THE FRENCH HUMORISTS.
MONTAIGNE.
From an original Picture at Paris in the Ddpot des Archives
(ill Royanwe.
ROBERTS BROTHERS. BOSTON.
THE
French Humorists
FROM THE TWELFTH TO THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY.
BY
WALTER BESANT, M.A.,
Christ's college, Cambridge,
AUTHOR OF "studies IN EARLY FRENCH POETRY," ETC.
BOSTON":
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1874.
Cambridge :
Press of John Wilson 6^ Son.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER pj^OE
I. The Chaxsox 9
II. RuTEBEUF THE Tkouvere . 25
III. The Romance of the Rose , ^ 41
ly. EusTACHE Deschamps . 82
V. Rabelais 99
VI. Montaigne 132
Vir. La Satyue M^nippee 148
VIII. Mathuuin Regnier . * 165
IX. Saixt Amant 185
X. VoiTURE AND BeNSERADE 199
XL The Parasites 213
XII. SCARRON 239
XIII. La Fontaine 202
XIV. BoiLEAU 285
XV. MOLIERE 310
XVI. Regnard 358
XVIL Gresset 375
XVIII. Beaumarchais 391
XIX. Beranger 418
PREFACE.
THE table of contents of this volume would
seem to be a sufficient preface. I have
selected those whom I consider representative
waiters, many of them hitherto almost unknown
to the English reader, though not to the student
of French literature, out of every century from
the twelfth downwards. The humorists of the
fifteenth century alone will be found unrepre-
sented here, unless Rabelais, who belongs to it
by birth, be claimed for it. The reason of this
omission, as stated in the first chapter, is simply
that I have in my previous work on early French
poetry discussed all those of that century who
could come within my limits. For the same reason
Clement Marot is absent from this volume. No
apology is needed for the omission from a single
volume — covering so large a space of time as
this — of Voltaire.
I trust the book wdll be found acceptable to
those who like, as I do, to know as much as pos-
vi PREFACE.
sible about their authors, and to connect their
writings with the conditions of their hves and the
Hterary atmosphere they breathed. I have given
in transLation most of the pieces taken to show the
character and genius of my authors. The greater
number are translated for the first time, I trust
without too much detriment to the originals. The
whimsical poem of Ver-Vert is given nearly in
full.
Two or three of these studies have, in somewhat
different forms, already appeared. I have to ex-
press my best thanks to the editor of the " British
Quarterly," for permission to reproduce as much
as I thought fit of a paper on the " Romance of
the Eose;" to the editor of " Macmillan's Maga-
z*ne," for a similar permission concerning a paper
on Rabelais; and to the editor of " Temple Bar,"
for permission to use again what I pleased of
papers on Moliere, La Fontaine, and Scarron.
I do not like to allow this volume to go forth
without also expressing my obligations to my
friend Mr. S. Lee, of my own college and Lin-
coln's Inn, for many valuable critical suggestions.
W. B.
Savile Club, Sept. 1, 1873.
THE FUENCH HUMOHISTS.
Chapter I.
THE CHANSON".
Mieulx est de rire que de larmes escripre, pour ce que rire est le propre de
rhomme. — Rabelais.
^ I ^HE most elementary form of joke is the discomfiture
-*- of an enemy: — discomfiture, at first, meaning
death. But there are other kinds of rivahies besides
those which involve mortal combat. In these, discom-
fiture means defeat. Advancing farther, we arrive at
oar modern point of laughing chiefly at those little inci-
dents in social life which mean temporary uneasiness,
awkwardness, slight mental trouble. Perhaps, as civili-
zation gets on, mankind will learn so much sympathy as
not even to lauglT at these. Laughter, however, is in
its nature the expression of relief from anxiety, of sur-
prise, or of self-congratulation. It is in any form a sort
of triumphant crow of victory, and as such will go on,
let us hope, for ever. Satire, on the other hand, of
which humor is a branch, is the weapon of the weak. It
is an acknowledgment of helplessness. In times of
oppression it is the boldest and most outspoken ; it lan-
guishes when laws become strong and men grow mild ;
it is lethargic in times of freedom.
Therefore, in rough and rude centuries, in times when
all the world is fighting, and life is much more uncertain
10 THE CHANSON.
than nature ever intended, we may expect to find the
keenest and most bitter satire.
II faut bien que I'esprit venge
L'honnete homme qui n'a rieu.
We do so find satire, making allowance for imperfect
powers of expression. So far as men can speak, they
speak strongly ; mostly they cannot frame their thoughts
at all, except for the ordinary purposes of life. To help
out their meagre forms of speech, they take Avhat songs
and phrases they can get from others, and use them.
AVe have to do Avith that people, gens summce solei^tice^
who first broke through the blackness of the Middle
Ages, and learned how to speak, write, and sing ; with
the country from which all great ideas of modern times
have sprnng, where men have ever had the courage of
their o[)inions, whose sons are quick to comprehend,
eager to realize, tenacious of a truth. ' France was first
in the field 6i modern literature. She it was who
changed the Latin for the vernacular; her people first
taught, and have always gone on teaching, the equality
of man. She began the reformation of religion ; it was
she who most kept alive the fire of learning, and most
helped th-e long, slow development of tlie Renaissance.
To her belong the great majority of mediaeval poets ; —
England has only one, Italy has four. She possesses the
most glorious list, till the more sluggish blood of Eng-
land is roused, of writers, scholars, and 2)hilosophers.
Hers is the longest martyr roll of heretics.
Frenchmen have nowhere shown their character more
tlian in their satire. They are fond of calling it the
esprit gaulois^ tracing back the vein of gayety, light heart,
and keen perception to those old ancestors who, after
all, have left them but little of their blood, divided as it
THE ESPRIT GAULOIS. 11
is among Romans, Franks, and Normans. It is a vein
which is quite peculiar to France. " It has not," says
a recent writer, '• any tincture of hatred or violence.
We do not find in it the overwhelming gayety of Aris-
tophanes, the exaggerated indignation of Juvenal, the
dry and bitter laugh of Don Juan ; but malice wrapped
up in bonhomie, the irony of Rabelais and La Fon-
taine, the grumbling and good-natured tone of a Picard
peasant." I want to show as we go along that the
French type for satire and humor has preserved one
uniform character from generation to generation. In
an unbroken line the writers are all the same. The
poets of the chansons and the parodies, Guyot the
Grumbler, Rutebeuf the Trouvdre, Villon the Ribaut,
Clement Marot, Rabelais, Passerat and Pithou, Saint-
Amant, La Fontaine — all down to Beranger, have one
quality in common, the es'prit gaulois. They are
always good-tempered ; their darts are wrapped in
flowers ; their poison — a harmless poison enough — is
administered in wine ; they are too s^'mpathetic to be
savage ; they never get into a rage, except perhaps
when, like poor Des Periers, they are going to commit
suicide ; or when, like Rabelais, who zs savage with the
monks, they have deep and bitter wrongs to resent. On
the other hand, the}^ are irreverent ; they have no strong
convictions ; they are incapable of martyrdom ; the}^ are
full of animal spirits and animal enjoyment ; they love
life with all the passion of a Greek ; they are like chil-
dren for mockery, mischief, and lightness of heart.
I cannot make my gallery complete, for two reasons.
First, because there are, since the days of Mademoiselle
de Scudery, limits to every volume ; and, secondly, be-
cause I have already, in a previous volume, written all
that I found to write about my very dear and especial
12 THE CHANSON.
friends, Francois Villon and Clement Marot, to say noth-
ing of those careless rascals, Coquillart, Roger de Col-
lerye, and Olivier Basselin.^
My limits are large — too large for my space, perhaps
too large for my strength. They stretch from the
eleventh to the nineteenth century. Perforce there is
many a name omitted — many a writer whose claims are
at least equal to some of those in these pages — notably,
you will not find here either Voltaire or Rousseau. But
let me lead j^ou by the hand through ways perhaps un-
trodden, among fields yet unvisited by you ; and after
introducing you to humorists of that dark time when
Boileau thought there was no literature — " rien n'est
agrdable," said Sainte-Beuve ; " qu'un guide familier
^ About Marot, however, I have this to say : — Professor Henry
Morley has written a life of him. I have a great respect for Mr.
Morley's two big volumes on English literature — the respect one
conceives for laborious and honest work. At the same time, I pro-
test against his Marot. The life contains not a single fact that is
new, and of the opinions very little, speaking from my own knowl-
edge of the period, which is true. For of all things under the sun,
i\Iarot was not a religious reformer. I cannot, as I could wish,
reprint what I have already written on the subject, but I refer my
readers to the chapter in this work oti Rabelais, where they will
find, not Marot's opinions — for the poor man had none — but the
opinions of the men who were his friends and associates. If there
be any further doubt as to his character — it is really an impor-
tant point, as it aifects \h^ greatest poet, in some points, that
France ever had — I submit the following lines, as showing w^hat
his own contemporary, Beza — a religionist if you like — thought
of him : —
" Tarn docte Venerem divinus pinxit Apelles,
Illi ut credatur visa fuisse Venus ;
At tantam sapinnt Venerem tua scripta, Marote,
Ut tibi credatur cognita tota Venus."
And surely there could be no better judge of such matters than
the author of the Juvenilia,
MEDIEVAL SATIRE. 13
dans iin pays iiiconnu " — let me try to throw fresh
light on men whose names are already familiar, and
make, if it may be, their dry bones live.
In the examination of the older authors, there has
been no turning over of yellow parchments, no decipher-
ment of faded manuscripts. That work has been done
for us by true and faithful Frenchmen, loyal to their
own literature. Of all the literature of the Middle
Ages, the best, the choicest, has been already published,
and though much yet remains, the work is practically
done. We who see how, to the shame and disgrace of
our rich men, the work of publishing our ancient texts
is left to one poor society — chiefly to two or three zeal-
ous men toiling against every kind of discouragement —
may well confess that France, the forerunner in modern
literature, is also the most careful to preserve her early
glories.
The history of French mediaeval satire is the history
of mediaeval literature and art. Satire is everywhere ;
it lies in every line of the fabliau, in every sentence of
the conte ; the minstrel carries it from place to place ;
the charlatan shouts it at fair-time from his stage ; it
forms part of every popular amusement ; it lurks in the
corner of the illuminated manuscript ; it grins at us from
some dark place in the cathedral. Side by side with the
solemn service of the church is the parody, with its ass,
its boy bishop, its liturgy in praise of wine. Beside the
crimson cavalcade of ladies and knights is the procession
of Renard and Isengrin. After the monks and priests,
chanting their psalms, comes, telling his beads like them,
the Devil ; while along with every amusement, joy, and
pleasure of life, a part of laughter, an echo of the song,
a guest at the feast, a leader of the dance, a follower of
the march, a fiddler in the band, the companion of king,
14 THE CHANSON.
knight, bourgeois, and peasant, sneering at all, laughing
at all, mocking at all, is the Mephistophelian Death of
the Dause Macabre.
From the eleventh to the fifteenth century it is a sort
of long procession of satire. First, as is but right, we
have the music, which is provided by the troubadours
and trouveres ; the}^ lead off the band of those who laugh
at every thing and try to improve nothing. The scholars
come next, then the clergy, then the men of the robe,
then a general breakdown dance of all together, and the
old things fall to pieces, giving place to the new.
Towards the end of the eleventh century we hear a
confused roar as of hungry wild animals. It is the voice,
no longer to be suppressed, of the people. They rise in
Laon, slaughter the bishop, burn the palaces, establish
their commune — are put down and punished. They
rise in Normandy, armed with pitchforks and sticks.
They are easily dispersed by steel-clad men-at-arms,
and ordered back to their cottages with feet and hands
cut off. The trouvere has preserved their song. " We
are men," it begins, with a grand and solemn simplicity,
" we are men even as they are ; such limbs as they have
we have ; as great bodies have we ; and we can endure
as much. Nothing fails us but heart alone. Let us
all}^ ourselves by oath. Let us defend our own and
ourselves. Let us keep ourselves together, and if they
wish to fight, we have against one knight thirty or forty
peasants, vigorous and strong to fight." ^
1 Nos sumes homes cum il sunt,
Tex membres avum cum il unt,
Et altresi grans cors avum,
Et altrctant sofrir poum.
Ne nus faut fors cuer sulement,
Alium nus par serement,
EMANCIPA T/ON. 15
It is the first of the terrible French risings. They
will try again and again, with the Pastoureaux, with the
Jacquerie, each time with the same song. For the heri-
tage of the Gaul, who used to divide his land afresh
every five years, is the irrepressible sense of equality.
With the eleventh century comes the first outward
mark visible to us of the great changes coming over
Europe. The laity are beginning to ask questions ; the
bourgeois are already struggling for the municipal inter-
ests ; the clergy are handing over to lay hands the ai-t
of architecture ; the universities are taking learning out
of the convents ; Abolard teaches his thousands ; Ber-
nard complains that the faith of the simple is divided,
and the very secrets of Heaven are searched into. To
meet the growing strength of inquiry the church invents
the mendicant orders ; the men of the law grow stronger ;
the royal povVer deepens and broadens ; men doubt and
deny ; all foreshadows the great convulsion of the six-
teenth century — the first of those by which men will at
last destroy their greatest and most accursed enemy, the
spirit of sacerdotalism.
At the end of the eleventh centur}^, another captive,
besides architecture and scholarship, escapes from the
cloister and finds her way into the world. It is music.
For the people begin to sing, not in the tunes of the
church service, but melodies of their own. One can
hardly believe that there coidd have been actually no
popular music before that date ; it is difficult to under-
Nos aveir et nus defendum,
E tuit ensemble nus tenurn.
Es nus voilent guerroier,
Ben avum centre un chevalier
Trente ou quarante paisanz
Maniables e cumbatans.
16 THE CHANSON.
stand a silent people ; but the fact seems so, and the
church service was the only means of giving utterance
to the instincts of music. Then came the chanson, set
to the viol and the lute, and singing of love and the
sweet springtime. It began, after the manner of an es-
caped prisoner, by being wholly joyous and bright : —
J'ai amiete
Sadete
Blondete
Telz com je voloie.
Presently a sweet melancholy falls upon the soul.
The lover has to leave his mistress ; he hears the birds
sing in Brittany and thinks of their song in sweet Cham-
pagne. He is getting old and past the time of love.
And just then the chanson is joined by another prisoner
from the convent, the " sirvente." The sirvente is the
earliest form of satire. It was the imitation of monkish
rhymes in the vulgar tongue, beginning with verse half
in Latin half in French, and was as great a step in ad-
vance as when Regnier first imitated Horace. And then
satire open and undisguised went up and down the face
of France, striking all, sparing nothing ; ridiculing the
ladies for their painted faces, the lords for their tyran-
nies, the Pope for his pride,^ the clergy for their avarice
— knight, lawyer, bourgeois, villain.
There is a singular monotony about the chansons of
the Langue d'Oil. They are, as I have said, mostly
tinged with the satirical spirit. Some, however, are
purely pastoral. The knight — it is always in May,
Papa captus hunc vel banc decipit,
Papa quid vult in lectum recipit,
Papa nullum vel nullam excipit,
Papae detur, nam Papa praecipit :
Tort a qui ne le dune.
THE KNIGHT AND THE BELLE. 17
when the birds begin to sing — rides through the forest
and finds a helle. The chanson has then two possible
endings. Most of the songs are quite simple and pretty.
Here is one of the very lightest : —
On a day as it befel
In a wood I rode along ;
Lying there, a maiden fair
Watch'd her sheep and sang this song :
Tire lire a lire,
Robin mine ;
Pipers come and pipers go,
Tire lire a lire.
I doff'd my hat and bent me low,
And beside her took my seat.
*' Maiden, tell me, ere I go,
Why dost thou this song repeat ? "
Tire lire, &c.
" Sir," she said, " where'er I hide me,
Robin comes and asks for love ;
And as often does he chide me.
Since my heart he cannot move."
Tire lire, &c.
" Ah ! " cried I, " but let me woo thee ;
Let me clasp this silver thing
Round thy waist and hold thee to me ;
Only, only, cease to sing
Tire lire," &c.
*' Sir, 'twere churlish ' No ' to say :
Take me now to be your bride.
Let us from this place away,
Together singing, as we ride,
Tire lire a lire,
Robin mine ;
Pipers come and pipers go,
Tire lire a lire."
Here, too, is another of a later period, in the same
light strain: —
2
18 THE CHANSON,
It is early in the morning,
At the very break of day,
My love and I go roaming
All in the woods to play.
The dew, like pearl-drops, bathes our feet,
The sweet dew-drops of May.
In the sweetest place of any,
'Mid the grasses thick and high,
Caring nothing for the dew-drops
That around us thickly lie.
Bathed and lapp'd in glittering May-dew,
Sit we there, my love and I.
As we pluck the whitethorn blossom,
As we whisper words of love.
Prattles close beside the brooklet,
Sings the lark and coos the dove.
Our feet are bathed with ^lay-dew,
And our hearts are bathed in love.
A simple time enough. You may play it on a
wheaten straw and on a scrannel pipe, but it will
only sound well in the open air, and must be sung
when the sun is brightest, the birds are loudest, the
flowers are sweetest, and youth is happiest. Under
these conditions it may pass for music.
In the next we get the fatal element of illicit
passion : —
Sweet Yolante, in her chamber fair,
Bends at her work o'er shuttle and woof ;
Here golden threads, and a silk one there : .
But her mother chides her in bitter reproof :
" Therefore, I blame thee, fair Yolante !
•* Fair Yolante. thy mother am I,
And so may speak as seemeth me good."
*' But mother, and mother, pray tell me why? "
*' Tell thee, I will, as a mother should.
Wherefore I blame thee, my child Yolante."
FAIR DOETTE. 19
**But why, then, mother? " she smiling said ;
" Is it for work, or is it for play?
Is it for weaving the golden thread,
Or is it for lying in bed all day?
Wherefore chidest thou fair Yolaute? "
•* It is not for wearing the silk and the gold ;
It is not for work, it is not for play ;
It is not for sleeping when matins are told ;
But for whispering ever your lover gay — •
Therefore I chide thee, fair Yolante.
*' AVhispering, child, wdth the County Guy;
Whispering, laughing, when no one is near.
Bitterly now doth thy husband sigh :
Speak no more with him, daughter dear —
Therefore I blame thee, fair Yolante."
"And if my husband himself should pray,
And he and his kin all sorrow and sigh.
Little care I, for I must say nay.
And never cease loving my County Guy."
" Therefore 1 blame thee, fair Yolante."
Or again, there is the pure ballad, taking in some in-
cident of love or death, sorrow or joy. I will take one
more as a specimen of the ballad literature of France,
which, with a greater wealth of incident, would be the
richest in the world; —
Fair Doette, at her window sitting,
Reads in her book with her thoughts astray ;
Still from the written page they are flitting
To her lord at the tournament far away.
Now woe is me.
A squire is climbing the stairs of her bower,
Down in the court has he left his steed ;
Fair Doette, in the Lady's Tower,
Springs to her feet for news indeed.
Now woe is me.
20 THE CHANSON.
Cried fair Doette, as he stood at the door,
" Where and how is my love, my lord? "
But she swooned away, and she asked no more,
For the squire he answered her never a word.
Now woe is me.
The Lady Doette has opened her eyes.
And she turns to the squire, but hopes in vain. ^
Heavy her heart in her bosom lies,
For her lord she never will see again.
Now woe is me.
*' Say," said the Lady Doette, " Now say
News of ray lord, whom I love so well."
" Alas ! alas ! he was kill'd in the fray ;
Fain would I hide it, but needs must tell.
Now woe is me."
' Gan fair Doette to sorrow and moan ;
" Ah ! liege my lord, and woe befall
The day and the tour nay ; now must I begone
To take the vow^s in the convent wall,
(Now woe is me) —
Ever a nun in the Church of St. Paul."
The names of the song-writers are legion. Among
the satiric trouveres^ excepting Riitebeuf, whom 5^011
I will find further on, note especially Count Thibaut of
■ Champagne, lover of Queen Bertha, a sweet and grace-
ful poet, but monotonous. He has a thing or two to
jsay about the general corruption of the age. We shall
hear a good deal before we have finished about the cor-
ruption of the age, and if that were the only common-
place, one would not mind. But worse commonplaces
are before us. Then there is Hue de la Ferte, whose
soul is moved by a mighty wrath against Thibaut him-
self, as well as against the corruption of the age.
Count Thibaut, with envy gilded.
And with deepest treachery stain'd,
GUYOT. 21
In the noble craft of knighthood
Little credit hast thou gain'd ;
Better skill 'd art thou, I ween,
In the art of medicine.
Thus politely hinting that the Count was a secret
poisoner. In another song he exhorts the young king,
Louis IX., to shake off the domination of women and
priests : —
Make the clergy go their way,
In the church to sing and pray.
Then comes on our list Adam de la Halle, of whom a
careful study ought to be made. He is a bourgeois of
Arras ; he is intended for the church, but falls in love
with Marie and marries her. Then he sings the beauty
of his bride. Ten years later, the artless minstrel, for-
getting all the tender things he used to sing — so fickle
is the poet's heart — is lamenting the way in which his
wife has "gone off" and lost her beauty — the unrea-
sonable husband. He w^rites about the Crusades, about
the mendicant friars, about the town gossip. He has a
clear and distinct individuality, pleasant to look back
upon, and is of a cheerful, vigorous nature, not above
considering the disputes of his own town fit subjects for
his verse, as well as the month of May and the ever-
lasting shepherdess sitting beside a fountain.
The first French satirist, properly so called, accord-
ing to some, is Guyot. It seems to me absurd to take
a man who can only represent a genre of literature at a
certain stage of development, and call him the first. No
writer invents. Satire began when man began to be
oppressed ; it was worth listening to in France as soon
as men learned to put together their own language in a
poetic form ; from that date it has gone on following
22 THE CHANSON.
the laws which regulate all literary development, and
obedient to the circum -stances which snrrounded it. The
great grumbler Giiyot, undoubtedly a satirist, lives in
an aqe which he calls *' horrible and stinkinoj." He
finds himself constrained to write a '* Bible " (book).
He has been in Germany, all over France, in Palestine ;
he knows all the great lords of the time ; he has been a
monk, and knows all the monasteries : — those Avhere
the monks wash and oil their heads at night to make
them soft and glittering in the morning ; those where
the abbot and cellarers drink up all the clear wine and
send to the refectory only the thick : those, like Cluny,
where 3'ou have to fast when you are hungry, to keep
awake when you are sleepy,- and roar all night long in
the church, and where 3'ou get nothing to eat but rotten
eggs and beans. As for the vices of the age, Guyot
can only find one — that of avarice — for serious indig-
nation. He attacks women, it is true, for their liglitness
and dissimulation ; nuns for the unclean state of their
houses ; lawyers for their chicanery ; physicians for
their ignorance. No real indignation about this man ;
only the ill-natured venting of disappointment. He has
been a monk, and does not like the restraints of the
cloister ; he has been a hanger-on at courts, and has got
no reward. He is getting old, in short, and must go
back to that eternal "bawling in church" which is his
special vexation.
Another and a very different '' Bible " is that of
Hugues de Breze. He is no disappointed musician-
monk. He is an elderly, respectable knight, who, hav-
ing taken his share in the fighting, now goes home and
amuses his old age in writing a grave and solemn satire
on the evils of the time ; not because he is in a rage
with everybody, nor because he likes to talk about vice,
PARODIES, 23
but because he is saddened by its spectacle, and hopes
to do something to stop its progress. " Some of us," he
says, '' are usurers ; some of us are robbers ; some mur-
derers ; some are full of luxury, and others are full of
license." And then he preaches on the folly of loving,
while inevitable death stares us in the face.
Another outlet for the satirical spirit Avere the paro-
dies of the chansons de geste. From the chronicles of
valorous deeds the transition was easy to the ridicule of
the defeats and mockery of the enemy. One of these
parodies, for instance, represents our Henry III. sur-
rounded by his barons, swearing to exterminate the
French, to carry Paris by assault, to set the Seine on
fire, to burn all the mills, and to carry the Sainte-Chapelle
to London. Simon de Montfort interrupts his boasting
by reminding him that the French, who are not by any
means lambs, will probably have something to say for
themselves.
In another a knight is drawn —
As great a coward, this story tells,
As ever hid in convent cells.
The tale is modelled exactly on the chansons de geste.
It begins by giving us the history of the hero's family.
His father. Count Turgibus, pale and j^ellow, with a.
neck like an ostrich, is a great man of war, who pierces,
the wings of butterflies with his lance ; his mother, the
one-eyed Rainberge. The usual presages of future
greatness surround the heir at his birth. There are
no nightingales, it is true, struck mute at the advent of
so great a man ; the stars do not pale ; but the ass, the
dog, and the cat of the castle shriek all night, and so
proclaim their sense of what has come into the world.
Audigier, the hero, grows up the type of awkwardness.
24 THE CHANSON.
clumsiness, and ugliness. The tale goes on to show
how he set out on his travels in search of adventure,
and what befel him, finishing with his marriage to the
frightful Tronce Crevace.
There were, lastly, the Wonderful Adventures of
travellers, a favorite theme from the time of Lucian,
who doubtless borrowed from some one else. The dit
d'aventures relates how a traveller, losing his way in an
enchanted forest, is attacked by brigands ; how he is
saved from their daggers by a she-wolf and her brood of
twelve young wolves ; how he falls into the river, and
is rescued by taking the bait of a fisherman, who drags
him to the surface ; and how he is swallowed by an
enormous monster, from whom he is rescued by a
friendly bull, who gores the monster in the flanks, and
so opens a way for escape.
%
Library.
Chapter II.
RUTEBEUF THE TROUVERE.
Jog on, jog on, the footpath way,
And merrily hent the stile-a;
A merry heart goes all the way,
Your sad tires in a mile-a. — Winter''s Tale.
TF such were the songs, what were the singers? The
-^ only answer is to present one, a professional trouvere
of the thirteenth century, a member of that fraternity
which went up and down the country, travelling from
castle to castle, from town to town. No kind of life
more tempting to one who was not content to sit at
home and see nothing, than the life of a trouvere. The
Crusades had spoiled the grand pilgrimage, which before
had been the excitement of a lifetime. When Jerusa-
lem fell into the hands of the Saracens, the one supreme
pleasure of life was lost with it, namely, to leave every
thing, care, trouble, debts, wife, and children — to go
away, staff in hand, license in pocket, and trudge
though Europe and across Asia Minor to the Ploly Land.
And now only the local saints, a feeble folk, were left.
At home, the rules were strict about keeping to your
own work, your own dress, your own town, even your
own food, so that life was doleful in its monotony, and
we are not surprised when we hear how the minstrels so
crowded every road that King Philip Augustus restricted
their numbers by law, and sent all the rest out of the
country. Some went to Italy, and some went to Eng-
land. At Bologna there were so many French min-
26 RUTEBEUF.
strels that they made a law to prevent their singing in
the streets.
A pleasant life, if onl}^ the competition was not too
keen, to take the road when the winter was fairly gone
and the spring set in ; to visit, one after the other, the
places where the singer was always welcome — to sing
the old song outside, sure of a joyous reception within.
Watch of the tower,
Guard for your hour
The walls of the castle secure from the foe.
While on my lute I play
Love song and roundelay,
Ere, once again, on my journey I go.
If the minstrel were lucky, he might get taken into
some great noble's castle, haply even into the palace of
the king. Philip Augustus, for instance, had Dans
Helynand always with him to refresh his soul, as Saul
had David. Judging from the only poem of Helynand's
that I have seen, Philip's enviable soul was easily
refreshed.
Below the rank of trouv e re w^^ the jongleur. He it
was who could play any sort of instrument, sing any
kind of song, cure ever}'- disease, tell stories, throw in
satirical bits at monks and their wicked ways. He was
not too proud to turn somersaults ; he knew all the
folk-lore and the proverbs ; he had been everywhere ;
could recite adventures by sea and land ; tell of hours
of peril with the infidel, fights with strange sea-mon-
sters. He had seen the court of the great Khaliff of
Cairo ; he knew the city of Prester John ; and if no
suspicious eye was Avatching, he would tell fortunes,
cast horoscopes, give children to the childless, and pro-
long the life of the dying. Above all, he it was who re-
lieved the monotony of existence in the country -town.
THE JONGLEUR. 27
He it was who kept np by his unflagging spirits, his
jokes, and his songs, the popular illusion of the jovial
wandering life. What school-boy has not mourned over
the cruel fate that forbids him to be a gypsy, a cheap
Jack, a clown ? Sings the jongleur —
I lead a good life semper quam possum ;
The host brings his bill, and 1 say, " Ecce assum."
At spending my money semper paratus sum ;
AVhen I think in my heart, et meditatus sum,
Ergo dives habet nummos sed non habet ipsum.
Love, singing, and drinking libenter colo
To play after dinner cum deciis volo:
Though I know that the dice non sunt sine dole.
Una vice I praise myself, then I repent,
Omnia sunt hominum tenui pendentia filo.
To drink the good wine fui generatus.
To hoard up my treasure non exstiti natus.
Certain it is I am not locupletatus,
For the miser was never to Heaven exaltatus ;
Despice divitias si vis animo esse beatus.
As yet, remark, there is no censorship of literature.
The poet is free ; to be sure, if he allows himself undue
license, there are irregular penalties not laid down by
law. His tongue may be pierced, or his eyes put out,
or his ears sliced. These are little dangers in the way,
but thej^ are rarely met with. Most trouveres and Jong-
leurs say just what they please, as privileged as the
King's fool. Literature is free, and for a good three
hundred years, every one, saving the respect due to the
church, may sing, recite, or narrate any thing he likes ;
which is, above all, the most important point to remem-
ber about that mediaeval life in which the songs of the
minstrel played so great a part.
All this brings us to Rutebeuf, who occupies a middle
28 RUTEBEUF.
position between the jongleur and trouvere. When he
is out of luck he is the people's poet ; when things go
well with him, he frequents great lialls, and sings for
lords and ladies. We know nothing of his life except
what we can construct from his poems. His contempo-
raries never mention him. And yet of all the trouveres
he is the most original, the most real, and therefore the
most attractive. The short biography which follows
I tender with great deference to that historical spirit
which requires proof. For of proof there is little. It
is evolved from the careful reading of his poems and
attention to the circumstances of the time. Some of
the details may be wrong ; the broad facts I am sure
are true.
He was born early in the thirteenth century, of hum-
ble parentage, as his name denotes. He was a quick,
sharp lad, and being endowed with a marvellously sweet
voice, Avas taken into the service of the church in some
Champagne town. Here he received from the monks
the rudiments of learning, and was taught to sing and
play.
Some benefactor — perhaps the abbot, perhaps the
seigneur — assisted him to go to the University of Paris,
where he fought, gambled, sung, danced, -and comported
himself like young Frollo till the time came when the
stream of bounty ceased, and the grim necessity of labor
stared him in the face. No thesis had been held ; no
degree had been conferred ; no learning had been ac-
quired. But the sweet boyish soprano was now a fine,
vigorous tenor; his knowledge of musical instruments
had extended till there was nothing he could not play,
from the lute to the bagpipes ; and he could sing and
recite countless songs and fabliaux.
Great Gaster, first Master of Arts, according to Rabe-
ON THE TRAMP. 29
lais, decreed that he should be a minstrel. So he copied
out his own verses fair, made up the budget which was
to form his '' entertainment," tied up his personal belong-
ings, which would make but a small parcel, and, with
his lute in his hand, started on the tramp. Going on
the tramp in his century was more picturesque than at
present, undoubtedly ; and could the minstrel have fore-
seen the advent of a day when all the splendor of cos-
tume was to vanish, with the glittering of armor, and
the glory of banners, he would certainly have enjoyed
his march more. On the other hand, there were rob-
bers — not so many as were to come a hundred years
later, which might also have consoled a prophet — but
still enough to convey a lasting and ever-present sense
of danger. You might at any time be caught and plun-
dered of ever}^ thing. If you were suspected of having
portable property concealed, there were a thousand
ingenious and persuasive arts by which you would be
induced to tell what and where it was. Few natures
can resist the pleading of a brigand, accompanied by the
prod of his knife — though this was elementary. There
were twistings by the thumbs and by the wrist, parboil-
ings, partial roastings, with other rough and handy
measures of persuasion. Above all, since dead men
alone tell no tales, there was always the nearest tree to
be dreaded. Therefore, when men journeyed in a small
company, so far from the minstrel being encouraged to
beguile the way by song, he would be more often warned
not to bring the enemy upon them by his unseasonable
noise. And in winter time there were wolves — troops
and swarms of wolves.
In the great towns there were always inns where
money was to be made, and public j^laces where a plat-
form could be erected ; between the towns lay the cas-
30 RUTEBEUF.
ties, and it was too often the minstrel's unhappy lot to
find in the seigneur a man with no more taste for music
than a Babbage, or already cleaned out by previous
visitors.
It Avas not for a poor minstrel like Rutebeuf to despise
the village jplace and the stage of the jongleur. Dressed
in the conventional robe which proclaimed his calling
in the triple capacity of singer, quack, and traveller, he
posed upon the boards and sang his song before he sold
his drugs. Who has toothache ? Who has rheumatism ?
Who wants to be 3'oung again? Behold the elixir of
life ; behold the herb gathered at peril of life and limb
from under the very nose of the Paj-nim. The price is
nominal, for the vendor has no other motive in selling it
than the good of his kind. And as to the qualifications
of the wandering philanthropist — but listen to the song
of Autol^'cus : —
Hola ! lords and ladies all,
Gentles great and villains small,
Hear what luck doth you befall
On this day.
There is no decit or guile.
You will own it, if a while
You will stay.
, Sit down all, 'twill please you well,
"While my tale I sing and tell,
Strange and rare.
Sirs, I am a doctor wise.
Many lands have seen these eyes,
Here and there.
Cairo's city knows my face ;
There I treated for a space
Man and maid.
Then I cross'd me o'er the seas,
'Till my ship brought me to Greece,
Where I stay'd.
THE CHARLATAN. 31
Next to Italy I came,
Laden with my gold and fame,
Curing all.
There I found herbs strange to see,
Fit to heal all ills that be,
Great and small.
Thence I journeyed to the stream
Where the precious jewels gleam.
Day and night.
But, alas ! I could not land,
Prester John was close at hand
With his might.
Yet they brought me from the port
Stones and gems of such a sort,
(Magic art,)
That at merest touch the dead
Come to life and lift their head,
Light of heart.
Leaving the road, Rutebeuf settled down in Paris,
where it is sad \o relate that he took to the line on which
satirists, the most independent, as they are also the
most virtuous, of men, are especially severe — he began
to court the great. He depended entirely on patronage,
wrote songs to order, preached up the Crusades, though
his heart must have felt ready to burst as each success-
ful song armed another of the knights his patrons, and
sent him far from his reach to die on the sands of Africa ;
wept floods of tears, to please the saintly king, over cap-
tive Jerusalem ; and only occasionally allowed himself
the luxury of writing to please himself.
He was always horribly poor, mainly because he was
" sair hadden doon " by thcvice of gambling : —
I gape with hunger, I cough with cold.
My bed is of thorns, and my clothes are old ;
I sit forlorn, with my pockets bare,
In Paris, the city of all good fare ;
And I lie all day on my pallet bed.
Because I've no money to buy me bread.
32 RUTEBEUF.
In the midst of his poverty, and with the absence of
prudence which distinguishes ahke the poet and the
parson — their only point of resemblance — he married,
and had a large family. What became of the younger
Rutebeufs I do not know, but Ave may fear the worst,
from the example set them by their thriftless father.
In one of those heav}^ moods which fall sometimes upon
all bards, he had the bad taste to write about his own
wife, even to complain of her age and ugliness. No
doubt the poor woman, who certainly could not read,
never saw her husband's verses : —
Home and money I had none :
Yet I married. Was it done
Out of pure good-will —
All to cheer and comfort those
Who hate my luck and love my woes,
And would wish me ill?
Such a wife, too, I must choose :
Poor and ragged as her spouse :
Pale and thin of face.
Neither fair nor young was she,
Fifty years her age might be,
Tall and scant of grace.
However, having married, he must work harder.
Day after day he has to go out, carrying his bag as well
as his lute — for he receives payment in kind for his
songs : —
When home I go with a swollen pack
Swinging heavily at my back,
My wife jumps up with a joyful cry,
And throws her spindle and spinning by.
And then there is roasting of chickens, buying of new
bread, and rejoicing of the children.
But there are too many children. While his wife is
C(Hi fined with another baby, the nurse brings back the
AGE AND DEATH, 33
last, for which she has not been paid, and threatens to
leave it at the house unless the poor distracted trouvere
will pay her bill. " Leave it here ? " he cries in exas-
peration, " to bellow all about the house ? " He will do
nothing for the child. He loses his temper, and cries
out, impatiently : —
Cil dame Diex qui le fist nestre ^
Li doinst chevance.
Which, gentle reader, you may translate for yourself.
Presently more misfortunes fall upon him, and he
compares himself to Job : he loses the sight of one eye,
the one which sees best ; he gets poorer instead of richer,
and, worse than all, he gets old.
Alas! the years of youth are o'er,
Its many sports are spent ;
Age is come, I sing no more,
'Tis time that I repent.
So, too, La Fontaine laments his sins when he is too
old to sin any more : —
Iklille autres passions, des sages condamnees,
Ont pris comme a I'envi la fleur de mes annees.
So, too, Henry Murger, Marot, Villon. They are all
alike. When the last hour comes they send for the
priest, and patch up a hasty peace with the church.
Good, easy-going French church ! She receives all
these sinners on the easiest terms, gives them the kiss
of a mother who only laughs at the follies of her chil-
dren, and promises tliem, before they go to bed, forgive-
ness and a whole hoHday for the morrow.
So the trouvere puts down his lute, heaves a sigh, and!
dies. Songs, ballads, exhortations to the Crusades, /rt5-|
liaux, mysteries and miracles, and poems against the.
monks — these are the literary baggage of Rutebeuf.
3
34 RUTEBEUF.
As regards the last, he is the boldest assailant of the
church ; not for her doctrines, understand, but for the
evil lives of her servants : —
Iler sons are sleeping, watch and ward are left
In peril great — of all but God bereft.
He is beside himself when he attacks the hypocrites ;
he would like to hang them all : —
Fans papelars, fans hypocrites,
Fausse vie menez et orde;
Qui vous pendroit a vostre corde
II auroit faict bonne journee.
He was not, however, the first who assailed hypoc-
risy. We find the hypocrite in the '^ Castoiement d'un
pdre a un fils" (translated fiom the " Disciplina Cleri-
calis"): —
Fair without and clean I am,
Clothed in the skin of a stolen lamb.
We shall meet him afterwards perpetually, till he cul-
minates in Tartuffe. Hear what Rutebeiif says about
monks : —
By many a shift and many a part
Live tliey who know no trade or art
To gain their life in honest way.
Some clothe themselves in sackcloth gray,
And some, to show the good they do,
Go without shirts the whole year through.
The Jacobins, so rich at home,
Rule Paris here, and there rule Rome ;
Kings and Apostles both are they,
And year by year still grows their sway.
For when one dies, if in his will • '
The Order be not mention'd. still
His soul may wai-t without, that so
The Order thus may greater grow.
THE FABLIAU. 35
In the " Chanson des Ordres " Rutebeuf parades the
whole crew of monks, bestowing an impartial flagella-
tion on each in turn. There is the Jacobin, the Corde-
lier, the Carmelite, the Trappist.
Then there is, all by himself in a separate " diz," the
Pharisee, clad in a simple robe, pale and dried of face,
with austere air, cruel and malicious more than lion,
leopard, or scorpion. And lastly, there is the b<^guine,
who (whatever she does, whether she weeps or laughs,
sleeps or dreams) is always a saint : —
Sa parole est prophetic,
SVll rit, c'est compaignie;
S'ell pleure, c'est devocion;
S'ell dort, ell est ravie;
S'ell songe, c'est vision;
S'ell ment, n'en creez mie.
Rutebeuf is also the author of the very best of the
old miracle plays. Short as it is, it is written with a
firm hand. The situations are effective, simple, and
striking.
This is hardly the place for a notice of his '' Theo-
philus," the study of which belongs to th^ history of
miracles and mysteries. Like \i\^ fabliaux., it is remark- -
able for the great clearness of treatment.
But the principal function of the minstrel was to put
into a poetical form all the stories which he could col-
lect together, and to tell over again those which others
had collected. Th.^, fabliau is, above all, the true place
to look for mediseval fun, satire, or humor, as well as for
mediaeval manners and customs. The fabliau was
essentially the amusement of the winter evenings ; happy
he who could write a new one or furbish up an old one.
Here the cure and the friar come to well-merited
grief; here the jealous husband is outwitted; here la
36 RUTEBEUF,
femme — the life and soul of the stories — is alternately
glorified and disgraced — ofttimes the latter: —
Feme est de trop foible nature,
De noient rit, de iioient pleure.
Feme aime et het en trop poi d'eure.
Here is the story of the " Medecin malgre lui ; " here
that of Griselda — " Griselidis " — the type of patient
conjugal virtue ; and here the real popular belief about
religion. An example of the last is the fabliau of the
^^ Villain who gained Paradise by pleading."
The poor rustic dies ; he is so humble that no one,
neither angel nor devil, cares to have any thing to do
with his soul. He wanders alone and unmolested, till
he finds himself at the gates of Heaven.
I tell a tale that once I read :
'Tis of a villain long since dead,
And of his soul. He passed away
One Friday at the close of day.
When it behooved the man to die,
Angel or devil, none was by;
And so the soul, from body reft.
Stood waiting there unheeded left.
None came to claim it ; all in awe,
Yet half rejoiced, the poor soul saw
No devil instant flames command,
No angel's smiling face at hand.
Then looking curious here and there.
Perceived a distant portal, where
Saint Michael's self was leading straight
A happy soul through Heaf en's gate.
The villain followed, till at last
To Paradise itself he passed.
Saint Peter, Heaven's porter, who
Had opened gates to let them through,
The soul received by Michael brought.
And then his eyes the villain caught.
" Who art thou? " asked he, when he saw
The soul come in against the law.
THE VILLAIN IN PARADISE. 37
" Here is there entrance none, except
For those by judgment strict elect.
Besides, in truth, by Saint Gillain,
We want not here base-born villain."
To whom the villain made reply,
" No worse than you, fair saint, am I ;
Harder are you than any stone ;
Small honor have the churches won
From your apostleship, 'Twas you
Who did deny your Saviour true."
Ashamed and angry, Peter stayed,
And called Saint Thomas to his aid.
Saint Thomas, " Leave the case to me,
Not long in Heaven his soul shall be."
Then to the villain goes, and, " Say
By what authority you stay,
False villain, where no soul may come
Without escort? This is no home
For such as you. From Paradise
Begone at once."
The villain cries,
*' Ah I Thomas, Thomas, is it well
For thee such measure rude to tell ?
Art thou not he who, doubting still,
Would'st not confess thy Lord until,
False and of little faith, I ween.
His very wounds thine eyes had seen? "
Saint Thomas, grieved, with answer none.
Bent low his head, and next is gone
Straight to Saint Paul. " Now, by my head,"
Cried Paul, " this villain shall be sped, —
Villain," said he, " you enter here,
Regardless of all right, all fear;
Know, villain base, of low degree,
That Paradise is not for thee:
Therefore begone."
" What!" cried the soul,
" Do I behold the Apostle Paul?
Paul, he who, cruel beyond compare.
Stoned Stephen, first of martyrs fair?
Full well I know thy life of old,
How many a man, betray'd and sold.
88 RUTEBEUF.
"Was put to death by thee and thine,
Apostle fair, and saint divine.
Hal have I not thy exploits heard? "
Saint Paul, abashed, with never a word
In answer, with confusion burned,
And to the other two returned.
It will easily be guessed that it is well not to trans-
late any further. The villain is allowed to remain in
Heaven.
This boldness in dealing with subjects of the deepest
reverence is entirely characteristic of the fabliau. It is
due partly to their mock religious ceremonies, and partly
to the intense luitred of the monks which overran all
France in the three centuries immediately preceding the
Reformation. Thus, we have the lover's Paternoster,
where every clause is a peg for amatory sentiments ;
the Credo of the Ribaut ; —
Credo — I believe in dice;
"Without a penny for the price
Full often have they got me meat.
Good wine to drink, and friends to treat;
And sometimes, too, when luck went worse,
They've stripped me clean of robe and purse.
And so on. There is the Credo of the usurer. He is
dying, and makes his last confession : —
Credo — this my faith receive:
In my coffers I believe.
In Deum — what shall I do?
My wife is such a thriftless shrew.
Patrem — if I leave her these,
And get well of my disease,
Half at least she'd waste and spend.
Omnipolenfem — ah ! my friend,
I remember how, one day.
Five whole livres she threw away;
And a hundred sous and more —
Creatorem — gone before.
THE ASS'S TESTAMENT. 89
There are knightly stories, and tricks of villains.
There is the story of Narcissus, of Graelent, of Aucassin
and Nicolette, the prettiest of pretty stories ; the lay of
Aristotle, and a thousand tales which may be read still
with pleasure. Grave faults there are, of course, and a
selection must be made.
The fabliau^ every thing by turns, was thus the real
instructor of the people, who could read nothing, were
taught nothing, knew nothing. It was for this reason
that the churcli, taking alarm at the great influence
which the satirical fahliaiix had obtained, devised the
plan of teaching sound doctrines by the same means.
In these was inculcated the worship of the Virgin, of
different saints, the duty and rewards of keeping up the
church, of paying dues, attending services, and the like.
And then people began to yawn, and so the fabliau
went into disrepute. But that was long after Rutebeuf
wrote the following, which is the story of the " Ass's
Last Will and Testament," with which we will finish
this chapter : —
A priest there M'as in times of oltl,
Fond of his cliureh, but fonder of gold,
AVho spent liis days and all liis thought '
In getting ^vvhat he preached was nought. \
Ilis I'h'sts were full of robes and stuif,
Corn tilled his garners to the roof,
Stored up against the fair-times gay,
From Saint Remy to Easter Day.
An ass he had within his stable,
A beast most sound and valuable.
For twenty years he lent his strength
For the priest his master, till at length,
"Worn out with work and age, he died.
The priest, .who loved him, wept and cried;
And, for his service long and hard,
Buried him in his own churchyard.
Now turn we to another thing:
'Tis of a bishop that I sing.
40 RUTEBEUF.
No greedy miser he, I ween;
Prelate so generous ne'er was seen.
Full well he loved in company
Of all good Christians still to be;
When he was well, his pleasure still,
His medicine best when he was ill.
Always his hall was full, and there
His guests had ever best of fare.
Whate'er the bishop lack'd or lost
Was bought at once despite the cost;
And so in spite of rent and score,
The bishop's debts grew more and more.
For true it is — this ne'er forget —
AVho spends too much gets into debt.
One day his friends all with him sat,
The bishop talking this and that,
Till the discourse on rich clerks ran,
Of greedy priests, and how their plan
Was all good bishops still to grieve,
And of their dues their lords deceive.
And then the priest of whom I've told
Was mention'd; how he loved his gold.
And because men do often use
More freedom than the truth would choose,
They gave him wealth, and wealth so much,
As those like him could scarcely touch.
" And then beside, a thing he's done.
By which great profit might be won,
Could it be only spoken here."
Quoth the bishop, " Tell it without fear."
*' He's worse, my lord, than Bedouin,
Because his own dead ass, Baldwin,
He buried in the sacred ground."
" If this is truth, as shall be found,"
The bishop cried, " a forfeit high
Will on his worldly riches lie.
Summon this wicked priest to me;
I will myself in this case be
The judge. If Robert's word be true,
Mine are the fine and forfeit too."
The priest comes when summoned.
" Disloyal! God's enemy and mine,
Prepare to pay a heavy fine.
THE ASS'S TESTAMENT. 41
Thy ass thou buriest in the place
Sacred by church. Now, by God's grace,
I never heard of crime more great.
What! Christian men with asses wait?
Now, if this thing be proven, know
Surely to prison thou wilt go."
*' Sir,'" said the priest, " thy patience grant;
A short delay is all I want.
Not that I fear to answer now —
But give me what the laws allow."
And so the bishop leaves the priest,
AVho does not feel as if at feast.
But still, because one friend remains,
He trembles not at prison pains.
His purse it is which never fails
For tax or forfeit, fine or vails.
The term arrived, the priest appeared,
And met the bishop, nothing feared;
For 'neath his girdle safe there hung
A leathern purse, well stocked and strung
"With twenty pieces fresh and bright.
Good money all, none clipped or light.
" Priest," said the bishop, "if thou have
Answer to give to charge so grave,
'Tisnow the time."
" Sir, grant me leave
My answer secretly to give.
Let me confess to you alone,
And, if needs be, my sins atone."
The bishop bent his head to hear,
The priest he whispered in his ear :
" Sir, spare a tedious tale to tell —
My poor ass served me long and well.
For twenty years my faithful slave.
Each year his work a saving gave
Of twenty sous — so that in all
To twenty hvres the sum will fall.
And, for the safety of his soul.
To you, my lord, he left the whole."
" 'Twas rightly done," the tishop said,
And gravely shook his godly head :
" And, that his soul to heaven may go,
My absolution I bestow. "
42 RUTEBEUF.
Now have you heard a truthful lay,
How with rich priests the bishops play,
And Rutebeuf the moral draws
That, spite of kings' and bishops' laws,
No evil times hath he to dread
Who still hath silver at his need.
Note ox Reynard the Fox.
During these centuries there were gradually grownng up the
various stories which go to make the immense assemblage known
as "Reynard the Fox." The Reynard series, which in France
numbers some three hundred and twenty thousand lines, began, it
is quite uncertain when, but probably in the tenth or eleventh cen-
tury, with the Latin poem of Reinardiis Vulpes. This was written
somewhere east of the Rhine, and somewhere north of the Loire.
jNo other limits can be assigned, no other date can be given. It is
.absurd for the Germans to claim the work, as they have done, and
.almost as absurd for the French. Let us give the original Reynard
jto Belgium.
I This enormous work, wherein the whole of the mediaeval life is
/represented, its satire, its ambitions, its desires, its follies, may be
I compared to a great cathedral, round which are grouped the
smaller chapels, each the idea of a different architect, while in the
building itself every artist has been free to carve what he pleased,
and every workman seems to have left his iildividual mark. The
names of the poets have perished. Here and there one tells us
something about himself. " I am a priest of La Croix en Brie,"
says one. ''I am a merchant and a grocer," says another. And
thus each adds his quota to the stupendous whole and goes away.
I can only here briefly indicate the main points of the old
French Renart.
The legend has been divided into three periods perfectly distinct.
The first, which contained the Reinardus Vulpes, the French,
Flemish, and German Reynard, brings us to the beginning of the
thirteenth century.
The second, containing the " Crowning of Reynard," belongs
also to the thirteenth century.
The third belongs to a new state of society, in the fifteenth cen-
tury, and contains Renart le contrefait.
The first period is the one best known. It is on this poem that
Goethe has made his Reineke Fuchs. Reynard is a proper name,
like that of Isengrin for the wolf. The dramatis personce are — to
REYNARD THE FOX. 43
give them their French names — Noble the lion, B run the bear,
Firapel the leopard, Brichemer the stag, Tardif the snail, bearer of
the royal banner, Bernar;! the ass and archbishop, Tybert the cat,
Belin the ram. Escoffle the kite, Tiercelin the raven — these three
last are confessors. Chanticleer the cock, Grimbert the badger,
Cointerians the monkey, Rakenau the she-monkey, the last three
being near relations of Reynard.
Reynard is not bound by any of the rules of chivalric honor.
He runs away. He hides and waits. He lies, thieves, and prac-
tises every sort of dishonorable action. He relies on his cunning
more than his strength. He is poor. He lives retired in his castle
of Malpertuis with llermeline his wife, and his three sons Perce-
haie, Malebranche, and Rovel. Sometimes there is nothing to eat.
Then Reynard makes the children an improving speech and goes
out to see what he can pick up.
His quarrels and battle with Tsengrin are tha, principal inci-
dents. We need not follow a well-known story^'<As for the satire,
all that the Middle Ages venerated, all that they practised with
faith and with love — pilgrimages, crusades, miracles, pious le-
gends, judicial duels, confession, chivalry, all are parodied here
without indignation, without violence, with a gentle irony which
is none the less profound for its hghtness. The hen, murdered by
Reynard, is canonized — miracles are wrought upon her tomb.
These must be true, hecaus<e ihey are attested hy the dog. Reynard
then asks the king's permission to expiate his faults, is told that
he may go, though the king does not approve of pilgrimages and
pilgrims —
For all obsen^e this custom sad,
They set out good and come back bad.
The popularity of these poems is significant of a great deal.
TVe see in them the feeling that there is something besides brute
force ; that cunning and craft may prevail against the stately
strength of the knight in chain armor.
" Miex valt engien que ne fet force."
A new ruler is to be bom, a new career open to those who are
able to seize upon it; it is the rule of those who have brains over
those who have none. And as for the church, this "Roman de
Renart" afEords another proof of the great fact that never once
has the mind of man acquiesced in the rule of priests. Kings have
imposed it for the sake of order ; scholars have been silent for the
sake of order; good priests themselves have accepted it for the sake
of order. The honest sense of the people, terrified at times by
superstitious terrors, has all along known that it was a false and
a cruel thino-, hateful to God. and harmful to man.
Chapter III.
THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
Be it right or -wrong, these men among
On women do complain ;
Affirming this, how that it is
A labor spent in vain
To love them well ; for never a dele
They love a man again.
The Nut-Brown Maid.
WJ^ have to treat of a book which for two hundred
^ ^ and fifty years continued to live as a sort of Bible
in France ; the source whence its readers drew their
maxims of morality, their philosophy, their science, their
histor}^ and even their religion ; and which, after hav-
ing retained its popularity for a length of time almost
unparalleled in the history of literature, was revived with
success after the Renaissance, the only mediaeval book
which for a long space of years enjoyed, this distinction
in France.
I shall endeavor to show some of the reasons of this
long-continued success, and to prove that the book,
once the companion of knights and dames, of damoiseaux
and damoiselles^ has the strongest claims on the student
of the Middle Ages ; that it is not a congeries of dry
and dead bones of antiquity, not a mass of mediaeval
fables, but a book full of ideas, information, and sugges-
tion — a book warm with life.
English readers know the *' Romance of the Rose "
through the translation which is attributed to Chaucer.
Whether it be really his or not is a matter which does
REASONS OF SUCCESS. 45
not concern us here, and to save trouble in explanation,
I will refer to it as Chaucer's translation. It is unfor-
tunate, in some respects, that it contains only a portion
, — viz., the first 5,170 lines, and then, with an omission
of 5,544 lines, about 1,300 more. It gives entire the
portion contributed by Guillaume de Lorris, and as
much of the remainder as fell in most readily with the
humor of the translator, the attack on the hypocrisy of
monks and friars. But by omitting all the rest, amount-
ing to about two-thirds of the whole, he has failed alto-
gether in giving the spirit of the work ; and those who
read only Chaucer's version would certainly be at a loss
to explain the rapid, extraordinary, and lasting popular-
ity which the book achieved.
The reasons of this popularity have, indeed, been the
subject of considerable discussion among French critics.
Pasquier speaks of its " noble sentiments," and consid-
ers that its object was moral — viz., to show that love is
but a dream. Roquefort can see in it only a long and
rather stupid allegory, enlivened by occasional gleams
of poetry; Villemain considers it a mere gioze on Ovid's
" Art of Love," with a melange of abstractions, allego-
ries, and scholastic subtleties. Nisard deduces from its
popularity a proof of its entire conformity with the spirit
of the age — an. almost obvious conclusion. Other
writers, Goujet among the number, try to account for
its success by the reputation which Jean de Meung
enjoyed as an alchemist, and the belief that the great
secrets of the science were to be found in the poem : a
manifestly inadequate reason, because the proportion of
alchemists to the rest of his readers must have been
small indeed. Others, among whom were Molinet and
Marot — of whom more presently — thought its success
was due to a double allegory which they found in it ;
46 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
while Professor Morley and Mr. Thomas Wright, the
latest writers who have given any account of the book
— both of them meagre, diy, and niiinteresting — do
not attempt to explain its popularity at all. There are
sufficient reasons why the book sprang at once into
favor, which I hope presently to explain. The great
success which it attained is illustrated by the number
and weight of its assailants. Foremost among these
was Gerson, the " most Christian doctor." He calls it
a book written for the basest purposes ; he says that if
there were only one copy of it in the world, and if he
were offered fifty pounds in gold for it, he would rather
burn it : that those who have it ought to give it up to
their father confessors to be destroyed : and that even
if it were certain — which was unfortunately far from
being the case, the contrary being presumable — that
Jean de Meung had repented his sins in sackcloth and
ashes, it would be no more use praying for him than for
Judas Iscariot himself. Cursing so ecclesiastical, invec-
tive so angry, stimulated public curiosity more and
more, and instead of copies being given to confessors to
be burned, copies were given to scribes to be multiplied.
Assailants came every day unto the field. Christine de
Pisan, later on, took up the cause of her sex, and vin-
dicated womankind from the sweeping charges made
against them by the poet ; while Martin Franc, who
styled himself " Le Champion des Dames," wrote an
elaborate apology for his clients, which has all the drear-
iness of the " Romance of the Rose," and none of its
brightness. The one is a desert indeed ; the. other is a
desert with oases.
The book is the work of two writers, Guillaume de
Lorris and Jean de Meung. The earlier of these seems
to have died about the time that his successor was born.
GUILLAUME LORRIS. 47
Of his life we know absolutely nothing. He came from
the little town of Loriis, where, it is said, the house in
which he was born is still shown. Two or three lines
in the poem are cited to prove the date of his birth and
death, and at the close of his part we get the following
note by a scholiast : —
Here William died; his song was done.
AVhen forty years had passed away,
Sir John the romance carried on,
And here commencing, told the lay.
While Jean de Meung himself says, safely prophesying
about himself: —
Car quant Guillaurae cessera
Jehan le continuera
Apres^a mort, que je ne mente,
Anns trespasses plus de quarente.
So that if we fix the date of Jean de Meung, we have
that of Guillaume de Lorris. Now, there is nothing to
help us except a tradition that Guillaume died in the
middle of the thirteenth century, and whatever internal
evidence the book itself affords. Most writers, because
the order of Knights Templars is mentioned as still
existing, have been content to date the book- at about
1806, the year before the destruction of the fraternity;
but the poet mentions Charles of Anjou as King of Sic-
ily. We have, therefore, a much narrower limit, viz.,
the year 1282. It is sufficient for our purpose to date
Jean de Meung's authorship at about 1280, and that of
Guillaume de Lorris at 1240.
It is not at all certain that Guillaume de Lorris was
very young when he feigned his dream. The hero of
the poem is necessarily a young man, because early
manhood is the period of vehement desire and passion.
Twenty is the typical age of early manhood : that age
48 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
may have very well been selected as the one best fitted
for dreams of love and the adventures of a lover. I am,
however, inclined to believe, on the whole, that the
poem was written when he was still quite young. A
tradition which only recalls one fact is generally true,
and the one fact recorded of the poet is that he died
quite young. Internal evidence, too, appears to support
this view. His style bears marks which seem, though
one may here be very easily mistaken, those of inexpe-
rience. Thus, the imaginative faculty is abundant,
and even luxuriant ; the descriptive power, fully em-
ployed in his portraits of abstract personifications, is
very much above the average ; he revels in picturesque
accessories and details which his copious fancy has con-
jured up ; and his pictures, if they have not always the
tone^ have all the vividness, with the prodigality of work,
which belongs to a young poet's early style. The ver-
sification, moreover, is cold, regular, and monotonous ;
there is nothing to indicate the possession of experience
or the presence of passion. He has read Ovid, and used
him freely to suit his own purposes ; but he wants
Ovid's sympathetic power, and tries to supply its place
by a certain cold and mannered grace ; his faults being
attributable, on the assumption of his early death, more
to inexperience and youth, than to any defects which
years would not have removed. Considered in this
light, his work remains an unfinished monument of
early genius, a work which would never have been res-
cued from oblivion, but for the splendor of light thrown
on it by Jean de Meung.
Chaucer's translation is exceedingly accurate, giving
line for line, and almost word for word, save when he
sometimes adds a line to enforce its meaning, or to
make it clear. Thus, when translating the famous
Li robe ne faict pas le moyne,
he ssiys
CHAUCER'S TRANSLATION. 49
Habite ne makyth monk ne frere;
But clene life and devocioun
Makyth gode men of religioun ;
and Rutebeuf says* —
Li abis ne fet pas I'ermite.
The saying itself (for nothing in the " Romance of the
Rose " appears to be original) may perhaps be traced to
Neckham, who died at Cirencester in 1217 : —
Non tonsura facit monachum, non horrida vestis^
Sed virtus animi, perpetuusque vigor.
The great ease of the translation makes it read almost
like an original work, though I cannot agree with those
who think that the translator has improved on his
model. No literal translation, not even the very best,
can be free from some stiffness and constraint. At the
same time, the felicity with which difficult passages are
occasionally rendered may be judged by the following
lines, which contain a touch almost worthy of Shirley.
Here it is, original and translation, side by side : —
Les yex gros et si envoisies, Hir eyen greye and glad also,
Qu'il rioient tousjors avant That laugheden ay in hir semblaunt,
Que la bouchette par couvant. First or the mouth by couvenant.
That is, her eyes began to laugh before her lips.
Let us, as briefly as possible, set forth the action of
the poem. It begins, like De Guilleville's "Pilgrim-
age of Grace," Chaucer's " Court of Love " (borrowed
of course, from this), Alain de ITsle's " Complaint of
Nature," and a thousand other mediaeval works, with a
dream. In the mouth of May — that season when the
earth forgets the j)overty of winter, and grows proud
of her renewed beaut}^ clotliing herself in a robe of
flowers of a hundred colors ; when the birds, silent dur-
4
50 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
ing the long cold months, awake again, and are so joyous
that they are fain, fer force., to sing, the youth of twenty
summers wanders forth, and comes upon the Garden of
Delight {Beduit?). We may remark how the walled
garden, secured from the outer world, is the mediaeval
writer's only idea of scenery. Perhaps our modern
craving for the picturesque would be greatly modified
if we too were uncertain, like our ancestors, about those
wolves, bears, and brigands, whose admiration for wild
scenes induces them to inhabit them.
The wall of the garden is painted with figures of all
evil passions, such as Envy, Hatred, Avarice, and Hy-
pocrisy (^Papelardle)^ with those of Sorrow, Age, and
Poverty. The youth is admitted at a wicket by the
Lady Oyseuse (^Idlesse)^ and wanders about, admiring
the rows of strange trees, the birds and flowers, the
peace and safety of the place. Presently he comes
upon Deduit himself, whom Chaucer calls Myrthe : —
Ful fayre was INIyrthe, ful long and high:
A fayrer man I never sigh.
With him are all his courtiers, including Leesce
(Joy):-
And wot ye who came with them there?
The Lady Gladness, bright and fair.
With the company was the God of Love, accompanied
by Doux Regard^ bearing two bows : one of them was
crooked and misshapen, the other straight, and beauti-
fully wrought. This shows the different impressions of
love, or its opposite, produced by the eyes. He had,
too, ten arrows (the idea is borrowed from Ovid), five
belonging to Love, viz.. Beauty, Simplicity, Frankness,
Company, and Fair Semblance ; and five to Dislike, viz.,
Pride, Villany, Shame, .Despair, and New Thought.
. * GARDEN OF DEDUIT. , 51
Love was followed as well by Beauty, whose attendants
were Riches, Largesse, Franchise, and Courtesy, as
Dames d'honneur, each of whom had with her a lover,
that of Largesse being '' sib to Arthur, Duke of Bre-
taigne." This is intended to illustrate how different
qualities attract love.
The garden is square ; it contains all sorts of fruit-
trees, " brought from the country of the Saracens ; "
these are set five or six fathoms apart ; wells, fountains,
and streams, soft grass and turf, and flowers of every
kind. Round the stone-work of one fountain he finds
written, "Here died the fair Narcissus" —an accident
which enables the poet to narrate at length the full
histor}' of that unfortunate swain. Getting over his
digression, the youth discovers a rose-bush laden with
roses and rosebuds, one of which he desires incontinently
to pluck. Here his troubles begin. Love shoots at liim
with five arrows, and when he is sick and faint with
wounds, calls upon him to surrender, and become his
vassal. This he does, giving Love as a gage of fealty
his heart, and receiving in return a code of rules which
have been imitated by many subsequent poets, notably
by Chaucer, in the " Court of Love," and by Charles of
Orleans. He also receives as a mark of especial favor,
Hope, Doux Penser, Doux Parler, and Doux Regard —
Sweet-Thought, Sweet-Speech, and Sweet-Looks, as
companions. He makes a rash and ill-considered attempt
upon his Rosebud. But Danger is there with Male-
bouche. Shame (child of Trespass and Reason), and
Chastit}^ the daughter of Shame. He is driven away,
loaded with reproaches. His companions leave him, and
while he is sitting dejected and despairing Reason comes
to him and argues on the folly of love : —
Love is but madness! I tell you true ;
The man who loves can nothing do :
52 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE. '
He has no profit from the earth ;
. If he is clerk, he forgets his learning:
If any thing else, whatever his worth.
Great is his labor and little his earning.
Long and unmeasured and deep the pain:
Short is the joy; the fruition vain.
But the pleading of Reason, as generally happens in
such cases, is quite useless. The. lover —
For still within my heart there glows
The breath divine of that sweet Rose —
goes next to a Friend (Ami), from whom he gets small
sympathy, but much practical relief. Acting on his
counsel, he begs pardon of Danger, who grants it
sulkily. Danger in most mediaeval allegories stands for
the husband. Getting Bel Accueil to accompany him,
he goes once more to see his Rosebud, which he finds
greatly improved. Venus obtains for him the privilege
of a kiss. « Shame, Jealousy, and Malebouche are alarmed,
and interfere. Danger turns everybody out. Jealousy
builds a high tower, in which Bel Accueil is shut up, a
prisoner, with Danger and Malebouche to guard him.
Outside the tower sits the disconsolate lover, lamenting
his misfortunes, and the mutability of love's favors,
which he compares to those of Fortune, of whom he
says : —
In heart of man
Malice she plants, and labor, and pain;
One hour caresses, and smiles, and plays ;
Then as suddenly changes her face:
Laughs one moment, the next she mourns:
Round and round her wheel she turns,
All at her own caprice and will.
The lowest ascends, and is raised, until
He who was highest was low on the ground,
And the wheel of Fortune has quite turned round.
And at this point the poet died — " trespassa Guillaume
SECOND MEANING. 53
de Lorris." Had he lived to complete his work we
should have had a complete '' Ars Amoris," fashioned on
the precepts of Ovid, and clothed in an allegory, cold,
monotonous, bloodless, though graceful, fanciful, and
not devoid of poetic taste.
Perhaps we should have had more than this. In its
simple, first meaning, it is not difficult for any one to
make it out. Idleness or Leisure alone makes Pleasure
possible ; through Idleness we enter into the garden of
Delight, where Love wanders. Youth is the season of
love, and Spring is an emblem of youth. The escort
of Love is the collection of qualities which belong to
the time of youth, and make it happy, such as beauty,
wealth, and courtesy. What has Reason to do with
Love ? Who can advise but an experienced friend ?
The only possession that the vassal can give to Love,
the suzerain, is his own heart ; the chief aid to success
is Bel Accueil — " fair welcome " — while Envy, Shame
(for fear of Malebouche — Calumny), Jealousy, and
Chastity protect the maiden.
So far all is clear and easy to be read. Was there
not, however, under an interpretation as easy as that of
Bunyan's " Holy War," a second and a deeper meaning ?
It is a question not easy to answer. Molinet — the dull
and laborious Molinet, who published, towards the end
of the fifteenth century, an edition of the book in
prose —
Le Homan de la Rose
Moralise cler et net,
Translate en rime et prose
Par votre humble Molinet —
pretends not only that there is a hidden meaning, but
also to discover what this hidden meaning was. " The
young man," he tells us, " who awakens from his dream
54 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
is the child born to the light : he is born in the month
of May, Avhen the birds sing : the singing of the birds is
the preaching cf holy doctors (/)." He dresses, in his
dreams, to go ont. This is the entrance of the child into
the Avorld, envelojDcd in human miseries : the river repre-
sents Baptism ; the orchard is the Cloister of Religion ;
outside it, because they cannot enter therein, and have
no share or part in Paradise, are the figures of human
vices. Ddduit is our Lord ; Ldesce is the Church ; Love
is the Holy Spirit ; the eight doves of Veniis's chariot
are the eight Beatitudes ; and the combat between Love
and the guardians of Bel Accueil is the perpetual con-
test between good and evil. Even the story of Narcissus
is not without its' meaning; and the pine which shades
the fountain is the tree of the Cross, while the fountain
itself is the overflowing stream of mercy. Love, again,
in the latter part, stands for our Saviour; homage to
Him is the profession of faith of a novice ; the command-
ments of Love are the vows of chastity and poverty.
And the legend of Virginia is an allegory ; the maiden
being the soul, and Appius the world. This position he
strengthens by deriving, after the fashion of the philolo-
gists of the period, the name of Appius from a privative,
and pius.
Clement Marot, on the other hand, in his edition,
where he turned the language into French of his OAvn
day, and thereby utterly spoiled it, finds an interpreta-
tion of his own, quite as ingenious and quite as improb-
able as that of Molinet. The Rose is the state of wisdom,
*' bien et justemenl conforme a la Rose pour les valeurs,
doulours, et odours qui en elle sont : la quelle est a avoir
difficile pour les empeschements interposez." It was a
Papal Rose, made of gold, and scented with musk and
balm ; of gold, on account of the honor and reverence
SECOND MEANING. 55
due to God ; scented with musk to symbolize the duties
of fidelity and justice to our neighbors ; and with balm,
because we ought to hold our own souls clear and pre-
cious above all worldl}^ things.
Or, the Rose is the state of Grace, difficult for the
sinner to arrive at, and fitly symbolized by the flowers
which had sufficient virtue to transform Apuleius from
an ass back to his human shape.
Or, again, the Rose was the Virgin Mary — the Rose
of Jericho, pure and spotless, and not to be touched by
human hands.
Fourthly: it was the rose which the Queen of Sheba
gave to Solomon, which signified eternal happiness.
The interpretations of jMolinet and Marot are both mani-
festly absurd, and represent the pedantic trifling of a
time, when the taste for double allegories had been
carried to a ridiculous extent. And as for Jean de
Meung's part there are plenty of touches in it which
show that the writer, though no heretic, had little sym-
pathy with church matters ; and would certainly not be
disposed to spend his time in laboriously concocting a
riddle of twenty thousand lines, the answer to which
was to be found in the Romish creed. And in Guil-
laume de Lorris himself, it is difficult to find a word for
or against the church. He was, no doubt, mindful of
the stern lesson read to heretics in the crusade of Pro-
vence, fresh in all men's recollection. But he had been
nurtured and fed on the poetry of the troubadours ; the
form of his verse and the turn of his thought were
Provencal. Was it likely that so young a writer should
escape the spirit of the literature while he studied its
form ? And since in a time of violent religious excite-
ment, he can find no word of sympathy for a church
which persecutes, is it not probable that his sympathies
56 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
are, if not with the church persecuted, at least with the
people ?
Whether this was so or not can never now be satis-
factorily answered. He left his poem unfinished, hardly,
perhaj)s, begun. Whatever has to be said on the sub-
ject of its original plan must be necessarily conjectural.
I incline to believe that he did have a religious purpose,
which was not understood by Jean de Meung, and that
one who bears in mind the religious history of Provence
as well as the character of its poetry, may well construct
an interpretation of the work of Guillaume de Lorris far
more probable and consistent than that of Molinet or of
Marot.
Jean de Meung,^ so called because he was born at the
little town of Meung, in the department of Loiret —
De Jean de Meung s'enfle cours de Loire —
Jean Clopinel, Limping John, because he was lame —
finding himself, some forty years later, with his head
stuffed full of all the learning of his time, nearly burst-
ing with sentiments, convictions, and opinions on relig-
ion, politics, social economy, and science, began, one
may suppose, to cast about for some means of getting
rid of his burden. Lighting on the unfinished and half-
forgotten work of Guillaume de Lorris, he conceived
the idea of finishing the allegory, and making it the
medium of popularizing his own opinions. He could
hardly have hit upon a readier plan. It was not yet a
time for popular science ; there were no treatises in the
vernacular on history, theology, and political economy,
and the only way of getting at people was by means of
rhyme. But Jean de Meung was no allegorist arid no
1 We know next to nothing of his life, but it hardly matters.
This is a chapter of " opinions."
JEAN DE MEUNG. 57
story-teller. He took up the tale, indeed, where his
predecessor left it, and carried it on somehow, but in so
languid a manner, with so many digressions, turns, and
twists, that what little interest was orignally in it goes
clean out. Nothing can well be more tedious than those
brief portions devoted to the conduct of the story. Love
calls his barons together, is defeated, sends an embassy
to his mother, Venus, who comes to his assistance ; the
fortress is taken, Bel Accueil is released, and the Rose
is plucked. In the course of the poem, Malebouche
gets his tongue cut out, Deduit, Doux Regard, Ldesce,
Doux Penser, and others drop out of the allegory alto-
gether ; the Garden is forgotten ; all the little careful
accessories of Guillaume de Lorris, such as the arrows
of Love and his commandments, are contemptuously
ignored. Those that remain are changed, the Friend in
the second part being very different from the Friend
in the first, while Richesse appears with a new function.
Ever}^ incident is made the peg for a digression, and
every digression leads to a dozen others. The losses of
the old characters are made up by the creation of new
ones, and, in Faux Semblant, the hypocrite and monk,
Jean de Meung anticipates Rabelais and surpasses
Erasmus.
Between Guillaume de Lorris and his successor there
is a great gulf, hardly represented by the forty years of
interval. Men's thoughts had widely changed. The
influence of ProveuQal poetry was finally and completely
gone, and its literature utterly fallen, to be revived after
many centuries only by the scholar and the antiquarian.
More than this, the thoughts and controversies of men,
which had turned formerly upon the foundations of the
Christian faith, now turned either on special points of
doctrine, or on the foundation and principles of society.
58 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
No writers, so far as I remember, have noticed the
entire separation between the two parts of the romance.
They are independent works. Even the allegory
changes form, and the idea of the trouvere Guillaume
was lost and forgotten when his successor professed to
carry it on. .
In passing from one to the other, the transition is like
that from a clear, cold mountain stream to a turbid
river, whose waters are stained with factory refuse, and
whose banks are lined with busy towns. The m3^stic
element suddenly disappears. Away from the woodland
and the mountains, and among the haunts of men, it
cannot live. The idea of love becomes gross and vulgar.
The fair, clear voice of the poet grows thick and
troubled ; his gaze drops from the heavens to the earth.
It is no longer a trouvere bent on developing a hidden
meaning, and wrapping mighty secrets of religious truth
in a cold and careful allegory ; it is a man, unfortunately
a Churchman, eager and impetuous, alive to all the
troubles and sorrows of humanity, with a supreme con-
tempt for love, and for woman, the object of love, and a
supreme carelessness for the things that occupied the
mind of his predecessor. We have said that new char-
acters were introduced. The boundaries of the old
allegory were, indeed, too narrow. Jean de Meung had
to build, so to speak, the walls of his own .museum. It
was to be a museum which should contain all the knowl-
edge of the time ; to hold miscellaneous collections of
facts, opinions, legends, and quotations, than which
nothing can be more bewildering, nothing more un-
methodical, nothing more bizarre.
As a poet he is certainl}^ superior to his predecessor,
though Guillaume de Lorris can only be ranked as a
second-rate versifier. He is diffuse, apt to repeat him-
HIS POETRY. 59
self, generally monotonous, and sometimes obscure. His
imagination is less vivid, and his style less clear, than
those of Guillaume de Lorris. Occasionally, however,
passages of beauty occur. The following for example,
diffuse as it is, appears to me to possess some of the
elements of real poetry. The poet is describing a
tempest folloAved by fair weather. Nature weeps at
the wrath of the winds : —
The air itself, in truth, appears
To weep for this in flooded tears.
The clouds such tender pity take,
Their very clothing they forsake :
And for the sorrow that they bear,
Put off the ornaments they wear.
So much they mourn, so much they weep,
Their grief and sorrow are so deep,
They make the rivers overflow,
And war against the meadows low:
Then is the season's promise crossed;
The bread made dear, the harvest lost,
And honest poor who live thereby,
Mourn hopes that only rose to die.
But when the end arrives at last,
And fair times come, and bad are passed;
When from the sky, displeased and pale.
Fair weather robs its rain and hail.
And when the clouds perceive once more
The thunder gone, the tempest o'er —
They then rejoice, too, as they may.
And to be comely, bright, and gay.
Put on their glorious robes anew,
Varied with every pleasant hue ;
They hang their fleeces out to dry,
Carding and combing as they fly;
Then take to spinning, and their thread
Abroad through all the heavens spread,
With needles white and long, as though
Their feathery gauntlets they would sew —
60 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
Harness their steeds, and mount and fly
O'er valleys deep and mountains high.
It is needless, after what has been said, to pursue
any further the story of the romance. There is not
much lost by this omission, because the work has really
little or nothing to do with the allegory, and might
simply be called, " The Opinions of Jean de Meung."
These opinions may be divided into four classes,
foremost of which, in his own mind, stands his hatred
of monks. In religion he w^as not an infidel, or even a
heretic ; he was simply in opposition. He writes, not
against sacerdotalism, but against . the inversion of rec-
ognized order by the vagabond friars. Order, indeed,
he would insist upon as strenuously as Hooker himself ;
but order he would subordinate to what he deems the
most essential thing, personal holiness. To decry, deride,
and hurl contempt on the monastic orders : to put into
the strongest possible words the inarticulate popular
hatred of these was, we believe, his leading thought
when he began his book.
His second idea was to make an angry, almost furious
protest against the extravagant respect paid to women,
and an onslaught on their follies and vices. It is very
curious, and shows how little he was trammelled by his
allegory, that he fails altogether to see how entirely out
of place is such an attack in the " Romance of the
Rose."
He had two other principal ideas : one to commu-
nicate in the common tongue as much science as the
world could boast ; and the other to circulate certain
principles of vague and hesitating republicanism which
were then beginning to take the place of those religious
speculations which occupied men's minds in the early
part of the century.
HIS OBJECTS, 61
Jean de Meung's was not the only book of the time
which aimed at being an encyclopsedia, but it was by
far the best known and the most widely rSpandn.
There were written towards the close of the thirteenth
century certain collections called tresors,, especially that
written by Dante's master, Brunetto Latini, in French,
the recollection of which comforted him even in torment.
These tresors were designed to contain every thing that
was to be learned, quicquid scibile, in mathematics,
physics, astronomy, alchemy, music, speculative philos-
ophy, and theology. Readers of old English litera-
ture will remember that dreariest of dreary books,
Gower's " Confessio Amantis," into which the hapless
student plunges without hope, and emerges without
profit, having found nothing but vapid imitation,
monotonous repetition, and somnolent platitudes. The
" Confessio " is a tresor^ and designed to contain all
the science of the time. It is adapted, so far as the
science goes, from a trSsor called the " Secretum
Secretorum."
Liberal thought, in the time of Jean de Meung, did
not attack the domain of doctrine, partly, perhaps, from,
an unwillingness to meet the probable consequences of
a charge of heresy ; indeed, when doctrine came in its
way, it seems to have leaned in the direction of ortho-
doxy. Thus we find Jean de Meung siding with
Guillaume de St. Amour in an attack on the " Eternal
Gospel." That most extraordinary book, ascribed to
Joachim, Abbot of Flora,^ which was intended to have
the same relation to Christianity which Christianity
bears to Judaism, to be at once its fulfilment and its
abolition, which was to inaugurate the third and last,
the perfect age, that of the Holy Spirit. The «iendi-
1 See " Revue des Deux Mondes," 1866, vol. 64.
62 THE ROMANCE OE THE ROSE.
cants, an ignorant, credulous body, quite incapable of
appreciating- the consequence of any teaching, espoused
the cause of the book ; Guillaume de St. Amour
arraigned them, not only of the ordinary vices attributed
to them — vices entirely contrary to their vows — but
as preachers of doctrines pernicious, false, and heret-
ical. Probably Jean de Meung was actuated by esprit
de corps, Guillaume de St. Amour being a champion of
the University of Paris, as well as by hatred to the
monks, and in spite of his hard words, was not moved
strongly by any special inimical feeling towards the
book. Following the instincts of his time, however,
he flatly ascribes its authorship to the Devil, the al-
leged author of so many theological books.
In the book occurs a description of Hell, which is
curious, as it shows that Dante classified rather than
invented the tortures of the circles : —
What guerdon, he asks, " can the wicked man look for, save
the cord which will hang him to the dolorous gibbet of hell?
There will he be riveted with everlasting fetters before the prince
of devils; there will he be boiled in cauldrons; roasted before and
behind; set to revolve, like Ixion, on cutting wheels turned by the
paws of devils; tormented with hunger and thirst, and mocked
with fruit and water, like Tantalus, or set to roll stones for ever
up hill, like Sisyphus.
One thing seems worthy of remark. The place of
punishment for the wicked man, in the Middle Ages,
was the torture-chamber of their own criminal courts,
intensified by imagination. Their punishment was
through the senses. Of mental suffering they had no
conception. Yet, strangely enough, their Heaven was
never a Heaven of the senses ; and it shows how deeply
the world was penetrated with the feeling of Christ's
holiness, that while every temptation seemed set to
make the mass believe in a paradise like that of Ma-
FAUX SEMBLANT. 63
hornet, the Heaven of Christendom has always offered,
as its chief charm, the worship and praise of a present
God. " There, by the fountain of mercy," says Jean
de Meung, " shall ye sit : " —
There shall ye taste that spring so fair;
(Bright are its waters, pure and clear,)
And never more from death shall shrink,
If only of that fount yoa drink.
But ever still, un tired, prolong
The days with worship, praise, and song.'
The poet reserves, however, his chief strength and
the main exposition of his views for his character of
Faux Semblant — False-seeming — the hypocrite. There
is dramatic art of the very highest kind in the way in
which Faux Semblant draAvs and develops his own char-
acter, pronounces, as it were, the apology of hypocrisy.
His painting of the vices of the mendicant orders does
not approach those of Walter de Mapes, or of Buchanan,
in savage ferocity; but it is more satirical and more
subtly venomous, and has the additional bitterness that
it is spoken as fi'om within the body which he attacks.
The others, standing outside the monastic orders, point
the finger of scorn at them. Jean de Meung makes one
of themselves, an unblushing priest, with a candor which
almost belongs to an approving conscience, with a chuck-
ling self-complacency and an unconsciousness of the
contrast between his life and his profession, which rise
to the very first order of satirical writing, depict his
' Cf. also Richard of Hampole: —
Ther is lyf withoute onv deth,
Ae yatte the most sovereign joye of alle
Is the sight of Goddes bright face,
In whom resteth alle manere grace.
64 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
own life, and take credit for villanies which he takes
care to inform us are common to his order. He has
been compared with Friar John; but the animalism and
lusty vigor of this holy man lead him to a life of jovial
sensuality through sheer ignorance ; whereas Faux
Semblant, his conscience seared with a hot iron, sins
against the light. We may compare, too, the attacks
made by Jean de Meung's contemporaries and immediate
successors. They never attempt satire of this kind. It
was an instrument whose use they could not compre-
hend. Their line is invective, as when llutebeuf says,
in his straightforward way —
Papelart et Beguin,
Ont le siecle honi ;
or else the satire of the fabliaux and contes, which is
the simple telling of stories discreditable to the clergy.
Faux Semblant, in his sermon, begins by telling his
hearers that he lives, by preference, in obscurity, and
may therefore chiefly be found where this is most read-
ily obtained, viz., under a religious habit. With the
habit, however, he is far from putting on the reality of
religion. He attaches himself to powerful patrons ; he
goes about preaching poverty, but living on the best of
every thing ; nothing can be more contrary to his expe-
rience than that religion is to be found at all under the
robe of a monk ; nor does it follow that men and
women lead bad lives because they wear a worldly garb ;
very many, indeed, of the saints have been married,
were parents of children, and men and women of the
world.
He tells how he changes his habit from time to time ;
how, out of the religious life, he " takes the grain and
leaves the straw ; " how he hears confessions and grants
FAUX SEMBLANT. ^^
absolution, as well as any parish priest ; but how, un-
like the parish priest, he will hear the confessions only
of the rich, who can afford to pay ; "let me liave the
fat sheep, and the pastors shall have the lean." So with
the poor ; he will not help any.
Let dying beggars cry for aid,
Naked and cold on dunghill laid:
There stands the hospital, with door
Wide open to receive the poor.
Thither let all who please repair,
For help nor money can I spare:
No use for me to save their life :
Wliat can lie give who sucks his knife f
Now, with the rich it is different ; and the mendicant,
while he takes the alms of those whose sins he has
heard, may glow with conscious virtue, reflecting that
the rich are much more exposed to temptation, and
therefore, as a rule, more grievously weighed down
with a sense of guilt than the poor. When relief can
be given, surely it should first be bestowed on those
who need it most.
Mendicancy, Faux Semblant acknowledges with an
engaging candor, is only right when a man has not
learned and cannot learn a trade. Monks ought to
earn their bread by labor, and when we are commanded
to give all to the poor, it is not meant that we should
take it back by begging, but that we should work for
our living. But the world, neglecting this among other
wholesome rules, has set itself to rob, plunder, and de-
spoil, every man trying to get whatever he can from his
neighbor. As for himself, his business, and that of his
brethren, is to rob the robber — to spoil the spoiler.
The mendicants keep up their own power by union ;
if a man does one of them an injury, they all conspire
to effect his ruin ; if one hates, all hate ; if one is
5
66 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
refused, all are refused, and revenge is taken : if any
man is conspicuous for good deeds, they claim him as
their own disciple, and in order to get the praise of
people and inspire confidence, they ask, wherever they
go, for letters which may testify to their virtue, and
make people believe that all goodness abounds in them.
He says that he leaves others to retire into hermitages
and caves, preferring to be called the Antichrist of rob-
bers and hypocrites : he proclaims himself a cheat, a
rogue, a liar, and a thief: he boasts that his father,
Treachery, and himself, rule in every realm, and that
in the security of a religious disguise, where no one is
likely to suspect him, he contrives various means to
charm and deceive the world. Set forth in this bold
fashion, the discourse of Faux Semblant loses all its
dramatic force. It is fair, however, to state that this
dramatic force is chiefly found in detached passages,
and that the sermon is entirely spoiled by the many
digressions, notably that on the " Eternal Gospel,"
which are found in it.
Another long and very curious dissertation, into
which there is no space here to enter, is that on predes-
tination, where he arrives at the conclusion that the
doctrine must be accepted as a dogma in Christian faith,
but that it need not affect the Christian life —
For every man, except a fool,
May guide himself by Virtue's rule.
A conclusion which seems almost to anticipate the
compromise arrived at in the Article of the Church of
England.
The sum of Jean de Meung's religious teaching is to
be found in the sermon of Genius —
And, lords and ladies, this be sure.
That those who live good lives and pure;
SERMON OF GENIUS. 67
Nor from their work and duty shrink,
Shall of this fountain freely drink.
To honor Nature never rest,
By labor is she honored best :
If others' goods are in your hands,
Restore them all — so God commands.
From murder let all men abstain ;
Spotless keep hands, and mouth keep clean.
Be loyal and compassionate,
So shall ye pass the heavenly gate.
The one thing insisted on by Jean de Meung is the
absolute necessity of a pure life. A profound sense of
the beauty of a pure life is, indeed, the key-note to all
mediaeval heresies and religious excitements. The un-
cleanness of the clergy was the most terrible weapon
wielded by the heresiarchs. Thus, Peter de Brueys
compelled monks to marry. Henry the Deacon taught
that the church could exist without priests. Tanchelin
of Antwerp held that the validity of the sacraments
depended on the holiness of him who administered
them. Peter Waldo sent out his disciples two by two,
to preach the subversive doctrine that every virtuous
man was his own priest ; while the Cathari went gladly
to the stake in defence of their principle that absolute
personal purity was the one thing acceptable to God.
The more ignorant the age, the wilder is religious
speculation ; but in the most ignorant ages, there rises
up from time to time a figure with a spiritual insight
far beyond that of more learned times. Protestantism
in its noblest form has found nothing more sublime
than this conception of a church where every good man
is a priest ; and there is nothing in the history of relig-
ious thought more saddening than these efforts of the
people, ever hopeless, ever renewed, to protest against
dogma, creed, perfunctory and vicarious religion, and
to proclaim a religion of personal holiness alone.
68 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
Let us turn to the second division. We find the
book teeming with a misogyny bitter enough to make
us believe that there must have been some personal
cause for it. " What is love ? " he asks. "It is a
maladie de pensee — the dream of a sick fancy. . . .
There is a far higher and nobler thing in the friendship
of men." And it is after narrating the stories of Pene-
lope and Lucretia, that he puts into the mouth of Jeal-
ousy the famous couplet —
Toutes estes, serez, on fustes,
De faict ou de voulente, putes.
Of course it may be urged that these are the words
of Jealousy, and not of the poet; but, unfortunately,
there are so many indications of the author's entire
approval of the sentiment, that the plea is hardly worth
much. Take, for instance, the dramatic scene, when
the wife worms out her husband's secret ; or that of the
old woman's lesson to Bel Accueil, where, as in the case
of Faux Semblant, he puts woman's condemnation in
her own mouth. She teaches him the art of love almost
in Ovid's own words; she prefaces her lesson by a
lament over the past days of youth and beauty ; her
regrets are not for a life of sin and deceit, but for the
past bad days that can come no more. She is steeped
in wickedness and intrigue ; she can see no happiness,
except in love and luxury : —
My days of gladness are no more ;
Your joyous time is all before;
Hardly can I, through age and pain,
With staff and crutch my knees sustain.
Almost a child, you hardly know
What things you have to bear and do.
Yet, well I wot, the torch that all
Burns soon or late, on you will fall;
And in that fount where Venus brings
Her maidens, will you drench Love's wings.
THE OLD WOMAN. 69
But ere you headlong enter, pause,
Listen to one who knows Loves laws.
Perilous are its waters clear;
He risks his life who plunges here
Without a guide. Who follows me
Safe and successful shall he be.
She tells of her vanished youth and all the pleasant
follies of her young days ; how she threw away her
affections on a scoundrel, who only robbed and ill-
treated her ; how she wasted her money and neglected
her chances ; how she grew old, and her old friends
ceased to knock at her door.
But ah! my child, no one can know,
Save him who feels the bitter woe,
What grief and dolor me befell
At losing what I loved so well.
The honeyed words, t,he soft caress,
The sweet dehght, the sweet embrace;
The kisses sweet so quickly sped,
The joyous time so quickly fled.
Fled! and I left alone to mourn.
Fled ! never, never to return.
The whole passage is full of the truest touches of
nature, and is written with a verve quite extraordinary.
Villon has imitated it in his ballad of the Belle Meaul-
miere ; ^ and B^ranger sings in the same key, —
^ Avis m'est que j'oy regretter
La belle qui fust Pleaulmiere;
Soy jeune fille souhaiter
Et parler en ceste maniere.
Qu'est devenu ce front poly,
Ces cheveulx blonds, sourcils voultiz,
Grant entr'oeil, le regard joly,
Dont prenoye les plus subtils;
Ce beau nez ni grand ni petit;
Ces petites joinctes oreilles;
Menton fourchu, cler vis, traictiz,
Et ces belles levies vermeilles?
70 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
Combien je regrette
Mon bras si dodu,
Ma jambe bien faite,
Et le temps perdu.
Jean de Meiing's old woman is no more repentant than
her successors. And she tells Bel Accueil all that
Ovid had to impart.
It is quite possible that in putting an imitation of the
*' Art of Love " into the old woman's mouth, Jean de
Meung catered to the lowest tastes of the age, and
courted a popularity from this part of his work which
he might not have obtained from the rest. The same
sort of defence — no defence at all, but another and a
worse charge — has been set up in the cases of Rabelais
and Swift. All such offenders, we are told, deferred to
popular opinion, and wrote what they inwardly dis-
approved. This surely is worse. To be yourself so
far depraved as to take delight in things impure is bad ;
to deliberately lay yourself out to please others with
things impure is surely infinitely more wicked. It is
possible that Jean de Meung, Rabelais, and Swift, did
this ; but I do not think it probable. In the case of the
poet whom we are now considering, there seems every
reason to believe that he had formed the lowest possible
ideas of love and women ; that from the depths of a
corrupted morality, which permitted him the same
pleasure in impurity which the common herd of the
vulgar and illiterate shared, he had eager yearnings for
that purity of life which alone, as he felt and preached,
could bring one to taste of the heavenly spring. That
a man could at the same time grovel so low and look so
high, that his gaze upwards was so clear and bright,
while his eyes were so often turned earthward, is a
singular phenomenon ; but it is not a solitary one.
THE MAN WITH THE MUCK-RAKE. 71
Other, greater, men have been as degraded as they were
exalted. Perhaps when Christiana and her children
saw that vision of the man with the muck-rake, while
the angel, unregarded, held the crown of glory over his
head, had they looked much longer, they might have
seen him drop his rake and gaze upwards, with stream-
ing eyes, upon the proffered glory. Jean de Meung
was the man with the muck-rake who sometimes looked
upwards.
The poet feels it necessary to apologize for his severity
against the sex. " If," he says, " you see any thing
here against womankind, blame not the poet,"
All this was for instruction writ;
Here are no words of idle wit.
Ko jealousy inspired the song;
No hatred bears the lines along;
Bad are their hearts, if such there live,
Who villainie to women give.
Only, if aught your sense offend,
Think that to know yourself is good,
, And that with this intent, my friend,
I write what else might seem too rude.
He thinks it right, too, to make a sort of apology for
the severity of his attack on monks : —
I strung my bow : I bent it well;
And though no saint, the truth to tell,
I let my random arrows fly
In lowly town and cloister high.
For what cared I where'er they lit?
The folk that Christ called hypocrite,
Who here and there are always found,
W^ho keep their lent the whole year round,
But feed on live men's flesh the while
With teeth of envy and of guile,
These were my mark ; no other aim
Was mine except to blot their fame.
72 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE,
Let us pass to what is perliajDs the most curious part
of the book, and the richest for the student of mediaeval
ideas — that in which he gives us his views on the
growth and principles of society. Here are advanced
theories of an audacity and apparent originality which
.make one curious to know how far they penetrated into
the lower strata of France ; whether they were the
speculations of a dreamer, or the tenets of a school ;
whether there was any connection — it is more than
possible — between this kind of teaching and the frantic
revolts of the peasantry ; whether, in fact, Jean de
Meung was a prophet with a following, or a visionary
witholit disciples. Read, for instance, his account,
imitated from the first book of Ovid's Metamorphoses,
of the Golden Age : —
Once on a time, in those old years
When lived our grandsires and forbears
(Writers, by whom the tale we know,
And ancient legends, tell us so),
Love was loyal, and true, and good;
The folk was simple ; the fare was rude ; *
They gathered the berries in forest and mead:
For all their meat and all their bread ;
They wandered by valley and plain and mountain,
By river and forest and woodland fountain,
Plucking the chestnuts and sweet wild fruits,
Looking for acorns and rustic roots.
They rubbed together the ears of wheat;
They gathered the clustering grape to eat;
Rich fare they made when the forest, bees
Filled with honey the hollow trees:
Water their drink ; and the strong red wine
Was not yet pressed from the autumn vine.
When sleep came with the shades of night,
They spread no beds of down so light,
But stretched in their cabins, on piles of hay,
Fresh gathered grass, and leaves, they lay.
THE GOLDEN AGE. 73
Or slept without — when the air was mild —
And summer winds were hushed and stilled;
When birds in the early morning gray
Awoke to welcome, each in his way,
The dawn that makes all hearts so gay.
In that glad time when the royal pair,
Flora — Queen of the flowers fair —
And Zephyr, her mate, give timely birth
To flowers of spring, through all the earth.
. . . such splendor give
That you might think the world would strive
With Heaven itself for glory — so bright.
So fair, so proud, with its flowers bedight.
Then in the woods they lay at ease,
Over their heads the branching trees —
Lovers kissed, w-ho lovers were.
And kissed again and had no fear —
Then they chanted rounds and lays,
Joyously led their sports and plays:
A simple folk; they had no prayer —
No fond ambition — nor other care
Than just to live a life of joy —
And loyal love without annoy.
No king or prince was with them yet
To plunder and wrong, to ravish and fret;
There were no rich, there were no poor,
For no man yet kept his own store:
And well the saying old they knew —
(Wise it is, and is proven true)
Love and Lordship are two — not one:
They cannot abide together, nor mate:
Who wishes to join them is undone,
And who would unite will separate.^
Or, as Dryden, who certainly never read the " Ro-
mance of the Rose," unless perhaps in Marot's edition,
says : —
Love either finds equality, or makes it.
^ Non bene conveniunt, nee in una sede morantur
Majestas et amor.
74 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
The end of the Golden Age — a thing not generally
known — was accelerated by Jason's voyage, the hero
bringing home with him treasures from Outremer :
people begin to get ideas of property: they amass
wealth : they rob and fight for plunder : they go so far
as to divide the land. " La propriete," says Proudhon,
'' c'est le vol."
Even the ground they parcelled out,
And placed the landmarks all about;
And over these, whene'er they met,
Fierce battle raged. What they could get,
They seized and snatched; and everywhere
The strongest got the biggest share.
So that at length, of plunder tired,
Needs must a guardian should be hired.
A sturdy peasant chose they then,
The mightiest of the sons of men;
Strongest in battle or in ring,
And him they took to be their king.
Voltaire has exactly the same idea : —
Le premier roi fut un soldat heureux.
This is the origin of royalty. The growth of feu-
dalism, of armjes, taxation, and division into classes is
carefully traced from these small beginnings.
But he deduces the great law of charity and love for
our neighbors. Having this, we have every thing;
and wanting this, we get wars, tyranny, and all the
miseries of the world.
What is the nature of true gentility. Lineage, he
explains, has nothing to do with it. None are gentle
but those whose virtues make them so. Ancestors may
leave their wealth behind them, but not the qualities
that made them great. Clerks have an advantage over
GENTLEHOOD, 75
unlettered persons in knowing what is right. If they
are coarse and rude, they sin against greater light, and
incur heavier punishment.
Let him, who gentleman would be,
From, sloth and idleness keep free;
In arms and study be employed,
And coarse rusticity avoid.
Let him, with humble, courteous grace,
Meet every class in every place;
Honor all women, wife or maid,
So that not too much trust be laid
In woman's faith. So may he steer
Of this great danger wholly clear.
Know all, that gentle blood may bring
No benefit, or any thing.
Except what each man's worth may give.
Know, also, none of all that live
Can ask for honor, praise, or blame.
By reason of another's name.
The idea, of course, is not new. It is found fre-
quently enough in the Greek and Latin literature. It
occurs, I believe, for the first time in the fragments of
Epicharmus —
dyadog 5' avrjo
Tidv y4idioxp Tiai dovXog, evyev/jg 'i(pv —
and afterwards it is found in Euripides, "Horace, Juve-
nal — " Stemmata quid faciunt? " ^- and, lastly, in Sen-
eca. Doubtless, Jean de Meung took it from Seneca.
Once started anew, the idea, of course, became popular,
and poet after poet repeated it, until it became a mere
commonplace. But, so far as I have been able to dis-
cover, it was Jean de Meung who gave it new life.
A few words only on the natural science taught in
the '' Romance of the Rose." The poet, having got
rid of this indignation and wrath that lay at his soul
anent the mendicant friars, and the vices of women,
76 * THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
wishes now, it seems, to sit down for a quiet and com-
fortable disquisition on universal knowledge, including
alchemy, in which he is a firm believer; indeed, he
wants to pass, in a certain ballad of his, for an adept.
This part takes the form of a confession of Nature to
her chaplain Genius (in which Power afterwards copies
him). The confession is long and wearisome, but it is
curious as being the earliest and fullest popular account
of medisBval science.
He fancies Nature to be perpetually at work, fashion-
ing creatures whom Death continually tries to destroy.
Nature, who fashions all that holds
The sky beneath its ample folds,
Within her forge meanwhile was found,
And at her work's eternal round, —
Struck out new forms of every race,
Lest life should fail, and types should cease;
She made so many, that Death, who toiled
With heavy mace to kill, was foiled.
They fly to save themselves, where'er
Their fate may lead or feet may bear ;
Some to the church and convent rule,
Some to the dance, some to the school;
Some to their merchandise are turned,
Some to the arts which they have learned.
Another, sworn by Holy Writ,
Puts on the cloak of hypocrite;
And, flying, would his thoughts conceal,
Did not his life the truth reveal.
So, shunning Death, do all men shape
Their diverse ways, his blows to 'scape.
The scientific discourse follows : observe the good
sense of many of his remarks : —
God having made the world out of nothing, having put all
things into their proper places, measured spaces, and allotted
courses, handed all over to Nature as his ckambriere. Whatever
SCIENCE. 77
man can do — and his power is very great — he cannot equal
Nature, the inexhaustible and untiring. By alchemy he can inter-
change metals; can restore its pristine purity to every thing; can
turn quicksilver into gold by subtle medicines; but he cannot
change or create species. This nature alone is able to effect,
changing the complexions of things, so that they assume new forms
and become new substances; as when, in thunderstorms, stones
fall from the clouds, where no stones ever were.
The heavens turn every day, bearing with them the stars. They
go around from east to west, rejoicing the world. A complete
revolution is made every 26,000 years.
The moon is different from the planets in being obscure in some
places and clear in others. The reason of this is, that the sun can
penetrate through one part of it, as through glass; the dark part,
on which is figured a serpent having a tree on his back, reflecting
the rays.
In the centre is the sun, like a king. He it is who makes the
stars so bright that they serve as lamps of the night; were we
nearer to the sun we should be scorched; were we farther away
we should be frozen.
The comets are not attached to the heavens, but fly about in the
air. They do not last long, and it is a mistake to suppose that
they portend disaster. For there is no man of worth or power
sufl&cient for the heavens to take notice of him.
Nor any prince of so great worth,
That signs from heaven should give to earth,
Notice of death for him alone ;
Nor is his body — life once gone —
Worth one jot more than simple squire,
Or clerk, or one who works for hire.
Foolish people imagine, too, that stars fall like flying dragons
from the skies; and that eclipses are to be taken as portents. Now,
no one would be astonished at these things who understood the
causes of things.
Every student ought to acquire a knowledge of optics, which
can be learned, by the aid of geometry, from the books of Aris-
totle, Albacen, and Hucayen. Here can be learned the properties
of mirrors; how they produce things which appear miracles; make
small things seem great — a grain of sand like a mountain; and
great things small — a mountain like a grain of sand; how glasses
can be used to burn things; how straight lines can be made to look
crooked, round things oblong, upright things reversed; and phan-
toms which do not exist appear to be moving about.
78 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
The book from beginning to end is as full of quota-
tions as Burton's " Anatomy." The author quotes from
Aristotle, Justinian, Horace, Seneca, St. Augustine, Ovid,
Cicero, Boethius, Lucan, Claudian, Suetonius, and he has,
probably through Cicero, some knowledge of Plato, but
all this in the wildest jumble, with no discrimination and
no critical power whatever. His range of reading was
not by any means contemptible, and though I have met
with no other writer of his time who can compare with
him in this respect, it is evident that since one man had
command of so many books, other men must have en-
joyed the same advantages. There is reason to believe
from Jean de Meung alone that acquaintance with
Latin literature was much more extended than is gen-
erally thought, and that the scholarship of the time
was by no means wholly confined to scholastic dispu-
tation.
Such, roughly sketched, is th^ work of Jean de
Meung, from which I have plucked some of the fruits
that come readiest to my hand. If not altogether an
original or a profound thinker, he has at least the merit
of fearlessness. He taught the folk, in the most popu-
lar way possible, great and valuable lessons. He told
them that religion is a thing apart from, and independ-
ent of, religious profession ; that "la robe ne faict pas
le moyne ; " he says that most of the saints, men and
women, were decent married people ; that marriage is a
laudable and holy custom, that the wealth of monks is
a mockery of their profession and a perjury of their
vows, that learned persons ought to set an example, and
what is sheer ignorance and brutality in others is rank
sin with them ; he attacks superstition, showing that
all phenomena have natural causes, and have nothing
to do with earthly events and the fortunes of men,
SUMMING UP. 79
because men are equal in the sight of God ; and he
teaches, in terms as clear as any used by Carlyle, that
labor is noble, and in accordance with the conditions
of our being, — that man's welfare is the end and aim
of all earthly provision.
All this in what used to be called the Dark Ages.
After six hundred years, the same questions exercise
LIS which exercised Jean de Meung. We are still dis-
puting as to whether true nobility is inherited or not;
we have not all made up our minds about the holiness
of marriage ; some of us still think the clergyman, be-
cause he wears a surplice, holier than other men ; work
has been quite recentl}^, and ^vith much solemnity, pro-
nounced noble by a prophet- who, which is a thousand
pities, forgot while he was about it to call it also respec-
table ; men yet live who look upon scientific men with
horror, and quote, with fine infelicity, a text of St. Paul's
about "science falsely so called;" while the lesson of
personal religion has to be preached again and again,
and is generally forgotten in our squabbles over vest-
ments and creeds.
Jean de Meung wished, it seems to me, to write a
book for the people, to answer their questions, to warn
them of dangers before them, and to instruct their
ignorance. On the sapless trunk of a dying and pas-
sionless allegory he grafts a living branch which shall
bear fruit in the years to come. His poem breathes
indeed. Its pulses beat with a warm human life. Its
sympathies are with all mankind. The poet has a tear
for the poor, naked beggars dying on dung-heaps and in
the H5tel-Dieu, and a lash of scorpions for the Levite
who goes by on the other side ; he teaches the loveli-
ness of friendship ; he catches the wordless complaint
of the poor, and gives it utterance : he speaks with a
80 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE.
scorn which Voltah^e only has equalled, and a revolu-
tionary fearlessness surpassing that of D'Alembert or
Diderot.
And much more than this. His book — absolutely
the only cheerful book of his time — afforded hope that
things were not permanent: evil times may change;
times have not been always evil ; there was once a
Golden Age ; the troubles of the present are due, not
to the innate badness of Nature and the universal un-
fitness of things, but to certain definite and ascertainable
causes. Now", to discover the cause is to go some way
towards curing the disease.
In that uneasy time, strange questions and doubts
perplexed men's minds — questions of religion and pol-
itics, affecting the very foundations of society. They
asked themselves wliy things were so ; and looking about
in the dim twilight of imperfect knowledge, they could
find as yet no answer. There was no rest in the church
or in the state, and the mind of France — which was the
mind of Europe — was gravitating to a social and relig-
ious democracy. An hour before the dawn, you may
hear the birds in the forest twitter in their sleep : they
dream of the day. Europe, at the close of the thirteenth
century, was dreaming of the glorious Renaissance, the
dawn of the second great day of civilization. Jean de
Meung answered the questions of the times with a
clearness and accuracy which satisfied, if it did not en-
tirely explain. Five generations passed away before the
full burst of light, and he taught them all, with that
geniality that is his greatest charm. His book lasted
because, confused and without art as it is, it is full of
life and cheerfulness and hope. Not one of the poets
of his own time has his lightness of heart : despondency
and dejection weigh down every oiie : they alternate
CONCLUSION,
81
between a monotonous song to a mistress, or a com-
plaint for France ; and to Jean de Meung they are as the
wood-pigeon to the nightingale. They all borrowed
from him, or studied him. Charles of Orleans, Villon, '
Clement Marot, Rabelais, La Fontaine, Regnier, Mo-
li^re, Bdranger, all come down from him in direct line,
and are his literary children and grandchildren.
Chapteb IV.
EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS.
Priez pour paix doulce vierge Marie,
Priez pour paix le vray tr^sor de joye.
Charles of Orleans.
TOURING the fourteenth century France is in a
-'-^ period of literary decadence. Versifiers there
are, but no poets. For the pahny days of chivalry
are over, and there are already abundant signs of
approaching change. Wycliffe and Huss belong to this
age. There is the Jacquerie in France : there are the
peasant wars in Germany, and there is Jack Cade in
England. In this century there flourished a volumin-
ous " maker," Eustache by name, called, after his estate,
Deschamps, and, because he was black of complexion,
Morel. He wrote no fewer than 90,000 verses, an
amount which represents four times the work of Vir-
gil and twice that of Homer. Of modern writers only
Mr. Browning can approach him.
He was born at Vertus, in Champagne, about the year
1340 ; paternity undiscoverable, probably obscure. He
studied at the University of Orleans, and presently got
appointed one of the king's messengers. He then trav-
elled, visiting Italy, Germany, and Hungar}^ He even
mentions with pride, but perhaps by poetical license,
that he has been a prisoner of the Saracens. Then he
became a court usher, in which capacity his duty was
HIS LIFE. 83
to watch over the personal safety of the king, to act as-
his escort, and to mount guard at the gates. He was in
great court favor, wrote verses in the highest form of
poetry, was a favorite of everybody, married, and had
two children, a son and a daughter. He was appointed
bailiff to the newly born Louis, afterwards Duke of Or-
leans, the same who was assassinated by order of the
Duke of Burgundy, and the father of Charles, the poet.
Deschamps having observed that at the birth of the
dauphin, three years before, there had been a succession
of victories over the English, takes occasion on the
auspicious arrival of the second son to prophesy that
the two together will effect the total destruction of
England. It was an unlucky prediction, because one
of the children became Charles the Mad, and the other
was murdered. But, of course, the prophet was not
expected to know that.
King Charles V., wisest of monarchs, temperate in
his habits, modest in his surroundings, affable to all,
and a patron of learning, is the poet's model of every
royal and manly virtue. In the contemplation of this
perfection and its illustration in verse, he passed the
happy years of his life.
Presently misfortunes fall upon him. His old friend,
Guillaume de Machault, the great musician of the four-
teenth century, dies ; then the King, Charles V., dies ;
then the English pillage his property at Vertus ; and
though the new King confirms him in his appointment
as '' huissier," and promises to indemnify him for his
losses at Vertus, no money is forthcoming, as the Royal
Treasury was empty. He goes with the King to Flanders,
and fights at Rosebecque ; then he is made one of the
Royal Treasurers, but eight days afterwards, in deference
to disagreeable popular opinion as to sinecures, the post
84 EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS,
is abolished. He is presented, in compensation, with a
chateau, which somebody else, probably the rightful
owner, takes from him. Finally, much to his own dis-
like, he is obliged to retire into private life. He died
about the year 1409, after a good long life of dependence
and patronage. He had been, it is true, always in favor
with the King and theRoyal House, but then they never
gave him any money. He was also chief literary adviser,
adviser, laureate, to the Crown: but then the Crown
never took his advice.
In regard to his poetry, he is two-faced, like Janus.
There is the moral side, and there is the satirical side. As
a moralist he presents some rather remarkable points,
popularizing in his ballads many of the ideas of the
Romance of the Rose. Here, for instance, is one on the
duty of work : —
In love or in knighthood ; in fray or in hall :
In labor afield at the plough or the tree :
In robe of the judge, or as king over all,
In coarse dress of toil on the shore or the sea ;
Be it far — be it near — the conclusion of toil.
Let each bear his burden the length of his day.
Nor for weariness' sake let his handiwork spoil :
Do all that thou hast to do, happen what may.
Desire not more : be not proud of thine own ;
Look ever on virtue and never on vice :
Leave peace to thy soul : to thy children renown :
For them, all their honor : for thee, Heaven's price.
God punishes evil : but ever He loves
For good done on earth better things to repay.
Seek only to conquer where honor approves,
Do all that thou hast to do, happen what may.
He moralizes in the usual way on the flight of time : —
No flower there is, no violet of spring,
No blossoming eglantine — how sweet it be —
No beauty, goodness, grace, or any thing ;
ADAM'S ADDRESS. 85
No maid white-limbed ; no knight gallant and free :
Brunette or blonde, comely and strong to see :
Wise, foolish : — nothing in all Nature's fold
But in its own time withers and grows old,
Falling to death in his relentless ehace :
Or being withered suffers scoff and scold.
Yieillesce est fin, et jeunesce est en grace.
We have seen how Jean de Meung revived the old
ideas of true nobility, and, like a modern republican,
proclaimed tlie equality of man. Deschamps borrows
the idea, and makes a ballad out of it, of which, because
it is very curious, you shall have an exact, and not a
verse, translation of part.
Adam loquitur : —
Children, children, sprung from me, Adam, your first father
after God ... ye are all descended according to the order of Nature
from me and from Eve, who was your mother. IIow is one called
villain, and the other gentleman ? Ye are all brothers : whence
comes nobility ? I know not, unless from virtue, and villany from
vice, which wounds all. Vous estes tons d'une pel revestus. Puis-
sant kings, counts, dukes, rulers of the people . . . when they are
out of their garments, how are they clothed ? With their skins.
Are they any better than the least ? Certainly not : they suffer
cold and heat, death, sickness, and bitterness. Think of your poor
estate, and remember, vous estes tons d'une pel revestus.
I find nothing in the moral part of Deschamps which
is not also in Jean de Meung. It is true, the mediaeval
stock in trade of ideas is limited at best, and if the older
poet had taken all, there was nothing for his followers to
do but to work up the old ones in new forms. But
Deschamps has one merit peculiarly his own. He is
real : he is a practical poet. He leaves the generalities
of allegory and attacks particular persons, things, and
customs. Thus he is very angry with people who borrow
his books and do not return them — a bad habit even
now, but doubly bad when books were manuscripts.
86 EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS,
" I am sick of it," he saj's, " dolens en sui." He rates
the Government over and over again, like an Opposition
leading article : they are irresolute : they are afraid :
the sailors and soldiers are dishonest : there are rascals
and scoundrels in every department of the service :
ingratitude is the only reward of faithful services — and
so on, till we almost feel that we are in the nineteenth
century. And he is as patriotic, particularly after the
English liave pillaged his farm,, as an Alsatian of the
present year. He prophesies, for example, with as much
earnestness as if he believed himself inspired, the^ utter
destruction of the English power : —
The French and Scotch, the ancient British race,
The sons of Brutus in their long array,
Shall raise their standards in one battle place,
And fight for conquest on one battle day.
Rivers of blood, before the day is done,
Shall flow on either side, but then shall die
The sons of Brutus with despairing cry,
And hope of mercy shall there be to none ;
Prostrate and vanquished shall the English lie,
And men shall say, " This land was Albion."
Like all Frenchmen in all times, he can see no town
like Paris. He leaves it with req;ret : "he is never tired
of 'singing its praises : he comes back to it with delight.
Next to Paris he loves Rheims, Brussels, Vertus (before
the English have come there), and Troye, which he calls
'' noble cit^, ville tres-amoureusey And he is always
chanting the praises of certain chdteaux^ seeming to love
every one better than his own, probably on account of
the superior fare he meets with. As for his own, he
only describes its miseries. Early in the morning the
rooks begin, wanting to know if it is daybreak already:
all day long you hear every kind of bird making a noise :
then there are the cows, the calves, and the sheep : with
TRA VEL. 87
them the bell of the monastery, which drives sick people
mad. At night come the owls, with their wailing notes,
who frighten those who lie awake out of their senses.
And then there are the fleas : —
C'est bien mal duis
A gens qui sont en maladie.
As a traveller, our Eustache is one of those who, like
Horace's exile, do not change their temper with the clime.
He goes to Germany, where he feels himself no better
than a barking dog, not knowing what is said to him and
not being understood, except now and then, when he
comes across a clerk who knows Latin. After travelling
for hours over mountains through ice and snow, you
arrive at a miserable roadside inn, where the table-cloth
and napkins are dirty, where they put down a dish for
ten persons, around which all sit " comme truans," like
beggars, digging their fingers up to the third joint in the
meat. Remember how Erasmus presents exactly the
same picture of a German inn — to be sure, it was only
a hundred and fifty years later. Then he goes to
Hungary, where, indeed, is real discomfort : —
I have nothing to say about Paradise, because 1 never was there.
As for the other place, I will tell you how to get there. You may
go by way of Lombardy, and journey over the mountains to Hun-
gary. There you will find ice and cold the whole year round :
ravines deep down in the earth : and no trees but firs. " Le pais
est un enfer en ce monde." Chariots and carts cannot pass there,
and the sun .never shines. Birds there are none, because the cold
is too severe for them. The roads are only a foot and a half broad,
with a precipice on either hand. If a man falls he is killed. If two
horses meet they have to agree which will throw down the other
[this is a fine stroke of humor]. There is no verdure; no vines;
no wheat ; no stag or doe or wild boar, only bears and chamois ;
the people seek their nourishment all day, and wherever they can.
There are howling winds, darkness, and horrible paths ; while
Lucifer, King of the Devils, dwells in the peaks and distributes ice
and cold to all parts of the world.
88 EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS.
Eustache, too much occupied with politics, flattery,
and his literary friends (he corresponded with Chaucer),
does not devote his attention much to amatory verse.
But among his poems is a sweet little "virelay," of
which I tender a translation : —
Tell me, tell me, am I fair ?
Does my mirror show me true ?
Sweet of face and blonde of hair —
Tell me — is that so to you ?
Tell me, tell me, am I fair ?
Gray-blue eyes and eyelids thin,
Clear-cut nose and rounded chin,
Slender throat, neck long and white ;
Tell me, tell me, am I fair ?
Long arms on my moulded breast,
With long fingers, lie at rest,
Tall and slender is my height ;
Tell me, tell me, am I fair ?
Little feet so smooth and round,
Deftly sandalled, touch the ground ;
Blithe and happy do I sing ;
Tell me, tell me, am I fair ?
Mantles have I, fur and gold,
Robes of satin new and old ;
I have many a precious thing ;
Tell me, tell me, am I fair ?
Brave and proud and happy he.
Who my love may win, shall be.
Was there e'er so sweet a maid ?
Tell me, tell me, am I fair ?
And my faith, a woman's word,
Pledged as though by Heaven heard,
Never shall be falsely played ;
Tell me, tell me, am I fair ?
If my lover gentle prove,
Knightly, brave, and true to love,
Slave and servant will I be.
Tell me, tell me, am I fair ?
LORD RE DU COR DIE R, 89
Is there greater bliss in life,
Only own it, than a wife
So endowed, so sweet to see ?
Tell me, tell me, am I fair ? .
I have put Deschamps among my humorists. Obvi-
ously, then, some proof must be given of his claim to
the title.
r find a ballad, as grimly humorous as can well be
devised, close to my hand. The roads at this time were
infested with robbers, disbanded soldiers, villagers run
away from their homes, deserters, uncaught murderers
and thieves. The ballad is called " L'Ordre du Cordier,"
and depicts the exquisite fun of catching, torturing, and
hanging two of these unhappy wretches. It is quite im-
possible to translate it. Please to take it, for once, in
the oriofinal.
'tj'
Dieu gart, monsieur le Bailli !
— A bien soiez, sire prodoms.
Que vous fault? pas m'avez failli,
Si vous voulez : cy est uns homs,
Voire deux, murdriers et larrons.
Sergens, alez prandre celli
A I'aumusse, nous le voulons,
Et 1' autre pour parler a li.
Cez deux mettez en noz prinsons.
— Sire Bailli nous appellons
De ce grief comme torturier.
C'est bien dit : nous y pourverrons :
Donnez-leur I'ordre dij cordier.
Or 9 a, venez parler a lui :
N'aiez paour. — Nous nous doubtons :
Pourquoy veez la nostre ennemi :
— Dictes voir — chascuns est prodoms.
— Vous mentez : tort les gehinons.
— Haro ! — Qu'as-tu ? — J'ay pis que puce,
Je muir. — 1)1 done ! — Ha ! sainte Luce !
Certes je suis larron, murdrier :
90 EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS.
Bien vouldroie que je mourusse.
— Donnez-lear I'ordre du cordier.
II I'ara, ses compains aussi.
Or tenez ces deux chaperons :
Estraing. — Haro ! pour Dieu merci,
Vous serrez trop fort les boutons.
— C'est trop tart. — Nous nous repentons,
De confesser ayons induce.
— II vous vaulsist mieulx estre en Russe ;
Dyables vous firent chevauchier.
Tout homme qui biens d'autruy suce,
Donnez-leur I'ordre du cordier.
He is great on the follies of young men, who, even in
the mediaeval days, used to sit up late at night and lie
in bed till mid-day ; who gave themselves up to all
manner of athletic exercises — can we be reading of the
fourteenth century ? — and wore extravagant clothes,
coats too short and hoods too long. As to the women,
their extravagances are a great deal worse ; they wear
their hair plastered and piled up, plaited with paper and
relieved and stuck out with pins; they — but in fact,
they went on then precisely as they are going on now.
One of the most amusing things is a supposed letter from
a student to his father : —
!My dear father, I have not a penny : nor can I have unless you
send it to me. Study is very costly. I cannot use my Code, nor
my Digest, because they are dropping to pieces. I owe the provost
ten crowns, and no one will lend me the money. The fact is that,
if I am to continue my studies, you must send me money to buy
books, to pay my fees, and to keep myself. I want decent dress,
too, and if you do not want your son to appear a mere clown, you
will send me money for that too. Wine is dear ; lodgings are dear;
every thing is dear. I am in debt all round. I fully expect to be
excommunicated, and I have already been summoned. If you do
not send me some money, I shall be most certainly turned out at
Easter.
It is in the " Mirror of Marriage," the last work he
wrote, that his satirical talents, and, I think, his poetical
powers, are chiefly shown.
THE WINE LIST, 91
Like so^many mediaeval writers, he proposed to write
a satire on women, making it the vehicle of showing all
his learning. The ideas are chiefly taken from Jean de
Meung, the communis ager^ but the treatment is his own.
And as, fortunately, his own learning Avas not great, we
get a most valuable account, graphic in parts, of life in
the fourteenth century. We learn how they lived, what
they drank,^ what they ate, how they dressed, what
furniture they had, and, in fact, all the details of bour-
geois life. A comfortable, abundant, and cheery life it
seems to have been, save for the general uncertainty as
regards the English, the way in which the young wives
flirted with the chevaliers, and the mothers-in-laAV.
It runs on in a light, prattling strain, generally viva-
cious and bright, always pleasant, for some 3,500 lines,
when it suddenly comes to an end. Death laid his hand
upon the busy hand of Eustache, and he dropped his
pen ; otherwise, like " The Ring and the Book," or
" The Earthl}^ Paradise," no reason on earth why it
should not go on for ever, unless the author have mercy.
The luxury of dress at this period was a real and
crying evil. Deschamps enumerates, no doubt with
exaggeration, the sort of trousseau which a young lady
required. Every thing seems to have been trimmed
^ The list of wines is instructive : —
Vin dc Saint Jehan, et vin d'Espaigne,
Vin de Ryn, et vin d'Alemaigne,
Vin d'Aucerre, et vin de Bourgongne,
Vin de Beaune, et de Gascongne,
Vin de Chabloix, vins de Givry,
Vins de Vertus, vins d'Irancy,
Vins d'Orleans, et de Saint Poiirsain.
Vin d'Ay, vins de la Rochelle,
Gamache fault et Ganachelle,
Vin grec et vin muscadd.
92 EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS.
with gold. There are mantles of cloth of gold ; robes
of silk ; wreaths and caps trimmed with gold, pearls,
and precious stones ; tissues of silk and gold ; stuffs of
blue, green, purple, white, all embroidered with gold ;
chains of gold and golden studs. Every thing is to be of
bright colors, for it is an age of splendid color. Then
there must be a horse to ride, and a chariot .drawn by four
horses, saddles, harness, and trappings properly trimmed
with gold. And when the wives of lawyers and bour-
geois saw these grand things, they naturally fell to
desiring them for themselves.
As for the men, they must needs have a squire, a
maitre d'hotel, a butler, a femme de chambre, horses
and stables, baths, expensive furniture, and for the
kitchen three whole pages of curious things, including
that expensive luxury, white sugar.
For a good solid standing grievance, there is your
mother-in-law. You have got your wife into good order ;
every thing is going well, she is happy and contented,
until her mother pays you a visit, and then good-by to
peace. The scene in which the dear old lady " fixes "
the son-in-law is worthy of all praise. Nothing so good
until Moliere put Madame de Sottenville on the stage.
Like all Frenchmen, Deschamps takes a keen delight
in watching the ways of women with each other.
Thus, after church, when they all get round the door
and dispute as to who should have the right of going
out first : —
" Pass, madame, we wait for you to lead."
" Nay, really, before you I cannot, indeed ;
Lady Alice will lead, of course."
' *' Oh ! no. The first place is certainly yours."
" Pass out, then, my Lady Babelee."
^' I do not presume to lead the way,
LADIES AT CHURCH. 93
But if you insist, by your order I go."
" Nay, rather your courtesy thus to show."
*' Indeed, I could not myself, but — well —
Oh ! But here is the Lady Isabelle,
She will lead." . . .
But just then somebody recollects that they have for-
gotten old Lady Sybille, who is hard of hearing, and has
not yet finished her prayers. They all go and drag her
up from her knees : —
'' Get up. Lady Sybille, the ladies wait ;
Before you lead, none will pass the gate."
Lady Sybille obeys, groaning : —
" O dear, dear, dear, O Sainte Marie !
To wait for a poor old thing like me."
They are all alike, these Frenchmen. Villon used to
watch the poor old women in the Halles, sitting round
their fire of shavings, and prattling. " Listen," he says,
" you will find them as wise as Macrobius." And
Coquillart, talking of the way in which they chatter
when they get together, says, " Ba, ba, ba, font ses
godinettes ; " while we all remember Beranger's old
women. But none of them excel this little picture of
the ladies crowding round the church door, so careful
not to make any breach of etiquette, and dragging the
old woman away from her prayers to lead the way.
He stops in his satirical course once to sigh after a
good wife. He says he will wait.
And never marry till I find
A wife at last made to my mind,
Humble and gentle, soft of speech,
Ready to work, and easy to teach,
Chaste and sweet, of years eighteen,
Rich and well-born, grave of mien,
Kind as a dove and fair to see,
AAd ready in all to follow me.
94 EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS.
Ah ! send me such a maid for wife,
I should love her above my life.
My days would pass in peace and joy,
Without suspicion or annoy.
Always at ease, always at rest,
No dark forebodings in my breast.
My youth would fly like a happy night,
Dreamed away in a vision bright.
My staff she would be in age, and when
Life at last should pass away,
AVhen I lay forgotten and left by men.
She for the peace of my soul would pray.
Let me give you one more quotation from him on the
old, old theme — you will find a specimen iu every
chapter : —
See how the white rose and the red
Their blossom and their perfume shed
All in a day. The violet,
With sweetest odor richly set,
The daisy and the lily white.
The marigold and iris bright.
They spring and bloom : they have their prime,
They perish e'en in summer time.
And this day's rose, so fresh and sweet.
To-morrow dies beneath our feet ;
The breezes down the plains that blow.
Strip oif their leaves and lay them low.
And day by day, till Martinmas,
Leaf, flower, blossoms, blade of grass.
Wither and die; then comes the frost,
And all the summer grace is lost.
Next winter, with the storm so cold.
Strikes wood and meadow, copse and wold :
Then all is faded, dry, and dead.
We seek in vain : the flowers are fled.
Deschamps is not a joyous poet. The troubles of his
country weigh him down. There is a note of sadness in
his most cheerful flights. But he is undoubtedly the
poet of his century. He shows its magnificence in dress
THE HOME LIFE. 95
and living, the fearlessness with which all questions
were discussed, the liberty enjoyed by the bourgeoisie,
the miseries caused by its wars, the rage and despair of
the people at their reverses in the English wars, and
all the while the calm domestic life going on uninterrupt-
ed by external things, where the wife and the husband,
with the children and the mother-in-law, make up the
little world. History paints this as the worst and most
disastrous period that Europe had ever seen ; yet here,
in the most real poet of the century, we see how life, as
a whole, went on in the usual way. For when a great
pestilence strikes a country, it slays its thousands and
goes away. Time quickly heals the wounds of grief,
and the w^orld goes on as before. Then come the Eng-
lish to sack and destroy. Nature heals their wounds,
too, by the recurring seasons, and the world goes on as
before. I am inclined to think that life, on the whole,
was generally pleasant for a well-to-do Frenchman of
the period. When bad times came, they were probably
worse than those of the present, owing to the existence
of thumb-screws, racks, and other ingenious modes then
prevalent of driving life slowly out of the criminal ; and
though it was extremely disagreeable three years ago to
be kicked and cuffed by a German boor, things were
much harder to bear when you had all this and the
thumb-screws as well.
A few words on the greatest friend of Eustache, his
master, the poet and musician, Guillaume de Machault.
The poetry of Machault is sometimes graceful, but never
strong. Like Eustache, and indeed nearly all the me-
diaeval poets, except the fabliaux writers, he is remark-
ably free from grossness, being essentially a ladies' poet.
I only mention him here in order to give myself an
opportunity of teUing an episode in his life.
96 EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS.
It happened when he was ah-eady past fifty years of
age, and grievously afflicted with gout. At this mature
age love came to him, love in the shape of a fair young
princess, Agnes of Navarre, sister to Charles the Bad.
She fell in love with him for his verses and his music ;
wrote to him ; begged him to come to her. He could
not, by reason of his enemy the goat, accept her gra-
cious invitation at once. But as soon as possible he
travelled south and obtained an interview with the
young lady, which is described at length by himself
in his best verses, where
. . . many and many a thing we said,
Too long to write, too long to read.
The princess received him in the garden, he being ac-
companied, the prudent man, by his secretary. There,
after the many words, Agnes sat down, and, laying her
head in his lap, went to sleep, or pretended to go to
sleep. Of course, sleep was an accident so very likely
to happen. However, in those days of unreal love and
unreal gallantry, it passed for the most natural and most
proper thing in the world. As soon as her eyes were
closed, the crafty young secretary stole softly with a
leaf and laid it over the princess's lips, motioning to
his master to kiss the leaf. Pale grew the face of the
gouty youth of fifty-five. He bent his head, trembling
with ardor, when the young rascal of a secretary sud-
denly withdrew the leaf, and the lips of our William
met those of Agnes. Then she woke up, and scolded
in her pretty little way — just as if she had not gone to
sleep on purpose —
Elle me dit moult doulcements,
" Amis, moult estes outrageus :
Ne savez vous nulz autres jeus ? "
Mais la belle prist a sourire
AGNES OF NAVARRE. 97
De sa tres belle bouche me dire,
Et a me fait ymaginer,
Et certaineinent esperer,
Que ce pas iie li desplaisoit.
Of course it had not displeased her. What young
princess could be displeased with so delicate a compli-
ment at once to her rank and her beauty as a kiss on
the lips, first reverently covered by a leaf? If any
one was to be blamed, of course it was " that boy,"
the secretary.
Poor little Agnes had not a happy time of it after-
wards. Her brother the Bad came to a fitting end, for
he was burned while taking a bath of that newly dis-
covered medicine, brandy. They had wrapped him in
a woollen bag, and after sewing him up, steeped the
bag in the brandy. Unfortunately the valet who wanted
to cut the thread after the operation was completed
could not find the scissors, and applied the candle.
The result was the burning of the wicked king. His-
tory is silent as to the punishment of the valet, but no
doubt it was something exceedingly disagreeable.
As for Agnes, she was married to Gaston Count of
Foix, one of those noblemen whose amiability, like that
of Bluebeard, did not go far enough to allow any to be
wasted at home. Agnes left her husband after some
years of brutal treatment. Her boy, young Gaston,
stayed behind with his father. He grew up at home,
and, wanting above all things to reconcile his separated
parents, consulted his uncle. King Charles, who had not
yet taken the fatal brandy bath. Charles gave him a
potion which he said would turn his father's heart back
to his wife. Home went the poor boy, boasting of what
he had got. The Count heard of it, and made a
preliminary trial of the potion on a dog, which died
7
yo EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS.
straightway ; upon which he saw that his brother-in-
law had intended, by this horrible device, to poison him,
and a wild suspicion seized him that his son was an ac-
complice. He threw the boy into prison, where he was
either starved, as some said, or stabbed by his father,
according to others.
It must not be forgotten, in judging of the happiness
of the fourteenth century, that such tragedies as these,
though more possible than they became later, were rare.
These great and puissant princes had no law but their
own inclination, and no restraint but their own good-
nature. Occasionally, therefore, when the spirit and
the flesh agreed, and were strong together, there were
found wild beasts in high places.
Chapter V.
RABELAIS.
The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb ;
What is her burying grave, that is her womb.
Romeo and Juliet.
nPHE common notions of Rabelais are derived partly
-■- from Pope's famous line, and partly from the fact
of his being generally called the " curd of Meudon," an
appointment which he held for less than two years, out
of a long life of seventy.
We picture him to ourselves as a jovial priest, whose
reputation is by no means doubtful ; worshipper of two
at least of the Latin deities ; one who mumbles a mass
and bawls a drinking song ; who spends the briefest
time possible over vespers and the longest possible over
supper ; who laughs and mocks at all things human
and divine ; who is a hog for appetite and a monkey
for tricks.
He has been described as a Lutheran and a Catholic ;
as a great moral teacher, a mere buffoon, and a notorious
infidel. And, in a way, he was most of these things, for
he was a Catholic, inasmuch as he never left the church
in which he was born ; he was a Protestant, in so far
as he devoted his best energies to heap contempt on
abuses which were the main causes of Protestantism ;
and he was an infidel within certain limits which I
propose to point out. To paint him as a moral teacher
alone is to ignore the overwhelming drollery of his
100 RABELAIS.
character, while to set him up as a mere m^rry-andrew
is to forget the reahty — not much like the earnestness
of the nineteenth century, but still not so feverish —
which underlies his writings, and makes itself felt even
when he is laughing with you and for j^ou.
Let us get first at the real story of his life. He was
born about the 3'^ear 1483,^ in the " garden of France,"
as he calls it, Touraine, and in the town of Chinon :
" ville insigne, ville noble, ville antique, voire premiere
du nionde." Here his father kept a hostelry, the " Lam-
prey," and appears to have had a small farm as well.
A good deal of discussion has been raised as to the
quality and condition of his family, but after four
hundred years we can afford to be careless about the
question. In those days, and indeed long afterwards,
meanness of birth furnished a tremendous weapon of
offence in literary controversy. They hurled at Rabe-
lais, for instance, the fact of his father having kept an
inn, and waited, looking in vain to see him subside. In
later years M. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, M. Francois-
Marie Arouet, and M. Caron de Beaumarchais suffered
a good deal from similar taunts ; while, before either of
these were born, poor Theophile Viaud was reduced to
the mere dregs of despair and rage when his enemies
contemptuously cut off the last letter of his name, and
so somehow deprived him of his claims to territorial
gentility.
Fran9ois Rabelais, then, was indisputably of the
middle class. His father wanted to make him, the
youngest of several sons, an ecclesiastic, and sent him
at ten years of age to the Benedictine monks of Scully,
* This date is disputed, some putting his birth in the year 1495.
There does not seem sufficient reason for departing from the
received tradition.
HIS LIFE. 101
with whom he staj^ed until he was removed to the more
important convent of Basmette. Here he was allowed
full play to his ardor for study, and made certain friend-
ships, destined to stand him in good stead in after years ;
notably, Andre Tiraqueau, who helped him in his sorest
need ; Geoffroi d'Estissac, afterwards Bishop of Mail-
lezais ; and the brothers Du Bellay, all of whom became
eminent men.
In an evil hour for himself he left his Benedictine
friends, and removed to the Franciscan convent of
Fontenay le Comte. The Franciscan vow seems to
have included ignorance as well as celibacy and poverty,
and by no other order was the " new learning " more
hated and feared.
He remained in the convent for fifteen years, taking
priest's orders in 1511, at the age of twenty-eight. Per-
haps by the help of his iriends, perhaps by his own
ingenuity, he managed to find the materials for carrying
on studies which to the Franciscan order were a criminal
waste of time, and were, so far as the Greek language
was concerned, a deadly sin. He kept up, for instance, a
correspondence in Greek with the great Budseus. But
his life there was a constant series of mortifications and
annoyances. It is to this long period, spent among the
most ignorant, the most bigoted, the most narrow of all
orders, that we owe his undying hatred of_monks. It
breaks out in every page of his writings, now passion-
ately, now sorrowfully ; with a cry of rage, or a laugh
of scorn. He hates them more bitterly than even Eras-
mus, for his nature is stronger ; he shows his hatred
more bitterly than even Buchanan, for his genius is
stronger.
He strikes the key-note in his very first book, the
Gargantua : —
102 RABELAIS.
" If you conceive how an ape in a family is always mocked and
teased, you will easily apprehend how monks are shunned of all
men, both young and old. The ape keeps not the house as a dog
doth; he draws not in the plough as the ox; he yields neither milk
nor wool as the sheep; he carriethno burden as a horse doth. . . .
After the same manner a monk. He works not as does the
peasant; doth not defend the country, as the man of war; cureth
not the sick, as the physician; doth neither preach nor teach, as do
the good evangelical doctors and schoolmasters; doth not import
commodities and things necessary for the commonwealth, as the
merchant doth. Therefore is it that by and of all men they are
hooted at and abhorred." " Yea, but," said Grangousier, " they
pray to God for us." "Nothing less," answered Gargantua.
*' True it is, that with a jangling of bells they trouble and disquiet
all their neighbors about them." " Truly," said the monk, " a
mass, a matin, a vesper well rung is half said." " They mumble
grea't store of legends and psalms, by them not understood; they
count plenty of pater-nosters, interlarded with Ave-Maries, without
thinking upon or apprehending the meaning of what it is they say.
And that I call mocking of God, and not prayers."
It was somewhere about 1520 that the chapter of the
convent — one would think they must have had for some
time suspicions of the abominable thing going on within
their walls — made a sudden raid on the cells of Rabe-
lais and his friend Pierre Lamy, and found there, with
horror, books written in Greek, the beloved character
of the devil himself. Then a mysterious event oc-
curred, for which no reasons, save vague and incred-
ible reasons, have ever been assigned. Rabelais was
condemned to the punishment called " in pace ; " that
is, to imprisonment in the dungeons of the convent for
the whole term of his natural life, on bread and water.
How long he remained in this seclusion we do not
know. His friends, and especially Tiraqueau, now
governor of Touraine, getting some inkling of his mis-
fortune, managed, by force, it is said, to get him out.
He appears to have then gone into hiding for some time,
FREEDOM. 103
until, by the special permission of the Pope, in 1524, he
passed over to the Benedictine order, into the Abbey
of Maillezais. Here he was further permitted to hold
whatever benefices might be given him, m spite of his
Franciscan vow of poverty.
And so, at the age of forty, he came out into the
world comparatively a free man — free, that is, to follow
his studies in Greek, Hebrew, philosophy, and natural
science. I^e is burning with that almost pathetic exu-
berance of enthusiasm for learning which marks the six-
teenth century. There is no sacrifice too great for the
scholars of his time, provided only they may continue
their studies. To be poor is nothing : to live hardly,
sleep little, work unceasingly, it is all part of the scholar's
life. They will do more — they will give up their inde-
pendence, be the servants of great men, follow in the
train of a bishop or a cardinal ; they will hide their
thoughts, or only whisper them to each other; they will
be outwardly orthodox, supple, submissive, even servile,
provided only they may go on reading.
" The oldlearning," cries Rabelais, " is now restored: the ancient
languages (without which it is a shame for any one to call himself
learned) are studied again : Hebrew, Chaldee, Latin. There are
correct and beautiful editions printed, an art invented in my own
age by divine inspiration, as much as on the other hand artillery
is the invention of the devil. All the world is full of learned men,
wise teachers, large libraries ; and I think that never even in the
time of Plato, Cicero, or Papinian, has there been such convenience
for study as one sees now. ... I see brigands, executioners, vaga-
bonds now-a-days more learned than the doctors and preachers
when I was young."
Once having got his protection from the Franciscans,
Rabelais seems to have cared very little about conciliat-
ing the Benedictines. On the contrary, he threw aside
the monastic garb altogether, put on that of a secu-
104 RABELAIS,
lar priest, and became secretary to the Bishop of Mail-
lezais. Perhaps the Benedictines were content to see
him go. Indeed, his presence among them would be
certainly found to be a gene. It was as if among the
magic circle of the Senior Fellows — say of Trinity —
were intruded one whose chief article of belief was that
all fellowships should be abolished, and who was known
to advocate openty the sale of college livings and the
abolition of college feasts.
With the Bishop of Legujd, and with the Du Bellay
brothers at Glatigny, Rabelais spent the next ten years
of his laborious life, always hard at work, always piling
up from the things that went on round him new mate-
rials of wrath against the monks, but as yet making no
indication of becoming any thing else than a scholar, cer-
tainly far from suspecting that he was endowed, above
all men, with the gift of satire.
Somewhere about 1530 he went to the University of
Montpellier with the intention of getting a medical
degree. Remark that at this time, when he is follow-
ing the lectures, he is already forty-seven years of
age. But medicine was not a new study for him, and
apparently he had already practised in some irregular
manner.
His feats — historical and traditional — at Montpellier
are too long to narrate ; how he was received among
them with acclamation ; how he pleaded the privileges
of the university in — let us say, n different languages,
the number varying according to the imagination of the
narrator ; how he wrote and acted farces ; how he lec-
tured, and how he laughed.
After two years or so of Montpellier life, he went to
Lyons, where he held an appointment as physician to
the hospital, and where also he appears to have acted
CHRONIQUE GARGANTUINE. 105
as a corrector for the press, an occupation then taken
up exclusively by scholars. Probably he was influ-
enced in his choice of a residence by the fact that his
friend Etienne Dolet was already established as a printer
in the place. The connection of Rabelais with the first
reformers of France is certain ; the extent of the con-
nection is extremely difficult to determine. It is clear,
however, that he had not the least intention of follow-
ing Calvin into exile, or Berquin to the stake ; that his
sympathies were never in favor of any dogmatic creed
whatever ; and that he found the society of Des Periers,
Dolet, and the school of Lyonnais free-thinkers, that
most congenial to his habits of thought.
It was here that he published the second volume of
the medical letters of Manardi, " Hippocratis et Galeni
libri aliquot ; " and a forgery, of which he was the dupe,
of a Latin will. Finding that the demand for these
works was but small, he revenged himself, as tradition,
with considerable air of probability, tells us, by writing
the " Chronique Gargantiiine," which appeared under
the imposing title of " Les grandes et inestimables
Chroniques du grand et ^norme Geant Gargantua,
contenant la genealogie, la grandeur de force de son
corps," &c. More copies of this extravagance were
sold in two months, he saj^s himself, with a mixture of
pride and contempt, than of Bibles in nine years. Its
appearance was the turning-point of Rabelais' career.
Henceforth he will issue no more learned books for the
world, he will write to amuse. He permits himself
only, by way of distraction from this more serious
object, the translation of Marliani's " Topography of
Ancient Rome," and then becomes altogether devoted
to the exposition of the Pantagruelian philosophy. In
1533, he brought out the first book of " Pantagruel,"
106 RABELAIS.
which appears as the second in his collected works, and
in 1534 he published the " Gargantua," a revised and
miich altered edition of the " Chronique," which is
always printed as his first book.
In *the same year he accompanied Jean du Bellay,
Bishop of Paris, in his journey to Rome, undertaken to
effect a reconciliation, if possible, between Henry VIII.
and the Pope. On his return, he published his cele-
brated " Almanack " for 1535. The unfortunate affair
of the placards at Paris happening about this time,
Rabelais, as deeply inimical to the Sorbonne as any,
thought it prudent, with all the band of novateurs and
free-thinkers, to go l)ack to Italy till the storm blew
over. He chose the safest place in Europe for a man
of heretical opinions — Rome: here he obtained per-
mission to lay aside the Benedictine habit, and to
practise medicine gratuitously ; and as soon as possible
he got back to France.
He was now getting old. Peace and tranquillity
came to him at last. He got further permission of
the Pope to quit the Benedictine order altogether, the
habit of which he had previously laid aside. The
powerful family Du Bellay protected and loved him.
The Cardinal gave him a canonry ; Martin du Bellay
(the Roi d'Yvetot) entertained him in Normandy,
Rend du Bellay at Maur ; and Guillaume du Bellay,
Seigneur de Langeay, had the author of " Pantagruel ''
with him as much as he could.
In 1546 appeared the " third book," protected by
royal privilege ; and on its appearance, leaving his
enemies to do their worst, he went once more to Rome,
with Cardinal du Bellay.
Through the influence of Diane de Poitiers, he ob-
tained a privilege from Henry II. for his " fourth
HIS DEATH. 107
book." It was printed in 1552, but prevented by the
Sorbonne from appearing till the following year.
In January, 1553, he resigned his living of St.
Christophe, which had been given him by Ren^ du
Bellay. On the 9th of February of the same year he
resigned the living of Meudon, which he had held for
two years only. His '' fourth book " appeared in
March, after he had given up his benefice, and in April
he died.
You know the story, which reads as if it were true,
of his last words. He is lying at the point of death.
A page enters with a message from some great man.
" Tell my lord," says Rabelais, " in what a pleasant
frame you found me. I go to seek the great Perhaps."
Then a few moments after he says, with his latest
breath, " Draw the curtain ; the farce is played." He
would have said, but for his monkish training, the
comedt/.
It is important to bear in mind, when reading his
works, some of their dates : —
1483. His birth.
1533. " Pantagruel," Book I. — commonly called
the second book.
1534. " Gargantua."
1546. "Pantagruel," Book IL — called the third
book.
1 553. " Pantagruel," Book III. — called the fourth.
His death.
And, in 1562, appeared the first sixteen chapters of
the last book.
The " fourth book," therefore, was given to the
world a few days before his death ; while the last did
not appear till ten years afterwards.
108 RABELAIS.
When the first book of " Pantagruel " was written,
the author was fifty years of age. It was not the work
of a young man ; there was no justification for its faults
on the score of youth, and no inexperience to plead in
modification of its judgments. The wisdom of a life-
time spent in study was to be expected ; the fruits of
many a year's toil ; the results of observation of many
men and many manners. The age of the author is,
indeed, one of the most singular things about it. At
a time when most men, dulled by disappointment, and
saddened by the loss of all their youthful illusions,
begin to fall back upon that gravity of resignation
which is one of the saddest properties of age, Rabelais,
with the freshness of twenty, but with the wisdom of
fifty, begins first to amuse, then to instruct, and finally
to laugh at the world. There can be no doubt that his
first intention, when he wrote the " Chronique Gargan-
tuine " — a mere farrago of nonsense — was- to write a
burlesque on the romances of the day, full of giants,
knights, and tales of enchantment. Achieving a sudden
reputation in a new and hitherto untried line, he con-
tinued his tale. But now the impossible becomes, by
slow degrees, possible and human : by slow degrees,
because he cannot suddenly, not altogether, abandon
the burlesque, and because the quaint and misshapen
creations of his fancy take time to alter their forms,
and become, even approximately, men. Not men and
women, because Rabelais has no women in his books.
Like Swift, he shows no signs of passion. Unlike Swift,
he does not write till an age when the passion of his
youth has had time to consume itself in those long days
and nights of toil during which he secretly read Plato
in the convent cell of Fontenay-le-Comte. Passion was
not in Swift's nature ; it was killed in Rabelais. The
ABSENCE OF LOVE, 109
great fault, common to both, is worse in Swift than in
Rabelais, because the former always mixed freely with
men and women, while the latter belonged wholly to
men. We cannot help a comparison of some sort be-
tween the two, but how immeasurably superior is Rabe-
lais in sympathy, in dignity, in power of conception,
and in all those finer touches which show the insight
of genius.
Not a single woman, except poor Badebec, in all
Rabelais. A whole half of humanity absent from his
mind. For this, too, we must thank the monks. Love, ♦
the source of all human joys and all sympathies, the
mainspring of self-denial, the bond of society, the chief
lever of civilization, appears in the accursed monastic
system nothing but corruption and natural depravity.
The discipline of the convent succeeded in killing all
this side of their victim's nature. Rabelais never loved.
He never even contemplated the possibility of love. He
had no more respect for women than an Australian na-
tive for his "gin;" no higher idea of women than the
chief officer of the Sultan's seraglio. More than this,
there has even dropped out of him that divine love for
the mother which makes a Frenchman the best son in
the world. Alone among French writers, he has no
filial piety. As the old galley-slave may be known by
the dragging foot, on which was once the fetter, so when
the long years have eaten away his youth, imprisoned
with its blind instincts and objectless passions, the ex-
monk is known by his sexless mind. On this side, and
this alone, Rabelais has no sympathy, no perception, no
discoverable trace of humanity.^
1 In one place, indeed, he lets us see plainly his opinion that
it is best for a scholar and a philosopher to be alone. " Thus,"
he says, " Pallas, goddess of wisdom, guardian of students, is
110 RABELAIS.
We are reminded, not only of Swift, but also of
Cervantes. He too resolved on writing a burlesque on
romances. Presently the caricatures he has conceived
begin to show human properties. The moonstruck
madness of Don Quixote is not incompatible with wis-
dom of the highest kind, chivalry of the highest type.
Sancho, who at first follows his master in the hope of
bettering his fortunes, follows him afterwards from the
noblest sense of affectionate loyalty, when all his hopes
of fortune are scattered. And as Pantagruel becomes
the wisest of kings, so Don Quixote becomes the knight-
liest of knights. For life is too serious to make good
burlesque writing possible except within very narrow
limits ; and directly the puppets touch on human inter-
ests, they become themselves human.
Impossible as it is to convey to those who do not
know Rabelais any adequate conception of the book or
the man, let me, keeping the comic element as much as
possible out of consideration, try a brief notice of his
great work.
The first book treats of the great giant Gargantua,
son of Grangousier (and Gargameile), his birth, child-
hood, education, and triumphant victories over King
called a Adrgin. Thus also the Muses are virgins, and the Graces
also. And I remember to have read that Cupid, often asked by
his mother, Yen us, why he doth not attack the jVIuses replied
that he found them so fair, so virtuous, so continually occupied,
one in contemplating the heavens, another in the calculation of
numbers,- another in poetical compovsition . . . that approaching
them, he unstrung his bow, shut up his quiver, and extinguished
his torch through fear of hurting them. Then he took off the fillet
from his eyes, in order to see them more openly, and to hear their
pleasant odes and poetic songs, in which he took the greatest pleas-
ure in the world. ... So far was he from wishing to distract
them from their studies."
EDUCATION. Ill
Picrocliole. This book, altered as it is from its original
form, is full of absurdities and extra vagrancies. Garo-an-
tua rides a great mare to Paris, which by the whisking
of her tail knocks down whole forests ; he robs Notre
Dame of its bells ; he combs the cannon balls out of his
hair after a battle ; he eats up six pilgrims in a salad,
who live for some time in the valleys and recesses of
his mouth, with other diverting incidents, most of which
are to be found in the first edition. The satirical ele-
ment is much stronger in this book than in the first
of " Pantagruel," which, as has been stated, appeared
before it.' It may be here remarked that nowhere
does Rabelais satirize the institution of royalty, or the
profession of healing, the two things in the world for
which he seems to have had the greatest respect.
Gargantua's education is at first confided to sophis-
ters and schoolmasters. With them he leads the life of
a clown. On rising he combs his hair with the German
comb, that is, his ten fingers, his preceptors instructing
him that to wash and make himself neat is to lose time
in this world. Then he gorges himself at breakfast.
After breakfast he goes to church, where he hears " six-
and-twenty or thirty masses." These despatched, he
studies for a paltry half-hour, his heart being in the
kitchen. After a huge and Gargantuan dinner, he
talks and plays with his attendants. Then he sleeps
two or three hours, " without thinking or speaking any
harm." After this he drinks, reads a little, visits the
kitchen to see what roast meat is on the spit, sups, goes
to bed and sleeps till eight. Ponocrates, his new tutor,
reforms all this, and, by dint of patience, succeeds in
making him forget his old habits. He now rises at four,
when he begins the day with prayer and the Holy Scrip-
ture, and spends the morning — not a word now of even
112 RABELAIS.
a single mass — in lectures and philosophical discourse.
Then to tennis, after which dinner. At dinner, the
talk is of the " virtue, propriety, efficacy, and nature of
all that was served in at the table ... by means where-
of he learns in a little time all the passages competent
for this that are found in Plato, Athenseus, Dioscorides,
Julius Pollux, Galen, Porphyrins, Oppian, Polybius,
Heliodorus, Aristotle, Ji^lian, and others."
Then they practise tricks with cards, by which he
learns arithmetic ; after this they sing, and then prac-
tise horsemanship and all manner of manlj^ exercises.
Returning home through the meadows, they herborize
and study botany ; and then, being arrived at their
lodging, Gargantua sups, afterwards singing, learning
astronomy, or playing cards till bedtime. " Then
prayed they unto God the Creator, falling down be-
fore Him ; and strengthening their faith towards and
so glorifying Him for His boundless bounty, and
giving thanks to Him for the time that was past, they
recommended themselves to the Divine clemency for
the future."
The most remarkable chapters in this book (all
written for the second edition) are those which de-
scribe Friar John's monastery of Thelem4 ■{Ob'),j]fia').
This was built and instituted after the holy friar's own
scheme, to serve as a model for ever for all future con-
vents. First, there was to be no wall round it ; and
because in some monasteries they sweep the ground
after a woman has crossed it. Friar John ordained that
if any regular monk enter the monastery every room
through which he has passed shall be thoroughly
scrubbed, cleansed, and purified. And as in all con-
vents every thing is done by hours, it is here strictly
enjoined that no clock or dial at all be set up. For the
THELEME. 113
occupants, they are to consist of such ladies as are fair,
well featured, and of a sweet disposition ; and of such
men as are comely and well-conditioned. Anyhody
may go where he or she likes, and they have free per-
mission to marry, to get rich, and generally to do as
they please.
The^ buildings of the monastery, which are more
splendid than those of Chantilly or of Chambery, are
described, and the fancy of the writer runs riot in
picturing all the splendor, luxury, and comfort he can
conceive. Thus, by the river Loire, the Thelemites
spend their lives, not by laws and statutes, but ac-
cording to their own free-will and pleasure. In all
their regulations there is but one of universal appli-
cation — " Do what thou wilt." On the principles of
natural religion, or rather of good breeding, is the
monastery of Thelem^ to be governed, "because men
that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in
honest companies, have naturally an instinct or spur
which prompts them to virtuous actions ; " herein the
author seeming to get dangerously n6ar the heresy of
Pelagius.
The real hero of Rabelais is Pantagruel, son of
Gargantua, and not Panurge at all, notwithstanding all
that has been said. At the birth of Pantagruel, his
mother Badebec dies, so that Gargantua is divided
between weeping for grief at the loss of his wife, and
rejoicing at the birth of so fair a son : —
" Ah ! Badebec, Badebec, my darling, my sweet, never shall I
see thee again. Ah I poor Pantagruel, thou hast lost thy good
mother."
With these words he cried like a cow, but on a sudden fell a
laughing like a calf when Pantagruel came into his mind. " Ua,
my little son," said he, " my childilolly, my dandlichucky, my
8
114 RABELAIS,
pretty rogue. . . . O how jolly thou art ! ... Ho ! ho ! ho I
ho ! how glad I am ! Let us drink." *
The earlier years of Pantagruel, which show too
close a connection with the " Chronique Gargantuine,"
may be passed over. When he grows older he visits
the different French universities, Montpellier, Valence,
Bourges, Orleans — where he meets the Limousin
scholar who talks the new Latin-French — and Paris,
whi(;h gives the author an opportunity of giving his
famous catalogue of the library.
And then comes Gargantua's noble letter to his son,
exhorting him to study.
And that which I now write to thee is not so much that thou
shouldest live in this virtuous course, as that thou shouldest rejoice
in so living and iiaving lived, and cheer thyself up with the like
resolution for the future ; to the prosecution of which undertaking
thou mayest easily remember how that I have spared nothing to
see thee once in my life completely well-bred and accomplished :
as vs'ell in virtue, honesty, and valor, as in all liberal knowledge
and civility : and so to leave thee after my death as a mirror repre-
senting the person of myself thy father : and if not so excellent
and altogether as I do wish thee, yet such is my desire. . . .
I intend, and will have it so, that thou learn the languages
perfectly : first of all, the Greek, as Quintilian will have it ; sec-
ondly, the Latin; and then the Hebrew, for the Holy Scriptures'
sake ; and then the Chaldee and Arabic likewise : and that thou
frame thy style in Greek in imitation of Plato ; and for the Latin,
after Cicero. Let there be no history which thou shalt not have
ready in thy memory; — unto the prosecuting of which design,
books of cosmography will be very conducible, and help thee much.
Of the liberal arts of geometry, arithmetic, and music, I gave thee
some taste when thou wert yet little, and not above five or six years
old. Proceed further in them, and learn the remainder if thou
canst. As for astronomy, study all the rules thereof. Let pass,
nevertheless, divining astrology, and the art of Lullius, as being
nothing else but plain abuses and vanities. As for the civil law,
^ The name of Pantagruel is derived from Trarra, says Rabelais,
and gruel^ which *' in the Hagarene language doth signify thirsty. ^^
PANTAGRUEL. 115
of that I would have thee to know the texts by heart, and then to
compare them with philosophy.
Now, in matter of the knowledge of the works of nature, I
would have thee give thyself curiously ; that so there be no sea,
river, nor fountain, of which thou dost not know the fishes ; all the
fowls of the air ; all the trees, whether in forest or orchards ; all
the herbs of the earth ; all the metals that are hid within the bowels
of the earth; together with the precious stones that are to be seen
in the east and south of the world. Let nothing of all these be
unknown to thee. And at some of the hours of the day apply thy
mind to the study of the Holy Scriptures ; first, in Greek, the New
Testament, with the Epistles of the Apostles ; and then the Old
Testament in Hebrew. In brief, let me see thee an abyss of knowl-
edge : for from henceforward, as thougrowest great and becomest
a man, thou must part from this tranquillity and art of study, thou
must learn chivalry, warfare, and the exercises of the field, the
better thereby to defend my house and to succor our friends in all
their needs, against the assaults of e"\dl doers.
But because, as the wise man Solomon saith. Wisdom entereth
not into a malicious mind, and knowledge without conscience is
but the ruin of the soul; it behooveth thee to serve, to love, to fear
God, and on Him to cast all thy thoughts and all thy hope, and, by
faith formed in charity, to cleave unto Him, so that thou mayest
never be separated from Him by thy sins. . . . And, when thou
shalt see that thou hast attained to all the knowledge that is to be
acquired in that part, return unto me, that I may see thee, and give
thee my blessing before I die.
Under Epistemon, his. tutor, Pantagruel makes rapid
proofress in study. In Paris he meets Panurge, who
addresses him in thirteen different languages, the
author probably bearing in mind a similar feat of his
own, when he pleaded the cause of the Montpellier
University. He hears and decides a cause in which
the pleadings are given with great prolixity of nonsense
on either side. Then we have the mischiefs of Panurge,,
the victories of Pantagruel, and the descent of Episte-
mon to the nether regions. This book, indeed, is the
only really mirthful one in Rabelais. It was the
natural sequel and development of the " Chrouique
116 RABELAIS.
Gargantuine." There is very little satire in it, and no
malice ; he leaves the monks alone, and only makes
fair game of the pedantry of the lawj'ers and the follies
of the university.
It is not difficult to construct, from this book alone,
a sort of master-key to the whole. Thus Pantagruel
is he who collects the wisdom and knowledge of his
councillors, and applies them to the practical purposes
of life. Epistemon, his tutor, represents scholarship
and learning ; Eusthenes, the right application of
strength. Friar John is the soldier and man of action,
spoiled by the monkish robe. Panurge — TtdvovQyog —
what may he not represent ? He is intellect, unaided
by rank or wealth. He is intellect without moral
principle. He is cunning, without forethought ; auda-
cious, without bravery. He is a spendthrift, contriver,
libertine, scholar, coward, wit. He has no pity, no
sympathy, no shame, no reverence ; he has no virtues
at all. He has no strength, only craft ; no affection,
save for what will help him. Pantagruel is a great
king, and Friar John a lusty comrade. But if John
gets old and Pantagruel weak, Panurge will betake
himself to the nearest available protector, and be as full
of animal spirits, as jovial, as reckless as ever. Panurge
is a man with every faculty, but without a soul.
I know that this kind of allegorizing is dangerous,
and may be carried very far beyond what was ever
intended. Still I have little doubt that some such
scheme, over and above the first idea of a burlesque,
was in the mind of Rabelais. Mere fooling, to a man
so learned, would have been simply impossible, and his
genius is nowhere so conspicuous as in the exquisitely
human touches of tenderness and sympathy that light
up his pages. But there is this one character that has
PANURGE. IIT
neither sympathy nor tenderness, and I am more and
more convinced that in Panurge Rabelais seriously
designed to show to the world man, in his highest
development of intellect, but with no soul — stripped
of that divine element which gives him, alone in the
world, the power of sympathy. It would be vain to
follow up the allegor}-, always sitting loosely upon him,
in his last two books deliberately neglected in order
to satirize the church ; and all his characters, except
Panurge and Pantagruel, sink into insignificance when
they visit the islands of Papimanie and Papefigue, and
the abode of the great Pope-hawk.
Panurge, then, is not the hero of Rabelais. It is the
consistency of his character alone, and the prominent
part he plays, that has led critics to forget his real sub-
ordination to the leading figure of the group ; and the
majestic conception of Pantagruel, wise and calm, is
only brought into stronger relief by the turbulent bois-
terousness of his follower.
We may put aside, too, as wholly absurd, the old
idea that the work depicts the living personages of the
time. Nothing can be sillier than the so-called keys to
Rabelais. Allusions, it is true, are constantly being
made to topics of the day, to local gossip, and contem-
porary anecdote. In the details of the J^ook, as well as
in its spirit, there is a flood of light thrown upon the
thought of the time — a time more abundantly illus-
trated than almost any other. Indeed, from Brantume,
Marot, Des Pdriers', Rabelais, and Erasmus, the first
fifty years of that remarkable century might be repro-
duced with a vividness and fidelity to which I think no
other period, unless it be the last century, presents a
parallel.
The third book opens with Panurge's prodigality,
118 • . RABELAIS.
after Pantagruel had given him the lordship of Salmy-
gondin, and his discourse on the pleasure and profit of
being in debt.
" Be pleased to represent unto your fancy another world, wherein
every one lendeth and every one oweth, and all are debtors and all
creditors. What would be the harmony among the regular move-
ments of the heavens ! I think I hear it as well as ever Plato
did. What sympathy between the elements ! . . . I lose myself
in the contemplation. Among men, peace, honor, love, fidelity,
repose, banquets, feasts, joy, delight ; gold, silver, small money,
chains, rings, merchandise will run from hand to hand. No law-
suits ; no war ; no disputes ; no one then will be a usurer, a miser,
avaricious, or a refuser of loans. Good God ! will it not be the
age of gold — the kingdom of Saturn — the idea of the Olympic
regions, in which all other virtues cease, and Charity alone is
regent, mistress, queen ? "
Then come Panurge's grave doubts on the subject of
marriage, and the incomparable chapter where he sets
forth his difficulties to Pantagruel, receiving from him
the alternate advice, " Marry, then," and '' Then do
not marry."
The rest of the book is chiefly made up of the ad-
vice given to Panurge by different councillors, none of
whom advances his cause at all. Here, too, occurs the
case of Judge Bridoise — without any exception, the
finest piece of comedy in the whole of Rabelais. The
humor consists not so much in making the poor old
judge, against whom an appeal has been lodged, confess
that he decided this case, and has decided all others
during his whole life, by the throw of the dice, keeping
big dice for important cases, and small dice for trifling
ones, as in the judge's perfect incapacity to see any
reason for concealing the fact, or any other method of
arriving at perfect justice and fair dealing, and his
inability to make any other defence than that, by
reason of the infirmity of age, he might be prevented
PROTECTORS. 119
from rightly discerning the points of the dice, and so
the course of justice be diverted.
The Sorbonne could find nothing in the third book
to complain of. In one chapter, the word dne was
printed no less than three times instead of dme; but
King Francis refused to sanction its prohibition on that
account, and the book appeared Cum prlvilegio.
Now Rabelais had little of the spirit of a martyr in
him. There was probably no form of religion for which
he would have gone to the stake, or even, willingly, to
prison ; martyrdom would have been just as disagree-
able to him whether at the hands of the monks or the
Calvinists. Both parties would certainly liave burned
him, had they been able, with a lively joy ; Calvin out
of the malice of a disposition rendered morbid by
bodily suffering and wounded personal vanity, and the
monks out of pure revenge on a man Avho had done
more than any other man, living or dead — Walter de
Mapes and Jean de Meung not excepted — to bring
them into contempt.
There must have been some protector at court on
whom Rabelais relied when he resolved on issuing his
fourth book ; else we must believe that in his old age
he committed the only imprudent act of his life ; and,
after dexterously avoiding his enemies for seventy
years, voluntarily put his head into the lion's mouth.
He died, but that was unfoi-eseen ; and we may picture
the rage of the orthodox when their old enemy, now
almost within their grasp, slipped quietly out of their
hands. The church never forgets, and priests never
forgive ; perhaps it was well for the writer that his life
was not prolonged beyond his threescore years and ten.
To the protection of the Du Bellay family, he added
that of Cardinal Odet. He it was, I think, who subse-
120 RABELAIS.
qiiently became a professed Protestant, and took a wife.
There must have been others, and the nature of the
work must have been perfectly known to them ; for
now an obvious change comes over the spirit of the
' book. It is no longer the pure spirit of drollery ; there
; is no more tenderness ; the old geniality seems gone
out of it; the animal spirits of the old man are dying
I out ; the fire of his resentment mounts higher ; all is
n fierce, vehement, bitter satire: he laughs, with a gibe
vl at the monks ; he moralizes, with a jest on the priests.
The last book may be taken with the fourth, though
it did not appear till ten years after the death of the
writer, and then without his final touches and correc-
tions. It lacks these ; its bitterness is too keen ; it has
no geniality at all, though it wants some, if only to set
off and heighten the boundless measure of its contempt
for monks and priests.
In the fourth book, however, we are not wholly
without fun. There we may read several very good
. stories : how Panurge bargained for the sheep ; how
the Lord de Basche struck a wholesome terror into
bailiffs ; how Francis Villon was revenged on Friar
Tickletoby ; how the great storm fell upon them, with
the cowardly conduct of Panurge ; and how the frozen
words fell on the deck, and melted, and were heard.
Here, indeed, are goodly materials for mirth. But tho;
tone of the whole is somehow changed.
They visit, during this Odyssean voyage, the island
of Shrovetide, the island of Papefigue, the inhabitants
of which, though once rich, were now poor, wretched,
and subject to the Papimanes. Then they go to the
island of Papimanie — " navigasmes par ung jour en
s^renit^ et tout plaisir, quand a nostre veue s'offrit la
benoiste isle des Papimanes," — and observe the calm
THE POPEHAWK. 121
weather which always reigns round the island of the
orthodox. When they near the shore, a boat puts off,
to ask them, " Have they seen him ? " " Seen whom ? "
asks Pantagruel. " Him ! " they repeat. " Who is
he?" quoth Friar John. "Par la mort beufi I will
smash him," thinking it had been some notorious
criminal. " How ! " cried they in the boat, " do you
not know, gentlemen pilgrims, the Only One
(F Unique) ? Nous parlous du Dieu en terre."
" Upon my word," says Carpalim, " they mean the
Pope." *' Oh, yes I " says Pantagruel, " I have seen
three of them ; much better am I for the sight. One
at a time, understand." " O folk thrice and four times
happy ! " they cry, " welcome and more than welcome."
'' Then they knelt down before us, and wished to kiss
our feet."
Then they were entertained by Homenas, who sets
forth the praise of the decretals, and how they gather
gold for Pome.
Next they go to the court of the great inventor .
Gastel-, the first Master of Arts in the world. There,
in the liveliest allegory, Rabelais shows how necessity ♦
and self-preservation are the parents of all arts and
sciences, and how from the mere want of food springs
every development of the ingenuity of man.
The purpose of the writer grows wider still in the
last, imperfect book. They go to the isle of Bells
(File Sonnante), where the single Pope-hawk lives •
with clergy-hawks, monk-hawks, priest-hawks, abbot-
hawks, bishop-hawks, and cardinal-hawks. These birds
are all of strange birth. They are imported from the
land of Lack-bread, and never go back. They sing
at the ringing of bells ; they lead joyous and happy
lives, "but nothing to what we shall have," says
^
122 RABELAIS.
jEdituus, " in the other world ; " and they are all sacred,
and not to be touched on pain of fearful punishments.
Here, without the least disguise, the church is de-
scribed. Then to other islands, including that of
Grippeminaud, the Inquisitor, and so on to the last,
the Oracle of the Bottle.
We see, then, in Rabelais, three stages : simple bur-
lesque, allegory, and satire almost unmixed. He has
the same purpose throughout, but it grows. While
at first he attacks monks only, he afterwards aims
at the follies of the whole church, and even at the
court and constitution of Rome, finishing the whole
with the oracle which relieves Pantagruel's mind, and
sums up the Pantagruelian philosophy by the magic
word, "Drink."
"Now," says the priestess, "you may depart, my
friends, under the protection of that intellectual sphere
whose centre is everywhere and circumference no-
wdiere, which we call God. Go, by. command of God
who leads you, to God. AVhen you return to the
world, do not fail to affirm that the greatest treasures
are hidden underground ; and not without reason."
The controversies of the time, the endless disputes
of the schools, the differences of churches — what were
they to men who could feed on Plato, and roam over
the flowery fields of ancient philosophy ? What was it
to them whether the bigot of Geneva, or the bigot of
Rome, conquered ? What to them the issue of ques-
tions as idle as the bells of Vile Sonnante^ as meaning-
less as the frozen words on the deck of Pantagruel's
ship? The spirit of priesthood — that had been the
enemy of philosophy in old times, and was its enemy in
the new times; its fanaticism, its blind fear of ignorance,
were their natural foes ; the long chain of custom, the
THE PANTAGRUEUANS. 123
fetter that bound men's souls to decaying forms, was
what they would fain, but could not, remove. Life
might be cheered by the intercourse of scholars ; but
life with the common herd, with the so-called religious,
or the so-called learned, was intolerable, ludicrous,
stupid. As for the doctrines of the church — well,
they are good for the common people. Meanwhile, the
great God reigns : He is like a sphere whose centre is
everywhere and circumference nowhere. The ministers
of religion are its worst enemies : he who is Avise will be
tied by as few dogmas as may be, but he will possess his
soul in patience ; and after seventy years of study,
thought, and labor, will accept the sacraments in the
usual way, with one last parting insult for the priest
who brings them.
This is the Pantagruelian philosophy, which was pro-
fessed by no small number of scholars. It was no mere
name, or peg, on which to hang a string of trifles. It was
followed by those who felt, with Rabelais, that to promote
learning was to promote progress ; that to remonstrate
against evils which spring mainly from ignorance is
futile. Hence they passed their lives in unprotesting
acquiescence, content to feel that the things they knew
would grow and spread more and more. There are few
scholars now to compare with those of the sixteenth
century. What men could learn they learned. Not
the whole circle of science only, but the whole circle of
languages, in which literature worth the reading was to
be found, was theirs. Rabelais was botanist, physician,
and astronomer. He knew Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Ara-
bic, and Italian ; perhaps, also, for the only limit to his
power of acquisition was that imposed by the dial, he
knew all those other languages in which Panurge ad-
dresses Pantagruel. But while their learning was great,
124 RABELAIS.
their numbers were small. They lived their own lives ;
few of them shared in the ambitions and hopes of other
men : they were men of the cloister, ^not of the outer
world. As for this outer world, it was a seething mass
of brutality, ignorance, and superstition. They knew,
out of those Greek volumes which monks regarded with
such just suspicion, how dark their own time was, com-
pared with that which had been. They knew well
enough that the ceremonies which men were taught to
believe God-sent, were copies and relics of paganism ;
they saw the Dii minores in the saints, the cult of
Venus in that of the Virgin, the Pontifex Maximus in
the Pope.
Some of them, among whom was Clement Marot, one
of the philosophers, though no scholar, laughed and
made sport of all the turmoil about religion ; some, not-
ably the Cardinal du Bellay, gravely held their tongues ;
some, among them Bishop de Saint Gelais (not Octa-
vien, or Mellin, the poets), went over to the Protestants ;
some, among whom was poor Etienne Dolet, talked, and
got burnt for their pains ; one or two, among whom was
Bonaventure Des Periers, broke out into open infidelity ;
while others. More, Erasmus, and Rabelais the chief, at-
tacked the abuses but remained in the church, which was
indeed their only camp of refuge. For them Calvin would
have been a more intolerant master than the great Pope-
hawk himself, and they were not the men to exchange
one yoke, however galling, for another that would gall
them worse in a different place. Is it too much to say,
with the examples before us, that the leading intellect of
the time remained with the ancient church ?
Some men there are who seem too great for creeds.
If they remain in the church wherein they were born, it
is because in no other would they find relief from the
CREED OF RABELAIS. 125
fetters of doctrine, and because the main things wliich
underlie Articles are common to all churches, in which
the dogmas are the accidents of time and circumstance.
This, however, is touching on dangerous ground.
Rabelais and his friends went further than contempt
for the trappings of modern religion. They rejected it
altogether. There can be no doubt, not the slightest
doiibt, that Rabelais, like Dolet and Des P^riers, was a
pure and simple Deist. Des P^riers, indeed, deliber-
ately divulges, in the " Cymbalum Mundi," the secret
creed of his associates. It appears, to intelligent Chris-
tians, dreary and dark enough ; to non-intelligent Chris-
tians, that is, to the greater part of the world, absolute
blasphemy. " In this great and wonderful world,"
Rabelais might have said, " I see everywhere the mark
of a mind whose grandeur is beyond any thing which
the human intellect can conceive. In the wondrous
formation of the body, in the courses of the seasons, in
the instincts of animals, in the great and awful mys-
teries of birth and death, in growth and decay, in the
annual sleep of the world and its annual waking, in
every thing upon the earth, above it, and beneath it,
I see benevolence, forethought, care for the happiness
of creation. In the investigation of the laws which
govern the world, I see the only hope of improving
men's lives, shortening their pains, increasing their joys.
To search for the secrets of Nature is the work of our
days, as to cultivate the pure intellect was the work of
the ancients. Nature, on the one hand; Plato and
Cicero, on the other hand. Beyond these, what ? Only
the silence of the grave. To all our questioning no
answer ; to all our passionate longing, no lifting of the
curtain. Light and joy beneath the sun ; on tliat side
what awaits ? Let us go on in the protection of that
126 . RABELAIS.
intellectual sphere whose centre is everywhere and cir-
cumference nowhere, which we call God. We have no
revelation ; we have but one hope, that, since the things
required for our life are made so incomparably well, the
benevolence of the Creator will continue, should exist-
ence continue, beyond the grave." ^
Not a Christian. I am certain that Rabelais was not
a Christian. And yet he never satirizes Christianity,
because he sees that, right or wrong, it is good for the
people to have the definite laws of a dogmatic religion.
He saw the evils of the church, but he hoped to help
their cure ; not directly, by schism, by any kicking
against the huge fabric he could not overthrow ; but in-
directly, by spreading the cause of learning, by bringing
monasticism into contempt, by widening the boundaries
of thought, and leading the world through laughter
rather than censure. He wholly failed, because men,
as a rule, not humorous by nature, cannot be led by
laughter, and because he profaned the sacred precincts
of the temple by buffooneries which other men prac-
tise outside.
Of his erudition, as shown in the book, I have given
no examples, but he knew more than any other man of
the time ; I have not said, indeed, a tenth part of what
might be written of him. It is not impossible that
England will yet learn to appreciate more largely this
glorious wit and satirist. There may be found some
1 This is what he might have said ; hear what he actually does
say. " Physis, that is, Nature, at first begat spontaneously beauty
and harmony, being of herself fertile and fecund. Antiphysis, who
is always the antagonist of nature, immediately conceived an envy
of this birth, and in her turn produced deformity and discord. . . .
Since then she begat the cagots and papelards, the demoniacal
Calvins, impostors of Geneva, church vermin, and other monsters
. deformed and framed contrary to nature."
-h-
HIS MORAL TEACHING. 127
man who has the leisure, and to whom it would be a
labor of love, to edit for modern readers the life and
voyages of Pantagruel. The necessary omissions could
be made without very great difficulty, and the parts to
be left out are not inwoven with the web of the whole.
Considering him as a moral teacher, we must remem- .,
ber what things he taught, and that he was the first ta I
teach them in the vernacular. Many of his precepts are ^^
now commonplaces, texts for the copy-book. But they
were not so then. In that time, when only a few had
learning, and the old mediaeval darkness was still over
the minds of men, we must remember what things, per-
fectly new and previously unsuspected, he poured into
men's ears. He showed them what a monastery might
be, the home of culture, letters, good manners, and .
gentle life. He taught the value of learning by direct
admonition, in the letter of Gargantua, of which I have
extracted a piece, and by the example of Pantagruel :
the value of good breeding, if with only a small tincture
of letters, in Gargantua : against the solid arts he con-
trasts the follies of alchemists, astrologers, and foolish '
inventors: he shoAvs that Necessity, against which we
pray so fondly, is in reality the parent and founder of
all that men have achieved — great Gaster is the first
Master of Arts. In brave stolid Friar John he shows a
nature open and manly in all except where the monks
have spoiled him. He exposes, from the height of his
own learning, the shallow pedantry of the schools, and
the folly of the people who forget God in their rever-
ence for the Pope ; he paints, in his wondrous panonima
of life, the foolish judge, the greedy priest, the cruel ,
inquisition, the lawyer with his false rhetoric, and the
needy adventurer with his shifts, turns, and wiles:
against all these he sets his wise and tranquil king.
128 RABELAIS.
whom no storms terrify, no clamors disquiet. I wish
there had been one, only one good priest, with one good
woman, so that we might extend over Rabelais that veil
of perfect charity which should have covered all his
faults. But priests he hated and women he suspected.
The robe he wore was to him like a bodily deformity —
it corrupted his mind and narrowed his views. It would
be easy to illustrate his Avit, his humor, his headlong
fun, and that easy jovial spirit which probably rendered
him during the whole of his long life — save when he
was munching his crust in 'pace at Fontenay-le-Comte —
the happiest of his kind. But I would rather, in writ-
ing about Rabelais, dwell upon that side of his character
which made him a teacher the like of whom Europe
had not yet seen.
A great moral teacher. Yes. But it would have
been better for France if his book, tied to a millstone,
had been hurled into the sea. Not on account of the
just and obvious charge which any one who opens its
pages will bring against it. That is nothing. The
filth and dirt of Rabelais do not take hold of the mind
— a little cold water washes all off. I have said above
that he wholly failed in his purpose ; he did more, he
greatly sinned, in a manner which has never yet been
pointed out. He destroyed effectually, perhaps for cen-
turies yet to come, earnestness in France. He found
men craving for a better faith, believing that it was to
be found, and left them doubting whether any system
in the world could give it. Great and noble as are
many of the passages in Rabelais, profoundly wise as
he was, I do believe that no writer who ever lived has
inflicted such lasting injury on his country.
As for his fault of coarseness, his biographers defend
it on the usual ground — taste of the age, and so forth.
LUCIAN. 129
Rubbish ! Where is the " taste of the age " in Eras-
mus ? There has been no time in the world's history,
from Catullus downwards, when those who have sinned
in this way have done so in deference to the ** taste of
the aofe."
Note on Lucian's True History.
The voyage of Pantagruel is borrowed, in many of its details as
well as in the leading idea, from the very curious " True History "
of Lucian, the real origin of so many fabulous voyages and travels.
Lucian's Gulliver begins by setting sail from Cadiz with exactly
the same desire as animated Columbus ; he wanted to find out
what lay beyond the western ocean. He took with him fifty
stalwart companions and a trusty pilot ; had a large and stout
vessel, which he provisioned with stores which would serve them a
long time. After encountering a storm which lasts eighty days,
they arrive at a hilly and richly wooded island, where they found
a pillar of brass, with an inscription in Greek, " Thus far came
Bacchus and Hercules." Two foot-prints, one of enormous size,
marked the farthest step of the god and hero. The rivers of the
island flow with wine, not water ; the clusters of grapes yield pure
wine ; then there were women who below the waist were mere vine
trunks, and who, when two of his companions tried to kiss them,
clasped them tight in their tendrils and transformed them into
vines. So in the seventh circle of Dante's "Inferno," Jacopo is
transformed into a bush which, as in Lucian, screamed with pain
when any twig or branch was broken oif .
Sailing away from the island, the ship is caught by a whirlwind,
which carries it up three thousand stadia into the air. The adven-
tures of the crew become now exciting indeed. They sail to the
moon, and being received hospitably by King Endymion, enlist as
volunteers in the war which he is about to wage with King Phae-
thon. Endyinion's forces consist, among other troops, of eighty
thousand Ilippogyps, i. e. warriors who bestride vultures, each
with three heads, so vast, that every feather is as big as a ship's
mast; of twenty thousand mounted on "cabbage-fowl." i. e. birds
whose wings are like lettuces — and so on. Phaethon's forces are
described in the same way. The engagement ends in the total
defeat and discomfiture of Endymion, who makes haste to accept
the most humiliating terms. The Greek sailors are taken prisoners,
but are speedily released by Phaethon, who allows them to go on
their way. As for the manners of the moon-men, they have been
130 RABELAIS,
repeatedly described since the time of Lucian ; but perhaps his
narrative has the merit of the greatest originality. They, the sub-
jects of Endymion, do not die, but vanish when the time of death
approaches. They do not eat or drink, as we do, only dine off the
odor of a roasted frog, or drink the air squeezed into a goblet. To
be esteemed beautiful you must be bald. They extract oil from
onions : get pure water from their grapes ; wear no pockets, being
provided with a pouch like the kangaroo ; the rich have garments
of glass, the poor of brass. The country abounds in minerals and
ores, which are worked by pouring water on them. To preserve
their sight they take out their eyes, and only use them when they
please, the rich buying up the spare eyes of the poor, and so on,
many details of which have been imitated by Rabelais.
Leaving the moon, they come next to the City of Lanterns (see
Pantagruel, v. 32, 33), Lychnopolis, where they land and see
many curious things. After several other adventures they meet
with the great misfortune of the voyage, being sw-allowed up by an
enormous whale, three hundred miles long, at one gulp, ship and
all. Getting inside they can at first (see Gargantua, chap. 38) see
nothing at all, but gradually perceive that they are in a vast cavity.
All about them lie bones of fish and men, ships with their cargoes,
sails, masts, skins and skulls of beasts. This is near the throat of
the monster. Sailing farther on they arrive at a small island, forty-
five miles round, with hills and valleys, forest-trees, singing-birds,
and fountains. On landing they discovered a small pillar erected
to Neptune, and presently came upon an old man and his son, the
last survivors of a mishap exactly like their own, who had lived
on the island for twenty years. They were very well off, having
cultivated the ground about their hut, and being able to fish in a
salt-water lake in the island, but with one drawback — the other
inhabitants, of w'hom there were about a thousand. The new-
comers rid them of these, and they all sit down to enjoy what good
things are left to them. After a long imprisonment the idea occurs
to them to eifect their escape by setting fire to the forest. They
do so. After the wood has burned for a few days, the monster
grows uneasy, sickens rapidly, and dies. They prop his jaws up
with beams of timber, and sail out again, the two original prisoners
accompanying them.
There were other adventures doing equal credit to Lucian 's
imaginative faculty. They get into a frozen sea, where they dig
a cave and live in the ice; they arrive at the sea of milk, with its
island of cheese; the salt sea where men have feet made of cork,
and skim about ; and then the Island of the Blessed, where, after
being subjected to a good deal of unpleasant questioning by llha-
LUCIAN'S TRUE HISTORY. 131
damanthus, they are allowed to stay for some months. It is a
pleasant place. The city has palaces of gold and ramparts of
emerald; its gates are of cinnamon-wood; its pavements are of
ivory; its temples are built of beryl, with altars of amethyst ; there
are crystal baths, and round the city flows a stream of rose-water.
They dress in purple ; they drink of the three hundred and sixty-
five fountains of water, honey, and essences. If they go outside
the walls it is to lie in beds of flowers, while the nightingales drop
roses on their heads, and choirs of sweet-voiced boys and girls sing
to them. All the demigods are there, and all the old philosophers.
Socrates, it is true, is in temporary disgrace, having been informed
by Rhadamanthus that his flirtations and levities may be carried
too far. Diogenes is so far changed that he is married to Lais, and
has taken to drink. Plato is set on an island by himself, where he
makes laws for ever. The Stoics are not admitted, and are still all
climbing up the steep slopes of the Hill of Virtue, while the Aca-
demics, who would like to come in, are excluded on account of
their having denied the existence of the place.
But an unpleasant incident disturbs their happiness. Cinyrus,
son of the old man above mentioned as the original prisoner, begins
a flirtation with Helen — Menelaus, as usual, seeing nothing. He
carries it so far as to propose an elopement, and actually puts her
on board the ship and sails away. There is a great commotion
among the heroes. They sail after the couple and presently bripg
them back, Helen in tears and Cinyrus in despair. The latter is
sent off to Rhadamanthus for sentence.
After this they all sail away again. In a short time they come
to a fog which smells like a mixture of burning asphalte, brim-
stone, pitch, and roasted flesh. It is a dark and murky atmos-
phere. There are howls, and cries, and the crack of whips. Alas!
it is one of the islands of the accursed. They land. No tree grov/s
— it really reads like the mediaeval Place of Torment. Swords and
daggers are stuck in the ground, point uppermost, instead of flow-
ers ; there are three rivers circling round it, respectively flowing
with mire, blood, and fire. And here is poor Cinyrus, the last se-
ducer of Helen, hung up over a slow fire and roasting like a modern
Huguenot. Gulliver takes occasion to remark, piously, that he is
glad to see liars and false historians in the hottest places.
Thence to the Island of Oceanus, with four gates, not two, as
Homer superficially observed. The bad dreams pass through two
gates of irou and potter's clay respectively; the pleasant dreams
through those of iron and ivory.
And a little more in the same style, the history abruptly wind-
ing up, as such histories might, with the promise of more next time.
Chapteb yi.
MONTAIGNE.
Fnii paratis et valido mihi,
Latoe, dones ; et precor, Integra
Cum mente, nee turpem senectam
Degere, nee cithara carentem.
HoR. Carm. i. xxxi. 17.
ly /r Y book would be incomplete indeed were it to pass
-^^■*- over the name of the most remarkable writer, the
most original, the most delightful, that France has ever
produced. Yet what to say aboat Montaigne that has
not been said before ? His life, his writings, his philoso-
phy have been written of again and again. From time
to time, every writer has a paper on Montaigne ; once
at least in every generation there is a translation, a
biography, a reprint ; once in his life at least every
writer feels the desire to make him the subject of a
study. For Montaigne is an established favorite ; he
belongs to the world: the older we grow the more we
love to read him ; the conditions of his life once ascer-
tained just out of curiosity, we feel no more interest
about the details. All these are of no consequence,
because our thoughts are ever within that old round
chamber where the texts on man's nothingness are
carved on the rafters, and where, surrounded by his
thousand volumes, the philosopher sits and writes.
He is the descendant of a long line of country gentle-
men, some of them merchants at Bordeaux. Scaliger
said that Montaigne's father was a " herring-monger," —
BIRTH OF MONTAIGNE, 133
which was ill-natured, as well as untrue, — whose family
name was Yquem, Eyquem, or Ayquem. The head of
the house resided in a castle, or fortified house, strono"
enough to resist any sudden attacks of wandering sol-
diers, and removed far enough from the track of armies
to count on comparative security. In fact, during all
the troubles of the Fronde, Montaigne never had any
other guard than an old porter. The memory of Pierre
Eyquem, Montaigne's father, has been preserved in the
Essays, so that we know him almost as well as his son.
A methodical orderly man, proud of his personal activity
and of his appearance, restless and full of projects, he
wanted to establish, among other things, the modern
system of advertising ; pure in life and manners, odd in
his wavs and dissatisfied if things were done as ordinar}'-
people do them ; unlettered, but with a profound ad-
miration for learning, altogether a quaint, admirable
character, quite in harmony with that of his great son.
Michel de Montaigne was born in 1533, the third son.
He was held over the font by two peasants, in order,
his father said, that he might be under obligations to
them, and look after their old age ; it was a kindly
thought. Then he was sent away to a nurse in a vil-
lage hard by that he might be made strong and healthy.
When he began to talk, his father provided a German
tutor who did not know French, with two assistant
tutors ; all these instructed to converse perpetually in
Latin with the child, so that he might learn to speak the
Latin tongue before any thing else. Not a word of French
was allowed to reach his ears, and when he was brought
home every person in the chateau, from his mother to
the scullery-maid, was strictly enjoined either to talk
Latin to the child, or to hold their tongues. Soon they
began to learn, even the servants, to talk Latin, and so
134 MONTAIGNE.
far did the strong will of Pierre Eyqiiem prevail that
many Latin words escaped from the kitchen and grew
into use among the vilhiges around, where perhaps they
still linger, like the relics of the Greek among the
Marseillais.
But at six years of age little Michel, his father distrust-
ing his own experiment, was sent away to school, and
probably very soon picked up the language of the boys.
This was in 1539. The school was that college of
Guienne where George Buchanan was a professor at the
time, and where the great Muretus taught. Then he
went through the miseries of school life. " What do
you hear," he asks, " in school ? Nothing but the screams
of tortured children or of masters drunk with rage." He
learned to like reading through Ovid, Virgil, and Terence,
acted in the Latin plays of Buchanan and Muretus, and
was 'considered to have completed his school education
at the age of thirteen. That is to say, he completed his
preliminar}^ training, and then was sent to study law,
perhaps at Toulouse, perhaps at Bordeaux. At all
events he was at Bordeaux during the curious insurrec-
tion of 1548.
We next find Montaigne in Paris, the city which he
loved with more than the ordinary Frenchman's devo-
tion. " I love Paris," he says, '' for itself. I am a
Frenchman only through this great city — great in its
13opulation, great in the happiness of its situation — but,
above all things, great in the variety of its conveniences
and appliances of all kinds; the glory of France, and
one of the noblest ornaments of the world." In some
capacity or other, now undiscoverable, Montaigne was
attached to the Court, and found favor, not only with the
king, Henry H., but also with his queen, Catherine of
Medici. In 1554, being then twenty-one years of age.
AT COURT. 135
he was made a councillor of the Conr des Aides for
Guienne. The post had been bought by his father
for himself, and ceded by him to his son, wlio held it
for twelve years. It was thus that he became the col-
league of his most dear and especial friend, Etienne
de la Boetie.
The duties of the post did not, however, prevent liim
from spending most of his time at Paris, where, accord-
ing to his own account, written in those ripe years wlien
the glories of his youth appeared decked in all the colors
that an unrepentant memory could lend, he led the life
common to the 3'oung fellows of his own times — love-
making his principal business, gambling his principal
recreation. Remember that Montaigne, grave and dec-
orous afterwards as became a married man and a country
gentleman, never affected a morality he did not feel,
and was a typical Frenchman in so far that he separated
religion from life, holding that a creed gives safety and
a death-bed absolution certainty.
In 1559 Henry II. was killed in that unlucky tourna-
ment by the lance of Montgomery, an accident of which
Montaigne was an eye-witness. In the same year
Montaigne accompanied the new king, Francis II., on
his journey into Lorraine, on which he was accompanied
by his wife, Mar}^ Stuart. Nothing can exceed the ad-
miration and love which Montaigne felt for this beautiful
and unhappy queen — nothing more real than the indig-
nation with which he speaks in later years of her ex-
ecution. The year after, we find him with Charles IX.
in Rome, where he saw the celebrated three American
Indians. And then he appears to have gone back to
Bordeaux, to enjoy the society of La Boetie, author of
the '' Servitude Volontaire." Their friendship was short,
for the accomplished and learned La Boetie died at the
136 MONTAIGNE.
age of thirty-two, having known Montaigne only six
years. His death-bed is described by the survivor with
a simplicity and a devotion which make the scene en-
tirely pathetic and beautiful. " My brother," said the
dying man, " my brother whom I love so dearly, and
whom I had chosen from so many men to renew with
you that virtuous and sincere friendship, the use of which
by the triumph of vice has for so long been removed
from among us, so that only some traces remain in the
memory of antiquity, I beg you, as a testimony of my
affection, to be the heir of my library. This is a very
small present, but it is heartily bestowed. It will be to
you fjivt]^6awov tui sodalis.^^ And the noblest essay that
Montaigne ever wrote is that on "Friendship." Men at
that period yearned after a communion of souls, which
should be the highest and noblest friendship). Mostly,
they were disappointed. Marot and Dolet believed in
each other at first, but afterwards quarrelled. Ronsard
and Joachim du Bellay, Rabelais and Jean du Bellay,
Boileau and Moliere, realized something of the perfect
trust and confidence, none approached the ideal friend-
ship, the love of David and Jonathan, so nearly as
Montaigne and La Boetie. But Jonathan died in 1563,
and David, to assuage some of the anguish of his mind,
looked about for a new mistress, a fact in his life which
the historian notes in passing with some astonishment, as
being a most singular and unphilosophical consolation.
After the mistress came the wife. His marriage took
place two years later, when he was thirty-three years
of age, the bride being the Demoiselle Frangoise de
Chassagne, daughter of a Bordeaux councillor. The
marriage was one without much affection, and the phi-
losopher, though he is careful to speak well of the married
state, — '' it is a gentle way of social life, full of con-
HIS MARRIAGE, 137
stancy and confidence, with an infinite number of useful
and solid offices and natural obligations," — is always
falling into little tempers about his wife and his do-
mestic happiness. '' Cato," he says, " like ourselves,
was disgusted with his wife." " Marriage is like a cage,
those birds that are inside desire to get out, and those
that are out want to get in." There is nothing, however,
to show that his Avife was not a good woman, if a quick-
tempered one, and a good wife. She brought him half-
a-dozen children, all of whom died in infancy except
one daughter.
Four years after his marriage Montaigne published his
first book, which was a translation of a cuiious book by
one Raymond de Sebonde, called " Theologia Naturalis,"
the first attempt to establish the Christian religion by
arguments drawn from natural reasons, apart from reve-
lation. No one seems to have taken much notice of the
work, which was revived after the Essays had brought
the author's name into notice.
In 1568 his father, Pierre Eyquem, died, and Michel,
being now the eldest son — his brother. Captain St.-
Martin, had been killed some time before by an acci-
dent in a tennis court — succeeded to the chateau and
property of Montaigne. The year after this he resigned
his post as councillor, and then applied himself to the
collection and publication of La Boetie's Remains, a
work which necessitated a good many visits to Paris.
We are not told whether he took his wife with him, but
one fears that he left the poor lady in the country while
he went to Paris to spend his mornings among the
printers and his afternoons at court, basking in the favor
of the queen-mother. There is no proof that he got into
the literary circles which then formed the glory of Paris ;
and though he speaks in his Essays of having conversed
138 MONTAIGNE.
with poets known to all the world, it is quite clear that
he was not one of that band whose names still maintain
their reputation. Among these were Antoine de Baif,
Ronsard, Du Bellay, Des Fortes, and Agrippa d'Au-
bigne. We may be quite certain that if Montaigne had
been one of them, we should have heard all about it, the
little Gascon gentleman being by no means inclined to
hide away the glory of his literary friendships. But in
point of fact, the one single literary friend he had was
La Boetie, and no one in Paris suspected that for the
hundreds who would read Ronsard and Ba'if, there were
going to be tens of thousands who would read Montaigne.
In 1571, the year before the Saint Bartholomew,
Montaigne, being then thirty-eight years of age, retired
to his chateau with the design of spending the rest of his
life in " the bosom of the learned Virgin, in repose and
liberty." The repose Avas prevented from becoming
monotonous by the uncertain tempers of his household.
He acknowledges that he sometimes fell into rages him-
self, could not bear the troubles of domestic matters, and
used to warn " those who had the right of being angry,"
i. e. his wife, " to be chary of their wrath, and not to let
it loose without reason ; " perhaps the most exasperating
thing one could say to a quick-tempered wife.
It was at this period, then, that he began to write
his Essays. Not that his life Avas altogether secluded
from the world. He received the order of Saint-Michel,
no great distinction, but still something. He was sent
by the Duke of Montpensier to make a great speech to
the parliament of Bordeaux. He was in a perpetual
terror during the civil war ; afraid that his house would
be attacked ; suspicious that he had not, perhaps, joined
the stronger party. He brought out his first volume of
Essays in 1580. And then was attacked by the same
MAYOR OF BORDEAUX. 189
dreadful disease which had killed his father ; and it was
in hopes of curing it that he travelled through France ai>d
Lorraine, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. He enjoyed
his travels enormously, writing the most interesting de-
scriptions possible of what he saw, with reflections in
his quaintest style, but returned without having done
his disorder any good to be Mayor of Bordeaux. This
was a great and important honor. For the Mayor of
Bordeaux must be a gentleman, an armiger^ and he took
precedence during his office of all nobles. Montaigne
held the post for four years, being once re-elected. To
his great satisfaction nothing of importance or difficulty
happened during all that time. Then he returned to
his chateau, where Henry of Navarre paid him a visit.
Montaigne was on good terms with Corisande d'Adonis,
"la belle Corisande," predecessor of Gabrielle d'Estrdes,
and at the same time was a friend of Queen Margaret
of Valois, now separated from her husband.
Presently the plague broke out in Bordeaux and
spread over the whole of Guienne and Perigord, the
dreadful scourge raging with a virulence difficult to
believe. Whole villages we are told were destroyed.
Montaigne says that not a hundredth part of the people
escaped — this must have been exaggeration. The grapes
remained ungathered, the corn unreaped, and the people
sat still, waiting for death, none caring for any thing
but to get sepulture ; men, while still in health, dug
their own graves, even got into them living, to escape
the wild beasts. Montaigne himself saw one of his own
workmen with the last movements left to him of hands
and feet, dragging the earth over himself. In Bordeaux
eighteen thousand died out of forty thousand. Mon-
taigne left his chateau, and took what he calls his
" caravan," consisting of his mother, his wife, his daugh-
140 MONTAIGNE.
ter, and his servants, to different places to get out of
the way. He even refused to go into Bordeaux to pre-
side at the election of his own successor. But Montaigne
was not a hero, and it did not probably appear to him
that duty called him to the post of danger.
In the midst of all these troubles he went on with
the Essays. The third volume was completed and pub-
lished in 1588, when he was fifty-five years of age. To
bring this out he went to Paris, and there fell in with
Mademoiselle de Gournay. Marie de Gournay, then
twenty-two years of age, had long read and re-read the
Essays till she had conceived a passion for the author.
She heard that he was in Paris, and sent him a message
full of compliments. Montaigne called upon her, came
again, and then sat down to be worshipped. This was
what he had wanted all along — some one to appreciate
him. In the country no one seemed to know how great a
man he was ; he had, it is true, the honor of being ex-mayor
of Bordeaux. But that was not enough — he wanted
literary fame — he wanted disciples — he wanted flat-
tery. He got it now in full measure, running over, from
a young, beautiful, and accomplished woman. " I look,"
he says, "to no one else in the world" — had he not a
daughter and a wife ? — "If adolescence can foretell any
thing with certainty, that mind will be one day capable
of the finest things. . . . The judgment she formed about
the first Essays, being a woman, and in this age, and so
young, and the only one who did so in her neigh-
borhood . . . are accidents worthy of consideration."
Of course ! can any author have a doubt of the
ability, the extraordinary sagacity, the keen intellect,
of one who selects him, of all the rest, for praise
and flattery ? Marie de Gournay must be a genius.
Poor Marie! we shall meet her again ^ when the roses
» See p. 225.
MARIE DE GOURNAY. 141
are all faded, and the promise of her youth has come to
nothing — passionate still in her worship of Montaigne,
crowned still with the withered garland of praise which
he placed upon her brow, rejoicing to the end in her
title of Montaigne's adopted daughter.
While in Paris, the essayist found himself one da}'
arrested and sent to the Bastille. No one accused him
of having done any thing, but a cousin of the Duke of
Elbeuf having been arrested by the king at Rouen, the
duke thought it would be well to exercise a reprisal.
His imprisonment only lasted a few hours, Catherine
of Medici herself sending an order for his immediate
release. The little incident, however, was sufficiently
discomposing to send him away at once, and he joined
the court in its wanderings from Rouen to Blois. De
Thou was with him at the time, and records some of
their conversations: thus, this critic, incapable of under-
standing the Essays, actually advised Montaigne to cut
out all the parts which related to himself, and his per-
sonal likings and habits. The two were at Blois to-
gether when Henry murdered the Duke of Guise. In
1589, he went back to his own chateau, married his
daughter, and sat down to talk with a new disciple, the
Abb^ Charron, and to write to Marie.
And a few years later, before he reached his sixtieth
year, came the much-feared death. Montaigne died on
the 13th of September, 1591 : his last action being to
sit up in his bed with uplifted hands, in the act of adora-
tion, when the priest elevated the host.
His mother survived him for nine years ; his wife for
thirty-six years. His only daughter, whose first act was
to disperse her father's library, lost her husband and
married again. One of his two daughters left three
daughters, through the eldest of whom the Montaigne
142 MONTAIGNE.
property remained in possession of the essayist's de-
scendants till the present century.
Such, briefly told, is the life of Michel de Montaigne.
It remains t.o say a word on the Essays. And here, in
presence of the volumes that have been written upon
him, it behooves us to be brief. In the first place, let us
rid ourselves at once of the notion that Montaigne had
any object in view. He had none. He conceived the
idea of writing down his thoughts, his observations, his
speculations, the results of his own experience. It was
an experiment. The dignity of literature, just then
occupied with ancient learning and newly discovered
general ideas, had not yet stooped to the consideration of
such a simple thing as ordinary humanity. Montaigne
took the man of whom he knew most, himself, the creat-
ure which was to him the most interesting object in
the world; and then began to group round this central
figure all thoughts, influences, events, accidents, and
habits which had accumulated during his lifetime. The
man stands before us for ever contemplating an immense
pile of these things, his own. Suppose you had spread
out before you all the things you had bought, possessed,
or imagined, in the course of your life ; suppose there
were the to3^s and games of childhood, the follies of
youth, the disappointments, the projects, the successes
of a long career, would not the mere description of these
things make an interesting volume ? But Montaigne
does more. He gives us not only these things, but the
things he has learned from them. Montaigne's Essays
owe their greatest charm to the fact that they reveal not
only the secrets of a soul, but of a soul not much raised
above the commonplace, and like our own. Such influ-
ences as acted upon his spirit, act upon ours. He goes
THE ESSAYS, 143
about the world among his fellows, plays the fool among
the boys, and is sober when he grows older ; has posts
of honor and dignity; associates sometimes with great
people ; is himself a gentleman of some learning ; is a
married man, and ^ fere de famille. There is nothing
which is not entirely commonplace, ordinary, and of
mere routine in his life ; every thing which should make
him entirely fitted for the task he undertook. The
Pleiad poets, for instance, with their scholarship, seclu-
sion, and pedantry — if these should attempt to do what
Montaigne succeeded in doing, what sort of man would
they produce ? Consider what ordinary people talk
about ; listen to them at their tables, in the streets,
in railway carriages : as they talk, Montaigne's people
talked. It is not of politics, nor is it of literature, nor
is it of art. They talk of their own habits first, their
little dodges to keep off sickness and defer death ; then,
their likings and dislikings ; then, any amusements that
are going on ; then, money-making ; then, the topic of
the day, on which they have a decided opinion. That
is how Montaigne talked, that is how he wrote. Nothing,
clearer than the portraits of himself, got from his Essays:
nothing less likely to excite enthusiasm.
He- used to write in a large circular room, with an
adjoining square cabinet. The rafters are bare, and
covered with inscriptions, cut by the direction of Mon-
taigne, such as the following : —
" Things do not torment a man so much, as the opinion he has
of things."
" Every argument has its contrary."
" Wind swells bladders; opinion swells man."
" Mud and ashes, what have you to be proud of? "
" I do not understand, I pause, I examine."
The sides of the square cabinet were covered with
144 MONTAIGNE.
fresco paintings, " Mars and Venus surprised by Vulcan,"
and such refreshing subjects, to which the philosopher
might turn when wearied by working at his " certain
verses of Virgil." The circular room, in which was his
library of a thousand volumes, no contemptible collection
for the time, is sixteen paces in diameter. Here for
twenty years, save when he is running up to Paris •' on
business," sits a little squat-figured, undignified man;
he is past forty now, and no longer fond of violent exer-
cises : he dresses in plain white or black : he is quick
and hasty-tempered, insomuch that his servants get out
of his sight when he begins to call them " calves : " he is
easily irritated by little things, such as the fall of a tile,
or the breaking of a thing : he sits down to dinner late,
because he does not like to see a crowd of dishes on the
table : he is fond of wine, but is not intemperate : he is
awkward, and unable to do things which other men do :
cannot dance or sing : cannot mend a pen, saddle a horse,
or carve meat, and his awkwardness makes him uncom-
fortable. He has all the virtues, he says, except two or
three : never makes enemies, never does any man injury ;
makes it his rule to keep things comfortable about him ;
is extremely kind-hearted, and eminently selfish. He
is lacking in the domestic faculty ; cares little about his
wife, and does not pretend to care at all for babies ; and
he is always interfering with servants, so that they hate
him. As regards his reading, it is without method,
desultory; he takes up his books one after the other,
and browses among them, reading Latin histories for
chief pleasure. He evidently has no real love for poetry
or power of criticism, because >ve find him turning from
Ovid and Virgil and admiring the miserable centos in
vogue at the time.
Do you want to know more about him ? Read the
THE ESSAYS, 145
Essays. There you will find every page with some
allusion to himself. You will be pleased to learn that
he prefers white wine to red ; tliat he loves to rest with
his legs raised ; that he likes scratching his ear, with
other interesting details.
It is all, in fact, as I said before, about himself. There
is the man, with his appearance, his manners, his habits,
and his baggage of thoughts. And because it is a real
man, ten times as real as Rousseau's pretended self,
therefore it is an immortal book. The main interests of
life lie in the commonplace ; the great thoughts of a
genius are too much for most of us ; we like the easy
wanderings of a mind of our own level ;^ we follow the
speculations of one who is not far removed from our-
selves with pleasure, if not with profit. Like him, we
doubt ; like him, we know nothing ; like him, we have
no disposition to be martyrs ; like him, we long after
something that » we have not got, something that we
cannot understand ; like him, we feel it is an extremely
disagreeable necessity, this of death.
Like ourselves, but yet superior. His mind differing
in degree from ours, not in kind ; larger, broader,
keener. It is impossible that truth should be better
studied in a successive series of observations, although
he is never able to show the relations of one to another.
They have, indeed, no natural relations to him. He
feels himself in a labyrinth full of uncertainty, doubt,
and perplexity, wanders aimlessly along, turning from
' People like best to read something just a little above their
ordinary stratum of thought. Hence you get a sort of pyramid of
popularity, at the base of which is Tupper. Next to him comes
A. K. H. B. As you go higher up you pass Carlyle, Helps, Km-
erson, a crowd of dignified names. Very few people, if they reach
the top, care to remain long in an atmosphere so cold and bracing.
10
146 MONTAIGNE,
path to path, plucking flowers as he goes, and careless
about finding any clew. His mottoes, cut upon the
rafters of his library, show his mind, in which uncer-
tainty is the leading characteristic. An uncertainty
which chimed in with the miserable condition of affairs
in the world ; when burnings, tortures, civil wars, horrid
plagues, were the commonest accidents of life, and man's
intellect, man's reason, man's kindly nature, seemed
powerless to arrest the dreadful miseries wrought by
king and priest. Religion ? It is a need. Truth ?
Who knows what it is? Government? It means pro-
tection. Life ? It means disappointment, disease, fear
of death. Science ? A bundle of contradictions. Love ?
It means falsehood and infidelity. And then men quar-
rel as to whether Montaigne was a Christian. It is ex-
asperating to find the question so much as raised. What
were these two banners under which men were ranofed,
of Huguenot and Catholic? Some poor artisans, like
Bishop Bri^onnet's weavers of Meaux, might greatly
dare for Hberty's sake ; to the men of culture, the rival
parties were but two political sides. Montaigne be-
longed to that side which represented, in his eyes, order
and law; he was, therefore, a Catholic. Like all the
men of his own time, he had a creed, a kind of pill, to
be taken when it might be wanted. The time had gone
by when such men as Rabelais and Dolet hoped to bring
the world to Deism ; the scholars had accepted the in-
evitable position of orthodoxy, and while giving all their
activity and interest to heathenism, were zealous sup-
porters of the lifeless creed. Montaigne a Christian ?
compare his morality with that of the Gospels ; read
how the dread of death is breathed in every page of his
book ; remember how he says that to pretend to know,
to understand aught beyond the phenomenal, is to make
HIS RELIGION. 147
the handful greater than the hand can hold ; the armfid
larger than the arms can embrace ; the stride wider
than the legs can stretch — ''a man can but see with
his eyes and hold with his grasp." Try then to remem-
ber that we are not in the nineteenth century, but in
the sixteenth ; that Montaigne died in the act of adora-
tion, and cease to ask whether the man was a Christian.
Christian ? There was no better Christian than Mon-
taigne in all his century.
Chapter VII.
LA SATYRE MENIPP^E.
FRENCH political satire, of which the fabliaux pre-
sent few examples, found its first home among
the Clercs de la Basoche ; nor was it till well on in the
sixteenth century that it escaped from the stage and ap-
peared in verse and prose. Its first appearance in the
new character was, as might almost have been expected,
inconceivably libellous, personal, and coarse. There
were the " Fanfreluche et Gaudichon," an apology, after
the manner of Rabelais, for the Saint Bartholomew ; the
" Fortune de la Cour ; " the " He des Hermaphrodites ; "
the " Ldgende du Cardinal de Lorraine ; " the " L^gende
de Catherine de Medicis," and plenty of others. These,
like wasps, inflicted their little sting, and passed away.
One satire only had genius to make it live ; one had
vigor enough to turn the tide of popular opinion and
influence the course of affairs. It was a satire, fresh,
clean, healthy, and new, as well as strong ; and was the
work of a small band of unknown scholars, who devised
it for their own amusement, without suspecting for a
moment the effect it would produce. It came out in
the year 1593. Let us remember what was the state of
France at that time. King Henry III., whose only noble
and kingly act was the courage with which he met his
death, had been murdered by Frere Jacques Clement in
1589, a few months after he had himself murdered the
POLITICAL ASPECT OF FRANCE, 149
Duke of Guise and the Cardinal. Paris' shouted and
screamed with joy at the news. From every pulpit
thundered praises of the regicide, and up and down the
streets drove the Duchess of Montpensier, sister of the
murdered Guise, with her mother, crying the good
tidings about. Nor was it till the Parisians were quite
hoarse with bawling, that they discovered their new
position to be a great deal worse than the old. For the
third Henry being dead, the next heir to the throne was
undoubtedly the Huguenot Henry of Navarre. Before
the murder of the king, some compromise was always
possible between him and the League, but now, none.
Worse than this, it was very soon discovered that the
League was divided among themselves. For, if the
B^arnais were kept out, who should come in ? There
were two possible answers to the question. By the abo-
lition of the Salic law, the heiress of the crown was the
Infanta Isabella of Spain, daughter of Philip II. by his
third wife, Elizabeth, sister to the last three kings.
Suppose the Salic law maintained, and Henry still kept
out, the nearest heir to the crown was, undoubtedly,
the young Duke of Guise himself.^ The door was thus
set open to intrigues of all kinds. The Duke of
* The able and ambitious man to whom was due the rise of this
great house, Claude de Lorraine, was the second son of Ren^,
Duke of Lorraine. He married by the order of Francis I. An-
toinette of Bourbon, in which way he became connected with the
royal line. The greatness of the house continued to increa.se till,
with the murder of Duke Henry by the king, it received a blow
from which it never recovered. But it had made alliances with
kings; it numbered four cardinals in as many generations; it had
appropriated to itself all the dignities, honors, and offices possible
to be got; and it had become powerful enough to shake the throne
itself. Through Mary Queen of Scots, the daughter of Marie de
Guise, their blood flows in the veins of our own royal family.
150 LA SATYRE MENIPPEE.
Mayenne, uncle of the young duke, was violently op-
posed to the abolition of the Salic law in the interest of
himself rather than his nephew, whom he proposed to set
aside. Philip of Spain did all in his power to promote
the abolition, throwing out hints of the marriage of his
daughter with a French noble, and even offering the
crown, in his left-handed way, to the young duke. And
so, when the great council of the States met in 1593,
they found themselves unable to agree upon a policy,
and separated, the cause of the League being irreparably
injured by their indecision, their quarrels, and their
personal interests.
Then, in the midst of the Catholic factions, in a time
of general hesitation, doubt, and distrust, when the
people were weary of war, when they began to under-
stand that S]Danish intrigues boded no good to France,
there dropped among them all, like a bombshell — the
" Satyre Menippee."
The '' Satyre Menippde," named in imitation of Yarro's
Menippean Satires, which were in their turn named
after that Menippus CTtovdoyelaTog, who was imitated by
Lucian, describes the meeting of the States of 1593.
It begins by introducing a couple of quacks, one of
Lorraine and the other of Spain (the cardinals of Pel-
levd and Plaisance), retailing in the court of the Louvre
the celebrated Catholicon of Spain, a drug which has
the effect of enabling those who take it to commit any
quantity of crimes and treasons without affecting the
tranquillity of the conscience and entirely for the good
of the church.
The way thus cleared, we have a description of the
grand opening procession. First comes the rector of the
university, late Bishop of Senlis, Roze by name. He
has put off his rector's hat, and donned the gown of a
INTRODUCTION, 151
master of arts, with a bishop's mantle, a soldier's gorget,
a sword at his side, and a halberd in his hand. After liim
comes an army of curb's, monks, novices, all equipped
in similar style, armed according to Saint Paul's in-
junctions. Then follow the leaders of the League,
each described with the fidelity of a caricature, the
legate, '•'- vray miroir de parfaite beaut(3," being the
ughest man in the world ; Madame de Nemours, mother
of the Due de Mayenne, grandmother of the young Due
de Guise, uncertain whether to appear as queen-mother
or queen-grandmother ; the Dowager Duchess of Mont-
pensier (sister to the Due de Mayenne), with a green
scarf, very dirty from long use ; the guards, Italian,
Spanish, and Walloon, but no French ; and the rest.
And so they all go to church, where they hear a sermon
by Rector Roze on continuing the war, ending appro-
priatel}^ with the quotation, " Beat! pauperes spiritu."
The hall in Avhich the assembly is held is prepared so
as to be exactly similar to that where Charles VII. the
dauphin, in 1480, was declared incapable of succeeding
to his father's kingdom, but the tapestry was all new,
and apparently made with special reference to the busi-
ness in hand. Thus, near the dais Sertorius is repre-
sented, dressed as a Frenchman, among the Spaniards,
about to consult the oracle, and on the other side is Spar-
tacus, haranguing his army of slaves, with a flambeau,
which he is applying to a temple, and the motto : —
Si aqua non possum, ruina exstinguam.
There were also dehneated the fall of Icarus and that
of Phaethon, with the sisters of the latter metamorphosed
into poplars, one of whom, who had broken her leg by
running to help her brother, marvellously resembled the
Duchess of Montpensier (she was lame).
152 LA SATYRE MtNIPPEE.
On the tapestry near the dais was the history of the
golden calf, Moses and Aaron being represented by
Henry HI. and the Cardinal of Bourbon, and the calf
having the lineaments of the late Duke of Guise.
The next piece represented the entry of John, Duke
of Burgundy, into Paris, and the Parisians all singing
" Noel."
Among the other pieces were the history of Absalom,
who drove his father out of Jerusalem, all the faces
being those of Leaguers ; the feats and treacheries of
the Bedouin and the Assassins, among them bearing a
portrait of Henry IH. being stabbed by a dissolute
monk, out of whose mouth come the words " C'est
I'enfer qui m'a cr^e ; " ^ the battles of Senlis, Aigues,
and Ivry, with a dance of peasants in a corner singing
a song : —
Reprenons la danse,
AUons, c'est assez :
Le printeraps commence,
Les roys sont passez.
Un roy seul demeure ;
Les sots sont chassez :
Fortune a ceste heure
Tous aux pots cassez.
The assembly having entered, the places are allotted
to them by a herald, without prejudice to any future
claims of precedence. The speech in which he addresses
each in turn with a personality, a satirical remark, or a
sneer, is one of the best things in the book. But it
cannot be quoted without a dozen pages of notes to
explain the allusions. And at last we get to the speeches
which were delivered.
* This is one of the happiest anagrams ever made. It is quite
fairly formed from Fr^re Jacques Clement.
THE ASSEMBLY SKETCHED. 153
Imagine, if you can, in the Houses of Parliament, for
one night only, the customary forms and figures of
speech abandoned, and each speaker in turn confessing
all his failures and exposing his secret soul, the base-
ness of his motives, the httleness of his ambition, the
narrowness of his vision, the poverty of his imagina-
tion, the extent of his ignorance, the selfishness of liis
measures. Or suppose, because our legislators are mostly
respectable country gentlemen, who would only betray
the narrowness of their information, and their intense
desire to protect property, that some enemy, one who
knew every detail of their private life and was certain
to spare no weakness, to exaggerate folly into vice, and
feebleness to imbecility — were to do this for them; and
then, putting yourself back to a time of bitter enmities,
when there are no rules of courtesy in pamphleteering,
try to imagine what would be the result, and you will
have the " Satyrs M^nippde."
The proceedings are opened by the Duke of Mayenne.
I propose to give a few extracts from the speeches as
they follow, so as to show not only the manner of the
satire, but the good sense that underlies the whole.
The duke begins : —
You are all witnesses here, how, ever since I took up arms for
the League, I have ever preferred my own private interest to the
cause of God, who can indeed very well protect Himself without
me, and I can say with perfect truth, that I was not so much out-
raged by the murder of my brothers as I was stimulated to follow
in their footsteps. . . . You know how, in my expedition to Guy-
enne, I failed utterly, and only succeeded in carrying away a girl,
the heiress of Caumont, whom I destined for my own son. . . .
Then you know how I undertook no important siege, or any great
exploit, in order to reserve myself entirely for my Catholic designs.
... And you all saw how quickly I hastened to you, and how the
divine inspiration descended on the Sorbonne, by the help of my
cousin the Constable of Bourbon. Hence have proceeded all our
154 LA SATYRE MENIPPEE.
splendid exploits of war : hence the thousands of holy martyrs,
dead by the sword, by hunger, fire, rage, despair, and other vio-
lences, for the cause of the sacred union. . . . Hence the ruin and
demolition of so many churches and monasteries. . . . Hence all
the sack and pillage which our brave soldiers, free archers, and
novices had carried on in town and village. . . . Hence so many
maidens violated, and so many young monks and priests debauched.
In short, the prompt and jealous decree of the Sorbonne, passed
after drinking, is the sole cause of all this direct interposition of
Heaven, and so, by our own diligence, we have turned this king-
dom of France, which was once a delightful garden full of all
kinds of abundance, into a vast universal cemetery, full of lovely
painted crosses, biers, gallows, and gibbets. . . .
Read the books of Josephus on the wars of the Jews — they
were very much like our own — and tell me whether the zealots
Simon and John ever had more inventions and subtleties to per-
suade the people of Jerusalem to die of hunger, than I myself have
invented to kill a hundred thousand with the same death in this
my city of Paris, even to making the mothers devour their own
children, as was done in the sacred city. ... A hundred times
have I violated my own oath, sworn to my private friends and
relatives, in order to arrive at what I want myself, and my cousin
the Duke of Lorraine, as well as the Duke of Savoy, could acknowl-
edge the truth of this. . . . As to public faith, I have always con-
sidered that my exalted rank put me above it, and the prisoners
whom I have made pay ransom against my promise, or the compo-
sition they made with me, can reproach me with nothing, because
I have always had absolution from my chaplain and confessor. . . .
We see the people crying after peace, a thing which we ought to
fear more than death, and I would a hundred times rather become
a Turk or a nun, always by the grace and permission of our most
holy father the Pope, than see those heretics sit down and enjoy
their own, which you possess. . . . Let us die, let us die rather
than come to that : a glorious sepulture is the ruin of a kingdom
like ours, under which we must be buried unless we can some-
how climb out of it. Never did man, high placed as I myself in
France, come down except by force; there are many ways of get-
ting into power like mine: there is but one way out of it — death.
After the Lieutenant comes the Legate. He begins
in Italian, goes on to dog-Latin, and finishes in Italian.
His speech is very short : —
THE LEGATE'S SPEECH. 155
And now I will go on to tell you the sum and total of my lega-
tion, which is taken from St. Matthew, chap, x.: " Think not that
I am come to bring peace into the world, I am not come to send
peace, but the sword. " For I have nothing in my orders and secret
instructions except to exhort you to battle and war, and in evei-y
way to hinder you from treating of reconciliation and peace be-
tween yourselves. . . . The other point which I have to bring
before you is the election of a good Catholic prince, the family of
the Bourbons being entirely set aside as heretical altogether, as a
favorer of heretics; and I know that you would do a most grateful
thing to our lord the Pope, as well as to my benefactor the most
Christian and Catholic King of Spain and to many other countries,
if you were to confer the duchy of Brittany upon his daughter, and
the kingdom of France upon some other prince of his family, whom
she might choose for her husband. . . .
" I forgot to tell you of an excellent piece of news I have just
received. His Holiness excommlinicates all cardinals, archbishops,
and bishops, abbes, priests, and monks who declare for the king,
whether they be Catholics or not. And so that there maybe no
difference between French and Spanish, the Holy Father will ar-
range for the French to have the scrofula the same as the Span-
iards, and to become swaggerers and liars like them. Further,
plenary indulgence 'to all good Catholics, Lorrainers or Spaniards
or French, who will kill their fathers, brothers, cousins, neighbors,
princes of the blood, and political heretics in this truly Christian
work, up to the three hundred thousand years of pardon. . . .
And, for my sake, do make a king. I care not if you elect the
Devil himself, provided he become the servant and feudatory of the
Pope, and of the Catholic king by whose means I have been made
a cardinal. . . . But, above all, take particular care not to say
a word about a truce or a peace, or the sacred college will re-
nounce Christ. Ego me vobis iterum commendo. Valete.
The Legate is followed by the Cardinal de Pellev^,
also in the interests of Spain. His speech is more
elaborate than his predecessor's, but in the same key.
Speaking of the King of Spain and his pretensions,
he says : —
Do not imagine that this excellent king sends you so many am-
bassadors, and makes the Pope send you these legates of his, with
any other intention than to make you believe how catholicly he
156 LA SATYRE MENIPPEE.
loves you; and you may possibly think that he who is lord of so
many kingdoms, that he cannot, as Charlemagne did for his mon-
asteries, count them with the letters of the alphabet, and is so rich
that he does not know what to do with his treasures, would be
likely to trouble himself about so small a matter as the kingdom of
France. Why, all Europe is not equal to one of those countries of
his conquered from the savages. . . . His treatment of the Neth-
erlands and the New World ought to be enough to assure yoa that
he no more thinks of doing any mischief than an old monkey, and
even if he were to cause you all to perish by fire, shell, and famine,
would you not be happy indeed, in finding yourselves seated in Par-
adise, above the confessors and patriarchs, and laughing at the
Huguenots whom you would see beneath you roasting and boiling
in the caldrons of Lucifer? Die, gentlemen, whenever you please.
AVe have plenty of -Africans, Moors, Walloons, and ItaHan bri-
gands to take your place. Kill, massacre, and burn every thing ;
the Legate will pardon every thing ; the Lieutenant will confess
every thing ; the Duke of Aumale will arrange every thing ; Moun-
sieur de Lyon will seal every thing ; and Monsieur Mastran will
sign every thing. As father confessor I shall serve you and France
too, provided she has the sense to die a Catholic, and make the
Spaniards and Lorrainers her heirs in general and particular, assur-
ing you, after the Legate, that your souls will not have to pass
through the fires of purgatory, being already sufficiently purged by
the fires which we have lighted in the four corners of the kingdom
for the Holy Virgin, and by the fasts, abstinences, and penances
which we are going to make you undergo.
I pass over the speech of Monsieur de Lyon, Arch-
bishop d'Espinac, which is more savage than any which
precedes, because it offers little or nothing new. D'Es-
pinac had at least conviction, as he proved by dying of
grief when Henry IV. made himself master of Paris.
We come to the oration, by Nicolas Rapin, of the
Rector Roze. This is, in my own opinion, the most
perfect oration of all, except the serious one by Pierre
Pithou. Pedantry, self-conceit, bigotry, cruelty, all the
vices that ecclesiastical partisanship produces are pa-
raded here. He speaks of the desolation of the uni-
versity caused by the war. All, he says, is changed.
ORATION OF RECTOR ROZE, 157
There are no more disputations in Latin, no more act-
ing of the classical drama, no more printing, bookselling,
lecturing, or teaching.
Thanks to the Holy League, and to you, M. le Lieutenant, the
butter-sellers of Vanves, the ruffians of Montrouge, the vine-
dressers of St. Cloud, the cobblers of Villejuive, and other Cath-
olic districts, are become masters of arts, bachelors, principals,
presidents, and scholars of colleges, regents of classes, and philoso-
phers so acute that now they dispute de inventiotie, and learn every
day atroSiSaKTcB?, with no other teacher than you, M. le Lieutenant,
to decline and die with hunger per regulas. . . . You are the cause
of all this, M. le Lieutenant: not that we have done nothing by our
decrees and preachments. But it is you, I say, who have really
defiled and defamed this eldest daughter and disowned of France,
this modest virgin, this comely damsel, this pearl of pearls, this
lily^^of Paris, so that all other universities make scoff and laugh at
her, et versa est in opprohrium gentium.
He goes on to talk about the kingdom, and recom-
mends plans by which the secret ambition of all the
leaders may be satisfied. Nothing more cynical was
ever written.
And, M. de Guise, believe me — and you will believe a fool —
do better than this : obtain from the Ploly Fathers a new crusade
and go regain your fair realm of Jerusalem, which belongs to you
by right of your grand-uncle Godfrey, as well as Sicily and Naples.
How many palms and trophies wait for you ! How many sceptres
and crowns are preparing for you ! Leave this miserable kingdom
of France to whoever will take charge of it : it is not worth your
consideration, born as you are for universal empire. . . . And
you, M. le Lieutenant, what do you propose doing? You are fat
and stuffed out ; you are heavy and sickly, your head is big enough
to carry a crown, but you say you don't want it . . . and if we
were to elect you king, you would have still to do with the B6ar-
nais, who knows a thousand tricks, and who never" sleeps except
when he likes and just as long as he likes : he will become a Cath-
olic, as he threatens, and draw over to his side all the powers of
Italy and Germany. . . . Think of it. . . . It is all very well to
make yourself out a king, but if you blow yourself up as big as
you please, like the frog, you will never be so great a lord as he.
158 LA SATYRE MENIPPEE,
But I will tell you what you may do, you may become an abb^:
there is not a king going but would make you prior of Cluny,
which belongs to your own house. . . . And as to electing a king,
I give my voice to Guillot Fagotin, church-warden of Gentilly, a
good vine-dresser, a worthy man, who sings well and knows the
service by heart. ... I have read in that great and divine philos-
opher, Plato, that those kingdoms are happy where the phi-
losophers are kings, and the kings philosophers. Now I know that
for three years this excellent church- warden, with his family and
his cows, has been meditating philosophy day and night in the hall
of our college,^ where for more than two hundred years we have
disputed philosophy and Aristotle and all sorts of moral books ;
and it is impossible that the worthy man should have slept,
dreamed, and slumbered so many days and nights between these
philosophical walls, where so many learned lessons have been given,
and so many splendid discourses delivered, without something pen-
etrating into his brain, just as happened to the poet Hesiod when
he slept upon Mount Parnassus. Wherefore I stick to my opinion
and give my voice that Guillot Fagotin, the church-warden of Gen-
tilly, be elected king as well as any other.
He is followed by the Sieur de Rieux, put forward to
represent the nobility. This was one of the shrewdest
ideas of the book, the speaker being little better than a
mere brigand, not of noble blood at all, and owing his
advancement to nothing but his own courage. He was
guilty of every crime, he was taken prisoner the year
after this assembly of the States, and hanged, in spite
of his rank, as a common robber. In his speech he
congratulates himself upon being chosen to speak for
the nobility, having been promoted by special and
Divine favor from the post of simple assistant com-
missary to the rank of gentleman and the office of
governor of a fortress. As for the people, he knows
how to treat them : —
^ During the siege the peasants drove in their flocks and stabled
them wherever they could, in the empty halls of colleges, among
other places.
SPEECH OF M, D'AUBRAY. y 159
I know plenty of devices to bring them to reason : I tie whip-
cord round their foreheads : I hang them by the arms : I warm
their feet with a red-hot shovel : I put them in irons : I shut them
up in the oven : I enclose them in a box half full of water : 1 truss
them up like roast fowls : I flog them with stirrup-leathers : I salt
them : I starve them : I have a thousand pleasant methods to draw
out the quintessence of their purses and to have their substance,
so as to make them and all theirs for ever mere vagabonds and
rogues. . . .
As for making a king, make me, and you will do well. I will
abolish all this rubbish of justice : I will suppress all these Ser-
jeants, procureurs, commissaries, and councillors, except only my
own friends : you will hear no more talk about seizures, execution,
bailiffs, and paying debts : you shall all be as comfortable as rats
in straw. Think it over, and be very well assured that I shall be
as good a king as any other.
And then follows the speech of M. D'Aubray. Here
the burlesque suddenly ends, and the discourse is sober,
serious, and sad, M. D'Aubray pointing out what is in
reality the state of Paris and of the country ; he shows
that for the restoration of order only one thing is pos-
sible, the restoration of the lawful king : he points to
the starving people, the haggard children clinging to
their haggard mothers, the very soldiers hardly strong
enough to crawl, and the wretched food which is reck-
oned a luxury; he takes a short view of the events
which have led to this misery, an abrege which is re-
markable above all for its judicial lucidity: and he
reproaches his auditors with their unnatural dealings
with a national enemy. It is a long, labored, and per-
fectly serious appeal to the nation to return to good
sense : there is nothing in it which need be quoted
now, because it is all so serious, and is chiefly valuable
as a contribution to history. The man who wrote it is
truly admirable, if only for the dispassionate way in
which he marshals his evidence and puts his points.
He feels strongly, but he lets his passion be felt, and
160 LA SATYRE MENIPPEE.
not expressed — and this, perhaps, is the truest form
of eloquence. When invective fails, and sarcasm has
( fallen unnoticed, the bare and honest truth, set forth
in plain words, is the next weapon. Such is the Satire.
Who were the w^riters of it ?
The idea is due to Pierre Le Roy, Canon of Rouen,
and secretary to the Cardinal de Bourbon. He it was
who sketched out the whole and wrote the opening
scenes. The thing was talked over in the house of one
Gillot, clerk to the parliament, Avhere afterwards Boi-
leau was born. Gillot, a canon of the Sainte-Chapelle,
held regular reunions at his house where a little knot
of scholars and poets assembled, the good canon de-
lighting himself with taking doAvn notes of the conver-
sation and good things. He wrote, also, works which
still stand on some shelves, and are said by those who
have looked into them, to contain a vast quantity of
learning.
One of the most active collaborateurs was Nicolas
Rapin, who served the cause of Henry with the sword
at Ivry, as well as, later, with his pen. He it was who
wrote the speech of the Rector Roze.. Second-rate
scholar, third-rate poet, father of an immense family,
Rapin had a busy and stormy life. He wrote an im-
mense quantity of verse both in Latin and French ;
in the latter, he took part in the celebrated " Flea "
collection — translations from Horace, odes, epigrams,
epistles, all that an accomplished poet can do. Truly
this sixteenth century loaded the earth with more than
its fair share of literature, and sad it must be for the
shade of Rapin the voluminous, that he is only re-
membered now by his single contribution to the " Satyre
M^nippde.*' He, too, so anxious about his glory, and
going out of the world in the most beautiful and swan-
like manner, dictating Latin verses to his son.
JEAN PASSERAT. 161
A mucli greater genius, and also a busy and active
bookworm, is Jean Passerat, who wrote most of these
verses for the " Satyre." After spending his youth in
running away from school and doing all those things
which are abhorrent to the model boy, he suddenly
took it into his head to become a scholar, and labored
till the day of his death, the usual sixteen hours a day
which were then thought necessary to produce a Latin-
ist. Like Rapin, he produced an enormous quantity of
Latin verse — it makes the brain stagger to think of the
miles of hexameters these men wrote and printed, poor
children of thought consigned to oblivion as soon as
born — and he also managed to find time for some
exceedingly pleasant light verse in his native tongue.
He even contrived in spite of the influences of his
friends, the poets of the Pleiad, to keep a style of his
own. A great part of his poetry is erotic, though we
are given to understand that he was never in love, being,
like Alain Chartier and Eustache Deschamps, as he
writes of himself, too ugly for love. He was short of
stature, one eye gone altogether and the other giving
little light, with a red face and an enormous great nose.
Men with great noses have before this been certainly
married and therefore, presumabl}^ loved : at least one
supposes so — but perhaps Passerat's sensitiveness as to
his personal defects was based upon ignorance of the
female sex.
He was a great admirer of Rabelais, which does him
infinite credit, and he even wrote a voluminous commen-
tary upon him which remained unpublished. Like the
master, Passerat was fond of wine, which perhaps ex-
plains the magnitude and redness of his nose.
His strains are chiefly on the one theme of which my
Frenchmen are never tired. From beginning to end
it is the same refrain: —
11
162 LA SATYRE MENIPPEE,
Gather ye roses while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying.
Occasionally they go off to other motifs^ but they
return. Is there any thing so sad, to those who love
life, and sunshine, and the light laughter of girls, as to
feel the years slipping by, the end approaching ? The
Frenchman will dare every thing, expect every thing,
laugh at every thing, except only the slow slipping away
of the golden hours. For he loves them every one.
Let Jean Passerat chant his little ditty before we go
on; —
Wake from sleep, to greet the morn,
And come away ;
See , for us once more is horn
The light of day.
Vanish 'd is the May's short night,
And the summer sky is bright
With cloudless blue ;
'Tis the very time for love ;
Mignonne, does the season move
Thy heart too?
Rise, and through the wood and glade
Come with me;
Long the birds their songs have made
From every tree :
Listen, one outbids them all —
'Tis the sweet-voiced nightingale
That we hear ;
■ Mirthfully he ever sings ;
Like him leave all troublous things,
Age draws near.
Time, who hates our merry ways,
His pinions shakes,
As he flies, our happy days
With him he takes.
Sadly, sadly wilt thou say.
Worn with age, some future day,
" Vain was I
To let the beauty of my face
Neglected fade, and all the grace
Of youth pass by."
CHRESTIEN AND PITHOU. 163
Scaliger, who hated everybody with any pretensions
to scholarship, as much as German Orientahsts hate
each other at the present day, said that Passerat had
only read eight books in his life, and was by no means
the great man he thought himself, which is quite possi-
ble. Very few people are.
The next contributor to the " Satyre " is Florent
Chrestien, who had once been tutor to Henry IV.
The honest king remembered his old tutor with a growl
of resentment whenever his name was mentioned, which
leads one to suspect that the revenues of the Navarre
Educational Department would not bear the expense of
a whipping boy. However, he gave Chrestien a pension,
which was well merited by the harangue of the Cardi-
nal Pell eve, his work.
But the really serious part of the " Satyre " was con-
tributed by the greatest man of them all. Pierre Pithou
wrote the harangue of D'Aubray. This remarkable
man was a Huguenot by birth and narrowly escaped
murder on the Bartholomew day. Returning to Paris
when the storm was over, he abjured and was reconciled
to the church, a step taken by a great many Huguenots.
We must remember that the step meant little more than
a change of politics.
To men who had no strength of religious conviction,
one church was just as good as another, and the strong-
est was of course the safest. Pithou's life was chiefly
spent in the elucidation of the canonical law, and he was
one of the earliest writers who maintained the liberties
of the Galilean church. Besides his law-books he found
time to edit, in his leisure moments, the works of Phse-
drus and Petronius, the "Declamations" of Quintilian,
the " Pervigilium Veneris," the " Bordeaux Pilgrim,"
and so forth, slight dallyings with lighter literature, just
as Lord Selborne, when he is not making laws, copies
164 LA SATYRE MENIPPEE.
out a psalm, or as Mr. Gladstone, in his leisure moments,
considers a myth. A man of strong solid sense ; one of
those who live in the present ; a scholar, but no book-
worm ; a conservative lawyer, but no pedant ; a clear-
sighted man, of no enthusiasm ; a partisan of order ; and
one who, above all, saw that men's whims and notions
must be humored and treated solemnly. With this
view he relieved the consciences of the French bishops
by providing them with fifty reasons for giving absolu-
tion to Henry IV.
At the end of the " Satyre M^nippde," is a little bit
of fooling called the " Trespas de I'Asne," by Gilles
Durant,. Sieur de la Bergerie, a superior poet to any of
the preceding. He wrote vers de socictS, little love dit-
ties, laments for the flight of time. And he sums up
his philosophy in the following lines : —
If all we did were guarded still
(Some writers teach us so)
By thought of what, for good or ill,
The future years shall show:
'Twere too much care and thought to spend.
Too great a load to bear :
We live from day to day, my friend,
And not from year to year.
Our life with doubtful fate is won,
With doubtful issues flies:
We know not if to-morrow's sun
Will greet our living eyes.
What boots it then to ask of fate
What loss it gives, what gain?
The evil to anticipate,
And feel too soon the pain ?
Long live to-day — our own at least :
Shall we to-morrow see ?
Take what you can of joy and feast,
And let to-morrow be.
Chapter VIII.
MATHURIN REGNIER.
What's fame ? A fancied life in others' bfeath ;
A thing beyond us, even before our death.
Pope.
OATIRE, as we have seen, in irregular form, then,
^ had always been plenty in France. Poems di-
rectly and professedly satirical ; the " Tournoyement
de I'Antichrist " of Hnon de M^ry ; the Bible Guyot ;
the Sirventes ; the " Loups ravissants " of Robert Gobin ;
the celebrated " Reynard the Fox ; " and the great mass
of Goliardic verses ; all these were confessedly satirical
in their aim. Besides which, the mediaeval collection
of France simply abounds and overflows with satire.
L* esprit gaulois is beyond every thing satirical, mocking,
irreverent. But it was not till late in the sixteenth
century that satire, strictly so called, and in imitation
of the classics, was revived. It was preceded by the
epigram, a sort of morning star before the sun, of which
the great master was unquestionably Mellin de Saint
Gelais, whose genius passed into a kind of proverb.
Ronsard writes, for instance : —
Kcarte bien de mon chef
Tout malheur et tout m^chef ;
Preserve moy d'infamie,
De toute langue ennemie,
Et de tout esprit malin :
Et fais que devant mon prince
Desormais plus ne me pince
La tenaille de Mellin.
166 MA THURIN REGNIER.
At the same time first appeared the celebrated Coq-
d-Vdne epistles of Marot, which, like all good things,
were repeated till the very name became nauseous.
Joachim du Bellay, "standard-bearer" in the school of
Ronsard, was the first to raise his voice against the Coq-
d-Vdne school of verse. It was indeed Joachim du Bel-
lay who first wrote a satire according to the rules — that
is, in imitation of Horace. Its motif is the road to suc-
cess for a court poet. It possesses humor, subtlety,
and that charm of language which peculiarly distin-
guishes the last and best of the great Du Bellay family.
Here is a piece of it : —
Thou, reader, who would 'st learn the pathway short,
By which to rank among the wits of court,
No longer rack thy brain, no longer dream
Of Muses, and that ever sacred stream
Made by the heel of Pegasus : but heed
The way I teach thee — so shalt thou succeed.
And first, act not as some, with feeble aim,
Doom'd still to fail, striving for Pindar's fame;
Fly not like Horace thou, but take a course
Where thy more simple nature lends thee force;
Care not for controversy ; whether Art
Or Nature more her help to verse impart
Inquire not thou : enough for thee to know
That at the court they care not. Onward go,
Guided by instinct, art and learning scant —
To bow and cringe the only art to want —
Some little tinkling sonnet — hand it round.
Some chanson with no merit but the sound,
Some rondeau with a ballad spliced has proved
Divine to those whom Iliads had not moved.
Leave all the antiquated Latin rules,
What use are they in our French modern schools ?
The court thy Virgil and thy Homer make —
The court whence all their inspiration take.
Another point mark well : success is thine.
If thou hast learn'd the noblest art — to dine.
THE FIRST REGULAR SATIRE. 167
Here a nice conduct, here a wise parade
Of wit and learning, will thy fortune aid :
Be ready with the repartee and jest,
Preserve a commonplace for every guest.
Pass over what you know not ; what you know
Even from an hour's reading, keep for show.
It is the first regular satire in the language, and is,
perhaps, a little too fine. Remembei- that Du Bellay
was above all tied and bound by the rules of those
"Latins et Gr(^geois," away from whom he thought
there was no safety, so that his advice to his own school
would have read like the highest kind of irony. His
satire appeared about the year 1550. In 1572 was pub-
lished another, written by Du Verdier, called " Les
Oraonimes, satire des moeurs corrompues de ce si^cle."
It is, so far as I have learned — for I am only acquainted
with it at second-hand — simply unreadable, being writ-
ten in rimes equivoques?-
The following' year saw the " Courtisan Retir^*' of
Jean de la Taille. In 1586 Gabriel Bounyn wrote a
" Satire au roy contre les republicains." In 1593 ap-
peared, as we have seen, that perfectly original work,
the " Satyre Menippee." About the same time Vauque-
' It will save the trouble of explaining what this poetical tour de
force means, to give a few lines : —
Contre luxurieux plus qu'un Faune ou Satyre,
Je vouloy debacquer par cuisante satire ;
J'avoy fait mon project reciter en dix vers
Les abus, les malheurs, tes affaires divers
Qui en ces troubles sont renversez dessous France
Dont le peuple est r^duit en extreme soiiffrance.
Et n'y a des (?tats nuls qui n'aillent disans
Que c'est par trop souffert d'avoir souffert dix ans.
Could not something penal he done with writers such as these ?
A year's solitary imprisonment, for instance, with Du Verdier as sole
companion, would be disagreeable enough to deter from any crime.
168 . MATHURIN REGNIER.
lin, whose works were only published in 1612, wrote an
" Art Poetique " and half a dozen satires, calling on
poets to imitate Horace.
And then came the king of French satirists, Ma-
THURIN Regnier. He was not, of course, alone, but,
like Shakespeare, Moliere, and all great leaders,* he is of
no school. OxAj facile princeps^ like them. Thus, his
friends and contemporaries Avrote satires, all of which
have perished. Forquevaux wrote sixteen. Ganiste
wrote one called " Les Atomes." D'Aubignd, ancestor
of Madame de Maintenon, wrote half a dozen on the
evils of civil war, which appear to have been rather a
faithful description than satires. Among them is a por-
trait of that immeasurably worthless scamp, Henry HI.
The poet is describing the sons of Catherine: —
The third was better skilPd in woman's gauds,
And all their changes, skill'd, too, in the frauds
And subtleties of love ; with shaven chin,
With pale face, with a woman's gait and mien
So closely matched, that at a courtly feast
The shameless creature like a woman dress'd;
His long hair looped with pearl-embroider'd bows;
A new Italian bonnet with long rows
Of gems and double peaks, and hanging lace;
Bedaub 'd with rouge and plaster was his face;
Powder'd his head, each woman's art bestow'd.
Till like some shameless painted quean he show'd.
Mathurin Regnier, the eldest son of a respectable
bourgeois of Chartres, and nephew of the poet Des-
portes, was born in the year 1573. His father, with an
eye to the uncle, the possessor of many rich benefices,
" tonsured " him, after the curious custom of the time^
at eleven years of age. The boy quickly comprehended
the situation. His uncle was rich and a poet. Why
could not he, too, be a po6t, and consequently rich ?
FIRST EXPERIENCE. 169
Many young men have made this disposition of them-
selves for the future, but few have been able to carry
it into effect; for to be a poet, and to grow rich by
the proceeds of one's poetry, are withheld from most.
Fortunately, however, for poets, this was a time when
they were in clover, for the demand actually exceeded
the supply, and for a hundred and fifty years to come,
if a man could write tolerable verse, he was certain of
a pension, and could probably reckon on a few fat liv-
ings. The same sort of thing is remarkable now-a-days,
though to a less degree, as regards novelists. Regnier,
therefore, began to write verses, and at twenty years
of age got the protection of the Cardinal de Joyeuse,
with whom he went to Rome, staying there for eight
years, not much to his own happiness, for he speaks of
this time with the bitterness of a disappointed man : —
I left my home, and happy in my dreams,
Full of the strength of youth and lofty aims,
A courtier in a prelate's train I fared,
And countless dangers in his service dared.
My mind, my very self, I had to change.
Drink warm, eat cold, and sleep on pallets strange.
All day, all night, to follow in his train
I gave my liberty; for all my pain,
The right to be his slave at church, at board;
Happy, if sometimes I might please my lord.
He finds out at last, he says, that fidelity is no great
revenue, and returns disappointed to France. But he
returns to Rome again in the service of the Duke de
Bethune. Two years after he comes home again, thirty
years of age, poor as ever, disappointed and discon-
tented.
This time he took refuge with his uncle, the poet
Desportes, at the time the foremost man of letters, so
far as influence went, in France. Tallemant des Rdaux
170 MATHURIN REGNIER.
tells one or two stories of this part of his life. Des-
portes was a man to whom young poets brought their
pieces for his reading and judgment. On one occasion'
he gave a poem written by a young advocate to his
nephew to read for him. The work contained in one
place the line —
Je bride icy mon Apollon.
Regnier read no further, but wrote in the margin —
Faut avoir le cerveau bien vide
Pour brider des Muses le roy;
Les dieux ne portent point de bride,
Mais bien les asnes comme toy.
When Desportes, who had not even looked at it, gave
the manuscript back to the author, he complimented
him on the admirable things it contained. Of course,
the poet discovered the annotation of the scholiast, and
returned in a furious rage, complaining of the way in
which he had been treated, so that Desportes was obliged
to confess the whole business.
On another occasion occurred the celebrated quarrel
of Malherbe with Regnier and his uncle. Regnier had
invited Malherbe to dinner. He came late, and found
that they had not waited for him, which annoyed him.
However, Desportes treated him with great civility, and
informed him that he proposed presenting him with a
copy of his " Psalms," just then completed. He even
rose from his seat and offered to go upstairs at once
and get the book. Malherbe, the most disagreeable of
men, rudely replied that it was not worth tha trouble;
that he had already seen the " Psalms," and that, on the
whole, he preferred the poet's soup. The rest of the
dinner was, as might fairly be expected, conducted in a
frigid silence, and Malherbe never afterwards spoke, to
ANIMOSITY TO MALHERBE. 171
Desportes or Regnier. It is very curious to note how,
in that age of ceremonious politeness, the rudest things
were sometimes said and done, things a great deal worse
than ever happen now, even though one knows tliat
there will be no challenging, no kicking, and no boxing
of ears. Regnier never forgave Malherbe. It is of him
and of his school that he writes in his ninth satire : —
As for their learning, why it just extends
To scratch a word which here and there offends:
To see their pedant prosody obeyed;
That following rhymes be short or long instead;
Watch that one vowel meet no vowel next
So that the delicate ear catch up the text.
But lea\dng all the Muses' aid beside,
No noble spur pricks up their poet-pride;
Feebly they creep, and with inventions stale
Eke out the dull, correct, and feeble tale.
If it had been Boileau, he would have ended by a sort
of direct explanation of the whole passage —
Like Malherbe slumber, and like Malherbe crawl —
or some such line, to point the verse, and make the
whole quite clear to the meanest capacity. But we are
not yet arrived at the age of personalities. Regnier at-
tacks a school whose master he hates ; bi^t he does not
permit himself the pleasure of personal invective.
Later on, his animosity to the disciples of Malherbe
took a form sufficiently real and pronounced, for he
challenged Maynard, the writer of so many epigrams,
odes, and chansons, to a duel. Maynard, not remark-
able for courage, but not daring to refuse, informed the
Count de Clermont-Leduc of the approaching combat,
and begged him to appear in time and separate them.
When the time came, the Count was there, true to his
word ; but he hid himself behind a tree. Poor Maynard
172 MATHURIN REGNIER.
made a thousand excuses to prolong the time, — quar-
relled about the length of the swords, took half an hour
to pull ofp his boots, found his shoes too tight ; at last,
when the fight could no longer be postponed, he mourn-
fully took the sword in his hand, and — the Count ap-
peared. But it was too late for Maynard, who gave up
pretending any longer, and apologized abjectly to Reg-
nier, reserving his wrath for the Count, whom he over-
Avhelmed with reproaches. It was not the only duel
fought by Regnier, who was as handy with his sword
as with his pen ; that fought with Berthelot, for in-
stance, is commemorated in a poem printed with his
works.
Regnier died at the age of thirty-nine, in the very
flower and prime of his powers. The only facts of his
life are those which I have told, besides one or two not
so edifying as we might wish.
Of French satirists after the manner of the ancients,
there are but two worthy of consideration — Regnier
and Boileau. Of the two, the former seems to me in-
comparably the superior. Why, T will set forth after-
wards. Let me first try to give a clear idea of the worth
of this little read and almost forgotten poet.
The little volume of his collected works contains
seventeen satires, two or three elegies, with a few odes,
ballads, songs, epigrams, dialogues, and short pieces,
which we may leave aside altogether. They offer noth-
ing that calls for any serious remark, being neither bet-
ter nor worse than the commonplace poetry in vogue at
the time. It is in the satires that we look to find
Regnier himself.
To begin with, they are cast, like all satires, in the
mould of Horace and Juvenal. They describe the same
types, the miser, the man with a hobby, the bore, and
HIS SATIRES, 178
all the rest of them. There are the appeals of a sham
indignation, the outcries of a simulated fury, the con-
tempt of a pretended scorn, that we know so well and
detest so bitterly. Surely, of all shams, the worst is
a sham indignation. How poor, how used up and com-
monplace it appears to be when we read : —
O d6bile raison ! o\i est ores ta bride ?
OQ ce flambeau qui sert aux personnes de guide ?
Contre les passions trop foible est ton secours,
Et souvent, courtisane, apres elles tu cours,
Et, savourant I'appas qui ton ame ensorcelle,
Tu ne vis qu'a son goust et ne vois que par elle.
And have we not read, how many times have we not
read, the lament of a past age ?
Fathers of bygone years, your lives a page
Worthy of envy by this mocking age
(Did there yet linger aught of good and true),
Look down and say what things we seem to you.
In your time virtue, simple, pure, austere,
Followed its nature guileless and severe.
Her lamp threw round your path a splendor clear,
Which left no room for doubt, no place for fear ;
And without thought of gain in other sense,
She was herself your prize and recompense.
We follow other gods, our virtue now.
Perfumed and plastered, taught to dance and bow,
Spends at the ball long nights, and seeks to move
By arts effeminate a woman's love;
Rides at the chace a noble horse to death,
Or at the quintain tilts till out of breath,
New feats gymnastic studies and invents,
Equal at arts of toilette and of fence,
Contrives new ballets, sings the latest air,
And wTites the prettiest verses for the fair,
Affects all learning, prates of critic's rules,
And rates at equal value wise and fools.
It seems to me as if this sort of generalized satire is
174 MATHURIN REGNIER.
the easiest thing in the world to do, and the most use-
less when done. To be sure we have become accus-
tomed to it, and Regnier began the thing, so that it
had in his time the novelty of freshness.
He aimed, you see, at imitation. He w'anted to apply
the Horatian method to modern times. Instead of
Lucilius, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, we are to have
Desportes and Regnier ; the Louvre and the Pont-Neuf
stand for the Forum : and the names and dresses being
changed, all is to be as before. There is the pedant, as
we have said, the bad poet, the bore, the banquet, the
declamations against the vices of the world, the con-
fession of his own habits and opinions. We have them
all. You may find them, as well, in Boileau, Pope, and
eveiybody else, though Regnier has the great credit of
being the first. Bearing in mind, therefore, that his
mind was imbued with Juvenal and Horace, that he
imitates openly, that his chief and only pride is to pre-
sent the Latin satirist as a Frenchman of his own age,
it is absurd to hunt about for places where he has
copied ''beauties," as they used to say, not his own,
and imitations which are merely plagiarisms. Let us
admit all these, and then, finding things that are not in
Horace, and yet are good, let us be thankful, and read
them with real pleasure.
His sixth satire turns upon the tyranny of honor, and
while it has a certain Latin air, a reminiscence of Koman
inspiration, there is yet some freshness about it. It
begins by a complaint that his soul is burdened with a
weight heavy enough to break the back of a pack-
horse : —
'Tis not because I see on every side
Folly the monarch ; avarice and pride
In churchmen; justice hawked about for sale;
The innocent oppressed, the righteous fail;
THE GOLDEN AGE, 175
The council swayed by private interest,
And him who spends the most esteemed the best :
All this I know, but yet another ill
Afflicts my soul, more universal still.
Would I were king for generations twain, ^
Then would I banish, not to return again,
Banish, and never suffer to recall,
Honor, whose monstrous fetters bind us all.
Who troubles eyes that else might clearly see,
Throwing a glamour on all things that be ;
Who ruins nature, and when things are best.
Steps in to mar the joy, and spoil the feast.
After this, we get the inevitable golden age, for
which you may read Ovid's " Metamorphoses," or Jean
de Meung (see page 72), or, in fact, almost every poet
who ever lived. Thank Heaven ! The golden age
seems pretty well passed away, and played out by
this time, never, I trust, to be revived again.
He forgets his Horatian imitations, and goes back to
Ovid, when he speaks of himself and his sins : ^ —
No law restrains ray passionate soul, no chain
Of destiny, no bar of will, no rein,
To good self-blinded, drifting into ill;
Reason is powerless, argue what it will.
Of my own choice, the sin, the error mine,
My eyes I bandage while the siin doth shine,
Choosing the worst because I love it more,
My sorrow only that the sin is o'er.
A thousand voices tell me love is joy;
A thousand beauties do my love employ,
And musing here and there, each day I prove
In every woman something new to love.^
' Rabelais : " Hon ! que ne suis-je roy de France pour quatre-
vingts ou cent ans ! "
* See Ovid, " Amores," el. iv. § ii.
^ Non est certa meos quae forma invitet amores ;
Centum sunt causae cur ego semper amem.
17G MATHURIN REGNIER.
After which, revelations which we need not translate.
He returns again to the subject, one of which he was
only too competent to speak, with more perhaps of
worldly pride than of repentance ; —
If reason feeds on faik^^e, if our eyes
Gain strength from loss, 'tis time that I was wise ;
From all my labors lost this lesson prove,
And by experience know the art of love.
After so many hard campaigns endured,
And from the pains of fifty passions cured,
After these wars renewed by day and night,
A veteran warrior I wage the fight.
As some old soldier, locks grown gray in arms,
Unnerved no more by fears and vain alarms,
Calmly surveys the battle, till at length
He now opposes stratagem to strength ;
So I, who know each move the game can give.
My happiness by artifice contrive ;
Not running here and there like some young fool,
Led by caprice, but guided by this rule,
The more you force the less you make your way,
And women, cunning, more than strength obey;
Only wait watchful, till some lucky hour
The careless enemy place within your power.
All men are slaves : —
Au joug nous sommes nez, et n'a jamais este
Homme qu'on ait vu vivre en plaine liberte.
Mankind may be all told off into classes, the distinc-
tions of which are clear and defined. Satirists are
always very decided on this point : —
Le soldat aujourdhuy ne resve que la gloire :
En paix le laboureur veut cultiver la terre :
L'avare n'a plaisir qu'en ses doubles ducats :
L'amant juge sa dame un chef d'oeuvre icy bas.
Had Regnier lived in these days, he would have
found a decided objection to parade the professional
THEMES OF HIS SATIRES. 177
jargon at off-times. The lawyer does not talk law ; our
soldiers may perhaps dream of glory, but they keep
their dreams to themselves ; the laborer prefers the
beer-shop to the happy fields ; and the modern lover,
unless he is under five-and-twenty, an age at which our
civilization forbids love, may possibly tell his mistress
she is a chef-d'oeuvre just to please the dear girl, but he
knows better. And as for the miser, he saves what he
can spare after providing himself with a good dinner.
You may see the modern miser fat, comely, comfortable,
over a glass of port at the club any night. So far we
have outgrown satire. Life, indeed, is crossed with
every kind of shade, the tints of which melt into one
another. Hold up the tissue to the light this way, it is
magenta ; this way, it is purple. As in nature, so in
character, there are no outlines.^ and the verses of the
satirist are only like the early pencil drawings of the
infant artist with their rough and rude imitations of
the real and their thick coarse outlines in black and
white.
All men are fools : —
Je diray librement pour finir en deux mots,
Que la plus part des geus sont habillez eu sots.
It is a great mistake to be a poet : —
Pour moy, mon amy, je suis fort mal paye
D'avoir suivy cet art.
It was against the will of his father, as it always is in
the case of poets : —
Ssepe pater dixit, studium quid inutile tentas?
Mseonides nullas ipse reliquit opes.
It is impossible to please everybody : —
Bertaut! c'est un grand cas! quoy que Ton puisse faire,
II n'est moyen qu'un homme a chacun puisse plaire.
12
178 MATHURIN REGNIER.
There are in each age of life its own delights,
pleasures, and temptations : —
Reddere qui voces jam scit puer et pede certo
Signat huraum, &c.
And so on. These are the themes of his satires. They
are not by themselves of a nature to tempt one to read
further. But in truth the success of a satire depends
more upon the form in which it is cast than the novelty
of the sentiments, because, after all, we do not invent
new vices, and the whole possible field of human folly
seems to have been thoroughly explored by this time ;
although when Carlyle some time since assured the world
that men were mostly fools, we all received this astonish-
ing intelligence with a mere rapture of delight, as if it
was not only good news, but also a thing quite recently
discovered. /
Throwing yourself back, therefore, to Regnier's i
times, try to imagine that these things are absolutely \
new except to scholars, and that the French dress of
a Latin poet is entirely his own invention. You will
th^n find him vigorous, easy, and natural. You will
read his portraits, drawn with a rapid and bold pen,
with a curiosity which will gradually grow^ into interest.
You will find yourself in the hands of a master who
has the merit of reality, who is never a prig, who very
seldom puts on the sham indignation of a satirist, who
really does succeed in throwing new life into an old
trunk, who troubles himself little about rules of art,
and who writes as he lives, bound by no chains or
restraint of principle, art, or rule.
There is one type which French writers in all ages
have fastened on and improved till it has become pecul-
iarly and essentially French. It is that of the hypocrite.
MACETTE. 179
Nothing like it exists in classical literature, because
hypocrisy could only be, in the nature of things, a weed
growing in the soil of an artificial and perfunctory re-
ligion, like a good many people's Christianity. We have
seen the hypocrite in Rutebeuf and Faux Semblant in
Jean de Meung, the latter a perfect and finished sketch,
and before. we have the Tartuffe of Moliere, the complete
and inimitable type, we get the Macette of Regnier.
The first part of this satire only is original, the rest is
borrowed from Ovid, from Propertius, from Juvenal,
perhaps at second-hand, and through the Roman de la
Rose. I have translated a portion of the introduction,
which sufi&ciently explains itself : —
Macette the famous, who, from ten years old,
Trained in the lists of love her place to hold,
Weary of conquest, glutted with her spoils,
Weary of weaving nets and setting toils.
Weary, not satiate, renounces love
And turns repentant thoughts to things above.
She who, before these pious tears were shed
Saw but one sky — the sky above her bed,
Aspires, a Christian pattern of distress.
Close on the heels of Magdalene to press ;
Her dress a simple robe without pretence,
Her very visage, breathing continence,
Admonishes the world with austere looks,
And even priests and preaching monks rebukes.
From convent unto convent still she steals
And for confession at the altar kneels,
She knows the worth of chaplets and of beads.
What an indulgence grants, and what it needs.
Far from the world she plants her hermit cell,
Her weeping eyes a holy-water well ;
In short, in this backsliding age a hght
Of grace, of penitence, and virtue bright.
A saint acknowledged by the folk at home,
And it is darkly whispered that at Rome
They wait impatiently for her demise
This modern Magdelene to canonize.
180 MA THURIN REGNIER.
Small faith as I in miracles repose,
Believing things I see — nor always those —
Seeing this sudden change from what had been
I thought at last her soul changed with her mien.
" 'Tis thus," I cried, " God's grace our errors ends,
That life were bad indeed which never mends."
And moved by her example and her sighs
Began to think 'twas time to do likewise.
When by a special grace of Providence
(Which hates indeed a hypocrite's pretence),
Being alone with her I love one day,
Came that old screech owl, crawling on her way
With slow and solemn step, with pursed-up lips,
And mincing mouth that half the sentence clips ;
Gave us a courtesy, as one half afraid
And knowing no more than a convent maid.
After an Ave Mary, she began
Her common jargon — not of love — and ran
On hundred things that my poor girl was fain
To hear in patience, though her little brain
Was full of tender thoughts, for she and I
So happily make all the moments fly,
Loving and loved, that other lovers sigh.
And then . . . then . . . the graceless poet, who
has little taste for talk of piety, retires and leaves them
alone. But he conceives a desire to hear what they talk
about by themselves, and so he listens. And what a
conversation it is he hears !
You who know the old woman's discourse in Ovid
will know what it is : — •
Fors me sermonum testem dedit. Ilia monebat
Talia. Me duplices occuluere fores.
Scis, hera, te, mea lux, juveni placuisse beato:
Haesit et in vultu constitit usque tuo.
Et cur non placeas? nulli tua forma secunda est.
Me miseram ! dignus corpore cultus abest.
Youth in the eyes of this disreputable old lady is
THE PEDANT. 181
but the autumn of life, while beauty is its harvest ;
love is the madness of men ; riches, the price they must
pay for it ; while as for honor, virtue, fidelity, religion,
these are but the figments by which poor men would
win the golden prizes of beauty for nothing. The theme
loses nothing in Regnier's hands. He is as easy as Ovid,
and as strong. He writes as one inspired, and reading
his verses, though the very thoughts and phrases are
Ovid's, we know that Macette lived. We think we see
her wagging her wicked old head, and instructing the
artless girl : —
Le pech6 que I'on cache est demy pardonne :
La faute seullement ne gist en la defense :
Le scandale, I'opprobre, est ce qui fait I'offense ;
Pourvu qu'on ne le sache, 11 n'importe comment.
Qui peut dire que non, ne peche nuUement.
Did ever astonished moralist hear the like ? Tartuffe
made use of the same atrocious sentiments in his unfor-
tunate attempt upon Elmire : —
Le mal n'est jamais que dans I'^clat qu'on fait,
Le scandale du monde est ce qui fait I'offense,
Et ce n'est pas pecher que pecher en silence.
One more quotation from Regnier. This time, too,
it shall be left in French to show his style. It is the
description of the pedant : —
II me parle latin, il all^gue, il discourt,
II reforme a sen pied les humeurs de la court ;
Qu'il a pour enseigner une belle maniere,
Qu'en son globe il a veu la matiere premiere :
Qu'Epicure est yvrongne, Hypocrate un bourreau,
Que Bartolle et Jason ignorent le barreau ;
" Que Virgile est passable encor qu'en quelques pages,
II meritast au Louvre estre chifle des pages : •
Que Pline est inegal, Terence ne peu joly :
Mais surtout il estime un langage poly.
182 MATHURIN REGNIER.
Such was Regnier, rough and vigorous, one who
imitated, but did not copy j where he does not imitate,
fresh and strong ; where he does, throwing a life of his
own into the thoughts and opinions that he borrowed.
Full, too, of homely proverbs and sayings — things
which would have made the ha;ir of Schoolmaster
Boileau to stand on end, and turned his flesh into
goose-flesh. " Vous parlez barragouyn," " Vous nous
faites des bonadiez," " Je r^ponds d'un ris de Saint-
M^dard," *' C'est pour votre beau nez que cela se fait,"
and so on, locutions actually used b}^ the old women
in the Halles. Fountain of Helicon ! here was dese-
cration. It is for these things as well as more manifest
sins that Boileau speaks, when in the " Art Po^tique '*
he says : —
De ces maltres savans disciple ingenieux,
Regnier seul parmi nous forme sur leur modele,
Dans son vieux style encore a des graces nouvelles.
Heureux si les discours craints du chaste lecteur
Ne se sentoient des lieux od fr^quentait I'auteur.
Regnier died, unhappily, before he was able to
emancipate himself from his bondage to the classical
poets, and while preserving their form to breathe into
it fully the spirit of his own genius. For one of so
robust an intellect as his would assuredly, had he lived
longer, have carved out his own line, and made satire in
France a thing independent of Horace and Juvenal. I
claim for him genius of a high order. He knew how to
describe, he knew how to draw portraits, he could be
satirical without malice, and he could convey his moral
without maddening some unhappy fellow-creature with
a hornet's sting. In this respect at least he was above
Pope and Dryden.
Sainte-Beuve, in his way, draws a parallel between
REGNIER AND CHENIER. 183
the two most unlike men (at first sight) in the whole
world, Regnier and Andrd Ch^nier. It is, to be sure,
a comparison which consists chiefly of differences, but
he has found real points of resemblance between them
— in the utter absence of the religious sentiment with
both,i in \)^Q descriptive faculty common to both, in
their reality, in that irresistible force which attracted
them both to the society of women. " The styles of
Andre Chdnier and of Regnier," he says, " are a perfect
model of what our language permits to the genius ex-
pressing itself in verse. . . .With both the s^meproeede,
warm, vigorous, and free, the same luxury and ease of
thought, shooting its branches in all directions, with all
its interlacings and cross- tracery, the same profusion of
happy and familiar irregularities, the same readiness
and sagacity of discernment in following the current
idea under the transparency of images, and in not al-
lowing it to escape from one image to another, the same
marvellous art in carrying on a metaphor to its end. . . .
And as to the form and the carriage of the verses of
Regnier and Chdnier, they seem to me very nearly the
same, that is to say, the best possible ; curious without
effort, easy without negligence, in turn careless and
attentive."
A great poet, crippled by his blind adherence to
ancient models, not able to extricate himself from the
traditions of his time, a disciple of Ronsard who yet
hardly learned Ronsard's great lesson, to dare every
thing, to try every thing, to emulate, and not to imitate,
the surpassing genius of the past. And, besides all tliis,
1 Some germs of repentance maybe found in Regnier, but these
when he was already sinking into an early grave, worn out by his
excesses.
184 MATHURIN REGNIER.
which is a potent influence in the life of the artist, a
slave to his own passions. Art is a jealous mistress ;
she will be worshipped alone. St.-Amant failed, as we
shall presently see, because he joined the cult of Bacchus
to that of the Muses. And Regnier, so far as he did
fail, because he worshipped Venus, our Lady of Passion,
as well as that other and nobler Venus, our Lady of
Art.
Somebody wrote an epitaph for him, which is printed
among his collected works as his own. Now, it is given
to no man to write his own epitaph, save by an antici-
patory clause in his last will and testament. This is
what the epitaph says : —
J'ai vescu sans nul pensement,
Me laissant aller doucement
A la bonne loy naturelle ;
Et sy m'estonne fort pourquoi
La mort oza songier a moi
Qui ne songea jamais a elle.
Chapter IX.
SAINT AMANT.
A genoux, enfans d^bauchez,
Chers confidants de mes p^chez.
"PARLY in the seventeenth century, the desire fell
■^-^ upon France to laugh. The country had been
melancholy for a whole generation; for, with the ex-
ception of the Satyre M^nipp^e and a few squibs, there
was nothing at all to laugh at. Literature under Mal-
herbe was solemn ; mirth malice, and merriment seemed
well-nigh dead. " Give us," cried the Parisians, " some-
thing new and amusing. We have got through all our
troubles. King Louis XIII. is, to be sure, a foolish,
even a malignant creature, but there are no more sieges
and no more blockades ; and so let us laugh."
The demand created a supply, and though the Fronde
brought fresh civil wars, if left the people, as it found
them, laughing. There were Turlupin, Scaramouche,
Arlequin, on the stage, and there were Th^ophile Viaud,
D'Assoucy, Scarron, Voiture, Boisrobert among the
poets and writers.
It is of this goodly society that we have now to treat.
The student of French literature, who must read them,
will find in them no reflection whatever of the artistic
efforts of Ronsard and Du Bellay : they are careless as
to what Malherbe might have thought : they write by
no rules of art, but can defend themselves on attack ;
186 SAINT AMANT.
and they pour out their songs regardless of any criticism
but the voice of the people. It is characteristic of
French literature that the best poets have been those
who have dared to belong to no school. Rutebeuf and
Adam de la Halle are free. Olivier Basselin owes no
man aught, and Villon is independent. It is this same
quality of independence that I claim for Saint Amant,
La Fontaine, Beranger. Not only are they all indepen-
dent of rules, but they are all alike in one respect ; for,
the conditions of their lives and characters being differ-
ent, the French spirit remains common to all. And
then the leaders of the schools of style have got nothing
to say. What is the charm in Ronsard ? It is but the
charm of surprise that things said so often before could
be said again with so much delicacy. Nor is it till the
impression is gone, that one discovers the entire absence
of strength. And so the Pleiad never became popular,
never exchanged its character as an artistic circle for
that of popular poets. Cold, mannered, graceful, they
gave dignity to a literature daily becoming, before their
time, more discreditable ; and they helped those who
were to follow how best to say what they found to say.
Of those who delighted Paris in the seventeenth century
before Boileau appeared, I propose to select Saint Amant,
not only because he is the least disreputable, but also
because he is the truest poet. And it seems to me
worth the trouble of exhuming this dead and forgotten
writer,^ if only to add one more human figure to the
English gallery of French worthies.
Marc-Antoine Gerard, Sieur de Saint Amant, was
born at Rouen, 1594, and came of a good old fighting
' Not dead and forgotten in his own country. His works are
published in the " Bibliotheque Elz6virienne. "
HIS FAMILY. 187
stock ; his father, a gentleman adventurer, having been
one of Queen Elizabeth's sea captains, and, perhaps
while fighting an English ship, was taken prisoner by
the Turks. His uncle, too, served a captivity on the
galleys of Constantinople, and both his brothers died
fighting the infidels. They sailed to India in search of
fortune, for there was no money in the Saint Amant
family, and off the mouth of the Red Sea — what
was the ship doing there? — they were attacked by a
" Moorish " corvette. One brother was killed, the other
" escaped by swimming," a very remarkable statement,
as one naturally wonders where he swam to. Socotra,
Aden, and the land of the Somaulis have never held out
any thing but a hostile club to the visitor, and the near-
est friendly port would be Goa, while to swim fifteen
hundred miles, exposed to the danger of sunstroke,
must have been a perilous journey indeed. However,
the swimmer escaped, which was the great thing for
him and lived to fight the Turk again, getting killed at
last in Cyprus, under the Venetian flag. While these
stirring events were going on in his family, the young
poet was getting himself educated — he never knew
any Latin or Greek — at Rouen. Biographers, always
on the lookout for examples of precocity, have got
nothing more characteristic to tell of him than that he
fell three times into the river Seine off the quay, and
was nearly drowned on each occasion. It is charming
to get these characteristic anecdotes. What a flood of
light is thrown on a great man when we know how the
button came off his jacket.
He came to Paris young, and began at once to write
verses, having among his earliest friends that profligate
and unlucky bard, Th^ophile Viaud. At the age of
five-and-twenty, Saint Amant brought out his first and
188 SAINT AMANT.
best poem, called " Solitude." On no other single pro-
duction of his would I be content to rest his claim to be
a poet ; but this is by itself enough. He takes us into
the forest ; "vyg wander with him among the aged trees,
born long ago, " at the very nativity of time," watching
the birds, the waving of the branches, the lake with the
herons and the wild fowl, the long glades stretching
right and left, and, while he bids us mark the absence
of man's handiwork, the glamour of the scene falls upon
us and we forget the poet, his art, ourselves. This it is
to be a poet; this power it is which makes some simple
ballad live in people's hearts while all the verses of the
scholars are forgotten : it is the absence of this power
which kills the newly fledged versifier, though all the
critics unite in calling him poet.
Nor winter's frost nor summer's heat
Hath seen upon this silent sheet
Sledge, boat, or vessel leave the land;
Nor shall, till earth and time are spent.
No thirsty traveller here hath bent
And made a cup with curving hand.
Never did traitor hook ensnare
The foolish fish for angler s prey;
And never stag, in mad despair,
Here stayed the chase and turned to bay.
We leave the forest. Presently we find ourselves
before a ruined castle, solitary and deserted.
. . . See how year by year the walls
Of yon old ruins gray and hoar
Grow smaller still as on them falls
Time's talon, tearing more and more.
Here now the witches hold their tryst,
Here elves and fairies revels keep,
"Who all for mischief, as they list,
Our senses cheat and plague our sleep;
And here, in corners out of sight,
Are snakes of day and birds of night.
''SOLITUDES 189
The screech-owl with her cries of woe
(Sinister sound to mortal ear)
Wakes up the imps who come and go
With laughter wild and goblin cheer;
Under a cross-tree in the air
Swings to and fro the skeleton
Of some poor swain, who in despair
This deed upon himself hath done,
Long since — because a woman's face
Had for him neither smile nor grace.
On the old rafters bent and worn
Decipher, if you can, the name;
See on the marbles, moss o'ergrown,
The scutcheon of an ancient fame.
Beneath a mighty walnut's shade
Growing deep down within the fosse,
The highest turret roof is laid
Conceal'd with ivy and with moss :
And mark o'er all the silver slime
Where snails and vermin creep and climb.
Do you remember any thing of this kind before Saint
Am ant ? I do not. It seems to me that here is a
great advance. We have realit}^ truth, vigor, feeling.
There is not, to be sure, the delicate handling of De
Ba'if ; not the conscientious form of Du Bellay ; but we
are with a more vigorous poet. Young Saint Amant
can give utterance in part to those thoughts which defy
language ; they are the thoughts of youth, those that
come when the mind is yet in the delicate chlorine green
of childhood, when all the world is a wonder, and the
imagination throws out long rays of light, like the first
bright streaks of the rising sun, to the four corners of
the earth. Would that the poet had preserved his
thoughts of youth and early manhood ! With him, as
with most of us, the temptations of the world, the flesh,
and the devil, came to beat down, crush, and kill. When
190 SAINT AMANT,
we look again, behold the flaming poppies and the
tares.
He is next at Belleisle, companion, dependent on the
Duke de Retz. Here he lives for many years, writing
songs and singing them, drinking and carousing. For
Saint Amant has taken to intemperate ways. It is re-
corded of him that he once sat out, with the Marquis of
Belleisle, a debauch of four-and-twenty hours. But the
voice of fame always exaggerates, and perhaps it was
only four hours after all. Leaving the Duke de Retz,
he went with another patron, the Count d'Harcourt,i
Admiral of the French fleet, on his voyages, seeing the
world and making observations. With him was Secre-
tary Furet, and they were all three, the admiral, the
secretary, and the poet, on the best possible terms with
each other. In the cabin, shut out from the ship, dis-
cipline was relaxed, and distinctions of rank merged in
the nicknames of good fellowship, the admiral being
le Rond, Furet le Vieux, and Saint Amant le Gros.
In 1638, he returned to Paris — no more of such
poems as the " Solitude " to be written there — and
made new friends. After the troubles of the Fronde
were over — Mazarin was good-natured to some of his
enemies — he won the good graces of Marie Gonzague,
Queen of Poland. He went with her to Poland, made
odes upon her whenever she happened to be in an in-
' This is the Count d'Harcourt of Conde's epigram, written when
he joined Mazarin : —
That soldier fat and short,
Renown'd in story,
The noble Count d'Harcourt,
. Brimful of glory,
Who raised Cazal and took Turin,
Is bailiff now to Mazarin.
HIS APPEARANCE, 191
teresting condition, and got a pension, with which he
returned to Paris. There he was made a gentilhomme
verrier, a glass manufacturer, — it was not considered
derogatory to a gentleman to pursue this calling — and
then, in spite of Boileau's lines —
Qu'arriva-t-il enfin de sa muse abusee ?
II en revint couvert de honte et de risee.
Et la fievre au retour terminant son destin
Fit par avance en lui ce qu'auroit fait la faim —
lived and died in considerable comfort.
Like Oliver Goldsmith, Tom Moore, Horace, and others
of the poetic vein, Gerard de Saint Amant was short of
stature, round and fat. See him as he stands at the
door of the " Fir Apple," waiting for his friend Furet to
come and clink glasses with him. He is fresh-colored
and sun-burnt, because he has been tanned by the sea-
breezes ; his eyes are soft, because he is a tender-hearted
creature ; his brqwn hair is curly — straight-haired men
are only imitators ; his face is broad and laughing, be-
cause he never harbors resentment against any living
soul ; his look is careless, because he takes no more
thought for the morrow than the sparrows ; there are no
crows'-feet about his eyes, though he is past forty,
because he has no troubles of his own and cares nothing
for other people's troubles. The pretty women pass up
and down the street, but the honest poet has no eyes for
beauty ; they may dress, if they please, for other young
fellows of forty-five, but he is too fat for love. And in
his hand he bears a lute, no allegorical thing which he,
the actor, may pretend to twang while the orchestra
plays, but a real serviceable lute, on which he discourses
sweet music. As he plays, see how his face changes
like a hill-side on an April day — from mirth to sadness,
from sadness to mirth ; for he has Saul-like fits of
melancholy which only the lute can dispel : —
192 SAINT AMANT.
When as to chase the thoughts of grief and pain
Which lie hke lead upon my aching brain,
I take my lute, and in its accents find
Content for sadness, rest for troubled mind.
My fingers, idly wandering here and there,
Sadden the cadence, sympathize the air ;
A thousand half-tones, tearful, sad, and clear.
Wake in long sighs and vibrate on the ear ;
Trembling they hover on the inspired string,
Weep with my tears and with my sorrows ring.
Their dying accents, as they fainter grow.
Singing laments for me, my life, my woe.
Only a musician could have written these lines — they
are real. His reality, indeed, is the one grand virtue
with Saint Amant, for he is never acting a part, and if
he laughs it is because he is merry ; if he weeps it is
because he is sad. To be sure, he is not often sad ; but
lest }^u should think from the examples that follow
that he was always singing of Bacchus and wine, read
the following, one of the earUest sonnets extant in praise
of tobacco : —
Upon a faggot seated, pipe in lips,
Leaning my head against the chimney wall.
My heart sinks in me, down my eyelids fall.
As all alone I think on life's eclipse.
Hope, that puts off to-morrow for to-day.
Essays to change my sadness for awhile "
And shows me with her kind and youthful smile
A fate more glorious than men's words can say.
Meantime the herb in ashes sinks and dies;
Then to its sadness back my spirit flies,
And the old troubles still rise up behind.
Live upon hope and smoke your pipe: all's one.
It means the same when life is passed and done;
One is but smoke, the other is but wind.
He was elected one of the earliest, not the first,
member of the French Academy (see p. 228), and was
excused the customary oration at introduction on prom-
POWERS OF DESCRIPTION. 193
ising to contribute to the dictionary all the burlesque
words. He promised, and contributed nothing, but so
got off his speech.
Whether he is writing humorous or serious verses,
he depends always on his powers of description. His
" Chambre du Dobauch^," which unfortunately must
not be translated, is almost startling in its fidelity. In
the " Rome Ridicule " he attacks, in what seems to us
to be bad taste, the enthusiasm of antiquaries, and the
rage for ancient monuments. The thing itself having
gone, or else diverted into other channels, we have lost
the sense of fun in laughing at it. That enthusiasm
which once hoped every thing from the classics, lingers
now only among those who hope every thing from the
remoter antiquities of Assyria and Egypt. For a cold
spirit of measurement as well as of doubt has crept in,
and while we no longer regard the Tiber with the ven-
eration of old, evon the Jordan has had its critics. But
in Saint Amant's days the scholars were a lively nuisance,
with their contempt for every thing not classical, their
slavery to ancient forms, their quarrels, and their
pedantry. Poor Saint Amant knew neither Latin nor
Greek — we have seen how he was too busy falling into
the Seine to learn either — and the memory of many an
indirect insult* envenomed the pen that wrote " Rome
Ridicule." He went to England and wrote a " heroi-
comique " ode on Albion, from which I gather that my
countrymen have improved in most particulars since
that year. He is a furious Cavalier, as were all French-
men, and calls the Puritans '' ces malignes Testes-
Rondes."
Ces Turcs out casse les vitres,
Croyant bien, en mesme temps,
De cent temples esclatants
En eifacer les saints litres.
13
194 SAINT AMANT.
It is time to give a specimen of his lighter verse.
The following is an ode, invocation, or address to
Bacchus : —
In idle rhymes we waste our days,
With yawning fits for all our praise,
While Bacchus, god of mirth and wine,
Invites us to a life divine.
Apollo, prince of bards and prigs,
May scrape his fiddle to the pigs;
And for the Muses, old maids all.
Why let them twang their lyres, and squall
Their hymns and odes on classic themes,
Neglected by their sacred streams.
As for the true poetic fire,
What is it but a mad desire ?
While Pegasus himself, at best,
Only a horse must be confess'd;
And he must be an ass indeed, /
Who would bestride the winged steed.
Bacchus, thou who watchest o'er
All feasts of ours, whom I adore
With each new draught of rosy wine
That makes my red face like to thine —
By thy ivied coronet.
By this glass with rubies set.
By thy thyrsus — fear of earth —
By thine everlasting mirth,
By the honor of the feast.
By thy triumphs, greatest, least.
By thy blows not struck, but drunk.
With king and bishop, priest and monk,
By the jesting, keen and sharp,
By the violin and harp.
By thy bells, which are but flasks.
By our sighs, which are but masks
Of mirth and sacred mystery,
By thy panthers fierce to see.
By this place so fair and sweet,
By the he-goat at thy feet,
INVOCATION TO BACCHUS, 195
By Ariadne, buxom lass,
By Silenus on his ass,
By this sausage, by this stoup,
By this rich and thirsty soup,
By this pipe from which I wave
All the incense thou dost crave,
By this ham, well spiced, long hung,
By this salt, and wood-smoked tongue,
Receive us in the happy band
Of those who worship glass in hand.
And, to prove thyself divine,
Leave us never without wine.
This invocation to the god of wine is followed b}*- the
liveliest, brightest letter possible to his friend Furet.
It simply invites him to leave Fontainebleau and return
to Paris. Here is some of it. Mark how he changes
his mood from grave to gay : —
But why from Paris art thou torn ?
Was it a sudden yearning, born
Of the sweet spring; once more to see
The rocks, the trees, the forest free,
The lake reflecting on its breast,
The foliage deep, the earth at rest.
And while the sky is warm and still
To mark how over tree and hill.
As if they dread the thunder near,
Vibrate the trembling waves of air;
To mark how in their wayward guise
Hover and flit the butterflies.
As bright as if they were indeed
The very flowers on which they feed?
Or else, alone, and pensive, while
You ponder 'neath the greenwood aisle
On some far back mysterious theme
Fit subject for a poet's dream.
To find some dark and sombre glen
Fitting your sadden'd soul, and then
Deep in the darkest shade to write
Verse worthy of the brightest light.
196 SAINT AMANT.
Is it for fancies grave or gay,
My friend, you leave us ? Prithee, say.
Furet, they cry, is absent yet
From tavern and from cabaret;
He rhymes no more of cups and wine —
Unworthy follower of the vine.
And Bacchus, king of me and thee,
By well-known law, hath made decree
Thou shall not drink, save that alone
Which flows along the Seine or Rhone.
Thou friend of water ? '■ — couldst ihou go,
For Paris taking Fontainebleau?
Paris — where Bacchus holds all hearts ;
Paris, where Coiffier ^ bakes his tarts;
Paris, where Cormier* hangs his sign,
An apple-tree that points to wine;
Paris, which offers to our eyes
Another apple ; ^ greater prize
Than that of gold, which by belief
Brought gods and goddesses to grief;
An apple from the tall fir-tree —
Thou know'st that it hath shelter'd thee.
Paris, that cemetery vast,
Where all our griefs are buried fast;
Paris, that little world, in short.
Of sweet delight and pleasant sport;
Paris, whose joys bring more content
Than heart can wish or brain invent.
Ha! see. My words begin to press,
You speak not, but your eyes confess : .
You cannot leave our Paris till
Yourself you leave, against your will.
Leave care to other, duller beads ;
Leave lakes to fish, to cows the meads ;
Let wild beasts watch for April showers ;
Let snails eat up the sweet wild flowers ;
And — bless me — now I mark your face, —
Once brimming o'er with mirthful grace, —
• A well-known restaurateur and confectioner.
^ A cabaret kept by Cormier, which means an " apple-tree."
* The sign of the " Fir Apple."
REPENTANCE. 197
I never saw a change so great :
Come back, come back, 'tis not too late.
For sure the air that suits you best
Where corks fly out and glasses clink;
Where singers sing and jesters jest,
Where waiters wait and drinkers drink;
Will please you more, I know, I know,
Than all the woods of Fontainebleau.
When Saint Amant grew old, the religious sentiment
awakened again within his soul, a phenomenon which
may be remarked in most of the portraits in our gallery.
Then, with the view to a more lasting fame than that to
be got from odes, and with an eye to the welfare of his
soul, he wrote a long epic called " Moyse Sauv^." This
published, and after a little happiness in calling himself
the Gros Virgile, the penitent poet sat down and died.
The less said about the epic the better : Burns, indeed,
might as well have tried to write an epic.
Hard and scornful things, from the stand-point of
morality, as well as that of art, may be said about Saint
Amant. He wrote things that he should not have
written ; he indulged in the habit of drinking to^ excess ;
he was a dependent ; he exercised no active virtues
whatever ; and when at last he repented, he was like
that Lancashire convert, who lamented his sins in the
well-known hymn —
I rept and I rore, I cursed and I swore :
Oh ! Lord, what a sinner I bead.
Yet, without too much special pleading, we may make
out a very fair case for him. He is good-nature itself —
Frenchmen to be sure are nearly always good-natured ;
he has not a single enemy ; his laugh is contagious ; his
voice is so musical that his verses, when he reads them,
ring in the ears like the accents of the Psalmist ; his
soul is touched by all things in nature ; when he strikes
198 SAINT AMANT.
the lute he brings the tears into his hearers' eyes — and
his own too ; if he goes into the country he marks the
things that only a poet discerns ; if into the town, he
has eyes to note the contrasts, and a pen to write them
down. In his tavern, with the eliquetis of the glasses
round him, amid the fumes of the wine and the tobacco,
he can write sweetly, naturally, delicately. Then,
though he is a dependant, he is never a parasite. A
gentleman he is born, a gentleman he remains, and, like
a gentleman, he will not descend to abuse a religion
which he respects, though he does not practise it ; and
he has one of those rare and happy natures which seem
to require no effort for the maintenance of self-respect.
Nature gave him the poetic instinct. He had no rules
of art, because he never studied, but his taste was cor-
rect. It is a pity that we have no self-written record of
those younger days when doubtless he was sometimes
in love. One wants to know something more of the
mind of Saint Amant. Only, these poets do so exag-
gerate and deck out the passion of love that we, poor
creatures of clay, are dazzled and confused, never know-
ing how far they are real, and are led to confound our
own deepest emotions with the passing fancy of a poet
for an Amaryllis in the shade.
Chapter X.
VOITURE AND BENSERADE.
A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight. — Tioelfth Night,
T ET us leave the cabarets and go into decent society,
-"-^ even the very best, that of Madame de Ram-
bouillet, Madame de Longueville, and Ang(ilique Paulet,
"la Lionne." We are to wander now along the leafy
avenues of Chantilly, and sit in the blue room of the
HOtel de Rambouillet. No profane and violent words
will be heard here, nor any of those things which agitate
the human heart outside ; no love — that is, no passion ;
nothing rude, coarse, or harsh. We are in the highest
circle possible, calm, placid, Avell fed, with the court
poets.
There were other poets of society, but the two I have
selected are foremost : these two may be taken as the
perfect types of their kind. They are the pattern,
the envy of all the rest. They write songs for ballets,
the prettiest and most ingenious possible. They address
odes to ladies' eyes, to ladies' lips, to ladies' noses ;
write sonnets to ladies' lapdogs — and to their husbands ;
they manufacture verses for bouts-rimes; they write
lines for the maids of honor separately and collec-
tively ; they devote all their lives, these benevolent
persons, to promoting the gayety and amusement of
their fellow-creatures.
200 VOITURE AND BENSERADE.
Benserade, for his part, had no life to speak of. That
is to say, it was a life all of the same color, in which
any one week was a sample of all the rest. His father
was ?i'procureur2X Gisors, his mother being able to claim
kinship in some way with Cardinal Richelieu. The
young man was going up to Paris, was introduced to
the notice of the great minister, and taking orders ^ by
way of assuring his future, obtained some place or pen-
sion in acknowledgment of certain dramatic successes,
and probably thought it best to say little about cousin-
ship till the minister died. When this lamentable event,
which drove many hundreds of hungry dramatists, poets,
and artists adrift, took place, Benserade, with the rest,
lost his pension. He then attached himself to the Duke
de Breze, and remained with him till he w^as killed in
the wars two or three years afterwards. After this he
returned to Paris, and found favor with the Queen
Dowager and Cardinal Mazarin. From them he got
half a dozen pensions, and, as the story-books say, lived
happy ever after.
A man of polished manners, not an open profligate
like Boisrobert, or a drunkard like Chapelle ; nor an
atheist like Bautru ; a man who in spite of continual
amourettes gave little cause for scandal to his cloth:
^ We may partly understand this readiness to take orders with
no other call than the call of hunger, by the following extract from
the ♦' Turkish Spy." " There are," he says, " in France, 12 arch-
bishoprics, 104 bishoprics ; convents of the greater order, 540 ; con-
vents of the lesser order, 12,320; abbeys, 1,450; nunneries, 67;
708 friaries, 259 seminaries of the Order of the Knights of Malta,
27,400 parish churches, 540 hospitals, and 9,000 private chapels or
oratories. To fill all these, they reckon 226,000 religious, besides
130,000 priests." And this state of things lasted till the Revo-
lution !
COURAGE OF BENSERADE, 201
one whose delight was to haunt salons and ruelles^ to sit
among ladies, read them his poems, hear their praises,
and pay them compliments, one whose whole pleasure
was in social success, to say an occasional good thing,
and to hear it repeated everj^where, as the latest bon-
mot of Benserade the witty, Benserade the ingenious.
Surrounded as man always is by things of which
his tastes and inclinations disapprove, prevented by all
sorts of hedges from going his own way, one is pre-
pared to hear that our abba's life was not altogether
free from the cares and troubles which affect less
fortunate men. It might have been, for instance, mat-
ter of self-congratulation to him, as a priest, that he
loved not those excitements which are accompanied by
danger. But it was unfortunate that malicious persons,
Scarron for instance, could tell of him how, being once
with the Duke of Brdz^ in a naval engagement, hie was
found in the hold .crouched among the casks, bellowing
like Panurge, and how some kind friend maliciously
pointing out to him that he was in the most dangerous
part of the ship, he cried in an ecstasy of 1;error, *' Alas I
alas ! where then shall I hide myself? "
Again, once he was promoted to the embassy to
Stockholm, but in the midst of his pride at this prefer-
ment, it was taken away from him.
The disappointment alone was enough, without Scar-
ron making the event, as he did, the most important of
the year, speaking of it as the year when
• . . . le sieur de Benserade
N'alla point en son ambassade.
Another disagreeable incident in his life may be men-
tioned to show the instability of a satirist's power, and
the great danger, after he has established a laugh, of
202 VOITURE AND BENSERADE.
laughing himself " the wrong side of his mouth." For
he permitted himself not only to write poems to the
ladies of the court, but also on them. And once, insti-
gated by the Evil One, he produced the following epi-
gram on Madame de Chatillon : —
Chastillon, gardez vos appas
Pour quelque autre conqueste,
Si vous estes preste
Le Roy ne I'est pas;
Avecque vous il cause,
Mais, en verite,
II faut quelque autre chose
Pour vostre beauts
Qu'une minorite.
" Really," said the lady, " I am excessively obliged
to you, M. de Benserade, for making this pretty little
song about me." " And really, M. de Benserade," said
her husband, " if it ever happens to you to speak of
Madame de Chatillon again, I will break every bone
in your body." The bones in his body were not broken,
because he refrained for the future, but this kind of
thing is unpleasant in more than one way. It is apt to
take the spirit out of the satirist, especially if he be
deficient in physical courage, to cramp his flight, to limit
his field, and then, which is as bad, it makes other
people laugh. Scarron, for example, named another
year as —
L'an que le Sieur de Benserade
Fut menace de bastonnade.
In his capacity as court poet and wit, Benserade had
a formidable rival in Voiture, whose verses were at
least as good as his own, and whose personal attractions
were greater. For Voiture was a handsome, well-
made, dapper little man, full of life, spirits, and
BADINAGE. 203
mischief; the licensed favorite of everybody, and per-
mitted by the ladies to take as many liberties as he
pleased. Once in the presence of the Princess de Bour-
bon, feeling cold in the toes, he pulled off his shoes,
and warmed his feet at the fire. Once, too, thinking it
would be a capital joke, he put a couple of bears into
the bedroom of Madame de Rambouillet, frightening the
poor lady nearly to death. Another time he knocked
up the Count de Guiche at two in the morning, and
when he appeared awake and dressed told him gravely
that knowing the interest which the count took in his
afPairs, he had called to let him know he was thinking
of being married.
The circle of Madame de Rambouillet was far, indeed,
from being dull or reserved. Pedantic, after the fashion
of the age in literary matters, and of doubtful taste, in
its social side it was full of life, laughter, and enjoyment.
They asked for a perpetual variety in conversation ;
they aimed at those little subtleties of wit which evade
translation, even if they bear to be written down at
all ; they made great fuss and importance out of very
little things ; they studied the art of badinage, knowing
above all when to stop. Voiture was a perfect master
of the art. For instance, Madame de Rambouillet
having declared herself an admirer of King Gustavus
Adolphus, he sent her a letter brought by six gentle-
men disguised as Swedes, pretending to be from the
king ; and when he was in Algiers he wrote to Ang^-
lique Paulet, called by her friends, la Lionne, in the
name of " Leonard, keeper of the lions of the King of
Morocco."
It was a life of trifling, if you please, but the trifling
was elegant, innocent, and pure. No circle ever ex-
isted which was more harmless, more useful as an
204 VOITURE AND BENSERADE.
example, than that of this celebrated hotel. They could
have, and did have, their little breezes, tempers, and
jealousies. Where two or three women are gathered
together, these may be looked for. But they pulled
well together, and loved each other, madame, her
daughters, Madame de Longueville, and the divine
Ang^lique, with a strange affection. Above all, they
would have nothing discourteous, nothing rough, nothing
unmannerly, nothing coarse. The only thing out of place
in the blue room was Chapelain with his old coat and
unwashed linen. The only person permitted to take
liberties was Voiture, who could do what he pleased
anywhere ; who, besides, was to be trusted not to go
too far. It was a great educational establishment,
whither repaired the rough unruly lords of the court,
fresh from the country, to learn that there are things
to be respected as well as a scutcheon, reputations
other than a title can confer, and things that may be
made the subject of mirth, other than those bawled in
the cabarets and whispered in the corridors.
But full of tricks, quaint jests, espi^glerie. Once
Voiture brought Madame de Rambouillet a sonnet which
he considered better than any thing he had ever done
before. " I think," said the lady, taking it, " that I
have seen it already." He assured her that she was
mistaken, because the sonnet was bran new ; but the
next day she showed him his own sonnet printed in
a hook. He was confounded. He read it again and
again ; repeated his own lines to himself ; compared
them, and finally put it down to an extraordinary freak
of memory, which had led him to write out a poem he
had read and remembered, thinking he was composing
it himself. He went about telling everybody of this
singular accident, till Madame de Rambouillet confessed
TOSSED IN A BLANKET. 205
that she had herself got the sonnet printed from his
own copy, and imposed it upon him as an old one. Of
all practical jokes, surely the most amusing and the
most harmless.
On another occasion, Voiture had been sent to amuse
Mile, de Bourbon (afterwards Madame de Longueville),
who was suffering from some indisposition. He was
not in his usual spirits that day, and only succeeded in
making her more melancholy. The Rambouillet ladies
pretended to be extremely angry with him for his
failure, and actually — but read his own account of
his punishment, written to the lady herself, who had
left Paris.
I was, he says, tossed in a blanket^ on Friday after dinner
because I had not succeeded in making you laugh in the time given
me. Madame de Rambouillet gave judgment on the matter at the
request of her daughter and Mile. Paulet. They had intended to
defer execution till your return, but considered afterwards that it
was not right to put oif punishment so long, nor to a time wholly
given up to joy. It was no use crying out, the blanket was brought,
and four of the strongest men in the world chosen to perform the
execution. What I can assure you, mademoiselle, is, that no one
ever flew up so high as I. I doubt whether I deserved that Fortune
should raise me to so great an elevation. At each toss, I rose clean
out of their sight, higher than the eagles fly, with the mountains
flattened out beneath me, and the winds and clouds rolled below
' Tossing in a blanket was then a favorite amusement, now
happily gone out of fashion, with other pursuits that required
more evenness of temper than our ancestors have bequeathed to
us. Thus Saint Amant writes of this pastime : —
Tenez bien, roidissez les coings.
Y estes-vous ? serrez les poings,
Et faisons sauter jusqu'aux nues
Par des secousses continues,
Sans crier jamais, " C'est assez ! "
Ny que nos bras la soient lassez,
Cette sorciere a triple ^tage.
206 VOITURE AND BENSERADE.
my feet. At this extraordinary elevation I discovered countries of
which I knew nothing, and seas of which I had never heard. You
can imagine nothing so diverting as thus to get a whole half of the
world si3read out before your eyes. But it is not, I assure you,
mademoiselle, without a certain anxiety that we observe all these
things, because it is im^Dossible to forget the coming down again.
One of the things which frightened me most while high in the air,
was the looking down and seeing how small the blanket appeared
and how imj)ossible it seemed to fall back into it. This naturally
caused me some emotion. Among other curious objects that I saw
there was one, however, which took away all fear from me. It was
when, turning my eyes towards Piedmont, I discerned yourself,
mademoiselle, at Lyons, crossing the Saone. At least I saw on the
water a great light, with many rays round the most lovely face in
the world. Directly I came down I told them what I had seen.
Would you believe it ? They only laughed, and tossed me up
again higher than ever.
To be tossed in a blanket, and after dinner, would
be more than enough to disturb the equanimity — and
digestion — of any degenerate man of modern days. Yet
Voiture actually went through this misery with hilarity,
and pretended to lik'e it. No doubt the kind ladies only
put him gently in the blanket and made belief to toss
him. Had they meant really to do it, I am sure it would
have been done before dinner.
Voiture's poems are purely vers de societe, written for
the occasion, not eveii corrected, as he pretended, at all
events, not polished. There is not a single one of them
serious. All are light, frothy, sparkling. So are those
of Benserade. Vers de societe, like port, champagne,
coffee, and many other excellent things, are only good
when fresh. With the years the aroma disappears, and
the readers of this century may well ask for the causes
of their popularity two hundred years ago. To under-
stand that, you must know the times and the men.
Then you will see in these little frivolous sketches in-
LANDRIRETTE. 207
genuity of phrase, lightness of style, a delicate toning
of flattery — not too strong, observe, but laid on in soft
and insidious tints which do not at first catch the eye,
but presently please it insensibly ; half shades of praise
and sarcasm, love-making behind a mask, a certain air
of confidential relationship with the reader, as one of a
privileged set, and a series of little asides — all these
are in Voiture and Benserade, and make them, once you
know them and their circle and themselves, readable, if
not worth reading. Do not, however, carry away the
impression that I recommend you to read them, if your
time is valuable. At least they are pure and innocent.
Some of Voiture has been translated. It was a
hundred and fifty years ago and more. The ingenious
gentleman who did it was un nommS Webster. I may
fairly say that there exist no translations of any poem or
set of poems so utterly and miserably bad as these. One
says so without ill-nature, because the author is pre-
sumably dead, unless indeed he was the Wandering Jew,
who was a good deal about Western Europe at that
time, frequently taking supper, for instance, with the
Turkish spy.
Mr. Webster's failure was not altogether his fault,
except that he overestimated his powers. How can
you translate, for instance, the following verses — written
to Mile. Bourbon at Chantilly, to a popular air of the
day?~
Madame, vous trouverez bon
Qu'on vous derive sur le ton
De Landrirette,
Qui court maintenant k Paris,
Landriri.
Votre absence nous abat tons:
Quelques-uns en sont demi-fous,
Landrirette :
208 VOITURE ANDBENSERADE,
Les autres n'en sont qu'^tourdis,
Landriri.
Du point de votre ^loignement
L'hiver s'approche ^ tout moment,
Landrirette ;
Et les beaux jours sont accourcis,
Landriri.
L'on est ici fort tristement;
Tout notre divertissement,
Landrirette,
Est de chanter a qui s'ensuit,
Landriri.
En grace, en beautds, en attraits
Nulle n'^galera jamais,
Landrirette,
La divine Montmorency,
Landriri.
Among the hangers-on at the hStel was an unfortu-
nate poet named Neufgermain, a source of perpetual
amusement and ridicule to all of them. Voiture the
ingenious imagined one day a rebellion of all those
letters of the alphabet which had not the honor of
forming part of the name of this great and famous bard,
Jupiter attempts to appease the commotion : —
Well you know, illustrious band.
Servants eve.' true and tried
(Yours the aid that in my hand
Placed the sceptre and the pride).
Consultation long we had
Ere that noble name we made.
By a forethought quite divine.
In the name, whose echoes sound
Like a trumpet clear and fine,
Vowels four their place have found.
But, my consonantal friends,
Here my godlike forethought ends.
NEUFGERMAIN. 209
B and C -with S and L,
P and T with them combined,
Share of glory claim as well
In this name a place to find;
Even, I regret to say,
Useless Q must join the fray.
B, who makes our Blessings real,
B, without whose potent arm
Beauty we could never feel ;
C, too, queen of every Charm,
Swear to seek the shades below.
If they must this fame forego.
Then comes P, with haughty eye —
He alone makes half a Pope —
Prayer gives up and Piety
If we grant him not his hope;
Nothing more remains but this —
Patience — with Paralysis.
T comes next — and this is grave —
For our Thunder T doth lead,
Threatens too our ranks to leave;
Why, if P and T secede,
Power and Thunder both are gone.
Leaving us an empty throne.
Come then, be contented all,
Nothing else I see but this.
Call him — as the letters fall,
See you, each, that none doth miss —
Call him, though the name be quaint,
Sir Bdelneufghermicropsant.
Mademoiselle de Bourbon said that Voiture ought to
be preserved in sugar ; his portrait at least is drawn in
honeyed sweetness by Mile, de Scud^ri, in the " Grand
Cyrus," under the name of Callicrates : —
The third was a man of humble birth, named Callicrates, who
by his esjprit was raised to terms of equality with whatever there
was of greatness at Paphos, both among ladies and men. He wrote
14
210 VOITURE AND BENSERADE.
agreeably in verse and prose, and in a style so gallant and unusual
that it might almost be said that he invented it : at least I know
that no one has ever imitated it, and I think that no one ever will,
for out of the purest trifle he would produce a delightful letter, and
out of the most sterile subject, the lowest, the most common, he
would produce something agreeable and briUiant. His conversation
was very diverting on certain days, but it was unequal, and there
were moments when he wearied the world as much as it wearied
him. In fact there was a delicacy in his intellect which might
almost be called caprice, so excessive was it. His person was not
remarkably well made, but he made the open profession of gal-
lantry, . . .
If Voiture loved anybody it was Ang^lique Paulet,
" la Lionne," but I think he gave up the idea of marriage
very early. His birth prevented him from marrying any
of the ladies he met in his circle, and his inclinations
prevented him from marrying beneath that rank. He
was a gambler, and, unlike Benserade, was as pugna-
cious as a terrier, always ready to fight. He died young,
before he was forty years of age.
After the death of Voiture, Benserade wrote his cele-
brated " Job " sonnet. It was prefixed to a poetical
paraphrase of that poem, and compared his own suffer-
ings and patience with those of the great Sheikh, with
a leaning in favor of himself. Of course it occurred to
nobody that there was bad taste in this. The sonnet,
not the paraphrase — the Book of Job not being favorite
reading — was at first immensely admired. Everybody
read it, and everybody went into raptures over it, until,
in an evil moment, somebody asked the question whether
it was better than Voiture's sonnet to Uranie. The
question was like the golden apple, for it produced angry
battles, the consumption of oceans of ink, bad tempers,
and much disputation. Parties were formed and sides
taken. The Prince de Conti headed the party of the
SONNETS. 211
Jobelins, or supporters of Benserade ; his sister, Madame
de Longueville, was the chief of the Uranians. Then
— but why write the history of the squabble ? You
will find it in the chronicles of the times.
Only, as I am quite sure the two sonnets have never
yet been put together in an English form, let me, in
rivalry with the late Mr. Webster, give you the two.
The first is Voiture's : —
It rests, to end with love of Uranie,
Absence nor time may cure me of this pain ;
Nothing to help, nothing to ease, I see,
Nothing to win my liberty again.
Long time I know her rigor, but I think
Still on her beauty — wherefore I must die;
Content I fall, blessing my doom I sink.
Nor aught against her tyrant rigor cry.
But sometimes Reason feebly lifts her voice,
Bids me throw off this thraldom, and rejoice:
Then when I listen, and her aid would prove,
After all efforts spent, in mere despair,
She says that Uranie alone is fair.
And, more than all my senses, bids me love.
That is Voiture.
Now hear the gallant Abb^ : —
Job, with a thousand troubles cursed,
Here shows you what his troubles were,
And as he goes from worse to worst,
Asks for your sympathetic tear.
Behold his story, simple, plain,
Told by himself for your fair eyes:
And steal your heart to watch the pain
Of one who suffers, one who sighs.
Yet think — although he suffer'd much,
His troubles great, his patience such —
That some may still more patient be ;
212 VOITURE AND BENSERADE.
To all the listening world he groaned,
His pains to every friend bemoaned ;
I, silent, suffer more than he.
For my own part, I think the two sonnets, in trans-
lation at least, of equal merit. Let us give them an
" Honorary Fourth."
Voiture died in 1648. Benserade not till many years
later. At seventy he posed a theatrical farewell to
Love : —
Adieu, fortune, honneurs: adieu, vous et les votres,
Je viens ici tout oublier:
Adieu, toi-merae, Amour; bien plus que tous les autres
Difficile a congedier.
Then he retired to his little house at Chantilly, where
he paraphrased Psalms, read madrigals, wrote sonnets on
his trees, and odes on every thing. Like the trees them-
selves, they have all perished and we regret them no
more. At the advanced age of eighty-one he died, being
killed by the bungling of a surgeon who cut an artery,
and then ran away, leaving him to bleed to death.
Senec^ wrote an epitaph for him : —
Three marvellous gifts had this wonderful man,
Posterity, read, and believe if you can;
He was satirist, yet had no hatred to fear,
For his satire, was liked none the worse;
He was ever in love till his eightieth year,
And found fortune in writing of verse.
Chapter XI.
THE PARASITES.
You see how all conditions, how all minds
(As well of glib and slippery creatures as
Of grave and austere quality) tender down
Their services to Lord Timon. — Timon of Athens.
npHE French nobles of the seventeenth century
-*- invented a method of beguiling the tedium of
life quite peculiar to themselves, greatly superior to
the old plan of keeping a fool, and illustrative of their
stage of civilization. They kept a scholar. The quali-
fications necessary for any candidate for this office were
good manners, scholarship, an unfailing stock of high
spirits, power of repartee, discretion, so as to know
when to stop, the power of writing vers d^occasion, and
the gift of 'mimicry. The emoluments of the post were
a free run of the table, a pension of so many crowns,
according to the liberality and means of the chief, and
a charge upon some priory, abbey, or other ecclesiasti-
cal endowment. When the chief ceased to laugh, or
ceased to breathe, the pension would go, but the bene-
fice remained.
If the nobles thought it creditable thus to make use
of a scholar, the scholars themselves thought it ex-
tremely honorable to enact the part of the courtly
buffoon. Saint Amant, we have seen, was " protected '*
by one great man after another. But he was a depend-
ant of quite a different order, being ever a gentleman,
214 THE PARASITES.
a soldier, possessed of family pride, of self-respect. The
parasites are of the gown, not of the sword. They are
lower in social rank, they have no idea of the dignity
of man, they are of inferior genius, and save that their
influence, political as well as social, was in a few cases
quite out of proportion to their abilities, hardly deserve
a notice at all. There are two of them all, however,
who stand out from the rest, both men of importance in
their own day, both privileged buffoons, both represent-
ative men of their order, both so far snatched by the
historian from oblivion as to present a forcible example
of the virtues, the nobility, the elevation of character,
generated by a life of flatteries and dependence. One
of them was the privileged buffoon of the Duke de
Richelieu; the other, a much smaller creature, of the
little humpback Armand de Bourbon, Prince de Conti,
and brother of the great Cond^.
Let us begin with the latter as the less important.
His name was Jean-Fran9ois Sarasin, and he was the
son of a certain treasurer of finance, born at Caen in
the year 1604. Studies finished and parents dead, he
turned his property, worth 30,000 livres, into cash, and
removed to Paris. He was introduced by Angelique
Paulet to Madame de Pambouillet, and being an ex-
tremely clever, amusing young fellow, was made a good
deal of in the circles where Voiture and Benserade
already reigned. Here, too, he met Anne de Bourbon,
afterwards Duchess of Longueville, then the most rest-
less, the most ambitious, the most clever woman of her
time. Among the other friends of the period was
Manage, at whose Saturdays he was a constant attend-
ant, Charleval, Pellisson, and Scuddri, both the vain-
glorious George and his sister. At the outset Sarasin
proposed to himself the life of a man of letters, coupled
SARASIN. 215
with such pleasures as Paris only can afford. He
began by a " Dissertation on Chess," a '' History of
the Siege of Dunkirk," that of the " Conspiracy of Val-
stein," a bundle of Latin verses, and such like small
matters, equal in bulk, probably, to the life-work of one
of these degenerate times, but nothing in the eyes of
such producers of folios as the scholars of his time.
Scholarship alone is not an expensive occupation ;
but when you combine with letters the amusements of
a man about town, a capital of 30,000 livres is apt to
melt with astonishing rapidity. This was exactly the
case with Sarasin. He found himself one day without
a penny.
By this time, however, he had made friends. One of
these, M. de Chavigny, knowing the man's genius, per-
suaded him to go to Rome, and see what he could get
from Pope Urban VIII., always ready to welcome French
men of letters. He further lent Sarasin 4000 francs
to pay his expenses. The poet took the money, but in-
stead of going to Rome with it, spent it with a " lady
of the Rue Quincampoix," turning up again when it
was all gone.
Some men get very early in life a fatal reputation for
irresponsibility. What in others is dishonesty, treachery,
falsehood, is in them proof of a sweet, innocent, child-
like character, which only sins because it knows not the
world. That Sarasin was false, dishonest, treacherous,
never seems to have struck his friends as worthy their
condemnation. It was all part of the joke, part of
Sarasin's character. So, when he appropriated the
4000 francs, everybody laughed, including M. de Cha-
vigny, and said it was capital, just like Sarasin, exactly
what he might have been expected to do.
He then, with that ostentation of self-interest which
216 V THE PARASITES,
marks his type, married for money. Finding that his
wife gave him none, he first neglected, and finally left
her, making epigrams upon her age, her ugliness, her
bad temper, and her miserly habits. Probably the
poor woman wished only to keep her house together and
herself from ruin ; perhaps her temper had its provoca-
tions ; perhaps she was not so ugly as her husband rep-
resented her. Anyhow Madame Sarasin languished and
scolded at home, while her husband enjoyed himself
in the great world, being now a habitue of the court
of the Princess de Bourbon, mother of Condd, Conti,
and the Duchess de Longueville. The fetes of Chantilly
and the society of all these lords and ladies had for
Sarasin a charm which no domestic felicity could com-
pete with. It was at Chantilly that he read his one
good poem, the '* Pompe Funebre de Voiture." It was
here, too, that he read his famous Sonnet on Eve. This
really does deserve being rescued from oblivion. I leave
it in French, because it would inevitably spoil by any
translation of mine : —
Lorsqu'Adam vit cette jeune beaute,
Faite pour lui d'une main immortelle,
S'il I'aima fort, elle, de eon cote,
(Dont bien nous prit) ne lui fut point cruelle.
Cher Charleval, alors en verite
Je crois qu^il fut une femme fidele.
Mais comme quoi ne I'aurait-elle ^te?
Elle n'avait qu'un seul homme avec elle.
Or en cela nous nous trompons tous deux ;
Car, bien qu' Adam fut jeune et vigoureux,
Bien fait de corps et d'esprit agreable,
Elle aima mieux, pour s'en faire conter,
Preter I'oreille aux fleurettes du Diable,
Que d'etre femme et ne pas coqueter.
It was also to please Madame de Longueville that he
A MIMIC. 217
entered into the famous " Job " controversy, and wrote
a " Glose " of fourteen verses, every one of which ends
with one of the lines of the sonnet.
He was already, though this was a talent not yet
fully cultivated, a mimic of some reputation. " Preach
like a Cordelier," Madame de Longueville would order
him. Then would he fold his hands and preach like
a Cordelier. " Now like a Capuchin." And then like
a Capuchin.
We read no more of historical dissertations, or Latin
poems. Quite another style of literature was demanded
at Chantilly, and Sarasin was engaged in such courtly
erotics as the following : —
Tircis, tell me why your lovers
All alike in wooing are ?
Weeping, sighing,
Sohhing, crying,
Love-locks tearing,
And despairing.
Do they think that women care
For a man who can't he gay,
When the Loves, that children are,
Nothing do but laugh all day?
Or this, which is lighter still : —
To call her an angel —
YourPhillis —
I must say, my friend,
Very ill is.
New comparisons seek
Till you've got one ;
For angels I know,
And she's not one.
I own she is graceful,
■ Your Phillis,
But no more divine
Thau the lilies :
218 THE PARASITES.
These extravagant praises,
Get free of them,
For angels I know;
Know three of them.
It was a pleasant time, this of Chantilly, before the
Fronde came and all the circle was broken up. With
the Fronde began, not so much the evil days of Sa-
rasin, as the days of his real degradation. Hitherto,
he had been a favorite, a court poet, an amateur actor,
but always in a position which allowed him self-respect.
Henceforth he is to be a professional buffoon, a secret
spy, and a traitor. For he entered into the service of
Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, nominally as his
secretary, actually as his amuser. The prince was a
hunchback, with an inordinate ambition to be thought
a general ; he was also a libertine who had periodical
fits of repentance and morose piety. On such occasions
he and the secretaries would spend whole days at
church services, the secretaries, openly very devout,
winking at each other behind his back, anxious only
that the mood should pass. He was also jealous, sus-
picious, and irritable. Not the best sort of prince to
get on with; and Sarasin had need of all his tact and
power of comedy to menager his man.
Part of the life of Sarasin belongs now to the history
of France. For it was he who secretly negotiated with
Mazarin about the hand of his niece for the prince ; he
it was who stood between the prince and Madame de
Longueville ; he it was who told all the lies, betrayed
one trust after another ; he it was who endeavored to
rule the prince through his mistresses. Once or twice
he got found out. A letter which he had written to
Mazarin beginning, '' This little hunchback who calls
himself a general," was intercepted and brought to the
SARASIN'S END. 219
prince, who naturally enough found the commence-
ment ungrateful ; Sarasin was ordered from liis presence,
but a few days afterwards he came back again, and was
reinstated in favor. On another occasion, the prince
finding his affairs in the greatest disorder, looked every-
where for help, even asking his own servants to advance
him money. Sarasin declared, smiting his breast, that
all he had in the world was the prince's, but that un-
fortunately he had not a sou. Shortly after, the prince
found out that he had made a little purse of 20,000
livres which he kept back and said nothing about.
There was, as might be expected, more unpleasantness
about this.
Tlie end of this man was worthy of his life. He was
poisoned by an offended husband at the age of forty-
three. The prince, his master, was for an hour or two
profoundly afflicted, being relieved from his grief by a
troop of comedians* who played before him in the even-
ing. One man only mourned for him ; Pellisson the
plain, Pellisson the faithful, made a pilgrimage to
Pezenas and wept over his grave. Pellisson was a Prot-
estant, but thinking it well to lose no possible chances
in favor of his friend, he paid money for masses to be
said for the rest of his soul. It would certainly seem
as if the soul of Sarasin wanted every little help that
his friends could afford.
But we soar to a higher flight, and turn to contem-
plate and admire one of the greatest men that his gen-
eration saw. Great in his buffooneries, great in his
flatteries, great in his vices, he was, perhaps, greater
than all in his utter and absolute freedom from any
single one of those qualities which ordinarily go to
make a man respected. Their absence it is which calls
220 THE PARASITES. '
for the world's admiration in Francois le Metel de
Boisrobert.
He was a churchman, with no belief ; he owned the
finest wit in the world, and used it all for buffoonery ;
he was a profligate stained with every vice of his time
— a much worse time, on the whole, than our own;
he was a gambler and a drunkard ; he was as full of
tricks as Panurge ; he was as worthless as any habit-
ual criminal ; he had not common honesty ; he had no
scruples of honor, conscience, or principle. If he had
any good quality at all it was in a. sentimental leaning
towards generosity, for like most luxurious men he did
not like the sight of distress, which annoyed his sense
of ease. And he had one great gift ; he was not only
the best mimic of the time, but he was a fine and
finished actor. Added to this, he had an unlimited
supply of good spirits, a resolution always to accept the
situation and make the best of it, and a power of wit
and repartee which would make the fortune of a modern
novelist. His function in life, to make people laugh ;
his ambition, to go on getting plenty to eat and drink ;
his dread, that he might find the supplies run short.
It is not good to be a buffoon ; few positions in life are
more incompatible with dignity than those of clown and
pantaloon ; but it is good to have buffoons. Voltaire
says : —
Tous les gens gais ont le don precieux
De mettre en bon train tous les gens serieux.
Boisrobert was born at Caen in Normandy in the year
1592, his father having been a procureui\ and his mother
a woman of some pretensions to nobility, so that, as he
tells us, there were conjugal squabbles on the inferiority
of the husband's position. His father brought him up to
BOISROBERT, 221
the bar ; he was called, and had begun to plead, when in
1616, then only twenty-four years of age, he suddenly
gave up the profession and went to Paris. The reason
of this abrupt ending to his professional career was some
scandal connected with a young person and two babies.
The barrister was interrupted in the midst of an elo-
quent harangue in the courts by the appearance of
the lady, and her loudly expressed opinions as to his
conduct ; and as, though silenced once, she returned
again to the attack, the scandal was too great to be
endured, and he fled. Scandal, however, though not
about this misadventure, ran after him, and never left
him so long as he breathed these upper airs.
In Paris, and no longer pleading before the courts,
he could reckon on being safe from this persecutor at
least, and possibly, being still very young, he was able
actually to form good resolutions for the future. It is
charitable to suppose so, though the good resolutions
met the fate that generally attends these children, of
sorrow. He managed to get introduced at court and
among the great nobles, then an exceedingly easy mat-
ter, provided one had certain credentials of scholarship,
good spirits, and poetry. Presently, however, there
stared him in the face the difliculty of paying his way.
First of all, and as a stop-gap, he hit upon a device
which was as novel as it was ingenious. He went
about among his patrons asking not for money, but for
books with which to complete his library. These were
freely given, and as fast as he got them he sold them,
clearing, as we are told, five or six thousand francs by
the transaction. " The only life possible for a poet," .
says the author of the '' Roman Bourgeois," " is to haunt
the court, the ruelles^ and the academies ; to send letters
to all the great men, to compose verses for the maids
222 . THE PARASITES.
of honor, and to write ballets." This was exactly
Boisrobert's opinion. He began by haunting the court
and writing verses for the ladies, and then went on to
write the libretto for the court ballets.
The ballet, originally an Italian invention, was then
an entertainment in great vogue among great people,
and offered opportunities for display of dancing, sing-
ing, and little gallantries. It consisted of five acts,
each containing therein six, nine, or even twelve entrees,
every entree carrying on the action with a dance and
a song. In 1623, Boisrobert, with Theophile and two
or three others as collahorateurs^ brought out his first
ballet. Before this he had been attached to the court
of Marie de Medicis, at Blois, for whom he engaged to
w]']'te a translation of the " Pastor Fido."
In 1625 he went to England with Madame de
Chevreuse on the occasion of the marriage of Henrietta
with Charles the First. Here he made an enemy in
the person of Lord Holland, first by calling the climate
of England barbarous, which, if it had been this year,
1872-73, might have been pardoned by the greatest
patriot; and, secondly, through a trick of Madame de
Chevreuse, who hid the king and Lord Holland behind
the tapestry, and then made Boisrobert mimic the latter,
which he did only two well.
Four or five years later he made the greatest mis-
take that a man can possibly commit ; for he took orders,
being w^holly unfit for the work. He got preferment,
it is true, but he paid the penalty through life of a
false position ; and his ecclesiastical garb sat upon him
about as easily and as comfortably as that leaden cowl
which adorns certain souls in Dante's Hell. He was
ordained by the Pope, who laid hands upon him sud-
denly, and without that inquiry into his morals which
CANON OF ROUEN. 223
is thought proper in the Anglican Church ; for from
the very first moment of receiving the tonsure to his
death, Boisrobert was a disgrace to his order.
I)Ut the Pope was a man of letters, and fallible on
the literary side. When, three years, later, the young
priest obtained a canonry at Rouen, his friends ex-
horted him to observe a certain amount of decorum,
pointing out the necessity of outward seeming in a
beneficed ecclesiastic ; he listened, laughed, and did not
reform, going to Rouen as seldom as he possibly could,
cursing the day when he left Paris, and every day that
he was absent. He managed to scandalize his chapter
while down there, by having the audacity to promise
a young lady who was ill one day that the cathedral
bells should be silent. Now of all days in the year it
was that of the Nativity of the Virgin, and you might
just as well ask the Dean of Westminster to silence his
bells on Christmas Day, because on that day they were
accustomed and privileged to make a great deal more
noise than usual. The indignant chapter ordered every
available bell to be set ringing all day long, and then
laid an interdict on the offender. Boisrobert got the
interdict removed, and explained to the young lady that
his request had failed because the chapter were dazzled
by the charms of her rival.
Another of his amusements at Rouen was to get up
theatricals in the form of mysteries. On one occasion,
after arranging his piece, the ''Death of Abel," and cast-
ing his characters, a lady offered to pay all the expenses
if her son might act. To get all the expenses paid was
a great thing ; to find a character for the aspirant
was impossible. Boisrobert rose to the occasion. He
invented a new part, dressed the boy in red velvet, called
him the Blood of Abel, and had him rolled up and down
224 THE PARASITES.
the stage, bawling " Vengeance I " But these little
distractions were not enough to soothe the melancholy
of his exile. He was as sad as if Rouen had beeii
Tonii, and Normandy Pontus ; wrote letters to his
friends, begging them to bear in mind that he only
stayed away from Paris for the money, only .said mass
for the fees, and continually regretted the society he
had left behind. There came at last an opportunity
of which he gladly availed himself, of remaining alto-
gether in Paris. Richelieu, who already entertained
Bautru as privileged jester, was ready to engage, so to
speak, another; just as we sometimes see two clowns
on the stage in a pantomime. Boisrobert, with gifts
and graces far superior to those of Bautru, offered
himself. Thenceforth he w^as to the great minister a
necessary of existence. Richelieu loaded him wdth
offices and emoluments ; gave him the abbey of Cha-
tillon-sur-Seine, the priory of Fertd-sur-Aube, and
several other benefices ; named him grand chaplain
to the king, and gave him letters of nobility for his
father.
Here, now, is an excellent opportunity for the indig-
nation of a satirist. " See," says a Juvenal, ''how Cor-
neille is left to starve while Boisrobert gets fat ; a Homer
begs his way while a buffoon eats and drinks of the best,
and is clothed in purple. Is it, then, better to be a mimic
than to be a poet ? " It certainly is ; in every age of the
world's history it has paid to make people laugh ; he stands
best with his publisher who writes things that amuse ;
and a great comedian can command his own terms.
For myself, not being an indignant satirist, I entirely
sympathize with the world. It is so rare, this amusing
faculty, so seldom that one gets the enormous enjoy-
ment of an uncontrolled and uncontrollable laugh, that
AN ACTOR. 225
I refuse to point the finger of scorn at Richelieu. I
envy him the power of retaining Boisrobert, and I
should like, if I were a cardinal, to have at my table
every day a man who would be always witty, always
amusing, always clever, and always scholarly. To be
sure, the minister might have done something more for
the great Corneille ; but it must have been weary,
weary work, listening to those tragedies. Find me, if
you can, any living person who habitually reads Racine
or Corneille for pleasure.
Boisrobert's great facidty was his dramatic way of
telling a story. Those with which he amused the car-
dinal are all lost, except one preserved for us by Talle-
mant des Reaux. It is of a wicked trick perpetrated
on Mademoiselle de Gournay, the adopted daughter
of Montaigne, and the author of the " Ombre." She
was old and unmarried ; poor, too ; of extremely sensi-
tive literary nerves, and lived her long life in a vapor-
bath of admiration and respect for the great Montaigne.
She was also a great stickler for the language of the
sixteenth century, against the innovations proposed by
Malherbe, Colombay, and their school. s
The chevaliers De Bueil and Yvrande learning that
the poet Racan was going to pay a visit of ceremony to
this lady, conceived the brilliant idea of personating him,
one after the other, on the day of his visit. De Bueil,
actually a cousin of Racan, was the first to call. Mile,
de Gournay was making verses. He introduced himself
as M. Racan, made her a thousand compliments, and
presently went awa}^ leaving her in a rapture at such
unaccustomed flattery. Directly he was well out of the
house, Yvrande, who found the door half open, stepped
in unceremoniously. She was talking over her late
visitor to her companion. Mile. Jamyn.
15
226 THE PARASITES.
" I enter without knocking, madem6iselle, but the
iUustrious Mile, de Gournay must not be treated as a
common person."
'' That is a very pretty compliment," she answered.
" Jamyn, my tablets to put it down. And turn out the
cat, while I talk to this gentleman."
'' I have come to thank you," went on the chevalier,
" for the honor you have done me in sending me your
book."
" My book, monsieur ? I have not sent you one, but I
certainly should have done so. Jamyn, a copy of the
' Ombre,' for monsieur."
" But I have one, mademoiselle. To prove it let me
remind you of such and such a passage, in such a
chapter."
Then he informed her that in return he had brought
her some of his own verses. She took them and read.
" This is very good, Jamyn," she said. " Jamyn, I
must tell you, monsieur, is a daughter of Amadis Jamyn,
page to Ronsard, which connects us with the past. This
is very good. Here, perhaps, you Malherbize ; here you
imitate Colombay — but it is all very good, very good
indeed. May I only ask your name? "
'* My name, mademoiselle, is Racan."
" Ah ! you are laughing at me ? "
" Laugh at you ? laugh at Mile, de Gournay, the
daughter by adoption of the great Montaigne, that il-
lustrious lady of whom Lipsius himself said, ' Videamus
quid sit paritura ista virgo? ' "
"Very well — it is all very well," she replied, "but
the gentleman who just left me told me he was M.
Racan. Youth will laugh at age ; I am glad, however,
to have met two such handsome and agreeable gentle-
men."
RACAN. 227
So, with more compliments, tliey parted.
A moment afterwards, Racan himself came up the
stairs. He was neither handsome nor agreeable. More-
over, he was asthmatic, and was out of breath with the
effort of getting up the stairs, so that he came in puffing
and panting.
"Mademoiselle," he began, "excuse my taking a
chair." He had an impediment in his speech, too;
stammered, and was always in difficulty over some of
the more arduous consonants, such as s and r.
" Mademoiselle," he went on, " I will tell you in a
quarter of an hour or so, why I come to see you . . .
when I get my breath. Why the devil do you live so
high up? Phew — those stairs. Mademoiselle, I am
obliged to you for the copy of your book."
" Jamyn," said the lady, outraged by the puffing
bard's allusion to her poverty, " disabuse this gentle-
man. I have given no copies except to M. Malherbe
and M. Racan."
" Racan — Racan — C'est moi."
" Jamyn, be good enough to attend. This is a very
pretty story, is it not? At least the other two were
gentlemen. This fellow is a mere buffoon."
" Mademoiselle, I am Racan himself."
" I don't care who you are," she cried in a rage,
"you are the greatest fool of the three."
He took his own book of poems and offered to recite
them by heart. But she raged all the more, and began
to screech and cry "Thieves! " till Racan slipped away
as fast as he could.
Next day, she learned the real truth, and of course
wrote a letter of abject apology.
Boisrobert made a little play out of it, which he used
to act all by himself, representing them each in turn,
228 THE PARASITES.
the poor old lady, her faithful Jamyn, the sympathy of
the cat, and the three Racans. He played it before
Racan himself, who laughed till the tears ran down his
face, crying, " It's all true . . . it's all true."
Poor Mademoiselle de Gournay ! But she lost noth-
ing by the joke, because Boisrobert got a pension from
the cardinal for her, another for the faithful Jamyn,
and another for the cat.
He used his influence with the cardinal for a good
many people ; for Mairet, who had done him all the
mischief he could ; for Gombaut, who had called his
verses detestable ; for all who asked him, except his own
brothers and nephews, who came crowding about the
great man of the family, pestering for appointments : —
S'ils etaient morts, je vivrais trop heureux,
Car je n'ai peine au monde que par eux.
As for his literary w^ork at this time, it consisted in
writing epistles in verse, not so good as those of Saint
Amant, and in helping Richelieu with his very bad
plays. But then it is not as a great writer that we may
remember Boisrobert. It was he who first suggested
the formation of the French Academy.^ It grew out of
a reunion held weekly, of certain second-rate poets, at
the house of Boisrobert's friend Conrart. Would you
^ It was not, after all, the first French Academy. In 1570
Charles IX. granted letters-patent to an Academy of poets and
scholars which used to meet in the house of Antoine de Baif. The
members had the privilege of sitting in the presence of the king.
After the death of Charles, Henry III. made out new letters-patent,
writing them himself, and making his mother and the great lords
and ladies of the court sign them. Then the Academy met twice
a week at court, holding discussions, with music. Among the
members were Ronsard, Amadis Jamyn, Guy du Faur de Pibrac,
Philippe Desportes, and Agrippa d'Aubigne.
THE FIRST ACADEMICIANS. 229
like to hear something of the very first Academicians ?
They consisted of Conrart, Godeau, Gombaut, Giry,
Habert, Cerisy, Malleville, and Serisay.
Of these the best known now is Conrart, the first per-
petual secretary of the newly born Academy. He held
the office for more than forty years, living a peaceful
quiet life, now and then producing some little work of
no great merit, but carefully executed, and was always
a friend of everybody. Godeau, a better poet and
scholar than Conrart, was his cousin. He was very small
and very ugly, and so great a favorite at the Hotel de
Rambouillet that they called him le nain de la princesse
Julie. He became a bishop, and an exemplary bishop.
As for his books they were many, but probably did not
cause so much improvement to the human race as the
example of his godly life.
Gombaut, the third on our list, was also a very re-
spectable poet, and a highly respectable member of
society. He lived to be nearly a hundred years of age,
wrote a goodly quantity of verse, once very popular,
and had the misfortune of seeing himself forgotten long
before he died. The best thing recorded of Gombaut is,
that once when Cardinal Richelieu pointed to a passage
in his verses saying, '' There are some things here that
I do not understand," the poet replied simply, " That is
not my fault." As we have seen, Boisrobert helped
him to a pension.
Giry, of whom also nothing but praise must be
written, was a lawyer of great repute who had also
literary proclivities. He published certain translations,
and had the great credit of writing better French than
any living person.
Habert, not Frangois Habert, the poor poet of the six-
teenth century, was soldier as well as poet. He fought
230 THE PARASITES.
more than he wrote ; that is to say, his poetry is but
one poem, and his sieges were many. He was killed at
the siege of Emmerdick, in Hainault, being then com-
missary of artillery. He was one of those charged
with the foiTnation of the constitution of the new
Academy.
Cerisy, Habert de Cerisy, was his younger brother,
also a poet and a soldier. Malleville, of whom Boileau
writes —
A peine dans Gombaiild, Maynard, ou Malleville
En peut-on admirer deux ou trois entre mille —
gave up his life to the manufacture of sonnets. It was
an innocent occupation, doing no harm to anybody, and
as we are not now, whatever his contemporaries were,
obliged to read his poems, let us say no hard things about
him. Serisay, to complete the list of this learned society,
was also a poet, no doubt extremely good, could we find
time to read him. He was also a great pedant in lan-
guage, wanting to proscribe all sorts of familiar locu-
tions, such as dJ'autant^ toutefois^ encore^ and others, so
that we wonder what the French language would have
been had he been allowed to work his wicked will upon
it. Menage wrote of him : —
Bref , ce delicat Serisay
Eust chaque mot feminisi,
Sans respect ny d'analogie,
Ny d'aulcune etymologic.
This was the first circle ; one of commonplace and
respectable mediocrities, prigs, and pedants, with lite-
rary ambitions and aspiring airs, disposed to form a mut-
ual admiration society. Furet was the first stranger
introduced into the little band of poets. He read there
his " Honnete Homme,'* and was immediately elected
a member. Then came Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, the
FRENCH ACADEMY, 231
first chancellor of the Academy, and one of the most
singular characters of the time, but of limited genius.
On the foundation of the society, in 1634, a few more
were admitted, but chiefly for their social positions, and
out of deference to the cardinal.
Such were the first members of the French Academy.
Richelieu's purpose in founding it seems clear. It was
not to purify, or even to foster, literature. It was to
brinpf literature within court influence ; to counteract
the dangers of the press ; to establish a body of men,
the ablest writers of their time, who should be bound by
self-interest to support the existing order. More could
not be expected of a minister who preferred his own
comedies to those of Corneille ; and as for the men who
were the first Academicians, so long as they were respec-
table it was all he cared for. The real genius of the
time was not in the Academy at all. It was at the Hotel
de Rarabouillet, the rival establishment ; and it was not
till many years afterwards, after Boileau, La Fontaine,
and Racine had dignified the name of Academician, that
the real influence of the Academy began. We know
the history of the " forty-first chair ; " how great men
have been systematically kept out and small men ad-
mitted ; but all deductions made, it is and always has
been the greatest honor that a man of letters can achieve
to be elected one of the Forty. The outsiders have
avenged their defeat by countless epigrams, but they
would nevertheless all like to be admitted. And the
credit of establisliing the French Academy belongs to
the man who first suggested it — the buffoon Boisrobert.
He himself was proud of the act : —
Je suis abbe mitre:
Plus grands rimeurs out plus mal rencontre;
Et j'eus encor fortune assez amie
Quand je formal I'illustre Academie.
282 THE PARASITES.
He exercised his good-nature at the cost of the
Academy's reputation, by getting in men who had no
claim at all to literary distinction. He called them
" les enfants de la pitie de Boisrobert." Fureti^re
called them the jetonniers^ meaning that they only at-
tended the seances to draw their share of the forty
livres which were granted for each meeti'ng. There is
no doubt that some of them used to waste the time of
the members in little idle discussions, in order to pro-
long the business, and so get more meetings.
Let us get back to our abbe. It is related of him
that on one occasion — the only one on record — he was
touched with a little repentance at his dissolute ways.
He went, as the person most likely to sympathize with
him, to Ninon de TEnclos. '' Ma divine," he said, " I
shall go and stay for three weeks with the Jesuit fathers.
That will stop the tongues of people. I shall stay there
just three weeks, and then come away quietly ; they will
think I am still there. The only thing that troubles me
is their dinners. ... I cannot quite make up my mind."
The next day he called again. "I have thought it
over," he said. "I shall go for three days; that will
produce quite as good an effect as three weeks."
The day after he appeared again. " Ma divine, it is
all settled. I thought it was best to go to the Jesuits.
I called them together and pronounced my apology.
We are the best friends in the world. As I went away
a young brother caught me by the cassock, and said,
' Monsieur, come and see us sometimes. There is no-
body in the world that pleases the fathers more than
you.' " The rascal pleased everybody, with his jovial
ways, his jokes, his mimicry, and fun.
The best actor of his time, undoubtedly, was Mon-
dori, in spite of a tendency to mouth his part. No
FALL FROM POWER, 238
one could " pousser une passion," as it was called,
so well as Mondori. No one could so easily draw the
tears of his audience. His voice was soft and sweet ;
his gesture full of fire and animation, while he seemed
himself possessed bj^ every passion which he portrayed.
His force and vigor brought him to a premature end,
for while acting the part of Herod in the tragedy of
" Mariamne," he fell into a fit of apoplexy, and only re-
covered to find one side of his body partly paralyzed.
Boisrobert declared, when on one occasion Mondori
threw the cardinal into tears, that he could act as well.
He declaimed the same piece before the actor himself
and the cardinal, and with the same success. Even
Mondori acknowledged that in Boisrobert he had found
an equal.
But success brings with it the stings of envy, and
Boisrobert was henceforth known as the Abb(^ Mondori.
He was making an excuse once for not keeping an ap-
pointment. " They carried me off," he said, " at the
very door of the theatre." "What!" his friend re-
turned, " at your own cathedral ? "
He carried his familiarity with the great cardinal at
last to a point which led to his disgrace. It was on the
occasion of the first representation of the " Mirame "
which was put on the stage at Richelieu's own expense.
The king, the Duke of Orleans, and all the court were
present. Boisrobert actually had the audacity to bring
in a couple of young ladies partly connected with the
theatrical profession, and of character not at all dubious.
The king spoke of it to the cardinal, who was furious,
and ordered Boisrobert to retire to his ecclesiastical du-
ties. The French Academy interceded for him, but the
cardinal kept him in exile for some time. The meeting
of the two, when the minister recalled the buffoon, was
234 THE PARASITES.
affecting ; for when Richelieu burst into tears on seeing
his favorite again, Boisrobert, at this critical moment,
could not force a single tear. What was to be done ?
Only one thing. He fell back in a pretended fit, as
if stifled with suppressed emotion. They carried him
away and bled him, and presently the desired tears
came, and his credit for sensibility was re-established.
But Richelieu died immediately after the reconciliation,
and the Abb^ Mondori found himself, at fifty years of
age, free to laugh or not as he pleased, and well pro-
vided with good things in the shape of benefices. He
lost, however, the power which had formerly given him
dignity, and was reduced to the position of a simple ec-
clesiastic about town, an able de la coiir. Then he writes
to Mazarin and complains of his fall from the lofty posi-
tion of actual to that of would-be favorite. " You ought
to pity me," he says, " you who have seen me appear in
the cabinet of a great and puissant master, now reduced
to look about for a place among those who try to catch
your eye. And all in vain, for you ever pass else-
where.'*
Was it then agreeable, this position of jester, lackey,
humble friend to a minister ? Does a time come when
the jingle of the golden fetters is a sweet and refreshing
sound to a great man's slave ?
He went on telling stories, and saying good things.
Thus the Prince de Conti one day called out to him at
the theatre, when they were acting a piece of his, " Bois-
robert, it is a wretched piece." " Monseigneur," he
replied, "you overwhelm me by these praises in my
presence."
He wrote verses at the time of the troubles against
the Frondeurs. The Coadjutor, of course the leading
spirit of the Fronde, heard of them, and sent for him.
ANECDOTES. 235
" Recite me your verses, Boisrobert," he said. " With
the greatest pleasure," replied the abbd ; but, as if
struck with a sudden thought, went to the window,
opened it, and looked down. " Ma foy ! monseigneur,
I shall do nothing of the sort. Your window is much
too high."
One day, again, Madame d'Aiguillon began to abuse
him for his notorious evil life. " They say everywhere,
Boisrobert, that you are an atheist." " Madame, they
will say any thing. They say everywhere that you
" " Boisrobert ! " " Madame, I assure you that
I have never believed them."
To stop some of the scandals about him the authorities
ordered him to perform mass sometimes, and it was then
an edifying thing for the fashionable world to go to
church on these occasions and actually see him doing it.
*' Look at him," the ladies whispered, " his chasuble is
made out of Ninon's petticoat." And once when talk-
ing of genealogies and ancient names, he said that, his
name being Metel, he had a perfect right to call himself
Metellus. " So," said some one, " that it is not Metellus
Pius."
When he was between sixty and seventy, the court
exiled him from his beloved Paris, making as an excuse
a certain volley of oaths that he had discharged after
a heavy night of play. For, among other little weak-
nesses, M. Boisrobert was a gambler. They had him
back after a while, and the old life went on again. He
published his epistles in verse, and got praise, at least.
Manage, the scholar, wrote : —
Sermones patrio scripsit sermone Metellus,
Parcere vult famae dum, Venusine, tuae.
Enough to make the Yenusian bard turn in his grave.
But the conviction, deliberately formed and openly ex-
236 THE PARASITES.
pressed, of the writers of that age, was that posterity
for all time would be entirely occupied in the study
of their works and the distribution of their respective
honors. It was a creed that got good work out of them
all, because conceit seldom did one harm. And see,
after two hundred years, during which no Englishman,
at least, has spoken of this most disreputable old sinner
and poet, I am occupying twenty pages of this volume
in telling you his history.
A life with no gravity, no principle, no self-respect, no
high aims, no art, no dignity, could have but one kind
of age, the most wretched and contemptible spectacle of
an old man whose craving is still for the vices and pleas-
ures of his youth. His friends continued to be amused
with him to the end. No man ever told more stories,
or, single-handed, ever gave rise to so many. No man
lived more undoubtedly a life of pure selfish animal en-
joyment and mirth. When he died a new era was com-
mencing. It was in 1662. Mazarin was dead. Louis
had begun really to reign. Boileau had begun to write.
Art, method, decorum, good taste, manners, decency,
were to have their turn ; and it was all over with poets
like St. Amant, Benserade, Voiture, Sarasin, and Bois-
robert. The wits and witlings of the old school were
put up on the shelves, written though they were in the
vernacular, ''so as to spare the fame of the Venusian
poet," not to be puUed down again for two hundred
years.
The death of Boisrobert was not so edifying as he
wished it to be. He was, of course, repentant, and after
sending for his confessor, he began in the most prom-
ising manner. " Do not," he said to his friends,
" think of Boisrobert living, but of Boisrobert dying."
This was very good, so far, and quite what might be
HIS DEATH, 287
hoped. " God," observed his confessor, " has pardoned
greater sinners than you."
Old Boisrobert's eyes began to twinkle again.
*' He has," he said, " much greater sinners. The
Abb^ de Villarceaux, for instance" — he had just lost
money at play to this ecclesiastic — "is doubtless a
greater sinner than T, but I hope God will pardon
him too."
One of the ladies at his bedside said to him, " Monsieur
Tabbd, contrition is a great virtue."
" It is, madame," he replied ; " I wish it you with all
my heart."
And his last words were, " I should be content to be
on as good terms with our Lord as I have been with
Cardinal Richelieu."
Was ever deathbed scene so bizarre? We see the
actor endeavoring to go out of the world as he ought.
He has no conscience, because it is dead long since ; he
has no faith, no belief, no hope, no fear ; even at the
last moment he cannot abandon his old habits of speech
and thought. He makes a repartee, leaves behind a
mischievous mot against the man who has won his
money, gives a sigh for the good old days, takes the
crucifix in his hands, and expires.
His life is an anticipation of that of hundreds of men
as bad as himself, perhaps worse, because at least they
had no genius, and said no good things, who flourished
in the eighteenth century as abhSs de la cour — priests
about town, men with whom atheism was religion and
profligacy the rule of life.
This is Loret's epitaph : —
Ci-git un monsieur de chapitre-,
Ci-glt un abbe portant mitre,
238 THE PARASITES.
Ci-git un courtisan expert,
Ci-git le fameux Boisrobert.
Ci-git Tin homme academique,
Ci-git Tin poete comique ;
Et toutefois ce monument
N'enferme qu'un corps seulement.
Chapter XII.
PAUL SCARRON".
He is as disproportioned in his manners
As in his shape. — Tempest.
TT) Y common consent, when a new genre in literature
-■-^ or art springs up, we call the most eminent among
the early masters in the style its founder. We do not
mean to imply that he invented it, or that he perfected
it, but that he found it in a rudimentary and chaotic
state, and left it so formed that its future was only
a matter of natural development. In this sense the
founder of modern burlesque is indubitably Scarron.
He neither invented the name nor the thing. As for
the name, it was taken by Sarasin from the Italian, and
replaced the older word grotesque ; and for the thing,
there are plenty of traces of burlesque in the literature
of his own country before his time ; in the Fabliaux,
which we are quite sure Scarron never heard of; in
Rabelais ; in the story-tellers of the Renaissance ; and
in the " Satyre M^nippee." These were full to over-
flowing of that spirit of mirth, mockery, and incredulity,
of which burlesque was naturally the offspring. The
possibility of burlesque, indeed — its dvva^ig — has always
been latent. It has broken out from time to time, as
occasion served; not generally in times of faith and
acquiescence, but in those of doubt and struggle ; when
men's old idols were passing away, and their respect for
ancient things was dying ; or, even more, when a gen-
240 PAUL SCARRON.
eration of mighty struggles and lofty hopes has perished,
leaving a legacy of hopes disappointed and struggles
fruitless.
The earliest writer of burlesque would be, I suppose,
Aristophanes ; the next, of those whose works are pre-
served, Lucian. Then burlesque sleeps. Pulci half
awakens it in his " Morgante Maggiore," which is a
kind of burlesque. But it is not till Scarron that it
really wakes again : for the time, as well as the man,
were wanting. Both came — the time in the later years
of King Louis XIII., and the man in the person of Paul
Scarron.
Hardly any period, for those who take the trouble and
have the leisure to read the memoirs extant, can be so
fully and familiarly known, so clearly understood, as
this. The volumes of Tallemant des R^aux have given
us at least all the ill-natured things that could be said
about every man and every woman who figured in the
Parisian circles. Besides his anecdotes, we have the
letters of some of them ; even their works are not yet
quite forgotten, although they were contemptuously dis-
missed by Boileau to the limbo of oblivion. We know
these men, as they talked, and wrote, and squabbled.
We can see them from the outside — can laugh at their
follies and their eagerness over trifles, sympathize with
their difficulties, and forgive their vanity.
It was very far from being a healthy time for France.
As for what we call " earnestness," there was none.
The country was in a wretched condition ; affairs of
state were left to the great cardinal ; the monarchy was
disgraced by a king who was too feeble to rule alone,
and who hated the man who kept him on the throne.
The old enthusiasms were dead ; the early fire of zeal
was dying out in the Huguenots ; hatred of schism was
BURLESQUE. 241
well-nigh extinguished with the Catholics; and men
were tired, and even ashamed, of the ancient ardor
with which they had plunged into classical learning.
Time was when they had looked for the regeneration
of the world from Plato. A hundred years before,
Rabelais, Erasmus, Dolet, Etienne, and the glorious
race of the early scholars, looked forward, eager with
hope, expecting that learning would soften all men's
hearts. But a century of scholarship had left the world
very much where it was before. Here was a Europe
steeped in Plato, versed in Greek and Latin, and yet
worse than at any previous time; its literature — in
France at least — fouler, its manners coarser, its morals
looser ; its leaders seeming baser and more wicked. No
wonder that men, ^disappointed and wearied, looked no
longer for things noble, or for things great, and that
they yawned in thp face of their bid idols ; for it was
that dull dead time between two schools of thought,
when, if any one mock at things once thought great
and heroic, all men mock with him. This was what
Scarron did. In place of yawning with the rest, he
took down the chief of the old idols, Virgil, and set his
troupe of gods and heroes on the modern stage, making
them talk the language of the market-place and the
barracks; and all the world, bursting into a Gargan-
tuan roar of laughter, rushed to imitate their leader, and
everybody wrote burlesque. The function — it is, I
own, a limited one — of burlesque is to strip jrom ob-
jects of former admiration andT worship their supposed
heroic properties ; to show them actuated by the com-
monest motives, enunciating the most vulgar sentiments,
and parading under the garb of heroes the ideas and
language of lackeys. Burlesque makes a Philistine of
Elm who was once believed to be a prophet, a Bobadil
16
242 PAUL SCARRON,
of the soldier, a kitchen drab of the queen ; it turns the
solemn destinies of the gods into the caprices of a vestry ,
and it makes of the great Thunderer himself, o vxpi^Qefistrjg,
a mere Spicier. In burlesque there is no room for any
thing lofty, any thing pure ; there is no enthusiasm, no
faith, no hope. Of all forms of mockery devised by the
human wit, there is none more effective than this, which
out of the thousand various impulses which prompt men
to action takes uniformly the basest, the lowest, and the
most interested. Thus Aristophanes puts Bacchus on
the stage, pretending to be Hercules, and convicted by
his own cowardice ; Lucian makes Charon a higgler for
his penny fee ; Scarron shows us Anchises, borne from
the flames of Troy by the devotion of his son, prodding
him in the back to make him go faster, and in an agony
of terror addressing him alternately as " w^tm" and as
" mon cher fils.^^ Thus, too, ^neas is a Pecksniff and a
prig ; Dido a queen with the soul of a housemaid.
As is the work, so was the man. It is a common-
place of all who have written about Scarron, to say that
his writings are en rapport with his life ; that as he was
a burlesque on humanity, his works are a burlesque on
literature. It is only a half truth: the truer way to put
it would be that certain works of his have an artistic
twist and deformity about them somewhat analogous to
the deformity of his body.
Paul Scarron, a Parisian by birth, came into the world
in the year 1610. His father, a man of good family, and
a councillor of the Parliament, possessed a fortune of
twenty thousand livres, worth at least four or five thou-
sand sterling in these days. He had three children —
Paul, the second, and two daughters. Unfortunately
■for them, his first wife died, and he married again. The
second marriage brought three more children, and Paul
HIS YOUTH. 248
very quickly saw that his chances of the inheritance
grew daily less, owing to the influence of his mother-in-
law. The father incurred the displeasure of Cardinal
Richelieu, and was ultimately exiled to Touraine. This,
however, was much later on. Then Paul began to make
things disagreeable at home by quarrelling with his step-
mother, and accusing his father of being unduly influ-
enced by her, to his own prejudice. Possibly he was
quite wrong, for at least he was never remarkable for
prudence or sobriety of judgment in after-life, and the
step-mother may have been a remarkably just and ad-
mirable person. As he made the house too hot for both,
his father sent him away to a cousin at Charleville,
where he remained two or three years, and was then
taken back on condition of good behavior. So Paul
came home, making what the school histories call a
" hollow peace." In due course he assumed the petit
collet. The sacred profession served to young men of
good family not only as a tolerably sure stepping-stone
to fortune, but also as a cloak to disguise any amount of
profligacy. It meant very little, as a badge, except that
the wearer was quite prepared to do literary work or
accept a benefice. Young Scarron, there is every
reason to believe, was in the fastest set of his time.
He would appear to have had command of money, for
we hear of no work being done, or any application for a
benefice. Quite the contrary ; his life was that of a
pure bird of pleasure — pleasure of the kind chiefly
sought after by young gentlemen of Epicurean pro-
clivities. When he was about twenty-four he made a
journey to Italy, probably on some pretence of getting
good things out of the Pope, like Boisrobert later on.
It was a country which had the reputation of being
more than usually detrimental to the morals of young
244 PAUL SCARRON.
travellers ; if, at least, the proverb IngUse Italianato
diavolo incarnato may be applied to others than our own
countrymen. Small was the amount of moral baggage
that Paul Scarron took with him to Italy ; smaller, per-
haps, the amount he brought back with him. For four
more short years he enacted with far more than ordinary
ability the part of the prodigal son ; and then came an
end, sudden, sharp, retributive, decisive. He was only
twenty-eight. He might have reformed and settled
down, as so many young fellows do, little the worse
for his wild oats. He was clever, he had interest, he
had scholarship. His life lay stretched before him fair
and clear, when suddenly he was brought up short,
and placed for a quarter of a century on a chair of
suffering.
There is a ridiculous story told about the cause. It
is said that at carnival time he disguised himself, Avith
certain others, as savages ; that their appearance in the
streets caused such an uproar, that they were obliged
to run for their lives, and that Scarron only escaped
by swimming across the river. The consequence of this
cold bath, taken in February, was the paralysis and
twisting of his limbs, of which he could never be cured.
That is the popular account, which is quite false, the
real truth being that he trusted himself to the tender
mercies of a quack, who, by means of certain noxious
drugs, brought on a complication of diseases worse than
those he tried to cure. The strength of his manhood
left him ; his limbs were bent, his back was arched, so
that he resembled nothing so much, he says, as the
.letter Z ; and he was laid by the heels a prisoner for
life in his arm-chair.
He took a rueful pleasure in describing his own
misfortunes. In his epistle to Sarasin he describes
himself as
HIS MISERY. 245
Un pauvret
Tres maigret,
Au col tors,
Dont le corps,
Tout tortu,
■ Tout bossu,
Suranne,
Decharn^,
Fut reduit
Jour et nuit
A souffrir
Sans guerir
Des tourmens
V^hemens.
He had an engraving drawn for a frontispiece of one
of his books, in which he represents himself sitting,
twisted, doubled up, hunchbacked, in his arm-chair.
He laughs at his sufferings, but it is a rueful sort of
laugh, at best. At times, his real misery makes itself
felt ; and the bodily torture which he endured with the
fortitude of Capaneus in Dante's seventh circle was at
times too much even for Scarron's courage.
I cannot but think that, light-hearted and buoyant as
was his nature, his heart must have been broken when
first this dreadful thing fell upon him. Behind all his
mask of raillery and fun we can see the bitter pains of
disappointment and remorse sometimes convulsing his
face. Something more than human would he , be if he
had been really able to contemplate, even with resigna-
tion, a life spent in an arm-chair, cut off from ordinary
pleasures, with no longer a career, or a hope of distinc-
tion, save by the precarious road of letters. Whether
it is true or not that clowns in private life are the most
melancholy of men, it is certainly true that many men
who have written for the amusement of others have
been themselves miserrimi — most wretched. Swift,
Sterne, Smollett, Hood — the first names that occur —
246 PAUL SCARRON.
were melancholy men, when all the town was laughmg
at their wit ; Scarron was writhing with pain when the
whole town was laughing at his. But if we, who can
read all his letters, and compare them with his life and
works, who can read all the anecdotes told by his friends,
think we can detect the cloven foot of sorrow beneath
the robe of wit, Care sitting by the cripple, like the
skeleton form of Death stalking beside the knight:
those who only saw a part of the man, who assisted
at his receptions, who laughed at his epigrams, and
with their host found fresh amusement from every
pang that wrenched his frame, were all and easily de-
ceived. To them Scarron was the happiest, lightest-
hearted, and gayest of mankind. Life to him was a
real joke. The dread of poverty did not weigh him
down. No misfortunes affected him. If he lost his
pension, he had still his marquisate de Quinet (his pub-
lisher). He nearly dies of a cough — he makes an
epigram on his escape. He satirizes Mazarin; when
the cardinal returns to power he turns round and sat-
irizes himself. His income is too small for him to en-
tertain his friends at dinner or supper : let them bring
every man something, so that the feast may be an sQavog.
He can get no office from the queen : good — let him at
least be called the " queen's invalid." His two sisters
live with him ; their conduct is not altogether calculated
to keep up the family honor ; he consoles himself by a
hon-mot. His house is poor — his furniture shabby —
his entertainments meagre ; but everybody goes to him.
There you will meet the circle of Precisians — they
come . here to relax — who hover round the throne of
Arthenice the intellectual, and try to warm themselves
in the cold moonshine of Julia. Manage is there, scholar
and wit ; Sarasin, with all the company of buffoons,
HIS HOUSEHOLD. 247
satirists, and writers of vers de sociHS ; Tristan I'Her-
mite, Segrais, Marigny, Boisrobert, George de Scuddri,
Gascon pure and simple, great soldier and writer of
those everlasting novels which people once read, who
prefaced his works with his own portrait, and the boast-
ful legend —
Et poete et guerrier
D aura du laurier;
the illustrious Mademoiselle de Scuddri herself, it is
said, though one scarcely believes this ; Chapelain,
friend of Moliere and Boileau ; Voiture, of the letters
and the odes ; the great Coadjutor ; then, too, Madame
de la Sabliere, with sometimes Marion de Lorme, most
charming of sinners, and Ninon de I'Enclos herself. No
doubt, when Ninon and Marion came. La Scuddri kept
away. At least one hopes so. And in that room, what
discourse and mad revelling ! — what laughing at the
only circle in France which still tried to keep up a taste
for literature, and forced their own society, at least,
to preserve the outward forms of decency I Outward
forms were not, one imagines, much regarded at Scar-
ron^s receptions.
Before going to Paris, he held for three years the
benefice of Mans, the duties being performed by some-
body else. During this period he lived in his official
residence, and as no stories are told about him, probably
it was in great loneliness and misery. While he was at
Mans his father died, and a lawsuit which he instituted
against his step-mother about the succession failed. It
was during these years, too, that he began to feel his
way in writing, and practised the art of dedications,
requests, petitions, and begging-letters, in which he
afterwards achieved such distinction. He writes letters
asking for every thing, from pensions to patties ; and he
248 PAUL SCARRON.
gets every thing. Through the kind offices of Madame
de Hautefort, he is introduced to the queen, from Avhom
he solicits permission to be called 8on malade. Of course,
a pension went with this dignified post. Another intro-
duction to Mazarin procured him a second pension, this
time of five hundred crowns. But he was so exas-
perated by the cardinal's subsequent refusal to allow
his " Typhon " to be dedicated to him, that when the
Fronde broke out, he joined it, and became the most
vehement of all the Frondeurs, and was supposed to
have been the author of the " Mazarinade." Mazarin
came back.* Scarron perceived that his wisdom had
been at fault. So he made haste to turn round, ad-
dressing a beautiful letter to the cardinal : —
Jule, autrefois Pobjetde I'injuste satire.
He also began to write against the Frondeurs : —
II faut d^sormais filer doux,
II faut crier misericorde.
Frondeurs, vous n'etes que des fous:
II faut desormais filer doux.
C'est mauvais presage pour vous
Qu'une fronde n'est qu'une corde.
II faut desormais filer doux,
II faut crier misericorde.
It was all very well, and Mazarin was not the man
to bear long malice for a libel ; but Scarron never got
back that pension, or the one from the queen. Fouquet,
at this juncture of his affairs, gave him one of 1,600
livres, and he began to write with redoubled activity to
maintain the expense of a house, which, unless kept
always open, would have been dreary indeed to its
owner, who could never leave it. As for the mone}^
it came in from his poetry, his plays, his tales, his
dedications, and his begging-letters.
FRANCOISE D'AUBIGNE. 249
The society that met in Scarroii's mlon was of a
'' mixed " character, as we have seen, and the conver-
sation of the freest. But after five or six years of this
life, a salutary reformation was effected. For in 1652
the Baronne de Neuillant, his neighbor, brought to see
him her ward, Frangoise d'Aubign^, just arrived from
America, whither Scarron was projecting a voyage with
the hopes of geting cured. He never accomplished tliis
journey, but he was so moved by compassion at the poor
girl's forlorn and dependent condition, that he offered to
marry her. Life just then looked very dismal to little
Frangoise ; she was seventeen years of age (three years
older than the king) ; her father and mother were both
dead ; she was so horribly poor that she had not even
enough money to find the dot necessary to get into
a convent. Scarron Avas struck with her beauty, her
esprit^ her gentleness, and began by writing her letters.
" I always doubted whether the little girl that I saw
enter my room six months ago, with a dress too short,
and who began to cry — I don't know why — was really
as spirituelle as she seemed to be. The letter that you
have written to Mile, de Saint-Herman t is so full of
cleverness, that I am discontented with my own for not
having made her acquainted with the full merit of
yours. To tell the truth, I had never believed that in
the American isles they cared about the study of belles-
lettres^ and! am concerned to find out why you have
taken as much trouble to conceal your cleverness as
most people take to show it. Now that you are found
out, you must make no difficulty about writing to me
as well as you do to Mile, de Saint-Hermant. I will do
all I can to make my letters in reply as good as yours,
and you will have the pleasure of seeing the trouble I
must take to show as much wit as yourself.''
250 PAUL SCARRON.
This was a pretty little beginning. Only he does
not see why the poor girl cried. Was not her dress
too short, and she had no money to buy a new one ?
Reason enough to make any girl cry.
More letters, and then Scarron wrote and made her
a definite offer. He would find the dot for the convent,
or he would marry her himself. In the latter case, she
would at least have society, a shelter, and kindness —
all he could give. She chose the marriage. " I greatly
preferred marrying him to marrying a convent," she
said. When the notary asked what dowry the bride
brought, Scarron gallantlj^ replied : " Deux grands yeux
mutins, un tr^s-beau corsage, une paire de belles mains
et beaucoup d'esprit." '^And what is your settlement
upon her ? " " Immortality," said Scarron ; " other
names may perish ; that of Scarron's wife will re-
main for ever."
Perhaps the immortality that the wife of Scarron
got from her first husband was paled in the eyes of
some by that, greater splendor which she derived
from her second ; for Madame Veuve Scarron became
Madame de Maintenon, wife of the Grand Monarque.
She was a good wife to the cripple ; was faithful,
thoughtful, and kind. She changed the aspect of the
menage, introduced order and decency, bridled the rude
tongue of her husband and his friends, kept the physic
bottles in the background, and met the rough jokes of
the libertine wits with an esprit of her own, that soon
reduced them. More than all, she smoothed his last
years, and softened, as well as she could, the agonies
that racked his tortured frame ; and, in an age when con-
jugal infidelity was the mode^ she was proud enough to
preserve her reputation. " II n'y a rien," she would
say in after years, and under even more trying difiicul-
HIS DBA TH. 251
ties, *' de pins haLile qu'une conduite irr^^prochable.''
She was tempted by her frailer sisters. Ninon de FEn-
clos took her in hand, but gave her up in despair. " She
was too gauche^^ Ninon said. The Ninons of the time
could understand gaucherie ; but they could not under-
stand fidelity and pride ; and with the little Frangoise
the poor poet's honor was safe.
His married life, every year bringing more suffering
with it, lasted eight years, when he died of a hiccup,
on which he promised to write a very fine satire if he
ever got over it. The hiccup, however, was too strong
for him, and the satire was never given to the world.
He had taken the precaution to write his own epitaph
beforehand. Is it too well known to be quoted ? Let
us try it, at least, " newly done into English : " —
No foolish envy waste on him
Who sleeps this stone beneath:
Death's pangs he felt a thousand times
Ere yet he suffered death.
Ilush! traveller: let no footstep's fall
The sacred stilhiess break;
'Tis the first night poor Scarron sleeps :
Tread lightly — lest he wake.
He died in 1660, in the fiftieth year of his age.
It' may be the case, that had Scarron never lost his
health, we should have had no burlesque from him ; at
least, most likely he would have written nothing but a
few epigrams. Yet, as in science, so in literature, it
always seems as if, were the real inventor never to have
been born, some other person would, about the same
time, have made the discovery. It might have been St.
Amant, or Sarasin, or Boisrobert. Most likely it would
have been Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy, the greatest
of the small fry of imitators who followed the master.
252 PAUL SCAR RON.
Coypeau, indeed, was a sort of vulgar Scarron. He
went about the countrj^ like a trouvere^ accompanied
by a couple of singing-boys, bearing a lute. He wrote
a great quantity of verse ; was always in trouble and
disgrace ; lived to a green old age ; wrote a travesty
of Ovid, which is now forgotten ; and may now be
remembered chiefly for his " Aventures Burlesques,"
about which there is nothing at all really burlesque,
and where the chief fun turns upon his own personal
cowardice, his inability to ride, and the bad luck he had
at gambling.
I think that Scarron took to writing because there
was nothing else in the world at which he could occupy
himself and make a little money. The cast and tone of
his thought were doubtless affected, to a certain extent,
by his bodily sufferings. Indeed, every bodily defect,
deformity, and weakness, must have its own effect, pre-
judicial to the intellect ; and he alone, perhaps, can be a
perfect writer who has a sound and perfect physique.
Thus there may have been a predisposition to burlesque,
resulting from his position ; but the circumstances of
the time and his own mocking spirit, much more than
the wretched state of his body, turned him to burlesque
writing. And we must remember that he wrote many
other things beside burlesque.
His works (little enough read now) are voluminous,
and in every branch of light literature. There exist two
editions, and only two, complete. Probably no future
edition will ever be put forth. Still, he has his immor-
tality of a kind. Like so many poets who have pro-
claimed their erection of a monument cere perennius, his
prediction has been fulfilled, in a way. He is remem-
bered, at least, as a writer who set his mark upon the
''VIRGILE TRAVESTi:' 253
The " Typhon," which Mazarin refused to accept,
came out in 1644, the year before he left Mans and
went to Paris. It is a poem of simple buffoonery, but
contains within itself abundant promise of burlesque ,•
yet it is hardly burlesque proper, and bears about
the same relation to the Virgil as the first edition of
" Gargautua" did to the first book of " Pantagruel."
In 1648 came out the first instalment of the '' Virjrile
Travesti," which went on at intervals until 1652.
Scarron finished the first eight books ; and tlien, grow-
ing tired of so sustained an effort, he seems to have giveu
it up altogether. Other literary work also pressed upon
him ; indeed his busiest time was between 1646 and
1653. His plays (chiefly from Spanish sources), his
novels, his epigrams, his letters, his " Gazette bur-
lesque " — all this work left little time for the Virgil,
which, we suspect, was at first considered by Scarron
only as the recreation of an idle hour. But it " took "
as no other book of the time succeeded in doing. Imi-
tators crowded into the field. Ovid, Homer — anybody
— was burlesqued ; and for a period of twenty years,
after which the taste_Jor_buries(][ue jdJ^d^^ as
rapidly as itTiad grown up, the book-shelves were in-
undated with , travesties, most of them mere stupid
imitations of Scarron and floundering attempts at wit,
with no claim to admiration except for heir unblushing
grossness.
Of his tales, the one chiefly remembered, because
Goldsmith translated it, is the " Roman Comique." I
confess to having been bored to the last degree in read-
ing it. Of his plays, " Don Japhet de I'Armdnie," one
of his last, and " Jodelet," his first, are the two best,
and are worth}^ of being read still, were life long enough.
Poems he wrote — lines to his mistress, poor fellow —
254 PAUL SCARRON. .
as gay and bright as when he had a dancing leg, as well
as a laughing eye, but- quite in the conventional gal-
lantry of the time : —
Adieu, fair Chloris, adieu:
'Tis time that I speak,
After many and many a week,
('Tis not thus that at Paris we woo)
You pay me for all with a smile
And cheat me the while.
Speak now. Let me go.
Close your doors, or open them wide,
Matters not, so that I am outside;
Devil take me if ever I show
Love or pity for you and your pride.
To laugh in my face.
It is all that she grants me
Of pity and grace:
Can it mean that she wants me ?
This for five or six months is my pay.
Now hear my command.
Shut your doors, keep them tight night and day,
With a porter at hand
To keep every one in;
Well I know my own mind.
The devil himself, if once you begin
To go out, couldn't keep me behind.
The following is better known. It is his description
of Paris : —
Houses in labyrinthine maze;
The streets with mud bespattered all;
Palace and prison, churches, quays,
Here stately shop, there shabby stall.
Passengers black, red, gray, and white,
The pursed-up prude, the light coquette;
Murder and Treason dark as night;
With clerks, their hands with inkstains wet;
A gold-laced coat without a sou.
And trembling at a bailiff's sight;
jENEAS. 255
A braggart shivering with fear;
Pages and lacqueys, thieves of night ;
And 'mid the tumult, noise, and stink of it, •
There's Paris — Pray, what do you think of it ?
We are, however, chiefly concerned with his Virgil.
The burlesque effect, if we analyze the work, is pro-
duced, of course, by a perpetual antithesis between the
grandeur of the personages and the manner in which
they talk; between their traditional motives and the
motives which Scarron ascribes to them ; and between
the importance of the acts described and the littleness
of the actors : —
Regali conspectus in auro nuper et ostro
JMigrat in obscuras humili sermone tabernas.
Thus, whatever ^neas does or says, his words and
thoughts are those of a petty shopkeeper. He asks
Jupiter to send do\yn rain, some of that which the god is
accustomed to bestow so freely, on those occasions when
it is not Avanted, as when one has a new hat. When he
is puzzled, as, for instance, when he wants to find some
pretext for deserting Dido, he scratches his head all
over. He makes the most commonplace observations
with a sententious air, and an overwhelming regard to
propriety ; as when, moralizing over his fiither's death,
he says : —
He's gone — good man! — we can but weep;
Had he but learned his breath to keep,
A little later had he died.
He's gone! in sorrow we abide; ^
And, as is only right, meanwhile,
I never laugh, and seldom smile.
The second and third lines remind one of the epitaph
in the country churchyard : —
Here lies the body of Alice Wooden ;
Longer she wished to live — but cooden.
256 PAUL SCARRON.
The most common accidents of life, when he is in hig
most heroic vein, are sufficient to break him down.
Thus, when he is invoking the shade of his father : —
" Return once more, oh, father dear!
Return to me — I wait you here.
Alas ! your heart is cold as stone
To come so seldom to your son."
Thus calling on his absent sire,
lie tried to light the lingering fire ;
But not employing, as he ought,
The tongs to move the cinders hot.
He burned his fingers. " Devil take,"
He cried, " my father ! — for whose sake
I've all this trouble."
But — good man !
Pious by nature, he began
Remorse to feel for this bad word —
The first the gods had ever heard.
He tells the long story of Virgil's second and third
books, and at last concludes : —
Conticuit tandem, factoque hie fine quievit;
which Scarron translates, with some freedom : —
This of his long tale was the sum;
But with narrating it overcome,
And quite weighed down with want of sleep,
From yawning wide he could not keep.
Queen Dido, too, yawned; for 'tis found.
When one begins, the yawn goes round.
It is on the character of ^neas, indeed, that he
spends his chief strength. Above all, he insists on the
hero's unlimited command of tears : —
^neas, pleurant comme un veau.
And again : —
Je crois vous avoir deja dit
Qu'il donnoit des pleurs a credit,
Et qu'il avait le don des larmes.
DIDO. 257
The persecuted hero, victim of Juno's wrath, is fat,
orthodox, hypocritical, and easy-tempered. Penetrated
with the propriety of seeming pious, he is careful to
observe all the outward semblances of religion. His
superstition is enormous, his stupidity great ; his
bravery is not conspicuous ; his observations are trite ;
beneath the armor of a hero he wears the heart of a
calf. In appearance a king, in reality he is an ejncier^
and he looks on life from the point of view of some
respectable bourgeois.
With Dido, Scarron pursues the same treatment. He
describes her carefully. She is a " grosse dondon " —
what a shame to call Dido a dondon ! — fat, vigorous,
and healthy, '' somewhat flat-nosed, after the fashion of
most African women, but agreeable au dernier point.''''
She takes a lively interest in ^neas from the very be-
ginning ; makes a mental comparison between him and
the deceased Sychseus : —
Le defunt ne le valoit pas.
She confesses her love to Anna, in words which bear an
absurdly close resemblance to Virgil's : —
Quis novus hie nostris successit sedibus hospes ?
Quam sese ore f erens ! quam forti pectore et armis
Ah ! sister — faithful sister — tell
By what strange destiny it fell
That thus ^neas hither came?
iEneas ! how I love the name!
How fresh is he ! — how fat! — how fair!
How strong and big ! with what an air
He tells his deeds ! and what a height !
Oh ! sister Anne — he charms me quite.
After dinner she calls for tobacco : —
Mais celle n'en prit pas deux pipes
Qu'elle ne vidat jusqu'aux tripes:
Et ue s'en offusquait I'esprit.
17
258 PAUL SCARRON.
And she betrays the curiosit}^ of her sex in the most
characteristic way : —
Malta super Priamo rogitans, super Hectore multa.
This line becomes, in Scarron's hands, expanded in
the following manner, peculiarly Scarronesque : —
A hundred questions then she asks,
Of Priam, and the mighty tasks
Of Hector ere the siege was done;
Of Helen — How she held her own —
What kind of paint she used to buy;
Was Hecuba's hair all false? — and why
Paris was called so fair a youth ?
And then that apple — which, in truth,
Was the first cause of all the woe —
Was it a llibstone -^yes or no?
Of IMemnon — bright Aurora's son —
Was he a Moor to look upon?
AVho killed him? Was it rightly said,
About the stud of Diomed,
That farcy killed them all? — because
Of that disease she knew the laws ;
And when Patroclus met his end.
How long Achilles mourned his friend?
And only in her last speech Scarron permits himself for
a brief moment to leave burlesque.
The gods, of course, are lowered in the same propor-
tions as the men and women. Jupiter, Juno, and the
rest are mere bourgeois. Olympus might be Paris. The
quarrels of the gods are those of the fish-market. The
predilections, whims, and caprices are the same as those
of ^neas and his friends. Mercury, in spite of his
being a god, cannot fly without the wings tied to his
heels, and is afraid of breaking his neck. Jupiter is
coarse and stupid, Juno intriguing and malicious, Venus
alternately a courtesan and a doting mother. Thus,
when JEneas has addressed her with the words : —
VENUS, 259
O quam te memorem, virgo? namque baud tibi vultus
Mortalis, nee vox hominem sonat. O Dea certe, &c.
she replies (" Haud eqiiidem tali me dignor honore " ) : —
" I am not really," answered she,
" Of such exalted quality —
Your servant, sir."
" Too much," he cried,
" You honor me, I'm sure. . . Beside — "
** Oh, sir! " said Venus, making then
A court'sy — the best-bred of men
Turned half upon his heels, and low
Bent to the ground with courtly bow.
The mother's heart shed tears of joy
To see how polished was her boy.
Often a happy anachronism, a trick well known in
modern burlesque, lights up the page. Thus, Dido
makes the sign of the cross ; Mezentius is a blaspheming
ruffian who never goes to confession ; ^neas, when they
land on the shores of Africa, is particularly anxious to
learn whether the natives are Christians or Mahometans ;
the nymph Deiopeia numbers among her accomplish-
ments the power of speaking Spanish and Italian, and
she can quote " The Cid " of Corneille ; Dido says
" Benedicite " at table ; and Pygmalion kills Sychseus
with an arquebus.
Or he introduces himself, as when he says (I cannot
translate it) : —
IMessire iEneas, dont I'esprit
Ne songeait alors qu'a Carthage;
Et bien moins a faire voyage
Que moi — cul-de-jatte follet —
Ne songe a danser un ballet
Or in his observation on the line
Discite justitiam moniti et non temnere Dives;
to whith he remarks : —
260 PAUL SCARRON.
This observation's very well;
But what's the good of it in hell?
But the finest specimens of burlesque, where the fun
is concealed — sheathed as it were in a scabbard of grief
— are to be found in his description of the fall of Troy.
-3Lneas meets Panthus : —
Poor man! he faintly struggled on,
And gasped — his breath was almost gone
With shouting " Fire! " The gods he bore
Safe in a basket held before ;
While at his back his nephew clung.
Soon as he saw me — sorrow wrung
His noble heart
JEneas asks : —
" Our citadel is fallen, then? '*
'* Alas! iEneas, king of men —
And I, its governor, seeing well
Myself would perish when it fell
If I remained, most bravely fled
(Preserving still some strength of head),
Not for the fear of death or blow,
But only just to die with you."
And for a last extract, the scene in which ^neas
sorrowfully recalls the days of the past : —
By that gate fair Andromache
Would pass, papa-in-law to see,
And ere those fatal Greek attacks
Would bring with her Astyanax.
Queen Hecuba's continued joy
Was to caress and kiss the boy.
When he M^as but a tiny child
She dandling him her hours beguiled ;
And when he somewhat bigger grew
This good grandam, a baby too,
Would play with him. Sometimes the queen
Would tell him of fair Melusine,
And Fierabras, of wondrous Jack,
And all the old tales in the pack:
ANDROMACHE. 261
The child her idol was, and pet:
Sometimes so doting did she get,
That she would even ride cock-horse,
A stick between her legs, and course
All up and down, till, tired and weak,
She could not either breathe or speak.
Andromache oft plainly said
That grandmamma would spoil the lad:
And Priam, when he saw him cram
His mouth all day with bread and jam.
Remarked with some severity.
The boy would surely ruined be.
Burlesque has its times of splendor and decadence,
like every other form of literature. At times of strong
belief and general enthusiasm it cannot exist. When
enthusiasms die out, and ardor cools, when some people
are conscious of having been fools, and others are laugh-
ing at them, burlesque has its opportunities. Old idols
and heroes are fair game. Mythical histor}^, for instance,
seen from the modern point of view, is a proper subject,
and it is pardonable to upset old notions of which people
are tired. Classical idolatry, in Scarron's time, was over.
In our own age, in England, there is no real burlesque
possible, because we have got rid, some years since, of
our old-fashioned enthusiasms ; and we are only just
beginning to put things en train for our young men to
have, in another ten years or so, a red-hot start, with
a grand battle before them. After it is all over, per-
haps there will be more burlesque.
Chapter XIII.
LA FONTAINE.
Qu'un petit docteur au front chauve
Disc que les jeux sont maudits ;
Je n'en crois rien : si I'esprit sauve,
La Fontaine est en paradis. — Le Brun.
"\ T 7E all think we know Fontaine. To begin with, we
^ ^ made an imperfect acquaintance with him at
school, where we translated vix, with difficulty, two or
three of his Fables, and, naturally enough, conceived a
lively contempt for a Avriter who could employ, in cold
blood, French of so idiomatic a nature. How different
from the great Caesar, who, mindful of his destiny, wrote
for the third form ! This early prejudice soon enough
vanishes ; but we generally read little more of him, and
there remains in the minds of most of us a sort of
blurred image where the figure of La Fontaine should
be. The photograph is clouded.
The small knowledge which the world has of a man
who was once, and is still, one of the most popular
writers in French literature, springs partly from our
habit of considering him as a mere writer of fables.
Fables, indeed, he wrote — the best in the world — but
the Fable, however clever it be, is not a form of litera-
ture over which the mature intellect greatly cares to
linger: JEsop, Phaedrus, and Gay rarely become the
companions of our solitude. What is called " the taste
of the age " makes us ignore the fact, or at least keep
LA FONTAINE. 263
it in the background, that La Fontaine also wrote tales,
and that as a raconteur^ even in France, the chosen home
of the story-teller, he had, and. has, no equal.
Let me make an attempt to delineate the man. It is
not an easy task ; for we have before us a bundle of
contradictions — contradictions, that is, more obvious
than the average pack which go to make up the ordinary
man. While he liad no virtue himself, he drew to Ijim-
self and retained the affections of virtuous men — Ra-
cine, for instance, even after Racine had gone back to
the piety of his early youth. He had no constancy, yet
he attracted the love of Avomen, Avhose idol and play-
thing he always was. He deserted his wife and went
after strange goddesses ; he wrote verses which ought
not now to be read at all ; and yet Fonelon himself, the
most virtuous man of his time, burst into tears at his
death, and wrote his panegyric. He never put himself out
of the way to please people whom he did not like, but all
people liked him. He was a bad husband and a bad father.
He never performed a duty, or recognized a tie ; yet he
never lost a friend — save once by a kind of accident. He
was always in poverty, but he was always contented. He
had no ambition, yet he achieved a great reputation.
He lived an utterly godless life, but died the death of a
saint. He had no money, but never did any taskwork.
He was the most malicious of men, and yet the most
good-natured. He was by turns, and as the sweet will
seized him, gauche^ awkward, distrait^ or courtly, polite,
and urbane. He lived for himself, wholly and unre-
servedly, but was never called selfish ; and in early life
he sat down with the avowed intention of doing nothing,
claiming from the world the simple right of enjoyment ;
and his right the world conceded.
The world, indeed, loves its butterflies ; they are so
264 LA FONTAINE.
rare that it cannot but love them ; only seldom does a
man get born who has no capacity for work, no power
of foresight, no care about the future ; one on whom
life brings no anxieties, whose years only prolong his
childhood ; whose brow is furrowed with no lines of
thought. Volages and uncertain, they fly from flower
to flower, lingering over each one just long enough to
take its honey. Their life is a succession of summer
months; and, unless they early burn their wings, which
sometimes happens, it is a long summer of delights,
spent with Amour., Liesse, and Doux-Hegard, in the
garden of Deduit.
England has had but few of these gaudy and bril-
liant-winged creatures, her sky, perhaps, being un-
favorable to their production. Herrick was one, but
his erratic course was prematurely checked by the un-
timely frost of the Revolution ; Gay, Moore, and a very
few others, exhaust our list. To set against these,
France has Rutebeuf, Villon, Marot, La Fontaine, and
half a hundred others, who have fluttered in the sun-
shine of great men's smiles and the world's praise —
insects of the summer. And of all this careless and
improvident crew, the most careless and the most, im-
provident was Jean de la Fontaine.
Arguing from strong points of resemblance between
two great men, one is disposed to think that Harold
Skimpole modelled his own character on that of La
Fontaine — the disciple being far below the master.
For La Fontaine was more Skimpolean than Harold
himself. He said to the world, " Give me leave to live
among you ; a little light wine, fruit in the season,
plenty of music and singing, the society of young,
pretty, and pleasant women, and an entire freedom
from work and anxiety — these are all I ask. Give
HIS CHILDISHNESS, 265
them to me, and let me enjoy myself after my own
fashion." The world took him at his word, and gave
him all he asked. For threescore years and ten he did
no work, he had no troubles ; he dispensed with all
unpleasant things ; he enjoyed the society of pleasant
women and the luxuries of rich men ; and then, with a
repentance comfortable and leisurely — La Fontaine was
never in a hurry — for all sins and shortcomings not
included or implied in the above, he quietly went out
of the world in a green and serene old age.
If the highest object of life be to get what La Fon-
taine got, of all men he was the happiest. What
Harold Skimpole wished to appear. La Fontaine was;
a half-unconscious humbug, the one ; simple and with-
out guile, the latter. His friend Maucroix, writing of
him after his death, says : — *' We have been friends for
more than fifty years, and I thank God for having
brought the extreme friendship I felt for him to a
respectable old age, without interruption or any cold-
ness, so that I can say that I have always loved him
tenderly, the last day as much as the first. He was
the most sincere and the most candid soul I have ever
known ; never any disguise, and I think that he never
lied in all his life." He never did, except when he
wrote flatteries for the king. He neither lied, nor
quarrelled, nor envied, nor intrigued, in a time full of
lies, quarrels, and envy. In return, all men conspired
to smoothe his path for him. Like a child, they let him
out to amuse himself in the garden and the meadows
till the time came when the sun set and night fell, and
there could be no more play. Then they brought him
home, persuaded him to say his prayers, and put him to
bed, where he very soon fell fast asleep.
He was born in 1621, midway between the births of
266 ^ LA FONTAINE.
Corneille and Racine, at the little town of Chateau-
Thierry, in that pleasant Champagne land which has
produced so many poets, as well as such excellent
wine. His father held a post as maitre es eaux etforets,
and was a well-to-do man, something above the middle
class. No anecdotes are told about his childhood, ex-
cept the suggestive fact that he was always remarkably
lazy, which is probably not without truth. On leaving
school, he took it into his head that he would become a
priest, and went to an ecclesia*stical seminary, where he
actually remained for a whole year. Thence he went
back into the world, and took the taste of this monastic
twelvemonth out of his mouth by five years of idleness
and pleasure, courting the ''^ gentilles Crauloises " of
Rheims and Chateau-Thierry, and not writing any thing
but love songs. Then his father, thinking to make his
son un homme rangS, a serious maitre es eaux et forets,
married him, and resigned his post in his favor. Slight,
however, as were the duties connected with the post —
he only had to walk about a little in the fields, under
the shade of the trees — they were too irksome for La
Fontaine, and oppressed him beyond measure. His
wife, too, bored him ; this mistaken woman — to whom
he used to write in very kind and even affectionate terms
when he was well away from her — used to spend her
time in reading romances, and, instead of looking after
her husband's comfort, as all the rest of his friends had
to do, expected La Fontaine to look after hers. Ac-
cordingly, he neglected his domestic as well as his
official duties. There was a certain Abbess de Mouzou,
among other fair friends, to whom he writes a letter,
sprightly and gay enough. " When," he says, " you
took the vows —
" On that same day, Love, pretty fool,
Assumed the Benedictine rule:
THE ABBESS DE MOUZOU. 267
Venus, since you were also one,
Became a Benedictine nun;
And Mirth, M'ith all his careless flock,
Put on the Benedictine frock.
The Graces — how could they desert you? —
Swore to all Benedictine virtue;
And all the gods that Cyprus knows
Took on them Benedictine vows."
Nor is this gay religieuse the only Lesbia of whom
mention is made, and it is greatly to be feared that his
infidelities were not borne by the wife with that proper
spirit of resignation which becomes the wife pf a butter-
fly" of the Muses — papilio Musarum,
Soon after his marriage he made his first literary essay,
in the shape of a translation of Terence's " Eunuchus,"
which neither succeeded nor deserved success. For the
curious thing is, that La Fontahie, whose talents were
exercised whollj^ in the lightest possible form of litera-
ture, the touch of whose pen was too light to brush the
rouge from a woman's cheek, had, all through his life,
proclivities in the direction of scholarship. Ignorant of
Greek, he read Plato in translations, and even tried, in
his Songe de Vaux, to imitate his philosophy. He loved
to talk of Greek writers, though no one seems to have
thought his observations worth preserving ; and just as
Liston thought his forte was tragedy, so La Fontaine
sighed for the renown of a scholar. This departure from
the natural tenor of his life was due, perhaps, to some
touch of the weakness common to man ; he could not
be wholly a butterfly. He was corrupted, too, by his
friends, who raved of Latin and Greek, and translated
Seneca and Plato ; doubtless they inspired him, natu-
rally a sympathetic man, with some small portion of
their own ardor. For though the old rage for scholar-
ship had in a manner abated, there were yet left some
268 LA FONTAINE.
remains, and men gave the world editions, translations,
and imitations, if not so freely as fifty years back, at
least in abundance.
Meantime, the menage went on badly. His father
was dead, leaving his affairs complicated ; the " woods
and waters " grew daily more irksome, and at last he
sold the post, proposing for the future to live upon the
proceeds. However, he got full leisure, and began,
fortunately for everybody, to read the old French
writers, Jean de Meung, Villon, Marot, and Rabelais —
the glories of free and unacademized France. " Do you
think," asked La Fontaine once of Boileau, who was dis-
coursing on Augustine, " do you think that Augustine
had as much esprit as Rabelais ?"" — a question of mag-
nificent profundity, showing the true student of Rabe-
lais. This reading proved the turning-point of his life.
He left off trying to be a scholar, and allowed his mind
to follow its natural bent. But he never ceased to
admire and to love those old classics which seem des-
tined never to lose their hold on men's minds. He read
them perpetually. His translation of Plato Avas scored
and interlined, and black with marginal references. He
would dream away whole days over Horace and Virgil.
He accepted the doctrines they laid down as things not
to be disputed. He would hear no criticism on their
words ; and he became so steeped in their writings that
his own are full of imitations and echoes — not plagi-
arisms. Hear what he says himself: —
Some imitators, like a flock of sheep,
For ever in the steps of Virgil keep :
Him for my shepherd while I proudly own,
Sometimes I stray, and dare to walk alone;
And though my Virgil lead me, let him have
Me for his pupil, never for his slave.
FOUQUET. 269
His be the model, his the glorious laws
Bj'^ which he ritrhtly won a world's applause.
These let me follow; if perchance I dare
To borrow something from the riches there,
Let it, at least, attempt to seem in place,
And veil in fashions new its antique face.
It was not till he was past thirty that La Fontaine
began to be known in private circles as an extremely
clever writer of vers de societe. About this time he was
introduced by his wife's uncle, M. Jannart, to the great
Fouquet, who received him kindly, and gave him a
pension, coupled with the easy condition that he would
write him a ballad once a quarter. Then followed nine
years, all too short, of feasting, love-making, reading,
and perfect happiness, chiefly apart from his wife.
Vaux, Fouquet's magnificent palace, the forerunner of
Versailles, contained all that La Fontaine wanted, and
more. Fouquet, possessed of enormous wealth, spent
it regally. He had Pellisson for his secretar}^ Le Vau
for his architect, Le Brun for his painter, Vatel for his
maitre d'hOtel, La Fontaine and Moliere for his poets.
And all these dependants loved him. Little they knew,
most of them, of the outer intrigues, the plots against
the cardinal, Colbert's crafty web of lies and treacheries,
the deceits and meannesses of the king, and the long
array of misdeeds which ended in the fall of their bene-
factor. La Fontaine, for one, was all the time in the
garden, basking in the sun, and talking to the pretty
women about love, and Plato, and all the little eaquetage
that pleased him. How was he to, know any thing about
it? But the crash came. Fouquet was arrested, his
friends were dispersed, and La Fontaine, forty-two years
of age, found himself without a protector, and with very
few shillings, as we may well suppose.
270 LA FONTAINE.
Jannart, one of Fouqiiet's closest adherents, was
exiled to Limoges, whither La Fontaine, in the first
burst of his grief, accompanied him. On the way he
picked up his spirits a little, and wrote long and amus-
ing letters, kind, if not affectionate, interspersed with
verse, to his wife. " After all," he says, " it is a real
pleasure to travel. One always meets with something
remarkable. And you would hardly believe how good the
hutte?' ^^s." He tells the story of La Belle Barigny of
Poitiers, whose lover dying, left her 12,000 crowns.
His relations dispute the will. The lady, disconsolate,
swearing she will die of grief, " en attendant recueillit le
legs que son amant lui avait fait " — a touch entirely
Fontainesque. The country around Orleans pleases him
greatly, by reason of its verdure, and freedom from
those detestable montagnes pelees^ those bare peaks,
which every one hates so. At Amboise, where Fouquet
was then confined, he tries to visit the prisoner, but is
not allowed, and spends the whole day in tears at the
door, thinking sadly of the past nine years and the fat
kine. He did not stay long at Limoges, finding the air
of exile oppressive, and, ceasing his voluntary partici-
pation in misfortune, he returned to his wife, and shortly
after became a father, not greatly to his own delight.
For La Fontaine was not fond of children, the petit
peuple- — ^' cet dge sans pitie'^ — of whom he always
speaks with such petulance. How should he be ? A
child himself, as exacting, and consequently as jealous,
as children always are. He spent the next few years
between Paris and Chateau-Thierry, his wife sometimes
going with him to Paris, but getting tired of change,
and settling down gradually to her home in Chateau-
Thierry ; La Fontaine, for his part, gravitating toward
Paris. Here his friends were the best writers of the
AT PARIS. 271
day: Boileau, Racine, Moliere, and others. Notably
the drunken bard Chapelle, he whom Boileau once
lectured on the sin of intemperance, his repentant
disciple plying him with wine until the preacher was
drunk himself.
He was now about forty-five years of age, and had
hitherto published nothing except his miserable comedy.
But he made two new and powerful friends : the Dow-
ager Duchess of Orleans, who made him one of the
gentlemen of her household, and the Duchess de Bouil-
lon, one of Mazarin's nieces, who sometimes lived at
Chateau-Thierry. She, young, and full of cleverness
and wit, caressed and indulged to the utmost this spoiled
child of nine lustra. She made him use her house as
his own — one wonders how the wife liked the arrange-
ment — and even when she went awa}^ left orders that
every thing was to be at La Fontaine's disposal. This
was what he liked. He cared nothing for the ordhiary
ambitions of the world. To please the king and be
about the court was all very well for Racine and Boi-
leau. The^ had morals, or, at least, a tolerable reputa-
tion for morality ; he had none. The^ had decorum
and a proper respect for forms ; these he lacked. He
loved better to live without gene at the duchess's little
court of the Luxembourg, where he could go about in
perfect freedom, Avithout fear of a royal frown, and safe
in the sunshine of those soft hearts that never played
him false ; where he could do as he pleased, and 'say
what he pleased.
History regretfully has to confess that his first tales
were written at the request of Madame de Bouillon.
These were so sparkling, so witty, and so highly goutes
by the ladies for whose edification they were written,
that the poet was easily persuaded to write more, and
272 LA FONTAINE.
to go on writing more ; piling up abundance of material
for repentance when the time for repentance should
come. He did more than this ; he published, being
then in his forty-eighth year, his first collection of
Fables.
It is extremely curious to observe how long a time
the flower of his genius took to blossom and come to
perfection. At an age when most poets have filled
whole desks he had written nothing at all. At an age
when many authors are in the very summer of their
powers, he was putting forth timidly a poor little trans-
lation from the Latin. And when some men are begin-
ning to bethink them of rest after a good day's work,
La Fontaine, unconscious of his years, takes to writing
tales which belong to the mere wantonness of early
manhood ; and fables which show at once a child's keen
delight in trifles, the subtle perceptions, the " long
thoughts " of childhood, and the facile versification of
the most practised poet.
As soon as these things appeared their author be-
came, per saltum, the most popular writer in France,
None had spoken like him before. He had no court
airs, such as Racine sometimes put on. He was no
pedant as Boileau sometimes was. He did not think it
necessary to lash himself into fury at the follies of his
fellows; nor did he ever sneer at them; nor did he
pretend to bind himself by any laws. He suited his
verse to his subject, not his subject to his verse, and
vised short lines and long lines, odd rhymes and even
rhymes, just as best fitted his theme. Hence his lan-
guage was so bright and clear, and the verse was so
light that no mountain brook could trip more merrily
over its pebbles than his stories over their cadenced
channel of rhyme. His thought and his verse were
HIS FABLES. 273
wedded, and became one. For, just as the crafty
chemist, by a process known only to himself, invents
by cunning combination some new and delightful
essence, so La Fontaine, taking plentifully of the old
classical spirit, and of the Gallic spirit quantum suff.^
and artfully compounding these in the alembic of his
brain, produced a poetical result which was. as new as it
was pleasant, being, in fact, to other poetry, what cham-
pagne is to other wine. His tales and his fables were
dramas, without the dramatic rules, for La Fontaine
was a bad playwright. They were not written in five
acts, but, as he said himself, in a hundred. Their chief
strength lay in their perfect truthfulness to nature, —
the great charm in his writings as in his character.
Therein, as in a mirror, every man saw reflected his
own impulses and thoughts ; or, to use another simile,
the writer seemed to take each reader into his confi-
dence, while he went about, like a curious girl, and,
with a certain feminine delicacy, lifting up just the
corner of the curtain of the soul, afforded the merest
peep into what was behind, with his finger on his lips
and a smile in his eyes ; the play of a child, perhaps,
but of a child careful never to wound.
Above all, his work was most carefully finished.
There was no slovenly execution about La Fontaine.
Lazy though he was, V enfant de la paresse et du sommeil,
as he called himself, he would give nothing to the world
but what was his best. He did no task work ; but the
labor that he delighted in physicked pain. It was at
once his chosen amusement and his work. And, as
Thackeray wisely says, he is the happiest man who gets
the work to do best fitted to his hand, and does not get
tired of it.
Fifteen year^ passed by. He got separated, without
■P IS
274 LA FONTAINE.
any scandal, from his wife, whom he never saw again.
Once, indeed, Boileaii persuaded him to go to Chateau-
Thierry, and try to effect a reconciliation. He jour-
neyed there, found she was at church, and came all the
way back again, without waiting till the service was
ended, comforting himself with the reflection that he
had done all that was possible. He went on writing
tales and fables and letters, growing in reputation
yearly but not increasing in fortune, and living on the
bounty of his two duchesses.
Then misfortune fell upon him. The Duchess of
Orleans died ; two years later the Duchess de Bouillon
was exiled ; and poor La Fontaine, now in his fifty-
ninth year, as childlike and as innocent as ever, found
himself upon the world, once more, without a penny.
Of course, it mattered nothing. Of course, other
friends came to his assistance. Conde, the Prince of
Conti, the Duke of VendSme, gave him money and
helped him along till he found another patron, who
took him in, and adopted him, so to speak, for her
own son. This time it was Madame de la Sabliere.
Surely, of all fair sinners, there are few upon whom
the world has looked with more indulgent eyes than on
this accomplished and learned lady. One of the queens
of Parisian society, the companion of savants., a mathe-
matician, a Greek scholar, she was at the same time a
poetess, a musician, and the heroine of a thousand
amourettes. Her husband was little disposed to quarrel
with her for indiscretions for which his own notorious
infidelities — he had the bad taste to die broken-hearted
at the loss of a mistress — gave her, in the eyes of the
world, at least, some excuse. Whatever form these
indiscretions had previously taken, whether they were
innocent or not, matters very little now ; only we must
MADAME DE LA SABLIERE. 275
remark that Madame de la Sal)li(^re was already forty
years of age when she experienced an attack of that
grande passion which was almost as inevitable in her
times as the measles, and much more dangerous. The
object of her love was the Marquis de la Fare, an inter-
esting young gentleman some ten years her junior, of
poetic proclivities and most refined tastes. For some
time the liaison went on at fever heat ; the lovers would
spend whole days together — with all the accompani-
ments of poetry and the finest cream-laid sentiment.
The ardor of the gentleman was the first to cool, and
our middle-aged Sappho perceived with tears that her
charms could not altogether supplant those of the
gaming-table. With regret she took the second place
in her lover's heart. Presently another rival came into
the field : a woman this time. It was too much. Poor
Madame de la Sabliere threw up the game. Her hus-
band dead — perhaps this was no great loss; her lover
gone ; her last illusions perished — she bravely resolved
to leave a world which had no longer any charms for
her, and to spend the remaining years of her life in
seclusion and good works. She shut her house and
went no more into society. " I have sent away,'* she
wrote, " all my people, except my dog, my cat, and La
Fontaine.'*
This rival was, it is sad to say, a friend of the poet's.^
He had alwaj^s two sets of friends, one for serious',
moods, which were few, and one for his days of good \
spirits, which were many. She was La Champmesl^, \
the actress. Racine, before he was converted, taught '
her how to act. La Fontaine dedicated tales to her ;
her husband wrote comedies for her ; and all the world
fell in love with her. Of her worthy husband Boileau
maliciously wrote : —
276 LA FONTAINE.
De six am ants contents et non jaloux,
Qui tour a tour servaient a Madame Claude,
Le moins volage etait Jean,' son epoux.
The end of the gallant De la Fare, poet and lover,
divided, as it were, between Pallas Athen^ and Erycina
Ridens, was unworthy of so splendid a beginning. He
became a tremendous gourmand, and actually killed
himself by eating too much cod-fish.
It was in the year when La Fontaine's benefactress
retreated from the world that he was elected into the
Academy. The choice was not unanimous. The king
wanted the election of Boileau, a younger man, but
clearly more worthy in many respects of the honor.
President Rose, the leader of the opposition, made a
violent speech against La Fontaine. Flinging the
unfortunate volumes of Tales upon the table, he de-
manded whether the Academy would submit to the
king the name of a man who had written a book fletri
par une sentence de police. He was, however, chosen,
in spite of the opposition. The king refused at first to
ratify his election ; nor was it till La Fontaine had
written two or three odes brimful of flattery, and Boi-
leau had actually been elected to another vacant chair,
and the wayward poet — this naughty child of sixty-
three — had given a distinct and solemn promise to be
sage^ to be a good boy and never write any more wicked
stories, that Louis gave his consent, and La Fontaine
joyfully passed those doors which seem to lead to im-
mortality. On the day of his reception, with the first
throbbings of a repentant awe upon him, he read a
contrite epistle in verse to Madame de la Sablidre,
regretting his past sins and promising amendment for
the future.
Pleased with his election, La Fontaine- became one of
MADAME ULRICH, 277
the most regular attendants at the stances of the Aca-
demy, where it does not appear that he greatly con-
tributed to the work done, but where he enjoyed the
pleasure of feeling himself among the learned, and
pocketed his share of the forty livres distributed at
every sitting. He made new friends in the Hervaut
family, however, who helped him to forget his promise
to the king and the Academy. Among them he found
once more, what he could hardly get in the house of
La Champmesl^, but which was the chief grace and
beauty of life to him — the society of young and beau-
tiful ladies. With them he renewed his youth, and
forgot the crow's feet and gray hairs of sixty years.
He was always in love with them ; he wrote them
verses, made jokes for them ; was contented to be
laughed at. " What is the use," he said, " of old
radoteurs like me but to make the girls laugh?" He.
was the same once more as he had been forty years
before ; and in this society, the Capua of his old age,
he forgot all his promises of reform, and repeated all
his old offences. A certain Madame Ulrich, with whom
he contracted some sort of amourette., stimulated him
to indite more tales, and his last w'ere more sprightly,
more witty, and more wicked than any he had pre-
viously written. In vain his friends tried to bring
him to a better mind. His wings were heav}' now and
his flight feeble, but there was yet left a day or two of
the bright Indian summer of his life, and he would not
rest till the cold frosts of winter actually laid him low.
He had no money, of course, except what he got from
the sale of his Fables, which he probably spent as fast
as he got it. His wife lived still at Chateau-Thierry,
and his son was brought up by friends. A story is told
how La Fontaine met him once by accident, and how,
278 LA FONTAINE.
after he had admired the .young man's modesty and man-
ner, he was told that it was his own son. "Indeed?"
he said, simply, " I am very glad to hear it." Occasion-
ally he got a little honorarium ; once, for instance, from
the" dauphin, as an acknowledgment for his Fables;
and probably his old friend the Duchess de Bouillon did
not altogether forget him. At all events, his life was
greatly simplified by his free quarters in the Hotel
Sabliere.
But he even outlived his benefactor. Madame de la
Sabliare died when her poet was seventy-two years of
age, and once more he was turned out upon the world,
a beggar. Hervaut, going to offer him hospitality, met
him in the street, crying over the death of the kindest
and best friend he had ever had. " Come to my house,"
said Hervaut. " I was going there," sobbed the poet.
He went there, and stayed there till he died.
And now the cold winds of autumn were set in in
earnest. The November of life — the month when all
butterflies must disappear — was upon him. To every-
body comes a time when the flowers fade, and their
perfume, long since faint, wholly dies. To La Fon-
taine it came very late, but it came at last. He was
seized with a disease which the physicians pronounced
mortal, and began to patch up a hurried peace with the
church. His repentance was most sincere and real,
though the world laughs at the manner in Avhich it was
manifested ; for he began by reading the New Testa-
ment, a book altogether strange to him, and gravely
pronounced it to be a work of considerable merit. It
was at least fifty years since he had read it last, and it
had all the charms of novelty to him. He had pre-
viously, many years before, made a partial acquaintance
with the Apocrypha ; for Racine once showed him a pas-
REPENTANCE. 279
sage from Baruch, which he read with great interest,
and went about for a fortnight afterwards asking every-
body if they had read that excellent author, Baruch.
Again, on his confessor representing to him the grave
injury to public morals that his Tales had caused, the
honest and contrite bard, who never quite understood
the mischief he had done, offered, with many tears, to
give to the church the profits of his next edition; —
which is much as if a remorseful burglar were to promise
the proceeds of his next robbery in expiation for all the
preceding. Getting over these preliminaries — it was
natural that, after so many years of a life so dSrSglS he
should feel at first a little strange in the harness of virtue
— he set himself steadily, no longer a butterfly, but rather
a chrysalis, to do every thing acceptable to the church.
He made public lamentation over his sins at the Acad-
emy ; he burned his unpublished writings; he projected
hymns ; he wrote a translation of the Dies Irce ; he
wore a hair shirt; he practised rigors; he repented in-
deed. " Oh ! mon cher," he writes, " mourir n'est rien ;
mais songes-tu que je vais comparaitre devant mon Dieu I
Tu sais comme j'ai vdcu. Avant que tu re^oives ce billet
les portes de I'^ternite seront ouvertes pour moi."
These gates, indeed, were soon to open for him. He
died, the year following his conversion, painlessly and
happily, in the arms of Racine, his old and dear friend,
who was himself to follow five years later. All France
burst into tears, and everybody felt with his nurse,
'Dieu n'aura pas le courage de le damner."
La Fontaine presents a singular example of a man
who, throughout a long life, persevered in a course cal-
culated above all things to enfeeble the will and deaden
280 LA FONTAINE.
the conscience, and yet preserved his moral fibre strong
enough to change suddenly and entirely in extreme old
age. He had set his face steadily against all unpleasant
things ; he would do no manner of work ; he chose the
part of the lilies of the field, and would neither toil nor
spin, preferring to enjoy the summer sun and the warm
rain. But when the end came, and the inevitable stared
him in the face, a thing which could no longer be shirked
or forgotten, he emerged from his carelessness, and with
a nature as fresh and buoyant as ever, not only repented,
but tried to undo the mischief he had done.
It must be confessed that he had done a good deal of
mischief in his day. But " evil is wrought by want of
thought, as well as want of heart." What La Fontaine-
had done amiss was chiefly done by want of thought.
Like Adam, he fell at the temptation of woman. His
fair but frail Benedictine, the ladies of Vaux, the
Duchess de Bouillon, La Champmesle, and Madame
Ulrich, were ever at his ear, prompting him to write
clever things, which, to be amusing, must needs be
wicked, while Madame de la Sabli^re was the only
woman who urged him to repentance. Pleased with
his own dexterit}-, he acceded to the tempters, like a
child; and like a child, as soon as he saw that punish-
ment must needs follow offence, he began to be sorry
and to cry. His great power of inspiring affection was
mainly due to this touching simplicity and childishness.
But besides, he had that indefinable quality which
brings to some men the love of everybody, if not their
respect; Weak of will, to all seeming, till he was forced
into strength by contrition ; prone to think lightly of vice
and to laugh at follies, rather than to be indignant with
them, yet always with the possibility before him of
SOLITUDE, 281
higher things ; always sinning, yet always dreaming
of the Utopian future, where virtue should be all in all —
he ought hardly to be judged like other men. The func-
tion of his life was that of the butterfly, to repeat our
old simile, which, while all the world is at work, relieves
the mind b}^ the spectacle of one creature, at least, who
takes no thought and has no toil. And this function he
performed with an entire and guileless simplicity, with-
out affectation or pretence. Of affectation, indeed, he
was incapable. There is no quality in La Fontaine
more insisted on by his biographers than this perfect
candor. Numberless stories are told to illustrate the
way in which he always laid bare his mind. Thus —
one of them will do — being once bored by the coiupany
at a dinner, he rose abruptly, and said he must go, having
to be present at the Academy. " You will be too early,"
was objected. *' Oh. ! no," said La Fontaine, " I shall
go there by the longest way."'
Sometimes he would be seized with long fits of soli-
tude. Then he would eschew all society and go awaji
by himself, speaking to no one, and sitting for hours
under a tree, reading or musing, as happy with his own
thoughts as ever Lord Foppington was with his. His
book would generally be some Latin author, and his
friends learned how to respect moods of taciturnity
which were not morose, but a sort of natural repose of
the body while the mind digested its ideas. Perhaps
it is on account of these fits of silence that we have
such widely differing accounts of him as a com-
panion ; one biographer setting him forth as gauche
and distrait^ the other as the most charming man of
society. He was both in turns, for he made no conces-
sions ; and if people did not please him he made no
282 LA FONTAINE.
I effort to please them ; while if he was in congenial so-
\ciety he bubbled over with joyous fun and innocent
\pfialiee.
One must perforce compare him with Goldsmith, with
whom he has many points of resemblance. The Bos-
wells and Philistines of the day turned from both with
repugnance and dislike. The society of ladies was to
both what the light is to the flower ; wherever it shone,
thither their heads were turned. Oliver was softer-
hearted, less dreamy, more alive to the sorrows of others ;
but his mind was cast in a less delicate mould, and we
ma}^ look there in vain for that fine subtlety and felicity
of expression which distinguish La Fontaine above all
writers.
One thing more. His writings do not want.^ in order
to be understood, a knowledge of his life o^^ofhis times.
What he wrote, whether in fable or in tale, owes its in-
terest to no local coloring, and bears no stamp of his
century, save its cadre^ the framework of language.
This is the strongest proof of his genius. To write
for all time and of all time, to give illustrations of
human nature which will serve for any place or any age
of human society — this is what very few writers
have done. We step from the classical and powdered
school of Corneille and Racine, from the prim and arti-
ficial garden of Boileau, to a free and open ideal world,
where men and women walk and talk unfettered by in-
fluences of time and country. What cared the poet for
Louis Quatorze and all his splendor ? To him the dis-
putes of scholars and theologians were merely empty
words. Port-Royal or the Sorbonne, Jansenist or Jesuit
— he cared little which won. And he left the H8tel de
Rambouillet, in his time certainly fallen from its high
YOUTHFULNESS. 283
estate, to lay down its laws and formulate its decrees
without his interference. The present was nothing to
the poet. Like the virtuous man, in this respect at least,
the outer world might have crashed around him with-
out disturbing him from his reverie, or causing him an
anxiety for the future.
The great mistake of his life, which by his very^
nature he could not perhaps avoid, was the obstinacy'
with which he clung to youth. He would not, or could \
not, grow old. And as his mind, so are his writings ; i
these are always young. Flashes there are, in abun-
dance, of a genius higher than any that France had yet
seen. They are only flashes ; they hold out promise of
great things, never to be fulfilled. All his Tales should
have been written before he was thirty, and put on the
shelf to make room for that more solid work which he
might have given to the world. But this was too much
exertion for La Fontaine ; he preferred polishing the
gems — like his Fables — which mark the workman of
infinite cunning and craft, and possible power. The
promise was never fulfilled, and La Fontaine's work is
the work of a young man. In the same way, we look
in his life for the man, and only find the child ; a
marvellous, child indeed, spoiled by indulgence and
caresses, wayward and self-willed, but preserving still
his childlike sunny nature, his love for all who love
him, his childish selfishness, his childish inability to com-
prehend the nature of duty, and his readiness to repent
directly he can be made to understand that he has done
wrong.
Such was La Fontaine ; full of faults, in spite of which,
perhaps on account of which, we love him now as every-
body loved him then. Before we judge him let us
284 LA FONTAINE,
remember the words written of him by that great and
good man, F^nelon. " Lisez-le," says the bishop, " et
dites si Anacreon a su badiner avec plus de grace ; si
Horace a pard la philosophie d'ornements plus poetiques
et plus attrayants ; si Tdrence a peint les moeurs des
hommes avec plus de naturel et de v^rite."
Chapter XIV.
BOILEAU.
Tout ce qui n'est pas clair n'est pas FranQais.
" OPEAK no harm of Boileau," said Voltaire ; " ^a
^^ porte malheur." It is a pious superstition ob-
served by all. French writers, indeed, are proud of
their great Despreaux, and unwilling, save in times
of controversy, such as that of the Romantic move-
ment, to detract by any unkind criticism from his great
fame. He is like some old idol to whom, though
younger gods have come and gone, the people yet do
reverence by habit. The dust has settled thick upon
him and blurred his face; his ornaments and trappings
are tarnished ; the gilt sword has dropped from his
hands ; he seems to have no longer any power for good
or for evil ; and yet through the cobwebs and the dust
you may still mark the calm cold eyes, the clean-set
chin, the firm lips that tell of strength.
The father of Nicolas Boileau-Desprdaux was Regis-
trar to the Great Chamber of Paris, and in that centre
of the earth was born the satirist in November, 1636.
It Was in the same room in which the " Satyre M6-
nipp(^e " had been written. Nicolas was the eleventh
child of the registrar. The eldest brother, Gilles, was
already a poet and scholar of some reputation when
Nicolas was born. Another brother, Jacques, canon
of the Sainte-Chapelle, also achieved distinction as a
286 BOILEAU.
historian and antiquary. A third brother, Jerome, suc-
ceeded his father in the post of registrar. We have
thus a family of considerable respectability, a point
which was not without its influence on the future
satirist.
The childhood of young Nicolas was not fortunate,
He lost his mother at two years of age, and was no
favorite with his father. Afflicted too with a dire
disease, he was subjected to a terrible operation, un-
skilfully performed, which gave him uneasiness during
the whole of his life. He was thus a quiet and gentle
boy, incapacitated for the rude sports of other children,
and driven back upon his own resources, which did not
leave him altogether unhappy. Alone in a garret he
spent whole days poring over romances and poetry.
His father allowed him to do as he pleased, a little in-
dignant, as fathers of poets always are, at the waste of
valuable time, and occasionally remarking, with that ab-
sence of discrimination which also characterizes fathers
of poets, that Nicolas was a good lad who would never
do harm to others or good to himself. Everybody has
a sneer at the parents of poets. For my own part,
seeing the entire impossibility of predicting poetical
success, its rarity, its slender marketable value, and the
fact that poetry may be pursued with any other calling,
I am disposed to agree with M. Boileau 'pere^ and the
other anxious parents who rightly enough rank the
certainty of material comfort far above the chance of
glory. This, after all, if you get it, means chiefly the
standing in a conspicuous place on the shelves, and oc-
casionally having your character dissected, and perhaps
your reputation destroyed, by the critics, long after it
has been firmly estahlished.
He was educated at the College of Beauvais, where
EDUCATION. 287
he made himself remarked by a singular aptitude for
writing verses. At the age of eighteen he produced his
first serious attempt, happily now as dead as the dodo.
He wrote also certain bad tragedies. While it is the
best thing possible for an aspirant to attempt any kind
of writing, the exercise giving fluency to his style, com-
mand of language, and facility of expression, it must be
owned that the world has ever cause for congratulation
when the youthful efforts of a poet are lost.
The boy became a man, but always grave, sober, and
studious. There are no emportements de la Jeunesse;
none of the mad folly which the world laughs at and
excuses. Boileau was sage^ a little malin, perhaps, fond
of that kind of good story which makes you laugh at
the smaller misfortunes of your neighbor — that is to
be expected, because he was a Frenchman — but good-
natured at bottom, and careful on the whole not to say
or do any thing which might give pain. He first began
to study law, but gave it up in disgust after being called.
Years afterwards he manifested his hatred to law when
he drew the character of Chicane in the " Lutrin."
Between those old supports, by which the wall
Supports the mass of this stupendous hall,
There stands a pillar known and cursed by fame,
Where the litigious Norman shouts his claim.
Here, on a dusty pile of parchments old,
A Sibyl sits each day to screech and scold;
Chicane her name : no single thought of right
Her ceaseless clamor calms, or clears her sight;
Beside her throng her children — shaking Fear:
Famine and Ruin — shameful brood — are here.
Around their mother's, throne they press, and still
With loud laments the troubled echoes fill:
She, poring always over precedents.
To work new ruin, pleadings new invents,
House, castle, palace, at one stroke o'erthrows,
And adds more cases to the countless rows.
288 BOILEAU.
A hundred times has Themis wept to see
Her balance weighed by Chicane's subtlety.
From shape to shape she turns, by magic might;
Now like the blinking owls she shuns the light,
Now like a hungry lion glares around;
Now like a serpent crawls along the ground.
He then turned his attention to theology, took orders,
and for a time held a small benefice worth some eight
hundred francs, though he was never a theologian. And
once, but only once, we hear of Boileau in love. No one
is wholly exempt from the fatal passion. A studious
life, a preoccupied mind, a cold temperament, ill-health,
these did not apparently protect Boileau. Of the
passion we learn but little. Its object was his cousin,
Marie Porcher de Bretonville. The love-making, ap-
parently^ conducted on different principles from those
which guide most suitors, ended in Boileau selling his
benefice and devoting the proceeds to his mistress, not,
light-minded reader, with the frivolous object of pro-
curing the poor girl dresses, gayety, societ}^, some of
the light and brightness of life, but with the grave and
solemn end of putting her into a convent, A curious and
suggestive story. Boileau is in love ; he shows it by
making his mistress a nun. Poor poet ! poor Marie !
One pictures her carrying his image in her heart, pin-
ing away for fifty years or so — nuns take a long time
to pine — while she treasures up still the memory of a
wooing, pleasant while it lasted, though cold as ice.
Boileau, in reality, was incapable of love. That is
the secret of his coldness, his want of sympathy, the
uniformity of his coloring. The power of loving, not
the fact that a man has loved, gives to literature what
the atmosphere gives to nature, its color, its half shades,
its repression of outline, its haze, softness, and tone.
All this is wanting in Boileau, because he was without
SATIRES, 289
the yearning after the other sex which makes poets of
us all. He had no mother, no wife, no mistress — even
an amourette would have been something — no single
woman whom he loved.
At the age of twenty-four he begins to write his
satires. The first, in imitation of the third satire of
Juvenal, was found by Furetiere among the papers of
Gilles Boileau, to whom it had probably been submitted
for criticism. He read it, liked it, carried it away, and
showed it about. It had immediate success. Younjr
Nicolas was invited to the Hotel de Rambouillet, where
he made the acquaintance of Chapelain, Cotin, and
the rest of the tuneful throng. He went there seldom,
however, for he made friends of greater value than the
Rambouillet and Scuderi circles, now in their decline.
He became known to Madame de Sdvign^, to Madame
de la Fayette, to Rochefoucauld, Lamoignon, Racine,
Moliere, Chapelle, and La Fontaine. His friendship
with Racine was especially tender and devoted, lasting
a whole lifetime without a cloud. For Boileau, who
had no place in his heart for the love of women, could
yet — it is the one soft point in his character — be the
truest of friends. Had he been Paris, he Avould have
adjudged the apple by rules of art, and after careful
tape measurements of the goddesses. But to Damon
he was another Pythias, to Jonathan another David.
The death of his father giving him a modest patri-
mony, Boileau henceforth lived the life of a scholar,
chiefly among a small circle of friends. He rented a
room in the Rue du Vieux Colombier, where, with
Racine, La Fontaine, Moliere, and Chapelle, weekly
reunions and dinners were held and literary mattei-s
discussed. The little circle ^ consisted of men who had
* It is spoken of by La Fontaine, in the '* Amours de Psych6."
19
290 BOILEAU.
all made their d^huts in the world. La Fontaine, by his
Tales ; Racine, by his " Th^baide ; " Moliere, already
well known ; Chapelle, by his "Voyage;'^ and Boileau,
by his Satires. The penalty for an infraction of the
rules was nothing less than the perusal of so many
verses of the '' Pucelle ; " the highest penalty — we
hope, never inflicted — was the compulsory reading of
a whole page. At these meetings, little by little, the
literary creed which we find promulgated in the " Art
Poetique," was discussed and formularized. They held
the same views of art ; they assisted each other in car-
rying them out, and in laying down their principles.
Not slowly, but rapidly, the name and influence of
Boileau grew. To understand the weight of his opin-
ion, it is not enough to read the Satires ; these only
prove it, they do not explain it. We must remember
that there was as yet no criticism. A few poets and
a few people with literary taste met at the Hotel de
Rambouillet, or that of Mile, de Scuderi. These
circles, beginning with excellent aims, rapidly degene-
rated into prejudiced coteries. Literature, to be sure,
w^as always discussed, but on false principles of art.
Then, too, as we have seen, a knot of third-rate poets
had got themselves constituted an Academy, but it
took many years before the French Academy became
a literary power. There were as yet no reviewers,
nothing to guide popular opinion. Just as an un-
learned listener at a concert likes or dislikes a piece
of music, so the Parisians liked or dishked a new poem,
tickled with a new melody, pleased and surprised b}^ a
novel collocation of words. But with no principles or
rules of art and taste.
The four friends were Moliere, who is called Gelaste {yiKaaroi) ;
Boileau, Ariste ; Racine, Acante; and La Fontaine, Polyphile.
LITERARY STYLE. 291
And as for the literature itself, it was as wild and
unregulated as might have been expected. In wander-
ing down one of those ravines which cut up a tropical
island into sectors of splendor separated by rays of
gloi:y, you will mark as you step along the bouldere,
amid which the mountain stream bubbles and sparkles,
the palms spreading out broad branches, pointing sk}^-
ward each its single spiral spear ; beside these the great
tree fern, beneath which the leaves appear by day a
golden fretwork wrought for Solomon's Temple, and by
night, under the moon, a marvellous pattern of lace cut
out in silver. Round your feet spring up the scentless
flowers of the forest; the bamboo is over your head,
clustering together its long thin arms for protection
against the wind ; the aloe shoots thirty feet into the
air, its long mast laden with its bitter berries. All, at
first, seems the glorious, wanton prodigality of Nature
which cannot exhaust her types of beauty. But as you
go on you may mark how the great creepers stretch
their murderous embrace from tree to tree, crushing out
their lives, so that the dead trunks killed long before
their time stand up among the rest ; at every step your
foot plunges into what appears to be a solid bank of
moss-grown earth and is a rotten and corrupting trunk ;
on the trees are vast ant-houses, where the little crea-
tures live until their host is eaten up ; death, premature
decay, blighted promise, cross you at every step ; in the
branches the hideous monkey lives, and chatters, and
leaps, and runs. And there are no sweet birds, because
this creature of mischief, this fittest emblem of the
flesh and its selfish appetites, has sucked all their eggs
and destroyed all their nests. The literature of France
at this time was like the tropical ravine, as full of promise
and power, as full of death, decay, and bhghted hopes ;
292 BOILEAU.
the sweet fancies of innocence and youth destroyed by
license and by lust.
We have seen how the lives of some of the men I have
spoken of were licentious and disgraceful. What I have
kept in the background is the way in which their lives
reacted upon their work —
Le vers se sent tou jours des bassesses du coeur.
There is nothing in all literature so disgraceful — let
me say it for once and have done with it — as the galant
verse of the seventeenth century. As a punishment its
writers, save when one delves and digs in obscure places,
are all forgotten, with their works —
Ces dangereux auteurs,
Qui, de I'honneur en vers infames deserteurs,
Trahissant la vertu sur un papier coupable,
Aux yeux de leurs lee tears rendent le vice aimahle.
But in their time they were read, learned, quoted.
They corrupted the sacred sources of love, honor, self-
restraint ; they made mirth ghastly, hideous, harmful ;
they changed the laugh of childhood to the leer of Sile-
nus ; they took the blush from woman's cheek, the dig-
nity from manhood. It was one of the two Herculean
tasks undertaken Iby Boileau, to stop this foul and fetid
stream. The second, which was a harder and fiercer
fight, was to substitute good taste for bad, proportion for
disproportion, harmony for cacophony. The wretched
taste of the poetasters, headed by Chapelain, seems
almost inconceivable. It had grown up along with a
habit of praising each other, till real criticism was re-
garded as a mark of ill-breeding. Chapelain himself,
with his eternal "Cela n'est pas mdprisable," was called
by Voiture, "I'excuseur de toutes les fautes." Costar
was supposed not to knoAV the use of the word " no ; "
they were all so greedy of praise that to get it they
NO CRITICISM. 293
grudged not the most extravagant compliments to each
other. Words were no longer, as a writer complained,
the signs of judgment and reason, but of a civility which
one man pays to another like a salutation. Their style
— I am not now talking of Voiture, Benserade, or Saint
Amant, but of the prose writers — was made up of
conceits the most far-fetched, the most wearisome, the
most fade?-
The romance writers and the poets not only protected
and praised each other, they were protected by great and
powerful nobles, by the Prince de Condd, by Colbert, by
the king himself until he learned better. They had the
prestige of court patronage ; they were the servants,
dependants, parasites, of all that was rich and powerful
in France.
Boileau appeared among them more as a critic than a
poet. He came with a mission to silence them all, and
to lay down anew the rules of poetical art. These rules
he arrived at by no instinct of his own, but by the ap-
plication of common sense to the rules of Horace. These
at least were the laws of good taste, laws which ought
to be part of our nature ; laws as inscrutable as those of
proportion and harmony. He would make them known,
not by translation, but by imitation ; he would apply an
1 Take this as a specimen. The author wants to tell us of the
arrival of the summer by the constellation of the Bull and the
Twins. " After that the Knight of the Day, in the celestial
amphitheatre, mounted on Phlegon, has valiantly speared the
luminous Bull, throwing rays of gold for javelins, and having for
applauders of his attacks the charming assembly of stars, who, in
order to regard with more pleasure his elegant shape, were leaning
on the balconies of Aurora ; after that, by a singular metamor-
phosis, with spurs of feathers and a crest of fire, the fair-haired
Phoebus, become a cock, has presided over the multitude of brilliant
stars, hens of the celestial fields," &c.
294 BOILEAU.
Horatian analysis to the writers of his own time ; he
would illustrate it by satires and epistles of his own, im-
itated directly as to form, spirit, and almost as to words,
from those of Horace and Juvenal, those things only
being changed which must be changed.
There was no hurry in his movements. When he
had written a piece he kept it in his desk, polishing
and correcting, till he could think of nothing more to
add. Then he gave it to Racine for his criticism and
suggestions. Perhaps, too, he showed it to Moliere.
Always the limce labor et mora. The satire finally fin-
ished, it was not, as is our hasty and ill-considered prac-
tice, immediately set up in type and published, but
was first carefully copied and handed about. Paris
fought for copies ; they were learned by heart ; they
were written down by memor}^ and sent into the coun-
try as precious things, and long before they were printed
the lines had become proverbs, and the unfortunates
satirized were mere objects of contempt.
Boileau had thus a giant's strength. He used it
with generosity, forbearance, and wisdom. No personal
malice or ill-nature corrupts his satire. In every single
case his verdict has been endorsed by posterity. Not
one of all the poets whom he ridiculed has survived,
not because Boileau held him up to contempt, but be-
cause he deserved oblivion at least for the things which
Boileau ridiculed. St. Amant's "Moses Saved" is long
ago "Moses Lost," Chapelain's "Pucelle" was dead and
buried as soon as born. The others are but shadows,
the shadows of names. We have forgotten that people
once ran after them pointing with the finger and crying
aloud to the four winds their glory and immortal fame.
His power was increased by his position at court. He
was thirty-three when he was presented to the king,
AT COURT. 295
two years younger than himself, and not yet quite
spoiled by adulation. Boileau, at this first interview,
by the king's request, recited him those well-known
verses, which were not yet published, from the " Epitre
au Roi." Louis' face changed. He could not conceal
his pleasure at flattery so undisguised, so audacious, and
so gracefully set. "I would praise you more," he said,
'' had you praised me less." Boileau left the palace
that day with a pension of two thousand francs for him-
self, and one for Racine of four thousand. Henceforth,
Boileau is the official literarj^ adviser of the crown.
Whom he praises, Louis praises. If Louis ventures on
an opinion contrary to his own, Boileau, always with
his head erect (the man who flatters best is he who
flatters as if the truth were extorted from him) dares to
tell the king that he is admirable in sieges, but not so
good as himself at sonnets. Li the art of adulation
Boileau was not onl}^ easily, incomparably first, but he
also struck out a quite original line for himself. It is
indicated above. He set up the king as a mighty con-
queror — a second Alexander ; he claimed for himself
the proud position of celebrater of the king's triumphs.
When he and Racine were with Louis at the siege of
Ghent, a cannon-ball fell within a few yards of the
king, and not many from where Racine and Boileau
were standing. " Were you frightened ? " asked the
king, kindly. Of course he was no more frightened
than Julius Csesar would have been under similar cir-
cumstances. An unready man would at once have dis-
claimed the imputation of cowardice. Not so Boileau.
He mao^nified the dang-er bv insinuation. He claimed
for himself the usual amount of courage by insinuation.
He conveyed to the king, by insinuation, the assurance
that he — Louis — was as superior to ordinary mortals
296 BOILEAU.
in bravery as he was by position. " I trembled for my-
self, sire, but I trembled more for your majesty."
Observe, too, that Boileau's flattery, like that of all
the writers of the time, has a strong element of sincer-
ity in it. It was a new thing to have a king who reigned
and ruled as well. Richelieu and Mazarin, and before
them the great lords, liad accustomed the French to
regard divided authority, with a puppet for a king, and
all its attendant miseries of faction and tyranny, as a
necessary evil. For the first time since Louis XL here
was a king who ruled by no great minister ; who con-
ducted his wars in person, or at least seemed to do so to
the outer Avoild ; who was affable and courteous, who
loved arts and literature. Therefore, when all men
united in praising such a king it was from their heart.
They meant it. It was not in nature to regard with
other feeling than that of profound admiration a mon-
arch who not only respected literature, but rewarded it
by substantial pensions. Honor and a pension together
naturally induced reverence for the fountain of honor.
Personal loyalty may thus be in a way an indirect func-
tion of personal vanity, and the surest friends of the
king are certainly those whose personality the king has
recognized. For these reasons I am not disposed to
sneer at Boileau for his adulation ; rather to admire
him for doing it so well. He did it, as I have said,
with a proper sense of his own importance. The king
showed him once some verses of his own composition.
" Nothing," said the critic, " is able to deter your
majesty ; you have wished to make bad verses, you
have made them." He even ventured in the presence
of the king to speak with contempt of Sqarron, the
first husband of Madame de Main tenon. And yet
this was the same man who glosses over the inaction
CRITICISM. 297
of the king during the passage of the Rhine, saying
how Louis
Se plaint de sa grandeur qui Tattache an rivage.
On another occasion, the D-uke de la Feuillade meet-
ing Boileau at Versailles, showed him a sonnet by
Charleval. Boileau read it, and gave it back with a
disparaging remark. The duke showed it to the dau-
phin e, who looked it over and returned it, saying,
" Voila un beau sonnet." " There," said the duke,
" the king likes it and the princess likes it." " The
king," said Boileau, " is very good at taking towns ;
the princess is a lady of infinite accomplishments ; but
allow me to say that I know verses better than either of
them." The duke hastened to tell the king. "What
does your majesty think of such insolence?" *' I am
sorry to say," said Louis, " that I think Boileau is quite
right."
He first received permission to print in 1666. He
had already written his " Heros des Romans," of which
I propose to speak further on ; but out of consideration
for Mile. Scuderi, he refused to publish it in her life-
time. It was printed in Holland as the work of St.-
Evremond.
It was in 1677 that he was made, with Racine, "his-
toriographer " to the king. Neither of them ever wrote
any history ; and it was. not till 1687 that he was elected
a member of the Academy, not at his own wish, but
by the wish of the king. He made a very fine speech
on the occasion, which the Academicians hardly knew
whether to regard as real or satirical, for he told them
that he supposed his election to be due to the fact that
being appointed royal historiographer, the king wanted
him to take the advice of the Academy.
298 BOILEA U.
All the stories told of him — they are as many as
those told of Dr. Johnson — illustrate his constant de-
votion to the one object of his life — the improvement
of good taste. With this end he taught the very
wholesome doctrine that morality, public and private,
is a necessary element in art. Thus he objected to the
constant love-making of the opera, with its eternal
refrains —
II faut aimer,
11 faut s'enflammer ;
La sagesse
De la jeunesse
C'est de savoir jouir de ses appas —
and would have preferred the chorus of antiquity : - —
Ille bonis faveatque et consilietur araicis,
Et regat iratos, et amet peccare timentes.
Yet it was only by certain points that the Latin spirit
seized his mind at all. Terence he felt and appreciated ;
Horace as a satirist, but not as a lyrist ; while Virgil,
Catullus, Ovid, were nothing more than names to him.
And it illustrates his habit of grasping the satiric point
that he conceived the idea of writing a life of Diogenes,
"whom I will make a model of the most perfect gueu-
herie. . . . Nobody in the world had more esprit; he
did from vanity what Socrates did from philosophy, an
ingenious copyist trying to outdo the original. Socrates
had a house ; Diogenes had a tub ; Socrates had a wife ;
Diogenes got along without one ; Plato used to say that
Diogenes was Socrates gone mad."
He is careful to restrain his Pegasus, by observing
strictly his own rule — "tout ce qu'on dit de trop est
fade et rebutant " — till the poor animal is as quiet as a
parson's cob, and ambles along at a measured pace while
the satirist on his back pours out his general common-
HIS SATIRES, 299
places enlivened by their strokes of delicious person-
alities.
Do you, reader, like Boileau's satires? Do you,
indeed, like anybody's satires ? Does your heart, like
mine, sink when the poet assume's the pose of virtuous
indignation, and begins his dialogue with the usual
platitude ? " Man is the most foolish of animals," cries
Boileau. Quoth the other locutor — the dummy who is
always being bowled over, like the infidel every Sunday
— " Do I understand you aright, great Desprdaux ! you
actually assert, in that brilliant and original remark,
that man is more foolish than the brute creation ? " "I
mean it," returns the satirist, solemnly —
Voila I'horame en effet. II va du blanc au noir;
II condamne au matin ses sentiments du soir, —
and so on. How we know the stale old tune, set to
ever}^ barrel organ : man is inconstant, fickle, change-
able ; he is a slave to his passions, to his position ;
unlike the animals, who eat each other up in happy
freedom, he makes laws for protection. The bigger the
fool the wiser he thinks himself; with the rest of it.
Then we have trotted out again the old classes : our
friends the miser, the soldier panting for glory, the
pedant, the gallant, the bigot, the libertine, the gambler,
the prodigal, with Chapelain and Cotin lugged in to
give point to it all.
Then comes, of course, the goody about true nobility,
which is done just as well by Jean de Meung ; the bore,
the banquet, the sham miseries of those who make
verses, the wretched necessity which makes the writer
a satirist. We know all the second-hand properties and
old stage tricks ; we only wink at each other when the
satirist asks what he is to do at Rome, being unable to
300 BOILEAU.
lie ; we grin when lie deplores the vices of women ; we
g€t up and go awaj softly when the old familiar indig-
nation has gone on too long. Surely, the days of the
Horatian satire are over at last.
You may read, however, one of Boileau's with pleas-
ure. It is the " Embarras de Paris." Imitation as it
is, there is life, movement, vigor, in the descriptions ;
you hear the cats all night, the carts all day ; the lack-
eys fight in the streets, the tiles fall off the roofs, the
mud pours down the gutter. Then you may read some
of the '' Lutrin," if you like. I do not like. To the
" Rape of the Lock " it is as the gambols of a clown to
the dance of a fairy. Who can possibly take any inter-
est in the great fat canons ?
But the most sparkling, the most clever^ of Boileau's
works is the '-'- Heros des Romans." Here he parodies,
with a lightness of touch which he shows nowhere else,
the Scud^ri literature and the little literary fashions of
the day. There, is Horatius Codes, singing to the tune
of *' Toinoii la belle Jardiniere,"
Et Phenisse m^me publie
Qu'il n'est rien si beau que Clelie —
a verse which Diogenes, who is there too, engrossed
with the new-fashioned trifles of the day, explained
after the manner of Mile. Scuderi : " Phenisse is one of
the most gallant and most spirituelle ladies in Capua,
but she has too great an opinion of her own beauty, and
Horatius Codes rallies her in this impromptu, making
her confess that every thing gives way to the beauty of
Clelie." The Grand Cyrus is there : he does nothing
but weep for his lost Mandane, till Pluto drives him
away in a rage. At the news of an insurrection in
Hades, Cldie is only terrified lest they should invade
*' GRAND CYRUS:' 801
the Royaume du Tendre. Lucretia is occupied on a
kind of anagram, invented by the great Brutus ; while
Sappho does nothing but draw portraits. One of them
is given. It is exactly in the style of the portraits in
the '' Grand Cyrus." These were all, of course, flat-
tering.
Tisi phone is naturally above the average stature of her sex, but
nevertheless is so ile(ja(jde, so free, and so well proportioned in all
her limbs, that even her great height sits well upon her — she has
small eyes, but they are piercing, full of fire, and are bordered
besides with a kind of vermilion which wonderfully enhances their
splendor. Her hair falls naturally in ringlets, and one could almost
say that these are so many serpents twisting in and out and playing
carelessly about her face. Her complexion has not the faded and
insipid color of the Scythian women, but rather partakes of that
noble and masculine brown imparted by the sun to the ladies of
Africa. Her step is extremely noble and haughty : when it is
necessary to hasten it she flies rather than walks, and I doubt
whether Atalanta herself could outstep her. For the rest, this vir-
tuous maiden is naturally an enemy of vice, especially of great
crimes, which she pursues everywhere, torch in hand, and never
leaves to repose ; seconded in this by her two illustrious sisters,
Alecto and Megaera, who are no less enemies of vice than herself :
and one might say of these three sisters that they were morality
personified and living.
Who would recognize in this description the features
of the Fury of Orestes with her blood-stained eyes and
snaky tresses?
A suspicion, to be discarded at once, crosses the ir-
reverent mind, that Boileau remembered in drawing
Tisiphone, that poor Mile, de Scud(^ri — Sappho — was
herself the plainest of her sex; uglier, it was said,
though this must have been exaggeration, than any
man except Pellisson, her lover, of whom we have
heard before. Boileau certainly allows himself to say
so, in rhymes which are as impertinent as most epi-
grams : —
302 BOILEAU,
La figure de Pellisson
Est une figure effroyable :
Mais quoique ce vilain gar^on
Soit plus laid qu'un singe et qu'un diable-,
Sapho lui trouve des appas;
Mais je ne m'en etonne pas;
Car chacun aime son semblable.
Boileau might have remembered his own maxim :
" Rien n'est beau que le vrai." One hopes that poor
Sappho never saw the epigram.
The grand literary event of his later years was the
part he took in the dispute as to the relative merits of
the ancients and moderns. Charles Perrault, known
now as the author of the " Contes des Fees," was the
first to strike the signal of revolt against the classical
despotism. It would be too tedious, here, to follow the
dispute ; to tell all the arguments used on both sides ;
to fight the dreary battle over again. In every age
there is always some such question coming to the front
to exasperate the combatants and bore the by-standers.
The reign of Boileau lasted all his life : his real
power ceased in the year 1G85, when he went to live at
Auteuil. Here for nearly thirty years longer he lived
by himself, occasionally going to town to the Academy,
and receiving a few friends. One by one the old circle
dropped and left him lonely. Racine died in 1699 in
the arms of his old friend. " It is a happiness," he
whispered with his last breath, " to die before you."
Moliere was dead twenty years before. La Fontaine
had gone in 1695 ; and when all were dead except; him-
self, the old man, deaf, half blind, unable to speak
above a whisper, full of pains and infirmities, sat down
to wait his own turn, occupied meanwhile in correcting,
and reading over and over again, his own poems. He
OLD AGE, 303
added little to his fame in the last thirty years of his
life, writing more satires and epistles, a very terrible
ode after the manner of Pindar,^ and the two last cantos
of the " Lutrin." For him the age of great writers was
gone. He felt as Ovid might have felt, had he returned
to Rome and found himself alone, left the last of all the
Augustan circle.
There could be no more great writers. France had
exhausted her powers with the illustrious five of whom
he was one — Corneille, Racine, Moliere, La Fontaine,
and Boileau. The soil was worn out by this supreme
effort. Rest was absolutely necessary for France, per-
haps a rest of many centuries. No more books for a
very long time would be required. The other poets of
his old age were ridiculous versifiers, even worse than
those who went before him. The dramatists were crea-
tures beneath contempt. "Do you want," he whispered
savagely to an unfortunate playwright who brought
him a MS., "do you want to hasten my last hour?"
Yet the new generation went to Auteuil to look at him
and to do him homage. The old man liked it ; treated
them politely, and ignored their writings.
As the end drew near he removed to Paris, where he
died in 1711, with a last word of honorable pride.
'' It is a great consolation for a dying poet," he said,
"to have never written a word against morality." He
might have gone further — he might have consoled him-
self more with the reflection that he had also helped,
by example and by precept, to keep others from so
offending.
' That is to say, as he expresses it, "full of movement and
transport, wherein the mind seems hurried away by fury rather
than guided by reason.'*
304 BOILEAU,
I find in Boileau the greatest master of the French
language that the country had yet seen. Every Avord is
the right one ; every adjective is the right one ; every
sentence is in the best order possible: every rhyme is
correct ; every thought is fully expressed ; and not a
single line of his polished verses halts, stumbles, or
runs lame. His satires are like a well-ordered garden,
smooth, trim, in perfect order. You look for the well-
known flowers — they are all there. No wild flower,
mark you, no weed, no flaunting hedge-side blossom ;
but — no new flower. We see everywhere the patient
gardener, never tired of his labor, delighting in the
work of his hand: —
Dans ce rude metier oil mon esprit se tue,
Eu vain . . . je travaille et je sue.
As you wander about in this garden you become
aware of a sense of fatigue. You yawn, you are op-
pressed, you seem to have seen it all before, and when
you come out you feel as if you never want to go back
again. I have recognized this feeling in every single
writer on Boileau, even among those who have pro-
nounced his eloge. Nobody wants to go back to him.
Presently we find that he has never conceived an
original idea, never looked for one, never felt the neces-
sity of thinking, save in grooves. Take from Boileau
all that he has taken from Horace and Juvenal, and
what have we left ? A dummy of graceful form with a
few rags. fluttering in the Avind. Take further what lie
has pillaged from Regnier, and the very rags disappear.
Tt was no robbery, in those days, to take from the
classics. Everybody who could do it did it boldly and
without shame. Perhaps, too, he thought that what he
cribbed from Regnier he made his own by improving it.
NOT A POET. 305
The thing we miss, absolutely and entirely, is the
poetic instinct.
Boileau is not a poet. He is an imitator of the very
first' order ;■ he can write verses to dress up other
people's thoughts in the smoothest and most workman-
like manner possible. I believe the art of sculpture
may be reduced to mechanical skill, and what Canova
has designed his workmen can execute. So it is with
Boileau. He is a poetical workman who surpasses the
whole world in mechanical skill. He is never wrong.
You may entirely depend upon him. But he is not a
poet. He has no eye for nature ; those subtle analogies,
those half shades of a dimly felt relation between tlie
outer and the inner world, which make up half the soul
of a poet, are undreamed of by Boileau. In his country
residence at Auteuil, where La Fontaine would have
chirruped like a grasshopper among the blossoms, he
sits gloomily thinking of days when he was not so deaf,
and mute, and miserable, when dear Racine was living,
wlien the weekl}^ dinner in the Rue du Vieux Colombier
was a present and glorious reality, and wlien he was
able to flatter and please a king. For the best consolers
of age bereaved and broken, are the spring and the sun-
shine, and the flowers ; and Boileau felt them not. He
has, besides, no sympathy with humanity ; men and
women are as if they did not exist. Books are every
thing — books and the art of making them. Kgnd and
consistent friend as he was, there is not a line in all his
writings to prove that his heart ever beat for another.
He does not praise the dragonnades, it is true ; but he
passes over without a tear the sufferings of the miserable
people. He goes to the wars, and has no Avord for the
wretchedness that war brings with it. He goes up and
down the streets of a mighty city, but its pulse does not
20
306 BOILEAU.
beat for him ; the tide of its passions, its sufferings, its
inarticulate moanings after better things, affect him not.
He is cold, he is unmoved, he is only a workman. Noth-
ing moves him. In the loveliest of chapels, in that per-
fect dream of architecture, the Sainte-Chapelle, he sees
only the fat and greedy canons fighting over their stupid
reading-desk. He is unaffected by the pomp of war;
he is unmoved by music ; women's eyes have no lustre
for him ; there is no trace of any love for children ; there
are no tears in the man ; he has no weaknesses, na foibles,
no pet sins,^ hardly a single thing by which we can rec-
ognize him as one of ourselves. Now, most of us are
happiest in the company of sinners.
But he reaches his own ideal. He shows the French
how to make perfect verse — of a kind. He prepared
the country for the reception of genius when genius
should come. In Lamar tine, in Alfred de Musset, we
see the poet working with the tools of Boileau the
versifier.
Even on his own narrow ground he has no enthu-
siasm ; coldly, firmly, he lays down his rules, and judges
his contemporaries by them. He is without elevation
because he is without enthusiasm ; he is without enthu-
siasm because he is a slave to his rules. He is like a
canal, of uniform width and regulated depth, and just
as a canal might do, he is for ever heaping derision and
contempt on those licentious and self-willed rivers which
have no law but their own fancy, and run as deep as
they please and as broad as they please.
1 He twice in his life got drunk; is once said to have danced;
once showed considerable powers as a mimic ; and once went, I am
sorry to say, with Racine, to call on La Champmesle. But what is
this, in a life of seventy years ?
HIS REAL WORK, 307
I have said above what was his mission in life. It
remains to say that he did his work with a thorough-
ness which left nothing to desire. The luxurious law-
lessness which allowed a Th^ophile to run riot, and
made the pre-Boileau literature a wild field, grown
over with weeds and encumbered with filth, was effect-
ually and completely checked. That was alone a grand
achievement. And for a hundred years the literary
influence of Boileau kept French poetry within his
limits, narrow but wholesome, of form, of thought, of
expression.
After all, to have done a great work in one's genera-
tion, sensibly to have improved manners, without con-
tradiction to have advanced the great cause of order,
civilization, culture — is not this the very highest form
of glory ? Who, beside this great and splendid crown,
which is undoubtedly due to our Nicolas, will com-
pare the crown which he so ardently desired, of true
and immortal poet? As for that, he actually had all
the consolation which the latter croAvn can give, be-
cause he wore it in fancy on his brows. Men there are
in every age who go about adorned with this imaginary
coronet. It makes them happ}^ ; it adds to their real
worth by magnifying their self-conceit ; it gives bright-
ness to their days, dignity to their step, the carefulness
of pride to the goings of their feet. The cause is but
a copy of verses, perhaps, in a Poet's Corner, but it is
enough. Surely, of all blessed gifts the most blessed
is the gift of self-respect — conceit, assurance. Lord,
make our boys conceited !
It is the quality which I most admire in Boileau.
He steps to the front at once — setat. twenty-four — and
stands there as if he were in his right place, and knew
it. From that position he issues decrees, judges his
808 BOILEAU.
elders, including big brother Gilles, and condemns his
contemporaries. Nobody tries to pull him down, nobody
disputes his right to be there. So grand with it too.
He concedes to the king his claim to be another Alex-
ander of Macedon ; but in matters of verse the king
must give way to him. Nothing more delightful to
contemplate than the magnificent air of this perruked
dictator of good taste ; nothing more comic, if it were
not a little sad, than to see how the poor creatures whom
he ridicules creep back to their ignoble cells and die of
a broken heart. Like the pigs — I mean no disrespect,
though the pig's exterior has not received the attention
'given to some animals — like the German swineherd's
pigs, they tremble if the whip is raised, they scream if it
is in the air, they are crushed if it fall upon their back.
The whip falls but seldom, and only on the incorrigi-
ble, for Boileau is a good-natured dictator. Yes, next
to his self-respect I admire his admirable good-nature.
Read the savage lines of glorious John when he hap-
pens to have a difference of opinion with any one.
Read the spiteful lines of ill-natured Pope when he
wants to say a nasty thing, and then read Boileau and
mark the difference.
In most men's letters wiM be found some hint, if not
a clear revelation, of the real man's nature. Not so in
those of Boileau. The pedantry of style affects them
all; he writes as if he knew they were to be shown
about; he writes, however, of the things nearest his
heart. These are, first, the literary topics of the day,
the merits of an imitation, the turning of a phrase, and
the affairs of Versailles. Now and then, but to Racine
only, he writes of himself, but not often enough to give
us the sympathy for him and his troubles which we can
feel for those who tell their friends all their troubles.
HIS LETTERS.
309
It is all because he was a solitary child and a solitary
man. He was deficient in that great quality, the capa-
bility of love, which mostly binds us all together, and
makes us sensitive to the sufferings, the hopes, the dis-
appointments, and the joys of men and women, boys
and girls. In spite of all he was an unselfish man, a
generous man, charitable, compassionate, good-natured,
a master of language, of keen if narrow intellect, and
of perfect taste. But — he was not a poet.
Chapter XV.
MOLIERE.
"He the best player! " cried Partridge. "Why, I could act as -well as he
myself. In that scene where you told me he acted so fine, why. Lord help me,
any man would have done exactly the same." — Fielding.
" /^^ O," said grandfather Cressd to little Jean-Baptiste
^-^ Poquelin ; " go to the Hotel de Bourgogne.
There, at least, you will be out of mischief." The boy-
went, and that was the beginning of all the mischief,
for the dramatic faculty of Moliere was first awakened
by those boyish visits to the play.
By this time, the French drama, of which I have as
yet said nothing, having got well out of the " Ferrex
and Porrex" school was going through those successive
steps of development which belong to the history of
the modern stage in every country. The mysteries and
moralities, the farces and sottises, which' had delighted
Villon and Marot were at last finished and put away,
and the Confr^rie de la Passion, a brotherhood which
had lasted for a hundred years and more, finally handed
over their h6tel to the new comedians in 1588, and after
enjoying the rents in peace for forty years, at last had
even these taken away from them and were finally
abolished.
To be sure they died hard, and made as good a fight
as could be expected of people whose very bread de-
pended on the maintenance of their popularity. The
JODELLE. 311
first blow at the old order of things was struck in 1552,
when Jodelle produced his famous classical tragedy of
"Cleopatra," after the model of Seneca's plays. It was
acted before Henry II. and all. his court at Rheims, by
the poet himself and his friends the scholars and poets
of the Pleiad. The king congratulated the author, and
gave him five hundred crowns, after which, Ronsard,
Baif, R^mi, Belleau, and La Peruse went with Jodelle to
Arceuil, where, after the manner of the ancients, and
brimful of classical ardor, they offered the poet a he-
goat crowned with flowers. In the same year, Jodelle
wrote his " Dodo " and his " Eugene," a tragedy and a
comedy. The Confreres, seriously alarmed at the suc-
cess of the new drama, made desperate efforts to regain
their position. First and foremost, Jodelle must be ac-
cused of atheism. A man,indeed,who had consented to
the sacrifice of a he-goat could be nothing but an atheist.
Ronsard answered the charge, denying the sacrifice, and
Jodelle, who wrote no more plays, became, after he had
spent the five hundred crowns with Lesbia and Lalage,
quite after the manner of the ancients, a drunken
hanger-on at court, arranging ballets and divertisse-
ments of all kinds for the king, dying in great misery
and poverty at the age of forty. The poverty of Jo-
delle did the Confreres no harm, but the growing taste
for learning and their own dulness killed them. It was
in vain that the morality became more moral, for the
people would not return to their old paths. Where
one devil was formerly held up to ignominy on the
stage, now two, four, even eight — just as we sometimes
see two or even three clowns in a pantomime — capered,
played their tricks — these all stale and threadbare —
and were brought to confusion. But it was too late ;
the more devils there were the more the people yawned ;
812 MO LI ERE,
and the brotherhood, who knew very well that the Paris-
ian's yawn is as fatal to a drama as the Roman's thumb
was to a gladiator, perceived with anguish that a snug
and lucrative family business was gone to pieces, and
that the mediaeval drama was really done and ended.
During Moliere's boyhood there were three theatres in
Paris, for the company at the Confreres' old theatre, the
Htjtel de Bourgogne, grew so popular that it was found
necessary to divide it into two and establish a new thea-
tre, that of the Marais ; both of these theatres acted under
license and with privilege. In addition to them was the
Itahan company, which played at the Hotel de Petit
Bourbon. And besides these, Richelieu, himself, as we
know, an aspirant for dramatic glory, caused two thea-
tres, one of which held two thousand spectators, to be
built in his own palace, to which the public were not
admitted.
At the ItaUan house the pieces were principally im-
promptu farces, in which the plot of the piece, probably
also some of the dialogue, was first carefully put to-
gether, and every incident assigned to its proper act and
scene, while the words were supplied by the actors them-
selves, who trusted to their mother- wit to help them
through. The best actor among them called himself
Arlequin, a name assumed by him out of gratitude to
his patron, the great and good Achille de Harlay — he
is almost forgotten now, but was in his day a foremost
man in France ^ — a man so loyal that his heart was said
to be sown with jieurs-deAis. It seems a strange irony
of fate, that the name of so eminent and good a man
should now survive only in that of Arlequin's lineal de-
' Not that Harlay- Champvallon, Archbishop of Paris, of whom
we shallhear something more farther on.
ARLEQUIN. 313
scendant, the pantomime man with the mask and lath. Of
Arlequin's ready wit many stories are told. Being asked,
for instance, of what disease his father had died, he said
it was of grief, *' at seeing himself hanged." And one
day in a very thin house. Columbine whispering a secret
to him : " Speak up," he said, '' nobody will hear you."
Of Arlequin, too, is told that celebrated and well-worn
story which belongs to the life of every comic actor.
" Go and see Arlequin," the doctor told him, '' he will
cure you." "Alas!" cried the unfortunate buffoon,
" then I am a dead man, because I am myself Arle-
quin." After him came Scaramouche, whose real name
was Fiorelli. This extraordinary being possessed the
admirable power of boxing his own ears with his feet,
and long after he was seventy years of age used to strike
his audience with delight and awe by doing it. Moliere,
M(^nage says, never missed an opportunity of going to
see him.
As for the pieces performed by the French companies
— those on which the mind of the future dramatist and
actor was nurtured — they were principally the earlier
plays of Corneille, with those of Rotrou, Quinault, and
Kacan. Real comedy, as yet, was not in existence. Pas-
torals there were, and hergeries^ graceful, pretty, and con-
ventional, with broad and coarse farces, prodigal in
situations if in nothing else, from which Moliere might
have learned the power of dramatic reality. Such com-
edies as the boy would see at the Hotel de Bourgogne
were chiefly of the Spanish school, turning on intrigue
and love quarrels, of which his own " Depit Amoureux,"
or the motif oi Horace's "Donee gratus eram tibi" is a
favorable example. Corneille's " Mclite " was already
on the stage, and Alexandre Hardy, who encumbered
the literature of his age by some hundreds of com-
314 MOLIERE.
edies, of whicli not one survives, and who once com-
posed, wrote, and put on the stage a five-act play in
three days, was the stock author of comedy. And his
plays, neither satirical, nor real, nor moral, were de-
pendent entirely on situations.
Low comedy, or rather buffoonery, was represented
by an immortal trio of actors, rejoicing in the stage
names of Gros Guillaume, Gaultier Garguille, and Tur-
lupiii. Rumor went that their greatness was achieved
rather than born with them, and that in earl}^ life they
had all three been adepts in the art and mystery of
baking. In the intervals of kneading they developed,
this wonderful triad of bakers, a talent for mimicr}^ so
prodigious that it could not be lost to the world ; and
so, yielding to the irresistible call of destiny, they
stuck up a stage on trestles, where, with the aid of
scenery rudely painted on old boat-sails, they began to
make the Parisians laugh first at fair-time, when all
privileges and monopolies were suspended, and after-
wards venturing to continue until they should be
stopped by the law. They became so popular that the
Hotel de Bourgogne found them formidable competi-
tors, and brought a formal complaint against them for
unlicensed acting. Cardinal Richelieu heard the case ;
sent for them, made them act in his presence, and
laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks ; and though
he forbade them to go on breaking the law he ordered
the Hotel de Bourgogne to receive them in their com-
pany. " Your theatre is excessivel}^ dull," said the
cardinal ; " perhaps by the help of these men it will be
a little more lively."
They composed their own pieces, would not allow
any women to act with them, and, scorning the con-
ventional dress of the stage, dressed exactly as seemed
GROS GUILLAUME. 315
best to them. Gros Guillaume was an immensely fat
man — so fat that he used two belts, which made him
look like a walking cask. He wore no mask, as was
the custom in comic acting (hence Plarlequin's mask in
our pantomime), but covered his face with flour. A mel-
ancholy solemnity accompanied and set off his acting,
and a painful disorder to which he was subject some-
times seized him on the stage and caused tears of pain
to rise into his eyes. The spectacle of real physical
suffering in the midst of a farce was quite a new feature
of comedy, and proved immensely successful. Gaultier
Garguille was as thin as his colleague was fat. Nature,
mindful of his destiny, had been bountiful indeed to
him. An excessively long, lean body, supported by
straight legs of attenuated proportions, but as supple as
those of Scaramouche, terminated in a round red face,
while his voice had a rich nasal twang. He generally
took the parts of schoolmasters and pedants, and sang
his own songs.
Turlupin — who, when he acted tragedy, took the
name of Belleville — owed his celebrity, like Arlequin,
to his powers of improvisation. The three acted to-
gether in an unbroken friendship for nearly fifty years ;
then, venturing to imitate a trick of gesture of a well-
known magistrate, they fell into trouble. The other
two escaped, but poor Gros Guillaume was too fat to
run away and got caught. Put into prison, he was seized
with so terrible a fear that he incontinently expired, and
his two comrades, preserving to the last a friendship
worthy of being placed side by side with that of Damon
and Pythias, both died of grief in the same week.
The costumes and scenery of the stage were effective
enough, if simple. As the king's servants, the actors
were obliged to follow the court ; the scenery seems to
316 MOLIERE.
have been painted on canvas, unrolled and hung up at
the end of the hall. " Flies," or side-scenes, of course
were impossible, because the sides of the stage were
crowded with benches, occupied by those who could
afford to pay for the privilege of sitting there. A change
of scene, when required, could be easily effected by
dropping another painted roll. MoHere's plays, how-
ever, are generally written for a single scene, an in-
terior, furnished. It is probable that in the private
performances before the court, there was no stage at
all, and the actors waited at the side till it was their
turn to go on, when they crossed an imaginary line and
were immediately supposed to be visible. Thus the
" Bourgeois Gentilhomme " was first performed at the
Chateau de Chambord, and the room shown there as
the scene of the performance is clearly too small to ad-
mit of any but the simplest appliances. In front of the
stage stretched the parterre^ or pit, the admission to
which was ten sous, till Molicre raised it to fifteen. It
had no seats or benches, everybody standing. ^ Nor was
it till 1782 that the Com(3die Frangaise, the mother of
all stage improvements, introduced benches, and there-
fore quiet, into this noisy and turbulent area ; while it
was only in 1760 that they were enabled, at great pecu-
niary sacrifice, to get rid of the seats on the stage and
have the boards entirely to themselves.
The dresses were, of course, quite conventional. An
actor's theatrical wardrobe consisted de rigueur of an
expensive suit in the richest fashion of the time. Riche-
lieu, for instance, gave Bellerose a new suit for his part
in '' Le Menteur ; " Moliere presented Mondori, when
he was in distress, with an acting dress ; and actors are
criticised for allowing care for their plumes to interfere
with the fire of their acting. Certain, marks of distinc-
THEATRICAL COSTUME. 817
tion were made. A hero or a king wore a laurel wreath
in his wig ; Moliere's enemies declared that he carried
a whole grove on his head. A warrior put on a cuirass ;
swords, of course, were worn ; and it was not difficult
to assume the appearance, when required, of an exempt^
a magistrate, or a physician. Actresses, for their part,
appeared in the richest dresses they could command,
regardless of the parts they were to sustain. Absurd-
ities and anachronisms of costume naturally occurred,
but do not appear to have struck the audiences of the
time as ludicrous. While, for instance, great Hector
trod the boards in a cuirass and classic buskin, with a
gigantic wig of the seventeenth century, it was fortu-
nate if he did not think it due to his position to crown
the perruque with a helmet, fondly supposed to repre-
sent the casque Avhich.fell by the banks of the Simois.
Moliere, who took things as he found them and was no
reformer of stage accessories, cared little enough about
such anachronisms. Probably he was as used to them as
we are to the neat hrodequins and bright dresses of those
conventional village maidens, whom we gladly accept in
place of the clodhopping wenches of our own secluded
hamlets. Moreover, though one wonders how Psyche
and Amour were dressed, most of Moliere's plays belong
to his own time. Racine tried to effe<3t a reform, but no
one seconded him ; the great Baron himself played the
part of Misael, in the " Maccabees," dressed as a Paris
bourgeois ; and when Hercules appeared on the stage it
was in the coat and wig of the seventeenth century,
while his strength was indicated by rolling back his
CLifPs, and a small log of wood on his left shoulder served
to represent his club. Apollo, on the other hand, made
his godhead apparent to all by wearing a yellow plate
fixed conspicuously behind the left ear.
818 MOLIERE,
. It was more than a hundred years later that a reform
was really begun. In 1747 the Italian company acted
a comedy, the scene of which was laid in Spain, in
Spanish costume. In 1753 Madame Favart took the
part of a village girl, dressed really en paysanne ; and
then, the thin edge of the wedge being introduced, re-
form went on merrily, till Talma put the cou]p de grdce to
the old system at the end of the last century, and every
actor began to study how best to dress his part.
To Moliere's time, if not to his company, belongs the
first attempt to raise the social status of actors. The
earliest comedians, those who succeeded the Confrerie
de la Passion, led lives of pure and unbridled license.
They enjoyed no social position, and obeyed no social
law. Excommunicated by the church, they considered
themselves freed from all restraints save those only
imposed by the magistrates. They got their money
freely and spent it carelessly. Hear what Moliere says
himself : —
. Our profession is the last resource of those who can find nothing
better to do, or of those who want to do no work. To go on the
stage is to plunge a dagger into your parents' hearts. You think,
perhaps, that it has its advantages. You are mistaken. We are,
if you please, the favorites of the great, but we are also the slaves
of their whims and caprices. . . . Whether we like it or not, we
must march at the first order, and give pleasure to others, while we
are ourselves suffering from all kinds of vexation ; we must endure
the rudeness of those with whom we have to live, and compete for
the good graces of a public which has the right of grumbling at us
in return for the money which they give us.
Considering who and what the actors of the time
were, it is not surprising that M. Poquelin pere^ most
respectable of upholsterers, should object to his son's
going upon the stage. It was not for this that he had
sent him to the College de Clermont, to the lectures of
SOCIAL STATUS. 319
Gassendi, and that he had regretfully consented to his
giving up trade and going to the bar. Fate was too
strong, and the only concession the old man could gain
was that his son should change his name — a practice
common enough among the actors then as now. But
in becoming an actor, Moliere did much to raise the
character of the profession. In the first place, he had
belongings. His father had not been hanged, as had
happened to some actors. Next, he was a scholar and
a lawyer. He had not been, as some comedians, a. baker
or a lackey or a prison-bird. No one could bring up
disagreeable antecedents against him. He was also a
servant of the crown, being one of the king's valets de
chamhre. Again, he was a special favorite and protegS
of the king, who took delight in showing him favor, and
protected the profession b}^ declaring it in no way de-
rogatory to a gentleman to become an actor. And his
writings helped. An actor who was also a scholar ; a
comedian who Avas an author and the friend of Boileau
and La Fontaine ; a player who held his own among
courtiers and was a favorite with the king ; a man who
could make a house hold their sides with laughing, who
yet was not a drunken profligate, but lived reputably ;
the leader of a theatrical company who yet set himself
up as a satirist and a censor morum : this was a new
thing in the land, and was accepted first with astonish-
ment and secondly with respect. For the rest, an
actor's life then was much the same as it is now.
Favorites were recognized ; debutants were received
with hesitation ; it took time to make a mark, and suc-
cess was often a lottery. There was a spice of danger,
belonging naturally to a time when the pit was filled
with armed men always ready for a row. Once, for
instance, when the king took away from his musketeers
320 MOLIERE,
and gentlemen of the guard the privilege of free admis-
sion, there was a kind of O. P. riot. The excluded
soldiers, by way of asserting their rights, came in a
body to the theatre, and after murdering the porter,
rushed into the house with the intention of sacrificing
all the comedians. Actors and actresses scuttled off in
wild terror. B^jart, the younger, who happened to be
dressed as an old man, appeased the tumult by hobbling
on the stage and imploring the mob at least to spare the
life of an old man who had but a few days left. Then
Moli^re, the persuasive, addressed them in honeyed
words, and convinced them of their unreason. Nothing
seems to have been said about the unfortunate porter.
One of the actors in his terror endeavored to escape
through a window too small for him. He got his head
and shoulders through, but the rest of him refused to
follow, and he stuck there, screaming in an agony of
terror lest some unfair advantage should be taken of
his position, till his friends released him by taking out
a bar.
But let us leave the theatre, and turn to our author.
He Avas born at Paris on the fifteenth day of January,
1622, the eldest of ten children ; his father and relations
being respectable bourgeois^ connected with upholstery,
tapestry, and so forth ; his father being also valet de
chamhre in the royal household. Young Jean-Baptiste
received the best education possible at the College de
Clermont, and afterwards followed the courses of the
illustrious Gassendi, with whom he had for fellow-
students Chapelle, Bernier, Hesnault, and Cyrano de
Bergerac, among others. He here imbibed a profound
respect for Lucretius, whom he tried to translate, when
he began to study law as a profession. But all his
earlier projects were thrown to the winds when he took
EDUCATION. 821
to acting. For while frequenting the courts he fre-
quented the theatre as well, and at length joined a
band of young men, students chiefly, like himself, with
whom he acted for pleasure at first, at fair-time, the
company being known by the name of " I'lUustre
Thdatre." They held together for a year or two, when
the troop was broken up, and Moliere, Avith the Bcjarts
and a few more, set off on a journey, which was des-
tined to last for twelve years, through the provinces as
professional actors. And before taking the decisive step
of adopting the stage as a profession, the young man
changed his name, and was henceforth known as Moliere.
Why he took that name, or where he found it, I do not
know ; ^ but from the age of twenty -two the name of
Poquelin belonged to him no more. Arouet and Po-
quelin, — they are bourgeois names which convey no
meaning to most people ; and very likely the stocks
still exist in France, producing respectable and godly
people. By what freak of nature does a family, other-
wise commonplace and level, suddenly push forth one
shoot which is to be a glory to the whole world, and
then never distinguish itself again ?
The change of name is significant. It marks, first,
obedience to a custom which has more or less prevailed
to the present day — a custom which ought to be dis-
continued, if only because it springs originally from
contempt of an actor's calling. But it shows also how,
in taking a step which seemed then to condemn him, in
the eyes of respectability, to social infamy, young
Poquelin broke voluntarily with the whole of his
family. Henceforth we never hear of them in connec-
' There was a French poet of that name who died about the
year of Moliere's birth. Perhaps he was known to some of the
Poquelin family.
21
322 MOLIERE,
tion with Him at all. They were strangers to him.
Tbe}^ have another name. No doubt it was shame and
grief to them to see the vagabond actor come back to
Paris, after bis Odyssean wanderings, and become at
once the favorite of the court. We can imagine his
brothers and cousins agreeing never to mention his
name. In the family reunions his place is filled up by
another. There is, of course, no idea that he has
achieved a greatness which upholstery could never
conve}-. Even if this were so,, we may fancy them
solemnly shaking their heads, and agreeing that so-
lidity of purse, after all, forms the best basis for repu-
tation. Perhaps they were right. It is better to be
comfortable, to work little, to live well, to have your
neighbor's esteem, than to fight like a gladiator for the
world's applause. It is better, in the autumn of your
days, to retire to a suburban villa, and bask in the sun,
at peace with all mankind. We have but one life in
r. . this world, and there is plenty to be said in favor of
'i\ making it comfortable.
So Moliere set forth on his appointed tour with his
friends the Bejarts, of whom more presently. This
part of his life, the most obscure because only a few
traces of him can be discovered here and there, was
perhaps the happiest. He was young, successful so far,
ambitious ; and, going about with his comedians from
place to place, noted silently, in his undemonstrative
way, the manners and talk of the people. A silent
man, one who would sit at a window and listen, and
watch the waj^s of the folk. At Pezenas they used to
* show the chair, in a barber's shop, where he would sit
for hours, saying nothing, so that his taciturnity was
proverbial; Boileau afterwards called him " le contem-
plateur," while Moliere himself alludes to this habit of
STROLLING ACTORS, 823
his with a certain grim humor in the " Critique de
I'Ecole cles Femmes : " —
You know the man and his indolence as regards conversation.
She invited him simply on a visit, and he never appeared so stupid
as among half a dozen people whom she had asked, as a great
favor, to meet him. They stared at him as if he was unlike any
other man. They thought he was there to amuse the company
with bom-mots: that every word from his lips would be something
strange : that he would make impromptus on all that was said, and
would call for wine with an epigram, lie deceived their expecta-
tions by his silence, and the lady was ill-satisfied with her experi-
ment.
The way of travelling of a strolling company is de-
scribed by Scarron in the opening chapter of the
" Roman Comique : " —
It was towards the evening when a cart, drawn by four lean
oxen, led by a brood mare whose colt was capering round and
round the cart, like a little fool that it was, slowly entered the
town. The cart was full of coffers, trunks, and great packets of
painted canvas, on the top of which sat a lady dressed in a costume
partly of the country, partly of the town. Beside the cart walked
a young man who had on breeches like those worn by comedians
when they represent a hero of antiquity, and, in place of shoes,
antique buskins mudded up to the ankles.
A third player follows, bearing a violoncello, and the
rest of the troupe join them afterwards. In the even-
ing, regrets are expressed that the actors are too few to
perform a piece ; and the young man tells them that
their paucity of numbers is no obstacle, because he can
easily take three parts himself. Clothes are borrowed,
and they begin to perform, when they are interrupted
in the Scarronesque fashion, that is to say, by a quarrel
and a free fight. Then that garrulous vagabond, d'As-
soucy, tells how he met Moliere, and went on with the
company as far as Lyons.
It is said that the best man in the world gets tired of giving
his brothers dinners after a month : but the players were more
324 MOLIERE.
generous than any brothers, for they kept me at their table a whole
winter. ... I never saw so much goodness, so much heartiness, so
much honesty, as among these people, well worthy to represent in
the world those princes and kings whom they personate every day
on the stage.
In 1654 the Prince de Condd offered to make him his
secretary, vice Sarasin, deceased. Moliere had the good
sense and the extraordinary good luck to refuse the post,
although he was already past the period of early man-
hood, and as yet had made no mark. It was in 1658
that he returned to Paris, and then, through the good
offices of the same prince, performed before the king in
the " Nicomede " of Corneille, and received the royal
license to establish his company in the theatre of the
H6tel de Petit Bourbon, under the title of the Troupe
de Monsieur^ every actor being entitled to a pension of
300 livres. It was here that for twelve years Moliere's
company plaj^ed the pieces which their manager wrote
for them, until his death put an end to their power of
cohesion. Two or three years after that event they
were amalgamated with the H8tel de Bourgogne, which
swallowed up, shortly afterwards, the Theatre of the
Marais, and the Com^die FrauQaise grew up out of
the three.
Moliere was the stage-manager, principal partner,
orator, author, and chief actor. As a manager, he
seems to have been despotic, arbitrary, and irritable.
Off the stage the most gentle, tractable, and amiable of
men : on it the most rigid and inflexible tyrant. The
consequence was that his pieces were played with an
attention and precision to which the Parisian stage had
been previously a stranger. As an actor, he was the
greatest artist of his time. " Moliere was comedian
from head to foot ; it seemed that he had several differ-
THE MANAGER. 325
ent voices. Every thing in him B'poke ; and with a step,
a smile, a movement of the hand, a dropping of the eye-
lash, he imparted more ideas than the greatest talker
would have managed to convey in an hour." He did
not, however, always undertake the principal parts in
his own plays ; and while he was Alceste in the " Mis-
anthrope," Jourdain in the " Bourgeois Gentilhomme,"
he was only Orgon in " Tartuffe."
The success of his company, which speedily eclipsed
the other two, was due not only to the pieces they per-
formed, but in a measure to the continued favor and
protection of the king. I think indeed that, while it
is the fashion to harp upon the unbounded egotism and
selfishness of the grand monarque^ too little justice is
done him for the patronage he extended to men of
letters and learning, and the freedom he allowed to
them. We ought to remember the long list of poets
and writers who shared the king's bounty and were
put on his pension list. It was no slight stimulus to an
author to feel that the king was taking an interest in
his work, and that, though not without claims to critical
ability, he was willing to defer his own judgment to the
opinion of better critics. " Who," asked Louis once of
Boileau, "is the greatest writer of the day?" "Sire,
Moliere." " I had not thought so," replied the king ;
" but you know more about those subjects than I do."
Enemies, envious of his fame, swarmed about the
dramatist. Their accusations and scandals have noth-
ing to do with us here. One charge, however, he ad-
mitted. He borrowed right and left — a " grand et habile
'picoreur^'' as Manage calls him. The idea of "Les Pr^-
cieuses Ridicules " is borrowed ; Ninon de TEnclos sug-
gested that of the " Tartuffe ; " a story of the Count
de Grammont, that of the " Mariage Forc^ ; " and the
326 MOLIERE.
plot of the " ]\'Ialade Imaginaire " is taken from a medi-
aeval Latin book called '' Mensa Philosophica." Boileau,
La Fontaine, Madame de la Sabliere, even the king, sug-
gested situations. Thus the famous phrase, " Le pauvre
Jiomme ! " was used by the king. He once invited a
certain ecclesiastic to supper. The reverend gentleman
declined on the ground of religion, affirming that on fast-
days a single collation was all he allowed himself. One
of the by-standers laughed ; and, on the king asking the
reason, he enumerated a long list of dishes by which
the good man had mortified the flesh that day. At the
mention of each plat the king exclaimed, " Le pauvre
homme ! "
Moliere's own rivals were of course the bitterest
against him. He replied to them much in their own
coin, sparing none of the actors of the Hotel de Bour-
gogne, except Floridor, the tragedian. The exception
was, perhaps, politic, Floridor being a great favorite of
the king's, and of a popularity too great for the public
to allow any attack upon him. Perhaps, however, it
was due to personal friendship. Floridor was worthy
of the exception. Alone among actors, no scandal ever
attached to his name. His morals were blameless ; his
acting was perfect ; his life free from envy and malice,
and his conversation from detraction and slander.
Foremost among the little troupe of which Moliere
was king is the name of Bejart. The family o£,Bdjart
consisted of two brothers, both conscientious, praise-
worthy actors, and three sisters. The eldest was Ma-
deleine, Moliere's first flame (she was said to be secretly
married to a gentleman of Avignon), the Dorine of his
" Tartuffe," and, after the death of her brothers, the
principal partner with Moliere in the profits of the com-
pany. She was already past the bloom of her beauty
HIS COMPANY. 327
when the troupe established themselves in Paris, and
resigned the principal parts — certainly with regret, and
probably with temper — to the younger members. Gene-
vieve, the second, had no genius, and it is not clear that
she kept the stage long. The youngest sister, Armande
Elisabeth Gresinde, became Moliere's wife.
With regard to the actors of the company, there was,
first, Br^court, who deserted them, and went to the
Hotel de Bourgogne. Here, performing the part of
Timon in his own play with too great vehemence, he
broke a blood-vessel and died in consequence. Ap-
parently there was a good deal of bawling on the
stage at the period, for Brdcourt's manner of death
was not singular. Montfleury, who was too fiit for the
part, killed himself by over-exertion in the part of
Orestes ; and Mondori, as we have seen above, got an
apoplectic fit as Herod, and could act no more : '* Homo
non periit^ sed periit arfifex^^'w^^ said of him. Br^court
created the part of Alain in the '^ Ecole des Femmes."
*' This man," said the king, " would make the very
stones laugh."
Beauval, who was born by nature and specially de-
signed to act the part of Thomas Diafoirus in the
" Malade Imaginaire," and nothing else ; De Brie,
whom Molicre only tolerated for the sake of his wife ;
De Croisy, a*- gentleman by birth, and the original actor
of TartufPe ; L'Espy, the successor of Moliere as the
orator ; Du Pare, called " Gros Ren^ ; " and Le Noir de
la Thouiliiere, who would have been a glorious actor of
tragedy but for an unfortunate face, which spoiled all
tragic effect by its irrepressible jollity, nearly make up
the list of his actors. Only one more must be men-
tioned — the great, the illustrious Baron, Moliere's pupil,
the darling of the stage, and of half the fine ladies in
328 MOLIERE.
Paris ; the finest, the handsomest, and the vainest actor
that Paris had ever seen. "A comedian," said Baron,
" is brought up in the lap of kings. I have read all
histories, ancient and modern. I find that Nature has
produced in every age a crowd of heroes and great
men. Prodigal in every other respect, she has beer
niggardly in this alone, for I find only two great
comedians, Roscius and myself ! "
He acted M^licerte when he was only thirteen years
old, but when Moliere's wife boxed his ears he gave up
the part and left the company in dudgeon. He came
back at the age of eighteen, as handsome as an angel,
and played Amour to Mile. Moliere's Pysch^. There
was no more boxing of ears between them, but, unfortu-
nately, quite the contrary. Baron left the stage at the
age of thirty, and returned to it again after thirty years'
absence. His reputation had actually survived through
a whole generation. He left it no more, playing better
than ever until he died.
The actresses all bore the title of " Mademoiselle ; "
not that they were unmarried, but because in those days
no hourgeoise was privileged to bear the title of " Ma-
dame." The most popular among the company of the
Palais Royal was Mile. De Brie. If Madeleine Bejart
was his first love, the De Brie was certainly Moliere's
second. She was also the fourth, because after the first
rupture with his wife he returned to her to find in her
society some alleviation from his domestic miseries.
She first played the part of Agnes in the " Ecole des
Femmes," and was so popular in it that the public
would have no one else so long as she lived ; and she
played it till the age of sixty-four. Like many actresses,
she had the art of preserving her beauty, as an epi-
gram written upon her testifies : —
HIS ACTRESSES, 329
If her beauty, though fading, outrivals
Our youngest and loveliest queen,
Say, since she's so charming at sixty,
What must she have been at sixteen ?
Moliere's troubles in his efforts to keep the peace
between Madeleine B^jart, Mile. De Brie, and his wife
were sometimes too much for his philosophy. Chapelle
brought him comfort by comparing him to Jupiter, try-
ing to keep his three goddesses in good temper, and
referred him to Homer : —
Your trouble is vain. Read the tale and reflect:
The moral you cannot but see ;
It teaches the folly of men who expect
That three women will ever agree.
Take comfort by Homer's experience there,
And own he is sanguine indeed.
Who ventures in credulous confidence where
Great Jupiter ne'er could succeed.
Mile, du Pare, in her youth more beautiful than
De Brie, excelled in dancing. She was the inventor
of an attraction to the stage which we are too apt to
think belongs to the moderns : " Elle faisait certaines
cabrioles remarquables, et on voyoit ses jambes, au
moyen d'une jupe qui ^toit ouverte des deux cotds,
avec des has de soye." Mile. Beauval, the first Nicole
of the " Bourgeois Gentilhomme," was popular and
pretty, though the king disliked her voice. She en-
riched the state, if not her husband, by the production
of four-and-twenty children. Mile. De Grange was
ugly and bad ; Mile. Beaupr^ was pretty and good ;
and De Croisy's wife and dgiughter, of whom there is
nothing to say, make up the list.
Remains only Moliere's wife.
This is her portrait, drawn by her husband : —
330 MOLIERE.
** Her eyes are small."
" True, they are small ; but they are full of liglit, the brightest
and most winning possible."
"Her mouth is large."
" Yes ; but it has graces that you never see in any other mouth.
The very sight of it inspires desire — it is the most attractive, the
most lovable mouth in the world."
" She is not tall enough."
" No; but her carriage is easy and graceful."
"As for her wit " —
" She has plenty — the finest and most delicate."
" Her conversation " —
" Her conversation is charming."
" She is as capricious as possible."
" Well, I like a beautiful woman to be capricious. Her caprices
become her."
Because little Armande had grown up under his own
eyes, had been pleased by his kindness, had learned to
look upon him as her best friend, and had run to him
for -help in all her childish troubles, he imagined that
she would find it easy to love him. So practised an ol^-
server should have known that familiarity is the greatest
enemy to love ; that where there is no mystery, nothing
unknown, there can be no room for the imagination ;
that gratitude makes a bad soil for the growth of love.
He met with neither love nor gratitude, for the woman
was worthless. She used her sweet voice and her winning
ways to cajole her husband, and gave her affections to
other men.
It is Chapelle who tells us Moliere's own sufferings
v/-ith his wife : —
" Have you ever loved any woman at all? " Moliere asked me.
" I have certainly been in love," said Chapelle, "but only as a
man of sense ought to be." " Then," replied Moliere, " you have
never loved any one: you have mistaken the shadow of love for
love itself. ... I was naturally endowed with the greatest incli-
nation to tenderness, and as I thought that my efforts might in-
HIS WIFE. 331
spire in my wife those sentiments which time could not destroy, I
spared no effort to succeed. As she was very young when I mar-
ried her, I knew nothing of her vicious inclinations, and thought ray-
self a little less unhappy than most of those who enter upon similar
engagements. Therefore marriage did not cause me to relax in
my attentions: but T found so much indifference in her that 1 began
to think all my care useless, and to perceive that what she felt for
me was very far from what I had hoped. ... I spared nothing at
the first knowledge I had of her guilty passion for the Count de
Guichy to conquer my own feelings, seeing the impossibility of
changing hers. I called to my assistance all that might help to
console me. I considered her as a person whose one merit was her
innocence: this gone, she had no other. I formed the resolution of
living with her as an honest man may with a light-minded wife, one,
that is, who is sufficiently persuaded that his reputation does not
tlepend on her bad conduct. . . . But I found that a woman with-
out much beauty, relying only on the intellect that I had trained
in lier, was able in an instant to destroy all my philosophy. Her
presence caused me to forget all my resolutions, and the very first
words she uttered in her own defence left me so convinced that
my suspicions were ill founded that I asked her pardon for my
credulity. . . . Every thing in' the world connects itself in my
heart with her; the idea of her has so seized me that I can think
of nothing iu her absence which gives me the least pleasure."
Moli^re ventured to put his personal feelings even
more plainly upon the stage. In the " Misanthrope "
he gives to Ci^b'mdne, a fart taken hy his wife, all her
coquetry ; and to Alceste, his own part, he assigns all
the weakness of a man who endeavors in vain to com-
bat a passion for an unworthy object. Did Mile.
Moli^re herself perceive what the story of their life
makes so plain to us ?
Non, I'amour que je sens pour cette jeune veuve
Ne ferme point mes yeux aux defauts qu'on lui treuve:
Et je suis, quelque ardeur qu'elle m'ait pu donner,
Le premier a les voir comme ^ les condamner.
Mais, avec tout cela, quoi que je puisse faire,
Je conf esse mon f aible ; elle a I'art de me plaire ;
332 MOLlkRE.
J'jii beau voir ses defauts et j'ai beau I'en blamer,
En depit qu'on en ait elle se fait aimer,
Sa grace est la plus forte; et, sans doute, ma flamme
De ces vices du temps pourra purger son ame.
But Moliere, as his friend Chapelle, not like St. Peter,
" himself a married man," told him, was not the only-
great man unhappy in his wife.
It was true, but it brought no consolation. It soothes
no unhappy man to reflect that others are more unhappy-
still. Other great men have been mated with worth-
less wives ; none with a Avife so worthless as Arraande
B^jart. Again and again Moliere forgave her ; but
things could not always go on so, and they agreed at
last to separate, living, however, under one roof. A
year before Moliere's death they were reunited, and
a month before he died his wife gave him a child,
which died in infancy. Perhaps had her husband lived
longer, even this hard-hearted woman might have been
touched by such continual kindness, such unmerited
love.
His first great triumph was in 1659, when he put on
the stage his- " Prdcieuses Ridicules." The success of
the play was undoubted from the first. " Courage,
Moliere," cried an old man from the pit, " this is real
comedy.^' And Menage, who was then with Chapelain,
remarked, as they went out, " Monsieur, we have ap-
proved of all these absurdities which have just been
criticised so finely and with such good sense. After
this, as Saint-Remi said to Clovis, we must burn what
we have adored, and adore what we have burned."
Manage relates the story himself, but as it was told
some years after the event, very likely it never hap-
pened at all. Many prophetic reputations have been
based upon a fortunate memory.
HIS SUCCESS. 338
But after this his success is assured ; his career as
the greatest dramatist of France is one continued tri-
umphal march. He is loaded with favors by the king ;
he can hold his own against the insolent nobles who are
jealous of his favor ; he has a large income ; he has a
country-house at Auteuil : and, as we have seen, against
all this, he has a wife who deceives him. And then,
too, he has delicate health and is in constant anxiety
about the future. Only he is happy in his friendships,
for to Auteuil come Boileau, Racine, Chapelle, Bachau-
mont, and all the crowd of scholars and free-thinkers
— for Moliere was not a religious man. Grave, sober,
contemplative, no careless scoffer, he yet evidently con-
sidered religion as something which had no concern with
him. Perhaps it was the consciousness of being excom-
municated, for if you are sentenced beforehand it hardly
matters what you say or do. Perhaps it was the absorp-
tion of his whole mind into his art. Great masters are
impatient sometimes of things like disease, religion,
poverty, other people's troubles, which disturb the quiet
in which an artist loves to sit, and obtrude a troublesome
personality. Moliere shows no religion either in his life
or in his writings, and he found the comfort and pleasure
of his life in the society of those friends I have named,
and such ladies, as Ninon de I'Enclos and Madame de
la Sabliere (before her conversion), as would receive a
player into their society.
But he had what we may call the common sense of re-
ligion. He was not, for instance, like Bautru, who would
take off his hat to a crucifix, remarking, " Nous nous
saluons, mais nous ne nous parlous pas." Nor was he
like Bachaumont, who, after a long life of profligacy,
reformed at the last, and used to say that " un honnete
homme doit vivre h, la porte de I'eglise et mourir dans la
334 MOLIERE,
sacristie." But he was a man generally careless of re-
ligion, and sometimes more than careless ; as when, in
the " Festin de Pierre," he makes Don Juan utter his
terrific sneer to the beggar, '' You pass your life in
prayer, and you die of hunger ; take this : I give it you
for the love of humanity." The heavens are deaf and
pitiless : at the callous hand of the profligate alone the
beggar finds mercy.
His friends were certainly men of "advanced thought.'*
Take Chapelle, for instance, the drunken poet, who wrote
with Bachaumont the delightful ''Voyage," half in prose,
half in verse. He was the illegitimate son of a maitre
des requetes, and being legitimized found himself, on the
death of his father, the owner of a considerable fortune,
with which he devoted himself to a life of pleasure.
The Duke de Brissac once invited him to be his com-
panion. Chapelle complied, and started to join his
patron. On the way he read a line in Plutarch, " He
who follows the great becomes a slave." Struck with
the sentiment, he turned back, and spent the rest of his
life in great independence and liberty. He gave Moliere
several valuable hints, and tried to persuade himself and
the world that he wrote part of his plays. Moliere
watched his opportunity ; invited^ him to write a scene
of " Les Facheux," and when he received the manu-
script said good-naturedly, " Chapelle, if you let any
one in future believe that you write for me, I shall show
them this." It is not on record that Chapelle ever
reconciled himself with the church.
It is noteworthy, too, that all that little set which at-
tended Gassendi's lectures together, were suspected of
free-thinking. There was the great traveller Bernier,
physician to Aurungzebe for eight years ; Hesnault, the
translator of Lucretius, who repented and died with a
HIS APPEARANCE. 335
rope round his neck in token of contrition, and Cyrano
de Bergerac, who killed ten men in duels, all to main-
tain the honor of his own enormous nose. Gassendi
himself, in spite of his refutation of those doctrines of
Epicurus, antagonistic to Christianity, was more than
suspected of free-thinking.
The personal appearance of Moliere is drawn by
Mademoiselle Poisson, wife of the comedian : —
Moliere was neither too thin nor too stout: he was inclined to
be tall, had a noble carnage and a firm leg: walked gravely, with
a serious air: had a large nose, a full mouth, with thick lips, black
and strongly-marked eyebrows. To these last he used to give
movements on the stage which heightened the comedy of his per-
formai?ce. As for his character, he was gentle, generous, and
complaisant. He loved to make speeches, and when he read his
comedies, liked to have the players' children to listen, in order to
judge of the merits of the piece by their natural movements.
We have other details about him ; as that the ej^e-
brows are not only strongly marked, but thick and
shaggy : he stoops ; he has a short cough ; his face is
set with melanchol}^ save when he is acting ; and he
acU all over.
Above all, an artist. He held views on the dignity
of his profession, which were not understood, even by
Boileau himself, the man who most admired and loved
him. Two months before his death Boileau expostu-
lated with him on the exertions of his life and the
risks he ran. '' The continual agitation of your lungs
in the theatre," he said, " the excitement of your mind,
must sooner or later make you give up acting. Is
there no one in the company but yourself who can take
the first parts ? Content yourself with composing, and
leave theatrical representation to some one else ; it will
bring you more honor with the public, who will see in
the actors mere paid servants of your own ; and, for the
336 ^ MOLlkRE.
actors themselves, who are not always so easy to manage,
they will the better feel your own superiority." Re-
plied Moli^re, " There is my honor engaged. I cannot
give it up." "Very fine honor," rejoined Boileau, " an
honor which consists in blacking your face to make a
moustache for Sganarelle, and in handing over your back
for the comedian's stick. What ? This man, the very
first in our age for e8]prit and true philosophy, this in-
genious censor of all human folly, has one more extraor-
dinary still than any of those he ridicules every day."
Boileau could not understand him : I think we can.
Moli^re died in 1673, after fifteen years of success,
and in the fulness of his powers. The history of his
last moments was written by the actor Baron: —
That day, feeling his chest worse than usual, Moliere called his
wife, and said to her in the presence of Baron, " As long as my
life was made up of equal portions of pleasure and pain, I supposed
myself happy: but now that I am overwhelmed with pains without
being able to count on any moments of satisfaction and pleasure, I
see clearly that I must give it up. I can no longer hold out against
the mental and bodily sufferings which never give me a moment's
rejDOse. How much a man suffers before he dies! nevertheless, I
feel that it is all over with me." His wife and Baron were deeply
touched by this speech, which they little looked for, although they
knew that he was suffering. They prayed him, with tears in their
eyes, not to play on that day and to take repose. " What would
you have me do?" he cried. "There are fifty workmen who
depend upon their day's pay. What will they do if I do not
play?" But he sent word to his company that feeling himself
more indisposed than usual, he would not play at all that day,
unless they were ready at four o'clock precisely. "If not," he
said, " I shall not be there, and you may return the money." The
company had the lights lit and the curtains up at four. Moliere
went through his part with the greatest difficulty, and half the
audience perceived that in pronouncing the word Juro he had a
sort of convulsion. But he passed it off with a forced laugh.
When the piece was finished, he put on his dressing-gown and
went to Baron's box, to ask what was said of it. . . . Baron
HIS DEATH. 837
remarked that his hands appeared frozen, and put them in a muff
to warm them: he sent for his chairmen to take him home at once,
and never left the chair from the Palais lloyal to the Rue Riche-
lieu for fear of some accident. When he was in his chamber, he
wanted him to take some bouillon which Mile. Moliere had always
in readiness for him. But he refused, and after eating a little
Parmesan cheese with bread, lay down in bed. A moment after
he sent to his wife for a pillow filled with some drug which she
had promised him. . . . Then he had a violent fit of coughing,
bringing up blood. " There," he said, " is the change." Baron
cried out in terror. " Do not be alarmed," said Moliere, " you
have seen me bring up a good deal more blood than that. Go and
tell my wife to come upstairs." He remained, assisted by two
sisters of those who come to Paris begging for the poor during
Lent, to whom he had given hospitality. At this last moment of
his life they gave him all the succor that they could, and he
manifested the sentiments of a Christian and the resignation due
to the will of the Lord. And then he died in their arms, suffocated
by the blood which poured from his mouth. So that, when his
wife and Baron came upstairs, they found him dead.
The Cur(^ of St. Eustache, the parish in which he
died, refused him Christian burial, as having died with-
out being reconciled to the church. Accompanied by
the Curd of Auteuil, the widow made her way to Ver-
sailles, and thre\y herself at the feet of the king. Here,
unfortunately, the curd, who was suspected of Jansen-
ism, put in two words for himself to every one for
Moliere. The king grew impatient and sent them both
away. At the same time he wrote to the archbishop to
find some middle way. The archbishop gave permis-
sion that the body should be buried in the Cemetery of
St. Joseph, Rue Montmartre, but on the condition that
it should not be taken into the church. Accordingly
the body was taken to the burial-place direct. It was
in the evening. Outside the house were gathered a
great crowd of people, whose threatening gestures
seemed to denote some fanatical demonstration. They
22
338 MOUERE.
dispersed after the widow had sent out a thousand
francs, and the cortege, consisting of two hundred
mourners carrying torches, was suffered to proceed
unmolested. With it walked two priests, so that Mo-
liere was not altogether abandoned by the church. I
believe that most biographers have thought it right to
discharge a solemn volley of indignation against the
archbishop and the church. Harlay, we are told, was
a man of immoral habits : what has that to do with it ?
You might as well find fault with an English judge's
decision on the same ground. The church has a rule.
Persons who die excommunicate shall not receive the
ordinary parting benediction. Moliere died as he had
lived, out of communion. Those who think that the
prayers of the church are likely to be of any use here-
after, ought to get reconciled, or else to agitate for a
change of the rule. I am quite certain that Moliere
was as indifferent to a funeral mass as any Lyons ouvrier
of the present day. As it was, you see the church act-
ually strained a point in his favor ; gave him six feet of
consecrated ground ; suffered an irregular sort of service
to be held, which, while doubtless inefficacious compared
with the virtue of a real mass, yet served to mark the
regret which the church felt in consigning so great a
man to hopelessness.
Somebody made an epitaph on him, and took it to the
Prince de Conde. "I have brought you," he said, ''Mo-
lieie's epitaph." " Would to Grod," said the prince,
bursting into tears, " it was Moliere bringing me yours ! "
Let us say a few words on Molicre's satire.
All weapons are alike, provided they be lethal, to
the ferocious satirist. A Juvenal cares little Avh ether
he shoots his enemy, tramples upon him, or stabs him in
the back, provided he can maim, disable, or kill him.
HIS SATIRE. 839
All missiles are justifiable by the rules of satiric war-
fare; whether epithets undeserved, crimes never com-
mitted, motives not dreamed of, antecedents invented
— all are equally good, provided only they be equally
useful. To describe your enemy as stupid is nothing ;
to be vicious is nothing. He must . be superlatively
vicious and incredibly stupid. True it is that the
ferocity of the satirist seems to produce wonderfully
little effect. He foams at the mouth, and gnashes with
his teeth ; the unthinking folk stare, and go on their
way. We do not learn that the later Empire was
greatly improved by the virtuous verses of Juvenal;
and the Franciscan friars — fratres fraterrimi — appear
to have been little the worse for Buchanan's lashing.
But when the indignant moralist has had his say, and
comes down wiping his brow, there is a chance for him
who tries to lead the people another way, not by hurl-
ing abuse at them, but by showing them their idols in
a true light — by making them see for themselves how
petty, insignificant, and powerless are their gods. The
glamour falls from the eyes of the world, and it wakes,
like Titania, to find that it has been enamoured of a
monster. So the most fitting emblem for satire would
be the th3TSUs, wreathed with the leaves which hide the
spear-head. It belongs to the two men who, above all,
have been successful satirists — Erasmus and Moliere.
It does not belong to Buchanan, to Boileau, or to Pope.
The world's respect for a principle or an institution
is, as it were, its very breath of life ; when this goes,
when the world agrees to laugh at it, it falls, never to
revive again. And thus it is that Moliere is stronger
than Boileau. Both worked in the same field ; both
aimed at the maintenance of sense and taste ; both had
the true gift of the satirist in a genuine, not a pretended,
840 MOLIERE.
hatred for shams and unrealities and wind-bags. But
they pursued different methods of attack, and got very
different results. It is certain to me that Trissotin,
Vadius, and Tartuffe, Cathos, Madelon, and Armande
Doctor Diafoirus and Doctor Desfonandres, did more
to damage Ingots and quacks, hypocrites and pedants,
to restore reason to literature, and to destroy affectation
and humbug, than all Boileau's poems put together.
We would not have lost the works of the very prophet
of common-sense; but we miss in him that consideration
and tenderness for human failings which prevent Moliere
from ever being, or pretending to be, in a real rage.
Boileau pretends not to be able to hide his scorn ; while
with Moliere, flowers, songs, laughter, the music of
maiden's voices, the sighs and hopes of lovers, the at-
mosphere of life and the world, surround the objects of
his satire. Henriette and Clitandre, Valere and Mari-
anne, make us sometimes forget the follies of Armande
and the hypocrisies of Tartuffe ; while these, as in the
world, are not the whole, but only a part of life.
The gallery of Moliere, for so great a dramatist, is an
extremely limited one. Content at first to imitate the
Spanish school of intrigue, in which all the dramatis
personce are cast in uniform moulds, and delineation of
character is entirely out of the question, it was not till
late in his dramatic life that he found his real field,
and attacked the follies and foibles of the day. His
" Avare," his " Ddpit Amoureux," and even his '' Ecole
des Maris," belong to no time and all time ; while the
" PrecicQses Ridicules," the earliest of his satiric come-
dies properly so called, was yet a mere sketch, and had
to wait for six years before it found a true successor
in the " Tartuffe," the " Bourgeois Gentilhomme," and
the " Femmes Savantes," all of which belong to the last
HIS SATIRE. 341
five years of Molidre's life. His muse was to be a tree
whose best fruit comes late, and in too small quantity.
Moliere had two subjects of satire which he shared
with every comedian, and even every buffoon, namely,
the stock subjects of the aspiring citizen and the quack
physician ; and he had two others which he made
peculiarly his own, which were his own creation — the
hypocrite, the pretended pious, and the pedants who set
themselves up for judges of good taste. The " Bour-
geois Gentilhomme " has been put upon every stage ;
there are Jourdains and Dandins in every literature ;
and we need not linger over the follies of the citizen
aping the manners of the great. Let us rather pass on,
to show how the times themselves illustrate the force
and point of Moliere with regard to the remaining
classes. Bright and fresh as his plays are, they assume
colors far brighter and fresher to him who takes the
trouble — let us rather say, gives himself the pleasure
— of reading about the men and women who formed
the society of Moli^re's Paris — men and women be it
observed, not opinions and theories. The materials are
abundant, and the research required is not laborious, for
the seventeenth century is as well known to us as our
own.
In tlie " Prdcieuses Ridicules " we have the story of
two young ladies from the country. Deeply impressed
with the reading of " Clelie," they have recently arrived
in Paris, and are longing to form part of a society
which that mellifluous romance has taught them to be-
lieve the only thing worth living for. They repel their
honest, country-bred suitors with the greatest disdain,
because their advances are not made in the forms pre-
scribed by Mile. Scud^ri. In revenge, the two gentle-
men dress up their valets as persons of distinction, and
342 MOLIERE.
send them to pay a morning call. The vulgarity and
pretension of the two servants, the enormous pleasure
they take in performing their part, the little affectations
of the poor girls, and their innocent delight at getting,
as they suppose, a chance of realizing their fondest
hopes by forming a part of the society which tliey only
know from their reading, are the slight materials out of
which the piece is constructed.
In the " Femmes Savantes " a higher note is struck.
It is not this time a pair of provincial damsels longing
to see the coteries of which they have heard so much,
but the very coterie itself — a family of women who
have taken up the fashionable ideas of the time, and
devote themselves to science, criticism, and art. Their
criticism is worthless, their science pretence, and their
knowledge of art nothing. They propose to establish
an Academy for which Plato's Republic — of which they
understand as much as if it were so much Hebrew — is
to furnish the rules and form the model. It is destined
to establish the equality of women with men — or, to
use their own words (it really seems as if Moli^re were
writing to-day) : —
Nous voulons montrer a de certains esprits,
Dont I'orgueilleux savoir nous traite avec m6pris,
Que de science aussi les femmes sent meublees ; *
Qu'on peut faire, comme eux, de doctes assemblees,
Conduites en cela par des ordres meilleurs;
Qu'on y veut r^unir ce qu'on separe ailleurs,
Meier le beau langage et Ics hautes sciences,
Decouvrir la nature en mille experiences,
Et sur les questions qu'on pourra proposer,
Fuire entre chaque secte et n'en point epouser.
Above all, they burn to make scientific discoveries.
Armed with telescopes, compasses, and mathematical
instruments, they are ready to prove that woman's
WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 343
region of thought extends beyond the domain of rib-
bons and shawls, and is bounded only by those limits
assigned to the masculine intellect. Indeed, they go
beyond the powers of man, and have already made
discoveries of startling interest, greater than any yet
vouchsafed to the male eye. For one of them (with
commendable modesty) announces that she has dis-
cerned men in the moon ; while another, confessing to
an inferior power of vision, has only as yet made out
the church-steeples of that satellite. They are pre-
pared, in their Academy, to discuss and teach grammar,
histor3% moral and political philosophy. But their im-
mediate work is the reform of lano^uao^e. All doubtful
and coarse expressions are to be abolished ; common-
places will be banished ; and they have vowed a mortal
hatred against a multitude of nouns, verbs, and adjec-
tives, which are henceforth to be expunged from the
language. Finally, by their own laws, they are to be
the absolute critics of every work — judges, from whose
decision there is to be no appeal — of prose and verse: —
Nous chercherons partout a trouver a redire,
Et lie verrons que nous qui sachent bien 6crire.
It is refreshing to find the Rights of Women asserted
so long ago, and in terms as plain as those we are get-
ting accustomed to now. And there is comfort in the
thought that, disagreeable as the present prospect may
appear, the whole question was as vehemently discussed
and as forcibly argued two hundred years ago, with no
result.
'* Rise," says Armande to her grovelling and down-
trodden sister, " rise above these low and vulgar incli-
nations. Make yourself sensible to the delights of study
and of science. Marry yourself to philosophy. Give
344 MOLlkRE.
up to reason the sovereign lordship. What can you
see, what is there to see, in marriage ? " "I see," says
the contemptible Henriette, " I see my husband, my
children, and my home."
In these two plays there was not a single word of
exaggeration. When Menage, after the first represents ^
tion of the " Pr^cieuses Ridicules," made that speech
which you have just now read, to Chapelain, the greatest
sinner of all, he pronounced the first recognition of what
was to prove the death-blow to the conceits and man-
nerisms of his own circle. They were henceforth to
burn what they used to adore, and to adore what they
used to burn. Most of the set, however, were too har-
dened in their own beliefs, and went on adoring at the
ruined shrines of their old idols long after the people
had given them up.
But the pre eieuses of Moliere's play must not be care-
lessly or hastily confounded with that brilliant circle
first got together at the Hotel de Rambouillet, of which
we have had to speak so much already. This mansion
was not yet, it is true, closed, but its glories were de-
parted. Julie de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet,
had a long and glorious reign of more than thirty years,
the queen of Parisian society. At the age of twenty,
being then a matron of eight years' standing, she with-
drew from the Louvre, pretending that she found no-
pleasure in the noise and tumult of the royal assemblies.
It seems very likely that a personal dislike which she
had conceived for Louis XIII. had a good deal to do
with her retirement. She went to her hotel, newly
built and decorated after her own designs, the most
beautiful as it was also the most commodious house in
Paris, and announced her resolution to leave it no more.
She kept this resolution, which cost her nothing, because
MADAME DE RAMBOUILLET. 345
society came to her, for fifty five years, when she died,
full of years and of honor, leaving not a single person to
say a word against her. The memory of this pure woman
is altogether sweet and holy ; her influence, save in the
region of art, was altogether good — her example alto-
gether elevating. At her house, for thirty years at
least, an assembly gathered every evening of the week.
Here (Madame de Rambouillet's own inno^vations) all
the year round fresh-cut flowers filled the vases ; here
the windows opened to the ground, and enabled the
visitors to step into the gardens of the H6tel, the finest
in Paris ; here the old dark and sombre colors of the
walls were replaced by bright blue and gold ; and here
the best people in Paris assembled, and modern society
began.
But criticism was not the object of the H6tel." It was
a social circle, where everybody was required to repress
himself, and to consider his exertions only valuable in
so far as they contributed to make other people happy.
This was, as we have seen, its first, and so far as Madame
de Rambouillet herself was concerned, its only object.
Abuses naturally crept in with success. Pedantry began
to take the place of scholarship ; prigs, i.e. prScieux et
prScieuses, grew up as thick as dandelions ; a mannerism
of speech set in ; niceness reigned in the place of deli-
cacy ; false canons of taste were introduced and accepted ;
the objection to coarse language was carried absurdly
far ; when the younger daughter unhappily took to faint-
ing at a doubtful word, and it became the fashion to
emulate a sensibility so remarkable and so difficult of
attainment, it really seemed as if the French language
was going to be robbed of half its words, and to be re-
duced to expressing the simplest ideas by circumlocution.
All this was not the fault of Madame de Rambouillet.
846 MOLIERE.
What she originally proposed she succeeded in effecting;
and the language of Louis Qnatorze was of a very dif-
ferent tone from that of his illustrious but outspoken
grandfather, with his celebrated oath of " Ventre Saint
Gris I " The abuses sprang from the excessive zeal of
her disciples, and date from the decay of the H5tel. For,
after thirty years of prosperity, the circle began to fall
away. Julie, the eldest daughter — the divine Julie,
the Philomide of Mile. ScudM, the heroine of the
" Garland " — yielded her hand at last, and after twelve
years of wooing, to her patient lover, M. de Montausier.
She was then a tender .young thing of thirtj^-eight.
Ang^lique, her sister, the fragile thing who fainted even
at moral words if they sOunded strong, married the
Count de Grignan, and in a measure lost her extreme
sensibility. Ang^lique Paulet, the " Elise " of Mile.
Scuderi, who was more beautiful at fifty than she had
been at twenty, and at twenty was more beautiful than
Helen, died suddenly, to the great grief of everybody.
The troubles of the Fronde broke out. M. de Ram-
bouillet died. The two sons died — one in battle, the
other of the plague. Sickness fell upon poor Arthenice
herself, and she could not bear the sight of a fire in
winter or the sun in summer. Her old friends dropped
off at her side, for no one ever deserted her, to join the
majority ; the gloj:ies of her youth could not be renewed ;
new and rival circles were established, notably that of
Mile. Scuderi, her old disciple, and were followed by the
more advanced of the precieuses ; and it was at these as-
semblies, not those older ones of Madame de Rambouillet,
that taste declined and genius drooped ; it is one of
these that Moliere ridicules in the " Femmes Savantes."
The society which haunted their gatherings is de-
picted in the novels of MUe. Scuderi, w^ho was the
MADEMOISELLE SCUDERI. 347
Richardson of France, only with more than Richard-
son's propriety and less of Richardson's vigor. Her
romances — more dreary than the human brain can now
conceive — have the special interest that all the char-
acters are portraits. Cyrus is Conti ; Mandane is the
Duchess of Longueville ; Cl^omire, Madame de Ram-
bouillet ; Elise, Angelique Paulet ; while Sappho is the
modest name assumed by the writer herself. The as-
sumption of names was an affectation of the time in
private life ; we all know how that of Arthenice was
given to Madame de Rambouillet, and how little Made-
Ion and Cathos, in the ''Precieuses Ridicules," tell their
papa, in their pretty conceited way, that they intend
no longer to be called by names so common and so
utterly unknown to the grand style, but by those of
Polixene and Ariste.
Every thing which had been introduced by Madame
de Rambouillet, with a view to the formation of a har-
monious and untroubled social circle, was exagger-
ated and distorted by Mile. Scuderi and her followers.
Because language was to be pure, the commonest things
were to be expressed by circumlocution. '' Give me,"
says Madelon, " the counsellor of the Graces," meaning
the looking-glass. *' Convey us," says Cathos, " the
commodities of conversation," meaning " Place chairs."
And while Madame de Rambouillet kept love as much
as possible out of her circle, because love-matters are
the most fruitful source of dissension and jealousy, the
Scuddri coterie would prohibit it altogether, substitut-
ing a mawkish Platonic affection, which admitted of
tawdry and meaningless compliments. If it satisfied
the women — which does not appear, from the slight
evdence we possess, to have been the case — it was only
laughed at by the men. Nor could real flesh and blood
848 MOLlkRE.
ever wholly be kept out, and therefore they bethought
them of laws and regulations by which love could be
safely carried on ; and in the " Cl^lie " there is the de-
licious " Carte du Tendre," or " Map of Affection,"
where Billets Doux^ PetiU Soins^ Billets Galants^ and
Jolis Vers, form villages on the highroad of love. Love-
making, henceforth, was to be a matter of science and
study ; there was to be a method of attack and one of
defence, and the fortress was only to yield after the
siege had been carried on according to the most scien-
tific mode, and the defence been as obstinate as the sys-
tem of " Cldlie " called for.
The poets who formed the later circles were as degen-
erate as might have been expected. They wrote for
the ladies, and the productions most pleasing to the
ladies were enigmas, portraits, madrigals, and sonnets.
Mascarille says that he can count two hundred songs,
as many sonnets, four hundred epigrams, more than a
thousand madrigals, without enumerating enigmas and
portraits, and that he is going to turn the whole of
Roman history into madrigals. It is a sonnet which
Trissotin reads to the enraptured Philaminte, Armande,
and Belise. And of portraits we have whole galleries
in Mile. Scud^ri herself, who drew those of every one
of her friends.
It has been doubted whether Moliere ever intended
to satirize Mile. Scud^ri herself. I think there need
be no doubt whatever on the subject. The fact that
Boileau did not scruple to attack this great woman
is sufficient to dispel any doubt. Boileau and Molidre
were united by a firm friendship. Different as were
their minds, in many respects they thought alike. The
same good sense guided both: if Moliere writes on a
subject, we can find Boileau suggesting it ; and what
THE PRECIEUSES. 349
is to be found in the satires of the one will be found as
well in the comedies of the other.
At the same time it must be owned that the leader of
the precieuses was not so utterly ridiculous. She had
been brought up in a fairly good school ; she was sen-
sible that her example, imitated beyond due limits, led
to affectations and ridicule ; indeed, she complains her-
self of the follies of her rivals and imitators. But she
was in a way responsible for these very follies. The
leader of a circle which pretended to be learned, and
rebelled against the authority of men, without the ex-
cuse of genius or scholarship, she encrusted herself, in
the ideas of her youth, and probably did not know, till
her complacency was rudely disturbed by Moliere and
Boileau, that a new world of thought had sprung up
around her. But as the ladies of Tunbridge Wells
petted and idolized Richardson, bringing him consolation
for the wicked insults of that Mohawk Fielding, so her
circle of admirers, with Pellisson, " the ill-favored one,"
at its head, gathered round her, and carried on the mad-
rigals, sonnets, enigmas, and portraits, till she died, at
the advanced age of ninety-six.
The "Femmes Savantes" not only attacked a circle,
but, almost by name, one of its most illustrious mem-
bers, the Abb^ Cotin. He had managed to offend both
Boileau and Moliere — the former, because he did not
attempt to disguise his contempt for Boileau's earlier
poems ; the latter, because he officiously suggested to
M. de Montausier that he was the original of Alceste
in the " Misanthrope." Cotin was the writer of an im-
mense quantity of verse, all kinds flowing with equal
readiness from his pen, all being equally insipid and
fashionable. In his own person he was a kind of type
of evei}^ extravagance and affectation to which the pr4'
850 MOLIERE.
cieuses had led their followers. To Boileau, as we have
seen, he was simply the monarch of bad taste : —
Que sert a Cotin la raison, qui lui crie,
" N'ecris plus, gueris-toi d'une vaine folie? "
When he speaks of the violation of common-sense he
names Cotin ; Cotin illustrates his discourses on me-
diocrity and obscurity ; Cotin points the moral to his
sermon on taste. These attacks, however, were com-
paratively harmless ; they were the compliments usually
paid by writers to others against whom they had a
grudge. Cotin would not be extinguished by these.
It was reserved for Moliere to suppress him once
and for ever.
Most fatally for the poor abb^, he fell out one evening
with Menage on the merits of a sonnet. The dispute
took place in the presence of ladies, precieuses, rose to a
quarrel, almost in the very words of the famous quar-
rel between Tri«sotin and Vadius and was quite as un-
dignified and absurd. Boileau, the- moment he heard
of it, ran with the joyful news to Moliere, who hastened
to put into his new piece a perfect copy of their com^
mon enemy, with his overweening self-conceit, his satis-
faction at the adulation of the women, and, to crown all,
the very quarrel, in its most ridiculous light, which was
the talk of the town. The name of the character was
at first Tricotin, but, this appearing too personal, it
was softened to Trissotin. Still, that there might be no
doubt whatever in anybody's mind as to the person in-
tended, Boileau and Chapelle made it their special busi-
ness to go up and down the town telling everybody ; so
that when the piece appeared there was a general rush
to see put on the stage the great Academician, the Abb^
Cotin, belauding himself and quarrelling with Manage.
COTIN, 351
The latter was spared, comparatively. He tells us him-
self that the quarrel really took place, though he hides
his own share in it — which is natural. But Cotin was
crushed by the blow. He lived for nearly ten years
more — his reputation gone, his audience of admiring
ladies gone, their adulation gone. No more literary
fame for him, no more autocratic decrees at the Acad-
emy ; and when he died there was not found one ^- not
even among his brother Academicians — to pronounce
his eloge — not one so poor as to do him reverence.
It was a time when literary quarrels were frequent
and bitter. Another quarrel is related by Furetiere,
illustrative of the tempers of the irritable race of au-
thors. MM. A. and B., like Vadius and Trissotin, are
discussing the merits of a poem ; of course they disagree,
and A., losing his temper, so far forgets what is due to
politeness as to administer a box on the ear to B. Not
able, naturally, to brook this insult, B. goes away,
and in the heat and blindness of his wrath buys a new
sword, preserving enough coolness of judgment to select
one several inches longer than that worn by A. Forti-
fied by the consciousness of a good cause, and this
superiority in the length of his rapier, he attacks his
enemy, meeting him in the street. But the crafty A.,
prepared for an encounter, and, with no more stomach
than the other for cold steel, has adopted a stratagem of
his own. His pockets are full of dust, and throwing
handfuls into his adversary's eyes, he blinds him, and so
wins an easy and a bloodless victory.
But it is time to leave the prScieuses, What is this
group of grave and reverend men, mounted on the easy-
paced mule, wearing high-peaked hats, flowing robes,
and majestic wigs? They are the doctors, Moliere's
doctors : —
352 MOLIERE.
Savantissimi doctores,
Medicinae profes§ores,
Qui hie assemblati sunt.
Or, to quote another epigram : —
What makes a learned doctor ? Speak.
A mien pedantic ; every word
Must be in Latin or in Greek:
A mighty wig, a gown absurd,
With fur and satin richly lined.
In these great qualities combined
A learned doctor you will find.
This profession has always divided with the church
the honor of being the most virulently satirized. In Mo-
li^re's time, of course, it was still highly dangerous to
say too much about the church ; while the third learned
profession, the law, had fingers too long. But doctors
were safe game.
I do not know whether the profession were quacks so
much as the people were credulous. Furetiere, while
he gives us his celebrated definition of a physician as
one who is paid for telling us tales (Jariholes) in the
sick chamber, till nature heals us or his medicines kill,
almost in the same breath gravely relates the wonders
he has seen wrought by a physician with a small phial
of teinture de lune valued at four hundred pistoles, with
which he could cure every thing.
When a great man died, of course his physicians were
accused of killing him. Thus at the death of Henri-
etta, daughter of Henry IV. and wife of our Charles I.,
some one wrote on her physician, Valot : —
A cruel fate, the same for each.
Three of a royal race befell ;
What killed the husband and the sire,
The wife and daughter slew as well.
Each died by an assassin's blow ;
Ravaillac, Cromwell, and Valot.
TARTUFFE. 353
Henry by stroke of traitor's knife,
Charles on the scaffold lost his head;
And now the daughter and the wife,
Slain by her doctor, here lies dead.
And after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, over whom
the doctors wrangled, not being able to make up their
minds as to his disease, the people would make way for
Doctor Gudnant in the streets, crying, " Let him pass
— let him pass ! He is the doctor who killed the car-
dinal for us."
I do not think that 'Moliere was actuated by any
really strong fueling about doctors. They were fair
game ; they were easy to ridicule ; everybody would
join in the laugh, and no one really was hurt. We
laugh at the physician when we are well, on whose lips
we hang with fear and trembhng when we are unwell.
And as for Moliere himself, one of his dearest personal
friends was a physician. " He gives me medicine," he
said; "I don't take it, and I get well."
The great creation of Moliere, his own undisputed
character, is " Tartuffe." The play, first performed in
an unfinished state before the king, was withdrawn in
the face of strong ecclesiastical opposition, and kept
back for three years before it could obtain a license.
Manage takes credit to himself for advocating its cause
with President de Lamoignon on the ground of its ex-
cellent moral. The church of course regarded the piece
with a profound horror, while the opposition it met with,
and the applause with which it was greeted, sufficiently
testify to the vraisemhlance of the principal character.
There was, in fact, a crowd of TartufPes in Paris dur-
ing the seventeenth century. It was a great time for
theological controversies and discussions. These pro-
28
354 MOLIERE.
duced a deep and lasting effect, and a very pernicious
one, upon the religious life of the country. If the
latter years of Louis were marked by a profound relig-
ious gloom, of which the " Tartuffe " seems a sort of
prophetic vision, it was not caused so much by the
king's awakened conscience and convictions, as forced
by the conditions of time on the weakness of his old age.
The cloud had been gathering during the whole long
reign; the ascetics of Port-Royal began their course
early in the century ; while it was yet in its early half,
Madame de Sabl^, Madame de Longueville, and a crowd
of others, retired to the gloomy shades of the monastery
pour fair e leur salut. The religious movement had its
ebb and flow, its tides, its periods of maximum and
minimum excitement. But when the excitement was
at its highest the churches were crammed ; men who
were not preachers or priests got reputations for ex-
traordinary piety; they were taken into houses and
maintained in luxury ; they were consulted, and asked
to advise, on all matters; they were encouraged to
affect a deeper religious sense than they possessed, and
the weakness of their entertainers forced hypocrisy upon
them. The very first thing they advised was to have
nothing to do with the theatre. " All amusements,"
writes Madame de Sabld, " are bad for the Christian
life, but among them all there is none to be feared so
much as the theatre." Madame de Longueville thought
that, " unless there was some sort of necessity in the
thing, there must be sin in play-acting." Her brother,
the Prince de Conti, Sarasin's former patron, withdrew
his support from the stage, and Bossuet preached against
it. The truth was that the greatest hindrance to the
" revival " which the religious world wanted to produce.
TARTUFFE. 855
and waited for with so much interest and hope, was this
very " Tartuffe," known and condemned long before it
received its license. For here, clinging to the coarse
and oily Stiggins of the seventeenth century, was to be
seen that common type of the feeble creature which,
terrified into religion, cannot stand alone, and leans for
support on the first prop which offers itself ; and here
too was set forth, in Cl^ante, the type of the strong and
balanced mind, not to be turned aside from the even
tenor of its way by any fleeting enthusiasm of the mo-
ment, or any religious excitement : —
En un mot, je sais, pour toute ma science,
Du faux avec le vrai faire la diffe'rence :
Et comme je ne vois nul genre de heros
Qui soit plus a priser que les parfaits devots,
Aucune chose au monde et plus noble et plus belle
Que la sainte ferveur d'un veritable zele,
Aussi ne vois-je rien qui soit plus odieux
Que le dehors platre d'un zele specieux.
It is fair to say that Moliere's was not the only voice,
though his appears to have been the first, lifted up
against the folly and danger of religious exaggeration
and excitement. La Fontaine laughed at it, till they
caught him and converted him. Chapelle abused it :
Boileau sneered at it : Furetiere growled at it. " After
all," he says, " we must accommodate ourselves to the
laws of 'our being. When we retire from the world,
we desert the ruling influences of order, and for what ?
To abandon ourselves to our imaginations in the desert,
and to live in places where our very vexations come to
seem like victories to us. . . . What are we to say of
the folly of parents who make their children read the
works of Catullus and Horace, and refuse to let them
go to see ' Tartuffe ' ? "
856 MOLlkRE.
And besides people like the Port-Royalists, well mean-
ing if injudicious, and certainly deeply religious, there
was an ignorant and dissolute priesthood whom even
Moliere dared not attack. The very man who refused
him Christian burial, Harlay-Champvallon, Archbishop
of Paris, was of extreme profligacy. He was exces-
sively handsome, and a story is told how some one,
seeing him suA'ounded by ladies, exclaimed, '' Formod
pecoris custos,^^ upon which one of the ladies completed
the line — ''^ formosior ipse.''''
Stories, abundant and suggestive, are told every-
where about the priests of the time. One relates how
a certain preacher, having to celebrate a saint's day,
delivered himself of the following sermon from the
pulpit : " My brethren, it is to-day the feast of St. ;
on this day last year I told you all I knew about him.
I have not heard that during the past twelve months
he has distinguished himself in any way whatever. I
have^ therefore, nothing more to add."
And another, to finish, speaking of the scandalous
behavior of priests at funerals, tells how a certain old
lady left by will a bequest to the ofliciating priests,
subject to the singular condition that they should not
laugh while celebrating her funeral mass. Mindful of
the money, their reverences began well and solemnly.
But presentl}^ at sight of each other's long faces, set in
the deepest gloom, the}^ burst into a simultaneous roar
of laughter and lost the money.
But we could go on for ever. Let us stop. I have
endeavored to show the man and his surroundings
rather than to criticise his works. These you may
read for youi-selves. But his plays are so delightful,
the wit in them is so fresh and bright, that it is worth
ILL USTRA TION, 857
wliile to get every light possible to throw upon them,
and to bring out with greater clearness those of the
points, a knowledge of which depend upon a knowledge
of his actors, his audiences, his theatre, and the state
of that society for which he wrote.
Chabter XVI.
REGNARD.
Let me have audience for a word or two.
As You Like It.
THE only successor of Moli^re : as Ben Jonson is
to Shakespeare, so is Regnard to Moliere ; and
just as much as Ben Jonson is below Shakespeare, so is
Regnard below Moliere. But a man of mark ; one who
possessed genius, audacity, ambition, versatility, and,
above all, like Rabelais, Regnier, and Beaumarchais,
that inexhaustible vein of gaiety and good spirits
which seems the peculiar gift of the Frenchman. No
one reads Regnard now — for that matter, very few
read Moliere except at school ; yet, whether as a dram-
atist, traveller, or satirist, he is a writer whom we can
read with pleasure and remember with pleasure. And
his life had incidents of more than common value : like
Cervantes, he was a prisoner with the Moors ; he was a
great tl-aveller, and he knew how to describe his travels :
he was a bon-vivant, a man of society, a man of the
world, an associate of all the ablest men of his own time.
Unluckily, he came at a time when the writers of the
historiettes memoires and letters seem to have been rest-
ing from their labors for a generation. We know all
about the personal history, from themselves and others,
of Saint Amant, Racine, Boileau, and Moliere; we know,
from CoU^ and Grimm all that is to be said about the
THE VALET. ■ 859
writers of the eighteenth century : Boswells there were
before Regnard and after him ; none, unfortunately, of
his own time. Therefore, we have to fall back upon the
things he chooses to tell us himself, and even take the
man on trust from materials he has himself selected.
Kow the biographer loves to get the weak points as
Avell as the strong : to see the hero in his night-shirt ; to
act as his valet de chambre ; to put together the anec-
dotes which show those faihlesses which set ofp the
strong points and act as contrast to the situations.
None of us, in fact, can afford to do without the valet ;
the world refuses to accept a man on his own statement,
and we learn to love our great men best when we have
learned that they were even as ourselves, infused with
the same weaknesses, as liable to fall, no stronger than
ourselves, and subject to the same temptations.
Regnard, however, even on his own showing, has but
little of the heroic about him ; and from the scant}^ de-
tails he gives us of himself, we may very well construct
a model which shall not, after all, fall very far short of
the real man. He was born in 1655, of well-to-do-parents
in trade, thus belonging to the same rank in life as Mo-
liere, in the Halles of Paris. As a school-boy and a
student he did nothing creditable to himself or his
masters, but rather the reverse : —
Lui qui ne sut jamais ni le grec, ni l'h6breu,
Qui joua jour et nuit, fit grand' chere et bon feu.
Fortunately, he had not to make his own way in the
world, for his father, dying when his only son was
twenty-one, left him a fortune of 40,000 crowns, equi-
valent to at least £40,000 at the present value of money.
With this sum in hand he had no uneasiness as to his
future, and set off on his travels, going first to Italy.
360 REGNARD.
He was a gambler, and would appear to have been a
fortunate one, because he returned from his first visit to
Italy, having paid all his expenses by his gains and
netted 10,000' crowns as well. He was at this time a
tall, handsome young fellow, with, as his portaits show
us, large eyes, strongly marked features, a firm-set chin,
and full, tremulous lips. Under the great wig of the
seventeenth century, most faces appear to be alike, and
one fears that photographic minuteness was generally
given up in the attempt to produce a face which should
be like the original, and yet destroy the disagreeable
details. Still there can be no doubt that young Regn-
ard was as attractive in appearance as in manners.
He describes himself with a pen which may be as flat-
tering as his portrait, but which gives us clearly some-
thing of the truth.
Zelmis is a gentleman who pleases at first sight : you see him
for the first time and remark him. His appearance is so advan-
tageous that you need not look into his features to find him agree-
able. You must only, ladies, be careful not to love him too well.
Zelmis made a second journey to Italy, this time with
very disastrous results. It was at Bologna, in carnival
time, that he met his fate, the one single passion of his
life. She was a Provengale, the charming Elvire, mar-
ried^ to a M. de Prade ; and, with her husband, was look-
ing on at the horse-racing, when Zelmis first saw her.
An. introduction to her was simply effected by his clear-
ing the place of certain persons who obstructed her
view of the races. She smiled upon him — happy
Zelmis !
Elvire saw him ; she found him hien fait ; she conceived an
esteem for him ; she thanked him in the most obliging terms
possible. Whatever she said was with an accent so tender, and
an air so easy, that it seemed as if she asked for your heart. . . .
ELVIRE. 361
Even if the beauty of this Provengale had not charmed him, her
words would have made him more in love ; and something, I know
not what, a thousand times more touching than her beauty, sur-
prised him ; so that his love from that very moment was at a
height which the greatest passions generally take a considerable
time to reach.
And then Zelrais called on Elvire : was well received :
fell in love more and more : while the lady, though not
forgetful of her marriage vows, received with pleasure
the adoration of her new acquaintance. One evening,
after receiving a smile from her, his highest reward, he
perceived that another, an inconnu. was treated with the
same generosity. Furious at this apparent coquetry, he
addressed the stranger ; " You are happy, monsieur,"
he said, " in knowing the lady who had just passed.
Doubtless you love her. As for that, it is enough to
see her, in order to feel her charms ; and the manner in
which you have been received shows that you are not
indifferent to her." The incon7iu smiled. " Yes," he
said, "you are right: I love her, and I believe I may
fairly say that I am loved in return ; " words which
threw the lover into mere despair. But the ineonnu^
luckily or unluckily, was the lady's husband ; and if
Zelmis was thrown into despair, the husband was
thrown into jealousy. No more accidental rencontres
with Elvire : no more smiles, no more sweet whispers at
a ball ; for De Prade locked her up. Then Zelmis, wan-
dering alone among the trees, gave himself up to dreaip-
ing of his Elvire ; day after day he tried to meet her,
but without success ; and when he learned by accident
that they were gone to Rome, he followed them. There
they met again, at a masked ball first, and afterwards at
the ambassador's. He found out where she was hving,
and, with the help of the lady's maid — always that
lady's maid, Lisette — managed to see her every day, in
362 REGNARD.
the most Platonic way, though his passion was at fever
heat, M. de Prade, presumably — at least one hopes so
— knowing nothing whatever about these stolen inter-
views. At last, and after many pleadings, he extorted
from the lady a confession that she was not whollj- in-
sensible to his passion. Oh ! joy of joys — she was not
wholly insensible ! The moralist pauses here to remark
on the extraordinary pleasure which young Regnard,
then about two-and-twenty, finds in these perilous skat-
ings on thin ice, when the lady's avowal of what may be
called a tendency to an inclination is like the premoni-
tory cracking which leads to the giving way of the
whole, immersion, possible drowning, certain rheumatic
pains, and trouble for the rest of your days. However,
he was still young, and probably Elvire, who played
with him, was a little older in years, and a great deal
older in experience. Came letters from France. Reg-
nard must start at once for home, on business of an
urgent nature. He tore himself from his adored one ;
but love, coupled with his other great passion, over-eat-
ing, laid him up at Florence with a fever, and for several
months he was unable to travel. At last he got better,
and took ship at Genoa. Imagine his surprise and joy at
seeing on the deck, when he went on board, no other
than Elvire herself, with her husband. Then was
enacted for two or three days one of those little come-
dies which, pleasant enough for a while, are sure, if not
stopped at the right moment, to turn into tragedies.
For De Prade was jealous. If his wife looked at Zelmis,
if Zelmis looked at his wife, he fell into fits of jealousy
which almost deprived him of self-control. As for Zel-
mis — they all three had to live in the same cabin —
The joy of meeting Elvire, the fear of losing her again ; the im-
aginary pleasure of sleeping close to her ; natural jealousy at see-
CAPTIVITY. 3G3
ing her in another's arms, — all this threw him into agonies which
did not allow him a moment of repose. La belle Proven^ale was
no happier. She too was jealous. ..." What new passion kept
him in Italy ? Ah ! I am betrayed, I am deserted ; Zelmis loves
me no longer."
The husband was equally unable to sleep, and thus
these three lay in their cabin at night, all broad awake,
all troubled with suspicions, jealousies, and doubts,
perhaps, too, with sea-sickness, so that it must have
been a real relief when, after passing Corsica, two ves-
sels bore down upon them, which, after hoisting succes-
sively the flags of France, Spaiii, Holland, Venice, and
Malta — the unprincipled pirates — boldly ran up their
own, the standard of Barbary, accompanying the disquiet-
ing signal by a broadside of all their guns. Their own
was an English ship ; the captain was cut in two by a
chain-shot ; the officers were all killed, and, when the
Moors boarded her, hardly anybody was left to defend the
deck except Zelmis, who protected the Provengale sword
in hand — nothing said about her husband — until,
w^ounded and exhausted, he sank upon the pile of Moors
whom he had killed with his own hand. Regnard,
then, was brave as well as handsome : it is a detail
which he gives of himself, and one is glad to learn it.
Notwithstanding his courage, the ship was taken, crew
and passengers made prisoners, and carried off to Al-
giers by Captain Mustapha, a gentleman pirate of admi-
rable manners, quite the corsair of romance, who treated
Elvire with a cotisideration entirely unusual, if one may
judge from passages relating similar events, in " Can-
dide " and elsewhere.
Arrived at Algiers the captives were all sold, Elvire
to the Bey, Baba Hassan by name, Zelmis to Achmet
Thalem, one of the richest and most cruel of the Alge-
rians, and the husband to one Omar. Zelmis, for his
364 . REGNARD.
part, promising a large ransom, was treated with com-
parative kindness, and having. shown a creditable skill
in making ragouts was made cook,^ an occupation which
permitted him to go about the city and make inquiries
•as to the welfare of Elvire. He discovered where she
was, and, by the help of a new acquaintance, one Mehe-
met, an employe of the palace, even found means to see
and speak to Elvire as she was conveyed to the baths.
And here Regnard, with a natural desire to exalt his
passion and prove his own heroism, goes into certain
details which even to the eye of reverent criticism
appear improbable and even apocryphal. For he tells
us how he was employed by the Bey to furnish certain
designs and paintings, how under color of bringing these
things to the palace he gained access to the harem and
even conversed with Elvire, how he planned an escape
as romantic as that of Robinson Crusoe, how he actually
succeeded in putting to sea with Elvire, and how they
were caught and brought .back without being punished
at all, Baba Hassan allowing himself to manifest nothing
but a sublime sorrow — Elvire, the only authority on
this delicate part of the history, certainly always painted
the monarch as a very Scipio, and she had every oppor-
tunity of knowing the truth — while Achmet went no
farther than to shut up his prisoner more closely and,
which is strange, allow him the society of his four beau-
tiful Avives. No bastinado, no impaling, no beheading
at all.
What always happens when a Frenchman, young, tall,
handsome, spiritueU is locked up with four lovely Alge-
rian ladies ? Do not at least two of them fall in love with
' He says he became a painter, but this is the pardonable soft-
ening down of an autobiographer.
IMMONA, 365
him at once ? This was the unfortunate case with Zelmis.
They were all beautiful, but the fairest was Immona ;
she it was who first betrayed her passion, and in a
thousand little ways, by languishing looks, by smiles,
by little gestures, called on her slave to return the
passion. Next it was Fa.tima who remarked the cold-
ness of Zelmis to Immona, and wrongly construed it
into admiration of her own superior charms. This mis-
take cleared up, there remained jealousy and disap-
pointed vanity, which rage in Algerian as well as in
Parisian hearts, and poor Zelmis must be made to learn
furens quid foemina posnt. Zelmis, indeed, madly though
he loved Elvire, could not altogether remain insensible
to the charms of Immona, and, after various hairbreadth
escapes and dreadful perils successfully surmounted, was
found by Achmet in a situation at once delicate and dif-
ficult to explain. Joseph Surface himself was not more
effectually disconcerted. And then a terrible alternative
remained: he must renounce his faith or be burned alive.
Which of these Zelmis would have chosen we do not
know, for at this juncture the French consul interposed,
and representing to Achmet the certainty and greatness
of the ransom, persuaded him to withdraw his charge
and acknowledge he had acted on simple suspicion. The
ransom arrived, and Zelmis was free. More than this,
Elvire, too, was freed by the incomparable and disin-
terested generosity of the enamoured Baba Hassan, and
her husband was reported dead. The two returned to-
gether to France, alternately shedding tears for poor De
Prade, and clasping each other's hands in an ecstasy of
happiness.
Let us hasten to the end of this tragical romance.
They landed in France ; they lived near each other ;
they waited only for the term of widowhood to expire in
366 REGNARD.
order to complete their happiness. Thus eight months
had passed away, Zehnis falling daily more and more
deeply in love ; Elvire giving back sigh for sigh — when,
one day, Zelmis being with the fair widow, a servant
told them that two monks from Algiers wished to see
Elvire. Two monks ! But with them, no monk at all,
was none other than De Prade, not dead, but alive.
Ragged, wasted with hunger and privation, barefoot —
it was De Prade himself who threw himself into the arms
of Elvire his wife.
This was too much. Zelmis left the pair thus strangely
reunited, and fled abroad to seek oblivion in absence and
time. We hear no more of Elvire. Time and absence
often enough keep the heart constant to its former object.
It is the return, after many years, that disillusionizes.
When Zelmis got back to France we may picture him
calling upon Elvire, and waiting with a beating heart
the moment of seeing her again. She comes. He sees
her again, and, like a house of cards, his love, the re-
grets of all the years, his tender memories, his dreams
of beginning again the old sweet theme, every thing falls
to pieces and vanishes, and Zelmis is a free man once
more. For Elvire is as old as himself, and he is six-and-
thirty ; the graceful lines of youth have developed into
the fall-blown curves of matronhood; her cheeks are
painted, her eyes have lost the lustre of their youth ;
and when she speaks with the same old sentimental
sigh, it seems like some horrid mockery of a lifelong
dream.
Elvire ? She is no longer Elvire — she is Madame
de Prade, and good Monsieur her husband, the patient,
much-tried man, may rest at last in peace, for Zelmis
is dead and buried, and only Regnard, is left, who may
still perhaps trouble the rest of other married men, but
will leave him and his alone.
LAPLAND. 367
This romance, the only one in his life, is told us, as I
have said, by Regnard himself, much as I have told it to
you. What I have admitted are the beautiful speeches
the lovers make to each other, the admirable sentiments
of Baba Hassan, and the delightful unreality of the whole
thing. But there is no doubt of the facts. They were
all three prisoners. De Prade was reported dead. His
widow came home with Regnard, who promised to
marry her ; and then her husband turned up again. It
is like reading a novelette by Cervantes, and it would
be perfectly charming if only the writer had chosen to
describe the daily life of a slave among the Moors, in-
stead of treating us to his intrigues with Immona and
Fatima. But people had not yet learned the charm of
accurate description, and the romance of reality.
Regnard's travels in Lapland form a little book much
more useful, because he found himself in a country
where no Frenchman had yet penetrated. He gives us
a lively account of the people, this time keeping himself
and his conquests in the background altogether. He
attends at the funeral of a celebrated Lapland priest
of Tornea, Joannes Tornseus. At the bedside sits his
widow weeping and crying. Round her a group of other
women all lamenting together. Great silver vessels stand
on the table, filled with wine and brandy. The widow
stops her weeping, at intervals, to make everybody
drink. And so they weep and drink alternately. He
marks their superstition, how when one is ill^ they beat
the drum to know if he is going to recover ; and if they
are sure he is going to die, they make his last moments
fly more rapidly and more pleasantly, by plying him
with brandy, of which they partake themselves the more
to excite their tears. And when he is dead they destroy
his house to appease his manes. Then they observe
368 REGNARD.
unlucky days ; they mix up Christianity with the wor-
ship of Thor ; they offer sacrifices ; they have sorcerers,
and so on. Finally, with his companions, Regnard
reaches the North Cape, climbs the mountain which
gives them a view of the Northern Sea, and leaves a
Latin inscription for the bears and the wolves to read.
The inscription proclaims the greatness of the tra-
vellers : —
Gallia nos genuit : vidit nos Africa ; Gangem
Hausimus, Europamque oculis lustravimus omnem :
Casibus et variis acti terraque marique
Hie tandem stetimus, nobis ubi defuit orbis.
Returning from Lapland, Regnard visited Stockholm,
Turke}^, Hungary, and Germany, going back to Paris,
where he bought a charge of royal treasurer, which he
held for twenty years. His fortune was ample, his
power of conversation great, his social position was es-
tablished. And when, some time afterwards, he bought
the estate of Grillon, where he spent liis summers, he
was able to fill his house with the best society of Paris,
and to give his friends the most delightful life possible,
full of music, feasting, dancing, love-making, and sing-
ing. It was in the last period of the Great King's life,
and already, in secret, the note of the Regenc}^ had been
struck. Away in the country, hidden among the forests
of Grillon, a free and unbridled life could be led, of
which the world knew nothing, and where no Tartuffe
was allowed to penetrate. For Regnard was by con-
viction a pure Epicurean. What is it that life can
give ? —
Grand' ch^re, vin delieieux,
, Belle maison, liberie toute entidre :
Bals, concerts, enfin, tout ce qui peut satisfaire
Le gout, les oreilles, les yeux :
GRILLON. 369
Tci le moindre domestique
A du talent pour la musique.
Semblent du mattre eprouver le genie.
Toujours societe choisie :
Et, ce qui me parait surpreuant et nouveau,
Grand monde et bonne compagnie.
All this he had at Grillon, where he led the life he
liked, singing and making love to the fair Tontine : —
Upon her face
A thousand dimples smile for me;
Of love the work, of love the grace;
Beside the rest you cannot see
Upon her face.
Her pretty lips
Are full of laughter and of mirth,
And all her words our wit eclipse :
Love makes his palace upon earth
Her pretty lips.
• .
Her rounded throat
Of marble seems, that lies beneath.
No mortal yet has dared to note,
Save with the eyes of love and faith,
Her rounded throat.
Her tender voice
So sweetly strikes on lover's ear :
And when she sings the notes rejoice.
Once more the harmony to hear
\ Of her sweet voice.
Then all around,
Drink, drink a glass to fair Tontine.
Perhaps our lady may be found
To love — such things have sometimes been —
Us all around.
Grillon, indeed, was to be another monastery of The-
lem^, the rules of which he gives : —
24
370 REGNARD.
Pleasantly now to pass our days
With what the Fates may lend us,
A monastery let us raise,
With Bacchus to. befriend us.
And every one, or monk or nun.
Who fain would join our order,
Shall only prove his power of love
And merriment, to the warder.
The vows our brethren undertake
Shall bring no sorrow after ;
, Short prayers to read, long feasts to make,
And spend the days in laughter.
Temptation from us to remove,
And make all envy hated ;
Our gold, our wine, our very love,
Shall be in common treated.
Each monk shall have his penitent
Obedient to injunction,
And show her, to his teaching bent,
The virtues of compunction.
Like some fair flower sweetly trained,
Her soul will grow in beauty ;
While in her cell the holy saint
Still lectures her on duty.
And last, to show where here below
The true religious ease is,
Read evermore above the door :
" Here each hves as he pleases."
The sentiments of this Pantagraelian ballad are, in-
deed, deplorable ; but one may at least admire the verse,
and acknowledge that it shows the poet's true convic-
tions. If the idea is borrowed from Rabelais, at least
the theme loses nothing in the hands of Regnard.
It is very remarkable, if one may pass from this trifling
to a serious remark, to note how very slowly the idea of
THE EPICUREAN. 371
wealth's responsibilities, of the duties that the rich owe
to the poor, has grown up in the world. Especially in
this seventeenth century, men seem all supremely selfish.
Out of all, only La Fontaine and Moliere — perhaps, too,
Saint Amant — are touched with the sense of sympathy.
The rich man uses his wealth entirely to procure himself
enjoyment : the poor man spends his life in the effort to
procure wealth : men of genius flatter, cringe, and do
hotou^ to procure wealth and the means of enjoyment.
Regnard, at once a rich man and a genius, spent his
money in surrounding himself with all that life could
give of physical and aesthetic pleasure ; for the poor, the
helpless, the suffering, he has no thought. Suffering, in
all forms, is distasteful to the Epicurean, particularly
those forms of suffering which are associated with pov-
erty, ugliness, mean surroundings. He dislikes suffer-
ing so much that he will not see any if he can help it.
Let it stay outside. Inside, let the violins and flutes
play ; let there be the flowing of wine : let the boys
sing ; let the ladies prattle ; and in the intervals of
these, when the muscles are tired of laughing, the ear
fatigued with sweet sounds, let us go to our study
and write the comedies, the satires, the verses of this
artificial heaven which shall make us immortal.
For Regnard is a poet. Not, if you please, a great
poet, but a poet of considerable vigor and abundant
wit : second as a satirist to Boileau, and second as a
dramatist to Moliere. You will not, T apprehend, take
pleasure in reading all his satires, but you may read
one, that on Boileau-Desprdaux. Boileau, you remem-
ber, wrote a Satire on Women, the poorest and weak-
est production of his pen. Regnard, who was not one
of the great man's disciples, dared to write a counter-
blast on husbands, at which Boileau chose to be in a
372 REGNARB,
great rage. Whereupon Regnard wrote " The Tomb
of Boileau," in which he supposed the poet to have
expired in disgust at seeing another preferred to him-
self. These are his last words, addressed to his own
verses : —
Dearer to me than mistress, love, or wife,
You who will give your author second life,
For the last time I see you — round my bed
Already Death his horrid wings has spread.
Yet I die happy, since an age depraved
Sees, without horror, taste despised and braved ;
Since France, ungrateful, faithless, false, untrue,
Yawns o'er my verse, and yearns for idols new.
And I, so long the king of phrase and word,
Have now to witness llegnard's rhymes preferred.
Regnard, who ten years spent from shore to shore,
In liapland wandering from the Moorish oar ;
Regnard, who knows no classic rules aright.
Who eats, and drinks, and gambles day and night.
Was it for this that in my youthful toil,
By the pale glimmer of the rancid oil,
Bowed over dusty tomes, I learned — the curse
Of all my life — to hammer out a verse?
Is it on drinking that our poets hope?
And is Parnassus but a flowery slope?
Yet Regnard, Regnard, flies from hand to hand,
I heaped, meanwhile, on every old bookstand.
Oh ! cruel stroke of fate ! Despair and rage !
AVhen Herculean toils have brought old age,
By a new athlete vanquished, see me lie —
!My life too long for honour ; let me die.
It is pleasant, after reading the above, to remember
that Boileau and Regnard were subsequently recon-
ciled, and said kind things of each other. "Regnard
is only a mediocre poet," said some one to Boileau, after
the reconciliation. "II n'est pas m^diocrement gai,"
said the old satirist. While Regnard, making amends,
dedicated his comedy, the '' Menechmes," to Boileau,
calling himself his disciple, and saying: —
HIS PLAYS. 373
Favori des neuf soeurs, qui sur le mont Parnasse,
De I'aveu d'Apollon, marches si pres d'Horace.
Which is as it should be, and unkmd things are better
said of men when they are dead than when they are
living. At least they cause less annoyance. Let us
all agree to say nothing cruel of friend or enemy till he
is fairly under the sod. Think,. then, of the pleasures
of uncontradicted calumny.
In placing Regnard next to Moliere, it must be un-
derstood that there is an immense space between the
two. Regnard is animated, lively, gay, but he wants
that substratum of sadness which accompanies the
higher forms of genius. His plays, too, are quite con-
ventional, impossible, and unreal. Take only one, the
best — best because it is the liveliest and lightest — the
" Folies Amoureuses." Eraste has returned from Italy :
Agathe, under the tutelage of Albert, her jealous and
suspicious guardian, discovers the return of her lover,
and, accompanied by the inevitable Lisette, goes into
the garden, where all the action takes place, in the early
morning, in the hope of meeting him. Lovers, of
course, get up always at daybreak. Here she is dis-
covered by Albert, the guardian, and is sent indoors,
while Lisette is first abused and then coaxed. Crispin,
the valet of Eraste, sent to see how things lie, is inter-
cepted by Albert the jealous ; —
Vous me portez tout Pair de ces fripons
Qui rodent pour entrer la nuit dans les maisons.
Crispin pretends to be a chemist — doctor, natural phi-
losopher — and makes up a long story. Albert goes into
the house, and Eraste has a short conference with his
servant. That is all the first act. In the second,
Albert declares his love to Agathe, and Eraste Intro-
374 REGNARD.
duces himself. Crispin is there in his pretended charac-
ter of chemist. Agathe becomes mad suddenly, and
comes in dressed as Scaramouche, playing a guitar, and
singing, though Albert only half believes in the impost-
ure. She slips a letter into the hand of Eraste, en-
treating him to carry her off. In the third act Agathe
appears first as an old woman, then as a dragoon. Cris-
pin declares that the onl}^ way to cure her is to transfer
the madness to another person. He transfers it, by
magic, to Eraste, who immediately draws his sword and
threatens Albert. Albert flees from the madman: the
lovers make haste to escape in the opposite direction,
and when Albert timidly returns he finds them gone.
Well — that is all. A plot so very likely to happen
in real life ; quite simple, too. It makes three acts, the
liveliest possible ; and one can quite understand the pleas-
ure with which the jealousy of the guardian, the pert-
ness of the maid, the impudence of the valet, the
coolness of the lover, and the subtlety of the young
lady would be received. And you have just these five
characters, each perfect, and each having its own full
share of the piece.
Regnard wrote some seventeen such pieces, every
one of which, impossible as all are, may be read with
pleasure. He died at the age of fifty-five, being killed,
according to one account, by taking medicines too
powerful, after over-eating himself. '* Qui ne se plait
point h, Regnard," said Voltaire, " n'est pas digne
d'admirer Moliere." Which judgment will serve us
for his epitaph.
Chapter XVII.
GRESSET.
Alas ! poor shepherd. — As You Like. It.
TT is the fate of some writers to be remembered by a
-^ single piece, that of most not to be remembered at
all. So that Gresset, whose literary baggage consists
of tragedies, comedies, and verses of all kinds, may be
considered fortunate, inasmuch as the world yet reads
one of his poems, — his first and best. It is a whimsical,
absurd, extravagant, mirthful little poem, all about nuns
and their ways, full of the innocent babble, the extrav-
agant trifling, of the sisters, shut up with nothing to
think about but the little gossip, all about nothing, of
the convent. This wonderful production was the work
of a serious and sober young professeur entirely given
up to his work of teaching, never seen in society, of
studious and silent life, and selected for the scholastic
profession by the Jesuits, his masters, because he was so
quiet,, so good, so doux. And yet at the age of twenty-
five, when the first hot youth had been passed without a
sin, and all seemed to promise a sober manhood devoted to
Latin grammar, this young man, forsaking the traditions
of his youth, must needs write and print "Ver-Vert."
Worse than that, three editions followed each other in
rapid succession, and all France began to talk of the
young professeur who knew the ways of the nuns so
well, and could rhyme about them so glibly. The
Jesuits, alarmed at the gayety of the verse, and unable
376 CRESSET.
to see any thing to laugh at in nuns, sent the offender
for a term to La Fleche. After a brief exile, he returned
to Paris, where he brought out his " Cliartreuse," a long
account of a garret in a college, with rambling remarks
upon every thing, remarks that tumble headlong from
the poet's brain, not original, not striking, and certainly
not calculated to do any harm to even a child. But
the order were scandalized, and took up the matter
seriously. It is truly difficult to fathom the delicacy
of the ecclesiastical mind. For when the lady superior
of the Visitation nuns found the following lines in
" Ver-Vert " —
D6sir de fille est un feu qui d6vore,
Desir de nonne est cent f ois pis encore —
she made a grand state affair of it, and wrote to her
brother, a man in high place. He complained to the
Jesuit superiors, and Cardinal Fleury wrote to the lieu-
tenant of police on the subject : —
Here is a letter from the Pere de Linyeres, on the subject of
the young man whose three little works you have sent me. That
about the parrot is extremely pretty, and much superior to the
other two; but it is libertine in tone, and will certainly give
trouble to the Jesuits if they do not take care. All the young
fellow's talent seems turned to the side of license, and such gen-
iuses never get corrected. The best plan would be to expel him
from the society.
Poor Gresset! — all his talents devoted to licentious
writing ! And he so religious, and " Ver-Vert" so inno-
cent. The " libertine tone " is almost, save for a touch
here and a touch there, what might have been written
by any sprightly young girl. It sometimes approaches
dangerously near to things difficult to handle ... we
are almost among the breakers — but see, a turn, a break
in the sense, the slighest possible smile, the least little
light in the eye, such as girls use to convey their little
AN ACADEMICIAN. 877
shades of meaning, and we are sailing away again in the
open, free from shoals and far from the dangers of the
reef. Libertine? The cardinal is really too severe.
But it makes one reflect on the admirable freedom of
the press, the faithful representation of human life, the
perfect innocence of mirth, and the abundant material
for it, which we should have, did the priests, those
lambs of uncompromising virtue, command the right of
publication.
And thus Gresset was expelled the order of the
Jesuits. He had been in the society all his life, and he
was afraid of that cold world without, into which he had
never ventured. He took off the Jesuits' robe, laid it
down with a sigh, and ^ent out of his college crying.
He was but a child, as guileless as any nun ; as ignorant
of the ways of men ; as innocent of their ambitions.
Presently he went into the salons of Paris, looked round
him, reflected, observed, and wrote his comedy of " Le
M-^chant."
It was the second literary event in his life ; and it
marks the second period of his education. But it stamps
him with the brand of mediocrity. He is second-rate.
And though the comedy brought him into the French
Academy, got him pensions, and increased his reputa-
tion, it could not live. But he went on to write more
dramas, and to pour out verses with a fatal facility ; he
never had the least control over his pen, and now that
the '" first sprightly running " was over, and there were
only the lees of thought left, his lines are tiresome and
feeble indeed.
But presently he grew weary of Paris and the salons,
and began to sigh for a country life. Moreover, albeit
expelled from the society of the Jesuits, he was a man
in whom the reHgious sentiment was too strong to per-
mit the attractions "of Parisian life. He had pensions to
378 CRESSET.
the amount of ten thousand francs a year, and with this
income he retired to his native town of Amiens, where
he married and lived in the practice of rehgious duties
for the last thirty years of his life, from time to time
going up to Paris. Presently his religious prejudices
received a grievous stimulus. Do you know the
wretched story of La Barre ? Let me recall it, for it
is good to remind ourselves what the sacerdotal spirit
always has been and always is. He was a young gen-
tleman not twenty years of age, grandson of a greatly
distinguished French general. His father having dis-
sipated all his fortune, the boy was placed under the
charge of an aunt. Abbess of Villancourt, who brought
him up and, when he was nineteen years of age, solicited
for him a commission in a cavalry regiment, which would
have been granted in acknowledgment of his grand-
father's services, but for the miserable events which
happened. There was a certain Duval de Sarcourt, a
man at the time already sixty years of age, who took it
into his wicked old head to fall in love with the abbess.
His suit was treated with contempt, and young La
Barre, taking up the cudgels for his aunt, did all in his
power to make De Sarcourt ridiculous. Thereupon,
the latter conceived the idea of revenge. He learned,
to his great delight, that a year before. La Barre, with
another boy of the same age, named D'Etalonde, had
actually been guilty of the crime of remaining cov-
ered, whether by accident or not is uncertain, during a
certain religious procession. This was actually all that
the poor hoys had done. He made himself the denouncer
to justice of this horrible crime, painting it in the black-
est colors of blasphemy and atheism. Chance lent him
another weapon. The bran new cross, just put up on
the bridge of Abbeville, was found mutilated. De Sar-
court accused La Barre and D'Etalonde of having done
LA BARRE. 379
this as well. He raked up, besides, all the past history,
such as it had been, of the two lads, and, finding that
they had once sung certain light verses at a supper,
added this to the two other crimes. Then came the
Bishop Dorleans de la Motte, whom Gresset called
dignitate clarus^ pietate clarior. He had been a good
man. During the whole of a long life he had been a
model of every Christian virtue. But the crime that he
was about to commit robbed him of all title to respect.
For he joined in the cry and issued admonitions to his
flock, which had the effect of turning wonder into fury
and of fanning into a raging fire the smouldering embers
of fanaticism. De Sarcourt pushed on the case, forced
the magistrates to take it up, and taking every advantage
that the bigotry of the people, roused by their bishop,
lent him, brought evidence from all sides, and succeeded
in having the boys tried. When the evidence was col-
lected, his own son was found implicated in the two-
penny business of a few young men's frivolities. He
made him escape, and pushed on the matter to the end.
The tribunal of Abbeville, wise and excellent magis-
trates, found the two guilty. They were sentenced, to
have their right hands cut off, their tongues cut out at
the roots, and then to be burned alive. D'Etalonde
escaped to Prussia, where Voltaire got him a commission
in Frederick's army. He, at least, would henceforth
cherish a lively remembrance of ecclesiastical charity.
As for La Barre, he was not so fortunate. He was put
to the torture, but confessed nothing. Then his friends
got the punishment commuted. He was to be beheaded
before being burned, and he was spared the agony of
mutilation. They brought him to the place of execu-
tion, this hapless boy, his limbs twisted and racked by
the torture, but his spirit unbroken. On his breast
they placed a placard, calling him " impious, blasphe-
880 CRESSET.
mous, sacrilegious, execrable." His last words expressed
a sort of confused wonder that he should suffer so much
for having done so httle. " I did not think," he said,
" that they could put a young gentleman to death for
such a trifle." So De Sarcourt was avenged. That is,
he was still ridiculous as regards the love matter — as
he always had been — and now he was infamous as well.
As for the bishop, it is pleasant to read that the last
years of his life were tortured and agonized by the con-
stant spectacle of that unhappy boy and the memory
of the part he had taken. Voltaire wrote a burning
account of the whole business. But neither infamy nor
remorse nor indignation could bring back to life poor
young La Barre.
It was only a hundred years ago. The boys had
remained covered while the Capuchin monks carried
some mediaeval trumpery in procession. Only a hun-
dred years ago. Let us thank God for the French
Revolution !
As for Gresset, the lesson was not lost on him. He
thought of his two lines in " Ver-Vert," and trembled.
H^ fell into an abject terror. If these things were done
in the green tree, what should be done in the dry ? —
Desir de fille est un feu qui devore,
Desir de nonue est cent fois pis encore.
If La Barre were tortured, strangled, and burned for
not taking off his hat to a file of greasy monks, what
should be done to him for those appalling lines ?
Desir de nonne ....
He resolved what he would do — safety before every
thing. Let honor, self-respect, consideration for his
reputation, all go to the winds. The sinner would save
his body alive. Any humihation was better than the
very disagreeable quart cCheure necessarily spent in
REPENTANCE. 381
getting burned, a thing impossible to be hurried over.
He wrote an abjuration to the bishop of his title of
dramatic author, professed his unfeigned regret for
having written verses so light, asked pardon of the
Virgin Mary for his worldly comedies, and then sat
down* relieved and happ3^ Piron and Voltaire wrote
epigrams on his conversion. But that mattered little.
Said Voltaire : —
Gresset, done du double privilege
D'etre au college un bel-esprit mondain
Et dans le monde un homme de college,
Gresset, devot, jadis petit badin,
Sanctifie par ses palinodies,
Enfin pretend avoir coraponction
Qu'il composa jadis des comedies,
Dont a la Vierge il demande pardon ;
Gresset se trompe: il n'est pas si coupable:
Un vers heureux et d'un ton agr^able
Ne suffit pas: il faut de Taction,
De I'inter^t, du comique, du fable,
Des mceurs du temps un portrait veritable,
Pour consommer cette ceuvre du demon.
Gresset has no more history. Henceforth he is a
cagot^ an abject slave to the priests, a grovelling observer
of outward rites and ceremonies, trembling lest a Pater
should be omitted, careful to obey in the smallest par-
ticulars. Let us read his " Ver-Vert."
At Nevers once, not long ago,
The pet of certain sisters there.
Flourished a parrot, one so fair,
So trained in all a bird can know,
As to deserve a better fate.
Did happiness on merit wait.
Ver-Vert, such was the parrot's name,
Young yet, and innocent of wrong,
Transplanted from some Indian stream,
Was placed these cloistered nuns among.
Bright-hued was he, and gay, but sage;
Frank, as befitted childhood's age,
382 GRESSET.,
And free from evilthought or word:
In short, he was the very bird
To choose for such a sacred cage.
Needs not to tell what love he won,
What cares received, from every nun;
How, next to the confessor, he
Reigned in each heart; and though it be
Sinful to weakness to succumb,
Ver-Vert the bird was first with some.
He shared in these serene retreats
The sirups, jellies, and the* sweets .
Made by the sisters to excite
, The holy father's appetite.
For him 'twas free to do or say
Whate'er he pleased — 'twas still his way.
No circle could be pleasant where
There was not in the midst Ver-Vert,
To whistle, chirrup, sing, and fly;
And all the while with modesty,
Just like a novice, timid yet.
And ever fearful to forget ;
Never, unquestioned, silence broke,
Yet answered all, though twenty spoke;
Just as great Csesar, between whiles.
Wrote all at once five different styles.
At night his pleasure was to roam
From one to other for a home ;
Happy, too happy, was the nun
Whose cell his wayward choice had won.
He wandered here and wandered there,
But, truth to say, 'twas very rare
fThat fancy led him to the cell
Where any ancient dame might dwell.
No, rather would his choice be laid
Where some young sister's couch was made;
There would he sleep the long night through,
Till dayhght broke and slumbers flew;
And then, so privileged and free^
The sister's first toilette might see.
Toilette I say, but whisper low.
Somewhere I've read but do not know,
VER'VERT, 883
Nuns' mirrors must be quite as true
As, ladies, is required for you;
And, just as fashion in the world
Must here be fringed and there be curled,
So also in the simple part
Of veils and bands there lies an art;
For that light throng of frivolous imps
Who scale o'er walls and creep through bars,
Can give to stiffest veils and gimps
A grace that satin never wears.
Of course you guess, at such a school,
Yer-Vert, by parrot's instinct rule,
Endowed with speech, his ladies took
For pattern; and, except at meat,
When all the nuns in silence eat.
Talked fast and long, and like a book.
He was not, mark, one of these light •"
And worldly birds, corrupted quite
By secular concerns, ahd who
Know mundane follies through and through;
Ver-Vert was piously inchned ;
A fair soul led by innocence,
Unsullied his intelligence,
No rude words lingered in his mind.
But then he knew each canticle,
Oremus and the colloquies,
His Benedicite said well.
The Notre mere, and charities.
Instructed still, he grows more wise,
The pupil with the teacher vies ;
He imitates their very tones,
The softening notes, the pious groans,
The long-drawn sighs, by which they prove
How they adore, and how they love;
And knows at length — a holy part —
The Breviary all by heart.
But fame is full of perils ; well
In lowly lot obscure to dwell.
Success too great, without reverse,
Oft makes the moral nature worse.
Thy name, immortal parrot, spread
Still wider, till, by sad fate led,
384 . CRESSET.
It reached as far as Nantes. Here stood
The chief house of the sisterhood.
Now not the last, as might be guessed,
Are nuns to hear of what goes on ;
And chattering still, like all the rest,
Of what was said and what was done.
They heard of Ver-Vert, wondered much,
They talked and envied, talked and sighed
(Great though his powers, his virtues such,
Had been by rumor magnified) ,
Till last a common longing fell
On all alike this miracle
Themselves to see. A girl's desire
Is like a flame that leaps and burns :
But ah! a fiercer, brighter fire.
Is when a nun with longing yearns.
To JS'evers fly all hearts ; of nought
But Ver-Vert can the convent think.
Could he — ah! could he here be brought!
The Loire is swift; ships do not sink.
Oh! bid him come, if but to show
For one day what a bird can know.
They write to Nevers; then, how long
Before an answer ? Twelve whole days ?
So long? So far? Alas! 'tis wrong.
We sleep no more ; pale every face,
And sister Cecile wastes apace.
On board the bark that on the wave
Bore Ver-Vert from his patrons' care
Were three fair nymphs, two soldiers brave,
A nurse, a monk, a Gascon pair.
Strange company and sad, I ween.
For Ver-Vert, best of pious birds.
Innocent quite of what might mean
Their strange garb and their stranger words,
He listened, 'mazed at first. The style
Was new, and yet the" words were old.
It was not gospel, truly; while
The jokes they made, the tales they told,
, Were marked by absence of those sweet
Ejaculations, vows, and prayers,
Which they would make and he repeat.
No Christian 'words are these he hears.
VER-VERT, 385
The bold dragoons with barrack slang
Confused his head and turned his brain;
To unknown deities they sang
In quite an unaccustomed strain.
The Gascons and the ladies three
Conversed in language odd but free;
The boatmen all in chorus swore
Oaths never heard by him before.
And, sad and glum, Ver-Vert sat still
In silence, though against his will.
But presently the bird they spy,
And for their own diversion try
To make him talk. The monk begins
With some light questions on his sins;
Ver-Vert looks up, and with a sigh,
*' Ave! my sister," makes reply:
And as they roar with laughter long
Suspects, somehow, he's answered wrong.
Proud was his spirit, until then
Unchecked by scoff of vulgar men ;
And so he could not brook to see
His words exposed to contumely.
Alas! with patience, Ver-Vert lost
The first bloom of his innocence.
That gone, how little did it cost
To curse the nuns and their pretence
To teach him French? well might they laugh,
The nuns, he found, had left out half —
The half, too, most for beauty made.
The nervous tone, the delicate shade;
To learn this half — the better lore —
He speaks but little, thinks the more.
At first the parrot, so far wise.
Perceives that all he learned before,
The chants, the hymns, the languid sighs,
And all the language of the nuns,
Must be forgotten, and at once.
In two short days the task was done,
And soldiers' wit 'gainst prayer of nun,
So fresh, so bright, so pleasant seemed,
That in less time than could be dreamed
26
386 CRESSET.
(Too soon youth lends itself to evil),
He cursed and swore like any devil.
By steps, the proverb says, we go
From bad to worse, from sin to crime;
Ver-Yert reversed the rule, and so
Served no noviciate's tedious time.
Full-fledged professor of all sin,
Whate'er they said he marked within;
Ran their whole dictionary through,
And all the wicked language knew;
Till one day at an oath suppressed.
He finished it, with swelling breast.
Loud was the praise, great the applause;
Poor Ver-Vert proudly looked around,
He, too, could speak by boatman's laws.
He, too, this glorious half had found.
Then to his genius giving play,
He cursed and swore the live-long day.
Fatal example this, how pride
Young hearts from heaven may turn aside.
The boat arrives, and at the stage
A sister waits, to take the cage.
Since the first letter sent, she sits
With eyes turned ever up the stream,
And watching every sail that flits
Across the wave, each, in her dream,
The bark that brings the saint Ver-Vert.
He knew — corrupted bird — aright,
By that half-opened eye, that bare
And scanty dress, those gloves so white.
The cross — by all these tokens good —
He knew, he knew the sisterhood.
Seeing her there, he trembled first,
And then in undertones he cursed.
For much he feared, and much he sighed.
Thinking that all the blasphemies
In which he took such joy and pride
Would change again to litanies.
And then he shrieked ; she seized the cage,
In vain he pecked in useless rage ;
Bit the poor sister here and there,
For still she bore him to his fate.
Arrived within the convent gate,
VER-VERT. 387
And told the advent of Ver-Vert,
The rumor ran. They ring the bells,
The sisters troop from choir and cells:
*' 'Tis he, my sister, come at last."
They fly, they run, the old forget
The burden of the winters past ;
Some who were never known as yet
To haste their steps, came running now
All joyous, eager all, and bright,
As happy as if Ver- Vert's sight
Released them all from convent vow.
They see at last, and cannot tire,
That form so full of youth and fire :
For Ver- Vert, though now steeped in harm,
Had not therefore become less fair ;
That warlike eye, that dandy air,
Lent him at least a novel charm.
Ah, heaven! why on a traitor's face
Waste all this beauty, all this grace?
The sisters, charmed with such a bird,
Press round him, chattering all at once,
As is the way, I'm told with nuns;
That even thunder fell unheard.
He during all the clatter sat,
Deigning no word, or this, or that.
Only with strange libertine gaze.
Rolling his eyes from nun to nun.
First scandal. Not without amaze.
The holy lady saw how one
So pious could so rudely stare.
Then came the Prioress, and there
First questioned him. For answer all,
Disdainfully he spread his wings,
Careless what horror might befall,
And thus replied to these poor things,
*' Par le corbleu! Lord! Lord, what fools!"
At this infringement of the rules
Which mere politeness teaches, " Fie,
My dearest brother," one began.
In mocking tones he made reply,
Till cold her very life-blood ran.
388 CRESSET,
*< Great Heaven! Is this a sorcerer?
Is this the saintly praying bird
They boast so much of at Nevers,
Ver-Vert, of whom so much is heard?
Is this " — Here Ver-Vert, sad to say,
Took up the tale in his new way.
He imitated first the young,
The novices with chattering tongue ;
Their babble and their little ways,
Their yawning fits at times of praise.
Then turning to the ancient ones.
Whose virtues brought respect to Nantes,
He mocked at large their nasal chants,
Their coughs, their grumblings, and their groans.
But worse to follow. Filled with rage,
He beat his wings, and bit the cage,
He thundered sacrilegious words
Ne'er heard before from beak of birds;
All that he'd learned on board the ship
Headlong from that corrupted lip
Fell 'mid the crowd — words strange to see
(Mostly beginning with a d)
Hovered about his impious beak —
The young nuns thought him talking Greek,
Till with an oath so full, so round.
That even the youngest understood,
He ended. At the frightful sound
Multivious fled the sisterhood.
Ver-Vert, replaced his cage within,
The nuns resolved without delay
To purge the place of heinous sin,
And send the peccant bird away.
The pilgrim asks for nought beside,
He is proscribed, pronounced accurst.
Guilty pronounced of having tried
The virtue of the nuns ; called worst
Of parrots. All in order due
Attest the truth of this decree,
Yet weep that one so fair to view
So very black of heart should be.
He goes, by the same sister borne.
But now with feehngs changed and sad •
VER-VERT. 389
t
Ver-Vert of all his honors shorn,
Is yet resigned, and even glad.
So is brought back to Nevers. Here,
Alas! alas! new scandals come.
Untaught by shame, untouched by fear,
With wicked words he welcomes home.
To these kind ladies manifests,
Reading the dreadful letter through,
With boatmen's oaths and soldiers' jests,
That all their sisters' wrath was true.
Wliat steps to take ? Their cheeks are pale,
Their senses overwhelmed with grief,
With mantles long, with double veil,
In council high they seek relief.
Nine ancient nuns the conclave make —
Nine centuries assembled seem —
Here without hope for old love's sake,
Far from the girls whose eyes would stream
At thought of hurting him, the bird.
Chained to his perch, is duly heard.
No good he has to say. They vote.
Two sibyls write the fatal word
Of death; and two, more kindly taught,
Propose to send him back again
To that profane stream whence he came,
Brought by a Brahmin. These in vain —
The rest resolve, in common-sense.
Two months of total abstinence.
Three of retreat, of silence four —
Garden and biscuits, board and bed.
And play — shall be prohibited.
Nor this the whole ; in all the space
Forbidden to see a pretty face.
A jailer harsh, a guardian grim.
With greatest care they chose for him.
The oldest, ugliest, sourest nun,
An ape in veils, a. skeleton.
Bent double with her eighty years —
Would move the hardest sinner's tears.
So passed Ver-Vert his term; in spite
Of all his jailer's jealous care,
The sisters gave him some delight,
And now and then improved his fare.
390 CRESSET.
But chained and caged, in dungeon fast,
Bitter the sweetest ahnpnds taste.
Taught by his sufferings to be wise,
Touched, may be, by their tearful eyes,
The contrite parrot tries to turn
Repentant thoughts from things of ill ;
Gives all his mind again to learn,
Recovers soon his ancient skill,
And shows as pious as a dean.
Sure the conversion is not feigned,
The ancient conclave meet again.
And to his prison put an end.
Oh! happy day when Ver-Vert, free,
Returns the sisters' pet to be.
A real fete, a day of joy.
With no vexation, no annoy,
Each moment given up to mirth.
And all by love together bound.
But ah! the fleeting joy of earth,
Unstable, untrustworthy found.
The songs, and chants, and joyful hours.
The dormitory wreathed with flowers,
Full liberty, a tumult sweet,
And nothing, nothing that could tell
Of sorrow hiding 'neath their feet,
Of death advancing to their cell.
Passing too quick from diet rude.
From plain dry bread to richer food.
With sugar tempted, crammed with sweets,
Tempted with almonds and such meats,
Poor Ver-Vert feels his roses change
Into the cypress dark and strange.
He droops, he sinks. In vain they try
By every art to stave off fate.
Their very love makes Ver-Vert worse.
Their cares his death accelerate,
Victim of love, of love he tires,
And with a few last words expires.
These last words, very hard to hear.
Vain consolation, pious were.
Chapter XVIII.
CARON DE BE AUMARCHAIS. — A DRAMA
He that has hut impudence
To all things has a fair pretence ;
And, put among his wants but shame,
To all the world may make his claim.
Act I.
A N adventurer of the last century had a choice
-^^^ between many roads, all of which might lead
to fortune. He could become a financier, like Law and
Duvernay-Paris ; or a gambler, like Casanova ; or a
litterateur^ like Bernardin de Saint-Pierre ; or a charla-
tan, like Cagliostro. Caron de Beaumarchais chose all
these roads ; he was financier, gambler, author ; he gave
to the character of adventurer a universality that it
lacked before ; he was the grandest, as he was the last,
of his tribe.
Remark, to begin with, that an adventurer has not
only to dare greatly, but to pretend greatly. If he is a
bourgeois^ he pretends to be a noble ; if needy, he pre-
tends to be wealthy; if of dissolute habits, he affects
the highest morality. The one grand rule of his life is
the advancement of his own interests. Many men lay
down this rule ; few have the courage so to disregard
modesty, friendship, honor, and self-respect, as to abide
by it ; fewer still have the audacity at the outset of self-
assertion. For this is, after all, the greatest element in
success. You must not only believe in yourself (any
892 CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS,
poor broken-down drudge can do so much), but you
must also make the world beheve in you. And I recom-
mend this faithful history of Beaumarchais as a perfect
exemplar to penniless and ambitious youths, a pattern
of what an adventurer ought to be. He is styled by,
the great nickname-giver, Carlyle, a " withered music-
master," the period selected for the nickname being
that when he was winning his great cause. No epithet
could be more unfortunate, because, in the first place,
Beaumarchais was then only forty, and did not wither
early, but quite the contrary ; and in the second place,
he never was a music-master at all.
The life of Pierre-Augustin Caron, which divides itself
naturally into three acts and some eight tableaux^ began
at Paris in 1732, his father being a watch-maker. There
were six children, five of them girls, all clever, sprightly,
fond of literary trifling, and passionately fond of their
only brother. He had no other education than that of
a private school, which he left at the age of thirteen,
having acquired little beside the art of penmanship, a
taste for literature, and a certain precocious facility in
the manufacture of verses. So early as this, too, did
he begin to feel that fatal passion which was destined
to bring him into so many scrapes. He fell in love, was
received coldly, and threatened to commit suicide, con-
senting to live only on the supplications of all his sisters
together. Apprenticed to his father, we hear rumors
of late hours and extravagance, for which he was exiled
for a space from the paternal roof. Then, on promise
of amendment, he returned to be the industrious ap-
prentice. And then for six or seven years hard and
persevering work at the mystery of watch-making, his
only recreations being to write verses, practise music,
and get up little theatrical entertainments with his
FIRST SUCCESS. 393
sisters. Industry was rewarded, for at the age of
twenty-one the young fellow invented a new escape-
ment in the construction of watches, the first and most
creditable event in his life. The history of this man is
a series of grand effects, like a firework display. Just
as you think it is finished, bang goes another rocket,
and the next moment the whole sky is lit up with the
splendor of a fire cascade. As soon as young Caron's
invention became known it was imitated, and the dis-
covery claimed by a rival watch-maker. Pierre-Augustin
wrote an indignant letter to the '' Mercure," the first
of all his " Memoires," claiming his rights and demand-
ing that the Academy of Sciences should decide as to
the real inventor. Every thing is given to him who
dares to ask. The Academy consented to investigate
the question, and decided in favor of young Caron. He
was then appointed " watch-maker to the king," made
watches for all the royal family, took them to court,
explained his novel escapement, and fairly placed his
foot on the lowest round of Fortune's ladder. He was
tall, shapely, of polished manners, not embarrassed by
any mauvaise honte, bright'Cyed, and with clear-cut
features, full of gayety and high spirits, in fact, a hand-
some young fellow, and a complete coxcomb. A lady
presently falls in love with him, the first of many ladies.
She is the wife of a certain old M. Franquet, cotitroleur-
clerc de Voffice de la maison du roi^ thirty years of age,
and beautiful, so that when she took her watch to the
shop to be repaired, the young watch-maker begged
permission to bring it home himself. He brought it, he
called again, he made himself agreeable to M. Franquet,
he became the friend of the house, and in a short time,
the- old clerk being desirous of repose, Caron bought hia
post at the cost of a small annuity, became by right of
394 CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS,
the situation a gentleman, and gave up the watch-making
trade. This was the second step in advance. Then,
M. Franquet being good enough to die, Pierre-Augus-
tin married his Avidow, and from some small estate of
hers assumed the name of Beaumarchais. But his wife
too died a year afterwards, and the estate went to some-
body else, so that he was left again with nothing but
his new territorial name, which he retained, and his
little post at court.
It was then that he became known to the king's
daughters. These four ladies, whom Carlyle has quite
needlessly held up to derision with the vulgar nick-
names given them by their father, possessed great
accomplishments, besides a considerable fond of good-
nature. Madame Adelaide, for instance, was able to
play every instrument that ever was 'invented. Music,
indeed, in their monotonous lives, was their chief, if not
their only pleasure. They heard of the young con-
troleur-clerc s musical abilities, and expressed a wish to
hear him play the harp. He came ; he touched his in-
strument, then newly introduced, with the skill of David,
moved their hearts, and became their friend. Hence-
forth he was the principal performer in the family con-
certs, which the princesses gave every week, at which
only the king, the queen, the dauphin, and a very few
persons of the highest distinction, were invited to at-
tend. Perhaps he gave himself airs in this court favor ;
perhaps it was only envy that inspired the lively hatred
with which he was regarded by the courtiers generally.
One of them once stopped him coming from the prin-
cesses in all the bravery of his new court suit, and hand-
ing him his watch begged that he would look at it.
" Monsieur," said young Beaumarchais, " I am sorry to
say that since I have given up the trade I am become
HIS DUEL. 395
exceedingly maladroit " — thereon dropping the Tvatcli
on the floor. " I told yon so." This kind of persecu-
tion is quite easy and simple ; effective, too, for though
one may laugh it off, it has its sting, and no butterfly
cares to be reminded that he was once a grub. There
was only one way to stop it, and Beaumarchais, in spite
of strict laws against duelling, challenged one of his
persecutors, fought him, and ran him through the body.
The gallant young chevalier his adversary died, refusing, .
gentleman as he was, to name the man who had killed
him. Beaumarchais told his princesses, who told the
king, and Louis promised to overlook it unless it were
legally brought before his notice. So the persecution
ceased, Beaumarchais remaining about the princesses,
fetching and carrying for them, playing the harp, and
arranging their concerts. His father and sisters were
in ecstasies at the splendor of his success. " What have
I done," writes poor old Caron, proud and fond, " that
God should have given me such a son ? " ^ Meantime
the great and glorious son never forgot to send in his
little bill for general services rendered to the prin-
cesses.
Twenty years before this — we are now about 1760 —
Voltaire made the discovery that a man must be either
an anvil or a hammer. Paris-Duvernay made him the
former. In the same way the same man made Beau-
marchais, who never had the least taste for the rdle of
1 " I think," he goes on to say, " that God can confer no greater
favor on a father of virtue and sensibility than to give him such
a son In my intervals of suffering I have been reading
' Grandison,' and in how many things did I find a real resemblance
between Grandison and my son. Father of thy sisters, friend and
benefactor of thy father! If England, I said to myself, has its
Grandison, France has its Beaumarchais."
896 CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS,
anvil, also a hammer. It was in return for a favor Beau-
marchais did for him. For M. Paris-Duvernay had
established the Eeole Militaire^ and now, after spending
years of trouble over it, saw it drooping daily for want
of royal patronage. Would Beaumarchais get the prin-
cesses to visit the place ? He did. Not only that, but
the princesses, at his instigation, persuaded the king to
go too, and the JEcole was saved. It was in gratitude
for this that Duvernay made Beaumarchais a financier;
taught him, that is, his own art of making a fortune out
of nothing. Under his instructions, and in partnership
with the old fox, the young one began the glorious
game of shoddy contracts. To help himself in getting
them he bought the title of king's secretary, which gave
him the rank of nobility, told his father to take his name
ofp the shop-front, and then making a still higher bid,
applied to be allowed to purchase a vacant post of
Grand Ranger, valued at £20,000, Duvernay lending
him the money, which was to be repaid out of army
contracts. But young Caron was getting on too fast,
and the rangers rose as one man, protesting against his
admission into their body. Beaumarchais made an un-
successful attempt to overrule their opposition, trium-
phantly proved that this ranger was the son of a barber,
that of a wool- winder, a third of a second-hand jeweller
— all trades below the rank of the watch-making mys-
tery ; and then, for it was no time to hesitate at a few
falsehoods, declared that it was many years since his
father gave up the trade ; that he had an uncle a chev-
alier of St. Louis, and that his grandfather had been an
officer of engineers — we never hear of these illustrious
relations again. But it was no use, and he had to content
himself with the captaincy of the Warren of the Louvre,
an office in which he exercised magisterial control over
SPAIN. 397
trespassers, fences, encroachments, and poachers in the
woods outside Paris.
In the year 1764 he went to Madrid, nominally to
visit a sister, reall}^ to look after certain projects. Du-
vernay provided him with introductions, so that he was
received at the embassy, and gave him letters of credit
for 200,000 francs, which he was only to use for ad-
vancing the schemes of plunder. These were many,
and in the name of his partner and himself, Beaumar-
chais proposed to the astonished Spanish government
that they should grant him, first, exclusive rights of
trade with Louisiana, next, the exclusive right of sup-
plying the Spanish colonies with negroes — he had writ-
ten, only the year before, the most beautiful pamphlet
possible on the evils of slavery ; thirdly, that he should
be authorized to colonize the Sierra Morena ; fourthly,
he laid before them a plan by which Duvernay and Co.
would undertake to victual the whole Spanish army ;
and lastly, half a dozen plans for advancing, in the
most disinterested manner, the cause of agriculture
and commerce in Spain. Every thing in this man is
admirable ; but most admirable of all is the grandeur
of his schemes. He sticks at nothing. He will get
slaves for a continent, victual an army, conduct the
whole trade of a state. Never was a man so versatile
and so audacious. The Spanish government, taken
aback at first by the quick-witted Frenchman, hardly
knew what or how to refuse. Meantime he goes about
among his great friends. Lord Rochford and others,
playing the guitar, telling stories, picking up Spanish
melodies, laughing, gambling — he tells his father how
careful he is not to lose, and how angry the Russian
ambassador is because he wins — and making love. And
then, too, he has a little family business to arrange. . One
898 CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS.
Clavijo, engaged to his sister, a milliner in Madrid, refused
to keep liis promise, and broke off the match. Beaa-
marchais, not content with personally abusing the man,
actually tried to make an affair of state about it, and,
though it seems too absurd, even penetrated to the king's
presence with his complaints. Clavijo was dismissed his
post, and the poor little milliner remained a maid.
The Spanish negotiations failed, Spain preferring to
find her own negroes, to victual her own army, to
colonize her own waste lands, and to carry on her own
trade. So the discomfited financier retreated across the
frontier, and without wasting time over laments, began
new schemes of plunder and glory. It was at this
period that he fell in love with the St. Domingo heiress.
Pauline was charming : Pauline had a sugar estate worth
two millions : Pauline was ready to listen to his vows.
The courtship went on at fever-heat, until the lover
made the fatal discovery that there was a mortgage to
the full value of the estate. After that his ardor visi-
bly declined, and his "levities," as sister Julie char-
itably called them, began again. Still, things might
turn out well after all. Suppose that Pauline would
wait till news could come from St. Domingo? She
consented to wait, but learning by degrees that her
lover was not the perfect being she once thought him,
she listened to another, the ungrateful Chevalier de
S , whom, sad to tell, Beaumarchais had brought to
the house for the express purpose of making love to
Julie. One morning the perfidious pair quietly stole
off together and got married. Beaumarchais flew into
quite a vulgar rage, and after vowing a vengeance, never
executed, against the bridegroom, sat down and — made
out his bill, charges for time and money expended in
the service of Mademoiselle Pauline. It came to 24,000
PAULINE. 399
francs, for the angry lover omitted nothing. Pauline
gave him a written promise, but never paid any thing,
because in a short twelvemonth she was a penniless
widow, and Beaumarchais had forgotten his rage, being
in fact much too busy a man to sit down and brood
over his wrath. It is only your sluggish-blooded crea-
ture who nurses his anger and bides his time. Beau-
marchais, once recovered from his very natural wrath,
laughed, took himself off to new " levities," and forgot
all about it.
It was in 1765 that he came back from Spain, then
thirty-two years of age, and it was in 1767 that he
brought out his first piece at the Comddie Frangaise,
the '' Eugenie," a dismal, lachrymose piece, dull and
sentimental, for the author had not yet struck the real
vein. The " Deux Amis," which followed, was no bet-
ter. " M. de Beaumarchais," said Coll(^, founder of the
Caveau^ " has proved by this drama that he has neither
genius, talent, or wit." Coll^ was wrong. All that
Beaumarchais had really proved was that there was
neither genius, talent, or wit in either of the dramas he
had yet produced.
All this time, constant speculations, especially in the
wood-cutting line, contracts, loans, love-making, and
music. And in 1768 he married again, another widow,
Madame Leveque, who brought him a large fortune.
.And here, with the wedding-bells, drops the curtain on
the first act. Confess that he has done well. His name
is on every lip ; he is rich with his wife's income ; he is
growing rich rapidly with his contracts and concessions ;
his irons are in a hundred fires ; the watch-making j)ast
is clean gone out of sight and forgotten ; he is the most
envied, the most successful man of his time.
400 CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS,
Act II.
That would be an insipid play, where all the charac-
ters were virtuous, all the incidents mere additions to
existing happiness. In this act the footlights are dark-
ened, and while the sympathetic violoncello twangs,
Beaumarchais performs his great part of the good
man struggling with adversity.
' Old Paris-Duvernay died, leaving his money to a
certain Count de la Blache, his nephew, who hated
Beaumarchais Avith a great and solemn hatred. The
partnership had already been dissolved, Duvernay giv-
ing Beaumarchais a receipt for a settlement in full of
accounts, and a promissory note for 15,000 francs. La
Blache, immediately on succeeding, brought an action
setting aside the settlement, and claiming the sum of
139,000 francs. It does not appear that there was the
least shadow of justice in the claim, which was insti-
tuted by a small-minded man to gratify personal and
petty spite, and the court decided in favor of Beaumar-
chais. Then the count appealed, and began to stir up
the waters of bitterness by means of pamphlets, which
gave the affair its first importance. For the pamphlet-
eers asserted that more than money was at stake, that
the civil would be followed by a criminal action for
forgery. And when, at this time, Beaumarchais lost
his wife and her fortune too in childbirth, these gentle-
men drew public attention to the rapid deaths of old
Franquet himself, and of the two wives, more than
suggesting that Beaumarchais had poisoned all three.
Everybody knows that mud will stick, whoever throws
it, and Paris was quite prepared to hear, after this,
what La Blache stated immediately afterwards, that
SCANDALS. 401
Beau mar chais had been driven in disgrace from the
presence of the princesses. Beaumarchais made here
the one great mistake of his life, for he wrote to the
Countess of Pdrigord asking if she would get from the
princesses one single word to contradict this new cal-
umny. She answered that they had never said one
word against his reputation. Beaumarchais immedi-
ately published a m&nwire^ in which he stated that he
was " authorized " by the princesses to publish a con-
tradiction to the statement. The princesses, angry at
their names being thus brought into the affair, gave La
Blache a paper, saying, that they had no interest in M.
Beaumarchais' lawsuit. This of course was published
immediately. So that men began to look askance upon
this spoiled child of fortune ; there is no smoke without
fire, and there might be truth in these insulting pam-
phlets. To make suspicions certainty there was wanting
a tangible scandal. It was furnished by his own folly.
Mile. Mesnard, of the Theatre Italien, was a young
lady living under the protection of the Due de Chaulnes,
a nobleman who was remarkable for the violence of his
temper and his prodigious physical strength. Beaumar-
chais took to paying the young lady visits, and after
some time the duke perceived that her affections were
transferred to the new friend. Scenes of violence, in
which all but the strongest pieces of furniture were
broken, followed the discovery, and the girl fled in ter-
ror to a convent. Thence, after writing to the duke
that the rupture must be final, she went home and asked
Beaumarchais to visit her. He went, but first wrote a
moral letter to the duke, assuring him of the virtuous
sentiments under whose influence he was visiting the
lady, and of the profound respect he entertained for her.
It is very remarkable how all the letters written by this
26
402 CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS.
moralist produced an effect exactly contrary to what
was intended. !For they exasperated the recipient
beyond endurance. There is sometimes manifested, in
some of the more gifted among us, a certain ostentation
of superior intellect, morals, religion, or physique^ which
makes the humblest worm to wriggle in impotent wrath.
And did any other man ever take away your mistress,
and then tell you that his only object was to procure her
happiness? The Due de Chaulnes, speechless with
wrath, went into the country and raged for two months,
until he could bear himself no longer, and came up
resolved to kill the man.
He went first to Mademoiselle Mesnard's. There was
Gudin, friend of Beaumarchais. He took poor Gudin
by the throat, tore off his wig, cuffed him, and used
very terrible language. Then he broke more furniture.
Then he flung out of the house down to the court of
the Warren, where Beaumarchais was hearing cases,
and bursting into the place, informed the judge that he
was going to drink his blood. " Have the goodness, M.
le due," said Beaumarchais, " to wait till the day's
business is finished." Then he went on with his work
as slowly as he could, the duke pacing backwards and
forwards outside, using disquieting threats. When
Beaumarchais came out, and stepped into his coach,
the duke followed him, and made the drive home pleas-
ant by rude exhortations to prepare for death. Arrived
at their destination, they went upstairs together. There
Beaumarchais refused to fight, and called his servants.
The duke, mad with rage, went at his enemy with his
fists, tearing out his hair, kicking, scratching, and curs-
ing. Then he drew his sword and ran a-muck among
the servants, cutting off the coachman's nose, wounding
the valet in the head, and the cook in the hand.
PRISON, 403
Here was a pretty scandal ! — just, too, when it was all-
important to have a blameless reputation. Beaumarchais
was sent to the prison of For TEveque ; the duke was
sent to Vincennes ; and Mile. Mesnard ran back to her
convent. " I fortify myself," she wrote, " more and
more in my resolution to accept the cloister as my lot."
Reading the letter over again, she added, as an after-
thought, " at least for a time."
She enjoyed her seclusion for a fortnight, and then
came back to the world. Beaumarchais wrote a beautiful
moral letter from his prison, rebuking her for leaving
hers. Alas ! he could not get out, though he wrote
reams of memoires. They told him the best chance was
to keep silence. As if Beaumarchais could ever keep
silence. Why, the people might forget him. And when
he did get out, he troubled himself no more about little
Mesnard. It was the poor, impetuous duke who, the
moment he left his prison, looked after the welfare of
the girl who had deserted him.
What a curious story it is ! The blameless Beaumar-
chais, with Gudin the good, conspiring to rob another
man of his mistress ; the robbed one going into a royal
court declaring his intention of killing the judge, no
officer of the court pushing him out ; then, because he is
a duke, cutting off a coachman's nose, wounding a valet
and a cook, and no one making any remarks ; both par-
ties sent to prison with the impartiality of a schoolmaster
who flogs all round ; and, funniest thing of all, the
retreat of the young lady, about whose character there
could be no manner of doubt, to a convent, where she
stays as lofig as she pleases, and then returns to her
former life. It reminds one of Boisrobert's visit to the
Jesuits.
And now, when his character is at its lowest ebb,
404 CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS.
when he is in prison, when his fortune is gone, the
parliament gives their decision in the lawsuit — against
him — acting on the report furnished by Councillor
Goezman. Goezman : it is the councillor whose wife
he has bribed : a hundred louis and a gold watch worth
as much for herself, with fifteen louis to bribe the coun-
cillor's secretary. Madame Goezman returns the watch
and the hundred louis, and, on inquiry of the secretary,
Beaumarchais ascertains that this injured official has
had nothing at all. So he first appeals for a third and
last trial of the case, and then brings an action against
the lady for fifteen louis. She began by denying the
whole story. But the thing flew about and made a
scandal, for it was impossible to doubt what had hap-
pened. Goezman got the go-between in the matter,
but too late, to swear that his wife had indignantly
refused all the offers of Beaumarchais, and in his turn
charged him with attempted bribery and slander. He
was accused, remark, by one judge, the case to be tried
by the other judges, and with dosed doors; and the
interest of the judges was to maintain the honor of
their own body. Then Beaumarchais showed for the first
time the real nature of his genius, and wrote his famous
" Mdmoires." We must remember that as yet he had no
established position. His fortune, all locked up in works
and contracts, has only a paper existence ; his reputation,
founded on the good opinion of the princesses, is already
lost ; he has failed as a dramatist ; he has made innum-
erable enemies ; he has no family interest. " One of
the things," he says, " that I have always studied, is
the command of myself in important crises." This is the
most important in his life. Against him, all busily pour-
ing out pamphlets, are arranged Goezman, La Blache,
Murin of the '' Gazette de France," d'Arnaut-Baculard
m£moires. 405
the novelist, Bertrand the banker ; all the judges of the
new parliament ; and all Paris, prejudiced by the late
scandals. With him, Gudin the faithful, to find the
Latin ; Falconnet, an avocat^ to find the law; brothers-
in-law, Morin and Lupine ; and above all, Julie the
witty, Julie the satirical, Julie who could stab with a
sarcasm and kill with a mot. To these faithful friends
the hero brings his " Mdmoires " in the rough ; by them
they are forged and hammered and cut into shape,
till they are as deadly as so many torpedoes ; and then
they are launched at the enemy. Remember that these
" M^moires," on which Beaumarchais must chiefly rest
his claims, form a sort of literature of their own. Nothing
like them before or since. Clear and incisive, witty,
ironical, satirical, and straight to the point. During the
whole case they continue, always keeping before the
people the names of Goezman and La Blache, but care-
ful to throw into their pages all sorts of other things.
Thus, there are passages on public and private rights,
arguments on law, views of history, even a dissertation
on baptism. AH this fuss about fifteen louis ! And
then Beaumarchais, rising to a dazzling moral height,
lays his hand upon his heart and says : " I am a citizen.
I am neither an abbd, nor a courtier, nor a gentleman,^
nor a favorite, nor any thing as we call power now-a-
days. I am a citizen : that is something new, unheard-
of in France. I am a citizen, which you should have
been two hundred years ago, which you shall be, per-
haps, in twenty years." So posing for a moment in
seriousness, he breaks off into a laugh, and carries on
the gayety. The applause is deafening. Citizen Beau-
1 In another place he says that he is a gentleman by indisputa-
ble right, for he has kejpt the receipt.
406 CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS.
marchais ! The title which he assumed with so grand
a flourish, was destined to live, and in less than twenty
years all would indeed be citizens. Paris screamed with
delight at the " Memoires." All Europe read them. In
his quiet retreat at Ferney, Voltaire grew jealous of
their reputation. " They exhibit esprit^^'' he said, '^ but
I think that more was required to write ' Zaire.' "
All this fracas about fifteen louis, while it delighted
the Parisians, drove the Goezman party mad, and made
the author popular, was the most delightful time pro-
bably that Beaumarchais ever had. " La variete," he
says, " des peines et des plaisirs, des craintes et des
espcrances, est le vent frais qui met le navire en branle
et le fait avancer gaiement dans sa route."
The excitement grew daily greater. Beaumarchais
had played a dangerous game indeed. He had made the
new-formed parliament ridiculous, and the new-formed
parliament was to try his case : only public opinion was
on his side. It came on at last, and after an angry dis-
cussion of three hours, during which the people waited
outside, they gave their judgment. It was a compromise.
Madame Goezman was condemned to the penalty of
" blame," and ordered to give back the fifteen louis.
Her husband was placed out of court,^ a sentence
which obliged him to resign. Beaumarchais was also
judged to have incurred the penalty of " blame."
This penalty was no light matter. It rendered the
condemned incapable of holding any public post, and
he had to receive the sentence on his knees. " The
court blames thee, and renders thee infamous.^'
' Goezman retired into the country, and lived for twenty years
in quiet and obscurity, angry with the world and himself. Then
the friends of Robespierre discovered that he was an "enemy of
the people," and cut off the poor old man's head. He might have
met some of the Beaumarchais family in prison at the same time.
''infamous:' 407
The hero of the Mdmoires always declared afterwards
that he intended to kill himself had the court con-
demned him to the pillory. He did not know his own
mind so well as we know it. He would have stood in
the pillory, his friends, now all Paris, standing bare-
headed at his feet. The pillory ? It would have been
the most glorious, the most intoxicating moment of his
life. Not a single dead cat, not one rotten ^^^ would
have been thrown. Not'ning but the sighs of women,
the shouts of patriots, and the richest flowers, would have
been discharged at that noble martyr. To be sure, he
had tried to bribe a judge, but what was that? had he
not made all Paris laugh for a twelvemonth? had he not
made the new parliament contemptible ? had he not been
the occasion of a thousand epigrams, bons-mots, and good
stories ? I have always been exceedingly sorry, in my
zeal for my hero's reputation, that he was not put in
the pillory.
As it was, he was " infamous." But all Paris called
upon the infamous man : the Prince de Conti and the
Duke de Chartres gave him a grand fete the day after
the judgment. Said policeman Sartines, reprovingly,
" It is not enough for you to be infamous, you must also
be modest," as if Beaumarchais could be modest ; as if
the leopard could change its spots.
But two or three things have still to be effected. He
must get restitution of civil rights, he must get the La
Blache suit decided in his favor, and he must make
some more money. Court influence is necessar}- for
all three. So Beaumarchais changes *his dress and ap-
pears before us in his new and surprising character
of Mouchard. Yes, the great man becomes a spy and
secret agent.
There was a certain scoundrel in London, of the
408 CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS.
threatening-letter tribe, who was scaring Madame dn
Barry out of her wits. The early days of Du Barry
were, as every one knows, remarkable for a certain
frolicsome gayety, unrestrained by the prudish sobriety
which marks the conduct of some young ladies. M.
Thdvenau de Morande had possessed himself of all the
facts connected with her life, and now proposed to pub-
lish them for the admiration of the world, unless . . .
the usual conclusion. Louis sent over certain police
agents, who were instructed to seize him secretly and
bring him across the Channel. De Morande got a hint
of what was intended, saw them land at London Bridge,
and pointed them out to the boatmen as French spies
and informers, whereupon they were all thrown into the
river. Those who were not drowned went home again
at once, recommending another and a safer method.
Beaumarchais had an invitation to try what could be
done. Disguising himself carefully (there was not the
least reason for any disguise), he went over and bought
up the book, seeing all the sheets carefully burned, at
the scoundrel's own price, ^800 down, and a pension of
£160 a year. Then he hurried back triumphant. " Had
your Majesty confided the conduct of this case to any
ordinary practitioner. Heaven knows what the conse-
quences might have been." Louis promised the resti-
tution of the civil rights, and but for that fatal small-pox, ^
which gave France a sixteenth Louis, all would have
been well.
But there was another — a libeller, this time, on
Marie-Antoinette. More disguise, more buying-up and
burning of sheets. Only this time the libeller, a man
of small moral principle, concealed one copy. Beau-
marchais chased him all across Europe, caught him up
at Nuremberg, tore the copy from him, and then dashed
THE CHEVALIER D'EU. 409
down the Danube, presenting himself before the Em-
press of Vienna, breathless, gesticulating rapidlj, calling
on heaven and earth to witness his zeal. " All this about
a twopenny libel? " asked the Empress. " Go, my poor
man ; you must be mad : get yourself bled." So they
locked him up for a month, taking away all dangerous
instruments, and insisting on strong medicines, with
blood-letting. When they let him out he returned to
Paris, trying to look as if he had not made an ass of
himself, and consoling himself by sending in his little
bill of c£ 2,880 for posting expenses.
One more trial of his loyalty. This was the case of
the Chevalier d'Eu, who, everybody knows now, was
not a woman at all. Why Beaumarchais was sent to
him, what all the fuss was about, why the chevalier
should have mystified everybody (he pretended to fall
in love with Beaumarchais, who was hugely pleased
and pretended to be embarrassed with his conquest) ;
why he deserved a pension ; why the king insisted on
his returning to Paris — all these are questions perfectly
impossible to answer. Beaumarchais succeeded — that
is, he persuaded a poor man to receive an annual income
for doing nothing — and then came back to proclaim his
admirable talents as a negotiator. These three Her-
culean labors accomplished, Fortune smiles once more.
He obtains a reversal of his sentence as " infame," is
restored to civil rights, and can give up the spy busi-
ness, which, to tell the truth, he never really liked.
And now the curtain falls on the tableau of a repent-
ant France giving back his honor to a deeply wronged
and eminently virtuous man.
410 CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS,
Act III.
Beaumarchais is once more a contractor and a finan-
cier. He is more. He is now a successful dramatist,
for to this period of his life belong the two plays by
which he remains known, the '' Barber of Seville " and
the " Marriage of Figaro." Of these, his two master-
pieces, it might be said fairly enough that they are ex-
actly like those old plays of impossible intrigue which
Alexandre Hardy, predecessor of Moliere, poured out
by the hundred. They are, from a literary point of
view, thin ; there is hardly a line which deserves to be
remembered ; and they are stagey, conventional, and
unnatural. So much conceded, it remains to be said
that his gayety, his profusion of animal spirits, his prod-
igality of wit, his adaptation of the old conventional
comedy to the manners, follies, and ideas of the day,
carry away the reader as well as the spectator.
How Paris crowded to see his plays, how the very
class most satirized, laughed and applauded, how the
spirit of the day was exactly caught — all this every-
body knows. Let us go on to what is more interesting,
the life of the illustrious author. Of course, he must
have a quarrel, because this inimitable man never had
the snaallest dealings with his fellow-creatures without
one. This time, he did good service. There was an
abominable law at the Theatre FrauQais, that when
the receipts fell below a certain sum, the piece be-
came the absolute property of the actors. This was
very hard upon authors, who generally saw them-
selves, after a few nights' representations, plundered of
all future profit. Beaumarchais was the first to make
a stand for the dramatists against the actors, and es-
AMERICA. 411
tablished in its earliest form a dramatic authors' society,
to vindicate their own rights and secure themselves
something from the rapacity of the actors. Let him
have full credit for this. It was a great and substantial
achievement for literature, whose followers have had to
fight a desperate battle to gain even an approximately
fair share of what their labors produce.
All this by way of amusement, for the real business
of his life was now to make money. He saw, early in
the struggle between America and England, that the
States must ultimately win their independence. He
went over to England, satisfied himself that the British
government were themselves beginning to despair, and
then returning to Paris, wrote to M. de Vergennes urging
that France should send arms, munitions, even troops to
America. De Vergennes asked him for a plan which
might avoid any rupture with Great Britain. He sub-
mitted one which was characteristic, if not entirely dis-
interested. " Give me," he said, " three million francs,
and I will assist the Americans myself." After endless
negotiation and trouble, he actually got one . million
francs from the French government, lent in this secret
way to the United States, and one million from Spain.
For both these sums his written receipts are extant.
Things getting gradually in trim, the firm of " Rod-
rigue Hertalez and Company " — he might just as well
have written his own name on ever}^ packet sent —
undertook to supply the States with 200 cannons, 25,000
guns, 200,000 pounds of powder, clothing and tents for
25,000 men, with shot, shell, and other munitions of war,
all which things were to be subtracted without fuss from
the French arsenals. Ships were purchased, the cargoes
were put on board, certain artillery and engineer offi-
cers were engaged to accompany the expedition, and
412 CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS.
after endless delays, owing to the interference of the
English, and the pretended anxiety of the French gov-
ernment to preserve neutrality, three ships got off, and,
eluding the English cruisers, put into the American port
of Portsmouth in the beginning of 1777. Two more
ships followed, laden with a similar cargo. Then Beau-
marchais, saying nothing about the 2,000,000 francs,
and the fact that his stores were all taken from the
French arsenals, sent in his bill. The Americans re-
plied, that though they appreciated the services of M.
de Beaumarchais, they understood the cargoes to be a
secret present from the French government. Beaumar-
chais, without giving up his claim, went to M. de Ver-
gennes and got from him another million francs, so that
he had now actually obtained for his five ships, the sum
of .£120,000, with, so far as can be understood, the car-
goes themselves. The ships being now his own prop-
erty, it was not a bad beginning.
In any case, the credit of Messrs. Rodrigue Hertalez
and Company stood high. The company in a short time
became owners of a fleet of twenty ships, armed and
mounted like vessels of war. They were chiefly engaged
in conveying to America cargoes of a peaceful character,
consisting of European goods, ''for," writes the great
man at this time, " commerce before war." Then war
was declared between England and France. The splen-
did ship " Le Fier Rodrigue," the finest of Beaumar-
chais' fleet, was forced to join in an action off Granada,
and came out of it glorious indeed, but riddled with
balls, while the ten ships which she had been sent to
protect, were all dispersed and mostly picked up by the
English cruisers. For this loss and the services of the
" Rodrigue," Beaumarchais received an indemnity of
2,000,000 francs. In 1778, when the alliance of France
BELISARIUS, 413
and America was formed, he received drafts from Con-
gress to the amount of 2,544,000 francs, and in the
following year he sent in his bill for the remaining
amount, a trifle of 3,000,000 francs. Then came letters,
explanations, examination of accounts. In 1781, the
business was put in the hands of Mr. Arthur Lee, who
had already quarrelled with Beaumarchais. He showed
his fairness towards his old adversary, by making him
the debtor to the States of 1,800,000 francs. More pro-
testations. In 1793, Mr. Alexander Hamilton examined
the bills again, and found that the States, on the other
hand, owed Beaumarchais 2,280,000 francs. Year after
year he presented his account and claimed payment.
When an exile from France, living in a garret at Ham-
burg, proscribed and in hiding, he writes still, but now
in the lofty tone of an injured patriot. " Am I to stand
before you, holding out the cap of liberty which no man
has helped you to win so much as myself ? Am I to
say, ' Americans, a little alms for your friend, whose
services have received but this reward — Date obolum
Belisario ' ? " " Belisarius," said the Americans, "is a
humbug. He has made a fortune out of us, and we
owe him nothing."
A fortune he certainly had made, and he was spend-
ing it royally. His new house, as stately as that of
Kubla Khan, stood opposite to the Bastille, in its beau-
tiful gardens, one of the sights of Paris, and the owner
was to be seen in his carriage every day, a standing
example of the force of genius, ability, and impudence.
The " Mariage de Figaro," acted in spite of all oppo-
sition, was the crowning-point of his dramatic career.
It was successful because Beaumarchais was, above all,
able to catch the spirit of the day and transfer it to his
canvas. On the stage before them Paris saw herself,
414 CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS.
with her cynicism, her flippancy, her uncertainty.
What she did not s6e was what the writer could not
see — underlying all these surface mockeries, the deeper
yearning after a better life, after justice, fraternity, the
abolition of unrealities, which made the Revolution
noble.
The " Mariage " was played for sixty-eight nights.
On the fiftieth the author announced that the profits
were to be devoted to the poor. Does any one dare to
say that Beaumarchais is greedy and selfish ? Behold
his answer — a new Society for the Benefit of Nursing
Mothers. Great and good man ! Others may do their
charity in a sneaking, secret, and underhand manner.
He will let all the world look on while he helps on our
fatal modern method of pauperizing the people by tak-
ing away the necessity for thrift : —
De Beaumarchais admire la souplesse :
En bien, en mal, son triomphe est complet:
A I'enfance il donne du lait
Et du poison a la jeunesse.
More glory. He wrote, of the difficulties of getting
the play acted, that he had had to contend with " lions
and tigers." Louis thought he was personally insulted.
Should a Caron de Beaumarchais call his king a lion and
a tiger ? With his own royal. hand, in fact, on the seven
of spades, the king himself wrote an order for his arrest,
and, to make the thing more marked, sent him, not to
the Bastille, where a gentleman was made to feel at
home, but to St.-Lazare, among the common rogues.
Paris laughed at the poet's discomfiture, and then began
to rage and fume, because nobody was safe if this sort of
thing went on. They let him out in five days, rather
ashamed of themselves. Beaumarchais at first refused
to go out, for he was writing a splendid new m^moire,
but thought better of it.
THE REVOLUTION. 415
A quarrel with Mirabeau ; another lawsuit about a
woman ; the case decided in his favor ; more letter-
writing with America ; fresh claims on the government,
giving him an additional two millions ; his unsuccessful
opera of '* Tarare ; " these are the events which bring
him down to the* crash of the great Revolution.
He began his share of it characteristically, by getting
a contract, for he is now the most patriotic of citizens
and the most disinterested. He will procure 60,000
guns for the new republic. These guns, though they
cost him endless troubles and anxieties, saved his life by
taking him out of France during the Reign of Terror.
He is prosecuted as an Emigre., he, the patriot, actually
at Hamburg about the gun business ; his wife and
daughter are in prison ; the beautiful house is searched
and visited every day ; his very name is gone, and he is
once more plain Caron ; his property is confiscated ;
" the cherries in the garden all seized for the people,"
writes poor Julie, all alone by herself, and nearly starv-
ing, in the great Beaumarchais palace, " not even the
stones left." For four years he writes and appeals —
Santerre himself always said he -was an honest fellow —
but does not dare to return. And it was not till 1796
that he came back, to find his house defaced, his furni-
ture gone, his fortune broken up, his papers seized.
He spent three years more, the last three years of his
life, in fighting over his money and his claims. The
reality of events was too much for him, who had been
accustomed to regard every thing as unreal ; the enthu-
siasm of the new men was more than he could under-
stand ; the way in which noble sentiments were bowled
over, and really beautiful periods disregarded, offended
and annoyed him ; while there seemed no opening at
all in this new republic for a good old shoddy contract.
416 CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS.
Besides all this, he had grown deaf. Poor Julie was
dead — she died with an impromptu, a very improper
one, on her frivolous, faithful, loving lips. Then Beau-
marchais saw his daughter safely married, and died
quietly in his bed on the 27th of May, 1799, aged 67
years.
Surely no man ever lived so busy a life, no man ever
united in himself so many contradictory characteristics.
He is greedy, grasping, unscrupulous. He has no
morals and no religion, in spite of what his biographers
say. He bribes judges, seduces actresses, corrupts
counsel, never has a pecuniary transaction without a
quarrel, and never makes a friend who appears to have
been worth having. On the other hand, he is generous
to all sorts of poor creatures who hang round him and
depend upon him. He is bright, facile, high-spirited,
lively, and clever. He is charming in society, but he
never quite catches the tone of the best society. He is
adored by his own family circle ; he is detested by men
who seem to have had no reason whatever for the live-
liness of their hatred.
In his active life he accomplished a dozen things,
any one of which was enough to make a reputation.
He improved the mechanism of watches ; he perfected
the harp ; he started a Dramatic Authors' Society ; he
provided Paris with water ; he invented the word
" citizen ; " he dared to stand up, alone and unaided,
and fight the parliament ; and he was the first in France
to see the certain outcome of the American struggle.
An actor ! the cleverest and most versatile actor of
the day : his life not, as he proudly called it, a battle,
but a drama, in which he unfolds his character step by
step. But always he must be before the public, always
on the stage.
AN ACTOR. 417
And see how the drama would act. Look at the
splendid situations of the last act alone. The Bastille
falling before your eyes ; Beaumarchais as Lucius Junius
Brutus ; Beaumarchais distributing money to the poor ;
Beaumarchais in secret service for the republic ; Beau-
marchais in exile, poor and deserted, smiting his breast,
— so stood Belisarius before he had to ask for that
paltry obolus.
And then, just as the position of things threatens to
become tedious, a swift and sudden death brings down
the curtain, and the drama is finished. It has been full
of surprising situations ; there have been rounds of ap-
plause ; repeatedly the principal actor has been called
before the curtain ; and, finally, there has not been a
dull line in it from beginning to end.
27
Chapter XIX.
BERANGER.
Le bon Dieu me dit, chaute,
Chante, pauvre petit.
TIJ^ROM a moral point of view, tlie troop of humorists
-^ which has passed in review before us is a ragged
regiment indeed. Falstaff's own was not more out at
elbows. Their duds of morality fluttering in the breeze
may lend a touch of the picturesque, but it is sad to
confess that there is hardly one — Boileau the respect-
able always excepted — in whom the moralist can take
a reasonable pride. For the men whose writings have
been the household words of France, were, one and all,
lamentably deficient in those elementary virtues on
which the social life is based. I am therefore glad to
be able to finish this volume with one of whose character
nothing but praise is to be said, or if any dispraise, then
with such overwhelming balance of laudation as to an-
nihilate its effect. For Beranger's practice was better
than his preaching, while, save for a few weaknesses of
humanity, he was entirely a good man. Vir bonus est
quis ? — He is one who practises self-denial, is open to
charity, sympathy, and all noble influences, is debased
by no unworthy vices, is no greedy miser, no backbiter,
no hypocrite ; one who rejoices in the love and esteem
of his friends, and has a healthy pride in himself. And
such was Bdranger.
SYMPATHY OF siRANGER. 419
He is indeed a man whose life, as well as his songs,
may well bring the tears into our eyes. There has been
no lyrist like him in any language ; none with a voice
and heart so intensely human, so sympathetic, so strong
to move, so quick to feel. And yet, nurtured in the
traditions of the eighteenth century, when every thing
was sentimental and unreal, he never appreciated the
enormous difference between himself and those who
sang of Lindor and Camille. Does it not seem, some-
how, that the highest genius is least able to understand
its own power ? It is only the second-rate writer who
inflates himself with pride in thinking that he too has
caught something of the sacred fire. Shakespeare must
have been a modest man. And Bi^ranger is, in some way,
the Shakespeare of France. At least, to be more modest
in assertion, he is one of the three or four Frenchmen
who stand in the front, men to whom has been given
the glorious gift of speaking what others can only feel.
To utter the wants and sufferings of others ; to lose
your own individuality in the hopes and loves of the
world — it is to be to mankind what the wife may be to
the husband. The world has but few of these sacred
brides, these wedded souls. Humanity, whom, by some
curious error — it was in the days when men mistrusted
Nature, and were afraid — we have figured as a woman
seeking a bridegroom for a protector, takes this devotion
as a right, and only repays it by an undying love. Such
love as we feel to Shakespeare, with no critical measure-
ments of how much less is due, I claim for Rabelais, for
Moliere, and for B^ranger.
His life was spent in self-sought obscurity. Had it
not been for his imprisonments, for his autobiography,
and a few remaining letters, we should know no more
about him than that he lived and wrote, while future
ages, arguing from the differences between his poems,
420 BERANGER,
might have denied his individuality altogether. " Could
the same man have Avritten the ' Roi d'Yvetot ' and the
' Etoiles qui filent ' ? Could a poet of youth and joy —
things essentially selfish — have been at the same time
so sympathetic and so sad ? " For the weakest point of
critics is their inability to understand how a man can be
many-sided ; given one pose, one mood, one success, they
expect the immobility of a statue ; and the soul of man,
animula vagula^ as full of change as the ocean, is to be
fixed in a numberless smile, or an eternal sorrow. Now
the perfect cTiansonnier^ of whom Beranger is the one
great and unique type, has as many moods as humanity
itself.
I have tried to show -how far those French writers
who come within my range succeeded, and how far they
failed. Both their failure and their success I have con-
nected with the conditions of their lives. But B(^ranger
wholly succeeded, for every single circumstance of his
life and station played, in the happiest way, into his
hands. He was a member of the lower middle-class,
not too far above the ouvrier rank, not too far below the
bourgeois^ to represent the feelings and thoughts of both.
There was no aspiration of both classes that he could
not share, no prejudice that he could not understand.
You have seen, perhaps, that social pyramid on which
the statistician has represented the successive stages of
wealth, and therefore, as the world goes, culture. As
we ascend the strata, individuality becomes possible.
The inarticulate mass at the bottom can think of
nothing but their common wants and dangers. Ag we
ascend, as life grows more and more beyond the reach
of anxiety, the way is opened for those to sj)eak who are
endowed with the power of thought and speech.
Bdranger, born 1780, was the son of a grocer's ap-
HIS BIRTH. , 421
prentice and a milliner. His father, wlio claimed the
right to put a de before his name, and could , produce a
twopenny genealogy, deserted his mother at his birth. ^
Then Grandfather Champy took in the boy, and the
mother went her own way. Both parents — in his
autobiography B^ranger strives to hide a bitter sense
of their worthlessness — seem to have been as bad as
was possible. But his guardians more than replaced
the neglect of his parents. He tells us how old
Champy would read aloud the popular work of the
Abb^ Raynal, *' L'Histoire des deux Indes," while his
grandmother, for her part, pored over the romances of
Pr^v6t and the works of Voltaire, ^ and both united
in spoiling their grandchild. The boy was not too
fond of going to school, and at every opportunity made
excuses for staying away, his great delight being to sit
in a corner and carve little baskets out of cherry-stones.
At nine years of age, having already read the " Henriade"
and a translation of the " Jerusalem Delivered," he was.
sent to school in the Faubourg Saint- Antoine, whence
he was an eye-witness to the taking of the Bastille : —
J'6tais bien jeiine : on criait, Vengeons-nous !
A la Bastille! aux armes! vite, aux armes!
Marchands, bourgeois, artisans, couraient tons.
* Eh quoi! j'apprends que I'on critique
Le de qui precede mon nom.
]Btes-vous de noblesse antique ?
Woi noble ? oh ! vrainient, messieurs, non !
Non, d'aucune chevalerie
Je n'ai le brevet sur velin:
Je ne sais qu'aimer ma patrie.
Je suis vilain et tres-vilain.
* " Elle cotait sans cesse M. de Voltaire, ce qui ne I'emp^chait
pas, k la F^te-Dieu, de me faire passer sous le saint sacremeut."
422 bAranger,
The only prize the boy got was that which every one
was anxious to avoid — the cross for good conduct, and
even then the bad boy of the school, one Grammont, who
was afterwards very properly guillotined, an example
to all bad boys, forced him to steal an apple, and then
accused him of the theft, grinning at the taking-away
of the cross. However, the cross was restored and the
accuser discredited. Presently the grandfather had a
paralytic stroke ; his father, now a notary at Derval,
would not pay for his education, and his mother cared
nothing about him. So they took him from school and
sent him down to Pdronne, where an aunt had an
auherge. It helps to show how little B^ranger ever
read or thought about history, that he thinks it quite
unnecessary to say a word about the historical interest
of the place where Louis XT. was a prisoner, where the
Treaty of P^ronne, " la Pucelle " was signed, and where
later on Wellington made one of his minor conquests.
His aunt, declaring at first that she could not support
this additional burden, lost her courage when she looked
at his curly hair and pretty face, and burst into tears,
crying, " Pauvre abandonn^, je te servirai de m^re."
His mother as we hear, was living by herself, going to
theatres, balls, and concerts. The excellent aunt was a
woman of active mind as well as a good auhergiste. Her
library consisted of Tel^maque, Racine, and Voltaire's
plays, so that here was no small addition to the boy's
reading. As yet, however, he only knew how to read
to himself, could not pronounce the words, could not
write or spell. The village schoolmaster taught him
these useful arts, with a little simple ciphering, and
there his formal education ended. He was made to go
to church so long as the churches were open, and even
served as an assistant to the priest, who tried to teach
EDUCATION, 428
him the Latin prayers, but the boy was so awkward and
clumsy at the altar, that the priest one day swore at
him aloud during the service, and declared that he
should no longer be permitted to assist. Little B(i-
ranger was only too glad to escape.^
Then came the wars, and the boy could sit at the door
of the little inn and hear the cannons booming at the
siege of Valenciennes, filling his soul with nameless
terrors. Judge then of his joy when defeats became
victories, when the tide of battle rolled far off, and the
cannons were only fired to proclaim the successes of
the republic. Thus he drank in the sentiment of
patriotism with the fresh country-air that was making
him strong and healthy. A thunderstorm, in which
the lightning struck him, affected for a time his eye-
sight, so that he could not be apprenticed to the watch-
making trade, for which his dexterity of finger seemed
peculiarly to adapt him. Then he became a clerk to
M. Ballue de Bellenglise, magistrate, disciple of Rous-
seau, and founder of the P^ronne Club, in which the
boys of the town held discussions, formed themselves
into a corps, drilled, and sang republican songs. But
clerk's work was not in Bdranger's line — perhaps he did
not write well enough — and the good magistrate placed
him as an apprentice to a printer, where he spent two
years, and acquired something of the art of orthography.
The printer took an interest in him and tried to teach
him, but without success, the rules of syntax and pros-
ody ; for Bdranger had no other teacher but his own
ear and the verses of La Fontaine.
In 1795 his father, now a red-hot royalist, sent for him
^"Je vols bien," said his aunt, "que tu ne seras jamais
d6vot."
424 BERANGER.
to Paris. He had patched up a kind of peace with his
wife, and was full of financial schemes, in which his son
was to aid him. Young Bdranger suddenly developed a
great turn for calculation, and as his father's business
lay entirely in the buying and selling of assignats^ that
is, in money-lending, he was employed all day in making
out estimates and accounts. At the same time the
father was occupied in petty royalist plots, hiding con-
spirators, and trying to make himself of importance, so
that when the white cockade should return, he might
arm himself with his genealogy, and claim the right
of the grande entree ; for he nursed the wildest dreams
of the future ; saw himself in imagination the first
banker in Paris, his son a page to Louis XVIII., and
his future a splendor like that of Beaumarchais.^
In 1798 came the crash. Down went the banking-
house, over went the basket of eggs, the genealogy was
finally put away into a drawer, the future poet was re-
lieved of all fear of becoming page to the king, and the
father's dreams of greatness ended in a second-hand
book-shop, one of those miserable shops where the
worst kind of French romances were exhibited and sold.
It was in the Rue Saint-Nicaise. One evening Beranger
was returning to the shop when he was startled by an
explosion close by — the earth trembled beneath him,
the windows crashed, the houses shook. It was that
infernal machine which was to have destroyed the first
consul. One step more, and there would have been no
poetry of B(^ranger ; one step less, and there would
^ It is at this point of his tale that Beranger stops to tell the
true and touching story of "La Mere Jary." Nothing in fiction,
except the sorrows of the old recluse in " Notre Dame de Paris,"
can equal this humble tragedy.
HIS YOUTH. 425
have been no emperor for liim to lament. How did he
live at this time ? Probably on some share of the book-
shop, about which he maintains silence. " I lived in a
garret in the sixth story, Boulevard Saint-Martin. . . .
I installed myself in my den with an inexplicable satis-
faction, without money, without any certaintj'' as to the
future, but happy at least in being freed from so many
mauvaises affaires^ which since my return to Paris had
never ceased to wound my sentiments and my tastes.
To live alone, to live entirely at my ease, seemed per-
fect happiness."
With pensive eyes the little room I view
AVhere in my youth I weathered it so long;
With a wild mistress, a staunch friend or two,
And a light heart still breaking into song.
Making a mock of life, and all its cares,
Rich in the glory of my rising sun,
Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs.
In the brave days when I was twenty-one.*
It was at this time that he formed friendships which
lasted till death, with Autier, the vaudevilliste, Lebran,
afterwards Academician, and Wilhelm Bocquillon, musi-
cian. In their garrets these young fellows wrote songs
and music, promising each other future success, happy
in the little fetes that their slender purses allorwed, and
making every stroke of poverty the peg for new laugh-
ter. Thus, when Beranger gets a ticket to see the
solemn Te Deum chanted at Notre Dame, when all the
kings were present, he sings : —
Next Sunday, five kings in a row
On our fortunate vision will flash ;
I am sure they would like me to go;
So I've sent off my shirt to the wash.
* Le Grenier. Thackeray's translation.
426 BERANGER.
I've a hat; I've a very good coat;
Of stockings a sensible pair ;
And every thing else I have got,
If only I'd breeches to wear.
In 1804, being then twenty-four years of age, and
tired of starving in that liappy garret of his, he wrote
to Lucien Bonaparte, enclosing a bundle of verses. Two
days passed Avithout an answer. Judith Frere with a
pack of cards prophesied that a letter would arrive which
would please him. Incredulous Beranger ! he did not
believe the revelations of the cards, and next day found
him hopeless of an answer, patching up his boots and
his trousers, and meditating misanthropic rhymes. Sud-
denly he hears footsteps. It is the concierge, who brings
him a letter in an unknown hand. " I open it with a
trembling hand; the senator, Lucien Bonaparte has read
my verses, and wishes to see me ! It was not fortune
that I saw before me, it was glory.'' He borrowed
respectable clothes, and went. Lucien received him
kindly, read him good advice, and as he had just been
made a member of the Institute, gave him the little
pension allotted to the post. It was a thousand francs,
forty pounds a year ; a little fortune to the poor young
poet. Above all, it was the kindly act, the encouraging
word that he wanted. And it must be recorded, that
Beranger never forgot the gracious act of this best of
all the Bonapartes.
He next obtained a post which brought him in about
seventy pounds a year, in the bureaux of the painter
Landon, for whom he edited his " Mus^e." A hun-
dred and ten pounds a year ! — it was wealth — afflu-
ence ; it enabled him to gratify the greatest pleasure of
his life, the helping of others. It gave him the power
of keeping his grandmother, the poor old woman, ruined
HIS RELIGION. 427
by the assignats^ and his sister, a workgirl, whom he
subsequently put into a convent at her own wish.
At this time, under the influence of Chateaubriand,
he made a grand effort to become orthodox in his faith.
It was useless, orthodoxy being a fold out of which,
once a sheep has strayed, it can never again enter.
Beranger renounced the attempt, and remained to the
end, not an infidel, but one who had no belief ; no viru-
lent enemy of the faith, but one who found himself
outside and was content to remain there. English critics
always want to know exactly what creed a writer held.
And it is important within certain limits. More de-
ductions, for instance, would have to be made in the
statements and opinions of a ritualist than in those of
a stronger brother. But it seems to me impertinent to
push the question too far, and I admire that custom of
the Americans in never troubling themselves about any
man's religion. Was Beranger a Christian ? I do not
know. Was he a Protestant, a Romanist ? Certainly
not ; he followed the sect of Beranger : —
. . . Dieu n'est point colere:
S'il crea tout, a tout il sert d'appui.
After working for three years for M. Landon, his
task was accomplished, his income reduced, and only
Lucien's thousand francs remained. One of his P^ronne
friends, Quenescourt by name, lent him what little
money he wanted to tide him over the unproductive
time, and invited him to stay at Pdronne, where his
old friends made a grand reception for him. He wrote
songs for them ; singing them himself at their feasts,
with that sweet voice of his, like Tom Moore's, facile
but not too strong, and helped out by the singer's
feeling.
428 BERANGER.
On the foundation of the Imperial University in 1808,
he obtained employment as one of the clerks, with a
salary of a thousand francs. It was little, but it was
something. He had now, therefore, eighty pounds a
year, and regretted the death of his scamp of a father,
which happened "just when I could have made his
days more comfortable." He went on with his grand
literary projects, at the same time writing songs, to which
he turned as a sort of recreation, not understanding as
yet that here was the real work of his life.
Several of these, including the " S^nateur," the " Petit
Homme Gris," "Les Gueux," and the "Roi d'Yvetot,"
were handed about in manuscript, the last-named at-
tracting the attention of the police. Beranger, though
his hand grew firmer, and his purpose steadier with
years, hardly ever surpassed these his earliest efforts.
Absurd as it seems to speak of poems so well known
as these, was there ever so good and easy a thing as
that of the Roi d'Yvetot? —
On conserve le portrait
De ce digne et bon prince :
C'est I'enseigne d'un cabaret
Fameiix dans la province.
Remember, too, when you sing " Roger Bontemps "
that he is the lineal descendant of the Bontemps of
Roger de CoUerye : —
Aux gens atrabilaires
Pour exemple donn6
En un temps de miseres
Roger Bontemps est ne.*
* Vive le roy . . . Vive le roy . . .
Et tous compaignons et moy !
Je suis Bontemps, qui d'Angleterre
Suis ici venu de grant erre
En ce pays d'Auxerrois.
KoGER DE CoLLERYE {fifteenth century).
THE CAVEAU,
429
And you must own at least, that no song exists in any
language, or can exist, lighter, brighter, merrier, than
that of the careless toper in gray: —
Quand la goutte Taccable
Sur un lit delabre,
Le cure
De la mort et du diable
Parle a ce moribond,.
Qui repond,
Ma foi, moi, je m'en . . .
Ma foi, moi, je m'en . . .
Ma foi, moi, je m'en ris.
Oh! qu'il est gai, qu'il est gai, le petit homme gris!
The police wanted Napoleon to suppress the "Roi
d'Yvetot." Napoleon had no literary tastes like his
brother, nor could he understand literature, but at
least he could see that if no more violent attack was
made upon his throne than this picture of the honlwmme
king, he might sit secure.
So B^ranger became known. They invited him to
the New Caveau, a club of poets and litterateurs estab-
lished in imitation of that of Piron, Panard, and CoUd.
Desaugiers was president. B Granger had a capital din-
ner one night with them, and, fired by the generous
wine, sang all his best songs. They elected him a
member there and then. It was a fit and proper
commencement of his fame. The clinking of the
glasses, the shouts of the guests, the laughter and mirth
of the evening, reminded the chansonnier of his real
function in life — to delight his hearers.
The songs written by Desaugiers and his predeces-
sors were of two classes : songs bacchanalian and songs
amatory. As yet, save in a few scattered specimens, the
element of pathos was not in the modern chanson ; and
no one had discovered, what was left to Bdranger to do,
430 bAranger.
the lyric capabilities of the common people. France,
from the days of Olivier Basselin downwards, has
always been rich in drinking-songs, and Desaugiers
himself was the lineal descendant of Olivier, as gay,
as careless, as sparkling.
Quand je vois des gens ici-bas
Secher de chagrin ou d'envio,
Ces Malheureux, dis-je tout bas,
N'ont done jamais bu de leur vie!
On ne m'entendra pas crier
Peine, famine, ni misere,
Tant que j'aurai de quoi payer
Le vin que pent tenir raon verre.
Bdranger has never, so far as I remember, written a
drinking-song pure and simple. That is, there is always
something besides the wine : —
L' Amour, l'Amiti6, le vin
Veut egayer le festin.
Bon vin et fillette.
Or it is Madame Grdgoire —
Qui attirait des gens
Par des airs engageants.
Ah ! comme on entrait
Boire dans son cabaret.
Always a girl, or a friend, or a group, without whom
the wine loses its taste and drinking has no attractions.
At the New Caveau, however, at which B^ranger was
not a very frequent guest, drinking was the principal
theme of song, and Desaugiers the principal singer.
If Bdranger read the love-songs of his time, he might
choose between the dainty pastorals of Florian, the
pretty trifling of Gentil Bernard, or the coarse rol-
THE GAUDRIOLES. 431
licking of Gombaut, Piron, Coll^, and the rest of the
eighteenth century song-writers. Thus Florian, rest-
ing sweetly on a bank, with ribbons round his arm
and flowers round his hat, just like Sancho Panza in
his projected Arcadia, sings plaintively : —
Love's sweetness but a moment stays,
Love's promise all a life beguiles;
For Sylvia's sake I waste my days,
Yet Sylvia for another smiles.
Love's sweetness but a moment stays,
Love's promise all a life beguiles.
" While yonder streamlet," Sylvia says,
" Winds gleaming under greenwood aisles.
My love shall last." The stream still strays,
But Sylvia for another smiles,
Love's sweetness but a moment stays,
Love's promise all a life beguiles.
While the authors of the " Gaudrioles " bang the
table and bellow the chorus of the following, the
" Maiden's Confession," sung by a member of the first
Caveau, it is due to these gentlemen's reputation to
state, that this is the most innocent and insipid song in
the whole of their valuable collection : —
At confession I whispered my sins
In the ear of the Priest of Pompone:
*' My sweetheart each morning begins
With a kiss — but the fault is my own.
La — ri — ra,
Your Keverence of Pompone.
*' With a kiss every morning begins;
It is wTong, but the fault is my own."
** My daughter, for this class of sins
Only pilgrimage long may atone."
La — ri — ra,
Your Reverence of Pompone.
" For kisses and such pleasant sins.
On pilgrimage you must begone."
432 BERANGER.
*' Yes, father, and when it begins.
He shall come with me, all alone."
La — ri — ra,
Your Reverence of Pompone.
" My Robin, too, when it begins,
Shall go with me, all to atone."
** My child, I perceive, in your sins,
Unregenerate pleasure you own.'*
La — ri — ra.
Your Reverence of Pompone.
" 'Tis with sorrow I see, in your sins
This pleasure so worldly you own ;
But since penance forgiveness wins.
Kiss me twice, my dear child, and be gone."
La — ri — ra,
Your Reverence of Pompone.
The pre-Beranger songs are thas satirical, baccha-
nalian, witty, patriotic, and erotic. They have every
quality that we find in Beranger except one. They
are hard, they are selfish, they have no sympathy.
They are written, as it were, each for itself, as if their
writer could feel no sorrows but his own, and no pleas-
ures but his own. Let us, with this digression, return
to the life of Beranger.
It is in 1813 ; Beranger is thirty-three years of age
when these songs appear. You remember how La Fon-
taine and Moliere were already well past the 'premiere
jeunesse when their best works appeared. For the best
French fruit takes time to ripen. Beranger was a slow
and careful writer. At the outside, about ten songs in
a year ; hardly one a month ; painfully corrected, re-
corrected, altered, improved. Some two hundred and
fifty songs altogether.
In 1814, Beranger was witness of the return of the
Bourbons. He describes the scene : the people, never
dreaming of a capitulation, asked each other, " Where
PRISON. 433
is he ? " for, says Bdranger, "la patrie " meant Napoleon.
He came not. Then the news flew about, the city had
capitulated ; one or two voices in the crowd cried
" Vivent les Bourbons," one or two white cockades
timidly appeared ; and when the Russians and Germans
entered, some few hundreds tried to manifest the enthu-
siasm of a city, and multiplied themselves in shouting,
hand kerchief- waving, and even kissing the dusty boots
of their saviours. The king entered Paris, infirm, old
before his time ; after him followed a small band of
Napoleon's soldiers, scarred and bronzed, whom they
had persuaded to join in the demonstration. " Vive la
garde impdriale ! " cried the crowd. No shouts for
Louis le D(3sir(3. And with him came back the dauo^hter
of Louis XVI., the Duchess of Angouleme. Cold,
harsh, haughty, as if she could never forgive the mis-
eries of her youth, she lost at once the affection and
sj^inpathy which had followed her through all her years
of absence. If the advisers of kings would only teach
them how easy it is to be popular !
In 1815, appeared Beranger's first collection. The
author of the " Roi d'Yvetot" which Napoleon's police
wanted to suppress, was positively, then, not a Bour-
bonist. In the suspicious and intolerant atmosphere of
the new government, not to be a partisan was to be an
enemy. He was averti^ which meant at least that his
chances of promotion were small. When, six years later,
he brought out his second collection of songs, he antici-
pated the ministerial wrath by resigning his post alto-
gether. Remember that his official position was never
above that of a clerk on two or three thousand francs a
year, that he lived in his garret, that he associated with
no great people, was not a lion, and begged of his friends
only to let him lead his life in the shade. But it was
not enough that the clerk should resign his post, they
28
434 BERANGER,
must also prosecute him. About this first prosecution,
of which so much has been said, we need only remark
that B Granger enjoyed his three months' incarceration
extremely. He had a warm and comfortable chamber
in Sainte-Pelagie, instead of a draughty garret, he had
sympathizing friends, he had the Avhole public of France
on his side, he had an audience counted by hundreds of
thousands, by millions. " It was calculated," he tells
us, " that by the reproduction of the songs in the papers
of Paris, copied by those of the departments and those
abroad, there were sent abroad in the space of a fort-
night many million copies of the verses that they wanted
to interdict."
Some years later came out the volume containing the
*' Sacre de Charles k Simple," " Les Infiniment Petits,"
and the '' Petit Homme Rouge." Another prosecution,
and this time a fine of 10,000 francs with nine months
in prison. The fine was easily paid ; the prison, unfor-
tunately, was not so easy to work out ; but the poet,
who was consoled by the visits of his friends — among
others Lady Morgan — and by gifts of flowers and fruit,
endured it and came out more embittered against Jesuits
and the white cockade than ever.
The revolution of 1830 released him from any further
prosecutions, and he was henceforth free to say and
write whatever he pleased. In 1848 he was, against
his will, elected representative of the department of the
Seine by more than 200,000 votes. He protested, but
in vain, and he took his seat, but a day or two after-
wards he begged to be allowed to resign, and his prayer
was granted. Then he retired to the obscurity he loved,
and was seen no more.
I have said nothing of the man's inner and retired
life, because one feels ashamed in lifting a curtain that
the poor, proud poet, as bashful as any maiden, persisted
JUDITH FRERE, 435
in keeping down. Why should we pry and seek into
those secrets of his hfe which do not illustrate his songs ?
But of one romance so much has been said and so much
written, that I must fain speak of it too. It is the story
of Bdranger's one and only love, quite a simple story.
You may remember what he says of woman in his Auto-
biography. " I have always regarded woman as neither
a wife nor a mistress, which is too often to make of her
either a slave or a tyrant, and I have never seen in her
any thing but a friend whom God has given us. The
tenderness, full of esteem, with which women have in-
spired me from my youth, has never ceased to be the
source of my sweetest consolations. Thus have I over-
come a secret disposition to melancholy, the attacks of
which became daily less frequent, thanks to women and
poetry. Or let me say women alone, for my poetry
comes from them." Here, you see, is not the roving
disposition of Henry Murger in his " Bohemians."
Nor, indeed, could Colonel Newcome himself speak
more chivalrously.
Her name, mentioned above, was Judith FrSre. She
was two 3"ears older than Beranger, and of the same
station in life. He made her acquaintance when she
was eighteen and he sixteen, i. e. in the year 1796, an
acquaintance which every year deepened more and more
into the most perfect friendship that ever existed be-
tween man and woman. Was it love? Were they
secretly married ? We know nothing. But we may
be sure that it was no ordinary tie that boimd them
together. The little clerk of the University, living in
his garret on his petty salary, and that halved by the
charities he daily practised, found one person in the
world whom he could talk to, one in whom he could
entirely trust, who gave him the sympathy that man
can never get except from woman. It was to her rooms
436 B^RANGER.
— she was but a simple ouvrie.re^ with a pretty face, a
sweet voice, blue eyes, and brown hair — that Beranger,
during those long years when he was unknown, a small,
ungainly man, rough-featured, " chdtif et laid," with
bald head, and nothing handsome but his eyes, retreated
secretly and found the chief refreshment of his soul —
Grand Dieu! combien elle est jolie,
Et moi je suis si laid, si laid.
She did not fetter him, she did not assert herself. As
it would seem, she accepted the role of his friend, and
acquiesced sadly in the seclusion that fate had imposed,
because we cannot doubt that Judith loved him as well
as advised him.
Lise a I'oreille
Me conseille:
Get oracle me dit tout bas,
Ghantez, monsieur, n'ecrivez pas.
Note that year after year passed by, that the unknown
clerk became a great power in the land, but the name
of Judith Frere was not heard. None of his friends —
not Thiers, not Lamennais, not Manuel — knew any
thing about her. Then suddenly, in the evening of
their lives, when she was fifty-seven and he was fifty-
five, he brought her out into the sunshine, and placed
her in his house. The wicked world pointed fingers of
derision. Beranger wrote a letter to the Assemble
Nationale, claiming, with that quiet self-respect which
always characterized him, the right of arranging his
household in his own way, and, with no other word of
explanation, went quietly on his own way. She was
thus before the world his attached and honored friend :
she was more ; she was his devoted and single-hearted
servant, obedient to his slightest gesture — only he was
not an imperious master — held in honor by those who
were entitled to visit the poet, and happy in dying
HIS FRIENDS, 437
before her husband, friend — what j^ou will. Bdranger
told her to die first ; and of course she obeyed him. It
was a wish dictated from the kindest of liearts; he could
not bear to think that she would have any unhappiness
in surviving him. Let him bear the loneliness and the
desolation.
She was the " Bonne Vieille." You know it — the
sweetest and saddest of songs? It was written long
before they did grow old together : —
Vous vieillirez, 6 ma belle maitresse !
Vous vieillirez, et je ne serai plus.
Lorsque les yeux chercheront sous vos rides
Les traits charmants qui m'auront inspire,
Dos doux recits les jeunes gens avides
Diront, " Quel fut cet ami tant pleure ? "
De mon amour peignez, s'il est possible,
L'ardeur, I'ivresse, et meme les soup^ons;
Et bonne vieille au coin d'un feu paisible,
De votre ami repetez les chansons.
You see it was before he thought she would die first.
Is it selfish, this desire of the poet's, to live a little
longer in the heart of his mistress ? —
Sans rougir vous direz, " Je I'aimais."
Perhaps all man's love is selfish. He wants a com-
panion, he wants rest, and confidence. B(^ranger took
without claiming it, but as a right, the devotion of a life.
He was a man of many friends, though he sought
none. It was an honor to be his friend; it was also
one of the greatest pleasures to talk with him when he
expanded over the good wine that his healthy soul
loved. He would sing his chansons ; he would laugh
and be merry, careful only that Judith was happy too,
and that the old aunt, whose ill-humor was a sore
trial, was kept as comfortable as a thorny temperament
would permit. Always thoughtful, too, about Ms
438 BERANGER.
friends. He would listen for hours to the philosophical
theology of Lamennais, though he understood him no
more than Lamb iinderstood Coleridge. He remained
faithful to his old Peronne folk. He never made an
enemy or alienated a friend. His life was one long exer-
cise of charity, and he had little moral mottoes of his
own, small rules and maxims of life, copy-book texts,
evolved from no reading, but from his own reflections,
which turn up in his letters and his biography quite
simply and naturally. " Quand on n'est pas %oiste,"
he says, for instance, "il faut etre ^conome."
It may b§ remarked, as a national distinction of the
French character, that while our rich men give their
hundreds to hospitals and charitable societies — which
pauperize ; while our poor men give to each other and
to barrel-organists ; our middle classes — out of their
innocent zeal — give to the missionaries, and all give of
their abundance, the Frenchman, of whatever class, is
himself, so far as he can be, his own almoner, and gives
of his poverty. Beranger is no solitary example. It- is
a kind-hearted, generous, unselfish race, capable of sacri-
fice, ready to live on little, so that others may also live.
And thus Beranger, through a long life of poverty, con-
tinually devoted half his income to those who had less
than himself. When Christian, in Bunyan's story, drops
his burden, made up, as you know, of his own iniquities,
and nobody else's sins and sorrows, he goes along to the
end light-hearted, free from encumbrance. Beranger,
on the other hand, who is never conscious of any bur-
den of iniquities, is always being saddled with other
people's loads, one after another. It is his grandmother,
his aunts, his sister, who get upon his back and cling
round his neck. Then comes Judith, her little fortune
all lost, then a thousand poor people whose sufferings he
must alleviate. Always some new unhappiness to relieve,
HIS DEATH. 439
some new burden to take up, some little luxury to be
quietly put down. Take that case of Rouget de Tlsle,
author of the " Marseillaise." He is starving ; he is
put into prison, this Tyrtseus, for a debt of twenty
pounds. What does France care ? There is a Bourbon
with his troop of the infiniment petits on the throne, and
the '' Marseillaise" must be forgotten. Beranger finds
out the poet. ''Where are you?" he writes; "they
would not tell me yesterday, then I was certain where
you were ; so I write to Sainte-P^lagie. Do not be
ashamed of being in prison for a debt — it is for the
nation to be ashamed. . . . Come, tell me all about it
— point d'enfantillage''' Rouget is taken out of prison
by Beranger. But he has no money. He will die. Not
by a pistol or by poison, but he will wander about the
fields till he drops dead. It is Beranger who goes after
him, finds him in his aimless wanderings, brings him
back to the friend who will look after him, and helps
to keep him till Charles and his Jesuits are happily
over the border for ever, and a pension can be got for
the man who wrote the " Marseillaise."
It was not till 1857 that he died. His end was full
of suffering. For many months the flame of life had
been flickering in the socket, reviving for a little at mid-
day, and sinking when the sun went down. His friends
were gathered round him day after day, watching for
the, end to come, and all Paris was waiting to burst into
tears at his death. He recovered a little strength to
say farewell to Thiers, Villemain, and Cousin. '' Adieu !
my friends, adieu ! Live on, you will have, even here, the
better world. It is the will of God that men should
cease to suffer so much. . . . II y est ohligS.'" He
paused, then looked round and repeated his words.
" Oblige est le mot," he said, sinking his head upon his
breast.' It was on the 16th of July, 1857, at half-past
440 BERANGER.
five in the afternoon, that he breathed his last, without
any assistance from the priests, the greatest humorist,
the most finished lyrical poet, the most tender-hearted
friend, the simplest man that his country, that any
country, has ever seen.
A little old man, without distinction at the first sight, unless
one could penetrate his countenance with the divining glance of
genius, so much of simplicity was there, with all its subtlety. He
wore the dress of a rustic Alcinous, beneath which it was impos-
sible to suspect his divinity in the midst of a crowd; shoes tied
with a thong, coarse silk stockings, a clean cotton waistcoat, but a
common one, open above his large chest, showing a shirt of linen,
milk-white but coarse, such as country wives spin from their own
hemp for the village wearer, a wrapper of gray cloth, the elbows
of which showed the cord, while the unequal skirts let his legs be
seen as he went along the road ; and, lastly, a wide-brimmed
beaver, also gray, with no form, or worse than none, sometimes
stuck across his head, sometimes heavily thrust forward on his
brow, which gave play to a few sparse locks that fell about his
face or on his coat collar. He used to go about with a white wood
stick without head or ferule; not an old man's stick. He rarely
leaned on it, but with the end of this holly branch would trace capri-
cious figures on the floor, on the pavement, or on the sand. As to
his features, they might have been made out with big strokes
of the thumb in clay. There is the forehead, large and beethng,
the blue protruding eyes, the coarse arched nose, the -cheeks in
strong relief, the thick lips, the chin with a dimple in it, the short
muscular neck, the square-cut figure, the short legs. . . . But the
forehead was so thoughtful, the eyes so transparent and pene-
trating, the nostrils breathed such enthusiasm, the cheeks were so
modelled and their hollows so furrowed by thought and feeling,
the mouth was so fine and loving, the smile so kindly, and on the
lips irony and tenderness met. ... As Alcibiades said of Socrates,
*' Something divine, while we knew it not, must have diffused
itself over his countenance. Ugly as the man is, he is still the
most beautiful of mortals."^
The Chansonnier does not think : he is a mirror. The
popular moods catch his imagination at points which
vary with his age, his habits of life, his experience. Do
^ Lamartine.
THE CHANSONS, 441
not, therefore, with the critic, try to ascertain what
B^ranger thought and held ; for of creed, opinion, faith,
or doctrine, B(^ranger was incapable. His mind was as
a field of waving canes, now flaunting their silver-gray
plumage like the streamers of some holiday craft ; now
turning green and yellow leaves in flashing belts to meet
the wind, now sad with the passing clouds, now all-
glorious in the sun. But never still ; never the same.
For he was led by popular opinion ; he was infected by
a sentiment ; he caught their unuttered sympathies in
the looks of the people ; as he wandered about the
streets, he was able to read what they could not express.
When he had seized the thoughts that floated in the air,
he went home, and slowly, laboriously, carefully, gave
them such shape and utterance as never yet were seen.
First, we got the love-songs without a grain of politics.
What does the young man care for politics ? Then
we have " Ma Grand'mere," " Le Petit Homme Gris,"
" Le Vieux C^libataire," " Jeannette," and all the trip-
ping rhymes, armed each with the little arrow-point of
malice : —
Tant qu'on le pourra, larirette,
On te damnera, larira.
Tant qu'on le pourra,
L'on trinqera,
Chantera,
Aimera
La fillette.
Tant qu'on pourra, larirette,
On te damnera, larira.
As the poet gets older the songs of mirth and mis-
chief, whose charm is their entire absence of prSvoyance^
cease altogether, or change into songs of regret. On
this side Bi^ranger is free from even the suspicion of
morality. It is as if he would teach that the whole
duty of youth is to get pleasure, of age to regret it.
442 BERANGER.
Only, as I said above, pray do not accuse Bdranger of
teaching, preaching, or holding any doctrine whatever.
To the second class of the chansons belong the po-
litical songs. The politics of Bdranger are those of the
people. When the Bourbons come back they are tired
of war and fatigued with the anxieties that attend
victories and defeats. After all, even a Bourbon may
be good enough to bring tranquillity. Then B^ranger
sings : —
Louis, dit-on, fut sensible
Aux malheurs de ces guerriers
Dont I'hiver le plus terrible
A seul fletri les lauriers.
Presently, the people, accustomed to a generation of
social equality, find themselves burdened once more
with what they had taken so much pains to get rid of —
the domination of priests and the insolences of an aristoc-
racy. Then we have the famous " Marquis de Carabas."
Yoyez ce vieux marquis
Nous traiter en peuple conquis;
Son coursier decharne
De loin chez nous I'a ramen6.
Vers son vieux castel
Ce noble riiortel
Marche en brandissant
Une sabre innocent.
Chapeau bas ! chapeau bas !
Gloire au marquis de Carabas !
And to this period belong the " Reverends Peres,"
" Les Missionnaires," and " Les Infiniment Petits."
Tranquillity once re-established, and the priests and
nobles back again, France began to contrast the empire
with the monarchy. And then awoke again the idea of
Napoleon, which meant, to all born since the Revolution,
the country. This too would have died away with the
next generation, but for the fact that Beranger caught
LE VIEUX CAPORAL. 443
the sentiment while yet it was young and powerless for
good or evil, and gave it life, vigor, strength. Some of
his best songs are those in which the great emperor
is idealized : —
" Well, my dears, by kings attended,
Through the village street he passed
(I was then — the time goes fast —
But newly wed) ; the sight was splendid.
Up the hill and past the door.
Here he walked — it seems to-day —
He a little cocked hat wore,
And a coat of woollen gray.
I was frightened at his view ;
But he said, to calm my fear,
' Good-day, my dear.' "
" Grandam! did he speak to you?
Did he speak to you? " ^
And you know the grand song of the " Le Vieux
Caporal" singing on his way to he fusille for striking
one of his new officers : —
Qui la-bas sanglote et regarde?
Eh! c'est la veuve du tambour.
En Russie, a I'arriere-garde,
J'ai porte son fils nuit et jour.
Comme le pere, enfant et femme
• Sans moi restaient sous les frimas;
EUe va prier pour mon ame :
Consents, au pas;
Ne pleurez pas;
Ne pleurez pas;
Marchez au pas,
Au pas, au pas, au pas, au pas.
Morbleu! ma pipe s'est ^teinte;
Non, pas encore. . . . Allons, tant mieuxl
Nous allons entrer dans I'enceinte:
9a, ne me bandez pas les yeux,
Mes amis . . . f ache de la peine ;
* From the translation by Robert Brough.
444 BERANGER.
Surtout ne tirez point trop bas :
Et qu'au pays Dieu vous ram^ne !
Consents, au pas;
Ne pleurez pas ;
Ne pleurez pas ;
Marchez au pas ;
Au pas, au pas, au pas, au pas.
Compare with these songs " Denys Maitre d'Ecole "
and the " Dix-Mille Francs." Then think of the prob-
able effect on a people, ever inclined to forget the mis-
fortunes, and to dwell on the splendors, of the past ;
ever ready to see the ridiculous side of the present
situation. Imperialism owes its revival to B^ranger,
unconsciously, perhaps, because he could not foresee,
only interpret.
Lastly, let us consider one or two of the moral songs.
That song is moral, in its way, which is prompted by
sympathy with the sufferings and woes of our fellows.
Beranger is tender-hearted ; he gives out of his slender
store more than he can spare ; he sings out of the abun-
dance of his love in pity and forgiveness. " Poor soul ! "
he says, " you suffer, let me help you as I can." No
reprimand, no reproach, no advice for the future, no
lament for the past, falls from the lips of this moralist.
He sees nothing — always being a chansonnier — but the
present. Past and future, cause and consequence, do
not exist for him. Like the lark, he lives for the day,
feels for the day. Jeanne la Rousse, with her three chil-
dren, weeps for her husband the poacher, in prison —
Un enfant dort a sa mamelle,
Elle en porte un autre h. son dos :
L'alne, qu'elle tratne apr^s elle,
Gele pieds nus dans ses sabots.
Helas, des gardes qu'il courrouce,
Au loin, le pere est prisonnier.
THE SAMARITAN. 446
Dieu, veillez siir Jeanne la Rousse:
On a surpris le braconnier.
Pauvres enfants ! chacun d'eux pousse,
Frais comme un bouton printanier.
Dieu, veillez sur Jeanne la Rousse;
On a surpris le braconnier.
That the poacher is a criminal is nothing; that his
fate was to be expected is nothing ; that the misery is
deserved is nothing. He can only see the misery. And
with that, he sees, like the people in all ages, the cruel
injustice of sending a man to prison for knocking down
a hare that crosses his road. By what right does any
man claim the wild creatures as his own ? Laws may be
written down and expounded. You may teach people
that they may not, you will never teach them that they
ought not, to kill a partridge or a hare.
Next, it is an old vagabond who lies down in the ditch
to die. That he has been always a man who would not^
work, that the miserable, squalid death is worthy of
the miserable, squalid life, would involve a proposition
in social economy too profound for the poet. He only
sees the suffering.
Dans ce foss6 cessons de vivre:
Je finis vieux, infirme et las.
Or it is the poor blind woman who kneels on the
church steps in the cold, covered with rags, and begs.
Is she an impostor ? Is she a bad and woi^thless creat-
ure ? Never mind : she is suffering.
Elle est aveugle, helas! la pauvre femme:
Ah ! faisons-lui la charity.
There is nothing so bad, we are told, as indiscrimi-
nate charity, and nothing so unreal as the glow of con-
scious virtue which follows the relief of some street
impostor. Perhaps it might be urged, on the other
446 BERANGER.
hand, that there are dangers in charity by machinery.
Beranger has but one method : when he sees misery he
relieves it. Misery is in itself, indeed, a harsh adviser.
When it vanishes, the pain and shame of it linger still
like the summer twilight. The lessons of affliction, the
memory of degradation, may be used in two ways. They
may degrade lower, or they may help to raise. Our
sins may serve as stepping-stones to a higher level, or
they may serve as millstones to drag us down. In
either case Beranger would, if he were at hand, be ready
to help and sympathize, Avith never a word of reproach
or admonition, being, indeed, the good Samaritan of
fallen and bleeding humanity, to whom our organized
charities would fling by rule a coin wrapped in a tract.
It may be that some of our English wretchedness would
be more effectually relieved by some of the French
sentiment.
It has always seemed to me that one of the most
beautiful of Beranger's poems, and the most elevated
in tone, is the " Etoiles qui filent." That is the reason
why I have kept it to the last, and essayed a translation
of my own.
" Thou sayest, shepherd, that a star
Shines in the skies my fate to guide."
*' Yes, child, but in yon darkness far
Thick veils of night its glimmering hide."
" Shepherd, canst thou indeed divine
The secrets of the far-off spheres ?
Then tell me what yon brilliant line
Means, as it shoots and disappears."
" Know, child, whene'er a mortal dies,
With him his star that moment falls —
This, amid young and laughing eyes,
While music echoed to the walls,
Fell stricken lifeless o'er the wine
Whose praises fired his dying ears." —
" See yet another §tar, whose line
One instant gleams, then disappears."
LES ETOILES. 447
" Child, 'twas a star serene and bright,
The star of one as pure and fair.
A maiden blithe, a spirit light —
The wedding festival prepare :
Her virgin brow with orange twine :
Ring, wedding bells; weep, happy tears "
*' See, see, another shooting line.
That gleams and shines, and disappears."
" Weep, weep, my child, such stars are rare.
He gave his wealth to feed the poor.
They glean from others' store, but there
They reaped a harvest great and sure.
When o'er the waste those home-lights shine,
The wanderer forgets his fears." —
*• See, see, another gleaming line
That shoots across and disappears."
*♦ Yes, 'tis the star of some great king.
Go child, thy early virtue keep.
Let not thy star its glories fling
To wake men's envy from its sleep.
With steady light burn clear and far;
So. at the end look not to hear,
'Tis but another shooting star —
They shoot and gleam and disappear."
B^ranger sums up the poetry of the esprit gaulois.
In him is the gayety of the trouveres^ the malice of the
fabliaux^ the bonhomie of La Fontaine, the clearness
of Marot, the bo7ine maniere of Villon, the sense of
Regnier. Something, at first inexplicable, there is which
we miss in him. I have discovered what that is: we
look to be led, and everywhere we find him following.
Where the crowd is thickest, there is B^ranger ; where
the tide is flowing, thither drifts his bark with all the
rest ; amid the crowd we find their prophet ; we look
for the voice of a man, and we hear the voice, of the
multitude.
The chansonnier, above all artists, depends for success
448 BiRANGER.
on the emotions and sympathies evoked by his subject,
over and above the art? with which he has treated it.
In general he would deprecate a too careful criticism.
B^ranger, however, would seem to invite it ; for his art
is perfect. The tears, the laughter, the sympathies of
his songs, are in the words and the rhythm as well as
in the subject. Here is no rude sculptor who depends
upon the pathos of the theme, but one who, self-taught,
has mastered the profoundest rules of art — a poet after
the heart of Pedant Boileau, who has yet never read
the " Art Po^tique."
One after the other, we have seen these French poets
and humorists harping on the single strain of wasting
life and coming death. Truly, they are in this respect
as sad and hopeless as the Preacher : — " This is one evil
among all things that are done under the sun, that there
is one event unto all. ... To him that is joined to all
the living there is hope, for a living dog is better than
a dead lion ; for the living know that they shall die :
but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any
more a reward ; the memory of them is forgotten ; their
love, their hatred, their envy, is now perished, neither
have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that
is done under the sun."
The stern Israelite laments the loss of his hatred and
his envy, but it is not either of these that the light-
hearted Frenchman regrets ; it is his youth and his love.
'" Le temps que je regrette, c'est le temps qui n'est plus."
And even Ronsard, breaking for once into a natural
strain, sings with the rest : —
Ma douce jouvence est pass^e:
Adieu, ma lyre ; adieu, fillettes,
Jadis mes douces amourettes!
La! je n'ai plus en mon declin
Que le feu, le lict et le via.
CONCLUSION. 449
This intense love of life is a key-note — I struck it in
the first page — to all the French poetry, even that, out-
side my limits, where we might look to find what we
are accustomed to call loftier aims. It seems to me
that there can be nothing loftier than to labor and feel
for others ; nothing more noble than, like Bdranger, tO
sympathize with the world ; like Rabelais, to cultivate
the world ; like Moliere, to remove the prejudices of the
world ; and with all this, nothing more in accordance
with nature than to look on with sadness as the sunlit
days slip faster and faster from our hands, as the twi-
light follows the dawn ever more rapidly, as the winters
still more swiftly tear down the summers, as the river
rushes ever faster to the fall.
And which of us, pray, does not feel this sadness?
"What religion, what philosophy, what faith was ever yet
sufficient to make us grow old without regret, or con-
template death and separation with satisfaction ? We
in England, less natural than the French, have agreed
not to harp upon this great human sorrow, or at least to
strike the chord of regret indirectly, *' in thinking of the
days that are no more." But to live the simple and
self-denying life of B Granger, to work, save, spare for
others, to grow old in well-doing, and then, when the
shadows gather which precede the night, to lie down
with a sigh for the world we have found so full of love,
and die, leaving the rest to the hon Bieu^ proud, perhaps,
like Boileau, that we have done no wrong, and helped
on the world — is not this the course of a good man ?
It is, perhaps, a Pagan doctrine — one is astonished at
times in considering how many Paganisms still prevail —
but it has no lower an authority than the author of Ec-
clesiastes. On the other hand, it is not the Paganism
of Art, selfish in its cold and passionless abstraction, or
still more selfish in its desire to wring for itself, at any
29
450 BERANGER.
cost, from every passing moment, tlie utmost possible of
passion, rapture, and deliglit.
And so my humorists are all alike. Every one, like
Montaigne, might serve as a book of " Hours '* for a
Ninon de I'Enclos; in the face of every one the light
clear eye that brightens for a pretty girl, for a song, for
a feast, for spring-time and flowers, for a hon-mot^ for
an espieglerie. We may see in all of them the same
resolution to let others solve the insoluble, peering into
that impenetrable blackness which lies between and be-
3^ond the stars ; we may recognize in all the same nimble-
ness of wit, the same marvellous dexterity of language.
And see how. kind and tender-hearted they all are;
shut your ej^es to some of their faults — indeed, T have
hidden them as much as I could — and own the virtues
of generosity, elasticity, and self-denial. I have care-
fully abstained from instituting comparisons, but it re-
mains now to claim, in the briefest manner, what may
very possibly be disputed, superiority for the French
over the English humorists. Rabelais has, I maintain,
a finer wit than Swift ; we have no political satire so
good as the " Satyre M^nipp^e;" we have no early
English humor comparable for a moment with that of
\hQ fabliaux ; we have no letter-writer like Voiture ; we
have no teller of tales like La Fontaine ; and, lastly,
we have no chansonnier like Beranger.
INDEX.
Academy, fonndation of, 228.
Academicians, the first, 229.
Actors, social status of, 318.
Adam de la Halle, 21.
Adam to his children, 85.
-ZEneas, 255.
Agnes of Navarre, 96.
Allegory, in " Romance of the
Rose," 54.
Arlequin, 312, 313.
Ass's last will and testament,
the, 39.
Aubray, M. d', 159.
Bacchus, ode to, 194.
Baif, 311.
Barber of Seville, the, 410.
Barigny, La Belle, 270.
Baron, 327, 336.
Beauval, 327.
Mile., 329.
Beaumarchais, chap, xviii
Bejart, Madeleine, 326.
Armande, 327, 330, 331,
333.
Genevieve, 327.
Belleau, 311.
Benserade, chap. x.
Beranger, chap. xix.
Bergeries, 313.
Blanket tossing, 205.
Boileau, chap. xiv.
satire on, 372.
Boisrobert, 224 et seq.
Bonaparte, Lucien, 426.
Bonne Vieille, la, 437.
Bottle, oracle of the, 122.
Bourbon, Mile, de, 205.
Bourgogne, Hotel de, 312.
Bouillon, Mad. de, 271.
Brecourt, 327.
Breton ville, Marie P. de, 288.
Burlesque, 241.
Callicrates, 209.
Carabas, le Marquis de, 442.
Carlyle's nicknames, 392, 394.
Catholicon, the, 150.
Caveau, the new, 429.
Cerisy, 229.
Champmesle, La, 275.
Chanson, the, chap. i.
Chansonnier, the, 440, 441.
Charlatan, song of the, 30.
Charles the Bad, 97.
Chaucer, 45.
Chapelain, 289.
Chapelle, 289, 290, 329.
Chaulnes, the Due de, 401.
Chenier, Andre, 183.
Chicane, 287.
Chloris, lines to, 254.
452
INDEX.
Christine de Pisan, 46.
Chrestien, Florent, 163.
Chronique Gargantuine, 108.
Cleante, 355.
Coadjutor, the, 234.
Colle, 429.
Confessions of Regnier, 175,
176.
Confrerie de la Passion, 310.
Conrart, 228.
Conti, Prince de, 233.
Cotin, the Abbe, 289, 349.
Costar, 292.
Coypeau d'Assoucy, 252, 323.
Credo of the Ribaut, 38.
Credo of the usurer, 38.
Cymbalum Mundi, 125.
Danse Macabre, 14.
De Brie, 327, 329.
De Croisy, 327.
Deduit, garden of, 50.
Degeneracy of the age, 173.
Desaugiers. 429.
Deschamps, Eustache, chap. iv.
De'sir de nonne, 376.
Des Periers, 125.
Desportes, 169.
Dido, 257.
Diz d'Aventures, 24.
Doette, la belle, 19.
Dorleans de la Motte, Bishop,
379.
Du Bellay, the family, 106.
Joachim, 166.
Du Pare, 327, 329.
Durant, Gilles, 163.
Duty of work, ballad on the, 84.
Emancipation of music and
learning, 15.
Embarras de Paris, les, 300.
Esprit Gaulois, 10, 447.
Etoiles qui filent, les, 446.
Eunuchus, translation of, 267..
Eu, the Chevaher d', 409.
Eve, sonnet on, 216.
Eyquem, Pierre, 133.
Fabliaux, the, 35.
Fall of England, the, 86.
Faux Semblant, 63.
Femmes Savantes, les, 342,
349.
Figaro, Mariage de, 410.
Flattery, literary, 236.
Florian, 431.
Folies Amoureuses, les, 373.
Fouquet, 269.
Furet, Saint Amant's letter to,
195.
Furetiere, 351, 352.
Gargantua, 110.
Garland, the, 346.
Gaultier, Garguille, 314.
Gassendi, 320.
Gaster, 121.
Genius, sermon of, 66.
Gentility, true, 74.
Gerson, 46.
Giry, 229.
Godeau, 229.
Gombaut, 229.
Golden age, the, 72.
Gournay, Mile, de, 140.
Goezman, 404, 406.
Gresset, chap. xvii.
Grenier, le, 425.
Grillon, 369.
Gros Guillaume, 314.
Gudin, 402.
INDEX.
458
Guillaume de Lorris, 47.
de Machault, 95.
de St. Amour, 62.
Guyot, 21.
Habert, 229.
Hardy, Alexandre, 313.
Harlay-Champvallon, 356.
Heaven and hell of the thir-
teenth century, 63.
Henry III., 152.
Hervaut, 278.
Hotel de Rambouillet, 344, 345.
Hue de la Ferte, 20.
Hugues de Breze, 22.
Honor, Regnier's lines on, 174.
"If all we did were guarded
still," 164.
Indignation, sham, 173.
Jean de Meung, 56.
Jeanne la Rousse, 444.
Job, sonnet on, 210.
Jodelle, 311.
Jongleur, song of the, 27.
Judith Frere, 435.
Knight and the Belle, the, 17.
La Blache, Comte de, 400, 404.
La Barre, story of, 378.
Ladies at church, 92.
Lamartine on Beranger, 440.
Landrirette, 207.
Lapland, Regnard in, 367.
La Boetie, 136.
La Fontaine, chap. xiii.
La Peruse, 311.
Latin authors read in the thir-
teenth century, 78.
Le Roy, Pierre, 160.
Lorris, Guillaume de, 46.
Louis XIV., 295, 325.
Lucian's True History, 129.
Lucien Bonaparte, 426.
Luxury of dress, 91.
Macette, 179.
Maiden's confession, the, 431.
ISIaintenon, ISIadame de, 250.
Malherbe, 170.
Malleville, 229.
INIarais, Theatre des, 312.
Mariage de Figaro, 410.
Marot, 12.
Marriage, Mirror of, 90.
Maucroix, 265.
May dew, the, 18.
Mayenne, Due de, 149.
Maynard, 171.
Mediaeval satire, 13.
Menage, 350.
M6nippee, la Satyre, chap. vii.
Mesnard, Mile., 401.
Meung, Jean de, 56.
Moliere, chap. xv.
Mondori, 232, 327.
Monks, Rutebeuf on, 34.
Montfleury, 327.
Montaigne, chap. vi.
Morande, Thevenau de, 408.
Mouzou, lines to the Abbess
de, 266.
Music, Saint Amant on, 192.
Nature's workshop, 76.
Neufgermain, lines on, 208.
Nmon de I'Enclos. 235, 247.
Old woman, the, 68, 180.
Ordre du Cordier, 1', 89.
454
INDEX.
Panurge, 115.
Passerat, Jean, 161.
Pantagruel, 113.
Pantagruelian philosophy, 123.
creed, 127.
Paradise, the villain in, 36.
Parasites, the, chap. xi.
Paris, sonnet on, 254.
Paris-Duvernay, 395.
Parodies, 23. "*
Paulet, Angelique, 346.
Pauline, 398.
Pedant, the, 181.
Pelleve, Cardinal, 155.
Pellisson, 269, 301.
Perrault, Charles, 302.
Petit Bourbon, Hotel de, 312.
Petit collet, the, 213.
Phillis, 217.
Physicians, 351.
Pithou, Pierre, 163.
Plague in Guienne, 139.
Political satire, first appearance
of, 148.
Precieuses Ridicules, the, 341,
347.
Rabelais, chap. v.
Rambouillet, Hotel de, 203,
345.
Rapin, Nicolas, 160.
Raymond de Sebonde, 137.
Regnard, chap, xvi,
Regnier, chap. viii.
Religious establishments in
France, 200.
Religious revolt, 67.
Remi, 311.
Return of the Bourbons, 432.
Reynard the Fox, 42.
Richelieu, 233.
Rieux, Sieur de, 158.
Rights of women, 343.
Rodrigue Hortalez et C'% 411.
Roger Bontemps, 428.
Roi d'Yvetot, 428.
Roman Comique, 253, 323.
Romance of the Rose, chap. iii.
Ronsard, 311, 448.
Rouget de I'Isle, 439.
Royalty, origin of, 74.
Roze, Rector, 151, 156.
Rutebeuf, chap. ii.
Sabliere, Madame de, 274.
Saint Amant, chap. ix.
Sarasin, chap. xi.
Sarcourt, De, 378.
Satire, the vveaj)on of the weak,
9.
Satires, wearisome effect of,
299.
Scaramouche, 313.
Scarron, chap. xii.
Science in the thirteenth cen-
tury, 75.
Scuderi, Mile., 346.
Secretum Secretorum, the, 61.
" See how the white rose and
the red," 94.
Senece, Epitaph on Benserade,
212.
Sirvente, the, 16.
Solitude, Saint Amant's poem
on, 188.
Student's letter in the four-
teenth century, a, 90.
Suis-je belle? a " virelay," 88.
Tartuffe, 353.
Theatre, I'lllustre, 321.
Theatre, progress of the, 313.
INDEX.
455
Thelem^, monastery of, 112.
Thou, De, 141.
Tircis, to, 217.
Tobacco, Saint Amant on, 192.
Tontine, 369.
Travel in the fourteenth cen-
tury, 87.
Tresors, 61.
Turlupin, 314.
Typhon, the, 253.
Ulrich, Madame, 277.
Uranie, sonnet on, 211.
Valet, use of the, 359.
Valot, 352.
Vaux, 269.
Ver-Vert, 381.
Vieux Caporal, le, 443.
Villon, 69.
Virgil, La Fontaine's lines on,
268.
Virgile Travesti, 255.
Voiture, chap. x.
Voltaire, epigram by, 381.
" Wake from sleep to greet the
morn," 162.
Wine list, a mediaeval, 91.
Women, none in Rabelais, 109.
Yolante, 18.
Zehnis and Elvire, 360.
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