A Short History of French Literature

the religious wars, the persecution of the Huguenots, the abuses of the administration, and of contemporary manners, etc. Nothing equal to the best verses of this singular book had yet been seen in France, and not much equal to them has been produced since. The tone of sombre and impressive declamation had been to some extent anticipated by Du Bartas, but chiefly for purposes of description. D'Aubigne turned it to its natural use in invective, and the effect is often extraordinarily fine. Very copious citation would be necessary to show its excellence: but before Victor Hugo there is nothing in French equal to D'Aubigne at his best in point of clangour of sound and impetuosity of rhythm. It is noteworthy that Du Bartas' _Semaine_, with the _Tragiques_ and the tragedies of Garnier, finally established the Alexandrine as the indispensable metre for serious and impassioned poetry in France. Hitherto the decasyllable and the dodecasyllable had been used indiscriminately, and Ronsard's _Franciade_ is written in the former. But after the three poets just mentioned, the Alexandrine became invariable; the decasyllable being left for light and occasional work, as a sort of medium in usage as in bulk between the Alexandrine and the octosyllable. The truth is that, until the improvements of language and style which the Pleiade had introduced, the Alexandrine couplet had not had either suppleness or dignity enough for the work. It was lumbering and disjointed. As soon, however, as the classical turn, inseparable from a specially classical metre, had been given to the language, it at once took its place and has ever since kept it, though in the century succeeding it was deprived of much of its force by arbitrary rules. The lines of Boileau condemning Ronsard[202] have inseparably connected Desportes and Bertaut, and have given them a position in literary history which is as intrinsically inaccurate as it is unduly high. Neither approaches Du Bartas or D'Aubigne in poetical excellence or in adroit carrying out of Ronsardism. But neither was in the least made _retenu_ by Ronsard's failure, and it did not enter the head of themselves or any of their contemporaries, till their last days, that Ronsard had failed. Philippe Desportes[203] was a very unclerical cleric, a successful courtier and diplomatist, a great favourite with the ladies of the court. He was also a poet of little vigour, but of great sweetness, much elegance of style and form, and extraordinary neatness, if not originality, of expression. With Jamyn he was the most prominent of Ronsard's own particular disciples. His poetical works are sharply divided, like those of Herrick and Donne and some other poets, on the one hand, into poems of a very mundane character, collections of sonnets after the Pleiade fashion to real or imaginary heroines, celebrations of the ladies and the _mignons_ of the court of Henri III., imitations of Italian verse, and the like; on the other, into devotional poems, which include some translations of the Psalms of not a little merit. Personally Desportes appears to have been a self-seeker and a sycophant; not without good nature, but covetous, intriguing, corrupt, given to base compliances. He was Du Bellay's _poete courtisan_ in the worst sense of the phrase[204]. But working at leisure and with care, and undistracted by any literary or sentimental enthusiasm, he found means to give to his work a polish and correctness which many of his contemporaries of greater talent did not, or could not, give. In this fact the explanation of Boileau's commendation--for it is no doubt meant, relatively speaking, for commendation--is probably to be found. [Sidenote: Bertaut.] Jean Bertaut was, to use a metaphor frequently employed in literary history, the 'moon' of Desportes. Like him, he is a poet rather elegant than vigorous, rather correct than spirited. Like him, he wrote light verse and devotional poems, and, as in the case of Desportes, the religious poems are--rather contrary to the reader's expectation--the best of the two. His work, however, was even more limited in amount than that of his contemporary. FOOTNOTES: [192] The list is sometimes given rather differently; instead of Jodelle and Pontus de Tyard, Scevole de St. Marthe and Muretus are substituted. But the enumeration in the text is the accepted one. [193] Ed. Blanchemain. 8 vols. Paris, 1857-67. [194] The term usually applied to him by contemporaries. [195] Ed. Marty-Laveaux. 2 vols. Paris, 1866-7. [196] Ed. Gouverneur. 3 vols. Paris, 1866. [197] Not recently re-edited in full. In selection by Becq de Fouquieres. Paris, 1874. [198] Recently edited in 5 vols. by Courbet. Paris, v. d. [199] Ed. Blanchemain. 2 vols. Geneva, 1869. [200] Du Bartas, always unjustly treated in France, probably from a curious tradition of mingled sectarian and literary jealousy, has not been reprinted of late years. The edition used is that of 1610-1611. Paris, 2 vols, folio. [201] Ed. Reaume and de Caussade. Vols. 1-4. Paris, 1873-7. There is another volume to follow. [202] Here are these celebrated lines:-- Ronsard, qui le suivit, par une autre methode Reglant tout, brouilla tout, fit un art a sa mode, Et toutefois longtemps eut un heureux destin. Mais sa muse en Francais parlant Grec et Latin Vit dans l'age suivant, par un retour grotesque, Tomber de ses grands mots le faste pedantesque. Ce poete orgueilleux, trebuche de si haut, Rendit puis retenus Desportes et Bertaut. _Art Poet._, Chant i. [203] Ed. Michiels. Paris, 1858. [204] He was not a courtier for nothing. He held numerous abbacies, and Charles IX. is said to have given him 800 gold pieces, Henri III. 10,000 crowns of silver, in each case for a poetical offering of very small bulk. CHAPTER V. THE THEATRE FROM GRINGORE TO GARNIER. [Sidenote: Gringore.] It so happened that the mediaeval theatre closed, as far as its exclusive possession of the stage is concerned, with one of the most remarkable of all its writers. Pierre Gringore[205], who towards the close of his career preferred the spelling Gringoire, was a Norman by birth. His poetical and dramatic capacity has been considerably exaggerated by the learned but crotchety scholar who was at first charged with the joint editorship of his works in the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne. But, when the hyperboles of M. Charles d'Hericault are reduced to their simplest terms, Gringore remains a remarkable figure. It is to him that we owe the only complete and really noteworthy tetralogy, composed of _cry_, sotie, morality, and farce, which exists to show the final result of the mediaeval play--the _Jeu du Prince des Sots_. To him is also due the most remarkable of the sixteenth-century mysteries, that of _Saint Louis_; and his miscellaneous poems, as yet not fully collected, show us a man of letters possessed of no small faculty for miscellaneous work. Gringore first emerges as a pamphleteer in verse, on the side of the policy of Louis XII. He held the important position of _mere sotte_ in the company of persons who charged themselves with playing the sotie, and Louis perceived the advantages which he might gain by enlisting such a writer on his side. Gringore's early works are allegorical poems of the kind which the increasing admiration of the _Roman de la Rose_, joined to the practice of the Rhetoriqueurs, had made fashionable in France; but they are directly political in tone, and an undercurrent of dramatic intention is always manifest in them. _Les folles Entreprises_ is a very remarkable work. It might be described as a series of monologues of the kind usual and already described, but continuous, and having the independent parts bound to each other by speeches of the author _in propria persona_. The titles of the separate sections--_L'Entreprise des folz Orgueilleux_, _Reflexions de l'Auteur sur la Guerre d'Italie_, _le Blason de Pratique_, _Balade et Supplication a la Vierge Marie_ (_et se peult Interpreter sur la Royne de France_), etc.--explain the plan of this curious book as well as any laboured analysis could do. The author takes what he considers to be the chief grievances in Church and State, and dilates upon them in the manner, half moralising, half allegoric, which was popular. An argument of _Les folles Entreprises_ would, however, require considerable space. It enters into the most recondite theological questions, and of its general tone the heading of the last chapter tells as good a story as anything else can do: 'Comme le tres-chrestien roy et Justice relevent Foy qui estait abattu par Richesse et Papelardise.' Other works of the same semi-dramatic, semi-poetical kind are even more directly political in substance: _Les Entreprises de Venise_; _La Chasse du Cerf des Cerfs_ (Pope Julius), etc. Sometimes, as in _La Coqueluche_, the author becomes a simple chronicler describing incidents of his time. Indeed it would hardly be an exaggeration to describe Gringore's work as the result of a kind of groping after journalism condemned by the circumstances of the time to the most awkward and inappropriate form. In his definitely dramatic work the same practical tendency reappears. The tetralogy is of a directly politico-social kind. The _cry_, a summons in ironical terms to _sots_ of all kinds to come and hear their lesson; the sotie, an audacious satire on the state of things; the morality, in which the very names of the personages--Peuple Francois, Peuple Italique, Divine Pungnicion, etc.--speak for themselves, all show this tendency; and even the _bonne bouche_ at the end, the farce (which is altogether too Rabelaisian in subject for description here), seems to illustrate the motto--a very practical one--'Il faut cultiver son jardin.' Less directly the same purpose can be traced in the _Mystere de Monseigneur Saint Loys_. This is a picture of the ideal patriot king doing judgment and justice, and serving God by his voyages over sea, and his punishments of blasphemers and loose livers at home. [Sidenote: The last Age of the Mediaeval Theatre.] The first two quarters, and especially the first quarter, of the century contributed plentifully to the list of mysteries, moralities, and farces. The dates of the latter are not easy to ascertain, and it is probable that most of them are older than the present period. The taste for very lengthy mysteries and moralities, however, had by no means died out, and some of the mysteries, notably those of Antoine Chevallet, are of considerable merit. To the sixteenth century too belongs what is probably the longest of all moralities, that on _The Just and Unjust Man_, which contains 36,000 lines, besides the _Mundus_, _Caro_, _et Daemonia_, and the _Condamnation de Banquet_ already described. This school was continued, though under some difficulties, until a late period of the century. It had two things in its favour; it was extremely popular, and it lent itself, far more than the stately rival soon to be discussed, to the political and social uses which had long been associated with the stage in the mind of audiences. In Beza's tragedy of _Abraham Sacrifiant_, a kind of union takes place between the two styles. But even the triumph of the Pleiade did not at once abolish the mysteries which were still legal in the provinces, which had a strong hold on the fancy of the populace, and which some men of letters who were themselves much indebted to the new movement, notably Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, upheld with pen as well as with tongue. Thomas Le Coq, a beneficed clerk of Falaise, wrote a really remarkable play, _Cain_, of the purest mystery kind, in 1580; and the troubles of the League brought