A Short History of French Literature
plays, his chief dramatic works are _Eugenie_, _Les Deux Amis_, and
lastly, _La Mere Coupable_, in which the characters of his two famous
works reappear.
After Beaumarchais, but few comic authors demand mention. Collin
d'Harleville, one of the pleasantest writers of light comedies in verse,
produced _Les Chateaux en Espagne_, _L'Inconstant_, _L'Optimiste_, and
_Le Vieux Celibataire_, 1792, all sparkling pieces, which only need
freeing from the restraints of rhyme. Andrieux, the author of _Les
Etourdis_, 1787, _Le Tresor_, _Le Vieux Fat_, and others, has something
of the same character. Nepomucene Lemercier distinguished himself in
comedy, chiefly by _Plaute_, in irregular verse, and by a comedy-drama,
_Pinto_, in prose. These have his usual characteristics of somewhat
spasmodic genius. Fabre d'Eglantine, the companion of Danton and Camille
Desmoulins on the scaffold, is better remembered for his death than for
his life. But his _Intrigue Epistolaire_ and _Philinte de Moliere_ shew
talent. _Le Sourd_, by Desforges, is an amusing play.
[Sidenote: Characteristics of Eighteenth-century Drama.]
It will be seen that the positive achievements of drama during this
period were considerably superior to those of poetry. The tragedies of
Voltaire are prodigies of literary cleverness. In comedy proper Lesage
produced work of enduring value; Destouches, Marivaux, Piron, Gresset,
and some others, work which does not require any very great indulgence
to entitle it to the name, in the right sense, of classical;
Beaumarchais, work which is indissolubly connected with great historical
events, and which is not unworthy the connection. Moreover, as a matter
of general literary history, the drama during this time displays
numerous evidences of life and promise, as well as of decadence. The
gradual recognition of the vaudeville as a separate literary kind gave
occasion to much work, the ephemeral character of which should not be
allowed to obscure its real literary excellence, and founded a school
which is still living and flourishing with by no means simulated life.
The attempt of La Chaussee and Diderot to widen the range and break down
the barriers of legitimate drama was premature, and not altogether well
directed; but it was the forerunner of the great and durable reaction of
nearly a century later. Still the actual dramatic accomplishment of this
period, though in many ways interesting, and to a certain extent
positively valuable, is not of the first class. It is made up either of
clever imitations and variations of modes which had already been
expressed with greater perfection, and with far greater genius, by the
preceding century, or of what may be fairly called dramatic
pamphleteering, or else of tentative and immature experiments in reform,
which came to nothing, or to very little, for the time being. Even its
most gifted practitioners regarded it as a kind of journey-work, which
was understood to lead to honour and profit, rather than as an art, in
which honour and profit, if not entirely to be ignored, are altogether
secondary considerations. Hence, in a lesser degree, the drama of the
eighteenth century shares the same disadvantage which has been noted as
characterising its poetry. Its value is a value of curiosity chiefly, a
relative value. Indeed, as a mere mechanical art, drama sank even lower
than poetry proper ever sank; and for fifty years at least before the
romantic revival it may be doubted whether a single play was written,
the destruction of which need greatly grieve even the most sensitive and
appreciative student of French literary history.
CHAPTER III.
NOVELISTS.
The peculiarity of the eighteenth century in France as regards
literature----that is to say, the application of great talents to almost
every branch of literary production without the result of a distinct
original growth in any one department----is nowhere more noticeable than
in the department of prose fiction[288]. The names of Lesage, Prevost,
Marivaux, Voltaire, Rousseau, are deservedly recorded among the list of
the best novel writers. Yet, with the exception of _Manon Lescaut_,
which for the time had no imitators, of the great works of Lesage which,
admirable in execution, were by no means original in conception, and of
the exquisite but comparatively insignificant variety of the prose
_Conte_, of which Voltaire was the chief practitioner, nothing in the
nature of a masterpiece, still less anything in the nature of an
epoch-making work, was composed. The example of _Manon_ was left for the
nineteenth century to develop, the others either died out (the adventure
romance, after Lesage's model, flourishing brilliantly in England, but
hardly at all in France), or else were subordinated to a purpose, the
purpose of advocating _philosophe_ views, or of pandering to the not
very healthy cravings of an altogether artificial society. Yet, so far
as merely literary merits are concerned, few branches of literature were
more fertile than this during the period.
[Sidenote: Lesage.]
The first, and on the whole, the most considerable name of the century
in fiction is that of the author of _Gil Blas_. Alain Rene Lesage was
born at Sarzeau, near Vannes, on the 8th of May, 1668, and died at
Boulogne on the 17th of November, 1747. He was bred a lawyer, and should
have had a fair competence, but, being early left an orphan, was
deprived of most of his property by the dishonesty of his guardian. He
married young, moreover, and, unlike most of the prominent men of
letters of his day, never seems to have enjoyed any solid patronage or
protection from any powerful man or woman. This is indeed sufficiently
accounted for by anecdotes which exist showing his extreme independence
of character. Like most men of talent in such circumstances, he turned,
though not very early, to literature, and began by a translation of the
'Letters' of Aristaenetus. No great success could have awaited him in
this line, and perhaps the greatest stroke of good-fortune in his life
was the suggestion of the Abbe de Lyonne that he should turn his
attention to Spanish literature, a suggestion which was not made more
unpalatable by the present of a small annuity. He translated the 'New
Don Quixote' of Avellaneda (than which he might have found a better
subject), and he adapted freely plays from Rojas, Lope de Vega, and
Calderon. It was not, however, till he was nearly forty that he produced
anything of real merit. The _Diable Boiteux_ appeared in 1707, and was
at once popular. Still Lesage did not desert the stage, and the
production of his admirable comedy _Turcaret_ ought to have secured him
success there. But the Comedie Francaise was at that time more under the
influence of clique than at any other time of its history; and Lesage,
disgusted with the treatment he received from it, gave himself up
entirely to writing farces and operettas for the minor theatres, and to
prose fiction. _Gil Blas_, his greatest work, originally appeared in
1715, but was not completed till twenty years later. He also
wrote--besides one or two bright but trifling minor works of a
fictitious character, _La Valise Trouvee_ (a letter-bag supposed to be
picked up), _Une Journee des Parques_, a keen piece of Lucianic satire,
etc.--many other romances in the same general style as his great works,
and more or less borrowed from Spanish originals. The chief of these are
_Guzman d'Alfarache_, _Estevanille Gonzalez_, _Le Bachelier de
Salamanque_, and a curious Defoe-like book entitled _Vie et Aventures de
M. de Beauchene_. In his old age he retired to the house of his second
son, who held a canonry at Boulogne, and resided there for some years,
until, in 1747, he died in his eightieth year. His works have hitherto
been very insufficiently collected and edited.
_Le Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_ are far the greatest of Lesage's
romances, and, as it happens, they are the most original, little except
the starting-point being borrowed in the one case, and nothing but a few
detached details in the other. Lesage was, however, true to the general
spirit of his model, the picaroon romance of Spain, a kind of Roman
d'Aventures transported from the days and conventional conditions of
chivalry to those of ordinary but still adventurous life in the
Peninsula. The directly satirical intention predominates in the _Diable
Boiteux_, the more purely narrative faculty in _Gil Blas_. In both the
piercing observation of human character, which Lesage possessed in a
greater degree perhaps than any other French writer, appears, and so
does his remarkable power of making the results of this observation live
and move. No French writer is so little of a mere Frenchman as Lesage,
and in this point of cosmopolitan humanity he may be compared, without
extravagance, in kind if not in degree, to Shakespeare. Besides his
skill in character-drawing, and his faculty of spicing his narrative
with epigram, Lesage also possessed extraordinary narrative ability. His
books are not remarkable for what is called plot, that is to say, the
action rather continues indefinitely in a straight line than converges
on a given and definite point. But this continuance is so adroitly
managed that no break is felt, and the succession very seldom becomes
tedious. The novel of Lesage is the immediate parent and pattern of that
of Fielding and Smollett in England. It is somewhat remarkable that it
had no successors of importance or merit in France. This is probably to
be accounted for by the cosmopolitan tone which has been already
remarked upon. Indeed Lesage, as a rule, has had less justice done to
him by his countrymen than any other of their great writers. Yet his
style, looked at merely from the point of view of art, is excellent, and
perhaps superior to that of any of his contemporaries properly so
called.
Close in the track of Madame de la Fayette followed Madame de Fontaines
(Marie Louise Charlotte de Givri), the date of whose birth is unknown,
but who died in 1730. She was a friend of Voltaire's youth, and her best
work is named _La Comtesse de Savoie_, the date of the story being the
eleventh century. She also wrote a short story of less merit called
_Amenophis_. Madame de Tencin (Claudine Alexandrine Guerin), the mother
of D'Alembert, the friend of Fontenelle, and one of the most famous
salon-holders of the early eighteenth century, was a more fertile and a
cleverer writer. She was born in 1681, and died in 1749. She had a bad
heart, but an excellent head, and she showed her powers in the _Memoires
du Comte de Comminges_ and the _Siege de Calais_, besides some minor
works. The fault of almost all romances of the La Fayette school, the
habit of throwing the scene into periods about which the writers knew
nothing, appears in these works.
[Sidenote: Marivaux.]
But the first writer of fiction after Lesage who is worthy of separate
mention at any length (for in these later centuries of our history there
are, as any reader of books will understand, vast numbers of
practitioners in every branch of literary art who are entirely unworthy
of notice in a compendious history of literature) is Marivaux, an
original and remarkable novelist, who, though by no possibility to be
ranked among the great names of French literature, occupies a not
inconsiderable place among those who are remarkable without being great.
Pierre Carlet de Marivaux, whose strict paternal appellation was simply
Pierre Carlet, was born at Paris on the 8th of February, 1688. His
father was of Norman origin, and held employments in the financial
branch of the public service. Very little is known of the son's youth,
and indeed not much of his life. He is said to have produced his first
play, _Le Pere Prudent et Equitable_, at the age of eighteen, and his