LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE WS&l FRENCH LITERATURE ^l . FRENCH LITERATURE DELIVERED IN MELBOURNE BY IRMA DREYFUS WITH PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR All rights reserved THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF FEENCH LITEBATUBE A SERIES OF LECTURES DELIVERED IN FRENCH BY IRMA DREYFUS TRANSLATED BY JAMES SMITH LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY 1896 ERRATA. 9, line 27, for Villeneuve read Villemain 12, last, , , excited ,, excites 31, 1, ,, Kempis ,, Gerson 39, 6, ,, Monstrelet ,, Commynes 45, 13, the ,, his 99, 35, la ta 103, 26, ,, craignant ,, craignent 119, 35, ,, Scarrou ,, Scarron 120, 27, ,, Charles X. Charles IX. 132, 16, 1553 1573 137, 22, 1604 1634 138, 6, ,, cuve ,, cave 139, 6, 1597 1594 189, 6, ,, eighteenth XVII. 191, 9, ,, and his , , in the 222, 6, ,, Stency ,, Stenay 237, 20, ,, his ,, this 243, 29, , , must ,, most 248, last, , , 1'aurait ,, 1'aurais 266, 35, ,, Juba's ,, Julia's 280, 6, ,, Monturar ,, Montufar 282, 1, ,, 1645 1639 326, 32, ,, de Rude ,, de Lude 326, 35, Chateaubriand omit 336, ,, 13, for la fis read le fis 354, 24, ,, dieux , , deux 359, 39, ,, C'est le roi et Mme. ,, Le roi est aupres de de Montespan que Mme. de Montespan tient la carte qui tient la carte 443, 13, fourth fifth 453 from line 3 to line 44 to be read as following line 35 on page 454. INTRODUCTION THE book now submitted to the public is merely a collection of lectures delivered by me at Melbourne during the years 1893-5. The kindly reception which these modest studies met with from the Australian public has encouraged me to have them rendered into English, the Professors of the University, as well as my Translator, having been good enough to regard these unpretentious notes as giving a faithful abstract of the principal epochs of French literature, up to the time of Moliere, such as might usefully be brought under the notice of a wider circle. The difference between a lecture delivered viva voce and the same lecture set down in writing is so great that I long hesitated to publish this collection ; and I should never have taken what I consider a very bold step, had it not appeared to me that the difficulties of writing in one language what was spoken in another have been overcome by my Translator, who has a thorough knowledge of both languages and their respective literatures. After all, why should not these short lectures be worthy of perusal ? Those who are familiar with the subject of which they treat will certainly not derive instruction from the book ; nevertheless, they will find in it a correct clas- sification, which may be consulted with advantage. As for those to whom the French authors of the sixteenth and vi INTRODUCTION seventeenth centuries are mere names vague recollections of their college days to such the book may serve as a guide in their reading. I had no other end in view in the composition of these Lectures, which constitute simply a conscientious compilation. My criticisms have been dictated by my taste, which has also guided me in my selection of authors from the various periods ; and my readers will be able to form their own judgments without finding their ideas hampered by bias or a ' tendency.' I have consulted Villemain, Sainte-Beuve, Nisard, Taine, Geruzez, Walter Besant, Henry Hallam, Buckle, and many other French and English critics. Where I have borrowed from them I have been careful to indicate the fact by notes. I believe that I have succeeded in popularising French literature in Melbourne by these Lectures, and I can only hope that the success which they met with here, delivered in the French language, will attend this translation of them in all English-speaking countries. IBMA DREYFUS. MELBOURNE : 1896. CONTENTS LECTURE I Origins of French Literature. ' Chansons de Geste ' (3). Analysis of the ' Chanson de Roland ' (middle of the eleventh century) (3-6). Cycle of Arthur and the ' Round Table ' (twelfth and thirteenth century) (7). Romance of ' Brut ' by Wace (8). Chrestien de Troyes : romance of the ' Chevalier au Lion ' (8). ' Tristan and Iseult ' (10). Third Epic Cycle : Benoit de Sainte-Maure (middle of the twelfth century) (10). Adam Adenez, or Adam le Roi (11). ' St. Peter and the Juggler ' (11). ' Roman de la Rose : ' Guillaume de Loris, Jean de Meung (end of the reign of St. Louis, 1270) (12). ' Roman de Renard ' (1236) (13). Literary fecundity in France in the thirteenth century (14). Analysis of the farce of ' L'Avocat Pathelin ' (1470) (14-19). LECTURE II Guyot de Proving (thirteenth century) (20). Analysis of several fabliaux of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (21-26). Thibault de Cham- pagne (26). Ruteboauf (27). Marie de France (28). Christine de Pisan (29). Jean Gerson (30). Alain Chartier (31-33). Eustache Deschamps (33). Basselin de Vire (end of the fourteenth century and beginning of the fifteenth) (34-36). Le Houx (end of the six- teenth century) (36). Clotilde de Surville (36-38). LECTURE III Villehardouin (1160-1213) (39-44). Joinville (1223-1319) (44-51).- Froissart (1333-1410) (51-61). Monstrelet (1390-1453) (61). viii CONTENTS LECTUKE IV Philippe de Commynes (1445-1509) (63-68). Charles d'Orleans (1391- 1465) (68-73). Francois Villon (14317-1485?) (73-81). Of the Great Testament of Villon (1461) (79-81). Bude (1467-1540) (84). Erasmus (1467-1536) (84). LECTURE V Clement Marot (1495-1544) (86-92). Marguerite de Valois (1492-1549) (92). Mellin de Saint-Gelais (1491-1558) (93). Joachim du Bellay (1524-1560) (96-103). LECTURE VI Ronsard (1524-1585) (104-110). Remi Belleau (1528-1577) (110). Baa (1552-1591) (111). Jodelle (1532-1573) (111-114). Alexandre Hardy (1560-1630) (115). Robert Gamier (1524-1590) (115). Guillaume de Salluste, Sieur du Bartas (1544-1590) (116-119). Theodore d'Agrippa d'AubignS (1550-1630) (119). LECTURE VII Desportes (1545-1606) (123-127). Bertaut (1552-1611) (127-129). Regnier (1573-1613) (129-133). Malherbe (1555-1628) (133-137). Racan (1589-1670) (137-139). Gombauld (1570-1666) (139). Maynard (1583-1646) (139-141). Malleville (1597-1647) (141). LECTURE VIII Rabelais (1495-1553) (142-156). Amyot (1513-1593) (156-158). Montaigne (1533-1592) (158-170). LECTURE IX La Boetie (1530-1563) (171-178).-Pierre Charron (1541-1603) (178- 181). Michel de I'Hopital (1503-1573) (181-184). Cujas (1522- 1590) (184). Bodin (1530-1596) (185). Calvin (1509-1564) (185- 187). Costar (1603-1660) (188). Vaugelas (1585-1650) (189). La CONTENTS Mothe le Vayer (1588-1672) (189). Le Maistre (1608-1658) (190).- Patru (1604-1681) (190). Tallemant des Eeaux (1619-1692) (190). Descartes (1596-1650) (191-195). Pascal (1623-1662) (195-203). LECTUEE X La Satyre Menippee (1593) (204-210). Jean Passerat (1534-1602) (210- 213). Louise Labe (1526-1566) (214-217). Madame de la Fayette (1634-1693) (217-220). Madame de Longueville (1619-1679) (220- 225). Madame Deshoulieres (1634-1694) (225-232). Madame de la Sabliere (1636-1693) (232). LECTUEE XI ' L'Astree ' of D'Urfe (1568-1625) (233). Balzac (1594-1655) (234-236). Voiture (1598-1648) (236-240). Mademoiselle de Scudery (1607- 1701) (242-248). La Eochefoucauld (1613-1680) (248-256). Select ' Maxims ' (251-255). LECTUEE XII Hotel de Eambouillet (257-262). La Calprenede (1610-1663) (262). Ones Menage (1613-1692) (263). Isaac de Benserade (1612-1691) (264-266). Godeau (1605-1672) (266). Segrais (1624-1701) (267). Brebeuf (1618-1661) (268). Academic Francaise (1634) (270). Sarrazin (1605-1654) (271). Saint-Evremond (1613-1703) (272). Charles Perrault (1628-1703) (273). Theophile Viaud (1590-1626) (275). Saint-Amant (1594-1661) (275-277). Cyrano de Bergerac (1620-1655) (277). Paul Scarron (1610-1660) (277-280). Father Bouhours (1628-1702) (280). LECTUEE XIII La Bruyere (1645-1696) Selected Characters ' (282-321). LECTUEE XIV Madame de Sevigne (1626-1696) (322-372). CONTENTS LECTURE XV La Fontaine (1621-1695) (373-406). LECTVRE XVI LIBRARY Moli&re 162fe-l79)^Iie# ol Pr<(euses Bidicules ' ' L'Ecole des LECTURE XVII Moliere : ' Le Misanthrope ' ' Les Femmes Savantes ' (436-471). LECTUEES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECTUEE I Origins of French Literature ' Chansons de Geste ' Analysis of the 'Chanson de Roland ' (middle of the eleventh century) Cycle of Arthur and the ' Bound Table ' (twelfth and thirteenth century) Eomance of ' Brut ' by Wace Chrestien de Troyes : Bomance of the ' Chevalier au Lion ' ' Tristan and Iseult ' Third Epic Cycle : Benoit de Sainte-Maure (middle of the twelfth century) Adam Adenez, or Adam le Boi Peter and the Jugglers ' Boman de la Bose : ' Guillaume de Loris, Jean de Meung (end of the reign of St. Louis, 1270) ' Boman de Benard ' (1236) Literary fecundity in France in the thirteenth century Analysis of the farce of ' L'Avocat Pathelin ' (1470). MY first emotion is that of gratitude ; my first words must be those of thankfulness, for the distinguished patronage which has enabled me to make my d&but this evening under such favourable auspices. The kindly reception which I met with at your hands, when I ventured to submit an outline of the plan of my modest literary lectures, will remain for ever engraven in my memory and my heart. It is your goodness which has encouraged me to give practical effect to an idea I have entertained for many years past ; and if my work should hereafter be found to possess any merit whatsoever, it will be to you my gratitude will be due, because I have endeavoured by every means in my power to render it worthy of so generous and intelligent an audience. Let me premise, at the outset, that I have no intention of indulging in pedantic and wearisome dissertations, but 6 2 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. that my aim is to treat my subjects in a light and familiar spirit. And to gratify my own feminine predilections, I have selected from among our French authors those who, having been recognised as really meritorious by many generations, may be recalled to your recollection with the certainty of interesting, without any pretensions on my part to instruct you. What is intrinsically beautiful is not confined to any epoch or any school of letters ; and I have therefore sought, and trust I have succeeded in disengaging it, as well in the earliest productions of our old authors, struggling against a rebellious language, as in our classic writers employing a polished and refined vocabulary. Of all literatures, it has been said, the French is the only one which no foreigner can afford to ignore. Indeed, it has been often remarked that every one who comes into the world has two countries his own and France. But whether this kind of baptism be accepted or declined is immaterial. This, at least, is obvious, that the acquisition of a foreign language and a knowledge of its literature confer upon a person something like a second existence ; or, as Charles V. said, ' He who knows two languages is twice a man ; he who knows three is thrice a man ; ' and so on. And this is all I wish to prove. In fact, is it not to live twice, to have studied the languages of two great peoples, and to have divined, in the literature of both, the development of the human mind ? What I propose, then, is to converse with you modestly on the great writers of my country, and to try to bring you to like them by familiarising you with their works. I neither intend nor pretend, as I have already said, to increase your literary acquisitions in my own language. I aim only at inducing you to take pleasure in reading our authors; and so, without further preface, I will plunge into the heart of my discourse. The limits of my lectures having been thus clearly defined, you will not expect, on my part, any elaborate disquisition on the origin of French literature. Every library will be found to contain treatises on this subject, and these are easily accessible to those who wish to pursue deeper researches than are now practicable for me. At the same time I perceive that, in order to render my task more i THE 'CHANSON DE GESTE ' 3 complete, I must briefly glance at the dawn of our literature, its renaissance, its classic period, and its later developments. ' France,' said Henry Martin, ' whose epic genius was disputed during the long oblivion in which our old poetry was enshrouded, is precisely the nation which revived the 6pop&e in Europe ; and it was in its two mediaeval languages which combined to constitute our mother tongue, that the ' Chanson de Geste ' (the historic and chivalrous ballad) had its birth. Mediaeval Europe openly recognised this by designating this kind of heroic poem the ' Chanson a la Fran^aise,' just as it called our jousts and tournaments ' Jeux Frangais.' The epic productions of the North are generally divided into three cycles. The first turns principally upon the recollections of Charlemagne and his race. The rising chivalry, largely preoccupied by its wars against the Moslems in Spain, which were a prelude to the Crusades, was attached almost exclusively to narratives of deeds of war and love. And this is called the second cycle, the cycle of Arthur and the Knights of the Eound Table. In the third cycle the names of Greek antiquity cropped np for the first time. It was in the middle of the eleventh century that the ' Chanson de Geste ' burst forth to the north of the Loire. The date is certain. At the Battle of Hastings in 1066, in front of the army ready for the attack, Taillefer, the Norman jongleur, intoned the animated strophes of the ' Chanson de Eoland.' Only a few years ago that very poem, the composition of the trouv&re Theroulde, was rediscovered, if not in its primitive text, at any rate in one somewhat enlarged, and certainly anterior to the First Crusade ; and, at the end of the eleventh century, a cry of admiration arose when the ' Chanson de Eoland ' emerged, in all its vigour and native originality, from beneath the successive layers of imitations under which it had been buried for five centuries. How powerful in its simplicity ! What elevation of sentiment expressed in that still unformed language ! What grandeur of construction ! What unity in the plan and progress of the poem ! What majestic figures those of Charlemagne, Eoland, Oliver, and Ganelon ! And how differ- ent the last-named from the vulgar traitor of later romances ! B2 4 LECTUKES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT, Has the heroic poetry of any age or of any country anything more touching or more grandiose than the picture of the death of Eoland and the eleven peers? 'It wants, no doubt,' observes Henry Martin, ' the language of Homer ; but, as regards the art of composition, Theroulde acquired at a bound the genuine epic form, which the romance of the middle ages never succeeded in regaining after him ; and as to its spirit, the trouv&re of the eleventh century is abreast of all. To read it is, surprising to relate, an elevation of the soul. Patriotism is the very breath of the poem, and this at the very time when there was as yet only a simple community of manners and of language, and when there was really no political country ! ' The mind of the poet created in that far-off time that which was reserved for the hereafter, a true France, that ' sweet France,' for which her heroes expressed such a touching tenderness, and it is Charlemagne who constitutes its majestic personi- fication. A few words will suffice for the analysis of the poem. 1 Spain is conquered ; Saragossa alone holds out, defended by the African king, Marsile, but he proposes to surrender. Blancer- din presents himself in his name before Charlemagne, who sends Ganelon to negotiate conditions of peace; Ganelon, who, at the instigation of Eoland, has reluctantly undertaken that dangerous mission, and already a traitor in his mind, pro- mises to cause Roland and the ilite of the army of Charle- magne, forming his rear guard at the moment of retreat, to fall into an ambuscade. The plot thus contrived is executed. The bulk of the army has already reached the other side of the Pyrenees, when the rear guard enclosed in the Valley of Eoncevaux hears the sound of a formidable army, of which the numerous battalions are advancing upon it. A combat is thenceforth inevitable. Thereupon, Eoland blows a terrible blast upon his ' olifant.' Charlemagne, warned by the sound, retraces his steps, and arrives in time to repulse the Saracens. But Eoland rejects, as an unworthy weakness, the advice given him by the brave Oliver, and flatters himself that he can make head against the enemy and exterminate him with- out the help of the emperor. The combat commences ; and who shall relate and enumerate the exploits of Eoland, of 1 Geruzez, i. 35. i THE 'CHANSON DE EOLAND ' 5 Archbishop Turpin, and of Oliver ? There all is on a grand scale, both the field of battle and the heroes. That indomi- table phalanx, which never recoils, bestrews the ground with corpses ; but it will perish beneath the blows of an enemy constantly returning to the charge. It is then that Eoland awakens the echoes of the mountains with the blare of his ivory horn. The combat continues more desperately than ever, while the army of Charlemagne, at length alarmed, hastens to the spot. Succour approaches, but the danger redoubles. Oliver, Roland's comrade in arms, is slain. Two warriors alone survive the car- nage, Archbishop Turpin and Eoland. Their last exploits have struck terror to the hearts of the Saracens, who are still further dismayed by the increasing sound of Charlemagne's clarions. They take flight. The archbishop is mortally wounded, and Eoland summons up just sufficient strength to collect the dead bodies of his friends and lay them at the feet of Turpin, who dies in blessing them. Eoland alone survives, but the blood is stream- ing from his veins, and he is at the point of death. He vainly endeavours to break his sword. He lies down upon the sward with his eyes turned towards Spain, and angels descend to receive the hero's soul. It is borne towards heaven, just as Charlemagne appears upon the scene with his army. Such, in broad outline, is the analysis of that celebrated ' Chanson de Eoland,' which reveals the heart and the imagination of a great people ; relating the death of an invin- cible captain by treason, while compensating it, in defiance of history, by a sudden and glorious revenge. That idea of the country, so vivid in the ' Chanson de Eoland,' will be obliterated from that poesy with the rising grandeur of the national monarchy, and the feudal poets, moving in a direc- tion opposed to facts, will no longer celebrate local heroes or the exploits of knight-errantry. But the popularity of such a personage as Eoland will not undergo those vicissi- tudes to which the memory of Charlemagne has been sub- jected. That French Achilles invades all languages, all literatures, and the imagination of the whole of Christendom. We meet with legends of Eoland among the Turks of Asia Minor, and in the heart of the Caucasus. Dante, in his ' Inferno,' compares the voice of Nimrod to the sound of the dying Eoland's olifant. Pulci describes the battle of Eonce- vaux in his ' Morgante Maggiore.' Eoland is also the hero of the ' Orlando Innamorato ' of Berni. Boiardo has done 6 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE MCI. the same in his serio-comic epic, and Ariosto has immortalised the name of the French Achilles in his ' Orlando Furioso.' Milton alludes to the battle of Eoncevaux in ' Paradise Lost ; ' and Cervantes relates how Don Quixote met a peasant carol- ling the ' Chanson de Eoland ' as he walked along. It is thus that when a man of genius kindles a fire, twenty poets who have been inspired by his example hasten to light their own torches by its flame. I have dwelt at some length upon this old chanson de geste, because it is by far the most beautiful production of the cycle to which it belongs, and therefore I can only casually refer to the romance of the ' Loherains,' and enumerate the titles of the principal chansons founded on the feudal relations of Charlemagne with his vassals. These are the ' Chronicles of Turpin,' the ' Four Sons of Aymon,' ' Maugis d'Aigremont,' ' Huon de Bordeaux,' and ' Doolin de Mayence.' The four last chansons were written by Huon de Villeneuve. Then came the ' Roman de Viane ' (Vienne), by Bertrans ; ' Beuves de Hanstone,' by an unknown author ; ' Augier le Danois,' and ' Eaoul de Cambrai." ' It is in these long narratives," observes M. Quinet, ' that we meet with the monastery, the ladies of the clear complexion gather- ing the flowers of May, or watching from their balconies the approach of messengers with news ; the hermit poring over his illuminated missal in the depths of the forest ; the young lady mounted on her dappled palfrey; the messengers; the pilgrims seated at table and conversing in the great chamber ; the towns- folk loitering under the postern ; the deer in the glade ; the banners fluttering in the wind; the embroidered flags unfurled; the sports of falconry ; the trials by fire, water, and the duel ; pleadings ; the joustings ; the heroic swords ; the Durendal ; the neighing steeds, each with his own name, as in Homer ; the " Bayard " of the Sons of Aymon, the " Blanchard " of Charle- magne, and the " Valentine " of Roland. 'It is in these chansons de geste that we may behold the entire spectacle of that noisy, silent, diversified, monotonous, religious and warlike life, where all extremes met ; so that these poems, which seem so extravagant at first, very often conclude by presenting you with a truth of details and of sentiments more real and striking than history itself.' Every subject which the Middle Age could supply was thus treated by these trouv&res ; but among the numerous themes they most affected there were two to which they in- cessantly reverted. They could neither exhaust them nor i KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE 7 lay them down when they had taken them up. These were jousts and battles. The poems of the Carlovingian cycle were purely feudal. They were to become chivalrous. In the second cycle, known as that of Arthur and the Bound Table, the poets would continue to sing of knights and arms, but would add to them lays of love and ladies. According to the generally accepted theory, the Bound Table was an association com- posed of twelve knights, chosen by King Arthur from the worthiest of those who attended his court, in order to form a secret brotherhood, whom he used to assemble at a round table in order to abolish all differences of rank among them. Nothing can more clearly prove the strength of the popular belief in the historical truth of these Arthurian legends than the fact that in Winchester Castle, ever since the thirteenth century, a table has been carefully preserved as that which has been rendered famous in connection with King Arthur. In the North of France there has arisen a cloud of epic poems which relate, in the prevalent style of the period, the deeds and gestes of the Knights of the Bound Table. These poems were all very successful, and spread far beyond the limits of France ; and the same continually acquired by accretion new ideas and foreign elements. ' Merlin,' ' Tris- tan,' ' Lancelot du Lac,' and ' Perceval,' are the principal poems of that cycle. The author of the last two is Chrestien de Troyes, who wrote, moreover, ' Le Boman du Chevalier au Lion,' that of ' Guillaume d'Angleterre,' ' Erec et Enide,' and ' Cliget.' I cannot invite you to launch out with me upon the ocean of French romances of the Bound Table, romances which were imitated in then: turn in every language of Europe, and which, like the epic traditions of Boland, pene- trated as far as Greece and Asia. Love, scarcely hinted at in the most ancient poems of the cycle of Charlemagne, reigned supreme in the Armorican cycle, or that of Arthur, with characters entirely new. The heroism associated with love has equally novel incentives : primarily, that of the passion itself ; and, secondarily, the thirst for adventure, the craving for the unknown and the marvellous, the pursuit of emotion for its own sake, replacing the eagerness for conquest and the enthusiasm of the religious wars. To the conquering 8 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT- and political knight, the son of France, succeeded the knight errant, the son of Gaul, pursuing through the world the poetry of danger and the ideal of love; having the entire field of nature for his exploits, animated and illumi- nated as it were by elfin creations, among birds of evil omen, dwarfs, giants, benevolent fairies, hostile monsters, and animals acting as brethren in arms to man. An entirely enchanted world encompassed the Knights of the Bound Table, and versions in verse and in prose ' Luces de Gast,' ' Gautier Map/ ' Eobert,' and ' Helie de Barren ' among the latter filled the second half of the twelfth and the whole of the thirteenth century with a long series of romans, commencing with the ' Brut ' of Wace, which em- bodies the whole, or at least the greater part, of the tradi- tions current ; then each of the Breton heroes furnished a theme for vast compositions, all of which connected them- selves with the general cycle, and revolved around the Bound Table. All the poems of that cycle adopted a new rhythm, the octosyllabic couplet, a graceful, facile, and agreeably har- monious form of versification, well adapted to the expres- sion of tender sentiments and delicate shades of feeling, and calculated to impart an animated movement to a narra- tive, but, at the same time, so easy of acquirement as to tend to laxity and diffuseness. These are, in fact, the qualities and defects of the Champenois trouv&re, Chres- tien de Troyes, who dominates French poetry during the second half of the twelfth century by the number and lustre of his productions a writer distinguished rather by the fertility, elegance, suppleness, and variety of his produc- tions than by their genius. ' He develops, occasionally enlarges, and in no wise invents.' I must not leave Chrestien de Troyes without borrowing from him something to give you an idea of the style of this trouv&re. In the ' Chevalier au Lion,' of which Yvain or Owenn is the hero, and the Lady of the Forest of Broce- land is the heroine, an old Armorican legend has been woven into the following story. Yvain, who has been the means of widowing the lady, has to console her later on by becoming her husband. Thanks to a magic ring, which renders him invisible, he has witnessed her transports of i THE 'ROMAN DE LA ROSE' 9 grief and listened to her threats of vengeance. She does not know, observes the poet, that she is already avenged ; for, to quote the words of Chrestien de Troyes, the wounds inflicted by love are deeper and more incurable than those occasioned by a lance. For these yield to the treatment of the surgeon, but those become more acute when the sufferer approaches more nearly to the only person capable of healing them. What is most surprising about this poem is the modernity of the character and language of the lady's waiting-maid, who resembles a saucy soubrette of modern comedy, and tells her mistress that a live dog is worth more than a dead lion ; or, in other words, that the living victor is greatly to be preferred because he is living to the unfortunate husband, who is now a mere corpse. None of these poetic jewels will bear translation, for their charm is inseparable from their form. Nor is it neces- sary for me to dwell upon the numerous romans of the Armorican cycle. It will suffice to indicate their general characteristics. The Breton supplants the Celtic legend. Arthur succeeds Charlemagne. A chivalrous worship of woman replaces the rough deeds of war. ' The sweet vision of the Holy Grail ' inspired Sir Galahad, Sir Perceval, and Sir Bois to set out in quest of it, and we are launched into that region of romance which has been rediscovered and almost recreated by the genius of Alfred Tennyson. As ViUeneuve has so perspicuously pointed out, the Middle Age has taken advantage of three mythologies the chivalrous, the allegorical, and the Christian. The first gave birth to a swarm of enchanters, fairies, dwarfs, and magicians ; from the second, which was the natural offspring of the first, sprang the personification of every possible virtue, and of the vices and evil thoughts ; and it is to that allegorical mythology that the world is indebted for the ' Eoman de la Eose/ that teeming storehouse of allegory upon which the writers of later centuries have largely drawn. Nor can I quit this cycle without saying a few words about an unknown Norman, whose work has reached us perhaps in a mutilated condition, but who seems to me to surpass Chrestien de Troyes in simplicity, sobriety, rapidity ]0 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. both of action and of style, in warm colouring and deep sensibility. His ' Tristan,' fragmentary as it is, is one of the most perfect compositions of the Armorican cycle ; and the beauty of the d&nouement, narrating the death of the hero and heroine both of whom are said to have lived in the sixth century is unequalled. Nothing more touching is to be found in any poetry. What the catastrophe of Koland is in the purely warlike chivalry of the Carlovingian &pop&e, it has been well observed, is this incident in the amorous chivalry of the later cycle. We have now arrived at an epoch when the memory of Charlemagne and of his great deeds is entirely effaced at an epoch in which the exploits of war and tales of love no longer suffice for the imagination of the trouv&res. The Eound Table, together with Arthur and his Knights, under- goes the fate of Charlemagne and his Paladins. A new field is discovered in the records of antiquity, and we begin to hear of the Siege of Troy, of Ulysses and Helen, of Alexander, and of Hector. It was towards the end of the twelfth century that French poetry began to repeat those glorious names in the confused recollections of antiquity, to satisfy the curiosity of their auditors. The first among those who treated of the Trojan war was Benoit de Sainte-Maure, an Anglo-Norman poet who lived in England for some time during the reign of Henry II., and composed a history of the Dukes of Nor- mandy in 23,000 verses, of which the following may be quoted as a fair specimen : Quand vint le temps qu'hiver derive, Que 1'herbe verd point a la rive, Lorsque florissent les ramel, Et doucement chantent oisel, Merle, mauvis et loriol, Et estornel et rossignol, La blanche flor pend a l'e"pine, Et reverdoie la gaudine ; Quand le temps est doux et soeufs [suave] Lors sortirent del port les nefs. These descriptions of the Spring, in the still youthful language of the Middle Age, have all the freshness of the season they aspire to paint. The trouvdres seem to have felt, as some one has remarked, the analogy between the i ADAM LE ROI 11 spring time of the year and that of their mother tongue. They loved to expatiate on the primavera dell' anno ; even as Chaucer did, when he characterised the colour of the tender leaves on their being first unfolded to the tender sun- shine of April and May as ' a glad light green.' Another trouvere, the most celebrated of his time, ' the King of Minstrels,' Adam Adenez, otherwise Adam le Eoi, minstrel of Henry III., Duke of Flanders, achieved great distinction among the poets of chivalry composing the poetic era which opened with the ' Chanson de Roland.' His chief work, written in honour of his protectress, Mary of Brabant, bore the uncomplimentary title of ' Berte aux grands pies.' He also wrote the ' Eoman de 1'Enfance d'Ogier le Danois,' and the ' Eoman de Pepin et de Berte sa femme.' Both are taking poems, noble in sentiment, felici- tous and sometimes dramatic in expression, and harmonious in versification, although encumbered by the Alexandrine metre. Adenez seems to have been almost the last of his class. The troubadours of the langue d'oc had disappeared, and the trouveres of the langue d'oil presently followed them. The soil which had been so fertile in poetic growths during the first half of the thirteenth century lay fallow during the second. But in the meanwhile the seed of a new flower was germinating beneath the surface, which presently sprang up and budded and blossomed as the fabliaux. These superseded the old heroic poetry. The poems themselves were imitations, in the first instance, of Eastern stories adapted to Western modes of thought and ex- pression. Popular satire found a voice for the first time in this new form of composition; and we may trace in some of the fabliaux, perhaps, the dawn of that satirical and mocking spirit which reached its climax in the writ- ings of Voltaire. Not only so, but these early examples of sarcasm, and of sly jests at the religious abuses of the period, anticipated Eabelais to some extent. Might he not have written the pleasant story of ' St. Peter and the Juggler,' which tells us how the Devil, wishing to enjoy a cooler temperature, took a trip into the country, and left the keys of Hell in charge of a fiddler, who was an inveterate gamester? St. Peter, happening to stroll in that direction, 12 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. challenged the fiddler to have a game at dice. So they sat down and played for lost souls. All the luck was on the side of Peter, who went on doubling the stakes until his infatuated opponent had emptied Hell, and Peter had drafted off its entire population to Paradise. What the Devil said when he came back from his country walk, and discovered the trick which had been played upon him by the Apostle, is altogether inconceivable. We may be sure that the fiddler ' caught it hot.' The ' Eoman de la Eose,' a model and masterpiece of this artificial kind of composition, has left its impress upon the greater part of the literary productions which made their appearance between its date and the Eenaissance, if not afterwards. It also gave the final blow to heroic poetry. It was begun by Guillaume de Loris towards the end of the reign of St. Louis, and was continued by Jean de Meung. By these two a gallant allegory, which might have furnished a troubadour with the subject of a graceful and subtle little poem, was expanded into an immense mass of versification, in which they broke away completely from the poetical pre- cedents and traditions of the past. To pass from the old trouveres to Loris and Jean de Meung is like passing from a green lane bordered by sweet- brier and honeysuckle to a shop full of artificial flowers ; or from a green meadow, in which children are making holiday, to a cemetery full of stiff statuary. Nevertheless, this kind of romance has played such an important part in French literature that I must offer a brief analysis of it. The ' Eoman de la Eose,' a long, learned, and wearisome allegory of more than 20,000 verses framed in a dream, all turns upon whether the hero of it shall succeed in picking a rose which he has seen in a garden, and is forbidden to gather by twenty personified abstractions, such as Danger, Baseness, Hatred, Avarice, and so forth. He has for his auxiliaries Kindly-welcome and Sweet-face. Dame Idler conducts him to the Chateau of Enjoyment did Thomson borrow his ' Castle of Indolence ' from the ' Eoman de la Eose ' ? and there he finds Love with all his retinue of Jollity, Courtesy, Freedom, and Youth. Need I dilate upon any- thing so frigid and inanimate as this symbolical mythology ? The smallest adventure of a real living being excited more i THE 'KOMAN DE KENAED ' 13 interest than all the fantastic proceedings of these bodyless shadows. Guillaume de Loris might have said all he had to say by way of conclusion in a few hundred lines ; but his unfinished work fell into the hands of Jean de Meung, who had, like Dogberry, the gift of tediousness, and he tacked on to it his crude ideas of science, his profane ethics, and his political theories and opinions. I think I have said enough of the ' Eoman de la Kose,' which must not be confounded with another celebrated poem, also allegorical in character, the ' Eoman de Eenard,' belonging to the second half of the twelfth century. But an apologue is not an allegory ; the first is living, the second is dead. ' Eenard ' is a masterpiece of satirical poetry, and while differing in form from the fabliaux of which we shall presently speak, its spirit is essentially the same. It has been justly styled an analysis of human life, where all the world is figuring in masquerade, and each of the more prominent divisions of society is typified by an animal, who embodies its salient characteristics. All the conclusions of modern science with respect to the descent of man seem to have been anticipated in this really wonderful satire, which is supposed to have been written between the First and Second Crusades, and has since found its way into all countries and all literatures. By successive accretions it grew into a poem of 80,000 lines ; and people of all classes derived exquisite enjoyment from the diverting adventures of the fox, the wolf, the lion, and the ass. Especially did the disinherited of fortune enjoy the sly gibes indulged in at the expense of the nobility and clergy. In an age when authority and force were paramount, the helots of society rejoiced to think that cunning and craft were sometimes stronger than either. Nor, we may be sure, did they view with regret the disparagement or denial of the spirit of chivalry, identified as this was in their minds with the domination of an arrogant and oppressive class. Is it not just possible that the ' Eoman de Eenard ' may have dropped into the hearts of the people the seeds which afterwards bore fruit in the Jacqueries and the Huguenot movement ? But versified allegories falling into disrepute by reason of their general impotence and frigidity, there then arose the fabliau, also a product of the thirteenth century, which, 14 LECTUEES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. representing the critical side of the French genius, contained the elements of an enduring nobility. The epoch was one of amazing literary fecundity. France alone produced a hundred poets, and the age, as Sir Walter Besant has pointed out, was fruitful of great rule.rs Innocent III. in Eome; Philippe- Auguste, St. Louis, and Philippe le Bel in France ; Edward I. upon the throne of England, and Barbarossa and Frederick II. on that of Germany, while the Itah'an cities were springing up into power and importance. Professor Morley has remarked that France was the nursing mother of the imagination of two nations, England and Italy. Chaucer, who translated the ' Eoman de la Eose ' into his own tongue, owed quite as much to French influence as to that of Petrarch, while the obligations of Dante and his precursors to the same source are undeniable. Both Boccaccio and Chaucer derived the story of Griselda from an old fabliau ; and the English poet's ' House of Fame ' appears to me to have been sug- gested by one of the French allegories I have previously spoken of. I now come to speak of an important literary event the birth of the first French comedy, ' Maitre Pierre Pathelin,' a modern version of which was produced upon the London stage, a hundred years ago, under the title of ' The Village Lawyer,' with John Bannister as Scout (Pathelin). And I introduce it in this place out of its chronological order for the sake of relieving by a note of gaiety the unavoidably dry and perhaps heavy matter by which I have preceded it. The original is undoubtedly the oldest and most curious monument extant of the comic gaiety of our ancestors. When it was written and by whom are extremely doubtful. The earliest manuscript of it known was copied from a document of the time of St. Louis. Hence it dates back to the middle of the thirteenth century, but it was not until about the year 1470 that we hear of its first presentation on the stage, and a little later we find a Latin version of it per- formed by the students at Heidelberg. An English critic has acknowledged its incontestable superiority in language, versification, and comic sentiment over the first efforts of the humorous muse translated in England, such as 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,' 'Ealph i 'L'AVOCAT PATHELIN' 16 Eoister Doister,' although these appeared three centuries later, and it really appeared as if French comedy sprang into existence not so much an infant as a full-grown goddess six centuries and a half ago. But pleasantry is in the blood of the French people. To laugh is a national and individual necessity, and thus Tesprit gaulois/ which animated the old fabliaux, found jovial expression in this very ancient farce, or farcical comedy, at the time the rest of Europe was patiently enduring the solemn mysteries and dreary moralities which were then in vogue. ' L'Avocat Pathelin ' has given birth to innumerable proverbs, and the very name has become synonymous with a crafty knave and an arrant trickster. Pateliner and patelinage are convertible terms with cozenry and imposi- tion, and there are few phrases which have passed into such universal use as that employed so often by the judge in order to recall the witness to the matter in contention Bevenons d nos moutons. The comedy is divided into two acts, and it opens in the poorly furnished cottage of Pierre Pathelin, advocate, and Guillemette, his wife. Pathelin bewails his ill-luck. He has tried to do his best, has worked hard, and has even deceived the public, and is, nevertheless, as poor as ever he was. Guillemette confirms all he says, and adds that the neighbours declare he is by no means so clever and sharp a practitioner as he was. Pathelin rejoins that in point of skill and knowledge he is without an equal. ' What's the good of all your learning,' exclaims Guillemette, ' if it won't fill the cupboard ? We are literally without food ; and look at our clothes they are falling to pieces ! ' Pathelin, who is growing rather tired of his wife's querulous complaints, asserts that he has hit upon an idea. ' Hold your tongue ! ' he cries. ' On my conscience, if I wished to put my ability to the test, I should know where to find a cap and gown.' Guillemette does not believe him, and says, 'You've neither pence nor farthings what are you going to do ? ' Pathelin, full of self-reliance, sets out for a neighbouring fair, where he calculates upon obtaining credit from a mer- chant, by means of a ruse, for six yards of cloth, which will suffice for a robe for himself and a gown for his wife. Then 16 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. follows a deliciously comic scene between Pathelin and the merchant at the fair. The former professes to have known the clothier and his father, and flatters the simple vanity of the trader by singing the praises of the incomparable family from which he descends. ' What a man your father was ! What a head for business he had ! Do you know, you are as like him as two peas ! Isn't it extraordinary that nature should have been capable of producing two men so perfectly resembling each other ? And your Aunt Lawrence ! she was one of the beauties of her day upright, graceful, and just your figure ! Ah, you come of a fine old stock ! I don't know anything like it in all the country-side ! ' And while he is speaking, and as if by mere chance, his hand glides among the folds of a bale of cloth, of which he extols its soft, silky touch. In fact, he has never met with such a beautiful fabric before. The merchant explains that it has been made from the wool of his own sheep. Thereupon Pathelin piles up fresh panegyrics of the business qualities of the trader. ' Bah ! ' he observes, ' I had saved up eighty crowns, but I see very plainly that some of them will find their way into your purse, for I cannot possibly resist the sight of that splendid cloth. Cut me off six yards ; the price is no object.' This having been done, he will not give the merchant the trouble even of sending it home, but will carry it himself, adding, ' Will you come by-and-by, just in a friendly sort of way, and take pot luck with us ? No ceremony, you know. My wife has got a goose on the spit. And I will pay you for the cloth at the same time.' Pathelin goes home in triumph, and explains to Guillemette how he has obtained the cloth. But she reminds him of the old fable of the crow and the cheese ; and my readers will probably be interested to find in the farce of Maitre Pathelin one of the models, or, at any rate, the antecedents, of La Fontaine's charming fable : II m'est souvenu de la fable Du corbeau qui 4tait assis Sur one croix de cinq ou six Toises de haut, lequel tenait Un fromage au bee. LA venait Un renard qui vit le fromage ; Pensa en lui : ' Comment l'aurais-je ? ' i 'L'AVOCAT PATHELIN' 17 Lors se mit dessous le corbeau : ' Ah ! ' fit-il, ' tant as le corps beau, Et le chant plein de melodie ! ' Le corbeau, par sa couardie, Oyant son chant ainsi vanter, Si ouvrit le bee pour chanter, Que son fromage choit a terre : Et maitre Eenard vous le serre A bonnes dents et si 1'emporte. Another excellent scene succeeds. It is that in which Guillemette, instructed as to the part she has to play, receives the merchant and begs of him to speak low, because Master Pierre Pathelin is suffering a perfect martyrdom on a bed of sickness, from which he has not arisen for the last six weeks. The merchant does not believe a word of it ; but, on a second visit, he arrives at the conclusion that Pathelin is really lying at the point of death ; and he beats a hasty retreat, imagining that it must be the very devil himself who has robbed him of his six yards of cloth, because he has heard Pathelin raving first of all in the Limousin patois, because, as Guillemette explains to him, her husband has an uncle in that district; then in the dialect of Picardy, because his mother came from that region ; then in Flemish and in Norman, because he went to school in Normandy ; then in Breton, because his mother originally lived in Brit- tany ; and finally in Latin. Some of the scenes in the second act are even more really comic than those which have gone before. The merchant has already apprised us that he grows his own wool ; and we presently make the acquaintance, first of all in his shop, and afterwards before a judge, of the faithless shepherd who has killed and eaten his master's sheep. This man, Aignelet by name, is defended by Pathelin, who re- commends him to feign idiocy and to bleat out ' Baa,' like a sheep, in reply to every question put to him by the judge. I should only spoil what follows, if I were to analyse or translate it. The comicality of the situation reaches its climax when the merchant finds himself confronted by the man who has cheated him out of his cloth, and in the excitement of his feelings he continually mixes up his lost goods and his purloined sheep. This is part of the 18 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. plaintiff's case, whom the magistrate incessantly recalls to his ' muttons : ' Drap. Or, ga, je disais, A mon propos, comment j 'avals Bailie six aunes . . . Je veux dire Mes brebis (je vous en prie, sire, Pardonnez-moi). Ce gentil maitre, Mon berger, quand il devait etre Aux champs, il me dit que j'aurais Six ecus d'or quand je viendrais. . . . Dis-je, depuis trois ans en ga Mon berger me convenanga [promit] Que loyaument me garderait Mes brebis et ne m'y ferait Ni dommage ni vilenie : Et puis maintenant il me nie Et drap et argent pleinement. Ah ! Maitre Pierre, vraiement Ce ribaud-ci m'emblait [volait] les laines De mes betes ; et toutes saines Les faisait mourir et pern- Par les assommer et ferir De gros baton BUT la cervelle. . . . Quand mon drap rat sous son aisselle II se mit en chemin grand erre [tres vite] ; II me dit que j'allasse querre Six ecus d'or en sa maison. Le Juge. II n'y a rime ni raison En tout ce que vous rafardez. Qu'est-ceci ? vous entrelardez Puis d'un, puis d'autre ; somme toute, Par le sang bleu ! je n'y vois goutte ! . . . Revenons a nos moutons. . . . Aignelet having succeeded in passing himself off as an idiot, thanks to his bleating, quits the tribunal, and pays off Pathelin in his own coin, when the latter, exulting in the success of his stratagem, asks for his fee. ' Baa ! ' cries Aignelet. ' Come, come ; we've had enough of this.' ' Baa ! ' ' Yes, yes ; the case is over. Drop it, now. Didn't I work the dodge well ? wasn't I wide awake ? ' ' Baa ! ' ' Look sharp ; I want to go. Stump up ! ' ' Baa ! ' and so on, to the end ; the advocate becoming more and more importunate, and his client bleating more and more idiotically. Ultimately the cunning shepherd beats a retreat, pursued by his angry dupe, venting all sorts of i 'L'AVOCAT PATHELIN' 19 impotent maledictions upon Aignelet who has profited so well by the lawyer's lesson in dissimulation. It has been justly remarked that there is nothing in Moliere more delightfully comic than the last scene but one of the second act of ' L'Avocat Pathelin,' where the doubly wronged merchant confounds in his pleadings the two robberies of which he has been the victim. But the unknown author of the comedy sought for his materials, as Jean-Baptiste Poquelin did for his, in human nature ; and so also did Shakespeare, when he caused Shylock, writhing under the twofold loss he had sustained, to exclaim : My daughter ! O my ducats ! O my daughter ! Fled with a Christian ! O my Christian ducats ! Justice ! The law ! My ducats and my daughter ! c2 LECTUEE II Guyot de Proving (thirteenth century) Analysis of several fabliaux of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Thibault de Champagne Ruteboeuf Marie de France Christine de Pisan Jean Gerson Alain Chartier Eustache Deschamps Basselin de Vire (end of the fourteenth century and beginning of the fifteenth) Le Houx (end of the sixteenth century) Clotilde de Surville. I WILL now revert to the chronological order of my subject- matter, from which I deviated at the end of my last lecture. Our worthy forefathers, although well inclined to lend an ear to the heroic and chivalrous lays of their poets, did not disdain the reading of playful compositions. After the tragic muse came the Jongleurs, to serve up to those laughter-loving ancestors of ours a dish of lighter verse, the indulgent auditors of which welcomed an outburst of simple hearty gaiety as a relief from, and contrast to, the more sombre emotions awakened by sterner themes. In that extraordinary epic, ' Eenard,' the satire, truth to say, was only indirect, and the main, if not the only, purpose of the authors was to amuse their audience. But, as M. Geruzez has said, the Middle Age was not without its malcontents and its soured bilious spirits ; and their moroseness found vent in invective. At their head may be noted Guyot de Provins, who, towards the end of his life, at the close of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century, wrote a satire of about 3,000 lines, in which, although he belonged to the Benedictine Order and died in the monastery of Cluny, he attacked the Pope and the College of Cardinals with extreme virulence, just as Kobert Langland did, in England, many years later, in his ' Vision ' and ' Creed of Piers Plowman.' He was no common versifier, this Guyot de Provins, but a man who had travelled much, both in France and Germany, had been a guest in the courts of LECT. ii GUYOT DE PROVINS 21 kings, the palaces of prelates, and the chateaux of noble- men ; was an acute observer of the follies and vices of the great, and knew how to lash them with an unsparing hand. In the then state of society he found endless provocatives of scathing sarcasm. Profligacy reigned supreme in all the higher walks of society, both lay and ecclesiastical, and the very name of priest had become so odious in public estima- tion that those who had received the tonsure covered their heads in order that their profession might not be recognised ; and we read of a Bishop of Cambrai, who, making war upon Sivard de St. Aubert, otherwise called Maufilatre, caused the eyes to be gouged out of all the serfs of his enemy who fell into his hands. 1 No wonder this keen-sighted monk, with his rare gift of satire, denounced, in caustic language, the vices of men in high places, who were guilty of practices so infamous and abominable that I dare not even hint at them. Nor did such invectives emanate from churchmen only ; for laymen, like the Seigneur de Berze and Gautier de Coinsy, outdid the Benedictine monk in the severity of their animadversions on the dissolute manners and morals of the age. Nor would it be difficult to find, in the narratives of the trouvdres of the period, the materials for a terrible bill of indictment against the Middle Age, involving the nobility and clergy and both the learned professions. In fact, the ' good old times ' continually recede farther and farther backward, the more closely we examine the political and social life of any given period. But at this very epoch, when lengthy chivalrous epics, such as aroused the admiration of our ancestors, were enjoying the height of their popularity, and when mal- contents, like Guyot de Provins and others, were revealing the purulent sores of society, there arose another form of poetical composition which combined brevity with bonhomie, a certain elegance of narrative with a malicious naivete 1 of expression, and aimed at blending amusement with instruc- tion, and at presenting more variety than was to be found in the poems of an earlier time. This was the fabliau, which is admittedly one of the most valuable bequests we have received from the thirteenth century. Sometimes it related 1 Becueil des Historians de France, xi. 299. 22 LECTUEES ON FRENCH LITEEATUEE LECT. an anecdote, sometimes a diverting incident, and sometimes a bon mot. Gaiety was its dominant note, but it was not always free from grossness. The art of narrative was pushed to its utmost limits. The genius of the nation seemed to find itself perfectly at home in these familiar stories, and it already revealed in man some of his finest qualities. And the influence of the fabliaux upon the English and Italian imagination was, as I have already hinted, very great indeed. Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarch freely appropriated the inexhaustible resources they dis- covered in them ; and French authors, in later centuries, took advantage of them just as freely. Moliere was indebted to them for his ' George Dandin,' his ' M^decin malgre' lui,' and probably for other borrowings ; and La Fontaine derived from them the groundwork of many of his fables and stories. To the people of the nineteenth century these fabliaux are chiefly interesting on account of the strong light they throw on the manners and customs of the bourgeoisie and the lower classes in the Middle Age ; although some of the stories are borrowed from much older sources. Take, for example, ' Le Vilain Mire,' which suggested ' Le M6decin malgr6 lui,' and is derived from a Latin legend, which may be thus translated : ' A certain woman who had been beaten by her husband waited upon a gentleman who was ill, and informed him that her husband was a doctor, but that he would never consent to prescribe for his patients until he had been well cudgelled ; and by this means she caused her better half to receive a sound thrashing.' The author of the fabliau has expanded this brief sketch into a large canvas. He marries a rich peasant to the daughter of an old knight who has nothing to boast of but his high descent. The peasant fustigates the poor woman before he goes out to his work in the morning, and begs her pardon for his ill-usage of her when he comes home at night. This being his daily practice, it becomes rather monotonous to her, at any rate. She reflects upon the reason of his brutality, and a happy thought strikes her. He beats her from sheer inexperience. He has never felt the weight of a cudgel himself, and the one thing needful is to procure for him that sensation. But how? As good luck would have it, the prince who rules the country sends out his messengers far and near to find a ii THE 'VA1R PALEFROI' 23 doctor capable of healing his own daughter who is lying at the point of death, owing to a fish-bone having stuck in her throat. The peasant's wife points out her husband as a medical expert, but whispers to them that he will only exer- cise his art under constraint. So they give him a preliminary pommelling, and when he reaches the court the king orders him another. Introduced to his patient he writhes and wriggles so much under the beating he has received, that the princess is seized with a violent fit of laughter, and coughs up the recalcitrant bone. After this he tries to sneak away, and is again cudgelled for making the attempt. Patients come from far and near, and, at his request, a spacious hall is fitted up for their reception. He causes a great fire to be lit ; and presently the king, who has been waiting at the door to see what will happen, perceives the sick folk rushing out one after another, protesting that they have been perfectly cured. How has the fellow operated upon them ? By a very simple device. He required the greatest of the sufferers present to submit to be calcined in the huge wood fire, because the powder of his bones would supply the medicine indispensable for the successful treatment of the rest. The king was so much pleased with the shrewdness of the peasant that he loaded him with presents and sent him home to his wife, against whom he never more lifted his hand. Here, then, we have the skeleton of one of our most delightful comedies; just as Shakespeare went to the old story-tellers to Bandello, Montemayor, Cinthio, and others for the plots of his dramas. Side by side with ' Le Vilain Mire ' may be placed the ' Vair Palefroi,' which is not less ingenious in its construc- tion, and owes its interest even more to the delicacy of its sentiment than to the lively fancy of the narrator. A young, courteous, brave, and good-looking knight, with a light purse and an excellent palefroi (anglice palfrey), lives near an old gentleman, who has a very beautiful daughter. Naturally, the two young people have ' met by chance, the usual way,' and have fallen in love with each other. Naturally also the young knight asks the old gentleman for his daughter's hand, but is politely shown the door on account of his straitened circumstances. The lovers are not going to be 24 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. discouraged by a rebuff of that kind. Eomeo has an uncle everybody in distress flies to an uncle and as he is that relative's sole heir, Juliet recommends that an application be made to him for assistance. The uncle promises to advance him something on account, and calls upon Juliet's father, who happens to be an old crony of his. Meanwhile the lover rides off to a tournament, and the uncle asks for and obtains the young lady's hand. It is for himself, how- ever; and preparations are made for the nuptials. The knight returns home from the tourney, full of hope, and does not receive the news of his uncle's treachery until some- body comes to ask him for the use of his handsome palefroi, whereon to conduct the bride from the residence of her father to the church. The unhappy lover, in spite of his grief, consents to the sacrifice, and the fair lady mounts the saddle. The cortege sets out before daybreak, and when it reaches a four-cross way in the forest, the horse, recognising a familiar track, sets off at full gallop, not checked, we may be sure, by his rider. It will be readily guessed whither his instinct conducted him. Arrived at the chateau of the knight, the young lady finds a chaplain there quite by acci- dent, of course who joins their hands in holy matrimony ; and when the two old folks come to claim the fugitive, they find it is too late, and nothing remains but to give their reluctant assent to a union consecrated by affection and religion. Let us add that this fabliau, so cleverly conceived and worked out, is naturally and gracefully related. It was written by Huon le Roy, who must not be confounded with the more celebrated Huon de Villeneuve ; the authorship of ' Le Vilain Mire,' however, as well as of ' St. Pierre et le Jongleur,' already referred to, is quite unknown. St. Peter, by the way, figures conspicuously in the fabliaux of the Middle Age. One of the best of the stories relating to him has a blacksmith for its hero. The Virgin Mary, in requital for some good deed he had performed, had promised him that whenever he sat himself down upon an old cap he wore, no power, human or divine, should remove him thence. After his death, on arriving at the gates of Paradise, he begged of the saint just to allow him one peep into the realms of bliss, and Peter good-naturedly opened the portals for a foot or so, and thereupon the blacksmith flung his it 'THE VILAIN WHO CONQUERED PARADISE' 25 smoke-blackened cap inside. ' At least you will allow me to step inside and pick it up, won't you ? ' said the black- smith in his most insinuating manner. St. Peter nodded assent, and the crafty blacksmith, gliding into Paradise, squatted down upon his cap, from whence neither saint nor angel could ever dislodge him. In many of these fabliaux we may detect, on the part of the writers, a deep undercurrent of sympathy with the poor and the oppressed ; and at that time the words were almost synonymous, for the peasants were serfs and chattels, and the nobles, who inhabited the 4,350 castles scattered over the surface of Prance, looked upon them as no better than so many beasts of burden, and inflicted on them far worse treatment. ' So many chatelains, so many tyrants,' said the old French proverb. But the poet, who witnessed the burdens of the people and the arrogance of their oppressors, often took care to let Jacques Bonhomme have the best of it in the next world, where his mother -wit stood him in excellent stead, as for example in the fabliau of ' The Vilain who con- quered Paradise by his pleadings.' It is a delightfully naive story, and illustrates the quaint spirit in which sacred sub- jects were dealt with by these mediaeval versifiers. It was this : A vilain died, without either angel or devil concerning himself about him ; but his soul, looking straight up to heaven, saw the Archangel Michael conducting one of the elect to Paradise, and followed him. St. Peter opened the gate to the new comer, but repelled the other spirit, swearing by St. Guilain that heaven was no place for such as he. ' Good, Sir Peter,' said the rejected soul, ' God made a great mistake when He chose you for an apostle, and afterwards for a door-keeper you who denied Him thrice. Stand aside, and let a more loyal man than you come in.' St. Peter, somewhat abashed, went to complain of the intruder to his col- league St. Thomas, who also tried to keep the intrusive stranger out. ' A deal you have to be proud of, Master Thomas,' said the vilain, ' when you wouldn't believe in God until you had felt His wounds.' The discomfited saint then fell back upon St. Paul, whose interference drew down upon him this rebuke : ' Was it not you, Don Paul the Bald, who stoned St. Stephen, and to whom the good God gave a stinging blow ? ' As neither Peter, Thomas, nor Paul could utter a word in reply, they carried the case to the judgment seat of the Most High, before whom the enfranchised serf justified himself by his pleadings, and was admitted into heaven. 26 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECI. There was nothing irreverent in these old fabliaux. They simply displayed what Mrs. Barrett Browning described as one of the characteristics of Chaucer namely, An infantine Familiar clasp of things divine. At the same time, the trouveres and jongleurs, and the jongleurs more particularly, were by no means saints. They were, by inclination and by natural frailty, fond of the good things of this life when they could get them light-minded, light-hearted, and light-spoken. Clement Marot claims for them that they were the best fellows in the world. One of them imagined and described the Utopia of gluttons, or, in other words, the Land of Cocagne ; a country in which every- body has a great appetite and can always find an abundance of succulent and savoury dishes. The realm itself is a pure invention of the trouveres ; and the word is said to be derived from coquina, which is identical with cuisine. In England it signified ' Lubber-land ; ' and the modern word Cockney, as applied to a native of London, means, accord- ing to certain etymologists, an inhabitant of the Land of Cocagne. And thus, as will be seen, these merry story-tellers, during the second half of the twelfth and the whole of the thirteenth centuries, amused themselves and their hearers at the same time. I must mention in passing the names of some of the ablest of the poets of that epoch. Thibault de Champagne, who was born in 1201, was protected by Philippe- Auguste, took part in one of the Crusades, returned safe and sound, cultivated letters, wrote poetry, and died in 1253. These few words summarise his life. He has been sometimes styled the first of the French poets, although upon this point the critics are not unanimous ; and it may be remembered that a similar title has been conferred on Charles d'0rl6ans, Alain Chartier, Villon, Clement Marot, Chrestien de Troyes, Eustache Deschamps, and Marie de France. Thibault de Champagne wrote chansons, tensons, sonnets, and reverdies ; the latter, as the name implies, were com- posed in honour of the spring and of the return of the flowers. Marot describes them as May-songs. But n KUTEBCEUF 27 Thibault's style and language are so antiquated that I should scarcely venture to quote one of his reverdies. You will find something very like them, only more modern, in Eobert Herrick's poems. One can hardly speak of Thibault as having written after the manner of the fabliaux, which were really a form of composition that nobody invented and everybody adopted ; and if I have introduced his name, it is in order not to omit him in the chronological order. Kuteboeuf, one of the continuators of the ' Eoman de Renard,' is one of the most daring and one of the ablest of the trouv&res who versified their stories. His works may be easily read, with a little practice, and are well worth con- sulting by any one interested in the language and literature of France. His life and his poems might serve me as types of those of very many of the trouv&res ; for the first oscillated between extravagance and penury, debauchery and privation, sometimes reciting his poems at bridals and other festivities in the castles of the nobility, and at other times declaiming them to gaping rustics at country fairs. He was a gambler and a spendthrift ; and while some of his compositions were remarkable for their elegance of expres- sion and the harmony of their versification, others were coarse and indecent to excess and were written down to the level of a boorish auditory. In one of his poems he writes : ' I am without a coat, without victuals, and without a bed. I am shivering with cold and gaping with hunger.' But this did not prevent him from marrying twice, and he thus describes his second wife : ' When I married her, she was as poor as Job; and odd to relate, I was as destitute as herself. She is neither comely nor pretty. She is meagre and wizened. She has fifty years on her shoulders, and is, therefore, not likely to play me false.' Euteboeuf seems to have died in indigence about the year 1286. Two of his best fabliaux were the ' Testament de 1'Ane ' and the 'Moine Sacristain.' Of the other trouv&res who were his compeers, it is only necessary to mention Gu6rin, Baudouin, Jean de Cond6, and Jean de Boyes. But I must not omit to allude to one versifier, named Hans Helinand, who was historio- grapher and also poet laureate to Philippe- Auguste, an office, it will be seen, which existed in the court of France more than two hundred years before it was introduced into 28 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. England. Helinand's duty was to amuse the king after dinner by reciting original narratives of love and warfare. Towards the close of his life he entered the monastery of Froidmont, belonging to the Cistercian order, and the only poem of his extant is entitled 'Vers sur la Mort.' It bristles with pungent sallies against the court of Borne, but has come down to us in an imperfect condition, and is very hard reading. If there were many starvelings, like Ruteboeuf, among the trouv&res, there were also some royalties Eichard Coeur de Lion (1157-1199) and Charles of Anjou (1220-1285) among the number ; both of whom left behind them poems which are stiU held in remembrance. Many princes and nobles also loved and cultivated the muse in France during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is only necessary for me to enumerate the most conspicuous -Pierre, Duke of Brittany, Jean de Brienne (1237), Guillaume de Ferrier, Vidame de Chartres, the Comte de Chalons, and Hugues de Lusignan (1361). Marie de France, as her name indicates, was born in that country, but the date and place of her birth are alike unknown. She went to England during the reign of Henry III., where she made a great reputation by her poems, which included a collection of 103 fables, under the title of ' Esopet,' numerous ' lays ' illustrating the legends of the Armorican cycle, which are masterpieces of poetical narra- tive ; and a romance of the marvellous in verse, entitled 'Le Purgatoire de St. Patrice.' Her French reached the highest point of perfection, as regards the old language, before it underwent the gradual modifications which resulted in the formation of our present tongue. I should like to quote one or two of her charming ' lays," but their diction, like that of Kutebceuf's poems, is of too antiquated a character to render it easily intelligible to modern readers. Many of the French kings, and more particularly the Charleses, were munificent patrons of letters. Thus Charles V., by his example and his liberality, encouraged the cultivation of ancient literature, and assisted in the formation of many able writers ; foremost among whom were Christine de Pisan, Jean Gerson, and Alain Chartier. When Andrelin recited his poem on the Sack of Naples ii CHEIST1NE DE PISAN 29 before Charles VIII., that monarch rewarded him with a sack so full of silver coin that he staggered under its weight as he carried it home. Charles IX. was more judicious in his bounty, because he used to say that poets resembled racehorses, and should be fed not fattened ; and Marot, of whom I shall speak hereafter, was called ' The poet of princes and the prince of poets.' Besides Christine de Pisan, Jean Gerson, and Alain Chartier, other writers were associated with himself by that enlightened monarch who laid the foundation of the Eoyal Library, and extended the privileges and jurisdiction of the University of Paris in his efforts towards the resto- ration of letters ; and this, too, at a time when France had been dismembered by the Treaty of Br6tigny, was crushed beneath the weight of an enormous debt ; and was convulsed by civil war. His son's tutor, Nicholas Oresme, whom he created Bishop of Lisieux, was at once an eminent statesman, a learned divine, a distinguished economist, a good geometrician, and an accomplished scholar, whose ' Trait6 des Monnaies ' was the means of placing the French currency on a sound basis, and who gave us a masterly translation of the ' Ethics ' and ' Politics ' of Aristotle. He it was who enriched the French language with a number of new words, such as actif, action, aristo- cratie, barbare, contemplation, demagogue, democratie, despote, lieros, economie, ilUgal, incontinent, Ugislateur, legislation, melodie, harmonie, and many others. Philippe de Maizieres, whom ' Charles the Wise ' appointed governor to the Dauphin, was the author of the ' Songe du Viel Pelerin,' which is, in reality, a complete treatise on morality ; while the ' Songe du Vergier,' sometimes attributed to him, but probably written by Eaoul de Presle, a great work of jurisprudence, written in the form of a dream, is one of the most remark- able productions of the period, and powerfully vindicates the privileges and prerogatives of the French crown as against the pretensions of the Eoman Curia. Christine de Pisan, daughter of Thomas Pisan, astro- loger to Charles V., was taken to the court of France by her father in 1368. After receiving a good and solid educa- tion she was married at an early age to a gentleman of Picardy, who left her a widow with three children when 30 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. only twenty-five ; and it was then that she began to write. One of her children was adopted by the Earl of Salisbury and taken to England. Two portraits of her are still extant : one in the National Library in Paris, and the other in the British Museum. She wrote some pretty ballads and other poems, much in the diction of Alain Chartier ; and the esti- mation in which the former were held may be judged of by the fact that Jean, Due de Berry, gave her 200 golden crowns for the manuscript of them. Her ' Pucelle ' and her ' Hundred Tales of Troy ' were the most important of her poetical works, as her ' Life of Charles V.' was certainly her best prose production. That monarch had been her protector and friend, and on his death she was persuaded by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, to pre- pare his biography ; and she executed the task so conscien- tiously and well that, as M. Geruzez has observed, she ' ennobled the profession of letters.' A later writer, Martin le Franc, declared that she rivalled Cicero in elegance and Cato in wisdom ; while Clement Marot thus summarises her merits : D'avoir le prix en science et doctrine Bien merita de Pisan la Christine. Although it would be impossible to replace Christine de Pisan on the high pedestal raised for her by her contem- poraries, which she retained until the sixteenth century, yet she does not deserve the oblivion into which she has fallen. More of a scholar than a poet, she nevertheless stood out from among the singers of her time by reason of the intense spirit of patriotism which breathed through her writings ; and a letter which she addressed to Isabeau of Bavaria, on behalf of her beloved France, palpitates with pathetic emotion, and with a deep womanly sympathy for the afflicted widows and the famishing orphans upon whom civil discord inflicted such severe and undeserved sufferings. Jean Chartier, commonly called Gerson after his native village, was originally a farmer's son, and rose to be Chancel- lor of the University and Church of Paris. He was a mystic in religion, and a Neo-Platonist in philosophy. Whether he wrote the famous ' Imitation de Jesus-Christ,' or whether it was the work of Thomas & Kempis, is still a moot-point. On the whole the balance of evidence seems to incline in n ALAIN CHARTIER 31 favour of Kempis. It was largely owing to his influence that the Council of Pisa, in 1409, deposed the rival Popes, and seated Alexander V. in St. Peter's chair. It was reserved for himself and for Christine de Pisan, towards the close of their lives, to witness that glorious outburst of religious and patriotic inspiration, in the person of Jeanne d' Arc, to which Prance was destined to owe her emancipation from the yoke of the stranger ; and both rendered homage to her simple piety, her lofty devotion, and the purity and nobility of her character. Christine, who only beheld her first successes, never doubted and confidently predicted her ultimate triumph. Alain Chartier (1386-1458) was secretary to Charles VI. and Charles VII. successively. His numerous works exist for the most part in manuscript only, and are so voluminous that it would consume a little fortune to print and publish them, and a lifetime to read them when published. He was said to be the ugliest man in France, which did not prevent Marguerite of Scotland, the first wife of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI., from kissing him in the presence of the ladies of her Court as he lay asleep ; observ- ing, as she did so : ' It is not the man I have kissed, but the mouth from whence have issued so many golden words, both gay and grave.' His poetical works have not been reprinted since 1617, and comprise ' Le D6bat du Eeveil-matin,' ' La Belle-Dame sans Merci,' ' Le Bre'viaire des Nobles,' and ' Le Livre des Quatre Dames.' The latter was composed shortly after the disaster of Azincourt, in which one of the ladies has lost her lover, whose death she bitterly bewails, and whose character she extols ; the second has heard that her lover has been taken prisoner ; the third knows nothing of the fate of hers ; and the fourth claims to be the most wretched of the group, because her lover has proved to be a coward, and has basely fled from the field of battle ; so that she would a hundred times rather he had died than live thus dishonoured. The poem affords Chartier an oppor- tunity of expressing his own patriotic grief at the reverse which his country has just sustained, and I cannot resist the pleasure of quoting some passages from this his best work. Here is a description of the place in which the four ladies assembled : 32 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. Tout autour oiseaulx voletoient, Et si tres-doucement chantoient Qu'il n'est cuer [coeurj qui n'en fast joyeux : Et en chantant en 1'air montoient, Et puis 1'un 1'autre surmontoient A 1'estriv^e, a qui mieulx mieulx. De bleu estoient vestus les cieux Et le beau soleil cler luisoit ; Violettes croissoient par lieux Et tout faisoit ses devoirs, tieux Comme nature le duisoit. "With all our earliest poets the springtime, love, joy, grief, and old age, were the themes they preferred; and when they had exhausted these fundamental topics they condescended to give us some good advice, as Alain Chartier did in a ballad with the refrain ' You had nought of these when you were born.' Here is a sample : Or fols de fols, et les fols mortels hommes Qui vous fiez tant ez biens de fortune, En celle terre et pays ou nous sommes, Y avez-vous de chose propre aucune ? Vous n'y avez chose vostre nesune, Fors les beaux dons de grace et de nature. Si fortune done, par cas d'aventure, Vous toult les biens que vostre vous tenez, Tort ne vous fait, ain9ois vous fait droiture ; Car vous n'aviez rien quand vous fates ne. This ballad, which is an exceedingly lengthy one, concludes with an excellent moral : Si fortune vous fait aucune injure, C'est de son droit, ja ne Ten reprenez, Perdissiez-vous jusques a la vesture ; Car vous n'aviez rien quand vous fates n&. Of course the philosophy of the poem is as old as the days of Job : ' We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.' I have only spoken of Alain Chartier as a poet, and something remains to be said of him as a prose writer, and more particularly of his ' Quadriloge Invectif.' It is really a splendid appeal on behalf of national unity to the whole people of France, during a temporary period of national eclipse. The interlocutors are France, the People, Gentry, n EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS 38 and Clergy. Cruelly tortured by civil war, and dismembered by foreign invasion, France was passing through the same throes in 1415 which she underwent in 1871, and the voice of Alain Chartier seemed to anticipate that of Gambetta at the later period. ' Awake ! Arise ! Combine ! Prance is not lost ; her resources are not exhausted ; her people, though defeated, are not dismayed. Trample faction under foot; let all classes clasp hands ; and the nation shall arise greater than ever.' This was the burden of Chartier's -message to his countrymen, and it was worthy of his great and noble heart ; worthy of one of the best rhetoricians, moralists, orators, poets, and philosophers, and one of the truest patriots of his time. His literary style, like that of Christine de Pisan, was characterised by a certain stately gravity and by a dignified movement, altogether unknown to the writers who pre- ceded him. Both of them resembled the first pallid rays of the dawn which heralded the approach of the classic renaissance in France. I have now to speak of Eustache Morel, or Deschamps, a name which he took from a country house near Orleans, in which he spent the latter years of his life. His was an adventurous and remarkable career. He had travelled much in Europe, Asia, and Africa ; had been taken prisoner, like Cervantes, by the Moors, by whom he was treated as a slave ; and he escaped from captivity in time to take part in the war against the English, in the course of which the defence of two important places was entrusted to him. Writing somewhat earlier than Froissart and Charles d'Orleans, he may be regarded as the precursor of the latter poet. Deschamps' original manuscripts, containing 1,175 bal-' lads, 171 rondeaux, 80 virelays, 14 lays, and 28 farces and ' Complaints,' remained undisturbed in the National Library, Paris, until the year 1832, when they were dis- covered by M. Crapelet, who then published a selection from the works of this poet of the fourteenth century. It may be said of Eustache Deschamps that he was the creator of the ballad, which he handled with a grace and a finesse equal to those of Clement Marot, who wrote two D 34 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. centuries later. We may also attribute to him the invention of the drinking-song, a kind of composition eminently French, afterwards perfected by Oliver Basselin, the jolly fuller of Vire, in Normandy, to whom we owe the ' Vau-de- Vire,' from whence, it is said, the word Vaudeville was derived. Deschamps, who was ruined by the ravages of the English, wrote bitterly against what he called ce peuple maudit ; and his indignation found vent in many poems, and notably in one entitled ' Ballad of the Prophecy of Merlin on the Destruction of England.' Worse than all perhaps, he made an unhappy marriage, which caused him not only to rail against all womankind, but to stigmatise the institution itself as ' a trap and a fraud/ in his ' Mirror of Marriage.' His poems in general are precious monuments for the antiquary and the historian, reflecting, as they do, the manners and customs of our ancestors. Their pastimes, their sports, tourneys, festivals, weapons, diet, household utensils, furniture, and fashions, are all described with artistic fidelity ; and thus you may perceive that Eustache Deschamps is well worthy of mention. I greatly regret, indeed, that the space at my disposal compels me to deal so briefly with a poet who seems to have been the precursor of the contemporary school of realists in literature, both in France and in Great Britain. And now there rises before me the jovial figure of that portly Oliver Basselin, the remains of whose fulling-mill still bear his name, although four hundred years have elapsed since he used to ' set the table in a roar ' with his merry and convivial songs. He had been a soldier, had seen some travel, knew Latin, and was, it must be confessed, too much addicted to good cheer. Perhaps he found in the exhilara- tion of the cider cup forgetfulness of the disaster which overtook him when his mill became a heap of ruins at the siege of Vire. His songs are distinguished by their verve, buoyancy, and gaiety; and after passing from mouth to mouth for upwards of half a century, they were first collected and printed in 1610 by Jean Le Houx, a song- writer like himself. In reading the following one wonders whether Shake- speare knew anything of Basselin, and if so, whether he remembered these lines when he put into the mouth of ii BASSELIN DE VIRE 35 Falstaff his delightful description of the jewelled wealth and luminosity of Bardolph's nose : Bean nez ! dont les rubis ont cousttS mainte pipe De vin blanc et clairet Et duquel la couleur richement participe Du rouge et violet. Gros nez I qui te regarde a travers un grand verre Te juge encore plus beau : Tu ne ressembles point au nez de quelque here Qui ne boit que de 1'eau. Un coq d'Inde sa gorge a toi semblable porte : Combien de riches gens N'ont pas si riche nez ! Pour te peindre en la sorte II faut beaucoup de temps. Basselin, the putative father of the Vaudeville, wrote sixty-two drinking songs ; and in the three stanzas subjoined, written at the time the English were besieging Vire, in 1417, the poet shows us that his heart was in the wine-cellars of his native town : Tout alentour de nos remparts Les enneruis sont en furie ; Sauves nos tonneaux, je vous prie ! Prenes plustost de nous, souldars, Tout ce dont vous aurez envie, Sauves nos tonneaux, je vous prie ! Nous pourrons apres, en buvant, Chasser notre merencolie ; Sauves nos tonneaux, je vous prie ! L'ennemi qui est cy-devant Ne vous veult faire courtoisie, Vuidons nos tonneaux, je vous prie ! Au moins, s'il prend notre cite, Qu'il n'y trouve plus que la lie : Vuidons nos tonneaux, je vous prie ! Deussions-nous marcher de coste, Ce bon sildre n'espargnons mie, Vuidons nos tonneaux, je vous prie ! Before quitting Basselin I cannot refrain from quoting a pleasantry with which his name is associated. Sacred history relates how a curse was pronounced upon the human race on account of Adam having eaten that tempting apple. If he had shown a preference for drinking, our author thinks o2 36 LECTUKES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. the course of mundane affairs might have been very different. At any rate, this is how the poet puts it : Adam the fact is too well known Would not have caused us so to rue 't If he, for liquor over fruit, An early preference had shown. I must depart for a moment from the chronological order of my lecture to speak of Jean Le Houx, who was also a native of Vire, where he died in 1616. The mantle of Basselin fell upon his shoulders, and the examples of the songs of both writers, given by Mr. Walter Besant, are excellent, full of gaiety and good feeling, untainted by immorality, and so cheerful and jocund in sentiment that it is a pleasure to read them. There are few modern jocularities on the subject which may not be traced back to the songs of these two topers, the later of whom was a lawyer of more than ordinary ability and in very good practice ; but he often penned a stanza when he should have been pleading a cause. For some time the name of Clotilde de Surville figured among the poetesses of the fifteenth century, until the publication of her alleged works by Vanderbourg in 1803 aroused suspicion as to their authenticity. Nodier and Villemain, among others, detected their modernity, and the artificiality of their antique language ; while others, and notably Mr. Ainger, Mr. Besant, and M. Mac6, contended that they were early poems which had been retouched by a modern hand. Hallam, one of the most judicious of critics, treats the poems as forgeries, ' by no means so gross as that of Chatterton ; ' and adopting a vein of gentle sarcasm, speaks of them and of their imaginary author thus : ' The muse of the Ardeche warbled her notes during a longer life than the monk of Bristow (Thomas Eowley), and having sung the relief of Orleans by the hand of Arc in 1429, lived to pour her swan-like chant on the battle of Fornova in 1495. Love, however, as much as war, is her theme ; and it was a remarkable felicity that she rendered an ode of her prototype Sappho into French verse many years before any one else in France could have seen it.' Then, again, Clotilde de Surville undertakes a refutation of a fragment ii CLOTILDE DE SURVILLE 37 of the ' De Eerum Natura ' by Lucretius, which was not discovered until long after her death. Her poems abound in other anachronisms, and there can be very little doubt, I think, that Clo tilde de Surville was just as mythical a personage as the Mrs. Harris of ' Martin Chuzzlewit ; ' and that, as Sainte-Beuve contends, the poems which have been published under her name were the work of the Marquis de Surville, from whom Vanderbourg received them. As a work of fiction the story of her life is a very pretty one, and it is a pity it should have been invalidated by the application to it of a rigorous criticism. Born at the chateau of Vallon in 1405, she is said to have written exquisite poetry at the age of twelve ; to have been married at sixteen to a husband whom she adored ; and to have gone on composing verses until she was past the age of ninety. ' Une H6roi'de ' in honour of her husband ; ' Songs of Love,' for the four seasons ; a sketch of a poem entitled ' Nature and the Uni- verse ; ' the ' Phelyp6ide,' which is only a fragment ; and the ' Trois Plaids d'Or,' an adaptation of one of Voltaire's stories. One of the compositions which bear her name is so feminine in tenderness of feeling and beauty of expression, that it is difficult to believe it was written by a man. All women, and all mothers more especially, will appreciate the beauty and the charm of the following ' Verselets to my Firstborn,' notwithstanding it is a palpable imitation of Berquin's romance, ' Dors, cher enfant, clos ta paupiere : ' O cher enfantelet, vrai portrait de ton pere, Dors sur le sein que ta bouche a presse ! Dors, petit ; clos, ami, sur le sein de ta mere, Ton doux ceillet par le somme oppresse. Bel ami, cher petit, que ta pupille tendre Goute un sommeil qui plus n'est fait pour moi I Je veille pour te voir, te nourrir, te defendre . . . Ainsi qu'U m'est doux ne veiller que pour toi. Dors, mon enfantelet, mon souci, mon idole ! Dors sur mon sein, le sein qui t'a porte 1 Ne m'esjouit encore le son de ta parole, Bien ton souris cent fois m'aye enchant^. Etend ses bracelets ; s'e'pand sur lui le somme ; Se clost son osil : plus ne bouge. ... II s'endort. . . . N'e'tait ce teint fleuri des couleurs de la pomme, Ne le diriez dans les bras de la mort ? 38 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. n Arrete. . . . Cher enfant. . . . J'en fremis tout entiere ! Reveille-toi ! Chasse un fatal propos ! Mon fils 1 pour un moment, . . . Ah 1 revois la lumiere ! Au prix du ton rends-moi tout mon repos. . . . Douce erreur ! il dormait. . . . c'est assez : je respire. Songes legers, flattez son doux sommeil : Ah ! quand verrai celui pour qui mon cceur soupire, A mes e6te"s, jouir de son reveil ! Je parle et ne m'entends ... eh ! que dis-je ? . . . insense'e ! Plus n'oiroit-il qu'en fut moult eVeille, Pauvre cher enfan9on ! . . . Cher fils, de ta pense'e L'e"chevelet n'est encore debrouille'. Tretous avons e"te, comme es toi, dans cette heure : Triste raison que trop tot n'adviendra 1 En la paix dont jouis, s'est possible, ah 1 demeure ! A tes beaux jours meme il en souviendra. O cher enfantelet, vrai portrait de ton pere, Dors sur le sein que ta bouche a pressl 1 Dors, petit ; clos, ami, sur le sein de ta mere, Ton doux oeillet par le somme oppresse. By whomsoever written, this is surely admirable in sentiment and diction. The picture of the happy mother bending over her little one, with such anxious affection that even when the child is sleeping she is alarmed by the resemblance which slumber presents to death, and would fain awaken him in order to be convinced he lives, is as beautiful in its way, I think, as some of those divine images of maternal love which Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Gian Bellini, and Del Sarto portrayed upon their canvases for the admi- ration and delight of after generations. For delicacy of detail, natural truth, simplicity, and grace, this Madonna and Child of the French nursery is not far from perfect ; and when we arrive at the study of the poets of the eighteenth century, and observe the analogies between the methods of expression adopted by Andre Chenier and Berquin, for example, we shall find how faithfully the Marquis de Surville copied the admirable models which they presented for his imitation. Meanwhile, the imaginary Clotilde de Surville has, to quote the words of Hallam, ' fallen into the numerous ranks of the dead who never were alive.' LECTUKE III Villehardouin (1160-1213) Joinville (1223-1319) Froiseart (1333- 1410) Monstrelet (1390-1453). HAVING, in the first two lectures, examined the works of the earlier French poets exclusively, I devote the present one to the study of prose, which is a later formation than poetry, and of which we may watch the development in our four chroniclers Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, and Monstrelet, whom I have grouped together for the purpose of exhibiting the differences of their respective styles and language, deferring, for the moment, the further considera- tion of the other branch of French literature. The first of the chroniclers is Villehardouin (1160-1213), Marshal of Cham- pagne, who has left us a narrative of the Fifth Crusade, of which he was the actual promoter. His work marks the transition from the epic poem to history ; his account of the conquest of Constantinople appearing to constitute, by the grandeur of its subject, and the rude and warlike manners of the personages who figure in it, a sequel to those chansons de geste which sang the exploits of Charlemagne. The merit of the French historian is that he identifies himself so thoroughly with this theme that it is impossible' to separate the one from the other. Villehardouin is not only the chronicler, but the most solid hero of the exploits he relates, in which he successfully doubles the parts of soldier and negotiator. The Fifth Crusade (1202-1204), of which he is the narrator, is an historical and not a literary subject. It is written, as Demogeot has said, in a style that is both grave and concise. There is a certain military stiffness about it, which is characteristic both of the man and of the infancy of the language. The phrases are short and sharp, quick in movement, and little varied. They have 40 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. something of the brusque and angular carriage of the soldier. The worthy Marshal has few formulas at his command. He is always inviting us to hear one of the greatest of wonders, and to behold the miracle of our Lord. The fleet or city he describes is uniformly the finest that has ever been seen since the world began. An historical monument of this kind gives one a perfect idea of feudal society, of that organised anarchy which was held together only by community of religious faith. The work of Geoffroy de Villehardouin is simply the faithful reflection of passing events. It accompanies them step by step without ever co-ordinating them. It is not yet a modern history, but it is already more than a monkish chronicle. Villehardouin is, according to Henry Martin, the first French warrior who has written an historical work, and his history is the oldest we possess in French prose. With it begins the long series of our historical memoirs, one of the most original and most national branches of our literature. Villehardouin was, as I have said, the actual promoter of the Fifth Crusade. Sent, in the first instance, to Venice, to obtain vessels, it was he who addressed the Doge in the Basilica of St. Mark, and who concluded the treaty between the Eepublic and the Crusaders. Here is the text of his speech : ' Signori, The most high and mighty barons of France have sent us to you. They appeal to your mercy. They implore you to take pity on Jerusalem now in bondage to the Turks, and that God may move you to accompany them in order to avenge the shame done to Jesus Christ. They have made choice of you, because they know of none so powerful on the sea as you are. We have been com- manded to throw ourselves at your feet, and not to arise until you shall have granted our petition, and taken pity on the Holy Land beyond the sea.' On his return into Champagne Villehardouin learned the death of his Seigneur, Thibault, who was to have taken command of the crusade. The expedition was dissolved, but he was resolutely determined to find a chief for it. His choice fell upon the Marquis de Montferrat, who was accepted, and sent forward on the way to Venice, Louis, Comte de Blois, one of the most powerful leaders engaged ni VILLEHARDOUIN 41 in the crusade, who wished to reach Palestine by another route. In the month of October 1202 all was ready for the departure. The Marquis de Montferrat had been nominated commander-in -chief of the army by the French barons, and it only remained to designate the admiral of the fleet. Prayers having been offered up for the success of the expedition and here I follow Daru the Doge ascended the pulpit of St. Mark's and entreated the Eepublic to permit him to assume the cross, declaring that he was ready to place himself at the head of the Venetian army, and to accompany the crusaders, not only to Zara, but whithersoever their zeal might lead them, thankful if his already long life should come to a close in fighting for the deliverance of the Saviour's tomb. Such a resolution on the part of an old man, ninety-four years of age, who pre- served all the energy of his maturity, could not fail to excite a mingled feeling of admiration and tenderness. He descended from the tribune amidst the acclamations of the crowd, knelt before the high altar, and placed the cross upon his ducal cap. His son, Een6 Dandolo, was appointed his deputy during his absence. Picture the brilliant and impressive scene which pre- sented itself in the Basilica of St. Mark on a beautiful autumnal Sunday in the month of October 1202, as the venerable Doge, lifting up his voice in the pulpit of that Byzantine Cathedral, addressed an immense assemblage of men gathered together from all parts of Europe and ex- claimed : ' I am a very old man, my health is tottering, and I have greater need of rest than glory ; nevertheless, if it be your good pleasure that I should take up the cross to watch over and direct you, leaving my son as the protector of our country, I will accompany you with all my heart, and will live and die with you and the pilgrims.' Then the Venetians, with one accord, lifting their eyes towards heaven, cried out with a loud voice, ' In the name of God, we adjure you to come with us.' Then the Doge, descending the pulpit stairs, while a ray of sunshine fell like a golden aureole upon the head of Christ in the rood-loft, knelt down, his face moistened with tears of joy, and adopted the symbol of the crusaders, while all hearts were touched by the solemnity of this imposing spectacle. 42 LECTUKES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. Then from the five porches of the holy edifice, and beneath the resplendent frescoes of the Oriental fagade, poured forth into the great Piazza, even then ennobled by the rare beauty of its architecture, five cataracts of human beings, brilliant in the many-coloured costumes of the period, and resembling so many torrents of glittering jewels ; while the sun flashed on blazoned shields, on finely chiselled helmets adorned with precious stones, upon embroidered surcoats, and upon armour and weapons of polished steel, while the most beautiful daughters of Venice lent the charm of then* loveliness to the imposing grandeur of the dazzling ceremonial; and high above that thronging multitude floated from the summit of the cathedral the glorious gon- falon of Venice, with the winged lion of St. Mark's em- blazoned on its folds. And there, at the end of the Piazzetta, and along the Molo to the island of San Nicolo, and stretch- ing away to the Lagunes, were to be seen the five hundred vessels prepared for the transport of the crusaders to the Holy Land, the national ensigns of the warriors of the Cross fluttering in the wind from their ornamental turrets, with the great galley ' II Hondo ' towering above them all. Villehardouin might well exclaim in a transport of admira- tion, ' Par Dieu, it was the finest spectacle the eye of man ever looked upon.' I pass over the siege and capture of Zara by the cru- saders for the benefit of the Eepublic of Venice, and hurry on to the end of June 1203, when the expedition assembled before Abydos, at the entry of the Dardanelles. The 500 vessels sailed through the straits and blackened the waters of the Hellespont. Then, with flags flying, they approached so closely to the walls of Constantinople that many of the ships received and returned flights of arrows and of other missiles. On beholding that superb city, with its domes and palaces, its high walls, the four hundred towers which flanked them, and the masses of people by which they were covered, Ville- hardouin cries out, ' There was no heart, however stout and bold, which did not tremble, and not without cause, inasmuch as, since the creation of the world, never had so great an enterprise been undertaken by so small a number of people ; and each one cast his eyes upon the army.' in VILLEHABDOUIN 43 The flotilla of the crusaders was composed of fifty galleys, 250 transports carrying troops, seventy laden with provisions and munitions of war, and 120 palandries, with from 4,000 to 5,000 horses on board. We know what that small force of about 40,000 men accomplished, and' what were the principal achievements of that epical enterprise : the re- establishment of Isaac the Angel, the quarrels of the cru- saders with young Alexis, the usurpation and dethronement of Murzuphle, the occupation and pillage of Constantinople in 1204, the installation of Baldwin as Emperor, the combats which had to be sustained with the Greeks and Bulgarians, until the day of Adrianople, when he was made prisoner ; the Eegency and the first two years of the reign of Henry, Baldwin's brother, and the death of the Marquis of Mont- ferrat in 1207. Henry Martin gives us a magnificent description, after Villehardouin, of the capture of Constanti- nople by that handful of foreigners, whom the cowardly populace of the city might have annihilated, if only by raining down upon their heads the paving-stones of their terraces, but who laid down their arms and surrendered the capital of the Empire to pillage. The Eome of the East was treated by the men-at-arms of France and Italy just as the Western Eome had been by the hordes of Goths and Vandals. The victors and the vanquished had equal reason to feel ashamed and disgraced. The rapacity of the former in- spires no less indignation than the poltroonery of the latter. The knightly crusaders of France and Italy displayed a brutality worthy of the followers of Genseric or of Attila. They destroyed numberless masterpieces of ancient art gathered together in the city of Constantino. The marbles of Pentelicus were hewn to pieces by axes and hatchets ; statues of bronze were broken up and converted into money, and the taking of Constantinople by the Latins was one of the most fatal events in the history of art ; for, as our military chronicler observes in his customary phra- seology, 'never since the world was created was there so much booty obtained in any one city.' Villehardouin is perhaps the most substantial hero of that epic the work of his own persistent firmness, and where he played the part, by turns, in decisive moments, and with a success of which he is less boastful than the 44 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. heroes of Homer, of a diplomatist and of a captain. His memoirs are brought to a close with the death of the Mar- quis of Montferrat in 1207. It may be said that the old Gallic orthography alone disappears in the language written by Villehardouin. On the other hand, the order and suc- cession of his facts, and the naturalness of his narrative, could scarcely be changed, even to perfect them, without injury to the recital. But one must not look to find in Villehardouin any more depth of thought than literary art. Although entrusted on various occasions with delicate mes- sages with respect to personages who were by no means gifted with his chivalrous loyalty, it does not appear that his penetration ever went beyond that instinct of the heroic ages, in which everything was the result of the first impulse rather than of calculation, and when men could not com- prehend the passions which betrayed them. What one must look for, therefore, in the narratives of Villehardouin is the frankness of the knight and the simplicity of the Christian. His is the sincerity of an analyst who only speaks of what he has seen, and who gives his authorities when he recounts only what he has heard. His morality is the will of God, who punishes sins by reverses, and who bestows success upon all those whom He deigns to assist. A practical mind going straight to his aim, Villehardouin, if he has not the depth of vision which we should demand from the historian of a more advanced condition of society, has no more illusions than it should surprise us to find in an historian of his own epoch. It has been said that Villehardouin is for history what Theroulde is for the epic ; for the conquest of Constantinople, like the ' Chanson de Eoland,' is the sketch of a master. Between Villehardouin and Joinville, of whose chronicles I am about to offer a summary analysis, an entire century intervenes. More personal than his predecessor, he is at the same time the admirer of a magnificent and royal hero. He writes, moreover, in a language more cultivated and in a style more modern than that of Villehardouin. The grandeur of the events and of the men, and the relative delicacy of the manners of his epoch, have impressed on him a particular character. Villehardouin represents certain qualities of the French mind ; Joinville certain others ; and m JOINVILLE 46 it may be said of both that they mark two epochs of the same language. Joinville is the inventor of that kind of historical writing which is peculiarly French, and is known as ' Memoirs.' Born towards 1223, he died about 1319. He was the con- temporary and historian of Louis IX. (1226-1270) and of Innocent III., who was Pope from 1198 to 1216. Joinville brings to a worthy close the chivalrous period of the Middle Ages, the virtues of which he purified and softened; St. Louis and his historian aptly typifying the warlike and religious heroism of the feudal king and the loyalty of the faithful vassal. Up to the time of his accompanying St. Louis in the first crusade, we know nothing of the life of Joinville. He seems to have succeeded his father, about the year 1240, as Seneschal of Champagne, and he himself tells us that at a grand court held by Louis IX. at Saumur he carved ; that is to say, he was gentleman carver to the king. Some days before his departure for the crusade, a son was born to him, and from Easter Monday to the following Friday f6tes were given at the Chateau de Join- ville in honour of the new comer. Nor was it until that Friday that he spoke of his departure. He told those who were there that, as he did not wish to carry away a single coin that did not belong to him, if there was any one present to whom he had done wrong, he was prepared to offer him reparation. Some days afterwards he made confession, assumed the scrip and staff of a pilgrim, performed a pil- grimage barefooted to the neighbouring churches, and when he retraced his steps to the Chateau de Joinville, in which he had left his wife and children, he said, ' I will not turn my eyes towards Joinville, because my heart would melt at the sight of the fair home in which I leave my two children.' That paternal tenderness, that regret for the fair home, savouring rather of the man of peace than of the warrior, are delicate sentiments which we must not look for in the Memoirs, nor under the iron breastplate which covered the heart of Villehardouin. And it is by no means astonishing that the same man who turned his eyes away from the abode of his little ones, for fear of being overcome, embarked with- out enthusiasm, and recalled to mind how he suffered from sea-sickness as he crossed the Mediterranean. Joinville 46 LECTURES ON FEENCH LITERATURE LBOT. thought more of the land he had quitted than of that which he was going to conquer. 1 In a short time,' he writes, ' the wind filled our sail, and we lost sight of the shore, so that we saw nothing more than sea and sky ; and every day took us farther and farther from the land of our birth. . . . And I relate these things, because such a one is very rash and foolish who dares to confront a like peril with the wellbeing of others or with a mortal sin upon his conscience ; for when you fall asleep in the evening there, you know not whether you may not be found at the bottom of the sea on the morrow.' Quoting this passage from Joinville, who shrank from looking back on the familiar scenes he had quitted, Chateau- briand in his ' Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem,' where he professes to go as a pilgrim also, and as the last of the Crusaders, whereas he only proceeds thither as the first of the tourists to quote the words of Sainte-Beuve has said : 'In quitting my country even, on July 13, 1806, I was not afraid to turn my head, like the Seneschal of Champagne, because, almost a stranger in my own land, I forsook neither castle nor cottage.' ' The illustrious author,' adds Sainte-Beuve, ' touches me less than he wishes to do by his reasonings. It is very true that to possess a chateau or a simple residence disposes one to weep at parting, but even if possessing nothing on one's native soil, there are places, the sight of which touches and penetrates one at the moment of separation when our last look rests upon them. Both these departures suggest to the critic the recollection of a third, described in the First Canto of " Childe Harold : " The sails were filled, and fair the light winds blew, As glad to waft him from his native home ; And fast the white rocks faded from his view, And soon were lost in circumambient foam ; And then, it may be, of his wish to roam Bepented he, but in his bosom slept The silent thought, nor from his lips did come One word of wail, while others sat and wept, And to the reckless gales unmanly moaning kept. ' This is altogether the opposite of Joinville ; for if a tear is ready to start, pride dries it up upon the instant. Byron surpasses Chateaubriand. He feels the passion of travel, the ironical gaiety of departure. He utters a cry of wild joy in severing himself from his native land, and boasts that he leaves nothing to regret. But he is presently brought back to natural emotion by the sight of his page and his yeoman, who offer a contrast to his own insensibility, and we are thus made to perceive that he is by no means a stranger to tears himself. He shows the boy and man weeping like ordinary mortals, the one for his father and mother, and the other for his wife and children. In a word, he exhibits all the art and all the HI JOINVILLE 47 refinement of a great poet who is blase. He enjoys the pleasure of having two Joinvilles by his side, while playing the Chateau- briand at his leisure ; and with an excess of verve and rapture, his egotism is assisted by two sensibilities.' Marvellous incidents succeed each other on the way, and we at length arrive at Cyprus, the port of rendezvous. All the vicissitudes of the voyage are recounted by Joinville, with that credulous, fertile, and ignorant imagination which Villemain has so well denned. ' For Joinville, all is new, all is extraordinary. Cairo is Babylon, the Nile a river which arises in Paradise. He has his own private notions about many things ; but as to actual facts, one does not know where to find so naif a witness. One might say that the objects had been born into the world the day he saw them.' St. Louis and his army set sail from Cyprus on Saturday, May 24, 1249. ' It was a fair sight to see,' writes Joinville, ' for it seemed as if the whole sea, as far as the eye could behold, was covered with the canvas sails of the vessels, which were reckoned to number 1,800 both great and small.' The arrival and disembarkation in sight of the enemy is related by Joinville. On Thursday after Pentecost the king reached Damietta, and found the entire army of the Sultan on the shore ; a goodly host to look upon ; for the Sultan's panoply was of gold, and the sun shining on it made it quite resplendent. ' The din which they raised with their cymbals and their Saracenic horns was terrible to listen to.' We have still the proclamation which St. Louis addressed to his barons before disembarking, and it ran thus : ' My faithful friends, we shall be insurmountable so long as we remain united in charity. It is only by permission of God that we have arrived here so promptly. It is not I who am King of France, nor am I the Holy Church. I am but a single man whose life will pass away like that of any other man when it shall please God. All things are possible to us. If we are conquered, we shall rise to heaven in the quality of martyrs ; and if we are victorious, we will proclaim aloud the glory of the Lord, and that of all France, or rather of all Christendom, will be aggrandised. God who fore- seeth everything has not upheld me in vain. It must be that He has some great design in view. Let us fight for Jesus Christ, and He will triumph in us ; and to Hun, and not to ourselves, will we ascribe the glory, the honour, and the benediction.' On disembarking, lighter craft were employed, and there 48 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. was an emulation as to who should be the first to spring to land. But he who nobly outstripped the rest was the Comte de Jaffa ; ' for his galley,' writes Joinville, ' was painted inside and out with his coat of arms a red cross on a field of gold. He had quite three hundred rowers in his galley, and to the right of each was a shield blazoned with his arms, and above each shield a small pennon, with the same blazon in raised gold. As it drew near the land, it seemed as if the galley flew beneath the arms of the rowers, who lifted it up by the power of their oars ; and it seemed as if a thunder- bolt fell from the heavens ; such was the sound occasioned by the pennons as well as the cymbals, drums, and horns of the Saracens within.' The debarkation of the king is thus described by the historian : ' He sprang into the sea, and the water rose up to his armpits, his shield about his neck, his helm upon his head, his gauntlets upon his hands, and he was one of the first to reach the land. No movement,' as Sainte-Beuve observes, ' could be more prompt or better rendered ; it is vivacity itself. Froissart, the literary histo- rian of chivalry, will amuse us one day by describing the shock of arms, the luxury of colours, the dazzling glitter of the casques and halberts in front of the battalions. With Joinville it is not yet a sport nor an art, it is only the natural and rapid flash of the memory, the preserved reflection of that hour of joyousness and sunshine, when one is young, brilliant, and victorious. We have not to follow the history of that crusade of St. Louis, but only to indicate the facts which characterise the naif historian of that century. Damietta was taken almost without striking a blow ; and the burning of the bazaar caused Joinville to make the following naive comparison : " And thus it happened just as if some one were to set fire to-morrow which God forbid ! to the Little Bridge in Paris." ' The description which Joinville gives us of the Nile is remarkable at once for some faithful strokes and for a mix- ture of ignorance and credulity, ' It is expedient in the first place,' he says, ' to speak of the river which comes from Egypt and from the terrestrial Paradise.' He makes men- tion also of the Bedouins and the Mamelukes, but all we meet with in the historian is unmethodical and disorderly. His narrative moves on like the war itself. The arrival of the king upon the battlefield of Massoura is painted by Joinville with a brilliant vivacity in which affection and m JOINVILLE 49 admiration are closely blended. ' There, when I was on foot with my knights, wounded, as I have said before, came the king with all his battle array and a great flourish of trumpets along a causeway. Never was beheld so goodly a man-at-arms. He appeared to be a head and shoulders above all the rest, with a gilded helmet on his head, and a German sword in his hand.' That day of Massoura was a rough one, and, as was said, a very fine feat of arms ; but, from thenceforward, misfortunes and reverses did nothing but follow each other and accumulate. Joinville has little else to do then, but to record the number of the sick and the dead ; and famine was soon added to the list of the calamities of an army sorely pressed on all sides by the Saracens. The historian continues to narrate to us the capture of St. Louis and himself ; and presently the negotiations which led to an understanding, arrived at after many uncertainties and vicissitudes, between St. Louis and the Saracens in relation to the king's ransom and that of the numerous Christian captives. During the four years which the king had yet to spend in the East, Joinville will never quit him. I am obliged to omit many other anecdotes of that Crusade, which Joinville has rendered famous ; but I must devote some little space to show you how the historian has portrayed St. Louis, in the midst of his people, during the sixteen years which followed his return to France, 1254-1270. Joinville often saw the king, and it was during his hours of free intercourse that he gathered together most of the anecdotes which compose the first part of his ' Memoirs.' The portrait traced by Joinville of St. Louis, as a judicial and paternal monarch, will remain for ever that which posterity will be pleased to revere. ' It is impossible,' observes Sainte-Beuve, ' to avoid quoting even if it be for the hundredth time that page which is his great- est glory : " It often happened in the summer time that the king, after hearing Mass, repaired to the wood of Vincennes, and leaning against an oak tree bade us be seated around him. And all those who had any business with him came and spoke to him without the obstruction of any functionary ; and when he asked them with his own mouth if there was any one who had a cause to plead, and E 50 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. those rose up who had, he said to them, ' Keep quiet, all of you, and let me hear each in his turn." And then he called Momei- gneurs Pierre de Fontaines and Geoffrey de Villette, and said to one of them, ' Despatch this cause.' And when he saw something to amend in the discourse of those who undertook the pleadings, he corrected it out of his own mouth. I saw him sometimes in summer come to the Paris Garden to render justice to his people, clad in a camlet robe and a linsey-woolsey overcoat without sleeves, with a black mantle round his neck, his hair well combed, but not dressed, and a hat with white peacock's feathers on his head. He caused a carpet to be spread for you to sit upon around him, and everybody who had business with him stood up outside. Then he caused them to be judged and sent away, in the manner I have already described to you in the wood of Vincennes." ' Fifteen years afterwards, when St. Louis experienced a new desire to fight once more beneath the cross (1270), Joinville, in spite of his devotion to his master, resisted and opposed him, adducing the most legitimate reasons for de- clining to follow him reasons connected with the well- being of his vassals and his people. It is a final touch which completes the portrait of that frank and upright nature. Joinville survived St. Louis by about forty-seven years, and persisted to the last in his belief that those who had persuaded the king to set forth again had been guilty of a mortal sin. In the course of his long career the Sire de Joinville witnessed the reign of six kings, from Louis VIII. to Philip the Long. Joinville's work is certainly not that of a learned historian. Modern criticism would easily find much to reproach the naif chronicler with. Doubtless he plunges into a mass of often trivial details ; but these details are so true, so frankly, simply narrated, and so characteristic as to become really instructive, while they confer upon the recital of the brave knight all the interest of a romance. I will not undertake to relate in detail the part which he played under the various kings of France whom I have enumerated above, and will confine myself, in concluding this lengthened study of him, to a summary of the last years of his life. Under Philip the Handsome, we find him now replying to the commissioners charged with inquiries relative to the canonisation of Louis IX., and now entering into a league of nobles con- federated to resist the imposition of a tax upon the province. At length, summoned to the royal standard by Louis X., in in FROISSART 51 an expedition against the Flemings, he once more donned his breastplate, at a very advanced age ; for he could not have been less than ninety-two years old. Jean Froissart (1333-1410), the most celebrated of the chroniclers, is the principal representative of French prose in the fourteenth century. He composed numerous poems, but he is best known by his ' Chronicle of France, England, Scotland, and Spain,' which is an almost universal reflection of events in Europe from 1322 to the end of the fourteenth century. But while Villehardouin and Joinville are impor- tant personages, who dictate memoirs of the events in which they have played a prominent part, Froissart is a simple priest and a chronicler by profession, who relates the exploits of others. ' His work is a vast historical picture,' observes Demogeot, ' full of movement, brilliant in colour, splendid in costumes, battles, f6tes, tourneys, sieges of cities, captures of castles, imposing cavalcades, skirmishes, daring deeds, noble acts and feats of arms, entries of princes, solemn assemblies, court balls and robes. All the military and feudal life of the fourteenth century crowds upon and accumulates in his pages in magnificent profusion.' Froissart is the Walter Scott of the Middle Ages, as well as the father of the war correspondent and the ' interviewer ' of modern journalism. It was by perpetual travel that he gathered together the materials of his work. He spent five years in England, where in 1362 he was secretary to Philippa of Hainault, wife of Edward III. He visited Scotland ; then attached himself to the Black Prince and to the Duke of Clarence, accompanying the first into France and Spain, and the second into Italy. He travelled over all parts of France and was often in Paris. Everywhere he questioned, with an eager curiosity, his travelling com- panions or his noble hosts, and wrote sometimes, in the form of conversations, the narratives just as they were related to him. He had learned Latin and possessed some literary culture. His talent for narration is admirable, but he had no critical faculty, nor any power of methodical arrangement. 1 Froissart, as I have already said, also wrote numerous poems, which are graceful and spirited, and show a great 1 Walter Besant. F,2 52 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. advance in the language over that written by Gaston de Foix and Thibault de Champagne. The subjoined example has been modernised, however : Le corps s'en va, mais le coeur nous demeure, Tres chere dame, adieu jusqu'au retour, Trop me sera lointaine ma demeure. And then he repeats the first and second lines. Most of his poetical pieces resemble the foregoing in form and metre. Might we not fancy it is La Fontaine who is speak- ing to us in the poem of ' Psyche/ rather than Froissart when he says : Mais je passois a si grande joie Ce temps. . . . Que tout me venoit a plaisir, Et le parler et le tcvisi/r, Le aller et le etre coi. Froissart greatly liked the spring. His heart always went out where there were roses and violets ; but in the winter he also knew how to accommodate himself to the season, and, remaining snugly at home, his especial reading consisted of ' treatises and romances of love.' Adenes, the trouv&re, was his favourite poet. The first care of Froissart at the English court, and his greatest pleasure, while fre- quenting the society of the great nobles, and the knights and their squires, was to ascertain the details of every memorable event, and of all the particulars which were capable of being worked up into history. In writing the first part he took for his guide, as he states himself at the outset, the Chronicle of Jean le Bel, Canon of St. Lambert in Liege. Froissart has informed the somewhat dry canvas of Jean le Bel with his animated narrative, his easy and natural abundance. In some passages, even as, for example, in the celebrated siege of Calais, he seems to have entirely recast and renewed, by his own richness, the primitive text of his forerunner, upon whom he has but slightly depended, and only for the primary facts. As regards the years which followed that siege, he has collected his information on his own account, composing his own materials, and flying with his own wings. The battle of Poitiers (1356), presently to be described, is, hi all respects, a masterpiece. But, first of all, we in FKOISSAET 53 remark that Froissart comprehends to an astonishing degree what was the true role of the historian in his days. What was required at this epoch in history was not criticism but philosophy ; what was chiefly important was the accumula- tion of materials and the judicious disposal of them; and this he has done with a zeal and indefatigable ardour, and with an elevated sentiment of the service which he was rendering to posterity by preserving the records of great events and noble deeds. M. de Barante has said of Froissart : There is no historian who possesses a greater charm or is more truthful. His book is a living witness of the time in which he lived. No art is required to make it visible. The candour of the sentiments is equal to his naivete of expression. We recognise in it the colour and the charm of the romances of chivalry : the same admiration for valour, loyalty, brave deeds of arms ; for the love and service of ladies ; and, at the same time, the disorders, the cruelty, the rough manners of those barbarous times, the still - beginning, never-ending wars, the conflagration of cities, the massacres of peoples, desolated provinces, companies of armed men who have become estranged from all countries, and subsisting only on rapine ; and nevertheless, in the midst of so many horrors, men appearing to be full of grandeur, freedom, and force. They are cruel, they are fickle in their political affections, but they are sincere and the slaves of their word. One of the essential points in dispute concerning Froissart is his impartiality. Lengthened sojourns at the English court, and the benefits lavished on him by Queen Philippa of Hainault, seem to have rendered him partial to that country. In fact it seems difficult for a chronicler, resting under an obligation to so many nobles, not to requite the favours received from them by according them great pro- minence in his writings. ' These are inevitable incon- veniences,' observes Sainte-Beuve, ' but the extreme and passionate curiosity of Froissart was a sort of remedy for, and guarantee against, partiality, even if he had been inclined thereto ; but he was not the man to close one ear, nor to keep to himself a report once related to him, even if that account should contradict a previous version hi some particular. He was eager to listen to all sides.' Observe him hastening to Bruges, and then to Zealand, on learning that a Portuguese knight was there who could give him some information with respect to the affairs of Spain, which 64 LECTUKES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. would be the counterpart of what he had already obtained from the Gascons and the Castilians. It was this which led Montaigne, when speaking of simple historians who pick up everything that comes in their way, and who record in good faith all things without choice and without dis- crimination, to say : ' Such, for example, among others, is worthy Froissart, who moves along in his enterprise with such a frank na/ivet6 that, having once committed a fault, he has no hesitation in correcting it, so soon as he finds it out, and who acquaints us even with the different rumours current and the various stories in circulation. It is crude and naked history, from which each can derive as much profit as he has understanding.' To judge Froissart properly, we must take into account the then state of the chivalry, of which he is really the historian, without regard to cause or nation. His ideal is that sort of universal brotherhood which embraces every- thing that is noble and valiant, and comprehends within its ranks the fine flower of the chivalry which knew how to crown the victor while respecting and honourably raising up the vanquished. He is, by turns, the countryman of all who act valorously and deserve renown and honour. In a word, he is, strictly speaking, the organ of chivalry. England has been grateful to Froissart for the regard he has entertained for her and which he has always maintained. He has been, at all times, appreciated there, and has found readers and admirers among the 6lite. The poet Gray, writing in 1760, said : ' " Froissart " is one of my favourite books. It seems strange to me that people who buy, for their weight in gold, a dozen original portraits of that epoch, to adorn a gallery, never cast their eyes upon so many moving pictures of the life, the deeds, the manners, and the thoughts of their ancestors, painted on the spot in such simple but strong colours.' ' But,' adds Sainte-Beuve, from whom I have borrowed freely for this study of Froissart : The one of your authors who has offered him the finest homage is a facile genius, a painter who wields a broad, free pencil, and who is not without a great family resemblance to him. I speak of "Walter Scott in his 'Old Mortality.' On the day after the victory which Claverhouse has won over the fanatics, and which he in FROISSART 55 has sullied in his turn by his pitiless cruelties, Morton, a prisoner, and treated with distinction by the General, accompanies him on his way. Struck by his courage, urbanity, and generous and chivalrous demeanour, he is unable to reconcile such high and estimable qualities with his contempt for men's lives, and especially for those of an inferior class, and he cannot help contrasting him in his heart with the fanatical Balfour of Burley. Some words which he lets fall betray what he is thinking of. 'You are right,' said Claverhouse, with a smile, 'you are very right, we are both fanatics ; but there is some distinction between the fanaticism of honour and that of dark, sullen superstition.' And it is then that, after some other talk on the same subject, he abruptly asks Morton, ' Did you ever read Froissart ? ' ' No,' was Morton's answer. ' I have half a mind,' said Claverhouse, 'to con- trive you should have six months' imprisonment in order to procure you that pleasure. His chapters inspire me with more enthusiasm than even poetry itself. And the noble Canon, with what true chi- valrous feeling he confines his beautiful expressions of sorrow to the death of the gallant and high-bred Knight, of whom it was a pity to see the fall ; such was his loyalty to his king, pure faith to his religion, hardihood towards his enemy, and fidelity to his lady- love ! Ah ! benedicite ! how he will mourn over the fall of such a pearl of knighthood, be it on the side he happens to favour or on the other. But, truly, for sweeping from the face of the earth some few hundreds of villain churls, who are born but to plough it, the high-born and inquisitive historian has marvellous little sympathy, as little, or less perhaps than John Grahame of Claverhouse.' We will not go so far as Claverhouse, and will only say that Froissart had the morality of his time, that of the nobles and knights with whom he consorted and whom he served. He is a Paul Pry, and his curiosity is appropriate, open, and pleasant. He will never be a philosophical historian like Gibbon, but his work, confined to curious inquiry and the vivid representation of facts, appears to stand out in even greater relief. The conversation of Froissart with Henry Castide, an English squire, during one of his last journeys to England, will furnish us with a perfect example of the way in which our historian gathered together the materials for his chronicles. The squire speaks first : ' Messire Jean, have you not yet found any one in this country, or in the court of our lord the king, to tell you of the expedition which the king made into Ireland last season, and how four of its kings, great potentates, came to render fealty to the English sovereign ? ' And I replied, in order to draw him out, ' No, indeed.' ' Then I will tell it you,' said the squire, ' so that it may find a last- ing place in your memoir when you go back to your own country, and when you will have leisure and pleasure. Whereupon I was greatly pleased, and replied, ' Many thanks.' 56 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. Observe that, on the first question addressed to him by the squire, Froissart, even if he had already heard tell of that journey, made believe to know nothing of it, the better to learn all. And when the squire related to him in detail the submission of those four kings, and when he had shown how they were gradually led to accept knighthood at the hands of King Eichard, Froissart adds : There is one thing I want to ask you, which has not failed to excite my wonder greatly, and which I should much like to know, if you are acquainted with it as I can scarcely doubt you are and that is, how it was these four kings of Ireland were so quickly brought to obey the king of England, while his royal grandsire, who was such a valiant man, and so widely dreaded and renowned, could not bring them into submission, and incurred their constant enmity. You have said that it was by treaty and by the grace of God. Well, the grace of God is an excellent thing, when we can obtain it, and certes, it has its price ; but one sees very few earthly lords at present enlarging their estates except by strength and might, and when I get back again to the country where I was born, and begin to talk about these things, you must know that I shall be very much questioned and catechised about them. Thus, Froissart was not satisfied with what contented Joinville. There were occasions when he wanted to ascer- tain the secondary causes of events. Not only so, but his natural piety was tempered by his worldly experience ; for while he did not undervalue the grace of God, he had found that sword and spear were potent elements in worldly affairs, just as Cromwell, in later times, when charging his soldiers to ' put your trust in God,' significantly added, ' and keep your powder dry.' A century after Froissart, Commynes will go back to political principles and to the first causes of events. ' Note the gradation,' observes Sainte-Beuve. Froissart goes half- way, and there is with him what I would willingly call some remains of the devout fabliaux, a la Joinville. His chronicles cover the events of three-quarters of a century, from 1325 to 1400 from the coronation of Edward III. of England to the deposition and death of his grandson, Eichard II. And one finds in them the history of everything that took place in all the provinces of France, and of every considerable event in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Flanders, an in- finitude of particulars concerning the affairs of the Popes of Eome and of Avignon, as also respecting those of Spain, in BATTLE OF POITIERS 57 Portugal, Germany, Italy, and sometimes even of more distant countries, such as Hungary, Turkey, and realms beyond the sea. But when our worthy Froissart travels so far afield, he is not always to be depended upon, and mis- takes, and even fables, are plentiful. In the midst of that vast and somewhat confused work, England and France occupy the first place. In his Chronicles we meet with three episodes most impressively depicted. The first, King Edward's affection for the Countess of Salisbury, is purely graceful and romantic. The second is pathetic and dramatic the incident of the siege of Calais and of the six citizens for whom the queen of England successfully interceded. The third is entirely epic and grandiose the battle of Poitiers, of which I will endeavour to offer you an epitomised narrative. On the death of King Philip of France, in 1350, his eldest son John succeeded to the throne, was crowned at Eheims, and held high festival in Paris for a whole week. But all this time the Prince of Wales was harrying some of the fair provinces watered by the Loire, which provoked the king into swearing a great oath that he would do battle with his English adversary. Accordingly, in 1356, he marched a large army, consisting of 48,000 men, towards the city of Poitiers, while the enemy was so much inferior in point of numbers that the French exceeded them by six to one. ' God help us ! ' said the Black Prince, when he heard of this enormous disparity. ' We will now consider which will be the best manner to fight them most advantageously.' And he posted his men in a strong position among vineyards and hedges. It was in the middle of the vintage and on a bright autumnal morning, when the bells of the beautiful cathedral were sending their Sabbath music across the fer- tile plains dominated by the picturesque hill-city of Poitiers, that the French king caused mass to be celebrated in the presence of his chivalry, nineteen of the noblest in th realm wearing the same royal armour as himself, so that the sovereign might not be singled out for special attack. It must have been a splendid spectacle as the early sun flashed and glittered on the brilliant suits of mail, on the embroidered surcoats, on the banners and pennons, on the crimson hat and robe of Cardinal Pe'rigord, and on the albs and stoles of 68 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. the ecclesiastics. The conflict did not take place on that day, because the Cardinal passed from camp to camp bear- ing the olive branch of peace ; but all his negotiations were ineffectual, seeing which the Black Prince, bating no jot of heart or hope, addressed his followers thus : ' Now, my gallant fellows, what though we be a small number com- pared with our enemies ? Do not be cast down. Victory is not always to the stronger side. It is the Almighty who bestows it. I entreat you to exert yourselves and to combat manfully, for if it please God and St. George, you shall see me act this day like a true knight.' On the part of the French, when the sun rose on that fateful morning, the preparations for the attack were vigorously commenced. A little patience on their part would have delivered the adversary into their hands, as he was short of provisions and of forage, but it was believed to be dishonourable to delay the assault. It has been ever thus with the posterity of the Franks of the old Carlovingian race, who, on various occasions when a great and deadly duel had to be engaged in, discounted the advantages which courage and ability might have procured for them. Lord James Audley seems to have had the ordering of the battle; and he masked his men so well behind the hedgerows and the vines, that when the English archers began to open a galling fire of arrows on the French cavalry , the horses, smarting with the pain, threw their riders, and caused the greatest confusion, which reached its climax when the battalion of the marshals was routed by the bowmen, and the men-at-arms rushed upon the discomfited host ' and slew them at their pleasure,' as Froissart says. It was a moment of disaster and dismay, and the bravery of the horsemen was rendered impotent by the wild stampede of their wounded and ungovernable chargers. ' They fell back so much on each other,' writes the chronicler, ' that the army could not advance, and those who were in the rear, not being able to get forward, fell back upon the battalion commanded by the Duke of Normandy, which was very thick in the front, though it was soon thin enough in the rear, for when they learned that the marshals had been defeated they mounted their horses and rode off.' ' In reproducing these words five centuries later,' observes m BATTLE OF POTTIEKS 59 Sainte-Beuve, ' it must not be forgotten that they are those of an adversary concerning a day which was then one of great mourning for France ; but France is so rich in glory that she can afford to honour a victorious enemy so endowed with generosity, as he himself honoured an opponent so full of valour.' In simple truth, the battle of Poitiers was won upon the village greens of England, where from time immemorial the rustic folk had been accustomed to assemble on summer evenings and on Sunday afternoons to practise archery, and had thus acquired that strength of arm and that precision of aim which told so fearfully upon their brave antagonists who encountered them near the homestead of Maupertuis, to the eastward of Poitiers. On beholding the retreat of the battalions of the marshals, the English men-at-arms mounted their horses, which were close at hand, and raised a lusty shout of ' St. George for Guienne ! ' ' The day is ours ! ' cried Sir John Chandos to the Black Prince. ' Let us make for our adversary the king of France, for he will be in the thick of the battle. I well know that his valour will not let him fly, but he must be well fought with.' And presently the two gallant opponents joined issue, the French raising the thrilling war-cry of ' Montjoye St. Denis ! ' and the English replying with a loud ' St. George for Guienne ! ' In the shock of arms King John gave proofs of splendid prowess, and so did the knights and nobles who rallied round his standard. Most of them, indeed, were slain or taken prisoners ; the Duke of Bourbon, the Duke of Athens, Con- stable of France, and the Bishop of Chalons being among the dead, and the flower of the French chivalry passed into captivity upon that memorable day, as many as two hundred knights and squires having been either killed or taken. The English pursued their foemen to the gates of Poitiers, which were barred against them; and the result was a great slaughter of men and horses under the very walls of the city. Meanwhile what had become of the brave but defeated king? His banner-bearer, the Sire de Chargny, was slain with the royal standard in his hand ; and a young knight in the 60 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. English service, addressing the king, in irreproachable French exclaimed, ' Sire, sire, surrender yourself !' The king, turning sharply round, rejoined: 'To whom shall I sur- render myself ? Where is my cousin, the Prince of Wales ? ' ' Sire,' replied Sir Denys, ' he is not here ; but surrender yourself to me and I will lead you to him.' ' Who are you ? ' said the king. ' Sire, I am Denys de Morbeque, a knight from Artois ; but I serve the king of England because I cannot belong to France, having forfeited all I possessed there.' The king gave him his right-hand glove, and said, 1 1 surrender myself to you.' Brought into the presence of the Earl of Warwick and Lord Cobham, who had been despatched in search of him, the captive king was received with the greatest courtesy, both barons dismounting and standing bareheaded before him. He was then conducted to the Black Prince, to whom he was presented by his noble escort ; and wine and spices were brought, the victorious Englishman waiting upon his prisoner with chivalrous hospitality, and, as Froissart quaintly puts it, ' giving all the comfort he could.' The royal pair travelled to Bordeaux together, and win- tered there, for the whole of south-western France was at that time under English rule, and they sailed for England in the spring. Landing at Sandwich, they proceeded to Canterbury, from whence the Prince despatched a messenger to London, directing that magnificent preparations should be made for the reception of his royal prisoner. Indeed, the latter was the hero and the central figure of the brilliant pageant. For thus writes Froissart concerning the entry of these two heroic men into the English capital : The prince and his royal charge remained one day at Canter- bury, where they made their offerings to the shrine of St. Thomas, and the next morning they proceeded to Rochester, the third day to Dartford, and the fourth to London, where they were received with much honour and distinction. The king of France, as he rode through London, was mounted on a white steed, richly capari- soned, and the Prince of Wales on a little black hackney by his side. The palace of the Savoy was first appropriated to the French king's use ; but soon after his arrival, he was removed to Windsor Castle, where he was treated with the greatest possible attention, and hunting, hawking, and other amusements were provided for him. in MONSTRELET 61 It was from the period at which the battle of Poitiers was fought that Froissart, as Sainte-Beuve has pointed out, began to rely upon his own resources as an historian, and from the first pages he sets out by presenting a great picture worthy of a master. Indeed, the most distinguished critics of our times, Villemain, Ampere, and Nisard, as well as Sainte-Beuve, have exhibited a special predilection for him, and have accorded him the highest praises ; while Hallam considers that his picturesque descriptions and fertility of historical invention entitle him to be regarded as the Livy of Prance, Philippe de Commynes being the Tacitus. Froissart found a continuator in Monstrelet, who did not possess the gift of ' invention ' ironically attributed to his predecessor, nor his pictorial style, but is more trustworthy perhaps, if occasionally dull. But of him we shall presently have occasion to speak. Froissart has been sometimes styled the creator of French prose, but such a statement cannot be accepted without reserve, inasmuch as Joinville, and the authors of the oldest and best prose versions of the romances of chivalry, had written before Froissart. What is indisputable is that he holds a foremost place among the primitive prose writers ; and that, after him, French prose, far from exhibit- ing a continuously progressive development, retrograded and was disorganised in the midst of the calamities which disturbed the French mind, overturned the society of the fifteenth century, and signalised the end of the Middle Ages. The French language and French literature only rose again when transformed by the Eenaissance. Froissart's poetry has not retained the same celebrity as his prose, and has not the same originality. At the same time it contains enough of sensibility, elegance, and delicacy, to justify the high esteem in which it was held by his contemporaries. Enguerrand de Monstrelet is said to have been the natural son of a gentleman of good family in the county of Boulogne, and to have been rather wild in his young days. In fact, he appears to have taken to the road, and to have got into trouble for robbing a merchant on the highway near Abbeville. But he was pardoned by King Henry VI. of England in 1424, and a few years later he was taken into the service of John of Luxembourg, and we hear of him as 62 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. in present at the interview which took place between Joan of Arc and the Duke of Burgundy, and afterwards as Provost of Cambrai. He also took part in the siege of Compiegne in 1430. Taking up the thread of Froissart's narrative where he dropped it, Monstrelet chronicles the principal events which occurred between 1400 and 1444 ; and he tells us that he collected his information at first hand from all manner of trustworthy people ; that he endeavoured to record what he had learned with fairness and impartiality ; and that his chief desire was to be accurate and truthful to the best of his 1 towledge and belief. The principal events related by Monstrelet are the wars which were waged between the Houses of Orleans and Burgundy, the occupation of the city of Paris, and the conquest of Normandy by the English. Exact and con- scientious in his statements, laborious in the collection of authentic documents to corroborate the truth of his narra- tives, he is one of the safest and best guides we possess to a knowledge of all the more important events of the first half of the fifteenth century. I have left myself still very much to say about Proissart, even from a merely literary point of view, if I had under- taken to exhaust my subject ; but I perceive that I have already devoted much more space to the study of this author than to that of all the rest, and I begin to fear that I have put your indulgence to too severe a test. I will commence my next lecture with Commynes. LECTUEE IV Philippe de Commynes (1445-1509) Charles d'Orleans (1391-1465) Francois Villon (14317-1485?) Of the Great Testament of Villon (1461) Bude (1467-1540) -Erasmus (1467-1536). HAVING spoken of Villehardouin, Joinville, and Froissart, I will now endeavour to present to you the fourth of our oldest chroniclers, namely, Philippe de Commynes, although the title of chronicler is scarcely applicable to one who is really the first of the moderns who placed himself on the track of the political authors of classic antiquity. He is the first actually modern writer, and every reader who does not want to go too far back, nor to gratify an erudite curiosity, but wishes merely to form an entirely modern French library, must needs admit into it the works of Montaigne and of Commynes. ' These are men,' observes Sainte-Beuve, ' who have our ideas, and who have them to the extent and in the sense it would be good for us to have them men who understood the world and society, and more particularly the art of living in it, and of daily conduct, as we should only be too happy to understand it in the present day. They are counsellors and conversationalists who are as pleasant to listen to after three or four centuries as when they first spoke ; Montaigne on all subjects and at all hours ; Commynes upon affairs of state, upon the secret springs of great actions, upon what from that time one calls modern political interests ; and upon so many of the in- centives which actuated men in his day, and have not ceased to move them in our own.' The historian has been so much studied, men the most deeply versed in literary and historical criticism have so repeatedly explored the ' Memoirs ' of the writer who has earned for himself the title of the French Tacitus, that they have left very little to be gleaned by any one wishing to speak of him at the end of the nineteenth century. If, in 64 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. the case of some of the poets and prose writers of whom I have previously spoken, I have ventured to offer my own thoughts, to look at them from my own point of view, and to select the extracts I have quoted, I must humbly confess that, in the case of Commynes, I must faithfully follow what writers of great authority have said of him, and can only presume to present to you a compilation seriously undertaken, and an exact summary of what has been written with respect to the man and his work. Commynes was born about the year 1445, at the chateau of Commynes, a place which is to-day a very busy town a few miles from Lille. ' When I had emerged from childhood,' he says, ' and was old enough to mount a horse, I was taken to Lille to see the Duke Charles of Burgundy, who was about to become Charles the Bold ; ' and he followed him in the war of the League for the Public Good, formed by the great vassals on the eve of giving battle to the new king, Louis XI., a few leagues from his capital, at the foot of the hill of Montlheri. It was the first battle at which Commynes had been present, and nothing can be more piquant than his narrative of it ; and if in narrating that encounter he has endeavoured to parody that of Poitiers, so broadly and clearly depicted by Froissart a hundred years previously, which I have sketched in the last lecture, he could scarcely have done otherwise. The battle in this instance was engaged in by all at cross purposes, and contrary alike to the original plan and to common sense. Louis XI. wished to elude the combat, and what happened was the very opposite. There were traitors on both sides, and when the battle began the Burgundians did the very reverse of what had been decided upon in the council of war. Commynes kept close to the side of Charles the Bold all day, ' having less fear,' he said, ' than he had ever felt in any place since then,' the reason given being that he was young and had no idea of danger. And as he showed himself at Montlheri so he will be later on at Pornova : full of sangfroid, making very little account of military heroism, and being of opinion with his future master, Louis XI., that he who has the profit of war has the honour of it. The irony of Commynes breaks out in that first narrative, and it is to that irony I seek to call attention, and not to relate the battle, which is IT COMMYNES 66 of small importance. At a certain moment each side believed itself beaten. On that of the king there was a great personage who fled full gallop to Lusignan without drawing bridle ; and on the side of Burgundy another great personage escaped not less quickly to Quesnoi. ' Those two,' remarks Commynes, ' cannot snarl at each other.' A complete analysis of the ' Memoirs ' of Commynes would be equivalent to a history of the reign of Louis XI., of his quarrels with his great vassals, and more particularly with Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, as also of the reign of Charles VIII. and of his campaign in Italy, not stopping until we come to Louis XII., who, not requiring the services of Commynes, left him the leisure to write those ' Memoirs ' which are engaging our present attention. At the same time I cannot altogether lose sight of the events while analysing the record of them, but I will be as brief as possible. Commynes, as we have seen, entered at first the service of the Duke of Burgundy, that sanguinary madman who ravaged with fire and sword so many of the fairest provinces of France, and met with his death at the siege of Nancy, when he was not yet forty years of age, after having sus- tained at the hands of the Swiss the two reverses of Granson and Morat, the glorious anniversaries of which are commemorated to this day by the Helvetic Confederation. It was at the interview of Peronne, when he was twenty- one years of age, and already wise and prudent, that he attracted the attention of Louis XI., to whom he appears to have rendered a signal service by making known to him the intentions of Charles the Bold, and thus enabling the king to extricate himself as well as he was able from the dangerous position in which he was placed. The king, we do not know exactly how, found himself in the power of Charles the Bold, and he dreaded the jokes of the Parisians about the ' fox captured by Isengrin.' Later on, indeed, to avoid the sarcasms to which he has been habituated, he will give orders to deliver up to one of the king's officers all the chattering birds, magpies or jackdaws, crows or starlings, which have made the streets ring with allusions to the misadventure of Peronne. 1 Charles the Bold, by his trans- 1 Henry Martin, vii. 47. F 66 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. ports of rage, his obstinacy, and his cruelty, found himself successively abandoned by the wisest of his servants. It was after his devastations in the district of Caux, and the checks he sustained before Dieppe and Eouen, that his service was forsaken by his chamberlain, Philippe de Commynes. Still young, he was already the politician who was to lead the way among moderns in writing history as a thinker and as a statesman. He could no longer put up with the freaks of a brutal and fantastic master, and he decided on attaching himself to the king, Louis XI., who was more capable of appre- ciating the shrewdness of his spirit, and whom he had known ever sirvce the forced sojourn of that monarch at P6ronne. Commynes was now only twenty-five, and he served Louis XI. faithfully as counsellor and chamberlain until the king's death in 1483, when he was still not more than thirty- six. ' Commynes, 'observes Sainte-Beuve, ' grasped like Machiavelli and Montesquieu the scope of his times, the various forms of government, their principles, and the remote consequences flowing from them. He was also a partisan of the English system of government.' And at that remote epoch Commynes was an advocate of the principle of self-government ; his views upon which will be found set forth in a chapter entitled ' Character of the French People, and of the Government of its Kings ' views denoting his sagacity and his breadth of outlook. Commynes was extremely indulgent in his judgment of Louis XI., as, of all the princes of his time, he was the one of whom he had the most good and the least evil to say ; and, as Henry Martin has shrewdly remarked, it would be difficult to pronounce a more cutting satire on the monarchs of the fifteenth century. At the same time it must be remembered that the king was labouring for the unification of the kingdom, completely open to attack up till then (as Michelet observes), when he closed it up for the first time, and gave a lasting peace to its central provinces. The incomparable details, given by Commynes, of the life of the king after his retirement to Plessis-les-Tours, render that portion of his history a most eloquent picture of royal and human history. No historian conveys so vividly as he does a deep conviction of the wretchedness of royalties iv COMMYNES 67 and grandeurs, of the mighty and the ' happy ' ones of the earth. Listen to what he says of Louis XI. : ' Would it not be far better for him, and for all other princes, and men of middle estate, who have lived under the great, or will live beneath the rule of kings, to choose the via media ; . . . . to have less knowledge, less care, and less labour, and to undertake fewer things, to have more fear of offending God and of persecuting the people and their neighbours in so many cruel methods, and to enjoy more ease and honest pleasure ? Their lives would be longer, sickness would not overtake them so soon, and their death would be more generally regretted and less desired.' One recognises here, observes Sainte-Beuve, ' the man who has watched the sleep- less nights and evil dreams of kings, and who, from the flower of their age until their death, has failed to detect in their envied destinies one single happy day.' In the reflec- tions of Commynes we may hear the stern voice of experi- ence confirming the impressive words which Shakespeare has placed in the mouth of Anne Bullen : I swear, 'tis better to be lowly born, And range with humble livers in content, Than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief, And wear a golden sorrow. From the death of Louis XI. the memoirs of Commynes undergo a sensible diminution of interest. The conquest of Italy by Charles VIII., and his march to Naples, as related by him, belong rather to the domain of history ; and it will suffice to mention that Commynes' life was not untroubled, that he passed eight months in one of those iron cages invented by Louis XI., the use of which he taught to his daughter, Anne of Brittany ; that he was employed as ambassador by Charles VIII. ; and that he apprised him, from Venice, of the Italian coalition, which all his efforts had failed to restrain the Republic of the Adriatic from joining. I will conclude by quoting a mot of Vauvenargues, which, observes Sainte-Beuve, Commynes entirely justifies : ' True politicians know men better than those who cultivate philosophy. I might say they are the truer philosophers.' But in order to be so, adds the essayist, they must be genuine politicians, and there are very few who can lay so good a claim to that title as Commynes. 68 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. Henry Hallam, in his ' Introduction to the Literature of Europe,' has judged him thus : ' An acute understanding and much experience of mankind gave Commynes this superiority ; his life had not been spent among books ; and he is consequently free from that pedantic application of history which became common with those who passed for political reasoners in the next two centuries. Yet he was not ignorant of former times, and we see the advantage of those translations from antiquity, made during the last hun- dred years in Prance, by the use to which he turned them.' Commynes has been read, and is still read occasionally, in England, although not to the same extent as our old chronicler, Froissart, who was and is the favourite historian. But Sir Walter Scott has given him a fame as enduring as his own ; for one of his best romances, containing an inimi- table picture of the Middle Ages, ' Quentin Durward,' is based on the memoirs of Commynes. A French poet, Casimir de la Vigne, has also drawn upon him for the materials of his historical drama of ' Louis XI.,' a character so admirably embodied on the French stage by Ligier and Beauvallet, on the English boards by Charles Kean and Henry Irving, and in the Australian theatres by G. V. Brooke. Theodore de Banville also went to the same source for his comedy of ' Gringoire.' After having thus studied French prose in its four principal historians, I return to our poetry, and the author who presents himself as next in succession to those already treated of is Charles d'Orleans. Born in Paris, at the Hotel St. Pol, in May 1391, he was the most gallant knight and accomplished gentleman of his tune. It was he who, in 1409, married Isabel of Valois, whom Eichard II. of England had espoused at the age of eight, and left her a widow three years afterwards. Made prisoner at Agincourt, he spent twenty-five years of captivity in England, where he wrote several poems in the language of his conquerors : poems which furnish an additional proof of the truth of Shelley's lines : Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong ; They learn in suffering what they teach in song. Nor was he liberated until 1440, on paying a ransom of 200,000 golden crowns. Some time after his return to iv CHAKLES D'OKLEANS 69 France he retired to his chateau at Blois, and gave himself up entirely to poetry. The impulse which he imparted to letters in France made itself felt very early in the following century, and he died in 1465. He hospitably opened his home and his heart to the writers of his time, among whom he was undoubtedly the best. For two centuries his name as a poet has been forgotten, and has been only mentioned as that of a French prince who was taken prisoner by the English at Agincourt. Louis XI., his royal cousin, appears to have been jealous of the popularity he acquired on his return from captivity, and it is even said that he died of chagrin on account of the suspicions entertained of him by the king on that account. It is at least probable that a great politician like Louis XI. could not have seen, without pro- testation, Charles d'Orleans occupying himself exclusively in his chateau at Blois with his insipid loves, while pre- occupations of an entirely different kind absorbed all his own attention. It was not until 1734 that the Abbe Sallier acquainted France with the name of another forgotten poet, a poet de- scribed by Villemain as the only one of the fifteenth century. With respect to Charles d'Orleans we may consult the criticisms and notices written by Sallier, Goujet, Angis, and Villemain. The last-named critic, when speaking of him, dwells on the ingenuousness and homeliness of his diction, his aristocratic and chivalrous good taste, and that elegance of manner, and that fine vein of pleasantry in relation to himself, which one looks for only in an epoch of greater cultivation than his own. He further remarks that one meets with expressions in his poems which belong to no date, and which being always fresh are neither effaced from the memory nor from the language of a people. One can only attribute the oblivion into which the poems of Charles d'Orleans fell, during a couple of centuries, to the invention of printing of which he was the contemporary ; for it was the old and not the living authors whose works passed through the press. The earliest book printed in the French language, for example, was the ' Eecueil des Histoires de Troye,' produced by Caxton somewhere in the Duchy of Burgundy. Charles d'Orleans is, undoubtedly, the first trouvdre 70 LECTURES ON FEENCH LITERATURE LECT. who has written French, and he is much more easy to read than Lydgate in English, for example. At the same time we may call him the last of the trouv&res, in spite of the opinion of M. Villemain. We do so because he possessed too much in common with the versifiers who were then dis- appearing to entitle him to the name of poet. He continued, like the trouvtres who preceded him, to use and abuse allegorical figures, borrowing them more particularly from the ' Koman de la Eose,' of which the influence was still to make itself felt up to the time of the writers of the H6tel de Eambouillet. Faux-danger, Bel-accueil, Souscy are the personages he selects ; and, although allegory was carried to still greater lengths and with even worse taste after him, he really belonged to the period of allegorical versifiers. His style and his ideas are pure ; but, on the other hand, his imagination is weak. He presents us with nothing new, nothing original ; and the sole praise due to him is that he abstained from the coarseness in which his contemporaries took delight, but which he felt to be unbecoming his own position as a French prince. The poet Villon, who was not restricted by any considerations of the same kind, availed himself very largely of that licentious freedom which was so liberally taken advantage of by the writers of that time. In the eyes of Charles d' Orleans personal respect could not exist unless in a man of noble blood, and he showed that he was quite unable to comprehend the possibility of a churl or a bourgeois ever possessing the chivalrous virtues. He never said so explicitly, but all his poems breathe these class prejudices. It was only natural, therefore, that he should entirely have failed to perceive, and should never even have suspected, that gradual elevation of the middle class which began in the fifteenth century ; which was more obvious in France than elsewhere, and was taking place everywhere around him. He did not understand that the age of chivalry was coming to an end. No doubt Louis XI. did so, as I have already said, and observed the crumbling to pieces of the old social fabric and the motive forces at work so repugnant to his own ideas. A poet who, notwithstand- ing he was his own cousin, only looked at things through the prison furnished by Apollo, and abode in the castle of Loyalty, conducted thither by Honour and Fidelity, and iv CHARLES D'ORLEANS 71 loyally defended its ramparts against Recreancy and Treachery, sustained by their minions Deceit, Treason, and Calumny, must have appeared insupportable to a politician of the strength of Louis XI. It is difficult to make extracts from the poems of Charles d'0r!6ans ; they are all short and generally embody a single idea, agreeably expressed, although often insignificant and insipid ; but it is always admirably finished, and one does not really see how a punctilious author could render anything in better form. Here is a passage by way of example : France, jadis on te souloit nommer En tons pais, le tresor cle noblesse ; Car un chacun pouvoit en toy trouver Bonte, Honneur, Loyaute, Gentillesse, Clergie, 1 Sens, Courtoisie, Proesse : Tous Strangers amoient 2 te suir Et maintenant voy, dont j'ay desplaisance, Qu'il te convient maint grief soustenir, Tres Crestien, franc royaume de France. In the following verses we find the poet exhorting the people to pray for peace : Priez pour Paix, doulce vierge Marie, Royne des cieux et du monde maltresse, Faictes prier, par votre courtoisie, Saints et Saintes, et prenez vostre adresse Vers vostre fils, requerant sa hautesse Qu'il lui plaise son peuple regarder Que de son sang a voulu racheter En desboutant guerre qui tout desvoye ^ De prieres ne vous veuilliez lasser : Priez pour Paix, le vrai tresor de joye, And here we have a description of the spring which well deserves quotation : Le temps a laissie son manteau De vent, de froidure et de pluye, Et s'est vestu de broderie, De soleil riant, cler et beau ; II n'y a bete, ne oiseau Qu'en son jargon ne chante ou crye : Le temps a laissie son manteau De vent, de froidure et de pluye. 1 Instruction. 2 Aimaient. 72 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. Riviere, fontaine et ruisseau Portent, en livr^e jolye, Gouttes d'argent, d'orfevrerie ; Chacun s'habille de nouveau ; Le temps a laissie son manteau De vent, de froydure et de pluye. It is impossible to offer you an analysis of the allegorical poems of Charles d'Orleans, nor would they interest you if I did. One might as well dissect the whole of the ' Eoman de la Kose ; ' in which all the virtues, all the vices, ideas and sentiments of humanity are personified ; and even to in- dicate to you, though ever so briefly, how all these personages speak and move, is really beyond my power ; while I believe it would be equally beyond the patience and endurance of my indulgent hearers. The chief reproach to be directed against this last and best of the trouv&res is on account of his almost entire lack of patriotism in the terrible times which France was then passing through. His muse was not made to bewail the woes of his country. His thoughts were less elevated. In the midst of the frightful disasters of the invasion he found nothing better to sing of, as his predecessors did, than love, the seasons, the flowers, and the green fields. In his critical estimate of Charles d'Orle'ans Sainte-Beuve remarks that ' when he addresses himself to his lady, it is with a decorous gallantry which shows the knight beneath the trouv&re. Sensitive as a captive to the beauties of nature, he paints the spring with a gracefulness of imagination and a freshness of drawing which have not yet become antiquated.' Often when the mood takes him, a delicate sentiment of harmony suggests to him that regular coupling together of feminine and masculine rhymes which was an elegance of style before it became a rule of versification^ Henry Martin says that the consolations which he sought in letters have served to render his name second only to those of Thibault de Champagne and of our most celebrated trouv&res. The prolonged weariness of captivity had deve- loped in him, observes the same writer, a poetic talent which, though wanting in power, was distinguished by a melancholy sweetness of grace. I must cite one more passage from that well-known ballad which he addressed ' To Fortune : ' iv VILLON 73 Fortune, veuillez-moi laisser En paix une fois, je vous prie. Trop longuement, & vrai center, Avez eu sur moi seigneurie. Toujours faite la rencherie Vers moi et ne voulez ouir Les maux que na'avez fait souflrir, II y a ja plusieurs ans passes, Dois-je toujours ainsi languir ? Helas ! et n'est-ce pas assez ? I forbear from quoting any of the English poetry of Charles d'0r!6ans because the language in which it was written is much further removed from that of Shakespeare than is that of his French compositions from the language of Moliere. Villon sut le premier dans ces sieeles grossiers D^brouiller 1'art confus de nos vieux romanciers. It was in these terms that Boileau, the arbiter of Parnas- sus, spoke of the poet whom we have now to consider. Villon was the most remarkable as well as the earliest of the poets belonging to the epoch at which we have just arrived. A student at the University of Paris, a wild roysterer, a reckless ne'er-do-well, a brawler, a libertine, and, it is to be feared, a thief, he was the first to fling aside the chivalrous gallantry, the metaphysical abstractions, and the dreary allegories imitated from the ' Koman de la Eose.' In short, Villon was the first who drew his poetry from him- self : the first to write in a style that was vivid, original, and French ; and who went to the people itself as the true source of the national muse. That which especially distinguishes his poetry is that it is a mixture of light-hearted gaiety, of sar- donic sarcasm, of frolicsome waggery, satirical and clownish sallies, of delicate grace, and of a melancholy that is always touching. Many of his verses are still quoted. Who does not know that tender poem on the beautiful women of by- gone days, that charming ballad on the fragility of their destinies, with its pathetic refrain, Mais oh sont les neiges d'antan ? } I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting that delicious composition, because I am sure it will give my hearers pleasure : 1 Ante-annum. 74 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. Dites-moi ou, en quel pays, Est Flora, la belle Romaine, Archipiada, ni Thais Qui fut sa cousine germaine ; Echo, parlant quand bruit on mene Dessus riviere ou sur etang, Qui beaut^ eut trop plus qu'humaine ? Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan ? Ou est la tree sage Heloiis, Pour qui fat blesse et puis moine Pierre Abelard, a St. Denis ? Pour son amour eut cette essoine [malheur]. Semblablement ou est la reine Qui commanda que Buridan Fut jete, en un sac, en Seine ? Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan ? La Reine Blanche comme un lys, Qui chantait a voix de sirene ; Berthe aux grands pieds, Bietrix, Allis, Eremburges qui tint le Maine, Et Jeanne la bonne Lorraine, Qu' Anglais brulerent & Rouen ? Ou sont-ils, vierge souveraine ? Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan ? Sainte-Beuve has devoted to this remarkable ballad so eloquent a page, and one so powerfully impressed by that poetry of feeling which inspired the original, that I need not apologise for translating it in full : ' We re-read and re-read aloud the entire piece. . . . Happy is he who has thus known how to find an accent for an immortal and perpetually renewed situation of human nature. He may live, perchance, as long as itself, as long, at least, as the nature and the language in which he has uttered that cry of genius and sentiment. Evermore, when the question arises of the rapidity with which generations of mankind pass away, resembling, as old Homer says, the leaves of the forest ; evermore, when one considers the brief duration assigned to the noblest and most triumphant destinies ; but, above all, when the mind reverts to those smiling and fugitive images of vanished beauty, from Helen to Ninon ; to .those tran- sient groups which seem to be swept into the abyss, one after another, in the light whirl of a dance ; to the women of the Decame- ron, of the Heptameron, of the fetes of Venice, or of the court of Ferrara ; and to the cavalcades of Diana (the Diana of Henry II.), who animated the gallant hunting parties of Anet, Chambord, or Fontainebleau ; when we call up the period of the pompous, of the tender rivals who encircled the youth of Louis XIV. as with a garland Ces belles Montbazons, ces Chatillons brillantes, Dansant avec Louis sous des berceaux de fleurs ; iv VILLON 75 when, nearer to us still, although already distant, we recall the name which had such a fresh and pleasant sound in our youth, the then queens of elegance, the Juliets, the Hortenses, and then the Delphines, the Elviras, and the Lisettes of the poets ; and when one asks, with a touch of sadness, ' Where are they ? ' what more natural or more appropriate response arises to our lips than the tuneful refrain which has found its way to every tongue, ' Mais oii sont les neiges d'antan ? ' An exquisite image of mutability, it must be allowed ; and yet one that has been excelled by the incomparable lines of the poet-peasant of Scotland : Like the snow-falls in the river, A moment white, then melts for ever. The pretty trifle which follows conceals beneath the playfulness of its form the same tender melancholy, which the poet has so freely infused into the verses I have already quoted, and, indeed, into his works in general. It bears the individual impress of his genius : Je congnois bien mouches en laict ; Je congnois a la robe Phomme ; Je congnois le beau temps du laid ; Je congnois au pommier la pomme ; Je congnois 1'arbre a voir la gomme ; Je congnois quand tout est de mesme ; Je congnois qui besongne ou chomme ; Je congnois tout, fors que moy -mesme ; Je congnois pourpoinct au collet ; Je congnois le moine a la gonne [robe] ; Je congnois le maistre au valet ; Je congnois au voyle la nonne ; Je congnois quant piqueur jargonne ; Je congnois folz nourriz de cresme ; Je congnois le vin a la tonne ; Je congnois tout, fors que moy-mesme. ENVOI Prince, je congnois tout en somme ; Je congnois coulorez et blesmes ; Je congnois mort qui nous consomme ; Je congnois tout, fors que moy-mesme. Commenting on these charming lines, Nisard extols the ' neatness of the idea, the vivacity of form, the force of ex- pression, and the deep yet sportive philosophy ' they disclose, ' all which,' he observes, ' are superior to the careless facility 76 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. of Charles d'Orl^ans. What acquisitions,' he exclaims, ' for the French intellect, and for our poetical language ! ' Villon was a Bohemian of the Bohemians, a literary Ishmaelite of the fifteenth century, a Guzman d'Alfarache, doubled by a poet. His real name was Montcordier. His father died when he was a mere child ; his mother was quite illiterate ; and a kind-hearted priest took the poor boy by the hand, sent him to school, and paid his fees at the University of Paris. The priest's name all honour to his sterling goodness was Guillaume de Villon, and the young student adopted it in preference to his own. At college Frangois was the gayest of the gay, the wildest of the wild ; foremost in all the practical jokes and boisterous fun that youth and high spirits prompted the students at that period, as of every other, to indulge in. In old Paris there were blocks of stone at convenient intervals, by the aid of which ladies used to mount their palfreys, at a time when carriages were almost unknown. By way of frolic, Villon and his companions removed two of these to what were then known as Mont St. Hilaire and the Montagne Ste. Genevieve. The set -gents de mile laboriously carried them back again, but the collegians once more transported them to those eminences, danced round them to the merry music of a flute, and cele- brated a grotesque marriage between the two blocks of stone. Another of the freaks of these rollicking youngsters was to detach the large flesh hooks from the butchers' stalls, and to take down and conceal the signs which then hung in front of all manner of shops. One day it was on June 5, 1455, that being the F6te-Dieu Villon was conversing with a priest named Gilles and a pretty woman named Isabeau for, being a poet, he admired pretty women when another priest, named Philippe Sermoise, came up and picked a quarrel with him. From high words they came to blows, and Sermoise stuck Villon across the mouth with his dagger. The poet picked up a stone and knocked his assailant down. The latter fell so heavily on the pavement as to produce concussion of the brain, from the effects of which he died next day. Villon was tried, convicted of murder, and sen- tenced to be hanged ; and it was then that the poet wrote the verses beginning : IT VILLON 77 Je suis Frar^ois, dont ce me poise, Ne de Paris empres Pontoise, Qui d'une corde d'une toise Saura, etc., etc. His sentence was commuted to banishment for life, but with the help of his good friend the priest, who had grown to be very fond of the scapegrace, Villon hid himself in one of the most disreputable purlieus of Paris, and there he enrolled himself in a band of thieves calling themselves Les Coquillarts, nearly a thousand strong, owning allegiance to a chief whom they called the King of La Coquille, and having laws and a secret language, or jargon, of their own. Villon not only mastered this argot, but he wrote seven ballads in it. Sad to relate, two of the poet's dearest friends in this band, Eegnier de Montigny and Colin de Cayeux, were hanged ! Probably he would have shared the same fate, if strong interest had not been used to procure his pardon for killing the priest ; for, when this had been obtained, Villon was enabled to return to civilised society ; and the good old priest, who held that a true Christian should forgive his erring brother until seventy times seven, received the outlaw and prodigal with open arms, and killed the fatted calf for his better entertainment. What did the poet do next? He fell in love with a young lady in prosperous circumstances, named Catherine de Vaulselles, who rather discouraged the attentions of the penniless scamp and poet ; and one evening her guardian gave Villon such a cudgelling that he went back home with a sore heart and sorer shoulders, to meditate on all the great men of antiquity who had been similarly crossed in love, though not, perhaps, similarly beaten. Towards the end of 1456 he quitted Paris very abruptly. I am sorry to say he had fallen in with some of his old companions, the Coquil- larts, and they and he broke into the sacristy of the College of Navarre and stole a coffer containing 500 golden crowns. One-fifth of the booty fell to the share of Villon, who fled from Paris and afterwards turned up at Blois, where he took part in a sort of poetical tournament instituted by the Duke of Bourbon, who gave, as the theme of a competitive ballad, the words, ' Je meurs de soif aupres de la fontaine.' We next find him in prison at Blois, probably for theft 78 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. But there was a gaol delivery in honour of Marie de Cleves having given a daughter to her husband, and Villon was liberated with the rest. After many wanderings we meet with him again as a prisoner at Meung-sur-Loire ; but, as good luck would have it, Louis XI. passed through there, on his way back from his coronation, and once more the gaol doors were flung open, and the poet crept back to Paris after an absence of five years, still young, according to the calendar, but old in constitution. And there stood the dear old priest, in the cloister of St. Benoit, with a sweet smile on his angelic face, and words of love and tenderness, compassion and forgiveness, on his aged lips. Villon is believed to have died about 1489, and is supposed to have been, at the time, a member of a strolling company for whom he had written a Passion play in the dialect of Poitou, and to have taken part in the performance of it. With all his faults, his heart was as tender as that of a little child, and his character singularly sweet and pious. Strange medley of qualities ! Who shall solve the enigma of such a nature and of such a life ? We learn from the cynical admissions of the poet him- self that he was a man of many vocations ; but one day, in the midst of those ignominies, which only served to furnish matter for his merriment, there broke from him an accent of genuine patriotism, and he launched against the enemies of ' French honour ' a ballad whose energetic refrain still finds an echo in the hearts of his countrymen. He bans and brands, through the whole gamut of malediction, those 'who wish evil to the realm of France.' ' A strange thing,' it has been observed, ' that at a time, above all, when the patriotic sentiment was still so rare, there was at least one French- man, and he a regular vagabond, who had neither hearth nor home.' As I have already said, Villon was a student of the Uni- versity, but a Bohemian of Bohemians, of whose wild life he has left an animated record in his ' Free Feeds.' The epithet lives, and so does the thing itself; yes, and the author of the poems likewise. There are always Villons in the world, although few of them possess his genius. To eat, drink, and be merry, at the expense of other people; to incur debts without the expectation or intention of ever iv VILLON 79 paying them ; to laugh at duns and break a jest upon im- portunate creditors ; to live from hand to mouth, and never to deny himself a single pleasure that could be procured at anybody else's cost : these were Villon's rules of conduct, and they are those of scores of gentlemanly fellows at the present moment hi every great city in Europe, America, and Australia. St. Marc Girardin says that if Villon had lived in our days he would have been as fond of good cheer as ever he was, but that he would have been an honest man. Nothing of the sort. He would probably have thrown an air of refinement over his swindling propensities, and sipped champagne and eaten truffles in a sumptuous hotel, leaving behind him a portmanteau full of bricks in satisfaction of his credulous landlord's bill, instead of cheating the keeper of a wine shop or of a cabaret, as the earlier Jeremy Diddler did ; but Fra^ois Villon would be the same man, au fond, at the end of the nineteenth century that he was in the second half of the fifteenth. Irrespective of his ballads, this roystering poet wrote two other pieces : ' The Little Testament,' in 1456, which con- tained his farewell and his legacies to his friends ; and his ' Great Testament,' composed in the maturity of his powers and of his life, and comprising a long succession of satirical bequests, more or less autobiographical in character, and reflecting, as in a mirror, the wayward moods and variable emotions of his highly gifted but perversely erratic mind. He is by turns remorseful and tender, savage and pathetic, a penitent in the confessional and a satirical jester in his cap and bells. Sometimes his strains are those of a lyric poet, delicately touching in sentiment, as in the following bequest : Item, donne a ma bonne mere, Pour saluer notre maitresse, Qui pour moi eut douleur amere, Dieu le salt, et mainte tristesse ; Autre chateau ou forteresse N'ai ou retraire corps et ame Quand sur moi court male duresse, Ni ma mere, pauvre femme ! There is only one poem in the English language charac- terised by such an extraordinary versatility of thought and 80 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. style, by such a strange mixture of seriousness with merri- ment, by such an amalgam of gold, silver, and clay, by such pathos and buffoonery, as the ' Great Testament ; ' and that is the ' Don Juan ' of Lord Byron. But in his pensive and sombre reflections on a past which can never return, on the brevity of our mortal life, and on the fugitive character of earthly greatness and of earthly glory, Villon reminds us by turns of Bossuet, of Hamlet in the graveyard at Elsinore, and of Thomas Gray moralising among the little green mounds beneath which ' the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.' Listen to the French poet discoursing SUE LA MORT. Quand je considere ces tetes Entass^es en ces charniers ; Tons forent maitres des requetes, Ou tous de la chambre aux deniers, Ou tous furent porte-paniers : Autant puis 1'un que 1'autre dire ; Car d'eveques ou lanterniers, Je n'y connais rien a redire. 1 Et icelles qui s'inclinaient Unes centre autres dans leurs vies ; Desquelles les unes regnaient, Des autres craintes et servies ; La les vois, toutes assouvies Ensemble en un tas pele-mele, Seigneuries leurs sont ravies : Clerc ni maltre ne s'y appelle. De pauvrete me guermentant, 2 Souventes fois me dit le cceur : Homme, ne te doulouse tant, Et ne d^mene tel douleur, Si tu n'as tant que Jaques Cceur : Mieux vaut vivre, sous gros bureaux 3 Pauvre, qu'avoir e"te seigneur, Et pourrir sous riches tombeaux. 4 Mon pere est mort, Dieu en ait 1'ame, Quant est du corps, il git sous lame : 5 1 Je ne saurais faire la distinction. - Plaignant. s Gros-drap. 4 Lafontaine a exprim6 cette pensee de Villon par cette phrase qui a passe en proverbe : Mieux vaut goujat debout qu 1 Empereur enterrd, et vous avez en Anglais un proverbe qui pourrait bien aussi etre tir6 de la : 1 A live dog is better than a dead lion.' 5 Tombeau. iv TRANSITION PERIOD 81 J'entends que ma mere mourra ; Et le sait bien la pauvre femme : Et son fils pas ne demourra. Je connais que pauvres et riches, Sages et fous, pretres et lais, 1 Noble et vilain, larges et cb.icb.es, Petits et grands, et beaux et laids, Dames a rebrass^s collets, 2 De quelconque condition, Portant atours et bourrelets, Mort saisit sans exception. 3 Et meure Paris et Helene ! Quiconque meurt, meurt a douleur, 4 Celui qui perd vent et haleine, Son fiel se creve sur son cceur, Puis sent Dieu sait quelle sueur ! Et n'est de ses maux qui 1'afflige ; Car enfants n'a, frere ni soeur, Qui lors voulut etre son piege. 5 La mort le fait fremir, palir, Le nez courber, les veines tendre, Le col enfler, la chair mollir, Jointes et nerfs, croitre et etendre. Corps feinim'n, qui tout es tendre, Poli, suave, si gracieux, Te faudra-t-il ces maux attendre ? Oui, ou tout vif aller aux cieux. We have now arrived at a period of transition in the literary history of France. The Middle Ages are disappear- ing, and the Eenaissance is about to impress the stamp of beauty upon all our intellectual productions. But before quitting the arid epoch of which I have been offering an imperfect study, I will take a passing glance at those writers who, from the middle of the eleventh century, and expressing themselves in a language becoming less and less barbarous, have been the pioneers of the route along which we shall henceforth travel, without further hindrances or impedi- 1 Laiques. '- Hauts collets plisses. 3 Dans ce passage encore Villon devance Shakespeare, qui a exprimd une pensee analogue dans les deux vers suivants : ' Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney sweepers, come to dust.' 4 Avec douleur. * Sa caution. G 82 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. ments. When we take into consideration all the virile poetry embodied in the ' Chansons de Geste ' of the first two cycles ; when, among our early chroniclers, one recognises so much vigour of style, and such a comprehensive treat- ment of the subjects taken up ; when we come to admire, in those poets of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth cen- turies, of which Charles d'Orleans and Villon close the list, the ideas, thoughts, sentiments, and originality which they disclose ; may we not reasonably ask ourselves whether men like these might not have made of our French literature, many centuries earlier, that which it became in the sixteenth and seventeenth, if only the imperfect instrument of which they availed themselves in their time had been as refined as that of which their more fortunate successors were able to take advantage ? The multiplication of books in Prance in the sixteenth century, coinciding with the unification of the kingdom, naturally communicated a powerful impulse to letters and led to the creation of a national literature. Thenceforth books were no longer considered as articles of luxury, but became objects of necessity. They passed from the chateau and the monastery into the sitting-room of the middle-class citizen and the workshop of the artisan. The sun of know- ledge, which had hitherto shone only upon the eminences of society, began to flood the valleys with its golden light. It was like Moses descending from the heights of Mount Sinai with the glow of inspiration enveloping his illuminated figure. Let us take a rapid survey of the literary productiveness of the period which intervened between the ' Great Testa- ment ' of Villon, in 1461, and the earliest writings of Clement Marot, in 1515. Guillaume Cretin, whose real name was Dubois, satirised by Eabelais under the epithet of Bamina- grobis, wrote, at the request of Francis I., twelve books of rhymed chronicles, beginning with the siege of Troy and coming down to the Carlovingian kings of France. George Chastelain, the friend and ' pantler ' of Duke Philip the Good, was both a poet and the chronicler of the House of Burgundy. Of his best work, containing his reminiscences of his own time, only three fragments have come down to us. He was succeeded as historiographer to that ducal iv TRANSITION PERIOD 83 family by Jean Molinet, who was librarian to Margaret of Austria. He was a facile writer, both of prose and verse, but destitute of imagination. He was the first, I believe, to introduce double rhymes at the end of his verses : a grotesque fancy so humorously caricatured by Hood in the following lines : Nursemaid in a night-mare rest chest pressed Dreameth of one of her old flames, James Games, And that she hears what faith is man's I Ann's Banns And his from Reverend Mr. Rice, twice, thrice ; White ribbons flourish and a stout shout out That upward goes shows Rose knows those bows' woes I Jean Maschinot, who seems to have been court poet to the Dukes of Brittany, is chiefly known by a collection of twenty-five ballads, called the ' Lunettes des Princes,' and was very fond of throwing his verses into extremely fantastic forms. His early years were spent in splendour, and his declining days in comparative poverty. Guillaume Alexis is referred to in terms of praise by Sainte-Beuve ; and Martial de Paris, better known as Martial d'Auvergne, is spoken of by the Abb6 Goujet as one of the ablest writers in the second half of the fifteenth century. His ' Vigiles de la Mort du Eoi Charles VII.,' narrating the principal events of his reign in verse, had an immense vogue at the time it was written. Nor must I omit to mention Guillaume Coquillart, who is believed to have been a native of Eeims, and wrote a poem on the entry of Charles VIII. into that city on the occasion of his coronation. The poet is reported to have lost his fortune at the game of morre (the game still played in Italy as morra), an incident commemorated by Clement Marot in a punning quatrain. Jean Marot, whose real name was Desmaret, was secre- tary to Anne of Brittany, wife of Louis XII., and acquired some distinction at her court as a poet ; but his reputation was cast into the shade by that of his son, just as the celebrity of Bernardo Tasso was eclipsed by the fame of the illustrious Torquato. Jean le Maire, the instructor of Cle'ment Marot, and gentleman of the chamber to Louis XIII., was not only an accomplished versifier, but a master of many languages, arts, and sciences ; and his ideas and G2 84 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. inventive faculties were greatly in advance of the age in which he lived. There were also two poets of the name of Saint-Gelais, Octavian and Mellin, father and son, or uncle and nephew it is uncertain which. The elder was an elegant writer, if a dissolute ecclesiastic. Besides composing some amorous poetry, he translated the ' .ZEneid ' of Virgil and the ' Epistles ' of Ovid into French ; and, having been appointed Bishop of Angouleme, he renounced the dissolute pleasures of the court of Charles VIII., and devoted him- self to the discharge of his episcopal duties. Mellin de Saint-Gelais, educated at the University of Padua, was a man of various gifts and of an estimable character. Music, poetry, philosophy, astrology, and the Greek, Latin, and Italian classics equally engaged his attention. Francis I. gave him the Abbey of Eeclus, and Henry II. made him librarian at Fontainebleau. The sweetness of his disposition endeared him to all his friends, and when the hour of his death arrived, and his physicians were hotly arguing about the nature of his malady, he smilingly remarked, ' Gentle- men, I will relieve you from this difficulty,' and turning his face to the wall he breathed his last. Before proceeding to speak of Cle'ment Marot, who was the first poet of the Eenaissance, and of Marguerite d' Angou- leme, who was its first romance writer, I must not omit to say something of two famous savants Guillaume Bud6 and his friend and rival, the learned Erasmus. The former, who induced Francis I. to found the College of France, was the greatest Hellenist of his time. He wrote Greek with equal ease and elegance ; and Erasmus designated him ' The Prodigy of France.' His erudition was vast as well as varied, and his devotion to study was so ardent and absorbing that when his servant came to tell him his house was on fire, he calmly remarked, ' Go and tell my wife ; you know it is no business of mine.' Although Erasmus was a Dutchman by birth, we may regard him as a Frenchman by adoption ; he spent so many years in Paris, and was so thoroughly French in character. Most of his writings relate to theological questions, and the subject is one so provocative of controversy that I prefer to pass over it in silence. But his influence on the literature of the sixteenth century was so great, and the part he played iv ERASMUS 86 in the revival of a love for the great masters of antiquity was so important, that he will always stand out as one of the beacon lights of his century. His ' Eloge de la Folie ' created a prodigious sensation at the time of its first appearance, and it is still an historical document of the highest value, as enabling us to comprehend the condition of Europe at that epoch, besides being an almost incom- parable example of the finest raillery. LECTUEE V Clement Marot (1495-1544) Marguerite de Valois (1492-1549) Mellin de Saint-Gelais (1491-1558) Joachim du Bellay (1524-1560). I DEVOTE this chapter to the study of the writers known as the literary PUiade of the sixteenth century, of which Joachim du Bellay was the organiser and Eonsard the most brilliant star, but before doing so I must speak of C16ment Marot and must add something to what I have already said of Mellin de Saint-Gelais. Clement Marot, born at Cahors in 1495, was one of the most striking and picturesque figures of a picturesque epoch. Liberally educated, he began life as page to the Seigneur de Villeroy, and was promoted to be one of the gentlemen in waiting on Marguerite d'Angouleme, ' the pearl of the Valois.' He accompanied her brother, Francis I., on his disastrous expedition into Italy, and, like him, was wounded and made prisoner at the battle of Pavia. Obtaining his release, he returned to France, where the freedom of his religious ideas led to his being accused of heresy and thrown into the prison of the Chatelet, and the rest of his life re- flected some of the most characteristic aspects of the period. It was a period in which society and those who governed it tolerated, in both men and women, the utmost licence of conduct; and the more brilliant the sinner, the more in- dulgent his judges, but woe to those who dared to think for themselves upon any question of faith or religious practice. To break one of the Ten Commandments was a venial offence, but to dispute an article of belief or to doubt a dogma was an unpardonable crime. In his poem entitled ' L'Enfer ' Marot tells us that he was denounced by a young lady to whom he was tenderly attached, because he had been guilty of the enormous crime of eating some bacon in Lent ! At the LECT. y CLEMENT MABOT 87 same time, he says that if he were to describe the depraved life of the monastic orders he could scarcely hope to escape the scaffold or the stake. At one time, while residing in Ferrara, which was then a place of refuge for all who had the audacity to think for themselves, Pope Paul III. induced the Duke to expel the poor poet who was suspected of heresy. From Ferrara Marot proceeded to Venice ; and Francis I., extending his protection to his old comrade in arms, invited him to return to the court of France ; for the king entertained a great predilection for the joyous humour, the careless gaiety, and the large-hearted tolerance of the much-abused poet, whose destiny appeared to be to fall under the ban of the Sorbonne. And he did so, once again. Struck by the beauty and the religious fervour of the Psalms of David, he translated those noble compositions from the original Hebrew into French. His ecclesiastical enemies scented heresy in this new version of the sublime language of the Shepherd King, and the book was suppressed by royal authority ! In order to evade pursuit, Marot once more became an exile and found an asylum in Geneva ; but even here he was not allowed to rest. Wherever he went and whatever he did, the imputation of heresy followed him and clung to him like the poisoned shirt of Nessus. This time it was the austere Calvinists who frowned upon him. They did more. They denounced him as abandoned by heaven and guilty of a deadly sin. I almost shrink from declaring the wickedness of our unfortunate poet. Yet I must conceal nothing. He was in the habit of beguiling his leisure hours by playing at trictrac a very harmless game identical with the ' tables ' of which Shakespeare speaks in ' Love's Labour's Lost,' and resembling the modern backgammon, I believe. To escape the penal consequences of this terrible depravity, Clement Marot fled from Geneva, turning his back upon that diminutive state of which Voltaire used to say that, when he shook his wig, he powdered the whole republic. The poet took refuge finally at Turin, where he died in poverty in the year 1544. The poor poet, whose chief fault was that he held ideas of religious tolerance which were 300 years in advance of his 'time, found rest at last in the tomb, and his epitaph might have been that which Macbeth pronounced upon Duncan : 88 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well .... Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further. Marot's place in French poetry is that of a fixed star, even although his brilliancy should be somewhat dimmed in proportion as the age in which he lived recedes farther and farther from the lifetime of each generation. Demogeot has made the felicitous remark that it seemed as if the poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, about to be eclipsed by the rising splendour of the Eenaissance, had accumulated all its wealth for the endowment of that for- tunate hero of the trouvdres, combining, as he did, the colour of Villon with the naturalness of Froissart, the deli- cacy of Charles d'0r!6ans, the good sense of Alain Chartier, and the caustic humour of Jean de Meung. As regards his language, it will be enough to say that Marot edited the works of Villon with explanatory notes, showing that the elder poet was already regarded as somewhat out of date. After some youthful compositions, in which Marot revived the allegories of the Middle Ages, he surrendered himself entirely to his own fancies. Various spirituel and graceful epistles ; elegies in which sensibility seasoned the wit ; epigrams full of humour and malice such were the poeti- cal compositions dear to his lighter moods of thought. The language at his command sufficed for his works. For the use of a brilliant court he polished the poetry of the fabliaux and availed himself of that decasyllabic verse which seems to have been invented for gay and piquant narratives. The ' Marotic style ' is still spoken of in France, but it is one which bad taste has frequently abused. It is permissible to regret, in our own days, the naive grace of our old phra- seology, words which have become obsolete, and some inver- sions which have fallen into disuse ; but, as Marmontel has said, in order to gracefully handle a naive style one must be naive oneself. I think I have sufficiently indicated the kind of style which has derived its name from Marot and which La Fontaine has excelled in imitating. In his epigrams Eousseau has left some admirable specimens of the Marotic style. Voltaire has occasionally used it with exquisite taste, appropriate to each subject. Among the more notable writings of Marot are ' L'Enfer,' v CLEMENT MAKOT 89 which is a satire against the judiciary ; an ' Epitre au Eoi,' urging him to release him from prison ; his translation of the Psalms of David, and quantities of fables and minor poems. Here are three examples of his versification the first octosyllabic and the other two decasyllabic. In the following he is speaking of a woman who is vainglorious : Vous etes belle, en bonne foi : Ceux qui disent que non, sont b6tes. Vous etes riche, je le voi ; Qu'est-il besoin d'en faire enquetes ? Vous etes bien des plus honnetes ; Et qui le nie est bien rebelle. Mais quand vous vous louez, vous n'fites Honnete, ni riche, ni belle. In the next the poet solicits a loan from his royal pro- tector, on account of the dishonesty of his own valet : J'avais un jour un valet, de Gascogne, Gourmand, ivrogne, et assure menteur, Pipeur, larron, jureur, blasphemateur, Sentant la hart de cent pas a la ronde ; Au demeurant, le meilleur fils du monde. Our poet combined wit with elegance, and the French language contains nothing more piquant, naive, and dexterous than the epistle to the king in which Marot solicits a loan by implication rather than by direct request. I must quote a few lines of this adroit production : Je ne dis pas, si voulez rien prester ; Que ne le prenne. II n'est point de presteur, S'il veut prester, qui ne fasse un debteur. Et S9avez-vous, Sire, comment je paye ? Nul ne le scait si premier, ne 1'essaye. Vous me debvrez, si je puis, du retour. Et vous feray encores un bon tour A celle fin qu'il n'y ait faulte nulle, Et vous feray une belle sedulle A vous payer, sans usure s'entend, Quand on veoirra tout le monde content : Ou si voulez, a payer ce sera Quand vostre los et renom cessera. The life led by our poet rendered it indispensable that he should make frequent demands for money upon his pro- tectors, his friends, and people generally ; and in a reply to Margaret he thus pleasantly alludes to his financial em- barrassments' 90 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LEOT. Mes cr^anciers, qui de dizains n'ont cure, Ont lu le vdtre ; et sur ce, leur ai dit : ' Sire Michel, Sire Bonaventure, La sceur du roi a pour moi fait ce dit.' Lors eux, croyant que fusse en grand credit, M'ont appel Monsieur a cri et cor, Et m'a valu votre ecrit autant qu'or ; Car promis ont non-seulement d'attendre, Mais d'en preter, foi de marchand, encor ; Et j'ai promis, foi de Clement, d'en prendre. To a lady, who inquired if he had burnt a certain letter, as she had begged him to do, Marot wrote in reply : Aucune fois au feu je la mettais Pour la bruler, puis soudain 1'en otais, Puis la remis, et puis Ten reculai ; Mais a la fin, a regret la brulai, Disant : 6 lettre ! apres 1'avoir baisee, Puisqu'il le faut, tu seras embras^e ; Car j 'aime mieux deuil en obissant Que tout plaisir en de"sob4issant. These agreeable pleasantries expressed with so much grace justify the opinion on Marot pronounced by La Harpe. Certainly there is something in that poet which we do not find either in Charles d'0r!6ans or in Villon. The lady to whom he addressed the verses just quoted was no less a personage ' than the king's ' sister, to whom he gave the name of ' Sister in Poetry; ' and to Francis I. himself Marot offered one of his earliest compositions, ' Le Temple de Cupidon,' into which the poet introduced the old mytho- logical personages which had been such favourites with his predecessors. They breathe the same atmosphere of gallantry, and they have the same allegorical names, but a new life has been infused into them by the vivid imagi- nation of the poet, and they are less mannered and less artificial than the exceedingly unreal men and women, or rather personified abstractions, so dear to the hearts of earlier versifiers. Bel Accueil, in a green robe, officiates as porter to the Temple of Cupid, of which Beau-Parler, Beau- Aimer, and Beau-Servir are its joyous and right glorious patrons; and the Amorous Pilgrim adroitly evades Eefus, who is walking in the nave, and by favour of Bel Accueil glides into the choir where Perme Amour is to be found reposing. v CLEMENT MAEOT 91 There must have been something very fascinating about these allegories to both writers and readers in those days, not in France alone, but in England, for do we not find Edmund Spenser towards the end of the same century creating his ' House of Holiness ' and his ' House of Alma,' and Bunyan, a hundred years afterwards, taking us into the ' House of the Interpreter ' and the ' City of Mansoul,' and James Thomson building for us ' The Castle of Indo- lence ' in the first half of the eighteenth century ? Sainte-Beuve does not hesitate to dwell at some length upon Marot's ' Temple of Cupid,' not only because it is the longest of his poems, but because he has also lavished on it such a wealth of imagination. Yet he declines to credit the poet with the possession of genius, inasmuch as 'he had not one of those vigorous talents which place a man in advance of his age and equip him with wings to outstrip it.' The critic seems disposed, indeed, to take a disparaging view of one whom an English writer has styled ' the greatest poet, in some points, that Prance ever had ; ' whose elegance, lucidity, and grace were the admiration of the writers of the seventeenth century, and in whom, as a recent French critic has said, ' Eacine and Boileau were contained as Konsard was in Victor Hugo.' Nor should it be forgotten that Boileau himself has bracketed his name with that of three immortals in the line : Arioste, Marot, Boccace, Babelais. ' If his mind had taken a more ambitious aim,' observes Sainte-Beuve, ' there is reason to believe that he might have winged his flight somewhat earlier than Ronsard did towards those poetic heights, as yet inaccessible, which Malherbe had the honour of being the first to reach and to retain. Happily for Marot, his intellect was better suited to the mediocrity of the times. In poetry as in other respects, taking life easily, and prompt to enjoy, he derived something from all he found, without any regrets and without discerning what he wished. One likes to see him taking things easily amidst so many troubles, and in that perfect harmony between the man and his surroundings we recognise the poet of his age par excellence. . . . Having been a page at court, he acquired in his intercourse with the great that delicacy to which Villon was a stranger. . . . Most of the minor kinds of poetry embraced by our literature found an echo in him without the effort of invention, and with all the charm of their primitive sim- 92 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. plioity. The familiar epistle, the epigram, the story, and the song sparkle often with an original grace which has not suffered etlacement. And if we are not mistaken, entirely secondary although these have become, they constituted for a long time the chief, if not the unique, substance of our poetry. For a consider- able period they formed the warp and woof of the web, whereof to-day they appear to be only an elegant embroidery, and beneath those thin coverings which age has not yet withered was concealed the germ of nearly all our literary future.' Marot represents the old French poetry in its greatest purity, and one perceives in him the legitimate and direct descendant of Guillaume de Loris, Jean de Meung, Alain Chartier, and Francois Villon. With the latter Marot had much in common ; like him, he sang of his amours and of his imprisonment, but his amours were more delicate and his imprisonment more honourable. ' Marot/ said Nisard, ' is Villon rescued from poverty, Villon at court, page to a king, and valet de chambre to a queen. Villon and Marot were both poets sprung from the people.' The lady to whom Marot addressed the epistle pre- viously quoted was no other than Marguerite de Valois, who, in her widowhood, espoused the king of Navarre, and gave birth to Jeanne d'Albret, mother of Henry IV. Her court was the refuge of the independent thinkers of her time ; so that the little city of Alencon became another Athens. She saved the life of Calvin, and she protected Marot from the malice of his persecutors. She was the Bgeria of her brother Francis I. ; and without her, it has been said, the brightest ornaments of the Eenaissance in France must have perished at the stake of the Inquisition. A singularly accomplished woman, she had mastered Greek and Hebrew, and could converse with equal facility in French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English. She was more than suspected of heresy, because she hated ignorance, fanaticism, and intolerance with all the strength of her generous nature ; and when she wrote her mystical poem entitled ' The Mirror of the Sinful Soul,' the Sorbonne included it in the Index Expurgatorius. Living in an age of loose morals and dissolute manners, she preserved ' the white flower of a blameless life ' unspotted from the world. All that can be urged against her is, that some of the stories in her ' Heptameron ' were tainted by the grossness v MAKGUERITE DE VALOIS 93 of the time. But it must be remembered they were written to beguile the weary hours of Francis I. when stretched upon a bed of sickness, and that something had to be conceded to the licentious tastes of her royal brother. In extenuation of their faults, let it be borne in mind that the ideal standard of religion and virtue which was set up in them was higher than that of the period, and that they asserted the rights of conscience at a time when no little moral courage was required on the part of any one, however highly placed, who dared to breathe a word against bigotry and persecution. Her ' Heptameron,' if not a masterpiece of French literature, is a work which did much to form and fix the language in which it is written ; and, as M. Nisard has said, ' it is the first prose composition that one can read without the aid of a vocabulary.' Its title and its idea were obviously borrowed from the ' Decameron ' of Boccaccio ; but its execution was quite original. Other writers towards the middle of the fifteenth century had been similarly indebted to the Italian story-teller, thus reclaiming from Italy the loans which its writers of fiction had borrowed from our fabliaux ; but they were destitute of that liveliness of manner and that gift of clear and facile expression which Marguerite of Valois enjoyed. Her narratives cannot be recommended for perusal in our day, in spite of the dictum of Nisard that ' decency without prudery constitutes their original feature and their charm.' After the lapse of three centuries, the French language has no other words for the same ideas, and we can comprehend the agreeable writer of the ' Heptameron,' just as we comprehend our contem- poraries. With it commences the history of our prose literature. Her poetry is of a mediocre character ; and her best title to our esteem rests upon the work just mentioned, and upon her correspondence, mainly consisting of letters to her brother. Of Mellin de Saint-Gelais I have already spoken in connection with the older poet of the same name ; but chronologically his place is here, for he died in 1558. He may be regarded as one of the best poets of the school of Marot. By M. Viollet-le-Duc he is characterised as the 94 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. first epigrammatic writer in France. Here are some of his productions : A UN POETE VANTARD Tu te plains, ami, grandement, Qu'en mes vers j'ai loue Clement, 1 Et que je n'ai rien dit de toi : Comment veux-tu que je m'amuse A loner ni toi, ni ta muse ? Tu le fais cent fois mieux que moi. And here is a small piece entitled ' Folie,' which was then synonymous with epigram : Notre Vicaire, un jour de fete, Chantait un Agnus gringotte,* Tant qu'il pouvait, & pleine tete, Pensant d' Annette etre ecoute. Annette, de 1'autre cote, Pleurait, attentive a son chant ; Done le Vicaire, en s'approchant, Lui dit : Pourquoi pleurez-vous, Belle ? Ah ! Messire Jean, ce dit-elle, Je pleure un ane qui m'est mort, Qui avait la voix toute telle Que vous, quand vous criez si fort. Of the writers who succeeded Marot and Saint-Gelais, and who chose verse as the vehicle for the expression of their thoughts, only a passing mention need be made, for they were merely poetasters. Etienne Dolet, the great printer, who was hanged and his body burned, for no other offence that that of having faithfully translated a passage which Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates, is not remem- bered by any of his writings but by the jeu de mots which he uttered on the way to the scaffold : Non dolet ipse Dolet, sed pia turba dolet. (' It is not Dolet who grieves, but the sympathetic crowd.') Passing over Thomas Sibilet, Jacques Gohorry, Pelletier du Mans, and Etienne Pasquier, we pause for a moment at the name of Victor Brodeau, whom Marot spoke of as his intel- lectual child, and of whom the elder poet has preserved the following stanza addressed to two minor friars : 1 Marot. - Twittering. T JEAN GROLIER 95 Mes beaux peres religieux, Vous disnez pour un grand merci. (5 gens heureux ! demi-dieux ! Plust a Dieu que je fusse ainsi ! Comme vous, vivrai sans sousci ; Car le voeu qui 1'argent vous oste, II est clair qu'il defend aussi Que ne payez jamais vostre hoste. Of Louise Lab6, the beautiful ropemaker of Lyons, I shall have occasion to speak hereafter ; and it may be remarked, in passing, that the same city produced Maurice Sceve, one of the most versatile men of his time. An advocate by pro- fession, he was also a poet, musician, painter, architect, and antiquary; his poems winning for him the enthusiastic praises of Marot, Dolet, and Du Bellay. Towards the close of the reign of Francis I. (1547), there was a lull in the poetical productiveness of France, which seemed to revive on the accession of his successor, Henry II., who was fond of letters and even cultivated them. Mellin de Saint-Gelais, the friend of Marot, was his almoner, and his titular poet was Frangois Hubert, the disciple of both, and the translator of the ' Metamorphoses ' of Ovid. Mean- while the French language was gaining ground, thanks in no small degree to the influence and authority of the late king, who had commanded it to be taught by the professors of the College of France, and had upon all occasions lent it the weight of his sanction. Guillaume Bud6, in his old age, had applied himself to write the ' Institution du Prince ' in the vernacular ; and the classic languages of antiquity no longer monopolised the exclusive devotion of scholars. Before taking final leave of the reign of Francis I., I must just glance at a few of its literary celebrities, in addition to those already touched upon. Among these was Lazare de Bai'f , who translated the ' Electra ' of Sophocles, and the ' Hercules ' of Euripides, into French verse ; Guillaume Cop, one of the restorers of the science of medicine in France, and the translator of the works of the most illustrious Greek practitioners ; Jean Euel, physician, botanist, and canon of Notre-Dame, whose translations from the Greek and Latin caused Bishop Huet to style him ' the eagle of interpreters ; ' and last, but not least, Jean Grolier, a name dear to the heart of every book-collector, at once the father and the prince 96 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. of French bibliophiles, a scholar and a man of letters, as well as a farmer-general, a foreign ambassador, and a minister of finance under Charles IX. He should never be forgotten, were it only for the device upon his book-plate Grolierii et amicorum. Towards the close of the fifteenth century, our French savants had begun to exhume the literary treasures of antiquity ; while, on the other hand, our expeditions into Italy had made us acquainted with Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio ; and the result of these studies made itself felt at the epoch at which I have now arrived, and of which I must now speak. For a powerful impulse and a novel direction were thus imparted to our poetry by young and enthusiastic men of letters brought up under classic dis- cipline. The savour of our old poets, the elevation of their language, and the nobility of their ideas, were looked upon as pretty nothings by these innovators, who endeavoured to substitute for the naive and often mannered virelays and rondeaux the masculine beauties of classic compositions. You will have guessed that I am about to touch upon that association of poets known as the Pl&ade, and com- posed of Eonsard, Daurat, Du Bellay, Eemi-Belleau, Bai'f the younger, Pontus de Thiard, and Jodelle. Its manifesto was published by Du Bellay in 1549, under the title of 'The Defence and Illustration of the French Language." The literary movement thus com- menced was prolonged for nearly half a century, under the auspices of Eonsard, its intention having been not only to defend the French language against the attacks and the contempt of the learned men of the epoch, but to show that it was capable of acquiring the very qualities in which it was said to be deficient. Nor can I do better than quote the introduction to Du Bellay's compendious analysis of his own ' Illustration : ' ' Languages,' said he, ' do not spring up like plants, some weak and sickly, others healthy and robust. All their virtue lies in the will and determination of mortals. To condemn a language as being struck with impotence is to adopt a tone of arrogance and temerity ; as certain of our fellow-countrymen do to-day, who, being nothing less than Greeks or Latins, regard with a more than stoical superciliousness everything written in French. If our lan- guage is poorer than the Greek or Latin, this is not attributable to v JOACHIM DU BELLAY 97 our own inability, but to the ignorance of our own predecessors who have bequeathed it to us in so meagre and so bare a form that it stands in need of ornament, and, so to speak, of plumage from other sources.' This is the keynote of his argument ; and then he goes on to point out that the Greek language was not originally that which it had become in the time of Demosthenes, nor the Latin that which was employed by Cicero in his orations. Thence he proceeds to speak of the unsatisfactory character of all translations from the classic languages of antiquity; especially as regards those compositions which depend for so much of their effect upon the living voice, so that, as he observes, ' when you pass from the text to the transla- tion, you seem to travel from the burning mountain of Etna to the icy summit of Caucasus.' As regards the Greek and Latin poets, he considers that to translate is to betray and profane them. He then makes a remark full of sagacity and practical wisdom. It is as follows : ' The Eomans well knew how to enrich their language without applying themselves to the labour of translation. They imitated the best Greek authors, transforming themselves into them, devouring them, and after having well digested them, con- verting them into blood and tissue. In like manner we must imitate the Greeks and Latins,' and also, he adds, borrow from foreign languages such words and phrases as may be legitimately and advantageously incorporated with the mother tongue. And it is by this means, it may be observed, that the English language has become such a copious and expressive vehicle of thought, having grown by successive accretions from Celtic, Eoman, Scandinavian, Norman-French, and other foreign sources, annexing and adopting any word which appeared to be desirable of acquisi- tion and suitable for use. After observing that, of all our old poets, there are scarcely any but Guillaume de Loris and Jean de Meung who deserve to be read, and these rather out of curiosity than for profit, Du Bellay continues : Thou, then, who devotest thyself to the service of the Muses, turn thee to the Greek, Latin, and even Spanish and Italian authors, from whence thou mayest derive a more exquisite form of poetry than from our French authors. In no way trust to the H 98 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. examples of such of our own as have acquired a great renown, with little or no science ; and do not allege that poets are born, for this would be too easy a method of achieving immortality. Therefore read and re-read day and night Greek and Latin models, and leave to me all those old French poems for the Floral Games of Toulouse and the Puy de Rouen, such as rondeaux, ballads, vire- lays, chants royal, chansons, and other suchlike sweetmeats, which corrupt the taste of our language, and only serve to testify to our ignorance. And so he continues in the same strain, winding up with a recommendation to French poets to select, as Ariosto did, some one of the beautiful old romances in the national literature, such as ' Lancelot ' or ' Tristan/ and make it the groundwork of a new ' Iliad ' or another ' .ZEneid.' This ' Defence,' the only prose work of Du Bellay, con- stituted in point of fact the programme of the school which made so much noise in the second half of the sixteenth century. ' It was a fierce war which was then undertaken against ignorance,' observes Pasquier in his ' Eecherches,' wherein his mind kindles at the recollections of his youth, and in imagination he recalls and depicts Pierre de Eonsard, Ponthus de Thiard, Bemi Belleau, Etienne Jodelle, and Jean- Antoine de Baif, advancing in the order of a brigade and sustaining the brunt of the battle. That brigade is still further reinforced by Jacques Tahureau, Guillaume des Autels, Nicolas Denisot, Louis le Caroud, Olivier de Magny, Jean de la Pe'ruse, Marc-Claude de Buttet, Jean Passerat, Louis des Mesures, and finally himself, who had only just donned his first armour. But to determine with anything like exactitude the number of the writers associated in the ideas of and efforts towards the reform started by Du Bellay would be as difficult as to enumerate the stars form- ing the constellation from which they took their name. Some of these are visible to the naked eye, while others are discernible only through a telescope. But it is high time we said something of the author of the movement. Joachim du Bellay, nephew of the famous general, and of the equally distinguished cardinal of the same name, was born at Lir6, in Anjou, in the year 1424. In early life he was confined to his bed for two years by a severe illness, and having no other pastime but reading, he devoured every book he could lay his hands on, so that when he 99 regained his health his mind was filled with stores of know- ledge. Moreover, he had discovered that he was a poet ; and his verses found great acceptance in the brilliant court of Francis I., and discerning appreciation at the hands of Marguerite of Valois. They were so smooth and harmonious as to earn for him the appellation of the French Ovid; while some of his admirers compared him to Catullus. At the age of twenty-five he accepted an invitation from his uncle, the cardinal, to visit him in Eome, where he re- mained for three years. The condition of society both lay and ecclesiastical in the Eternal City at that time was so scandalous as to inspire him with scorn and indignation, and these found expression in some sonnets replete with caustic satire. The young poet had already entered the Church, and when he returned to France, his cousin Eustace, who was a prelate, presented him with an arch- deaconry in the diocese of Paris, as also a canonry in the cathedral of Notre-Dame. He was a welcome guest at the court of Henry II. ; but afflicted with deafness, and having relapsed into ill-health, he retired into privacy, solaced himself with poetry, and died in Paris at the early age of thirty-six, leaving behind him 115 sonnets, and numerous odes, elegies, and lyrical compositions. These were first collected and published seven years after his death, and among them are two really beautiful odes. From one of them, addressed to Madame Marguerite, I select the following lines : Princesse, je ne veux point suivre D'une telle mer les dangers, Aimant mieux entre les miens vivre Que mourrir chez les etrangers. Mieux vaut que les siens on precede, Le nom d'Achille poursuivant, Que d'etre ailleurs un Diomede, Voire un Thersite bien souvent. Quel siecle eteindra la memoire, O Boccace ! et quels durs hivers Pourront jamais secher la gloire, Petrarque, de tes lauriers verts ? . . . The poet, as it seems to me, strikes a note in the fore- going not audible in the poetry of his predecessors. In the second ode, addressed to the Seigneur Bouju, Du Bellay H2 100 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE IECT. appears to have borrowed his inspiration from Horace ; and the composition will be found to repay perusal. From an ode on ' Immortality,' one of his most lyrical productions, I must quote a few Lines : L'un aux clameurs du Palais s'etudie ; L'autre le vent de la faveur mendie : Mais moi, que les graces cherissent, Je hais les biens que Ton adore ; Je hais les honneurs qui perissent Et le soin qui les coeurs deVore : Rien ne me plait, fors ce qui peut deplaire Au jugement du rude populaire. As an example of Du Bellay's sonnets, the following is extremely characteristic : Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage, Ou comme celui-la qui conquit la toison, Et puis est retourne plein d'usage et raison Virre entre ses parents le reste de son age ! Quand reverrai-je, helas ! de mon petit village Pumer la cheminee, et en quelle saison Reverrai-je le clos de ma pauvre maison, Qui m'est une province et beaucoup d'avantage. Plus me plait le sejour qu'ont bati mes aieux Que des palais romains le front audacieux ; Plus que le marbre dur me plait 1'ardoise fine, Plus mon Loire gaulois que le Tibre Latin, Plus mon petit Lire que le mont Palatin, Et plus que 1'air marin la douceur angevine. A chanson addressed to the Zephyrs is written hi a Lighter vein, appropriate to the subject : A vous, troupe legere, Qui d'aile passagere Par le monde volez, Et d'un sifflant murmure L'ombrageuse verdure Doucement ebranlez, J'ofFre ces violettes, Ces lis et ces fleurettes Et ces roses ici, Ces vermeillettes roses Tout fraichement ecloses, Et ces osillets aussi. T JOACHIM DU BELLAY 101 De votre douce haleine Eventez cette plaiue, Eventez ce sejour, Cependant que j'ahanne 1 A mon ble que je vanne, A la chaleur du jour. 1 Les Begrets,' a collection of short pieces, was written during the poet's residence in Eome, where, although he was no puritan, he saw much that shocked and disgusted him. And at the same time his thoughts wandered regret- fully across the Alps, and a feeling of sadness and weari- ness crept into his verse. In the subjoined sonnet he reproached himself for having sacrificed his studies and his hopes of fame to the pursuit of fortune : Las ! ou est maintenant ce mepris de fortune ? Ou est ce coaur vainqueur de toute adversite, Get honnete desir de 1'immortalit^ Et cette belle flamme au peuple non commune. Ou sont ces doux plaisirs qu'au soir, sous la nuit brune, Les muses me donnaient, alors qu'en liberte, Dessus le verd tapis d'un rivage cart Je les menais danser aux rayons de la lune ? Maintenant la Fortune est maitresse de moi, Et mon coeur, qui soulait etre maitre de soi, Est serf de mille maux et regrets qui m'ennuient ; De la posterite je n'ai plus de souci ; Cette divine ardeur je ne 1'ai plus aussi, Et les muses de moi, comme etranger, s'enfuient. In his ' Olive ' an anagram of Viole, a fair young Angevine, whom he really admired he extols her beauty and analyses its specific features, comparing them with natural objects. ' It is this poetry of sentiment and imagery,' observes Sainte-Beuve, ' which came at an opportune time to temper the gaiety of the cabaret, and to infuse into our language decency as well as sparkle.' Amidst the ruins of Eome Du Bellay found the same inspiration as Byron did in a later century, and his ' An- tiquite's de Eome,' consisting of forty-five sonnets, descriptive of its most famous monuments, takes rank with ' Begrets,' as the best of his poems. In them he often displays an energy and uses expressions such as we meet with afterwards 1 Breathe with difficulty. 102 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. in Corneille. It is honourable to the character of the poet that he quitted the palace of his uncle the cardinal as poor as when he entered it. In an era of simony and corruption, he neither soiled his fingers with bribes nor his soul with the sins of a traffic which was not the less infamous because it was so very general. The members of the Pleiade welcomed his return to France with genuine enthusiasm; but he only lived to reach what has been often called ' the fatal age of genius,' and died, as we have said, at thirty-six. His uncle the cardinal had preceded him into the other world by six weeks. All the poets of the time sincerely bewailed the loss of one so young and gifted ; and his remains were buried in the cathedral of Notre-Dame. His ' Antiquities of Eome ' were translated into English by Edmund Spenser. Let me not omit to add that the French language is indebted to Joachim du Bellay for that beautiful word patrie, for which there was no equivalent in the earlier tongue. Henry Martin says of him that he was at once the initiator of his school and the most discreet and best inspired of its adepts. The ' Poet Courtier,' another production of Du Bellay 's, is remarkable in many respects. It is one of our best classic satires. It is directed against the court poets, whose fatuity and ignorance he makes merry over, and the flimsy character of whose compositions he exposes with the utmost pleasantry. No doubt many of his gibes were directed against Mellin de Saint-Gelais, towards whom he was often unjust, as indeed he was rather apt to be towards the whole of the school of Marot. From another point of view this epistle is a striking one, for in it the Alexandrine line of twelve syllables is managed with gravity and ease. ' This primitive Alexan- drine, with its variable ccesura, its free flow of sense from one line into the other, and its rich rhymes, was habitually that of Du Bellay, Eonsard, D'Aubign6, and Eegnier ; that of Moliere in his versified comedies, of Eacine in his " Plaideurs ; " that which Malherbe and Boileau had the misfortune to misunderstand and to persistently combat, and which Andre Chenier at the end of the last century recreated with incredible audacity and unheard-of good fortune ; that Alexandrine,' wrote Sainte-Beuve in 1830, ' is the same as the younger school of poets feels an affection for and cul- v JOACHIM DU BELLAY 103 tivates, and which quite recently Victor Hugo hi his " Oliver Cromwell," and Bmile Deschamps and Alfred de Vigny hi their versified translation of " Borneo and Juliet," have aimed at re-introducing into dramatic compositions.' In the seventeenth century the name of Du Bellay still retained its vogue ; but dying so young, his reputation paled before the rising glory of Eonsard, before both of them were enveloped in the same eclipse. By way of conclusion to my study of this standard-bearer of the Pleiade, I will append one of the sonnets from his ' Eegrets,' in which he shows how tenderly he loved that France from which he was so far removed, that dear motherland upon which he was the first to bestow the epithet of Patrie : France, mere des arts, des armes et des lois, Tu m'as nourry long-temps du lait de ta ruamelle ; Ores, comme un agneau qui sa nourrice appelle, Je remplis de ton nom les antres et les bois. Si tu m'as pour enfant advoue" quelquefois, Que ne me respons-tu maintenant, 6 cruelle ? France ! France [ respons & ma triste querelle : Mais nul, sinon Echo, ne respond a ma voix. Entre les loups cruels j'erre parmi la plaine, Je sens venir 1'hyver, de qui la froide haleine D'une tremblante horreur fait herisser ma peau. Las ! les autres agneaux n'ont faute de pasture, Us ne craignant le loup, le vent ny la froidure, Si ne suis-je pourtant le pire du troupeau. LECTUEE VI Bonsard (1524-1585) Eemi Belleau (1528-1577) Baif (1552-1591) Jodelle (1532-1573) Alexander Hardy (1560-1630) Eobert Gamier (1524-1590) Guillaume de Salluste, Sieur du Bartas (1544-1590) Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne (1550-1630). I CONCLUDED the last lecture with Joachim du Bellay, and, continuing the study of the same group of authors, I will now speak of Eonsard, and pass from the standard-bearer of the Pleiade to its earliest and most energetic com- batant. This famous writer the ' French Homer,' as he has been styled of whom we are about to treat exercised in fact an immense sovereignty over the literature and poetry of his epoch : an influence, as Sainte-Beuve has remarked, which lasted for half a century and admitted of neither rivalry nor opposition. Of himself, his family, his birth, his education, and his early adventures, Eonsard has furnished us with detailed and exact particulars, in an epistle addressed to Belleau. It appears from the personal information thus supplied that he was born on September 11, 1524, in the Vendomois ; that he spent nine years at the College of Navarre ; that he left it, at an early age, to enter the service of the Due d'Orl^ans, son of Francis I. ; that he quitted it for that of James V. of Scotland, and resided for nearly three years in North Britain. James dying, Eonsard resumed his former position ; afterwards became page to the Dauphin ; and was secretary to a foreign embassy; acquiring during his absence from France a knowledge of the English, German, and Italian languages. He also obtained what was still more valuable, a knowledge of men and affairs while he was yet a youth. For he was only eighteen when he was compelled to relinquish a diplo- matic career by a serious illness which afflicted him with LBCT. vi RONSARD 105 deafness, and proved a blessing in disguise, since it was the means of withdrawing him from the court, and of impelling him to embrace a career of study and of comparative seclusion, for he entered the college at Coqueret, where for seven years he enjoyed the benefit of Jean Dorat's tuition, and had for his fellow students Jean-Antoine de Bai'f, Eemi Belleau, Lancelot de Charles, and Marc-Antoine Muret, each of whom was destined, like himself, to acquire celebrity in letters in after life. They were all struck, like his tutors, by the daring of his intellect, and it was at that time that Eonsard laid the foundations of the literary revolution which changed the future of the French language and its poetry. It was about a year after quitting Coqueret that Eonsard met with Du Bellay, and associated himself with him in his pursuits. Their first works were published within a year of each other, and the maiden efforts of these innovators were violently attacked at court by Mellin de Saint-Gelais and his coterie, but their opposition was soon silenced, and the success of Eonsard was rapid, unanimous, and something like a triumph. Sainte-Beuve has left us a charming description of the brilliant rise into distinction of the still youthful writer and scholar : ' Proclaimed at the Floral Games the prince of poets, Eonsard, as had been said of Marot, became the poet of princes. Margaret of Savoy, sister of Henry II., was his Margaret of Navarre not to speak of Diana of Poitiers, who played an important part in introducing the new school. Mary Stuart received him during the short reign of her husband. Later on she remembered him, when seated on the throne of Scotland, as at a still later period she read his poems in her captivity. Queen Elizabeth sent a valuable diamond to the poet who had celebrated her beautiful and royal rival, and who charmed her while she was a prisoner. Charles IX. cherished Eonsard and heaped abbeys and benefices upon him.' There was no writer of his period, as Pasquier has reminded us, who did not address eulogistic verses to him. It was a continual hymn of praise, a veritable worship. His works were publicly read and explained in the French schools of Flanders, England, Poland, and even at Danzig. And this chorus of laudation lasted during fully fifty years, not only without diminution, but ever increasing 106 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LHCT. with the lapse of time. Towards the end of his life, the poet Desportes enjoyed, it is true, the entire favour of Henry III. ; but Desportes, as well as Bertaut, was brought forward under Eonsard's patronage, and had been formed by his example. I must not omit to add that Bonsard devoted twenty- five years of his life to the composition of an epic poem entitled ' La Franciade," which was left unfinished at his death. When our poet died in 1585, his loss was mourned by the whole of Prance. Funeral orations were pronounced, and statues erected, in his honour. Invested with all sorts of honours, he seemed to have been enshrined in a true Temple of Fame. Fifteen years had scarcely passed away when Malherbe, who reformed everything, who was a grammarian as well as a poet, scrupulously particular, and severe towards him as well as others, pronounced upon the poet, so loudly extolled but a short time before, a judgment which posterity has ratified, in cancelling, verse by verse, the whole of Bonsard. The French Academy and Boileau finished the work of effacing him. But it has been seriously doubted whether the author of the ' Satires ' and ' Epistles ' ever read his works. Bonsard was pedantic, no doubt, and as the satirist said, ' his muse spoke Greek and Latin/ but he scarcely deserved the severe censures pronounced upon him by Honor6 de Balzac, when he declared that the stream of his poetry contained more mud and sand than water, for his lighter compositions are really felicitous in expression, and full of brightness and gaiety. Neither should we forget the honour due to him as a patriot and as a man. Few of Bonsard's fellow countrymen would have had the courage to address words like these to Charles IX. : ' Sire, ce n'est pas tout que d'etre Boi de France.' Few religious thinkers of his time were raised so high above the brawling of the sects as to be able to condemn alike the fanaticism of the Protestants and the intolerance of the Catholics, or as to record his belief that one day both of them would live harmoniously in heaven. Few men showed at that time so much sincerity and perseverance in preaching peace and conciliation as Bonsard did, who applied all the force of his nature to avert the horrors of civil war, provoked by differences of religious belief. TI RONSARD 107 When we come to examine the writings of Eonsard, we discover in them some pearls which will well repay the search. An admirer of the ancients, he imitated instead of translating them, and it was through him that, for the first time, the features of the past seemed to revive in the French language. We owe him this much at any rate. As examples of his best work, I will cite the following passages : Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, a la chandelle, Assise aupres du feu, devisant et filant, Direz, chantant mes vers et vous emerveillant, Eonsard me celebrait du temps que j'etais belle. Lors vous n'aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle, Deja sous le labeur a demi sommeillant, Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s'aille reveillant, Benissant votre nom de louange immortelle. Je serai sous la terre et, fantdme sans os, Par les ombres myrteux je prendrai mon repos : Vous serez au foyer une vieille accroupie, Regrettant mon amour et votre fier dedain, Vivez, si m'en croyez, n'attendez a demain ; Cueillez des aujourd'hui les roses de la vie. Following the example of my predecessors who have sketched the history of French literature, I will quote some graceful stanzas addressed by Eonsard to a lady, under the title of LA VIE E8T KAPIDE Mignonne, aliens voir si la rose Qui ce matin avait desclose Sa robe de pourpre au soleil A point perdu, ceste vespree, Les plis de sa robe pourpree Et son teint au vostre pareil. Las ! voyez comme en peu d'espace, Mignonne, elle a dessus la place, Las ! las ! ces beautes laisse cheoir ! O vrayment marastre nature, Puisqu'une telle fleur ne dure Que du matin jusques au soir ! Done, si vous me croyez, mignonne, Tandis que votre dge fleuronne 108 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBOT. En sa plus verte nouveaute, Cueillez. cueillez vostre jeunesse : Comme & cette fleur, la vieillesse Fera temir vostre beaute". As an appropriate pendant to the foregoing let me quote the last six lines of an irreproachable sonnet : Icy chanter, la pleurer je la vy, Icy sourire, et la je fas ravy De ses discours par lesquels je desvie : Icy s'asseoir, la je la vy danser ; Sur le mestier d'un si vague penser Amour ourdit les trames de ma vie. Such was the more graceful aspect of Eonsard's muse, and it would be unjust to overlook the fact that if he did not definitively found the noble language of the poetry towards which his principal efforts were directed, he has, neverthe- less, given it that diapason which Malherbe knew so well how to maintain. Henry Martin's estimate of him appears to me to reach the juste milieu of criticism : ' He had neither the invention which is the privilege of genius only, nor the taste which was scarcely to be looked for in that epoch of tumultuous transition. But the Muses had given him warmth of colouring, picturesqueness of expression, an inexhaustible abundance of imagery, the instinct of harmony, transformed by labour into the science of rhythm, and something of that sentiment of nature which had been the very life of antique poetry. The variety of the elegiac and lyric modes in which he indulged ravished the ear, while the voluptuous charm of his pictures enervated the heart and the senses. What should induce us to pardon the poet but to condemn the chief of a school, is that while Eonsard triumphs in the middle region of amorous poetry, in the Anacreontic ode, we see his Icarian wings melt whenever he attempts to wing a loftier flight towards the sun of the epic or of the Pindaric ode. But, hi the matter of sustained style, he raises himself many degrees above the sphere of Marot." The critic I have just quoted adds : ' His contem- poraries did not judge him thus, but placed him in the poetical empyrean at a height from which he was speedily precipitated by other gods like a thunder- smitten Titan. Fifty years of immoderate glory have been expiated by two centuries of unjust contempt.' YI RONSARD 109 It has been remarked that, in the study of a literary epoch, our principal critics have always had a favourite author. Walter Besant in his ' Early French Writers ' has shown a marked predilection for the tender and amiable Clotilde de Surville, whose very existence is a matter of con- troversy. Payne in England and Campaux in France made an idol of Villon. Villemain has reserved his special admira- tion for Charles d'0r!6ans and Montaigne, while Sainte- Beuve and this is the point I am coming to has praised, commented upon, explained, and occasionally excused, Eonsard as none of his most enthusiastic and indulgent annotators have done. The more recent of these two critics has even gone so far as to dedicate the following sonnet to the poet's honour : A toi, Ronsard, a toi, qu'un sort injurieux Depuis deux siecles livre au mepris de 1'histoire, J'eleve de mes mains 1'autel expiatoire Qui te purifiera d'un arret odieux. Non que j'espere encore au trone radieux, D'ou jadis tu regnais, replacer ta memoire, Tu ne peux de si bas remonter a la gloire : Vulcain impunement ne tomba point des cieux. Mais qu'un peu de pitie console enfin tes manes ; Que, dechire longtemps par des rires profanes, Ton nom, d'abord fameux, recouvre un peu d'honneur ; Qu'on dise : II osa trop, mais 1'audace etait belle ; II lassa, sans la vaincre, une langue rebelle, Et de moins grands depuis eurent plus de bonheur. Before concluding this notice of Eonsard I will, show how he, too, could use the key wherewith, as Wordsworth says, ' Shakespeare unlocked his heart : ' Je vous envoi un bouquet que ma main Vient de trier de ces fleurs epanies : Qui ne les eust a ce vespre cueillies, Cheutes a terre elles fussent demain. Cela vous soit un exemple certain Que vos beautez, bien qu'elles soient fleuries, En peu de temps cherront toutes flaitries, Et comme fleurs periront tout soudain. Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, ma Dame, Las ! le temps non ; mais nous nous en allons, Et tost serons estendus sous la lame : 110 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. Et des amours desquelles nous parlions, Quand serons morts, n'en sera plus nouvelle : Pour ce aymez-moy, cependant qu'estes belle. Konsard's swan-song was pious and pathetic. He dic- tated two sonnets addressed to Jesus Christ, then turned upon his side and rendered up his last sigh, with a smile upon his lips. The news of his death produced a great sensation in Paris. The funeral ceremony was celebrated in the chapel of the college of Dreux, the court and the parliament being both represented on the occasion. The king sent his musicians, and the bishop of the diocese pro- nounced the absolution. The classical tendencies of the age found curious expression in one passage of the prelate's discourse. ' Nature,' said he, ' has put on mourning as she did at the death of the god Pan ! ' Eemi Belleau, the pastoral poet par excellence, ' the gentle Belleau ' of the Pl&ade, was born at Nogent de Botrou hi 1528, and died in Paris in 1577. He made a comedy in verse, ' La Eeconnue,' which is one of the earliest of our plays, and is still readable. But a better idea of this poet will be obtained if I quote the following imitation of Anacreon from his pen : Si 1'or et la richesse Retardaient la vitesse, La vitesse et le cours De nos beaux jours : Je 1'aurais en reserve, Ann de rendre serve [esclave] La mort tirant a soi L'argent de moi. Mais las ! puisque la vie, A tous vivants ravie, Ne peut se retarder Pour marchander, Que me sert tant de plaintes, Tant de larmes contraintes, Et sanglots ennuyeux Pousser aux cieux ? Puisque la mort cruelle Sans merci nous appelle, Que nous servirait or [a present] L'argent et 1'or ? YI BAIF 111 Avant que mort descendre La-bas, je veux dependre [depenser] Et rire, a table mis De mes amis. Jean Antoine de Bai'f, Eonsard's fellow student, was born in the year 1552 in Venice, where his father had been ambassador from Francis I. to the republic of St. Mark. He was the most fertile writer of the group to which he belonged. He endeavoured to invent a new alphabet con- sisting of ten vowels, nineteen consonants, eleven diphthongs, and three triphthongs. He instituted the first literary society which was founded in France, endeavoured to introduce four- and five-syllabled verses into our language, and wrote a mass of poetry which is never read. After exhibiting his loyalty to the programme issued by Du Bellay, De Ba'if died in 1591. Subjoined is an example of his style : LE CALCUI. DE LA VIE Tu as cent ans et davantage : Mais calcule de tout ton age Combien en eut ton cre"ancier, Combien tes folles amourettes, Combien tes affaires secrettes, Combien ton pauvre tenancier, Combien tes proces ordinaires, Combien tes valets mercenaires, Combien ton aller et venir: Ajoute aussi tes maladies, Ajoute encore tes folies, Si tu pouvais t'en souvenir : Et tout cela qui, sans usage, S'en est alle pour ton dommage : Si tout cela tn en rabats, Tu verras avoir moins d'annees Que tu ne t'en etais donne'es, Et que tout jeune tu t'en vas. I must deal briefly with the other members of the Pl&ade, but in so doing I may succeed perhaps in giving you some idea of the style and general tendencies of the group. The part which Jodelle played in the movement was that of resuscitating the tragic authors of Greece. Many transla- tions into French had already been made of the plays of 112 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. Euripides and Sophocles, as also of the comedies of Terence from the Latin. Jodelle himself had written a version of the 'Plutus' of Aristophanes in 1549. Three years later he ventured to put upon the stage two original tragedies in imitation of the ancients, entitled ' Cleopatra Captive ' and ' Dido ' respectively. The first was acted before Henry II . by a company of amateurs. The author, who was only twenty, played the part of the Egyptian queen, and his friends Bemi Belleau and Jean de la P6ruse sustained the other leading characters. It met with an immense success, and the king presented the dramatist with 500 crowns. It is a curious proof of how men's judgments are frequently blinded by a transitory and factitious enthusiasm that Ronsard allowed himself to be so completely carried away as to declare that Sophocles, Euripides, and Menander were mere schoolboys in comparison with the French author ! Listen to this dithyrambic outburst on his part : Jodelle le premier d'une plainte bardie FranQoisement chanta la Grecque tragedie ; Puis en changeant de ton, chanta devant nos rois La jeune come"die en langage Francois, Et si bien les rima que Sophocle et Menandre, Tant fussent-ils savants, y eussent pu apprendre. Looking at these dramatic experiments from a calmer and more critical point of view, the plaudits of Jodelle's con- temporaries find no echo in our own times. Nearly all the tragedies and comedies of the new school sinned in one important particular. There was no invention of characters. Yet, singularly enough, Jodelle proved the exception to the rule in his ' Eugene,' a comedy written in imitation of the Italians, and played before the king as an afterpiece to ' Cleopatra.' M. Eoyer, in his ' Histoire Universelle du Theatre,' says that besides being picturesque in expression it contains two characters, a chaplain and a captain, drawn from life. In the plays of that period, the situations and the management of the plot are scrupulous reproductions and perfect counterfeits of Greek forms. The action is simple, observes Sainte-Beuve, the personages few in number, the acts very short and intermingled with choruses, the lyric poetry of which is far superior to the dialogue ; and these vi SUPPRESSION OF MYSTERIES 113 pieces are written in a style which aims at nobility and gravity, and which only fails to reach them because their language is faulty. Such, in brief, are the tragedies of Jodelle and his contemporaries. The efforts made by him- self and by some of the disciples of Eonsard to supersede the mysteries, farces, and foolish productions placed upon the stage by pieces imitated from the antique suggest a passing allusion to the old theatre which was about to disappear. The authors of the Mysteries had ended by lowering their subjects to the level of their uncultivated audiences. Those representations had degenerated, indeed, into veritable saturnalia, and the disorders which attended some of them provoked the interference of the magistracy of Paris. The last bright days of the Mysteries were seen during the winter of 1540 and 1541, when the Brethren of the Passion played the ' Acts of the Apostles ' at the Hdtel de Flandres. It was a truly gigantic composition by the Brothers Gr6ban, doctors in theology, containing 80,000 lines, and necessitating the co-operation of 500 performers. It embraced the crucifixion of St. Peter, the transport of the emperor Nero to hell, and the roasting alive of St. Thomas upon red-hot bars. The stage directions show that even the vapour of boiling water was introduced upon the stage in order to represent the smoke ascending from the martyr's body. Quite recently it was revived in the Eoman amphitheatre at Bourges, where the performance lasted for forty consecutive days ! The king's people complained of the entertainments presented by the Brotherhood, and after some years of vacillation a decree was issued by parliament forbidding the acting of Mysteries taken from the Holy Scriptures, and confining such dramas to 'profane and honest' subjects. And thus in 1548 the religious theatre of the Middle Ages came to an end in France. A similar statute had been passed in England five years previously ; and there the dis- appearance of sacred plays led to the creation of a national drama, and the appearance of such a constellation of dramatic poets, including Marlowe, Massinger, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Peele, Dekker, Ford, and Webster, with Shake- speare towering head and shoulders above them all, as England never saw before nor has seen since. i 114 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. France did not proceed so rapidly and so directly along the same career. The Eenaissance at first merely ventured to place upon the scene an antique puppet in lieu of the old Catholic drama. And that epoch, otherwise so intelli- gent, allowed itself to be deluded into accepting Jodelle as a great genius. At the same time it should be added that his vogue was confined to the court and to the educated classes. The great bulk of the public remained completely indifferent to his academic tragedy of ' Cleopatra/ which was above the comprehension of the crowd and not worth studying in their opinion. The dramatist and his asso- ciates announced that they had it in contemplation to replace the old farces as well as the Mysteries, and to resuscitate pure comedy as well as tragedy. But their experiments in that direction, with the exception I have mentioned, did not differ essentially from the ancient farces ; and the best of them is very inferior to ' Pathelin,' that fine old prototype of French comedy, which remained unsurpassed, as Sainte-Beuve has said, until the days of Moliere. Hallam, who is not less deserving of the epithet ' judi- cious ' than Eichard Hooker, says of Jodelle, ' His style is often low and ludicrous, which did not prevent this tragedy ("Cleopatra"), the first fruits of a theatre which was to produce Eacine, from being received with vast applause. There is, in reality, amidst those raptures that frequently attend an infant literature, something of an undefined presage of the future, which should hinder us from thinking them quite ridiculous.' ' Call no man happy until he dies ' was the exclamation of one of old. Did Jodelle remember it when he lay upon his death-bed, lonely and neglected, miserable and forgotten ? He had fallen under the royal displeasure owing to a simple blunder on the part of a mechanist to whom he had entrusted a matter of detail connected with a masque which the poet had been commanded to arrange at the Hdtel de Ville in honour of the Due de Guise. The bungle excited a roar of laughter, and Jodelle passes into disgrace, oblivion, and poverty. ' Put not your trust in princes ' might have served him for an epitaph. The poets of the time who laboured with Him for the vi ROBERT GARNIER 115 regeneration of our dramatic art were Jean de la P6ruse, Charles Toustain, Jean-Jacques de la Taille, Jacques Grevin, Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Jean-Antoine de Bai'f, and Eemi Belleau. The repertory of these innovators was inconsider- able, each of them contributing three or four pieces at the most, all of which were marked by a total want of originality, and were indebted to the ancients for their form and substance. Among the dramatic authors of that epoch, I must not omit to mention Pierre de Larivey, who wrote half a dozen comedies, which, if somewhat licentious in language, were vivacious in dialogue, and moral in their general tendency. One of the best of them was dedicated to an Italian gentle- man named Nicol6 Buonaparte. It was the first mention, I believe, of that name in French literature. Then came Alexandre Hardy (1560-1630), a most volu- minous playwright, who is said to have written, or vamped, 600 tragedies and tragi-comedies ; in some of which he intro- duced scenes of revolting indecency, with what Hood might have called an insolent hardy-hood. All that remain of his profuse and generally worthless productions are forty-one examples, collected and published by himself when he was an old man. I pass over many undistinguished names, to pause for a moment at that of Eobert Gamier, a judge, who was held in the highest estimation by Charles IX. and Henry III. ; and a dramatist who was much superior to Jodelle. He adopted classic models, like him selecting Seneca in preference to the great Greek masters, from whom, however, he borrowed the idea of his choruses ; while the correctness of his versifi- cation, the elevation of his style, and the sustained dignity of his dialogue marked him out as one of the precursors of that classic drama in France which was brought to perfec- tion by Corneille and Kacine. Both Jodelle and Gamier bestowed a new language on tragedy ; and some of the choruses of the latter merit the title of odes. Here is a passage in which Caesar, making a triumphal entry into Eome, thus apostrophises that august city: sourcilleuses tours ! coteaux deceits ! Palais orgueilleux 1 O temples honores ! 116 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. O vous, Murs, que les dieux ont maQonn^a eux-memes, Eux-memes etoffes de mille diademes ! Ne ressentez-vous point le plaisir en vos coeurs, De voir votre Cesar, le Vainqueur des Vainqueurs, Par tant de gloire acquise aux nations etranges, Accroitre votre empire, ainsi que vos louanges ? Et toi, fleuve orgueilleux, ne vas-tu pas tes flots Aux tritons mariners faire bruire mon los, Et au pere ocean te vanter que le Tybre Roulera plus fameux que 1'Euphrate et le Tygre ? Ja presque tout le monde obeit aux Romains : Us ont presque la mer et la terre en leurs mains : Et soit ou le soleil, de sa torche voisine Les Indiens perleux au matin illumine ; Soit oA son char, lasse de la course du jour, Le ciel quitte a la nuit, qui commence a son tour ; Soit ou la mer glacee en cristal se resserre ; Soit ou 1'ardent soleil seche et brule la terre ; Les Romains on redoute, et n'y a si grand roi Qui au coeur ne fremisse, oyant parler de moi. I shall avoid fatiguing you by making further extracts from these authors ; and indeed a complete familiarity with the infancy of our dramatic literature is unnecessary to any one who does not desire to make a special study of it ; and I believe I have said enough on this head to fulfil the purpose I have in view. I shall confine myself hereafter to analysing those dramatic works only which have obtained, and still preserve, the distinction of being French classics. However open to adverse criticism the theatrical pro- ductions of the Pleiade were, they nevertheless left their mark upon the stage, by endowing our dramatic poetry with the Alexandrine verse, and this was the gift of La Peruse, whose ' M6d6e,' imitated from Seneca, is notable for its rigorous observance of the rule with respect to masculine and feminine rhymes. Let us now pass on to the consideration of other authors belonging to the same group and the same school. Guillaume de Salluste, Sieur Du Bartas, born about 1544, in the village of Montfort, may be said to have ' lisped in numbers,' for he began composing verses even in childhood. A Protestant in religion, he drew his inspiration from the Bible ; and his ' Muse Chr6tienne ' was a protest against the pagan tendencies of contemporary literature. It was dedicated to Margaret of Navarre, who is said to have been 7i DU BAETAS 117 his godmother. His views were elevated, but his literary faculties did not enable him to soar into the higher regions of song. His ' Uranie ' and his ' Judith ' were heavy and tedious productions, and his most important work ' The Week ' (or ' Creation ') was not of such a character as to justify the prodigious success it achieved, or to explain the extraordinary admiration which Goethe conceived for it. ' We are struck,' he writes, ' by the grandeur and variety of the images which his verses call up before us ; we render justice to the strength and vivacity of his pictures, and to the wide extent of his knowledge of physics and of natural history.' The real secret of the popularity of this elaborate poem must be sought for, I think, in the circumstances of the times : Du Bartas was the poet of the French Calvinists, and the trusted servant of Henry IV., just as Milton was after- wards the poet of the English Puritans and the secretary of Cromwell ; and at an epoch in which all good Catholics in France affected the light and licentious poetry which pleased the Cavaliers in the days of the Stuarts, Du Bartas presented himself as the exponent of the religious muse, and as a defender of the Christian faith. Be this as it may, ' The Week,' which no doubt inspired the ' Sette Giornate ' of Tasso, ran through thirty editions in six years. It was translated into Latin, Italian, Spanish, German, and English; and extorted the praises of so true a poet as Edmund Spenser ; while it is worthy of remark that the compound words which Du Bartas introduced into French literature, and which were condemned by the critics as pedantic, were adopted from that time forth by the best English writers : Chapman employed them in his admirable translation of Homer, so warmly eulogised by Keats ; Sir Philip Sidney did the same in his ' Arcadia ; ' Milton in both his great epics ; and Phineas Fletcher in his ' Purple Island.' In ' The Week,' Du Bartas, having arrived at the creation of man, when the world having been formed and peopled nothing remained but to introduce the principal guest, did so in this pleasant fashion : Le sage ne conduit la personne invitee Dans le lieu du festin, que la salle appretee 118 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. Ne brille de flambeaux, et que les plats charges Sur le linge flamand ne soient presque ranges : Ainsi notre grand Dieu, ce grand Dieu qui sans cesse Tient ici cour ouverte . . . Ne voulut convier notre aieul a sa table Sans tapisser plus t&t sa maison delectable Et ranger, liberal, sous les p6les astres La friande douceur de mille mets sucres. The poet's conceptions of the Supreme Being were as anthropomorphic as those of Murillo himself ; and he con- cludes a description of the person of the Most High in this quaint fashion : En bref, 1'oreille, 1'ceil, le nez du Tout-Puissant En son oeuvre n'oit rien, rien ne voit, rien ne sent Qui ne preche son los. Sainte-Beuve considers that if the capacity of Du Bartas had equalled his ambition, he would have been our Milton ; as Du Bellay is, in some respects, a French Spenser. Such comparisons, however, are generally in- judicious and misleading, however plausible and attrac- tive. In 1584, the poet published a ' Second Week,' or rather the first two days of it ; but it met with a frigid reception from the public, and encountered some hostility from the critics, who, finding it very inferior to his former poem, began to cast doubts upon his authorship of that, alleging that he had plagiarised the work from the ' Hexameron ' of George Pisides, a Byzantine poet and historian, who lived in the seventh century, and described the creation of the world in a poem bearing that title. Du Bartas, in any case, had exhausted the capital of his reputation, and being the last of the Pleiade, and one of its most conspicuous members, he had to bear the brunt of all the ridicule and adverse criticism which its eccentricities and its strained neologisms had provoked ; and even now, when that group of poets is spoken of, we are apt rather to think of the faults of Du Bartas than of his praiseworthy efforts as the founder of a school. But, whatever may have been his defects as a writer, let us never forget the heroism of his death, as a son of France. ' Commanding a company of cavalry,' De Thou tells us, ' under the orders of Marshal de Matignan, governor of the province (during the League), vi THEODORE AGEIPPA D'AUBIGNE 119 he succumbed to the heat of the season, the toils of the campaign, and to some wounds which had been badly closed, in the month of July 1590, in the flower of his age, being only forty-six.' I have yet to speak of another author, Theodore Agrippa d'AubignS, who was also a soldier and a courtier. Born at Saintonge on February 8, 1550, the future historian made such rapid progress with his education that he could read Greek, Latin, and Hebrew at six years of age. At thirteen he took part in the religious wars, being an ardent Calvinist, like his father, and assisted at the siege of Orleans. He was condemned to death for his participation in these conflicts ; fought under the flag of the Prince of Conde, and entered the service of Henry IV., by whom he was greatly admired for his valour, his cheerful spirit, his great intellectual gifts, and the genuine nobility of his character. On the death of that monarch, by whom he was most inadequately requited for his loyal devotion, both as a soldier and a diplomatist, D'Aubign6 relinquished the sword for the pen, and dedicated some years of retreat to the composition of a ' Universal History ' of his times, from 1550 to 1601, a work remarkable alike for the boldness of its views and the independence of its opinions ; which excited so much anger in high places that the last volume was publicly burnt by order of the parliament of Paris. Its author would no doubt have shared the same fate if he had been within reach, but he took refuge in Geneva, where he spent the last ten years of his life in fortifying the principal cities of Switzerland for the defence of their Protestant liberties. ' Threatened men live long,' says the proverb, and it was verified in the case of D'Aubigne, who, after having been four times condemned to death, died in his bed on April 22, 1630, at the advanced age of eighty. One of his sons, Constant, Baron of Surineau, was the father of the lady who married Scarrou, ' 1'Empereur du Burlesque,' and then Louis XIV., le Roi-Soleil. Besides his ' Universal History,' D'Aubigne left behind him many other works, among which may be mentioned a satire in seven cantos, entitled ' Les Tragiques," overflowing with the fiercest invective, and not unworthy of his Roman model ; ' La Confession Catholique du Sieur de Sancy,' and ' Le 120 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. Baron de Fceneste,' which are also biting satires, and his own biography. Henry Martin's critical estimate of this writer is so sound and just that I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting it. 'He is far superior,' he observes, 'to Du Bartas, and is too little read nowadays, although much less forgotten than the author of " La Semaine." What a formidable inspiration is that of " Les Tragiques," those vast satires which, combined, enclosed the court of the Medici in a circle of 11,000 verses, written with a pen of brass, dipped in the blood of the martyrs ! The impassioned im- precations of the prophets are blended with the bitter and cynical verve of Juvenal in that astonishing work, where passion overflows with a too impatient violence all bounds and limitations ; and the poet is too little master of himself and of his subject to fulfil the true conditions of art ; but where, nevertheless, a thousand gloomy beauties break forth. The savage rudeness of the language inten- sifies the effect of the idea and the image ; for that rudeness involves neither inflation nor obscurity. The expression is as clear and trenchant as steel. " Les Tragiques " are, as it were, the death song and the damnation of the last of the Valois and of their mother.' Although these satires were written in 1577, they were not published until 1616. In the other two I have referred to, irony took the place of anathema.' Little remains to be said of the remaining poets of the Pleiade. Jean Dorat, the preceptor of Eonsard, was but an indifferent versifier, although he received the title of Poet Eoyal from Charles X., and was foolishly pronounced to be the modern Pindar by some of his admirers. Pontus de Thiard, at the age of twenty-two, published a volume of ' Amorous Errors,' which he followed up by a collection of lyrical poems. His contemporaries called him the Great Thiard ; and the epithet was not altogether undeserved, for he was a great eater and a great drinker, as we learn on the authority of De Thou, and was both tall and corpulent. Forsaking poetry for divinity, he received from Henry III. the bishopric of Chalon-sur-Sa6ne, and sustained with dignity the duties which it entailed. I make no pretension to completeness in this catalogue of poets, for to name all the rank and file who served under the seven captains of the Pleiade would be tedious and weari- some in the extreme. Some of them, indeed, acquired a certain celebrity during their lifetime, but others have escaped identification even by the erudite. YI ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE SCHOOL OF RONSARD 121 Jacques Tahureau, a descendant on his mother's side from Bertrand du Guesclin, is better known by his moral and satirical ' Dialogues ' than by his somewhat erotic poems, which were collected and published nineteen years after his death ; the latter event occurring in 1550, when he was only eight-and-twenty. Olivier de Magny, who was for a time secretary to Henry II., wrote numerous excellent sonnets, odes, and lyric poems, some of which were ad- dressed to Diana of Poitiers ; but they were too often dis- figured by a gross licentiousness. Jean de la Taille was the author of three or four tragedies, and distinguished himself, like D'Aubign6, on the field of battle, fighting for the Pro- testant cause. His bravery was so conspicuously exhibited in the fight at Arnay-le-Duc, where he was dangerously wounded, that the king of Navarre publicly embraced him, and confided him to the care of his own surgeon. I cannot conclude this rapid survey of the poets who were the colleagues and camp-followers of Eonsard better than by quoting what Geruzez has written concerning them. ' It is only right,' he observes, ' to remember that that generous, obstreperous, and fertile school was not unserviceable to the pro- gress of our literature and the development of our language. It provoked a crisis necessary to the growth of poetry. It was need- ful to make an energetic appeal to superior intellects, still held back by the habitual employment of Latin, which appeared to them to be the only clothing worthy of serious ideas, to make use of the vulgar tongue, which had need of their assistance to fortify and to enrich it. That appeal was listened to. They continued to acquire Latin, and they learned Greek more thoroughly, which was a great resource ; but they believed themselves to be less obliged to write in the ancient languages, which were thenceforth merely an exercise, a means and not an end. They aimed at the expansion of the mother tongue, which had been hindered in its advance by the vicinity of the dead languages.' If the school of Eonsard founded nothing, it gave an im- pulse to a movement which would lead to an end ; and its efforts were not sterile, since they prepared the materials and the implements for the edifice which more favoured hands have been privileged to construct. Here I close the study of the members of the Pl&ade which I have felt it to be my duty to submit to you. The influence of that school made itself felt long after the dis- appearance of every one of its members ; and we shall have 122 LECTUKES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. vi from time to time to recur to it when speaking of the poets who immediately succeeded it, and who will form the sub- ject of the next lecture. And here I may find it a fitting occasion to express my high sense of the value of such an institution as the Public Library in this city. 1 It is, in fact, only by means of the col- lection of works upon French literature which I have had an opportunity of consulting there that I have found it possible to prepare this series of lectures. To find in Australia so complete and well selected a col- lection of books upon this subject may not surprise those foreigners residing here, who live in a certain intellectual atmosphere ; but I know a good many Parisians and why should I not add a good many Londoners also ? who would be greatly astonished by such a fact. But what would they say if they were informed, in addition, that the private libraries, which have been hospitably opened to me, are, relatively speaking, on the same scale as the Public Library, which stands on as high a level as the best institutions of the kind in Europe ? 1 Melbourne. LECTUEE VII Desportes (1545-1606) Bertaut (1552-1611) B^gnier (1573-1613)- Malherbe (1555-1628) Eacan (1589-1670) Gombauld (1570-1666) Maynard (1583-1646) Malleville (1597-1647). IN the last lecture I pointed out the signal failure of the poets of the Pl&ade to effect that revolutionary change in our literature which their demonstrative efforts were intended to promote. They aimed at a sweeping reform, and they pro- duced confusion. Their intention was to nationalise our language and to create a distinctly French school of poetry ; but if the mask of the muse was Gallic, her voice spoke alternately in the accents of ancient Greece and Eome. This was especially the case with the last of the group, the author of ' La Semaine ; ' and it now remains to speak of two poets who, while affiliated to the Plelade, nevertheless escaped to some extent from its pedantic influences, and marked a period of transition from Eonsard and Du Bartas to Mal- herbe I speak of Philippe Desportes and Jean Bertaut. The first of these writers was born at Chartres in 1545, and died at the age of sixty-one in the Abbey of Bonport, which had been bestowed upon him by Henry III. in recompense for one of the poet's sonnets. Never, indeed, was versifier more royally rewarded. The king presented him with 30,000 livres on the publication of his works ; and the Due de Joyeuse and others gave him no less than four valuable benefices. To crown all, Desportes was offered the arch- bishopric of Bordeaux, which he declined, much to the astonishment of his royal patron, to whom he stated that he was unwilling to undertake the cure of souls. ' But,' remon- strated the king, ' have you not charge of the souls of your 124 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. monks ? ' ' No ! ' replied the poet, ' for they have none ! ' The income of Desportes is estimated to have been 10,000 crowns, which would represent an immense sum in our days ; and he expended a good deal of it in the formation of a magnificent library, which was accessible to all the men of learning who sought to take advantage of it. A man of wide and general erudition himself, his writings bore the impress of scholar- ship, but were classic in form rather than in substance. His compositions included odes, love songs, elegies, sonnets, ballads, chansons, pastorals, and a versified translation of the Psalms, of which he offered a weak and colourless para- phrase only. It was undertaken probably in order to atone for the youthful indiscretions of his muse, such as his ' Premieres Amours,' his ' Amours d'Hippolyte,' his ' Der- nieres Amours,' and his ' Baisers.' With the latter, by the way, Mademoiselle d'Aubigne, afterwards Madame de Main- tenon, was so charmed that she is said to have conceived quite a tendresse for its author. Desportes, on the principle that a fond mother generally loves her deformed child better than all the others, seems to have thought very highly of his feeble version of the ' Psalms,' and one day, before sitting down to dinner with a party he had invited, he proposed to read some of them, just as a modern host sometimes invites his guests to whet their appetites with a glass of sherry and bitters. Malherbe, who was present, splenetically exclaimed : ' Let them alone ! let them alone ! Your soup is better than your Psalms.' The coarse and vulgar gibe was not for- gotten by another of the guests, young Mathurin K6gnier, the nephew of Desportes, who afterwards ridiculed Malherbe with so much caustic wit in his Ninth Satire as to cause his victim to writhe under the attack. It is by his earlier poems, however, that Desportes invites the judgment of posterity. And some of these, so elegant in their language, and so fluent in their versification, were on every lip. Charles IX., who cultivated the art him- self, was so much charmed with his ' Eodomont ' that he pre- sented him with 800 golden crowns ; and it is related of the unfortunate Henry of Guise, that a few minutes before he fell under the dagger of the Valois in the chateau at Blois he was humming the following lines : TII DESPORTES 125 Rozette, pour un peu d'absence, Vostre coeur vous avez change, Et, moi, scachant cette inconstance, Le mien autre part j'ai range ; Jamais plus beaute si legere Sur moi tant de pouvoir n'aura : Nous verrons, volage bergere, Qui premier s'en repentira. Ou sont tant de prornesses saintes, Tant de pleurs verses en partant ? Est-il vrai que ces tristes plaintes Sortissent d'un coeur inconstant ? Dieux, que vous etes mensongere I Maudit soit qui plus vous croira ! Nous verrons, volage bergere, Qui premier s'en repentira. Celui qui a gagne ma place Ne vous peut aimer tant que moi ; Et celle que j'aime vous passe De beaut6, d'amour et de foi. Gardez bien votre amitie neuve : La mienne plus ne variera ; Et puis nous verrons a 1'epreuve Qui premier s'en repentira. Even as late as the reign of Louis XIV., Desportes' cele- brated chanson ' O nuit ! jalouse nu.it ! ' written in imitation of Ariosto, but in a different strain of feeling, was still ex- tremely popular. The first lines of this often-quoted freak of fancy run thus : nuict ! Jalouse nuict contre moi conjuree, Qui renflammes le ciel de nouvelle clarte, T'ai-je done aujourd'hui tant de fois desiree Pour etre si contraire a ma f^licite" ! All the first flowering of the poetical genius of Desportes still retains its primitive grace and freshness, notwithstanding the lapse of so many years. Here, for example, are some charming couplets from a chanson which enjoyed great celebrity in its day : Oh, bienheureux qui peut passer sa vie Entre les siens, franc de haine et d'envie, Parmi les champs, les forets et les bois, Loin du tumulte et du bruit populaire ; Et qui ne vend sa liberte pour plaire Aux passions des princes et des rois I 126 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. Dans les palais enfle's de vaine pompe, L'Ambition, la faveur qui nous trompe Et les soucis logent communement : Dedans nos champs se retirent les fees, Reines des bois, a tresses decoiffees, Les jeux, 1'amour, et le contentement. Ainsi vivant, rien n'est qui ne m'agree ; J'ois des oiseaux la musique sacre"e, Quand au matin ils benissent les cieux, Et le doux son des bruyantes fontaines, Qui vont coulant de ces roches hautaines, Pour arroser nos pres delicieux. The poem reminds one at once of ' The Old Man ' of Claudian, and of the ' Mine be a cot beside the bill ' of Samuel Eogers. How easy it is to write in this vein when one is an immensely rich abbot like Desportes, or the friend and favourite of two emperors, like the Eoman poet, or a wealthy banker with a perfect bijou of a town mansion in Park Lane, like the author of ' Italy ' ! Desportes introduced into French poetry something of the mellifluous expression of Ariosto and Tasso. He wrote more purely, as La Harpe observes, than Eonsard and his imitators ; he effaced the rust impressed on our versifica- tion, and rescued it from the chaos into which it had been plunged. He took care to avoid the enjambement and the hiatus', but feeble in his ideas and in his style, he was unable, in the succeeding century, to maintain his station upon Parnassus. La Harpe's opinion of Desportes is concurred in by Sainte-Beuve, who also disputes the statement that he and Bertaut and Passerat effected a reform in French poetry. ' The two first,' he says, ' made no revolution, but continued that of Eonsard ; and, rigorously considered, they are writers of a period of decadence much more than of one of regenera- tion.' Desportes was, as we have said, one of the favourites of fortune ; and, although for a time, during the civil wars, his revenues were confiscated by the Eoyalists, yet they were restored to him by Henry IV., whom he assisted to re-enter Normandy, so that he died a wealthy man. He made few enemies, consisting mainly of those who, like Malherbe, envied him ; his nature was kindly, benevolent, and incapable of rancour; and he remained to the last vii JEAN BERTAUT 127 unspoiled by that prosperity which is so much harder to bear, in general, than adversity. Jean Bertaut was another poet upon whom the sun shone. He was born at Caen in 1552, and the writings of Eonsard so captivated his imagination that he strove, at an early age, to clothe his own thoughts in verse. His ear seemed naturally attuned to melody ; his theme was love ; his admiration was beauty ; and he understood so well the art how to rise in life, that his poems were always addressed to persons of the highest distinction, by whom they were munificently rewarded. Henry III. appointed him his private secretary and reader, and he was very near him when he was assassinated by Jacques Cle'ment. Marie de M6dicis made him her almoner, and Henry IV. presented him with the rich abbey of Aubney, and twelve years after- wards gave him the bishopric of Seez, in Normandy, where he died in 1611, after having assisted in the conversion of his sovereign to Roman Catholicism. Sainte-Beuve remarks that his stanzas, elegies, and chansons appeal to the ear rather than to the eye, and that he possesses the indisputable merit of having given nobility to our language before Malherbe ; while Mademoiselle Scude'ry ranks him above Bonsard and Desportes in some respects. Here is an elegy of his, which is prized by all people of taste : Les cieux inexorables Me Bont si rigoureux, Que les plus miserables, Se comparant a moy, se trouveroient heureux. Mon lict est de mes lannes Trempe toutes les nuits ; Et ne peuvent ses charmes, Lor B raesme que je dors, endormir mes ennuys. Si je fay quelque songe, J'en suis espouvante, Car mesme son mensonge Exprime de mes maux la triste v^rite". La pitie, la justice, La Constance et la foy, Cedant a 1'artifice, Dedans les coeurs humains est esteinte pour moi. 128 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. En un cruel orage On me laisse perir, Et courant au naufrage, Je vois chacun me plaindre et nul me secourir. Felicite pass^e, Qui ne peux revenir, Tourment de ma pensee, Que n'ay-je, en te perdant, perdu le souvenir. ' Of these couplets,' observes Sainte-Beuve, ' the last more particularly singular chance ! has survived for two cen- turies. Our mothers know it still and have sung it. The quality peculiar to our author is a contemplative note, in which love and religion blend together, and each finds in turn its vague and touching expression. Our poet in a " Com- plaint," from which I must quote a passage, has hit upon the double and charming expression of enduring love and eternal regret : Mes plaisirs s'en sont envolez, Cedans au rnalheur qui m'outrage, Mes beaux jours se sont escoulez Comme 1'eau qu'enfante un orage, Et s'escoulans ne m'ont laisse Rien que le regret du passe. ' To do entire honour to the poet,' adds Sainte-Beuve, ' I will bring forward certainly the most sustained verses he has composed, a rare and natural image, developed in happy fulness. It is taken from an elegy in which he expresses his sadness when he loses sight of his lady, and complains of the inequality of their torments in absence : Mais las ! pourquoy faut-il que les arbres sauvages Qui vestent les costeaux ou bordent les rivages, Qui n'ont veines ni sang qu' amour puisse allumer, Observent mieux que nous les lois de bien aimer ? On dit qu'en Idum6e, es confins de Syrie, Oft bien souvent la palme au palmier se marie, II semble, a regarder ces arbres bienheureux, Qu'ils vivent animez d'un esprit amoureux ; Car le masle, courbe vers sa chere femelle, Monstre de ressentir le bien d'estre aupres d'elle : Elle fait le semblable, et pour s'entr'embrasser, On les voit leurs rameaux 1'un vers 1'autre avancer. TII JEAN BERTAUT 129 De ces embrassements leurs branches reverdissent, Le ciel y prend plaisir,, les astres les be'nissent, Et 1'haleine des vents soupirans a 1'entour Loue en son doux murmure une si sainte amour. Que si 1'impiete de quelque main barbare Par le tranchant du fer ce beau couple se"pare, Ou transplante autre part leurs tiges desolez, Les rendant pour jamais 1'un de 1'autre exilez, Jaunissans de 1'ennuy que chacun d'eux endure, Us font mourir le teint de leur belle verdure, Ont en haine la vie, et pour leur aliment N'attirent plus 1'humeur du terrestre element. Si vous m'aimiez, helas ! autant que je vous aime, Quand nous serions absents, nous en ferions de mesme ; Et chacun de nous deux regrettant sa moitie', Nous serions surnommez les palmes d'amiti^. The germ of this pretty idea, as a French critic has already pointed out, is to be found in Pliny and in Theo- phrastus, and they probably borrowed it from the beautiful Eastern tradition which affirms that each man and woman is but half a being, and that it is only by his or her discovery of the complementary moiety, and by union therewith, that a perfected entity can be arrived at and a true marriage accomplished. Marie de France expressed a similar idea with felicitous simplicity in ' Le Lai du Chevrefoil,' observes Henry Martin, and it has been also developed by Goethe and other poets. Sainte-Beuve speaks of the foregoing as ' the most beautiful, perhaps the only really beautiful, page in Bertaut. Besides this, he has only scattered odes. Apart from these two palm trees, the enduring crown of the poet, there would be not enough surviving the wrecks of time to form a volume, however slender, from the salvage. It is enough, at any rate, to find the wherewithal to adorn a eulogy, and to fix an honourable remembrance of his name in the memories of men. For that purpose two or three golden nails suffice.' At the age of thirty- six the Anacreontic poet merged into the austere prelate who recorded the conversion of the king in sacred verse, translated the writings of St. Ambrose, wrote polemical treatises, and died five years after his assumption of the mitre. From the school of Eonsard, however, one genuine poet E 130 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. issued the first poet of genius, indeed, that France had hitherto produced. This was Mathurin Eegnier, who was born at Chartres in 1573. Educated for the Church, he received the tonsure at eleven, and was only twenty when Cardinal de Joyeuse, who had been named Protector of France at the court of Eome, took him to that city, the social life of which at that time was licentious in the extreme. He plunged into it with all the ardour of a youthful and un- disciplined nature, vif de courage, as he says, et tout chaud d'esperance; and seems to have been not unfamiliar with privations. The ten years he spent in Eome showed him so much of the seamy side of human life, and were so fruitful of adventures and experiences, that they probably developed in him those cynical views of character, and that talent for satire, which afterwards found expression in his works. Eeturning to France, his uncle Desportes provided him with a liberal income, and gave him a few years afterwards a canonry in the cathedral of Chartres. In spite of his eccle- siastical functions the conduct of Eegnier was anything but decorous. He was improvident by habit, by no means abstemious in the matter of the bottle, and he often com- plains that his old cloak is full of patches. Mathurin Eegnier lived, in fact, under a reign in which the lavish eccentricities of that of Henry III. were unknown. Besides, the utter carelessness of the poet made it impossible for him to acquire a fortune, or at any rate to keep one. He says himself that, living heedlessly, he just allowed things to take their chance. He was irregular in his morals and in his writings, rather by reason of his thoughtlessness than of his imprudence ; and even in the most biting of his satires one perceives the bonhomie of the poet who was surnamed the ' Good Eegnier,' because, to use his own expression, he had not wit enough to be wicked. Satire is so much a national instinct, it existed so long before Eegnier, and displayed itself under so many forms, in our fabliaux and in our romances, in our farces and in our chansons, that we can scarcely term him the founder of it. Nevertheless it has been said that Eegnier founded it in France ; which is true in a sense, for he reduced it to rule and measure. Sainte-Beuve has summed up his charac- teristics in this admirable fashion : vir MATHURIN KEGNIER 131 ' The mouth of a satyr, but more prone to laugh than to bite ; heartiness, good sense, exquisite malice, at times a bitter eloquence, narratives with the smirch of the kitchen, the tavern, and naughty places on them ; in his hands, instead of a lyre, some clownish but not discordant instrument ; in a word, ugly and abundantly gro- tesque -such may we picture, in the gross, Mathurin Regnier. Placed at the gateway of our two principal literary centuries, he turned his back upon them and gazed towards the Sixteenth. He stretched out his hands towards those Gallic forefathers, Montaigne, Ronsard, and Rabelais. Where Regnier excelled above all was in his knowledge of life, in his expression of manners and personages, and in his portrayal of interiors. His ' Satires ' are a gallery of admirable Flemish portraits. Once known, his poet, his pedant, his coxcomb, can never be forgotten.' In quite as great a degree as Malherbe, B6gnier revived in France the imitation of our old authors. He profited by the abortive efforts of the P16iade, avoiding and combating at the same time the errors into which, as we have seen, they and their immediate successors fell. When we reflect upon the careless hardihood and the abundant and over- flowing vitality of his style, so like that of our greatest essayist, we feel justified in designating him the Montaigne of our poetry. To quote his best passages would be to swell this page into a volume. I have already referred to the insult offered by Malherbe to Desportes at his own table, and to the way in which Ke'gnier afterwards resented it in a satire, in which the pedantic tone of Malherbe, so provocative of ridicule, was lashed by the younger poet. Here is a sample of his verse : . Ces reveurs dont la muse msolente, Censurant les plus vieux, arrogamment se vante De reformer les vers. . . . Qui veulent deterrer les Grecs du monument, Les Latins, les Hebreux, et toute rantiquaille, Et leur dire & leur nez qu'ils n'ont rien fait qui vaille. Ronsard en son metier n'etait qu'un apprentif ; II avait le cerveau fantastique et retif ; Desportes n'est pas net, Du Bellay trop facile ; Belleau ne parle pas comme on parle a la ville ; II a des mots hargneux, bouffis et relev^s, Qui du peuple aujourd'hui ne sont pas approuves. Comment 1 il nous faut done, pour faire une oeuvre grande Qui de la calomnie et du temps se defende, Qui trouve quelque place entre les bons auteurs, Parler comme & Saint Jean parlent les crocheteurs ! K 2 132 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. And what right have these poets to come along and change everything ? Have they any pretension to genius ? No. Leur savoir ne s'etend seulement Qu'a regratter un mot douteux au jugement, Prendre garde qu'un ' qui ' ne heurte une diphthongue, Epier si des vers la rime est breve ou longue, Ou bien si la voyelle, a 1'autre s'unissant, Ne rend point a 1'oreille un vers trop languissant, Et laissent sur le verd le noble de 1'ouvrage. Nul aiguillon divin n'eleve leur courage ; Us rampent bassement, faibles d'inventions, Et n'osent, peu hardis, tenter les fictions, Froids a l'imaginer : car, s'ils font quelquechose, C'est proser de la rime et rimer de la prose. Born, as I have said, in 1553, Eegnier, although younger than Malherbe, died in 1613, fifteen years before the latter, leaving no school and no literary posterity worthy of his great talent. For he was not the forefather of Moliere and Boileau, much as they owed to him ; and the tribute which the latter writer paid to his genius is as honourable to its author as to its object. ' The celebrated Eegnier,' said he, ' is, by universal consent, the poet who before the time of Moliere was best acquainted with the manners and the character of men.' Sainte-Beuve indicates points of resemblance between Eegnier and La Fontaine. He must surely have been a great man who could thus suggest so many illustrious names without being eclipsed by them. Some time before his death, it appears, E6gnier expe- rienced a return to pious sentiments, and shed tears of penitence. Like his uncle, he composed some devotional sonnets. It was the fashion of the time, our poets ter- minating the stormiest existences by translating or imitating the Holy Scriptures. All things considered, Eegnier closed one epoch as Malherbe opened another ; and without entirely accepting the exalted estimate formed of him by Alfred de Musset, we may certainly adopt without hesitation that of Boileau : De ces maitres savants, disciple ingenieux, Re^gnier seul, parmi nous, forme sur leurs modeles, Dans un vieux style encore, a des graces nouvelles. His ' literary baggage ' comprises sixteen satires, five elegies, three epistles, and numerous odes, stanzas, and vn FRANCOIS DE MALHERBE 133 epigrams ; a collective edition of which was published by the celebrated Elzevir. Nor can I take leave of E6gnier without quoting his epitaph upon himself, for it is a portrait from the life : J'ai vecu sans nul pensement, Me laissant aller doucement A la bonne loi naturelle ; Et si m'etonne fort pourquoi La mort osa songer a moi Qui ne songeai jamais a elle. Before Francois de Malherbe, who was born in 1555, France had not yet acquired a poetic diction of an elevated character. Its advent constituted an epoch in the history of the French language and literature. Malherbe alone revealed all the riches of our versification : beauty of expression, picturesqueness of imagery, rapid movement, variety of metre, cadence nothing was wanting in his fine odes. No one knew better than himself the effects of harmony ; no one was gifted with greater taste. His severity in the choice of his words was extreme, and he commenced that purification of our mother tongue which was continued by the Academy. He is one of those writers, indeed, who have rendered the greatest services to the French language, making it a vehicle of expression alike for the court, the city, and the people. Here are some stanzas addressed to a friend, to console him for the death of his daughter in 1607: Ta douleur, du Perier, sera done eternelle, Et les tristes discours, Que te met en 1'esprit I'amitie" paternelle, L'augmenteront toujours ? Le malheur de ta fille au tombeau descendue Par un commun trepas, Est-ce quelque dedale, ou ta raison perdue Ne se retrouve pas ? Je sais de quels appas son enfance estoit pleine, Et n'ai pas entrepris, Injurieux amy, de soulager ta peine Avecque son mepris. Mais elle estoit du monde, ou les plus belles chose Ont le pire destin ; Et Rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses, L'espace d'un matin. 184 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. La mort a des rigueurs a nulle autre pareilles : On a beau la prier ; La cruelle qu'elle est se bouche les oreilles, Et nous laisse crier. Le pauvre en sa cabane, cm le chaume le couvre, Est sujet a ses lois ; Et la garde qui veille aux barrieres du Louvre N'en defend point nos rois. De murmurer contre elle, et perdre patience, II est mal & propos ; Vouloir ce que Dieu veut est la seule science Qui nous met en repos. These verses reveal to us another poet who had ' learned in suffering what he taught in song ; ' for we find in them a softened echo of the pathetic sentiment which breathes through every line of the singularly touching letter which he addressed to his wife in 1599, to apprise her of the death of ' Ma chere fille et la votre, notre belle Jordaine.' ' It showed that there was a time in his life when he was neither heartless nor irreligious.' In the same sombre strain of feeling the poet moralised upon the tombs of kings : Ils sont ronges des vers : La se perdent ces noms de maitres de la terre, D'arbitres de la paix, de foudres de la guerre ; Com me ils n'ont plus de sceptre, Us n'ont plus de flatteurs, Et tombent avec eux d'une chute commune, Tous ceux que la fortune Faisait leurs serviteurs. But among these servants of the great and the fortunate there were few more obsequious than the poet himself, and few more ready to treat with obloquy the corpse of the dead lion. While. Henry III. lived, 'Malherbe fawned upon him in a couplet full of adulation, like the following : Henri, de qui les yeux et 1'image sacree Font un visage d'or a cette age ferree ; and the poet was rewarded with 500 crowns for his sycophancy. But no sooner had the king joined the ' diet of worms ' than he was stigmatised by the same pen as a ' roi faineant, la vergogne des princes.' It was the same with Marie de M6dicis, whom Malherbe extolled during her regency as a ruler of matchless wisdom and goodness, and as a masterpiece of heavenly work. When she was exiled TII FRANCOIS DE MALHERBE 16 and disgraced he smeared the Due de Luynes with the thickest of honey, and hailed him as the saviour of France. But when that statesman's day of power came to an end, the satirist turned upon him the weapons of invective and lampooned him as Une absinthe au nez de barbet Que je voudrais voir au gibet ; while before the rising sun of Eichelieu the poet prostrated himself in the dust, and could scarcely find words in his copious vocabulary sufficiently eulogistic to lavish on ' ce grand cardinal, grand chef-d'oeuvre des cieux ! ' There was so much in fact that was thoroughly contemptible in the character and career of Malherbe, that it is difficult to set aside the unpleasant impression produced upon the mind by the knowledge of his conduct as a man, while we are engaged in picturing his works as a poet. Even his egregious vanity almost tempts one to depreciate his genius. What an overweening estimate of himself must he have formed when, in writing an ode, as the court poet, on the death of Henry IV., he found occasion to inform his countrymen that there were only three or four upon whom Apollo would bestow a laurel crown : Au nombre desquels on me range, adding that they Peuvent donner une louange, Qui demeure eternellement ; and we find him repeating the same vainglorious boast in a sonnet to the king : Les ouvrages communs durent quelques annees, Ce quo Malherbe ecrit dure eternellement. To find his parallel in English literature, we should have to fuse Charles Churchill and Alexander Pope into one being. Malherbe was as unscrupulous as the first and as cynical as the second ; and he was gifted with the splendid powers of satire which were common to both. Like Pope, he was a great artificer of language ; and Balzac, writing some time after the death of Malherbe, says : ' Do you remember that old pedagogue of the court, who was formerly called the tyrant of words and syllables ? I pity a man who makes so much ado between pas and point, and who 136 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. treats a matter of participles and gerunds as if it were one of two neighbouring peoples jealous about their frontiers.' Sainte-Beuve considers the immortal glory of Malherbe to have been this : that ' he was the first French writer who possessed the sentiment and the theory of style in poetry, and who comprehended that the choice of terms and ideas is, if not the principle, at any rate the condition of all true eloquence, and that the happy arrangement of words and things is very often more important than the words and things themselves.' Malherbe's methods of composition were slow and laborious in the extreme. They resembled the work of the diamond cutters in Amsterdam, and were just as tedious and prolonged. Was it not Sydney Smith who said that when Samuel Eogers was about to give birth to a couplet he took to his bed, had the street strawed with tan, muffled the door knocker, and awaited with exemplary patience the arrival of the little stranger ? Much the same might have been said of the French poet. He was once commissioned by a high functionary to write some verses on the death of his wife. After three years of gestation the lines saw the light, but in the meantime the widower had married again. On another occasion he served up to Eichelieu a dish of verse which had been first cooked years before. It was one of Malherbe's favourite maxims, indeed, that after having written a poem, short or long, the mind required to lie fallow for ten years. To him must be ascribed the honour of having emanci- pated the French language from its previous bondage to foreign tongues, and of having bestowed upon it a gravity and a dignity, a harmony and a grace in which it had hitherto been deficient. He was a purist in the matter of grammar and prosody, and he may be said to have died with a correction on his lips ; for, an hour before breathing his last, he roused himself for the purpose of reprimanding his nurse, who had used a word which was not pure French. When his confessor remonstrated with him for so doing at such a moment, he said he could not help it, and that he was resolved to defend the purity of the French language to the very death. Malherbe was a reformer of French prose as well as of vii KACAN 137 French poetry, and Balzac formed his own style upon that of his predecessor, and may be considered as having per- fected the revolution which he commenced. Henry Martin somewhat qualifies the excessive praise bestowed upon Malherbe by earlier critics, and makes the happy remark that his was the task of forging the weapons of which later writers made such a noble use. ' He prepared the way for Corneille and Eacine, just as Henry IV. prepared it for Eichelieu and Louis XIV. ; with this important difference, however, that Henry IV. will never be effaced by his suc- cessors, more powerful, perhaps, but not greater than himself.' It is impossible to speak of Malherbe without recalling to mind the name of Eacan, the favourite disciple of him whom Boileau calls the first in France who Fit sentir dans les vers une juste cadence, D'un mot mis en sa place enseigna le pouvoir, Et reduisit la Muse aux regies du devoir. The Marquis of Eacan, who was born in 1589 and died in 1670, has less power but quite as much natural grace as his preceptor. He was one of the first members of the French Academy founded by Eichelieu in 1604, and his ' Bergeries,' a long dramatic pastoral, contains many beautiful passages. The difference between the master and his disciple has been cleverly hit off by Boileau in the following couplet : Malherbe d'un heros peut chanter les exploits, Eacan chanter Phillis, les bergers et les bois. In the subjoined lines we catch an echo of Malherbe, but they bear at the same time the stamp of individuality : Le bien de la fortune est un bien perissable ; Quand on batit sur elle, on batit sur le sable ; Plus on est eleve", plus on court de dangers ; Les grand pins sont en butte aux coups de la tempete, Et la rage des vents brise plutot le faite Des maisons de nos rois que des toits des bergers. bienheureux celuy qui peut de sa memoire Effacer pour jamais ce vain espoir de gloire Dont 1'inutile soin traverse nos plaisirs, Et qui, loin retire de la foule importune, Vivant dans sa maison, content de sa fortune, A selon son pouvoir mesure ses desirs ; 138 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. II voit de toutes parts combler d'heur sa famille, La javelle a plein poing tomber sous la faucille, Le vendangeur ployer sous le faix des paniers, Et semble qu'a 1'envy les fertiles montagnes, Les humides vallons et les grasses campagnes S'efforcent a remplir sa cuve et ses greniers. What causes Eacan to be still read in our days is the harmonious way in which he depicts his own sentiments ; when he speaks of the pleasures of rural life and compares them with the agitations of those people who are engaged in the pursuit of fortune, he shows himself to be a true poet. He was a sincere lover of nature, and holding the vanities of the world and the ambition of men in but light esteem, he produced some of his most telling effects by the antithe- tical presentation of his affection for the country and his contempt for a city life. Questions of this kind are often propounded in his verse : Que sert a ces galants ce pompeux appareil Dont ils vont dans la lice eblouir le soleil Des tresors du Pactole ? La gloire qui les suit apres tant de travaux Se passe en moins de temps que la poudre qui vole Du pied de leurs chevaux. Eacan was by no means unacquainted with the life he despised ; for in his youth he had been one of the pages of the chamber to Henry IV., and later on he had embraced a military career, had taken part in nearly all the expeditions of Louis XIII., and had commanded a company at the siege of Eochelle. He did not marry until he was nine-and- thirty, and soon afterwards the Duchess of Bellegarde bequeathed him an income of 10,000 livres per annum ; whereupon he settled down in his ancestral chateau of La Eoche-Eacan, in that garden of France, beautiful Touraine. Tallemant des E6aux describes the poet as having all the appearance of a country farmer, rustic in his manners and stammering in his speech. His imitations of the ancients in his poetry were perfect ; and some of them were prefer- able to those of Malherbe on account of their superior sim- plicity. When his model died, Eacan was so much grieved that he laid aside his pen for twenty years. Towards the close of his life he cultivated the composition of sacred verse, vii GOMBAULD 139 and died at the age of eighty-one. La Fontaine has coupled the names of Malherbe and Eacan in his well-known fable of ' The Miller, his Son, and his Ass/ where he says : Ces deux rivaux d'Horace, heritiers de sa lyre, Disciples d'Apollon, nos maitres, pour mieux dire. Before speaking to you of Balzac, 1597-1655, who has been called the Malherbe of French prose, I must glance for a moment at two poets who were contemporary with Malherbe and Eacan. Jean Ogier de Gombauld, 1570- 1666, in spite of the fact that he was a Huguenot, enjoyed the favour of Marie de M6dicis, Henry IV., Louis XIII., and Louis XIV. He was one of the beaux esprits of the Hotel de Eambouillet, and one of the original members of the French Academy. Some of his sonnets and epigrams still survive. The following will serve as examples of his style : JUGEMENT DBS (ETJVRES D'AUTKUI Vous lisez les ceuvres des autres Plus negligemment que les votres, Et vous les louez froidement. Voulez-vous qu'elles soient parfaites, Imaginez-vous settlement Que c'est vous qui les avez faites. LE MOYEN DE SB DEFAIRE DE QUEtQU'lIN Tu veux te defaire d'un homme, Et jusqu'ici tes vceux ont ete superflus. Hazarde une petite somme : Prete-lui trois louis, tu ne le verras plus. There is a good deal of wit and satire in the epigrams of Gombauld ; and if the specimens I have quoted should induce you to desire to know more of him, I may refer you, for fuller information, to the ' Historiettes ' of Tallemant des Eeaux. Frangois Maynard, 1582-1646, is perhaps better known by his lines on the misery of poets than by anything he ever wrote. They are these : Muses, Parnasse est une terre Ou desormais nos nourrissons. Soit dans la paix, soit dans la guerre, Feront de petites moissons. 140 LECTUEES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. Mais les vers ont perdu leur prix, Et pour les excellents esprits La faveur des princes est morte ; Malherbe, en cet age brutal, Pe"gase est un cheval qui porte Les grands homines a I'hdpital. Maynard was a facile writer, with much lucidity and elegance of expression, simple and natural in the construc- tion of his verses ; and although he laboured to secure their high finish, yet he possessed the ' art of concealing art,' so that his most laboured efforts appeared spontaneous. Voltaire includes him among the precursors of the age of Louis XIV. During a visit to Rome, Maynard was honoured with the friendship of Cardinal Bentivoglio and of Urban VIII. ; and this is understood to have excited the jealousy of Richelieu, who remained persistently unfriendly to him. Maynard's own ideas of lucidity of expression are very well set forth in the following epigram : Ce que ta plume produit Est couvert de trop de voiles ; Ton discours est une nuit Veuve de lune et d'estoiles. Mon ami, chasse bien loin Cette noire rhetorique ; Tes ouvrages ont besom D'un devin qui les explique. Si ton esprit veut cacher Les belles choses qu'il pense, Dis-moi, qui peut t'empescher De te servir du silence. After a second journey to Rome, during the regency of Anne of Austria, Maynard, wearying of dancing attendance on the great, and of ' burning incense,' as he says, ' before the idols of the day,' quitted Paris for Aurillac, where he held an appointment, and wrote above the door of his library the following verse : Las d'espdrer et de me plaindre De la cour, des grands et du sort, C'est ici que j 'attends la mort Sans la desirer ni la craindre. It calls to mind the concluding passage of Leigh Hunt's essay on his books : ' I can help the appreciation of them vii FRANCOIS MAYNARD 141 while I last, and love them till I die ; and perhaps, if fortune turns her face once more in kindness upon me before I go, I may chance some quiet day to lay my own beating temples on a book, and so have the death I most envy.' Boileau quotes the names of Maynard and of Gombauld, d propos of the sonnet, that form of composition so difficult to treat, when he says : A peine dans Gombault, Maynard et Malleville, En peut-on admirer deux ou trois entre mille. And, speaking of the sonnet, I would venture to remind you that it was imported into France from Italy by Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Joachim du Bellay, and Pontus de Thiard. Malleville, of whom I should not have spoken if his name had not been coupled with the two others by Boileau, was born in 1597 and died in 1647, was an Academician, and cultivated the same kinds of poetry as Maynard. I now take leave of this branch of my subject ; not that I have by any means exhausted it, but because I feel that I ought not to increase my demands upon the attention of my hearers. It is difficult, if not impossible, in studying a literature like the French, to say, ' I will begin here and I will finish there ; ' but I think I have arrived at a convenient halting place, at which to pause before resuming my journey across the wide field that stretches out before me. LECTUEE VIII Rabelais (1495-1553) Amyot (1513-1593) Montaigne (1533-1592). I COME now to an author who was one of the founders of French prose. I speak of Eabelais, whom I can neither omit from my course nor discuss except with that reserve which becomes a woman approaching such a theme. Pos- sibly I may be the first of my sex who has studied his works in order to speak of them in a public discourse ; but if others have preceded me, they will certainly understand my hesi- tation and appreciate my embarrassment. Nevertheless, Eabelais fills so large a place in French literature that he cannot and must not be overlooked. I have read his writings both in French and in the wonderful translation of them which exists in English, and will try to communicate to you in what follows the knowledge I have acquired of them. Nisard has made some remarks upon this enigmatical author, which naturally rise to one's lips on an occasion like this : ' Owing to that mania of critics which induces them to apparel the life of a writer with the character of his works, they have constructed a burlesque and anecdotic biography of Eabelais, of which the last act was his testa- ment : "I possess nothing ; I owe a great deal ; I give the rest to the poor." They have also placed in his mouth when dying the words, " Drop the curtain ; the farce is over." "Whatever is authentic and indisputable in the life of Eabelais is insignificant. All that is doubtful is exaggerated. His biography and his writings have been equally miscon- ceived. In his book, one portion is pure fantasy, facetious- ness, intellectual libertinage, and farce. Another portion is sheer obscenity, a veritable cesspool, which cannot be quali- LECT. vin RABELAIS 143 fied as literature. But there is yet a third part philoso- phical in spirit, evidently written with a satirical purpose, replete with good sense, elevated in reason, very superior in style, thoroughly original, and displaying far more maturity of judgment than the two others. One must laugh at the first, supposing we are able to comprehend all its finesses, but without subjecting it to torture, in order to discover a serious meaning which is not there. We must glide over the second so as not to defile our vision, and it can offer no gratification except to a very coarse or an exceedingly jaded intelligence. Finally, we must perforce admire the third, study it, and extract much profit from it, by retaining its enduring ideas, by meditating on the rich- ness of the style, and by learning by heart those aphorisms of which the good sense and the practical application will last for ever.' It is in reliance upon the judgment of so excellent a literary critic that I have ventured to undertake a study of Rabelais, by following the advice which he gives for the threefold perusal of his works. That portion which Nisard says should be glided over I shall carefully avoid, confining my attention to the satirical and philosophical aspects of one of the masterpieces of the national literature. Francois Eabelais was born at Chinon in what he justly calls ' the garden of France,' fair Touraine, in the year 1495, memorable also as that in which Martin Luther and Eaffaelle first saw the light. He was at first a novice in a convent of Benedictines, and the immensity and profundity of his youthful studies are a sufficient refutation of the traditions current with respect to the irregularity of his habits. He was by turns librarian, secretary, doctor, and parish priest. Medicine, mathematics, theology, astronomy, botany, jurisprudence, the natural sciences, and the romances of chivalry nothing came amiss to him. With Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic he was as familiar as with his mother-tongue. He contrived to emancipate himself from conventual life just before reaching the age of forty, when he qualified himself for, and obtained, the diploma of a physician, and by way of intellectual recreation acquired a knowledge of the Spanish, Italian, German, English, and Basque languages. Anticipating Cervantes, he conceived 144 LECTURES ON FEENCH LITERATURE LECT. the idea of burlesquing the old romances of chivalry, of which he had read so many, and, remembering the legends of Gargantua, the great giant, of whom he must have heard from the lips of his aunt down in Touraine, he selected that popular personage as the hero of a work which stands quite alone in European literature. He began it in 1532, and published it at Lyons, under the title of ' The Chronicles of Gargantua.' In the year following appeared ' Pantagruel,' in which were recorded the exploits of the giant's son, which immediately became so popular that three editions of it were called for in a twelvemonth. In his advice to the reader occur the following verses, which are pretty widely known and have served as a text for many a modern author : Amys lecteurs, qui ce livre lisez, Despouillez vous de toute affection ; Et le lisant ne vous ecandalisez, H ne contient mal ne infection. Vray est qu'icy peu de perfection Vous apprendrez, sinon en cas de rire. Autre argument ne peut mon cueur elire, Voyant le deuil qui vous mine et consomme : Mieulx est de ris que de larmes escripre ; Pour ce que rire est le propre de l'homme. Vivez joyeux. We find him in the same year visiting Eome, in company with his old friend, Cardinal du Bellay, who was negotiating with the Pope for the divorce of Henry VIII. of England from Catherine of Aragon. He revisited that city on his own account in 1536, to obtain absolution for having vio- lated certain ecclesiastical rules, and the absolution was readily granted. At the same time and here we see the practical side of the great scholar's mind Eabelais intro- duced the melon, the artichoke, and the carnation into France. It was on his second return from Eome, in 1539, that Eabelais prefaced a revised edition of his ' Gargantua ' by the following enigmatical words, which many of his com- mentators have quoted in their anxiety to solve an apparent riddle and to decipher the historical meaning of the work : ' My worthy disciples, When reading the merry titles of some books of our invention, you are too apt to fancy that vni RABELAIS 145 nothing but jest and frolic is to be found within. . . . But the frock does not make the monk. . . . That is why the book should be carefully opened and its contents seriously weighed. Then you will find out that the drug inside is much more precious than the box would seem to indicate. . . . The book should be interpreted in a far higher sense than one which you might imagine perchance to have been written in mere gaiety of heart.' ' Certain critics,' observes Nisard, ' wishing to discover the historic sense of Eabelais's work and to explain all its enigmas, have added to his obscurities those of their own contradictions. No doubt Eabelais did not lose sight of the men and abuses of his own times, and he sought to amuse himself and his contemporaries at their expense, but he was far from making war to the knife on the age he lived in ; ' and Buckle has pointed out that it was to his abstinence from so doing that he was indebted for his immunity from persecution at an epoch in which toleration was practised by no religious party whatever. In 1546 he published the Third Book, and three years later he issued eleven chapters of the fourth, while the fifth and last was found in manuscript after his death. Cardinal du Bellay had presented him with the living of Meudon, which he held in conjunction with another cure of souls, in 1548, but, for some unexplained reason, he resigned them both in 1552, and died in the year following. To say that Eabelais was one of the greatest humourists the world has ever seen is only to claim for him his rightful due. So also was Shakespeare, but both of them were something far higher than that. They were deep thinkers and serious reasoners, and while they laughed right jovially at the follies and foibles of mankind, they mingled with their mirth philosophical reflections and precepts instinct with practical wisdom. For the present, however, I must proceed to speak of Eabelais as the king of jesters. We may put aside for the present the speculations which have been indulged in, and the rash conjectures which have been hazarded, with respect to the hidden sense of what I may call the epic of extrava- gant jocundity, and take the colossal joke just as we find it. Altogether apart from the piquancy of its satire, as directed 146 LECTUKES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. against the vices and follies of the time, the ' Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel ' is one of the most extraordinary books that have ever been written, a monument of its author's deep and varied erudition, no less than an evidence of the wildly capricious flights of his irrepressible imagina- tion. How can one characterise a work in which wisdom and buffoonery, rollicking fun and mordant satire, the jovial laughter of the genial lover of his kind and the sardonic grin of the cynic, the lofty morality of the sage and the rank indecency of Silenus, are so inextricably interwoven ? It is a book without ancestry and without posterity. It stands alone as a fantastic, grotesque, amorphous, and phantasmagoric production of the human mind, conceived without a plan, executed in obedience to the dominant impulse of the passing moment, and achieved at a time when the restraints upon freedom of thought and speech were so numerous and powerful, and when so many men were burned alive for expressing themselves far more guardedly concerning abuses in Church and State than ever he did, that it is amazing to reflect upon the extraordinary good fortune which enabled Eabelais to die peaceably in his bed. Let me endeavour to present you with a brief analysis of the first part of his immortal work. Grandgousier, whose portrait is painted with a broad and flowing brush, resides at Chinon with his wife Gargamelle. A gigantic son is born to them, whom they name Gargantua ; and the first words he utters are ' Drink, drink, drink,' in so tremendous a tone of voice as to be audible for many miles round. It requires 17,913 cows to supply him with milk, and his pretty little under-garment consumes 1,950 yards of the finest linen. As soon as he is old enough to be sent to Paris, he rides thither on a mare as big as six elephants, which was imported in three carricks and a brigantine. This is the best of Eabelais : he is always so accurate in his details. For example, he tells us how Gargantua used to hear from twenty-six to thirty masses when he went to church, arid how he used a cartload of rosaries in his devotions ; if he had said a barrowful, we might not have believed him. He gave half an hour to study every morning. It was the halfpennyworth of bread to the intolerable deal of viii 'GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL ' 147 sack which he consumed, for he held very strong opinions upon this subject, contending that the legitimate limits of toping were when the cork of the drinker's shoes had swollen half a foot. And he ate ye gods ! how Gargantua did eat ! His daily bill of fare reminds one of the menu of King Arthur at Caerleon : Hogsheads of honey, kilderkins of mustard, Muttons and fatted beeves and bacon swine ; Herons and bitterns, peacock, swan and bustard, Teal, mallard, pigeons, widgeons, and in fine Plum-puddings, pancakes, apple-pie, and custard ; And therewithal he drank good Gascon wine, With mead, and ale, and cider of his own, For porter, punch, and negus were not known. Gargantua's education was entrusted in the first instance to Sophists, and the life which his earliest preceptors led him is portrayed in a highly comic vein. When he rose in the morning, the child arranged his hair by means of a German comb, that is to say, with his ten fingers ; while his masters taught him that to wash himself, and to be cleanly generally, was sheer waste of time in this world. After a perfunctory toilet he gorged himself with food ; and having despatched an enormous breakfast, he went to church, where he heard from six-and-twenty to thirty masses ; and Eabelais tells us, in addition, that, for his rosary, he re- quired, as I have said, a whole cartload of beads. His religious exercises accomplished, one little half-hour was devoted to study; and during the whole of this time our hero's heart was in the kitchen. Then followed an immense Pantagruelian dinner ; after which he chatted and played with the persons chosen to wait upon him, and then, with- out troubling himself about anything good or evil, he slept for two or three hours. On awaking, he drank, read a little, and went into the kitchen to see what joints were roasting on the spit, supped, went to bed, and slept until eight o'clock next morning. His first preceptors were replaced by Ponocrates, who completely reversed his system of education, which Gar- gantua was sent to finish in Paris. He rode thither on a mare of colossal proportions and as high as six elephants, for nothing less would have sufficed for a youth of such L2 148 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. stupendous stature. Some of the incidents of his journey are related in this extravagantly humorous fashion : Thus merrily they proceeded along the highway, everywhere refreshing themselves with good cheer, until they drew near Orleans ; at which place there was an extensive forest about thirty-five leagues long and seventeen broad, or thereabouts. This wood was horribly fertile, and swarming with hornets and horse- flies, so that for the poor mares, horses, and asses, it was a regular scene of torment. But Gargantua's roadster inflicted a summary vengeance for all the outrages sustained by beasts of her species, by a single stroke, for no sooner had she entered the aforesaid forest, and the hornets had commenced a general assault, than she spread forth her tail, and whisked it with such tremendous force that down went the whole of the forest, striking the trees at random, here and there, forward and backward, above and below, to the right hand and the left, far and near ; so that the timber fell like grass before the mower's scythe, so that presently neither flies nor trees were visible, but all was open country. Seeing which, Gargantua was very pleased indeed, and without making any boast of it, said to his people ' That's fine ! ' (Je trouve beau ce /) And so that region was thenceforth called Beauce. Gargantua's impressions of Paris and the Parisians are full of naivete 1 and sly sarcasm. ' The people,' he says, ' are so foolish, so boobyish, 1 and naturally so inept, that a mountebank, a ragpicker, a mule with his bells, or a player on the hurdy-gurdy, in the middle of a thoroughfare, will draw together more people than a good preacher of the Gospel. And he met with so many obstructions by the way that he was obliged to sit down and rest himself on the towers of Notre-Dame. And being there he took a look at the large bells in the towers, and caused them to ring harmoniously ; in doing which, it occurred to him that they would be just the things to hang on the neck of his mare whenever he should send her back to his father, laden with cheeses of Brie, and with fresh herrings. So he carried the bells off to his lodgings.' A deputation is sent to wait upon Gargantua to solicit restitution of the bells, and its spokesman addresses the jolly giant in the most delightful of dog-Latin. Here is a specimen of it : ' Omnis clocha clochabilis in clocherio clochando clochans clochativo clochare facit clochabiliter clochantes. Parisius habet clochas. . . .' Of course the reasoning is unanswerable. But in the meanwhile Grandgousier's kingdom is invaded by King Picrochole (meaning ' bitter bile '), and Gargantua 1 Tant badatilt, whence the modern badaud. vni ' GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRTJEL ' 149 is summoned home from Paris, and performs a succession of tremendous exploits in the way of pulling down fortresses and slaughtering his father's enemies, without sustaining any other inconvenience than that of getting his hair so full of bullets and cannon-balls that it takes him a long time to comb them out again. But the whole campaign, its origin, its incidents, and its consequences, as described by Eabelais, constitute a biting satire upon wars in general and upon those who wage them. Sainte-Beuve compares the pro- ceedings of the council held by Picrochole to a scene out of Moliere ; but if M. Taine had written a commentary upon it he would probably have found in it a sort of prophetic vision of the Napoleonic epic. His captains, having received the king's gracious permission to keep their helmets on in his presence, proceed to submit a plan of operations. Having subdued Grandgousier, he will overrun Spain and Portugal, take ship at Lisbon, rebuild the Pillars of Hercules, rebap- tise the Mediterranean by the name of the Picrocholine Sea; and this accomplished, Barbarossa will tender his submission. 'I will be merciful to him,' exclaims Picrochole. ' The north of Africa, Italy, Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia will succumb to him, and having seized the islands in the Levant, he will bend his course towards the Holy Land.' ' Then will I build the temple of Solomon,' says Picrochole. ' Do nothing rashly, but make haste slowly,' rejoin his sage counsellors, who proceed to map out other conquests, while he generously apportions among them some of the terri- tories he is going to subdue. All this is excellent fooling, and it is something more and something better. The dreams of world-wide conquest cherished by an Alexander of Macedon, a Charles V., and a Napoleon Bonaparte : are they not as iUusory as the visions of Picrochole ?- who is afterwards routed and put to flight, together with his lieutenants, and nobody ever knew what had become of them ; they did not even find a retreat in a Spanish monastery or upon a lonely rock in the Atlantic. But let us be grateful to the campaign of Gargantua against his father's enemy ; for how otherwise would he have known Friar John? and if there had been no Friar John, there would have been no Abbey of Thelema that miracle of architecture which Eabelais has described so minutely that 150 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. it is as real as Blois, Chambord, or Chenonceaux, and con- stitutes ' the noblest dream of the sixteenth century.' No one has been better qualified to appreciate it than Mr. Walter Besant, the virtual founder of the People's Palace in London ; and this is how he speaks of it : ' This Abbey of Thelema is one of the most graceful and most noble fancies that ever entered into the brain of man.' Its inmates are ' composed entirely of young people living together in the freedom of gentlehood, unrestricted by any conventional and useless rules. They are to learn, by watching the wishes and wants of each other, how to live ; they are to be occu- pied all day in study, in manly exercises, or in the acquire- ment of womanly accomplishments ; they are to be entirely free from the petty cares and anxieties of the ignoble life ; they are to live in accordance with the laws of nature, and are therefore to be exempt from disease.' In depicting the architectural glories, the splendour, the luxury, and the comforts of the Abbey, Eabelais exhibits the imagination of a poet combined with the feeling of an artist ; and the scheme of life and conduct which he devised for the Thelemites proved him to be a deep philosophic thinker. Even the rules of the monastery, condensed in one clause, ' Do as thou wilt,' did not imply licence, but were based upon the assumption that, to quote his own words, ' men who are free, well born, well bred, and conversant with honour- able company, have naturally an instinct which prompts them to virtuous actions and withdraws them from vice this is called honour.' The conscience of each is his or her own guide. They live a life of unselfish labour, and their meditations and mutual service conduct them towards the higher life, upon which their thoughts are set. ' Love among them is free, and marriage the natural outcome of their life. All is noble, all is delightful, all is elevated, all is well bred and worthy, and to crown everything, from a Eabelaisian point of view,' observes Mr. Besant, ' there is not a priest in the place.' Such, in brief, is the substance of the first book of this marvellous compound of riotous and sometimes ribald humour, and of an elevated and ennobling moral philosophy ; a book of which, as its author assures us, more copies were sold in two months than were bought of the Bible in nine years. vin 'GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL ' 161 I will now endeavour, in spite of the difficulty of the undertaking, to give you some idea of the other four books into which the rest of the work is divided. Grandgousier has departed this life, and Gargantua reigns in his stead. It is Pantagruel and Panurge who occupy the entire atten- tion of the reader. Gargantua was getting on in years to be exact, he was 498 years old when Pantagruel was born ; and the infant was so sturdy, and withal so thirsty, that he had to be fed with the milk of 4,600 cows ; and it was boiled in the big bell which still hangs in the belfry at Bourges. As soon as he was old enough he visited all the universities in France; and at Orleans he met with a scholar who addressed him in Latinised French, such as Eonsard and his school were supposed to affect. This is a sample of it. Pantagruel asked him how the students in Paris spent their time, and the scholar replied : ' We trans- fretate the Sequane at the dilucul and crepuscul ; we deam- bulate by the compites and quadrives of the urb ; we despumate the Latial verbocination ; and like verisimiler amorabonds, we ceptat the benevolence of the omnijugal, omniform, and omnigenal feminine sex.' Could Shakespeare have read this passage when he made Sir Andrew Aguecheek remark to the clown, in ' Twelfth Night,' ' Thou wast in very gracious fooling last night, .when thou spokest of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of Queubus ' ? Arrived in Paris, Pantagruel favours us with his famous catalogue of the Library of St. Victor ; quotes the noble and admirable letter addressed to him by his father with respect to his studies and future conduct ; and meets for the first time with Panurge, the incomparable and immortal Panurge, a character worthy of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Ariosto, and Moliere, and one whom Sainte- Beuve has bracketed with Pathelin, Lazarillo, Falstaff, Sancho Panza, and Sganarelle. Panurge addresses him in thirteen different languages, a reminiscence, no doubt, of an incident which is alleged, on somewhat doubtful authority, to have occurred to Eabelais himself, when pleading for the liberties of the University of Montpellier before Chancellor Duprat in Paris. Taken into the household of Pantagruel, Panurge turns out to be an evil-doer, a cheat, a drunkard, a vaga- 152 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. bond, a libertine, if ever there was one in Paris, but is, nevertheless, says Eabelais, ' one of the best fellows in the world.' To enumerate the pranks he plays, the scrapes he gets into, and the thousand and one irregularities of his character and conduct, would tax my pains and your patience. He loved to whip the pages whom he met in the street carrying wine to their masters. In his coat which contained six-and-twenty little pockets, were sharp penknives for cutting purses ; bottles of verjuice, which he threw in people's eyes ; burs stuck with goose-feathers, which he dropped on the heads and robes of honest people ; little horns and quills full of fleas, which he poured down the necks of young ladies as they knelt in church ; hooks and crochets, with which he secretly hooked together men and women at their devotions, especially those who were well-dressed ; squibs, with tinder and matches for lighting them ; burning-glasses, with which always in church he drove people nearly mad ; and powder, with which he made ladies sneeze for four consecutive hours without stopping, a thing which mightily amused him. In one respect Panurge is the precursor of Mephis- topheles. He symbolises intellect entirely divorced from conscience. He has nothing ever so faintly resembling a moral sense. He has a mind, but no soul. He is without pity and without shame ; and in a mere spirit of reckless gaiety and unbridled mirth, he exclaims with Satan, ' Evil, be thou my good ! ' In other respects he is the progenitor of all the unprincipled and lying valets who have figured on the stage or in fiction since this brain-child of Kabelais was first born. But what of the three principal characters who figure in the First Book ? Mr. Walter Besant ingeniously suggests that Pantagruel is the personification of wisdom and of science, gathering both from his councillors and apply- ing them to the practical purposes of life. Epistemon, his tutor, represents scholarship and learning; Eusthenes the right application of strength. I do not feel qualified to offer an opinion upon the allegorical nature of this extra- ordinary book ; but one thing appears to me to be sufficiently clear : that it teems with allusions to events and topics which were the theme of common conversation at the time it was vni 'GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL ' 153 written. Contemporary anecdotes and the gossip of the country-side found a place in the narrative, which throws a flood of light upon the ideas of that epoch, an epoch yield- ing in celebrity to no other ; for it was an epoch illustrated in France by men like Erasmus, Brantome, Des P6riers, Marot, and Eabelais himself. In the third book, Pantagruel, who has conquered Dipsodie, the land of thirsty souls, and has colonised it with 9,876,543,210 Utopians, not reckoning their wives and children, bestows the government of Salmigondin on Panurge, whose prodigality becomes excessive, who grows enthusiastic in praise of debt, and discusses the question, ' To marry or not to marry,' in a succession of chapters as full of learning as of drollery. Chapters XXXIX. to XLIII. contain that delicious bit of comedy in which Judge Bridoise makes the naive avowal that he has always been in the habit of deciding all cases by a cast of the dice, using large ones for decisions of importance, and small ones for those of minor concern. Nor does he see the slightest impropriety in the proceeding, or any possibility of a miscarriage of justice, except for his vision becoming so enfeebled as to prevent him from accurately counting the spots. In the fourth book, Pantagruel sets out upon a voyage in quest of the Divine Bottle, in which Eabelais overwhelms with ridicule the travellers' stories which used to be brought home by adventurous navigators in those early days. On the way Panurge quarrels with a sheep-drover named Dindenault, but pretending to be reconciled with him, buys the ram of his flock and flings it into the sea ; whereon every one of the sheep leaps after him ; and hence the popular proverb, Sauter comme les moutons de Panurge. The voyagers touch at many marvellous islands ; and their course is continued in the fifth book, which has been left incomplete by its author. Finally they reach the object of their search and consult the Oracle, who has no better answer to return to Pantagruel, who professes to be search- ing for the truth, than the laconic injunction, ' Drink ! ' Truly ' a lame and impotent conclusion,' and one worthier of a Silenus than of a man of vast erudition, rare genius, and of a genuinely philosophical habit of mind like Frangois Eabelais. 154 LECTUEES ON FEENCH LITEEATUEE LECT. His influence upon European literature, but more par- ticularly upon that of France and England, has been very great indeed. La Fontaine has borrowed from him more than one of the subjects of his ' Fables,' and more than one picturesque expression. Eodilardus, Eaminagrobis, and Grippeminaud are personages of Rabelais. Henry Martin observes that the characters the beings he has created are as powerful and as original as his language. In that strange, colossal world, he adds, the whole of our literature has sought for its living types, from La Fontaine and Moliere down to Beaumarchais. ' The vogue of his Homeric buffoonery penetrates every- where, and has left its stamp upon the arts. He communi- cated a new impulse to the grotesque, and the employment of quaintly fantastic figures, called Mascarons, began to multiply in monumental sculpture. There is one quarter of the old city of Angers in which an entire commentary upon Pantagruel seems to have been portrayed in the carvings of its timber gables. What he has done for our language is simply incalculable. In his hands it assumes a grandeur that it never had before or since. . . . What Dante did for Italian, Eabelais has done for French. He has employed and fused all the dialects, and the elements of every century and of each province which the Middle Ages supplied him with, adding thereto a world of technical expressions furnished to him by the arts and sciences. Any other man would have succumbed to this immense variety of erudition. He harmonised it all, his knowledge of antiquity, and above all of the Greek genius, as well as of every modern, language, enabling him to envelope and dominate our own.' To this eloquent appreciation by Michelet I will venture to add that of Sainte-Beuve : Eabelais's book is a great feast ; not one of those noble and delicate feasts of antiquity, where golden chalices, wreathed with flowers, ingenious railleries and philosophical remarks circulate to the sound of the lyre ; not one of those delicious banquets of Xeno- phon and Plato, celebrated under marble porticoes in the gardens of Scillus or of Athens. It is a smoky orgy, a bourgeois carousal, a Christmas revel. It is moreover, if you will, a prolonged drink- ing song, the piquant couplets of which are frequently interrupted by a merry refrain and the jingle of glasses. And in these choruses the verve supplies the sense ; and to try and comprehend the latter is to miss its meaning altogether. vni CHARACTER OF RABELAIS 165 An excellent translation of Kabelais was made by Sir Thomas Urquhart, of Cromarty, in Scotland, who died in 1642. It has been everywhere cited as an unprecedented tour de force ; for the original has been so admirably repro- duced as to make an English author of the great French writer. A purified version was published in London, not long ago, and may be consulted by those who wish to shun the grossness of the earlier and more literal transla- tion. There are many passages in Eabelais which no woman could or should read ; and yet to omit any notice of his writings in such a course of lectures as this would be altogether unpardonable. For his place, not only in our own, but in all literature, is simply unique. There never was but one Eabelais ; and I doubt if there can ever be another. His learning was prodigious and his jocundity inexhaustible. He was the most exuberant, rollicking, joyous, buoyant, and irrepressible of humourists; and at the same time so wise, reflective, and sagacious in the midst of his buffoonery. He let loose a torrent of vociferous ridicule upon the follies, fanaticisms, and superstitions of the Church, in which he had been a monk and was afterwards a minister, and was just as unsparing of the Protestants ; and neither denomination ever forgave him. Yet at the same time his conceptions of the Supreme Being were so pure, so noble, and so elevated, as to anticipate the most exalted notions of God entertained by Spinoza and Novalis. Let us condemn without stint his grossness, coarseness, indecency, and repulsive realism ; and let us acknowledge that, if they are explained, they are in no way excused by the licentiousness of the age in which he lived. But, having done this, let us frankly admit how much there was to admire and even, perhaps, to love in Francois Eabelais. If Voltaire once called his book ' Un ramas des plus grossieres ordures qu'un moine ivre puisse vomir ; ' and if Calvin, Luther, La Bruyere, F6nelon, and Lamartine considered it detestable ; let us remember, on the other hand, that Bishop Huet annotated four editions of it, and that it has been praised and defended by Victor Hugo, Michelet, Guizot, Villemain, Sainte-Beuve, Prosper Me'rime'e, and Jules Janin in France ; and by Coleridge, Charles Kingsley, and Walter Besant in England. To me Eabelais appears to resemble nothing so 166 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. much as that wonderful compound of fun and frolic, of wit and wisdom, of madcap merriment and stinging satire, of which Shakespeare's fools are the immortal type. In the midst of his wildest flights of jovial gaiety, he pauses to indite a masterly treatise on the education of a young prince an anticipation, indeed, of the ' Telemaque ' of F^nelon. When he is pursuing the ' Quest of the Divine Bottle,' he pilots us into that unknown sea in which Jonathan Swift afterwards discovered Lilliput and Brobdingnag and the land of the Houyhnhnms. If there had been no Pantagruel I think there would have been no ' Tristram Shandy ' and no ' Baron Munchausen ; ' and in that Abbey of Thelema, which has been characterised by an English critic as ' one of the most graceful and noble fancies that ever entered into the brain of man,' may we not find the germinal idea of the beautiful institution of which the Princess Ida was the president in Tennyson's ' Princess ' ? While Eabelais scoffed at astrologers, alchemists, casuists, and the inventors of new religions, he could sincerely respect, as Mr. Besant has said, ' that gentle, amiable, and pure-minded school of religious and specula- tive men who gathered principally about the little court of Marguerite Lefevre d'Etaples, Eoussel, Brigonnet, and their friends who thought to keep religion free from the clergy, and taught their flocks that a life of personal holi- ness was the only walk with God.' Beneath the robe of the arch- jester beat the heart of a true philosopher and of a really devout man, whose creed has been thus com- pendiously expressed : Trust in God as a Being of infinite love and wisdom, and a life of effort on your own part for the good of others, taking the blessings of life as they come, and thanking the Author of all good for the enjoyment they afford. I continue this lecture with the study of a writer whose talent was equalled by his modesty ; whose name, like his works, is imperishable, and who rendered a notable service to moral philosophy. Jacques Amyot was something more than a translator : he was a translator of genius. He has left us a version of Plutarch which has been a real boon to France. ' We ignorant folk,' observes Montaigne, ' should have been lost if this book had not lifted us out of the vin JACQUES AMYOT 157 slough. Thanks to him we now venture to speak and to write, and ladies lord it over their teachers. It is our breviary, by reason of the naweU and purity of its language.' Eacine praises Amyot for having combined with the quaintness of the old style a grace which has never been equalled by the moderns, and Henry Martin pronounces him to have been a discreet and able neologist, full of good sense and moderation, who had imbibed all that was sweet and harmonious in our language. Amyot was one of its creators, indeed. He did not translate the ' Lives ; ' he transfused the spirit of Plutarch into his own picturesque, animated, original, and dramatic narratives, and produced a great literary monument, when he only professed to be an interpreter of the famous Greek biographer. And he possessed that ' capacity for taking infinite pains ' which is close akin to genius, for to perfect his work he ransacked the great libraries at Venice and in the Vatican, in order to examine and compare the best Greek and Latin texts of his author, and left no source of information unexplored, no means of elucidation uninvestigated. His life was a little romance in itself. Born of poor parents at Melun, on October 30, 1513, he seems to have been sent to Paris, where he received a scanty supply of food once a week from home, conveyed to him by one of the boatmen on the Seine ; and to provide himself with clothes and books and the means of paying for his lodgings, he per- formed menial offices for the richer students. By dint of unwearied application and of great natural ability, Amyot became proficient in Greek, Latin, philosophy, and mathe- matics, took his degree as Master of Arts, and was appointed, at the age of only nineteen, professor of Greek and Latin in the University of Bourges. A translation of a Greek romance and of some of the Lives of Plutarch, which he dedicated to Frangois I., procured for him the abbey of Bellezene. Then occurred his visit to Italy, on his return from whence Henry II. appointed him tutor to his sons, and Amyot completed his translation, which he dedicated to his royal master. When Charles IX. came to the throne, he appointed his late preceptor Grand Almoner, and subse- quently Bishop of Auxerre. Henry III. added to these distinctions the commandership of the order of the Holy 158 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. Spirit, an honour rarely conferred upon men of plebeian birth. He suffered severely during the Wars of the League, and died, in the hospital at Orleans, of a slow fever at the age of eighty, leaving behind him an immense fortune. Avarice was, indeed, the one blot upon his character. The hardships and privations he had undergone in early life had caused him to be thrifty to excess and eager in the acquisi- tion of money, and there can be no doubt that there was a good deal both of truth and of philosophy in his reply to Charles IX., from whom he was soliciting the gift of another abbey. ' Did you not once assure me,' said the king to the wealthy pluralist, ' that you would limit your ambition to the acquisition of an income of a thousand crowns ? ' ' Yes, sire,' replied the covetous prelate, ' but then, you know, the appetite grows by what it feeds upon.' Amyot was at Blois when the assassination of the Due de Guise occurred, and was accused of complicity in it by the Leaguers. The charge was wholly groundless, but if his force of character had been equal to his learning and his understanding, he would probably have obtained such a moral ascendency over his two royal pupils as would have prevented their reigns from being rendered infamous by the massacre of St. Bartholomew and the dastardly murder just referred to. If I were to follow up the progress of French prose, so disdained by the school of Eonsard, I should have to show how it gained in maturity and strength, to a greater extent than the poetry of the period, at the hands of Nicolas Herberat des Essarts, an officer of the French artillery, who translated from the Spanish the first eight books of ' Amadis de Gaule,' a work nearly approaching that of Amyot. He was a brilliant representative of the prose writers of that epoch, but I cannot aim at completeness as regards any of the subjects upon which I touch. That virtue has to be sacrificed to compression, but I trust it will suffice to pre- sent you with a succinct and at the same time just and accurate idea of the men who have won for themselves an honoured name in both branches of our literature. And here I am called upon to salute the illustrious author of the ' Essays,' Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne, the Frenchman of all others whom English men of letters know most familiarly, the writer with whom they are most perfectly VIII MONTAIGNE 159 at home, the friend who takes us all most unreservedly into his confidence. He was born at the chateau of that name down in P^rigord, on February 28, 1533, where he received a sound classical education, his tutors conversing with him so habitu- ally in Latin that it became like a second mother tongue to him. He learned Greek as a pastime, and at six years of age he entered the college of Guyenne, at Bordeaux, which he quitted at thirteen, after having studied under Buchanan, who afterwards became the historian of his native country, Scotland, and under Muret, the Latin poet and orator of evil notoriety. Having passed his legal examination, Montaigne was appointed, in 1554, counsellor to the parliament of Bordeaux. He was highly esteemed by the celebrated Chancellor de 1'Hopital, while another of his confreres, of whom I shall have occasion to speak hereafter, La Boetie, blended his name with that of Montaigne in a friendship which the essayist has immortalised in his writings. In 1566 Montaigne married, and published his first work soon afterwards. This was simply a translation he had made at the request of his father ; and in 1571 and 1572 he edited the works of his friend La Boetie. The political agitations of the period caused him to retire to his chateau, where he calculated upon passing the rest of his days in studious indolence, 'the world forsaking with a calm disdain.' But his mind, a veritable ' runaway horse,' as he terms it, insisted upon being fed, and so we find him sitting down at the age of thirty-nine to begin those ' Essays ' which were destined to render him immortal. The first two books were published in 1580, and the third in 1588. Thanks to his natural indif- ference to what was going on outside of his own library, which, like that of Prospero, was to him ' a dukedom large enough,' he scarcely felt the shock of the calamitous events of the times in which he lived, although he did not always succeed in preserving his chateau ' virgin of blood and sack ' in the midst of the civil wars which were raging around him. But his adopted daughter, Mademoiselle de Gournay, and his friend Charron helped him, by their consolations, to support these slight and transitory misfortunes. He made occasional excursions in France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, observing much and reflecting more ; was twice elected mayor of Bordeaux ; was decorated with the Order of St. 160 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. Michael by Charles IX. ; was honoured by receiving the freedom of the city of Eome, and died in 1592, when he was approaching his sixtieth year. Although it did not appear until some years later, the work of Montaigne was conceived during the stormy reign of Charles IX., if it be permissible to use the word ' concep- tion ' in connection with the ' Essays,' that universal mirror which reflects the thousandfold aspects of human nature, without order and without connection other than the caprice of a vagrant idea. ' How can we analyse Montaigne ? ' asks Henry Martin. ' One might as well try to sketch the profile of the Alps or the Pyrenees, or to fix the aspect of the ocean and its restless waves.' Que sais-je ? What can I know ? is the motto of the great doubter, who gave an immortal impetus to the independence of the human mind. His ' Essays ' form an epoch not only in the literature but also in the civilisation of France. Putting aside the personal dissimilarities which, after all, have less importance than is generally supposed, one will find that between Eabelais and Montaigne there is all the difference which exists between the two epochs at which their respective works were pub- lished 1545 and 1588. To make my meaning better under- stood by my English readers, I might add that Montaigne stands in the same relation to Eabelais as that which Hooker bears to Jewell on the one side, and Chillingworth to Hooker on the other ; for the law which governs those rela- tions is that of progressive scepticism. Such, at least, is the dictum of Buckle, who pithily remarks that, while the writings of Eabelais were only directed against the clergy, those of Montaigne ' were directed against the system of which the clergy were the offspring.' He was no Pyrrhonist, however, and his scepticism was only that of Pliny when he wrote in his ' Natural History ' ' Solum certum nihil esse certi, et homine nihil miserius aut superbius.' His was the 'honest doubt,' in which, as Tennyson said, 'there lives more faith ' than in ' half the creeds.' A good Catholic, Montaigne was full of tolerance in an age in which toleration was regarded almost as a crime; and among the friends with whom he lived were Francois de la Noue, surnamed Bras de Fer, and Theodore de Beze, two of the foremost Huguenots of the time. He extolled the first for the sweet- vin MONTAIGNE 11 ness and beauty of his character, and proclaimed the second to be one of the greatest poets of the century, notwithstand- ing that his writings had been laid under a ban by Rome. Lamartine has called Montaigne and Montesquieu the two great Republicans of French thought, and the first of these was undoubtedly the precursor of Descartes. Nor must it be forgotten that the publication of the second series of his ' Essays,' in which he vindicated the principle of religious toleration, and preached compassion, forbearance, prudence, and wisdom, as Bodin and L'Hopital had done before him, preceded by five years only the promulgation by Henry IV. of the Edict of Nantes. Before Montaigne doubt was almost unknown, and it is to the publication of the works of this sceptic that we owe, in all probability, the issue of that memorable Edict, by which civil and religious rights were conceded to heretics by a Catholic govern- ment. Once, if not twice, the king of Navarre was his guest at the old chateau in Perigord ; and may we not imagine the young monarch imbibing from the lips of the philosopher, who was twenty years his senior, those tolerant ideas which were embodied in that document ? No epoch in the history of France defines so clearly the close of the old world and the advent of a new one as that of which the ' Essays ' of Montaigne constitute one of the great literary landmarks. Intellectually nurtured on the past, for Athens and Rome were the foster-mothers of his mind, his eyes were firmly fixed on the future. His was the voice that announced principles of political, social, and individual conduct that were to be adopted and applied long after he should have mouldered into dust. Liberty of conscience, freedom to believe ; the enfranchisement of the human mind from the slavery of tradition, prejudice, superstition ; the overthrow of impostures of all kinds ; and the extinction of those false sciences which obstruct the progress of the true ones : these were the objects which seemed to be dearest to his heart. Yet we must not believe, however, that he replied ' No ' to the great questions to which previous generations had responded ' Yes.' What he substituted for the latter, as Henry Martin observes, was ' Perhaps.' The attitude of his mind was not one of blank negation, but of a reflective hesitation. He disliked M 162 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. dogmatism, which, according to the witty definition of Douglas Jerrold, is ' only puppyism full-grown.' Dog- matism is the offspring of inteUectual conceit and arro- gance. Montaigne was humble because he had read much, observed much, and reflected much. Above all, he had pored over the mysteries of his own mind. He held, with Pope, that ' the proper study of mankind is man,' and that the whole of humanity is capable of being read by the introspective examination and analysis of himself. And thus, becoming cognisant of his own weaknesses and im- perfections, he learned to be very indulgent towards those of all others. As one of his critics has pointed out, Montaigne passed through two periods of doubt. In the first during which he composed his ' Essays ' it was that expressed by Hamlet in the memorable soliloquy beginning ' To be, or not to be ; ' and this was succeeded, in the second place, by a less placid and dreamy and a more passionate and tragic doubt. Only a few of the essayist's contemporaries were qualified to discern the greatness of the man and the enduring nature of his work. Justus Lipsius surnamed him the ' French Thales ; ' De Thou, the historian, pre- dicted his immortality ; Etienne Pasquier read his writings with delight ; and Cardinal du Perron pronounced them to be 'the Breviary of honest people.' But his adopted daughter's womanly intuitions enabled her to predict, with singular foresight, in 1634, that a century would elapse, at the very least, before the generality of people would ade- quately appreciate Montaigne. Yet, on the other side of the English Channel, there was a young dramatist who was eight-and-twenty when Montaigne passed out of this world, and who, having probably read the ' Essays ' in French, afterwards procured a copy of John Florio's trans- lation of them into English, wrote his name upon the title-page, and read the book the precious volume is now in the British Museum with what we may weU believe to have been affectionate attention and sympathetic admira- tion. For this same dramatist, William Shakespeare by name, transplanted some of the essayist's flowers into his own garden; as when he borrowed a whole passage from Montaigne's dissertation on cannibals, beginning, Tin MONTAIGNE 163 ' It is a nation, I would answer Plato, that hath no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters,' &c., and transformed it into poetry, where the lines commence thus : I' the commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things; for no kind of traffic Would I admit, no name of Magistrate ; Letters should not be known ; &c., &c. So, too, we find Shakespeare, in ' Macbeth,' epitomising Montaigne's antipathy to drugs in the often-quoted sentence, 'Throw physic to the dogs.' And, again, the essayist's expressed aversion to artificial perfumes appears to be revived in Hotspur's vehement outburst against the scented coxcomb with his pouncet-box, in the First Part of ' King Henry the Fourth.' Moreover, Montaigne's observation that none are so old and decrepit as not to believe that they have yet some twenty years of life before them, seems to find an echo in aged Justice Shallow's unconcealed astonish- ment at the death of ' old Double,' in the Second Part of the same play. Finally, is there not a striking coincidence between the great Frenchman's remark, 'Philosopher, ce riest autre chose que s'apprester d la mort,' and Hamlet's ' If it be not to come, it will be now ; if it be not now, yet it will come : the readiness is all ' ? It is impossible to separate Montaigne from his ' Essays ; ' they are a part of himself ; he has incorporated his moral with his mental tissues in those compositions. ' His life,' said his intimate friend Btienne Pasquier, ' was nothing else but le general de ses escripts.' Therefore, to understand them, we must first of all understand him. And is there any man in the whole range of literature whom we know so well, unless it be old Sam Pepys perhaps ? We live with him. He ' made his toilet in public,' as some one has said ; not from the diseased craving for notoriety which induces the little great people of modern society to lay themselves out to be interviewed by newspaper reporters, and to send paragraphs about their movements, their receptions, and their new dresses to society journals ; but because he was of such an expansive nature that he enjoyed taking people into his confidence, and conversing with them in a spirit of delightful frankness, and with an unreserve that is always M 2 164 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. charming because his is such an interesting and engaging personality. If I were to name another writer who is equally candid both in his essays and his letters, and for whom his readers entertain the same sort of affection they cherish for Michel de Montaigne, it would be Charles Lamb. How accurately we know them both ! And how peculiarly applicable to each is the aphorism of Buffon : Le style, c'est I'homme. Both loved books with a feeling in which tenderness and reverence were equally blended. The domestic affections of both were not less deep than durable. Although Mon- taigne's marriage with Mademoiselle Franoise de la Ghas- saine was one of convenance, yet he appears to have been a model husband in times when the yoke of matrimony sat rather lightly, on the shoulders of husbands more particu- larly. Only one of his letters to his wife has come down to us ; and some passages in this are too characteristic to be omitted. 'You are 'very well aware,' he writes, with his customary frankness, ' that, according to the rules of these modern days, it does not become a gentleman of fashion to be still courting and caressing his wife ' too often, indeed, the husband of the period was courting and caressing some- body else's ' for they say that a sensible man may very well take a wife for himself, but to espouse her is the act of a fool. Well, let them say what they will ; I hold, for my part, to the simple fashion of old times, as I do to the cut of my beard. Let you and me, my wife, love each other after the good old French ways.' After the marriage of his only daughter and child he adopted Mademoiselle Marie de Gournay le Jars, who seems to have repaid his fatherly affec- tion with filial gratitude. In one of his essays he tells us that he loves her more than anything in the world. ' If youth can give any presage of the future,' he adds, 'that soul will one day be capable of the highest things ; and, among others, of the perfection of that holiest form of friendship to which we do not read of her sex having as yet attained.' No one was so well qualified to speak with authority on the subject of friendship as Montaigne himself. Among the memorable friendships of antiquity, such as those of Har- modius and Aristogiton, of Alexander and Hephaestion, of Agis and Cleombrotus, there are none more close and touch- vin MONTAIGNE 165 ing, more perfect and unbroken, than that which united the essayist to Etienne de la Boetie. When the elder of the two was asked why he loved the younger so fondly, he could only reply, with laconic simplicity, ' Because it was he because it was I.' That friendship, after a duration of four years, was terminated by the death of La Boetie ; and the grief occasioned by their separation was never effaced from the mind of Montaigne. Eighteen years after its occurrence something brought his departed friend into his mind, and the recollection of what he had lost saddened him for the rest of the day. Such a friendship masters Time indeed, and is Eternal, separate from fears ; The all-assuming months and years Can take no part away from this. Let us look in upon Montaigne when he had returned from his public duties at Bordeaux to his picturesque old chateau in the valley of the Dordogne, where he occupied the round tower originaUy constructed for the purposes of safety and defence in times of peril and disorder. It is thus that he described his abode : From my library, I command at once my whole establishment. I enter it and see below me my garden, my court, my farmyard, and nearly all quarters of my premises. Then I turn over the pages now of one book, and now of another, without order or method, in disconnected snatches. At one time I meditate, at another I make notes and dictate such fancies as you have here. 'Tis the third story of a tower. The first is my chapel, the second is a bedchamber and its dependencies, where I often sit for the sake of being alone. Above this is a large room, which was formerly the most useless part of the house. Here I pass most of the days of my life, and most of the hours of my day : I am never there at night. Connected with it is a cabinet, handsome enough, capable of holding a fire in the winter, with windows very pleasantly arranged. . . . The shape of this room is circular, and there is no flat wall except enough for my table and chair, and its curves pre- sent to my view all my books, ranged in five rows of standing presses all round me. On the rafters of the open ceiling of his library Mon- taigne had caused to be inscribed upwards of fifty mottoes in Greek and Latin, which might be regarded as expressing the essence of his philosophy. ' All is vanity,' was one of these. ' I do not understand,' ' I hesitate,' ' I examine/ 166 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. were others, highly significant of his mental attitude towards all questions. As a warning against and a corrective of that intellectual vanity which is one of the mental diseases of our own time, he kept well in view before him sentences like these : ' Woe unto those that are wise in their own eyes,' ' Be not wise in your own conceits,' ' If any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know ; ' and, finally, this epitome of sage counsel : ' The final wisdom of man is to make the best of things as they are, and for what remains, to face it with confidence.' What was the personal appearance of the only French writer who, according to Voltaire, was known outside of Prance to those who were acquainted with the language in which he wrote ? He has obligingly sketched his own portrait for us when he was forty years of age. Imprimis, he was rather below the middle height, which he regretted, because he was apt to get jostled in a crowd, and to be splashed with mud by people passing him on horseback. Then, again, he was neither sprightly nor athletic. ' Nevertheless,' said he, ' my figure is strong and well knit, my face not fat but full, my temperament between the cheerful and the melancholic, moderately sanguine and warm, my health sound and vigorous, even now that I am pretty well advanced in age, and it is seldom disturbed by illness.' He could run fairly well, but did not shine in dancing, tennis, and wrestling ; he was stupid at music, knew nothing of swimming, fencing, vaulting and leaping ; and he added, ' I am so clumsy with my hands that I cannot write well enough for myself to read.' Then, by way of completing the catalogue of his defects, he says : ' I do not know how to fold a letter properly, I cannot mend a pen, or carve at table to any pur- pose, nor saddle and bridle a horse, nor carry a hawk nor fly her, nor halloo to a hawk, a hound, or a horse.' But he could write essays which have been a source of instruction and delight to ten generations of his countrymen and foreigners in all parts of the civilised world, and ' the rest is all but leather or prunella.' Montaigne fancied he was of English extraction, and says that his family name (Eyquem) was known on the other side of the Channel in his own day, and was spelt as Egham, Higham, or Ockham. And is he not more closely vin MONTAIGNE 167 akin to Eobert Burton, the author of the ' Anatomy of Melancholy/ than to any French essayist? Is there not something like an echo of Montaigne, when he was in one of his self-depreciatory moods in what follows? 'I have read many books, but to little purpose, for want of good method. I have confusedly tumbled over divers authors in our libraries with small profit, for want of art, order, memory, judgment. ... I am not poor ; I am not rich ; nihil est, nihil de-est. I have little, I want nothing. All my treasure is in Minerva's tower.' And there is a strain of pensive reflection and occasionally of meditative melan- choly in Montaigne's writings which seems to us rather more English than French, rather more touched by the sombre influences of a northern climate upon the Anglo- Saxon intellect, than by the brightness and hilarity which have always characterised the people of Gascony. Of the ' Essays ' themselves it would be hopeless to attempt to say anything new. Nobody sits down to read them persistently and perseveringly, as he would a poem, a romance, or an historical narrative. They are to be sipped like liqueurs, and not taken in tumblers like vin ordinaire. Huet said of them that they constitute ' the handbook for gentlemen in their leisure hours.' This is entirely true ; for their author has poured into them, as Burton did into his famous book, and as Eobert Southey did into ' The Doctor,' the fruit of such extensive and desultory reading, that same culture which was formerly the exclusive privilege of ' gentlemen ' and scholars that is so essential to their com- prehension and enjoyment ; and being thus desultory in their composition, these essays should be read in a desultory fashion also. ' There are, in fact,' as Nisard has observed, ' men who have always been reading Montaigne, and who have never finished him.' With the essayist commences the long and majestic march of our classic literature, and his book is the first in date and glory of all those master- pieces which have been the contribution of France towards the perfecting of human genius. His essay on 'The Art of Conversation' ranks among the best that proceeded from his pen, and I will quote one passage from it, partly because it illustrates his literary style, and partly because it reveals some of the many 168 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. aspects of his mental character. 'I engage in argument and discussion,' he remarks, ' with great ease and freedom, since opinions find in me a very bad soil to strike deep into, or to take firm root. No propositions astonish me, and no belief offends me, however opposite it may be to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous or extravagant as not to seem to me a natural product of the human mind.' And here we have an example of that beautiful spirit of tolera- tion by which Montaigne was guided and governed. It was all the more honourable and remarkable when we remember the times in which he lived, and that he was contemporary with, and an eyewitness of, the infamous massacre of St. Bartholomew. ' Contradiction of my opinion, therefore,' he continues, ' neither offends me nor disconcerts me. It only rouses me and puts me on my mettle. We shrink from having our judgment challenged ; we ought rather to court and lay ourselves out for it, especially when it comes in the form of argument and not dictation. Whenever we are contradicted we are apt to consider not whether the contradic- tion be just, but how we are to get the better of it, right or wrong. Instead of opening our arms to it, we thrust out our claws. I could bear to be even roughly handled by my friends " You are an ass you are dreaming." I love plain and bold speech between gallant men, and that our words should go along with our thoughts. We must harden our ears and steel ourselves against that over- tenderness. . . . For my own part I welcome and embrace truth in whatsoever hands I find it, and submit to it cheerfully ; nay, hold out my arms to it in token of submission as soon as I see it approaching in the distance ; and provided always it does not take an imperious and dictatorial tone, I take pleasure in being set right, often rather on grounds of civility than conviction, because I love to gratify and encourage the liberty of admonition by my readiness to give way even to my own cost.' What is so delightful in passages like these is their engaging mixture of philosophical reflection with innocent and agreeable egotism. We are listening to the serious thoughts on familiar subjects of a mind ripened by culture and mellowed by experience ; and we are at the same time taken into the confidence of one who is at once the kindliest of instructors and the pleasantest of gossips. Considering the intellectual plane upon which he stands, it is little less than an act of condescension on his part ; but Montaigne is too much of a gentleman ever to let us feel that it is so. vin MONTAIGNE 169 To very few writers has it been given, as Sainte-Beuve has observed, to become an inexhaustible and everlasting subject of studies and of comments. Yet such is Montaigne, such has he been, and so he will continue to remain, in all probability, while the language and literature of Prance shall endure. Not the smallest details of his life are indifferent to us, or devoid of interest, if they be found capable of adding so much as a single new feature to the physiognomy of the great writer who has admitted us into the innermost sanctuaries of his private and domestic life. 'What a pleasure it would be to have such a neighbour as Montaigne ! ' said Madame La Fayette. ' He is everybody's neighbour,' exclaimed Sainte-Beuve, ' and one can never know too much about his neighbour.' Montesquieu characterised him as a great poet ; Etienne Pasquier characterised his ' Essays ' as constituting ' a true summary of beautiful and notable sen- tences ; ' adding that one may find in them something for every age and for every hour of our lives. M. Villemain praises his inexhaustible memory, his taste, his judgment, and his instinct ; and observes that upon every subject which he takes up, he begins by telling us all he knows, and ends which is still better by informing us as to what he believes. Speaking of his literary style, the same writer asserts that Montaigne has no superior in the art of painting by words : ' What he thinks, he sees ; and by the vivacity of his expressions he brings it vividly before the eyes of every- body else.' And Hallam remarks that ' the fascination of Montaigne's manner is acknowledged by all who read him, and with a worse style or one less individually adapted to his character, he would never have been the favourite of the world.' Who that has read the ever-delightful letters of Madame de Sevigne can have forgotten the frank outburst of naive joy fulness excited by having found a volume of Montaigne which she did not know that she had brought with her? ' Ah ! 1'admirable homme ! ' she exclaims ; ' qu'il est de bonne compagnie ! C'est mon ancien ami ; mais, a force de m'6tre ancien, il m'est nouveau. Mon Dieu ! que ce livre est plein de bon sens ! ' More than three hundred years have elapsed since the ' Essays ' of Montaigne were first published at Bordeaux ; ten generations have come and gone, and the 170 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. vin garrulous gossip of the dear old Gascon is as fresh and as full of good sense as ever it was : Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale Its infinite variety. Egotism is usually odious, but the egotism of Montaigne is simply adorable, because we feel it to be the outpouring of a rich mind, a good heart, and a most sincere and ingenuous nature. When Henry of Valois told him that he liked his book, the essayist replied ' Then your Majesty must needs like me, for my book contains nothing but a dissertation on myself and my own notions.' And this constitutes its greatest charm not the less so because the man was very far from perfect. Had he been an example of all the virtues, we could not have liked him half so well. He is allied to us by his weaknesses and frailties ; and with what admirable candour, with what entire freedom from reserve, does he unbosom himself to us. ' I leave nothing,' he writes, ' for people to wish for or to guess at concerning myself. If they must be talking of me I would have them do so fairly and truly. I would willingly come back from the other world to give the lie to any one who should make me out to be other than I am, even though it were intended to do me honour.' l There speaks Montaigne ! And because he leaves nothing to be wished for or guessed at, his ' Essays ' constitute one of the most copious and truthful autobiographies to be found in any literature, ancient or modern. Cicero comes the nearest to him in his ' Letters.' Let us not forget, more- over, that Montaigne was the inventor of the Essay. He opened up a new field of letters. It is his by right of con- quest and discovery, and in it he is still supreme. He stands at the head of that splendid cohort of writers whom we admire or venerate under the names of Bacon, Locke, Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, Pope, Addison, Steele, Dryden, Temple, Defoe, Cowley, Macaulay, Lamb, Hazlitt, Pascal, La Bruyere, Leib- nitz, La Eochefoucauld, Vauvenargues, Voltaire, Bonald, Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Sainte-Beuve, and a host of German and Italian essayists, not forgetting Jean Paul and Gasparo Gozzi. What a magnificent family for Father Montaigne to be proud of ! 1 Essay 103 : ' Of Vanity.' LECTUEE IX La Boetie (1530-1563) Pierre Charron (1541-1603) Michel de I'H&pi- tal (1503-1573) Cujas (1522-1590) Bodin (1530-1596) Calvin (1509-1564) Costar (1603-1660) Vaugelas (1585-1650) -La Mothe le Vayer (1588-1672) Le Maistre (1608-1658) Patru (1604-1681) Tallemant des Reaux (1619-1692) Descartes (1596-1650) Pascal (1623-1662), ETIENNE DE LA BOETIE, born at Sarlat in Perigord on November 1, 1530, was the senior by two years of Montaigne, his fervid friendship for whom has caused the names of both to be linked together like those of Tennyson and Hallam. Montaigne's affection for the young scholar, whose life was cut short in the moment of its highest promise, inspired some of the most beautiful and pathetic passages in his essay on Friendship. He who could awaken so deep and durable a sentiment in the mind of so philo- sophical a thinker, so shrewd an observer of character, and so perfect a gentleman as the Seigneur de Montaigne, must have had rare intellectual gifts and admirable qualities of heart. Such indeed was La Boetie, whose name is embalmed for ever in the elegiac prose of the greatest of French essayists, and perhaps few writers have appreciated his sterling worth with so much delicacy of discernment and sympathetic insight as M. Feugere, whose eloquently expressed estimate of him I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting. His most brilliant qualities impressed upon his entire person a severe charm and the stamp of distinction. The equality of a soul governed by duty ; a virtue rigorous towards himself and indulgent to others ; an unalterable frankness ; a piety remote from all super- stition, and as exempt from laxity as from stubbornness ; much weight and security of judgment ; an habitual elevation of views 172 LECTUKES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. and ideas ; an easy and agreeable humour ; much knowledge joined to the graces of a lively and fertile imagination; a rare combination of vigour and penetration ; a tender attachment to that miserable country which was then being preyed upon openly by enemies at home and abroad ; an ardent love for freedom and mankind ; a profound aversion to every vice, and more especially to that odious traffic hi justice which usurps and dishonours its name ; a singular modesty which endeavoured to conceal such an affluence of endowments, and which by veiling augmented their lustre : such were the features of the mind and character of that great and good man, as Montaigne called him. The enthusiasm which dreams of perfection found in the wisdom and rectitude of his sentiments its model and its equilibrium. Such men as La Boetie and L'Hopital are the very salt of the earth, and they preserve mankind from corruption. They are the glory of the country in which they are born, but they are also an honour to the human race. We are proud of them as our countrymen, but we must not refuse to recognise the broader proprietary interest in them which is claimed by the whole of humanity. Etienne's early years of study were passed, like those of Montaigne, in the college of Bordeaux, where his pre- cocity amazed both the professors and his class-fellows. He acquired a perfect mastery of the language and literature of Greece and Borne, and translated some of the works of Aristotle and Xenophon. He was only eighteen when he wrote his ' Discourse on Voluntary Servitude,' a philo- sophical protest against the tyranny of kings, called forth by the remorseless way in which the insurrection in Guyenne had been suppressed by royal authority. Appointed coun- sellor to the parliament of Bordeaux in 1552, he became, a few years later, the colleague of Montaigne in the exercise of similar functions, and then commenced the memorable friendship which continued unbroken until the death of La Boetie on August 18, 1563. In the essay already referred to, Montaigne tells us that, in natural parts, he knew of no man comparable with his friend, and that their intimacy, founded on mutual respect and esteem, was ' so perfect, inviolate, and entire, that certainly the like is hardly to be found in story, and among the men of his age there is no sign nor trace of any such thing in use.' Their friendship, he says, was something differentiated from all other friendships. It was ,free from the slightest taint of self, and the will of each lost ix LA BOETIE 173 itself in the will of the other. ' Our souls,' adds Montaigne, ' have drawn so unanimously together, and we have with so mutual a confidence laid open the very bottom of our hearts to each other's view, that I not only know his as well as my own, but should certainly, in any concern of mine, have trusted my interest much more willingly with him than with myself.' The essayist believes that he and La Boe'tie were drawn together ' by some secret appointment of heaven,' so that from that time forward they became so mutually endeared that ' nothing was so dear to them as each other.' And Montaigne, in exalting his friend upon so high a pedestal, seems to have anticipated the great poet of our own times, who, in apostrophising his beloved comrade, exclaimed : But thou, that fillest all the room Of all my love, art reason why I seem to cast a careless eye On souls, the lesser lords of doom. And a somewhat similar sentiment is to be found in La Bruyere, where he says, ' There is a savour in pure friendship unattainable by those of mediocre birth.' 1 La Fontaine has shown his fine conception of friendship in the ' Two Pigeons ' and the ' Two Friends of Monomotapa.' In Montaigne and in the Fabulist, friendship has its sweet folly and its delirium, and Montesquieu was probably think- ing of this when he said, ' I am enamoured of friendship.' 2 Only one fault is to be found with that admirable essay which has conferred immortality upon La Boe'tie, and it is that the author of it seems to imply that woman is incapable of that excellent sentiment. ' Their soul,' he says, ' appears to be insufficiently strong to sustain the strain of a tie so close and durable.' 3 The greatest minds, you see, are mistaken, or at any rate take imperfect views of things. Craving to be excused for making this digression into a domain which is foreign to my subject, I return to the works of La Boe'tie. 1 ' II y a un gout dans la pure amiti6 ou ne peuvent atteindre ceux qui sont nds m6diocres.'. 2 ' Je suis amoureux de 1'amitie.' 3 ' Leur ame,' dit-il, ' ne semble assez ferme pour soutenir l'6treinte d'un noeud si press6 et si durable.' 174 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. Although enrolled under the flag of the Pl&ade, he is scarcely to be regarded as a poet on the strength of the twenty-nine sonnets of his which Montaigne has preserved. He did not possess the lyrical faculty, although Viollet- le-Duc has translated one of his Latin poems, which he pronounces to be a little masterpiece of esprit, grace, and facility. La Boe'tie, however, will not float down to posterity on a poetical pinnace. But as the example of his versifica- tion, and of the language with which he clothes an idea which Montaigne extols as having been derived from no author of ancient or modern times, I will quote the following sonnet : Toi que oyes mes soupirs, ne me sois rigoreux Si mes larmes a part toutes miennes je verse, Si mon amour ne suit en sa douleur diverse Du Florentin transi les regrets langoreux, Ne de Catulle aussi, le folatre amoreux Qui le coeur de sa dame en chatouillant lui peree, Ne le savant amour du migregeois 1 Properce ; Us n'aiment pas pour moi, je n'aime pas pour eux. Qui pourra sur autrui ses douleurs limiter, Celui pourra d'autrui les plaintes imiter : Chacun sent son tourment et sait ce qu'il endure. Chacun parle d'amour ainsi qu'il 1'entendit, Je dis ce que mon coeur, ce que mon mal me dit, Que celui aime peu, qui aime a la mesure I There are, as Sainte-Beuve has pointed out, some beauti- ful lines in this sonnet, and the italics are his own. At the same time I am bound to acknowledge that the poet's prose is much more fluent than his verse. I have already mentioned La Boetie's ' Discourse on Voluntary Servitude.' It was written during the reign of Henry II., when an insurrection had broken out in the south-western provinces of France, aroused by the intole- rable pressure of taxation, and the cruel rigour with which payment was enforced. Even the nobility, the clergy, and the burghers of the large towns and cities made common cause with the unfortunate peasantry. The king expostu- lated with the insurgents and promised them, if they would lay down their arms and return to their homes, that he would redress their grievances. They did so, and then the royal miscreant despatched the terrible Constable Anne 1 Semi-Greek. ix LA BOETIE 175 de Montmorency to pacify the disaffected districts. ' Do not kill or pillage/ said the monarch, with his tongue in his cheek. Brantome tells us how these instructions were carried out : ' Hang such a one,' were the Constable's commands. ' String that fellow up to a tree. Eun your pike through this rascal ; shoot down thai; other. Cut to pieces every one of those villains. Burn down yonder village, and set fire to the country for a quarter of a league around it.' His atrocities culminated in the hideous crimes of which he was guilty to a magistrate named Les-tonal, and his afflicted wife : crimes with the narrative of which I dare not sully my pages. The city of Bordeaux, although it had made humble submission to the king, and to the infamous miscreant who was the instrument of his vengeance, was treated like a foreign town that had been taken by assault, and during the four or five weeks of its occupation by the Constable, executions, confiscations, and outrages of all kinds were the order of the day. It was under these circumstances, and in full view of the scaffolds erected for the execution of the victims of Montmoreney's ferocity, that La Boe'tie wrote his memo- rable discourse, ' the first war-cry of that abstract republi- canism,' as Henry Martin has remarked, ' which has been the answer made to the doctrines of monarchical despotism.' Down in Guyenne was sown some of the seed of that harvest of blood which wa's reaped during the Eeign of Terror 240 years later. The ' Discourse ' was a cry of indignation raised from a heart all aflame with anger at the insolence and murderous brutality of armed authority, and all aglow with compassion for the abject misery and help- less submission, and perhaps the cowardice also, of the crushed and bleeding masses. ' What is to be done,' exclaimed La Boetie, ' when so many men, so many towns, so many cities, so many nations submit to a single tyrant, who possesses no power but that which is given to him, and who could not injure them if they were not willing to endure it ? What a misfortune, or what a vice, to see an infinite number of people, not obeying but serving, not being governed but being tyrannised over by a single individual ; and he neither a Hercules nor a Samson, but an insignificant little man, and very often the greatest coward, and the most effeminate person in the 176 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. nation ! Poor, miserable people ! senseless races, stubbornly cling- ing to evil, and blind to your own welfare, you live in such a way that you can call nothing your own, neither your property, nor your kinsfolk, nor your children, nor your own lives. And all this ruin befalls you, not from your enemies although, doubtless, he is your enemy but from him whose greatness is of your own making ; for whom you go forth so courageously to war, and for whose grandeur you do not hesitate to sacrifice your own lives. You plant your cornfields and orchards in order that he may ravage them ; you build and furnish your houses that he may pillage them. From such indignities as these, which the very beasts of the field would not put up with, you might deliver your- selves, if you were only willing to do so. He who thus lords it over you, from whom but you does he obtain so many eyes to act as a spy upon you ? Who but yourselves give him so many hands wherewith to smite you ? What could he do if you were not the receivers of the stolen goods he robs you of ; accomplices of the assassin who murders you, and traitors to yourselves ? Make up your minds to serve him no longer, and you are free ! I would not excite or unsettle you, but would only urge you to uphold him no longer, and you will see him topple over like a huge colossus which has lost its pedestal, and by its own weight tumbles into ruins. . . . The first cause of voluntary servitude is habit. People say they have been always subjects, they and their fathers before them, and therefore they fancy that they are bound to champ the bit, and they ground their obedience on the length of time they have been owned by those who tyrannise over them ; but, of a verity, years do not confer the right to do evil. Rather they ag- gravate the injury.' l 1 ' Comment se peut-il faire, que tant d'hommes, tant de bourgs, tant de villes, tant de nations, endurent un tyran, seul, qui n'a puissance que celle qu'on lui donne, qui n'a pouvoir de leur nuire, sinon de tant qu'ils ont vouloir de 1'endurer ? . . . . Quel malheur, ou quel vice, de voir un nombre infini, non pas obeir, mais servir; non pas etre gouvernes, mais tyrannises d'un seul, et non pas d'un Hercule ni d'un Samson, mais d'un seul petit homme, et le plus souvent du plus lache et feminin de la nation. . . . Pauvres gens et mis6rables, peuples insenses, nations opi- niatres en votre mal et aveugles en votre bien, vous vivez de sorte que vous pouvez dire que rien n'est a vous, ni vos biens, ni vos parents, ni vos enfants, ni votre vie meme ! Et toute cette ruine vous vient, non* pas des ennemis, mais bien certes de 1'ennemi et de celui que vous faites si grand qu'il est, pour lequel vous allez si courageusement a la guerre, pour la grandeur duquel vous ne ref usez pas de presenter a la mort vos personnes. . . . Vous semez vos fruits afin qu'il en fasse le degat ; vous meublez et remplissez vos maisons, pour fournir & ses voleries De tant d'indignit6s, que les be"tes memes n'endureraient point, vous pouvez vous delivrer si vous essayez seulement de le vouloir ! Celui qui vous maitrise tant, d'ou a-t-il pris tant d'yeux dont il vous epie, si vous ne les lui donnez ? Comment a-t-il tant de mains pour vous frapper, s'il ne les prend de vous ? Que vous pourrait-il faire, si vous n'etiez receleurs du larron qui vous pille, complices du meurtrier qui vous tue et traitres a ix LA BOETIE 177 Eemembering the date at which this was written, it is surely an audacious and remarkable protest against ' the monstrous faith of many made for one,' and an unflinching arraignment of ' the right divine of kings to govern wrong.' And does it not contain the germs of those revolutionary principles which, formulated by Thomas Paine in his ' Common Sense,' served as , the basis of the American Declaration of Independence, and of the great organic changes in France between 1789 and 1793 ? La Boetie's vigorous piece of declamation was followed by a picture of the favourites and parasites of tyranny : ' those devourers of the people, whose names, execrated during their lifetime, are blackened, after their death, by the ink of a thousand pens ; their reputations torn to pieces in a thousand books, and their very bones dragged from their graves by posterity. 1 This writer, whom Montaigne calls ' the greatest man of his century,' lived almost unknown, and died in the arms of his friend at the age of thirty-two. His last words were very touching. ' Per ad venture,' said he, ' I was not born so useless as not to have had the means of rendering some service to the public good, but let that be according as it pleases God.' 2 Montaigne's letters, written many years after the death of his friend, breathe an enthusiastic admiration for him of whom he never ceased to celebrate the virtue, the justice, the elevation of mind, the purity of morals, the enlightened piety, and the tender affection for his miserable country. vous-memes ? Soyez resolus de ne servir plus et vous voila libres ! Je ne veux pas que vous le poussiez ni 1'ebranliez ; mais seulement ne le soutenez plus et vous le verrez, comme un grand colosse a qui on a de- rob6 la base, de son poids meme fondre en bas et se rompre ! . . . La premiere raison de la servitude volontaire, c'est la coutume ! Us disent qu'ils ont et6 toujours sujets, que leurs peres ont ainsi vecu ; ils pensent qu'ils sont tenus d'endurer le mors et fondent eux-memes, sur la longueur de temps, la possession de ceux qui les tyrannisent ; mais, pour vrai, les ans ne donnent jamais le droit de mal faire, ains agrandissent 1'in- jure. . . . 1 ' Ces mange-peuples, dont le nom, execr6 durant leur vie, est, apres leur mort, noirci de 1'encre de mille plumes, la reputation dechi- ree dans mille livres, et les os meme train6s par la posterity ! ' 2 ' Par aventure, n'etais-je pas ne si inutile, que je n'eusse moyen de faire service a la chose publique ! mais qu'il en soit ce qui plait a Dieu ! ' 178 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. Indeed, allowing for differences of personal temperament, of race, and of period, these tributes to the genius and goodness of La Boetie, from the pen of the great essayist, bear a singular resemblance in substance, although not in form, to the sentiments expressed towards Arthur Henrj> Hallam by the author of the finest elegiac poem ever penned in any language, ancient or modern. Indeed, Montaigne might well have written of his departed friend what Tennyson wrote of his more than brother : Whatever way my days decline, I felt and feel, though left alone, His being working in mine own ; The footsteps of his life in mine ; A life that all the Muses deck'd With gifts of grace, that might express All-comprehensive tenderness, All-subtilising intellect. Some years after the publication of Montaigne's ' Essays ' there appeared a work in France which, although but seldom read to-day, had a great vogue in the seventeenth century. This was the celebrated 'Treatise on Wisdom,' by Charron, in which we find, for the first time, in a modern language, the attempt to establish a system of independent morals. Pierre Charron, born in 1541, was the son of a Parisian bookseller and one of a family of twenty-five children. Educated for the law, he acquired both distinction and profit in that profession, with which, however, the innate integrity of his nature caused him to become disgusted, and he relinquished it, after five or six years' successful practice at the bar, for theology, and entered into holy orders. He became so distinguished for his eloquence in the pulpit that he was appointed preacher to Marguerite, wife of Henry IV., and honours and preferments flowed in upon him. While residing at Bordeaux, he acquired the friend- ship of Montaigne, whose principal disciple he became. Naturally he imbibed much of his master's scepticism, and adopted Je ne sqay as his motto. He threw himself with the utmost ardour into the cause of the League, and became one of its most powerful and passionate preachers. He ix PIERRE CHARRON 179 went beyond Montaigne in his doubts, for in his ' Treatise on Wisdom ' he declared all religions to be ' strange and revolting to common sense.' His enemies stigma- tised him as an atheist, but in this they wronged him. He was a theist pure and simple, and in much that he held and wrote concerning God and immortality he seems to have anticipated the Abb6 Lamennais in our own days. Montaigne, when dying, signified his wish to bequeath his armorial bearings to Charron, and he himself testi- fied his affection for the memory of the great sceptic by constituting Montaigne's brother-in-law his universal legatee. Of all Charron's writings, the ' Treatise on Wisdom ' is by far the most important, and also the most difficult to analyse. It was something more than an endeavour to systematise the opinions of Montaigne. It was, as Buckle has said, ' an attempt made for the first time, in a modern language, to construct a system of morals without the aid of theology. What rendered this book,' continues the same writer, ' in some respects even more formidable than Montaigne's, was the air of gravity with which it was written. Charron was evidently deeply impressed with the importance of the task he had undertaken, and he is honour- ably distinguished from his contemporaries by a remarkable purity both of language and of sentiment. His work is almost the only one of that age in which nothing can be found to offend the chastest ears.' Charron has been accused, by Sainte-Beuve among others, of having borrowed largely from Montaigne, and from the writings of his contemporaries ; and Hallam goes so far as to say that he was ' often little else than a tran- scriber ; ' but Buckle deprecates such statements as too strong and asserts that, ' on the most important subjects, Charron was a bolder and deeper thinker than Mon- taigne.' Incidentally, he mentions a curious fact, which he found in the ' Memoirs ' of Madame de Genlis namely, that Talleyrand was a great admirer of the 'Treatise on Wisdom,' and presented his favourite copy of it to that lady. ^^M I need not examine CL^xun's allegt. obligations to the 180 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. great essayist, to Du Vair, Bodin, Plutarch, and Seneca ; nor point out in what respect Montaigne and Charron may be regarded as the precursors of Comte and of Herbert Spencer, and as the first to propound the theory that religion is subject to the law of evolution, although he did not make this statement in so many words, but showed that some such conception was in his mind. It will be found, I think, to underlie the following passage, in which he arrives at certain conclusions based upon the progressive birth and death of religious ideas among mankind, and upon what may be called ' the survival of the fittest ' of such ideas. Each being imperfect in itself passes away, and its successor is built up on its ruins, as ' Judaism was on the religion of the Gentile Egyptians, Christianity on Judaism, and Mahommedanism on Judaism and Christianity com- bined.' Mr. Buckle's estimate of the ' Treatise on Wisdom ' appears to me to be so eminently just and fair that I cannot do better than transcribe it. ' There is about the work of Charron a systematic completeness which never fails to attract attention. In originality he was, in some respects, inferior to Montaigne ; but he had the advantage of coming after him, and there can be no doubt that he rose to an elevation which to Montaigne would have been inaccessible.' This is certainly the case in the eloquent passage which follows : ' We should rise above the pretensions of hostile sects, and without being terrified by the fear of future punishment, or allured by the hope of future happiness, we should be content with such practical religion as consists 'in performing the duties of life, 1 and, uncontrolled by the dogmas of any particular creed, we should strive to make the soul retire inward upon itself, and by the efforts of its own contemplation, admire the ineffable grandeur of the Being of beings, the Supreme Cause of all created things.' Charron regarded a man's religion as the result of his environment, his race, family, native country, and 1 To know That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime wisdom. MILTON. ix MICHEL DE L'HftPITAL 181 particular epoch ; and thus anticipated John Dryden when he wrote : By education most have been misled, So they believe because they so were bred ; The priest continues what the nurse began, And thus the child imposes on the man. If; as Pope says, ' an honest man 's the noblest work of God/ Michel de L'Hdpital is entitled to take high rank in that divine aristocracy. For, great as he was in intellect, he was even greater in the moral elevation of his character. He resembled, indeed, one of Plutarch's men, for he combined a belief in ethical precepts as pure and beautiful as those of Marcus Aurelius with the practice of virtues resembling those of Cato. Born in the year 1503, he was sent to study the law at Toulouse, when his father was exiled and his property confiscated for political reasons, and the son was thrown into prison. Obtaining his release, he followed his father to Milan, and was there when the city was besieged by Francis I. Young Michel succeeded in escaping to Padua, where he resumed his studies. But the death of the French king brought into power the friends of the elder L'Hopital, and the young man was actually sent as ambassador to Bologna. Not only so, but on his return from Italy Marguerite de Valois appointed him her chancellor, and Henry III. nominated him president of the parliament. In that capacity he distinguished himself by his unswerving integrity, his strict economy, his stern repression of waste and corruption in all their forms, and in the courageous measures he adopted for purifying the administration of justice. 1 Gentlemen,' said he to the judges, in defining their duties, ' take care, when ascending the judgment-seat, not to bring with you any hostility, favour, or prejudice. I see many judges who intermeddle with cases and wish to adjudicate on causes in which their enemies or friends are concerned. I daily observe passionate persons who are the adversaries or the partisans of individuals, sects, and factions, giving judgment for or against them without ever considering the equities of the case. You are judges of a field or a meadow, and not of life, not of morals, not of religion. You think fit to decide upon a cause in favour of the man whom you look upon as the most well to do, or the best Christian, as if it were a question between the litigants of which was the best poet orator, 182 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. painter, or artisan ; in short, you are guided by the profession, the power, worth, or other sufficing circumstance, and not by the matter at issue. If you do not feel sufficiently strong and just to command your passions and to love your enemies as God com- mands you, do not take upon yourself the office of a judge.' To imagine the effect of such an harangue as this, uttered by a man of spotless probity, high position, and commanding ability, we should have to project ourselves into an age when might made right, when the strong habi- tually oppressed the weak, and unjust judges and magistrates were as plentiful as blackberries. He himself, in the course of the same address, found occasion to animadvert upon ' the venality of justice disguised in the form of presents.' And we must remember that it was only about thirty years after this time that one of the greatest lawyers and wisest philosophers that ever occupied the Woolsack in England was fined 40,000 and committed to prison in the Tower for habitually receiving bribes as presents from suitors in his own court. L'Hopital married a Protestant wife, and her influence, as well as the breadth and liberality of his own sentiments, caused him to espouse the side of freedom of conscience and to use his utmost efforts to appease the rancour of reli- gious animosities. Had his counsels been followed, France might have escaped those religious wars which were respon- sible for the shedding of so much blood and so many bitter tears. He offered a strenuous opposition to the establish- ment of the Inquisition in that kingdom ; and when the Guises sentenced to death the Prince of Cond6, Michel de L'Hopital refused to sign the sentence of death. ' I know how to die,' said the brave and upright man, ' but not how to commit an act of dishonour.' He had been appointed chancellor of France by Francis II., and was continued in that office by Charles IX. ; but his policy, which was always patriotic and far-seeing, was lihwarted by the parliament, by the king, and by the queen- mother. Then came the infamous crime of St. Bartholo- mew, and L'Hopital resigned the great seal and retired to his chateau at Vignay. Thither, however, he was pursued by a furious populace, and his domestics came to him in fear, and asked if they should arm themselves. ' No ! ' re- ix MICHEL DE L'HftPITAL 183 plied the calm old statesman ; ' if the small portal is not wide enough for their admission, throw open the great gates.' The queen-mother having sent a detachment of cavalry for his protection, the commanding officer assured L'Hopital that he would be forgiven for his former zeal on behalf of the heretics. ' I did not know,' was the rejoinder, ' that I had ever deserved either death or pardon.' His daughter, who was a Protestant, had been saved in Paris by the mother of the Duke of Guise. He himself did not long sur- vive a catastrophe which had surpassed his worst anticipa- tions. He died on March 13, 1573, having expressed the horror and despair with which that frightful event had in- spired him in a Latin poem which was published after his death. He rendered inestimable services to French jurisprudence by filling the chairs of law in the various schools with pro- fessors, of whom Cujas may be quoted as the most brilliant type. The enactments which he himself drafted were the models for some of the best legislation of later centuries. Henry Martin has truly said of L'Hopital that he was domi- nated by a single passion devotion to his beloved country. He was the unwavering opponent of civil war, and when the Constable angrily reproached him for interfering in such affairs, L'Hopital replied ' Lawyers may not know how to wield arms, but at any rate they know when they should be used.' During the minority of Charles IX. the chancellor gave him for a device two pillars, with the legend ' Piety and Justice.' The lesson was quite lost on the royal butcher. The remains of the great statesman, legist, and patriot were laid to rest in the village church of Champmo- teux, near his chateau, and his tomb was restored in 1836 by subscriptions contributed by a very great number of French magistrates. Upon a slab of black marble lies the stately image of L'Hopital, in his chancellor's robes ; and near him is a statue of St. Michael, his patron saint, over- throwing the Dragon as the symbol of violence and injustice. Among his literary works, which have been collected in five volumes, are his ' Treatise on the Eeformation of Jus- tice,' his ' Testament,' his ' Harangues,' and ' Remonstrance,' some Latin poems, and other compositions. But his greatest work was his life : so pure in purpose, and noble in act ; so 184 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. loyal to the sense of right, and so elevated in its conception of duty : Foremost legist of his time, Rich in saving common sense, And as the greatest only are, In his simplicity sublime. To Jacques Gujaus, or Cujas, the son of a poor cloth- dresser of Toulouse, where the future jurisconsult was born in 1522, belongs the glory of having completed that restitu- tion of the old Boman law to its original integrity, which had been commenced by Alciat, and of having thus paved the way for the creation of the stately fabric of modern jurisprudence upon that strong and solid foundation. To qualify himself to do this, Cujas acquired, by his own un- aided efforts, a knowledge of the dead languages, of ancient history, eloquence, poetry, philosophy, and mathematics, until he became a marvel of erudition. At twenty-five years of age he commenced in his native city a course of lectures upon the ' Institutes ' of Justinian, which he continued for seven years ; and so remarkable in form and substance were they that they drew law students and scholars from all parts of Europe. ' He may be said to have been the legal educator of the splendid galaxy of men whose attainments in this respect were such that it was said, by an impartial foreigner, that ' if the Boman Jurisprudence were to be lost among all other nations it would be found quite complete among the French.' Spanish and Italian cities competed equally with each other to induce the great legist to settle among them, and he lectured in some of the most famous law schools of his time in Paris, Turin, Valence, Bourges, &c. He was honoured by Pope Gregory XIII., Charles IX., and Henry III. of France. He secretly embraced the Protestant faith, and was a zealous partisan of religious liberty. The works he left behind him were exclusively legal ones, and are distin- guished, it is said, ' not less by the purity, the conciseness, and the elegant limpidity of his style, than by their depth and erudition.' It is remembered of him that he always pursued his studies stretched at full length on the floor of his chamber, which was piled up with the books he wished to consult. He died at Bourges in 1590, with a reputation as a jurisconsult second to none in the whole of Europe. ix OUJAS 185 The expulsion of the Jews from Spain was as deplorable a mistake as the revocation of the Edict of Nantes at a later period. Among the fugitives who crossed the Pyrenees, perhaps, were the grandparents of Jean Bodin, who was born at Angers in 1530. Educated for the law in the uni- versity of Toulouse, he found his way to Paris, where he published his ' Method of History,' written for the purpose of giving a philosophical direction to the study both of law and history ; and in it he showed himself the forerunner of Francis Bacon, of Vico, and of Herder. In another work he laid down most of the foundation principles of political economy with surprising clearness and force, and demon- strated how the prices of all commodities rise and fall according to the abundance or scarcity of the supply of the precious metals used as currency. He was also an advocate of freedom of exchange, up to a certain point. Being sus- pected, and probably not without cause, of a leaning to Protestantism, he narrowly escaped assassination in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Bodin published his cele- brated ' Eepublic ' in 1577, in which he put forth some views on political government and liberty of conscience very much in advance of his age, and perhaps of our own ; and Jean Eeynaud does not hesitate to pronounce him to have been the father of political science in France, while Hallam brackets his name, as a great political philosopher, with that of Montesquieu. In his ' Heptaplomeres,' which is a dia- logue on religion between seven persons holding different opinions, he displayed an astonishing hardihood in putting forward heterodox views on questions of religious belief ; and yet strange contradiction ! he published a work on ' Demonomania ' which proved him to be as superstitious in some respects as he was audaciously free in his thoughts concerning the dominant beliefs of his time. Accused of heresy in 1590, his library was seized and publicly burnt in the centre of the large square in Laon, where he resided. He died of the plague in 1596. Henry Martin said that to know Eabelais, Calvin, and Loyola, all three of whom might have met together on a given day in the streets of Paris, is to know the whole of the sixteenth century. I have nothing to do with Calvin as a theologian, but the influence of his language on the prose 186 LECTURES ON FEENCH LITERATURE LECT. literature of France has been so very marked that I cannot exclude him from a series of lectures like the present. Of his life I shall say but little. His real name was Jean Chauvin, and his father was a notary at Noyon, in Picardy, where the future reformer was born in the year 1509. He received a good education, and at the age of twelve (!) was appointed chaplain, for the purpose of securing him a stipend. He studied successively in the universities of Paris, Bourges, and Orleans, and was intended for the pro- fession of the law. But on the death of his father, in 1531, Calvin gave himself up to theological studies and pursuits. He had, however, previously embraced the doctrines of the Eeformation, and from that time until his death at Geneva, in 1564, he was one of the most combative of the new sect ; and his ' Institutes of the Christian Keligion,' published anonymously in 1535, was the precursor of a mass of polemical literature from his pen, filling six portly folio volumes. His magnum opus, which he dedicated to Francis I., was for Protestantism what the ' Summa ' of Thomas Aquinas had been for Eoman Catholic theology. It was written with incomparable ability in language which, while owing its parentage to the logical French of the Middle Ages, was the progenitor of the noblest prose writings of the seventeenth century. It conquered for ever a sphere of its own that of theological controversy and metaphysics. Bossuet, who of course detested his religious principles, pays a generous tribute to the admirable correct- ness of his style, and the power and eloquence of his language, while reprehending its passionate vehemence and the violence of the abusive epithets which he hurled at his adversaries. Nisard says of Calvin that he not only perfected while he enriched the general tongue, but he created a particular language, of which the forms, very variously applied, have not ceased to be the best because they have been from the very first conformable to the genius of our country ; I mean the language of polemics. It is the style of serious discussion, more habitually nervous than coloured, which has more of move- ment than imagery ; its object not being to please but to convince : a formidable instrument, by which French society was enabled to conquer one by one all the progressive steps it took, and to trans- form into facts everything it had conceived by the power of reason. ix CALVIN 187 Another critic has admirably described what Calvin did for the French language in the following words : That new form of speech, firm, clear, sober, eloquent without emphasis ; expressive with simplicity ; vigorous without extrava- gance ; logical, before all things, in its rigorous construction ; which ignored the grammars of antiquity ; was made for instruction, for exposition, for discussion, for demonstration and conviction ; has retained the greater part of the Gallic qualities and left the defects to our kindred, the Spaniards ; rebellious to classic disci- pline ; but in thus parting with those defects, it has also relinquished some of the gifts of our fathers, and, by an excess of logic, has sacrificed, not altogether the sentiment, but another element of poetry the free movement of the imagination. Calvin scarcely thought of that which is to-day his undisputed glory. He intended to forge a weapon of combat, and not an instrument of renown for himself. It was in the month of August 1535 that there appeared at Basle the dogmatic treatise above referred to. It was dedicated to Francis I. of France. This work had no direct effect and did not influence the king; but indirectly its result was immense. It furnished a religious code to the Eeformers in France and in a great part of Europe. The dedication to Francis I. is a masterpiece of style, address, reasoning, and even of eloquence ; but to speak of it at length would be out of place in a purely literary lecture ; and I pass on, merely telling you all that is needful to be known, and all that can interest us, about that prose writer, and indicating the place which he filled during his life, and the influence he exercised upon the writers who came after him. If the cause of reform had its orators, and the League had its preachers, the Christian pulpit could boast of a popular eloquence which was extremely effective by its pleasantries and its gestures with the crowd. When the political passions and private vices of Henry III. inflamed that oratory, it became powerful as addressed to a still coarse and rough populace. I must content myself with a mere enumeration of the more violent of these ' gospellers ' Boucher, Launay, Prevost ; then Eose, Bishop of Senlis, Pelletier, Quincestre, Hamilton, and Cueilly. These are the men who caused Madame de Montpensier, the soul of the League, to boast ' I have done more by the mouth of my preachers than they could do with all their devices, arms, 188 LECTUKES ON FRENCH LITERATURE IECT. and armies put together/ and caused Henry IV. to exclaim ' All my reverses were inflicted by the pulpit.' I must also add to the prose writers of this epoch the name of Marshal de Montluc, whose military ' Commen- taries ' have been compared to those of Caesar. He belonged to the ultra-Catholic party. Pierre Costar was a man brimful of Greek and Latin, the friend of Voiture and Balzac, and an imitator of both. Although the son of a hatter, he was received into the inner circle of the frequenters of the Hotel de Eambouillet, and he belonged, like a great many authors I have cited, and a great many more I have omitted, to an epoch in which letters were cultivated with a perfect frenzy, and for them- selves alone. Whatever other reproaches may be directed against it, this much, at least, may be said on its behalf, that the period was one of great intellectual activity. To be admitted to pay your court to the famous lady who was the sun of the planetary system revolving around her in that memorable H6tel, constituted in itself a title of literary nobility before Moliere had written his ' Pr6cieuses Eidicules,' and Costar must have been a man of consider- able mental gifts in order to enable him to overcome the aristocratic prejudices of that very exclusive set. I am afraid he must have been a bit of a tuft-hunter and a time- server ; for it is related of him that he first attracted atten- tion by condemning an ode which had been addressed to Cardinal Eichelieu by Chapelain, and afterwards begged his pardon, protesting that he was the best poet in the world for heroic verse. In spite of his bourgeois origin, Costar was a perfect gentleman in his manners, except that, in the company of noblemen, his politeness was apt to degenerate into obsequiousness, and this gave rise to a brilliantly cynical mot : ' Monsieur Costar is extremely polite,' it was re- marked ; ' he always has his hat in his hand.' ' Ah ! ' was the rejoinder, ' he derived that habit from his father ! ' He wrote, among other works, ' A Defence of the Writings of M. Voiture,' for which Mazarin rewarded him with a pension. He published also a collection of Letters, as full of classic quotations as Burton's ' Anatomy of Melancholy,' while at the same time their literary style was that of most ix VAUGELAS 189 of the second-rate authors of his period. It was smart, pointed, elegant, and fastidious ; but disfigured by an excess of emphasis, which was the besetting sin of the epistolers of his time. I do not suppose that we are less spirituel in France to-day than they were in the eighteenth century, but it is nevertheless worthy of remark that the pungent witticisms of these latter days appear to be either repetitions or revivals, and when we look back upon the exuberant esprit of our forefathers, we seem to be drawing upon the store of good things which they accumulated. But at any rate we may flatter ourselves that we know how to make a good use of them. Claude Favre de Vaugelas, emigrating from Savoy to Paris, was appointed chamberlain to Gaston, Duke of Orleans, and, remaining faithful to him in his disgrace, lost a handsome pension for two lives which Louis XIII. had conferred upon his father. He applied himself thereupon to literary pursuits, and his admirable knowledge of the French language enabled him to become one of the most useful of the compilers of the Dictionary of the Academy, of which he undertook the general direction. Kichelieu was so much pleased with his zeal that he restored him his pension, and when Vaugelas waited upon him to thank him, the cardinal remarked with a grim smile, ' Well, you won't forget the word "pension" in the Dictionary, will you?' ' No, Monseigneur,' was the prompt reply, ' nor " gratitude " either.' His ' Eemarks on the French Language,' published in 1647, earned for him the title of its ' Oracle.' He pub- lished a translation of Quintus Curtius, which Balzac pro- nounced ' inimitable,' and he wrote some indifferent verses. He died so poor, owing to his noble attachment to his original patron, the Duke of Orleans, that the manuscript of the Dictionary was seized after his death by his creditors, but rescued from then: clutches by the Academy, of which he was one of the first members. La Mothe le Vayer wrote in 1647 a work entitled ' Con- siderations upon French Eloquence,' in which he oscillated between the old and new schools of French style. He blames 'Du Vair for making use of strange and barbarous words, and at the same time ridicules those who were beginning to object 190 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. to the introduction of certain low and common phrases. The conjunction car was not employed by some writers, and Le Vayer composed an entire treatise upon that folly. Some French purists condemned the use of quotations from a foreign language, but he approved of it. But altogether, as Hallam remarks, his treatise is of very little value, and is exceedingly diffuse. Two other French writers are entitled to passing men- tion, Patru and Le Maistre, both of them famous advocates in their day. The pleas of the first, written with extreme correctness, acquired for him a great reputation at the Bar and among men of letters. Their language is so pure and their style so polished that Hallam does not hesitate to assert that they resemble some of the harangues of Demo- sthenes. Purely Attic in form, as he observes, they are free from pompous ornament, make no appeal to the emotions of the heart, and contain no bold figures of rhetoric. Perrault also praises his style for its lucidity, simplicity, nice arrange- ment, and freedom from emphasis ; and states that his pleadings still serve as models for correctness of composition in the French language. La Maistre made his d&but at the Bar in Paris in 1629, when he was only one-and-twenty years of age, and very soon became one of its leaders. A disappointment in mar- riage led him to renounce a brilliant career, and to retire into the seclusion of Port Royal, where he acquired the surname of Father of the Solitaires. He wrote the lives of some of the Saints, translated the works of some of the Fathers of the Church from the Greek, and furnished Pascal with some of the documents he made use of in his ' Pro- vinciales.' Another writer of that time whose name has come down to us has an equal right to be mentioned in this place. I allude to Tallemant des Beaux, who is called by some ' the Brant6me of the seventeenth century.' But his position in French literature will be better understood by English readers if I compare his ' Historiettes ' to the ' Diary ' of Samuel Pepys and the ' Letters ' of Horace Walpole ; for they appear to me to combine the gossip of the first with the esprit of the second. Educated for the magistracy, Gedeon Tallemant married his cousin, Elizabeth de Rambouillet, ix DESCARTES 191 who brought him an independent fortune, and gave him the entree to the celebrated H6tei of which he became the chronicler. While his ' Historiettes ' record the conversa- tions, they also reflect the prejudices of his hostess. What he tells us respecting the reign of Henry IV. is an echo of the former. What he says to the discredit of Louis XIII. is tinctured with the personal antipathy which the Marquise entertained towards that monarch. Tallemant was also a poet, but we possess only his ' Madrigal of the Lily ' and his ' Garland of Julia,' together with some fugitive compositions. He also aspired to the dignity of an historian, and com- menced, but never completed, a ' History of the Eegency.' His ' Historiettes,' like the suppressed portions of Pepys's 1 Diary,' are not altogether suitable for extract ; and I may have occasion to return to him when speaking of some of the famous writers of his epoch, for we owe to him much of our knowledge of them. And while he was not a chronicler upon whom implicit reliance can be placed, his book is a valuable one to consult for information concerning the secondary events of the period and the topics which were then discussed in the higher circles of society. Speaking of his personal character, his friend Mancroix says of Talle- mant des K6aux, ' He was one of the most honourable and upright men I have ever known.' Descartes was born in 1596 and died in 1650. Strictly speaking, his life and works belong to the history of philo- sophy ; but he is entitled to be mentioned in this series of purely literary lectures as the author of the ' Discourse on Method,' which is one of the most remarkable literary monuments of the grand siecle, and is, in point of date, the first masterpiece of modern French prose. It is, moreover, the only work which he wrote directly in his own language. I would limit myself to a succinct analysis of this ' Discourse,' and to an enumeration of the titles of his different works, were it not that the important place he occupies in modern philosophy and the numerous pages devoted to him in every treatise on our literature by eminent writers who acknow- ledge that, in so doing, they are stepping outside of their sphere compel me to speak of him at greater length than I would do otherwise. At sixteen years of age Descartes had absorbed all the 192 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. knowledge he could acquire at the college of La Fleche, and at nineteen he formed the resolution to efface all he had learned, to discard books, and to study the fundamental principles of the truth which must underlie all science. These considerations impelled him to compose his celebrated ' Discourse,' which, however, he did not publish till 1637, having, in the meantime, embraced the career of arms, and displayed great intrepidity at the battle of Prague in 1620. Disgusted with the atrocities perpetrated by the army in Hungary, he renounced the military profession, travelled through Prance, Switzerland, and Italy, and finally settled down in HoUand, where he gave himself up to philosophical and mathematical pursuits. But his views were regarded as heretical by the ecclesiastical authorities in that country, who accused of atheism the author of what Mr. Lecky calls ' the most sublime of all modern proofs of the existence of the Deity,' publicly burnt his works, and would probably have put him to death if he had not fled to Sweden, where Queen Christina had offered him an asylum. He died in Stockholm in the fifty-fourth year of his age. As a geometrician Descartes may be said to have been the creator of modern mathematics, while his ' Discourse on Method ' has been placed by Bossuet above all the works of his country. It was the first fruit of a genius which had reached its maturity in the very springtime of his life. It was the splendid result of his courageous determination to apply the mathematical method to all philosophical specula- tion and all scientific research. And its literary workman- ship was perfect. He found it to be necessary almost to apologise for using his mother tongue, and he did so, he says, because he trusted ' that they who only employ their simple and native reason wih 1 estimate my opinions more fairly than they who only believe in ancient books.' And what an admirable use he made of that language ! Descartes was not only a great thinker, but a great writer, and his ' Discours,' which preceded Pascal's famous ' Provinciates ' by twenty years, may be likened to Minerva, springing in the fulness of her stature and perfectly equipped from the brain of Jove. The principles upon which he proceeded in his search for truth may best be described in his own words : ' When I set forth in its pursuit,' he writes, ' I ix DESCARTES 193 found that the best way was to reject everything I had hitherto received, and pluck out all my own opinions, in order that I might lay the foundation of them afresh, believing that by this means I should more easily accomplish the great scheme of life than by building on an old basis, and supporting myself by principles which I had learned in my youth without examining if they were really true.' And this in an age when authority hi theology, science, and philosophy was supreme, dogmatic, and fiercely intolerant ! And so earnest a truth-seeker was he that he declared he would not sacrifice a single leisure hour for the most honour- able employment upon earth. His ' Discourse on Method ' was followed by his ' Medita- tions,' in which he demonstrated the existence of God and the immortality of the soul ; and in 1644 appeared his ' Principles of Philosophy,' in which he predicated of man as an incarnation of thought, declaring that we have no knowledge of our soul except as a thinking substance, and that it would be easier for us to believe that the soul should cease to exist than that it should cease to think. God and man, the order of the universe, the earth, the heavens, and the elements, all find their place in his treatise. Science can point to no work more audacious in its conception ; and although, in our own times, most of the hypotheses it con- tains have been abandoned, its extraordinary grandeur has not been diminished thereby. The last work printed during his lifetime was a ' Treatise on the Passions ; ' and the rest of his writings, collected and published after his decease, were of a philosophical or scien- tific character. Instead of enumerating them it will be more interesting to show the estimation formed by later writers of the services which Descartes has rendered to mankind. Victor Cousin, while tracing his intellectual paternity to Plato, indicates the points of resemblance and of dissimilarity between these two great and original thinkers, and remarks that they possessed in common 'the genius which lifts us, in the first place, above the things of sense, and, by the intermediation of those marvellous ideas which are undoubtedly within us, bears us towards Him who alone can be the substance of them, and who is the infinite and perfect Author of our ideas of infinity and perfection.' o 194 LECTUKES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. Dugald Stewart pronounces Descartes to have been ' the father of the experimental philosophy of the human mind.' Paul Janet declares that all modern philosophy has origi- nated in him, and that it would be easy to show the trans- formations which each of his ideas underwent in the minds of Leibnitz, Spinoza, Malebranche, Hume, Locke, Schelling, Kant, and Hegel ; and how the ' Discourse on Method ' contains the germ of all our modern thinking upon mental philosophy. Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, extols Descartes as having ' alone of all philosophers at once banished from philosophy all those substantial forms or souls derived from matter, and absolutely divested matter itself of the faculty of feeling and thinking." Henry Hallam remarks that the single fact of his having first established, both in philosophical and popular belief, the proper imma- teriality of the soul, were we even to forget the other great contributions which he made to psychology, would declare the influence he had had on human opinion. Mr. Lecky, the historian, points out that it was the proud distinction of Descartes to have taught for the first time, or almost for the first time in France, the innocence of error and the evil of persecution. Descartes had a far greater confidence in human faculties, but he had also a far greater distrust of the ordinary judgments of experience. He taught men that the beginning of all wisdom is absolute, universal scepticism ; that all the impressions of childhood, all the conclu- sions of the senses, all of what are deemed the axioms of life, must be discarded, and from the simple fact of consciousness the entire scheme of knowledge must be unfolded. Buckle speaks of Descartes as having been the author of what is emphatically called Modern Philosophy. He is the originator of that great system and method of meta- physics, which, notwithstanding its errors, has the undoubted merit of having given a wonderful impulse to the European mind, and communicated to it an activity which has been made available for other purposes of a different character. Besides this, and superior to it, there is another obligation which we are under to the memory of Descartes. He deserves the gratitude of posterity not so much on account of what he built up as on account of what he pulled down. His life was one great and successful warfare against the prejudices and traditions of men. He was great as a creator, but he was far greater as a destroyer. . . . He was the great reformer and liberator of European intellect, and was one of those men who, by removing the pressure of tradition, have ix PASCAL 195 purified the very source and fountain of our knowledge, and secured its future progress by casting off obstacles in the presence of which progress was impossible. Elsewhere the same writer calls attention to the similarity observable between the views of Descartes on the subject of toleration, and those put forth about the sa me time by Chil- lingworth, the English divine, which, it is remarked, ought not to excite surprise, for they were but the natural pro- ducts of a state of society in which the right of private judgment and the independence of the human reason were first solidly esta- blished. If we examine this matter a little closer (continues Buckle), we shall find still further proofs of the analogy between England and France. So identical are the steps of the progress that the relation which Montaigne bears to Descartes is just the same as that which Hooker bears to Chillingworth ; the same in reference to the difference of tune, and also in reference to the difference of opinions. . . . And as the generation after Hooker brought forth Chillingworth, just so did the generation after Montaigne bring forth Descartes. I would refer my readers, or such of them as may ,be interested in this comparison between the intellectual state of France and England at that epoch, to the author I have quoted from. It will be found in the first chapter of the second volume of his ' History of Civilisation in England,' and is a lucid exposition of the simultaneous development of intellectual freedom, along two parallel lines, in countries differently circumstanced, and professing different and hostile forms of religious belief. The name of Descartes brings to mind that of Pascal, the necessary complement of the apostle of pure reason. These two men represent the entire genius of France. But what a grievous contrast is presented between their two lives ! How complete was the self-possession of the one, and with what a sovereign freedom did he use all the gifts bestowed upon him by God : while the other, alas ! buffeted about by eternal storms, was far from reaching ' those serene temples of the wise, in which his rival sits with tranquil majesty ' ! I borrow the comparison of the two great writers textually from Henry Martin, and I put it forward in advance against any criticism which may be urged against the desultory and inadequate character of the analysis of o2 196 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. Pascal I am about to offer you. He, even less perhaps than Descartes, cannot be excluded from the programme of my lectures. Those ' Letters to a Provincial,' generally known as ' Les Provinciales,' which in the opinion of the best authori- ties have definitively fixed the French language, certainly claim a distinct recognition on my part ; and I would have analysed them, one by one, were it not that they touch upon questions of faith and doctrine which I am bound to avoid. I should have greatly wished, at the same time, to invite your admiration of the style and workmanship of these compositions, which Villemain has characterised in these words : ' Conciseness, lucidity, an unusual elegance, a mor- dant and natural pleasantry, a power of using words which fasten on the memory, secured for them a popular success.' And presently he adds, ' My admiration of the " Provincial Letters " would have been less had they not been written before Moliere.' Pascal anticipated high comedy. He introduced upon the scene many actors an indifferent person who receives the confidences of all manner of people, of the wrathful and passionate, of men belonging to the party of sincerity, of false men connected with the party which is more ardent than the others, of those who are genuinely disposed to reconciliation but are everywhere repulsed, and of hypo- crites who are everywhere welcomed, the whole constituting a veritable ' comedy of manners.' The first three of the ' Provincial Letters ' discuss the question of grace a thorny subject of which he upholds the hard and narrow side. And he does so, as Demogeot observes, with characteristic frankness and inflexible logic, although abounding with tortuous ambiguities. But how could I hope to enlist any kind of interest on your part in such a theme as this ? From and after the fourth letter, Pascal discusses the morality of the casuists, whom he attacks, a ground upon which he had the good sense of the public entirely with him ; but I am sure you will thank me for sparing you the terrible list of propositions which he puts forth in opposition to those of the Jesuits, and in defence of the Jansenists, for I should only be treading upon the still smouldering ashes of one of the most heated of the many theological controver- ix PASCAL 197 sies by which France has ever been distracted. It is much pleasanter to consider the purely literary qualities of the ' Provincial Letters,' which, in spite of the apparent aridity of the subjects they discuss, are really delightful reading. Although issued anonymously, their success was immediate ; and by the time the seventeenth had appeared, it was found necessary to strike off 10,000 copies, each of which, passing rapidly from hand to hand, found at least a dozen readers ; so that the aggregate circulation would probably exceed 100,000. In point of eloquence they have been compared to the noblest efforts of Cicero and Demosthenes; and Voltaire has declared that Bossuet produced nothing more sublime than the later ones. They excited the enthusiasm of Madame de S6vign6, who exclaims, ' Could there be a style more perfect, a raillery more fine, more natural, more delicate, more worthy to be the offspring of those Dialogues of Plato which are in themselves so beautiful? . . . What solidity ! what strength ! what seriousness ! what eloquence ! what a love for God and for the truth ! And what a method of sustaining it, and of making it under- stood ! ' That keen and trenchant irony, breaking out at last into withering indignation ; that gibing dialectic, weaving itself round and stifling his adversaries within deadly folds unknown to the rhetorical methods of the old school of polemics, caused the objects of the writer's attack to writhe in impotent agony, like the central figure in the matchless group of the Laocoon. Pascal's pen is by turns a poignard and a club. Sometimes he irritates his oppo- nents by a rapid series of slight dagger thrusts, as the Spanish picador does the maddened bull in the arena ; and sometimes he levels him to the earth by a single blow of his missive bludgeon. His language, strenuous, supple, and brilliant as steel, seems to have been created expressly for the ' Provincials,' as that of Descartes had been for the 'Discourse on Method.' The phraseology of the latter is alternately simple and majestic, but withal a little lengthy. Pascal's phrases are as swift as the flash of a sword ; their march is governed by art, and the man of sentiment must be a much better artist than the man of pure reason. In Pascal there is nothing whatever to add, nothing whatever to retrench, in either the form or substance of the 198 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. composition. The French language is as much fixed as it is possible for a language to be ; that is to say, it has attained the highest perfection of which it is susceptible; and I regret that the topics discussed in these ' Letters,' and the doctrines in controversy, prevent me from quoting some passages, from the Seventh and Ninth Letters more par- ticularly, in order to prove that all that has been said about Pascal as a combatant falls actually short of the truth. He had also made preparations for a second and more important work : nothing less than a defence of the Christian religion. It was never completed ; and the scattered and apparently incoherent fragments of it were not gathered together until after his death. They were first published in 1670, under the title of ' Pascal's Thoughts upon Eeligion and other Subjects ; ' and these fragments, ' at once so luminous and sombre,' as Henry Martin has said, continue to possess, and will probably always retain, a certain fascination for all to whom the deeper problems of exist- ence present themes for grave reflection and intellectual speculation ; while they also serve to show, in the words of Principal Tulloch, 'the greatness of Pascal's soul, and the depth and power of his moral genius.' In these ' Thoughts ' there are axioms as profound as those of Descartes himself. Take the following as examples : ' The heart has its reasons, which the reason knows not. The heart loves the universal being naturally and itself naturally; it is the heart which feels God and not the reason.' Pascal attributes to the heart, to the sentiment, all that is not demonstrable, and first principles admit of no demonstration. His theory tends to establish, after St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, three principles of knowledge, the Essence, Eeason, and Faith ; and then he proceeds to build up, on these corresponding elements, a sort of hierarchy, in which the carnal life occupies the lowest place, the mental life an intermediate position, and the life of the heart otherwise, that of charity or wisdom the highest grade. The philosophy of Pascal, however, is something which lies outside the scope of a lecture of this kind, and I hasten back to its legitimate boundaries. Let me, therefore, quote some of those ' Thoughts ' in which he iias epitomised so ix PASCAL 199 much practical wisdom and shrewd observation with equal point and terseness : Vanity is so rooted in the heart of man, that a soldier, a hodman, a cook, a porter will be given to boasting, and wishes to have his admirers, as do philosophers themselves. Those who write against glory desire the glory of having written well on the subject ; and those who read what has been written desire the glory of having read it ; while I, who write this, am not free perhaps from the same craving. 1 Men are necessarily such fools that it would be a folly of another kind not to be a fool. Do you wish men to speak well of you ? Then never speak well of yourself. The last thing we discover in writing a book is to know what to put at the beginning. ' This is my dog,' say children ; ' that sunny seat is mine.' There is the beginning and type of the usurpation of the whole earth. It is the contest that delights us, not the victory. It is the same in play, and the same in search for truth. We love to watch in argument the conflict of opinion ; but the plain truth we do not care to look at. He who would thoroughly know the vanity of man has only to consider the causes and effects of love. The cause is an I know not what, an indefinable trifle ; the effects are monstrous. If the nose of Cleopatra had been a little shorter it would have changed the history of the world. There are two kinds of men : the righteous, who believe them- selves sinners ; and sinners, who believe themselves righteous. If each of us examines his own thought he will always find it occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely think of the present, and if we think of it at all it is only for the sake of the light it may throw on the future. The present is never our object ; the past and the present are our means ; the future alone is our end. 2 Thus we never live, but we hope to live, and being always dis- posed to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so, if we aspire to no other beatitude than that which may be enjoyed in this life. 3 1 ' La vanite est si ancree dans le coeur de 1'homme, qu'un soldat, un goujat, un cuisinier, un crocheteur, se vante, et veut avoir ses admira- teurs, et les philosophes m6me en veulent. Et ceux qui 6crivsnt centre la gloire veulent avoir la gloire d'avoir bien ecrit ; et ceux qui le lisent, veulent avoir la gloire de 1'avoir lu ; et moi, qui ecris ceci, j'ai peut-etre cette envie.' 2 ' Que chacun examine sa pensee, il la trouvera toujours occupde au passe et a 1'avenir. Nous ne pensons presque point au present ; et si nous y pensons, ce n'est que pour en prendre la lumiere pour disposer de 1'avenir. Le present n'est jamais notre fin : le passe et le present sont nos moyens; le seul avenir est notre fin.' * ' Ainsi nous ne vivons jamais, mais nous esperons de vivre, et nous 200 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. And once we find this great and original thinker striking a note of singular solemnity. It is in the following : The last act is always tragedy, whatever fine comedy there may have been in the rest of life we must all die alone. Love, in the life of Descartes, as Henry Martin has observed, was of so little consequence that history has not taken the trouble to remember that the philosopher was a husband and a father. In the life of Pascal love was an essen- tial event, the mainspring of the drama, and we are indebted to it for one of the most precious of the works of genius which fell from the pen of that great man, or rather from his heart ; that is to say, that treatise on the passion of love which miraculously escaped the severity of the Jansenists, and has been recently revealed to France. How, continues Henry Martin, are we to analyse that lay, which seems to have been directed to a metaphysician - poet by the harmonious shades of Petrarch and Eaffaelle ? ' Man is born to think, but thought does not suffice for his happiness. He must have movement and action ; he must have pas- sions, love and ambition being the two principal ones. . . . The greater the intellect the stronger the passions. In a great soul, all is great.' Then follow some sublime words concerning love. ' We are only sent into the world to love,' and he explains in language worthy of Plato, ' that which impels man to transcend the narrow limits of self- love the ideal of beauty which is a natural instinct, and which he not only realises in himself, but craves for out- side of himself.' ' L'homme seul is imperfect ; a second being is essential to his happiness. Therefore it is he loves that which most resembles himself among other beings woman. . . . Man is born for pleasure : he feels it ; any other proof is unnecessary. He obeys his reason, therefore, in cultivating pleasure. . . . Love and reason, far from being antagonistic, are one and the same thing ; and one could not wish it should be otherwise.' At the same time we must not understand Pascal as employing the word ' pleasure ' in the sense of a vulgar epicureanism, or as asso- disposant toujours & tre heureux, il est inevitable que nous ne le soyons jamais, si nous n'aspirons a une autre beatitude qu'a celle dont on peut jouir en cette vie.' ix PASCAL 201 ciating it with anything that is coarse, sensual, and debasing. The refinement of his mind, the delicacy of his perceptions, and the purity and nobility of his character, combine to discredit any such notion. Were it not so, the following passage would effectually disprove it : The first effect of love is to inspire a great respect. We cherish a feeling of veneration for those we love. This is very just. Nor can we recognise anything in the world so great as this. The diversion of love into many channels is as monstrous as injustice in the mind. . . . He who loves seems to be quite a different being from what he was when he loved not. He is raised by that passion to the greatest height his nature is capable of. 1 We obtain a pretty clear insight into the beautiful mind of Pascal, as well as an accurate knowledge of the elevation of his spirit, from the ' Memoirs ' of Nicholas Fontaine, who has preserved some of his conversations with De Saci, his spiritual director at Port Eoyal. From these we learn that his two favourite authors were Epictetus and Montaigne : the great moralist of classical antiquity and the philosophical sceptic of an epoch near his own. He knew nothing of the Fathers of the Church, and yet he had intuitively divined what was highest and best in the teachings of them all. His conversation on these subjects was so wonderful, indeed, that De Saci looked upon him as another St. Augustine; and when we remember that he died at the early age of thirty -nine, it is with something like a feeling of awe that we contemplate the variety and magnitude of his intellectual gifts. It only remains to supplement this imperfect notice of his literary works by a short sketch of his life. Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623, at Clermont Ferrand, of an old and somewhat distinguished family. His parents removed to Paris in 1632, and there the house of Pascal p&re became the rendezvous of men like Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes. Blaise was only twelve when he 1 ' Le premier effet de 1'amour, c'est d'inspirer un grand respect ; 1'on a de la veneration pour ce que 1'on aime. II est bien juste ; on ne recon- nait rien au monde de grand comme cela. L'egarement a aimer en divers endroits est aussi monstrueux que 1'injustice dans 1'esprit . . . . il semble que 1'on ait une tout autre ame quand on aime que quand on n'aime pas : on s'eleve par cette passion et 1'on devient toute grandeur ! ' 202 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. had taught himself, without book or teacher, the definitions, axioms, and demonstrations of mathematics, as far as the thirty-second proposition of the first book of Euclid. At sixteen he had written a treatise on conic sections, which had excited the ' mingled incredulity and astonishment ' of Descartes ; and at the age of nineteen he invented that famous arithmetical machine, by which elaborate calcula- tions were rendered practicable by mechanical means. His researches with respect to atmospheric pressure enabled him to verify the theories of Galileo and Torricelli, and he laid the foundations of the modern science of pneumatics, .as well as of the doctrine of probabilities. Not only so, but he came so near the discovery of the differential and integral calculus that, ' if he had proceeded with his mathematical studies,' Bossuet tells us, ' he would have anticipated Leibnitz and Newton in the glory of their great invention.' With these multifarious scientific researches and dis- coveries Pascal combined a prodigious literary activity, enabling him to endow the literature of Prance with two masterpieces, and with many precious fragments besides. What wonder, then, if his fiery soul, Working out its way, Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o'erinformed the tenement of clay ? He was only four-and-twenty when he had an attack of partial paralysis, for which he was attended by Descartes. He recovered sufficiently to admit of his going a good deal into society, and for a time he mingled with the most brilliant of the Prondeurs ; when he seems to have fallen in love with Charlotte, the young and beautiful daughter of the Due de Eoannez, to whom he is supposed to allude in his ' Discourse on the Passion of Love,' when he says, ' Some- times man fixes his affections on an object far beyond his rank, and the flame burns the more intensely that he is forced to conceal it in his own bosom.' The lady, however, became the Duchesse de la Feuillade, and her life was full of misfortunes. We are indebted to Pascal for the invention of the wheelbarrow and the truck, destined to lighten so greatly ix PASCAL 203 the toil of the labouring classes; and I might continue almost indefinitely the enumeration of all our obligations to him. But I must forbear, and hasten on to his last moments. Blaise Pascal was fast moving towards the tomb. His soul had completely worn out that feeble body which from the age of eighteen had never known a day that was free from pain. Upon his deathbed he made it a matter of self- reproach that he was surrounded with too many comforts, for his thoughts went out to the many poor creatures who were dying in indigence and wretchedness, with none to minister to their last necessities. He ended by an heroic act of self-sacrifice, in abandoning his house to a poor sufferer attacked by a contagious malady, and went to die under his sister's roof. He expired on August 19, 1662, when not yet forty years of age, and went to seek elsewhere the happiness which had been denied him on earth. LECTUEE X La Satyre Menippee (1593) Jean Passerat (1534-1602) Louise Lab6 (1526-1566) Madame de laFayette (1634-1693) Madame deLongue- ville (1619-1679) Madame Deshoulieres (1634-1694) Madame de la Sabliere (1636-1693). POLITICAL satire, of which we find but rare examples in the old fabliaux, seems to have taken its rise among the ancient guild of lawyers. It was not until the sixteenth century was drawing to a close that such satire began to manifest itself in prose and verse. On its first appearance it was, as might be expected, full of personalities and coarseness. There were successively published ' Fanfreluche et Gaudichon/ an ' Apologie de la Ste.-Barth61emy,' 'La Fortune de la Cour,' ' La Legende du Cardinal de Lorraine,' ' La Legende de Catherine de Medicis,' and many others which have passed away and left no trace behind them. Only one satire was sufficiently imbued with genius to cause it to endure ; only one among them all was so vigorous and trenchant as to influence the current of popular opinion, and to affect the course of national events. This was a composition at once robust and healthy, gay and caustic, pungent and urbane, witty and corrosive. It was, indeed, such a masterpiece of its kind that a critic of some authority (Pere Eapin) has compared it to 'Don Quixote,' while M. Nisard has declared that it combines the hostile energy of Aristophanes with the ingenious irony of Socrates. If you could imagine a great political pamphlet in which the lambent wit of Sydney Smith and the delicate humour of Charles Lamb should be blended with the mor- dant satire of Dean Swift, you would then have something very like the ' Satyre Menippee.' This creation took its title, as may be readily concluded, from Menippus, the cynic LBCT. x. THE ' SATYRE MENIPPEE ' 206 philosopher of Gadara, an enfranchised slave who became an extortionate money-lender, and revenged himself upon those who condemned his usurious practices by writing thirteen satires, not one of which has come down to us. The ' Satyre M6nipp6e ' was first issued in 1593, by a little group of writers magistrates and citizens whom we may proceed to enumerate. There was, first of all, Jacques Gillot, canon of the Ste.-Chapelle in Paris, a man of great erudition, and a collector of all the clever sayings and epigrams current in society at that time, which he published in his 'Chroniques Gillo tines,' a complete record of the slanders in circulation against the Ligue. Then came Pierre le Boy, the real instigator of the ' Satyre ; ' he was a canon of the cathedral of Eouen, a man of singular probity, modesty, and worth ; who shrank from notoriety as much as some of his colleagues courted it. Nicolas Bapin was as skilful with his sword as with his pen, followed the white plume of Henry of Navarre at Ivry, and was distinguished alike as a lawyer and as a poet. Jean Passerat, professor of rhetoric and also poet, will be spoken of later on. With these were associated Florent Chrestien, the Calvinist, who had been Henry IV.'s tutor, and who was one of the best Greek scholars of his day ; Pierre Pithou, equally famous for his integrity and his legal lore ; and Gilles Durant, a lawyer by profession, a gentleman by birth, and a poet by choice. In this group of writers the old national spirit survived which we have already seen animating the works of those who wrote after Poitiers and Agincourt. They hated all foreigners the Spaniard more particularly as heartily as Eustache Deschamps and Alain Chartier had execrated the triumphant English. Such were the men who rallied round the worthy Gillot in his house on the Quai des Orfevres the same in which Boileau Despr^aux was afterwards born, as if its roof had been predestined to cover our best satirists. Let us take a look at Paris then. The streets were full of broils ; the Louvre and the city gates were garrisoned by Spanish troops ; fanatical preachers belonging to the League were fulminating from the pulpits of the capital ; gibbets were being continually erected ; and Mayenne, the fat chief 206 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. of the League, was striving with might and main to restrain the populace, which growled like a famished hound, and promising day after day victories and victuals which never arrived. There, in a quiet corner, Gillot and his little band kept up a running fire of couplets, epigrams, and pleasant jests, directed against the Lorraines, the League, and the Catholicon of Spain. It required courage to laugh then. People risked their heads in proportion as the prospects of the one party grew more gloomy and those of the other brightened. It is related that a servant having mentioned that her master and mistress exhibited some pleasure in hearing of the battle of Ivry, the indiscreet couple narrowly escaped hanging. Having thus indicated the men by whom and the place wherein the ' Satyre M6nipp6e ' was written, I will endea- vour, before proceeding to analyse it, to give you a slight sketch of the state of France at the time of its appearance. Henry III. had fallen beneath the dagger of the fanatic Jacques Clement (1589), only a few months after the assas- sination of the Due de Guise and his brother the cardinal by the king's command. Paris received the news of the death of its king with every demonstration of ostentatious delight. Ministers of religion so far forgot the principles of peace as to extenuate the crime of the assassin, and even to apologise for the criminal, while the Duchesse de Montpensier, sister of the Due de Guise, who had suborned the assassin, went about Paris proclaiming the news of his death from her carriage windows, distributing green scarves in token of her delight, and causing bonfires to be lit in honour of the murder! But the unhappy Parisians soon made the dis- covery that they had escaped from the frying-pan into the fire. Henry of Navarre was the next heir to the crown ; the League was split up into two factions ; Philip of Spain was coquetting with the young Due de Guise with a view to raise him and the Infanta Isabella to the vacant throne ; and at that very time Henry IV., after conquering his kingdom, town after town, and winning the victories of Arques and Ivry, was approaching the walls of Paris. Such, ' then, was the condition of political affairs when this famous satire made its appearance, not yet as a printed volume, but in the shape of fly-leaves, passing from hand to hand, and x THE ' SATYRE MENIPPEE ' 207 even learned by heart by those poor famishing citizens of Paris who, according to the chronicles of the period, were as pallid as statues. All forms of eulogy have been exhausted, as Lenient observes, with respect to the ' Menippee.' No better epithet, perhaps, has ever been bestowed upon it than that of the ' king of pamphlets.' ' It is a masterpiece of militant litera- ture in an age when the pen fought as many battles as the sword. Never had the double vocation of our France " to combat and to speak skilfully " been better justified.' It is time, however, that I should make you acquainted with the general plan of this satire, and, without penetrating to its very core, should at any rate describe its principal features. The basis of the work is the convocation of the States General, which was continually being deferred by the party of the League ; and it was the future speeches of the orators in an assembly which had not yet met that our satirists were parodying in anticipation. The writers of the ' Menippee ' are much more nimble and alert than the States themselves, who were framing their resolutions and slowly preparing their orations while parodies of them were actually circulating in the streets of Paris. The satire commences by a sort of exhibition of mounte- banks, such as was very common then and long afterwards. It takes place in the courtyard of the Louvre, where two quacks, one from Lorraine, and the other from Spain the Cardinals de Pellev6 and Plaisance hold forth from their stage to the gaping crowd on the virtues of a celebrated drug, the Catholicon of Spain, compounded of gold-dust, pensions, promises, and persuasive words, and sublimated in the college of Jesuits at Toledo. Its good qualities are more than fifty in number. It is the universal panacea, by the use of which any one will be enabled to commit every imaginable crime and to be guilty of the most shameful treasons without the slightest remorse of conscience, for the greater welfare and glory of the Church. This first part is full of piquant allusions to the doings of the more prominent leaders of the League. To the parade of the characters succeeds the solemn pro- cession which is to call down the blessing of God upon the labours of the League. This is a masquerade conceived and 208 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LBCT. described in a spirit of exquisite humour. It is headed by Eose, the rector of the University, formerly Bishop of Senlis, who ' has put off his rector's hat and donned the gown of a master of arts, with a bishop's mantle, a soldier's gorget, a sword at his side, and a halberd in his hand. After him comes an army of cur&s, monks, novices, all equipped in similar style,' and armed according to Paul's injunctions. Then follow the leaders of the League, each described with the fidelity of a caricature : the legate, ' a true mirror of perfect beauty,' being the ugliest 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 Montpensier (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 the rector Kose on continuing the war, ending appropriately with the quota- tion, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit.' ! And thus ends the first day. We now arrive at the gem of the satire, which is a vivid description of the power wielded by the States of the League. The hall in which they are held is tapestried with hangings which depict the horrors and iniquities of civil and religious warfare, as exemplified in profane and sacred history ; the actors in these scenes bear a striking resemblance to the chiefs of the League, while the assassination of the late king by a monk is also graphically portrayed. The battles of Senlis, Arques, and Ivry are also represented, and in one corner a group of peasants singing these words : Let us resume the dance, Be merry while we may ; The springtime shines in France, And monarchs pass away. One King alone remains ; The fools are scatter 'd far ; Fortune rewards our pains, And smash'd is every jar. 2 1 The French Humourists, by Walter Besant. 2 Reprenons la danse, Un roi seal demeure ; Allans, c'est assez : Les sots sont chassez : Le printemps commence ! Fortune a ceste heure Les roys sont passez. Tous aux pots cassez. x THE 'SATYRE MENIPPEE ' iJO At the summons of a herald, who describes the members one by one, they appear and take their places : his sarcastic sketches of each constitute the most caustic portions of the satire. At length the deputies commence the debate. Imagine, if you can, any legislative assembly in Europe abandoning, for one sitting, all the accustomed forms of oratory and usages of discussion, and every speaker in it turning himself inside out, as it were, laying bare all the vices and weaknesses of his character, dissecting his own moral nature with a firm and fearless hand, ' exposing the baseness of his motives, the pitifulness of his ambition, the narrowness of his views, the poverty of his imagination, the extent of his ignorance, and the selfishness of his measures ; ' imagine all this, and then picture the delight of a public naturally prone to persiflage, to raillery, and to sarcasm, as each of the prominent Leaguers mounted the pillory and opened a window as it were in his bosom ! And this, too, at a time when party spirit ran so high; when personal animosities were so bitter and deadly ; when the hostilities of opposing factions were fierce, savage, and un- appeasable ; and when men hated each other for the love of God, and persecuted each other in the sacred name of religion. The speeches put into the mouths of ecclesiastics, nobles, and people of high degree are really magnificent specimens of irony ; those of the Due de Mayenne and the Italian legate more especially so. But after these is heard the voice of one who represents the insignificant and almost impotent Tiers $tat. It is no longer the language of sar- casm or of veiled invective that we are listening to, but that of history, stern, simple, and impressive as a chapter of Tacitus. The accents are those which previously lent so much pathos and poignancy to the heartrending cry of the poor labourers of Prance, as represented in lines first written in 1422, it is believed, and published in the ' Chronicles ' of Monstrelet, which found an echo in the ' Chanson du Pain ' of quite recent date. I must quote a portion of this speech, because it is a document of no little historical value, and faithfully reflects some of the social aspects of the epoch : O Paris, who art no longer Paris, but a den of wild beasts, a citadel of Spaniards, Walloons, and Neapolitans, an asylum and a p 210 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. secure retreat for thieves, murderers, and assassins : wilt them never resume thy dignity, and remember what thou hast been and what thou hast become ? Wilt thou never, never shake off that frenzy which has caused thee to engender, instead of a legitimate and gracious sovereign, fifty kinglets and fifty tyrants ? Behold thy- self in fetters, behold thyself beneath the yoke of the Spanish Inquisition, a thousand times more intolerable and more hard to bear by minds born free and frank, like those of France, than the most cruel deaths the Spaniards are capable of devising ! Thou couldst not endure thy king, 1 so debonair, easy, and familiar, who behaved himself like an ordinary citizen and burgess of the city, which he has enriched and embellished with such sumptuous edifices, surrounded with strong and stately ramparts, and endowed with such honourable privileges and exemptions. What did I say ? Thou couldst not endure him ! It is far worse. Thou hast chased him from his city, his home, and his bed. Chased, quotha ? Thou hast pursued him. Pursued him, quotha ? Thou hast assassinated him ; thou hast canonised his murderer, and kindled joyful bonfires in celebration of his death. This harangue, the last of the scenes, is the only one written in a serious vein. Like La Boe'tie, the speaker had read the classics of antiquity, and had assimilated their essence ; and listening to his words, as Nisard has remarked, < when he is denouncing the League in the name of those eternal principles which condemn every kind of anarchy, we seem to hear the accents of Demosthenes unmasking Philip, or of Cicero overwhelming Antony, while painting the horrors of civil war. Never have patriotism, probity, and common sense spoken braver or more loyal words.' Such was the ' Satyre Menippee,' which consummated the ruin of the League, and left it dead, past all recovery. I have already mentioned the names of those who were prin- cipally concerned in its production. Most of them were copious writers at an epoch of great literary fertility, Gillot and Kapin more particularly so; and it is a remarkable circumstance that, with a single exception, each of them is now known and remembered only as one of the contributors to the ' Satyre Menippee.' That exception was Jean Passerat, a man of genius and a poet. Placed by his uncle, a canon of the cathedral of Troyes, in the college of that city, his youthful excesses compelled him to take flight, and he was reduced to such a necessitous condition as to beg for work in an iron mine 1 Henry III. x JEAN PASSERAT 211 near Bourges. A worthy monk befriended him and pre- vailed upon him to return home, where his uncle forgave him, and Jean repaired to Paris and applied himself to study in such good earnest that he was appointed professor of eloquence in the College of France. He wrote and trans- lated many Works, chiefly in verse. Singularly enough, love was one of their principal themes, although, like Alain Chartier and Bustache Deschamps, his personal ugliness disqualified him for becoming a lover. He became blind in his latter days, and died in Paris at the age of sixty-eight. As an example of his poetry I will quote the biting satire which he wrote on the Prince d'Aumale and other prominent Leaguers who turned tail at Senlis : THE BATTLE OF SENLIS 1 To each of us kind nature gives, For firm support, a pair of feet ; And these will ofttimes serve us well, Provided we are only fleet. Thus Prince d'Aumale, a valiant wight, By using both his legs with speed, Though reft of all his best effects, Preserved his life in time of need. He saw the open way, and then, While deadly fears oppress'd his mind, Betook himself to rapid flight, And never once did look behind. 1 SUB LA JOUBNEE DE SENLIS A chacun nature donne Bien courir n'est pas un vice : Des pieds pour le secourir : On court pour gagner le prix : Les pieds sauvent la personne : C'est un honnete exercice : II n'est que de bien courir. Bon coureur n'est jamais pris. Ce vaillant Prince d'Aumale Souvent celui qui demeure Pour avoir fort bien couru, Est cause de son mechef : Quoiqu'il ait perdu sa malle, Celui qui fuit de bonne heure N'a pas la mort encouru. Peut combattre derechef. Quand ouverte est la barriere, II vaut mieux des pieds combattre De peur de blame encourir, En fendant Pair et le vent, Ne demeurez point derriere: Que se faire occire ou battre II n'est que de bien courir. Pour n'avoir pris le devant. Courir vaut un diademe : Qui a de 1'bonneur envie Les coureurs sont gens de bien : Ne doit pourtant en mourir : Tremont, et Balagny me"me, Ou il y va de la vie, Et Cougy le savent bien. II n'est que de bien courir ! 212 LECTURES ON FRENCH LITERATURE LECT. To fly is worth a diadem ; The swift of foot are prudent men ; So thought Treuront, Cougy too ; Balagny l also scuttled then. To run is not so bad a thing, Men do so when a prize they'd gain ; It is an honest exercise : The nimble runner's rarely ta'en. For he who stays behind full oft Has cause to rue his sad delay ; But he who has the chance and flies May live to fight another day. 2 'Tis better, then, to use your feet In cleaving through the yielding wind Than risk a fatal wound or death By lingering too long behind. He who for honour's cause would live For honour's sake should never die ; And so to save one's life, you see, The safest course is just to fly. :i Sainte-Beuve remarks that Jean Passerat was the first poet, after the literary reform of 1550, who reverted to the natural gaiety and rare pleasantry of the older writers. He composed volumes of hexametrical Latin verses, but it is by those he wrote in French, although much fewer in number, that he will be chiefly remembered. The greater part of the verses in this satire are from his pen; and among others this capital quatrain : What means the double cross, the League Emblazons on its flag so plain ? It is to signify thereby They crucify our Lord again ? 4 1 Three conspicuous Leaguers. 1 Was this the origin of the couplet in Butler's Hudibras ? ' For those that fly may fight again, Which he can never do that's slain.' Or did the French and English poets both borrow it from Erasmus ? ' That same man that runneth awaie Maie again fight another dale.' * There is a curious resemblance between this verse and Falstaff's soliloquy on Honour in the fifth act of Henry IV. (first part). Is it a coincidence, or had Shakespeare read La J