Bomier, Henri de, 788 Bossuet, 105, 220, 223, 255, 256, 271, 331, S88-S98, 400, 401, 402, 404, 429, 431, 454, 503, 567, 588, 623, 633, 819, 866 Bossuet, abb^, 402 Botrel, Theodore, 850 Bouchardy, Joseph, 663, 695 Bouchart, isi Boucher, 538, 564, 764 Bouchet, Guillaume, 173 Bouchet, Jean, 121, 174 Bouchor, Maurice, 741, 850 Bouciquaut, 59 Boufflers, chevalier de, 569 Bouhfilier, Saint-Georges de (Georges de Bouh^lier-Lepelletier), 840, 850 Bouhours, the P., 382, 386, 421, 439 Bouilhet, Louis, 788, 790 Bouillon, duchesse de, 357, 411, 43s, 436 Boukay, Maurice. See Couyba Boulanger, Louis, 661 Boiurbon, due de, 428, 49s Bourbon, Nicolas, 175 Bourdaloue, 388, 389, 396-398, 400, 406, 431 Bourdelot, abb6, 419 Bourgeois, L^on, 840 Bourges, Eltoir, 850 Bourget, Paul, 713, 741, 849, 860-851 Bourgogne, due de, 390, 400, 402, 404, 40S Boursault, 368, 476 Bourzeys, abb6 de, 338, 386 Bout«lleau, Georges, 851 Boutroux, Emile, 831, 851 Bouvier, Alexis, 724 Boyer, 448, 796 Boylesve, Ren^, 852 Bradstreet, Mrs., 225 Brakespeare, Nicholas, 102 Brantflme, 243^-244, 251 Brazier, 694 Brebeuf, 439 Briand, Aristide, 840 Brijonnet, 157, 221 Brieux, EugSne, 843, 852 Brifaut, 607 Brinvilliers, Mme de, 358, 398, 414 Brisson, A., 787, 844, 848, 852 Brisson, Henri, 840 Brissot, 592, 594 Brizeux, Auguste, 681, 724 Brodeau, Victor, 153, 282 Broglie, due de, 632, 814, 816 Brossette, 377 Broussais, 645, 657 Browne, Sir Thomas, 239 Bruant, Aristide, 808 Brueker, 199 Brunck, 575 Brunetiere, Ferdinand, 208, 234, 255, 276, 280, 321, 369. 655, 8io, 818-8H1, 838, 853, 856, 866 ' Brunette Latini, 107 Brutus, 267 Buchanan, George, 211, 231 Buckle, 746, 747 Bude, 127, 131, 132, 133, 137, 138, I39-I4S, 164, 204 Buffet, 816 Buffon, 448, 543, 667-669, 561, 571, 579, 628, 731 Buhle, 199 Buloz, Franfois, 736 Bulwer, 849 Burckhardt, 129 Buridan, 95 Bums, Robert, 846 Burton, 239 Bussy-Rabutin, 414, 423, ^26 Buttet, Claude de, 177 Buzot, 592 Byng, 509 Byron, 572, 624, 651, 655, 657, 658, 659, 661, 662, 663, 664, 667, 668, 672, 67s, 697, 700, 723 Cabanis, 602 Cabanis, Mme, 601 Cabet, Etienne, 647, 767 Caeeilia Metella, 614 Caesar, 4, 36, 243, 267, 740 Caffaro, 391 Cagliostro, 710 Caigniez, 693, 694 Caillavet, Gaston-Armand de, 85 2, 858 Caius Gracchus, 555 Calas, 509 Calderfin, 491 Callias, Nina de, 795 Calvin, 132, 152, 158, 171, 200, 220, 22i-; 252, 339, 395 Campistron, 360 Camus, 285, 286 Capus, Alfred, 852 Carel de Sainte-Garde, 290 Carlyle, 590, 729 Caro, 537, 789, 811 Caron, Louis le, 177 INDEX OF NAMES 94S Carrel, Armand, 644, 73s, 743 Cartier, Jean-Hippolyte, 822 Casanova, 64 Casaubon, 20s, 429 Cassagnac, Paul de, 822 Cassagne, A., 710 Cassiodorus, 12, 100 Castellion, 222 Castelvetro, 214 Castiglione, I5g, 168 Castillon, 388 Catherine, Empress, 450, 513, 336, SSO Catherine, Saint, 401 Catullus, S77 Cavisse, Charles. See Mael, Pierre Caylus, comte de, 574 Cazalis, Henri, 796, 798 Caze, Robert, 800 C6ard, Henry, 767 Cellini, Benvenuto, 134, 371 Cellot, Louis, 318, 319 Cerizay, 272 Cervantes, 491 Challemel-Lacour, 8r7 Chambers, Ephraim, 541 Chamfort, 422, 460, 569, 595-696 Champion, Edme, 529 Champmesl6, la, 352, 377 Champsaur, F^licien, 841 Chantal, Mme de, 346, 41 2 Chantavoine, Henri, 853 Chapelain, 213, 214, 253, 270, 272, S74— Z7S, 278, 290, 29s, 312, 317, 383, 406, 412 Chapelle, 329, 366, 376 Chappuzeau, 477 Chardin, 496, 538 Charlemagne, 7, 11, 12, 18, ig, 22, 23, 25, 26, 39, 87, 97, 39S Charles I, of England, 272, 393 Charles V, S9t i^4. "Si "8, 119, 702 Charles V, the emperor, 148 Charles VI, 60, 80, 116 Charles Vni, 61, 117, 132, 137 Charles DC, 178, 180, 196, 244 Charles X, 630, 635, 702, 73s Charles XII of Sweden, 514 Charles d'Anjou, 46 Charles d'Orl^ans, 117, r22 Charles le Chauve, 7, 8, 52, 88 Charles le Tem^raire, 61 Charles Martel, 19, 24 Charles, Mme, 666 Charles-Brun, 448 Charlevoix, Pere, 617 Charmes, Francis, 853 Charpentier, Gustave, 806 Charpentier, Jacques, 202 Charron, 240, 251, 335, 342, 345 Chartier, Alain, 117, IBO^lgS, 144, 150, 213 Chasles, Philarete, 625, 736 Chastellaiu, Georges, 145 Chateaubriand, 45, 235, 532, 605, 606, 607, 614, 616-6ZB, 650, 651, 652, 6S3, 6S7, 666, 672, 683, 696, 708, 726, 727, 743, 7S9, 869 Chatelain de Couci, 46 Chatelet, M. du, 528 Chatelet, Mme du, 467, 507, 520, 528 Chatillon, Auguste de, 796 Chatrian, Alexandre, 774 Chatterton, 568, 608, 674 Chaucer, 38, 70, 112 Chaulieu, 440, 462 Chaulnes, due de, 382, 583 ChenedoUfi, 607, 608, 658, 666 Ch^nier, Andr6, 186, 567, 568, 572, 575- 579, s8o, 587, 653, 671, 674, 677, 80s, 806 Chteier, G. de, 576 ChCnier, M.-J., 579, 580, 396, 605 Ch^nin, Emile, 872 Cherbuliez, Victor, 773 Chesterfield, Lord, 496 Chevalier, Michel, 736 Chevreuse, Mme de, 312, 409, 426 Chigi, Cardinal, 370 Choisy, Mme de, 410 Chopin, 715, 718 Chrestien, Florent, 177, 214, 224, 247 Chrestien, Nicolas, 294 Chretien de Tr'oyes, 29, 30, S1-S6, 44, 46, 54 Christina, queen of Sweden, 323 Christine de Pisan, S9, 116, 117-lSO, 213 Chrysoloras, 137 Cicero, 3, 12, log, 116, 203, 263, 687, 815 Cladel, L^on, 778 Clairon, Mile, 470 Clamenges, 95, Hj6, 136 Claretie, Jules, 853 Claude, Queen, 151 Claudel, Paul, 853 Clavijo, s8i Clemenceau, 8^2, 823, 839 Clement XI, 501 Clfon, 588 Gierke, Dr., 367 Clermont, Emile, 841 Clermont, Mile de, 49s Clotaire, 15, 16 Clovis, 16 Cochin, Denys, 853 Col, Gonthier, 116, 120 Colardeau, s6s, S68, 569, S73 Colbert, 256, 274, 420 Coleridge, 572 Colet, Mme Louise, 790 946 INDEX OF NAMES Colin Muset, 46 CoUetet, Francois, 268 CoUetet, Guillaume, 268, 297 Collin d'Harleville, 55)6 Combes, 839 Commines, 61 Compayr£, 349 Comte, Auguste, 548, 646-646, 747, 752. 760, 810, 812, 813 Concini, 261, 279 Cond^, prince de, 390, 394, 428, 430, 462 Conde, princesse de, 253 Condillac, abb6 de, 519, 646-547, SS4, 601. 640, 746, 747 Condorcet, 444, 547, 663-664, 587, 601, 644 Condorcet, Mme de, 587, 601 Congreve, 506 Conon de B^thune, 46 CoHrart, Valentin, 272, 273, 274, 278, 281 Consid6rant, Victor, 647, 767 Constant, Benjamin, 610, 611, 616, 625, 630, 644, 763, 841 Contl, prince de, 334, 363, 411, 493 Cook, Captain, 561 Coolus, Romain, 843, 853 Cooper, James Fenimore, 697, 708, 720 Cop, Nicolas, 222 Copernicus, 830 Copp6e, Franjois, 742, 788, 796, 798, 799, 806 Coquerel, Athanase, 8i6 Coran, Charles, 796 Coras, 290 Corbi6re, Tristan, 804 Corbinelli, Jean, 423 Corday, Charlotte, 308, 593 Cordier, Maturin, 223, 231 Cormenin, 736 Corneille, Pierre, 210, 2ig, 265, 271, 274, 278, 287, 293, 296, 297, 298, 301, 302, 303, 305-319, 335, 344, 35°. 35i. 353. 354. 3S6, 359. 363. 364, 373. 381. 383. 407. 410, 4S6, 468, 469, 470, 471, 477, 491, SIS, 580, 60s, 607, 654, 687, 697, 788, 856, 878 Corneille, Thomas, 303-304, 3o8, 360, 361, 364, 386, 409, 422, 456, 457, 467, 476 Corrozet, Gilles, 162 Coste, 448 Cotin, 274, 278, 420 Cottin, Mme, 606 Cotton, P., 347 Coulevain, H£l£ne Favre de. See Coule- vain, Pierre de Coulevain, Pierre de, 853 Courbet,. 759 Courier, Paul-Louis, 630-631 Courteline, Georges, 853 Courval-Sonnet, 291 Cousin, Victor, 412, 639, 641-643, 647. 670, 726. 734. 740, 747. 748. 753. 79°, 811, 814, 829, 833 Coustel, 349 Couyba, Maurice, 850 Cowley, 22s Cowper, 572 Cranmer, 395 Crashaw, 2 68 Cr^billon, 467-468 Cr^billon (fils), 460, 489, 67s, 739. 87S Cr6mleux, Hector, 739 Cretin, 132, 145, 189 Cr6vier, 501 Croisset, Francis de. See Wiener, F. Cromwell, 493 Cros, Charles, 804 Croy, Henry de, 145 Cubieres, 488 Cujas, 200, 24s Curchod, 46s Curel, Franjois de, 854 Cusanus, Nicholas, 156, 157 Custine, Mme de, 621 Cuvelier de Trye, 693 Cuvillier-Fleury, 736 Cyrano de Bergerac, S68-S69, 281, 288, 298, 329, 345. 355. SIS Dader, Andr£, 406, 420 Dacier, Mme, 417, 461 Dacquin, Mile Jenny, 715 Daguesseau, 600, 542 Danchet, 361 Dancourt, 477, 478, 482 Dangeau, 432 Daniel, Samuel, 198 Dante, 103, 107, 119, isi, 15s, 159, 595, 638, 655, 666, 721, 799 Danton, 691, 592, 594, 596 Darwin, Charles, 728, 759, 819 Daubenton, SS7 Daudet, Alphonse, 770-77H, 799, 846, 854 Daudet, Alphonse. Mme, 854 Daudet, Ernest, 855 Daudet, Lfen, 823, 838, 854 Daudin, Jean, lis Daunou, 602 David, Fflicien, 644 David, Jacques-Louis, 208, 575 David d'Angers. 661 David de Dinant. 89 Decourcelle, 69s, 854 INDEX OF NAMES 947 Beffand, Mme du, 460, 462, 463, 514. 55° Dejob, Charles, 265 Delacroix, 661 Delarue-Mardrus, Lucie, 842, 834 Delaunay, Mile. See Staal-Delaunay, Mme de Delavigne, Casimir, 683, 697, 704 Delbousquet, Emmanuel, 854 Delille, 570-572, 587, 595, 607, 687 Delia Rocca de Vergalo, 802 Delorme, Marion, 410 Democritus, 429 Demosthenes, 207 Denis, Mme, 467, 308, 313 Denisot, Nicolas, 177 Dennery, Adolphe, 695 Deroul6de, Paul, 834 Desaugieis, 608, 680, 704 Des Barreaux, Jacques, 2O8 Desboides-Valmore, Mme Marceiine, 681 Descartes, 88, 199, 236, 234, 233, 270, 271, 273, SnSSO, 336, 345. 348, 349. 384. 413. 431, 443, 444. 541. 347, 338, C39. 812, 831, 833 Descaves, Lucien, 767, 833, 836 Deschamps, Antony, 638, 796 Deschamps, Emile, 638, 796 Deschamps, Eustacke, 43, IIS-II4, 123 Deschamps, Gaston, 842 Deschanel, Emile, 632, 821 Deschanel, Paul, 855 Desfontaines (dramatist), 314, 319 Desfontaines (journalist), 466, 316 Deshoulieres, Mme, 338, 411, ^17-^18, 434 Desjardins, Hortense, 410 Desjardins, Paul, 835 Desmaizeaux, 448 Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, 286, 289, 298, 299. 385 Desmasures, Louis, 177, 184, 224 DesmouUns, CamiUe, 593-694 Desnoyers, Charles, 693 Despautere, 348 Despax, Emile, 83s Desportes, Philippe, 177, 189, 190, 197, 223, 232, 256, 237, 239, 261, 263, 266 Desprfiaux. See Boileau Destouches, 448, 482 Destouches, chevalier, 462, 550 Destutt de Tracy, 602 D6v6rias, the, 661 Diane de Poitiers, 133, 136 Dickens, 369. 722. 739, 77° Diderot, 449. 45°. 4SS-J,86, 489, 513. 3i9. 520, 523. 524. 636-545, 347, 331, 372, 383, SQO, 630, 691, 779. 860 Didon, Henri, 816 Dierx, lAon, 796, 833 Diocletian, 623 Diodorus Siculus, 207 Diomed, 211 Dion Cassius, 213 Dionysius the Areopagite, 88, 92 Dolce, Lodovico, 210 Dolet, Etienne, 132, 133, 142, 143 Donatus, 211 Dondey, Thdophile, 663 Donnay, Maurice, 856-856 Dorat, Claude-Joseph, 568-569, 373 Dorat, Jean, 177, 178, ISO, igo, 197, 204 Dorchain, Auguste, 836 Dorimond, 366, 367, 370 Dorval, Mme, 674, 693 Dostoyevski, 843 Doublet de BreuiUepont, Mme, 463 Doudan, 689, 814 Doumic, 449, 843, 856 Dreyfus, Alfred, 754, 768, 798, 817, 820. 823, 827-828, 837, 838, 848, 833, 860, 86i, 867, 868 Dreyfus, Henry. See Fursy Drouet, Mme, 690 Droz, Gustave, 739 Drumont, Edouard, 823, 827 Dryden, 26s. 36S. 700 Dubois, Cardinal, 471, 491 Du Bos, abbfi, 300 Du Camp, Maxime, 637, 661, 662, 663 Du Cange, 420 Ducange, 693, 693 Duchatel, Pierre, 138, 140 Duchf, 361 Duchesne, Mgr, 83s. 836, 868 Duels, Jean-Francois, 4^4-4^^ Duclos, 447. 649-550 Ducray-Duminil, 606, 693, 694, 720 Dudevant, baron, 715 Du Fresne, 362, 496 Dufresay, 478, 479 Du Lorens, 238, 291, 370 Dumas, A. (fils), 716, 737. 779. 781-784, 78s, 788, 842 Dumas, A. (pere), 298, 632, 660, 66i, 677, 691, 696, 697-699, 7GO, 703, 709, 7/0- 711, 723. 736, 770 Dumesnll, Mile, 469 Dumont, abbi, 669 Dunoyer, Olympe, 303 Duns Scotus, 92, 93, 94. 96 Dupanloup, 638, 731, 816 Du Perron, Cardinal, 177, xs6,$59, 392 Dupin de Francueil, Mme, 449 Dupont de Nemours, 551- Dupont, Pierre, 799 948 INDEX OF NAMES Durand, Mme, 410 Puranty, Edmofld, 760 Duras, Mme de, 621 Durkheim, Emile, 813, 832 Duruy, Victor, 740, 814 Dussault, 605 Duval, Alexandre, 607 Duvergier de Hauranne, 652 E Ebroin, 54 Edward III of England, 60 Edwards, Jonathan, 333 Eimery, Mme, 873 Einhard, 12, 23, 52 Eisen, 568 Eleanor of Aquitaine, 30, 32, 44 Eliot, George, 761 Elizabeth, Princess, 322 Elskarnp, Max, 805 Emerson, s, 239 Empls, 704 Enault, Louis, 778 Enfantin, 644, 645, 717, 719 Enghien, due d', 618 Epictetus, 569 Epinay, Mme d', 465, 520, 523, 546 Erasmus, 127, 135, 136, 137, 1S8, 141, 142, 143, 167, 238, 509, 873 Erckmann, Emile, 774 Ermoldus Nigellus, 52 Ernest-Charles, Jean, 857 Escobar, 341 Escousse, 662 Esparbes; Georges d', 857 Esprit, abbd, 411, 426 Essarts, Errunanuel des, 796 Estauni£, Edouard, 349, 857 Esterhazy, Major, 827 Estienne, Henri I, 204 Estienne, Henri II, 136, 183, 189, 190, 192, SOi-SOe, 224 Estienne, Robert, 204 Estissac, Geoffroy d', 164 Etienne, 607 Eugenie, Empress, 714, 773 Euripides, 210, 211, 215, 687, 794, 849 Evrard de B£thune, 95, 100 Fabifi, Franjois, 857 Fabre d'Eglantine, 596 Fabre, Emile, 843, 8S7 Fabre, Ferdinand, 772, 841 Faciot, 17s Fagon, 433 Faguet, 448, 577, 689, 783, 867-868. 877 Fail, Noel du, 173 Falkner, 506 Falloux, comte de, 635, 638 Farel, GuiUaume, 221, 222 Faret, 268 Faro, St., 16 Farrere, Claude. See Bargone, F. Fauchet, Claude, 246 Fauchois, Ren£, 858 Faure, F61ix, 768 Fauriel, 602 Fauris de Saint- Vincens, 502 Favart, 486, 487 Favart, Mme, 487 Favre, Jules, 816 F^letz, 60s Ffinelon, 387, 390, 391, 396, 4OO-4O8, 429, 43pi 439- S03, 867 Ferdinand of Parma, S46 Ferriol, M. de, 464 Ferriol, Mme de, 464 Ferry, Jules, 814, 817 Fertiault, P., 796 Feugere, Anatole, 397, 398 Feuillet, Octave, 773, 779, 784 Feutry, 565 Fdval, Paul, 723 Feydeau, Ernest, 763, 858 Feydeau, Georges, 858 Fichet, Guillaume, 136 Fichte, 530, 610, 728, 7S2 Ficino, Marsilio, 156, 157 Fielding, 491, 492 Fiesque, Mme de, 410 Firenzuola, 258 Flaubert, 636, 716, 740, 757, 758, 759, 760- 763, 764, 765, 7(19, 790 Flavio Blondi, 498 Fl^chier, 105, 398, 399 Flers, Robert de. See Caillavet Fleury, Jean, 777 Flodoardus, 52 Florian, 486, 563, 673-674 Florio, 239 Florus, 498 Foerster, 29, 32, 33 Fogazzaro, 836 Foigny, Gabriel de, 446 Folquet de Marseille, 44 Fonsegrive, Georges, 835 Font, 486 Fontainas, Andr6, 805 Fontaine, Charles, 153 Fontanes, 605, 624 INDEX OF NAMES 949 Fontenelle, 361, 386, 430, 443, 444, 446, 451, 453. 4SS. 456-468, 461, 462, 548 Force, MUe de la, 410 Forni, Jules, 796 Fort, Paul, 843, 858 Fouill^e, 813, 859 Foulque de Neuilly, 105 Fouquet, 366, 414, 435 Fourier, 628, 646-647, 767, 793 Fourneau, L^on. See Xanrof Foy, General, 631 France, Anatole, 166, 289, S56. 796, 818, 840, 859-861, 864 Francis I. 127, 131, 132, 133, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 149, ISO, 151, 156, 158, 175, 191, 222, 243, 701 Francis II, 178 Frangois, A., 651 Franklin, Benjamin, 464, 602 Frapi£, L€on, 861 Freculphus of Lisieux, 52 Fredegarius, 17, 51 Frederick the Great, 450, 508, 513, 550 Freppel, 817 Fr6ron, 466, 5x6, 605 Freycinet, Charles de, 817 Froebel, 531 Froissart, 59-60, 61, 112 Fromentin, Eugene, 772 Fulbert, 13 Fulgence, 704 Furetiere, 288, 355, 376, 439 Fursy, 808 Fuselier, 486 Fustel de Coulanges, 816 Gaboriau, Emile, 724 Gace Brul6, 45, 46 Gaguin, Robert, 59, 136 Gaifle, 4S4, 692, 693, 694 Galen, 99, 374 Galeotto del Carreto, 210 Galiani, 459, 462, 464 Galileo, 335 Gall, 602, 645 Gallifet, marquise de, 739 Galloix, Imbert, 663 Gambetta, 771, 784, 816, 817, 822 Gandillot, Lton, 862 Garguille, Gautier, 294 . Gamier, Robert, 177, SI4-SIB, 292, 302 Gamier de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, 54 Gassendi, 268, 398-339, 346, 443 Gaston-Ph^bus of Foix, 59 Gaucher de Denain, 35 Gautier d' Arras, 36 Gautier de Coinci, 46, 55 Gautier d'Espinau, 46 Gautier, Mrae Judith, 862 Gautier, Lfon, 19, 22 Gautier, Th^ophile, 289, 655, 656, 658, 661, 663, 668, 678-079, 736, 740, 757, 759, 777, 790, 791, 792, 795, 796, 799, 817, 821, 848, 862, 877 Gauthier-Villars, Henry, 880 Gay, 506 Gay, Delphine, 736 Geftrei Gaimar, 56 Geffroy, Gustave, 862 Gellert, 450 Gemistus Pletho, 137, 156 Genest abbf, 462 Gfenlis, Mme de, ^87 Gensonnet, 592 Gentil-Bernard, 569 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 28, 29, 56 Geoflrin, Mme, 457, 462, 463, 546, 550, 879 Geoffroy, 605 George I, of England, 322 Georges, MUe, 607 G^raird, Rosemonde, 878 Gerbert (continuer of Chr6lien de Troyes), 35 Gerbert (Sylvester II), 13 Gerson, 95, 116, 120, 136, 391 Gervaise, 107 Gessner, 450, 561, 564, 372, 573, 650 Geulincx, 326 Ghil, Rene, 805, 87 s Gibbon, 455, 465, 609, 614 Gide, Andr6, 841, 862 Gilbert, 473, 477, 367, 568, 570, 579, 674 Gilebert de Berneville, 46 Gillot, Jacques, 247 Ginguen£, 449, 602 Giraldi Cinthio, 210, 214 Girardin, Emile de, 678, 723, 735, 736, 821, 822 Giry, 272 Gissing, 623 Glatigny. Albert, 796 Gluck, 575 Gobineau, comte de, 726 Godard, Jean, 217 Godeau, 272, 281, 290 Godefroi de Lagny, 33 Goethe, 113, 226, 370, 450, 510, 530, 581, 6i4t 65s, 697, 746, 861, 872 Goezman, M., 583, 385 Goezman, Mme, 583 Gohier, Urbain, 823 95° INBEX OF NAMES Gohin, F., 163 Goldoni, 450, 514 Gombauld, 272, 278, 301 Gomberville, S86 Goncourt, the brothers, 656, 67g, 740, 744, 758, 760, 762, 76S-765, 772, 773, 776, 786, 800, 801 Gondi. See Retz, cardinal de Gondinet, Edmond, 788 Gonzague, Anne de, 394 Gonzague, Marie de, 709 Gotha, Duke of, 551 Gottsched, 450 Goudeau, Emile, 808 Goulard, Simon, 245 Gourmont, Remy de, 862 Gournay, M. de, 552 ■ Gournay, Mile de, 233, 254, 264, S66, 288 Gourville, 423 Gouv^a, Andrfi, 231 Gower, 77 Grabbe, Christian, 371 Graffigny, Mme de, 514 Grande Mademoiselle, the, 423, 440 Granet, abb£, 466 Gratry, 638, 811 Gray, Thomas, 263, 449, 488, 650 Gr^ard, Octave, 814 Greban, Arnoul, 78 Greban, Simon, 78 Gregh, Fernand, 840, 862 Gregorio Corraro, 210 Gregory IX, 97 Gregory Nazianzen, 367 - Gregory of Tours, 51, 727 Grenier, 488 Grenier, Edouard, 796, 799 Gresset, Jean-Baptiste-Louis, 488 Gr^ry, 488 Greuze, 538 Gr^ville, Henry, 777 Gr^vin, Jacques, 214, 216, 224 Grignan, corate, 412 Grignan, Mme de, 327, 412, 414 Grimm, baron, 450, 465, 487, 519, 520, 523, 5SI Grimm, the brothers, 802, 870 Gringore, 79, 83 Grober, 22 Gros Guillaume, 294 Grotto, Luigi, 283 Grouchy, 231 Gua de Malves, ahb6, 541 Guadet, 592 Guaita, Stanislas de, 807 Guarini, 239, 285 Guteeau de Montbeillard, 558 Gu^rente, 231 Gu^rin, Eugtoie de, 724, 77s Gu^rin, Maurice de, 636, 724, 77s Guerne, vicomte de, 863 Guevara, 490 Guibert, comte de, 464 Guibourg, abb4, 358 Gniches, Gustave, 767 Guido delle Colonne, 38 Guillaume d'Auvergne, 92, 165 Guillaume de Champeaux, 89, go, gj Guillaume de Conches, 89 Guillaume de Nangis, 57 Guillaume de Provence, 24 Guillaume de Saint-Amour, 47 Guillaume de Toulouse, 24 Guillaume Durant, 102 Guillaume le Clerc, 107 Guillaume le Marfichal, 56 Guillaumin, Emile, 863 GuilKn de Castro, 311 Guillet, Femette du, 162 Guillot Gorju, 294 Guimond de la Touche, 474 Guinon, Albert, 863 Guizot, 613, .629, 630, 632, 6SS-eS4, 667, 731, 732, 734, 781, 81S Guttmguer, Ulric, 638 Guy of Blols, 59 Guy Patin, 328 Guyau, Jean-Marie, 813-814 Guyon, Mme, 158, 347, 391, 3916, Jfll-iflS, 40s Gyp. See Mirabeau de Martel, comtesse de H Habert, 272 Hachette, 767, 778 Haeckel, 819 HaiUan, Girard du, 242 Hal^vy, 739, 774, 779, 78s Hall, Bishop, 429 Haller, 450, 535 Hamon, 330 Hanotaux, Gabriel, 863 Haraucourt, Edmond, 863 Hardy, Alexandre, S9S-S94, 297, 300, 302, ■ 318 • Harry, Myriam, 842, 863 Hauptmann, S43 Haur^au, g6 Haussmann, baron, 738 Haussohville, comte de CKnon d', 863 Hauteroche, 476 Hawker, R. S., 34 Hazlitt, 239 INDEX OF NAMES 951 Hubert, 593, 594 Hecker, Father, 833 Hegel, 641, 729, 746, 748, 752, 776, 829 Heine, 123 Heinrich der Glichzare, 63 Heinsius, 296 Helgaldus, 53 H^linand de Froidmont, 105 Heliodorus, 207 H^lolse, 90, 527 Helv^tius, 464, 513, 539, 542, 546, 647-548, 601, 711 Helv^tius, Mme, 548, 587 H6nault, 461, 463 Hennique, L£en, 767 Henri d'Andeli, 69, 95 Henri de Champagne, 44 Henri de Valenciennes, 58 Henry I, of England, 107 Henry II, 156, 178 Henry II, of Englamd, 30, 32, 44, 102 Henry III, 179, 180, 189, 697 Henry HI, of England, 56 Henry IV, 208, 228, 243, 244, 247, 251-260, 264, 277, 286, 347, 393, 516, 662 Henry d'Albr«t, 159 Henry of Ghent, 92 Henriette d'Angleterre, 356, 390, 393, 398, 414 Henriette de FraBce, 390, 393 Heraelitus, 429, 538 Herbart, 530 Herder, 530, 602, 727, 728, 729, 746, 752 Heredia, 226, 572, 796, 797, 865 HfiricaiTt, Marie, 434 Hermant, Abel, 8@4 Hermonymus of Sparta, 137 Herodotus, 20s, 39s, 631 Heroet, Ailtoine, 162, 163, 174, 181, 184 Harold, A.-Ferdinand, 864 Hervart, d', 435 Herve, Edouard, 821, 822 Herv6, Gustave, 823 Hervey, James, 565 Hervieu, Paul, 843, 864^865 Hesiod, 687, 794 Heywood, 84 Hichens, Robert, 872 Hilarius, 72 Hildebert, 47, 105 Hildegarius of Meamc, 16 Hincmar of Rheims, 52 HippocKites, 99, 374 Hirsch, 508 Hirsch, Charles-Henry, 840 Hobbes, 396, 525, 529, 541, 548 Hoffman, 605 Hoffmann, 658, 659 Holbach, baron d', 464, 546, 549, 711 Homer, 16, 37, 96, 109, 121, 185, 226, 265, 389, 4041 40s. 408, 457. 577. 623, 687, 794 Honorius III, 97 Honorius Augustodunensis, 102 Horace, 87, 95, 109, 185, 187, 188, 192, 211, 257, 264, 266, 377, 381, 382, 380, 687, 794 Hospital, Michel de 1', 187, 192, 204, 247, 500 Hotman, Francois, 200, 245-246, 247 Houdetot, Mme d', 520, 521, 522, 528 Houdoy, 67 Houssaye, Arsene, 777, 796, 865 Houssaye, Henry, 865 Houtin, abb6, 835 Houville, Gerard d'. See Rdgnier, Mme Henri de Hruodlandus, 23 Huet, Daniel, 329, 411, 415, 4^0 Hugo Farsitus, 55 Hugo, Victor, 228, 299, 308, 316, 317, 353, 360, 470, S17, 570, 590, 616, 62s, 629, 637, 640, 652, 653, 654, 655, 658, 659, 661, 664, 670, 675, 677, 681, 682-690, 691, 694, 69s, 700-703, 709, 710, 713. ?23, 724. 735. 737, 742. 743, 7^7. 7^9. 77=. 787, 788, 790, 792, 79S, 796, 877, 878 Hugues d'Orlfens, 48 Hugues de Saint-Victor, 89 Hugues le Primat, 48 Hulst, Mgr d', 835 Hume, 494, 521, 523, 640, 812 Humieres, Robert d', 865 Hurtado de Mendoza, 366 Huysmans, J.-K., 767, 774, 775. 776-777, 801, 803, 855, 872 Huzard, Mme Antoinette, 880 Ibsen, 805, 847, 850, 870, 876 Innocent IV, 57, 104 Innocent X, 338 Ireland, Archbishop, 833 Isidore of Seville, 12, 100 Ives, Charlotte, 621 Jacobi, 530 Jacot de Forest, 38 Jacquemart Gel^e, 64, 66 Jacques de Vitry, 105, 106 James VI, of Scotland, 225 952 INDEX OF NAMES James, Henry, 851 James, William, 829, 830, 835 Jammes, Francis, 863 Jamyn, Amadis, 177, 197 Janet, 353, 811 Janin, Jules, 736, 821 Jansenius, 333, 335, 342 Jarry, Alfred, 787 Jaucourt, chevalier de, S43 Jaures, 823, 839 Jean II, iii, 115 Jean de Condg, 69 Jean de Monstereul, 109, 114, 115, 116; 120, 131, 136 Jean le Bel, 59, 60 Jeanne de Navarre, 58 ^ Jeanroy, 42 Jehan de Thuin, 39 Jerome, St., 52 Jodelet, 299 Jodelle, 177, 178, 181, 184, 194, 214, 216, 217 John of Salisbury, loi, lOS, 114 Johnson, Dr., 460 Joinville, 51, 68 60 Jolyot, Prosper. See Crebillon Jonson, Ben, 239, 26s Jordan, Camille, 632 Joubert, 389, 605-608, 624 Jouffroy, Theodore, 643 Jouy, Jules, 808 Juda Abarbanel. See L£on H6breu Julian the Apostate, 673 Julius II, 83 Julius Valerius, 37 ' Jurieu, 451, 453, 454 Jusserand, J. -J., 267 Justel, Henri, 419 ' Justin, 121 Juvenal, 48, 87, 109, 229, 257, 291, 381, 382 K Bfthn, Gustave, 802, 803, 805, 807 Kant, 92, 530, 7S2, 811, 812, 830, 831 Karr, Alphonse, 724 Kean, 697 Keith, Lord, 523 Kemble, 697 Kingsley, Charles, 636, 762 Kipling, 237 Kistemaeckers, Henry, 86s Klein, abb6, 834 Klopstock, 450 Kock, Paul de, 723 Konig, S08 Kornman, 582 Kriidener, Mme de, 606 Krysinska, Marie, 802, 808 La Barre, de, 509 La Baume, Mme de, 425 Lab£, Louise, 160 La Beaumelle, 516 Laberthonniere, Fere, 835 Labiche, 373, 779, 784-785, 788, 862 La Blache, comte de, 582, 583' Laboulaye, Edouard de, 821 La Bourdoimaye, comte de, 630 La Bruyere, Jean de, 150, 236, 281, 386, 397, 412, 423, 4S8-4S1, 457, 502, 503, 571, 814 La Calprenede, Z86-S87, 298, 450, 468 Lacaussade, Auguste, 794 La Chaise, P., 348 La Chauss^e, Pierre-Claude Nivelle de, 48Z- 483, 866 Lachelier, Jules, 811 Laclos, Choderlos de, 489, 875 La Combe, Pere, 402 Lacordaire, 635, 636, 637-638, 736, 737, 833 Lacroix, Paul, 711 Lacume de Sainte-Palaye, 488 Lacuzon, Adolphe, 840 La Fare, marquis de, 411, 440 La Fayette, Mme de, 288, 398, 412, 414~ 415, 418, 427, 440 Lafenestre, Georges, 796, 865 La Fert6-Imbault, Mme de 463, La Fontaine, 62, 70, 151, 276, 281, 378, 380, 406, 4H, 430, 434-439, 573, 574. 687, 721, 749, 86s . Laforgue, Jules, 802, 805 La Fosse, 361 Lagrange, 601 Lagrange-Chancel, 360 La Harpe, Jean-Franpois de, 422, 474, 513, 601 Labor, Jean. See Cazalis Lally-Tollendal, 509 Lamarck, 538 Lamartine, 257, 568, 572, 580, 590, 607, 628, 660, 664, 666-^71, 674, 675, 677, 683, 685, 790, 791, 793, 795, 796, 868, 874 Lamber, Juliette. See Adam, Mme Lambert, Mme de, 457, 459, 4BI, 495, 565 Lambert le Tort, 39 Lamennais, 628, 635-637, 639, 715, 717, 736, 737, 743, 745, 833 La Mesnardiere, 295 La Mettrie, 450, 548, 549 Lamoignon, de, 370, 377 INDEX OF NAMES 953 La Honnoye, Bernard de, 420 La Mothe le Vayer, 264 La Motte, Houdar de, 361, 387, 444, 461, 468, 66S-B66, 567 Lamy, Etienne, 865 Lamy, Pierre, 164 Lancelot, 349, 350 Lanfranc, 13 Langlois, C.-V., 816, 866 Langlois, Hippolyte, 866 Languet, 246 Lanson, G., 321, 44s, 446, 483, 839, 866 Lapauze, Mme Jeanne, 868 La Peruse, 214 La Place, 474 Laplace, 601 Laprade, Victor de, 681 Lar£velli^re-L6peaux, 533 Larivey, Pierre, 217-218, 251, 365 La Rochefoucauld, 411, 412, 413, 414, 415, 423, 424, 426-428, 429,- 430, S02, S03, 548, SS8, S9S, 606 Laromiguiere, 641 Larroumet, 352, 852 La Sabliere, Mme de, 411, 435 LsLscaris, Janus, 137, 141, 173 La Serre, 314 Lasserre, 654, 662, 664, 676, 728, 838 La Tailhede, Raymond de, 80s Latouche, H. de, S76 Latour, Mme de, 523 Lattaignant, abW dc, 460 Laumonier, P., 177, 193 Laurent, veuve, 459 Lauzun, 413 La Valliere, Mile de, 369, 390, 411 Lavater, 531 La Vaudere, Jane de, 841 Lavedan, 844, 866 Lavigerie, Cardinal, 816 Lavisse, 816, 837, 866 , Law, John, 479 Laya, 596 Lebajgt, Laurent, 87s Le Barillier, Mme Berthe-Cotinne, 849 Leblond, Ary, 866 Leblond, Jean, 150 Leblond, Marius, 866 Le Bossu, Vite, 290, 382 Lebras, 662 Le Braz, Anatole, 867 Le Breton, 541, 542 Le Brun-Pindare, S73, S7S, S76. 587, 696 Leclerc, 423, 448, 704 Lecomte, Valleran, 293, 300 Leconte de Lisle, 790, 791, 79S-794, 796, 800, 8ss, 863, 867 Ledru-Rollin, 718, 737 Lee, 210 Lefebure, Eugfene, 796 Lefevre d'Etaples, 133, 137, 157, 220-S21 Lefranc, A., 170 Le Franc, Martin, 117, 150 Le Franc de Pompignan, 447, 516, 567 Le Goffic, Charles, 867 Legouv^, Ernest, 788 Legrand d'Aussy, 488 Le Houx, Jean, 485 Leibnitz, 92, 326, 327, 511, 515 Leigh, Augusta, 662 Le Jay, the P., 505 Le Kain, 470 Le Laboureur, 290 Ldlio. See Riccoboni, Luigi Lemaire de Beiges, 127, 132, I46-I49, 150, 151, 152, 174, 182, 196, 200, 404 Le Maitre, Antoine, 334, 349, 388 Le Maitre de Saci, 334 Lemaltre, Fr^ddrick, 695, 696 Lemaitre, Jules, 352, 408, 731, 818, 842, 867-868, 877 Lemerder, NdpomucJne, 607 Lemerre, Alphonse, 79s Lemire, abbd, 834 Lemoinne, John, 821 Lemonnier, Camille, 805 Lemoyne, Andrd, 796, 799 Lemoyne, Pere, 290 Lenglet Dufresnoy, 153 Le Notre, 438, 450 Lenotre, G., 866 Leo archipresbyter, 37 Leo X, 137 Leo XIII, 637, 816, 833 Leo Judseus. See Lfion H£breu Lten Hfibreu, 162, 180 Leonard, 572, S73 Leonardo da Vinci, 134 Leonora, Queen, 132 Leopardi, 794, 876 Lepelletier, Edmond, 796 L'Estoile, 244, 297, 698 Leroux, Pierre, 628, 644, 647, 716, 717, 718, 727, 767 Le Roy, Edouard, 83s, 836 Le Roy, Eugene, 868 Le Roy, Louis, 207 Le Roy, Pierre, 247 Lesage, 477, 478-479, 486, 489, 490-491 Lespinasse, Julie de, 46S-464, 546, 550, 560, 879 Lesseps, Ferdinand de, 644 Lessing, 3x5, 430, 473, 614 Lesueur, Daniel. See Lapauze, Mme Jeanne 954 INDEX OF NAMES Le Tellier, Michel, 390, 394 Le Tellier, P., 348 Le Tourneur, 474, 565 Leuven, 710, 877 Levasseur, Th£r6se, 519, 520, 521 Lhdrie, 877 Liancourt, due de, 338 Liard, L., 837 Lichtenberger, Andr^, 368 Li^geard, Stephen, 868 Lillo, 449, 484 Liniere, 268 Liszt, 644, 716, 718 Littr^, Emile, 645, 760 Livry, de, 877 Livy, log, 115, 121, 210, 242, 243, 39s, 687, 72s, 74Q Lizet, 132, 221 Locke, 448, 470, 499, 506, 507, 511, 529. S30, 541, 547. S48, SS8, 640 Lockroy, 710 Loges, Mme des, 277 Loisy, abbi, 833. 83s. 868-869 Lombroso, 813 Longfellow, 849 Longinus, 377 Longolius, 142 Longueville, Mile de, 421. See also Ne- mours, duchesse de Longueville, Mme de, 274, 312, 334, 409, 411, 421, 426, 642 Longus, 207, 631 Lope de Vega, 282, 319, 366, 491 Lorde, Andre de, 787 Loret, 4^1-4eS Lorris, Guillaume de, 108 Loschi, 209 Lothaire, 7 Loti, Pierre, 858, 869 Louis VI, 53 Louis VII, 29, 32, 44 I-ouis IX, 46, 58 Louis XI, 61, 117 Louis XII, 83, 132, 137 Louis XIII, 253, 264, 272, 421, 426, 431, 683 Louis XTV, 130, 253, 254, 256, 294, 348, 3S0, 356, 395. 399. 4,02. 40s, 411, 416. 423, 428, 431. 433. 438, 439. 445. 446. 450, 452, 459, 462, 480, 496, SOI, S14, 73S, 818 Louis XV, 497. S08. 581. 775, 873 Louis XVI, S31. 552, 582, S93, 594. 873 Louis XVIII, 613, 629 Louis le D^bonnaire, 12, 32 Louis le Germanique, 7, 8 Louis-Philippe, 613, 629, 632, 633, 633, 639, 656, 667, 680, 696, 702, 70s, 722, 732, 733, 73S. 736. 780 Louise de Savoie, 149, isi, 152, 156, 159 Louveau, Jean, 172 Louvet de Couvray, 490 Louys, Pierre, 840, 869 Lowell, J. R., 523 Loyola, 222, 347 Loyson, Hyadnthe, 816 Lucan, 12, 36, 37, 39, 48, 95, 109, 121, us, 229, 408, 439 Lucas, Dr., 765 Luce de Lancival, 607 Lueian, 172, 264, 406, s6o Lucretius, 329, 507, 577. 7'97 Lugn6-Po£, 843 LuUi, 361 Luther, 138, 220, 221, 39s Luxembourg, Mme de, 320 Luxembourg, M. de, 320 Luynes, due cte, 261, 279, 328 Luzarche, Robert, 796 M Mabillon, 420 Mably, de, 319, 6B4-6CB, 574, s88 Machault, Guillaume de, 45, 59, IIZ-IIS, 123, 144. 523 Machiavelli, 61 MacMahon, 811, 822 Mac-Nab, Maurice, 808 Macpherson, 608 Macready, 697 Macrobius, 96, 108 Msecenas, 271 Mael, Pierre, 869 Maeterlinck, 77, 803, 870 Maffei, 514 Magny, Olivier de, ifio, 177, igo, 193, 194, 197 Magre, Maurice, 870 Mahomet, 511 Maigron, 657, 659, 661, 664, 676 Maillard, 105, 144, 391, 397 Maillot, 597 Maimbourg, the P., 452 Maindron, Maurice, 870-871 Maine, duchesse du, 327, 462, 467 Maine de Biran, 640, 641 Maintenon, Mme de, 348, 358, 397, 400, 402, 410, 411, 413, AlB-417, 423, 433, 480. See also Scarron, Mme Mairet, 210, 214, 294, 297, 298, 301, 311 Maistre, Joseph de, 6OS-GO4, 610, 630, 639, 775, 838 Maistre, Xavier de, 606 Malakoff, duchesse de, 739 INDEX OF NAMES 955 Male, M. loi Malebranche, 255, 256, 326, S30-SS1, 345, 349. 384, 431, 437. 456. 567. 673 Malesherbes, 733 Maldzieu, 46a Majfiiatre, Clinchamp de, 5^7. S68 Malherbe, 188, 189, 190, 191, ig8, 253, 2S4. 256, 257. 258, 2S9, a61-26B, 266, 267, 270, 274, 278, 288, 327, 378, 38s, 413, 579 MaUarmfi, St£phane, 796, 803, 804, 805, 8SS, 8rs MalleviUe, 272 Malot, Hector, 778 Mambrun, 382 Mancini, Marie, 356, 411 Manhac, Pierre, 116 Manuel, 631 Manuel, E., 798 Manutius, Aldus, 137 Map, Walter, 29, 48 Maquet, Auguste, 663, 710 Marat, 308, 550, 554, 593. 59* Marbode, 10s, 107 Marcelin. See H^nat, E. Mardllac, Francois, prince de. See La Rochefoucauld Marcus Aurelius, 748, 755, 797 Mar£chal, Antoine, 294 Margaret of Austria, 146, 147 Margaret of Scotland, 121 Marguerite de Navarre, 133, 140, 150, 151, 152. 153. 155. 156, 1S7-160, 171, 172, 221, 7ig Marguerite de Val^s, 243, 244, 286 Margueritte, general, 871 Margueritte, Paul, 767, 871 Margueritte, Victor, 871 Mariana, 347 Marie-Antoinette, 467, 573, 593, 596 Marie de Champagne, 32, 44, 46 Marie de France, 30, 62, 436 Marie Leczinska, 546 Marie-TherSse, 350, 390, 394 Marillier, 568 Marinetti, F.-T., 871 Marino, 274, 279 Marivaux, 369, 48O-4SS, 489, 491-492, 706 Marmontel, 422, 460, 462, 465, 474, 488, 503. 513. S43. 650-561, 569, 623 Marot, CUment, 46, 108, 127, 133, 145, 149-15S, 154, 160, 174, 184, 185, 221, 224, -257, 259. 4.35. 436 Marot, Jean, 149 Mars, Mile, 607 MarsoUeau, Louis, 871 Marston, 210 Martelli, Lodovico, 210 Martial, 183 Martiauus CapcUa, 12, 100 Martin, Alexis, 796 Martin, Henri, 732, 733 Marty-Laveaux, Charles, 795 MaruUus, 192 Marvell, Andrew, 272 Mary, Queen of Scots, 215 Mascaron, S9S Massenet, 55 MassUlon, 105, 398, 3gg Masson, Armand, 8d8 Masson, Fr6d£ric, 871 Masson-Forestier, 350 Mathieu, G., 799 Mathilde, princesse, 740 Mathiron de Cursieu, Georges. See An- cey, G. Maturin, C. R., 659, 720 Mauclair, Camilie, 871 Maupassant, 70, 491, 609, 767, 769-770, 772, 840, 873 Maupeou, 583 Maupertius, 450, 508, 516 Maure, Mme de, 410 Maurice de Nassau, 322 Maurice de Sully, 105 Maurras,- Charliss, 805, 838, 871-872 Mayeur de Saint-Paul, 692 Maynard, 794 Maynard, Francois, 265 Mazarin, Cardinal, 253, 294, 306, 316, 356, 357. 361. 4". 421, 424. 42s. 426. 439 Mazarin, duchesse de, 383, 411, 43s Mazeres, 704 Medici, Catherine de', 229 Mfidicis, Marie de, 264, 279 Meilhac, 739, 774, 779, 785 Mekinchthon, 395 M^line, Jules, 822 Mdnage, GiHes, 274, 281, 412, 414, 419, 420, 421, 439 Mfinard, Louis, 794-795, 796 Mendes, Catulle, 739, 796-797, 798, 858, 862 Mennecier, 35 Menot, 105, 144, 391, 397 M6rat, Albert, 796, 799 Merder, S6bastien, 485, 690, 693 M^r6, chevalier de, 271, 336, 411, 423 Meredith, 758 Mirimfe, Prosper, 708, 709, 713-716, 716, 740, 760, 785, 821 Merlant, J., 626 Merrill, Stuart, 572, goa, 805, 806, 875 Mesehinot, 132, 145, 146 Meun, Jean de, 6% 95, 108-110, 120 9S6 INDEX OF NAMES Meurice, Paul, 710, 787 Meusy, Victor, 808 Meyer, Arthur, 738, 822 Meyer, Paul, 23 M^zeray, 423 M^ziSres, Alfred, 872 Michael Angelo, 673, 6go Michaut, 356 Michel (de Bourges), 713, 717, 718 Michel, Jean, 78 Michelet, 40, 114, 127, 445, 628, 726, 727^ 728, 7^9-731, 732, 752 Middleton, 494 Miesnik, Marie, 560 Mignet, Francois, 732, 735 Mikhael, Ephraim, 805, 87s Mill, John Stuart, 548, 645, 747 Mille, Pierre, 872 Millet, Jacques, 79 Millevoye, 580, 607, 650, 666 Mills, 541 Milton, 22s, 507, 517', 623, 687 Minturno, 214 Mirabeau, marquis de, 502, 551, 582, 689- 590, S9I, 863, 872 Mirabeau, de Martel, comtesse de, 863 Mirabeau-Tonneau, 589, 863 Mirbeau, Octave, 767, 843, 870, 872 Miton, 336, 423 Meckel, Albert, 80s Mogador, Cdleste, 739 Moinaux, Georges. See Courteline, Georges Moinaux, Jules, 788 Mol^, M., 672 Molike, 69, 70, 99, 218, 2ig, 258, 264, 265, 269, 270, 273, 274, 280, 281, 28s, 288, 289, 292, 293, 294, 298, 299, 301, 303, 30s, 31S, 316, 319, 328, 329, 348, 3SO, 351, 354, 361, 362-375, 376, 378, 381, 398, 403, 407, 4". 414, 417, 420, 422, 431, 434, 435, 43Q, 476, 477, 478, 479, 481, 482, 484, 491, 520, 584, 596, 654, 657, 687, 701, 704, 781, 783, J84, 865, 867 Molina, 339 Molinet, Jean, 145, 146, 150, 189 Molinos, 401 Molza, 258 Mondory, 293, 310 Monge, 601 Monluc, 243 Monnier, Henri, 656 Monnier, Mme de, 589 Monod, Gabriel, 339, 816, 866 Montaigne, 166, 170, 201, 211, SSI-B40, 251, 252, 254, 266, 271, 323, 328, 335, 336, 342, 345, 421, 430, 445, 4S4, 49S, S03. S30, 625 Montalembert, 636, 638, 833 Montalte, Louis de, 338 Montauron, 305 Montausier, marquis de, 278, 390 Montchrestien, 210, 214, 215, 251, 292 Mont^gut, Emile, 759, 761, 817 Mont^gut, Maurice, 872 Montemayor, 285 Mont^pin, Xavier de, 723 Montespan, Mme de, 358, 398, 411, 416, 428, 462 Montesquieu, 246, 448, 460, 461, 4^5-501, 503, 543, 553, 574, 588, 611, 731, 734, 747 Montesquiou-Fezensac, comte Kobert de, 872 Montfleury, 293, 364, 368 Montfleury, the younger, 476 Montglat, Mme de, 425 Moore, 484 Mora, marquis de, 464 More, Sir Thomas, 169, 647 Mor^as, 572, 801, 805, 846, 871 Moreau, Emile, 872 Moreau, Hdg^sippe, 681 Moreau, Jacob-Nicolas, 546 Morellet, abb6, 447, 551 Morelly, 555 Morenne, Claude de, 257 Morice, Charles, 805 Mordri, 453 Morley, Henry, 153 Mornet, 651 Momy, due de, 771 Morny, duchesse de, 739 Moselly, Emile. See Ch6nin, Emile Motteux, 448 Motteville, Mme de, 417, 423 Mouchy, Mme de, 621 Moufle d'Angerville, 465 Mun, comte de, 741, 840, 872 Muret, 177, 204, 211, 214, 231 Murger, Henry, 759, 788 Musset, Alfred de, 179, 517, 568, 658, 661, ■ 663, 664, 676-678, 704, 706-706, 712, 715, 716, 758, 770, 791, 793, 795, 877 Musurus, Marcus, 175 N Nadaud, Gustave, 799 Nantes, Mile de, 428 Nanteuil, C61estin, 663 Napoleon I, 555, 574, 594, 595, 601, 605, 606, 609, 612, 618, 674, 680, 684, 685, 687, 689, 690, 697, 702, 712, 732, 816, 871, 878 Napoleon III, 667, 685, 686, 736, 738, 740, 771, 773, 816 INDEX OF NAMES 957 Naud^, Gabriel, 328 Navagero, 192, 194 Necker, 609 Necker, Mme, 465, SS7. S87, 609 Nefitzer, Auguste, 821 Nemours, duchessede, 421. See also Longue- vill^. Mile de Nennius, 28 Nero, 3SS, 3S6 Nerval, Gerard de, 658, 661, 663, 724, 759, 777 Nesmy, Jean. See Surchamp, H. Nettement, 73s Nevers, due de, 357, 411 Newmsm, Cardinal, 834, 879 Newton, 323, 443, 444, 449, 470, 507, 511, 54°, S4I, SS8 N&el, Theodore, 695 Nicole, 329, 349, 350, 419 Nicole Bozon, 106 Nicolet, 691, 692 Nietzsche, 239, 841, 843, 857, 862 Ninon de Lenclos, 377, 410, 44s, 462, 505 Nisard, 255, 3SS, 734. 746. 818 Nithardus, 52 Nivardus of Ghent, 63 Noailles, comtesse de, 842, 873 Nodier, Charles, 657, 658, 659, 661, 693, 709, 710 Nolant de Fatouville, 479 Nolhac, Pierre de, 873 Nordau, Max, 806, 856 Normand, Jacques, 873 North, 208 Noue, de la, 243 Novella Andrea, 118 Novell], 846 Obermann. See Senancour Ockham, William of, 94 Odericus Vitalis, 53 Odon de Cluny, 13 CEcolampadius, 39S Offenbach, Jacques, 739, 783 Ogier, Franf ois, 302 Ohnet, Georges, 873 Olivet, d', 445 Olivetanus, 221 Ollivier, Emile, 816, 873 Olympo, IS3 Omar Khayyam, 798 ■^ Dresme, 114, US, 118 Orneval, d', 486 Qrosius, 121 Ossian, 561, 621, 6so, 666, 675, 714, 794 Otto, King, 776 Otway, 69, 361 Ouville, d", 298 Ovid, 36, 37, 44, 48, 87, 100, 106, 108, 109, 112, 116, 149, ISO, 179, 183, 194, 203, 258, 264, 434. 43Q, 564. 568, 569. S78 Ozanam, Fr^d&ic, 638 Pagello, 677, 715 Failleron, Edouard, 789 PMva, la, 739 Palatine, Princess, 390 Palissot, 525, 789 Palissy, Bernard, 200, 236 Pannard, 486 Paolo Emilio, 242 Papadiamantopoulos. See Mor£as, Jean Pare, Denys Sauvage du, 162 Pare, Mile du, 305, 352, 358 Par£, Ambroise, 200, 236 Parigot, H., 698 Paris, diacre, 334 Paris, Gaston, 16, 22, 28, 29, 32, 41, 83, 117 Paris, Paulin, 66 Paris-Duverney, 581, 582 Parny, 372, 578, 650, 666, 793 Parodi, Alexandre, 788 Pascal, 234. 236, 239, 253, 270, 273, 281, 332, 334-344, 34S, 35°. 4", 412, 413, 423, 431, 443, S02, S03, 567. 583, 606, 642, 797, 83s, 837, 861 Pascal, Jacqueline, 33s Pascal III, 19 Pasquier, Etienne, 121, 133, 136, 149, 161, 174, 177, 194, 200, 204, S06-W7, 234, a4S, 246, 251, 339, 347 Passerat, Jean, 177, 247, 256, SB9 Pasteur, 853 Pater, Walter, 764 Patin, Guy, 413 Paul III, i6s Paulet, Mile de, 279 Paulus Diaconus, 11 Paulyanthe, 696 Pazzi, Alessandro de', 210 Pearl, Cora, 739 Peire Roger, 44 P^ladan, Jos^phin, 873 Peletier du Mans, 133, 174, 17S, 178, 182, 184-186, 376 Pelletier, 460 Pellissier, Georges, 873 Fellisson, 272, 281, 290, 295 9S8 INDEX OF NAMES Pranbroke, Countess of, 215 Penthifevre, due de, 573 Pepin, II, 19, 52 Pepys, 239, 36s, 367 Pericles, 388 P&ier, M., 338 P^rier, Mme, 335 Pfirie^, Du, 261, 263 Pfiriers, Bonaventure des, 172, 204 Perrault, 191, 290, 386, 418, 439 Perrault, Mme. See Harry, Myriam Perrin, Franjois, 217 Perrin, Pierre, 361 Persan, Mme de, 465 Persius, 95 Peruse, Jean de la, 177, 178 Pestalozzi, 531 Peter Comestor, 102 Peter Lombard, 92, loi, lOS Peter of Pisa, 1 1 Peter Venerable, 47 Petit de JuUeville, 22 Petrarch, 91, 112, 114, iij, 116, 147, 150, 156, 161, 183, 188, 196, 198, 210, 523, 614, 666, 687, 872, 873 Petronius, 879 Petrus Hispanus, 100 Peyrebrune, Georges de. See Eimery, Mme Phsedrus, 62 Philippa of Hainaut, 59 Philippe-Auguste, 29, 93 Phillipe de Beaumaooit, 69, 77 Philippe de Grfeve, 48 Phihppe de Nanteuil, 46 Philippe de Thaon, 197 Philippe de Vitry, 123 Philippe le Bel, 58, 82 Philippe Mousket, 56 Philippe, Charles-Louis, 840, 841, 874 Phryne, 8si6 Pibrac, 118, 200 Picard, 607, 816 Picavet, F., 96 Picote, Pere, 338 Picquart, General, 827 Pidansat de Mairobert, 465 Piedagnel, Alexandre, 796 Pierre de Bourbon, 147 Pierre de Saint-Cloud, 39, 63 Pierre le Picard, 107 Pigault-Lebrun, 606, 720, 855 PiBon, Francois, 813 Pindar, 185, 191, 198, 264, 380 Piron, 460, 486, 488, 573 Pissarro, Camille, 801 Pissarro, Lucien, 801 Pithou, Pierre, 247 Pius VII, 674 Pius X, 828, 834, 836 Pbcerlcourt, Guilbert de, 659, 692, 69S-694 Planat, Emile, 822 Planche, Gustave, 736 Plato, 96, 109, 137, 184, 187, 201, 207, 228, 230, 231, 254, 323, 40s, 437, 531, 554, 641. 669, 687, 856, 857, 859 Plautus, 217, 219, 298, 319, 372, 478, 879 Plessis, Frederic, 874 Plessis, Maurice du, 803 Plessis-Mornay, Du, 246, 236, 239, 392 Plotinus, 88, 96, 641 Plutarch, 201, 207, 208, 235, 263, 264, 308, 430, 434, 498, 502, 51-8, 522, 327, 329, 592 Pocques, 138 Poe, Edgar Allan, 724, 770, 776, 787, 792, 803, 804, 807, 809, 870 Poincarg, H., 831, 835, 874 Poincar^, Raymond, 840, 874 Poisson, 477 Pobfandje, 281 Polybius, 498 Pomairols, Charles de, 874 Pomar^, 739 Pommier, AmM^e, 799 Pompadour, Mme de, 464, 508, 351, 381 Pomponius Laetus, 136 Ponchon, Raoul, 423 Ponsard, 664, 703, 707, 779, 795 Ponson du Terrail, 723 Pope, 282, 382, 449, 306, 311, s6s, 568, 624, 668 Porfe, the P., 505 Porphyry, 95, 100 Porto-Riche, Georges de, 874 Potez, 449 Pouvillon, Emile, 778 Prades, abbe de, 342 Pradon, 358, 360, 411 Prevost, abbfi, 4481 489, 43^494 Provost, Marcel, 874 Privost-Paradol, 821 Primal de Saint-Denis, 57 Primaticcio, 134 Prior, 377, 462 Priscian, 95 Proclus, 88 Propertius, 183, 577 Protagoras, 829 Proudhon, Pierre- Joseph, 648r-6Jt9, 710, 737, 743 Provence, comte de, 332 Prudentius of Troyes, 32 Przedziegka, Mme, 713 Ptolemy Philadelphus, 177 INDEX OF NAMES 959 Pucdni, 759 Pusey, Dr., 332 Quesnay, Doctor, 551, 552, 553 Quesnel, P6re, 501 Quillard, Pierre, 87s Quinault, 316, 359, 360, 361, 373, 477 Quinet, 62?, 726, 7S7-7S9, 730, 767 Quintilian, 187 Quititiln, 158 Rabaaus Maurus, 12 Rabelais, 63, 68, 70, 128, 135, 145, 149, 164- 172, 236, 238, 252, 258, 3SS, 368, 369, 372, 375. 435. 448. 497. S04, 53°, 5«S. 689, 777 Racan, 2B4, S65-S66, 268, 278, 288, 294, 301 Rachel, 664 Rachilde, 842 Racine, log, 215, 227, 255, 265, 269, 274, 281, 297, 303, 30s, 316, 3r8, 334, 344, 350-361, 364, 376, 377. 378. 382, 383, 384, 388, 393, 399, 404, 407, 409, 411, 423, 435, 467, 468, 470, 472, 476, 481, 482, 491, 515, 567, 580, 676, 688, 699, 766, 861, 867, 874 Racine, Louis, 567, 568 Radbertus Paschasius, 13 Radcliffe, Mrs., 606, 659, 693, 870 Raffaelli, 801 Rambouillet, marquise de, 270, 272, i???- $79, 281, 398 Rameau, 538 Rameau, Jean. See Lebalgt, Laurent Ramus, 95, 15s, igg, SOI-SO4., 224, 254, 323, 324 Randon, Gabriel. See Rictus, Jehan Raoul de Presles, 114 Rapin, Nicolas, 247, 258, 382 Rapin ThoyrsK, 448 Ratisbonne, Louis, 796, 799 Ravaillac, 347 Ravaisson, F^lix, 811 Ravignan, Pere de, 638 Ravisius Textor, 210 Raymond de Sebonde, 232, 237 Raynal, abbg, 422, S49. 588 Raynaud, Ernest, 805 Raynouard, 602, 667 Rayssiguier, 294 Rebell, Hugues, 805 Reboux, Paul, 875 R^camier, Mme, 587, 619, 621, 635, 743 Regnard, 377. 477-478, 479, 482 R6gnier, Henri de, 801, 805, 875 Rfignier, Mme Henri de, 865 Regnier, Mathurin, 254, 256, S57-S69, 266, 291, 369 Reid, 640 R^musat, Charles de, 613 Remusat, Paul de, 629 Renan, 4, 394, 532, 638, 726, 73B, 740, 741, 760-756, 810, 811, 815, 821, 837, 846, 860, 861, 867, 868 Renan, Henriette, 751 Renard, Jules, 875 Renaud, Armand, 796 Renaudot, Thfephraste, 421, 422 Ren4 of Anjou, 112 Renfe de France, 150, 152, 156, 222 Renouard, 631 Renouvier, Charles, 811-813, 831 Restif de la Bretonne, 489 Rett^, Adolj)he, 802 Retz, Cardinal de, 417, 421, 423, 424^4^5, 428, 431 Reiichlin, 137 Revel, Jean. See Toutain, Paul Reybaud, Louis, 629 Reynaud, Jean, 644, 719, 733 Ribot, Alexandre, 840, 875 Ribot, Th6odule, 8ro Ricard, Louis-Xavier de, 795, 796 Ricard, marquise de, 795 Riccoboni, Luigi, 480 Richard Cceur de Lion, 44, 46 Richard de Foumival, 107 Richard de Lison, 63 Richardson, 267, 449, 450, 463, 492, 494, 527. 539. 650 Richebourg, Emile, 723 Richelieu, 61, 253, 272, 273, 274, 277, 278, 295. 297, 302, 306, 311, 318, 364, 385, 421, 424, 426, 439, 683, 709, 863 Richepin, Jacques, 876 Richetrin, Jean, 766, 850, 875, 876 Richer, 52 Richter, J. P., 531 Rictus, Jehan, 808 Rigaut de Barb&ieux, 44 Rigolboche, 739 Rimbaud, Arthur, 803, 804 Rivarol, 450, 571, 590, 593, B95-S96 Rivoire, 843, 876 Roannez, due de, 336 Robert (king of France), 53 Robert d'Auxerre, 53 Robert de Boron, 35 Robert de Clary, 58 Robert de Sorbon, 105 Robert, P., 354 960 INDEX OF NAMES Robespicrte, S^Q. 53^. SSS, 575, 588, s8g, 690-591, 592, S94, 596, 643 Robineau, Madeleine, 281 Robinet, 422 Robinson, Crabbe, 610 Robortello, 214 Rocca, 610 Rochefort, Henri, 822 Roches, Mme des, 277 Rod, Edouard, 767, 876 Rodenbach, Georges, 805 Rodolphus Glaber, 53 Rohan, chevalier de, 506 Rojas y Zoiilla, F. de, 319 Roland, Mme, 587, 592, 609 Rolland, Remain, 840, 876 Rollin, Charles, 601, S74 RoUinat, Maurice, 808, 809 Ronsard, Pierre de, 14s, 149, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188-197, 204, 212, 216, 224, 225, 227, 2i8, 252, 256, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 294, 321, 380, 407, 430, 576, 577, 578, 579, 616, 6S3, 680, 689, 792 Roqueplan, Nestor, 738, 739 Rosamund, Fair, 30 Roscellinus, 90 Rosimond, 477 Rosny, J.-H., 767, 876, 877 Rossetti, 161 Rostand, 281, 298, 308, 359, 741, 796, 843, 872, 877-878, 880 Rostand, Mme. See G6rard, Rosemonde Rota, Berardino, 198 Rotrou, 233, 297, 298, 301, 302, 314, 318- Sm, 364, 372 Roucher, 570, 575 Rouget de Lisle, 580 Rouher, Eugene, 816 Roujon, Henry, 878 Rousseau, J.-B., 457, 516, 566, 567 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 169, 246, 438, 449, 463, 483, 487, 489, 502, S03, 510, 513, 516, B18-6S6, 542, 543, S47, 554. 56o, 561, 562, 572, 574. • 80, 588, 589, 590, 592, 596, 604, 609, 611, 613, 616, 617, 619, 621, 622, 625, 627, 633, 639, 650, 651, 657, 666, 692, 716, 717, 719, 720, 751, 772, 775, 841, 862, 867, 874 Rouxel, Genevieve, 261 Royer-CoUard, 613, 6SS-6SS, 640, 641 Rucellai, 210 Rustebeuf, 46, 69, 73 Ryer, Isaac du, 294 Ryer, Pierre du, 285, 298, 314, 364 Rymer, 450 Sabatier, Mme, 740 Sablfi, Mme de, 281, 327, 334, J^ll-^IZ, 426 Sabran, Mme de, 587 Sacy, Silvestre de, 736, 821 Sade, marquis de, 490 Sadoleto, 142 Sagon, Francois, 152 Saint-Amand, 696 Saint-Amant, Z68, 290 Saint- Ange, Frere, 335 Saint-Cyran, Du Vergier de Hauranne, 333, 335. 349 Saint-Evremond, 313, S8S-S8S, 411, 413, 434. 435. 446, 448, 789 Saint-Gelais, Mellin de, 133, 153, 174, 181, 184, 197, 210 Saint-Gelais, Octovien de, 133, 149 Saint-Just, 591 Saint-Lambert, marquis de, 507, 520, 528, 570, 573 Saint-Marc Girardin, 734, 736, 821 Saint-Martin, 603, 626 Saint-Martin, Mme de, 410 Saint-Pierre, abb^ de, 444, 461 Saint-R6al, 361 Saint-Simon, comte de, 843-646, 647, 726 Saint-Simon, due de, 423, 431-433, 438 Saint-Victor, Paul de, 740, 817 Sainte-Beuve, 80, 133, 146, 179, 235, 265, 271, 359, 377. 576. 602. 616, 623, 624, 62s, 636, 644, 653, 658, 660, 661, 672, 716, 738, 740, 741-746, 747, 792, 800, 812, 817, 818, 821 Sainte-Marthe, Sc^vole de, 177, 530 Salel, Hugues, 181 Sales, Francois de, 256, 285, 335, 342, 346- 347, 388, 401, 404, 412 Salis, Rodolphe, 807 Sallo, Denis de, 422 Sallust, 52, 109, 687 Salmon Maigret (Macrin), 174 Samain, Albert, 801, 802, 805 Sanchez, 252, 341 Sanctis, de, 818 Sand, George, 449, 665, 676, 677, 678, 704, 706, 707, 708, 712, 71B-720, 724, 737, 761, 783, 793, 809, 843, 847, 863 Sandeau, Jules, 707, 715, 736, 780 Sanderson, 536 Sandras, Courtilz de, 710 Sangnier, Marc, 834 Sannazaro, 152, 183, 196, 285 Sansovino, 258 Sarcey, 781, 785, 806, 818, 832 Sardou, 695, 779, 784, 785 INDEX OF NAMES 961 Sanasin, 274, 281 Sasso, Famphilo, igS Saxe, Maurice de, 715 Say, J.-B., 602 Scaliger, Julius Caesar, 143, 212, 295 Scarron, S88-S89, 291, 298, 299, 364, 367, 370, 382, 410, 416, 679 Scarron, Mme, 410, 416. See also Main- tenon, Mme de Sceve, Maurice, 153, 160-161, 174, 181, 184, 226, 804 Schelandre, Jean de, 302 Schelling, 641, 728, 752 Scherer, Edmond, 817 Scheurer-Kestner, 827 Schiller, 330, 610, 697 Schlegel, 473, 612, 614, 651 Schleiermacher, 530 Schneider, Hortense, 740 SchoU, Aur6Uen, 739, 822 Schopenhauer, 876 Scott, Walter, 655, 657, 658, 697, 700, 708, 709, 720, 726, 727, 762 Scotus Erigena, 88, 96 Scribe, Eugene, 703-706, 736, 779, 785, 788 ScudSry, Georges de, 278, 287, 289, 295, 298, 302, 311, 312 Scud^ry, Mile de, io5, 274, 276, 277, 279, S81, 284, 287, 366, 371, 373, 376, 378, 409, 413, 774, 801 Sebillet, 133. 181, 376 Secchi, Niccolo, 365 S6ch6, 698 Secr6tan, 876 Secundus, 192, 569 Sedaine, 485, 4S8, 693 Segrais, 409, 411, 415, 439-440 Sfigur, Mme de, 778 S^gur, Pierre de, 879 Seigneur, Jehan du, 663 Seignobos, 816, 866 Sellius, S41 Senancour, 6S4-6S6, 716, 841 Seneca, 87, 117, 121, 201, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 21S, 223, 229, 235, 264, 408, 435, 502, 849 Serafino dall' Aquila, 153, 160, 194 Serb of Wilton, 48 Serre, de, 632 Serres, Olivier de, 256 Servatus Lupus, 12 Servetus, 222 S«vign«, Mme de, 4IS-4I4, 4i7. 423. 4^5 S^vignfi, marquis de, 412 , Sextus Empiricus, 237 Seyssel, Claude de, 141, 148 Seytres, de, 502 Shaftesbury, 470 Shakspere, 25, 38, 42, 77, no, 208, 227, 239, 2S4, 269. 365, 372, 373. 449. 47°. 47i. 472. 474, 506, 651, 655, 687, 697, 706, 861, 872 Shelley, 187 SiblUet. See Sebillet. Sieffert, Louisa, 790 Sieybs, abbS, 594-595 Sigibertus Gemblacensis, 53 Signac, 801 Silvestre, Armand, 799 Silvia. See Benozzi, Giannetta Simeon Stylites, 738 Simon, 39 Simon, Jules, 814 Simon, Richard, 391, 446, 454 Sirven, 509 Smith, Adam, 552 Smithson, Miss, 697 Smollett, 491 Socrates, 96 Sophocles, 210, 408, 687, 794, 856 Sorel, Albert, 448, 815 Sorel, Charles, 2S8, 370 Soulary, Jos^phin, 799 Souli€, Fr6d6ric, 695, 699, 711, 723, 736 Soumet, 658, 696 Souvestre, Emile, 724 Souza, Robert de, 879 Spencer, Herbert, 645, 760, 853 Spenser, 152, 179 Sperone Speroni, 187 Spinoza, 327, 512, 746 SpuUer, E., 633, 822 Spurzheim, 602 Staal-Delaunay, Mme de, 444, 462 Stael, Mme de, 271, 465, 587, 665, 606, 609-615, 623, 630, 632, 650, 651, 72s, 734 Stael-Holstein, baron de, 609 Stanhope, Hester, Lady, 670 Statins, 12, 36, 37, 39, 48, 95, 121, 213, 264 Steele, 449 Stendhal, 652, 653, 708, 711-713, 714, 723, 747, 851 Sterne, 171, 239, 449, 492, 338, 539. 606 Straparola, 172 Strauss (composer), 762 Strauss (historian), 673 Strowski, F., 234 Suard, Mme, 587 Sudre, 64 Sue, Eugene, 369, 708, 723, 724, 736 Suetonius, 52, 109, 353, 356 Suger, 53 Sully, 252-253 Sully, Maurice de, 391 Sully Prudhomme, 796, 797, 874 962 INDEX OF NAMES Sulpicius Rufus, Servius, 263, 614 Surchamp, Henri, 872 Surville, Clotilde de, 608 SurviUe, marquis de, 608 Swedenborg, 603 Swetchine, Mme, 637, 781 Swift, 506 Sylvester, Josliua, 225 Sylvester II, 13 Symonds, J. A., 48, 764 Syveton, 864 Tabarin, 294 Tacitus, 14, 22«), 3s6, 426, 498, 594 Tahureau, Jacques, 177, 197 Tailhade, Laurent, 846, 879 Taille, Jacques de la, 214 Taille, Jean de la, 214, 217 Taine, 62, 69, 255, 438, 6s6, 713, 726, 738, 740, 741, 743, 744, 746-760, 7SI, 757, 759, 810, 811, 815, 821, 846, 849, 851 Tallemant des Riaux, 278, 423, 426 Talleyrand, 614 Talma, 605, 107 Tansillo, Luigi, 198, 261 Tarde, Gabriel, 813 Tasso, 225, 258, 28s, 408, 666, 687 Tassoni, 382 Tastu, Mme Amable, 681 Tavemier, 496 Taylor, H., 500 Tebaldeo, 153, 195, 198 Tendn, Mme de, 457, 462, 464, 495, 550 Tennyson, 34 Terence, 116, 217, 219, 355, 366, 373, 381, 434. 687 Tesson, Francis, 796 Texte, 492 Thackeray, 722, 739 Theganus, 52 Theocritus, 183, 193, 196, 577, 687, 794 Thtodamas, 281 TheoduUus the Goth, 11, 12, 13 TMophile. See Viau, Thfophile de Theophrastus, 429, 430 Theresa, Saint, 401 Theuriet, Andre, 778, 796 Thibaut de Blois, 44 Thibaut de Champagne, 44, 46, 57 Thieriot, 505 Thierry, kmiiie, 726 Thierry, Augustin, 644, 725, 726-727, 747 Thierry de Chartres, 89 Thiers, Adolphe, 575, 629, 6S4, 7SS, 73s, 816 Thomas, 28, 30 Thomas, A.-L., 474, 574, 588 Thomas Aquinas, St., gi, 92, 93, 96, 99, 102, 103, 104, 232, 339, S15, 833 Thomas-a-Becket, 54, 102 Thomas of Bologna, 118 Thomas of Celano, 47 Thomson, 449, 570, 803 Thou, De, 229, 242, 423, 725 Thoulier, the P., 505 Thucydides, 687 Thureau-Dangin, Paul-Marie-Pierre, 879 Thyard, Pontus de, 160, 162, 177, 178, 180, 184, 194, 197 Tibaud of Vernon, 54 TibuUus, 183, S77 Tinayre, Marcelle, 879 Tinseau, Leon de, 879 Tiphernas, Gregorio, 137 Tissard, Frangois, 137 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 73S-7S4 Tolstoy, 818, 841, 843, 874, 876 Torricelli, 33s Tournemine, the P., 305 Tournon, Cardinal de, 132 Toutain, Paul, 87s Travies, Charles, 656 Trebutien, 775 Trefeu, 740 Tressan, comte de, 488, 778 Trissino, 154, 210, 213 Tristan I'Hermite, 288, 293, 298 Trogus Pompeius, 121 Tronchin, 521 Troterel, Pierre, 294 Turgenev, 740 Turgot, 543, 56S-SS4 Turlupin, 294 Tumebe, Odet de, 217 Turoldus, 22 Tyrrell, Father, 836 Tyrtffius, 580 U Ulbach, Louis, 778 Urbain Grandier, 401 Urfe, d', 278, 284, 285- 347. 71Q G, 287, 297, 301, Vabre, Jules, 663 Vacherot, Etienne, 811 Vacquerie, Auguste, 787, 796 INDEX OF NAMES 963 Vair, Du, 240, 251, 33s, 342 Valade, L£on, 796, 799 VsJera, Juan, 682 Valerius Majdmus, 121 Vandal, Albert, 816 Van Dale, 456 Vand&em, Femand. See Vanderheym, F.-H. Vanderheym, Femand-Henri, 879 Vanini, 345 Vanloo, 564 Vein Pauteren, 348 Varro, 247 Vascosan, 205 Vatable, 152 Vatel, 414 Vaucaire, Maurice, 879 Vaugelas, 270, 273, 278, 410 Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, 256, 257, S59- 260, 264, 321, 376 Vauvenaigues, 601-604, 513, 606 Vaux, Mme Clotilde de, 646 Veber, Pierre, 879 Vegetius, 119 Vendome, Philippe de, 462 Vergedo, Angelo, iSo Vergne, Marie de la. See Fayette, Mme de la Vergniaud, 592 Verhaeren, Emile, 80s Verlaine, Paul, 796, 801, 8OS-8O4, 862, 87s Verne, Jules, 778 V6ron, Dr., 736 Veuillot, Louis, 638, 730, 736, 781, 821, 838 Vianey, J., 19s Viau, Theophile de, 190, 254, Z67-S68, 297, 34S Viaud, Julien. See Loti, Pierre Vicaire, Gabriel, 796, 799 Vice, 729 Vida, 187 Vidocq, 722 Via^-GrifSn, 572, 801, 805 Vien, S7S Vigny, Alfred de, 653, 658, 659, 661, 662, 668, 671-676, 702-703, 709. 710, 792, 797, 800, 874 Vagard, 87 Villanovanus, 142 Villars, mar^chal de, 502 Villedieu, Mme de. See Desjardins, Hor- tense Villehardouin, 51, 57, 60 Villele, M. de, 630 Villemain, Abel, 734 Villemessant, H. de. See Carrier, J.-H. Villemin, Eugene, 796 Villiers, 368, 370, 477 Villiers de Tide- Adam, 774, 776, 796, 803, 870 Villon, Fransois, 47, 8s, u7, 122-124, 803, 808 Vincent de Beauvais, loi, 102, 103-104, S4I Vincent de Paul, 392, 638 Vincent, Charles. See Mael, Pierre Vinciguerra, 258 Vinet, 397 Vintimille, Mme de, 60s ' Viollis, Jean. See Ardenne de Tizac, H; Viret, Pierre, 221 Virgil, 3, 12, 36, 37, 38, 40, 48, 87, 95, 109, 116, 121, 183, i8s, 186, 196, 226, 258, 264, 382, 495, 408, 440, S07, S70, 577, 580, 687, 729 Virieu, Aymon de, 666 Visagier; Jean, 175 Vitelli, Comelio, 136 Vitet, Ludovic, 697 Vitruvius, 211 Vittorino da Feltre, 168, 238 Vives, 238 Vivien, Renfe, 842 ' Viz6, Donneau de, 368, 422 Vogiif, Charles- Jean Melchior de, 880 Vogu6, EugSne Melchior de, 741, 817, 880 Voisin, la, 358, 398 Voiture, 281-283, 385, 412, 439, 462 Volland, Mile, 539 Vohiey, 656-666, 587, 601, 614 Voltaire. 191, 210, 269, 276, 337, 353, 422, 443. 447. 448. 449.450, 455. 4S8, 460, 461. 462, 463, 464, 466,' 467-474, 482, 488, 489, 491, 502, 606-517, 522, 525, 528, 532, S37, 539, 543. 549. 55i, SS3. 568, 569, 570, 571. S73. 579. 582, S90, 594. 596. 605, 607, 623, 626, 650, 652, 67s, 677, 678, 687, 725, 774, 860, 866 Voretzsch, 14, 28, 41 Vossius, 295 Vulteius, 17s W Wace, 28, 56 Wafllard, 704 Wagner, 34, 776, 792, 80s, 862 Walafridus Strabo, 12, loi Waldeck-Rousseau, Renfi, 817, 840 Walon de Beaupuis, 349 Walpole, Horace, 462, 463, 464, 513, 572 Warens, Mme de, S18, 519, 528, 531, 720 Washington, George, 617, 634 964 INDEX OF NAMES Watriquct de Couvin, 6q Watteau, 481, 564, 764, 877 Webster, Daniel, 389 Webster, Pelatiah, joo Weeks, R., 23 Weil, Ren£. See Coolus, Romain Weiss, J.-J., 817, 82 r Wenceslaus of Luxembaurg, sg Whitman, Walt, 802, 849 Wieland. 450 Wiener, F. 854 ' Wilbois, 83s Wilde. Oscar, 6S9, 762, 777, 862, 873 William Longsvrord, 30 William of Tyre, 56 Willy, Colette, 880 Wilson, W. Lawler, 591 Winckelmann, 450, 575, 614 Winter, Henry, 796 Wintzenried, 519 Wolfi, Albert, 739 Wolff, Pierre, 843, 880 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 34 Wolmaj-, Melchior, 222, 223 Wordsworth, 187, 572, 668, 669 Wulf, Maurice de, 96 Wycherly, 372 Xanrof, 808 Xenocritus, 578 Xenophon, 114, 405, 631 Yomig, 449, S17. 565. 608, 650 Yver, Colette. See Huzard, Mme toinette. An- Zamacois, 843, 880 Zola, Emile, 69, 66s, 75°, 757, 7S8, 760, 762, 765-769, 772, 776, 778, 823, 828, 840, 8SS. 863, 871 Cornell University Library PQ 103.W94 1912 A history of French "terature. 3 1924 015 651 155 oiin,»