A Short History of French Literature
elaborate prose have been perfectly simple and unpretentious in private
life. Buffon was as pompous and inflated as his style. Anecdotes
respecting him are numerous; but perhaps the most instructive is that
which tells how, having heard some one speak of the style of
Montesquieu, he asked, 'Si M. de Montesquieu avait un style?' It is
needless to say that from any just standpoint, even of purely literary
criticism, the hollow pomp of the _Histoire Naturelle_ sinks into
insignificance beside the nervous and solid yet graceful vigour of the
_Esprit des Lois_.
[Sidenote: Lesser Scientific Writers.]
No single scientific writer equals the fame of Buffon, but there are not
a few who deserve to be mentioned after him. Pierre Louis Moreau de
Maupertuis, a Breton by birth, who was a considerable mathematician and
a physicist of more eccentricity than merit, owes most of his literary
celebrity to the patronage of Frederick the Second, and the pitiless
raillery of Voltaire, who quarrelled with him on his visit to Berlin,
where Maupertuis was president of the Academy. Maupertuis' chief
scientific performance was his mission to Lapland to determine the
measurement of a degree of longitude in 1736. Of this mission he
published an account. At the same time a similar mission was sent to
South America under La Condamine, who underwent considerable hardship,
and, like Maupertuis, published his adventures when he came back.
Mathematics were indeed the favourite study of the time. Clairaut, De
Moivre, Euler, Laplace, all wrote in French, or belonged to
French-speaking and French-descended races; while Voltaire's own
contributions to the reception of Newton's principles in France were not
small, and his beloved Madame du Chatelet was an expert mathematician.
Voltaire also devoted much attention to chemistry, which was the special
subject of such of the Baron d'Holbach's labours as were not devoted to
the overthrow of Christianity. It was not, however, till the eve of the
Revolution that the most important discoveries in this science were made
by Lavoisier and others. The Empire was a much more favourable time for
science than for literature. Bonaparte was fond of the society of men of
science, and pleased by their usual indifference to politics. Monge,
Berthollet, Champollion, were among his favourites. Geoffroy St. Hilaire
and Cuvier were, however, the chief men of science of this period, and
Cuvier at least had no mean command of a literary style sufficient for
his purposes. His chief work of a literary-scientific character was his
discourse _Sur les Revolutions de la Surface du Globe_. Earlier than
this the physician Cabanis, in his _Rapports de Physique et de Morale_,
composed a semi-materialist work of great excellence according to
eighteenth-century standards. Bichat's _La Vie et la Mort_, the work of
an anatomist of the greatest talent, who died young, also belongs to
literature.
[Sidenote: Voyages and Travels.]
Some contributions to letters were also made by the voyages of discovery
which formed part of the general scientific curiosity of the time. The
chief of them is that of Bougainville, 1771, which, giving the first
clear notion to Frenchmen of the South Sea Islands, had a remarkably
stimulating effect on the imaginations of the _philosophe_ party.
[Sidenote: Linguistic and Literary Study.]
In works of pure erudition more directly connected with literature, the
age was less fruitful than its immediate predecessor. The laborious
studies of the Benedictines, however, continued. One work of theirs,
important to our subject, was projected and in part carried out under
the superintendence chiefly of Dom Rivet. This was the _Histoire
Litteraire de la France_--a mighty work, which, after long interruption
by the Revolution and other causes, was taken up again, and has
proceeded steadily for many years, though it has not yet reached the
close of the middle ages. This work was part, and a very important part,
of a revival of the study of old French literature. The plan of the
Benedictines led them at first into the literature of mediaeval Latin.
But the works of the Trouveres, of their successors in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, and of the authors of the French Renaissance,
also received attention, scattered at first and desultory, but gradually
co-ordinating and regulating itself. La Monnoye, Lenglet-Dufresnoy, the
President Bouhier, and many others, collected, and in some cases edited,
the work of earlier times. The Marquis de Paulmy began a vast
_Bibliotheque des Romans_, for which the Comte de Tressan undertook the
modernising and reproducing of all the stories of chivalry. Tressan, it
is true, had recourse only to late and adulterated versions, but his
work was still calculated to spread some knowledge of what the middle
ages had actually done in matter of literature. La Curne de Sainte
Palaye devoted himself eagerly to the study of the language, manners,
and customs of chivalry. Barbazan collected the specially French product
of the Fabliau, and, with his successor Meon (who also edited the _Roman
du Renart_), provided a great corpus of lighter mediaeval literature for
the student to exercise himself upon. By degrees this revived literature
forced itself upon the public eye, and before the Republic had given
place to the Empire, it received some attention at the hands of
official teachers of literature who had hitherto scorned it. M. J.
Chenier, Daunou, and others, undertook the subject, and made it in a
manner popular; while towards the extreme end of the present period
Raynouard and Fauriel added the subject of Provencal literature to that
of the literature of Northern France, and helped to propagate the study
abroad as well as at home.
In the older fields the renown of France for purely classical
scholarship diminished somewhat as compared with the days of Huet,
Menage, Dacier, and the Delphin classics. The principal work of
erudition was either directed towards the so-called philosophy in its
wide sense of enquiry and speculation into politics and manners, or else
to mathematics and physics. The Benedictines confined themselves for the
most part to Christian antiquity. Yet there were names of weight in this
department, such as the President Henault, a writer something after the
fashion of Fontenelle, but on classical subjects; and the President de
Brosses, also an archaeologist of merit, but chiefly noteworthy as having
been among the founders of the science which busies itself with the
manners and customs of primitive and prehistoric man[291].
FOOTNOTES:
[291] I owe to M. Scherer the indication of a misprint of '_des_
Brosses' for 'de' in former editions. M. Scherer says that I 'have never
heard' of the President's pleasant _Lettres sur l'Italie_, because I do
not mention them. He also says that what I do say of De Brosses is
'egalement surprenante pour ce qu'elle avance et par ce qu'elle omet.' I
am, therefore, justified in supposing that M. Scherer 'has never heard'
of the _Lettres sur Herculanum_, the _Navigations aux Terres Australes_,
or the _Culte des Dieux Fetiches_.
INTERCHAPTER IV.
SUMMARY OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE.
The eighteenth century was pre-eminently the century of academic
literature in France: far more so than the seventeenth, which had seen
the foundation of the Academie Francaise. The word 'academy' in this
sense was an invention of the Italian humanists, prompted by their
Platonic, or perhaps by their Ciceronian, studies. Academies, or
coteries of men of letters who united love of society with the
cultivation of literature, became common in Italy during the sixteenth
century, and from Italy were translated to France. The famous society,
which now shares with the original school of Plato the honour of being
designated in European language as 'The Academy' without distinguishing
epithet, was originally nothing but one of these coteries or clubs,
which met at the house of the judicious and amiable, but not
particularly learned, Conrart. Conrart's influence with Richelieu, the
desire of the latter to secure a favourable tribunal of critics for his
own literary attempts, or (to be generous) his foresight and his
appreciation of the genius of the French language, determined the
Cardinal to establish this society. It was modestly endowed, and was
charged with the duty of composing an authoritative Dictionary of the
French literary language; a task the slow performance of which has been
a stock subject of ridicule for two centuries and a half. The Academy,
though it suffered some vicissitudes in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic
period, has survived all changes, and is virtually one of the most
ancient existing institutions of France. But, though it from the
beginning enjoyed royal and ministerial favour, it was long before it
collected a really representative body of members, and it was subjected
at first to a good deal of raillery. One of Saint Evremond's early
works was a _Comedie des Academistes_; while one of the most polished
and severe of his later prose critical studies is a 'Dissertation on the
word "Vaste,"' in which the tendency of the Academy to trifling
discussions (the curse of all literary societies), the literary
indolence of its members, and the pedagogic limitations of its critical
standards, are bitterly, though most politely, ridiculed. It did itself
little good by lending its name to be the cover for Richelieu's jealousy
of the _Cid_, though there is more justice in its _examen_ of that
famous play than is sometimes supposed. But the institution was
thoroughly germane to the nature, tastes, and literary needs of the
French people, and it prospered. Conrart was a tower of strength to it;
and in the next generation the methodical and administrative talents of
Perrault were of great service, while it so obviously helped the design
of Louis XIV. to play the Augustus, that a tradition of royal patronage,
which was not afterwards broken, was established. The greatest blots on
the Academy were the almost unavoidable servility which rewarded this
patronage, and the private rivalries and cliques which have occasionally
kept some of the greatest names of French literature out of its lists.
Moliere and Diderot are the most shining examples among these, but many
others keep them company. Nevertheless, by the end of the seventeenth
century at least, it became the recognised aim of every Frenchman of
letters to belong to the 'forty geese that guard the Capitol' of French
literature, as Diderot, not quite a disinterested witness, called them.
Throughout the eighteenth century their power was supreme. Competition
for the various academic prizes was, in the infancy of periodicals, the
easiest and the commonest method by which a struggling man of letters
could make himself known; and literary heresy of any kind was an almost
certain cause of exclusion from the body when once the dictatorship of
Fontenelle (a benevolent autocrat who, being something of a heretic
himself, tolerated freethinking in others) had ceased. Moreover, except
in rare cases, chiefly limited to persons of rank who were elected for
reasons quite other than literary, it was not usual for an author to
gain admission to the Academy until he was well stricken in years, and
until, as a natural consequence, his tastes were for the most part
formed, and he was impatient of innovation.
At first the influence of the Academy was beyond question salutary in
the main, if not wholly. Balzac, whose importance in the history of
prose style has been pointed out, was one of its earliest members. It
was under its wing that Vaugelas undertook the much-needed enquiry into
French grammar and its principles as applied to literature. The majority