A Short History of French Literature
modify. As a Latin scholar Dolet was accurate and sound. His
translations suffer somewhat from the want of a sufficiently definite
and flexible French style, but the striving after such a style is
apparent in them.
Dolet and the other persons just mentioned had translated for the most
part prose into prose. Sanxon, Hugues Salel, Lazare de Baif, Sibilet,
and others, translated verse into verse; but the theory of French
versification had not as yet been sufficiently studied to make the
attempt really profitable. After the innovations of the Pleiade many of
Ronsard's followers bent themselves to the same task with a better
equipment and with more success. Almost all the poets mentioned
elsewhere executed translations of more or less merit.
[Sidenote: Fauchet.]
From a literary point of view, however, the exercises of the century, in
what may be called applied scholarship, were, leaving out of sight for
the moment Amyot's work, and also that, presently to be mentioned, of
Herberay, of greater merit than its pure translations. All the mediaeval
legends, assigning classical or semi-classical origins to the
populations of France, were resumed and amplified by Jean Lemaire de
Belges, in the first years of the century, in his _Illustrations des
Gaules_. Lemaire belongs, as has been said elsewhere, for the most part
to the earlier school of the Rhetoriqueurs, but his literary power was
considerable. The style of research, mingling as it did antiquarian and
historical elements with a strong infusion of what was purely literary,
was illustrated during the period by three persons who deserve special
mention. Claude Fauchet is a name of great importance in French literary
history. So long as mediaeval literature actually flourished we should
expect to find, and we do find, no attention paid to its history and
development. Fauchet was the first person, so far as is known, who
devoted himself to something like a critical examination of its
results; and as many of the materials which he had at his disposal have
perished, his work, with all its drawbacks, is still very valuable. His
_Antiquites Gauloises et Francoises_ are purely historical, but display
a sound spirit of criticism. His _Recueil de l'Origine de la Langue et
Poesie Francoise, Ryme et Romans, plus les Noms et Sommaires des
Oeuvres de CXXVII Poetes Francois vivans avant l'an MCCC_, is a work
for its period (1581) almost unique. Philologically, of course, Fauchet
is far from infallible, as, for instance, in his theory, obviously
indefensible, that French is a cross between the tongues of the Gauls
and the Romans. But his 'Noms et Sommaires' are actually taken from the
study of manuscripts; and, as the works of the Trouveres had, with few
exceptions, long dropped out of sight, except in late fifteenth-century
prose versions, the attempt to make them known was as salutary as it was
bold.
[Sidenote: Pasquier.]
Fauchet unfortunately was not a good writer. This cannot be said of his
principal rival, or rather successor, Etienne Pasquier. Pasquier was
born at Paris in 1529, and early devoted himself to legal studies, which
he pursued all through his life. His most famous performance as an
advocate was his speech for the University of Paris against the Jesuits
in 1565. He afterwards took a vigorous part in the Royalist polemic
against the League. He did not die till 1615. His works, as yet
unpublished in a complete form, are in modern times accessible chiefly
in the selection of M. Leon Feugere[212]. They are voluminous, but by
far the most important (with the exception perhaps of the valuable
_Letters_) is the _Recherches de la France_. This is a somewhat
desultory but very interesting collection of remarks on politics,
history, social changes, and last, not least, literature. To us the most
attractive part of Pasquier's literary history is the account he gives
of the great poetical and literary movement of his own day, the
revolution of the Pleiade, or, as he describes it picturesquely, 'De la
Grande Flotte de Poetes que produisit le Regne du Roi Henry Deuxieme.'
But his notes on the previous history of literature in France, though
necessarily based on somewhat imperfect knowledge, are full of
interest, and not destitute of instruction, such, for instance, as his
chapters on the farce of _Pathelin_, on Provencal poetry, on the formal
measures of the fourteenth century, etc. Pasquier's style is very
delightful. Despite his erudition, and even what may be called his
Ronsardising, he does not aim at the new severity and classicism. But
his manner is exceedingly picturesque, perfectly clear, and
distinguished by a sort of gossiping ingenuousness without any lack of
dignity, the secret of which the sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries in France and England seem to have possessed and carried off
with them.
[Sidenote: Henri Estienne.]
The third of three not dissimilar names is that of Henri Estienne. His
remarkable _Apologie pour Herodote_, like not a few other works of the
same kind, would be less remarkable if it were stripped of borrowed
plumes; but his three treatises on French linguistics, the _Traite de la
Conformite du Francais avec le Grec_, the _Precellence de la Langue
Francaise_, and the _Nouveaux Dialogues de Langage Francais Italianise_,
would give him a considerable place in the history of French literature
if he had written no _Apologie_ and published no _Thesaurus_. All three
works are more or less directed against the Italianising mania of the
day.
[Sidenote: Herberay.]
Here, perhaps, better than elsewhere, may be mentioned the name of one
of the best, if not the best, purely narrative writer of French prose
during the century, Herberay des Essarts. It is to Herberay that the
famous romance of _Amadis of Gaul_ owes most of its fame. According to
the most probable story, the _Amadis_ was originally translated by the
Spaniard Montalvo from a lost Portuguese original of the fourteenth
century. There is absolutely no trace of a French original, the
existence of which has been assumed by French critics. In form the
_Amadis_ is a long prose Roman d'Aventures, distinguished only from its
French companions and predecessors by a somewhat higher strain of
romantic sentiment, and by a greater abundance of giants, dwarfs,
witches, and other condiments, which, even in its most luxuriant day,
the simpler and more academic French taste had known how to do without,
or at most, to apply moderately. It had been continued in the Spanish by
more than one author, and was a very voluminous work when, in 1540,
Herberay undertook to give a French version of it. He, in his turn, had
continuators, but none who equalled his popularity or power. Readers of
the Spanish complain that Herberay has not been a faithful translator,
and, in particular, that he has been guilty of no few anachronisms. He
probably troubled himself very little about exact fidelity or strict
local and temporal colour. But he ranks, in order of time, second only
to Calvin in the production of a clear, elegant, and scholarly French
prose style. The book became immensely popular. It is said that it was
the usual reading book for foreign students of French for a considerable
period, and it was highly thought of by the best critics (such as
Pasquier) of its own and the next generation. It had moreover a great
influence on what came after it. To no single book can be so clearly
traced the heroic romances of the early seventeenth century.
[Sidenote: Palissy.]
It may seem somewhat premature to speak of scientific writers in the
sixteenth century. Yet there are three who usually and deservedly hold a
place in French literary history, and who cannot be conveniently classed
under any other head. There are few better known names of the time than
Bernard Palissy. His famous enamels are no doubt partly the cause of
this, but other artists as great or greater are not nearly so living to
us as this maker of pottery. He was born in or about 1510, at a village,
Chapelle Broin, near Agen, and he died in the Bastile, in 1589, a
prisoner for his Protestantism. Catherine de Medicis had saved him from
the massacre of St. Bartholomew. His long life was occupied mainly in
art and scientific researches, partly also in lecturing on natural
history and physics, and in writing accounts of his investigations,
which are not very voluminous, but which possess an extraordinary
vividness of style and description. His treatise on pottery, the _Art de
la Terre_, contains the passage which has become classical, describing
his desperate efforts to discover the secret of the Italian enamellers.
He also wrote a _Recepte veritable par laquelle tous les hommes de la
France pourront apprendre a multiplier et a augmenter leurs Tresors_,
and, some ten years before his death, a _Discours admirable de la Nature
des Eaux et Fontaines_. His literary work is an almost unique mixture of
research with genuine literary fancy.
[Sidenote: Pare.]
Ambroise Pare, also a famous name, was born about the same time as
Palissy, and died the year after him. A freethinker in his way, he
escaped all temptation to embrace the dangerous heresy which was so
fatal, or, at least, so inconvenient, to many other men of science and
letters, and for the last forty years of his life he was court-surgeon.
His literary work is not inconsiderable in amount, consisting, as might
be expected, chiefly of professional treatises. The most interesting of
his books, however, from a general point of view, and, as it happens,
also by far the best written, is his _Apologie et Voyages_, a kind of
autobiography which contains a large collection of anecdotes and
details, not unimportant for the history of the time, as well as of much
personal interest. The style of this book is often vivid and
picturesque, as well as clear and precise.
[Sidenote: Olivier de Serres.]
It was fitting that agriculture, which is the staple industry of France,
should contribute to her literature at this period--the most genuine and
exuberant period of its history, if not that which produced the most
minutely finished work. The _Theatre de l'Agriculture et du Menage des
Champs_ of Olivier de Serres was published in the last year of the
century. The author was a native of the town of Villeneuve du Berg, in
the present department of Ardeche. He was a Protestant and a great
favourite of Henri IV., to whom he was useful in developing Sully's
plans of internal economy. The _Theatre de l'Agriculture_ was long the
classic book on the subject, and the author has been honoured, in quite
recent times, by statues and other demonstrations. Like most books of
the kind, it is much overlaid with erudition, but this only adds to its
picturesqueness; and, as the author's precepts were founded on a life's
experience of his subject, it certainly cannot be reproached with a want
of practical knowledge and aim.
Not a few other authors would require notice, if space permitted, in
this class of scientific and erudite authors, particularly in the class
of linguistics and literature. Such is Geoffroy Tory, a printer,
grammarian, and prose-writer of merit in the early part of the century,
who anticipated Rabelais in his protest against the indiscriminate
Latinisation of the later Rhetoriqueurs. Not a few other writers, such
as Pelletier and Fontaine, busied themselves during the period with
grammar and prosody; while towards the close of it, the first French
bibliographers of eminence, La Croix du Maine, and Du Verdier, made
their appearance. But the works of all these, as rather ancillary to
literature than actually literary, must here be passed over.
FOOTNOTES:
[209] Cauvin or Chauvin is the more correct form, but the Latinised
Calvinus made Calvin more usual. Calvin's works are voluminous. The