A Short History of French Literature
method, and devote themselves chiefly to the study of character. But
they go farther than these great artists by objecting to the processes
of art. According to them, literature is to be strictly 'scientific,' to
confine itself to anatomy, and, it would appear, to morbid anatomy only.
The Romantic treatment, that is to say, the presentation of natural
facts in an artistic setting, is rigidly proscribed. Everything must be
set down on the principle of a newspaper report, or, to go to another
art for an illustration, as if by a photographic camera, not by an
artist's pencil. Now it will be obvious to any impartial critic that the
pursuance of this method is in itself fatal to the interest of a book.
The reader, unless of the very lowest order of intellect, does not want
in a novel a mere reproduction of the facts of life, still less a mere
scientific reference of them to causes. Accordingly, the naturalist
method inevitably produces an extreme dulness. In their search for a
remedy, its practitioners have observed that there are certain divisions
of human action, usually classed as vice and crime, in which, for their
own sake, and independently of pleasure in artistic appreciation of the
manner in which they are presented, a morbid interest is felt by a large
number of persons. They therefore, with businesslike shrewdness,
invariably, or almost invariably, select their subjects from these
privileged classes. The ambition of the naturalist, briefly described
without epigram or flippancy, but as he would himself say
scientifically, is to mention the unmentionable with as much fulness of
detail as possible. In this business M. Emile Zola has not hitherto been
surpassed, though many of his pupils have run him hard. Unfortunately,
for those who are proof against the attraction of disgusting subjects
merely because they are disgusting, M. Zola is one of the dullest of
writers. His style is also very bad, possessing for its sole merits a
certain vulgar vigour which is occasionally not ineffective, and a
capacity for vivid description. He is deeply learned in _argot_, or
slang, the use of which is one of the naturalist instruments, and his
works are therefore not useless as repertories of expressions to be
avoided. M. Zola's criticisms are more interesting than his novels,
consisting chiefly of vigorous denunciations of all the good writers of
his own day.
M. Victor Cherbuliez, besides political and miscellaneous work of
inferior relative power, has produced a series of novels (_Le Comte
Kostia_, _Le Roman d'une Honnete Femme_, _Meta Holdenis_, _Samuel Brohl
et Cie_) which are remarkable for style, construction, and wit. M.
Alphonse Daudet, beginning early, produced in his first stage a charming
collection of _Lettres de mon Moulin_, and a pathetic autobiographic
novel _Le Petit Chose_. In his second, attempting the manner of Dickens,
he obtained with _Jack_, 1873, and _Froment Jeune et Risler Aine_, 1874,
great popularity. His later works, _Le Nabab_, _Les Rois en Exil_, _Numa
Roumestan_, _L'Evangeliste_, _L'Immortel_, shew, in their condescending
to the satisfaction of vulgar curiosity as to living or lately dead
persons, a great falling off. The capacity of M. Daudet (whose _Tartarin
de Tarascon_ with its sequel is wholly admirable extravaganza) cannot be
doubted: his taste is deplorable. Of still more recent novelists two
only can be mentioned: M. Georges Ohnet (_Serge Panine_, _Le Maitre de
Forges_, _La Grande Marniere_) whose popularity with readers is only
equalled by the unanimous disfavour with which all competent critics
regard him, and M. Viaud ('Pierre Loti'), a naval officer, whose work
(_Aziyade_, _Le Mariage de Loti_, _Mon Frere Yves_, _Madame
Chrysantheme_), midway between the novel, the autobiography, and the
travel-book displays some elegance and much 'preciousness' of style and
fancy.
[Sidenote: Journalists and Critics.]
[Sidenote: Paul de Saint-Victor.]
[Sidenote: Hippolyte Taine.]
After the Revolution the fortune of journalism was assured, and though
under the subsequent forms of government it was subjected to a rigid
censorship, it was too firmly established to be overthrown. Almost all
men of letters flocked to it. The leading article or unsigned political
and miscellaneous essay has never been so strong a feature of French
journalism as it has been of English. On the other hand, the
_feuilleton_, or daily, weekly, and monthly instalment of fiction or
criticism, has been one of its chief characteristics. Many, if not most,
of the most celebrated novels of the last half century have originally
appeared in this form, publication in independent parts, which was long
fashionable in England, never having found favour in France. In the same
way, though weekly reviews devoted wholly or mainly to literary
criticism have, for some reason, never been successful with the French
as they have with us, daily journalism has given a greater space to
criticism, and especially to theatrical criticism. All French criticism
subsequent to 1830 may be said to derive, whether it deals with
literature, with the theatre, or with art, from three masters,
Sainte-Beuve, Gautier, and Janin. The method of the first has been
sufficiently explained. Gautier's was rather the expression of a fine
critical appreciation in the most exquisite style, and Janin's, the far
easier, and, after a short time, unimportant plan of gossiping amiably
and amusingly about, it might be the subject, it might be something
quite different. The only successor to Gautier was Paul de Saint-Victor,
who, however, was inferior to his master in appreciative power, and
exaggerated his habit of relying on style to carry him through. Paul de
Saint-Victor was not a frequent writer, and his collected works as yet
do not fill many volumes. _Hommes et Dieux_, which is perhaps the
principal of them, exhibits a deficiency of catholicity in literary
appreciation. His latest book, _Les Deux Masques_, an unfinished study
of the history of the stage, contains much brilliant writing, but is
wanting in solid qualities. As a theatrical critic, Janin was succeeded
by a curiously different person, M. Francisque Sarcey, who has chiefly
been noteworthy for severity and a kind of pedagogic common sense, as
unlike as possible to the good-humoured gossip of Janin. M. de
Pontmartin was an acrid but vigorous critic on the royalist and orthodox
side. M. Hippolyte Taine, chief of Sainte-Beuve's followers, has
somewhat caricatured his master's method. Sainte-Beuve's principle was,
it must be remembered, to examine carefully the circumstances of his
author's time, in order to ascertain their bearing upon him. In M.
Taine's hands this wise practice changed itself into a theory--the
theory that every man is a kind of product of the circumstances, and
that, by examining the latter, the man is necessarily explained. M.
Taine chose for his principal exercising ground the history of English
literature. He produced under that title a series of studies often
acute, always brilliant in style, but constantly showing the faults of
the critical method just indicated. Of other literary critics, the two
chief besides M. Taine are M. Edmond Scherer and M. Emile Montegut. The
latter is a critic of a very fine and delicate appreciation. A short
essay of his on Boccaccio may be specified as one of the best of French
contemporary critical exercises. M. Scherer has a good deal of common
sense, a considerable acquaintance with literature, and a clear,
straightforward, and vigorous style. His judgment, however, is much
limited by prejudice, and some of his studies, such as those on
Baudelaire and Diderot, show that he is an untrustworthy judge of what
is not commonplace.
[Sidenote: Academic Critics.]
A separate school of criticism, of a more academic character than that
represented by most of the names just mentioned, has existed in France
during the greater part of the century, and during a great part of it
has found its means of utterance partly in the University chairs and in
treatises crowned by the Academy, partly in a well-known fortnightly
periodical, the _Revue des Deux-Mondes_. The master of this school of
criticism may be said to have been Villemain, 1790-1870, who represents
the classical tradition corrected by a very considerable study of other
European languages besides French. Not the least part of the narrowness
of the older classical school was due to its ignorance of these
languages, and its consequent incapacity to make the necessary
comparisons. Villemain's criticism, though not quite so flexible as it
might have been, was on the whole sound, and the same variety of the
art, though with more limitations, was represented by Guizot. Not a few
critics of merit of the same kind were born at the close of the last
century, or at the beginning of this. Among them may be mentioned M.
Nisard, a bitter opponent of the Romantic movement, and a prejudiced
critic of French literature, but a writer of very considerable
knowledge, and of some literary merit; Eugene Geruzez, author of by far
the best history of French literature in a small compass, and of many
separate treatises of value; Alexandre Vinet, a Swiss, and a Protestant,
who died at no very advanced age, leaving much work of merit; and
Saint-Marc Girardin, who busied himself nearly as much in journalism and
politics as in literary criticism proper, but whose professorial _Cours
de Litterature Dramatique_ is a work of interest, exhibiting a kind of
transition style between the older and newer criticism. Michelet,
Quinet, M. Renan, and others, who will be mentioned under other heads,
have also been considerable as critics. Philarete Chasles was a lively
writer, who devoted himself especially to English literature, and whose
judgment in matters literary was not quite equal to his affection for
them. The critics of the _Revue des Deux-Mondes_ proper include, besides
not a few authors named elsewhere, Gustave Planche, a person of curious
idiosyncrasy, chiefly remarkable for the ferocity of his critiques;
Saint Rene Taillandier, a dull man of industry; and M. Caro, a man of
industry who was not dull. Latterly some younger writers have
endeavoured (chiefly in its pages) to set up a kind of neo-classical
school, which is equally opposed to modern innovations, and to the habit
of studying old French, that is, French before the sixteenth century.
The chief of these advocates of a return to the Malherbe-Boileau dungeon
is M. Ferdinand Brunetiere. We must not omit among the older generation
M. Lenient, the author of two admirable volumes on the History of French
Satire; among the younger, M. Paul Stapfer, the author of an excellent
study of 'Shakespeare et l'Antiquite,' M. Jules Lemaitre, a brilliant
critic, who is perhaps a little more brilliant than critical, and M.
Emile Faguet, whose criticism is as sound as it is accomplished.
Among the representatives of art criticism Viollet-le-Duc as a writer
on architecture, and Charles Blanc (brother of Louis) as an authority on
decorative art generally, made before their deaths reputations
sufficiently exceptional to be noticed here. Here also, as
representatives of other classes of literature, the names of Hector
Berlioz, the great composer, author of letters and memoirs of great
interest; of Henri Monnier, an artist not much less skilful with his pen
than with his pencil in satirical sketches of Parisian types (especially
his famous 'Joseph Prudhomme'); of Charles Monselet, a miscellaneous
writer whose sympathies were as wide and his temper as genial as his
literary faculty was accomplished; of X. Doudan, whose posthumous
remains and letters attracted much attention after a life of silence;
and of the Genevese diarist Amiel, selections from whose vast journal of