A Short History of French Literature
attention too much upon poetry; prose, the less exquisite but the more
useful instrument, had been comparatively neglected. Almost all styles
had been tried in it, but no general style nor the conditions of any had
been elaborated. In drama much remained to be done. The model was there
in the rough, but the workmen had been unskilful, and fifty years of
practice on the plan of Jodelle had not yet resulted in the composition
of one really dramatic play. In short, though the Pleiade movement had
begun by being nothing if not critical, it had not kept up the habit of
self-criticism. The application of this criticism was what was left for
the seventeenth century to supply, and at the same time the elaboration
of a complete and workman-like prose style. We shall see how early and
how eagerly this task was accepted, and how thoroughly it was carried
out; so thoroughly, that the seventeenth century is the age of perfect
French prose. But what was gained in prose was lost in poetry, and,
putting the dramatists aside, the drop in this respect from the
sixteenth to the seventeenth century is immense. The sixteenth is,
putting our own days out of question, the palmy time of poetry in
France. The urbanity of Marot, the stately grace of Ronsard and his
followers, the majesty of Du Bartas, the fire of D'Aubigne, the nervous
and yet effortless strength of Regnier, have never been surpassed, and
until the last half century they have rarely been equalled. If to this
be added the more irregular and unequal, but hardly inferior merits of
the best sixteenth-century prose, the inexhaustible humour of Rabelais,
the simplicity and varied colour of the great memoir-writers, the subtle
eloquence of Montaigne, it may perhaps seem that the period can contest
the primacy with any other. The dispute between it and its successor is,
however, only an instance of one which recurs again and again in
literature, and which neither need nor should be handled here at
length.
BOOK III.
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
POETS.
[Sidenote: Malherbe.]
The history of the poetry of the seventeenth century in France naturally
and necessarily opens with Malherbe, though he was forty-five years old
at its beginning, and considerably the senior of Regnier, who has been
included among the poets of the Renaissance. Francois de Malherbe[224]
was born at Caen in 1555, being the eldest son of his father, another
Francois de Malherbe, and both on the father's and mother's side of
noble family. He was educated at his native town, in Germany and in
Paris, and when he was twenty-one he entered the army. He married in
1581, and had three children, two of whom died young--a circumstance not
immaterial in connection with his most famous poem, which is a
'Consolation' to a certain M. du Perier, whose daughter Marguerite had
died in her youth. He seems to have written verses tolerably early, but,
exercising on himself the same rigid principles of criticism which he
applied to others, he preserved none or hardly any of them. It was not
till he was past forty that his best-known poems were written, and the
whole amount of his surviving work is not large. During the first
two-thirds of his life he was not rich, for his patrimony was scanty,
and the death of the Grand Prior, Henri d'Angouleme, to whom he had
attached himself, deprived him of the chances of preferment. But in
1605 he was presented to Henri IV.; he soon afterwards received various
places, and for more than twenty years was a court favourite, and in a
way the autocrat of poetry. He died in 1628.
It has been said that Malherbe's poetical work is by no means
voluminous: a small volume of two hundred pages, not very closely or
minutely printed, contains it all; and ingenious persons have calculated
that as a rule he did not write more than four or five verses a month.
Nor even of this carefully produced, and still more carefully weeded,
result is there much that can be read with pleasure by a modern student
of poetry. The verse by which Malherbe is best known,
Et, rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses,
is worth all the rest of his work, and it can hardly be said to be more
than a very graceful and touching conceit. But Malherbe's position in
the history of French poetry is a very important one. He deliberately
assumed the functions of a reformer of literature; and whatever may be
thought of the result of his reforms, their durability and the almost
entire acquiescence with which they were received prove that there must
have been something in them remarkably germane to the spirit and taste
and genius of the nation. His first attempt was the overthrow of the
Pleiade. He ridiculed their phraseology, frowned on their metres, and,
being himself destitute of the romantic inspiration which had animated
them, set himself to reduce poetry to carefully-worded metrical prose.
The story is always told of him that he went minutely through a copy of
Ronsard, striking out whatever he disapproved of; and when some one
pointed out the mass of lines that were left, that he drew his pen
(presumably across the title-page, for it is not obvious how else he
could have done it) through the rest at one stroke. The insolent folly
of this is glaring enough, for Malherbe is not worthy as a poet to
unloose the shoe-latchet of Ronsard. But the critic had rightly
appreciated his time. The tendency of the French seventeenth century in
poetry proper was towards the restriction of vocabulary and rhythm, the
avoidance of original and daring metaphor and suggestion, the perfecting
of a few metres (with the Alexandrine at their head) into a delicate
but monotonous harmony, and the rejection of individual licence in
favour of rigid rule. The influence of Boileau came rapidly to second
that of Malherbe, and the result is that not a single poet--the
dramatists are here excluded--of the seventeenth century in France
deserves more than fair second-class rank. La Fontaine, indeed, was a
writer of the greatest genius, but, though the form which his work takes
is metrical, the highest merits of poetry proper are absent. La
Fontaine, too, was himself, though an admirer of Malherbe, a rebel to
the Malherbe tradition, and delighted both in reading and imitating the
work of the Renaissance and the middle ages. But he is always clear,
precise, and matter-of-fact in the midst of fancy, never attaining to
the peculiar vague suggestiveness which constitutes the charm of poetry
proper.
[Sidenote: The School of Malherbe.]
[Sidenote: Vers de Societe.]
[Sidenote: Voiture.]
It was, however, impossible that so large a change should accomplish
itself at once, and signs of mixed influences appear accordingly in all
the poetical work of the first half of the century. Cardinal du Perron,
Malherbe's introducer at court, was himself a poet of merit, but rather
in the Pleiade style. His _Temple de l'Inconstance_, though rougher in
form, is more poetical in substance than anything, save a very few
pieces, of Malherbe's. Chassignet displayed some of the same
characteristics with a graver and more elegiac spirit. Gombaud is
chiefly remarkable as a sonneteer. The two most famous of the actual
pupils of Malherbe were Maynard and Racan. Maynard was a diplomatist and
lawyer of rank, who was born at Toulouse in 1582, and died in 1646. His
work is miscellaneous, and not very extensive, but it shows that he had
learned the secret of polished versification from Malherbe, and that he
was able to apply it with a good deal of vigour and of variety. Honorat
de Bueil, Marquis de Racan[225], was the author of a pastoral drama,
_Les Bergeries_, founded on, or imitated from, the _Astree_ of D'Urfe,
of an elaborate version of the Psalms, and of a considerable number of
the miscellaneous poems, _stances_, _odes_, _epitres_, etc., which were
fashionable. Racan, though his amiable private character and the
compliance of his principal work with a fashionable folly of the time
have caused him to be somewhat over-estimated traditionally, was a
thoroughly pleasing poet, with a great command of fluent and melodious
verse, a genuine love of nature, and occasionally a power of producing
poetry of a true kind which was shared by few of his contemporaries. The
remarkable author of _Tyr et Sidon_, Jean de Schelandre, produced,
besides his play, a considerable number of miscellaneous poems; but he
was a thorough reactionary, avowed his contempt of Malherbe, and
studied, not without success, Ronsard and his own coreligionist Du
Bartas as models. One of the most original, though at the same time one
of the most unequal poets of the early seventeenth century, was
Theophile de Viaud, often called Theophile[226] simply. He, too, was a
dramatist, but his dramas do not do him much credit, their style being
exaggerated and 'precious.' On the other hand, his miscellaneous poems,
though very unequal, include much work of remarkable beauty. The pieces
entitled 'La Solitude,' 'Sur une Tempete,' and the stanzas beginning
'Quand tu me vois baiser tes bras,' have all the fervour and
picturesqueness of the Pleiade without its occasional blemishes of
pedantic expression. Theophile was a loose liver and an unfortunate man.
He was accused, justly or unjustly, of writing indecent verses, was
imprisoned, and died young. All the poets hitherto mentioned were
writers of miscellaneous verse, who, except in so far as they held to
the elder tradition of Ronsard or the new gospel of Malherbe, can hardly
be said to have belonged to any school. Towards the middle of the
century, however, two well-defined fashions of poetry, with some minor
ones, distinguished themselves. There was, in the first place, the
school of the _coterie_ poets, who devoted themselves to producing _vers
de societe_, either for the ladies, or for the great men of the period.
The chief of this school was beyond all question Voiture[227]. This
admirable writer of prose and verse published absolutely nothing during
his lifetime, though his work was in private the delight of the salons.
That it should be, under the circumstances, somewhat frivolous is almost
unavoidable. But, especially after the cessation of the great flow of
inspiration which had characterised the sixteenth century, it was of no
small importance that the art of perfect expression should be cultivated
in French. Voiture was one of those who contributed most to the
cultivation of this art. His letters are as correct as those of Balzac,
and much less stilted; and of his poetry it is sufficient to say that
nothing more charming of the kind has ever been written than the sonnet
to Uranie, which stirred up a literary war, or the rondeau 'Ma foi c'est
fait de moi.' This last put once more in fashion a beautiful and
thoroughly French form, which it had been one of the worst deeds of the
Pleiade to make unfashionable. The chief rival of Voiture was Benserade,
a much younger man, whose sonnet on Job was held to excel, though it
certainly does not, that to Uranie. Benserade was of higher birth and
larger fortune than Voiture, and long outlived him. He was a great
writer of ballets or masques, and not unfrequently, like Voiture, showed
that a true poet underlay the fantastic disguises he put on. Around
these two are grouped numerous minor poets of different merit.
Boisrobert, the favourite of Richelieu and the companion of Rotrou and
Corneille in that minister's band of 'five poets;' Maleville, who in one
of the sonnet-tournaments of the time, that of the _Belle Matineuse_,
was supposed to have excelled even Voiture; Colletet, whose poems make
him less important in literature than his Lives of the French poets,
which unfortunately perished during the Commune before they had been
fully printed; Gomberville, more famous as a novelist; Sarrasin, an