A Short History of French Literature
Descartes, had it not been for the fact, first, that, except on rare
occasions, he chose to wrap himself in the grotesque; and, secondly,
that he came before the innovations of the Pleiade had enriched the
language, and the reaction against the Pleiade had pruned off the
superfluity of richness. Calvin was also exposed to this second
drawback, and had besides a defect of idiosyncrasy in a certain dryness
and heaviness allied with, and partly resulting from, a too close
adherence to Latin forms. Montaigne again, like Rabelais, deliberately
refuses to be bound by the mere requirements of argument, and expatiates
into all sorts of digressions, partaking of the other style, the style
of description. If any one will take the famous passage of Descartes
already referred to (the passage in which he describes how being in
winter quarters, with nothing to do and sitting all day long by a warm
stove, he started the train of thought which ended or began in _Cogito
ergo sum_), and, having a good acquaintance with the three authors just
mentioned, will imagine how the same facts and arguments would have
appeared in their language, he will not find it difficult to realise the
difference. The grotesque by-play and the archaic vocabulary of
_Gargantua_, the garrulous digression and anecdote of the _Essays_, are
not more strikingly absent than the jejune scholasticism which is the
worse side of Calvin's grave and noble style. The author does not think
it necessary to attract his readers with ornament, nor to repel them
with dry and barren marshalling of technicalities. All is simple,
straightforward, admirably clear, but at the same time the prose is
fluent, modulated, harmonious, and possesses, if not the grace of
superadded ornament, those of perfect proportion and unerring choice of
words.
As a prose writer Descartes is generally compared to his contemporary,
and in some sort predecessor, Balzac, and his advantage over the author
of the _Socrate Chretien_ is stated to lie chiefly in the superiority of
his matter. This is not quite the fact. Balzac had, indeed, aimed at the
simplicity and classical perfection of Descartes, but he had not
attained it; he still has much of the quaintness of Montaigne, though it
must be remembered that in comparisons of this kind censure bestowed on
the authors compared is relative not positive, and that Descartes could
no more have written the _Essays_ than Montaigne the _Discours_.
Descartes has almost entirely discarded this quaintness, which sometimes
passed into what is called in French _clinquant_, that is to say, tawdry
and grotesque ornament. It is a peculiarity of his that no single
description of his sentences fully describes their form. They are always
perfectly clear, but they are sometimes very long. Their length,
however, as is the case with some English authors of the same century,
is more apparent than real, the writer having chosen to link by
conjunctions clauses which are independently finished, and which, by
different punctuation even without the omission of the conjunction,
might stand alone. The mistake of saying that Descartes is nothing more
than clear and correct can only arise from an imperfect appreciation of
the language. Let, for instance, his condemnation of scholastic method
in the _Discours_ be taken. Here the matter is interesting enough, and
the comparison with the gorgeous but unphilosophical disdain which Bacon
is wont to pour on the studies of the past is interesting also. But we
are busied with the form. In the first place, any one must be struck
with the modernness of the phrase and style. With insignificant
exceptions there is nothing which would not be most excellent French
to-day. Further examination of the phrase will show that there is much
more in it than mere clearness and correctness, admirably clear and
correct as it is. There is no 'spilth of adjectives,' as it has been
termed. The words are just so many as are necessary for clear, correct,
and elegant expression of the thought. But it is in the selection of
them that the master of style appears. The happy phrase, 'La gentillesse
des fables reveille l'esprit;' the comparison of the reading of the best
authors not merely to a conversation, but a _conversation etudiee_, in
which the speakers 'show only their best thoughts;' the contrast between
eloquence and poetry (too often forgotten by the writer's countrymen);
the ironic touch[275] in the eulogium on philosophy; all these things
show style in its very rarest and highest form--the form which enables
the writer to say the most, and to say it most forcibly with the least
expenditure of the stores of the dictionary. One sees at once that the
requirement of one of the greatest French writers of our time, that the
master of style 'shall be able to express at once any idea that presents
itself requiring expression,' is fully, and more than fully, met by
Descartes; and one sees also how the miracles of expression which
Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Bossuet, were to produce became possible, and
who showed them the way. It may be asserted, without the slightest fear,
that the more thoroughly Descartes is studied with the necessary
apparatus of knowledge, the more firmly will his claims in this
direction be established.
It is not superfluous to call attention to the fact that the _Discours
de la Methode_ appeared within a few months of the _Cid_. Thus it
happened that the first complete models of French classical style in
prose and verse, and two of the most remarkable examples of that style
which have ever been produced, were given to the public as nearly as
possible contemporaneously. This fact, and the brilliant group of
imitators who almost immediately availed themselves of the examples,
prove satisfactorily how powerful were the influences which produced the
change, and over how wide a circle they worked. As the influence of
Descartes was thus no less literary than philosophical, it followed
naturally enough that his school (which soon included almost all the men
of intellectual eminence in France) preserved literary as well as
philosophical traditions. This school, so far as it concerns French
literature, may be said to have produced two remarkable individuals and
one remarkable group. The group was the school of Port Royal; the
individuals were Malebranche and Bayle.
[Sidenote: Port Royal.]
We are not here concerned with the religious fortunes of the community
of Port Royal[276]. It is sufficient to say that it was originally a
nunnery at no great distance from Versailles, that it underwent a great
religious revival under the influence of St. Francis de Sales and Mere
Angelique Arnauld, and that, chiefly owing to the inspiration of the
Abbe de St. Cyran, there was engrafted on it a community of _Solitaires_
of the other sex, who busied themselves in study, in religious
exercises, in manual labour, and in the education of youth. The society
was early imbued with Jansenist principles, which brought it into
violent conflict with the Jesuits, and eventually led to its persecution
and destruction. It was also the head-quarters of a somewhat modified
Cartesianism, and this, with its importance as a centre of literary
instruction and its intimate connection with many famous men of letters,
such as Pascal, Nicole, and Racine, gives it a place in the history of
literature. The most remarkable work of an educational kind which
proceeded from it was the famous Port Royal Logic, or 'Art of Thinking,'
which seems to have been a work of collaboration, Arnauld and Nicole
being the chief authors. This, though open to criticism from the point
of view of the logician, had a very great influence in making the
methodical treatment and clear luminous exposition which were
characteristic of the Cartesian school common in French writers. Of the
two authors just mentioned, Arnauld was the greater thinker, Nicole by
far the better writer. He was, in fact, a sort of minor Pascal, his
_Lettres sur les Visionnaires_ corresponding to the _Provinciales_ of
his greater contemporary, while he was the author of _Pensees_, which,
unlike Pascal's, were regularly finished, and which, though much
inferior to them, have something of the same character. The
intellectual activity of Port Royal was very considerable, but most of
it was directed into channels which were not purely literary, owing
partly to incessant controversies brought on by the differences between
the community and the Jesuits, partly to the cultivation of
philosophical subjects. The age was perhaps the most controversial that
Europe has ever seen, and the comparative absence of periodicals (which
were only in their infancy) threw the controversies necessarily into
book form, as letters, pamphlets, or even volumes of considerable size.
But no very large portion of this controversial matter deserves the name
of literature, and much of it was written in Latin. Thus Gassendi, the
upholder of Neo-Epicurean opinions in opposition to Descartes, and
beyond all question the greatest French philosopher of the century after
Descartes and Malebranche, hardly belongs to French literature, though
his Latin works are of great bulk and no small literary merit. The
Gassendian school soon gave birth to a small but influential school of
materialist freethinkers. What may be called the school of orthodox
doubt, which had been represented by Montaigne and Charron, had, as has
been said, a representative in La Mothe le Vayer. But this special kind
of scepticism was already antiquated, if not obsolete, and it was
succeeded, on the one side, by the above-mentioned freethinkers, who
were also to a great extent free livers[277], and whose most remarkable
literary figure was Saint Evremond; on the other, by a school of learned
Pyrrhonists, whose most remarkable representative in every respect was
Pierre Bayle.
[Sidenote: Bayle.]
Bayle was born in the south of France in 1647, and, like almost all the
men of letters of his time, was educated by the Jesuits. He was of a
Protestant family, and was converted by his teachers, his conversion
being however so little of a solid one that he reverted to
Protestantism in less than two years. After this he resided for some
time in Switzerland, studying Cartesianism. In 1675 he was made
Professor of Philosophy at Sedan, a post which he held for six years,
moving thence to Rotterdam. Here he began to write numerous articles and
works in the periodicals, which were slowly becoming fashionable,
especially in Holland. They were mostly critical, and dealt with
scientific, historical, philosophical, and theological subjects. Bayle's
utterances on the latter subject, and especially his pleas for
toleration, brought him into a troublesome controversy with Jurieu, and
in 1693 he was deprived of his professorship, or at least of his right
to lecture. He then devoted himself to the famous Dictionary which is
identified with his name, and which, though by no means the first
encyclopaedia of modern times (for Alsten, Moreri, Hoffmann, and others
had preceded him within the century), was by far the most influential
and most original yet produced. It appeared in 1696, and brought him new
troubles, which were not however of a serious character. He died in
1706.
The scepticism of which Bayle was the exponent was purely critical and
intellectual. He was not in the least an enemy of the moral system of
Christianity, nor even, it would appear, an enemy to Christianity
itself. But his intellect was constitutionally disposed to see the
objections to all things rather than the arguments in their favour, and
to take a pleasure in stating these objections. Thus, though he was
after his religious oscillations nominally an orthodox Protestant, the
tendency of his works was to impugn points held by Protestants and