A Short History of French Literature
Grimm. For a time the Duke of Luxembourg protected him, then he was
obliged, or thought himself obliged, to go into exile. Marshal Keith,
Governor of Neufchatel for the King of Prussia, received and protected
him, with the inevitable result that Rousseau considered it impossible
to continue in this as in every other refuge. David Hume was his next
good angel, and carried him to England in 1766. But the same drama
repeated itself, as it did subsequently with the Prince de Conti and
with Madame d'Enghien. Rousseau's last protector was M. de Girardin, who
gave him, after he had lived in Paris in comparative quiet for several
years, a home at Ermenonville in 1778. He did not outlive the year,
dying in a somewhat mysterious fashion, which has never been fully
explained, on the 2nd of July.
Rousseau was a man of middle age before he produced any literary work of
importance. He had in his youth been given to music, and indeed
throughout his life the slender profits of music copying were almost
his only independent source of income. His knowledge of the subject was
far from scientific, but he produced an operetta which was not
unsuccessful, and, but for his singular temperament, he might have
followed up the success. His first literary work of importance was a
prose essay for the Dijon Academy on the subject of the effects of
civilisation on society. Either of his own motion, or at the suggestion
of Diderot, Rousseau took the apparently paradoxical line of arguing
that all improvements on the savage life had been curses rather than
blessings, and he gained the prize. In 1755 his _Discours sur l'Origine
de l'Inegalite_ appeared at Amsterdam; in 1760 his famous novel _Julie_,
and in 1764 _Emile_, both of which have been spoken of already. Between
the two appeared the still more famous and influential _Contrat Social_.
Of the other works of Rousseau published during his lifetime, the most
famous, perhaps, was his letter to D'Alembert on the subject of the
introduction of theatrical performances into Geneva, a characteristic
paradox which made a bitter enemy of the most powerful of French men of
letters. Besides these, the _Reveries d'un Promeneur Solitaire_, the
_Lettres de la Montagne_, and above all, the unique _Confessions_, have
to be reckoned. The last, like several of Rousseau's other works, did
not appear till after his death.
Of all the writers mentioned in this chapter the influence of Rousseau
on literature and on life was probably the largest. He was the direct
inspirer of the men who made the French Revolution, and the theories of
his _Contrat Social_ were closer at the root of Jacobin politics than
any other. His fervid declamation about equality and brotherhood, and
his sentimental republicanism, were seed as well suited to the soil in
which they were sown as Montesquieu's reasoned constitutionalism was
unsuited to it. Rousseau, indeed, if the proof of the excellence of
preaching is in the practice of the hearers, was the greatest preacher
of the century. He denounced the practice of putting infants out to
nurse, and mothers began to suckle their own children; he recommended
instruction in useful arts, and many an _emigre_ noble had to thank
Rousseau for being able to earn his bread in exile; he denounced
speculative atheism, urging the undogmatic but emotional creed of his
_Vicaire Savoyard_, and the first wave of the religious reaction was
set going to culminate in the Catholic movement of Chateaubriand and
Lamennais. But in literature itself his influence was quite as powerful.
He was not, indeed, the founder of the school of analysis of feeling in
the novel, but he was the populariser of it. He was almost the founder
of sentimentalism in general literature, and he was absolutely the first
to make word-painting of nature an almost indispensable element of all
imaginative and fictitious writing both in prose and poetry. Some of his
characteristics were taken up in quick succession by Goethe in Germany,
by Bernardin de St. Pierre and Chateaubriand in France. Others were for
the time less eagerly imitated, and though Madame de Stael and her lover
Benjamin Constant did something to spread them, it was reserved for the
Romantic movement to develop them fully. It was singular, no doubt, and
this is not the place to undertake the explanation of the singularity,
that Rousseau, who detested most of the conclusions, and almost all the
methods of the Encyclopaedists, should be counted in with them, and
should have undoubtedly helped in the first place to accomplish their
result. But such is the case. His peculiar literary characteristics are
perhaps better exhibited in the _Confessions_ and in the miscellaneous
works, than in either of the novels. The _Contrat Social_ is a very
remarkable piece of pseudo-argument. It is felt from the first that the
whole assumption on which it reposes is historically false and
philosophically absurd. Yet there is an appearance of speciousness in
the arguments, an adroit mixture of logic and rhetoric, of order and
method, which is exceedingly seductive. The _Confession du Vicaire
Savoyard_, with many passages allied to it in the smaller works, has,
despite the staleness of the language (which was hackneyed by a thousand
empty talkers during the Revolution), not a little dignity and
persuasive force. But it is in the _Confessions_ that the literary power
of the author appears at its fullest. Never, perhaps, was a more
miserable story of human weakness revealed, and the peculiar thing is
that Rousseau does not limit his exhibitions of himself to exhibitions
of engaging frailty. The acts which he admits are in many cases
indescribably base, mean, and disgusting. The course of conduct which he
portrays is at its best that of a man entirely destitute of governing
will, petulant, often positively ungrateful, always playing into the
hands of the enemies whom his hallucinations supposed to exist, and
frustrating the efforts of the friends whom he allows himself, if only
for a time, to have possessed. Yet the narrative and dramatic skill with
which all this is presented is so great, that there is hardly room for a
sense of repulsion which is merged in interest, not necessarily
sympathetic interest, but still interest. Of the feeling for natural
beauty, which is everywhere present in these remarkable works, it is
enough to say that in French prose literature, it may almost be said in
the prose literature of Europe, it was entirely original. Part of
Rousseau's devotion to nature arose no doubt from his moody and retiring
temperament, which led him to rejoice in anything rather than the
society of his fellow men. But this would not of itself have given him
the literary skill with which he expresses these feelings. It is not so
much in set descriptions of particular scenes as in slight occasional
thoughts, embodying the emotions experienced at the sight of a flower, a
lake-surface, a mountain side, a forest glade, that this mastery is
shown. Yet of the more elaborate passages of this kind in other writers
few can surpass the best things of the _Nouvelle Heloise_, the
_Confessions_, and the _Reveries_. There is nothing novel to readers of
the present day in such things, though they are seldom done so happily.
But to the readers of Rousseau's day they were absolutely novel. It is
in this that the main literary importance of Rousseau consists, though
it must not be forgotten that he is in many ways a master of French
prose. His contemporaries made use of his Genevan origin to find fault
with his style; but with a few insignificant exceptions the criticism
has no foundation. It has been very frequently renewed, and sometimes
with little better reason, in the case of Swiss authors.
Round these chiefs of the Encyclopaedic movement were grouped many lesser
men, some of whom will be most conveniently noticed here. Marmontel,
Morellet, and Saint-Lambert, whose chief importance lay in other
directions, were contributors. The Chevalier de Jaucourt, a man of no
original power, but a hack-writer of extraordinary aptitude, took
considerable part in it. There were others, however, who, partly within
and partly without the range of the Encyclopaedia, had no small share in
the promotion of what has been called the _philosophe_ movement. Some
of these have found their place under the head of Essayists. There is,
however, one remarkable division, which must be treated here--the
division of economists--before we pass to the philosophers properly so
called, who either continued the metaphysics of Locke in a directly
materialist sense, or who, restraining themselves to sensationalism,
made the most of the English philosopher in that direction.
[Sidenote: Political Economists. Vauban, Quesnay, etc.]
The science of 'Political Arithmetic,' as it was first called in
England, had a somewhat earlier birth in France than in England itself.
It is remarkable that the complete establishment of the royal authority
under Louis XIV. preceded but by a very few years the examination of the
economic condition of the kingdom by unsparing examiners. The two chief
of these, both of whom fell into disgrace for their doings, were the
great engineer Vauban, and the great theologian Fenelon. The latter was
attracted to the subject chiefly by compassion for the sufferings of the
people, and expressed his opinion in a manner more rhetorical than
scientific. Vauban's course was naturally different. In the later years
of his life he set himself to the collection of statistical facts as to
the economic condition of France, and the result was the two books
called _Oisivetes de M. de Vauban_ and _La Dime Royale_, 1707. The
former of these contained the facts, the latter the deduction from them,
which was, to put it briefly, that the existing system of privilege,
exemption, and irregular taxation was a loss to the Crown, and a torment
to the people. Vauban received the reward of his labours, attention to
which would probably have prevented the French Revolution, in the shape
of the royal displeasure, and nothing came immediately of his
investigations. In the next century, however, a regular sect of
political economists arose. They had, indeed, been preceded by an
eccentric man of letters, the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, who occupied his
life in propounding Utopian schemes of universal peace and general
prosperity. But the first and greatest of the economists properly so
called was Quesnay. The extreme misery of the common people attracted
his attention, and set him upon calculating the causes and remedies of
periodical failings. He was himself a frequent contributor to the
Encyclopaedia. Many others of the _philosophe_ set occupied themselves
with these and similar subjects, notably the Abbes Morellet and Galiani.
The former was a man of a certain vigour (Voltaire called him 'L'Abbe
Mord-Les'), the latter has been noticed already. His _Dialogue sur le
Commerce des Bles_ acquired for him a great reputation.
[Sidenote: Turgot.]
Very many writers, among them the father of the great Mirabeau (in his
curious and able, though unequal and ill-proportioned _Ami des Hommes_),
attacked economical subjects at this time. But Turgot, though not
remarkable for the form of his writings, was the most original and
influential writer of the liberal school in this department. He was a
Norman by birth, and of a good legal family. He was born in 1727, and,
being destined for the Church, was educated at the Sorbonne. Turgot,
however, shared to the full the _philosophe_ ideas of the time as to
theological orthodoxy, and did not share the usual _philosophe_ ideas as
to concealment of his principles for comfort's sake. He refused to take
orders, turning his attention to the law and the Civil Service instead