A Short History of French Literature
satire of the kind had hitherto flown so high, or with so well-organised
a flight. The seven speeches, which form the bulk of the book, display
moreover a remarkable variety and a still more remarkable combination of
excellences. The first six--those of Mayenne, the legate, Pelve, the
bishop of Lyons, Rose, and Rieux, none of which is long--are, without
exception, caricatures, and of that peculiar order of caricature in
which the victim is made, without a glaring violation of probability, to
render himself vile and ridiculous, and to give utterance to the satire
and invective which the author desires to pour upon him. Butler (who
beyond all doubt had the _Satyre Menippee_ in his mind when he projected
his own immortal travesty of the Puritan party) is the only writer who
has ever come near to its authors in this particular department of
satire. Treated as they were by different hands, there is a curiously
pleasing variety of style in the portraits. Mayenne uses a mixture of
aristocratic and somewhat haughty frankness with garrulous digression.
The two cardinals indulge in an astounding macaronic jargon, the one of
Italian mingled with Latin, the other of Latin mingled with French. The
bishop of Lyons, and Rose the rector, preach sermons, after the fashion
of the time, thickly larded with quotations, stories, and so forth.
Rieux (he was a noted bandit) expresses with soldierly frankness his
extreme surprise that he should have become a gentleman and the
representative of the nobility, and mildly reproaches Mayenne and the
League for not having given _carte-blanche_ to himself and his likes to
finish off the _Politiques_ bag-and-baggage. But in the last harangue,
that of the representative of the _Tiers-Etat_, Claude d'Aubray, which
is, as has been said, the work of Pithou, and which occupies something
like half the book, the tone is entirely altered. In this remarkable
discourse the whole political situation is treated seriously, and with a
mixture of practical vigour and literary skill of which there had hardly
been any precedent instance. D'Aubray denounces the condition of Paris
first, and the condition of the kingdom afterwards. The foreign
garrisons, the sufferings of private persons by the war, the deprivation
or suspension of privileges, are all commented upon. A remarkable
historical sketch of the religious wars follows, and then turn by turn
the speaker attacks those who have spoken before him, and exposes their
conduct. A vigorous sketch of 'Le Roy que nous voulons et que nous
aurons,' leads up to the announcement that this king is no other than
'Notre vray Roy legitime, naturel et souverain, Seigneur Henry de
Bourbon, cy-devant Roy de Navarre.' After this discomposing harangue the
assembly breaks up in some confusion.
The _Satyre Menippee_ had an immense effect, and may, perhaps, be justly
described as the first example, in modern politics, of a literary work
the effect of which was really great and lasting. It is not surprising
that such should have been its fortune. For it is a remarkably happy
mixture of the older style of _gaulois_ jocularity (in which
exaggeration, personal attack, insinuations of a more or less scandalous
character and the like, furnished the attraction) and the newer style of
chastened and comparatively polished prose. The greater part of the
first six speeches are of a more antique cast than Montaigne; and though
the speech of D'Aubray exhibits a more elaborate and less familiar
style, it too is definitely plain and popular in manner. Although there
are the allusions usual at the time to classical subjects, the Pleiade
pedantry, with which at least two of the contributors, Passerat and
Rapin, were sufficiently imbued, is conspicuously absent. Rabelais is
frequently alluded to; and when the style of the book and the obvious
intention of appealing to the general, which it exhibits, are
considered, no better testimony to the popularity of _Gargantua_ and
_Pantagruel_ could be produced. The descriptions, too, have a
Rabelaisian minuteness and richness about them; and in the burlesque
parts the influence of that master is equally perceptible. But the
strictly practical point of view is always maintained; and the
temptation, always a strong one with French writers of the middle age
and Renaissance, to lose sight of this in endless developments of mere
amusing buffoonery, is constantly resisted. There is certainly less
exaggeration in the _Menippee_ than in _Hudibras_, though the personal
weaknesses of the innumerable individual persons satirised contribute
more to the general effect than they do in Butler's great satire. The
distinguishing trait of the _Satyre Menippee_, next to those already
mentioned, is the constant rain of slight ironical touches contributing
to the general effect. Thus the arms of the processioning Leaguers are,
'le tout rouille par Humilite Catholique;' the League scholastics and
preachers 'forment tous leurs arguments in _ferio_.' The deputies'
benches are covered with cloth, 'parsemees de croisettes de Lorraine et
de larmes miparties de vair et de faux argent.' These sure and rapid
touches distinguish the book strongly from nearly all mediaeval satire,
in which the satirists are wont, whenever they make a point, to dwell on
it, and expound it, and illustrate it, and make the most of it, until it
loses almost all its piquancy. Very different from this over-elaboration
is the confident irony of the _Menippee_, which trusts to the
intelligence of the reader for understanding and emphasis. 'Vous
prevoyez bien,' says Mayenne, 'les dangers et inconveniens de la paix
qui met ordre a tout, et rend le droit a qui il appartient.' Hardly even
Antoine de la Salle, and certainly no other among the authors of the
preceding centuries, would have ventured to leave this, obvious as it
seems now-a-days, to reach the reader by itself.
[Sidenote: Regnier.]
A similar but a still more remarkable, because an individually complete,
example of the combination of Gallican tradition with classical study
was soon afterwards shown by Mathurin Regnier[223]. Regnier was born at
Chartres on the 21st of December, 1573, his father being Jacques
Regnier, a citizen of position; his mother was Simonne Desportes, sister
of the poet. Jacques Regnier desired for his son the ecclesiastical, but
not the poetical, eminence of his brother-in-law, and Mathurin was
tonsured at nine years old. The boy, however, wished to follow his
uncle's steps in the other direction, and early began to write. It is
said that he wrote lampoons on the inhabitants of his native town, and,
repeating them to the frequenters of a tennis-court which his father had
built, got himself thus into trouble. His father's threats and
punishments, however, had no more effect than is usual in such cases,
and Regnier soon, but at a date not exactly known, betook himself to his
uncle at Paris. By Desportes, who was in favour with many high
personages, he was recommended to the Cardinal de Joyeuse, and took part
in that prelate's embassy to Rome in 1593. Joyeuse, however, did nothing
for him, and in 1601 he again went to Rome in the suite of Philippe de
Bethune. He returned before long, and, in 1604, a canonry, to the
reversion of which he had been presented long before, fell in. His first
collection of satires appeared in 1608. Five years afterwards, in 1613,
on the 22nd of October, he died at Rouen, having not quite completed his
fortieth year. His way of life had unfortunately been by no means
regular, and his early death is said to have been directly caused by his
excesses.
In this short sketch almost everything that is known of Regnier, except
a few anecdotes, has been included, and the total is, it will be seen,
exceedingly meagre. Nor is his work abundant even for a man who died
comparatively young. Sixteen satires, three epistles, five elegies, and
a few miscellaneous pieces, make it up, and probably the total does not
exceed seven or eight thousand lines. The relative excellence of this
work is however exceedingly high. Regnier is almost the only French poet
before the so-called classical period who has continuously maintained
his reputation, and who has only been decried by a few eccentric or
incompetent critics. He was an ardent defender of the Ronsardising
tradition, yet Malherbe, whom he did not hesitate to attack, thought and
spoke highly of him. In the next age Boileau allotted to him a mixture
of praise and blame which is not too apposite, but in which the praise
far exceeds the blame, and elsewhere declared him to be the French
writer, before Moliere, who best knew human nature. The approval of
Boileau secured that of the eighteenth century, while Regnier's defence
of the Pleiade propitiated the first Romantics. Thus buttressed on
either side, he has had nothing to fear from literary revolutions. Nor
will any judgment which looks rather at merit than authority arrive at
an unfavourable conclusion respecting him. His satires are not indeed
absolutely the first of their kind in French. Vauquelin de la Fresnaye,
Jean de la Taille, and above all, D'Aubigne, had preceded him. But in
breadth as well as, except in the case of D'Aubigne, in force, and above
all in even excellence and technical merit, he far surpassed those who
in a manner had shown him the way. His satire is exclusively social, and
thus it escapes one of the chief drawbacks of political satire, that of
dealing with matters of more or less ephemeral existence and interest.
He has indeed borrowed considerably from the ancients, but he has
almost always made his borrowings his own, and he has in some cases
improved on his originals. He has softened the exaggerated air of moral
indignation which his English contemporaries, Hall and Marston, borrowed
from Juvenal, and which sits so awkwardly on them and on many other
satirists. He has avoided such still more awkward followings as that
which made Pope upset all English literary history in order to echo
Horace's remarks about Rome and Greece. Sometimes he has fallen into the
besetting sin of his countrymen, the tendency to represent mere types or
even abstractions instead of lifelike individuals embodying the type,
but he has more often avoided it. His descriptive passages are of
extraordinary vigour and accuracy of touch, and his occasional strokes
are worthy of almost any satiric or didactic poet. He is perhaps
weakest, like all poets with the signal exception of Dryden, when he is
panegyrical. Yet his first satire--in the order of arrangement not of
writing--addressed to the King, Henri IV., has much merit. The second,
on poets, has more, and abounds in vigorous strokes, such as that of the
courtier bard who
Meditant un sonnet, medite un eveche;
and as the couplet which concludes a lively sketch of his diplomatic
experiences--
Mais instruit par le temps a la fin j'ai connu
Que la fidelite n'est pas grand revenu.
This poem, which contains some humorous descriptions of the poverty of
poets, ends with an eloquent panegyric on Ronsard. The next, on 'La Vie
de la Cour,' attacks a very favourite subject of the age, and winds up
with an extremely well-told version of the fable of the beast of prey
and the mule whose name is written on its hoof. The fourth returns to
the subject of the poverty of poets. The fifth argues at some length,
and in a spirit not very far removed from that of Montaigne, the thesis
that 'Le gout particulier decide de tout.' It contains some of Regnier's
finest passages. A subject somewhat similar in kind, 'L'honneur ennemi
de la vie,' gives further occasion, in the sixth, for the display of
the moralising spirit of the age, which, in Regnier, takes the form of
a kind of epicurean pococurantism mingled with occasional bursts of