A Short History of French Literature

dramatic industry was thenceforward considerable. As a romancer he worked more by fits and starts. His first attempt at prose fiction is said to have been--for the authenticity of the attribution is not certain--a romance in a kind of pseudo-Spanish style, called _Les Effets surprenants de la Sympathie_, published six years later. Then he took to the sterile and ignoble literature of travesty, attacking Homer and Fenelon in the style of Scarron and Cotton. This brought him, through La Motte, under the influence of Fontenelle, to whom he owed not a little. He made a fortune and lost it in Law's bubble. Then he turned journalist, and after writing social articles in the _Mercure_, started a periodical himself, the nature of which is sufficiently shown by its borrowed title, _Le Spectateur Francais_, 1722. At a later period he began another paper of the same kind, _Le Cabinet du Philosophe_, 1734. His plays, which have been already noticed, were written partly for the Comedie Francaise, and partly for a very popular Italian company which appeared in France during the second quarter of the century. But for the present purpose his works which concern us are the famous romance of _Marianne_, 1731-1742, and the less-known one of the _Paysan Parvenu_, 1735. His dramas, rather than his fictions, procured him a place in the Academy in 1742, and he died in 1763. _Marianne_ has been said to be the origin of _Pamela_, which may not be exactly the fact, though it is difficult not to believe that it gave Richardson his idea. But it is certain that it is a remarkable novel, and that it, rather than the plays, gave rise to the singular phrase _Marivaudage_, with which the author, not at all voluntarily, has enriched literature. The plot is simple enough. A poor but virtuous girl has adventures and recounts them, and the manner of recounting is extremely original. A morally faulty but intellectually admirable contemporary, Crebillon the younger, described this manner excellently by saying that the characters not only say everything that they have done and everything that they have thought, but everything that they would have liked to think but did not. This curious kind of mental analysis is expressed in a style which cannot be defended from the charge of affectation notwithstanding its extreme ingenuity and occasional wit. The real importance of _Marianne_ in the history of fiction is that it is the first example of the novel of analysis rather than of incident (though incident is still prominent), and the first in which an elaborate style, strongly imbued with mannerism, is applied to this purpose. The _Paysan Parvenu_, the title of which suggested Restif's novel _Le Paysan Perverti_, and which was probably not without influence on _Joseph Andrews_, is not very different in manner from _Marianne_, and, like it, was left unfinished after publication in parts at long intervals. [Sidenote: Prevost] A third eminent writer of novels was, in point of production, a contemporary of Lesage and Marivaux, though he was nearly thirty years younger than the first, and fully ten years younger than the second, and he more than either of them set the example of the modern novel. The Abbe Prevost, sometimes called Prevost d'Exilles, was born at Hesdin, in Picardy, in April, 1697. He was brought up by the Jesuits, and after a curious hesitation between entering the order and becoming a soldier (he actually served for some time) he joined the famous community of the Benedictines of Saint Maur, the most learned monastic body in the Roman church. When he did this he was four-and-twenty, and he continued for some six years to give himself up to study, not without interludes of professorial work and of preaching. He became, however, disgusted with his order, and unfortunately left his convent before technical permission had been given; a proceeding which kept him an exile from France for several years. It was at this time (1728) that he threw himself into novel-writing, taking his models, and in some cases, his scenes and characters, from England, which he visited, and of which he was a fervent admirer. He obtained permission to return in 1735, and then started a paper called _Le Pour et le Contre_, something like those of Marivaux, but more like a modern critical review. He received the protection of several persons of position and influence, notably the Prince de Conti and the Chancellor D'Aguesseau, and for nearly thirty years led a laborious literary life, in the course of which he is said to have written nearly a hundred volumes, mostly compilations. His death, which occurred in November, 1763, was perhaps the most horrible in literary history. He was on his way from Paris to his cottage near Chantilly, when he was struck by apoplexy. A stupid village doctor took him for dead, and began a post-mortem examination to discover the cause. Prevost revived at the stroke of the knife, but was so injured by it that he expired shortly afterwards. His chief works of fiction are the _Memoires d'un Homme de Qualite_, 1729, _Cleveland_, and the _Doyen de Killerine_, 1735, romances of adventure occupying a middle place between those of Lesage and Marivaux. But he would have been long forgotten had it not been for an episode or rather postscript of the _Memoires_ entitled _Manon Lescaut_, in which all competent criticism recognises the first masterpiece of French literature which can properly be called a novel. Manon is a young girl with whom the Chevalier des Grieux, almost as young as herself, falls frantically in love. The pair fly to Paris, and the novel is occupied with the description of Manon's faithlessness--a faithlessness based not on want of love for Des Grieux, but on an overmastering desire for luxury and comfort with which he cannot always supply her. The story, which is narrated by Des Grieux, and which has a most pathetic ending, is chiefly remarkable for the perfect simplicity and absolute life-likeness of the character-drawing. The despairing constancy of Des Grieux, conscious of the vileness of his idol, yet unable to help loving her, the sober goodness of his friend Tiberge, the roystering villany of Manon's brother Lescaut, and, above all, the surprising and novel, but strictly practical and reasonable, figure of Manon, who, in her way, loves Des Grieux, who has no objection to deceive her richer lovers for him, but whose first craving is for material well-being and prosperity--make up a gallery which has rarely been exceeded in power and interest. A novelist of merit, slightly junior to these, was Madame Riccoboni (Marie Jeanne Laboras de Mezieres), who was born in 1713, married an actor and dramatic author of little talent, and died at a great age in 1792. Her best works of fiction are _Le Marquis de Cressy_, _Mylady Catesby_, and _Ernestine_, with an exceedingly clever continuation (which, however, stops short of the conclusion) of Marivaux' _Marianne_. All these books are constructed with considerable skill, and are good examples of what may be called the sentimental romance. Duclos, better known now for his historical and historical-ethical work, was also a novel-writer at this period. The _Lettres du Marquis de Roselle_, of Madame Elie de Beaumont, rather resembles the work of Madame Riccoboni. The works of the three principal writers who have just been discussed belong to the first half of the century, and do not exhibit those characteristics by which it is most generally known. Marivaux is indeed an important representative of the laborious gallantry which descended from the days of the _precieuses_--Fontenelle being a link between the two ages--and Prevost exhibits, in at least its earlier stage, the sensibility which was one of the great characteristics of the eighteenth century. But neither of them can in the least be called a _philosophe_. On the other hand, the _philosophe_ movement, which dominated the middle and latter portions of the age, was not long in invading the department of fiction. Each of the three celebrated men who stood at its head devoted himself to the novel in one or other of its forms; while Montesquieu, in the _Lettres Persanes_, came near to it, and each of the trio themselves had more or fewer followers in fiction. [Sidenote: Voltaire.] No long work of prose fiction stands under the name of Voltaire, but it may be doubted whether any of his works displays his peculiar genius more fully and more characteristically than the short tales in prose which he has left. Every one of them has a moral, political, social, or theological purpose. _Zadig_, 1748, is, perhaps, in its general aim, rather philosophical in the proper sense; _Babouc_, 1746, social; _Memnon_, 1747, ethical. _Micromegas_, 1752, is a satire on certain forms of science; the group of smaller tales, such as _Le Taureau Blanc_, are theological or rather anti-theological. _L'Ingenu_, 1767, and _L'Homme aux Quarante Ecus_ (same date), are political from different points of view. All these objects meet and unite in the most famous and most daring of all, _Candide_, 1758. Written ostensibly to ridicule philosophical optimism, and on the spur given to pessimist theories by the Lisbon earthquake, _Candide_ is really as comprehensive as it is desultory. Religion, political government, national peculiarities, human weakness, ambition, love, loyalty, all come in for the unfailing sneer. The moral, wherever there is a moral, is, 'be tolerant, and _cultivez votre jardin_,' that is to say, do whatsoever work you have to do diligently. But in all these tales the destructive element has a good deal the better of the constructive. As literature, however, they are almost invariably admirable. There is probably no single book in existence which contains so much wit, pure and simple, as the moderate sized octavo in which are comprised these two or three dozen short stories, none of which exceeds a hundred pages or so in length, while many do not extend beyond two or three. Nowhere is the capacity of the French language for _persiflage_ better shown, and nowhere, perhaps, are more phrases which have become household words to be found. Nowhere also, it is true, is the utter want of reverence, which was Voltaire's greatest fault, and the absence of profundity, which accompanied his marvellous superficial range and acuteness, more constantly displayed. [Sidenote: Diderot.] No inconsiderable portion of the extensive and unequal work of Diderot is occupied by prose fiction. He began by a licentious tale in the manner, but without the wit, of Crebillon the younger; a tale in which, save a little social satire, there was no purpose whatever. But by degrees he, like Voltaire, began to use the novel as a polemical weapon. The powerful story of _La Religieuse_, 1760, was the boldest attack which, since the Reformation and the licence of Latin writing, had been made on the drawbacks and dangers of conventual life. _Jacques le Fataliste_, 1766, is a curious book, partly suggested, no doubt, by Sterne, but having a legitimate French ancestry in the _fatrasie_ of the sixteenth century. Jacques is a manservant who travels with his master, has adventures with him, talks incessantly to him, and tells him stories, as also does another character, the mistress of a country inn. One of these stories, the history of the jealousy and attempted revenge of a great lady on her faithless lover by making him fall in love with a girl of no character, is admirably told, and has often since been adapted in fiction and drama. Other episodes of _Jacques le Fataliste_ are good, but the whole is unequal. The strangest of all Diderot's attempts in prose fiction--if it is to be called a fiction and not a