A Short History of French Literature
a vivid narrative rather in the manner of the nineteenth than of the
eighteenth century, with a continuation of the _Voyage_ called
_Expedition Nocturne_, which has not escaped the usual fate of
continuations, and a short version of the touching story of Prascovia,
which contrasts very curiously with Madame Cottin's more artificial
handling of the same subject. The important point about Xavier de
Maistre is that he unites the sentimentality of the eighteenth century,
and not a little of its _Marivaudage_, with an exactness of observation,
a general truth of description, and a sense of narrative art which
belong rather to the nineteenth. Although he was not a Frenchman, his
style has always been regarded as a model of French; and the great
authority of Sainte Beuve justly places him and Merimee side by side as
the most perfect tellers of tales in the simple fashion.
[Sidenote: Benjamin Constant.]
Benjamin Constant's _Adolphe_, 1815, is a very different work, but an
equally remarkable one. It may be a question whether it is not entitled
to take rank rather as the first book of the nineteenth-century school
than as the last of the eighteenth. But its author (better known as a
politician) published no further attempt to pursue the way he had
opened; and though he himself denied its application to the persons who
were usually identified with its characters, there is every reason to
believe that it was rather the record of a personal experience than a
deliberate effort of art. It is very short, dealing with the love of a
certain Adolphe for a certain Ellenore and his disenchantment. The
psychological drawing, though one-sided, is astonishingly true, and
though _sensibilite_ is still present, it has obviously lost its hold
both on the characters represented and their creator. Deliberate
analysis appears almost as much as in the work of Beyle himself. It is
in every respect a remarkable book, and many parts of it might have been
written at the present day. What distinguishes it from almost all its
forerunners is that there is hardly any attempt at incident, far less at
adventure. The play of thought and feeling is the sole source of
interest. It is true that the situation is one that could not support a
long book, and that it is thus rather an essay at the modern analytic
novel than a finished example of it. But it is such an essay, and very
far from an unsuccessful one.
FOOTNOTES:
[288] The works of fiction written by the great authors of the century
are easily obtainable. _Manon Lescaut_ has been frequently and
satisfactorily reproduced of late years--the two editions of Glady, with
and without illustrations, being especially noteworthy. Restif de la
Bretonne is a literary curiosity whose voluminous works hardly any
collector possesses in their entirety; but the three volumes of the
_Contemporaines_, selected and edited for the _Nouvelle Collection
Jannet_ by M. Assezat, will give a very fair idea of his peculiarities.
Of most of the other authors mentioned convenient, handsome, and not too
expensive editions will be found in the _Bibliotheque Amusante_ of MM.
Garnier Freres. This includes Mesdames de Tencin, de Fontaines,
Riccoboni, de Beaumont, de Genlis, de Duras, de Souza, as well as
Marivaux and Fievee. Lesage's more remarkable fictions are obtainable at
every library. Xavier de Maistre forms a single cheap volume. A handsome
little edition of Constant's _Adolphe_ has been edited by M. de Lescure
for the Librairie des Bibliophiles. Cazotte's _Diable Amoureux_ is in
the _Nouvelle Collection Jannet_. M. Uzanne's reproductions of the prose
tale-tellers are excellent.
CHAPTER IV.
HISTORIANS, MEMOIR-WRITERS, LETTER-WRITERS.
[Sidenote: Characteristics and Divisions of Eighteenth-century History.]
In the three branches of literature included in this chapter the
interest of the eighteenth century is great, but unequally divided. In
history proper, that is to say, the connected survey from documents of a
greater or lesser period of the past, the age saw, if not the beginning,
certainly the maturing of a philosophical conception of the science.
Putting Bossuet out of the question, Vico in Italy, Montesquieu and
Turgot in France, are usually and rightly credited with the working out
of this great conception. But though pretty fully worked, or at least
sketched out, it was not applied in any book of bulk and merit. The
writings of Montesquieu and Turgot themselves are not history--they are
essays of lesser or greater length in historical philosophy. Nor from
the merely literary point of view has France any historical production
of the first rank to put forward at this time. The works of greater
extent, such as Rollin's, are of no special literary value; the works of
literary value, such as Voltaire's studies, are of but small extent, and
rather resemble the historical essay of the preceding century, which
still continued to be practised, and which had one special practitioner
of merit in Rulhiere. But nothing even distantly approaching the English
masterpiece of the period, the _Decline and Fall_, was produced; hardly
anything approaching Hume's History. Nor again do the memoirs[289] of
this time equal those of the seventeenth century in literary power,
though they are useful as sources of historical and social information.
No man of letters of the first class has left such work, and no one, not
by profession a man of letters, has by such work come even near the
position of the Cardinal de Retz or the Duke de Saint Simon, the latter
of whom, it is fair to remember, actually lived into the second half of
the century. On the other hand, the letter-writers of the time are
numerous and excellent. Although no one of them equals Madame de Sevigne
in bulk and in completeness of merit, the letters of Mademoiselle de
l'Espinasse, of Madame du Deffand, of Diderot to Mademoiselle Volland,
and some others, are of very great excellence, and almost unsurpassed in
their characterization of the intellectual and social peculiarities of
the time. The absence of regular histories of the first merit would be
more surprising than it is if it were not fully accounted for by the
dominant peculiarity of the day, which is never to be forgotten in
studying its history--the absorption, that is to say, of the greater
part of the intellect of the time in the _philosophe_ polemic. Almost
all the histories that were written, except as works of pure erudition,
were in reality pamphlets intended to point, more or less allegorically,
some moral as to real or supposed abuses in the social, ecclesiastical,
or political state of France. This peculiarity could not fail to detract
from their permanent interest, even if it did not (as it too often did)
make the authors less careful to give a correct account of their subject
than to make it serve their purpose.
[Sidenote: Rollin.]
The first regular historian who deserves mention is Charles Rollin, who
perhaps had a longer and wider monopoly of a certain kind of historical
instruction than any other author. He was born at Paris in January,
1661, of the middle class, and, after studying at the College du
Plessis, he became Professor at the College de France, and, in 1694,
Rector of the University; a post in which he distinguished himself by
introducing many useful and much-needed reforms. He was a Jansenist, but
was not much inconvenienced in consequence. Rollin's book (that is to
say the only one by which he is remembered) is his extensive _Histoire
Ancienne_, 1730-1738, the work of his advanced years, which was the
standard treatise on the subject for nearly a century, and was
translated into most languages. Although showing no particular
historical grasp, written with no power of style, and not universally
accurate, it deserves such praise as may be due to a work of great
practical utility requiring much industrious labour, and not imitated
from or much assisted by any previous book. The _Histoire Romaine_,
which followed it, was of little worth, but Rollin's _Traite des Etudes_
was a very useful book in its time.
[Sidenote: Dubos.]
[Sidenote: Boulainvilliers.]
Two historians, who hardly deserve the name, are usually ranked together
in this part of French history, partly because they represent almost the
last of the fabulous school of history-writers, partly because their
disputes (for they were of opposite factions) have had the honour to be
noticed by Montesquieu. These were Dubos and Boulainvilliers. The Abbe
Dubos was a writer of some merit on a great variety of subjects; his
_Reflexions sur la Poesie et la Peinture_ being of value. His chief
historical work is entitled _Histoire Critique de l'Etablissement de la
Monarchie Francaise dans les Gaules_, in which, with a paradoxical
patriotism, which has found some echoes among living historians, he
maintained that the Frankish invasion of Gaul was the consequence of an
amicable invitation, that the Gauls were in no sense conquered, and that
all conclusions based on the supposition of such a conquest were
therefore erroneous. It is fair to Dubos to say that he had been in a
manner provoked by the arguments of the Count de Boulainvilliers.
According to this latter, the Frankish conquest had resulted in the
establishment of a dominant caste, which alone had full enfranchisement,
and which was lineally, or at least titularly, represented by the French
aristocracy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These reckless
and baseless hypotheses would not require notice, were it not important
to show how long it was before the idea of rigid enquiry into
documentary facts on the one hand, and philosophical application of
general laws on the other, were observed in historical writing.
[Sidenote: Voltaire.]
Montesquieu himself will come in for mention under the head of
philosophers, but Voltaire's ubiquity will be maintained in this
chapter. His strictly historical work was indeed considerable, even if
what is perhaps the most remarkable of it, the _Essai sur les Moeurs_
(which may be described as a treatise, with instances, on the philosophy
of history, as applied to modern times), be excluded. Besides smaller
works, the histories of Charles XII. and Peter the Great, the _Age of
Louis XIV._, the _Age of Louis XV._, and the _Annals of the Empire_,
belong to the class of which we are now treating. Of these there is no
doubt that the _Siecle de Louis Quatorze_, 1752, is the best, though the
slighter sketches of Charles, 1731, and Peter, 1759, are not undeserving
of the position they have long held as little masterpieces. Voltaire,
however, was not altogether well qualified for a historian; indeed, he
had but few qualifications for the work, except his mastery of a clear,
light, and lively style. He had no real conception, such as Montesquieu
had, of the philosophy of history, or of the operation of general
causes. His reading, though extensive, was desultory and uncritical, and
he constantly fell into the most grotesque blunders. His prejudices were
very strong, and he is more responsible than any other single person for
the absurd and ignorant disdain of the middle ages, which, so long as it
lasted, made comprehension of modern history and society simply
impossible, because the origins of both were wilfully ignored. These
various drawbacks had perhaps less influence on the _Siecle de Louis
Quatorze_ than on any other of his historical works, and it is
accordingly the best. He was well acquainted with the subject, he was
much interested in it, it touched few of his prejudices, and he was able
to speak with tolerable freedom about it. The result is excellent, and
it deserves the credit of being almost the first finished history (as
distinguished from mere diaries like those of L'Estoile) in which not