A Short History of French Literature
newspapers, the chief of which was _La Renaissance_. Another nickname of
the poets of this sect (which, however, included almost all French
writers of verse, even Victor de Laprade being counted in) was _les
impassibles_, for their presumed devotion to art for art's sake, and
their scorn of didactic, domestic, and sentimental poetry. Their numbers
were very great, and none, save a few, can be mentioned here. Perhaps
the chief of the original _Parnassiens_ were MM. Sully Prudhomme and
Francois Coppee, the former of whom experienced some reaction and
affected what is called 'thoughtful verse,' while M. Coppee, having
taken to domestic subjects, is as popular as any contemporary French
poet, and in at least one instance (_Le Luthier de Cremone_) has
achieved success at the theatre. A poet of great gifts, the latest of
the vagabond school of Villon, was Albert Glatigny, who lived as a
strolling actor, and died young. Many of his poems, but especially the
_Ballade des Enfans sans Souci_, have singular force and pathos. It
would hardly be fair to mention any other names, because a singular
evenness of talent and general characteristics manifests itself among
these poets. All sacrifice something to the perfection of form, or, to
speak more correctly and critically, most are saved only by the
perfection of their form, which is as a rule far superior to that of
English minor poets. Of late years the _Parnasse_ as a single group has
broken up somewhat, and during the last decade some isolated poets of
promise have appeared. M. Maurice Bouchor recurred to the bacchanalian
model for inspiration; M. Paul Deroulede is tyrtaean and bellicose. Both
of these may be said to be representative of reaction against the
_Parnasse_. The new naturalist school, which has produced such singular
work in prose fiction, is represented in poetry by M. Richepin and M.
Guy de Maupassant. The former, with much unworthy work, produced in _La
Mer_ and elsewhere excellent things. The latter, despite an unfortunate
licence of subject, showed himself the strongest and most accomplished
versifier who has made his appearance in France for the last twenty
years. But after his first efforts he appeared to abandon himself almost
entirely to prose. M. Paul Verlaine, a poet known from the early days of
the Parnasse, has more recently produced work of increased but very
unequal merit, exaggerating the faults but showing some of the charm of
Baudelaire; and, partly under his, partly under foreign influence, a
still younger school has begun to make experiments in prosody which are
not uninteresting, but which are too minute for notice here.
[Sidenote: Minor and later Dramatists.]
[Sidenote: Scribe.]
[Sidenote: Ponsard.]
[Sidenote: Emile Augier.]
[Sidenote: Eugene Labiche.]
[Sidenote: Dumas the Younger.]
[Sidenote: Victorien Sardou.]
The progress of French drama during the last half century is of somewhat
less importance to literature, but of even more to social history, than
that of poetry. The greatest masters of drama have already been
mentioned among the eight typical names of 1830, even Balzac having
attempted it, though without much success. The most famous and
successful playwrights, however, as distinguished from the producers of
literary dramas, have yet to be noticed[293]. Pixerecourt, a
melodramatist and a book-collector, achieved his first success with a
play on the well-known story of the Dog of Montargis (itself dating back
to the earliest days of the Chansons de Gestes), in 1814, and followed
it up with a long succession of similar pieces. Two years later Eugene
Scribe, who had been born in 1791, made his _debut_, as far as success
goes, with _Une Nuit de la Garde Nationale_. Scribe was one of the most
prolific, one of the most successful, and one of the least literary of
French dramatists. For nearly half a century he continued, sometimes
alone, and sometimes in collaboration, to pour forth vaudevilles,
dramas, and comedies, almost all of which were favourably received.
Scribe was generous to his associates, and would sometimes acknowledge
the communication of a bare idea by a share in the profits of the play
which it suggested. He had also an almost unrivalled knowledge of the
_technique_ of the theatre, and not a little wit. But his style is loose
and careless, and his dramas do not bear reading. His most important
later plays are _Valerie_, 1822; _Le Mariage d'Argent_, 1827; _Bertrand
et Raton_, 1833; _Le Verre d'Eau_, 1840; _Une Chaine_, 1841; _Bataille
de Dames_, 1851. One of the less famous partakers in the first Romantic
movement, Bouchardy, distinguished himself, in succession to
Pixerecourt, as a Romantic melodramatist, his most famous works being
_Le Sonneur de Saint Paul_, and _Lazare le Patre_. In 1843 a kind of
reaction was supposed to be about to take place, the signs of which were
the performance of the _Lucrece_ of Ponsard in that year, and of the
_Cigue_ of Emile Augier the year after. Ponsard, however, was only a
Romantic whose colour was deadened by his inability to attain more
brilliant tones. His succeeding plays, _Agnes de Meranie_, _Charlotte
Corday_, _L'Honneur et l'Argent_, showed this sufficiently. M. Emile
Augier is a more remarkable and a more independent figure. In so far as
he represents a protest against Romanticism at all (which he does only
very partially), it is because he shared in the growing tendency towards
realism, that is, to a recurrence in the Romantic sense to the _tragedie
bourgeoise_ of the preceding century, and because also he gave no
countenance to the practice, in which some of the early Romantics
indulged, of representing immoral personages as interesting. Almost all
M. Augier's dramas, such as _L'Aventuriere_, 1849, which is his
masterpiece, _Gabrielle_, 1849, _Diane_, 1852, _Le Mariage d'Olympe_,
1855, _Le Fils de Giboyer_, 1862, and others of more recent date, are
distinctly on the side of the angels. But the author does not make the
excellence of his intention a reason for passing off inferior work, and
he is justly recognised as one of the leaders of French drama in the
latter half of the century. About this same time (1845) was the date of
the appearance of a fertile and successful playwright of the less
exalted class, M. Dennery (_Don Cesar de Bazan_, _L'Aieule_). Auguste
Maquet, another of the old guard of Romanticism, distinguished himself
by helping to adapt to the stage the novels of Dumas the elder, which he
had already helped to write; and one of his colleagues on Dumas' staff,
M. Octave Feuillet, who was shortly to make a great reputation for
himself as a novelist, appeared on the boards with _Echec et Mat_.
During the whole of this decade (1840-1850) Delphine Gay, the beautiful
and accomplished wife of the journalist Emile de Girardin, was a
frequent and successful play-writer. Soon afterwards M. Legouve, son of
the academician of the same name, and himself an academician, began to
collaborate with Scribe in works of more importance (_Adrienne
Lecouvreur_) than the latter had before attempted; while George Sand and
her former friend, Jules Sandeau, were also drawn into the inevitable
theatrical vortex. In collaboration with Augier, Sandeau produced, from
one of his own novels, one of the best plays of the century, _Le Gendre
de M. Poirier_, 1855. Eugene Labiche, who had been born in 1815,
distinguished himself, in 1851, by _Le Chapeau de Paille d'Italie_, and
in it laid the foundation of a long career of success in the lighter
kind of play which, at last, conducted him to the Academy. His
best-known play is _Le Voyage de M. Perrichon_. The year 1852 was
memorable for the French stage, for it saw the production of _La Dame
aux Camelias_, the first important play of Alexandre Dumas _fils_.
Without much of his father's talent for novel-writing, M. Dumas has been
both a more successful, and perhaps a better, dramatist. Most of his
plays have been directed to some burning question of the social or
ethical kind, and it has been his practice to re-issue them after a
time, with argumentative prefaces, in a very singular style. _Diane de
Lys_, _Le Demi-Monde_, _La Question d'Argent_, _Le Fils Naturel_, _Le
Supplice d'une Femme_ (nominally composed with Emile de Girardin), _Les
Idees de Madame Aubray_, _Une Visite de Noces_, and _L'Etrangere,_ are
his chief works. In 1854 appeared a now almost forgotten work by
Victorien Sardou, who was destined to be the favourite dramatist of the
Second Empire, and to share with MM. Augier and Dumas _fils_ the chief
rank among the dramatists of the last half of the century. Seven years
later _Nos Intimes_ gave him a great success, and, in 1865, _La Famille
Benoiton_ a greater, which he followed up with _Nos Bons Villageois_,
1866. Since that time he has written many plays, of which the finest by
far, and one of the few comedies of this age likely to become classical,
is the admirable _Rabagas_--a satire of the keenest on the interested
politicians, who, in France as elsewhere, take up demagogy as a trade.
M. Sardou has attempted serious work in various plays, the best of which
is, perhaps, _Patrie_, but it is not his forte. Satirical observation of
manners, and especially of the current political and social follies of
the day, is what he can do best, and in this peculiar line he has few
equals. But he is admitted to be one of the most unequal of writers. A
peculiar offspring of the Second Empire are the brilliant burlesques of
Offenbach, which owed at least part of their brilliancy to the librettos
composed for them by MM. Meilhac and Halevy. The first-named of these
had produced successful dramas as far back as 1859. The collaborateurs
did not confine themselves to furnishing words for M. Offenbach's music,
but attempted the prose drama frequently and with success, _Froufrou_
being their most important work in this way. M. Gondinet and M.
Pailleron also deserve notice as successful manufacturers of light
plays, the latter in especial having an excellent wit (_Le monde ou l'on
s'ennuie_, _Le Chevalier Trumeau_). This may also be asserted of M.
Halevy, who has latterly, in _Les Petites Cardinal_ and other
non-dramatic sketches, shown himself to even greater advantage than on
the stage. Indeed the Cardinal family may be said to be the most
striking literary creation of its kind for years.
In a different class and earlier, Joseph Autran, a poet of the school of
Lamartine, obtained a great reputation by his tragedy of _La Fille
d'Eschyle_, which procured him a seat in the Academy, and gave him the
opportunity of writing not a few volumes of polished, but not very
vigorous, poetry. M. Theodore de Banville, who has tried most paths in
literature, produced, in 1866, a short play, with the old mystery-writer
Gringoire for hero and title-giver; a play which is admirably written,
and which has kept its place on the stage. M. Francois Coppee's graceful
_Luthier de Cremone_ has already been mentioned. Another literary
dramatist, to distinguish the class from those who are playwrights first
of all, is M. Henri de Bornier, who obtained some success, in 1875, with
_La Fille de Roland_, and, in 1880, with _Les Noces d'Attila_. Both
these are good, though not consummate, specimens of the poetical drama.
[Sidenote: Classes of Nineteenth-Century Fiction.]
Active, however, as was the cultivation of poetry proper and of the
drama, it is not likely that the nineteenth century will be principally
known in French literary history either as a poetical, or as a dramatic
age. Its most creative production is in the field of prose fiction. It
is particularly noteworthy that every one of the eight names which have
been set at its head is the name of a novelist, and that the energy of