A Short History of French Literature
_Institution_ was published in convenient shape at Paris in 1859.
[210] Most of Amyot is accessible only in the old editions. A beautiful
edition of the _Daphnis and Chloe_ has been published by L. Glady.
London, 1878.
[211] Dolet's works are not easily to be found except in public
libraries. The standard book on him is that of Mr. R. C. Christie
(London, 1880), one of the best monographs on French literary history to
be found in any language.
[212] 2 vols. Paris, 1849.
CHAPTER VII.
MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME.
[Sidenote: Disenchantment of the late Renaissance.]
A period of enthusiasm passes naturally and almost necessarily into one
of scepticism, and it is in no way surprising that the prominent
literary figure of the second half of the sixteenth century in France
should have taken for his motto rather 'Que sais-je?' than, like
Rabelais, 'Sursum Corda.' The early hopes of the Renaissance had been
curiously disappointed. The Reformation had resulted not merely in cruel
and destructive civil war, but in the formation, in too many cases, of a
Protestantism not less imperious and far more illiberal than the
Catholicism against which it protested. The economic and social effects
of the discovery of the New World had been equally discouraging, and
even the recovery of classical learning had produced a race of pedants
almost as trifling as the last doting defenders of scholasticism. The
evils of the civil state of France, moreover, drove nearly all the best
men into the sect of _Politiques_, or Trimmers, who avowedly regarded
high questions of truth and faith as subordinate to a politic
opportunism. The age had not lost its power of enjoyment of affairs and
of pleasure, but its appetite for higher things was somewhat blunted. In
this state of matters a few persons, of whom Montaigne was incomparably
the most important, philosophised sceptically about life, and a great
many, of whom Brantome is the most typical, took pleasure in describing
the ways and acts of an aristocracy which combined extraordinary luxury
and corruption with great love of wit, singular intellectual ability,
and a keen interest in war and business.
[Sidenote: Montaigne.]
Michel Eyquem, Sieur de Montaigne[213], was born, 'between eleven and
twelve o'clock of the day' (the detail is characteristic), on the 28th
of February, 1533, at the _chateau_ from which he derived his name, and
which he has made illustrious. Montaigne is situated in the old province
of Perigord, or, according to modern nomenclature, in the department of
Dordogne and the arrondissement of Bergerac. It is at no great distance
from Bordeaux. The family was long believed from a phrase of Montaigne's
own to have been of English extraction, introduced during the long
tenure of Aquitaine by our sovereigns. But recent and industrious
researches have shown that it may with greater probability have been of
local origin and yeoman _status_. Pierre Eyquem, the father, had filled
many important municipal offices at Bordeaux. Michel was his third son
among nine children, but by the death of his elder brothers he inherited
the family estate. He was educated early, and after the manner of a time
when education was a subject on which almost all men of independent
thought rode hobbies. Latin he learnt by conversation at a very early
age, Greek as a kind of amusement. At the mature age of six he was
placed at the College de Guyenne in Bordeaux, not the least famous of
the famous schools of the time, for there it was that Buchanan, Muretus,
and Guerente, by the Latin plays which they wrote for their scholars to
act, introduced the Senecan drama into France and showed the way to the
French tragedy of the Pleiade. Seven years of study completed
Montaigne's school education at the age of thirteen, when nowadays boys
quit their preparatory cradles. He was set to work at law, but little
positive is known of him for many years. In 1554, being then twenty-one,
he was made counsellor in the Bordeaux _Parlement_, and in 1566 he
married Francoise de la Chassaigne, daughter of one of his colleagues.
Except casual references in the _Essays_, which are seldom precise, all
we know of him during these years is his friendship with Etienne de la
Boetie. He almost certainly served one or more campaigns; but the most
positive thing that can be said of his middle life is that, according to
an existing inscription of his own, he finally retired, in 1571, on his
thirty-eighth birthday, to the _chateau_ which had become his by his
father's death two years previously. He had already translated the
_Theologia Naturalis_ of Raymond de Sebonde. In the year of his
retirement he edited the works of La Boetie. But he now began a much
more important task. The first two books of the _Essais_ appeared in
1580; and immediately afterwards Montaigne, who suffered from severe
internal disorders, undertook a long journey into Italy, Switzerland,
and Germany, which occupied nearly a year and a-half. While sojourning
at the baths of Lucca, he received the news of his appointment as mayor
of Bordeaux, and hastened home. In 1588 he published the third Book of
the _Essays_, and had troubles with the Leaguers in Paris. Four years
afterwards, on the 13th September, 1592, he died of quinsy. Although
Montaigne's municipal and legal appointments at Bordeaux are all that we
know him to have enjoyed, he is styled 'gentleman in ordinary to the
king,' and letters extant from and to Charles IX., Henri III., and Henri
IV., show him to have enjoyed a considerable social as well as literary
position. He was a knight of the Order of St. Michael. By his wife he
had several children, but all died young, except one daughter, who
survived him and left offspring. His adopted daughter, however,
Mademoiselle de Gournay, a celebrated character of the next age, and the
first editor of his complete works after his death, is better known.
A complete abstract of Montaigne's work cannot be here attempted, and
indeed no such thing is possible, because the work itself is absolutely
destitute of general plan and exhibits no unity but a unity of spirit
and treatment. Whether Montaigne himself invented the famous title
_Essays_ or not, is a matter of the very smallest importance. It is
certain that he was the first to give the word its modern meaning,
though he dealt with his subjects in a spirit of audacious
desultoriness, which many of his successors have endeavoured to imitate,
but which few have imitated successfully. His nominal subject is, as a
rule, merely a starting-point, or at the most a text. He allows himself
to be diverted from it by any game which crosses his path, and diverges
as readily from his new direction. Abundant citation from the classics
is one of his chief characteristics; but the two main points which
differentiate him are, first, the audacious egotism and frankness with
which he discourses of his private affairs and exhibits himself in
undress; secondly, the flavour of subtle scepticism which he diffuses
over his whole work. Both these are susceptible of a good deal of
misconstruction, and both no doubt have been a good deal misconstrued.
His egotism, like most egotism, is a compound of frankness and
affectation, and its sincerity is not, as an attraction, equal to the
easy garrulity for which it affords an occasion of display. His
scepticism, however, is altogether _sui generis_. It is not exuberant,
like that of Rabelais, nor sneering, like that of Voltaire, nor
despairing, like that of Pascal, nor merely inquisitive and scholarly,
like that of Bayle. There is no reason for disbelieving Montaigne's
sincere and conscious orthodoxy in the ecclesiastical sense. But his own
temperament, assisted no doubt by the political and ecclesiastical
circumstances already described, by indifferent bodily health, and by
the period, if not exactly of excess, at any rate of free living, in his
younger days, to which he so constantly alludes, had produced in him a
general feeling that the _pros_ and _cons_ of different opinions and
actions balance each other more evenly than is generally thought. He
looks on life with a kind of ironical enjoyment, and the three books of
his _Essays_ might be described as a vast gallery of pictures
illustrating the results of his contemplations.
There are some considerable differences between the earlier and later
_Essays_, one of the most obvious of which concerns the point of length.
Thus the first book consists of fifty-seven essays, occupying rather
more than 500 pages[214], or an average of less than ten pages each. The
second (exclusive of the long 'Apologie de Raymond Sebonde,' which
occupies 300 pages by itself) contains thirty-six essays, of nearly 500
pages in all, or about twelve pages each. These books were published
together, and may be presumed to have been written more or less at the
same time. But the third and last book, though it contains full 550
pages, has only thirteen essays, which thus average more than forty
pages each, though their length is very unequal. Montaigne had, no
doubt, found that his pillar-to-post method of discourse was
sufficiently attractive to make fresh starting-points and definite
titles unnecessary; thus in the third book, his subjects (at least his
professed subjects) are sometimes much wider, and sometimes much more
whimsical, than in the two first. Oedipus himself could hardly divine
the actual subject of the essay 'Sur des Vers de Virgile,' or guess that
a paper 'Sur les Coches' would in reality busy itself with the question
what virtues are most proper to a sovereign. On the other hand, such
large titles as 'De la Vanite de l'Experience,' etc. give room for
almost any and every excursion. All these are in the last book; the
shorter essays of the two first for the most part deal more definitely
with their nominal subjects, which are most frequently moral brocards:
such as 'Le Profit de l'Un est Dommage de l'Autre,' 'Par Divers Moyens
on arrive a Pareille Fin,' etc.
In a literary history, however, of the scale and plan of this present,
the question of Montaigne's subjects and sentiments, interesting as it
is, must not be allowed to obscure the question of the expression which
he gave to these sentiments. His book is of the greatest importance in
the history of French style, of an importance indeed which has been by
no means invariably recognised by French literary historians themselves.
It must be remembered that he at once attained, and never lost, an
immense popularity. Thus the comparative oblivion which, owing to the
reforms of the early seventeenth century and the brilliant period of
production which followed them, overtook most of the men of the
Renaissance, did not touch Montaigne. He, with Rabelais, remained a well
of undefiled French, which all the artificial filtering of Malherbe and
Boileau could not deprive of its refreshing and fertilising power.
Writing, too, at a period subsequent, instead of anterior to the
innovations of the Pleiade, Montaigne was able to incorporate, and thus
to save, not a few of the neologisms which, valuable as they were, the
purists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries neglected. Many
words which his immediate contemporaries, and still more his successors,
condemned, have made good their footing in the language, owing beyond
all doubt to his influence. His style, too, was valuable for something
else besides its vocabulary. It entered so seldom into the plan of
Rabelais to write in any other than a burlesque tone, that he was rarely
able to display his own incomparable faculty of writing ordinary French,
pure, vigorous, graceful, and flexible at once. The tale-tellers and
memoir-writers of the time matured an excellent narrative style, but one