IvIBRARY OF THE University of California. GIFT OF GEORGE MOREY RICHARDSON. Received, August, i8g8. .Accession No. !>lg.^/^ Class No.. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/englishessaysfroOOjussrich ^-c ENGLISH ESSATS FROM A FRENCH PEN BY THE SAME AUTHOR. ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFEl IN THE MIDDLE AGES (XlVth Century). Translated by L. T. Smith. Revised and Enlarged by the Author. 4th Edition. Illustrated. Cloth, 7s. 6d. "An extremely fascinating book." — Times. THE ENGLISH NOVEL IN THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE. Translated by E. Lee. Third and Revised Edition. With 8 full-page and many smaller Illustrations in the text. Cloth, 7s. 6d. ' One of the brightest, most scholarly, and most interesting volumes of literary history.'' — Speaker. A FRENCH AMBASSADOR AT THE COURT OF CHARLES II. : Le Comte de Cominges, from his unpublished correspondence. Illustrated. 2nd Edition. Cloth, 7s. 6d. "The whole book is delightful reading." — Spectator. PIERS PLOWMAN, 1362-1398 : A Contribution to the History of English Mysticism. Translated by M. E. R. Revised and Enlarged by the Author. Illustrated. 2nd Edition. Cloth, 7s. 6d. " This masterly interpretation of an epoch-making book." — Standard. A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE: From the Origins to the Renaissance. Cloth I2S. 6d. nett. "We cordially commend this brilliant and thoughtful book." — A thencpuin. London: T. FISPIER UNWIN. fVT;^' fanit Ccf^.jtc :^tmtr Sum kttciiCtc if FRENCH SHIPS, OFTHE EARLY PART OF THE X V T 'l' CENTURY, I LLUSTRATIVE OF REGNAULT G I RAR DS J U RN EY. Walter 1., Cells, Ph.Sc-. ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN J. J. JUSSERAND fl Ministre Plenipotentiaire New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS London: T. FISHER UNWIN 1895 < 72-^/2. All rights reserved. / have to present my best thanks to Mr, James Knowles and to Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen^ who very kindly authorize me to reprint the " Journeys " to Scotland and to England^ first published in the " Nineteenth Century^'' and the essay on Paul Scarron^ printed as an introduction to " The Comical Romance and other tales^ illustrated from the designs of Oudry'' (^Lawrence and Bullen, 1892). T June 9, 1895. CONTENTS I. The Forbidden Pastimes of a Recluse — England, XIIth Century 11. A Journey to Scotland in the Year 1435 1. Regnault Girard 2. The journey 3. The stay in Scotland ... 4. The end of the negotiation 5. The homeward journey . . . 6. The end . . . III. Paul Scarron ... The cripple I. 2. 3- 4- 5- 6. The husband The poet The dramatist The novelist Scarron's fame IV. A Journey to England in the Year 1663 I. The traveller introduced Sorbieres's journey London Town ... Out of town Sorbieres's " impression d'ensemble " 6. Sorbicres publishes his book. The conse- quences of the deed 2. 3- 4- 5. II 24 24 30 35 43 49 59 62 62 86 100 112 125 148 158 158 162 167 179 182 184 8 CONTENTS. V. One more Document concerning Voltaire's page Visit to P^ngland ... ... ... ... 193 Appendix — 1. Mediaeval Shipping (extract from a letter by M. Ch. de la Ronciere, January, 1895) ... ... 206 2. A note by Esprit Cabart de Villermont, con- cerning Scarron and his wife (copied from the fly-leaf of the " Apologie pour M. Duncan ' preserved in the Paris National Library ; Press mark, Td. 86-14) ••• ••• ••• ••• ^^^ 3. A description of Hatfield by Samuel de Sorbieres, 1663 212 4. French text of a Letter by Count de Broglie con- cerning Voltaire's " Henriade," 1727 214 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE I. — French ships of the early part of the XVth century ; illustrative of Regnault Girard's journey to Scotland ; from MS. Fr. 2609, in the National Library, Paris, fol. 268 Frontispiece 2. — The tower, with the chain, at the entrance of La Rochelle harbour ; actual state. 'To face p, 53 3. — '' Arrival of the Players at Le Mans," being the first plate of a series of illustrations drawn by Pater for Scarron's '' Comical Romance " ; "Surugue sculpsit, 1729 " To face p, 155 4. — Portrait of Sorbieres, by N. Bonnart 1664 To face p. 158 5. — Clemency of Henry IV. at the battle of Ivry — from the London edition of the " Henriade," published by subscription in 1728. *' ¥. Le Moine inv. ; L. Desplaces sc.'* — thus de- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. scribed by Voltaire, who, long before, sent to Thieriot an account of all the plates he meant to order from Coypel, Galloche, &c., for his poem : " VIP Chant. — Une melee au milieu de laquelle un guerrier embrasse en pleurant le corps d'un ennemi qu'il vient de tuer ; plus loin Henri IV., entoure de guerriers desarmes qui lui demandent grace a genoux." — To Thieriot, Sept. ii, 1722 ... I'd face p. 193 lEriGlisb Essays ftoni a jfrencb pen. I. THE FORBIDDEN PASTIMES OF A RECLUSE. (England — Twelfth Century.) ETHELRED, Ailred, or Aeldred, sometime Abbot of Rievaulx, then one of the most important monasteries and now one of the finest ruins in England, was born at Hexham about 1109. He was brought up at the court of David, king of Scotland, the founder of Melrose and Holyrood, and was the companion of Henry, son of that king. He was appointed Abbot of Rievaulx in 1146, and died twenty years later, famous for his piety, his wisdom, and his religious zeal, no less than for his learning and his 12 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH FEN works. He left a great many writings on historical or theological subjects, all of them in Latin. He was canonised in 1191, and his feast is on the 12th of January. He had a sister, sister in the flesh and in the spirit, " carne et spiritu," says he, whom he dearly loved, and who, following examples not very rare in those troubled times, had become an anchoress or recluse. Recluses and hermits were numerous ; they assigned to themselves strict duties, and pledged themselves to the practising of very severe austerities, the hardest of these being their total separation from the outside world. Not a few discovered, when the great resolve had been taken, that the Tempter was not to be met only in public places and in merry gatherings : he found his way into the best-immured cells, and knocked at the gate of the heart. And the gate of the heart sometimes opened, and the life of austerities came to an end. It had begun as a canticle, and ended as a fabliau. This juxtaposition of contraries is of constant occur- rence in the Middle Ages ; opposite extremes are drawn to each other and meet. The wealthiest convents belong to friars who have made a vow of poverty ; mad songs and pious songs are sung at Christmas to the same tunes : songs so holy that they seem to come THE FORBIDDEN PASTIMES OF A RECLUSE. 13 from heaven, and songs so revolting that a certain notable man, according to Gascoigne, died of shame at the mere remembrance of them. Anchoresses flee from the v^orld, and settle, each one by herself, in a cell, there to think only of God and of their salvation. In those quiet retreats, far from the multitude, sheltered from the noise of the great v^orld, dead as it seems to the joys of life, recluses, instead of finding rest, found trouble. Mundane thoughts could not be walled out ; unedifying stories recurred to their mind, and filled it v^ith indecent images ; in their peaceful fortresses they had to undergo sieges ; the world might be ignorant of the fact, but their confessor knew it. The unfortu- nate recluses were besieged by Love. To this testifies Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx. He himself never led the life of a recluse ; he is sorry for it, because he would otherwise be in a better position to give useful counsel, and others would be able to profit by his experience. ^ But he has at least observed the people about him ; and so, while deriving from St. Benedict most of the advice he gives con- cerning food, raiment, fasting, &c., he adds, "some things meant especially for this time and country '* ; pro loco et tempore quadam. In these *' things " lies ^ "Utinam a sapicntiore id pctcrcs ct impctrarcs : qui non con- jectura qualibct scd cxpcrientia didicisset quod alios doceret." 14 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN the main interest of his '' Rule for Recluses, written for his sister" ; ^ a work not often read to-day, but which deserves to be better known, as it affords a most curious illustration of the manners of that remote period. It is, says he, a very good thing to shut one's self up, like the hermits of old who lived in the desert, or like those who, impelled by a pious zeal, cause themselves to be immured in their cells. But to shut the body in is nothing ; the danger will continue great, even for the body, if the soul wanders, and if, '* owing to vain talk, the mind journeys towards the towns, amongst the streets, to fairs and places where people are gathered together/' A breach exists in the anchoresses' holy citadel ; the door is closed, or even walled up ; but there remains the window. This is the weak point ; and through it the foe will get in. He will enter under various dis- guises ; illegitimate thoughts will creep in, laughable tales will be told ; at times also the enemy will take less immaterial shapes. The window is the cause of the main anxieties felt by the authors of rules for ^ " Regula sive Institutio Inclusarum, ad sororem." — " Lucas Holstenii . . . Codex Regularum monasticarum." August! Vin- delicorum, 1759, fol., vol. vi. p. 420. The oldest MS. of the "Regula" preserved in the British Museum is the MS. Cotton Nero, A. iii. THE FORBIDDEN PASTIMES OF A RECIUSE. 15 recluses. An opening doubtless was needed to let day- light in, and in the case of an immured cell food also. But what a dangerous need ! Most of the evil that happens is to be traced to the window. In the famous Ancren Riwle^^ drawn up in the following (thirteenth) century, the *' caveats " are as numerous and pressing as they are here. " My dear master," a recluse is supposed to say to the author of the Riwle^ " is it now so very evil a thing to look out ^ " *' Yea it is, dear sister, for the harm that comes of it is evil above evil to every anchorite, and especially to the young. ... If any one reprove them, then they immediately say : ' Sir, she does the same who is better than I am, and knows better what she ought to do.' O dear young recluse, often does a right skilful smith forge a full weak knife ; the wise ought to imitate wisdom, not folly." The same anxieties are displayed by Abbot Aelred. The recluse, as he describes her, sits at her window, and through the window, busy and inventive as a prisoner, she manages to arrange for herself a sort of active life ; she follows worldly interests ; she wants to escape the monotony of protracted meditations and long prayers. There are recluses who by means of their ' " The Ancren Riwle," ed. J. Morton, London, Camden Society, 1853. 4to» P- 53- 1 6 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH PEN. window addict themselves to the tilling of the land or the keeping of a herd, and who give so much attention to the cultivation of the fields around them that you would take them for ladies, not for anchoresses. ^ Others call children together, and while away the time by keeping a school ; the children sit under the porch, and the recluse teaches them from her window : " Ilia sedet ad fenestram, istae in porticu resident." She encourages, rewards, punishes them, and on occa- sion — poor secluded woman — covers them with kisses, calling a little one who weeps '' her daughter, her friend." 2 Sometimes — Aelred even says " often " — the occu- pations are of a much lighter and more objectionable kind. Before the window, always the window, an old woman " vetula " is sitting, and she assigns to herself the task of entertaining the recluse. She tells her the last scandal of the town, the newest gossip ; she gives an account of the mad pranks of young libertines ; she tells her some of those merry tales which are the ^ " . . . Vel multiplicandis pecoribus inhiant : tantaque sollici- tudine in his extenduntur ut eas matres vel dominas familiarum aestimes, non anachoretas." ^ " Nunc ridet nunc minatur, nunc percutit, nunc blanditur, nunc osculatur, nunc flentem vocat pro verbere propius, palpat faciem, stringit collum, et in amplexum ruens, nunc liliam vocat, nunc amicam." THE FORBIDDEN PASTIMES OF A RECLUSE, 17 groundwork of fabliaux. Were her stories in verse, t'hey would in fact be real fabliaux. The case is not an isolated one ; the same thing happens, the same garrulous old woman is to be observed, *' with nearly all the recluses of our time." Stories are thus circu- lated of dissolute monks, wanton girls, and wronged husbands. Most of the typical heroes of the Deca- nter one are called up by Aelred long before their day, and we gather from the account he supplies of those talks under the window that the stories were as complete as Boccaccio^s. The old woman would give descriptions of the personages, details concerning their outward appearance, their features, their manners and their ways ; also full particulars about the tricks resorted to by wives to deceive their friends or husbands.' There can be no doubt as to the nature of those tales : except for the verse they are fabliaux, that is laughable tales; 2 for Aelred adds : " The lips thereupon are shaken ' " Vix aliquam inclusarum hujus tcmporis solam invenics, ante cujus fcncstram non anus garrula vcl nugigcrula mulicr sedcat, quae cam fabulis occupct, rumoiibus aut dctractionibus pascat, illius vel illius monaci vcl clerici vcl alterius cujuslibct ordinis viri formam, vultum moresque dcscribat. Illcccbrosa quoquc interserat, puellarum lasciviam, viduarum, quibus licet quidquid libet, conjugum in viris fallcndis cxplcndisque voluptatibus astutiam dcpingat." '-' "Les Fabliaux sont dcs contcs a rire, en vers." Bcdicr, " Les Fabliaux," 1893, p. 6. 3 1 8 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN, with laughter, and the sweet poison, once drunk, per- vades the heart and the whole body." Those old story-telling women are very dangerous ; recluses are never tired of listening to them ; and they give them, as a reward, all they can, and share their food with them. Left alone, at dusk, they suffer no longer from their solitude ; the image of the heroes of those amusing tales has remained in their minds, and keeps them company ; the long hours have become short ; they are '' inebriated '* by such sweet remem- brances, and now " they go wrong while singing their psalms and have falls while reading the day's lessons.*' What, then, is the ultimate result of those talks, the memory of which so completely fills the mind, and which run on things so pleasant, it seems, to remember, but so ugly in truth to look at .^ The result is that the listener sometimes assumes a less passive role ; she first liked to hear, and now she likes to imitate ; she will soon become herself a fit subject for a tale or a fabliau. She thinks, she contrives ; assignations are made, and the pure cell meant for a holy life is trans- formed into a place of debauchery. ^ ^ "Nam manifestior sermo non jam de accendenda, sed potius desatianda voluptate procedens, ubi et qiiando et per quern possit explere quod cogitat, in commune exponunt. Cella utitur in prostibulum, et delicato qualibet arte, foramine, aut ilia egreditur, aut adulter ingreditur." THE FORBIDDEN PASTIMES OF A RECLUSE. 19 Thus the recluse in her turn supplies the authors of fabliaux with plots for which they will not, this time, have to look beyond the mountains and the seas. They will only have to open their eyes and ears, and note what takes place around them. If a small number among the popular tales of the Middle Ages come from India, a much larger proportion are made out of real life, true events, traits of character, which it was possible for the observer to note in many countries during that period. The holy Abbot of Rievaulx relates himself, by way of example and admonition, one or two knaves' tricks, drawn from life, which have been the subject of many licentious fabliaux ; standard tricks, if one may say so, which are to be found in every collection of tales. The very title of one of the chapters of his " Rule for Recluses '' might indeed be taken for the title of a chapter in the Decamerone,^ What must be done therefore in a time when the religious rules are so hard, and physical passions so vehement ? Aelred does not hesitate : the rules must be made harder ; all communication, all contact, every worldly sight is to be avoided. Beware of every man, even of your confessor ; do not take pleasure in seei him too often ; do not fail to choose him as old ^ 'i Contra illos qui dicunt se esse frigidos, vel impotentes, et lecto se cum mulieribus ponunt, duplex malum cumulantes." 20 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN possible ; be careful never to allow him to play with your hand : " Nee ipsi manuni suam tangendam praebeat vel palpandam." Younger men must of course be avoided with even greater care ; for it is much more difficult, the holy Abbot says, to resist them. Mind you do not accept from some young man, " under pretence of spiritual amity, letters or little gifts." ^ Do not embroider for him, " as is done so often,'' purses or girdles in threads of various colours. All this serves no purpose, ^' but to foment unlawful love, and cause great sins." For no doubt is possible, the fortress is besieged, ar.d Love is the besieger. One cannot be too much on guard against Love. On account of him many sorts of good works will have to be discarded. Helping the poor, sheltering the traveller, are works of mercy ; yet the recluse will abstain from them. A very difficult rule, the recluse will perhaps say; what can I do to prevent "clamouring poor, weeping orphans, crying widows from gathering round my cell ? " How can their coming be avoided ? ^ " Adolescentium et suspectarum personarum devita colloquium . , . Nunquam inter te et quemlibet virum, quasi occasione exhi- bendae charitatis vel nutriendi afFectus, vel expetendae familiaritatis aut amicitiae spiritualis, discurrant nuntii ; nee eorum munuscula literasque suscipias, nee illis tua dirigas, prout moris est, puta zonas, marsupia, quae diverse stamine variata sunt." THE FORBIDDEN PASTIMES OF A RECLUSE. 21 For the poor flock there, and they give vent more freely to their noisy supplications as they stand under the v^indow of a woman who is godly, and who, besides, cannot move away. Never mind, the abbot answers, ^' be seated, keep silent, let them alone ; they will at length perceive that you have nothing, and can give nothing ; they will get tired and desist." ^ To fortify herself against the temptation to be charit- able, the recluse will live only upon the produce of her own work ; or, if that is not possible, she must, before she is shut in, make arrangements with trusty people, *Mn order that there may be brought to her each day exactly what she wants for a day.'' 2 Those herds of beggars are more dangerous than they seem ; and here again Aelred sketches a little scene worthy of a fabliau or of the Decamerone. In the midst of those beggars, cripples and wretches, the same enemy, the great and sweet enemy. Love, finds ^ " Non circa cellulam ejus paupcrcs clamcnt, non orphani plorcnt, non vidua Icm^ntctur. Sod quis, inquies, hoc potcrit prohibcre ? — Tu scde, tu tacc, tu sustine ; mox ut sclent tc nihil habere, seque nihil rcccpturos, vel fatigati discedcnt.'* 2 " Ouod reclusa dc proprio labore vivat ... Si autem aut infirmitas, aut tcncritudo non permittat, antcquam includatur, ccrtas personas quasrat, a quibus singulis dicbus quod uni diei sufficiat, humiliter recipiat ; nee causa pauperura vel hospitium quidquam adjiciat. . . . Magna? infidelitatis signum est si inclusa de crastino sit sollicita.' 2 2 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH FEN his way. Unobserved in the group of the poor, some perfidious woman, a tempter, " insidiatrix pudicitias," will come quite close and speak to you in favour of a monk or a clerk, and drop melting words, " blanda verba," into your ear. Your alms will be the pretext and the means ; she will come quite close to kiss your hand, under pretence of gratitude. Hospitality is much less to be recommended to a wise recluse, even that rough sort of hospitality which a recluse could give, and which consisted in allowing some women to sleep under the shelter or porch before her window : " ante inclusas fenestram discumbentes.'* For in such cases, no one sleeps ; neither the recluse nor her guests, among whom will often be found women of the worst kind, " pessimae," who will not talk much about religion, you may be sure, but " about love " ; and almost the whole of the night will be thus spent without sleep. I Under the window of the recluse, all the night long, Love keeps watch. ^ "Cavendum praeterea est, ut nee ob susceptionem religiosarum foeminarum quodlibet hospitalitatis onus inclusa suscipiat. Nam inter bonas plerumque etiam pessimae veniunt, quas ante inclusa fenestram discumbentes praemissis valde paucjs de religiosis ser- monibus ad saecularia devolvuntur, inde subtexere amatoria, et noctem fere totam insomnem ducere. Sane tu tales devita, ne cogaris audire, quod videre horreas ; forte enim videbuntur amara CLim audiuntur vel cernuntur, quae sequuntur dulcia cum cogi- tantur." THE FORBIDDEN PASTIMES OF A RECLUSE. 23 The World must be shut out ; the cell must be bare : " the walls must not be hung, nor covered with various paintings." ^ In the case of absolute necessity, and this is in truth a very notable concession, the recluse will be allowed the help of a matron to whom her relations with the outside will be entrusted, and of a serving maid, who will carry the wood and water, and bake the peas and vegetables. But it must be understood that each of the two shall be perfect of her kind ; neither talkative, nor quarrelsome, nor addicted to tale-telling. The maid especially must be closely watched for fear, lest by means of her, the Fiend should get access to the house : " Ne forte ejus lascivia tuum sanctum habitaculum polluatur." Thus did the holy Abbot of Rievaulx show the way to heaven to his dearly beloved sister, allowing her to profit by his own observations (as he is careful to note here and there : '' I knew a certain monk. . . ^ *' I saw a man . . .*') ; and thus he taught her by what hard means and cruel sacrifices a life of quiet, pleasing to God, could be led, in the stormy days when King Henry the Second reigned over England. ' "Est ctiam quasdam species vanitatis in afFectata aliqua pul- chritudine etiam intra cellulam delcctari, parietes variis picturis et cclaturis ornare, oratorium pannorum ct imaginum varietatc decorare. Haec omnia, quasi professioni tuae contraria, cave." II. A JOURNEY ro SCOTLAND IN THE TEAR 1435. I. — Regnault Girard. A JOURNEY to Scotland was not, in the fifteenth century, the pleasure trip so many tourists have since accomplished. It was a serious and difficult undertaking, not to be attempted lightly. The men from abroad who visited the kingdom in those times usually came on important business ; they came, in fact, because they could not do otherwise ; salmon and grouse were not considered then a sufficient attraction ; no hotels had been built in picturesque spots, the beauties of Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine were allowed to pass unobserved and un- visited. The country was so far distant, so secluded from the rest of the world, that rather vague notions were A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D. 1435. 25 entertained as to its very situation. We have an account of the kingdom, written in the year 1498, in which it is described as '' bordering by sea on Brittany, France, and Flanders. Towards the west there is no land between Scotland and Spain. Scotland is nearer to Spain tha'i London."^ Strange as it may seem, these geographical particulars are not supplied by some ignorant compiler writing from hearsay, but by no less a person than Don Pedro de Ayala, Spanish ambassador at the Scottish Court. He had drawn up his report at the particular request and for the enlightenment of his masters, Ferdinand and Isabella, "who desired a full description of Scotland and its king." Near to France and Spain as the country was supposed to be, according to ambassadorial observation, still experience proved that the journey was not a short one. Tempests were frequent, much more indeed than now, for the reason that what we call a rough sea was a storm for the quaint unmanageable ships of the period. The sea, besides, was held by the English — a fact which contributed in no slight degree to diminish the enjoyment of journeys between Scotland and the Continent. The actual ruler of the country, King James the First, was a living example of what could be * " Early Travellers in Scotland," cd. P. Hume Brown, Edinb., 1891, 8vo, p. 48. 26 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH PEN expected, as he had been taken by the English in his youth, when on his way to France, and had remained nineteen years a captive in the Tower of London, at Newark, Evesham, and in other prisons. When the sea was smooth, and the EngUsh were busy elsewhere, then the traveller had to fight another enemy, namely ennui : he had no comfortable accommodation in which to sleep away the time, no novels to read, no tobacco to smoke ; the numerous days he was bound to spend in his ship appeared even more numerous. Froissart has given us a description of those long tiresome journeys, and the means resorted to in order to fill the empty hours : passengers played dice, or made bets ; a knight laid a wager that he would climb in full armour to the top of the mast; while performing the deed his foot slipped, he fell into the sea, and the weight of his armour sank him in a moment. " All the barons were much vexed at this misfortune," observes Froissart by way of funeral oration, " but they were forced to endure it, as they could not in any way remedy it." Tiresome or dangerous as they were, still journeys had to be undertaken. Scotland played then a part of its own in European politics ; she fought the English not only on the Border, but also by the Loire, with her auld ally, France. Intercourse had to be kept up. A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D. 1435. 27 Ambassadors came from the French or Spanish king, from the Pope, from the fathers of the Basle Council. Several of them took care to leave an account of their experience of far-off Scotland, and their journals have been recently collected by Mr. P. Hume Brow^n under the title " Early Travellers in Scotland.'' There will be found descriptions of the kingdom by Jean Froissart, iEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who was to be Pope Pius the Second, George Chastelain, Pedro de Ayala, and others. This fine collection is not however quite complete, and one at least very curious document has escaped the notice of the learned editor. This document consists in the report drawn by the French ambassador sent to Scotland in the years 1434-6 by King Charles the Seventh, to fetch the Lady Margaret, daughter of James the First, who had been betrothed six years before to Louis, Dauphin de Viennois, heir to the crown and the future Louis the Eleventh. This " Relation '' remains unprinted to this day ; it is in French, and is preserved in the National Library, Paris. ' Everybody knows how King Charles of France, who was not yet Charles le Victorieux, and had not been rescued by Jeanne d'Arc, wanting to tighten the bonds ^ MS. Fran^ais 17330. An edition is being prepared by Mr. Andrew Lang for the Roxburghe Club. 28 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH PEN between his and the Scottish kingdom, had despatched in 1427 a mission to King James, asking for the hand of his daughter Margaret. The mission was composed of John Stuart of Darnley, '^constable of the Scotch in Franc?,'' of Regnault de Chartres, archbishop-duke of Reims, and of Alain Chartier the poet, to whom the oratorical part of the business had been entrusted. Alain delivered in the presence of the king, queen, and assembled Court such a beautiful Latin speech that it made matters quite easy for the other ambassadors. The speech has come down to us, and a copy of it is preserve J at Paris. But, as the betrothed was only three years old, and the dauphin five, the two royal families considered that the marriage could be conveniently postponed, and it was only when the couple had reached riper years, being then nine and eleven respec- tively, that the French king decided to send for the dauphiness that was to be. His choice for this important mission fell upon Maitre Regnault Girard, knight. Seigneur de Bazoges, one of his councillors and masters of the hostel ; a very worthy man indeed, prudent, trusty, and wise, but as little warlike and as little inclined to seamanship as he well could be. The news of the great honour bestowed upon his person was to him most unwelcome ; the idea of the turbulent sea and hostile English was too much A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D. 1435. 29 for his pacific mind ; he was, indeed, unable to bear it. Honest Regnault Girard, knight, forgetting entirely his knighthood, bethought himself of some means to eschew the unattractive duty, and resorted to one which would be considered very strange in our day. He made it known that he would pay down the sum of 400 crowns to the plucky one who would consent to be ambassador in his stead. But even then the thing was considered inconsistent with the discipline to be maintained in a kingdom. Charles informed his councillor and master of the hostel that he had to go in his own person to Scotland, and in order to be fully assured that the Seigneur de Bazoges would not escape, he sent the Comte de Ven- dosme to La Rochelle to see the unwilling ambassador off. Regnault Girard had therefore no choice ; he had no shame nor remorse either, for if he was not plucky he was honest, and we have the story of the 400 crowns on his own testimony. He has noted it in his " Rela- tion," as a proof doubtless, if not of his courage, at least of his wisdom and foresight. " I did not like in the least to go," says he, not only on account of the season, '* but also because the king was at war with the King of England and the Duke of Burgundy, and could not expect any help from the Bretons. P'or which cause the said embassy was a full perilous and 30 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN dangerous one, and to avoid the danger of the sea I offered 400 crowns to the one who would undertake the journey, so that the king would hold me excused. But the king would never consent, and ordered me ex- pressly to go, . . . for I was meant to obey him, as he was my master and sovereign lord." lA. — iHE Journey. With a sorrowful heart and painful misgivings, the ambassador got ready and took his way towards the sea. He was accompanied by his son Joachim ; this one, at least, had no fear, either of the sea, the English, or anything. Others came, too, who were also to be of the journey, among them a famous lawyer, " famosus clericus," says Bower, Aymeri Martineau byname, who would be of use to draw up deeds and ducuments ; and also a man who was to prove very useful in his way, called Cande, or Crenede in Girard's ''Relation," Hugh Kennedy of his true name, a sturdy Scotchman, who had " fait ses preuves " at Beauge by the side of La Hire, and who, unlike the ambassador, enjoyed the idea of the expedition very much. Monseigneur de Vendosme did not fail in his duty, and met the travellers at La Rochelle, one of the few ports belonging then to the French Crown. He had A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D. 1435. 3' with him instructions made out at Orleans and signed by the king, containing a lengthy account of what the ambassador would have to say ; also the agreement between Charles on the one hand and J. Puver on the other, the latter undertaking to provide the " navy *' necessary for the bringing home of the dauphiness, v^ith an escort of about two thousand Scotchmen. Puver was to feed them on board and the king w^as to pay him five reals a head — that is 6,000 reals at the beginning of the journey, and the remainder on his return. Then follow some provisoes which we may suppose made poor Regnault Girard shudder : the king stated what he would do in the case of Puver's " navy " being rifled by the English, and in the case of Puver himself being taken. If the mishap occurred to the '' navy " during the outward journey, Puver would receive nothing beyond what would have been paid to him at starting ; if it occurred during the home- ward journey then a full payment would be due. In case of his being taken, the king " will help him to the value of 400 reals." The whole being promised by the prince '^ in good faith, and upon his word as a king." These papers and some others having been given to Regnault Girard, who copies them in full in his *' Rela- tion," Vendosme informed him that Charles had taken 32 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH PEN. care to fix the particular day on which they were to sail, namely, the 14th of November, 1434. They all, therefore, got ready, and at the appointed time the embassy left the town to go to what was then the usual starting-place, the little hamlet of Chef-de-Baye, on the sea, one league from La Rochelle. They were accompanied by Vendosme and by the good men of the city on horseback, to the number of one hundred or more. " We then took leave to go on board, which was not without great sorrow and tears on both sides. Then we went into a boat, which took us to a whaler belonging to me Regnault Girard, of which whaler the master was (after God) Tassin Petel. We numbered altogether sixty-three persons, including seamen as well as land men. Puver was of the journey, and came in his own ship, which was well filled with goods." All went well at first. The travellers had put to sea " with God's blessing " on the evening of the 14th, and four days later, on the i8th of November, towards two in the morning, they found themselves off the Scilly Islands. But there their troubles began, and their worst anticipations were fulfilled. " There, on the sudden, we were caught by such a great and marvellous storm, that we missed the harbour in the said islands. We missed the land of Ireland, and we A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D, 1435. Z2> had, according to the advice of the sailors, to launch into the great ocean sea. And the said tempest lasted for five days and five nights ; we were driven more than a hundred leagues beyond Ireland, according to the chart. The storm was so great that we were divided from Puver's ship, and lost sight of her." The unwilling navigator and envoy was in fact, and unknown to him, on his way to America. But this unexpected glory was not reserved for him, and he was not to discover the other shore of the '' great ocean sea." He made a vow to an Irish saint whom he calls "St. Treigney'' (St. Trenan), who was supposed to enjoy great influence in heaven, and who had then a greater fame on earth than he has now ; for which reason, it will not be perhaps useless to point out how well chosen the saint was to whom Girard applied in this pressing necessity. Trenan was a monk of the sixth century, and a disciple of St. Columba ; he had had once to undertake, by order of his chief, a journey between Ireland and Scotland ; at the appointed time, the pilot who was to guide his ship was not to be found, and Trenan inclined, therefore, not to go ; but Columba, addressing him, said : '* Go all the same ; thou wilt find wind and weather as thou wishest." Trenan put to sea, the winds filled his sails, and it seemed as if they were guiding the ship themselves; 3 34 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN. and the monk reached happily and miraculously the opposite shore. Regnault Girard remembered this in good time, and promised the blessed navigator a silver ship, to be hung from the roof of his chapel in Wales, v^ith the arms of France engraved on it. Not in vain. The tempest abated, and the sailors were again able to steer their boat. They made anew for Ireland, "and on the 24th day of the same month of November, by the grace of God, we reached the extreme end of Ireland, and there found a very high and marvellous rock called Ribon, which stands at the very end of all lands, towards the west. It is an uninhabitable land ; and there we anchored under the shelter of this rock. But then the tempest began again, and for five days we had to fight the storm ; and our anchors and ropes sustained great damage.'' On the 29th they left their place of shelter, and, while the sea continued very rough, they " risked the adventure,'' and followed the Irish coast, though none of their seamen had ever been there, and the land was an unknown and a desert one. At length, on the second day of December, they perceived that the land was no longer so wild ; habitations were descried, and they began again to know where they were. They sailed past " St. Patrick," then past " Le rax de Cantier " — A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D, 1435. 35 that is, the Mull of Cantire, a " marvellous place/' situated " between Ireland and the wild islands of Scotland." They had then an additional satisfaction, for they met the long-lost Puver, with his ship, quite safe. At last, on the 8 th of January, 1435, ^^^7 fo^^d themselves once more on dry ground, and they landed in Scotland, " having remained at sea from the 14th of November, when we left La Rochelle, for fifty-six days together, in the very heart of winter, and in stormy weather. And we had a great deal to endure, we ran great risks, and experienced adventures which it would be too long to tell." III. — The Stay in Scotland. On Scotch ground Kennedy became a most useful associate; a true Scotchman, he proved to be hospitable, clever, and practical. The first thing he did was to make his companions enjoy the benefit of clanship and kinship. He took his worn-out fellow-travellers to the house or " hostel " of a lady to whom he was related, the house being called '^ Hostel Cambel." The lady received them very well, and made them good cheer, the more willingly as a son of hers, as was the case then in many Scotch families, " had served the King of France as body-guard." 2,6 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN Thoroughly refreshed and comforted, the travellers remembered '' St. Treigney/' and, before beginning their land journey towards Edinburgh, they made their pilgrimage and offered to their protector, as agreed, a silver ship bearing the arms of France. They had in the meanwhile despatched a messenger towards King James, to inform him of their coming and ask to be admitted to his presence. On the 14th of January, their pilgrimage being ended, they were again in the friendly house of Kennedy, " who feasted us greatly. He had called to meet us a number of his friends and relations. Then we went to Dompbertrain (Dumbarton) ^ and there remained six days waiting for the answer of the King of Scotland.'' While there, they learnt, with no little anxiety, that a brother of the Scotch queen (Jane Beaufort, granddaughter of John of Gaunt), " brother also of the Earl of Somerset in England, had come to Scotland in great state with a mission to prevent the intended marriage of our lord the dauphin." In consideration of this news, Kennedy observed that, after all the splendour displayed by the English envoy, ^ " C'est un fort des plus munis qu'il y ait dans toutc I'Escosse et a cause de sa situation et de sa nature. Car il est situc tout proche les confluences des fieuves dans une plaine herbeuse et comme attache a un rocher aspre et roide." Jean de Blaev, " Le Theatre du Monde," Amsterdam, 1654, fol. vol. vi. p. 87. . A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D. 1435. 37 it would be unwise and contrary to the dignity of the French king if his ambassadors made their entry into Edinburgh, " which is the chief town of Scotland," without having a proper retinue and escort. He therefore called together as many as he could of his relations and friends ; they came on horseback, knights all of them, or esquires, and the French embassy was thus enabled to make some figure, as they were sixty horse altogether when entering the town. To honour them, the king had sent to meet them on their way the Bishop of ''Brequin'* (Brechin), and others so far as a town which Girard is pleased to call Liscou, but better known as Linlithgow. The entry took place on the 25th of January ; the ambassadors were lodged at the house " of one Alexan- der Neppar " ; and there, again, they received the civilities of the same Bishop of " Brequin," of the Lord Privy Seal, of the High Chamberlain, of Sir William Crichton, and many other prelates, knights and esquires. The following day they were received by James in person ; he was staying then in the convent of the Franciscans, according to the wont of the Scotch kings (and other kings too), who lived then as much as they could in convents and friaries, not only in consideration of the holy character of the place, but also because living there cost them nothing. ** The Scotch kings," 38 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN writes Pedro de Ayala, " live little in cities and towns. They pass their time generally in castles and abbeys, where they find lodgings for all their officers." James received the ambassadors most honourably ; he had with him the Bishops of *' Abredin " and " Brequin '' (Aberdeen and Brechin), the Earls of *' Glaz '' and '' Angluz " (Douglas and Angus), and others whose names were as accurately noted by Reg- nault Girard. He listened with great attention to the message of the chief envoy, who, having had no lack of time to learn by heart his instructions, explained, we may believe, with the utmost fidelity, the views of his master. But Girard was fated not to find smooth waters anywhere ; contrary winds arose, and difficulties began. The questions to be settled were manifold ; first, there was the marriage itself and the conveying of the young princess to France, then the question of the French alliance and the sending of Scotch auxiliaries, the ques- tion of the expenses of the home journey of the embassy and their escort, the question of the English war, and many other questions. And there was one more ques- tion, not mentioned in the instructions, but which stood foremost in the mind of James — the question, namely, of his consenting to part with a beloved and very youthful daughter, the first-born of a happy marriage. A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D. 1435. 39 the favourite child of the queen, that same Jane Beaufort whom James had loved while a prisoner at Windsor, and for whom he had composed his delightful " King's Quhair." The Scotch royal family was a united, loving family, and from this came the main difficulty the French ambassadors had to encounter. James was bound by his word, but it was not forbidden him to try to postpone at least the fulfilling of it. First he appointed representatives to discuss matters with Regnault Girard ; they discussed for six days together with great zeal, after which they found them- selves unable to agree on any point. The affair was then referred to the king, who said that he could do nothing without having consulted with the queen. He thereupon left town and went to " St. Genston " — that is, St. Johnstown, otherwise Perth — and asked the ambassadors to meet him there, towards the end of February. To Perth the ambassadors repaired accordingly ; they were presented to the queen, to the future dauphiness, and to a number of " lady countesses and baronesses " ; then they resumed their negotiation. A roll was at last drawn up and signed, which gave them great satisfaction, and scarcely less to the king, for there were in it so many clauses and provisoes that it was impossible not to submit them to the French king 40 ENGLISH ESSA YS EROM A ERENCH PEN, himself, and this meant no little delay. The roll ascribed to France the cost of the " navy " to be purchased and sent to Dumbarton to fetch the princess, the cost also of the '' bread, biscuit, beverage, salt and other victuals," to be consumed in the outward journey. The King of Scotland would supply meat, fish, butter, cheese and wood for the homeward journey ; he would bring together two thousand carefully chosen soldiers, the choosing requiring, of course, much time, to ac- company the dauphiness and protect her while at sea. Besides, the King of Scotland wanted to know where his daughter would live ; she must have a place assigned to her, where a Scotchman would be in command ; and she must be allowed to have Scotch ladies with her. James, however, understood that it was proper for her to have also in her retinue French gentlemen and ladies '' to teach her the manners of the country, and to inform her concerning her situation.'' A galley also, of particular excellence, and carrying crossbowmen and chosen troops, was to be provided, besides the fleet for the two thousand men ; on which galley the princess would take passage. The fleet was bound to reach Dumbarton in May. And so on. Nothing obviously could be done without the assent of the French king. The envoys resolved that two of them should undertake this additional journey, and go A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D. 1435. 41 back to La Rochelle. Kennedy and Aymeri Martineau were appointed to do this. Regnault Girard considered that he had better stay ; but his son Joachim went, also Dragance, pursuivant of Scotland, and the four thus departed on Shrove Monday, 1435. Left alone in Scotland, " which was not without great regret and sorrow " on his part, Regnault Girard established his quarters at Stirling, where the Princess Margaret mostly lived, and having there nothing to do but to wait for the return of his companions, he found the time very long and the winter very dull. James perceived it, and advised the ambassador not to stay at home so much, but to go about and see the country. He provided Girard with people to accompany him, and the French envoy began to visit ** several among the good towns of the kingdom, to spend time, and place himself out of the reach of ennui." Girard went thus to Dundee, '' where he was greatly feasted by the burgesses," to St. Andrews, where he was handsomely received by the bishop and the prior of the place, and where he had also some intercourse with " those of the university,'' and to " several other towns and abbeys.'* He was everywhere welcomed. *' To speak truth, in all the places where I went, I was most honourably treated, for the sake of the King of France, and the greatest civilities were shown me as well by churchmen and 42 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN. nobles as by the common people, and they all evinced so much good will in all that concerned the King of France, that I had an impression that nowhere could be found more loyal Frenchmen.'' Time thus passed ; the appointed date for the coming of the fleet was drawing near, and there was no news of the travellers. Girard then asked King James to take into account the unavoidable impedi- ments which must have stopped them on their way, such as the lack of wind, and to agree that the delay for the coming of the ships might be increased. James had only pleasure in agreeing ; and the date of the 20th of September, instead of the end of May, was accepted by him. In the course of the summer Aymeri Martineau, accompanied by Dragance, the pursuivant of Scotland, came back at last, bringing news of the assent of Charles to several of the conditions proposed, and of his dissent concerning the rest. Somewhat later the other travellers, Kennedy and Joachim Girard, came back also ; they had taken passage on the fleet gathered together for the bringing home of the dauphiness, and the said fleet arrived within the delay newly granted by James, and anchored at Dumbarton on the I2th of September '' or thereabout." A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D, 1435- 43 IV. — The End of the Negotiation. Aymeri and Kennedy brought letters for Girard and for the King of Scotland. Charles expressed in them his satisfaction at the happy turn taken by the negotiation, congratulated his envoy upon his zeal and cleverness, expressed the joy he had felt on " hearing good news of the good health and prosperity of the King of Scotland, the queen, and their daughter." He agreed to send the navy for two thousand men ; Puver would fulfil his contract, and leave La Rochelle on the 15th of July with his ships ; France would provide bread, biscuit, salt, and wine; Scotland, meat, fish, butter, and cheese. Charles would do his best to secure the wished-for galley meant for the dauphiness. But no such galley could be found in France, and much less in Scotland ; for the art of shipbuilding was not yet a Scottish art, and the hammers were not at work, as they have been since, along the Clyde. Spain was (with Italy) the great shipbuilding country ; Charles had sent there special delegates ; but their success was greatly to be doubted, for war was raging " between the Kings of Castile and Arragon. Peace seems to be remote, and no ships, or almost none, are allowed to leave the kingdom of Castile."^ ^ For details concerning the Spanish galleys of that date, see Appendix. 44 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH PEN. Concerning the attendance of the young princess the views of Charles greatly differed from those of his " good brother '' James ; for the one wanted Margaret to become as French as possible, and the other wished her to remain as Scotch as could be. Girard was in- structed to do all in his power to lessen the number of people sent to stay with her, to reduce it to nothing if he could, or, at least, to not more than one or two women, and as many men : — " For so long as she will have with her people of her nation, she will not will- ingly learn French, nor adopt the manners of the French kingdom." As for a place of safety under the command of a Scottish officer, there was no need for it, for she would stay with the Queen of France, and be treated as if she were a *' carnal daughter " of the French House. Concerning the two thousand men of the escort, the King of France would not deprive his brother of such a valuable force, and they would be sent back to Scot- land as soon as the journey was finished. Charles felt the more at liberty to do so, as affairs had taken a better turn with him ; he had the pleasure to inform James that " his people had recovered the town and abbey of St. Denis, which stands near Paris, also the Pont Sainte-Maxence, upon the Oise river and the town of Rue on the Somme, to the great confusion A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D, 1435- 45 and diminution of his enemies and adversaries/' The Earl of Arundel had been routed, and it was to be hoped that, " by the help of God, the French party would perform great warlike exploits against their foes." The better to show the excellent state of the kingdom where the young princess would have soon to come and live, Charles added, na'ively enough, that he had sent a great many men-at-arms and crossbowmen to Normandy, and beyond the Oise river, to continue the war, " so that he had relieved his provinces of the men-at-arms, and others who wanted to stay and plunder there, by which the state of his people had been greatly improved." But a more satisfactory piece of information was supplied in a paragraph where Charles stated that " Messeigneurs the Duke de Bourbon, constable of France, the Count de Vendosme, the Chancellor de Harcourt, the Marshal de Lafayette," and others, to the number of a thousand horse or more, had gone " in very great state to the town of Arras," to treat there of peace with the English, in the presence of cardinals sent by the Pope. A sort of European con- gress, in fact, was meeting at Arras, one of the first on record ; and, whatever should be the outcome of the nego- tiation, Charles pledged himself to keep his brother of Scotland well informed of everything, and not to sign 46 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH PEN, any arrangement that could in any way slacken the bonds and impair the old-established alliance between France and Scotland. So wrote Charles le Victorieux on the 13th day of July^ 1435? when he was staying in his castle of Amboise, on the Loire. All those papers were communicated to James, then at Stirling. The ambassadors pointed out that the fleet was now ready, and that the time had come to fulfil the " appointments '' agreed upon. But neither James nor the queen could make up their minds to part yet with their daughter. James observed that the fleet had been very slow in coming, that " winter was very near, and that no marriage was allowed during that season between right-minded people.'' He added that the queen would never be persuaded to consent to it, that the danger from the sea was very great at this time of the year ; '* and that we knew full well in what peril we had been ourselves when we came to the land of Scotland.'' A sly smile accompanied doubtless the delivery of this last observa- tion. The ambassadors made counter observations, pro- duced other papers ; all proved of no avail. It was at length arranged that Margaret should spend one more winter in her native country, and that towards the March moon her father would trust her '* a I'aventure de Dieu." ^// A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D. 1435. 47 The fleet, therefore, remained idle at Dumbarton. The king, after some discussion, consented to pay the expenses of this prolonged stay, " no small matter, as it was to last about half a year." Months went on, very slowly in the estimation of the French ambassadors, only too quickly for the royal family of Scotland. The only event which happened in the interval, an has been noted by Girard, was an epidemic among fc^!A^^ op.^^ seamen of the fleet, of whom a great many died. ^^ \^aS> In February, 1436, towards Candlemas, the envoys ^" betook themselves to the town of '^ Sainct John Stom " — that is, Perth — to remind the king that " the month of March was now near,'' and that everything ought to be made ready for the journey. This time James had to consent and to prepare in earnest for the fulfilling of the treaty. A farewell banquet was offered by him to the ambassadors. They sat at the royal table ; the king was there and the queen too, *' sitting next him in a chair." It was decided that Girard would go to Dum- barton and see that the fleet were in order, while Kennedy would stay and assist in the choosing of the escort. The following day another ceremony took place, and a very touching one. The king and queen, the am- bassadors being present, ordered the young princess to be brought before them : ** They addressed to her 48 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN. several fine words, and memorable ones, reminding her of the honour done to them by the King of France, and of the honour of the prince whom she was to marry. They entreated her to behave well, and God knows the tears which were shed on both sides, while this was going on/' The audience having come to an end, the ambassadors took their leave, and the poor father, not knowing how to make Margaret dearer to the French envoy, *' for the sake of his brother the King of France, ordered me, Regnault Girard, to kiss the queen, and the queen kindly and gracefully consented, and kissed me : which kiss I re- pute the greatest honour ever bestowed upon me. We left thereupon.'' The day after, fine gifts were sent by James to the house where the ambassadors lodged, and " speaking of this we must not forget that from the day we met him in his town of Edinburgh in the realm of Scotland, which was the 25 th of January, 1435, ^^ vvxre defrayed by him of all our ordinary expenses, wheresoever we went." Girard and his son, as well as Aymeri Martineau, left Perth on the 15th of February, 1436, and went to the ships to consult with the seamen. They saw that all would be got ready for the first tides of the March moon, and in order the better to attend to the business, A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D. 1435. 49 honest Regnault Girard, bad sailor as he was, went on board at once and there remained : " and I kept the sea for fifteen days before the king came, and I felt great discomforts." While he was thus tossing on the water a ship came from France, with goods to enable him to offer in his turn presents to the Scotch king. Whatever may have been the gifts of James, the ambassadorial ones were of primaeval simplicity. They consisted first of a gentle mule — '-' ung mullet bien gent '' — whom " I had ordered by the advice of Monseigneur de Vendosme, who had spoken to me about it when I took the sea, for he had seen the mule himself at La Rochelle. This mule I caused to be off^ered to the King of Scotland ; and he received it with great joy, and it was considered a very strange animal, for there are none in that country. As for the queen, I caused her to be pre- sented with three casks full of fruit, such as pears, apples, chestnuts, and others, and with six casks of wine ; and she was very happy to have them, for there is very little fruit in Scotland." V. — The Homeward Journey. At last, at the beginning of March, the army as well as the fleet being ready, the king came with the dauphi- ness to Dumbarton, and with the noblemen who were 4 50 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN, to accompany her, such as the Bishop of Brechin, the Count *' Derquenay '' — that is, the Earl of Orkney — and other gentlemen whose names are equally trans- formed by the pen of Girard. One last thing James would do before trusting Margaret '' a Taventure de Dieu,'* and in this his fatherly anxieties appeared again. '^One day the king came to see the ships, and he wanted to have a trial of them, and he ordered them to sail, so that he might ascertain which of them was fastest and best appointed to carry our said lady. And he found me there, on the ships, and he treated me wonderfully well and honourably." A sort of race was thus run in the presence of James, and it turned out that the swiftest ship was the one belonging to Peter Chepye (Percipey as he is called by Bower, whose narrative closely agrees on many points with Girard's). '* It was a new one and an excellent sailer, and had been built in the kingdom of Spain ; it was agreed that our whaler would constantly keep by the said ship, to help and protect our lady in case of need. Of which whaler my son Joachim Girard had command.'' James having thus arranged matters and left the ships, '' the masters of the same were not at all pleased with the arrangements taken by him, and they began to discuss the question noisily among themselves. They came to me, and said that in all the fleet there was but A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D. 1435. 51 one Spanish ship, and that all the rest hailed from France and Brittany ; that it would put to shame all the masters of those ships to suffer that our lady the dauphiness took passage on the ship of Peter Chepye, that they would not allow it for any consideration, that they would fight Chepye as soon as they were in the open sea, whatever be the decision of the King of Scotland, and that the said Chepye would not have the honour of carrying their mistress, Madame la Dauphine." An additional danger of an unexpected sort was thus threatening the princess, and who knows what might have happened if the impending fight had taken place ? Regnault Girard displayed again in this occurrence the resources of his diplomatic mind ; he tried his best to pacify the seamen, he spoke soothing words, and as these would not suffice — " for sailors are very difficult to manage, and they magnify things to a wonder " — he promised them that as soon as they should be out of view of the Scottish coast he would put the princess into the whaler, " and thus the French fleet would have the honour of carrying her, and by this means I pacified them." On the 27th of March the king came for the last time. He had his daughter with him. He saw her on board the ship of Peter Chepye, ordered Girard and 52 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH PEN. Aymeri Martineau to take passage with her ; the Earl of Orkney, the Bishop of Brechin, and other noble- men, and a number of chosen archers came into the same boat. Hugh Kennedy was in command of one of the warships called Saint-Gille, The officers, soldiers, and archers of the escort went on board their respective ships. Everything being thus arranged, and no cause or pretext remaining for a more prolonged stay, the poor father had to take his leave ; " the king did not stay long, but went away weeping many tears, for the sorrow of his leaving our lady the dauphiness his daughter." The fleet weighed anchor ; the number of warships was eleven, containing about one thousand or twelve hundred men, all of them chosen Scottish soldiers, without speaking of the sailors manning the fleet, who were French. The weather was favourable for one day and night, then contrary winds arose, and, in- structed by experience, and not at all desirous to risk the worst, the ambassadors ordered the fleet to go back, and they stopped for a little while in a harbour of Scotland. Then the wind turned, and they put to sea again, and they had fine weather during all the rest of the passage, '' thanks be to God, and we came in view of La Palice, not far from La Rochelle, on the 17th of April ; and on the following day we reached Chef- A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D, 1435. 53 de-Baye, at a distance of about one league from the said town." The intention had been to have the city of La Rochelle prepared and adorned against the coming of the princess. Margaret would remain in her ship — which ship it was, whether Peter Chepye's or the whaler, we do not know — till the town was ready. But a tempest interfered with the ceremonial ; it was so sudden and terrific that the boat carrying Margaret had to be conveyed without any delay to the inner harbour of the town ; the other ships did for the best, and drew near the great tower with the chain (still in existence — we give a view of it) ; but in so doing, one of the ships, built in Brittany, " was greatly wounded." On that day " our lady was not shown to the people, because it was late and the town was not decorated." The day after, at early dawn, before she could be seen by any one, she was taken to a neighbouring abbey, and there waited till the Rochelle people had had time so to adorn their town that a princess might decently make an entry into it. She received in the meanwhile the visit of several great men sent by the king to conpjratulate her upon her coming ; among them was the chancellor of the kingdom, this same Regnault de Chartres, archbishop- 54 ENGLISH ESSAYS EROM A ERENCH PEN. duke of Reims, who had gone nine years before to Scotland to ask for the hand of the same Margaret. On the loth of May, 1436, all was at last ready, and Margaret, retracing her steps, went back to La Rochelle, accompanied by a splendid retinue of Scottish men-at-arms, French noblemen of the region, special envoys of the king, &c. She was welcomed by the mayor and the guilds ; a little further on by the ladies and burgesses, and then " she received a fine present of silver plate, which she greatly liked, as it was the first she received in this kingdom." Then she went to Niort, where she was compli- mented by the Lady Perrette de la Riviere, dame de la Roche Guyon, first lady of honour to the queen, and by Blanche de Gamaches, dame de Chastillon, another lady of honour ; she passed other towns where she was received in great state and presented with fine gifts. At Poictiers brilliant festivities had been prepared for her ; the mayor and notables came out of the town to the distance of more than one league; after this she was met by gentlemen belonging to the Court of Parliament, then by the doctors and students of the University, and by representatives of various dignified bodies. " While she was entering the town a child, disguised as an angel, was let down from the portal of the city, and placed a chapel (crown) on her head, A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D, 1435- 55 a thing which was most genteelly and craftily per- formed/' At the main crossings, according to the custom of the time, Margaret, whose thoughts were, perhaps, far away, lingering over the beloved remote places where her childhood was spent, had to admire a variety of allegorical personages, richly apparelled, and to listen to numerous complimentary addresses. While this was going on Girard went to Bourges, where the king was, to render account of all that had taken place, and receive instructions for the marriage. He was graciously treated by the king, who con- gratulated him upon the success of his embassy, and appointed that the marriage should take place at Tours, on the day after the feast of St. John the Baptist. All concerned met then at Tours. The king arrived on the morning of the nuptials, and, as the manners of the time allowed, went, in order to ascer- tain how his daughter-in-law looked, '' into her room while she was being dressed. He was greatly pleased with her person, and felt great joy at the sight." So says Regnault Girard, and well he might, as Margaret was, according to Mathieu d'Escouchy, *' beautiful and well shaped, and adorned with all the qualities befitting a noble and high lady." Soon after the princess, wearing the crown, was 56 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH FEN taken to the door of the church, and there she met and saw for the first time the prince who was to be her husband, according to the arrangements signed when she was three years old. Young Louis wore the royal garb, and was followed by the princes of the blood. The marriage was at once blessed and consecrated by the Archbishop of Reims. " Great was the feast,'* writes Regnault Girard, who abstains from giving any details. Not so great, however, for the town accounts have survived centuries and revolutions, and we still know exactly what the good men of Tours spent to welcome the Lady Dauphiness. They had had little time to get ready, and all they could do is commemo- rated in the following entries : — Firstly, to Robin Lebarbier, sent to Chinon and to Loudun, to try and find dresses for a play to be played on the joyful coming of my Lady the Dauphiness, for his expenses and the hiring of his horse ... ... ... 35 sols. To Richard Gaugain, for four old bed sheets, used to make three dresses for those who shall dance the morris before my lady... 15 sols. To Jean Avisart, tailor, who cut, sewed, and made the said dresses ... ... ... 15 sols. To Denis, the painter-glazier, for having A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D, 1435. 57 hastily and richly painted those dresses, and four beards for the same dancers ... ... 40 sols. To Gervaise Lechanteur, for twenty-seven dozens of bells, distributed among the said dancers and the taborer ... ... ... 30 sols. To the same, for the hiring of part of those bells, which were afterwards returned... 5 sols. To Andre Hacqueteau, saddler, who sewed on leather the said bells, for them to be placed on the hands and legs of the dancers 5s. 6d. To two women who had gathered flowers to make head-wreaths for the said men ... 2s. 6d. To Pierre Rossignol (nightingale) and his companions, minstrels, who sounded their horns in the hat market on the coming of my lady ... 10 sols. To four fellows who built a scaffold on the drawbridge of the bulwark of Our-Lady-the Rich, where the organs were. . . . To four fellows who brought there and back the said organs ... ... ... .,. ... 3s. 4d. To master Robert-the-Devil, one of the dancers, for his trouble, and for having ordained the said dance ; for having attended to the making and painting of the dresses, and for a pair of hose which he asserted to have burst while dancing ... ... ... ... 30 sols. 58 ENGLISH ESSAYS LROM A FRENCH PEN We shall stop here our quotations, not without some suspicion that master Robert-the-Devil who put forth such assertions, which the town accountant only half endorses, well deserved, maybe, his nickname. As for the others, the items concerning them give a clear idea of what took place, and we see how the inhabitants did their best, having so little time, to get up a play, tried to find ready-made dresses, failed, and had to be con- tent with a morris dance, the dancers being " richly and hastily " apparelled in dresses cut out of old bed sheets, and tinkling all over with their twenty-seven dozens of little bells sewed on their arms and legs. This sound was accompanied by the music of the church organ, brought out into the open air for the occasion. They carry flowers on their heads, they dance and jump, they make merry, and Robert-the- Devil distinguishes himself and bursts his hose, " as he asserts." The men from Scotland were handsomely treated ; they received '' fine gifts " which remain nondescript in the " Relation " of Girard, now drawing to its close. A few of her compatriots were allowed to stay with Margaret. Regnault Girard was appropriately ap- pointed her first master of the hostel, and Joachim the esquire of her stables. '' And thus came to an end the embassy sent to A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D, 1435- 59 fetch from the kingdom of Scotland our most redoubted and mighty lady, Margaret, eldest daughter of the king of the kingdom of Scotland, Dauphiness of Viennois — Thus signed : Regnault — Hue Crenedi — Aymeri Mar- tineau." VI. — The End. Festive days passed. The daughter of the Stuarts was not long in discovering the sort of man she had been married to. Beautiful and kind, bred at the fire- side of a loving father and mother, endowed herself with a loving nature, fond of art and poetry, she found herself tied for life to a man without a heart, who never cared for father, mother, or wife, and whose only interest in life was political ambition. The his- torian Commines has thus summed up his opinion con- cerning the tastes and inclinations of his hero : '* He was very fond of falcons, but not quite so much as he was of dogs. As for ladies, he never cared for them." Poor Margaret, deserted by her husband, tried to find some alleviation to her sorrows, and used the means which had been the resource of her father many years before, when he was a captive in England. She read books and wrote poetry. But she could not forget her grief ; gnawing thoughts preyed upon her ; vile calumnies brought her to the verge of 6o ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN despair. She could no longer rest nor sleep, but sat on her bed, musing, regretting the dear, far-off mother- country. *' Were it not for my pledged word,'' she said once, '' I would fain regret having ever left Scotland." The king and queen loved her dearly, and did all they could to soothe her. They lived with her as much as possible ; they tried to amuse her ; they said that she should not '' merencolier " herself so. The king once inquired why she looked so pale ; a friend of Louis hastened to answer that the cause was that she overworked herself "She would,'* he said, "write roundels, and busy herself so much with such work, that she would write as many as twelve in a day ; a thing which is most unwholesome for her." "What!" said the king, "does such writing give headaches } " " Yes," answered Jean Bureau, who happened to be there, " to those who overdo it, though such things are only trifles." Years went on, Louis forsook her more and more, she looked paler and paler ; she was fading away. She died at Chalons on the i6th of August, 1445, a heartbroken, childless wife, being then only twenty.^ ^ The author of the " Liber Pluscardensis " (ed. Skene, Edin- burgh, 1877-80, vol. i. p. 382; ii. p. 288), who was with her in A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND A.D, 1435. 61 And this was the real end of " the embassy sent to fetch from the kingdom of Scotland our most redoubted and mighty lady, Margaret, daughter of the king of the kingdom of Scotland, Dauphiness of Viennois/' France, thus concludes his notice of her : *' Here follows her epitaph which was placed upon her tomb after her death, in the French tongue ; only it is here translated into the Scottish tongue, by command of that Lady's brother, King James II., ot famous memory : " He michti makar of the major munde, Quhilk reuly rollis thir hevinly regionis rownd About this erd, be mocioune circuler, Ger all the cloudis of the hevin habound, And souk vp all thir watteris hal and sounde, Baith of salt sey, of burne, well and revere ; Syn to discende in tygglande teris tere. To weip with me this wofull waymentyng, This petwys playnt of a princes but peire, Quhilk dulfull Deed has tane till his duelling." [etc.] Another daughter of James, Isabel, spent her life in France, having married the Duke of Brittany. Her Book of Hours was recently purchased by the National Library, Paris (Nouvelles acquisitions, 588). Her portrait is to be seen at fol. 33. III. PAUL SCARRON, I. — The Cripple. GREAT things were done in the days of the Grand Roi. Mighty efForts were made to rule an un- ruly kingdom, the France of the League and the Fronde. Battles were won (some it is true were lost) ; tragedies were written, porticoes were built ; Nature herself had to submit to the sway of the monarch, and trees rose '* en charmilles," at Versailles and elsewhere. Let us not believe, however, that only porticoes were built in France at that time, that only tragedies were written, obeying the stern rules of the three unities, and that no novels were published but the huge com- positions of Madeleine de Scudery, telling the wonder- ful exploits of the Grand Cyrus. Not all trees, in fact, were cut according to pattern ; all plays did not obey the three rules ; men were found who did not wear a 62 PAUL SCARRON. 63 wig : so difficult it is to establish order in a country. Novels even were written, containing accurate pictures of plain everyday life. Three at least can be named. One is by Madame de La Fayette, who gave in her '' Princesse de Cleves," 1678, an inimitable picture of court society ; another is the work of Furetiere, whose '* Roman Bourgeois'' is an excellent description of middle-class life in 1666 ; the third and earliest in date, the most curious of the three, is the '' Roman Comique," 165 1, of Scarron, who chose the difficult task of depict- ing provincial France. Paul Scarron was the son of a " conseiller au ment," and was born in Paris in 16 10. Paul Sca^ the father, was a man of importance and belonged to a good family with aristocratic alliances. When contem- poraries (Mathieu Mole, for one) allude to the presence or sayings of councillors, they usually name him among those to be noticed. He was even exiled by order of Louis XIII.,' so much attention was paid to his doings. He was a whimsical man, nicknamed '^ the Apostle '' by * "Le Lundi 30 Janvricr [1640] j'ai prcscntc a la cour dcs lettrcs dc jussion du roi sur Ic rcfus dc verification par Ic Parlc- mcnt dc I'cdit dc creation dc seize Maitros dcs requetcs. . . . L'cdit a encore etc refuse. . . . M. Scarron [cut commandment] de s*en aller en sa maison vers Blois.'' " Memoires de Mathieu Mole" (Socictc dc I'Histoire de France), ii. p. 475. Cf. Bassom- pierre's "Memoires" (p. by the same Society), iv. p. 328 64 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH PEN Prince de Conde on account of his constant reading of the Epistles of St. Paul his patron. He was a passionate admirer of Ronsard and could never forgive his son who preferred Malherbe. The poet's mother died when he was still young, and, his father having re-married, family life, instead of being thus renewed, turned out to be definitively broken for the future poet. When he reached the age of man he began on his own account, and for the sake of his sisters, a long war with his step- mother, a rapacious and tyrannical woman. The war, initiated at home in his father's time, was continued long after, and had for its seat sometimes the courts of law and sometimes the booksellers' shops in the " Galeries du Palais.'* No good came out of it for any one, both parties finding themselves when it was finished sore and bruised and the poorer for it. Scarron was first destined to the Church and was, from 1633, ^"^^ many years, known as Tabbe Scarron. At this time he resided at Le Mans, in the house of the bishop, Monseigneur Charles de Beaumanoir, leading, however, no exemplary life, mixing with the gayest com- pany, associating with players — in fact, preparing him- self much more to write of TEtoile and Destin than to become a Church dignitary. He was then gaiety itself, lithe and active. He wrote agreeable verses, was a good dancer, played on the lute, and was an amateur painter PAUL SCARRON. 65 of skill. At all the neighbouring chateaux, especially among the Lavardin and Tesse families, he was a wel- come guest. In 1635 Monseigneur de Beaumanoir had to go to Rome and did not fail to take there with him the lively abbe, who was sure to prove a very acceptable travelling companion. In Rome Scarron improved his acquaint- ance with painting and painters. Players and painters were ever among his best friends. He met there his famous compatriots, Nicolas Poussin and Pierre Mign- ard, and he began with them an intercourse which lasted through life. It was one of the peculiarities of his mind : with all his love of the grotesque and the burlesque, he had in his heart a veneration for higher things ; he felt and understood them. His admiration for the austere genius of Poussin was boundless. In the same way as the Grand Roi, though being the Grand Roi, would enjoy " Pourceaugnac," the first representa- tion of which was reserved for his applause, so Scarron, though being Scarron, had a passion for the author of *' Les Bergers d'Arcadie," now in the Louvre, as well as for the classical poetry of Malherbe. Those con- tradictory tastes were frequent at that time ; people were not so stiff and one-sided as they are sometimes supposed to have been ; real birds are known to have perched on the yew-trees at Versailles. 5 66 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN In the case of Poussin, however, Scarron's passion got only a poor return. Nothing is more curious and characteristic of the man than the circumlocutions and precautions to which kindly, modest Poussin resorted in order to avoid expressing too sharply the feelings that he entertained towards the author of the '^ Virgile Travesti." He, for one, had no contradictory tastes, and could not be induced to deride what he at the same time adored. This Scarron could do ; for all the travesty he put on the shoulders of Virgil, he none the less at bottom adored him, as everybody did in his day. His work was a joke, and he wanted his readers to take it as nothing more than a gaminerie. He knew full well, and was ready to agree, that if it was to be considered in any other light, it could not but appear sacrilegious. " Mon tres Reverend Pere/' he wrote once to a reverend father in the Church, '* I have heard from you that Father Vavasseur has written against burlesque style. . . . As I am in a way the cause of the country having been flooded by works in that style. Father Vavasseur might as well have called me to account on that score. Those who believe I should have been angry do not understand me." ^ Poussin ^ "Vous m'avez appris que le Pere Vavasseur avait ecrit contre le style burlesque. II a bien fait. . . . Puisque je suis cause en quelque fa9on du grand debordement qui s'en est fait, le Pere PAUL SCAR RON. 67 was among those who "did not understand'* Scarron ; in the eyes of the painter the burlesque poet was nothing else than a " new Erostrates/' Each mis- took the other's temper. Scarron thought he would be of service to Poussin in making him laugh, and he never forgot to send him any new book of his which he considered a laughable one. Poussin, in his turn, being asked by Scarron for a picture would paint a bacchanal, but Scarron preferred to obtain from the high-minded artist something in his highest style and he insisted upon Poussin painting for him a " Ravisse- ment de Saint Paul." Poor Poussin was wont then to open his heart to his friend, M. de Chantelou, to whom he would write in this strain : '' I have received from the master of the French post a ridiculous book con- taining the facetiae of M. Scarron. ... I perused the book once and will not open it again ; you will pardon me if I do not express to you in full the deep disgust I feel for such works.*' ^ Vavasscur n'aurait pcut-ctre pas mal fait dc s'cn prendre a moi. Ceux qui vous ont dit que j'cn ctais en colt^re contrc lui ne me connaissent pas." '* Les Dernii^res CEuvrcs de M. Scarron," Paris, 174.0 (first edition, 1663), 2 vols, izmo, i. p. 181. * "J'ai re9u du maitre de la postc de France un livre ridicule dcs faccties dc M. Scarron. . . . J'ai parcouru ce livre une seule fois ct c'est pour toujours : vous trouverez bon que je ne vous exprime pas tout le dcgoQt que j'ai pour de parcils ouvrages." Rome, February 4, 1647. "Collection dcs Lcttres de Nicolas Poussin," Paris, 1824, 8vo, p. 256. 68 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN, The next year Scarron sends to Poussin his " Typhon '' and " threatens " him with his '' Virgile Travesti'' ; upon which the painter writes again sorrowfully to his friend : " I had already written to M. Scarron, in answer to the letter which I got from him with his ' Typhon ' in burlesque style; but the one I have just received with yours is for me a new cause of trouble. I wish he would desist and end by liking my paintings as little as I like his burlesque. I am sorry he took the trouble to send me his work ; but the worst of all is that he threatens me with a travestied Virgil of his own, and with an epistle directed to me, which he means to print in the next book he publishes. He aims, he says, at making me laugh as heartily as he does himself, cripple as he is ; but on the contrary I am near weeping when I think a new Erostrates has been born in our country. I tell you this in confidence ; do not let him know. I shall write to him in a different strain, and try to please him, at least in words.'' January 12, 1648.^ The next year we find Poussin at work on a ''sujet bachique pour M. Scarron." But Scarron never received it, as it seems ; he got another instead, painted to his order : ''I shall be able to send at the same time to M. I'abbe Scarron the picture I painted for him of the ' Ravissement ' of St. Paul. You will see it, and will ^ P. 282. . PAUL SCARRON. 69 be so good as to tell me your sentiment about it." Everybody is now able to see it and to express his " sentiment about it," for the picture is in the Louvre and was long in no less a place than the *' Salon Carre " itself. I It is the more interesting as it shows the great influence Domenichino had on Poussin : the admira- tion of the Frenchman for the Italian is well known ; in this particular case Poussin seems to have taken his inspiration direct from his master, whose picture repre- senting the same subject of St. Paul carried to heaven by angels is also in the Louvre. Scarron had come back to France in 1636, and had been put in possession of a canonry at Le Mans, where he seems to have resumed his former gay life. But the time had arrived when it was to be stopped. Not long after his return began that strange disease which baffled all attempts to cure or even explain it. It was a progressive malady which got possession of him little by little, attacking his feet, then his legs, then his arms and afterwards his fingers ; he became a_ paralytic and a cripple, as helpless as he had been agile before ; he lost sleep and sufi^ered strange flashes of pain, the usual ac- companiment of diseases of the spine. His sufl^erings ' Sec a reproduction of it in " The Comical Romance and other Tales by Paul Scarron," London, Lawrence and Bullen, 1892, vol i. p. viii. 70 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH PEN increased as he grew older ; towards the end he could scarcely write. *' The extreme tip of my fingers/' he said, " is the place of abode of a legion of black devils/' " De mes cinq doigts Textreme region De demons noirs loge une legion." ' " Pour moi/' he wrote on another occasion to the Comte de Vivonne, *^ I am constantly getting worse, and I feel I am gliding towards my end at a quicker pace than I should like ; I have a thousand pains, or rather a thousand legions of devils in my arms and legs/' 2 For a long time he could not patiently submit to what was then an almost unexampled fate ; some- times he tried remedies, and sometimes he thought of suicide : ^' When I think," he wrote to Marigny, '' that my mind is not weak, that I have neither ambition nor avarice, and that, if the powers above had left me the use of legs which used to dance pretty well and of hands which knew how to paint and play the lute, the use, in a word, of a very agile body, I might have led a happy though rather obscure life, I assure you, my dear friend, that were it allowed me to get rid of my own existence I should have poisoned myself long ago." 3 He tried the waters, experimented with strange pills ^ "Dernieres CEuvres," p. 240. Epistre a M. Pellisson. 2 June 12, 1660 (shortly before his death), "Dernieres CEuvres," i. p. 55. 3 Ibid.^ p. 61. PAUL SCARRON. 71 and queer baths ; but with no effect. In 1641 and 1642 he underwent a cure at Bourbon, and there found him- self the king of the sick : — " Many people have I seen, ugly and pretty, good and wicked, wealthy and poor, tall and short, all of them more or less disabled, but I can safely say, and without self-conceit, that there I was in my own kingdom ; and that everybody paid homage to me as being sick above them all. All their diseases put together are trifling when compared to mine. My body is no longer a human body ; my skin is a sort of dry vellum, a sieve through which my bones are cutting holes." " Certcs, j'ai vu maintes personnes, Laidcs, belles, mauvaises, bonnes, Pauvres, riches, petits et grands Et tous assez mal se portans : Mais sans vanitc je puis dire Que la j'etais dans mon empire, Et que tous m'y portaicnt honncur Comme a leur malade majcur. Aussi tous leurs maux joints ensemble Prcs dcs miens sont peu ce me semble. Mon corps n*est plus un corps humain ; Sa peau n'est qu'un sec parchemin Dont mes os veulcnt fairc un crible." ^ This kingship he retained all his life, and so sure was he after a while that he would not be dispossessed ^ " Secondc Lcgendc de Bourbon." **CEuvres," 1786, 7 vol. 8vo, vii. p. 13. 72 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROAl A ERENCH PEN. of it that he received only with laughter the news of the coming of a certain Spanish paralytic to make ''assaut de reputation" against him.^ The mystery of this strange disease has been recently explained. The eminent surgeon, Professor Lanne- longue, whom I consulted about Scarron, kindly wrote to me as follows : — " Not another day must I put off the poor fellow who has been unable for two hundred years to find some proper information concerning his disease. My diagnosis will be the more useful as it will wash his memory from a charge brought against him by his contemporaries.^ The least informed are often the worst accusers. Scarron seems to me to have suffered from a tuberculous affection of the vertebras, what we now call Pott's disease. At the time of life when he was seized with it — that is, when he had reached maturity — this disease assumes usually an insidious cha- racter ; it is slowly progressive, and leads to paralysis, and to a contraction of the muscles, distorting the limbs of the sufferer in the way you have described to me. Shootings of pain are another important symptom of the malady. Scarron must have died m^rasmatic, though keeping his intelligence unimpaired'' (Valmont, September 30, 189 1). ^ Letter to Marigny, "Dernieres CEuvres," ut supra .^ p. 62. 2 See Tallemant's " Historiette " concerning "le petit Scarron." PAUL SCARRON. 73 Scarron was now settled in Paris, in the Quartier du Marais, not far from the Place Royale where Ninon de Lenclos lived, and Madame de Sevigne had been born, and many people with a name in the annals of literature and fashion had established themselves. It has greatly altered since. Compared with the Luxembourg or the Pare Monceau, with their wealth of flowers and the rich foliage of their trees, the square in the Place Royale, now called Place des Vosges, with its meagre plants and thin trees, with its noisy children and dusty benches, with its dogs and cats, seems to-day a bit of " province " transplanted into the middle of the capital. After a while Scarron had to leave what was then a very elegant quarter and go beyond the water to the Faubourg St, Germain, there to try a new remedy. It was one of those extraordinary panaceas meant to heal any disease, and such as the fertile mind of the Purgons and Diafoirus of the time, not yet broken by their arch-enemy Moliere, was wont to invent. Of which panacea and journey to the " rive gauche " thus writes the poor poet : '' Good-bye, fine Quartier du Marais. With many regrets I have to leave you for a while at the call of a pressing necessity. I am going to the Faubourg St. Germain, to dip that dry vellum my skin into a bath said to be the best thing to cure 74 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN, the pains which make me howl. ... I must go, not on my legs, for my feet are of no use to me, and bathe myself in a gutter, for gutter may I well call the bath prepared for me, as it is a bath of guts." ^ And then he says good-bye to all his friends one by one: Adieu, "Lady who art everybody's talk, charm- ing Ninon, beautiful Ninon. Adieu, ditto, beautiful de Lorme " : "Fiile dont park tout le monde, Charmant esprit, belle Ninon ... Item adieu belle de Lorme ; " Adieu to this one and adieu to that other.^ While he is carried on his chair over the bridge he looks from the windows : " From the chair in which I am carried, ^ " Adieu, beau quartier du Marets ! C'est avecque mille regrets Qu'une tres pressante besoigne Pour quelque temps de vous m'eloigne. Je vais au faubourg St. Germain Tremper mon tres sec parchemin Dans un bain qu'on tient salutaire A la douleur qui me fait braire. . . . Je veux aller, non de mon pas, Car des pieds j'ai perdu I'usage, Me baigner dans un tripotage : Car tripotage appeler puis Le bain auquel destine suis Puis qu'il est compose de tripes." 2 *' Adieux aux Marais," " CEuvres," vii. p. 29. PAUL SCARRON, 75 how many people I see walking ! What would I not give to be able to walk too ! '' " Que de la chaise qui me porte J'aper^ois de gens cheminer ! Helas ! que me faut-il donner Pour pouvoir marcher de la sorte ? " ' But, alas ! he was not destined to walk any more ; the " bain de tripes " proved of no avail ; he had to dream of other inventions and began studying Raymond Lulle. Send me, he writes to a friend, "all you will be able to find by Raymond Lulle ; I will return you the money when you come to Paris. ... I have been worse than ever during the last fortnight and I trust in nothing but in potable gold.'' 2 Chemists and alchemists equally failed, and we find one day poor Scarron confessing that the only thing which did him any real good was — to swear ! In this he had such faith (and experience) that he went the length of recommending it to his friends in trouble as a most efficacious and at all events accessible remedy. '' I swear, without pride, as well as any one in France, and I believe that if his Highness would condescend to ^ "Le Chcmin du Marais au faubourg St. Germain," " CEuvrcs,'* vii. p. 233. * "Dernicrcs CEuvres," i. p. 50. Concerning this friend, sec below, p. 96. 76 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN swear sometimes like a man it would do him no harm. ... As for me, I am sometimes in such a passion that if all the devils were willing to come and fetch me, I think I would go half way to meet them.^i Scarron had now taken apartments in the " Hotel de Troyes/' Rue d'Enfer, not far from the Luxembourg.^ He had furnished his rooms with taste and in a costly fashion. Some parts of his person had not been dis- abled by the malady, and he tried to avail himself of those and to live an acceptable, though fragmentary, sort of a life. His stomach remained good, and his friends supplied him with wine from the country, cheeses, tarts, and pasties. What, however, he did enjoy most and above everything was the unimpeded agility of his mind. His ideas remained clear, his wit kept all its sharpness, his temper all its gaiety. Broken as he was in his body, sleepless and a constant sufferer, he was always ready for a joke, the equal of any one in conversation, so gay, so pleasant, so good-humoured, that all Paris flocked to his rooms to see the wonder, ^ "Derni^res CEuvres," i. p.. 63. 2 Concerning the various places of abode of Scarron, see A. de Boislisle's "Paul Scarron et Fran9oise d'Aubigne," a reprint from the "Revue des Questions Historiques," Paris, 1894, pp. 31 seq. Concerning especially the Hotel de Troyes, see pp. 34 and 179. PAUL SCARRON. 77 and to amuse the poor fellow and be amused by him. There is scarcely any other example of so much acute pain so lightly borne, with such an ease indeed that not only did he make his company bearable — which is the most disabled people usually can do — but sought for and enjoyed. Men and women of fashion, marechaux de France and precieuses, men of letters and men of the sword, players and painters, were seen from day to day in his apartment. They came, and what they saw Scarron himself has described. It was then the fashion to write portraits ; Madame de La Fayette drew some. Mademoiselle de Scudery many ; there are constant allusions to them in Madame de Sevigne's letters. Here is the portrait of Scarron drawn by himself in the year 1648 : '' Reader, who have never seen me, and possibly do not want to, for there can be no great pleasure in seeing a creature made as I am, be sure that I would not much like you to see me, had I not heard that certain facetious wits are making jokes at my expense, and give unfaithful descriptions of how I am built. Some pretend that I am a cripple sitting in a wooden bowl, others that I have no thighs, and that people put me into a sheath, and on a table, where I chatter like a magpie ; and others assert that my hat hangs to a rope by which I raise or lower it to welcome visitors. I 78 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN think I am bound in conscience to prevent them lying any longer : and with this object I had the plate made which you see in front of my book.^ You will grumble, doubtless ; I grumble too when I am a reader ; you will grumble, I say, and find fault, because I show myself only from behind. It is not, I protest, because I want to turn my back upon the company, but merely because the roundness of my back is better fitted to receive an inscription than the hollow of my stomach ; the same being, besides, partly concealed by my leaning head. . . . Without pretending that I should by this means have bestowed any great gift upon the public (for, by our ladies the Nine Sisters, I never hoped that my head might be used as a model for a medal), I should have willingly ordered my portrait to be painted, but no painter could be expected to attempt such a task. Failing a picture I shall tell you how I am made. " I am now over thirty, as you see on the back of my chair. 2 If I reach forty, I shall add many sufferings ^ See a reproduction of it in " The Comical Romance, and other Tales by Paul Scarron." London, Lawrence and Bullen, 1892, vol. ii. 2 He was much older, as he was writing in 1648, having been born in 1610. Some biographers' supposition that Delia Bella's engraving used as a frontispiece to Scarron's volume was made in 1 64 1 cannot be admitted, for the plate was meant to adorn a poem on the death of Voiture, which took place in 1648. Besides what PAUL SCARRON, 79 to those I have borne for the last eight or nine years. Though not tall, I had formerly a rather good figure ; disease has made it now shorter by a foot. My head is a little large for my height . . . my sight is pretty good though my eyes be big ones ; they are blue . . . my teeth, square pearls in former years, have now a wooden colour, and will soon be slate-coloured . . . my legs and thighs made at first an obtuse angle, then a right angle ; now they make an acute one ; my body and thighs make another, and as my head leans over my stomach I am very like a Z. My arms have been shortened as well as my legs ; and my fingers as well as my arms ; in a word I present an abstract of all human miseries." Of his temper he writes with the same minute exactitude : " I was ever a little choleric, a little gourmandy and a little lazy. I often call my servant an ass, and soon after address him as monsieur, I hate nobody ; may I be similarly treated ! I am glad when I have money, and would be more glad if I had health. I am rather pleased when I have company ; I am not Scarron says here of the date when his disease began squares with the indication in *' Typhon," when he refers to it as having begun in 1638. If he had been only thirty-one when he wrote the lines above and referred to the plate, the date of his illness would be 1632 or 1633, which we know to be wrong, as he was able after that time to travel in Italy. 8o ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH FEN. displeased when I am alone ; I bear my sufferings rather patiently." i The plate he ordered as a frontispiece to a volume of his works in 1648 is a very curious one, and was drawn according to his own directions. Faithful to his tastes in artistic matters, he applied to a classical engraver to have it made, and it looks strange and queer among the grand landscapes, conventional trees and carefully drawn ruins which abound in the works of Delia Bella. People came in and talked. Scarron was one of the great talkers of his day ; I am, he said himself, " un des grands parleurs que je connaisse." 2 We need not inquire whether the sort of talk was of the freest ; the late abbe who still remembered his gay life of former days was not the man to stop the mouth of any visitor. All sorts of freedom and libertinage were allowed in the yellow-damask rooms ; certain subjects with which he could now busy himself only in thought constantly recurred, without which he asserted, " all conversation is sure to die before very long." 3 Poli- tical questions, religious questions, literary questions, ^ "La Relation veritable de tout ce qui s'est passe dans I'autre Monde au Combat des Parques et des Poetes sur la mort de Voiture." Paris, 1648, 4to. 2 " Dernieres CEuvres," i. p. 37. 3 To Vivonne, "Dernieres CEuvres," i. p. 198 PAUL SCARRON. 8i manners and fashions were discussed with an equally free mind. Retz was among the more devoted fre- quenters of Scarron's rooms and both spoke all that came into their head, " when he leaned beside me on my little yellow bed and discussed other topics than the Fronde ... I can pride myself upon having obliged him to set aside the gravity and haughtiness usually associated with the red hat." ^ They did not, however, forbear to speak also of the Fronde, and bitter sarcasms, epigrams, pungent jokes, at the expense of Mazarin, sprang by thousands during those stormy times from the " Hotel de Troyes," and supplied the Frondeurs with what proved not the least effectual of their ammunitions. A number of anonymous pamph- lets were for this cause attributed to Scarron ; one of them, the most scurrilous of all, "La Mazarinade" (March ii, 1651), was the cause of a persistent ill- will of the all-powerflil Cardinal towards the poet. Scarron protested and denied the pamphlet, but in vain. 2 If he was not the author of it he was the ^ To Fouquet, "Demi^rcs CEuvrcs," i. p. 104. 2 "Cent Quatrc Vers contre ceux qui font passer leurs Libelles difamatoires sous le nom d'autrui, par M. Scarron.'* Paris, Quinet, 165 1. Sec also his "Dernicrcs CEuvrcs," i. p. 202 : " Pendant les troubles dc la Rcgence, ma malhcureuse reputation a etc cause que tout ce qu'on a imprimc k Paris de bon et de m^chant a etc publid sous mon nom, et cct abus dure encore. . . ." 6 82 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN, inspirer of many such, as was only too apparent from the number of mazarinades where ^' Scarron's muse " was called to the rescue. ^ On important occasions he had himself carried to other people's houses and paid a visit in person. He did it once for the Queen 'Mother, another time for Christina, the Queen of Sweden, several times for Ninon de Lenclos. From his visit to Anne of Austria he brought back the title of the Queens own "malade" and a pension, ^ and he was wont in after time to sign himself '' le malade de la Reine." He went to the Louvre again "pour contenter la curiosite'' of Christina, to whom he addressed several eulogistic letters and dedicated one of his comedies.3 As for Ninon he had himself carried to her house for the pleasure of ^ For example, in " Plaintes du Carnaval," February, 1649 : — " Approche toy muse falote, Chere maistresse de Scarron, Qui n*aimes pas I'air fanfaron Dont se chantent les funerailles Des heros morts dans les batailles." " Choix de Mazarinades," ed. C. Moreau. Paris, 1853, 2 vols. 8vo, vol. i. p. 268. Cf. " Bibliographie des Mazarinades," by the same, 1850, p. 206. 2 " Reine, de qui j'ai tous les ans. Cinq cents ecus beaux et pesans En bonne et loyale monnoie," &c. "CEuvres Burlesques de M. Scarron." Paris, 165 1, 4to, p. 75. 3 "Dernieres CEuvres," i. p. 23. PAUL SCARRON, 83 dining in company that recalled better days : " Je vous en dirai davantage demain," he writes to the Marquis de Villarceaux, " chez Mademoiselle de Lenclos, ou je me ferai porter a I'heure du diner/' ^ Ninon did not fail' to return the visits. Women of another stamp came also ; among them no less a person than Madame de Sevigne, to whom Scarron had written once, in his happiest vein : — '' Madam, I lived abstemiously to the best of my ability, in order to obey your command not to die before you had seen me. But, madam, with all my abstemiousness I feel each day I am dying of sheer desire to see you. Could you not at least alter the cause and means of my death? I should feel not a little beholden to you. All these deaths from love and longing are not natural to me, and are even less to my liking. If I have mourned on a hundred occasions people who died such deaths, think what I should do in my own case, especially when I hoped that I should die a natural death. But every one must submit to fate. . . . " Et du moins souvicns toi, crucllc, Si je meurs sans te voir, Que ce n'est pas ma faute. * "Derni^res CEuvrcs," i. pp. 22, 64. 84 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH PEN *' The rhyme is not very good, but at the hour of death we must think of dying, not of rhyming, well/' I Another very welcome guest of later years was Mignard the painter. Scarron had first met him in 1636 ; Mignard had since become famous : every- body at Court wanted to have his portrait painted by him, and the king had given the example. He had made at Avignon the acquaintance of Moliere, then a strolling player of very inconsiderable fame, and had struck a friendship with him. This friendship resulted in Mignard painting his portrait, the best portrait extant of the master-dramatist, and in Moliere writing his fine poem on '' la Gloire du Val de Grace," 1669, Mignard's most important work. As for Scarron he addressed copies of verses to *' Monsieur Mignard, le plus grand peintre de notre siecle,*' and sometimes, using a more homely and not less pleasant style, he asked him to dinner, giving him in advance the following inviting menu : — ''On Sunday, my friend, if you like, we shall have a good soup, followed by one or two ragouts, a joint, dessert and cheese. We will drink some excellent wine ; a bright fire in my rooms will take off the edge of the cold. We will . ^ "Dernieres CEuvres," i. p. 14. PAUL SCARRON. 85 have sweet wines, and compotes too with ambergris in them." I We shall say nothing of the grandees and men of the world who came to Scarron's house, in order just to have been there, and because it was the fashion, and who choked the street with their carriages. '' They flock/' says Scarron, " to my rooms as people used for- merly to flock and see the Elephant ; they come here and spend the afternoon when they have missed their appointments and have nothing else to do/' - To one of those grands seigneurs, this one a real friend, he playfully describes the state of his street when all the '' carriage people '' are away : " When you did me the honour to come and see me I prided myself very much upon it. Your carriage caused my little door to be venerated by every inhabitant of the Rue St. Louis, and more than one forte cochere envied its fate. The ^ " Dimanchc, Mignard, si tu vcux, Nous mangcrous un bon potage Suivi d*un ragodt ou dc deux, Dc roti, dessert et fromagc ; Nous boirons d'un vin excellent, Et contre le froid violent Nous aurons grand feu dans ma chambre ; Nous aurons des vins de liqueur, Dcs compotes avec de I'ambre." " Derniilires CEuvres," i. p. 251. » Ibid.^ p. 105. S6 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH PEN du Rincy carriage alone maintains in my neighbours a feeling of awe, but they will lose it at last if some gentlemen of the Court do not come back soon to Paris and uphold till your return our somewhat shaky repute/' ^ II. — The Husband. One day of the year 1650, when Scarron was in his apartment of the '' Hotel de Troyes," he received the visit of a person who could scarcely be described as a young lady and who was something more than a little girl. She wore a gown too short for her growth, and what with her gown, what with the peculiarities of the extraordinary being she was visiting, felt so much em- barrassment that, not knowing what to say, she concealed her face in her hands and wept. Six months later, Scarron was writing to her : '' Mademoiselle, I had always suspected that that little girl whom I saw six months ago, coming into my room, with too short a gown, and who began to weep, I scarcely know why, was as witty as she seemed to be. . . . But I should ' " Dernieres CEuvres," i. pp. 69, 70. To Marechal d'Albret, Oct. 13, 1659. The Rue St. Louis, now Rue de Turenne (corner of the Rue des Douze Portes, now Rue de Villehardouin), was the last place of abode of Scarron. His house still exists, almost untouched, and bears, according to M. de Boislisle's identification (ut supra, p. 66), the number 56. PAUL SCARRON, 87 never have imagined that either in the islands of America or at the convent of Niort the art of writing fine letters could be learnt ; and I do not understand for what reason you took as much trouble to conceal your wit as others take pains to display theirs.'' ^ This young person of fourteen was the daughter of Constant d'Aubigne, himself the rebellious son of the famous Huguenot, Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne, equally well known as a soldier and as a novelist, poet and historian. Constant d'Aubigne had obtained in 1645 a small appointment at Marie Galante, in the West Indies ; he went there with his wife and his children, Fran^oise (born at Niort in November, 1635) ^^^ Charles. He came back to France with his family in 1647, ^^d died the same year. His wife found herself in complete penury. The three lived for awhile upon the alms of the Jesuits' college at La Rochelle : *' the children came each in his turn every other day to re- ceive at the door a dish of meat and potage." 2 Fran- (joise, whose fate was to be more extraordinary than any heroine's in Scudery's novels, was shortly after entrusted to the care of her wealthy and avaricious godmother, Madame de Neuillan, who tried to ^ "Dcrnicrcs Qtuvrcs," i. p. 12. 2 GcfFroy, " Madame dc Maintcnon d'apr<^s sa correspondance.** Paris, 1887, 2 vols. 8vo, p. 3. 88 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN. persuade her out of her Protestant faith, and gave her as an occupation the keeping of turkeys. *' I well remember/* Fran^oise used to say many years later, " how my cousin and I, both of the same age, spent part of the day keeping my aunt's turkeys. They planted a mask on our noses to prevent the sun from burning our skin ; they set a small basket on our arm with our breakfast in it, and they gave us a little book containing Pibrac's quatrains, of which we had a few pages to learn every day. With this and a long pole in our hand we had to overlook the turkeys and prevent them going where they ought not." ^ Such were the beginnings in life of one who was destined to marry the King of France, after she had been for eight years the wife of crippled Scarron. She was converted to the Catholic faith through the exer- ^ GefFroy, " Madame de Maintenon d'apres sa correspondance," p. 3. Madame de Neuillan's ideas as to the education of girls was destined to obtain the uncraved-for applause of worthy Gorgibus, who thus advises his daughter : — " De quolibets d'amour votre tete est remplie, Et vous parlez de Dieu bien moins que de Clelie. Jetez moi dans le feu tous ces mechants ecrits Qui gatent tous les jours tant de jeunes esprits ; Lisez moi comme il faut, au lieu de ces sornettes, Les quatrains de Pibrac. . . . Touvrage est de valeur Et plein de beaux dictons a reciter par coeur." " Sganarelle," by Molier.e, sc. i, year 1660. PAUL SCARRON. 89 tions of the Ursulines at Niort, and then came with her mother to Paris, where a common friend made her acquainted with the poor poet. Still hoping for his cure, Scarron had heard with admiration of the wonders the climate of La Martinique could work ; it was an averred fact that M. de Poincy, who had arrived there disabled by gout, now rode, fenced, and had recovered the com- plete use of his limbs. From that day Scarron only dreamed of the West Indies, and gathered information about them. A company had been established to work the country round the Orinoco river ; he asso- ciated eagerly with it : "I have," he wrote to Sarrazin, " taken a share of a thousand ecus in the new company of the Indies which is going to establish a colony three degrees north of the equinoctial line, by the banks of the Orellana and Orinoco rivers. Adieu France, adieu Paris, adieu tigresses in angel plumage, adieu Menages, Sarrazins, and Marignys. I give up burlesque verses, comical romances and comedies, to go to a country where there will be neither false virtue, nor religious cheats, inquisition, sharp winter, nor fluxions to smother me, nor wars to famish me.'* ^ His intention was soon known and created quite a stir ; many deprecated his plan, verses were written about ^ '* Dernitircs CEuvrcs," i. p. 12. 90 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH PEN it. In his collection of epigrams ^ Fiiretiere has the following : " So, that famous paralytic, who crawled along with many a moan, is starting on a journey to America, like Vespucci or Magellan? He means to make discoveries, to people new harbours with mer- chants, scamps and navvies ? I wish I may die if he is not setting about the most burlesque of all his works." 2 ^ The first of which, called " La Feintc Rupture," is very pretty : — " Puisque tu veux que nous rompions Et reprenant chacun le notre Dc bonne foi nous nous rendions Ce que nous eumcs Tun de I'autre, Je veux avant tous mes bijoux Reprendre ces baisers si doux Queje te donnai a centaines ; Puis il ne tiendra pas a moi Que de ta part tu ne reprennes Tous ceux que j'ai re9us de toi. "Poesies Diverses," Paris, 1664, p. JJ. 2 « Done ce fameux paralytique Qui ne marchait qu'avec ahan Va voyager en I'Amerique Comme Vespuce ou Magellan. II veut faire des decouvertes Et va peupler de nouveaux ports Avec marchands, gueux et manoeuvres ! Je meure s'il ne fait alors La plus burlesque de ses ceuvres." Furetiere, ibid., p. 140. PAUL SCARRON. 91 This, "the most burlesque" of his undertakings, was not after all to be performed ; the journey, society, and project came to nothing mainly through the unexpected end of one of the originators of it. Abbe de Marivault, who, setting out from Paris to take ship at Havre, was drowned opposite the Cours-la-Reine. The plan, however, had for Scarron some lasting consequence ; while busy with it he had become ac- quainted with Fran^oise d'Aubigne, '' Bignette '' as she was then familiarly called, and had been charmed with her wit, youth and beauty. Kindly as he was, he tried to place her at least above want, and offered either, if she were so inclined, to pay her dot to a convent, or, if she preferred, to marry her. This last alternative the young girl, who had kept no very pleasant remembrance of the Ursulines at Niort, decided to choose, and two years after the acquaint- ance was made, in April, 1652, ^ Fran^oise d'Aubigne's first marriage took place. She was then sixteen and Scarron forty-two. This marriage proved very happy. Fran^oise tended the poor poet with great affection and care ; there is nothing but words of praise towards her in all Scarron's ^ Sec various deeds concerning this marriage, discovered and printed for the first time by M. de Boislisle, " Paul Scarron et Fran^oise d'Aubignd,'* 1894, pp. 53 fF. 92 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN correspondence. She was full of tact as well as of wit, and in the most difficult and bizarre situation managed to keep her dignity, and even give some shade of it to the household itself, i She was not then the rigid, untractable woman of later years ; the rigours of the Convent des UrsuHnes still weighed upon her mind ; she did not dream yet of a repeal of the Edict of Nantes. With perfect feminine sense she knew what she ought to exclude and what she could endure, and was respected as well as admired. " She impressed,'' her relative Madame de Caylus wrote in her '* Souvenirs,'' '' everybody in such a way that no one in her presence durst utter a word of indelicate suggestion, and one of those young men said: 'If I had to take liberties either with the Oueen or with Madame Scarron, I would not hesitate, I would rather take them with the Queen.' In Lent she would eat a herring at the end of the table and soon retire to her room." 2 ^ Another lady, Celeste de Harville-Palaiseau, whom Scarron had for a while housed, after she had been cast off by a lover, had tried, not without some success, to reform the tone of the place. In a letter to her Scarron expresses his thanks for having been delivered through her exertions "des mauvaises compagnies," of which he says "j'etais accable." But this reform was only tem- porary. — " Dernieres CEuvres," i. p. 22. 2 Ed. de Lescure, Paris, Janet,'p. 44. PAUL SCARRON. 93 Whether or not there was some exaggeration in this account, written long after, certain it is that it was not Lent all the year round, and she did not always retire so soon. The part she took in conver- sation delighted her husband, who, great connoisseur as he was in those matters, was not long to see that few could compete with his wife. He read his works to her, and she attempted, not without some degree of success, to get rid of what was too gross and licentious in them. " Madame de Maintenon," we read in " Segraisiana,'' ^ " who had no less wit than virtue, was of great use to Scarron, for he consulted her about his works and was much the better for her emenda- tions.'* Visitors became now more numerous than ever, and more than ever was the street (first the Rue d'Enfer, and later the Rue St. Louis, now Rue de Turenne in the Marais quarter 2) choked with carriages. *' The new bride," writes St. Simon, who is on other scores extremely hard and unjust to her, "delighted the different sort of people who called at Scarron s. He saw the best and most varied society. It was the fashion to visit him ; there came wits, men of the Court, and men of the town ; he saw in his house the best and the most distinguished people, upon whom he * " Scgraisiana," 1721, p. 114. '^ Sec above, p. %(). 94 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN, was unable to call himself, and who were ever drawn to him by the charms of his mind, his learning, his imagination, his matchless gaiety, which his sufferings could never dull, and that gift of invention and that jocosity which we still admire in his works." ^ In all those gatherings Fran^oise d'Aubigne had her word to say, be the subject of conversation literature or philosophy, religion or travels. We find her once enlightening a great friend of the house, Segrais, the collaborator of Madame de La Fayette, on those curious things, little known at that time, pine-apples. She remembered to have seen them at La Martinique, and could vouch that they grew on a plant shaped like an artichoke, and that the fruit had a taste " between an apricot and a melon," 2 not at all a bad defini- tion. We see her also, when talkers grow unendurable, leaving the house under pretence of paying visits to her friends. Scarron mentions good-humouredly her goings out on these occasions as a sort of penance inflicted upon him ; and he gives a pleasant insight into his menage when he writes in a kindly vein to his friend Pellisson : '' I am often surrounded with dunces who pour upon me their silly jokes, their fun as frigid 1 "Memoires," Cheruel's edition, Paris, 1873, vol. xii. p. 91. 2 " Segraisiana,'* p. 183. PAUL SCARRON. 95 as all the snows of the pole. My wife then leaves me to confront alone a danger which she ought to share with me ; she takes her muff and goes out to see some friend. But when I have good company, when you are here, or d'Elbene comes, or le Rinci, the lady behaves in another fashion." ^ An amusing picture this of the young wife taking her muff and walking out in a pet when uncontrollable " mauvais plaisants '' came, and of Scarron being left to mope. Among those who were sure not to make her look for her muff was Mignard, who, when he came back from Rome, found Scarron married and was a frequent guest during the last years of the poet's life. Long after, when the career of the artist was drawing to its close, Mignard painted for St. Cyr a portrait of *' la Marquise de Maintenon," now in the Louvre. '* He had known her in her youth," wrote Abbe de Monville, his biographer, '' and found means to recall ^ "Jc suis souvcnt dc sots cnvironnc, Mauvais plaisants plus froids que dc la ncigc, Enfin plus froids que toute la Norvcge. Ma femme alors me laisse en un danger ^u'elle dcvrait avec moi partager, Prend son manchon et va voir quclque amic ; Mais quand je suis en bonne compagnie, Toi par excmple, Elbene ou le Rincy, La dame alors n'en use pas ainsi." "Dcrnicres CEuvres," i. p. 244. 96 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN. her charms, without altering the expression age had given to her face." ^ Another welcome visitor at the poet's home, and even for some time an inmate of it, was a certain mysterious friend who made Scarron and Fran^oise d'Aubigne acquainted, and who, after having taxed the ingenuity of all biographers, has just been identified by M. de Boislisle. He has left on the fly-leaves of a book now preserved in the National Library in Paris a long manuscript note of the greatest interest and importance for the history both of the poet and his wife and for the history of the poet's works. As it is not very accessible, and as there is not a word of it which does not convey some curious information, we here translate in full the part of it that concerns Scarron : " The manuscript notes on the margins of this book were written by the Sieur de la Menardiere - who was ^ See a reproduction of this picture in "The Comical Romance and other Tales by Paul Scarron," 1892, vol. i. p. xxii. A friendly- portrait or description of Scarron and his wife is to be found in the great romance of Mile, de Scudery, " Clelie," where the two appear under the names of Scaurus and Lyriane. 2 The book is called : " Apologie pour M. Duncan . . . contre le traite de la Melancholic, tire des Reflexions du Sr. de la Mre." 4to ; no date nor place. Press mark, Td. 86-14. Hippolyte Jules Pilet de la Menardiere, reader in ordinary to the king, member of the French Academy, and a physician of note, has left various works in verse and prose and some tragedies ; he died June 4, 1663. PAUL SCARRON. 97 private physician to the Marchioness de Sable, received a salary from her, and lived at her house. Later on he became reader to the king. It is he v^ho for some slight disease administered certain pills to M. Scarron (first husband of the Marchioness de Maintenon) which caused such a contraction of his muscles that, though he had been up to then a well-built, alert man, he became a cripple ; and his inability to use his limbs increased till his death. " I knew Madame Scarron well, before she went to the West Indies. I saw her since at La Martinique, at her mother's, where I was lodging while our ship was being loaded, and afterwards at St. Christopher, at the house of the Commandeur de Poincy, where we remained two months. The mother had come to fetch her husband, the late M. d'Aubigne, son of the one who wrote the ' Universal History,' the ' Baron de Foeneste,' the ' Confession of Sancy,' and other works. " I lived since for three years with M. and Madame Scarron, at the Hostel de Troyes, Rue d'Enfer, where they married in 1652. Madame d'Aubigne, the mother, had sent me a power of attorney ^ to represent her when the deeds for the marriage were drawn, and ' Printed for the first time by M. dc Boislislc, " Paul Scarron cc Fran9oisc d'Aubigne," 1894, p. 53. It bears date February 19, 1652. 7 98 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN. she wrote asking me to place her daughter in some convent till the time of the projected marriage. The young lady had been staying before that in Poitou with the Marchioness de Neuillan, to whose care she had been entrusted, and who came to stay at the Hostel de Troyes with her brother, M. Tiraqueau. There it was that the loves of the two began ; M. Scarron had apartments there, some of which were let by him to me. I boarded with him afterwards as well as Lafleur my servant, whom he often asked to make frangipane tarts in his presence. '^ There again it was that he wrote, on my advice, the first volume of his ' Comical Romance ' dedicated to Cardinal de Retz, then coadjutor to the Archbishop of Paris, who often came to spend some pleasant hours with him, when he left the Luxembourg during the Fronde. I supplied him with the four Spanish tales, which he so cleverly translated, and inserted in his first two volumes, as well as with four others which he also translated and printed in a separate form. I suggested that he ought to give us a new translation of ' Don Quixote ' instead of the Ethics of Gassendi, which I found him busy translating. But he would not try, on account of a previous translation by Oudin and another, though that was very bad. I told him, if that was so, he had better begin some work of his own invention. PAUL SCARRON, 99 and conformable to his lively temper, rather than con- tinue those Ethics of Gassendi, which were too serious for him. I added that he should introduce some novels, for which I would give him Spanish originals ; I had many of them, and he knew the language. He would thus imitate ' Don Quixote,' in the first part of which four such pretty ones are to be found. So that I may say that in a way the public owes me that pleasant work (the ' Roman Comique '), though I am not the author of it, and the four novels published separately. '* I have some hundred charming letters which he wrote me, and which I shall print some day if his widow gives me leave. He wrote one among others while I was at Sedan, beginning: 'What on earth are you doing by the banks of the Meuse?' * in which he bestows great praise on Marshal de Fabert, who, ac- cording to him, is not one of those marshals who are led merely by instinct." ^ The rest concerns only La Menardiere and his quarrels with Duncan. There are many points in this long note. We see that before she died Madame * The hundred letters were not published, but this particular one was printed among the "Dernieres CEuvrcs" of Scarron. The early editions (1663, 1668, 1696) do not contain it, but it is to be found in the edition of 1709, p. 49. 2 See below Appendix II. loo ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN, d'Aubigne had had time to arrange for the marriage of her daughter with Scarron, and that she approyed of it. We learn how Scarron, drawn once more by his taste for higher things, meant for a while to dedicate his leisure to the translation of Gassendi's works ; and how at the request of his anonymous friend he con- sented to think of a lesser subject, which lesser subject turned out to be his '' Roman Comique," the work by which he is specially remembered and which has long survived the faded fame of Gassendi's philosophy. M. de Boislisle has placed beyond the possibility of a doubt who the author of this note was. We owe it to Esprit Cabart, Sieur de Villermont, a man of wit and learning who had travelled in many countries, and had been for a time Governor of Cayenne. Many years after the events here related, Madame Scarron, then the Marchioness de Maintenon, preserved a grate- ful remembrance of his kindness ; and owing to her interference he could avoid some serious trouble which he had incurred by wearing unduly the titles of '' Messire " and '' Chevalier." ^ III. — The Poet. Among the various sources from which Scarron drew ^ "Paul Scarron et Fran9oise d'Aubigne," 1894, pp. 39 ff. PAUL SCARRON, loi his income were some pensions, one, not long continued, from the Queen Mother, another from Surintendant Fouquet, " the patron " as he constantly calls him, the revenues (for a while) of his canonry at Le Mans, the gifts following his dedications,^ and the produce of what he called his '' Marquisate of Quinet." Quinet was his publisher.^ From his earliest days Scarron had been known as a writer of easy, pleasant, amusing verses. Such was their average character ; they were apt, especially in after times, to sink into scurrilousness, or (on rare occasions, it is true) to rise almost to the level of Cornelian nobleness and grandeur. ^^ Little Scarron has always had an inclination towards poetry,'* wrote Tallemant in his chapter on ^' Little Scarron.'' His name first appeared in print as the author of a copy of verses written in praise of Scu- dery's '' Lygdamon," one of the many plays drawn at that time from D'Uife's " Astree," and performed in 1629. He wrote epistles, madrigals, epigrams by the hundred ; they were handed round and greatly admired ; many seem to have been lost, a large number remain. Several collected editions of those fugitive pieces were ' Fifty pistoles, for example, from "la Grande Mademoiselle" for his "Ecolier de Salamanque " ; see "Segraisiana," 1721, p. 87. ^ (Quinet paid for Scarron's Virgil eleven thousand livres; sec Boislislc, p. 108. 102 ENGLISH ESSA VS FROM A FRENCH FEN given in Scarron's lifetime.^ That mass of now for- gotten poetry deserves to be better known, and the few stray readers it now gets do not complain of the hours spent in perusing it. Its particular merit consists in what the poor author so sorely wanted in his body, namely, agility ; the freedom of his demeanour as a poet, the nimbleness of his movements, the alertness of his gait are unparalleled. It seemed as if his mind had profited in this respect with all that his body had lost. His pleasure in being at least intellectually agile was so great that he could refuse himself nothing ; sometimes he is admirable for his elegance, more often he is ludicrous for his gambols, japes, and mad pranks. " Why would not my verse please even the queen ^ " he wrote in the dedication of his " Virgie," '^as the meanest monkey may sometimes amuse the most refined mind." He was unsparing of his monkey tricks, and wry faces were very frequent. Much more interesting and curious will be some specimen of what he could do when he meant to be graceful. There is much real grace, and an exquisite harmony of words, in his description of that fairy land, America, where at one ^ For example : "Recueil de quelques vers burlesques," Paris, 1643, 4to ; "Recueil des CEuvres burlesques de M. Scarron . . . dediees a sa chienne." Paris, 1648, 4to ; second and third part, 165 1 ; "La Relation veritable (ut supra) . . . et autres pieces burlesques." Paris, 1648, 4to. PAUL SCARRON. 103 time he expected to travel, there to undergo a new birth, as Faust was rejuvenated by his enchanted beverage : "II faut porter dans rAmerique Un chagrin si melancolique, Et voir si sous un autre ciel Son absinthe deviendra miel. La nulle fluxion ni goute, La nul froid que tant je redoute ; La nuit sculement un vent frais Y semblc ctre fait tout expres Contrc le chaud dc la journce ; La le printemps toute I'annce Y conserve sa gayete, L'automne sa maturite, Et I'ete, sans bruler Ics herbes, Chaque mois y donne des gerbes, Et tous deux des fruits ravissants, A la fois murs, ncs et naissants." ^ Another sort of merit to be noticed in Scarron's poetry is his gift for close description from life. The little he could now see he saw well ; he was an excel- lent observer of what was going on around him. Some of his character sketches are so accurate and so flill of life that they would not be out of place in a comedy of Moliere. No fdcheux in Moliere is better painted to the life than a certain intruder who came one day to I ** GEuvrcs," 1786, vol. vii. p. 187. I04 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH PEN bore poor Scarron, who could not escape. Every detail of the dress and speech is noted with a care and skill so perfect and accurate, the outline, colour, attitudes, and gestures so curiously observed, that nothing would be easier than for a painter to put the scene on canvas. Here it is complete : '' I was alone the other day in my little room, stretched on my bed, with pains in every limb, sad as mourning itself, sorrowful as one of the doomed race, cursing the day that I was born, when my little page, as silly as any in France, came in and said : * Mr. So- and-so wants to speak to you.' Though Mr. So-and-so was unknown to me, I could not help saying that he was welcome. And then, behold, there entered a eunuch face, with a gigantic periwig, which with both hands he tried to arrange ; he was all bespotted with red, yellow, and blue tassels ; his rhingrave was short, his legs were crooked. He wore canons^ or rather rotundas, as large as any round table. He was hum- ming, when he walked in, some old tune or other ; he leaned on his cane, giving himself great airs. After having curtsied to me with immense amplitude, his body swinging to and fro, he said with a smile and in a shrill voice : ' I am an admirer of your divine writings, sir, and for my part, sometimes I pride myself upon following you close in your comic vein. I come there- PAUL SCARE ON. 105 fore to visit you as a brother author, and as being also your most humble servant/ " ^ The fdcheux goes on undismayed, gives his opinion on Quinault, St. Amant, Furetiere, " le docte Menar- diere " (him of the pills mentioned above), on Corneille (" Corneille a fort baisse ") ; wants to know whether Scarron prefers '' Clelie ou Cassandre," and what he is ^ *' J'ctais seul I'autre jour dans ma petite chambre, Couchc sur mon grabat, soufFrant en chaque membre, Triste comme un grand deuil, chagrin comme un damnc, Pestant et maudissant le jour que je suis ne : Quand un petit laquais, le plus grand sot en France, Me dit : Monsieur un tel vous demande audience. Bien que Monsieur un tel ne me fut pas connu, Je repondis pourtant : qu'il soit le bienvenu. Alors je vis entrer un visage d'eunuque, Rajustant a deux mains sa trop longue perruque, Hcrissc de galans rouges, jaunes et bleus ; Sa rhingrave ctait courte et ses genoux cagneux, II avait deux canons ou plutot deux rotondes Dont le tour surpassait celui des tables rondes ; II chantait en entrant je ne sais quel vieux air, S'appuyant d'une canne et marchait du bel air. Aprcs avoir fourni sa vaste reverence, Se balan9ant le corps avecque violence, 11 mc dit en fausset et faisantun souris : Je suis Tadmirateur de vos divins ccrits. Monsieur, et de ma part quclquefois je me pique, De vous suivre de prt^s dans le style comiquc. Je vous rends done visite en qualitc d'auteur Et de plus comme ctant votre humble scrvitcur." " Epitre chagrine ou Satire HI., GEuvrcs," vi. p. 175. io6 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH PEN, working at just now. *' Will you not finish your pretty romance? " *' N'achcverez vous point votre joli roman ?" and so on for pages. The main basis of Scarron's repute as a writer of verse was, however, in his time, his two burlesque poems, " Le Typhon," published in 1644,^ and " Le Virgile travesti," the first two books of which were printed by Toussaint Quinet, in 1648.2 This last work appeared under the patronage of the Queen Mother ; the first had been dedicated to Mazarin, and had for its subject the epic quarrel of the Giants and the Gods : '* I sing the horrid Typhon, him of the hooked nose, like a griffin's, who had only two shoulders, but one hundred arms as long as poles, . . . who was so bitter- minded that I am at times ashamed of him. I sing also those gentlemen his brothers, who were not far behind him when the business was to uproot a mountain, to cross a bridgeless river, to flatten the highest peak to the level of the plain, pull up great pine-trees and use ^ " Typhon ou la Gigantomachie, pocme burlesque, dcdie a I'eminentissime Cardinal Mazarin." Paris, 1644, 4to ; frontis- piece by H. David. Mazarin took no notice of the dedication, and this incited Scarron not a little to side with the Frondeurs. 2 "Le Virgile travesty en vers burlesques." Paris, 1648, 4to. Curious engravings. PAUL SCARRON. 107 them as sticks, and yet they found them rather short ; and with the same gave a drubbing to many a god who never mentioned it." ^ The title of the work is well justified. There is something prodigious, gigantic, enormous in all the doings of Scarron's heroes. They are grotesque, no doubt, but still enormous ; they would have made friends with young Gargantua and invited him to sit and play on their knees. Being very hungry one day they espy oxen at the plough ; they devour them with- out taking the trouble to "pluck off the ploughs.*' They play at skittles on a certain Sunday to while away the time, their skittles are long pieces of rock, ' " Je chante I'horriblc Typhon Au ncz crochu comme un griffon, A qui cent bras longs come gaule Sortaient de deux seulcs cpaulcs . . . Au reste d'esprit si quinteux ^ue j'cn suis quelqucfois honteux. Je chante aussi messieurs ses frc^res, Qui certes ne le lui ccdaient gucres, Tant a dcraciner les monts Qu*k passer rivieres sans ponts, Mettre les plus hautes montagnes Au niveau des plates campagnes Et des grands pins faire batons Qui n'ctaient encore assez longs, Desquels maints grands coups lis donn^rcnt A maints dicux qui nc s*en vant^rcnt." io8 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN. they get warm in their play and throw their stone playthings about ; one falls on the foot of Typhon, who in his rage picks up the skittles and sends them all — to the gods. *^ n ramassa quilles ct boules Et les jeta sans rcgarder Tant que son bras les put darder. Les quilles d'un tel bras ruces Passcrent bientot les nuces, Et per9ant la voute des cieux Donncrent jusqu'oii tous les dieux Humaient sans songer a malice L'exhalaison d'un sacrifice, Et de nectar se remplissaient Que les deesses leur versaient, Resolus de boire et reboire Pour le moins jusqu'a la nuit noire." One of the skittles falls on the cupboard and breaks all the crockery. Jupiter, who slept, " having taken one glass too much,'' jumps to his feet crying : " I say, what is the matter ? " ('' Dites done, qu'est-ce qu'il y a ? ") No one dares answer except Cypris, who carelessly says, " Oh ! nothing," and is rebuked with words we shall not reproduce. Jupiter soon gets at the truth, and understands it must be war. Mercury is ordered away the better to ascertain facts, and his flight to Helicon is described with that particular agility of verse which was one of Scarron's gifts : '' Having tied PAUL SCARRON. 109 wings to his heels, over fields, over towns, he flew light as a falcon, straight towards Helicon, to see the nine sisters, refresh himself and drink at the spring. He found the nine learned ones, seated on benches, busy dissecting roundels, sonnets, and stanzas, on sorrows, on partings, on favours won. . . .'' ^ They were in fact, it seems, anticipating our friend Bourget's psychology and analysis. A terrible war is waged, with uncertain success for a while ; at last Typhon is vanquished and shut up under Mount Etna. " Et moi je mets fin a mon conte Tire du sieur Noel le Comte." ^ Such literature of course could not please Boileau ; he could not allow without a protest *' les filles de ^ " Puis ayant mis scs talonnicrcs . . . Par dessus champs, par dessus villcs, Vola Icger comme un faucon Droit vers la montagne Helicon, Pour voir Ics filles de mcmoire Et la se rafraichir et boirc. II trouva le docte troupeau, Les neuf savantes demoiselles, Assises dessus des bancelles, Qui faisaient dissection De rondeaux, de sonnets, de stances, Sur des chagrins, sur dcs absences, Et sur des plaisirs accordcs." 2 Otherwise Noel Conti or Natalis Conies, an Italian writer of the sixteenth century. no ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN memoire " to be thus derided ; he wanted them, we may suppose, to keep their voices clear to sing with him of " Namur." He is therefore loud in his con- demnation of ''Typhon,'* which, with one contemptuous Hne, he exiles from Paris to the provinces. ^ " Typhon '' none the less enjoyed a considerable degree of popu- larity, and its success encouraged Scarron to attempt more in this line ; it caused in fact the poet to write his huge '' Virgile travesti/' This, too, was a success, and even a more marked one than his former work. For us this vast compila- tion is past enduring : the joke is too protracted ; witticisms, clever tricks, happy thoughts, curious japes, gambols, and grimaces abound, but they last too long, they are too numerous ; we soon get to know tie utmost the ''monkey" can do, and want to push the door open and get out into the fresh air. " TyP^^^'"^ *' has at least this merit, that it is comparatively short. But seventeenth century people took in such works a ^ "Au mepris du bon sens, le Burlesque efFronte Trompa les yeux d'abord, plut par sa nouveaute. . . . Mais de ce style enfin la cour desabusee Dedaigna de ses vers I'extravagance aisee, Distingua le naif du plat et du boulFon Et laissa la province admirer le Typhon. Que ce style jamais ne souille votre ouvrage.'* "Art Poetique," i. PAUL SCARRON. particular pleasure for a cause which no longer they had at times a surfeit of dignity, etiquette, and periwigs, and this made them enjoy grins, tricks, and bald pates. We know what was the tone of conversa- tion in Scarron's rooms, and we know too that St. Simon described it as '' la plaisanterie du meilleur gout " ; one must be very tired of Versailles to say so. Racine read the " Virgile " with laughter and delight, not unaware that he was sinning against the gods and Boileau, but somehow feeling that his was a pardonable sin. There is not a shade of vituperation or scorn in the letter where Madame de Sevigne informs her daughter of what books she has taken to while away the time in her journey from Paris to Grignan,*books not many copies of which are now sold to ladies at railway stalls : " We found no reading worthy of us, but Virgil, not in travesty, I say, but in all the majesty of the Latin and Italian.'' ^ On account of those contrary tastes mentioned before, people were then able to admire Virgil in his majesty and in his travesty too. Poussin did not, but he was an exception. The success of the '' Virgile '* was extraordinary ; it pleased the queen ; it delighted Chancelier Seguier, so much so that, hearing of his approval, Scarron dedicated his second book to him ; it had a number of editions ^ Madame de Grignan, July i6, 1672. 1 1 2 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH PEN and was found not unworthy of the Elzevir press ; it caused at last such a flood of " burlesque " poems that even Scarron felt sick of it, and expressed the hope that the French Academy, then in its early youth, would interfere : '' Perhaps the wits who have been enlisted to keep our tongue pure from all taint will see to it. . . . As for me I am quite willing and ready to give up a way of writing which has spoiled so many." ^ He wrote two books more after this ofl^er, and then stopped of his own accord, not waiting for an injunction from the Academy. IV. — The Dramatist. " I scarcely write anything now, but comedy verses," Scarron said once to a friend ; '^ for I draw from them most of what I get." He had always been fond, as we know, of plays and* players, and when nothing was left him but his clear mind, instead of following actors from tennis-court to tennis-court, he wrote for them. His first comedy, " Jodelet ou le Maitre valet,'* per- formed in 1645 ^^ ^^ Marais theatre, enjoyed great popularity. The famous actor Jodelet, who gave to the ' Dedicace of Book V. to Councillor Payen Deslandes, 1650. The work was finished by Moreau, Seigneur de Brasei. As for Scarron's innumerable rivals and imitators in the burlesque style, see Victor Fournel's edition of the " Virgile Travesti," introduction, and p. 189. PAUL SCARRON, 113 play his own '^ nom de theatre,"^ was at his best when he appeared in it ; his queer look and ugly face, his large mouth, his speaking through the nose were the more ludicrous, as he had to act under silk and ribbons the part of his own master, Don Juan. He was destined to be some years later one of the original actors in Moliere's *' Precieuses,'' where he appeared as 'Me Vicomte de Jodelet,'' while Moliere himself was Mascarille. At the date when Scarron's first play was performed Moliere was twenty-three, and had as yet written nothing ; Racine was a child of six, but Corneille, who was Scarron's elder by four years, had already produced his most famous dramas, and, without speaking of his tragedies, had put on the stage his comedies of " Le Menteur" (1642) and ''La Suite du Menteur'' (1643), in which Jodelet had had a great success as Cliton. Both plays were adapted from Spanish originals, for Spain was in this respect what France has been of late : the great storehouse where dramatists of many coun- tries came for their plots, and sometimes for their wit. Her authors were numerous and prolific, and their * Instead of taking it from the play as M. Fournicr wrongly asserts (" Theatre complet de Scarron."^ Paris, 1879, 8vo, p. xiii.). This actor was known as "Jodelet" when he performed Cor- neille's *'Mcnteur" (1642): " Lc hcros de la farce, un certain Jodelet ..." (" Suite de Menteur," i. 3). 114 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN. repute as inventors of adventures, unexpected rencontres, grand discussions on noble matters, farcical characters, was so well established that most foreign dramatists and novelists called at their stalls and supplied them- selves freely. We owe to Spain '' Le Cid " as well as '' Le Menteur," and the bulk of Scarron's dramatic works : most of the latter are drawn from Calderon and Rojas. Scarron asked his friends to send him Spanish comedies, as he would have asked them for any other commodity ; he was very indignant at the thought that people about town spoke Spanish less purely than in former days, and heard once with pleasure that there was a renewed demand for grammars : — '' The sale of Spanish grammars has not reached fifty thousand livres, as you say, but we are not far from that number. The Spanish tongue has never been so corrupt as it has been of late in Paris. I am much beholden to you for the trouble you take in seeking Spanish comedies for me." ^ After " Jodelet ou le Maitre Valet " Scarron wrote a number of comedies or tragi-comedies, the principal of which are "Jodelet duelliste," performed in 1646 (under the name of " Les trois Dorotees ") ; " THeri- tier ridicule," 1649 5 " I^^^ Japhet d'Armenie," 1652 ; " I'Ecolier de Salamanque,'' 1654; " Le Marquis ^ "Dcrnicrcs CEuvres," i. p. 62. PAUL SCARRON. 115 ridicule," 1655, or beginning of 1656; — the plot of them all being laid in Spain, in Madrid, Toledo, Orgas, or Valencia. In these plays Scarron appears with his usual quali- ties of ease and alertness, his gift for observing attitudes and noting curious details, his irrepressible gaiety, and that strange combination of tastes that made him relish tragic grandeur as well as farcical buffoonery. When- ever there is an opportunity for using a higher style Scarron never lets it pass. If he has not the genius he has at least a taste for proud heroes and grand scenes. The thought of Corneille is constantly upon hini ; Corneille was, with Malherbe, the master he recognised, the true god of his literary religion. In more than one scene of " Jodelet on le Maitre Valet," Don Juan speaks the language of the Cid ; he is, in fact, nothing else than a Cid caught in a comedy, as may happen any day to any Cid in real life. The thing is so visible that Scarron has it noticed by the very persons in his play. I But Scarron sometimes overdid what he ' Jodelet to Don Fernand : — "Que vous eussiez aime pour votrc gendrc un Cid Qui vous cilt assommc, puis dpousc Chim^nc ! '* (iv. 5). Cf. in " L'Ecolier de Salamanquc" the part of the Count; sec for example his speeches to old Don Felix : — "Tes injures, tes oris nc pcuvent m'irritcr ; Je veux un ennemi qui puisse resistcr. ii6 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN, attempted, and his debates between passion and duty, in " TEcolier de Salamanque,*' for example, inspired as they are by the Cid/s, are too superhuman. The danger of striving after Corneille is that one reaches Scudery. Lesser people in Scarron's theatre are remarkable for their clear outline and their life-like expression ; he looked at men with the eye of a draughtsman. Few series of plays better lend themselves to be illustrated, few are less difficult to put on the stage ; though there are almost no stage directions, words adapt themselves to situations so well that there is an attitude under each, and no actor with any gift could miss it. The details of actual life are introduced with a care and accuracy very rare on the French stage of the time ; people drop their spectacles, want to know the hour, tell stories, feel cold, take notice of and suffer Je ne veux point de femme et quand j'en voudrais une, J'en choisirais une autre et d'une autre fortune. Pour me la faire prendre il fallait me prier, Non pas me quereller, non pas m'injurier. Je ne fais rien par force et fais tout par priere ; Aux humbles je suis doux ; aux iiers j'ai Tame fiere ! . . . Don Felix. Ah ! si ton bras m*epargne, insolent ravisseur, Je prefere tes coups a ta fausse douceur . . . Viens, viens finir mes jours, ils n'ont que trop dure." [&c.] ii. I. It is obvious that Scarron remembered the scene in the " Cid," i. 3 and 4. PAUL SCARRON, 117 from a number of trifles which mere puppets would not attend to : *' Do read, please, for I have lost my spectacles and I do not know where to find others fitting my sight." " Lisez done, aussi bien j'ai perdu mes lunettes, Et n'ai pas trop aise d*en retrouver de nettes," says old Don Fernand, *' Hang the bolt which has caught my fingers ! ** I »' " Maudit soit le verrou qui m*a pince les doigts ! exclaims Beatrix. At another place she thus describes Jodelet, who, unknown to everybody and under a disguise, has to pay court to Isabel le, while the real Don Juan acts as his servant : '* Your son-in-law is there, beautiful to look at, new varnished, new shaven, well- powdered, curled, and trimmed, laughing as a madman, besprinkled with jewels like a Chinese king." "Votre gendre est la-bas, beau, poli, frais tondu, Poudrc, frisc, pare, riant comme un perdu, Et couvert de bijoux comme un roi de la Chine." Both are betrayed by their attitude and language, and Isabelle is sure to love for life the man she could not help loving even while passing as a valet. The same plot has been turned to account by Marivaux in his delightful '' Jeu de T Amour et du Hasard.** ri8 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN. In '4'Ecolier de Salamanque '' Crispin pays his court to a lady's maid in a most proper and approved fashion : *' Beatrix, darling, let us have some scandal now, and give freedom to our tongues ; tell me all about thy mistress and I shall tell thee all about my master. Let us talk about our gains, or tell stories ; let us say all the good things we remember. I must tell thee a tale. There was once a king. That king lived in a wood. In the midst of that wood . . .'* ^ All these plays are in verse — Scarron's easy-going verse, verse with no pretension, adapting itself to circumstances, a light verse and sometimes intentionally faulty. He will on occasion, instead of looking for a proper rhyme, coin a new word to suit a line and tease his reader ; once he manages to have Beatrix rhyme with larme^ straining the words thus : " Or, si vous en tirez la moindre lacrimule, Je vous donne gagnc, foi de Beatricule. ^ " Beatrix ma mignonne, Medisons un moment sans respecter personne ; Mcdis de ta maitresse et moi je te dirai Du maitre que je sers tout ce que je saurai. Parlons de nos profits, contons nous des histoires, Exer9ons a I'envi nos heureuses memoires. Je veux t'en conter une. II etait une fois Un roi. Ce roi faisait sa demeure en un bois ; Au milieu de ce bois. . . ." [&c. &c.] iii. 3. PAUL SCARRON. 119 Vous riez, Don Louis, de ce diminutif ? Dame, nous en usons, et du superlatif. Un certain jeune auteur, qui tache de me plaire, Quand jc vais visiter mon cousin le libraire, M'apprend tous ces grands mots ! " ^ And if we do not consider this enough, and still object to " lacrimule," a quantity of explanations are yet in store, and the poet will go on for ever till we bow acceptance. This trick and many others Scarron has in common with a very different sort of a poet, whose name, unlikely as it may seem, often recurs to the mind when reading the poor cripple's works : I mean no less a person than Alfred de Musset. The bent and aim of the woiks of both are as different as can be ; but they sometimes resemble each other in their peculiarities and details. Musset, too, is very fond of volunteering explanations for avoidable mis- takes, which he prefers not to avoid ; - he has the s.mie eye for neat picturesque outlines, for amusing sketches, the same taste for deriding silly pomposity. Secondary resemblances these, but resemblance^ all the same. Scarron besides was well known to Musset. Irus' way of appreciating the merits of his servants in " A quoi revent les Jeunes Filles '' reminds us of Don Japhet's own attendants. * "Jodclct ou Ic Maitrc Valet," iii, 2. * There are a number of" such cases in " Namouna," where. I20 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN "Spadille a I'air d'unc oie et Quinola d'un cuistre" is becoming proverbial, as Don Japhet's lines have long been : " Don Zapata Pascal, Ou Pascal Zapata, car il n'importe guere Que Pascal soit devant ou Pascal soit derriere." besides, a passage in Scarron is introduced in full. Scarron's verses : — " Nous voila tous sur le pave ; Sur mon dos mon pcre eleve Nous cclairait de sa lanterne . . . Ma Crcuse venait derriere . . . Au vieil temple nous arrivames . . . Quasi tous, car ma femme hclas . . . Se trouva manquer a la bande . . . Mon pere ne fit autre chose Que me dire : ' Elle reviendra Ou bien quelqu'un la retiendra ; N'est elle point reste derriere Pour raccommoder sa jartiere ? ' " (" Virgile Travesti," ii. Fourncl's edition; Paris, Garnier, pp. 119, 120) become in Musset : — "Je suis comme Eneas portant son pere Anchise. Eneas s'essoufflait et marchait a grands pas. Sa femme a chaque instant demeurait en arricre. ' Creuse, disait-il, pourquoi ne viens tu pas ?' Creuse repondait : ' Je mets ma jarretiere,'" &c. " Namouna," i. 75, 76. The scene is represented in a curious engraving in Scarron's first edition. PAUL SCARRON, 121 There is in Musset a number of such comical en- counters as the one between Don Japhet and the Bailli. — " Bailli, votre fortune est grande, Puisque vous m'avez plu. — Le bon Dieu vous le rende ! " *' Don Japhet " is the most famous, as it was the most successful, of Scarron's plays. There is more drollery in it than in any other of his comedies. Don Japhet, who is the fool of Emperor Charles Quint and claims distant kinship with his master, " L'empereur Charles Quint, ce hcros redoutable, Mon cousin un deux mil huitanticme degrc," comes to Consuegra in search of a wife. He is wel- comed by the Commander in the same fashion as Don Quixote and Sancho are welcomed by the Duchess. All sorts of practical jokes are played upon him, but his cowardice and pomposity prevent him from retaliating. He is beaten and derided ; a number of ridiculous accidents mar an appointment he had or thought he had with his betrothed. At last, in the same manner as M. Jourdain was to become " mamamouchi,*' he resolves to marry a Peruvian infanta answering to the beautiful name of Ahihua, and concerning whom a letter from the great Mango Capac to his cousin Japhet 122 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH PEN. is publicly read : " Let her be the wife of Japhet my cousin. I give to both the produce of a tax I have lately laid upon flame-coloured parrots and upon the lamentins of the great river Orellana." ^ No better sort of income had poor Scarron himself derived from the great river Orellana, where he had dreamed of going to make a plantation. When *' Don Japhet '' was published it appeared with a dedication to King Louis XIV., a free-spoken one in which Scarron says : " I shall only try to per- suade your Majesty that it would not hurt you much to do me a little good. If you did me a little good, I should be merrier than I am, I should write funnier comedies ; your Majesty would be better amused ; and if you were better amused your money would not prove ill-spent/' The pleasure young Louis had taken at the adven- tures of Don Japhet had been very keen indeed ; his taste for that play lasted all his life. Fifty years later, when Scarron had long been dead and his young wife had become old Madame de Maintenon, the Great King had still " Don Japhet " performed ^ " De mon cousin Japhet qu'elle soit I'epousce; Je leur donne un impot que j'ai mis depuis peu Tant sur les perroquets qui sont couleur de feu Que sur les lamentins du grand fleuve Orillane." PAVL SCARRON. 123 before him at Fontainebleau and Versailles (1703). He has been often reproached with his dislike for the " magots de Teniers " ; many excuses could be found for his aversion to those gloomy, pale-faced drunkards. Certain it is that, with all his dignity and wigs and ribbons, he was a man and a Frenchman, and enjoyed his laugh as much as any. Most of Moliere's farcical comedies were first performed before him, "George Dandin '' in 1668, " Pourceaugnac" in 1669, "Bour- geois Gentilhomme '' in 1670, &c., and their success had been great at court before the Paris public had a chance to say its say about them. Scarron's plays enjoyed for the same reason no small degree of favour, both at court and in town. For a long while they were constantly on the bill of Moliere's troupe. They did not always bring much money, but neither did always Corneille's tragedies. We find, for example, in Lagrange's " Registre " of the troupe under the year 1659 the following entries : — April 30. — " Jodelet Maitre Valet '' ... 155 livres. May 3.— "Cinna " 175 „ May 7. — Performed at Vincennes,"Don Japhet,'* for the king. Aug. I. — " L'Heritier Ridicule " .... 130 „^ ' "Registre de Lagrange, 1 658-1 685, publie par la Comcdie fran9aise," Paris, 1876, 410. 124 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN. These three plays of Scarron recur from time to time with various success, bringing sometimes 226 livres and sometimes only 96. But it must be remembered that Corneille's "Cid'* could be played (July nth) for 100 livres, and his '' Rodogune** (July 3) for 42. All those numbers show by comparison what was the run when there was a new play by Moliere himself. The first performance of the *' Precieuses '* brings to the troupe 523 livres, the second 1,400, the third 1,004, ^^d so on, and the troupe is asked by great people to give private performances in their houses. " Les Precieuses" are thus performed at the houses of Michel le Tellier, of Chevalier de Grammont, of La Marechale de THos- pital, &c. The cardinal and the king want also to see the new play, and Lagrange makes in his journal the following entry: — ''Oct. 26, 1660. ' L'Etourdi ' and ' Les Precieuses ' at the Louvre, in the apartments of his Eminence Cardinal Mazarin, who was ill in his chair. The king saw the comedy, standing incognito, and leaning on the back of the chair of his Eminence." In November the king asks for "Don Japhet/' and again the following year. In June, 1663, " TEcole des Femmes " and " La Critique de TEcole des Femmes " are performed together, bringing 1,357, i>i30, 1,355, 1,426, 1,000, 1,357, 1,731 livres, and so on. We are very far from the 42 livres for " Rodogune '' and PAUL SCARRON. 125 96 for '' Don Japhet/' which none the less continued to be performed from year to year by the troupe. They have now long ceased (" Don Japhet " alone excepted) to appear on theatrical bills and deserve perhaps a better fate. Their construction, no doubt, is loose, their conclusions are patched up and do not fit very well ; the innermost coils of the human brain and heart are left alone for future psychologists to unroll them. There are only sketches in these plays ; but they are pleasant sketches, drawn with a clever hand, guided by an observing eye, such sketches as Scarron's contemporary, Abraham Bosse, was wont to draw and engrave. Collectors and curieux consider them well worth the preserving. V. — The Novelist. When Scarron became a novelist, he did not cease to busy himself with players. They were his particular delight ; he took them for the subject of his principal tale. Nor did he cease to think of Spain and to look to Spanish authors for his originals. We have seen his friend, Cabart de Villermont, supplying him with Spanish novels *' of which he had a number." He published separately a small collection of tales adapted from Spanish authors in which there is plenty of love and adventures, masks, swords, and tokens ; much 126 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN. fancy and good grace, sweet discussions under balconies and behind lattices, long veils concealing the prettiest faces in the world, prancing horses, valorous cavaliers, Andalusian eyes such as those which were to shine and sparkle again in literature during that second advent of Spanish heroes to France, when Hernani paced the stage, and Don Paez fell in love with the Lady Juana. Scarron's novels enjoyed a great success, and were often reprinted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; they numbered among their readers Moliere, who took several hints from them. One or two passages in " TartufFe " have a striking resemblance with some lines in Scarron's tale, '' Les Hypocrites." When there is a first attempt at unmasking the " faux- devot " Montufar, the rabble, who have been entirely taken by the hypocrite's sweet demeanour, rush at the accuser, and want to kill him. But Montufar interferes in his favour, and exclaims : *' I am the wicked one ... I am the sinner, I am the one who never did anything acceptable to God. Do you think . . . because you see me dressed as a pious man should be, that I have not been, all my life long, a thief, a cause of scandal to others, and my own perdition ^ You are mistaken, my brethren ; hurl at me your insults and stones ; draw upon me your swords. — With PAUL SCARRON, 127 this he ran towards his foe and threw himself at his feet/' I Finding himself in a similar situation, and accused by Damis, the son of the house, TartufFe addresses Orgon thus : '' Yes, my brother, I am a wicked one, a guilty one, a sinner,'' &c. " Oui, mon frcre, je suis un mcchant, un coupable, Un malheureux pccheur tout plein d'iniquite, Le plus grand scclerat qui jamais ait cte. Chaquc instant de ma vie est charge dc souillures ; Elle n'est qu'un amas de crimes et d'ordures. , . . [^Addressing Damis.'] Oui, mon cher iils, parlez, traitez moi de perfide, D'infame, de perdu, de voleur, d'homicide, Accablez moi de noms encor plus detestes, Je n'y contredis point, je les ai mcritcs Et j'en veux a genoux souffrir I'ignominie.''^ Though Montufar is not less severely punished at the end than Tartuffe himself, it must be confessed that the morality of Scarron's novels is very lax indeed. Scenes of an unedifying character abound ; from the ^ "Je suis le mcchant . . . je suis Ic pechcur, je suis cclui qui n*ai jamais ricn fait d'agreable aux yeuxdeDicu. Pensez vous . . . parce que vous me voycz vctu en homme de bien, que je n'aic pas etc toutc ma vie un larron, le scandalc des autres et la perdition dc moi mcmc ? Vous vous ctes trompcs, mcs fr. ^ <7 P- r /I ■ 1^ I CV ^ /// cnplu rcluiuM pentpiccy nienlu opc.r. .r-y PORTKAIT OK SORBIEKES, BY N. BONNART, 1664. A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.D. 1663. 159 was Sorbieres himself, to all appearance, during many years. He lived for a while at Paris, then in Holland, then at Orange, where he was appointed principal of the local college. His easy manners, easy speech, easy style in writing made him an agreeable correspondent and companion, and he became, early in life, acquainted with several of the best men of the day ; he exchanged letters with Gassendi, Father Marsenne, Hobbes, Saumaize. A number of epistles addressed by him to Saumaize are preserved in the National Library, Paris (MS. Fr. 3930); they treat of learned questions; they contain copies of recently discovered inscriptions ; they are full of friendly assurances and respectful compli- ments to both Mr. and Madame de Saumaize. Sorbieres had while young studied theology ; then medicine ; then he had devoted himself wholly to the making of his fortune, for the improvement of which he allowed himself to be converted in good time to the Catholic faith. " I have heard," Guy Patin writes in 1653, "that our old friend, M. Sorbieres, master of the college at Orange, has proved a turn-coat, and has become a Roman Catholic. He was requested to do so by the Bishop of Vaison, and by the Cardinals de Bichi and Barberin ... Of such kind are the miracles which can be witnessed to-day — miracles, I say, of the political and economical, rather than the metaphysical i6o ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH FEN. order. He Is a widower ^ and a clever fellow, but, sharp as he is, I wonder whether with that new shirt of his, he will succeed in making his fortune at Rome, for the place swarms with hungry and thirsty people." The thirst and hunger of Sorbieres were of the keenest, and he took immense pains to assuage both ; he journeyed to Rome, appealed to the king, wrote against the Protestants ; but his want of character was against him ; he only got temporary favours, small allowances, and unimportant livings. He did his best from year to year to ingratiate himself with cardinal, king, and pope ; he never failed nor succeeded entirely. From Mazarin he got little ; from Louis XIV. he received the empty title of Historiographer Royal (1660) and, what was more to the purpose, a pension of a thousand livres ; from Clement IX. he obtained a trifling gratuity, given once for all, and many kind words. His dehoire on this last occasion was great : " They give lace cuffs,'' he said, ^' to a man without a shirt ! " As his disappointment lasted long he had time to circulate this consolatory witticism, to improve it and remodel it ; several of the '* variantes " such as : *^ I wish they would send me bread for the ^ Sorbieres had married, while in Holland, a Frenchwoman called Judith Renaud ; they had a son, Henry, who, after the death of his father, caused a part of his papers to be published. A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.JD. 1663. 161 butter they kindly provided me with/' have been preserved by his friend Graver ol.^ Before his journey to England, Sorbieres was known to literary men principally by his translations. He had turned from Latin into French Sir Thomas More's ''Utopia/' Hobbes's " De Give/' Bates's " Elenchus motuum nuperorum in Anglia." 2 He had also written a few essays, letters and discourses, on philosophical, medical, theological, and other subjects. Hobbes had been greatly pleased with Sorbieres's translation : ''The book " (/>., the '^ De Give "), he said, in his " Six lessons to the professors of the mathematics," 1656,! " translated into French hath not only a great testimony from the translator Sorbieres, but also from Gassendus and Mersennus." He began with Sorbieres a corre- spondence in Latin, where he apostrophises him as " clarissime charissimeque, amicissime, eruditissime," &c. And he went even further, as he dedicated " viro clarissimo et amicissimo Samueli Sorberio/' his "Dialogus ' In the biography he published as a preface to the " Sorberiana/' Toulouse, 1691. 2 " Lcs vrayes causes des derniers troubles d'Angleterre, abrcgc d'histoirc, ou les droicts du Roy et ceux du Parlcment et du pcuplc sont naifvement representee," Orange, 1653, 8vo. This is often given as an original work of Sorbieres, though in his dedica- tion he himself states that he translated it at the request of the Count de Dhona. II 1 62 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH PEN physicus de Natura Aeris," addressing to him a very characteristic and pungent letter, where, according to his wontj he loudly complains of everything and every- body, but concludes with the kindest appeal to his correspondent, saying : '* Let us live as long and as well as we can, and let us love each other — Vale/* A desire of having some talk with Hobbes was among the main motives Sorbieres had when he under- took the journey which was to make him for a short while famous all over Europe in the literary and diplomatic world, and to give him his "minute d'immortalite." II. — SoRBiEREs's Journey. Sorbieres spent the summer of 1663 in England ; he had long conversations with Hobbes, he went to the play, dined at the French Embassy, was presented at Court, visited Oxford, drove to Hatfield, was admitted to a sitting of the Royal Society, and, when he had come back, wrote, at the request of the Marquis de Vaubrun Nogent, an account of all he had seen. The book appeared in 1664,^ and raised a storm. The author was refuted, confuted, and exiled ; diplomatic ^ " Relation d'un Voyage en Angleterre, ou sont touchees plusieurs choses qui regardent I'estat des sciences, et de la Religion etautres matieres curieuses." Paris, 1664, 8vo. A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.D. 1663. 163 dispatches were exchanged on his account, and apology offered ; the English Court and the Danish Court and the French Court were in a state of commotion ; the literati on the three sides of the North Sea flew to their pens and made a stand against the invader ; even gentlemen belonging to the Church wrote in un- christian language on the subject. The book and man which created so much mproar have fallen since into oblivion. Whenever by any chance they are alluded to, it is always with a re- membrance of the quarrel, and the " Relation d'un Voyage en Angleterre " is usually mentioned as being a book of slander on the English nation, and nothing more. But it is something more. Sorbieres's first impressions on landing had not been very good ; his companions' luggage had been stormed, it seems, by intrusive porters, and street arabs had pestered them with uncomplimentary apostrophs. The same thing, he philosophically observes, happens in all countries ; in England it happens thus : As soon as Frenchmen land, " boys run after them, shrieking, A mounser, a mounser ! /.^., au monsieur ! by way of insult. Little by little, as travellers warm the boys through their very efforts to push them away or to stop their noise, the said boys rise to : French dogs, French dogs ! Such is the honourable name by which we are 1 64 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH PEN known in England — in the same way as we go by the name of moucherons [gnats] in Holland ; both being less hard than the matto Francese [mad French] with which the rabble favours us in Italy/' For such inconveniences Sorbieres considers that the travellers themselves are in a great measure responsible : " We make too much noise/' he says ; " our agitation is considered indiscreet ; they deem it ridiculous and they show it as I have said. Our behaviour is the very reverse of theirs ; they are phlegmatic and quietly suffer everybody to do exactly as they like." This being once understood, no unpleasantness need be expected. Sorbieres himself met with a better treat- ment at Dover than it had been his fortune to find anywhere else ; but his companions were greatly '' deconcertes." For " as soon as they appeared on the wharf the noise they made with their servants drew a mob which accompanied them to their lodgings with strange howls. They took it unkindly ; dogs played their part in the fray ; stones were thrown, and the militia had to interfere." From Dover to London, by way of Canterbury and Rochester, Sorbieres is constantly on the look out, and writes, in praise of the English landscape, and especially on the beauty of the English grass, words which ought to have mollified the heart of his censors : '' The A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.D. 1663. 165 country is undulated and shapes itself in hills and little valleys covered with an evergreen mantle. It even seemed to me that the grass had a more pleasant hue than elsewhere, and. was finer. For this cause it is well fitted for the making of those pastures and sheets of grass so even that people play bowls on them as comfortably as they would on the cloth of some great billiard table. As this is the usual amusement of gentlemen in the country, they have large stone cylinders which they cause to be rolled on the grass to keep it down. All the country is full of parks, very pleasant to see, with large herds of deer pacing them. . . . There are so many trees that even the cultivated land has the appearance of a forest, when seen from some height, on account of the orchards and hedges with which the meadows and the fields are surrounded." This will surely be considered an appreciative account ; though of course a British-born subject — such a subject, for example, as Thackeray — might have spoken more warmly, as the author of " Vanity Fair '' did in his famous description of Dobbin's return from India, when the soldier passed " by pretty roadside inns, where the signs hung on the elms, and horses and waggoners were drinking under the chequered shadow of the trees ; by old halls and 1 66 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH PEN parks, rustic hamlets clustered round ancient grey- churches, and through the charming friendly English landscape. Is there any in the world like it ? To a traveller returning home it looks so kind — it seems to shake hands with you as you pass through it." Sorbieres and his companions go through villages and towns ; they notice that the windows are low and without shutters, " which shows that the inhabitants do not fear insults nor revenge." The build of the windows is peculiar ; at Canterbury, and indeed " all over England, they protrude and shape themselves into a sort of balcony, either polygonal or semi-circular ; they appear as so many little to\A^ers and they give elegance to the outside of the houses when the eye has once become accustomed to them. The rooms are the more commodious for it and better lighted ; and you can without being seen observe what goes on in the street. With us, people see only what is just opposite them." Analogous to the differences in the national windows, Sorbieres might have observed, were the difference between the literatures of the two coun- tries : windows to see just opposite, with logical straightness, in Racine ; polygonal or circular bay windows to see forward and backward, and all round, and to let the mind wander along with comers and goers ('' that living flood pouring . . . from eternity A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A,D, 1663. 167 onwards to eternity," says Teufelsdrock) — in Shake- speare. Not until the time of Victor Hugo and the romantic school was the use of bay-windows fairly re-established in French literature. From Gravesend to London '^dockyards are discovered on both sides of the road, and there is a swarm of carpenters who build ships. Ships of all sorts and of all ages are to be seen everywhere ; their number is surprising." III. — London Town. Reaching town, Sorbieres took lodgings in the Common Garden, and began his rambles in the capital, visiting it carefully and so to say street by street. Frenchmen, he considers, speak too disparagingly of it, the cause being that they do not know it well. The fact is (and he notes it with regret) that it is a larger one than Paris, but Paris possesses some other advantages, such as having a more numerous population. London has more houses and Paris more inhabitants, for in London there is only one family in each house. Furnished lodgings are, however, to be found, and they are not expensive, the cost being one crown (ecu) per week. " I chose mine not far from Salisbury House because I liked to be able to visit at any time Mr. Hobbes, who was living there i68 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH FEN. with his patron, the Earl of Devonshire, two very rare persons, of whom more hereafter." London town is adorned with a number of grand buildings, such as the New Exchange in the "Strangh" (Strand). This is the place for mercers, "and I need not say whether fine wares are to be found there, as well as pretty girls at the counters." Lincoln's Inn Fields is pleasant to look at. Whitehall is a sorry medley of constructions of all epochs, but with a splendid banqueting-hall (Ingo Jones's banqueting-hall, with pictures by Rubens, now the Chapel Royal) ; the palace is beautifully situated near the river and the park. Two churches are to be noticed, one is Westminster Abbey with its chapel of Henry VII., handsomely carved (un ouvrage a roses) and its royal tombs, " which equal if they do not overmatch ours at St. Denis." The other church is " Pauls', for such is the unceremonious fashion in which this saint's church is called." The rest of the religious buildings consist of Protestant temples, very plain and without interest. At Westminster, as well as on London Bridge, a remarkable sight is afforded by the heads of the late rebels stuck on the towers. " It is to be hoped that this sight will do as much to overawe evil-minded persons as the benedictions which have rained on the A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.D. 1663. 169 head of General Monk will encourage peace-loving, honourable and loyal citizens.'* The parks are large and fine. In St. James's Park the king has caused telescopes to be erected, and Sorbieres is allowed to use them and to contemplate Saturn with its ring and Jupiter with its moons. As for " Eyparc " (Hyde Park), it has too many "fiacres,'' and people who have their drive there turn round and round in endless gyrations, "de sorte que cela se passe avec peu de galanterie." Little "galanterie'' is to be discovered either in the cooking practices of the nation. " The English are not appreciative of cooking, and the table of the greatest lords is covered only with large pieces of meat. Bisques and potages are as good as unknown. . . . Pastry is heavy and ill-baked ; compotes and jams are scarcely eatable ; forks and ewers are not in common use ; the washing of the hands is performed by a dipping of them in a basin full of water that is brought round to all the guests. Towards the end of the meal it is customary to smoke tobacco (prendre du tabac en fumee), and while so doing people continue their talk very long. Men of quahty do not practice smoking so assiduously as men of the people ; for a workman scarcely allows a day to pass without going to the tavern, there to smoke with some friends of his. For which reason, I70 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH FEN taverns abound and work progresses but slowly in the shops ; a tailor, a shoemaker will leave his board, what- ever be the pressure of work, and stroll to the public- house, of evenings. And as he comes home late and somewhat dizzy, he opens his shutters and begins work again scarcely before seven the following morning. Manufactured goods are the dearer for it ; and a strange jealousy grows out of these towards French workmen, who are usually more diligent." In their dining-rooms, as well as in their taverns, British citizens indulge in political talks of a very free description. They are proud of their Parliament, which is a " corps bigearre " ; and during the long hours they spend in smoking, they discuss public affairs, the new taxes, '' the chimney tax," the state of the trade. Then they allow their fancy to carry them back to the time " when Oliver was there, and their fleets were so powerful, and they won glory on all the seas, and all the earth wanted their alliance, and the Republic flourished and received ambassadors from all countries.'' Then they consider the present state of the country and they make, between the past and the present, comparisons which are nothing short of " odieuses." They do not forbear saying what they think of the king himself; they are not unwilling to have one, but his rule must not press heavily upon them. A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.D. 1663. 171 The theatres are well worth a visit ; they are splendidly fitted up ; the actors are excellent ; the pity is that English dramatists have only contempt for the holy and mighty rule " of the twenty-four hours/' Many characteristics of the play-house are peculiar to England. '* The best places are in the pit, where men and women sit together, each with his friends. The theatre is very fine, and covered with green cloth ; the stage is all left to the actors ; ^ there are many perspectives and scene-shiftings. An orchestra plays and allows the audience to await, without ennui^ the beginning of the performance ; people go there early in order to hear the music. Actors and actresses are admirable, I am told, and so far as I could guess from their attitudes and pronunciation. But the plays would not meet with the same applause in France as they obtain in England. The poets despise uniformity of place and the rule of the twenty-four hours. They write comedies that are supposed to last twenty-five years ; and when they have shown you the marriage of a ^ The French stage had not been reformed yet in this respect : " II y a ^ cetteheure une incommodite epouvantahle a la comedie ; c'est que les deux c6tcs du theatre sont tout pleins dc jeunes gens assis sur des chaises dc paille.'* Tallcmant, " Historiette," cdxxxvi. Cf. Moli<^rc "J'etais sur Ic theatre, en humeur d'e'couter," &c. — "Les Facheux," i (1661). 172 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH PEN prince at the first act, they exhibit all at once the fine deeds of his son, and they lead him far away to many lands. They pride themselves above all upon their good rendering of the various passions, vices and virtues, and in this they succeed rather well. . . . Their comedies are in prose mesuree [/.^., blank verse], which is nearer the ordinary language than our verses. They cannot conceive that it is not a teasing trouble to have the same cadence constantly striking on one's ear. They pretend that to bear for two or three hours Alexandrine verses, with the regular cassura stop, can- not be considered either very natural or pleasant. It must be confessed that this way of speech is as far from, real life and by consequence from what is to be represented, as the Italian custom of acting comedies in music [/.^., operas] outdoes the extravagance of our own habits. But it is better not to discuss tastes, and we must leave everybody to follow his own bend.'' So great, indeed, is the difference between English and French plays, that Sorbieres would bring home some samples of the former to show to his friends at Paris as travelling curiosities. What he chose to take with him was neither the first folio of Shakespeare nor old Ben's works, nor Davenant's romantic plays, but of all works and of all dramatists, a volume lately published by *'dear Margaret Newcastle," as Charles Lamb was A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.D. 1663. 173 fond of calling her ; '^ un volume que la Marquise de Nieucastel a compose/' He took at the same time with him three volumes of the poetical, political, and philosophical works '' de cette dame," and his friends in France could not but admire the " bel esprit, good sense, and eloquence," of which he says they are full. Other sights attract crowds in London ; foremost among them the fights, of what Sorbieres calls " gladia- teurs " ; but we shall pass them over, for, as he says, they have *^ quelque chose de bien farouche,'' ^ and we must go back and mix with polite society and learned men. London town is not famous only for its buildings, ^ " Je nc dois pas oublicr, parmi Ics divertissement de la bonne ville de Londres ceux que Ton va prendre de temps en temps k voir Ics gladiateurs. Ce sont d'ordinairc des maistres d*escrime ou des prcvosts de sale qui, pour se mettre en reputation et gaigner autre chose que des coups font un dcfi ct proposent 20 ou 30 Jacobus a qui vondra se battre contre eux. L'argent est mis en depot et remis a celuy qui accepte le combat. L'appellant tire ce qui est rcceu a la porte du cirque, et quelque fois il monte ^ deux ou trois fois plus qu'il n'a donnc k son antagonistc, scion qu'il y a plus ou moins de peuple qui accourt a ce spectacle. lis com- battent avec la rondache et I'espce, ^ grand coups d'estrama9on : mais je croy qu'il y a de la collusion entre cux pour faire durcr le jcu que Ton quitte volontiers au premier sang rcpandu. D'ailleurs le fer n*est pas csmoulu, et neantmoins ils ne laissent pas de se donner quelque fois de terriblcs horions et de s'avaler la moitic d'une joue ... En ce triste diverstissement, il y [a] quelque chose de bien farouche." 174 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN. but also for its men ; it is pre-eminently '' magna virum.'' Towering above all the rest in the estimation of Sorbieres, and of many, the great Mr. Hobbes, of Malmesbury, was then to be seen. " The first thing I did when I reached London was to go and visit Mr. Hobbes. ... I had not seen him for fourteen years ; I found him little altered. He was sitting in his room in the same posture as he was accustomed to, of after- noons, when he lived in Paris ; for he spent that time of the day in studying, after he had been walking all the morning. He acted thus for the benefit of his health, which he rightly deemed the first thing to be considered. For the same cause, and though he is now seventy-eight, he has modified his rules in only one item, adding each week a game at tennis, which he continues until he has to stop out of sheer exhaustion. He is little changed in his face, and not at all in what concerns the vigour of his mind, the strength of his memory, and the mirthfulness of his temper, which he has preserved in their entirety.'* ^ ^ "Je trouvay le premier \i.e., Hobbes] peu change depuis quatorze ans que je ne I'avois veu, et je le rencontray dans sa chambre en la meme posture qu'il etait accoutume d'estre routes les apres disnees ; car il les employoit a I'estude, apres s'estre promene tout le matin. Ce qu'il practiquoit pour sa sante, laquelle il faisoit avec raison marcher la premiere ; comme encore a present dans sa soixantc et dix huictiesme annee il n'a adjouste A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.D. 1663. 175 The king favours him greatly. " His Majesty showed me his portrait by the hand of Cooper ^ in his cabinet of natural and mechanical curiosities. He asked me whether I knew that person and what I thought of him. I answered as I should, and we agreed that if he had been a little less dogmatical he would have been very useful as a member of the Royal Society. . . . He has frightened, I do not know how, the clergy of his country and the mathematicians of Oxford and their followers. For which reason his Majesty told me that he looked very much like a bear baited by dogs." Many other philosophers, thinkers, and inventors are to be met in London ; and, indeed, ^' in all times England has produced excellent minds who have addicted themselves to an earnest study of natural sciences. Had the country produced in this line but Gilbert, Harvey, and Bacon, it would be enough for her to compete with France and Italy, who had Galileo, Descartes and Gassendi. But to speak truth Bacon the a cestc mcthodc que I'cxcrcicc dc la paulmc a laqucllc il jouc une fois toutcs Ics scmaincs jusqucs a cc qu'il succombc a la lassitude. II me parut fort peu change dc visage, ct point du tout quant ^ la vigueur dc I'csprit, a la memoirc et a la gayetc qu'il retenoit toute cnti^rc." ^ Samuel Cooper, the well-known miniaturist, 1609-72, who painted portraits of Cromwell, Charles II., &c. 176 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH FEN Chancellor rose above all the others by the vastness of his ideas/' No one did so much for physical science and so powerfully incited people to make experiments. Private persons, however, do nothing but ruin them- selves in such attempts, and before success could be reached it was necessary to wait until princes and lords had acquired a taste for things of this sort. The Commonwealth, Sorbieres observes, came in good time to give leisure to princes ; they began studying sciences ; '^ even the king did not neglect them, and he has acquired a knowledge at which I was surprised when I was received by his Majesty.'' The proof Sorbieres gives of Charles' scientific tastes show, however, as might have been surmised, that the monarch was fond of curiosities and lusus natuvte^ but did not trouble himself very much about the solution of higher problems. Of a more serious nature were Sorbieres's conversa- tions with another friend of his, M. de Montconis, the well-known traveller and savant, who made him au fait with all the more recent discoveries. Sorbieres is thus shown an instrument which marks " the changes in the atmosphere " and registers them with a pencil ; he receives an account of a deaf and dumb person whom M. Wallis of Oxford had taught to read. He is let into the secret of a new plan to ^' petarder," /.d*., A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.D. 1663. 177 blow up, ships at sea. He sees a machine newly in- invented by the Marquess of Worcester, " which being set in motion by one single man, will raise at a height of forty feet, in one minute, four great buckets full of water." He becomes acquainted with members of the Royal Society ; he is admitted to one of their sittings, and he is filled with admiration by their learning as well as by their modesty. " These excellent men are full of high thoughts, and they put in practice with great cleverness what they have conceived in their mind." The Royal Society, or, as Sorbieres calls it, the '' Academic Royale,'' was then in its early youth, having received its charter only the year before. It held its sittings in Gresham College every Wednesday, in a street which our traveller is pleased to call '' la rue Biscop getstriidt" (Bishopsgate Street). "The hall of assembly is a large one, all wainscoted. There is a long table before the chimney, with seven or eight chairs covered with grey cloth, and two rows of wood benches, all bare, with a dossier ; they are arranged so as to rise amphitheatre-wise. . . . The president sits in the middle of the table in an armchair, with his back to the chimney ; the secretary sits at one end, on the left ; they have an inkstand and some paper before them. I saw nobody on the chairs. I suppose they 178 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH PEN, are reserved for men of high rank or for those who have to come and speak to the president on certain occa- sions. All the other academicians sit anywhere without ceremony ; and when one of them comes in after the sitting has begun, no one moves, the president nods to him, and he sits down quietly on the first seat, in order not to interrupt the speaker. The president has a little wooden mace in his hand with which he knocks on the table when he wants silence. . . . Speakers are never interrupted, and those who disagree do not carry the discussion to a point nor use a tone that might be considered disobliging. Nothing more civil, more decent, and better conducted than this assembly as I saw it can well be conceived.'' Of all this Sorbieres judged as best he could, by the tone of the speeches and the manner of the speakers, and by hints which friends gave him as to the pur- port of the discussion. For we need not say that he did not understand a word of English ; nobody did in his time; his main resource when his learned acquaint- ances did not speak French was Latin, but even this did not prove very satisfactory, for '' the English pronounce Latin with a peculiar accent which renders it no less difficult to understand than their own language.'' A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.D. 1663. 179 IV. — Out of Town. Before leaving England Sorbieres resolved to see two very characteristic sights, namely, one of the universities and one " chateau.*' He took accordingly a '' carrosse" and drove to Oxford. The drive was performed in two days. " We were warned against highwaymen ; I thought at first that they mentioned them out of sheer pride, to show that London was nothing behind Paris in this respect. But I heard that there was some truth in the statement, and that highwaymen make their appearance from time to time.'' They live, however, under difficulties, and country people chase and destroy them mercilessly. At Oxford, Sorbieres is shown all over the place by the obliging Mr. Lockey, a '* sharp and learned professor," who lives at Christ College, and is '' Biblio- thecaire d'Oxfordt." ^ He visits with the help of this guide college after college, "the meanest of which is scarcely inferior to the Sorbonne." He greatly admires the Bodleian Library, St. John's College, and Brasenose. " There is one college where I saw a big bronze nose above the door, similar to a mask of ' Thomas Lockey, D.D., librarian of the Bodleian Library, 1660-65. He had, according to Sorbieres, "pris ^ la cour de France un air obligeant et une fa9on accorte.*' i8o ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN Polichinelle, I was told that the place was called on this account the college of the nose, and that within its walls John Duns Scot had lectured in his time : to commemorate which event a reproduction of his nose had been stuck above the door/' In his rambles about Oxford Sorbieres meets Dr. Wallis, who, being the adversary of Hobbes, is very severely handled by the traveller. Wallis is confessed to be very learned indeed, but his manners are rough and uncivil ; he has " bien moins que M. Hobbes du galant homme." He wears on his head a not unknown sort of coiffure, by which, however, M. Sorbieres seems to have been deeply struck. ''You should see him," he says, " with his flat cap on his head, as if he had covered his portfolio with black cloth and sewed it to *his calotte. Such a sight would have inclined you to laughter, as much as the appearance and courtesy of my friend Mr. Hobbes would have bred in you esteem and affection for him.'' The " chateau " which Sorbieres visited is called by him Achtfields (Hatfield). He is taken there by the Earl of Devonshire, the pupil of Hobbes ; the distance from London is eighteen miles ; they go and dine there and come back in the same day, performing the journey ** a toute bride/' Hatfield is a delightful place. *' The eye meets on A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.D. 1663. 181 all sides woods, meadows, and hills and vales. ... I rarely ever saw a more agreeable solitude. The castle is built in bricks with several turrets covered with lead and slates. There are three base courts, in the first of which are the stables and the menagerie. When you reach the place from the main avenue on the park side, and when all the gates of the courts are open, you discover beyond the architectural foreground endless alleys cut straight to the other extremity of the park. The castle looks prodigiously gay and the inside is magnificent. I numbered fifteen rooms on the same floor very well furnished, also a gallery and a chapel. We dined in a hall which overlooks a grass parterre with two fountains and espaliers on the sides, and a balustrade opposite with flower pots and statues on it. From this parterre you are led down to another by two flights of twelve or fifteen steps each, and then to a third." There is a large " parterre d'eau," then a meadow with troops of deer, and then hills covered with a wood which closes the horizon. There are a variety of kiosks and bowers, so pretty, so fine, overlooking such a clear and pure course of water that, suddenly growing lyrical, Sorbieres goes on to describe ** the little fishes who come in their thousands to enjoy so many delights ; they try to leave their own element, 1 82 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN and they jump out of the water as if wanting to contem- plate all I have just described." ^ Hatfield, in a word, is an '^ enchanted place/' V. — SoRBifeREs's '^Impression d'ensemble." Taken altogether, Sorbieres's conclusions are rather fair and modest. If we except some unlucky houtades^ his general impression is greatly in favour of the nation he had been visiting. He honestly acknowledges that many things are against him for giving a reliable judg- ment. He has seen, it is true, the king and the court ; he has moved about as much as he could, paid visits in the country, spoken with people of all sorts, and kept his eyes well open. But his stay has been too short ; his ignorance of the language has been very much against him, so that some of his strictures are, he confesses, only from hearsay. " Though I took all the possible trouble, I do not persuade myself that I have gone to the bottom of affairs, nor understood a nation whose temper is very singular and uneven. I report things as they appeared to me ; not, may be, as they are in the verite des chosesT In his summary of the defects and qualities of the ^ See French text in Appendix III. A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.D. 1663. 183 nation the part allotted to praise is no small one. Among the former he notices a tendency to idleness, presumption, and " quelque sorte d'extravagance de pensee qui se remarque me me dans leurs plus excel- lents ecrits." But he is careful to add that the nation should not be blamed for those faults ; they all come, he says, anticipating Taine's theories, " from the soil '' [terroir)^ Do not forget besides that " il y a en eux de tres rares qualites." '^ I find in them a something that is great, and reminds one of ancient Rome. . . . They have a deep love for their country ; they are strongly united against foreigners ; they are intrepid in danger." They are ruled by a king now, but " ils ont beaucoup retenu, en se rangeant sous I'estat de Tem- pire, de Thumeur qui domine naturellement dans les esprits de tous les hommes en I'estat de liberte." They have, indeed, a propensity to scorn all the rest of the world ; this blameable tendency is mainly caused by the extraordinary resources afforded by their own country, which '^ lacks neither iron, nor stone, lead, tin, coal, plaster, wood, corn, vegetables, meadows, oxen, sheep, horses, game, pasture-land, springs and rivers, nor plenty of fine sights, nor industry to turn all these into use, . . . with the ocean round them to * **Ccttc inclination dc laqucllc jc nc protends pas les blamcr puisque cllc leur vient du terroir. ..." 1 84 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH FEN. prevent other nations from coming to trouble their felicity/' Thinking thus of the nation at large, and consider- ing that some boutades here and there would be counted as nothing, Sorbieres, when he had come back to his country, did not hesitate to write and publish an account of what he had seen, with results which were not long in following and which surprised him not a little. VI. SoRBlfeRES PUBLISHES HIS BoOK. ThE CON- SEQUENCES OF THE Deed. Sorbiefes*s book was printed at Paris in 1664 ; the dedication to the king is dated December 12, 1663 : the ^^ acheve d'imprimer'' is of May 16, 1664. A storm, extraordinary in its violence, was at once raised by the work. The jealousy between France and England was then keener than ever ; there was, as the phrase is, no love lost between the two countries, which phrase plain Mr. Pepys plainly wrote in different words, thus : '' We do naturally hate the French." Of that hate the Sun-King, for reasons of his own, would have none. The thing he wanted then above all others, the plan nearest and dearest to his heart, was a close alliance and union with the British Kingdom. A number of sacrifices which under different circumstances he would have never A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.B. 1663. 185 dreamed of making counted for nothing, if only he could reach his most cherished goal. In such a cause to give up some Sorbieres or other was for him no sacrifice, and his decision would depend not on what was in the book, but on what would be thought of it in England. Unluckily for Sorbieres his performance was very badly received in London. In the jealous mood of the nation the merest pretext was seized upon for recrimination. All Sorbieres had said of the Roman temper of the English and of their manifold virtues and glories was as nothing ; \{\shoutades and some slanderous remarks, not even always his own, but mostly reported, were alone regarded. The outcry was especially loud because of his language concerning the Chancellor. What he had said was nothing more nor less than this : '* My Lord Hidde is a man of the law, an advocate by profession ; he understands the legal procedure well, but he knows little of other things ; he is ignorant of the belles lettres. He is said to be presbyterian in his character, and to want distinction in his mind {il a Vesprit populaire). He is a good- looking man, with an agreeable presence ; he is about sixty ; he has the honour to be father-in-law to the Duke of York, which is, maybe, one of his crimes in the eyes of the Earl of Bristol and of the people." 1 86 ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN This picture of the Prime Minister was declared to constitute in itself an unbearable and unpardonable offence. King and Court and Chancellor rose against Sorbieres. To add to the author's misfortunes he had towards the end of his volume introduced a story of the Danish king and the Count Ulefeld, which made him obnoxious to the Danish as well as to the English Court. His fate was soon settled. On the 9th of July, 1664, the king being at Fontainebleau, an edict of the Council of State was issued '^ against a book entitled ' Relation [etc.],' written by the Sieur de Sorbieres, to the disadvantage of the English nation and of the King of Denmark." The edict Itself condemns in no measured terms a work " in which the author, under pretence of recount- ing with complete simplicity what he has seen, takes the liberty to put forth a variety of things which are contrary to truth and detrimental to the English nation. He is so bold" as to express himself calumniously con- cerning the personal qualities and the behaviour of one of the principal ministers of the King of Great Britain, the said minister being deeply esteemed, considered, and beloved by his Majesty. . . .'' The author is also guilty of some inconsiderate judgments bearing upon the conduct of the King of Denmark ; and for all these A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.B. 1663. 187 reasons "his said Majesty in his council, with the intent of showing publicly the displeasure he felt for this audacious and imprudent satire — the author of which has already been sentenced to relegation — has ordered and orders the said book ... to be suppressed in all his kingdom and lands belonging to him, forbids all printers and booksellers to sell and publish the same under a penalty of five hundred livres, wills that all his subjects of whatsoever rank bring the copies they may possess to the office of their respective baillages and senechaussees, to be, as above said, suppressed. . . . Signed : Louis, and lower, De Lionne, and sealed with the great seal of yellow wax sur simple queued Very mournfully did Sorbieres undertake his journey to Brittany, vainly protesting of his innocence and good intentions. He stopped at Nantes, and from thence wrote the most pressing letters to his friends in Paris to exculpate himself and to ask for their interference in his favour. Some are still extant (and unpublished) ; one directed to the famous Abbe de Pure, the bete noire of Boileau, is preserved in the original at the National Library, Paris. In it Sorbieres throws himself on his knees, beseeching the abbe to protect him and to set his numerous patrons in motion to procure the repeal of the decree ; the said patrons being " les plus honnetes gens de la cour, du palais et des academies.'* A special 1 88 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH PEN, appeal to "les marquises" is not forgotten (Nantes, August 9, 1 664). I While Sorbieres was thus eating the bread of adver- sity, his book, though suppressed, continued to live, and as it was prohibited in France, foreign booksellers were not slow to seize their opportunity. A variety of editions were published, in French, in Italian, in English. Replies and imitations increased its repute, and, in most cases, increased also the ill-humour on both sides. Some of the replies were in French, such as the " Observations d'un Gentilhomme Anglois sur le voyage d'Angleterre du Sieur Sorbiere," 2 which has all the appearance of a work de commande. The author is ^ MS. Fran^ais, 15209, fol. 13. Another among the famous adversaries of Boileau busied himself with Sorbieres, but was less favourably inclined. Chapelain writes to Heinsius, then at Stock- holm : " Le Sieur Sorbiere est toujours relegue a Nantes oil il ronge son frein et paye la peine de son insolence. M. Huygens le pere qui revient d'Angleterre m'a dit que le chancelier se relaschoit et vouloit bien lui pardonner sa temeritc. Je ne croy pas que le roy de Danemark soit si facile," October 20, 1664. " Lettres," ed. Tamizey de Larroque, Paris, 1883, ^ ^o\s. 4to, vol. ii. p. 371. 2 Paris, 1664, i2mo. See also : "Reponse aux faussetes et invectives qui se lisent dans la Relation du voyage de Sorbieres en Angleterre." Amsterdam, 1675, izmo. It is an adaptation of Sprat's " Observations." Also " A Journey to London in the year 1698 . . . written ... by Monsieur Sorbieres, and newly trans- lated." London, 1698, 8vo. The real author of this last work was William King ; Sorbieres at that date had been dead for twenty-eight years. A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.D. 1663. 189 loud in his praise of *' the Solomon of our century, the august King Louis XIV. /' and of Lionne, a minister without peer. The drift of the answer is that if Sor- bieres has discovered vices (as well as qualities) in the English nation, his opinion is an isolated one, and a number of authors are quoted to show that the French have never discovered anything but virtue in their neighbours. There were English answers, too, and these were couched in less measured language. For a while, owing to the interference of the French Ambassador, the Comte de Cominges, no replies were allowed to be printed, and Charles ordered the materials collected with this object to be brought to him and set aside. But at length the monarch's will was altered or over- ruled, and Thomas Sprat printed his " Observations on Monsieur de Sorbieres's voyage into England — Sed po- terat tutior esse domi '* (1665, another edition 1668). It is a wild, rambling pamphlet, written ab iratOy the lapse of time having in no way cooled the anger of the author. Sprat is blinded by his passion ; his answers in several cases defeat his own intentions, so much so that more actual praise of the English nation will be found in Sorbieres's book than in Sprat's wild reply. Sprat acknowledges the fairness of Louis XIV. ; his treatment of Sorbieres " became the justice of so I90 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH PEN, . great a monarch," and befitted the sins of the traveller. These sins are manifold ; he is a man of an obscure birth, a turncoat (Sprat was forgetting his own '' Poem on the death of Oliver, late Lord Protector," 1659), a pedant, and an ass ; his descriptions of the country are grotesque ; the account (quoted above) he gives of Kent is worthy of *^ the authors of Clelia or Astrea." His pretence that the king and court have a propensity to spend too much money, and that this causes discon- tent in the country, is monstrous ; for everybody knows that Charles has greatly reduced the expenses of the Crown, and dismissed all useless persons that were wont to hang about court : '' those blood suckers have parted with their very food.'* Sorbieres's attack on Clarendon is a scandal ; he pretends that the chancellor is merely a " man of the law '' ; this surely is bad enough, " but the worst is still behind : my Lord Chan- cellor is utterly ignorant of the Belles Lettres!'' Four pages are dedicated to a vindication of Clarendon's character in this respect. The description of Dr. Wallis's cap is considered a gross insult to the Univer- sity and the nation at large. So blinded, indeed, had Sprat been by anger, that he makes the most curious mistakes in reading the French text of his opponent. When Sorbieres complains that the Dutch irreverently call the French *' moucherons,'' Sprat declares that the French are nicknamed '' mushrooms.'' A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND A.D. 1663. 191 What Sorbiercs advanced concerning the English stage touched Sprat to the quick ; the English not to know and properly revere the unities ! This showed the man Sorbieres was ! And not caring in the least what great men he was throwing overboard, and how detrimental if true his own strictures would have been to England, Sprat thus vindicates the drama of his country. That Frenchman, he says, '^ has confounded the reign of Charles II. with that of Queen Elizabeth. 'Tis true about an hundred years ago the English poets were not very exact in such decencies ; but no more than were the dramatists of any other countries. The English themselves did laugh away such absurdities as soon as any, and for these last fifty years our stage has been as regular in those circumstances as the best of Europe. Seeing he thinks fit to upbraid our present poets with the errors of which their predecessors were guilty so long since, I might as justly impute the vile absurdities that are to be found in Amadis de Gaul, to Monsieur de Corneille, de Scudery, de Chapelain, de Voiture, and the rest of the famous moderne French wits." Having thus dealt equal if summary justice to Amadis and to Shakespeare, Sprat goes on to remind his friend, Dr. Wren, that, discussing together, some day, long before, what time they would have preferred 192 ENGLISH ESS A YS EROM A ERENCH PEN. to live in, they had agreed the time of Augustus would have been the best. '' This, sir, was then our opinion ; but it was before the King's return. For since that blessed time the condition of our own country appears to me to be such that we need not search into ancient history for a real idea of happinesse." Sprat was appointed Canon of Windsor in 1680, Dean of West- minster in 1683, and Bishop of Rochester in 1684 : — the least, in truth, which could be done. Long before this, however, Charles, who had not the defect of a sour temper, considered the poor Sorbieres had paid enough for his insufficient appreciation of Clarendon's Belles Lettres. He requested the French Ambassador to interfere in favour of the culprit, who was accordingly amnestied. Sorbieres came back to Paris, went to Rome in 1667, where a portrait of him was made by the famous Audran, and continued as vainly as before his exer- tions to establish his fortune. Having become drop- sical with no hope of recovery (1670) he took laudanum in order to " stun himself," and not to suffer the pangs of agony ; and thus he died — " too much as a philosopher," says Moreri. ':Lr^^e^piCtCi lJ'^1 WlJ)'" ? CLEMENCY OF HENRY IV. AT THE BATTLE OF IVRY, FROM THE LONDON EDITION OF THE " HENIADE." V. ONE MORE DOCUMENT CONCERNING VOLTAIRES VISIT TO ENGLAND. WHEN Voltaire, after his second imprisonment in the Bastille, had to leave his country and go to England I (1726), he found there his friend, Lord Bolingbroke. He had known the lat^ minister of Queen Anne in France, whe:i that states- man and philosopher lived in exile, and he was heartily welcomed by him. Bolingbroke, who was " amy zele, dangereux ennemy," - lost no time in introducing * On Voltaire's visit to England, see J. Churton Collins, *' Bolingbroke, a historical study, and Voltaire in England," London, 1886; and A. Ballantync, "Voltaire's visit to England 1726-9," London, 1893. 2 Portrait of Bolingbroke in an unpublished note by the Duke d'Auraont, French Ambassador to England, August 10, 17 12. Archives of the French Foreign Office, *' Anglctcrre," vol. ccxcii. : ** A parler juste, on pent dire que c'est mylord Bolingbroke qui, apr^s le Grand Trcsoricr (/.^., Harlcy) a le plus de credit et qui gouvernc tout. II est amy intime du Grand Trcsorier, il a des talents supcrieurs. II est hommc polyc, eloquent et s'cstoit acquis par cc» 13 «93 194 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH FEN. Voltaire, an exile in his turn, into the most elegant society. He introduced him also, and this was no less useful to the new-comer, into the literary circles of London. Voltaire thus became acquainted with Swift, Pope, Gay, and many others. One fact has never been noticed. Voltaire, who rightly enough asserted, on leaving France, that he was " very well recommended to people in England," ^ had provided himself, before he crossed the Channel, with letters of introduction for the French Ambassador. • They had been given him by none other than the Foreign Minister himself, Count de Morville, a member of the French Academy, the same to whom he announced a little later the impending, but never-to- take-place, visit of Dean Swift to France. M. de' Morville had even gone the length of asking the royal ambassador to present Voltaire to the members of the English cabinet, so that the exile was soon on the best of terms with everybody : with the Tories, thanks to Bolingbroke, and with the Whigs, owing to the good offices of M. de Morville. Walpole, among others, patroned him with p;reat zeal. raisons un credit extraordinaire dans la chambre basse pendant qu'il y tenoit sceance. D'ailleurs il aime les plaisirs, son com- merce est agreable, il dit son sentiment avec beaucoup de hardiesse et de liberte. II est amy zele, dangereux ennemy." ^ To Thieriot, August 12, 1726. VOLTAIRE'S VISIT TO ENGLAND. 195 Letters of this sort recommending a banished man to the kindness and good offices of his ambassador would shock our ideas ; but such an occurrence did not seem so very strange then, and this example is not unique. There was no more shame at that time in being exiled than in being " embastille," and it was not very rare to see friendly, not to say cordial, relations established between proscribed Frenchmen and the representatives of the most Christian monarch. Expelled from France on account of some writing, for which he had to undergo a life-long exile, Saint- llvremond had been cordially received by the French Ambassador, who never failed to send news of him, his doings, his sayijigs, and his health, to Louis XIV., adding even the most favourable appreciation of the author of the " Lettre au Marquis de Crequy." The Chevalier de Grammont was equally well treated at the French Embassy, and Count Cominges was good enough to give him kindly advice, and strongly to recommend him not to marry the peerless but portion- less Mademoiselle de Hamilton. Voltaire seems to have availed himself of Morvi lie's letters in at least one memorable circumstance. The ambassador was the Comte, afterwards Marshal and Duke, de Broglie. The occasion was the issuing of a definitive edition of the " Henriade/' This epic had 196 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A ERENCH FEN, already been issued five times on the Continent ; but these editions, three of which bore the imprint of Geneva, and two of Amsterdam (1723-4), did not contain a perfectly complete text. Voltaire had revised his work, and had been preparing for several years to give an enlarged version, which he intended to publish *' in quarto, on beautiful paper, with large margins, and handsome type/' ^ The moment seemed auspicious ; the ground had been prepared by Voltaire himself, who, in order to be better known among English thinkers and wits, had just printed two essays in English : " An essay upon the civil wars of France, extracted from curious manu- scripts, and also upon the epick poetry of the European nations from Homer down to Milton," by M. de Voltaire, London, 1727. The new epic poet had a pecuniary as well as a literary interest to make the best of the occasion. A fashion, which had been introduced also into France,^ had prevailed for some thirty years in England. Literary works of importance were published by subscription ; it was a more decent means of getting money from admirers and friends than the dedications of old. Famous authors were thus enabled to collect ^ To Thieriot, October 17, 1725. 2 "Tout le monde salt," Abbe Prevost writes, "que c'est a Londres que la methode des souscriptions a pris naissance." "Le Pour et Contre," No. vi. VOLTAIRE'S VISIT TO ENGLAND. 197 sums which, given the difference in the value of money, can be compared with the profits of the most popular novelists of our day. The time was long past when that poor author, Milton, had published his " Paradise Lost,'' with great and immediate success, and a total profit of eighteen pounds for him and his widow. Dryden, since then, had printed by subscription his translation of Virgil in 1697, and had received twelve hundred pounds ; Pope had got nearly nine thousand for his Homer ; Prior four thousand for a volume of poems ; Gay was going to secure one thousand for a single comedy, '* Polly," the performance of which, it is true, had been forbidden by authority. Voltaire was in a state of very pressing need. His pensions had been stopped, and, on his coming to London, the failure of the Jew, d'Acosta, had cost him twenty thousand francs. He at once resolved to turn to account this taste of a wealthy public for literary things, and to realise an idea he already entertained before his exile. ^ He advertised a fine quarto edition of the " Henriade,'' with engravings, and began to enlist subscribers, at a guinea each. A curious letter, addressed by him to Swift at that moment, which figures in his '' Correspondance Generale," shows that he did not forget to knock at the door of his literary * To Thicriot, 1722. 198 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH FEN. friends. He asks Swift " to make use of the influence he enjoys in Ireland to secure some subscribers to the ^ Henriade,' now entirely finished, which, for the lack of some slight assistance, has not yet been published." December 14, 1727. He sent also his appeal to his political friends. Walpole took the interests of the poet greatly to heart ; Bolingbroke did the same, and displayed the more zeal because he had been *' infiniment satisfait " with the epic, when Voltaire had shown him a first sketch of it at the castle of La Source in Touraine, 1722. Voltaire, lastly, had called upon the representative of his country and asked him to secure subscribers for the work. The ambassador who, before he had come to London in a diplomatic capacity, had busied himself much more with war than with poetry, was greatly puzzled, for he did not know whether the epic of that " Sieur de Voltaire '' was worthy of approval. He therefore referred the matter to his chief, the French Foreign Minister, and asked for instructions. His letter to the Comte de Morville is preserved in the archives of the Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Paris, and has escaped the notice of all the biographers of Voltaire, It is to the following effect : — VOLTAIRE S VISIT TO ENGLAND. 199 '^From London, March 3, 1727. "Sir, — The Sieur de Voltaire whom you did me the honour to recommend to me, and in favour of whom you sent me letters of recommendation intro- ducing him to the ministers of this Court, is about to print in London, by subscription, his poem on the League. He asks me to secure subscribers for him, and M. de Walpole does his very best on his part to get him as many as possible. I should greatly like to please him ; but I have not seen that work, and I do not know whether the Court will approve of the addi- tions and suppressions he has introduced into the text given to the public at Paris, and of the plates he has ordered to be sent from thence in order to adorn the same. I told him therefore that I could not meddle with his undertaking, till I knew whether you liked it or not. I am always afraid that French authors should be tempted tc make a wrongful use of the liberty they enjoy in a country like this, to write all that comes into their mind concerning religion, the Pope, the Government or the members of it. Poets especi- ally are wont to use such license without caring much whether or no they cast obloquy upon what is most sacred. And if there were anything of that sort in this poem I should not like to incur the blame of having subscribed to it and recommended others to do the 200 ENGLISH ESS A YS FROM A FRENCH PEN same. I most humbly beseech you, sir, to be so good as to send me instructions concerning the line I must follow in this circumstance. I shall conform my con- duct to what you will do me the honour to prescribe. " I have, &c , ''Broglie.''! This great circumspection on the part of the soldier and diplomatist was only too well justified. In no other period had the produce of the printing press been watched in France with a more searching eye. Voltaire knew it well, as he had already tried in vain to obtain a royal privilege for that same " Henriade," and had had to cause the copies of it to be secretly carried from Rouen to Paris, where they were to be sold. " The narrowness of mind of our authorities," he wrote later, '' has reached such a pitch that only meaningless works can be freely printed. The good authors of the time of Louis the Fourteenth would be denied the ' privilege.' Boileau and La Biuyere would receive nothing but persecutions. We must live for ourselves and for our friends, be careful not to think aloud, or, if we want to do so, go and think in England or Holland "^ — the very thing Count de Broglie feared Voltaire was ^ See Appendix iv. 2 To M. de Formont, 1734 VOLTAIRES VJSIT TO ENGLAND. 201 about to do. The epic on Henry the Fourth had been, as M. Desnoiresterres has pointed out, con- sidered as imbued with a '^ Jansenist," nay, a '* semi- Pelagian " spirit. The praise it contained of heretical Elizabeth, and of the Huguenot chief, Coligny, had also caused deep disgust to pious-minded persons. As for the engravings, if there was nothing to say concerning those which represented the clemency of the king at Ivry (reproduced in my volume), or " King Henry the Fourth, lifelike, on a throne of clouds, with King Louis the Fifteenth in his arms," ^ several others lent themselves to criticism. Th;^ author had ordered, for example, the goddess Discord to be shown in one of them as newly arrived from Rome, and inciting the monks of Paris to armed rebellion. I have vainly looked for the answer of M. de Morville. Comte de Broglie in fact abstained from subscribing to the book, and his name does not appear in the list published with it. The poem was issued in 1728, under the title: ''La Henriade de M. de Voltaire " — " a Londres.'* Some copies had been subscribed for by French gentlemen ; they were sent to them fiom London, but on reaching the opposite shore they were seized and confiscated by the royal authorities. ' Voltaire to Thicriot, September 11, 1722. 202 ENGLISH ESSA YS FROM A FRENCH FEN. The success of the undertaking was, however, very great in England. In the table of ^subscribers may- be found, besides the names of many colleagues of the Comte de Broglie — that is to say, members of the Corps Diplomatique — innumerable names of honourable and right honourable gentlemen, lords, earls, dukes, and duchesses, obviously enlisted by Bolingbroke, Walpole, and the other powerful friends of Voltaire. Chesterfield subscribed for ten copies and Bolingbroke for twenty. Many men of letters find a place also in this brilliant pageant of names, and among others. Swift, Tickell, Cibber, Berkeley, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, John Locke, Congreve, &c. Swift seems to have exerted himself with great alacrity in favour of the writer, who bestowed upon him the praise of being " Rabelais dans son bon sens." The large number of people with a situation in Ireland appearing in the list is a proof of the Dean's friendly activity. " I do not send you yet my great edition,'' we read, in one of Voltaire's English letters, '' because I am really afraid of having not copies enough to answer the calls of the subscribers." More than that : King George the Second and Queen Caroline, ''the virtuous consort," as Voltaire wrote in his dedication of the " Henriade," '' of one who^ among so many crowned heads, enjoys, almost VOLTAIRE'S VISIT TO ENGLAND, 203 alone, the inestimable honour of ruling a free nation," bestowed their patronage on the work of the exile. Besides the large paper issue, it went through three editions in three weeks, and the sums Voltaire thus received were the beginning of his fortune, that is to say, of his independence. APPENDIX. APPENDIX. MEDIEVAL SHIPPING. {See above^pp. 43^) MCH. DE LA RONCIERE, of the Paris National Library, one of the best authorities on mediaeval shipping, whom I had consulted about the "navy" sent to Scotland to fetch the Dauphiness, kindly wrote in reply the following letter, which will surely be read with interest : — '* . . . II ctait naturel de se demandcr pourquoi le roi d'Ecosse prisait tant les galcres et si les galores espagnolcs n'ctaient pas supcrieures aux autres. " Remarquons d'abord qu'en 1435 il n*y avait plus de gal<^res de guerre ni en France ni en Angleterre. Depuis Richard II. , les rois anglais n'en avaient plus. La liste des vaisseaux d'Henri IV. et Henri V. ne comprer.d que des voilicrs (^carraques, nefs, balin- gcres) vendus du rcste en 1423. "En France, la marine royale avait toujours comptc de 6 a 15 galores pendant plus d'un si^cle. Mais les deux derniers specimens de ce type avaient etc briiles en 141 8 avcc le Clos des Galces lui mcme, lors de la prise de Rouen. "Du rcste, cctte annce mcme ou le roi d'Ecosse songeait aux galcres espagnolcs, un autre souvcrain y pcnsait aussi. Jc vcux 207 2o8 APPENDIX. dire le due de Bourgogae Philippe le Bon qui, des 1436 aura cinq ou six galeres achetees dans le Sudou construites par des mcridio- naux. "Les Etats du nord-ouest de I'Europc, en 1435, ne possedaient done pas de galere?. lis n'avaient — et le roi d'Ecosse tout le premier — ils n'avaient dis-je, comme batiments a rames, que des row-barges, filles des longues nefs norroises. Mais les row-barges avaient leurs bordages a elins et non pas a joints lisses, comme les sveltes galeres du Sud ; elles etaient plus fortes, mais plus lourdes ; elles avaient beaucoup moins de rameurs que les galeres, quatre vingts au plus, tandis que les galeres en avaient jusqu'a deux cents. Les row-barges enfin n'avaient pas re^u ces perfectionne- ments et cet agrandissement qui, au XV^ siecle, leur vaudront, d'etre placees au rang des plus rapides croiseurs. Ce que les his- toriens disent de ces row-barges ou ramberges anglaises qui com- battirent d'Annebault en 1515 n'est pas applicable aux petites row-barges de 1435. " Voila pourquoi le roi d'Ecosse preferait une galere meridionale a ses row-barges. Avec une galere, sa fille serait plus sure d'echapper aux corsaires, la galere ayant un equipage plus nom- breux et etant plus legere. Si le reste de la flotte, les voiliers, etaient surpris par un calme plat, la galere pourrait toujours aller de I'avant et gagner un port ami. "Pourquoi, maintenant, desirer une galere espagnole plutot qu'une galere italienne ? D'abord evidemment, parce que I'Espagne etait plus proche ; ensuite parce que les convois genois et venitiens dits des 'galeres de Flandres ' ne detachaient jamais ancune de leurs galeres au service de I'etranger ; enfin parce que I'equipage combattant etait plus nombreux. Au lieu des 25 ou 30 hommes de guerre que compcrtaient les galeres franco-italiennes, en plus des 160 ou 180 rameurs, les Espagnols en embarquaient 60 et plus. Vers 1400, I'equipage normal d'une galere espagnole etait de 240 hommes environ, d'une galere fran^aise, 210. Dois-je ajouter que les Espagnols etaient bien connus en Ecosse ou ils allaient chercher les troupes auxiliaires envoyees a Charles VII. ? APPENDIX. 209 "II ne faut pas cependant attacher a cette epith^te * espagnole ' une portee qu*elle n*a pas, et, pour vous en convaincre, je puis vous dire, monsieur, que la galere propremcnt dite (je laisse de c6te tous see derives infiniment variables : galiotte, gallon, galcasse, &c.) est le navire qui a le moins change dcpuis les latins et mcme les Egyptiens jusqu'au XVIIP siecle. Plut au ciel que les autres voiliers ou batiments a rames n*aient pas eubi plus de modifications ! Ce serait un jeu de les reconstituer, au lieu que . . . Mais ceci n'est plus dc notre sujet. "Les prototypes des galcres portugaises et cspagnoles du XIIP siecle avaient etc faits a Lisbonne et k Seville par des Gcnois, pendant qu'en ce mcme siecle les ouvriers castillans allaient s'instruire aux chantiers de Genes. J'ai retrouvc les noms d'un grand nombre de Scvillans dans les archives de Genes, XIV*^ siecle. A Lisbonne, durant deux siccles, XV® et XVP, douze marins et constructeurs gcnois furent constamment a la solde des rois. De mcme en France, du XIIP au XV.*^ siecle, au Clos des Galces, il y avait deux scries d'ouvriers et maitres entretenus : des Normands pour les voiliers (barges, nefs, coques), des Italiens, Espagnols ou Proven9aux pour les batiments a rames (galores, galiottes, lins). De la cette identitc de construction, de langue, de technique, pour tout ce qui concerne la marine a rames. En Angleterre aussi, il y eut des constructeurs italiens au XIV*^ siecle. "Quant a ce que les Norvcgiens du Moyen Age appelaient galces ou galt^res, il faut entendre par la un derive de leurs longues nefs. " Vous pourriez ctre tcntc, monsieur, de prendre, commc type de la galere, la gravure de Breughel donncc par Jal dans son Glossaire Nautique, article Galore. Gardez vous en. Ce petit bateau n'a que I'avant de la gal<^re. Et encore, au XV* siecle, la galere ne portait guire que deux pieces de canon \ la rambade. Mais il n*a pas les deux mats, 1' agilite et la iubtilitk^ comme on disait alors, d'une galcirc." H II. A NOTE BY ESPRIT CABART DE VILLERMONT CONCERNING SCARRON AND HIS WIFE. Copied from the fly-leaf of the " Apologie pour M. Duncan," preserved in the National Library, Paris. Press mark, Td. 86-14. {See above^ /. 96.) " Les notes marginales et manuscrittes de ce livres sont du Sieur de la Menardiere qui estoit medecin de madame la marquise de Sable, a ses gages et demeurant chez elle et, depuis^ lecteur du roy. Ce fut luy qui donna, pour un Icger mal, des pillules a feu M. Scarron (mary de madame la marquise de Maintenon) qui luy caus^rent une contraction de nerfs qui, d'homme bien fait et tres dispost, le rendirent impotent par une contraction de nerfs qui augmenta jusques a sa mort. " J'ay connu particulierement madame Scarron avant qu'elle allast auxindes occidentales. Je I'ay veue depuis a la Martinique chez sa mere chez qui je logeay pendant que notre navire estoit en charge, et, depuis, a St. Christophle, chez le commandeur de Poincy, oil nous demeurames ensemble pendant deux mois et ou elle estoit venue chercher son mary, feu M. d'Aubigne, filz de celuy qui a fait rhistoire d'Aubigne, et le Baron de Fenest et la Confession de Sancy et autres ouvrages. " J'ay demeure depuis avec M. et Madame Scarron pendant trois ans ... a I'hostel de Troyes, rue d'Enfer, ou ils furent mariez en 1652 : Madame d'Aubigne sa mere m'ayant envoye une procuration pour la yalidite du mariage, m'ayant prie par ses lettres de U APPENDIX. 211 mettre en quelque religion en attendant leur manage projette, auparavant que sa fille fut en Poitou avec madame la marquise de Neuillan \ qui elle estoit etqui logeoit a I'hostel de Troyes avec son frere M. Tiraqueau ; et ce fut la ou commencerent leurs amours, M. Scarron y tenant une portion dont il me loua une partic. Ensuitte de quoy il me prit en pantion avec Lafleur qui me servoit et a qui il fesoit souvcnt faire des tourtes de frangipane devant luy. '* Ce fut la ou il fit, a ma persuasion, le premier volume de son Roman Comique qu'il dedia au Cardinal de Rets, pour lors coad- juteur de Paris, qui venoit souvent passer d'agrcables heures avec luy au sortir du Luxembourg, pendant la Fronde. Je luy fournis les quatre nouvelles en espagnol qui sont si agreablement traduittes dans ses deux volumes, aussy bien que les quatre autres qu'il a traduittes et qu'il a donnces a part. Je luy proposay une nouvelle traduction du Don Quixotte au lieu de la morale de Gassendy a la traduction de laquelle je le trouvay attache, mais il n'en voulut point tater accause de la prcccdente traduction par Oudin et un autre, quoyque pitoyable. Je luy dis qu'il falloit done qu'il entreprist quelque ouvrage de son chef et de son caractcre enjouc, plustost que cette morale de Gassendy trop scrieuse pour luy, et qu'il y meslast des nouvelles dont je luy fournirois les originaux en espagnol qu'il entendoit et dont j'avois quantite. En quoy il imiteroit au moins Don Quixote qui en a donnc quatre si jolies dans sa premii^re partie : de sorte que je puis dire que le public m'a, en quelque sorte, I'obligation de cet agrcable ouvrage, bien que je n'en soy pas I'auteur, aussy bien que de ses quatre dernicres nouvelles imprimees a part. " J'ay cent jolies lettres qu'il m'a escrittes, que je feray pcut estre imprimer quelque jour si sa veufve m'en donne la permission. II m'en escri[vi]t une entre autres pendant que j'estois a Sedan, qui commence par : * Que diable faites vous sur les bords dc la Meuse,' ou il fait I'cloge du mardchal de Fabert et oCi il dit quMI nc ressemblc pas k ces marcchaux qui n'ont que de I'instinct tout au plus." III. A DESCRIPTION OF HATFIELD BY SAMUEL DE SORBlfeRES, 1663. {See above^ p. 180.) "Je ne vous parleray que de [la maison de campagne] de M. le Comtc de Salisbury, a laquelle M. le Comte de Devonshire me mena. Elle est a 18 milles de Londres. Nous y fusmes disner et revinsmes a la ville le meme jour, mais ce fut a toute bride que nous allasmes. Achtfields done est un tres beau chasteau que le pere de ce seigneur fit bastir dans un grand pare et qu'il acheva dans moins d'un an, lors de sa surintendance. Ce que M. le Comte de Devonshire ?on gendre me fit remarquer pour m'ap- pendre qu'ailleurs qu'en France les surintendans s9avoient clever bien tost de beaux edifices. Celuy-cy est en une situation fort avantageuse. La veue ne rencontre que des bois et des prairieres, des collines et des valons, qui fournissent d'agreables objets a toute sorte de distance. . . . Je n'ay guere vu de plus aimable solitude. Le chasteau est de brique, a plusieurs petites tours couvertes de plomb et d'ardoise. II a trois basse-cours ; en la premiere des- quelles sont les escuyeries et la mesnagerie. Quand on y arrive par la principalle avenue du coste du pare et lorsque les portes des basse-cours sont ouvertes, on descouvre a travers cette architecture des allees a perte de veue, qui percent jusques a I'autre bout du pare. " Le Chasteau est merveilleuscment gay et le dedans est tres magnifique. J'y contay quinze pieces de plein pied fort bien APPENDIX. 213 parces, une assez grande galerie ct une chapellc. Nous disnasmes dans une sale qui rcgarde un parterre de gazon accompagnc de deux Fontaines, avec des espalliers a costc et une balustrade au devant sur laquelle il y a des pots de fleurs et des statues. "De ce parterre on descend par deux degrez de douze ou quinze marches a un autre au dessons ; et du second a un troisicme. De cette terrace, la veue descouvre le grand parterre d'eau. . . . Au dela de ce parterre il y a une prairie ou des troupes de daims se promcncnt ; jusques a ce que le sommet de la colline se hcrisse en un bois qui forme I'horison. ** Je ne dois pas oublier une vigne que je vis a la dcscente de la terrace, ny divers petits bastimens qu'il y a a costc, et dont les uns sont pratique? pour la retraite de plusieurs sortes d'oyseaux, qui demeurent familicrement aupres du monde sans s'efFaroucher. Sur quelques eminences, il y a aussi des cabinets en forme de chiosques a la Turque avec une galerie tout k I'entour et eslevez aux plus beaux cndroits, pour y aller jouir des difFerentes vcues de ce charmant paysage. II y a mesme aux lieux ou la riviere entre ct sort du parterre des pavilions de bois tout ouverts, avec des sieges a I'entour ; d'ou Ton voit entrer et sortir avec une eau fort claire, une infinite de poissons, qui semblent venir en foule pour jouir de toutes ces dclices ; et qui s'efForcent de quitter leur clement, lors qu'ils s'clancent quelquesfois hors de I'eau, corame pour considcrer tout ce que je viens de vous dccrirc." IV. COUNT DE BROGLIE'S LETTER CONCERNING THE "HENRIADE" OF VOLTAIRE, 1727. From the Archives of the French Foreign Office. " Angleterre," vol. ccclviii. (See above^ p. 199.) "A Londres, le 3 Mars, 172'^. " Monsieur, — Le S. de Voltaire, que vous m'avez fait I'honneur de me recommandcr etpourlcquel vous m'avez addressc des lettres de recommandation pour les ministres de cette cour, est prest a faire imprimer a Londres, par souscription son poeme de la Ligue. II me sollicite de lui procurer des souscrivants et M. de Walpole s'employe de son cote tout de son mieux pour tacher de luy en faire avoir le plus grand nombre qu'il sera possible ; je serois tres aise de luy faire plaisir, mais comme je n'ay point veu cet ouvrage et que je ne sais point si les additions et soustractions qu'il dit avoir fait a celui qu'il a donne au puplic a Paris, ni les planches gravees qu'il en a fait venir pour I'enrichir seront approuvees de la Cour, je luy ay dit que je ne pouvois m'en mesler qu'autant que vous I'auriez pour agreable. Je crains toujours que des auteurs fran^ois ne veuillent faire un mauvais usage de la liberte qu'ils, ont dans un pays comme celuy-cy d'ecrire tout ce qui leur vient dans imagination sur la Religion, le Pape, le Gouvernement ou les personnes qui le com- posent. Ce sont des licences que les poetes particulierement se croyent toujours en droit de se donner sans s'embarrasser de pro- phaner ce qu'il y a de plus sacre. Et s'il se trouvoit quelque chose APPENDIX. 215 de pareil dans ce poeme, je ne voudrois pas etre dans le cas d'essuyer le reproche que jY aurois souscrit et engage des gens a y souscrire. Je vous supplie trcs humblement, monsieur, de vouloir bien me mander la conduite que je dois tenir a ce sujet ; je me conformeroy a ce que vous me feres I'honneur de me prescrire. "J'ay celuy d'etre, avec un trcs sincere et trcs parfait attache- ment, " Monsieur, " Votre trcs humble et tres obeissant serviteur, " Broglie." UNWIN BROTHERS, CHILWORTII AND LONDON. •'^ 1 ,HISBOOKISB.BOKTHBI.ASTPATB STAMPEDBELOW 4« INITIAL i^ll^Z^^fSll DAY AND TO SI"" OVERDUE. •HY, JUL 24-193 iOV. J92i- RECEIVED LOAN DB#t' jyL22j94S- f^ i:^^^'- ^^r^^^ «t)ft LD 21-100m-7,'33