A Short History of French Literature
stories. The interludes, however, in which the tale-tellers are brought
on the stage in person, are more circumstantial than those of the
Decameron, and the individual characters are much more fully worked out.
Indeed, the mere setting of the book, independently of its seventy-two
stories (for the eighth day is begun), makes a very interesting tale,
exhibiting not merely those characteristics of the time and its society
which have been noticed in connection with the _Contes et Joyeux Devis_,
but, in addition, a certain religiosity in which that time and society
were also by no means deficient, though it existed side by side with
freethinking of a daring kind and with unbridled licentiousness. The
head of the party, Dame Oisille, is the chief representative of this
religious spirit, though all the party are more or less penetrated by
it. The subjects of the tales do not differ much from those of
Boccaccio, though they are, as a rule, occupied with a higher class of
society, and of necessity display a more polished condition of manners.
They are much longer than the anecdotes of the _Contes et Joyeux Devis_,
and generally, though not always, deal with something like a connected
story instead of with mere isolated traits or apophthegms. The best of
them are animated by the same spirit of refined voluptuousness which
animates so much of the writing and art of the time, and which may
indeed be said to be its chief feature. But this spirit has seldom been
presented in a light so attractive as that which it bears in the
_Heptameron_.
[Sidenote: Noel du Fail.]
[Sidenote: G. Bouchet.]
[Sidenote: Cholieres.]
The influence of Rabelais on the one hand, of the _Heptameron_ on the
other, is observable in almost all the work of the same kind which the
second half of the sixteenth century produced. The fantastic buffoonery
and the indiscriminate prodigality of learning, which were to the
outward eye the distinguishing characteristics of _Pantagruel_, found
however more imitators than the poetical sentiment of the _Heptameron_.
The earliest of the successors of Rabelais was Noel du Fail, a gentleman
and magistrate of Britanny, who, five years before the master's death,
produced two little books, _Propos Rustiques_[186] and _Baliverneries_,
which depict rural life and its incidents with a good deal of vividness
and colour. The imitation of Rabelais is very perceptible, and sometimes
a little irritating, but the work on the whole has merit, and abounds in
curious local traits. The _Propos Rustiques_, too, are interesting
because they underwent a singular travesty in the next century, and
appeared under a new and misleading title. Much later, near forty years
afterwards in fact, Du Fail produced the _Contes d'Eutrapel_[187], which
are rather critical and satirical dialogues than tales. There is a good
deal of dry humour in them. The provinciality to be noticed in Du Fail
was still a feature of French literature; and in this particular
department it long continued to be prominent, perhaps owing to the
example of Rabelais, who, wide as is his range, frequently takes
pleasure in mixing up petty local matters with his other materials.
Thus, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Guillaume Bouchet (to
be carefully distinguished from Jean Bouchet, the poet of the early
sixteenth century) wrote a large collection of _Serees_[188] (Soirees),
containing gossip on a great variety of subjects, mingled with details
of Angevin manners; and Tabourot des Accords composed his _Escraignes
Dijonnaises_. A singular book, or rather two singular books[189], _Les
Matinees_ and _Les Apres-Dinees_, were produced by a person, the
Seigneur de Cholieres, of whom little else is known. Cholieres is a bad
writer, and a commonplace if not stupid thinker; but he tells some
quaint stories, and his book shows us the deep hold which the example of
Rabelais had given to the practice of discussing grave subjects in a
light tone.
[Sidenote: Apologie pour Herodote.]
[Sidenote: Moyen de Parvenir.]
There remain two books of sufficient importance to be treated
separately. The first of these is the _Apologie pour Herodote_[190]
(1566) of the scholar Henri Estienne. In the guise of a serious defence
of Herodotus from the charges of untrustworthiness and invention
frequently brought against him Estienne indulges in an elaborate
indictment against his own and recent times, especially against the
Roman Catholic clergy. Much of his book is taken from Rabelais, or from
the _Heptameron_; much from the preachers of the fifteenth century. Its
literary merit has been a good deal exaggerated, and its extreme
desultoriness and absence of coherence make it tedious to read for any
length of time, but it is in a way amusing enough. Much later (1610) the
last--it may almost be said the first--echo of the genuine spirit of
Rabelais was sounded in the _Moyen de Parvenir_[191] of Beroalde de
Verville. This eccentric work is perhaps the most perfect example of a
_fatrasie_ in existence. In the guise of guests at a banquet the author
brings in many celebrated persons of the day and of antiquity, and
makes them talk from pillar to post in the strangest possible fashion.
The licence of language and anecdote which Rabelais had permitted
himself is equalled and exceeded; but many of the tales are told with
consummate art, and, in the midst of the ribaldry and buffoonery,
remarks of no small shrewdness are constantly dropped as if by accident.
There seems to have been at the time something not unlike a serious idea
that the book was made up from unpublished papers of Rabelais himself.
All external considerations make this in the highest degree unlikely,
and the resemblances are obviously those of imitation rather than of
identical authorship. But undoubtedly nothing else of the kind comes so
near to the excellences of _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_.
FOOTNOTES:
[178] Among these may be mentioned the charming story of _Jehan de
Paris_ (ed. Montaiglon, Paris, 1874), which M. de Montaiglon has clearly
proved to be of the end of the fifteenth century. It is a cross between
a Roman d'aventures and a nursery tale, telling how the King of France
as 'John of Paris' outwitted the King of England in the suit for the
hand of the Infanta of Spain.
[179] Ed. Jannet and Moland. 7 vols. (2nd ed.) Paris, 1873. Also ed.
Marty-Laveaux, vols. 1-4. Paris, 1870-81.
[180] The question has been again discussed since the text was written
by M. Paul Lacroix (Paris, 1881), whose facts and arguments fully bear
out the view taken here. The other side is taken, though not very
decidedly, in the fourth volume of M. Marty-Laveaux' edition. The two
contain a tolerably complete survey of the question.
[181] The best general commentary on Rabelais is that of M. J. Fleury. 2
vols. St. Petersburg, 1876-7.
[182] For an excellent account of Folengo, see Symonds' _Renaissance in
Italy_, vol. v. chap. 14.
[183] Ed. Lacour. 2 vols. Paris, 1866.
[184] Ed. Leroux de Lincy. 3 vols. Paris, 1855.
[185] She was born in 1492, and was thus two years older than her
brother Francis I. She married first the Duke d'Alencon, then Henri
d'Albert King of Navarre. Her private character has been most unjustly
attacked. She died in 1549. Marguerite is spoken of by four surnames; de
Valois from her family; d'Angouleme from her father's title; d'Alencon
from her first husband's; and de Navarre from that of her second. In
literature, to distinguish her from her great-niece, the first wife of
Henri IV., Marguerite d'Angouleme is the term most commonly used.
[186] Ed. La Borderie. Paris, 1878. The bibliography of this book is
very curious.
[187] Ed. Hippeau. 2 vols. Paris, 1875.
[188] Ed. Roybet. Paris. In course of publication.
[189] Ed. Tricotel. 2 vols. Paris, 1879.
[190] Ed. Ristelhuber. 2 vols. Paris, 1879.
[191] Ed. Jacob. Paris, 1868. It is possibly not Beroalde's.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PLEIADE.
[Sidenote: Character and Effects of the Pleiade Movement.]
Almost exactly at the middle of the sixteenth century a movement took
place in French literature which has no parallel in literary history,
except the similar movement which took place, also in France, three
centuries later. The movement and its chief promoters are indifferently
known in literature by the name of the _Pleiade_, a term applied by the
classical affectation of the time to the group of seven men[192],
Ronsard, Du Bellay, Belleau, Baif, Daurat, Jodelle, and Pontus de Tyard,
who were most active in promoting it, and who banded themselves together
in a strict league or _coterie_ for the attainment of their purposes.
These purposes were the reduction of the French language and French
literary forms to a state more comparable, as they thought, to that of
the two great classical tongues. They had no intention (though such an
intention has been falsely attributed to them both at the time and
since) of defacing or destroying their mother-tongue. On the contrary,
they were animated by the sincerest and, for the most part, the most
intelligent love for it. But the intense admiration of the severe
beauties of classical literature, which was the dominant literary note
of the Renaissance, translated itself in their active minds into a
determination to make, if it were possible, French itself more able to
emulate the triumphs of Greek and of Latin. This desire, even if it had
borne no fruit, would have honourably distinguished the French
Renaissance from the Italian and German forms of the movement. In Italy
the humanists, for the most part, contented themselves with practice in
the Latin tongue, and in Germany they did so almost wholly. But no
sooner had the literature of antiquity taken root in France than it was
made to bear _novas frondes et non sua poma_ of vernacular literature.
There were some absurdities committed by the Pleiade no doubt, as there
always are in enthusiastic crusades of any kind: but it must never be
forgotten that they had a solid basis of philological truth to go upon.
French, after all, despite a strong Teutonic admixture, was a Latin
tongue, and recurrence to Latin, and to the still more majestic and
fertile language which had had so much to do in shaping the literary
Latin dialect, was natural and germane to its character. In point of
fact, the Pleiade made modern French--made it, we may say, twice over;
for not only did its original work revolutionise the language in a
manner so durable that the reaction of the next century could not wholly
undo it, but it was mainly study of the Pleiade that armed the great
masters of the Romantic movement, the men of 1830, in their revolt
against the cramping rules and impoverished vocabulary of the eighteenth
century. The effect of the change indeed was far too universal for it to
be possible for any Malherbe or any Boileau to overthrow it. The whole
literature of the nation, at a time when it was wonderfully abundant and
vigorous, 'Ronsardised' for nearly fifty years, and such practice at
such a time never fails to leave its mark. The actual details of the
movement cannot better be given than by going through the list of its
chief participators.
[Sidenote: Ronsard.]
[Sidenote: The Defense et Illustration de la Langue Francaise.]
Pierre de Ronsard[193], Prince of Poets[194], was born at La
Poissonniere, in the Vendomois, or, as it was then more often called,
the Gatinais, on the banks of the river Loir, in 1524. He died in his
own country in the year 1585, acknowledged, not merely in France but out
of it, as the leader of living poets. His early life, however, was
rather that of a man of action than of a poet, and one of the most
studious of poets. His father was an old courtier and servant of
Francis I., whose companion in captivity he had been, and Ronsard