A Short History of French Literature
The _Institution_ itself is beyond all question the first serious work
of great literary merit, not historical, in the history of French prose.
It is strongly Latinised in form and construction, as might indeed be
expected considering the circumstances of its production. But the point
in which it differs from preceding works in which the classical
influence is prominent, is that the author no longer attempts to give
his classical colour by means of wholesale importations of terms. The
vocabulary, though rich and varied, is still in the main genuine French,
and the Latinism is more observable in occasional constructions and in
the architecture of the clauses than in the mere selection of words.
This clause-architecture was a matter of the last importance, for it was
exactly in this respect that French, like most of the vernacular
tongues, was deficient. The entirely artless and mainly conversational
array of the sentence which, out of verse, had hitherto been common,
served for narrative well enough, but not at all for argument or
discussion. Calvin threw his French clauses into the mould in which his
Latin had been cast, and without unduly stiffening them produced a
regularity of form which was entirely novel. Even when his sentences are
of considerable length, there is clearness and simplicity in them, which
in some languages, English for instance, was not generally reached in
prose till much later. It is remarkable, too, that the besetting sin of
serious French prose, its tendency to the declamatory, is well kept
under by Calvin. Next to the graceful stateliness of his phrase, its
extreme sobriety, not rejecting legitimate ornament, but seldom or never
trespassing into the rhetorical, has to be observed. Considering that
the whole of it was written before the author was seven-and-twenty, it
is perhaps the most remarkable work of its particular kind to be
anywhere found--the merits being those of full maturity and elaborate
preparation rather than of youthful exuberance. The book consists of
four parts; the first on God, the second on the Atonement, or rather on
the Mediatorial Office of Christ, the third on the results of that
Office, the fourth on Church Government. Its end, it need hardly be
said, is double--the establishment in the most rigorous form of the
doctrine of predestination and original sin, and the destruction of the
sacramental and sacerdotal doctrines of the Catholic Church.
[Sidenote: Minor Reformers and Controversialists.]
Despite the fervid interest taken in religious disputation and the
masterly example which Calvin had set both to friends and foes, theology
proper did not contribute very much of value to literature during the
period. Beza wrote chiefly in Latin, his _Histoire des Eglises
Reformees_ being the chief exception. Pierre Viret, a Swiss by birth,
who passed the last twenty years of his life at various towns in the
south of France as a preacher and theological teacher, wrote a
considerable number of treatises, both serious and satirical. The titles
of some of the latter, _L'Alchimie du Purgatoire_, _La Cosmographie
Infernale_, etc., are characteristic of the time. But Viret's literary
merit was not remarkable. This kind of theological pasquinading was in
great favour throughout the period, and authors of very various merit,
such as Marnix de Sainte Aldegonde, Dore, Claude de Saintes, Arthus
Desire, and others, contributed plentifully to it. But the interest of
their work is for the most part historical and antiquarian only. The
title of 'Protestant Rabelais' has been absurdly given to Marnix. It is
only so far deserved that the scurril language and gross images which
with the master were but accessories, were with the pupil the main
point. In the latter part of the century, after the quieting of the
troubles of the League, two more serious disputants arose, each of
considerable literary eminence. These were on the Protestant side,
Philippe de Mornay, better known as Duplessis-Mornay, who distinguished
himself equally as a soldier, a diplomatist, and a man of letters, and
the still more famous Cardinal Du Perron, a converted Calvinist, who was
supposed to be the most expert controversialist of a time which was
nothing if not controversial. The chief theological work of
Duplessis-Mornay was his _Traite de la Verite de la Religion
Chretienne_. The chief written theological work of Du Perron was a
_Traite du Sacrement de l'Euchariste_, in reply to a work on the same
subject by Mornay.
[Sidenote: Preachers of the League.]
Between the controversies of the earlier part of the century and those
of the latter, preaching, if not dogmatic theology, held an important
place because of its political bearing. The pulpit style of the
sixteenth century was for the most part an aggravation of that (already
described) of the fifteenth, the acrimony of sectarian and factious
partisanship leading the preachers to indulge in every kind of verbal
excess. During the League the partisans of that organisation, especially
in Paris, were perpetually excited against Henri III. and his successor
by the most atrocious pulpit diatribes, the chief artists in which were
Boucher, Rose, Launay, Feuardent, and Genebrard. The literary value of
these furious outpourings however is very small. After their cessation a
reaction set in, and for some time before the splendid period of pulpit
eloquence, which lasted from St. Francis de Sales to Massillon, the
general style of French homiletics was dull and laboured.
[Sidenote: Amyot.]
Jacques Amyot[210] was born at Melun in 1513, and belonged to the lowest
class. He was educated as a servitor at the famous College de Navarre,
and took his degree in arts at the age of nineteen. He then held various
tutorships and attracted the notice of Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, the
constant patroness of men of letters, who gave him a Readership at
Bourges. After some years of University teaching in the classics, he
began his series of translations with the _Theagenes and Chariclea_ in
1546. This was three years in advance of Du Bellay's manifesto, and
though not a few translations had already appeared, none had even
approached Amyot's in elegance. As usual at the time his literary
reputation was rewarded by Church preferment and employment in the
diplomatic service. He was also made tutor to Charles IX. and Henri of
Anjou. His elder pupil, when he came to the throne, made him, first,
Grand Almoner of France, and then Bishop of Auxerre, while Henri III.
added the honour of a commandership in the order of the Holy Ghost. For
a time, in the midst of the troubles of the League, Amyot was driven
from his palace, but he returned and died, at the full age of fourscore,
in 1594.
Besides the work of Heliodorus, Amyot translated Diodorus Siculus
(1554), _Daphnis and Chloe_, Plutarch's _Lives_ (1559), and Plutarch's
_Morals_ (1574). It may seem at first sight that his selection of
authors to translate was somewhat peculiar. It was however, either by
accident or design, singularly well suited to the age which he
addressed. The positive merit of Heliodorus, and still more of Longus,
is certainly greater than is usually admitted nowadays. But for that
time they were peculiarly suited (and especially Longus) by their
combination of romantic and adventurous description with graceful
pictures of nature and amatory interludes. Plutarch, on the other hand,
expressed, more than any other author, the practical and moralising
spirit which accompanied this taste for romance. Montaigne confessed
that he could not do without Plutarch, and it may be doubted whether any
other single author of antiquity, after the Ciceronian mania was over,
exercised such an influence as Plutarch, through Amyot, North, and
Shakespeare (a direct succession of channels), upon France and England.
The merit of the translator had not a little to do with the success of
the books. Here is the testimony of the greatest in a literary sense of
Amyot's readers. 'I give,' says Montaigne, 'and I think I am right in
doing so, the palm to Jacques Amyot over all French writers, not only
for the simplicity and purity of his vocabulary, in which he surpasses
all others, nor for his industry in so long a task, nor for the depth of
his learning which has enabled him to expound so happily a writer so
thorny and crabbed. I am above all grateful to him for having selected
and chosen a book so worthy and so suitable as a present to his country.
We dunces were lost had not this book plucked us out of the mire. Thanks
to it, we dare to speak and to write. By it ladies are in a position to
give lessons to schoolmasters. It is our very breviary.' This praise,
which is not exaggerated in itself, and still less when taken as an
expression of the feeling of the time, refers of course to the
'Plutarch,' and in estimating it it is necessary to take account of
Montaigne's especial affection for the author translated. But if we take
in the lighter work, and especially the _Daphnis and Chloe_, Amyot will
stand higher, not lower. His merit is not so much that he has known how
to adjust himself and his style to two very different authors, but that
in rendering both those authors he has written French of a most original
model and of the greatest excellence. The common fault of translation,
the insensible adoption of a foreign idiom--especially difficult to
avoid at a time when no classical standards or models of the tongue used
by the translator exist--is here almost entirely overcome. The style of
Amyot, who had little before him, if Calvin and Rabelais be excepted,
but the clumsy examples of the _rhetoriqueur_ school, is, as Montaigne
justly says, perfectly simple and pure; and so little is it tinged
either with archaism or with classicism that the seventeenth century
itself, unjust as it was for the most part towards its predecessors,
acknowledged its merit.
[Sidenote: Minor Translators.]
[Sidenote: Dolet.]
Although Amyot was by far the most considerable of the French
translators of the sixteenth century, he was not by any means the first.
Claude de Seyssel translated many Greek authors, Pierre Saliat produced
a version of Herodotus, Lefevre d'Etaples was the author of the first
complete French translation of the Bible, and a cluster of learned
writers, some of them remarkable for other work, such as Bonaventure des
Periers, devoted themselves to Plato. Among these latter there is one
who was in many ways a typical representative of the time. Etienne
Dolet[211] was born at Orleans in 1509, lived a stormy life diversified
by many quarrels, literary and theological, did much service to
literature both in Latin and French, and, falling out with the powers
that were, was burnt (having first been, as a matter of grace and in
consequence of a previous recantation, hanged) in the Place Maubert, at
Paris, on his birthday, August 3, 1554. Dolet had written many Latin
speeches and tractates in the Ciceronian style--that of a curious
section of humanists who entertained an exclusive and exaggerated
devotion to Cicero. Then, becoming himself a master-printer, he wrote
several small treatises on French grammar, some poems, a short history
of Francis the First, and finally, a translation of the Platonic or
Pseudo-Platonic _Axiochus_, which was the proximate cause of his death.
He was one of the earliest of the French humanist students to devote
himself to the vernacular, and, though his short and troubled life did
not enable him to perfect his French style, he is very interesting as a
specimen. His friendship with Marot and Rabelais had in each case an
unhappy end. In the latter this was due to a pirated edition of
_Pantagruel_ and _Gargantua_, which reproduced expressions that
Rabelais, in the rising storm of persecution, had been anxious to