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A Short History of French Literature

George Saintsbury

which is said by students of the whole subject of the mediaeval pulpit in France to be disproportionate, but which they owe perhaps not least to the citations of them in a celebrated and amusing book of the next age, the _Apologie pour Herodote_ of Henri Estienne. These are Menot (1440-1518) and Maillard the Franciscans, and Raulin (1443-1514), a doctor of the Sorbonne. These preachers, living at a time which was not one of popular sovereignty, did not meddle with politics as preachers had done in France before and were to do again. But they carried into the pulpit the habit of satirical denunciation in social as well as in purely religious matters, and gave free vent to their zeal. No illustrations of the singular licence which the middle ages permitted on such occasions are more curious than these sermons. Not merely did the preachers attack their audience for their faults in the most outspoken manner, but they interspersed their discourses (as indeed was the invariable custom throughout the whole middle ages) with stories of all kinds. In Raulin, the gravest of the three, occurs the famous history of the church bells, which reappears in Rabelais, _a propos_ of the marriage of Panurge. FOOTNOTES: [153] Villon sut le premier, dans ces siecles grossiers, Debrouiller l'art confus de nos vieux romanciers. _Art Poet._ Ch. 1. [154] Ed. P. L. Jacob. Paris, 1854. Villon's life has been the subject of numerous elaborate investigations, the latest and best of which is that of A. Longnon. Paris, 1877. Dr. Bijvanck, a Dutch scholar, has dealt since with the MSS. [155] One of these anecdotes makes him patronised by Edward the _Fifth_ of England. But the very terms of it are unsuitable to that king. [156] The reader may be reminded that the _Testament_ was a recognised mediaeval style. It was satirical and allegorical, the legacies which it gave being mostly indicative of the legatee's weaknesses or personal peculiarities. [157] Ed. Chantelauze. Paris, 1881. Also usefully in Michaud et Poujoulat. [158] Ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove. 2 vols. Brussels, 1867-8. [159] Ed. Hericault. 2 vols. Paris, 1857. [160] Edited in part by J. Quicherat. Paris, 1856. [161] Martial d'Auvergne had the exceptional good luck to be reprinted in the 18th century (_Vigilles_ 1724, _Arrets_ 1731), but he has not recently found an editor, though an edition of the _Amant rendu Cordelier_ has been for some time due from the Societe des Anciens Textes. The notice by M. de Montaiglon (the promised editor of the edition just mentioned) in Crepet's _Poetes Francais_, i. 427, has been chiefly used here for facts. [162] Ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, as previously cited. For the remainder of the poets reviewed in this paragraph, few of whom have found modern editors, see Crepet, _Poetes Francais_, vol. i. [163] iii. 21. [164] Paris, 1876. CHAPTER II. MAROT AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. [Sidenote: Hybrid School of Poetry.] The beginnings of the Renaissance in France manifest, as we should expect, a mixture of the characteristics of the later middle ages and of the new learning. In those times the influence of reforms of any kind filtered slowly through the dense crust of custom which covered the national life of each people, and there is nothing surprising in the fact that while Italy felt the full influence of the influx of classical culture in the fifteenth century, that influence should be only partially manifest in France during the first quarter of the sixteenth, while it was not until the century was more than half over that it showed itself in England. The complete manifestation of the combined tendencies of mediaeval and neo-pagan thought was only displayed in Shakespeare, but by that time, as is the wont of all such things, it had already manifested itself partially, though in each part more fully and characteristically, elsewhere. It is in the literature of France that we find the most complete exposition of these partial developments. Marot, Ronsard, Rabelais, Calvin, Garnier, Montaigne, will not altogether make up a Shakespeare, yet of the various ingredients which go to make up the greatest of literary productions each of them had shown, before Shakespeare began to write, some complete and remarkable embodiment. It is this fact which gives the French literature of the sixteenth century its especial interest. Italy had almost ceased to be animated by the genius of the middle ages before her literature became in any way perfect in form, and the survival of the classical spirit was so strong there that mediaeval influence was never very potent in the moulding of the national letters. England had lost the mediaeval differentia, owing to religious and political causes, before the Renaissance made its way to her shores. But in France the two currents met, though the earlier had lost most of its force, and, according to the time-honoured parallel, flowed on long together before they coalesced. In the following chapters we shall trace the history of this process, and here we shall trace the first stage of it in reference to French poetry. In the period of which Marot is the representative name, the earlier force was still dominant in externals; in that of which Ronsard is the exponent, the Greek and Latin element shows itself as, for the moment, all-powerful. [Sidenote: Jean le Maire.] [Sidenote: Jehan du Pontalais.] Between the _rhetoriqueurs_ proper, the Chastellains and the Cretins and the Molinets on the one hand, and Marot and his contemporaries and disciples on the other, a school of poets, considerable at least in numbers, intervened. The chief of these was Jean le Maire des Belges[165]. He was the nephew of Molinet, and his birth at Belges or Bavia in Hainault, as well as his literary ancestry and predilections, inclined him to the Burgundian, or, as it was now, the Austrian side. But the strong national feeling which was now beginning to distinguish French-speaking men threw him on the side of the King of Paris, and he was chiefly occupied in his serious literary work on tasks which were wholly French. His _Illustrations des Gaules_ is his principal prose work, and in this he displays a remarkable faculty of writing prose at once picturesque and correct. The titles of his other works (_Temple d'Honneur et de Vertu_, etc.) still recall the fifteenth century, and the Latinising tradition of Chartier appears strong in him. But at the same time he Latinises with a due regard to the genius of the language, and his work, pedantic and conceited as it frequently is, stands in singular contrast to the work of some of his models. Something not dissimilar, though in this case the _rhetoriqueur_ influence is less apparent, may be said of Pierre Gringore, whose true title to a place in a history of French literature is, however, derived from his dramatic work, and who will accordingly be mentioned later. Nor had the tradition of Villon, overlaid though it was by the abundance and popularity of formal and allegorising poetry, died out in France. At least two remarkable figures, Jehan du Pontalais and Roger de Collerye, represent it in the first quarter of the century. The former indeed[166] owes his place here rather to a theory than to certain information; for if M. d'Hericault's notion that Jehan du Pontalais is the author of a work entitled _Contreditz du Songecreux_ be without foundation, Jehan falls back into the number of half mythical Bohemians, bilkers of tavern bills and successful out-witters of the officers of justice, who possess a shadowy personality in the literary history of France. _Les Contreditz du Songecreux_ ranks among the most remarkable examples of the liberty which was accorded to the press under the reign of Louis XII., a king who inherited some affection for literature from his father, Charles d'Orleans, and a keen perception of the importance of literary co-operation in political work from his ancestor, Philippe le Bel, and his cousin Louis XI. In precision and strikingness of expression Jehan recalls Villon; in the boldness of his satire on the great and the bitterness of his attacks on the character of women he recalls Antoine de la Salle and Coquillart. A trait illustrating the former power may be found in the line descriptive of the hen-pecked man's condition-- Tous ses cinq sens lui fault retraire. while his attacks on the nobility are almost up to the level of Burns-- Noblesse enrichie Richesse ennoblie Tiennent leurs estatz, Qui n'a noble vie Je vous certifie Noble n'est pas. [Sidenote: Roger de Collerye.] [Sidenote: Minor Predecessors of Marot.] Roger de Collerye[167] was a Burgundian, living at the famous and vinous town of Auxerre, and he has celebrated his loves, his distress, his amiable tendency to conviviality, in many rondeaux and other poems, sometimes attaining a very high level of excellence. 'Je suis Bon-temps, vous le voyez' is the second line of one of his irregular ballades, and the nickname expresses his general attitude well enough. Mediaeval legacies of allegory, however, supply him with more unpleasant personages, Faute d'Argent and Plate-Bourse, for his song, and his mistress, Gilleberte de Beaurepaire, appears to have been anything but continuously kind. Collerye has less perhaps of the _rhetoriqueur_ flavour than any poet of this time before Marot, and his verse is very frequently remarkable for directness and grace of diction. But like most verse of the kind it frequently drops into a conventionality less wearisome but not much less definite than that of the mere allegorisers. Jehan Bouchet[168], a lawyer of Poitiers (not to be confounded with Guillaume Bouchet, author of the _Serees_), imitated the _rhetoriqueurs_ for the most part in form, and surpassed them in length, excelling indeed in this respect even the long-winded and long-lived poets of the close of the fourteenth century. Bouchet is said to have composed a hundred thousand verses, and even M. d'Hericault avers that he read two-thirds of the number without discovering more than six quotable lines. Such works of Bouchet as we have examined fully confirm the statement. Still, he was an authority in his way, and had something of a reputation. His fanciful _nom de plume_ 'Le Traverseur des Voies Perilleuses' is the most picturesque thing he produced, and is not uncharacteristic of the later middle age tradition. Rabelais himself, who was a fair critic of poetry when his friends were not concerned, but who was no poet, and was even strikingly deficient in some of the characteristics of the poet, admired and emulated Bouchet in heavy verse; and a numerously attended school, hardly any of the pupils being worth individual mention, gathered round the lawyer. Charles de Bordigne is only remarkable for having, in his _Legende de Pierre Faifeu_, united the _rhetoriqueur_ style with a kind of Villonesque or rather pseudo-Villonesque subject. The title of the chief poems of Symphorien Champier, _Le Nef des Dames Amoureuses_, sufficiently indicates his style. But Champier, though by no means a good poet, was a useful and studious man of letters, and did much to form the literary _cenacle_ which gathered at Lyons in the second quarter of the century, and which, both in original composition, in translations of the classics, and in scholarly publication of work both ancient and modern, rendered invaluable service to literature. Gratien du Pont[169] continued the now very stale mediaeval calumnies on women in his _Controverses des Sexes Masculin et Feminin_. Eloy d'Amerval, a Picard priest, also fell into mediaeval lines in his _Livre de la Deablerie_, in which the personages of Lucifer and Satan are made the mouthpieces of much social satire.