A Short History of French Literature
too great exactness of the more brilliant examples in each kind. The one
practice leads to what is called, in Sterne's well-known phrase,
'looking at the stop-watch;' the other, to an endeavour to be like
somebody. It was not till the eighteenth century that these evils were
fully patent; and then, though they were somewhat mitigated in
departments other than the Belles Lettres by the eager spirit of enquiry
and adventure which characterised the time, they are evident enough. The
mischief showed itself in various ways. Besides the two which have been
already indicated, there was a third and subtler form, which has
produced some curious and interesting work, but which is obviously an
indication of decadence. Those who did not resign themselves to the mere
recasting of old material in the old moulds, or to simple following of
the great models, were apt to echo, aloud or silently, La Bruyere's
opening sentence, 'tout est dit,' and to draw from this discouraging
fact the same conclusion that he did--that the only way to innovate was
to vary in cunning fashion the manners of saying. In itself there might
be no great harm in the conclusion, especially if it had led to a revolt
against the narrow limits imposed by current criticism. But it did not,
it only led to an attempt to innovate within those limits, which could
only be done by a kind of new 'preciousness'--an affectation in short.
This affectation showed itself first (though La Bruyere himself is not
quite free from it, enemy of Fontenelle as he was) in Fontenelle, who
was a descendant of the old _precieuse_ school itself, and reached a
climax in the author from whose name it thenceforward took its name of
_Marivaudage_.
Thus the literary produce of the seventeenth century was better than its
tendency. The latter has been sufficiently described; a very few words
will suffice for the former. In the special characteristics of the
genius of French, which may be said to be clearness, polish of form and
expression, and a certain quality which perhaps cannot be so well
expressed by any other word as by alertness, the best work of the
seventeenth century has no rivals. Except in Corneille and Bossuet, it
is not often grand, it is still seldomer passionate, or suggestively
harmonious, or quaintly humorous, or even picturesquely narrative. But
the charm of precision, of elegance, of expressing what is expressed in
the best possible manner, belongs to it in a supreme degree. There are
not many things in literature more absolutely incapable of improvement
in their own style, and as far as they go, than a scene of Moliere, a
_tirade_ of Racine, a maxim of La Rochefoucauld, a letter of Madame de
Sevigne, a character of La Bruyere, a peroration of Massillon, when each
is at his or her best. The reader may in some cases feel that he likes
something else better, but he is incapable of pointing out a blemish. If
he objects, he must object to something extra-literary, to the writer's
conception of human nature, his political views, his range of thought,
his selection of subject. When the one supreme question of criticism
formulated by Victor Hugo, 'l'ouvrage est-il bon ou est-il mauvais?'
(not 'aimez-vous l'ouvrage?' which is the illegitimate question which
nine critics out of ten put to themselves), is set in reference to the
best work of this time, the answer cannot be dubious for one moment in
the case of any one qualified to give an answer at all. It is good, and
in very many cases it could not possibly be better.
FOOTNOTES:
[283] p. 267.
BOOK IV.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
POETS.
[Sidenote: Literary Degeneracy of the Eighteenth Century.]
The literature of the eighteenth century, despite the many great names
which adorn it, and the extraordinary practical influence which it
exercised, is, from the point of view of strict literary criticism,
which busies itself with form rather than matter, a period of decadence.
In all the departments of Belles Lettres a servile imitation of the
models of the great classical period is observable. The language,
according to an inevitable process which the more clearsighted of the
men of Louis the Fourteenth's time, such as Fenelon and La Bruyere,
themselves foresaw and deprecated, became more and more incapable of
expressing deep passion, varied scenery, the intricacies and
eccentricities of character. For a time a few survivors of the older
class and manner, such as Fontenelle, Saint Simon, Massillon, resisted
the tendency of the age more or less successfully. As they one by one
dropped off, the militant energy of the great _philosophe_ movement,
which may be said to coincide with the second and third quarters of the
century, communicated a temporary brilliance to prose. But during the
reign of Louis XVI., the Revolution and the Empire (for in the widest
sense the eighteenth century of literature does not cease till the
Restoration, or even later), the average literary value of what is
written in French is but small, and, with few exceptions, what is
valuable belongs to those who, consciously or unconsciously, were in an
attitude of revolt, and were clearing the way for the men of 1830.
[Sidenote: especially manifest in Poetry.]
Poetry and the drama naturally suffered most from this course of events,
and poetry pure and simple suffered even more than the drama. By the
opening of the eighteenth century epic and lyric in the proper sense had
been rendered nearly impossible by the full and apparently final
adoption of the conception of poetry recommended by Malherbe, and
finally rendered orthodox by Boileau. The impossibility was not
recognised, and France, in the opinion of her own critics, at last got
her epic poem in the _Henriade_, and her perfect lyrists in Rousseau and
Lebrun. But posterity has not ratified these judgments. Fortunately,
however, the men of the eighteenth century had in La Fontaine a model
for lighter work which their principles permitted them to follow, and
the irresistible attractions of the song left song-writers tolerably
free from the fatal restrictions of dignified poetry. Once, towards the
close of the century, a poet of exceptional genius, Andre Chenier,
showed what he might have done under happier circumstances. But for the
most part the history of poetry during this time in France is the
history of verse almost uninspired by the poetic spirit, and destitute
even of the choicer graces of poetic form.
[Sidenote: J. B. Rousseau.]
For convenience' sake it will be well to separate the graver and the
lighter poets, and to treat each in order, with the proviso that in most
cases those mentioned in the first division have some claim to figure in
the second also, for few poets of the time were wholly serious. The
first poet who is distinctively of the eighteenth century, and not the
least remarkable, was Jean Baptiste Rousseau[284] (1669-1741).
Rousseau's life was a singular and rather an unfortunate one. In the
first place he was exiled for a piece of scandalous literature, of which
in all probability he was quite guiltless; and, in the second, meeting
in his exile with Voltaire, who professed (and seems really to have
felt) admiration for him, he offended the irritable disciple and was
long the butt of his attacks. Here, however, Rousseau concerns us as a
direct pupil of Boileau, who, with great faculties for the formal part
of poetry, and not without some tincture of its spirit, set himself to
be a lyric poet after Boileau's fashion. He tried play-writing also, but
his dramas are quite unimportant. Rousseau's principal works are certain
odes, most of which are either panegyrical after the fashion of the
celebrated Namur specimen (though he is seldom so absurd as his master),
or else sacred and drawn from the Bible. The _Cantates_ are of the same
kind as the latter. These elaborate and formal works, which owed much of
their popularity to the vogue given to piety at court in the later years
of Louis XVI., are curiously contrasted with the third principal
division of his poems, consisting of epigrams which allow themselves the
full epigrammatic licence in subject and treatment. The contrast is,
however, probably due to a very simple cause, the state of demand at the
time, and perhaps also to the study of Marot, the only pre-seventeenth
century poet of France who was allowed to pass muster in the school of
Boileau. Rousseau's merits have been already indicated, and his defects
may be easily divined, even from this brief notice. He is almost always
adroit, often eloquent, sometimes remarkably clever; but he is seldom
other than artificial, never passionate, and only once or twice sublime.
Nor is it superfluous to mention that he is more responsible than any
other person for the intolerable frippery of classical mythology which
loads eighteenth-century verse.
La Motte-Houdart (1672-1731), a successful dramatist, an excellent
prose-writer, and an ingenious but paradoxical critic, was at the time
considered Rousseau's rival in point of ode-making. His work displays
the same defects in a greater and the same merits in a lesser degree,
but his fables in the style of La Fontaine are not unhappy.
Lagrange-Chancel, a partisan of the Duchess du Maine, is chiefly famous
for his ferocious satires on the Duke of Orleans. Louis Racine
(1692--1763), undeterred by his father's reputation and the dissuasion
of the redoubtable Boileau, attempted poetry of a serious kind. He was
brought up by the Jansenists, and his two chief works are poems on
'Grace' and 'Religion.' The latter is better than the former; but both
exhibit a considerable faculty in the style of verse which his father
had made fashionable. The 'Sacred Odes' of Louis Racine are, like most
French poetry of the kind, stiff with a double mannerism, literary and
devotional.
[Sidenote: Voltaire.]
It would not be easy to give a clearer idea of the strange conception of
poetry which prevailed in France at this time than is given in the
simple statement that Voltaire was acknowledged to be its greatest poet.
It is probable that few Englishmen think of Voltaire as a poet at all;
and he has indeed no claim to the title except such as may be derived
from his remarkable skill in the mechanism of the art of poetry, and
from the extraordinary felicity of his light occasional pieces. It is,
however, as a poet that he was chiefly regarded by his contemporaries;
and though he will figure in almost every one of the chapters of this
book, such brief notice of his life as can alone be attempted in this
volume may best be given here. He was born in Paris in 1694, being the
younger son of a wealthy notary. The Jesuits had charge of his
education, and he very early displayed inclinations towards verse which
were not agreeable to his father. His youth seemed destined to scrapes.
He became identified with the party hostile to the Regent, and was twice
imprisoned in the Bastile (the second time in consequence of no fault of
his own), while he was at least twice bastinadoed by personal enemies.
Being sent in the suite of an ambassador to Holland, he became entangled
in a foolish love affair, and had to be hastily recalled. But by degrees
his literary talent developed itself. His first visit to the Bastile is
identified, more or less correctly, with the composition of _Oedipe_,
his second with that of the _Henriade_. After his second release he had
to go to England, and there the poem was published. He was soon enabled
to return to France, and from that time forward was careful to keep
himself out of difficulties by residing first with his friend, Madame du
Chatelet, at the remote frontier chateau of Circy, then with Frederick
II. at Berlin, then on the neutral territory of Switzerland, or close to