A HISTORY OF 
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES WOODWARD HUTSON 
 
 Professor of Modern Languages in the University of Mississippi, 
 
 Author of The Beginnings of Civilization, Out of a 
 
 Besieged City, etc. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 WM. L. ALLISON COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS.
 
 Copyright, 1889, 
 
 BY 
 CHAKLES WOODWABD HUTSON.
 
 POLITICAL CHRONOLOGY OF FRANCE. 
 
 HOUSE OF CAPET. 
 
 Hugh the Great, 987- 996 
 
 Robert the Sage, 996-1031 
 
 Henry I., 1031-1060 
 
 Philip I., . _ 1060-1108 
 
 Louis VI., . / . . . 1108-1137 
 
 Louis VIL, 1137-1180 
 
 Philip Augustus, 1180-1223 
 
 Louis VIIL, . 1223-1226 
 
 Louis IX. (St. Louis), 1226-1270 
 
 Philip III., 1270-1285 
 
 Philip IV. (The Fair), 1285-1314 
 
 Louis X., 1314-1316 
 
 Philip V 1316-1322 
 
 Charles IV., 1322-1328 
 
 HOUSE OF VALOIS. 
 
 Philip VI 1328-1350 
 
 John the Good, ........ 1350-1364 
 
 Charles V., 1364-1380 
 
 Charles VI., 1380-1422 
 
 Charles VIL, 1422-1461 
 
 Louis XT 1461-1483 
 
 Charles VIII., 1483-1498 
 
 3
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 
 
 i. 
 
 GENERAL SKETCH: TO THE REVOLUTION OF 1789. 
 
 THE French language is one of those languages 
 of the great Aryan family which grew up in South- 
 ern Europe from the old Latin stock. It did not 
 spring from the Latir of literature, but from that 
 Lingua Romano, rusvet spoken in the later days 
 of the Roman Empii3, with various dialectic pecu- 
 liarities, over all th? outlying provinces. In Gaul 
 this tongue of the p >] iulace had already been mod- 
 ified by the Keltic >j>eech which it displaced, as in 
 Spain by the Kel i^erian. In the closing period 
 of Roman history had been further modified by 
 the Teutonic dialects brought in by the Western 
 Goths, the Burgundians, and the Franks. The in- 
 fluence of the Goths, however, was slight and tran- 
 sient, as they ultimately established their power on 
 the southern side of the Pyrenees. The influence 
 of the Burgundians was confined to the regions 
 about the Rhine. 
 
 The Franks mastered the country at just that 
 critical period which enabled their ruler to combine 
 the waning civilization of the Empire and the 
 moral vigor of the young Christian Church with 
 the energy of a fresh race, and so to continue the 
 traditions and the prestige of the old Roman Em- 
 pire into the new order of things. Their adher- 
 ence, too, to the Athannsian creed gave them an 
 advantage over other Teutonic races, who had 
 embraced the Arian doctrines, in enabling them 
 
 5
 
 6 To the Revolution of 1789. 
 
 to harmonize better with the old Eoman world 
 into which they had penetrated. 
 
 When first taking their place in history, they 
 were divided into two well-marked groups the 
 Salian Franks and the Eipuarian Franks. The Sa- 
 lians, at the close of the fourth century, were spread 
 over Holland and the Low Countries. The Ripu- 
 arians had settled on both sides of the Rhine as I'ar 
 up as the Main. Both groups were at that time of 
 thoroughly Teutonic blood and speech, except that 
 the Belgian part of the race may have had some 
 trace of Keltic origin. 
 
 By the time of Charles the Great, crowned Em- 
 peror at Rome in the year 800, the dominion of the 
 Franks had greatly increased, and that wise and 
 warlike prince so extended his rule as to embrace 
 under his sway all the West of Europe. His 
 realm included the whole of ancient Gaul, the 
 greater part of Germany, Spain as far as the Ebro, 
 and that part of Italy still known as Lombard} 7 . 
 This Kaiser Karl, it must be remembered, was in 
 blood and speech a Teutonic prince, though, from 
 his having in later ages become a special hero of 
 French romance under the name of Charlemagne, 
 he is apt to be regarded by ordinary readers of his- 
 tory as the founder of the French monarchy, which 
 is far from being the true conception of his place 
 in history. The truth is, there was no France as 
 yet, and the country of the Franks stretched across 
 what are now northern France and central Ger- 
 many, taking in the countries now known as Bel- 
 gium and Holland. 
 
 At the close of one of his wars with the Saxons, 
 Charles transported vast numbers of them into 
 northern Gaul, and settled them there. The Em- 
 peror Julian, ages before, had done the same thing 
 with the Alternant These transplantations greatly 
 increased the Teutonic element in the race which 
 afterwards came to be known as the French. With 
 grafts from such various Germanic stocks as the
 
 To the Devolution of 1789. 7 
 
 Gothic, Burgundian, Frank, Saxon, and Allemanic, 
 together with the Scandinavian branch of the Teu- 
 tonic family in the persons of the Normans, who 
 forced a settlement in the north of Gaul in the time 
 of Charles the Simple, it is no wonder that we find 
 the French language far richer in Teutonic words 
 than any other of the Romanic tongues. There are 
 in them all about nine hundred words of Teutonic 
 origin; about three hundred are common to them 
 all ; while French has four hundred and fifty not 
 found in the others. 
 
 The French monarchy and the French people 
 really have their historical beginning with the 
 crowning at Rheims of Hugues Capet. Count of 
 Paris, as King of the French, in the year 987. 
 The Franks of the West were then formally sepa- 
 rated from the Franks of the East, who remained 
 an integral part of the German Kingdom. 
 
 During the previous century, however that is, 
 from the deposition of Charles the Fat in 887 
 there had been a practical severance of the West 
 Franks from the East Franks. The men of Latin 
 Francia, dwelling between the Loire and the Seine, 
 and struggling for life and land with the Norman 
 pirates with little aid from their nominal lords in 
 the German land, were growing steadily into a sense 
 of their separate identity. Before the close of that 
 century of isolation and conflict, they were speak- 
 ing their dialect of the Romanic speech, and were 
 aware that it was something different from Ger- 
 man. 
 
 South of the Loire, another, though kindred Ro- 
 manic tongue was spoken. This was Proven9al. 
 The rulers in that land were the Dukes of Aqui- 
 taine and Gascony and the Counts of Toulouse and 
 Barcelona, who were really independent princes, 
 with but a slight bond of allegiance to the neigh- 
 boring kings. Its advanced position in the re- 
 newed march of progress, after the period of con- 
 fusion which the fall of Roman civilization brought
 
 8 To the Revolution of 1789. 
 
 upon Europe, is finely described in these words of 
 Macaulay : 
 
 " That country, singularly favored by nature, was, in 
 the twelfth century, the most flourishing and civilized 
 part of Western Europe. It was in nowise a part of 
 France. It had a distinct political existence, a distinct 
 national character, distinct usuages, and a distinct speech. 
 The soil was fruitful and well cultivated ; and amidst the 
 cornfields and vineyards arose many rich cities, each of 
 which was a little republic ; and many stately castles, 
 each of which contained a miniature of an imperial 
 court. It was there that the spirit of chivalry first laid 
 aside its terrors, first took a humane and graceful form, 
 first appeared as the inseparable associate of art and lit- 
 erature, of courtesy and love. The other vernacular dia- 
 lects which, since the fifth century, had sprung up in the 
 ancient provinces of the Roman Empire, were still rude 
 and imperfect. The sweet Tuscan, the rich and ener- 
 getic English, were abandoned to artisans and shepherds. 
 No clerk had ever condescended to use such barbarous 
 jargon for the teaching of science, for the recording of 
 great events, or for the painting of life and manners. 
 But the language of Provence was already the language 
 of the learned and polite, and was employed by numer- 
 ous writers, studious of all the arts of composition and 
 versification. A literature rich in ballads, in war-songs, 
 in satire, and, above all, in amatory poetry, amused the 
 leisure of the knights and ladies whose fortified mansions 
 adorned the banks of the Rhone and Garonne." 
 
 For many generations this land of culture re- 
 mained a mark for the ambition of the kings rul- 
 ing at Paris ; and it was only by slow encroach- 
 ments, by a long series of conquests, marriages, 
 treaties, and crusades against so-called heretics, that 
 they gradually extended their supremacy over the 
 south. Equally slow was .the growth of the 
 French language to the mastery of all the lands in 
 which it ultimately became the national speech 
 Provence and Languedoc in the south, Bretague in 
 the west.
 
 To the Devolution of 1789. 9 
 
 Of the two forms of modified Latin which sprang 
 up in Gaul, that which in the end became French 
 was long in imminent danger of being overweighted 
 and absorbed by its rival. The immediate parent 
 of French was the Roman Wallon or Langue d 1 Oil, 
 spoken in the north. The tongue used in the 
 south, the Provengal or Langue (TOc, in itself far 
 softer and more poetical, was, as has been said, long 
 the vehicle of art and culture. It was the instru- 
 ment of Troubadour song, the natural language of 
 the new spirit of chivalry. 
 
 The political fortunes of the kings of the Cape- 
 tian line, the extension of the northern speech into 
 England by the conquest of William the Norman, 
 the deadly blow dealt to the development of the 
 south by the persecutions of the Albigenses, all 
 tended to exalt the Langue d 1 Oil and to crush the 
 vitality of the Langue (TOc. 
 
 French literature proper did not begin, then, 
 until the French language had fairly ousted its 
 powerful rival of the south, though there were imi- 
 tators of the Troubadours among those who used 
 the northern speech before the Troubadours had 
 altogether ceased to sing. When the art of the 
 Troubadours began to decay, the university of Paris 
 was already at a high pitch of celebrity, and the 
 establishment of the Sorbonne soon added to its 
 glory. The fame of these institutions attracted 
 scholars from all nations, and the native language 
 began to assume greater elegance under the light of 
 learning thus held up in the capital of the French 
 people. 
 
 Throughout the twelfth century and in the early 
 part of the thirteenth, the Trouveres produced a 
 great number of Lays, some on real, some on imag- 
 inary subjects. The Fabliaux and some of the 
 early chronicles also belong to this period. In the 
 thirteenth century was begun by Guillaume de 
 Lorris, and finished in the fourteenth by Jean de 
 Meung, that Roman >le la AVv. which Chaucer trans-
 
 10 French Literature. 
 
 lated into English among his first essays in the 
 poetic art. It was a great favorite in France, and 
 long exerted an influence upon the taste and art of 
 many writers. 
 
 In that great age, the fourteenth century, when 
 Italy was blossoming into so rich a glory of art and 
 letters, and England was producing her Chaucer, 
 Froissart began French prose in those luminous 
 chronicles in which he described the great wars of 
 Edward with France, wars which he partly wit- 
 nessed, and in which he may be almost said to have 
 shared. Froissart was on the English side, rather 
 than the French, in these wars ; but it must be re- 
 membered that he was a subject of Philippa of 
 Hainault, Edward's queen, and that French was the 
 court language in England still, and the Plantagenet 
 princes were not yet English, whatever their island 
 people may have been. Prose chronicles, it should 
 be said, had been written by De Joinville under the 
 last of the Crusading Kings, as well as by Ville- 
 hardoin under the first Latin Emperor of Constan- 
 tinople. But, admirable as these works are from 
 some points of view, they are like the lispings of 
 childhood when compared with the lifelike and 
 many-colored narrative of Froissart ; so that French 
 prose may be truly said to begin with him, as En- 
 glish poetry begins with Chaucer. 
 
 Next to Froissart comes the historian, Philippe 
 de Comines, who wrote in the fifteenth century and 
 opens the way to the study of the philosophy of 
 history. With Francis I. and his brilliant sister, 
 Marguerite of Navarre, French literature took a 
 powerful impulse forward. Francis himself, with 
 all his faults, was fond of art and of books. The 
 revival of letters had quickened the human mind 
 everywhere in western Europe; and there were 
 many eminent writers in France, both in sympathy 
 with the court and hostile to it on account of its 
 attitude towards the Reformers. Rabelais satirized 
 all parties. Amyot translated the ancients and fos-
 
 To the Revolution of 1789. 11 
 
 tered a sort of heathen republic in the minds of 
 men. Montaigne observed the stir of parties tran- 
 quilly, and had doubts and scruples about them all. 
 Ronsard initiated the imitation of the excellences 
 of the ancients in poetry, and carried the age with 
 him into a great stretch of pedantic purism. Calvin, 
 driven from France, established in Geneva a sort 
 of pastoral theocracy, and formulated doctrine and 
 government there for a large section of the Re- 
 formed. Queen Marguerite displayed in her writ- 
 ings that curious contrast, so often to be observed 
 in the writers of this age, between the religious 
 side and the artistic side of human nature. One of 
 her books, the Miroir de Tame Pecheresse, a work 
 of religious devotion, had the honor of being con- 
 demned by the Sorbonne for its Reforming tone. 
 Another, the Heptameron des Nouvelles, an imita- 
 tation of Boccaccio's Decameron, goes even further 
 than that pleasant book in the license of some of 
 Its tales. 
 
 I have mentioned the efforts of Ronsard to im- 
 prison the forms of the language and literature 
 within the narrow limits of rigid rules drawn from 
 the best writers among the ancients. Rabelais, 
 thorough scholar though he w r as, was bitterly op- 
 posed to this exclusive homage to the ancients and 
 submission to their authority; and, though the 
 classical school gained the day for the time and 
 produced at a later period the polished but artifi- 
 cial gems of Corneille and Racine, the spirit of 
 modern French literature is more in unison with 
 the free and riotous fancy of Rabelais than with 
 the stiff and measured march of the school that 
 followed Ronsard's lead. 
 
 Rabelais, as a humorist, still holds a high place 
 in the literature of the world, and ranks as a great 
 prose Aristophanes. His fantastical romance of 
 Gargantua is a long series of satirical exposures of 
 all the follies and vices of his day, It is, however, 
 often so foul in its language and licentious in its
 
 12 French Literature. 
 
 exuberant flow of high spirits, that it is not a book 
 to be placed within reach of every comer. Dimi- 
 try's Three Good Giants strips it of this soiled ves- 
 ture. 
 
 Of all the writers of the sixteenth century that 
 have come down to us, Montaigne continues to be 
 the best known, the most read, and the most dearly 
 loved. The secret of this immortality, aside from 
 his merits as a thinker, lies in the wonderful way 
 in which he has impressed his individuality upon 
 his works. Every reader of the essays of Michel 
 de Montangne feels that he knows the man person- 
 ally, and that he is a lovable man to know. One 
 element, moreover, of their charm for us, and a 
 high and honorable trait in the character of Mon- 
 taigne, is the spirit of tolerance, of true charity of 
 judgment, which the Essays breathe. This feature 
 in the man's character is the more wonderful, in 
 that it was wholly alien to the spirit of his age c 
 To these attractions, he adds the charm of an ex- 
 ceedingly clear, sweet, and flowing style, and a 
 reflective temper peculiarly pleasing to the reader 
 of leisure. 
 
 Bulwer-Lytton, in one of his own admirable 
 essays, calls him the Horace of Essayists, " an ap- 
 pellation," says he, " which appears to me appro- 
 priate, not only from the subjective and personal 
 expression of his genius, but from his genial 
 amenity ; from his harmonious combination of 
 sportiveness and earnestness; and, above all, from 
 the full attainment of that highest rank in the sub- 
 jective order of intellect, when the author in the 
 mirror of his individual interior life, glasses the 
 world around and without him, and, not losing his 
 own identity, yet identifies himself with infinite 
 varieties of mankind." The French language owes 
 much to the inimitably easy style of the old Gas- 
 con country-gentleman. 
 
 The establishment of the Academic Francaise, 
 under the auspices of Cardinal Richelieu, formed a
 
 To the Revolution of 1789. 13 
 
 nucleus for the clustering of French literary genius 
 of every order. Kichelieu's bad taste and literary 
 jealousies for he was himself a writer do not 
 seem to have hindered the development of real 
 genius ; and his patronage of bad poets acted as a 
 stimulus upon the good, and gave them the advan- 
 tage of a foil to set off their own excellence. It 
 was enough that the atmosphere should be literary ; 
 genius had a climate to flourish in. 
 
 Corneille now appeared to grace the language 
 with his classic tragedies, and his single comedy, 
 the promise and foretaste of Moliere's rich fruitage. 
 Drawing inspiration from Seneca and the Latin his- 
 torians on the one hand, and from the Spanish 
 drama on the other, Corneille gave to the French 
 stage its earlier notemarks of dignity of style and 
 declamatory grandeur of sentiment, too often swell- 
 ing into bombast in his imitators. We find in our 
 English literature the faults of the French tragic 
 school carried almost, to unconscious caricature in 
 the extravagance of TDryden's and Nat. Lee's stilted 
 heroes and heroines. Corneille's finest plays are 
 Le (7/, Horace, Cinna, and Polyeucte. To these 
 must be added his amusing comedy, Le Menteur. 
 
 The next literary period, the age of Louis XIV., 
 for which Eichelieu's policy paved the way and pre- 
 pared the splendors emphatically the Augustan 
 age of French literature abounds in great writers 
 of every kind. 
 
 The place of Corneille in the tragic world of 
 dramatic literature was fully filled by Racine, whc 
 was to the elder poet what Sophocles was to 
 oEschylus. Phe'dre, that admirable play of passion, 
 was indeed drawn from the Phedra of Euripides; 
 but the sober evenness and moderation of Racine's 
 genius bring him into closer relationship with 
 Sophocles. While Racine was enriching the lan- 
 guage with powerful tragedies, first on profane 
 themes thrilled through with human love placed in 
 pathetic situations, and in later days on Biblical
 
 14 French Literature. 
 
 subjects carefully kept free from that passion wliicli 
 had kept alive interest in his earlier pieces, the 
 prince of comedy was amusing court and city with 
 his witty ridicule of all the whims and oddities of 
 the day. Moliere carried comedy of the purely 
 laughable and fun-moving order to its highest per- 
 fection. At the same time, being himself a capital 
 actor and one of the ablest stage-managers that 
 ever lived, as well as dearly beloved by his fellow 
 comedians, he created the celebrated Comedie Fran- 
 $aise, to this day the living transmitter of all the 
 traditions and prestige of the French theatre in its 
 best days. Moliere was thus not only the author 
 whose works we can all read and enjoy, but the 
 power, acting through the coming centuries, by 
 which the art of the player is kept from decline. 
 
 The stage showed brightest; but there was 
 scarcely a department of literary art which did not 
 at this time shine with a rich effulgence of light. 
 Pascal, in his Lettres Provinciates and his Pensees, 
 enriched the literature with keen reasoning and 
 profound thinking, expressed in the tersest and 
 neatest of styles. Descartes employed the lan- 
 guage with great force and skill in the domain of 
 speculative research, though much of his meta- 
 physics was expressed in Latin. Bossuet, Bourda- 
 loue, Massillon, and Fiddlier preached in it eloquent 
 sermons and impressive funeral discourses. Fn- 
 elon used it in a variety of ways ; for education in 
 his romance of Telemaque and in some special 
 treatises ; for controversial writings, in which he 
 measured swords with Bossuet; for philosophical 
 disquisition ; and for pulpit oratory. La Fontaine 
 produced in it his amusing but somewhat improper 
 Contes and his exquisite Fables; Boileau, his 
 pleasant Satires and Epitres, and his comic epic, 
 Lutrin. La Eochefoucauld and La Bruyere put it 
 to a new service in their epigrammatic Sentences 
 and Caracttres. Letters, such as those of Madame 
 de Sevigne' ; and Memoirs, such as those of Cardi*
 
 To the Revolution of 1789. 15 
 
 nal de Retz and Madame de Stael, and, towards 
 the close of the long reign of Louis XIV., those of 
 the Due de St. Simon, make a peculiar part of 
 French literature, distinctive indeed, as no other 
 literature possesses so many, so unreserved, and so 
 ably written private records of individuals and 
 families. 
 
 This age was followed by the one immediately 
 preceding that great rising of the oppressed com- 
 mons of France, known as the first French Revolu- 
 tion. It was characterized by a singular passion, 
 in court circles and among the literary men of the 
 day, for skepticism in the moral and religious field 
 of thought, and a speculative furore for fraternity, 
 liberty, and equality, in the political and social 
 sphere. 
 
 The leaders of thought, Montesquieu, Voltaire, 
 Rousseau, and Buffon, were all deeply imbued in 
 different ways with the spirit of the age, and did 
 much to bring about the tremendous results of the 
 next century. 
 
 Montesquieu, in his Lettres Persanes, satirized 
 the life of his day, religious, political, social, and 
 literary. In his Considerations sur les Causes de la 
 Grandeur et de la Decadence des JRomains, he threw 
 out many admirable suggestions toward the study 
 of the true philosophy of history. In his Esprit 
 des Lois, he ably investigated the principles which 
 lie at the foundation of organized society. The 
 supporters of civil liberty in every land owe a debt 
 to Montesquieu for the impulse which he gave to 
 studies into its nature and principles. 
 
 Voltaire has a bad name with serious persons. 
 But, with all his faults, he was a great light in 
 French literature and an able worker in the cause 
 of human progress. He laughed down many 
 abuses. So universal was his genius, though never 
 of an exalted type, and so great his versatility, 
 that it would be useless in a brief sketch like this 
 to so much as name the many fields of literature
 
 16 French Literature. 
 
 in which he shone. His long warfare with existing 
 institutions went far to destroy the faith of his 
 contemporaries in them, and helped to pave the 
 way for the great Eevolution. 
 
 What Montesquieu did by acute speculative 
 thought and Voltaire by keenest ridicule, Eousseau 
 did by sentiment. Never was work more filled 
 with impassioned sentiment than Eousseau's Con- 
 fessions. His whole charm lay in this appeal to 
 the sensuous part of our nature. His philosoph- 
 ical notions and socialistic opinions are worth- 
 less ; but they chimed in with the growing beliefs 
 of his day, and there was therefore great practical 
 power in his Contrat Social, feeble as its whole 
 system of sociology is to thinkers of our time. 
 
 Buffon's contribution to the destructive ideas by 
 which the writers of this period prepared the way 
 for the Eevolution, was not important. He was, 
 from that point of view, only one among the deis- 
 tical scientists of his time. But, in a literary light, 
 he was a noble figure of the age. His Histoire 
 naturelle, faulty enough considered as a scientific 
 work, popularized the study of nature by the 
 beauty of its style and the charm of its method. 
 His style is noble and eloquent, and his love for 
 nature sometimes exalts the language of his 
 descriptions to true sublimity. 
 
 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's lovely little prose- 
 idyll Paul et Virginie, serves as a stepping-stone 
 between Eousseau and Chateaubriand. It has the 
 tenderness of sentiment which the impassioned 
 Jean- Jacques had brought into fashion, and at the 
 same time the devotion to wild nature which Cha- 
 teaubriand was to enter upon in the next genera- 
 tion with such enthusiasm. His Chaumiere in- 
 dienne and Voyage a V Isle de France exhibit the 
 same characteristics. 
 
 Helve'tius, materialistic philosopher; Diderot 
 and d'Alembert, the encyclopedists ; Condillac, the 
 metaphysician; Crebillon, the dramatist; bis son,
 
 To the Revolution of 1789. 17 
 
 Crebillon, the indecent romancer; Beaumarchais, 
 the brilliant writer of comedy and unconscious 
 herald of the Revolution; and Le Sage, the creator 
 of Gil Bias, all belong to this period. 
 
 Le Sage, in permanence of literary fame, is by 
 far its greatest name. The others are marked 
 names, and their works are much talked about ; Le 
 Sage is read. Only sections of the reading public 
 read here and there a work of Voltaire or Rous- 
 seau. Everybody reads Gil Bias, if not in the 
 original, at least in translated form. Eminently 
 original and thoroughly French, though borrowed 
 in a general way from the Spanish picaresco ro- 
 mances, it holds its own even with modern readers, 
 not only from its entertaining vivacity, wit, and 
 humor, but because it is so true to human nature in 
 all time. To use the words of Bulwer-Lytton, in 
 his Essay on Knovjledye of the World: 
 
 " The knowledge of life it illustrates is so vast, that, 
 in substance, it remains to this day the epitome of the 
 modern world. Amid all the mutations of external 
 manners, all varying fashions of costume, stand forth in 
 immortal freshness its large types of civilized human 
 nature. Its author is equally remarkable for variety of 
 character, formed by the great world, and for accurate 
 insight into the most general springs of action by which 
 they who live in the great world are moved. Thus he 
 is as truthful to this age as he was to his own." 
 
 We have now reached the eve of the French 
 Revolution of 1789. With that tremendous event, 
 all changes in the world of French thought and feel- 
 ing. The old disappears in blood. The classic 
 taste in literature vanishes with the pomp of the 
 ancien regime ; laws and letters for awhile yield 
 to arms, and at the next breathing-place French 
 literature assumes a new phase. 
 2
 
 18 French Literature. 
 
 II. 
 
 SINCE THE REVOLUTION OF 1789. 
 
 BEAUMARCHAIS, the author of those witty come- 
 dies, Le Barbier de Seville and Le Mariaye de Fi- 
 garo, was the immediate precursor of the Kevolu- 
 tion of 1789. He it was who, by bitterly satiriz- 
 ing in his famous Memoir es the infamous Parlement 
 Maupeou, showed the poison that was sapping the 
 very life-blood of national existence. He it was 
 who gave the finishing stroke in the war of the 
 wits against the already tottering edifice of absolu- 
 tism in France. 
 
 Voltaire had broken the spell of religion such 
 as that age knew it a superstition or a hypocrisy. 
 Rousseau, in passionately advocating the rights of 
 man, had dimmed the prestige of birth and rank. 
 Beaumarchais, in lifting the veil, with unrivaled 
 skill as a pleader of his cause, from the court that 
 was bribed to wrong him, revealed the utter cor- 
 ruption that was poisoning the fountains of justice, 
 and opened the eyes of the people to the fact that 
 their last safeguard against tyranny was gone. His 
 brilliant attack excited the admiration of Yoltaire, 
 whose pen had often served the same cause and had 
 been dipped in the same gall. Villemain lavishes 
 his eulogies upon the art of Beaumarchais' forensic 
 eloquence : 
 
 " That art of filling with venom things the most inno- 
 cent, of mingling with a seemingly simple narrative lit- 
 tle calumnies, of lying with grace, of insulting with an 
 air of candor, of being ironical, biting, pitiless, of plung- 
 ing the point of sarcasm into the wound already made, 
 then of appearing serious, conscientious, reserved, and 
 eoon after of barking on a full cry of bad passions all for
 
 Since the Revolution of 1789. 19 
 
 the good of the good cause, of interesting self-love, of 
 amusing malice, of flattering envy, of exciting fear, of 
 rendering the judge an object of suspicion to the audi- 
 ence and the audience terrible to the judge; that art 
 of humiliating and of attracting, of threatening and of im- 
 ploring; that art, above all, of causing his adversaries to be 
 so laughed at that one begins to believe that people so 
 ridiculous can never be in the right ; in fine, all that ar- 
 senal of malice and of eloquence, of wit and of passion, 
 of reason and of invective, this is what makes up some 
 part of the Memoirs of Beaumarchais ! " 
 
 The same potent spirit of irony flamed triumph- 
 antly through the scenes of his brilliant comedies. 
 The age demanded tremendous negation of every 
 force that held authority in the land, for all were 
 supporting tyranny and oppression and misrule. 
 In all the literature of the day this destructive 
 philosophy found a vent; but it was especially 
 potent on the stage. In tragedy, there were inces- 
 sant tirades against fanaticism. In comedy, there 
 were as ceaseless utterances in favor of equality. 
 In the comedies of Beaumarchais, the fire burned 
 more fiercely and with a brighter and more beauti- 
 ful blaze than elsewhere. His Figaro has been 
 said to have given the signal and the programme 
 of the Revolution. He is the representative of the 
 superior intelligence that finds itself in a state of 
 social inferiority. He shows the disaccord of or- 
 ganized society, the unhappy contrast of capacity 
 and condition. It was madness in the government 
 of the day to have permitted the representation 
 of a piece which brought the light of genius to 
 bear upon such inequalities. 
 
 The strange thing about it all is that the ruling 
 class felt vaguely what \vas corning, and yet made 
 no provision for the evil days. Louis XV. said, 
 "It will last my time." No effort was made to 
 reform the stale. The Parlement which was the 
 judicial body in Fr.mce held stoutly to its privi- 
 leges ; the court continued its abuses; the clergy
 
 20 French Literature. 
 
 kept up the spirit of intolerance ; the nobles abated 
 not one jot of their outrageous claims ; the king 
 held firmly to the traditions of arbitrary power. 
 
 At last the storm burst, and all was swept away 
 the whole order of things that belonged to the 
 France of Louis XV. In the whirl of tragic 
 events, there was no room for literature. Men do 
 not create art when the house is tumbling down 
 upon their heads. The reign of the guillotine was 
 not propitious to the growth of taste. Anarchy 
 led to the Empire ; but the first Empire was one 
 long series of wars, and what literary workers 
 there were, were either in opposition or ready at 
 a moment's warning to take that position. Mad- 
 ame de Stae'l was of the first class ; Chateaubriand, 
 of the second. 
 
 They were the first of the romantic school in 
 France. Kousseau and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre 
 had given the impulse and had some share in fur- 
 nishing them with the keynote of those prose- 
 poems by which they are best known. But it was 
 they who first fairly introduced their countrymen 
 to new ideas and made them take an interest in a 
 world outside of France. Madame de Stae'l studied 
 Germany, and wrote a book about it. ISAllemagne 
 showed the new influence and the new tendency. 
 Like the Germans Goethe and the rest she went 
 to Italy, too, for inspiration ; and the new romantic 
 spirit, revealed in her Corinne, fed its nascent iervors 
 on the still smouldering incense of the old classic 
 and mediaeval art. 
 
 Chateaubriand, singular compound of reformed 
 skeptic and of a politician oscillating between re- 
 publicanism and legitimacy, drew a fresh source of 
 inspiration from his travels in America, where he 
 was especially impressed by the wild forests still 
 haunted by bird and beast alone and the mighty 
 river down the long course of which La Salle had 
 lately made his lonesome way. These and the 
 relics of a civilization found among that singular
 
 Since the Revolution of 1789. 21 
 
 tribe, the Natchez, seem to have greatly struck his 
 imagination. His Atala, his Genie du Christ- 
 ianisme, his Les Martyrs, prompted by the wonders 
 he had seen and by the enthusiasm which Christian 
 heroism produced in his susceptible spirit, exer- 
 cised a powerful influence, though not a permanent 
 one, upon the age. His little pamphlet, De Bona- 
 parte et des Bourbons, was declared by Louis XVIII. 
 to be worth an army of 100,000 men in favor of the 
 royalist party. Yet he had been an embassador in 
 Napoleon's service, until the murder of the Due 
 d'Enghien. Nor did Chateaubriand remain the 
 staunch royalist he must have felt himself to be at 
 the time he produced the pamphlet so much ex- 
 tolled by the Bourbon prince. In his last 
 political work, he sets forth as his political creed : 
 " I am a Bourbouist in honor, a Monarchist on 
 grounds of rational conviction; but in natural 
 character and disposition, I am still a Republi- 
 can." 
 
 He was a brilliant and effective writer, of warm 
 imagination ami fine powers of description ; but in 
 all that he has written there is a want of a sound 
 philosophic basis. He lacks depth and solidity, 
 and reminds us of wine that has a fine sparkle and 
 pleasant flavor, but is deficient in that quality 
 which connoisseurs style "body." There is in his 
 literary merits and demerits a marked resemblance 
 to Lamartine, or, to speak more justly, it should be 
 said that Lamartine resembles him. 
 
 After the Napoleonic age carne the romantic re- 
 vival, with an especially brilliant luxuriance in the 
 outgrowth of fiction and of comedy. We shall 
 find the withering influence of Voltairean unbelief 
 and the sensual influence of Rousseau's sentiment- 
 alism, like two noxious plants flowered into full 
 bloom, both impressing themselves still upon a 
 large portion of this later literature. 
 
 The gay songs of Beranger, that went to the 
 heart of a people naturally joyous, had the effect,
 
 22 French Literature. 
 
 during the dull period of the Eestoration, of restor- 
 ing that easy temper and fondness for amusement 
 which the horrors of the Reign of Terror and the 
 ceaseless conscriptions of the Emperor had for so 
 long a time made impossible to the French. Btranger 
 was thus, all unconsciously, the cause of a return 
 to the old passion for the stage, although the pleas- 
 ure of the Parisians in that form of amusement had 
 never wholly lapsed. 
 
 "The stage in France," says M. Franeisque Sarcey, 
 " is a national and especially a Parisian pleasure. Mo- 
 liere, Reynard, Beaumarchais, Voltaire, Scribe, and many 
 other less celebrated dramatic authors were born within 
 sight of the walls of Paris. Everybody in Paris is fond 
 of the play, and is a good judge of it. Even at the 
 present moment, when this passion is not so strong as it 
 used to be, many a young man will go without his dinner 
 in order to treat himself to the play. How many will 
 stand for three or four hours together at the doors of a 
 theatre, in the midst of rain or snow, to see the piece that 
 has ca,ught the taste of the public ! Everything that re- 
 lates to dramatic literature is warmly discussed, and there 
 is not a woman, however imperfectly educated she may 
 otherwise be, who is not capable of giving expression to 
 her opinions on theatrical matters, witli a knowledge of 
 the subject sometimes astonishing. Every soil has its 
 own peculiar virtues ; in the same way every nation has 
 its own peculiar aptitude. The passion of the French is 
 the stage." 
 
 Napoleon loved the theatre, and, while his jeal- 
 ousy of public discussion had an injurious effect 
 upon the development of literature under the Em- 
 pire, he fostered the great company that was proud 
 of calling itself La Maison de Moltire I mean, the 
 famous Comedie Fran^aise with aid from the pub- 
 lic treasury. 
 
 The social changes brought about by the Revo- 
 lution furnished the stage with a new audience. 
 The Court was no longer the arbiter of taste. For 
 some time after the Restoration, the bourgeois pub- 
 lic passed judgment upon the pieces represented
 
 Since the Revolution of 178$. 1'6 
 
 and the actors who played in them. "They were 
 called," says M. Sarcey, "the habitues because they 
 went to the theatre every night; and when the nc- 
 tor, entering on the scene, perceived those long rows 
 of bald and shining heads, on which the chandelier 
 shed its rays, he was seized with a slight trembling. 
 I saw the last remnants of this circle in my youth : 
 to-day they have entered into the category of fos- 
 sils." 
 
 These solid old citizens of Paris were tenacious 
 of the past ; they clung to tradition, and retarded 
 the advancement of dramatic literature. Aided by 
 such an audience, the superb acting of Rachel alone 
 kept up the classic stage, in opposition as it was to 
 the tastes and aspirations of the younger genera- 
 tion. The revolt of the romantic school against 
 the fetters of classicism began about the year 1830 
 The spirit of revolution was astir then, but the 
 classic drama still continued to hold the old House 
 of Moliere. It was obly after the Revolution of 
 18-18 that the new romantic school fairly succeeded 
 in overcoming the prejudice of the public in 
 favor of the classic drama, and gained a footing 
 even on the stage of the Theatre Fran^aise. Of 
 these who won distinction in dramatic composition 
 in these later days I can mention here only the 
 names of Boursault, Regnard, Legrand, Lemercier, 
 Victor Hugo, Dumas, Scribe, Alfred de Vigny, Al- 
 fred de Musset, and Octave Feuillet. Some of these 
 merit and will receive fuller mention. 
 
 But the greatest development of modern French 
 literature has been in the form of fiction. Espe- 
 cially in romantic fiction has this development 
 taken place, for the French have a gift in that direc- 
 tion. They have never yet been excelled in the 
 construction of the plot, they have a fine feeling 
 for sentiment, they are keen observers of life and 
 manners, they have a wholesome horror of weary- 
 ing the reader by serious digressions, they are care-
 
 24: French Literature. 
 
 ful and patient in their workmanship, and they 
 pay great attention to style. 
 
 If there is a philosophy at the bottom of their 
 pictures of life, they are far too artistic to bring it 
 to the front. If they describe minutely, they take 
 the greatest pains that the descriptions shall be 
 picturesque or else amusing. There is little of that 
 humor which, in English literature at its best, 
 blends philosophic reflection with feeling, in so sub- 
 tle a way that oftentimes the smile and the tear are 
 almost equally ready to come at the waving of the 
 enchanter's wand. But there is, in the place of hu- 
 mor, a sparkling wit, an engaging vivacity, q, 
 charming archness, that one finds rarely in English 
 writers. 
 
 There is not much real appreciation of country 
 scenery one of the sweetest traits in the art of 
 English genius except in George Sand (Madame 
 Dudevant) and a few others. But the life of cities, 
 and especially of Paris, is made as familiar to us as 
 if we had grown up amid the same scenes ; and 
 there is no literature which can excel the French 
 in these realistic pictures. 
 
 Alexandre Dumas, the elder, the most prolific 
 of them all, is also the most dashing and vivacious 
 of these romancers a Murat among story-tellers. 
 He is also one of the most entertaining, and is per- 
 haps the best known in this country, having myri- 
 ads of readers everywhere. The catalogue of his 
 writings numbers several hundreds of volumes, and 
 they all belong to the type of the sensational 
 romance. Most of them deal with past times, and 
 profess to be historical novels, though they are true 
 neither to character nor to fact. Yery many of 
 them were written in a sort of literary partnership 
 by men who found it pay them better to publish 
 under Dumas' name than under their own. Dumas 
 supervised them and gave them the final stamp of 
 his own rapid and readable style. But his real 
 masterpieces were unquestionably -wholly his own
 
 Since the Revolution of 17S9. 25 
 
 work. Such were Les Trois Mousquetaires, Le 
 Comte de Monte- Cristo, and his inimitable books of 
 travel. 
 
 Eugene Sue takes rank with Dumas as of the 
 sensational school. He excelled in intricate and 
 ingeniously complicated plots His energetic 
 movement kept up the interest of the reader at 
 every stage of the action, He especially under- 
 stood the art of contrast, and by the use of power- 
 ful dramatic situations urged the mind of the reader 
 to intense excitement. Nothing could remove the 
 spell until the last page was reached, and then 
 there remained long hovering over the imagination, 
 weird phantoms and wild visions, that mesmerized 
 the spirit into a longing for the renewal of the 
 feverish intoxication. There was peril for young 
 minds in this over-heating of the brain, and at the 
 same time Sue's political and social ideas were 
 eminently dangerous. It is likely that the crude 
 philosophy of Communism owes not a little to the 
 deep impressions made on the lower classes by the 
 propagandism of immature minds that had fed on 
 the unwholesome thought fermenting in Les 
 Mysteres de Paris, Le Juif Errant, and Mathilde. 
 
 Equally sensational, and in a really insane way 
 at times, but widely different in personal pride, in 
 intensity of conviction, and in style, from Dumas 
 and Sue is Victor Hugo. The author of Notre 
 Dame de Paris, of Quatre-vinyit-treize, of Les Mis- 
 erables, with a wild and lyrical style, sometimes ab- 
 surdly oracular, sometimes epigrammatic, some- 
 times as fantastic as that of Carlyle, has produced 
 remarkable pictures pictures, it is true, of a life 
 rather ideal than real, but still pictures of what 
 might be true. He is a poet always, whether 
 writing in verse or in prose, and as a poet he is a 
 fine manifestation of the Gothic type as distin- 
 guished from the classical. Hugo rejects form, and 
 puts his faith in the idea he would express : hence 
 the frequent uncouthness of his form and the cloudi-
 
 26 French Literature, 
 
 ness of the idea. He represents a French type at 
 the very antipodes in its remoteness from that type 
 represented by Kacine or Moliere, or even by Vol- 
 taire and Le Sage. 
 
 Balzac gives us another type. He is the pro- 
 found analyst of the human heart, the subtle 
 searcher into its follies, its frailties, its whimsies, 
 its passions, but morbid and bitter in the effects he 
 produces. He is perhaps best known by his Le 
 Pere Goriot, La Peau de Chagrin, and Eugenie 
 Orandet. 
 
 There was greater variety in Madame Dudevant. 
 She wrote at first in conjunction with Jules Sandeau 
 and from him adopted part of his name, so as to be 
 .Known in literature as George Sand. Full of 
 poetic fancy, gifted with a graceful and lucid style, 
 impassioned in her own nature, and yet versatile 
 enough to escape the monotony of passion per- 
 haps through the largeness of her sympathies she 
 charmed and entertained many different classes of 
 readers. Her Indiana and her Jacques were ro- 
 mances of the passions. Her La Petite Fadette, 
 La Mare d*Auteuil, and Nanette were simple, 
 touching country-stories, almost pastorals. Others 
 of her numerous works were Lelia, Mauprat, Andre, 
 Consuelo, and Flammarande. The story of her life 
 is a curious one, and there is an especial interest in 
 the account of her relations with Alfred de "Musset, 
 that unhappy poet whose rich fancy and melodious 
 utterance unluckily charmed her for awhile and 
 entrapped him into an ill-assorted, as well as unlaw- 
 ful, union. Madame Dudevant's life was immoral, 
 and so were her earlier books ; but the ferment in 
 her genius seems to have worked off in the course 
 of time, and left pure wine. 
 
 Paul de Kock, though making no insidious 
 attacks on morality, won the reputation of an auda- 
 cious tempter of the young into the paths of sin. 
 He certainly is not clean, yet there is a hearty 
 jovialty about him, a robust vitality, that makea
 
 Since the Revolution of 1789. 27 
 
 him a far less dangerous sinner than are those sen- 
 timental novelists who suggest immoral thoughts, 
 or preach an immoral creed, without venturing to 
 name the sin toward which they cluster. He was 
 a prolific writer, both of novels and of vaudevilles. 
 His son, Henri, has written novels of the same order. 
 
 To these romancers must be added a few others 
 of note. There is Edmond About, in his later 
 years almost wholly devoted to journalism and 
 politics, but whose Tolla, Le Roi des Montagues, 
 Germaine, Uhomme a Voreille cassee and Le Cos de 
 M. Guerin have won him no mean name among 
 writers of fiction. His works, fictitious and politi- 
 cal, are marked by 'trench ant sarcasm and fine 
 irony, as well as by original surprises. 
 
 There are Ernest Feydeau, the author of Fanny, 
 a novel of thoroughly maudlin sentimentality; 
 and Flaubert, whose Madame Bovary is a romance 
 of the grossly physiological type ; and Adolphe 
 Belot, whose Femme de Feu is also a picture of 
 sensual passion. 
 
 I should name too Jules Sandeau, to whom we 
 owe a fresher and sweeter strain in his charming 
 romance of Madeline. Then, there are Soulie and 
 Souvestre and Me"ry: Alphonse Karr and Paul 
 Feval ; the younger Dumas, Murger, and de Mire- 
 court; de Stendhal, and Chevalier. To these may 
 be added Charles de Bernard, Prosper Merime'e, 
 Jules Claretie, Theophile Gautier, and those literary 
 partners, Erckmann-Chatrian, who have done so 
 much for the delineation of Alsatian life. Then, 
 there are fimile Gaboriau, who imitated Poe in his 
 minuteness of detail and ingenious literary puzzles ; 
 Jules Verne, who struck out the new line of calling 
 the wonders of science to the aid of fiction, and 
 who seems exhaustless in the department he has 
 created ; and Daudet and Zola, who agree in their 
 cynical realism and contempt for decency, though 
 Zola seems to revel in the filth of all that misery, 
 vice, and crime which he depicts with so repulsive
 
 28 French Literature. 
 
 a minuteness, while Daudet has the art to turn his 
 gaze away from the utterly unclean. 
 
 The animated pictures of Eussian life, painted by 
 the lady who calls herself Henry Greville, furnish 
 a pleasant relief to all this vile prostitution of art. 
 
 Of the poets, Beranger, often styled the Burns 
 of France, the greatest of her song- writers ; and 
 Lamartine, most sentimental of sentimentalists, 
 belong to the period of the Eestoration. Victor 
 Hugo ranks high as lyric poet, as well as among 
 the dramatists and romancers. De Vigny and De 
 Musset have left their mark on the poetry of 
 French literature, both being singers of melody and 
 power. Sainte-Beuve's reputation rests chiefly 
 upon his admirable criticisms, but he also sought 
 to win fame among the poets of the romantic 
 school. Baudelaire was emphatically the poet of 
 unrighteousness and of despair, admiring Poe, 
 translating and imitating him, and producing the 
 kind of poetry that lust, opium, and hunger might 
 combine with a certain lurid style of genius to 
 form. Yet, in the case of poor Baudelaire, absinthe 
 may have painted all those effects which I have 
 imagined three potent demons to be responsible 
 for. 
 
 Of the critics the most eminent in modern times 
 have been Sainte-Beuve, Armand de Pontmartin, 
 and Jules Janin, in the field of French literature. 
 Henri Blaze is the chief critic and historian of 
 German literature ; and of English literature H. A. 
 Taine is confessedly the best historian of literature 
 in any language. The authors of histories of 
 French literature, either for certain periods or for 
 the whole of its extent, have been numerous. 
 Some of them have discoursed only on the Latin 
 literature produced in Gaul, and yet have called 
 their works Discourses on French Literature. The 
 greatest names among the writers of this class, and 
 of that which gave some account of French litera- 
 ture proper, are Littre, Villemain, Geruzez, Demo-
 
 Since the Revolution of 1789. 29 
 
 geot, Vinet, Nettement, Albert, Charpentier, Cart, 
 Marque, Nisard, and Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 The historians must be mentioned with equal 
 brevity. They are Barante, the author of UHistoire 
 des Dncs de Bouryogne; Guizot, the author of 
 IjHistoire de la Civilization en Europe and the 
 History of France; Thierry, the author of UHis- 
 toire de la Conquete de TAngleterre par les Normans ; 
 Lamartine, the author of ISHistoire des Girondins ; 
 Michelet, the author of UHistoire de France; to- 
 gether with Thiers, Martin, Delord, Lanfrey, Lenor- 
 mant, and a great many more. 
 
 In metaphysics, the chief names are Victor 
 Cousin, Jouffroy, Janet, Lacour, Laugel, and Vera. 
 In Christian morality and ecclesiastical dogma, the 
 most eminent writers are Lamennais, with his 
 memorable Sur r Indifference en Mature de Re- 
 l.i'jinn and the very different Paroles d" 1 unCroyant; 
 Laccrdaire; Montalembert, and Dupanloup. In 
 political philosophy, there are Chevalier, De Toc- 
 queville, and Bonald. In philology and archaeol- 
 ogy, the great names are Champollion, De Sacy, 
 Kenan, Rernusat, Littre, Bida, and Gaston Paris. 
 In socialistic propagandism, there are three great 
 visionaries, Comte, St. Simon, and Fourier. In the 
 sciences, the French have won high distinction in 
 that world-literature, which utters itself in every 
 civilized tongue. Among the great names are 
 those of Cuvier, the father of anatomy ; Ampere 
 and Arago, distinguished in so many sciences; La 
 Place, Gay Lussac, and Lcgendre. 
 
 In the rapid enumeration just made, there have 
 necessarily been omitted the names of many 
 writers who have a world-wide reputation. Such, 
 for instance, are Saintine, the author of that charm- 
 ing tale of prison-life, Picciola; Laboulaye, a most 
 versatile and excellent writer; Madame Craven, 
 the author of several tender and thoughtful 
 romances of deep, religious tone; and Madam de 
 Segur, whose fairy tales are fresh and sparkling.
 
 30 French Literature. 
 
 It is pleasant to be able to say, in closing this 
 brief review of recent French literature, that the 
 turbid stream of unbridled passion, which, like the 
 rushing torrent from the mountain, swept away 
 with the primness of the classic fountain and 
 mimic lake their limpid purity too, has begun to 
 exhaust its force and seems to be depositing its 
 sediment and gradually clearing. The strange and 
 offensive phenomenon of a Zola stirring up the 
 marsh-mud at the bottom serves only to mark 
 more strongly the general change for the better. 
 Decency will yet come back to cleanse the French 
 imagination.
 
 Lays of Irouvbres. 31 
 
 III. 
 
 LAYS OF THE TEOUVERES. 
 
 HAVING given a general outline of French liter- 
 ature, from the earliest utterances of the race in a 
 language wHch they realized to be something dif- 
 ferent from broken Latin, down to the writings of 
 our own day, I now turn back to invite your closer 
 attention to single periods, or even, in some in- 
 stances, to individual writers of marked eminence. 
 
 First, then, let us look more closely into the 
 earliest literature of the French. 
 
 The provengal literature, though the prelude 
 to that of the Trouveres of the North, cannot fairly 
 be classed as a par> of French literature, since both 
 in language and in sentiment it is more nearly allied 
 to the Italian and the Spanish. Properly speak- 
 ing, it stands apart as an independent literature, 
 from which all its neighbors drew inspiration ; the 
 Suabian Minnesingers coming nearest to it in spirit 
 and form. 
 
 I have already given a general account of the 
 origin of the French language, and shall not here 
 pause to describe in detail its gradual development. 
 It was still in a crude and formative condition in 
 the twelfth century when those lays were produced 
 which the spirit of chivalry gave birth to. 
 
 The youth of great races always passes through 
 the stage called the Heroic Age, and we find the 
 same general characteristics in all races at this 
 stage, whether we read of the Achaians in the lays 
 of Ilorner, or of the Persians in those of Firdausi, 
 or of the Burgundians in the Nibeluntj Lay. But 
 the chivalry of the Christian races of the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries was characterized by one
 
 32 French Literature. 
 
 feature which is found, in so marked a degree, in 
 only one other race their great rivals and adver- 
 saries, the Arabians after they had received the 
 faith of Islam. This striking feature, this power- 
 ful element, was the enthusiasm of religion. It 
 was religious fervor, blended with the passion for 
 war, which gave rise to the Crusades, whether 
 against the Moslem in Spain or the Moslem in the 
 Holy Land or the Moslem in Egypt and at Tunis ; 
 and the Crusades in turn exalted the passions which 
 led to their inception. 
 
 From these enthusiasms sprang the inspiration to 
 song the popular song of the twelfth century. 
 Human love soon came in to form an element in 
 this popular poetry, and completed the type of the 
 chivalric lay. 
 
 Those of the earlier type, in which love has no 
 share, or but a slight one, are called Lays of Ex- 
 ploits (Chansons de Geste)', while those of the later 
 type are known by the general name of The Cycle 
 of the Round Table (Le Cycle de la Table ronde). 
 
 The Lays of Exploits were sung by the Trou- 
 veres, as Homer's lays had been sung in the isles 
 of Greece or in the Hellenic cities by the Rhapso- 
 dists. They were of two classes, the first drawing 
 its subjects from traditional history of the Teutonic 
 races, the second from the greatly transmuted facts 
 of antiquity related by monkish historians. 
 
 The Cycle of the Round Table had its origin in 
 Breton legends transformed by Teutonic influences. 
 
 The finest of the heroic poems cluster around 
 the already mythical figure of the Frankish Karl. 
 The great leaders, under whom the armies led to 
 battle by him saved the Christian races of the 
 West from conquest by unbelievers, very soon be- 
 came mythical heroes. Roland, around whom the 
 most romantic legends gathered, is named but once 
 in authentic history. It is only casually that the 
 chronicler Eginharcl mentions him, as Warden of 
 trie March of Britanny, in the brief passage which
 
 Lays of the Trouvtres. 33 
 
 he devotes to that skirmish in which the Paladin 
 fell. 
 
 Yet, when three centuries had passed by, it was 
 Roland and his fatal fall at Roncevaux that formed 
 the theme of Taillefer's battle chant as he rode 
 forth from the Norman line at Hastings and met 
 the Saxon van with the stirring words of defiant 
 song ringing from his lips. The slaughter of the 
 Frankish emperor's rear-guard in that famous pass 
 of the Pyrenees, the treason of Ganelon, and the 
 heroic deaths of Roland and his comrades formed 
 the earliest subjects of epic and ballad in all the 
 literatures of the Romance races. The Frankish 
 epic of Roland (Chanson de Roland] is the noblest 
 of those early lays. 
 
 It is a poem of more than four thousand lines in 
 length. It covers events which transpired in the 
 course of a few days. It shows no trace of clas- 
 sical influence. It differs from the Spanish ballads 
 in that it is not lyrioal, but truly epical in form and 
 tone. Yet it is probably a growth from a number 
 of ballads common to the folk-song of the Frankish 
 race, welded by some artistic hand into unity. The 
 poem may be briefly outlined thus: 
 
 Charles sits on his golden throne, judging his 
 host, under a pine. The paladins all around him 
 are busy with the game of chess. As they are thus 
 engaged, Blancandrin comes in as envoy from 
 Marsile, sultan of the infidels, with offers of peace 
 and treaty. Marsile promises to give hostages and 
 to follow the emperor to his court at Aachen. 
 Roland exhorts Charles to refuse to negotiate with 
 miscreants who had once slain his envoys. Gan- 
 elon, Roland's stepfather, fiercely engages in the 
 discussion, and there is soon a hot altercation be- 
 tween the two barons. 
 
 The emperor imposes silence, and decides to send 
 an envoy to Marsile. Ganelon, in spite of his un- 
 willingness, is chosen. Feeling deeply aggrieved, 
 he begins in his heart to plot treason even while he 
 3
 
 34: French Literature. 
 
 rides away with Blancandrin. When he reaches 
 the camp of the enemy, he cries aloud to Marsile : 
 "Be thou baptized, oh King : to Aachen shaltthou 
 be taken, and there shalt thou be judged, and there 
 shalt thou die in shame and mean estate." 
 
 At these insulting words, Marsile lays his hand 
 on his spear. But he controls himself, and waits 
 for Ganelon to produce Charles's letter. Marsile 
 reads it, and the envoy, who is nowhere described 
 as lacking in courage, sets his back against a tree 
 and half draws his sword. Even the Saracens say 
 of him, " A noble baron is this." 
 
 Marsile finds the letter gentler than the bearing 
 of the envoy, speaks him fair, and offers him, in 
 true Homeric style, a gift of sable skins. He asks 
 Ganelon, " When will Charles the Old be weary of 
 war ? " " Never," answers Ganelon, " while his 
 nephew Eoland and the Peers are on ground." 
 
 He next advises Marsile to send tribute and host- 
 ages, and at the same time to lay an ambush in 
 the passes of the Pyrenees. After this evil counsel, 
 he swears to treason on the relics in the hilt of his 
 sword, and returns to Charles, bringing with him 
 the keys of Saragossa, as well as hostages and 
 tribute from the sultan. 
 
 On the eve of his homeward march, Charles has an 
 evil dream. In the vision he sees Ganelon seizing 
 his spear in the pass of the mountains. He awakes, 
 weeping at the omen of disaster. But the warning 
 is without effect. He yields to the suggestion of 
 Ganelon, that the rear-guard should be assigned to 
 Eoland, along with Evriard de Rousillon, Turpin, and 
 Oliver. Breaking up camp, the army crosses black 
 rocks and dark valleys, shedding tears when at last 
 they come in sight of Gascony, "at memory of their 
 fiefs and fields and of their little ones and gentle 
 wives." 
 
 While the host is thus melted to tender feelings at 
 the thought of their nearness to their homes, the 
 rear-guard begin to note the advance of the Sara-
 
 Lays of the Trouvbres. 35 
 
 cens. " We shall have battle," says Oliver, as he 
 hears the sounds of an approaching army. " God 
 grant it," cries Eoland ; " never let bad ballad be 
 sung of us." 
 
 Oliver begins to express his suspicion of Gan- 
 elou's treason. But Koland stops him. Then Oli- 
 ver urges him to use his magic horn, the Olifant 
 (horn of elephant's tusk), to bring Charles and the 
 main army to their aid. But Roland refuses. "In 
 sweet France," he cries, " I would lose my fame." 
 
 The Saracen host comes on. Bishop Turpin ab- 
 solves the Christians, though leaves and grass are 
 the only creatures of God that can serve for the sa- 
 cramental elements. 
 
 Then the Franks cry, "Mount Joie," and address 
 themselves to battle. Marsile's nephew, Aelroth, 
 rides along the Saracen line, shouting taunts to the 
 Christians. The two hosts rush together in fierce 
 onset. Roland drives his lance through Aelroth's 
 breastplate and breast. Oliver hurls down Faus- 
 seron, " lord of the land of Datban and Abiron." 
 Turpin slays King Corsablyx. 
 
 Fighting furiously with spear and battle-axe, the 
 Franks for a time seem to be driving back the en- 
 emy. Siglorel, another chief of the heathen, "the 
 enchanter whom Jupiter had led through hell," 
 falls before the charge of the knights. 
 
 Lances are broken and cast aside. The knights 
 draw their swords ; Oliver, his bright blade Haute- 
 claire; Roland, that famous brand Durandal. They 
 cut their way through the dense masses of the 
 enemy. 
 
 But the heathens are re-enforced, the Christians 
 are now few in number. Roland thinks it time to 
 wind his horn. But Oliver mocks him with the 
 question : " Wilt thou not lose thy fame in sweet 
 France? Ah, never now shalt thou lie in the arms 
 of Aide, my sister." * But Turpin interposes. 
 
 *The lady Aide, liere referred to, dies at the news of Roland's death ; 
 aud this is the only love-note in the poem.
 
 36 French Literature. 
 
 "Nay, sound," says he. "We shall have burial at 
 our friends' hands, and shall not be the spoil of 
 wolves." 
 
 Then Roland blows till blood starts from his 
 mouth ; and the echo of that dread horn winds 
 through the passes of the mountain and rings above 
 the tempest of wind and the thunder and the grand 
 moans of nature at the hero's death. Charles hears 
 the death-blast, and knows at once that his nephew 
 is in great need. At once he divines Ganelon's 
 treason, and lie hands him over to the cooks and 
 camp-followers to be bound and tormented. But 
 the worn-out remnant of the rear-guard are too 
 hard-pressed to be saved at this late hour. 
 
 "The black folk, that have nothing white save 
 the teeth," fall on the weary knights in vastly su- 
 perior numbers. Never shall the knights see again 
 "the land of France, that very sweet country." 
 
 Oliver is wounded to the death by the hand of 
 the Caliph, but cuts him down at the same time. 
 Oliver, whose eyas are dimmed by blood and the 
 nearness of death, strikes out so blindly that he 
 smites Roland on the crest. 
 
 "My lord companion, do you this of purpose?" 
 asks Roland. "Not so, for I hear thee, but thee 
 not, friend Roland, God help thee," cries Oliver. 
 
 Roland forgives the blow, and at that word they 
 bow to each other in knightly courtesy. Roland's 
 horse being slain, and he almost exhausted, he 
 gathers the bodies of the peers in a circle around 
 the dying Turpin. The bishop crosses his fair 
 white hands, and cries that they shall all meet soon 
 among the Holy Innocents. 
 
 Roland now speaks the praise of Oliver over that 
 knight's dead body, and lays himself down on the 
 green grass. He tries to break the blade of his 
 good sword Durandal, lest it fall into the hands of 
 the Saracens. He strikes ten blows on the hard 
 rock, but they fail to snap the steel. Then he cries: 
 " Ah, Durandal, how clear thouart and bright that
 
 Lays of the Trouv^res. 37 
 
 shinest as the sun. With thee have I conquered 
 lands and domains for Charles of the white beard. 
 Yea, now for thee have I sorrow and heaviness, 
 and would die sooner than see thee in pagan hands. 
 Holv thou art, and lovely; in thy golden hilt is 
 store of relics. How many kingdoms have I taken 
 with thee, wherein Charles now rules." 
 
 Then, casting down his sword and horn, he throws 
 himself over them on the green grass under a pine. 
 He turns his face to Spain, and many things come 
 into his mind sweet France, and the Barons of his 
 house, and Charles his lord. Weeping and groan- 
 ing heavily at the thought of these, he stretches 
 out to God the glove of his right hand. Saint 
 Gabriel takes it from his grasp. And as his spirit 
 leaves the body, it is borne to Paradise by Saint 
 Michael of the Sea. 
 
 The poem, however, does not end with this tragic 
 picture. The overthrow of the Saracens and the 
 punishment of Ganelon must be described. The 
 sun stands still for Charles, while the Paynim host, 
 calling on Termagaunt their god, are driven back 
 to Saragossa. 
 
 In Saragossa Marsile, furious at defeat, beats his 
 image of Apollo and casts the idol of Mahomet 
 into a ditch. At the era of this poem, the Chris- 
 tians evidently had a very vague conception of the 
 religion of Iskim. 
 
 Next day, the final battle is fought. Charles and 
 his Franks fight all day. " Clear is the moon and 
 flaming are the stars," when Charles marches into 
 Saragossa. There is no obstacle to the army's re- 
 turn this time. But, when the Franks come back 
 to Aachen without Roland, Aide " of the golden 
 hair and the bright face" falls dead at Charles's feet. 
 The grey king, musing alone, says, " My God, how 
 painful is my life !" 
 
 And so ends the "Geste'' that Turoldus made. 
 It comes nearer to being a great national epic than 
 any poem the French have ever produced since.
 
 88 French Literature. 
 
 But, being essentially a Frankish lay, it could not 
 wholly win the sympathies of the composite race 
 formed by the blending of Franks with Komanized 
 Kelts and Basques. 
 
 Yet, Homer's great epics glorified, in the Achai- 
 ans, a ruling aristocratic race with much the same 
 position in relation to other Hellenic races as that 
 held by the Franks towards some at least of the 
 subject races over whom, they held feudal sway. 
 Possibly, had there been no revival of ancient 
 learning in Western Europe, the great Chanson de 
 Roland might have taken somewhat the place in 
 French literature which the Iliad held in that of 
 Hellas. 
 
 This poem stands almost alone in its spirit of 
 loyalty to the Empire. The other poems relating 
 to Charles and his family manifest that tendency to 
 independence on the part of the great barons which 
 was essentially the temper of feudalism. These 
 lays are very numerous. One of them, Ogier de 
 Danois, would seem by its name to link the Frarik- 
 ish Emperor with the Scandinavians. But modern 
 criticism has traced in the title Danois Ogier's ori- 
 gin from the forest of Ardeene. Hence this pala- 
 din of Charlemagne was not a Dane, but a Frank. 
 
 In this story the game of chess figures mor 
 prominently than in the Lay of Eoland, for the 
 hostility of Ogier to the Emperor is caused by the 
 killing of his son Caudouin (Baldwin) at a game 
 with the son of Charlemagne who, enraged at being 
 beaten, dashes the heavy chess-board of gold and 
 ivory at his adversary's head. Escaping to Pavia, 
 the offended vassal performs wonderful acts of 
 prowess in the war that ensues between Charles and 
 Didier, King of the Lombards, in whose service he 
 fights his former master. 
 
 Later, he is once more in the service of Charles, 
 now in sore need of his stalwart arm. The Em- 
 peror has been even forced to yield his son to 
 Oierg's vengeance, which, checked by heavenly in-
 
 Lays of the Trouveres. 39 
 
 terference, lias taken the mild form of a furious 
 blow with the fist which has rolled the murderer in 
 the dust. Broiefort, the hero's old charger, is 
 brought forward from among the pack-animals of 
 a convent, rejuvenated at sight of his master and 
 the apparel of war, and soon returns from the field 
 with Ogier on his back, victorious over the 
 Saracens. 
 
 Turold is the name assigned to the author of the 
 Lay of Roland, while Eaimbert of Paris is accred- 
 ited with the authorship of the Lay of Ogier. 
 Turold is placed by scholars in the eleventh cen- 
 tury, and Raimbert in the twelfth. 
 
 But there are poems of fire and invention, which 
 must have been written in the interval between 
 these lays of Turold and Raimbert. These Chan- 
 sons de Geste are The Crowning of Louis (Le Cou- 
 ronnement de Louis), The Wagon of Nimes (Le 
 Charrois de Nimes}, The Capture of Orange (La 
 Prise d'Oranye), The Vow of Nivien (Le Vceu de 
 Vivien), and the Battle of Aleschans (Le Bataille 
 d 1 Aleschans). 
 
 These poems all relate to the same hero, Guill- 
 aume of the Short Nose, or, as he is also called, of 
 the Iron Arm ; and their scenes are laid in the time 
 of Louis the Easy-Natured, son- of Charlemagne. 
 Aleschans is JElisei Campi, the cemetery of Aries. 
 
 Among other famous lays are the Lay of the 
 Lorraines (Chanson des Lorrains), by Jean of Flagy ; 
 Raoul de Cambrai, the author of which is unknown; 
 and the Four Sons of Aymon (Quatre Fils Aymori), 
 by Huon of Villeneuve. 
 
 "We now reach lays that treat of real events. 
 The Lay of Antioch ( Chansom d'Antioche) is one of 
 these. It was composed by Richard the Pilgrim 
 at the time of the taking of Jerusalem by the cru- 
 saders, and at the end of the twelfth centurv was 
 rewritten by Graindor of Douai. It is regarded as 
 more faithful history than the Latin chronicles of
 
 40 French Literature. 
 
 the same events by such writers as "William of 
 Tyre. 
 
 About the same time, the Romance of Alex- 
 ander (Roman d'Alexandre] was produced by Lam- 
 bert the Short, of Chateaudun, and Alexander of 
 Bernai. This lay differed from the earlier lays in 
 two respects : it went to antiquity for its subject, 
 and it was peculiar in the structure of its verse. 
 
 The elder chanson had employed a loose verse 
 of ten or eleven syllables, with a strong time-beat 
 about the middle of each line. This romaunt em- 
 ployed, with great regularity, the verse of twelve 
 syllables, with the strong time-beat exactly in the 
 middle, so that each run of sounds up to the breath- 
 ing comprised invariably six syllables, or at any rate 
 three distinct time-beats. It was the use of this 
 measure in the Lay of Alexander, which gave 
 rise to the name Alexandrine. 
 
 The basis alone of this poem is antique, the col- 
 oring is of the age in which it was produced. The 
 manners and the spirit of the age of chivalry are 
 infused into it throughout. The real Alexander 
 would have recognized neither himself nor his 
 surroundings. 
 
 The lays about Arthur and the Round Table 
 Knights are based on legends the Bretons brought 
 from their island home six centuries before. 
 Wace, the Anglo-Norman, worked them into his 
 Romance of Brute (Roman de Brut). But the 
 Trouvere, Chrestien of Troyes, first gave them 
 really poetic form. His Tristan was written in a 
 verse of eight syllables with alternating rhymes. 
 Aime* of Varennes used the same verse in his 
 Florimont. 
 
 The taste for marvels and for amorous incidents 
 passed from the lays of the Bretons to those of the 
 Franks. Thus we find the sorceries of Maugis 
 playing a great part in the Four Sons of Aymon ; 
 and the gallantries of Witikind's queen, in Jeaa 
 Borel's Lay of the Saxons.
 
 Lays of the Trouvdres. 41 
 
 The romance of Parthenope shares this new 
 spirit. The hero, Parthenope of Blois, valiant and 
 lovable, reverses the old myth of Cupid and Psyche : 
 By the light of a lamp he indiscreetly views his 
 unknown mistress, the fairy Melior, Empress of 
 Constantinople ; and loses her by his fatal curiosity. 
 But deep repentance, deeds of prowess, and con- 
 stant devotion win her back to him ; and he ends 
 by reigning openly in that palace into which he 
 had once secretly penetrated. Singularly enough, 
 nearly about the time of the production of this 
 lay, a French-speaking prince, Baldwin, Count of 
 Flanders and Hainault, did mount the throne of 
 Constantinople, as the first Latin Emperor of the 
 Byzantine empire. Among other highly imagina- 
 tive romances of this kind may be named Flore et 
 Blanche- Fleur, Violette, and the Chastelain de 
 Coucy. 
 
 A work of far greater interest than any fairy 
 tale in verse was the outcome of the historic inci- 
 dents just rr.ontioned in connection with the lay of 
 Parthenope. Vlns was the first of the Chronicles, 
 the earliest work in French prose. 
 
 Induced by the Venetians to help them take 
 Zara, the leaders of the fourth Crusade had been 
 prayed while there by young Alexis, son of Isaac 
 II., Emperor of Constantinople, to aid him against 
 his usurping uncle by whom his father had been 
 deposed and blinded. The Crusaders agreed, 
 restored the rightful Emperor, and then failing to 
 get the reward promised by Alexis, returned to 
 Constantinople, seized and sacked the city, and 
 made Baldwin Emperor. 
 
 This striking and dramatic series of events was 
 witnessed and afterwards related by Geoffrey de 
 Villelmrdouin (1150-1213) in his Conquete de Con- 
 stantinople. This is a work of liigh merit. A mil- 
 itary leader, a man of the world, a negotiator of 
 treaties, he was qualified to record events of which 
 he knew the hidden springs, and of which he had
 
 42 French Literature. 
 
 seen the stirring and picturesque scenes enacted 
 before him. 
 
 His account is in keeping with these qualifica- 
 tions. He writes simply, soberly, with force, stat- 
 ing briefly what is of importance and leaving out 
 all that is irrelevant. Not a few single passages, 
 isolated from their context, stand out as complete 
 pictures. Such, for instance, is the account of the 
 negotiations of the Crusaders at Venice to procure 
 transports and to secure the concurrence of the re- 
 public. Such is that which describes the emotion of 
 the Crusaders at the sight of Constantinople, so 
 beautiful and grand a city as it seemed to those 
 simple Western warriors, and so capable of defence. 
 Such is the scene of the re-instatement of the blind 
 Emperor, where the blind old warrior Doge Dan- 
 dolo also figures, a scene vividly described from 
 our old chronicler by the younger Bulwer-Lytton 
 in English verse. 
 
 So far, we have had before us the serious side of 
 the age of chivalry. There was also a humorous 
 side, in which fables played their part, and in 
 which the true folk-lore multiplied its satirical 
 fancies. 
 
 Before, however, we turn aside from the Lays, 
 let me mention one charming work of the Trou- 
 veres, which seems to have been born of the de- 
 light felt by its author in the beautiful valleys of 
 Provence, where he lays the scene of his story. 
 This work is Aitcassin et Nicollette, an idyllic song- 
 story, the story being told in prose, with songs in- 
 terspersed through it. Competent scholars regard 
 it as a work of the twelfth century, though the 
 Trouvere who wrote it has caught from his sojourn 
 in the land of the Albigenses a tone of satire in 
 regard to priests and things clerical that was char- 
 acteristic of a later age among his countrymen. 
 Alexandre Bida, philologist and artist, has put it 
 into modern French and daintily illustrated it; and 
 we have it in English under the title, " The Lovers
 
 Lays of the Trouv^res. 43 
 
 of Provence." It is a fragrant little flower of ro- 
 mance handed down to us through the centuries as 
 fre.sh as when it first bloomed in that wild time. 
 
 I shall close this chapter with brief mention of 
 some of the Chansons de Geste not yet referred to. 
 Among these are Berthe aux grands pieds by 
 Adenes le Hoi, embodying legends of Charles the 
 Great's mother; Jean de Lanson, Huon de Bor- 
 deaux, Acquin, Aspremont, Fierabras, Otinel, Guy 
 de Bourgogne, Prise de Pampelune, Macaire, Doon 
 de Mayence, Guy de Nanteuil, all relating the ex- 
 ploits of Charles and his Paladins.
 
 44: French Literature. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE FABLIAUX AND THE CHRONICLES. 
 
 STUDENTS of folk-lore have shown that the 
 "beast-fable" is a common inheritance of the 
 Aryan races ; and it has been ascertained that it 
 has nowhere reached so high a degree of poetical 
 development as among the Franks. They handed 
 down this taste to both the German and the French 
 branches of their race. 
 
 It is worthy of notice, in passing, that a remark- 
 ably similar series of fables- has existed among the 
 descendents of the Africans brought to this country 
 as slaves, from the time of their importation to the 
 present day. The children of our country are now 
 familiar with many of them through the publica- 
 tion of Harris's Uncle Remus ; but they have for 
 generations been the delight of the young people 
 brought up on our Southern plantations, to whom 
 they were related by the old " rnaumers " in that 
 rich dialect which so admirably brought out their 
 native numor. 
 
 Reynard the Fox is the chief of these stories, as 
 they existed among the Franks ; and it seems to 
 have first appeared, in the Latin tongue, in the 
 Netherlands. These Latin poems belong to the 
 tenth and eleventh centuries. About the begin- 
 ning of the twelfth century appeared Isengrirnua, 
 of which the wolf is the hero; and, a little later, 
 Reinardus, relating the rogueries of the fox. Both 
 of these works were by Flemish ecclesiastics. A 
 little later still, the fable passed over into German 
 literature. 
 
 In French literature, it can be traced back only 
 to the beginning of the thirteenth century. But it
 
 TJt& Fabliaux and the Chronicles. 45 
 
 soon became immensely popular, and great num- 
 bers of poems were devoted to the adventures of 
 Reynard. 
 
 Through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 
 it formed a favorite vehicle for satire both in France 
 and Germany. The general plan of all these 
 animal-epics is the same. Noble the Lion is 
 emperor or king, with his court, palace, and all the 
 insignia of royalty. Keynard the Fox is a crafty 
 baron dwelling in a castle called Malpertuis. 
 Isengrin the Wolf is his uncle an uncle upon 
 whom he plays off malicious tricks, just as in the 
 comedies scampish nephews were wont to do. 
 Their wives too bear names. The spouse of 
 Reynard is Emmeline, that of Isengrin is Hersent. 
 Church and State are both satirized in these 
 poems, sometimes merrily, sometimes bitterly ; and 
 they are valuable for the light they cast on the 
 social condition of the people in the middle ages. 
 They are mostly written in verses of eight sylla- 
 bles, with rhyming couplets. 
 
 These " beast-fables " belong to the general class 
 called Fabliaux. This term comprehends a great 
 variety of short metrical tales, intended for recita- 
 tion. They were often of the nature of mock- 
 heroics, but were sometimes serious. One of the 
 rnerry ones, the Vilian Mire, furnished Moliere with 
 the plot of his Hedecin malgrZ lui. Others, also 
 ingenious and witty, are Saint Pierre et le Jongleur, 
 the Trois Bossus, and the Vair Palefroi. 
 
 The story of this last runs thus: A young 
 knight, courteous, brave, and of fine person, lacking 
 money but possessing an excellent horse or palfrey, 
 has for neighbor an old lord, father of a daughter 
 of great beauty. The two young people have seen 
 and loved each other. The lover in vain asks for 
 the hand of the lady. The father is polite, but in- 
 timates that the aspirant's estate is too slender. 
 The lady counsels her lover to apply to an old un- 
 cle of his, to whom he is sole heir, for aid in satis-
 
 46 French Literature. 
 
 fying the father. The uncle promises, but woos for 
 himself, and is accepted by the father. The young 
 lover, returning from a tournament, learns the 
 treason only through the request made for his 
 beautiful palfrey, to be used in the procession which 
 is to conduct the bride to the chapel. He sends 
 him, in spite of his grief and anger. Now, the pal- 
 frey was wanted for the bride's especial use. Dur- 
 ing the ride, which takes place before day-dawn, 
 the palfrey turns down a familiar path in the forest, 
 and gallops home before he is missed from the 
 cavalcade. A chaplain is at hand, and the lovers 
 are united before the two old men find their way 
 to the manor-house of the young knight. The 
 author of this graceful little fabliau is Huon le 
 Roy. 
 
 Other abler composers of fabliaux and contes were 
 Jean de Boves, Henri Piancelle, and Rutebeuf. 
 The taste spread to other lands ; and these metrical 
 tales appeared, sometimes in the form of prose, 
 sometimes in that of verse, in the works of master- 
 spirits. Boccaccio in his Decameron, and Chaucer 
 in his Canterbury Tales, drew largely from these old 
 fabliaux. 
 
 There were also legends of miracles, performed 
 by the saints and especially by the Virgin. One of 
 these, by Gautier de Coinsy, Prior of Yic-sur-Aisme, 
 relates how the Virgin contended and conquered in 
 a tourney under the form of a knight who had been 
 so deeply engaged in performing his orisons in one 
 of her chapels as to let the hour of combat pass by 
 unobserved. 
 
 During this period, when both the epic lay and 
 the mock-epic fabliau were so enthusiastically cul- 
 tivated, many circumstances concurred to extend 
 and ennoble the French language. The Normans 
 had carried it, a few generations before, to Sicily, 
 Southern Italy, and England. The Crusaders, with 
 leaders like Godfrey of BuiHon, Robert of Nor- 
 mandy, the Sicilian Normans, Bohemond and Tan-
 
 The Fabliau's and the Chronicles. 47 
 
 cred, Hugh ofVermandois, Louis Phillippe Auguste 
 of France, Richard of England, Baldwin of Flanders, 
 and other French-speaking captains, had carried it 
 in successive generations to the shores of the Levant 
 and to Jerusalem itself. 
 
 In the East all the nations of the West came to 
 be known for centuries by the comprehensive term 
 of Franks, and the mixed jargon in which all nego- 
 tiations were conducted between Christians and 
 Moslems was called Lingua Franca. 
 
 While Louis IX. Saint Louis was conducting 
 his disastrous crusades, was protecting the mendicant 
 orders, was trying in every way to bring back the 
 spirit of his age to the ardors and the simple faith 
 of the earlier crusading times, the great love-alle- 
 gory of the Middle Ages was produced. 
 
 Guilluame of Lorris takes a vast host of abstract 
 qualities, quickens them into life in forms like 
 those of the characters that Buiiyan in a later age 
 peopled his Pilg rim's Progress with, and creates 
 the famous Roman^de la Rose, the great Book of 
 Love for the centuries just before the Renaissance, 
 as Ovid's Art of Love had been for former genera- 
 tions. The work of Guilluame of Lorris was left 
 unfinished, and, forty years later, was continued in 
 a very different tone by Jean of Meung. 
 
 But, before we note the differences which the 
 last part of the Roman de la Rose, when compared 
 with the first, shows between the spirit, temper, 
 and motive of Jean of Meung and those of his pre- 
 decessor, it will be necessary to mention a remark- 
 able prose work. This is the chronicle of the Sire 
 de Joinville (1222-1318), who accompanied Saint 
 Louis in the first of his expeditions, knew him 
 thoroughly, and loved him as man and as master, 
 lie relates the exploits of his king, recites his con- 
 versations and opinions, opens to us fully that sin- 
 gularly enthusiastic nature crowned monk and yet 
 valiant knight. He does not concur in aJl the 
 views of his master, much as he admires him ; and,
 
 48 French, Literature. 
 
 when Louis sets out on his second crusade, the 
 good seneschal thinks that his five wounds received 
 at Massora, his captivity of several months, all that 
 he has suffered of hunger, thirst, fever, and the 
 plague, will honorably excuse him from the new 
 enterprise. 
 
 This chronicle of de Joinville has great merit as 
 a picture of the times and as a lifelike portraiture 
 of one of the most singular characters in history. 
 There are in it, also, vivid descriptions by an eye- 
 witness of most dramatic historical scenes. 
 
 We hardly leave the period of the Crusades, 
 when we find France greatly changed. Thought 
 had been enlarged by freer intercourse with Eome, 
 by contact with the splendid though effete civiliza- 
 tion of the Byzantine Empire, by a nearer acquain- 
 tance with the then brilliant civilization of the 
 Saracens, by the return of travellers from the mag- 
 nificent empire of the Mogul Khans. The political 
 and social situation had undergone a change at 
 home. The number of petty fief's had been greatly 
 diminished by their sale or merger for the equip- 
 ment of the barons wh'o had gone on the Crusades. 
 The great lords became greater than ever, and held 
 larger courts. The towns had increased their 
 wealth and gained greater municipal privileges. 
 
 The historian of Civilization in Europe, Guizot, 
 sums up the results of the Crusades in these words : 
 " On the one hand, the extension of ideas and the 
 emancipation of thought ; on the other, a general 
 enlargement of the social sphere, and the opening 
 of a wider field for every sort of activity: they 
 produced, at the same time, more individual freedom 
 and more political unity. They tended to the 
 independence of man and the centralization of 
 society/' 
 
 It was amid this new order of society that Jean 
 of Meung finished the poem left incomplete by 
 Guillaume of Lorris, Le Roman de la Rose. He 
 did so at the invitation of his king, Philip the
 
 The Fabliaux and the Chronicles. 49 
 
 Fair, that prince of cunning policy. The whole 
 spirit of the poem was changed in the continuation. 
 From a dreamy and metaphysical allegory of love 
 and the ladies, it became a vast political satire and 
 a social diatribe as well. The bitter poet scourges 
 avarice, idleness and hypocrisy, having an especial 
 grudge against those pests of the age, the mendi- 
 cant monks, "tramps" in the name of religion. 
 
 The same spirit of hostility to the abuses of the 
 Church, clothed in the same form of allegory, in 
 which all the personages and places are virtues and 
 vices, is exhibited in a renovation of the "beast- 
 fable" by Jacquemart Gelee. This fabliau is enti- 
 tled Renart le Nouvel. 
 
 Another poet, contemporary with, these, Franqois 
 of Rues, attacks the Pope and the order of the 
 Templars, making Fauvel the Mare the type of 
 luxury and ambition, as Gelee had made Reynard 
 the Fox the type of bad faith. 
 
 At this time, when poetry in France had degen- 
 erated into violent. satire, disfigured by the uncouth 
 forms of abstract qualities in masquerade, Italy 
 was moving steadily toward a brighter light of 
 learning than the old dark lantern of scholasticism 
 could furnish. A taste had sprung up for the study 
 of the older Latin literature. The Civil Law of 
 the Roman empire, too, had been eagerly studied 
 from the time of the twelfth century. That great 
 Florentine poet, Dante Alighieri, had produced his 
 Divina Commedia. There was an awakening be- 
 yond the Alps, which was to bear fruit later all over 
 Europe. 
 
 But France was destined to pass through the 
 throes of a great agony, before she could find leisure 
 to profit by the new quickening of the human 
 mind. She had now to meet the trials of the Hun- 
 dred Years' "War. These long wars filled up the 
 last half of the fourteenth and the first half of the 
 fifteenth centuries. We have nothing to do here 
 with those shining names, Crecy, Poitiers, Azin- 
 4
 
 50 French Literature. 
 
 court ; with the gallant knights, Edward the Black 
 Prince, Sir "Walter de Manny, Gaston de Foix, Ber- 
 trand du Guesclin ; or with that figure, the bright- 
 est and purest, surely, in all history, Jeanne Dare, 
 the Maid of Orleans. Our business is with what 
 came after ; for this time of convulsion was of ne- 
 cessity sterile in literary effort, except for two wit- 
 nesses of phases of the struggle and to some ex- 
 tent partakers in it, Jean Froissart the chronicler, 
 and Eustache Deschamps the poet. 
 
 Froissart, the son of a painter of escutcheons, was 
 born at Valenciennes in 1337. He was destined 
 for tke Church, and so received a better education 
 than the knights and princes with whom he after- 
 wards lived so much. His passion for poetry, for 
 courtly society, for knightly deeds, took him to 
 other lands, after inciting him to relate such events 
 of the wars of his time as he could find material 
 for. On finishing the first part of his Chronicles, 
 which he began when only twenty years of age, he 
 went to the brilliant court of Edward III. of Eng- 
 land, where he became a great favorite with the 
 Queen, Philippa of Hainault, who made him her 
 secretary. He also visited Scotland, as the guest 
 of King David Bruce. In 1366, he went with the 
 Black Prince to Bordeaux. Later, he accompanied 
 the Duke of Clarence to Italy; and, there, it is be- 
 lieved that he had Chaucer and Petrarca for fellow- 
 guests at the marriage of the duke with the daugh- 
 ter of Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan. On 
 Philippa's death, Froissart left England. He was 
 afterwards private secretary to the Duke of Bra- 
 bant, on whose death he p ntered the service of Guy, 
 Count of Blois, and, continuing his Chronicles, 
 made a journey to the court of Gaston Phoebus, 
 Count de Foix, to hear from the Bearnese and Gas- 
 con knights the tales of their feats during the 
 great wars. He made other journeys, especially a 
 visit to the English court of Richard II., where he 
 was nobly welcomed. He died in 1410 at Chimay,
 
 The Fabliaux and the Chronicles. 51 
 
 where he held a canonry. He was certainly a born 
 narrator, and cannot be surpassed for ease, unaf- 
 fected simplicity, warmth and variety of coloring. 
 
 " In certain narratives of battle," says Villemain, 
 " Froissart is truly Homeric. One could not describe 
 with greater force the shock of those masses of mail-clad 
 men that dash together. Arrived in the castle of Gaston 
 de Foix, you see there in life-like colors the life of leis- 
 ure, the dainty delights, the festivals: they could not be 
 painted with more grace. Pass with the Chronicler into 
 Spain : the boldness of Henry of Transtamare, the gen- 
 ius of the Black Prince are before you. Come back with 
 him to France : the wisdom of Charles V., his activity, 
 his able and restorative administration, are described 
 with a care and a seriousness which seem for a time to set 
 aside the natural gaiety of Froissart. Great events, 
 familiar anecdotes, characteristics of different nations, 
 English, Flemings, French all are mingled and succeed 
 one another without confusion ; and never are the colors 
 of the historian alike, though he is always unaffected, 
 natural, full of his stibject." 
 
 His Chronicles were, in the next age, continued 
 by Monstrelet, but in very inferior style. 
 
 As to the part taken by Froissart, one in these 
 days is apt to imagine, simply because he spoke 
 and wrote in French, that he was unpatriotic in 
 showing more decided sympathy in the great 
 struggle with the kings and nobles of England than 
 with those of France. But, it must be remembered, 
 that those kings were of the house of Anjou, spoke 
 French, and laid claim to the throne of France, 
 having in their veins fully as much of the French 
 blood-rojal as any prince of the house of Valois; 
 that those barons of England were of Norman and 
 Aquitanian descent ; that the English queen, who 
 protected and rewarded Froissart, was like himself 
 a Fleming, as Hainault was then subject to Flan- 
 ders ; and that the Angevin princes ruled by just 
 right of inheritance nianv fair lauds in which French
 
 52 French Literature. 
 
 was the native tongue, and were followed to battle 
 by many French knights. The struggle was at 
 first a struggle of dynasties, and not of nationalities. 
 It was not till the time of Henry V. that it could 
 be called a conflict between England and France. 
 
 But Froissart was to the men of his own day 
 something more than a chronicler. He was also a 
 poet, and a voluminous one. He tells the story of 
 his youthful love, which was a devotion after the 
 manner of the Provengal poets, in a lay of some 
 four thousand lines, interspersed with ballades 
 virelays, and rondeaux. The poem is styled Trettie 
 de TEspinette Amoureuse, and is full of all manner 
 of prettinesses. But unreal as it all is, there is in 
 it the noble ideal of faith in honor, virtue, loyalty 
 the belief in love as the great elevator and purifier. 
 So, in the great chronicler, we find also one of the 
 last of the Trouveres, or even of the Troubadours, 
 for both theme and treatment are more in their 
 mood than in that of the poets of the North. 
 
 There was another poet of this age, who has 
 come down to us with that title, and whose mission 
 it was to sing of those events which Froissart chroni- 
 cled. This was Eustache Deschamps, soldier and 
 magistrate, and hater of the English. His verse has 
 many tones, serious, lofty, tender, satirical. It has 
 also the varying forms of ballade, rondeau, lay. 
 
 It was in this age, too, when war was desolating 
 the land and was aided in its dread task by the 
 plague called the Black Death and by the frightful 
 atrocities of that rising of the peasants called the 
 Jacquerie, that as a singular contrast the table-song 
 and the vaudeville came first into being. Olivier 
 Basselin improvised such songs for the Norman 
 wine-bibbers two centuries before they appeared in 
 print, modernized somewhat in language, but with 
 the same thoughts and the same rhythm. There is 
 a fine lyrical swing about them, which has given 
 them vitality, and has caused their rhythm to be 
 reproduced in many a modern chant. This old
 
 The Fabliaux and the Chronicles. 58 
 
 singir of drinking-songs, Olivier Basselin, was not 
 only the father of the modern vaudeville, but that 
 species of composition actually takes its name from 
 him that is, from the name of the region where 
 he composed his songs, the Valley of the Vire, for 
 the vaudeville was originally called Vau-de- Vire. 
 
 Under Charles V. of France, who encouraged the 
 study of the classics, there were three authors 
 deserving at least brief mention. These were 
 Christine de Pisan, one of the most learned women 
 of her age; Jean Gerson, the ecclesiastic once 
 believed to have been the true Thomas a Kempis; 
 and Alain Char tier, poet and patriot. 
 
 Christine wrote the life of Charles V., under the 
 title, Livre des fails et bonnes moeurs du roi Charles 
 V. Gerson, besides a vast number of Latin works 
 which he composed in his numerous controversies, 
 wrote in French some strong remonstrances to 
 King Charles in behalf of the University, of which 
 he was Chancellor. Alain Chartier, a short time 
 after the fatal battle of Agincourt, wrote his Livre 
 des quatre Dames, a poem in which he takes occa- 
 sion to reproach those who fled from that lost field. 
 His most striking work is his Quadriloye invectif^ 
 a patriatic manifesto, put forth between the defeat 
 at Agincourt and the deliverance of Orleans by the 
 Maiden. It is a noble appeal, full of hope and en- 
 couragement. It was Jeanne Dare who answered 
 it in the name of France and of the God, who, as she 
 firmly believed, sent her to lead the armies of 
 France ; and, though she perished herself, she saved 
 her beloved France. 
 
 The old lays of exploits had now passed away 
 with the decay of chivalry. The latest of them 
 were two poems, one of them reciting the adven- 
 tures of a purely imaginary hero, Baldwin of 
 Sebourg, whom the Trouvere invents as a scion of 
 the house of the Counts of Flanders ; the other, 
 written by Cuvelier, a short time after the death of
 
 54: French Literature. 
 
 Du Guesclin, and narrating the history of that 
 Breton hero. 
 
 A little later, we find the heroic lays transformed 
 into prose romances, and the fabliaux into prose 
 novels. Among these latter was the famous col- 
 lection, called the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, some 
 tales of which and these among the most licentious 
 are ascribed to the Dauphin, who afterwards 
 mounted the throne as Louis XI. 
 
 But the most remarkable literary productions, 
 perhaps, of this age were the fiery sermons of the 
 popular preachers, Olivier Maillard and Michel 
 Menot, both of them Franciscan friars. They used 
 familiar comparisons, popular proverbs, piquant al- 
 lusions to passing events, biting personalities, satir- 
 ical anecdotes and fables; apostrophized with with- 
 ering irony and startling vehemence great Church 
 dignitaries; attacked the great lords and ladies; 
 and even rebuked the king. 
 
 Besides this dramatic preaching, stirring the peo- 
 ple to repentance Wickliffe in England and IIuss 
 in Bohemia had just preceded Menot and Maillard, 
 and Savonarola in Italy was their contemporary 
 the Church was authorizing at this time the per- 
 formance of those Mystery and Miracle plays, of 
 which in our times the Ober-Ammergau Passion- 
 play is a solitary survival. 
 
 A celebrated fraternity, called the Confrerie de 
 la Passion, founded in Paris in 1350, had the mo- 
 nopoly for the performance of these. They were 
 very long and occupied, each of them, several 
 days. The most celebrated of them, the Mystery 
 of the Passion, contains more than sixty thousand 
 verses, and its representation took up several weeks. 
 The brothers Grebau and Jean Michel of Angers 
 were the most notable composers of these religious 
 dramas. 
 
 Serious at first, these performances after a time 
 degenerated ; and farce and ribaldry were mingled 
 with them, until by the middle of the sixteenth
 
 The Fabliaux and the Chronicles. 55 
 
 century they fell into great disrepute. They were 
 at last prohibited, as a public scandal, by the Parle- 
 ment of Paris in 1548. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, that taste for allegory, which 
 had shown itself so prodigally in the Romance of 
 the Rose, also ventured upon the stage, and the en- 
 tertainment given by the Mystery Plays was some- 
 times varied by the performance of Morality Plays, 
 in which the virtues and vices took the place of the 
 Biblical characters. 
 
 The fabliaux also invaded the stage, being there 
 transformed into farces, very licentious for the most 
 part. Some that were comparatively free from such 
 grossnesses as disfigured the majority, were still 
 immoral in their tone, as setting forth the triumph 
 of roguery. They are, however, amusing ; and the 
 most famous of them, Maitre Pathelin, is really a 
 masterpiece of its kind. 
 
 Besides this purely popular literature, we find on 
 the eve of the Renaissance three writers of greater 
 literary pretensions, one of them, however, as pop- 
 ular as the preachers and the composers of Mystery 
 Plays. Fran9ois Villon is the immediate successor 
 of the author of Pathelin. Charles d'Orldans is 
 the representative of the old poetry of chivalry. 
 Phillippe de Comines is the real successor of Frois- 
 sart, whose spirit Monstrelet could not reproduce. 
 
 Charles d'Orle'ans, the near kinsmen of Louis 
 XI., and himself the father of a king, though cru- 
 elly used by that wily and wicked prince who is so 
 vividly painted for us in the Quentin Dumvard of 
 Sir Walter Scott, is an isolated flower of tender 
 and exalted sentiment. He does not belong to his 
 age, but to the elder times, and he is in his nature 
 almost a twin- brother of that good King Eene, the 
 last of the independent Dukes of Anjou and the 
 last of the Proven9al poets, whom Scott describes 
 for us in his Au^e of Geierstein. Indeed, these 
 princes resemble each other, not only in their pas- 
 sion for poetry an<l for the chivalry of olden time,
 
 56 French Literature. 
 
 but also in their unfitness to cope with the power- 
 ful and unscrupulous princes of the age. They 
 would both have made excellent troubadours ; but 
 the times were not willing to listen to troubadours. 
 
 In exile and in prison, as well as in his castle of 
 Blois, Charles poured forth gay rondeaux, dainty 
 little ballades, charming triolets. The sweet season 
 of spring reigns over all his poetry, and he .never 
 seems to grow old. Retiring to his castle of Blois, 
 after his return from captivity, he founded there a 
 little court of the Muses, and gathered around him 
 poets and wits who took part in poetical tourneys. 
 Here the last of the troubadours entertains the first 
 of the Bohemians, for Villon, whose real name was 
 Fran9ois Corbueil, fresh from a prison, came to one 
 of these tourneys, and carried off the palm of 
 victory. 
 
 Yillon, though a thorough scamp, fit to be the 
 pet of Louis XL, along with his hangman and his 
 barber, was after all a true poet, energetic, sincere, 
 and endowed with lively imagination, sensibility, 
 and wit. Narrowly missing the gallows, his most 
 touching verses are those in which he treats of 
 death, the fatal eclipse of all the beauty and the 
 grandeur that song and story proclaim as brighten- 
 ing the ages that have gone by. His poems have 
 been ably translated by John Payne. 
 
 De Comines, the last of the chroniclers and at 
 the same time the first of the historians, was also 
 befriended by Louis XL, to whom he voluntarily 
 attached himself, though at first in the service of 
 Charles the Bold, of Burgundy, Louis's great rival. 
 In his Memoires, besides describing with subtle dis- 
 crimination and narrating events with admirable 
 lucidity, he seeks to ascertain causes and effects 
 with a political sagacity till then unknown among 
 the writers of the Middle Ages. He has, too, the 
 valuable quality of the impartial witness. Mod- 
 eration and good sense characterize him through- 
 out, and they are rare gifts in one" who writes the
 
 The Fabliaux and the Chronicles. 67 
 
 history of his own times. Guizot says of Philippe 
 de Comines : "As a king's adviser, he would have 
 been as much in place at the side of Louis XI Y. 
 as at that of Louis XI. ; as a writer, he, in the fif- 
 teenth century, often made history and politics 
 speak a language which the seventeenth century 
 would not have disowned."
 
 58 French Literature. 
 
 V. 
 
 THE RENAISSANCE. 
 
 WE have reached the Renaissance the period 
 of the re-birth of the human mind after the torpor, 
 which was like death, that the unfruitful philoso- 
 phy of scholasticism had imposed upon it. The 
 human mind was astir once more. What were 
 the causes of this new life ? 
 
 I think they were nearly all traceable to the fall 
 of Constantinople in 1453, viewed by Christian 
 Europe, at the time and for ages after, as the great- 
 est of disasters. It is true, that what the Europe- 
 ans had learned from the East during the crusading 
 centuries had developed changes of great impor- 
 tance which prepared the soil, as it were, for those 
 seeds which were to be sowed by the coming of the 
 Turks into Europe. The Crusades had brought 
 the Western Europeans into contact with two civ- 
 ilizations more advanced than their own, the By- 
 zantine and the Saracenic. Their minds had been 
 greatly enlightened and liberalized. A public so- 
 cial opinion had been generated by the mingling 
 of the different nations in the prosecution of a 
 common cause. Commerce had been developed on 
 a larger scale than ever before. Gunpowder had 
 come into use, and was gradually changing the 
 methods of warfare and diminishing the impor- 
 tance of mail-clad cavalry. Printing had been 
 invented just before the fall of Constantinople, and 
 was ready to disseminate the new learning widely 
 almost, it may be said, at the very moment when 
 it began to be eagerly sought by the newly awak- 
 ened minds of men. The arts that minister to the 
 taste for the beautiful had also begun to be culti-
 
 The Renaissance. 59 
 
 vated with new zeal in Italy, fostered ty the pe- 
 culiar circumstances of those little city-common- 
 wealths that had sprung up tliere. Painting in oil 
 was invented, and great masterpieces were produced. 
 Engraving on copper was invented, and multiplied 
 copies of these great works. The mariner's com- 
 pass was invented, and gave new possibilities to 
 commerce. 
 
 Then came the fall of Constantinople, which 
 furnished new opportunities for utilizing these dis- 
 coveries. Cutting off the merchant ships of Yen- 
 ice and Genoa from the Levant, it forced them to 
 seek the East by a new route. This gave rise to 
 the Portuguese navigation of the seas around Af- 
 rica and their finding a new passage to India. It 
 gave rise to the discovery of the Antilles and then 
 of the great American continent by the faith and 
 enterprise of that noble Genoese seaman, Colum- 
 bus, in ships of Spain. 
 
 The downfall of the Byzantine Empire also 
 drove great numbers of fugitive Greeks into Italy, 
 and among them scholars, who brought with them 
 valuable manuscripts and the ability to reveal their 
 contents to the eager scholars of the West. Learn- 
 ing took a wider range and a loftier tone. The 
 Western mind awoke. Thought and action were 
 both possible on a larger scale than heretofore. 
 The material for both was immensely increased. 
 The old struggle against the abuses which had 
 sprung up in the Church was renewed, and, this 
 time, with success in the northern parts of Europe. 
 That movement, called the Reform, which had been 
 crushed successively in the case of the Albigenses, 
 of the followers of John Huss and Jerome of 
 Prague, and of the Lollard followers of Wickliffe, 
 reached maturity now under the leadership of 
 Luther, of Zwingli, of Calvin, of Knox. It had 
 its influence in France, but it failed to win over the 
 nation, and it did not seriously affect the literature. 
 
 Among those who listened willingly to the doc-
 
 60 French Literature. 
 
 trines of the Keformers was the poet, Clement 
 Marot, the son of Jean Marot, himself a poet of 
 some note, and favored by both Louis XII. and 
 Frangois I. 
 
 Marot's joyous nature was in perpetual contrast 
 with his life, for that was one continued struggle 
 against the machinations of his enemies. It was 
 in vain that he was befriended by Marguerite de 
 Valois, the king's sister, and by some of the fore- 
 most scholars of the age, among them the bold Rab- 
 elais. The hatred of Diane de Poitiers and of the 
 inquisitor of the Sorbonne, Jean Bouchard, was too 
 bitter to be stayed even by the favor of the king. 
 The poor poet had to suffer imprisonment, exile, 
 and misery everywhere save in the heart. 
 
 Marot was a true poet of the Renaissance. He 
 attempted many kinds of poetry, and in some styles 
 he has never been surpassed. His epigrams, his 
 rondeaux, his madrigals, his light and mirthful 
 epistles, have all the grace, the wit and the charm 
 that such compositions sliould sparkle with. But 
 he fails when he attempts a loftier strain. Could 
 we fancy the throbbing jewel that flits from flower 
 to flower in our gardens endowed with the joyous 
 matin song of the mocking-bird, such a creature of 
 quick beauty and thrilling rapture would be a fit 
 emblem of the singer Marot. But he does not 
 soar on eagle wing straight in the eye of the sun. 
 
 His little gems are numerous. There are the 
 ballade of Frere Lubm, the rondeaux of the Bon 
 vieux temps, the madrigals on La Meprise de 
 V amour and on Le Passer eau, the epigrams of 
 Lieutenant Maillart, L'Abbe et son valet, and Le 
 gros prieur, and his epistle to King Francis after 
 having been robbed by his valet. In these he has 
 much the spirit of Catullus, and indeed in many of 
 his lighter pieces he directly imitates that charm- 
 ing poet. He has merit, too, in his satires, apo- 
 logues, and elegies. His hymns, like the devo- 
 tional work of Queen Marguerite, Miroir de
 
 The Renaissance. 61 
 
 Pecheresse, as compared with her Heptameron des 
 Nouvelles, lacked the fire and rhythmic ease of his 
 profane productions. 
 
 Another Huguenot, and a most steadfast one, 
 was Bernard Palissy, the famous artist in pottery. 
 The story of his lifelong devotion to his art, of his 
 persevering experiments and final brilliant success, 
 of his favor with the king and his special exemp- 
 tion from the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day 
 because such a man could not be replaced, and of 
 his brave defiance in prison of every temptation to 
 abjure his faith, is a story very generally known. 
 But it is not so well known, that the memoirs he 
 wrote not only indicate a true method in the 
 study of physical science, but are regarded by crit- 
 ics as admirable from a literary point of view. 
 
 Fraugois Kabelais, Marot's friend, with a richer 
 vein of satire had greater skill in veiling his real 
 opinions, and succeeded in escaping persecution. 
 Indeed, it was not easy to persecute one who had 
 made all the world, laugh. The filth with which 
 he riotously, and seemingly with hearty enjoy- 
 ment, covers up the hands that point so jeeringly 
 at the follies and disgraces of his time, is apt to 
 disgust us of this nicer age so completely that we 
 fail to note his unerring vision as he marks the 
 proper objects of scorn and pitiless ridicule. We 
 should remember that but for that lavish license in 
 the nastiness that delighted those whom he satirized, 
 he would most likely have gone to the stake, or, at 
 all events, into exile. In truth, he had not the 
 martyr-spirit any more than had Erasmus; and, 
 yet, like Erasmus, he seems to have ardently de- 
 sired to laugh the lazy monks out of their too com- 
 fortable nooks. Setting aside the sullied garment 
 that clothes his thought, we find the meaning of 
 the great Pantagruelist sincere and serious; and 
 sometimes even his mirth, so often stained, is 
 clean as well as hearty. His satire, like that of 
 Swift in his Gulliver , is a universal one. From
 
 62 French Literature, 
 
 the king and court, the magistracy, the clergy, the 
 cloisters, to the lower functionaries and the popu- 
 lace, his satire embraces all. Learning, wit, and 
 true social and political wisdom shine under all 
 that mass of filth, with which the long allegory of 
 Gargantua and Pantagruel is daubed. There are 
 diamonds in the dungheap, if one can bear to turn 
 it over for them. Good sense on the subject of 
 education, a large conception of the benefits attend- 
 ant on the new learning, a creed of charity and lib- 
 erality of spirit far in advance of the age, are some 
 of the excellent things to be found in the midst of 
 sarcasms and drolleries. In many ways he seems 
 a forefather of Voltaire, in his faults and in his 
 virtues. But, though coarser, he is merrier and 
 less sardonic than the philosopher of Ferney. His 
 great misfortune was that he never seems to have 
 known a woman. 
 
 A notable contrast in temper, style, and matter 
 to the writings of Rabelais were the controversial 
 pamphlets and the great theological treatise, Insti- 
 tution chretienne, of Calvin, the French Reformer 
 who became the Genevese legislator. His prose is 
 ranked very high for firm, clear, virile energy by 
 French critics who dissent from his creed and abhor 
 his spirit. 
 
 The taste of King Fra^ois for the romances of 
 chivalry was reflected by a writer, who, according 
 to Philarete Chasles, exerted no mean influence 
 on the development of French prose. This was 
 Herberay des Essarts, who translated from the 
 Spanish that famous Amadis de Gaule, of which 
 Don Quixote was so fond, and which the French 
 king pored over in his prison at Madrid. 
 
 To these, the poet, the experimenter, the satirist, 
 the theologian, and the translator, must be added 
 the Queen of Navarre ; her valet de chambre, Bona- 
 venture des Perriers, author of the Joyeux Devis 
 and of the Cymbalum mundi ; Calvin's friend and 
 follower, Theodore de Beze ; Marot's imitator, Bro-
 
 The Renaissance. 63 
 
 deau: and the epigrammatist, Mellin de Saint- 
 Gelais. 
 
 Marguerite I have already alluded to. She was 
 daughter to Charles of Orleans, Comte d'Angou- 
 leme, and was in her youth known as Marguerite 
 d'Angouleme. She was versed in Latin, Greek, and 
 Hebrew, as well as in Spanish and Italian, and was 
 of brilliant mind. Married first to Charles, Due 
 d'Alenc.on, she was, on his death, given in marriage 
 to Henri d' Albret, King of Navarre, becoming thus 
 the mother of Jeanne d' Albret and the grandmother 
 of Henri IV. She was a loving sister, and had 
 gone to Madrid, when her brother was a prisoner 
 there, to nurse him in his sickness. As Queen of 
 Navarre, she did what she could to foil the persecut- 
 ing rage of the monks, though the threats against 
 her own life induced her to conform outwardly to 
 t'ue practices of the church of Rome. She was born 
 in the year in which Columbus discovered America, 
 and died in the year in which Du Bellay published 
 his Illustration de Id Langrte fran$aise. This period, 
 from 1492 to 1549, covered by her life, may well be 
 regarded as the first period of the Renaissance. 
 
 Du Bellay's work marks the beginning of a pe- 
 riod in which the influence of the old classics domi- 
 nated with really tyrannical sway, culminating in 
 the artificialities of Ronsard. Du Bellay, filled with 
 a high enthusiasm for the sinewy strength and pol- 
 ished grace of the best writers of antiquity, strove 
 to open the eyes of his contemporaries to the weak- 
 nesses of their earlier writers, and to animate them 
 to an earnest effort towards the attainment of true 
 excellence. His treatise was eloquent ; and, had 
 Ronsard, BaiT, Belleau, and the other young pupils 
 of the learned Jean Daurat, carried out his counsels 
 with judgment, the Renaissance might have pro- 
 duced far more valuable fruit. Du Bellay's own 
 work was healthy, and in no degree over-strained. 
 He was called the French Ovid ; and, had he lived 
 longer for he died at thirty-six he would perhapa
 
 64 French Literature. 
 
 have deserved such praise. His poetry is delicate, 
 tender, and full of sensibility. In one of his son- 
 nets, he breathes sweetly that love of the natal 
 place, which calls forth the sympathy of all who, 
 like him, are forced to pass a large part of life far 
 from the home of their childhood. Singing his 
 plaint in Eome, whither his kinsman, the Cardinal 
 du Bellay, had taken him, he declares that his own 
 Loire pleases him more than the Latin Tiber; his 
 little Angevin village, Lire, more than Mount Pala- 
 tine. There is also, among his poems, a light and 
 graceful little villanelle, addressed to the breezes, 
 and put into the mouth of a winnower of wheat, 
 which has been often quoted as a model of grace. 
 
 Pierre de Konsard, who was in far greater estima- 
 tion in his own day than Joachim du Bellay, sinned 
 by the exaggeration of that spirit of imitation which 
 the study of antiquity induced. For a half-century 
 he had the reputation of combining in his own per- 
 son the excellences of Homer and Virgil, of Pindar 
 and Horace. Montaigne admired him ; Tasso did 
 him honor; those bitter enemies, Elizabeth of 
 England and Mary Stuart, agreed in bowing down 
 before the glory of the great French poet. Indeed, 
 connected with the court at an early age on account 
 of the favor which his beauty and accomplishments 
 won for him, he had lived at both the Scottish and 
 the English courts, as well as the French, before 
 these princesses were born. It was deafness that 
 led him to renounce the career of arms for that of 
 letters. Going to the College de Coqueret, he stud- 
 ied hard there for five years. There, with his fel- 
 low-student, Du Bellay, and others of like mind, he 
 planned to reform his native language and invest it 
 with the dignity and grace of the classics. Du Bel- 
 lay, as has been seen, struck the first blow ; but it 
 was Ronsard who most boldly broke with the past, 
 and most resolutely set to work to polish the old 
 materials for a new style of literary architecture, 
 inserting freely stones of classic carving, in the be-
 
 The Renaissance. 65 
 
 lief that they must be more ornamental than what 
 they displaced. The year after Du Bellay's mani- 
 festo, appeared Ronsard's Amours and Quatre Livres 
 tf Odes. 
 
 The advocates of the new school hailed these 
 poems with delight. The court declared itself on 
 his side. Pensions and honors were showered upon 
 him. Rabelais raised almost the only strong voice 
 on the other side. Ronsard was carried away by 
 the applause lavished on him. Twenty days after 
 the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day which he 
 approved, for he was a bitter partisan he pub- 
 lished his unfinished epic, La Franqiade, a very 
 poor imitation of the ^Eneid. He finished only 
 four books out of the intended twenty-four; but for 
 these he was extolled to the skies. Charles IX. 
 gave him the abbeys of Croix-val and Bellozane 
 and the priories of Saint-Cosme and Evailles. At 
 the abbey of Croix-val, whither he had retired to 
 end his days, he received from the imprisoned Mary 
 of Scotland a set at' plate worth 2000 crowns, with 
 the inscription : A Ronsard, I 1 Apollon de la Source 
 des Mmes. Queen Elizabeth had sent hirn already 
 a set of diamonds. 
 
 The epic, of which an imaginary Francus of Troy 
 was the hero, broke off at the stem before the plant 
 had come into flower. But the Pindaric odes 
 reached their full maturity of strophe, antistrophe, 
 epode, and all the dithyrambic flights the finest 
 lyrical frenzy could desire. Their only lack was 
 that of the true lyrical fire which should have 
 glowed through all this measured extravagance. 
 It is not to be wondered at, that he should have 
 failed in such an adventure. Who has succeeded 
 in it in any modern language ? His imitations of 
 Anacreon's pretty, sportive, graceful little pictures 
 were more successful. There are, too, fine pieces 
 in the Horatian manner, especially one noble little 
 poern in which he pours forth a stirring invective 
 against the wood-cutters who had laid low the 
 5
 
 66 French Literature. 
 
 primeval trees of the forest of Gastine. There is, 
 too, a strong vein of sound feeling in his Discours 
 sur les misses du temps. We find so much that is 
 good in him, in fine, that while we must discard 
 and even wonder at the extravagant admiration felt 
 for him by his contemporaries, our judgment must 
 be that, however greatly he may be deficient in 
 taste and tact, he certainly does not lack genius. 
 
 So much cannot be said for Jodelle, who aimed 
 at reviving Sophocles and Terence, as Ronsard had 
 sought to bring back the epic and lyric poets. 
 Jodelle believed in poetic inspiration apparently, 
 for he wrote with facility and in haste. It took 
 him only a few weeks to prepare his tragedy of 
 Cleopdtre, and his comedy of Eugene ou la Ren- 
 contre. They were performed before the court and 
 had immediate and brilliant success. Jodelle, es- 
 corted by hi friends, went in triumphal procession 
 from Rheims to Arceuil, met on the way a he-goat, 
 seized him, decked him with ivy and ribands, and 
 dragged him into their festal hall, where Eonsard 
 improvised a dithyrambic ode. This drinking-bout 
 seems to have been so much to the taste of Jodelle, 
 that even his glory and the patronage of kings were 
 not incentives strong enough to hold him back from 
 ruin. He ceased to produce, and Gamier took his 
 place as the dramatist of the revivers of classical 
 taste. 
 
 Eemy Belleau, among the poets of this group, 
 though not tainted like the rest with pedantry, 
 survives only in his dancing and joyous Avril, a 
 little song that sings itself. Baif, imitator of 
 Moschus and Theocritus, was a complete pedant. 
 He even sought to introduce the comparative and 
 superlative forms from the Latin, which drew upon 
 him Du Bellay's ironical sonnet, ending with the 
 verse . 
 
 Docte, doctieur et doctime Baif. 
 One who pushed the faults of Ronsard to the ex-
 
 The Renaissance. 67 
 
 treme was Guilluame-Salluste, seigneur du Bartas, 
 brave follower of Henri of Navarre. His last song 
 was in celebration of the victory of Ivry, which 
 Macaulay has so stirringly sung in English. It was 
 strange that Du Bartas should have clung so eagerly 
 to the poetical creed of Ronsard, for no one could 
 have more sincerely and more gallantly op- 
 posed the religious and political creed of the Ron- 
 sard clique. In fact, while using their style, he 
 eschewed their pagan themes and chose Biblical 
 subjects by preference. His first heroine was 
 Judith, the Hebrew deliverer. His next work, the 
 Semaine, was a commentary on the account given 
 in Genesis of the creation. Full of sins against good 
 taste, as he is, the loftiness of his spirit and 
 his serious and often grand thought have 
 blinded foreigners to his faults of style. He was 
 not only much admired and translated in his own 
 day, but even in later days Goethe is to be found 
 reproaching the French with their lack of appre- 
 ciation for one whom he considers one of the great- 
 est of their poets. 
 
 Beside Du Bartas, in the camp, in the field, at the 
 desk, was another soldier of Henri of Navarre. 
 This was Thdodore-Agrippi d'Aubigne*, the grand- 
 father of an unworthy but famous descendant, 
 Madame de Maintenon. Like Du Bartas, he is of 
 the school of Ronsard, though of the faith of Calvin. 
 His satirical poem, called Tragiques, is a sort of 
 Juvenal with the flavor of the Hebrew prophets 
 superadded. Prolixity is the curse of this other- 
 wise strong poet. It is impossible for the reader 
 to keep up the bitter disgust and hate with which 
 the poet seeks to inspire him, through eleven thou- 
 sand verses. Bad as the kings of the house of Valois 
 were, it is too much to hear them reviled at a rate 
 that only the antediluvians could have found time 
 for. 
 
 D' Aubigne* wrote, besides, the Confession de Sancy, 
 the Adventures de Foeneste, the Histoire Universelle,
 
 68 French Literature. 
 
 and his racy, frank, and entertaining Memoires. But 
 the group of memoirs and it is a large one be- 
 longs to the time of Henry IV.'s reign, not to that 
 of his struggle with the League. 
 
 Imitators of Ronsard, also, were Desportes and 
 Bertaut; Desportes, rich abbe of Tiron, Bon port, 
 Aurillac, and other places, who kept a good table, 
 and to whom Malherbe once said: "Your/>ota(/e is 
 much better than your psalms;" Bertaut, who 
 survives in virtue of two short but exquisite pas- 
 sages of sweet melancholy. Desportes would not 
 have come down to posterity, had his fame de- 
 pended upon those psalms of which Malherbe spoke 
 so slightingly. It was to his earlier pieces, his 
 love-songs, that he owed his reputation; and Henri 
 de Guise was humming one of them but a short 
 time before he fell at Blois under the dagger of the 
 Valois prince. Of Bertaut's little pearls, one, 
 though bright, is so small that it may well be 
 strung here: 
 
 " Felicite passee 
 
 Qui ne peux revenir, 
 Tourraent de ma pens^e, 
 Que n'ai-je en te perdant perdu le souvenir!" 
 
 Sainte-Beuve says of this, that the mothers of 
 his generation knew it still and sang it. 
 
 Gamier, the dramatist, though of some merit, 
 has had the same fate of remaining little more 
 than a name on the roll-call of French poets. 
 
 Another of the same school was the Norman, 
 Yauquelin de la Fresnaye, a pastoral poet of some 
 grace and delicacy, a satirist and imitator of Hor- 
 ace's moral epistles of some seriousness and eleva- 
 tion of tone. 
 
 This group of would-be reformers, with Ronsard 
 at their head, though over-doing their work, were 
 a benefit to the literature and especially the poetry 
 of France. The minds of richest culture, whose
 
 The Renaissance. f*9 
 
 store of Greek and Latin made them inclined to 
 despair of expressing themselves in the rude 
 mother-tongue, were encouraged by the popularity 
 of Ronsard and his fellows to engage in the task of 
 polishing it. Such an c&ort could not fail in the 
 end to enrich and ennoble the language.
 
 French Literature, 
 
 VI. 
 
 FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO RICHELIEU. 
 
 THE massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day was the 
 most violent feature of a struggle, partly political 
 and partly religious, which made France a battle- 
 field for more than a quarter of a century. Torn 
 by contending factions, amid the horrors of a 
 dynastic and religious war, she was retarded in her 
 development, and, in the end, was stripped of many 
 of the best elements of national prosperity. 
 
 It was the news of this horrible massacre which 
 crushed the last hope for his country of her ablest 
 and most impartial statesman, the Chancellor, 
 Michel de 1'Hopital. It was his firm opposition to 
 the scheme of the Cardinal de' Lorraine for the es- 
 tablishment of the Inquisition in France that alone 
 saved his country from that curse. The States- 
 General had not met for eighty years. Eelying on 
 the support of the moderate Catholics, the Chan- 
 cellor convoked that body, and addressed it in a 
 discourse which deserves to hold a conspicuous 
 place in the literature of his country as a model of 
 eloquence, of equity, and of statesmanlike pru- 
 dence. He declares there the great principle that 
 religious belief cannot be coerced by force, but 
 must be won by persuasion. "Gentleness," said 
 he, " will avail more than rigor. Let us do away 
 with those diabolical words names of party, fac- 
 tion, and sedition Lutherans, Huguenots, Papists. 
 Let us not change our name of Christians." 
 
 After his retirement to his manor of Vignay, 
 when the civil war had broken out, he addressed to 
 the king a remarkable memoir, in which he warmly 
 pleaded the cause of the Reformed, and showed that
 
 From the Renaissance to Richelieu. 71 
 
 the only remedy for the evils that threatened the 
 State, was to satisfy the rightful claims of a party 
 too strong for the royalists to hope to destroy it. 
 Geruzez closes his account of the life and labors of 
 this eminent man, after large citations from his able 
 state- papers, with these words: 
 
 "His high intelligence and the purity of his heart put 
 him, not outside, but above the parties of his time; the 
 firmness of his character kept him there. The law of 
 the Athenians against those citizens who held aloof from 
 the conflict of parties would not have reached him. As 
 long as it was possible, he remained in the arena and 
 gave it law. Too clear of vision, too virtuous, to follow 
 any of the banners spread abroad by the factions, he 
 raised his own, and around that flag he called all that 
 were right-minded, all that had hearts devoted to the pub- 
 lic welfare. He knew how to consummate the alliance 
 of politics and morals. He displayed the ability of a 
 statesman, without ever having recourse to perfidy. He 
 was altogether calm and inflexible." 
 
 L' Hopital had stood up, in the heat of the con- 
 test between mutually hating factions, impartial 
 and independent. There were others, whom the 
 heated atmosphere of conflict affected with as strong 
 a disgust for the violence of extremes, but who did 
 not, like the Chancellor, stand in the breach. Their 
 mission was to philosophize, since they did not find 
 a field in which to act. Of this number was Mon- 
 taigne's friend, fitienne de la Boetie, formed by his 
 studies of Greek and Roman literature into an en- 
 thusiastic republican. His doctrines were set forth 
 in his discourse De la Servitude volontaire, a very 
 youthful but impassioned and eloquent rhapsody in 
 the cause of liberty. 
 
 By the side of La Boetie in this labor of love, 
 though of an earlier day, was Jacques Amyot, 
 whose share in the task of kindling the passion for 
 freedom was the translation of Plutarch. Both La 
 Boetie and Michel de Montaigne imbibed not a lit-
 
 72 French Literature. 
 
 tie of their love for antiquity from Amyot. How 
 much Montaigne admired him may be seen from his 
 express declaration : " I give the palm to Jacques 
 Amyot above all the writers of his time for fresh- 
 ness and purity of language." 
 
 Montaigne himself is the prince of doubters, op- 
 posing to the fanaticisms of his time a steady front 
 of calm, good-natured questioning. The old Gascon 
 country-gentleman is to this day a favorite with 
 men who know and care nothing abouth the disor- 
 ders of his time against which his half-pagan phi- 
 losophy was reasoned out to fortify his own spirit. 
 What is the secret of his charm ? Bulwer-Lytton 
 says, that it is his admirable knowledge of the 
 world, his knowledge of the human heart and of 
 his own heart. Others say, it is his easy, good- 
 natured, familiar tone, taking the reader, as it were, 
 into his confidence, and making him feel almost as 
 if he were holding conference with himself, all his 
 wisdom being what Blackstone describes the Com- 
 mon-Law to be, " the perfection of common-sense." 
 Others say, it is the Horatian mixture of sound 
 sense and sprightly wit and honest sentiment, nei- 
 ther too high nor too low for the better sort of 
 mankind. Perhaps it is all these, and the added 
 fact that he has stamped his individuality so strongly 
 upon his Essays, that we feel that we know him 
 better than we do many with whom we are thrown 
 almost daily. It is his style, his clear, fresh, nat- 
 ural style, that has done this. He really has noth- 
 ing to tell us, that we do not know already, and 
 better than he or any man of his century could 
 know it. But the inimitable manner in which he 
 says what he has to say, is the charm by which he 
 holds us. It is just the same with Horace. No 
 revolution of taste, no new discoveries can put these 
 men out of their rightful place among the small se- 
 lect band loved in every age by the reflective class 
 of readers as personal friends. 
 
 To his free discursive style the language owes a
 
 From the Renaissance to Richelieu. 73 
 
 great debt. Had he been merely a devotee of the 
 classics, like Ronsard, or had he been as utterly 
 lawless in the use of provincialisms and the Aris- 
 tophanic coinage of new words, as was Rabelais, he 
 might have contributed far less to the language. 
 But his judicious importation of new terms, by good 
 derivation from the Latin, was in the main accepted 
 by his contemporaries and his successors. Le Clerc 
 gives words so common as gratitude, enfantillaye, 
 diversion, and enjoue, as among the very many in- 
 troduced by Montaigne. Several of those named 
 by Le Clerc as not ultimately received into the 
 language, have become good English. Such are 
 condiment, equanimite, improvidence, inanite. 
 
 A story is told by his contemporary, fitienne 
 Pasquier, in one of his letters, which illustrates the 
 confidence Montaigne had in the excellence of his 
 French, however sprinkled it might be with oc- 
 casional Gasconisras. The two friends were walk- 
 ing together in the court of the Chateau de Blois, 
 during the session there of the States-General in 
 1588, when during their talk on literary matters 
 Pasquier observed that there was many a trace of 
 Gascon speech in the Essays. " As he would not 
 believe me," says Pasquier, " I took him to my 
 room, where I had his book, and there pointed out 
 to him many words which are familiar, not to 
 Frenchmen, but only to Gascons, as un patenostre, 
 un debte, un recontre; and such phrases asces ouvrages 
 sentent a Vhuile or a la lampe. Especially I showed 
 him that he used the word jouir altogether after 
 the fashion of Gascony, and not according to the 
 practice of our Frencn tongue, as la santt que je 
 j'ouis jusques d present, Tamitie est jmiie a mesure 
 qu'elle est desiree, la vraie solitude sepeut jouir au 
 milieu des villes, &c. Many other phrases did I point 
 out to him, not only with regard to this word, but 
 to many others also. And I imagined that he 
 would order all these things to be corrected in the 
 next then forthcoming edition of his book. But
 
 74 French Literature. 
 
 not only did he do nothing of the sort, but when it 
 came to pass that he was overtaken by death, his 
 adopted daughter caused everything to be printed 
 exactly as it stood, and in her preliminary letter 
 told us that his widow had sent her the MS. in the 
 condition in which he had intended that it should 
 appear." 
 
 Excellent adopted daughter ! She certainly under- 
 stood Montaigne much better than did his worthy 
 but somewhat pedantic friend. Montaigne was 
 proud of being a Gascon, and liked to keep the 
 Gascon flavor about his French. The purists would 
 take all destinctive flavors out of every noble and 
 highly individual style, if they could have their 
 way. 
 
 But the greatest merit of Montaigne a merit 
 which he shares with the Chancellor de 1'Hopital 
 was the spirit of tolerance. Toleration of the 
 opinions of others was the key-note of his whole 
 system of thought. It is an amazing fact in the 
 history of that age of bitter intolerance that two 
 such men as the Chancellor and the Gascon philoso- 
 pher should have been able to keep their rninds so 
 pure from all taint of this most contagious of dis- 
 eases. That they did so uniformly and courageously 
 is more to their credit than any other excellence 
 that can be found in the career or the writings of 
 either of them. Like de 1'Hopital, Montaigne's 
 place in the dissensions of his time was that of 
 mediator between the contending parties, and he 
 kept up friendly relations with men of all creeds. 
 That he was unable to keep that impartially inquir- 
 ing tendency of his mind, which expressed itself in 
 his favorite motto, Que sais-je? , out of the sphere of 
 religious dogma, is certain. But he was far from 
 being a professed unbeliever, and died in the act of 
 painfully raising himself in bed to receive the last 
 rites of his Church. 
 
 It remains to make some brief mention of his 
 personal history. He was of English extraction,
 
 From the Renaissance to Richelieu. 75 
 
 which may account for that tinge of humor, which 
 is so unlike anything French, that pervades his es- 
 says. 
 
 His real family name was Eyquem, the surname, 
 de Montaigne, being taken from the little manor of 
 Montaigne in the department of the Dordogne, 
 which he inherited. His father, whose memory he 
 greatly revered and of whom he speaks as often 
 and as fondly as Horace does of his, brought him 
 up very carefully, having special instructors for him, 
 and suffering him to speak only Latin from his 
 earliest years. One of his masters was the famous 
 scholar, George Buchanan. He received in 1554 
 the appointment of Counsellor to the Parliament of 
 Bordeaux, and was in the reigns of Francis II. and 
 Charles IX. a follower of the court in several cities. 
 But, having in 1570 succeeded to his inheritance, 
 he gave up his appointment, retired to his chateau, 
 and devoted himself to his books and his writings, 
 varying this occupation by travels for his health in 
 Germany and Italy, where he studied men and 
 manners. Twice serving as Mayor of Bordeaux, 
 after his return from his travels, he continued to 
 write his Essays of which five editions were pub- 
 lished during his lifetime until his death in 1592, 
 in the sixtieth year of his age. 
 
 We have already seen something of Pasquier, in 
 his interview with Montaigne at Blois. He was a 
 friend worthy of the sincere and thoughtful Gascon 
 gentleman. His studies in the early history of his 
 country were made to bear fruit in his Recherches ; 
 and his Lettres, from which the passage lately 
 quoted was taken, are still of value as containing 
 the testimony of an acute and observing witness on 
 many important facts in the history of his times. 
 He bore no ignoble part in the events of a period 
 in which there were so many ignoble characters 
 and so many unworthy deeds. He deserves credit, 
 too, for raising his voice, along with the President 
 Claude Fauchet, against the universal depreciation
 
 76 French Literature. 
 
 of the older literature of the country, of which Ron- 
 sard had set the fashion. 
 
 A man of considerable learning and member of 
 a family of famous printers and publishers, Henri 
 Estienne, took just the opposite course in his Apol- 
 ogie pour Herodole. He wrote, besides, two works 
 still read by philologists, his Precellence du Lan- 
 gage francais, and the Dialogues du frangais ital- 
 ianise. His father published the French Bible of 
 1545. 
 
 Among the writers of the sixteenth century must 
 also be mentioned Jean Bodin, the author of the 
 Republique, and Charron, the author of the Sagesse. 
 As both these writers were mere imitators, any de- 
 tailed criticism of them would be waste of time. 
 
 It is quite otherwise with Francois de La None, 
 the hardy and able soldier, the soul of honor,, be- 
 loved by the Huguenots and respected by the Cath- 
 olics, who called him the '"Protestant Bayard." 
 His impartial spirit and love of justice are as man- 
 ifest in his Discours politiques et militaires, com- 
 posed during his five years' imprisonment, as in his 
 conduct through the course of a most eventful life. 
 Nervous, energetic, and rhetorical in his style, like 
 De 1'Hopital, he resembles him also in his thought. 
 Both were just and high-minded men, though of 
 different creeds. 
 
 Opposed to La Noue, we have the equally gallant 
 soldier, the equally able narrator, but bitter Cath- 
 olic leader, Blaise de Montluc, of whose Commen- 
 taires Henri of Navarre, Huguenot chief as he was, 
 said, that it was la Bible des capitaines. 
 
 The religious and dynastic wars of this period 
 were accompanied by furious party pamphlets and 
 by the atrocious sermons of the preachers of the 
 League, inciting to assassination men, at a later 
 day, disavowed with horror by Bossuet, in the name 
 of the Church. These rancorous productions of 
 party-spirit were scathingly rebuked by the famous 
 Satyre Menippee, a work composed by a number of
 
 From the Renaissance to Richelieu. 77 
 
 writers, at the head of whom were the canons, 
 Pierre Le Boy and Claude Gillot. During that con- 
 ference in which Henri IV. went through the form 
 of conversion from the Huguenot faith to the Cath- 
 olic, in the year 1593, these canons, with Florent 
 Chrestien, Nicolas Rapin, the learned Passerat, and 
 the profound jurisconsult, Pierre Pithou, sot about 
 their congenial task of confounding the extremists. 
 It is by a comedy in which the bitter Swiftian irony 
 plays the greatest part, that they accomplish their 
 object, of laughing down the zealots. 
 
 At the same time that these satirists were utter- 
 ing their eloquent prose, there came forward an- 
 other satirist, the poet Mathurin Regnier. He, 
 however, attacked the manners and morals of the 
 time, without meddling with affairs of State. 
 With fine passages, and abounding in clearly drawn 
 and vigorous pictures, choice in his language, 
 though capricious and irregular in the movement 
 of his thought, he is a powerful but unequal poet. 
 
 To the same period belongs Malherbe, whom 
 French critics exalt as a master in good taste and 
 as rather a moulder of French verse into careful 
 propriety than as a profound thinker or an impas- 
 sioned singer. The ode to Marie de Medici s on 
 the happy success of her regency is signalized as 
 the most finished of Malherbe's works. He was 
 more critic than poet, and had pupils to whom he 
 gave oral lessons in the art of poetry, among them 
 Honorat cle Bueil, Marquis de Racan, and the Pres- 
 ident Maynard. Boileau and La Fontaine, in the 
 next age, give high praise to Malherbe and Racau. 
 Demogeot, after commenting on their faults, sums 
 up his criticism by declaring their merits. "Mal- 
 herbe," he says, "introduced into the loftier class 
 of literary work the element of truth, Maynard 
 dexterity (finesse], Racan grace and sentiment." 
 
 The interminably drawn-out pastoral of Honore* 
 d'Urfe, the Astree, imitated from the Diana of 
 Montemayor, so immensely popular in that age
 
 78 French Literature. 
 
 and long after, brought into vogue the affected and 
 highly sophisticated shepherds and shepherdesses, 
 that held so large a place in the literature, first of 
 Italy and Spain, and then of both France and Eng- 
 land. Racan followed this lead in his Bergeries, 
 but without attaining the success, or indeed the 
 merit, of d'Urfe. A pastoral drama, such as the 
 Beryeries, by putting into action on the stage the 
 unrealities of conventional shepherds, naturally 
 brought out in strong relief the absurdity of the 
 whole conception. Yet there are in this long- 
 winded, five-act play some fine lines of true poetry, 
 breathing a heartfelt love of the country. 
 
 Maynard had a more nervous and pointed style, 
 and, disappointed in his hopes of court-favor, 
 launched one sonnet at Eichelieu which is so 
 good as to be numbered among the few that rank 
 as really excellent. 
 
 Among the wild poets of the court, who, like 
 Maynard, produced some immodest pieces, was one, 
 who was so imprudent as to make enemies of men 
 capable of making his sins against morality a pre- 
 text for persecuting him. This was The'ophile 
 Viaud. For a collection, called the Parnasse 
 satirique to which Maynard was one of the con- 
 tributors Yiaud was burned in effigy on the Place 
 de Grre~ve. In his prison, however, he wrote de- 
 fenses of himself, which give him high rank as a 
 prose writer. As a poet, and especially as author 
 of the tragedy of Pyrame et Thisbe, he falls into 
 the vices of Spanish hyperbole and Italian con- 
 ceits. 
 
 We reach now a writer, whose influence upon 
 French prose has been very great. Balzac 
 has been called the Malherbe of prose; but 
 he was something more than this. It is true 
 that he laid great stress on cadence, on har- 
 mony, on purity of style, on choice and propriety 
 of diction, on pleasing the ear while enlightening 
 the mind. But he was also capable of lofty and no-
 
 From the Renaissance to Richelieu. < 9 
 
 ble thought. Still, he did not possess a sufficiently 
 powerful mind, with force and compass of thought 
 and unity of design enough, to round and complete 
 a master- work. Tiiere is no big heart behind that 
 bright intelligence of his, to concentrate its rajs 
 and flash them into a steady stream of light or 
 warm them into a burning fire. Yet there is fine 
 and glowing rhetoric, especially in the Socrate chre- 
 l>' n, and strong polemical argument in the Entre- 
 tiens a Menandre. His great merit, indeed, is 
 rhetorical skill; and the language owes him much 
 in point of style. It is also his fault, as with Dry- 
 den and Macaulay among English writers, for Dry- 
 den's prose is like Macaulay's in respect to this 
 same monotony of brilliant and pointed finish. 
 
 In Guez de Balzac we have the note-mark of the 
 polish of the seventeenth century. At the close 
 of the century was to form, like mutually attracted 
 atoms that move into crystallized shape, that clus- 
 ter of men of genius which constituted the golden 
 age of French literature. Balzac is therefore a no- 
 table figure of the period. He is, moreover, as 
 Geruzez says, the link and the mediator between 
 the hotel Rambouillet and the Academic francaise. 
 
 Madame de Rambouillet, the " Arthenice " x)f that 
 affected coterie, whose pedantries were so easily 
 caricatured by Moliere, and whose influence was 
 yet so wholesome in removing filthy conversation 
 from the language of society, looked up to Balzac 
 as to an oracle. Equally was he so .regarded by 
 Richelieu's newly-founded Society of the Learned. 
 
 The dainty marquise and her friends, the fine 
 ladies called les Precieuses, shunning the camp-vul- 
 garized court of Henri IY., in their efforts to main- 
 tain a pure-thinking and pure-speaking society, did 
 succeed in giving elegance, delicacy, arid grace to 
 the spoken tongue. They even did some service 
 to morals in forcing vice, out of a new-born shame, 
 to pay virtue the homage of abstaining from ex- 
 pressing itself openly.
 
 80 French Literature. 
 
 The first glory of the Hotel Ramlouillet began 
 with the mother of the charming marquise, Julie 
 Savelli, wife of the Marquis Jean de Vivonne, Ital- 
 ian by birth, and the child of a higher civilization 
 in point of manners than France had yet reached. 
 Her daughter, Catherine de Yivonne, who became 
 the Marquise de Eambouillet, inherited the winning 
 Florentine sparkle of the mother and the peculiar 
 sweetness of the southern manner. She was well 
 versed, too, in the rich literatures of Italy and 
 Spain. Demogeot, in citing the testimony of Talle- 
 mant des Eeaux to the charms of this queen of 
 society, remarks that Tallemant can find only one 
 fault iu her, and that is an excessive delicacy in 
 language ; to which he adds : " And when one reads 
 Tallemant, one cannot help recognizing the fact 
 that this ' fault ' is but one virtue the more." 
 
 Her influence on literature, however, aside from 
 her high regard for decency in thought and lan- 
 guage, was not good. Her preferences for foreign 
 models tended to encourage bad taste, the artificial 
 Marini being then the guiding star in Italian litera- 
 ture, and equally dangerous models in another 
 direction attracting French imitators towards Span- 
 ish literature. Inflated language was the mark of 
 weakness borne by the Spanish ; perpetual effort at 
 wit and point, that exhibited by the Italian. 
 
 The most brilliant period of the Hotel Eam- 
 bouillet was from the death' of Malherbe to that of 
 Voiture from 1628 to 1648. It owed much of its 
 fame to the wit and grace of one of the Marquise's 
 daughters, the celebrated Julie d'Angennes. 
 Around the brilliant mother and daughter were 
 gathered at those famous sessions, called the ruelles 
 in that day as later they were called salons, a daz- 
 zling band of women, fair and witty and high-born. 
 There were the Princesse de Conde, the last of 
 Henri IV.'s passions, that witty Charlotte de Mont- 
 morency, whose husband had to hurry her away 
 from the fascinated eyes of the old Bearnesej
 
 From the Renaissance to Richelieu. 81 
 
 Mademoiselle du Vigeau, the great Condi's first 
 love ; Mademoiselle de Bourbon, afterwards the 
 famous Madame de Longueville ; Richelieu's niece, 
 the Duchesse d'Aiguillon ; that mistress of cookery 
 as well as of gallantry, the Marquise de Sable; 
 Madame de la Vergne ; the Corntesse de Fiesque ; 
 the Comtesse de Saint-Martin ; the Duchesse de 
 Chevreuse ; the young and brilliant Marquise de 
 Sevigne ; the Comtesse de Maure ; and that tawny- 
 tressed Mademoiselle Paulet, whose locks and 
 leonine spirit won her the sobriquet of " Lioness." 
 
 Quite as select were the masculine visitors, includ- 
 ing the Condes, the Contis, the La Rochefoucaulds, 
 the Bussys, the Grammonts, to whom were added 
 such literary men as Chapelain, Conrart, Cotin, 
 Pelisson, Segrais, Benserade, and, in the later days, 
 Corneille himself. 
 
 In paying his court to the "adorable Julie," 
 Montausier devised a graceful tribute, which 
 brought all the poets together in an act of homage 
 to the young lady of the house of Rambouillet. On 
 the 1st of January, 1641, she found on her toilette, in 
 waking up, deux cahiers de velin, exactly alike, 
 each leaf of which contained a picture of a lovely 
 flower, painted in, miniature by Robert, and under 
 it a madrigal composed by one of the poets. 
 Chapelain, Godeau, Colletat, Scudery, Desmarest, 
 and Corneille were among the nineteen who wrote 
 the verses for the twenty-nine flowers of this Guir- 
 lande de Julie. 
 
 This delicate and intellectual style of compliment 
 was characteristic of the whole order of intercourse 
 between the sexes in that elegant mansion. The 
 lofty spirit and noble sentiments of Corneille's 
 heroes and heroines were born there ; the fine lan- 
 guage and even its over-strained stateliness, were 
 born there, too. 
 
 But no man can be monk, or woman nun, with- 
 out narrowing the whole nature ; no society can 
 isolate itself without suffering the penalty of be-
 
 82 French Literature. 
 
 coming conventional in its ideas and frivolous in its 
 productions. This fate came to the Rambouillet 
 circle ; and the affectations it fell into were of 
 course greatly exaggerated by the circles that imi- 
 tated it, especially those in the provinces. It was 
 the absurdities of these imitators that Molire after- 
 wards ridiculed in his Precieuses ridicules. The 
 real Precieuses may be said to have disbanded 
 when Julie followed her husband, the Due de Mon- 
 tausier, in 1648, to his governorship of Saintonge. 
 It was also the date of Vincent Yoiture's death. 
 
 Voiture had been the special mouth-piece, in 
 prose and in verse, of this spirited little society of 
 purists. Euphuist in grain, he lavishes his wit in 
 prodigal display, playing with, words and ideas 
 alike, seeking far-fetched congruities and contrasts, 
 jesting and trifling pleasantly, sometimes with really 
 charming fancy, and yet not making too much of 
 his diverting trifles. He was, however, something 
 more than a mere literary man, for, with true 
 political foresight, he was among the first to appre- 
 ciate the policy of Eichelieu, and early became his 
 staunch supporter. 
 
 A friend of Voiture's and a writer in the same 
 light and pleasant vein, was Sarrasin, the author of 
 the Testament de Goulu, the Ballade d*Eulever, 
 the Ode sur la lataille de Lens. He was capable of 
 stronger things, and won fame as a good prose writer 
 in his Siege de Dunkerque. But Sarrasin belonged 
 to the circle of Mademoiselle de Scudery, which 
 was a sort of subdivision of that of the Hotel Ram- 
 bouillet, almost a secession from it, mere authors 
 being covertly a little laughed at by the great lady 
 who presided there. 
 
 But when we have reached Balzac, the Marquise 
 de Rambouillet, Mademoiselle de Scudery, Yoiture, 
 and Sarrasin, we have fairly touched upon the 
 beginning of Eichelieu's influence in the literary 
 sphere ; and this influence, with its far-reaching 
 effects, must give us a new starting point.
 
 From the Renaissance to Richelieu. 83 
 
 One valuable part, however, of tlie literature of 
 Henri IV.'s time must be mentioned, before we 
 take up the writers of Richelieu's period. To the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century must be as- 
 signed those instructive and entertaining memoirs 
 of men who took part in the affairs of the troubled 
 period which coincides in the main with the closing 
 years of the sixteenth century ; and who have so 
 admirably painted for us the manners, opinions, style, 
 and minute historical details of their time. 
 
 The best of these memoirs are those of that bitter 
 partisan of the League, the Vicomte Jean de Ta- 
 vannes ; those of Henri IV.'s great minister, Maxi- 
 milien de Bethune, Marquis de Rosny and Due de 
 Sully; those of Henri's tutor, Pierre Palma Cayet; 
 those of Pierre de Lestoile ; those of Henri's first 
 wife, Marguerite of France ; those of the staunch 
 Huguenot captains, Agrippa d'Aubigne' and Du 
 Plessis-Mornay, the " Pope of the Huguenots." To 
 these must be added the memoirs of Brantome, the 
 greatest anecdote-teller of them all, the most amus- 
 ing, and personally the least worthy. Matthieu, 
 too, should be mentioned, as the author of several 
 histories of events in his own times. All of these 
 writers are grouped, in one way or another, about 
 the person of Henri of Navarre. De Thou, who 
 belongs to the same time, and whose History has 
 great qualities, unfortunately wrote in Latin, and 
 has therefore no claim to a place in French litera- 
 ture. 
 
 Among the other memoirs of from 1555 to 1650, 
 are those of Guillaume de Saulx-Tavannes, Antoine 
 des Puget, Jean de Mergey, Philippe Hurault, Henri 
 de La Tour d'Auvergne, Boivin du Villars, Charles 
 de Valois, and Nicolas de Neufville. They furnish 
 ample material for the thorough study of their 
 period, and contribute largely to the making up of 
 a true history of France. Demogeot warmly 
 praises the style and matter of Du Plessis-Moruay.
 
 84 French Literature. 
 
 " The language of Mornay," he says, " resembles his 
 costume : it is still d la Coligny. It is the old language 
 of the 16th century with its archaisms and its labored 
 constructions. But all the energy, all the masculine 
 pride of his soul flashes forth every moment from the 
 cloud. His style is admirable in firmness and nobleness. 
 Deeply read and learned, with the sap of antiquity 
 quickening his intellect, made wiser to understand the 
 past by his experience in affairs, the vigor of his discourse 
 recalls that of the speeches in Thucydides. Writer and 
 soldier, his written thought shines and smites like a sword."
 
 From Rididied, U\ Louis XIV. 
 
 VII. 
 
 FBOM RICHELIEU TO LOUIS XTV. 
 
 THE taste for poetry which led Maecenas to per- 
 ;->etrate bad verses did not, fortunately, expend itself 
 solely in that direction. The same propensity in 
 the great statesman who ruled France for so many 
 years during a most critical period, was also allied to 
 a happy appreciation of the importance of linking his 
 career with the names and works of great men of 
 letters. It was his misfortune that he was not al- 
 ways able to distinguish between mere men of let- 
 ters and men of genius. Still, his influence on 
 French literature was beneficial. The establish- 
 ment of the Academic Francaise, for the mainte- 
 nance of the purity' of the language and the eleva- 
 tion of literary men to an order in the State, was 
 one of the most remarkable of the Cardinal de 
 Richelieu's achievements. To this glory, he added 
 another. This was the stimulus his patronage 
 gave to the dramatic art. 
 
 Armand du Plessis de Richelieu, made bishop of 
 Lugon by Henri IV., first attracted attention to his 
 genius for affairs by the very able speech which he 
 made as the representative of the clergy at the 
 meeting of the States-General in 1614. The court 
 became eager to secure the services of such a 
 man. Attached to the service of the queen, 
 Marie de Medici, he remained at court until the 
 fall of the Concini ministry. In his retirement 
 from public affairs, which lasted for seven years, 
 he produced a number of theological works, of no 
 extraordinary merit. The queen-mother, resum- 
 ing her influence at court, Richelieu was raised to 
 the dignity of Cardinal and became Prime Minister.
 
 815 French Literature* 
 
 The great work which he accomplished of unifying 
 France, of strengthening the monarchy into actual 
 absolutism, and of making his country the greatest 
 power in Europe, we have nothing to do with here. 
 It is only of his share in the literary progress of 
 France that I shall speak. Of his own works, the cor- 
 respondence, and the accounts of his administration 
 entitled the Succincte narration des (jrandes actions 
 du roi, and the Testament politiqug, are all stamped 
 with the seal of his great political and administra- 
 tive genius. His Memoires, though full of tedious 
 passages and displays of bad taste, have great value 
 as material for history. 
 
 The work of ruling a great state and carrying on 
 difficult negotiations with foreign powers was not 
 enough for his active spirit ; even the added task 
 of compiling memoirs did not fill all his leisure. 
 He found time for attempts at purely literary work. 
 " What do you think I take the greatest pleasure 
 in doing?" he asked one day of Bois-Eobert. 
 " Monseigneur," was the courtier's reply, "it is in 
 making the happiness of France." " Not at all," 
 said the Cardinal, " it is in making verses." 
 
 He loved to invent plots for plays, which he 
 would put into the hands of his poets to be worked 
 out. Sometimes he would furnish whole scenes, 
 sometimes a number of lines. His poets, Bois- 
 Robert, Colletet, L'Etoile, Eotron, and Corneille, 
 were known by the name of The Cardinal's Brigade. 
 He cut out their work for them, assigning an act to 
 each. Pelisson tells us that Mirame, which ap- 
 peared as the work of Des Marets, was wholly the 
 Cardinal's. He had built, expressly for its repre- 
 sentation, a magnificent hall in the Palais-Cardinal. 
 The same authority assures us that he wrote no 
 less than five hundred verses of the Grande Pas- 
 torale. 
 
 The numerous tragedies and pastorals put upon 
 the stage of the Hdtel Marais by that rapid impro- 
 viser of plays, Alexandre Hardy he wrote over
 
 From Richelieu to Louis XIV. 87 
 
 six hundred had kept tlie taste of the public for 
 these entertainments from flagging, and had also 
 trained actors who were to be fit instruments for 
 expressing the genius of Corneille. 
 
 Theophile de Yiau, Racan, De Bourron, Bore'e, 
 De La Croix, Pichou, Du Cros, Rayssiguier, Gom- 
 bault, and Mairet, followed with various pieces 
 which made the theatre still more popular and at 
 the same time elevated the taste of the public. 
 Still, there was among scholars a felt want of order 
 and law in the French drama, and it was largely 
 this demand for authority over the new develop- 
 ment of literature which led to the founding of the 
 Academic Franraise. Ch apelain was foremost among 
 these reformers. He strongly represented to Riche- 
 lieu the necessity for the observance of the three 
 unities of time, place, and action, laid down by 
 Aristotle. Richelieu was delighted with the coun- 
 sel, gave Chapelain full authority over his poets, 
 and promised him a pension of a thousand crowns 
 as dramatic critic. Mairet wrote his Sophonisbe in 
 accordance with this regulation. It was the first 
 play in the French classic style. 
 
 There was a warm but short struggle between 
 the favorers of the free drama, such as Spain and 
 England recognized, and the regulated drama, 
 which became the form respected by the great mas- 
 ters of the French theatre. The public, the actors, 
 and most of the authors preferred the free drama. 
 But the Cardinal was too strong for them. On the 
 very eve of great public affairs, in 1635, when 
 France was about to engage in the Thirty Years' 
 War, shutting himself up with his Brigade, the five 
 poets, Richelieu dictated his plots to them, and set 
 them to work. Colletet especially worked to his 
 liking; but he was dissatisfied with Corneille, and 
 withdrew his favor from him. Des Marets took 
 his place. One of Des Marets' pieces, the Vision- 
 naires, long held the reputation of being the finest 
 comedy in the language.
 
 88 French Literature. 
 
 But the withdrawal of the Cardinal's favor from 
 Corneille was the emancipation of a great poet. He 
 could never have produced his grand works under 
 the tutelage of another. 
 
 Pierre Corneille was born at Eouen in 1606. His 
 father being an advocate, he was intended for the 
 same profession ; but the bent of his genius drove 
 him to dramatic composition. His earlier pieces, 
 Mlite, performed with success in 1629, Clitandre, 
 La Veuve, La G-alerie du Palais, La Suivante, and 
 La Place Royale, secured him popular favor, but 
 gave little indication of his really great qualities. 
 Neither did the ftfedee, written in imitation of 
 Seneca, reveal his true power. 
 
 Meanwhile, he had earned Kichelieu's ill-will by 
 his audacity, it is said, in altering the plan of a 
 comedy which the Cardinal had suggested to him. 
 Giving his attention to the study of Spanish litera- 
 ture, he now produced the Cid, and enjoyed his first 
 great triumph. The public were wholly unprepared 
 for this intensity of passion, this outburst of thril- 
 ling poetry. There was an eager enthusiasm 
 kindled for the poet's new creations, and Chimene 
 and Eodrigue seized the hearts of all as if by storm. 
 The impassioned love of the South, which is so 
 sweet and fresh and always young the same that 
 charms us in Romeo and Juliet ; heroic sentiment, 
 worthy of Spain's chivalry ; tragic woe that wrings 
 the heart, stirred every soul and forced the convic- 
 tion on the nation that a great poet had arisen for 
 France. 
 
 But the triumph of the poet did not deliver him 
 from the envy of Eichelieu. Chapelain was detailed 
 to draw up a damnatory criticism which the reluctant 
 Academy was to be induced to publish as its own 
 decision. Mairet and Scuderi were arrayed against 
 the offending poet. But Chapelain, who is chiefly 
 memorable as having butchered poor Jeanne Dare 
 over again in his La Pucelle, was not the man to 
 stand before a giant like Corneille, now that he wag
 
 From Richelieu to Louis XIV. 89 
 
 beginning to know himself. Nor was Scude'ri, 
 whose fatal facility was of the sort that Horace 
 laughs at in a poet of his day, and whose Lyyda- 
 mon and U Amour tyrannique and Alaric, and other 
 such improvisations have long since been dead, if 
 indeed they can be said to have ever lived. Nor 
 was Mairet, though there was some merit in that 
 Sophonisbe, which the Cid had cast into the shade. 
 
 The GUI appeared in 1636, and, in spite of the 
 jealousy of Richelieu's poets and the enforced cold- 
 ness of the Academy, was soon so popular with the 
 public, that "beautiful as the Cid" became a 
 proverb. His detractors having accused him of 
 plagiarizing the best parts of the Cid from Guillem 
 de Castro, Corneille now set himself the task of 
 writing his Horace, on the hint furnished by Livy's 
 brief story of the Horatii and Curiatii, no dramatist 
 having yet made use of the legend. 
 
 By some French critics Horace is regarded as the 
 most vigorous and -the most original effort of Cor- 
 neille's genius. The characters of Sabine and 
 Camille are as finely contrasted in this play as 
 those of Horace and Curiace, and the situations are 
 very moving, while the whole action of the piece is 
 powerfully wrought out. But the elder Horace is 
 as vigorously drawn as any of the characters brought 
 into immediate action, and the famous qii'il mourutf 
 the words regarded as of highest sublimity in the 
 whole range of French literature, proceed from the 
 stern lips of this proud .Roman father. 
 
 His next Koman play, Cinna, is considered by 
 others among the French critics as Coraei lie's mas- 
 terpiece. The impersonation in this piece of the 
 spirit of liberty is fimilie, the ward of Augustus, 
 but the beloved of Pompey's grandson. The scene 
 of the conspiracy, that in which the Emperor de- 
 liberates whether he shall retire from his exalted 
 post or hold it against all assaults, the heroic par- 
 don granted to the conspirators, are noble efforts of 
 the poet, in whom majesty of action and dignity of
 
 90 French Literature. 
 
 sentiment found their best expression. But there 
 is an inconsistency forced both on the plot and on 
 the characters of the conspirators by the favorable 
 turn of events which prevents that which was 
 throughout most tragical in its spirit and prepara- 
 tion from turning out a tragedy at all. 
 
 Corneille's next play was Polyeucte, a tragedy 
 of Christian martyrdom. The hero and Pauline, 
 the heroine, draw the deepest sympathy from every 
 hearer or reader. No picture could be more pa- 
 thetic than that of these lovers giving up all, in the 
 bloom of their youth and the joy of their love, at 
 the call of duty. 
 
 In his next play, Corneille had the boldness to 
 fill the air of his stage with the glory of a dead 
 hero, the play, Pompee, bearing the name of the 
 great Eoman, but not presenting him in person. 
 " The dead Pompey," says Geruzez, "fills the whole 
 scene. He lives again in the virile face of Cornelia. 
 It is to satisfy his angry manes that the infamous 
 Ptolemy perishes, and the last words of his widow 
 promise against Ca3sar himself a thrilling ven- 
 geance." It was a strong conception, but it is 
 marred in the execution by an excess of declama- 
 tion and emphasis in the language put into the 
 mouths of the chief characters. The turgid rhet- 
 oric of Lucan makes him a peculiarly dangerous 
 author to draw one's inspiration from; and with 
 Corneille he was a great favorite. 
 
 Corneille produced these masterpieces in the 
 course of six years. He was now the acknowl- 
 edged master in the domain of tragedy. There was 
 no one to compete with him. Mai ret had done 
 nothing better than the Sophonisbe. Du Kyer had 
 in his Scevole brought out some of that same fine 
 old Eoman tone of heroic spirit, which Corneille 
 loved to make the stage ring with; but Du Byer 
 could not hope to rival the "noblest Roman of 
 them all." Tristan had touched a chord of pathos 
 in his Marianne, but not so thrilling in its notes of
 
 From Richelieu to Louis XIV. 91 
 
 tender yet heroic anguish as that which the Chris- 
 tian martyrs in. Polyeucte had moved the hearts of 
 men with. Rotrou, Corneille's staunch friend, had 
 not yet produced anything of marked value, though 
 destined in after years to keep some hold on the 
 memory by his Venceslas and his Saint- Genest. 
 
 Cornille was thus alone, at a great height above 
 his contemporaries, in the sphere of tragedy. He 
 now surprised every one with a brilliant success in 
 comedy. As in the case of his first great triumph 
 in tragedy, he had drawn his inspiration from Spain, 
 so was it now in the case of his comic masterpiece, 
 the Menteur. 
 
 Dorante, that exquisite liar who gives name to 
 the comedy, is a masterly creation. There is an 
 easy grace and a naturalness in Corneille's merri- 
 ment, which strike us as really wonderful when we 
 contrast these traits with the grandeur of thought 
 and tone which is the dominant characteristic of 
 his nobler tragedies. 
 
 To these great successes in tragedy and comedy, 
 Corneille added some essays in the domain of the 
 opera, in his Andromede, the Toison d*or, and 
 Psyche. 
 
 Among his later tragedies, Rodogune, Heraclius, 
 and Nicomede are not without merit, though bear- 
 ing some traces of carelessness in style. These 
 plays also furnish examples of some of those qual- 
 ities which, though not so marked in Corneille as 
 his grand diction and elevated tone, are eminently 
 traits of genius. I refer to his variety of means 
 and motive, of characterization and plot. He is no 
 shoemaker with one last, no painter with one color. 
 If taxed, however unjustly, with plagairism from 
 Spanish authors, no one could venture to charge him 
 with copying himself. 
 
 As to the tone of his works, it is true that, in his 
 great plays, he has given expression to but one side 
 of human nature, the heroic. But to how many 
 varieties of the heroic has he given expression, and
 
 92 French Literature. 
 
 in how many varying situations has he set the 
 heroic before us ! And, if it be complained that 
 after all it is a monotony of heroism, it is surely 
 glory enough for one writer that he has so nobly 
 portrayed the dignity of the human soul. 
 
 Evil times coming upon France during the 
 regency of Anne of Austria, Corneille seems to 
 have been affected by the general feebleness of the 
 political conflict around him. He produced works 
 greatly inferior to his Polyeucte during this period, 
 ceased after a time to produce at all, and lived to 
 see Racine take his place in popular estimation. 
 He died in 1684. 
 
 While the dramatic genius of Corneille was 
 adding noble treasures to the literature of France, 
 the philosophical speculations of Des Cartes, the 
 physical studies of Gassendi, arid the theological 
 controversies of the Jansenists were dividing into 
 different camps the reflecting minds of the age. As 
 the principal works of Gassendi and Des Cartes 
 were in Latin, we have nothing to do with them 
 here, except to say that both denied the authority 
 of Aristotle, and proclaimed the emptiness of the 
 scholastic philosophy, though differing widely from 
 each other in the views with which they sought to 
 replace the old system of thought. Des Cartes, 
 however, in his Discours de la Methode, which ap- 
 peared shortly after the Cid, brings himself within 
 our scope, as a producer in the mother-tongue. The 
 fundamental principle of his thought, as there 
 set forth, is to know himself in order that he may 
 arrive at the knowledge of Grod and of nature. He 
 pursues his speculations in clear and simple lan- 
 guage, severely simple and direct. 
 
 The Jansenist controversy led to the persecution 
 of the Port Royalists, and thia to the brilliant de- 
 fence of that school of religious belief by Pascal. It 
 wik) "be fitting, therefore, as an introduction to 
 Pascal's literary career, to give a brief account of 
 Port Royal.
 
 From Richelieu to Louis XIV. 93 
 
 Port Royal, sometimes called Port Royal des 
 Champs, was in its beginning a convent about nine 
 miles south of Versailles, attached to the Benedict- 
 ine order, and founded in 1204. In the course of 
 time, its discipline, like that of many other such 
 establishments, had become greatly relaxed. About 
 the year 1608, Marie-Angelique Arnauld becoming 
 Abbess, reformed its discipline and gave it such 
 fame that many noble ladies began to reside in the 
 neighborhood, to share in its earnest devotions. In 
 the middle of the seventeenth century, Antoine 
 Arnauld, a learned doctor of the Sorbonne. accom- 
 panied by three of the famous Lemaistre family, as 
 well as by several other men of learning and purity, 
 took up his residence there. His mother, his sister 
 the Abbess, five other sisters, and six of his nieces 
 were already members of the establishment. The 
 Arnaulds, the Lemaistres, Nicole, and the Abbe de 
 Saint-Cyran, living near the convent, cultivating 
 their little gardens, teaching the young, and com- 
 posing valuable wo*ks, soon won for Port Royal the 
 reputation of being a school of virtue and learning. 
 Racine was one of the pupils of this school of puri- 
 tans in the bosom of the Church of Rome. Pascal, 
 whose sister and niece were members of the con- 
 vent, numbered himself as in spirit one of the little 
 fraternity outside its walls, though his work and 
 life were elsewhere. 
 
 For many years Port Royal had the highest 
 renown and success as a useful institution. But, 
 long before its arbitrary and cruel destruction in 
 1710, its troubles began, in the condemnation by 
 the Sorbonne, under the influence of the Jesuits, of 
 Saint-Cyran and then of Arnauld, as adherents of 
 the Jansenist school of religious belief. 
 
 Pascal now took the field in defence of Arnaukf, 
 producing his famous Lettres ecrites a un Provincial. 
 The first, second, and third of these letters are de- 
 voted to proving the identity of his friend's doc- 
 trine with that of St. Augustine. The others, how-
 
 94: French Literature. 
 
 ever, are those which caught the attention of the 
 public and won him the fame of stinging and 
 withering irony which still clings to his name. In 
 these he attacks the system of casuistry expounded 
 by the great Jesuit doctors, and holds the order up 
 to ridicule as masters in sophistry and teachers of 
 immorality. " The Provincial Letters " I quote 
 from a paper in one of the English reviews " are, 
 on the whole, the most brilliant collection of con- 
 troversial letters extant. They have not the 
 rounded finish, the concentration, the red-hot 
 touches of sarcasm, and the brief and occasional 
 bursts of invective darkening into sublimity which 
 distinguish the letters ofJunius. Nor have they 
 the profound asides of reflection, or the impatient 
 power of passion, or the masses of poetical imagery 
 to be found in Burke's Letter to a Noble Lord, and 
 Letters on a Regicide Peace ; but they excel these 
 and all epistolary writings in dexterity of argument, 
 in power of irony, in light, hurrying, scorching 
 satire, a ' fire running along the ground,' in grace of 
 motion, and in Attic salt and Attic eloquence of 
 style." 
 
 Geruzez well remarks that the charm and power 
 of this work of Pascal's, even with the readers of 
 our own time, lie quite apart from the original dis- 
 pute, that no one cares now about the rights of the 
 discussion on the nature of grace, but that we can 
 all appreciate and enjoy the masterly appeal in 
 behalf of truth against error, which the eloquent 
 genius of Pascal, passing beyond the particular 
 thesis he has set himself to defend, utters in passage 
 after passage of transcendent beauty. As to the 
 j ustice of all his charges against the Jesuits, it is 
 not my province to decide that question, any more 
 than in the case of his bitter onslaught on the 
 memory of Montaigne as a teacher of skepticism. 
 
 Blaise Pascal, born in 1623, was, like his friends, 
 the Arnaulds, from Auvergne. As a mere boy he 
 distinguished himself by his amazing proficiency in
 
 From Richelieu to Lords XIV. 95 
 
 mathematics, and in early youth as an experimenter 
 in physics. His intercourse with the distinguished 
 Jausenist preacher, the Abbe Guillebert, early led 
 him to join the ascetic school of which he later 
 became the ablest defender. The Provinciales, as 
 his famous letters are sometimes called, were writ- 
 ten under the pseudonym of Louis de Montalte. His 
 other great work, the Pensees sur la Religion, was 
 left unfinished ; but, even in their incomplete 
 shape, these fragmentary efforts to construct a body 
 of thought strong enough to cope with the argu- 
 ments of atheists have excited the admiration of 
 every generation of readers. The battering-ram 
 Pascal brings to bear against the stronghold of 
 atheism is framed of negations that confront and 
 crush the negations of human pride. He, the 
 brightest and acutest ef men in pure intellectual 
 force and subtlety, communes with himself, pushes 
 his thought back to its utmost bounds, sees and 
 marks the inexorable limitations, and forces his 
 mind to gaze into the impenetrable beyond, until it 
 shrinks back, aghast and appalled at the narrowness 
 of its range and the boundlessness and immensity 
 of what stretches beyond its grasp. It is thus that 
 he abases the human intellect and step by step 
 proves its littleness and the futility of its efforts to 
 penetrate the mystery that surrounds us. Bringing 
 his mathematics to bear upon the matter in and 
 around man, and forcing the imagination to compass 
 what it can of the infinitely great and the infinitely 
 small, he drives proud reason, beaten from all its 
 shelters, to plead to faith for help. 
 
 Pascal's wretched health prevented him from 
 grouping these wondrous Sibylline leaves into a 
 harmonious whole, and he died at the early age of 
 thirty-nine, in Paris, in the year 1662. 
 
 His friends, those Christian mystics who made 
 up the Port Eoyal school, deserve some special 
 mention. Antoine Arnauld was one of twenty 
 noble children of a famous lawyer. Jansenist,
 
 96 French Literature. 
 
 heart and soul, be joined Nicole in writing a mas- 
 sive treatise on La, Perpetuite de la Foi. Afterwards 
 when an exile among Protestant fellow-exiles, he 
 assailed them in his Apologie des Cathotiques. 
 Nicole was Arnauld's faithful auxiliary. When 
 not compelled by the ardor of his friends to engage 
 in controversy, he pleased his own peaceful nature 
 by composing his Essais de Morale. Antoine Le- 
 maistre, son of one of the sisters of Araauld; his 
 brother, Lemaistre de Saci, translator of the Bible ; 
 Claude Lancelot, one of Kacine's instructors; to- 
 gether with De Pontis, Du Fosse, and Fontaine, 
 were all scholarly men, engaged in the production 
 of grammars and text-books on logic, besides their 
 other works. 
 
 Between the death of Kichelieu and the personal 
 reign of Louis XIV. that is, during the period of 
 Cardinal Mazarin's struggle with the leaders of the 
 Fronde and the years of his final triumph no 
 great literary event occurred, besides the publica- 
 tion of Pascal's great controversial work. There 
 was nothing about the court of Anne of Austria to 
 encourage literature, nothing in the nature of 
 Mazarin to evoke genius. Even the great soul of 
 Corneille seemed to shrink, and the works he put 
 forth at this time are not those by which posterity 
 knows him. 
 
 What really belong to this period are the inter- 
 minable romances of Mademoiselle de Scuderi, in 
 which history and passion are alike falsified; and 
 the sonnets and madrigals and abortive epics of an 
 age of artificial taste. But, laughable as the char- 
 acters and conversations of these long narratives are 
 to readers of our day, Madeleine de Scuderi, holds 
 an important place in the history of literature, as 
 the founder of the heroic romance. It is true, she 
 had fore-runners, but her stories were greatly su- 
 perior in many ways to theirs, and may be said to 
 have established that class of work as having a 
 just claim to a recognized place in literature.
 
 From Richelieu to Louis XIV. 97 
 
 The pastoral romance of D'urfe was, in the 
 nature of things, succeeded by the heroic. To 
 translations from the old Greek romances and 
 the Spanish was added, in the days of the Queen 
 Mother, Marie de Medici, the Endymion of Gom- 
 bault, who in that strange idyllic romance allegor- 
 ized the favor with which the Queen-Regent her- 
 self looked upon him. After Gombault came Gom- 
 berville or, to give him the benefit of his name 
 and titles in full, Marin Le Roy, Sieur de Gorn- 
 berville et du Parc-aux-Chevaux who, between 
 1621 and 1651, published La Caritee, Polexandre, 
 La Cytheree, and Le Jeune Alcidiane. Polexandre 
 is considered the best. 
 
 There was still, however, an air of fairyland 
 about the prose romance. It was Gautier de Costes, 
 Seigneur de La Calprenede, who was to give it 
 more likeness to actual life. He was on duty at 
 court as a young guardsman when the public had 
 the first hint of his story-telling powers. It was 
 in the time of Anne of Austria, and this queen 
 complaining that her maids of honor were tardy in 
 their service, one of them excused herself and com- 
 panions by saying that there was in the first hall 
 a gentleman whom one could never tire of listen- 
 ing to. The queen had La Calprenede summoned 
 to her presence, and prayed him to tell her one of 
 those tales he told so well. The young Gascon 
 promptly complied with the request, the Queen was 
 delighted, and a pension was at once given him. 
 
 He who could please a queen naturally felt that 
 it would be easy for him to please the public. Ac- 
 cordingly he set to work, and it was not long be- 
 fore his teeming brain poured forth ten volumes of a 
 romance, the scene of which is laid in Persia during 
 the time of Alexander. This is his Cassandre. 
 There is no local color, no historic reality, but we 
 are treated to a long series of romantic loves, tre- 
 mendous combats, magnificent tourneys, the carry- 
 ing-ofF of princesses by ardent but respectful lovers, 
 7
 
 98 French Literature. 
 
 and all manner of exciting incidents. The charac- 
 ters, it is true, are not people of the time of Alex- 
 ander, but they are real for all that, and they talk 
 well. La Calprenede wrote another, the Cleopatre, 
 which occupied twelve volumes; and he began a 
 Pharamond, of which he printed only seven vol- 
 umes. Pierre de Vaumoriere, the author of the 
 Grand Stipion, afterwards finished it with five 
 more volumes. 
 
 Madeleine de Scuderi came to Paris with her 
 brave but amusingly boastful brother, George, in 
 1630. She, though more sensible than he, was 
 also vain of a supposed family grandeur in the past. 
 Demogeot remarks : " She used always to say, 
 'Since the downfall of our house'; you would 
 have said that she was speaking of the overthrow 
 of the Greek Empire. She was tall, thin, and 
 dark, with a very long face. Madame Cornuel 
 used to say that Providence had made that girl 
 sweat ink, since she was to spread so much of it on 
 paper. For a long time her brother kept up the 
 most amusingly jealous practices about her. Some- 
 times he shut her up entirely, and would suffer no 
 one to see her. She was not able to see whom she 
 wished even when forty years old. Madeleine 
 took all this treatment with a good grace. Perhaps 
 she was flattered by it." 
 
 This brother and sister were really very much 
 attached to each other, and it was to the advantage 
 of their literary work that they were evidently 
 always living a romance in imagination before they 
 undertook to write one. Madeleine herself wrote 
 under cover of her brother's name. George was a 
 dramatic author. Madeleine published Ibrahim, 
 her first book, in 1635. It was no advance on 
 Gomberville, and did not reach the merit of La 
 Calprenede. But her study of the refined manners 
 and lofty thought of the Hotel Rambouillet, to 
 which she was admitted, gave her something real 
 to paint. In her Artam&ne, ou le grand Cyrus and
 
 From Richelieu to Louis XIV. 99 
 
 CUlie, under the disguise of Persians and Romans, 
 she, to their great delight, painted the haunters of 
 the ruelles of "Cleomire," as she styled the brilliant 
 Marquise in the seventh volume of the Cyrus. 
 
 If Madame de Sevigne reproached herself, and 
 to no purpose too, for pouring over La Calprenede's 
 books, Madeleine de Scuderi's were to waste far 
 more time. They became the rage everywhere. 
 In England, we find old Samuel Pepys scolding his 
 wife and grumbling at her in his secret diary for 
 her devotion to them. There is, in truth, much in 
 the writings of this dark-skinned old maid, of 
 which a woman even in this age might well be 
 proud. To us, indeed, her stories are tiresome, 
 prolix, unnatural. But, besides her admirable por- 
 traiture of the choicest society of her own time, 
 she has some noble passages on the true place of 
 woman in society, some just and judicious reflec- 
 tions that have their value even now. Her style, 
 too, is flexible and flowing, with a grace and deli- 
 cacy about it from time to time which mark the 
 woman to whose ears the easy conversation of 
 the Rambouillet circle was familiar. 
 
 Chapelain's farcical epic, La Pucelle, I have al- 
 ready mentioned in passing. Another epic of the 
 sort that " neither gods nor men can abide," was 
 the Clovis of Desmarets, Richelieu's favorite. An- 
 other was the Moise sauve of Saint- Amant, who, 
 however, had some merit. Another was the Saint 
 Louis of the Pere Lemoyne, like the others full of 
 passages marked by wretched taste. 
 
 Amid the light literature of burlesque verse, 
 slashing lampoons, and bitter satires, provoked by 
 the war of the Fronde, were the letters of the doc- 
 tor Guy-Patin against Cardinal Mazarin, which 
 are still of some value as unconscious contributions 
 to contemporary history, as they were written 
 solely for private eyes. Mazarin, who did not con- 
 cern himself for literature, had but one defender 
 among literary men a man who did not like to
 
 100 French Literature. 
 
 think with other men. This was Cyrano de Ber- 
 gerac. In -his Leltre aux frondevrs, he makes 
 an especial butt of Paul Scarron, the burlesque 
 assailant of Mazarin. 
 
 Poor Scarron, with liis deformed and suffering 
 body travesty was natural to him. The 
 Erieide travestie is not a great work, in any 
 sense of the word, but there is seme fun in it. The 
 trouble is that one grows very tired of rending 
 long in a caricature spun out to so inordinate a 
 length. But Scarron does better work in his 
 Roman coinique and his Nouvelles. His comedies 
 also were amusing, and the young King enjoyed 
 them so much that he had one of them, UHeritier 
 ridicule, performed three times in one day. It was 
 the widow of this poor old pain-tortured merry- 
 maker for the young prince, Fran9oise d'Aubigne, 
 who was to be in after days the secretly wedded 
 wife and the nurse of the worn-out King, under the 
 name of Madame de Maintenon. 
 
 But, before we begin with Louis XIV. and 
 Moilere, the special glory of his age, a few words 
 must be said of Mazarin's solitary defender, the 
 fore-runner of Moliere, Fontenelle, and Voltaire, 
 and a great admirer of the philosopher Des Cartes. 
 
 Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, one of those big 
 Gascons, to whom France has owed some of its 
 most characteristic types of wit, was born in the 
 same year with Moliere, 1620. From his single 
 comedy, Le Pedant Joue, Moliere, who had been 
 his schoolmate and friend, borrowed largely when 
 he came to write Les Fourberies de Scapin. It was 
 the earliest prose-comedy in the language, and has 
 at least the merits of great exuberance of mirth 
 and much lively action. Had Bergerac not died at 
 the age of thirty-five, he might have given the lit- 
 erature another writer of comedy, not perhaps 
 worthy to be placed beside Moliere, but at all 
 events ranking just below him. He had pre- 
 riously written his single tragedy, La Mort d'Agrip-
 
 From Richelieu to Louis XIV. 101 
 
 pine, in which the "unities" are very carefully 
 observed. His really great works, however, were his 
 Histoire cwnique des Estats et Empires de la Lune, 
 and his Estats et Empires du Soleil, both of which were 
 in 1687 translated into English by A. Lovell, and are 
 said to have influenced Swift in his production of 
 Grulliver's Travels. These really able and most 
 entertaining satires are not, however, so cynical as 
 those of Swift. 
 
 De Bergerac's life-* was even better than his 
 books; for, though wild and dissipated at his first 
 coming to Paris, and engaged because of his great 
 strength and courage in numerous duels never, 
 however, as principal, the seconds in those days 
 fighting for their principals along with them he 
 became before his death a thoroughly noble and 
 unselfish character. He served also in the army, as 
 well as in duels for his friends, was shot through the 
 body at the siege of Mousson, and at that of Arras 
 was pierced in the neck. Indeed, he died from the 
 results of his wounds. His friend and old school- 
 mate, Le Bret, published his works after his death, 
 prefixing a sketch of his career. De Bergerac died 
 in 1655. 
 
 Two years after his birth, appeared a comic ro- 
 mance, which deserves some mention. This was 
 the Histoire comique de Francion, a book immensely 
 popular in its day. The author was Charles Sorel, 
 Sieur de Sauvigny, a fast friend of the satirical 
 Doctor Guy-Patin, Mazarin's inveterate enemy. 
 His book was a strong protest against the affecta- 
 tions and the "King Cambyses's vein" of the pre- 
 cieuse school of writers. In 1628, when the Astree 
 was at the height of its popularity, he returned to 
 the charge with a clever and piquant parody of that 
 romance, entitled the Berger extravagant. Later 
 still, when the Grand Cyrus appeared, full of care- 
 ful portraitures of the great people of the court 
 and the frequenters of Madame de Kambouillet's 
 ruelles; Sorel put forth his Descriptwn de Vile des
 
 102 French Literature. 
 
 portraitures, making fun of the passion for sketch- 
 ing pen-and-ink portraits which had seized the 
 grandees and their imitators. 
 
 The personal reign of Louis XIV. begins with 
 Mazarin's death in 1661. Before that event, Cor- 
 neille's greatest works had been produced and the 
 French drama was an established fact. Pascal had 
 put forth his masterpiece of irony and of acute 
 reasoning. D'Urfe, Gombault, Gomberville, La 
 Calprenede and Madeleine Scude'ii had inaugurated 
 imaginative fiction. Sorel, De Bergerac and Scar- 
 ron had presented life and manners as looked at 
 from the comic and satirical side. Madame de 
 Eambouillet and her friends had purified conversa- 
 tion, and elevated the tone of society, besides cul- 
 tivating in the higher circles a taste for literary 
 skill. France, under the rule of Eichelieu, and to 
 some extent even under that of Mazarin, was pre- 
 paring for the days of peace and courtly leisure 
 which under the Great King were to shine with 
 more than ordinary brightness in many forms of 
 literature. 
 
 The Memoirs which belong to the time of Eiche- 
 lieu, are those of ' Lavieuyille, of Henri de Eohan, 
 of the mare'chal d'Estres, of Pont-Chartrain, of 
 De*agent, of Bassompiere (who wrote his in the Bas- 
 tile), of Monglat, of Conrart and of the Cardinal 
 himself.
 
 Moti&rc. 108 
 
 VIII. 
 
 MOLIERE. 
 
 MOLIERE is the great master of comedy for 
 modern literature, as Aristophanes was for the 
 ancient. He is more than this: he is more purely 
 a comic writer than any other great master in the 
 history of literature. For, there are flashes of ex- 
 quisite poety in Aristophanes, while in Moliere all 
 is pure comedy. His business is to make you 
 laugh, and he does it. There are other writers, both 
 of the ancient and the modern world, whose works 
 are purely comic, Plautus and Terence in Latin, 
 Goldoni in Italian, Beauinarchais in French, Sheri- 
 dan in English ; but Moliere excels them all in the 
 power of producing laughter. 
 
 " Of all the French dramatists," says Bulwer-Lytton, 
 "he is the only one whose genius is as conspicuous to 
 foreign nations as it is to his own. Like Shakespeare, he is 
 for all time and for all races. A piercing observer of the 
 society around him, he selects from that society types the 
 least socially conventional. His very men of fashion are 
 never out of fashion. Where most he excels all that is 
 left to us of the comedy of the ancients is where his in- 
 vention most escapes from its influence, and reveals those 
 truths of a poetry almost tragic, which lie half in light, 
 half in shadow, on the serious side of humor. Here, the 
 comedy of the Misanthrope is without a rival as to con- 
 ception of character and delicacy of treatment, though in 
 point of dramatic construction and vigor of style the 
 Tartuffe has been held to surpass it, ' The exposition of 
 Tartiiffe,' says Goethe, is without its equal ; it is the 
 grandest and best of its kind ; ' ' 
 
 But, without lingering to trace generalities, let us 
 sketch as rapidly as possible the career of this great
 
 104 French Literature. 
 
 literary artist and unfold, as we go, the methods of 
 his work and the qualities it exhibits. 
 
 Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, whom the world knows 
 as Moliere, was born in Paris, on the 15th January, 
 1622. His father was an upholsterer, and the son 
 was brought up with the view of succeeding him 
 in the business. His grandfather, however, had a 
 great fondness for the theatre, and used to take him 
 often to see the play. He soon grew into a passion 
 for studies of a more intellectual order than those 
 needed to qualify him for carrying on his father's 
 business. Aided by the support of his grandfather, 
 he gained permission from his father to devote him- 
 self to such studies at the College of Clermont, 
 superintended by the Jesuits. Here he not only 
 received a scholarly education, but formed associa- 
 tions of great value to him in after life. Among 
 his schoolfellows and warm friends was the Prince 
 Armand de Conti, brother of the great Conde. By 
 the intervention of Chapelle, his attached friend, he 
 was also able to take lessons from the philosopher 
 Gasseudi. The teachings of Gassendi bore fruit in 
 two directions. We find traces of Gassendi's in- 
 structions in the Femmes Savantes and elsewhere 
 among the plays of Moliere, while a more immedi- 
 ate result of this philosopher's influence was 
 Moliere's undertaking to translate Lucretius, which 
 he did partly in verse and partly in prose. This 
 manuscript has, however, been lost. Among other 
 schoolmates of Moliere were Bernier the traveler, 
 Hesnault the poet and satirist of the minister Col- 
 bert, and Cyrano de Bergerac the fore-runner of 
 Swift in the character of Gulliver. 
 
 Moliere's first employment on leaving college 
 was the place his father had held of valet-de- 
 chambre-tapissier to the king. In virtue of this 
 office he followed the court to Narbonne. But this 
 position was so distasteful to him, that he turned 
 away from it to the study of the law. His old 
 passion for the theatre, however, drew him away
 
 Moliere. 105 
 
 me IAU, and in 1645 he is to be found in 
 Paris at the head of a troop of actors, of whom he 
 soon formed a permanent company. 
 
 A story is told of his first teacher's coming to 
 dissuade him from the life of an actor, and of Mo- 
 liere's so eloquently exalting that profession in his 
 defence of it as to induce the old man to join his 
 company and play those parts called lesperes nobles. 
 
 His friend, the Prince de Conti, also tried to dis- 
 suade him, offering him a place at court, but he 
 pleaded with him in vain. His vocation emphati- 
 cally called him. In going upon the stage, the 
 young comedian abandoned his paternal name of 
 Poquelin and adopted that of Moliere. So, in a 
 later age, did young Arouet take the surname of 
 Voltaire. 
 
 Performing at first in the faubourgs of Paris, and 
 then in the provinces, his company led the life of 
 strolling players; nor is anything known of the 
 plays produced in those early days by Moliere, 
 beyond the names of some of them. For twelve 
 years, only an occasional glimpse can be caught of 
 him in the records of the time. During all this 
 time of preliminary training, besides what his sharp 
 eye caught of men and manners, he must have read 
 much. For, his works show a thorough knowledge 
 of Plautus and Terence and of the Italian and 
 Spanish comedies. 
 
 But, at last, his old schoolfellow, Prince Armand 
 de Conti, sent for him to give representations at 
 the palace. The king does not seem to have been 
 present on the first occasion; and Moliere's players 
 had been patronized for some time by the Prince 
 de Conti, the Due d'Epernon, and Philippe d'Or- 
 leans, before Louis XIV. perceived the merit ot the 
 young comedian. The performance of the Docteur 
 Amonreux took the monarch's fancy, and he author- 
 ized Moliere to establish his company in Paris and to 
 perform at the Theatre du Petit -Bourbon, alternntely 
 with the Italian comedians.
 
 106 French Literature. 
 
 Moli&re had meanwhile been going through some 
 of those love-experiences which he has so largely 
 painted in his plays. Like Goldoni, he had some 
 unfortunate haps in his affairs of the heart, and, 
 like him, he drew on his own personal experience 
 for some of the situations in his comedies. His 
 first passion, which was for an actress named Mad- 
 eleine Bejart, gave way to a deep and unreturned 
 devotion to another member of his company, 
 Mademoiselle Duparc, a heartless beauty, a wor- 
 shiper of rank, and a despiser of the comedian's 
 humble social position. This scorn of one to whom 
 he had poured out his whole heart filled Moliere 
 with profound sadness. 
 
 His solace was the devoted friendship of Mad- 
 emoiselle de Brie, who loved him with the same 
 hopeless passion with which he had been inspired 
 by Mademoiselle Duparc. She became, under his 
 teaching and with the motive of pleasing him and 
 doing his genius honor, an accomplished actress and 
 a great favorite with the public. She is described 
 as " tall, slender, and graceful ; noble in her car- 
 riage, and natural in all her attitudes, with some- 
 thing particularly delicate in her face and features, 
 which rendered her most fitting for the part of an 
 ingenue. Her eyes possessed a peculiar charm, 
 derived from their mingled expression of candor 
 and tenderness. She was more intelligent than 
 witty, and had not a shadow of coquetry." 
 
 She had the quickness to perceive the deep melan- 
 choly which oppressed Moliere under his calm ex- 
 terior, won him over to confide in her, and consoled 
 him so sweetly that in process of time he was 
 wholly cured of his passion for Mademoiselle 
 Duparc. More than this he had yielded to the 
 charm of his sweet consoler, and was now in love 
 with her. For several years they were very happy 
 in their mutual love, though for some unknown 
 reason they did not marry; and, in the end, 
 Moliere's heart was won away from her by
 
 Moliere. 107 
 
 Armande Bejart, a younger sister of that Madeleine 
 Bejart for whom Moliere had felt so warm a passion 
 before. 
 
 This attractive but worthless coquette, witty and 
 gifced as an actress, completely stole away the 
 dramatist's heart. Mademoiselle de Brie, seeing 
 his total subjection to the charms of the younger 
 woman, sadly resigned herself to the painful sepa- 
 ration. Moliere, at the age of forty-one, married the 
 young girl, more than twenty years younger than 
 himself. Mademoiselle de Brie continued to be his 
 faithful friend, and after his death it was her 
 greatest pleasure to play those parts he had created 
 for her. She kept her youthful appearance to the 
 last, and on one occasion when at sixty she thought 
 it unfitting for her to play the part of a girl of six- 
 teen and gave up to another the part of Agnes in 
 the Ecole des Femmes, the audience insisted so 
 loudly on her resuming it that the manager was 
 forced to send for her. 
 
 It would have been well for Moliere had he re- 
 mained faithful to this faithful woman. His infatu- 
 ation was punished by the most shameless infidelity 
 on the part of the frail creature whom he had so 
 foolishly married. As an actress she brought all 
 the unprincipled gallants of the court to her feet. 
 About three years after the marriage, a violent 
 (|'iarrel ended in their separation for some six or 
 seven years. During all this time they met con- 
 stantly in the theatre, playing in the same pieces. 
 
 Some of his best plays many of them founded 
 on the misfortunes of husbands were produced at 
 this time. In the Afisanthrope, which was espe- 
 cially a revelation of his own troubles, Armande 
 played CelimZne, Mademoiselle de Brie, Eliante, 
 and Moli&re, Akeste. It is said that one night 
 Eliante was eo captivating that the dramatist quite 
 forgot his griefs as a betrayed husband in the re- 
 turn of his old tenderness for the first love. His 
 health failing for a time, Mademoiselle de Brie
 
 108 French Literature. 
 
 watched over him with all the devotion his wife 
 ought to have shown. But a piece of double 
 treachery destroyed the small share of happiness 
 Moliere was now enjoying. 
 
 Baron, the finest actor of his day, brought up by 
 Moliere and hitherto hated and persecuted by 
 Armande, while acting the part of Cupid in the 
 ballet of Psyche, produced conjointly by Moliere 
 and Corneille, looked so handsome that he changed 
 Psyche's sentiments from hatred to love. Forget- 
 ting the gratitude he owed to Moliere, Baron re- 
 turned this sudden passion. What was worse, the 
 worthless wife was so lovely a Psyche, that Moliere 
 sank once more under her spells. They were 
 reconciled; but Moliere was soon forced to admrff 
 her utter worthlessness, and was more unhappy 
 than ever. His health declined, and soon gave 
 way altogether. 
 
 While these troubles of the heart were going on, 
 works of wonderful variety and unrivaled humor 
 were pouring from his prolific brain. LEtourdi 
 and Le Depit Amoureux he wrote during the five 
 years of his happy life with Mademoiselle de Brie, 
 before his marriage. Then came Les Prtyieuses 
 Ridicules, produced to satirize the absurdities and 
 affectations of those who were imitating the literary 
 coterie that gathered at the Hotel Rambouillet. 
 
 This was caught at directly as heralding the 
 coming of a new era in comedy. At its first repre- 
 sentation, an old man cried : " Courage, Moliere I 
 voila la veritable comediel " Menage, the critic, said 
 to Chapelain, the poet, as they were going out of 
 the theatre together: "Henceforth (as St. Eemi 
 said to Clovis) we must burn what we have wor- 
 shiped and worship what we have burned." This 
 was in 1659. The next year, appeared Sganarelle, 
 and, the next, .Uficole des Mar is, partly founded on 
 the Adelphi of Terence, with Don Garde de Navarre 
 and Les Fdcheux. 
 
 After his marriage he wrote LEcole des Femmes
 
 Moltire. 109 
 
 and La Critique de Tecole des Femmes. Then came 
 the Impromptu de Versailles, Le Manage Force, and 
 La Princesse d 1 Elide. It was in this last piece 
 that his wife captivated the courtiers and brought 
 dishonor upon her husband. Between 1665 and 
 1672, he produced Don Juan ou le Festin de Pierre, 
 L* Amour Medecin, Le Misanthrope, Le Medecin 
 malgrt lui, Melicerte, Le Sicilian ou V Amour 
 Peintre, Tartuffe, Amphitryon, Les Amans Magni- 
 fiques, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Les Fourberies de 
 Scapin, and Psyche. 
 
 Tartuffe, his masterpiece in the opinion of most 
 critics, was written in 1664, but was not played 
 publicly until 1669, as its performance was prohib- 
 ited, the Jesuits making strenuous efforts to pre- 
 vent its representation. It proved a grand success 
 when brought at last before the public. "The 
 truth, the variety, the contrast of the characters, 
 the exquisite art shown in the management of the 
 incidents, the abundance of the sentiments, and the 
 wonderful alternatiors of feeling laughter, anger, 
 indignation, tenderness, make this," says one of his 
 critics, " truly a masterpiece." 
 
 " Tartuffe," says Bulwer-Lytton, " is not a comic 
 character he is almost tragic, for he creates terror ; 
 the interest he gives to the play is, in our vague 
 consciousness of a power, intense, secret, and unscru- 
 pulous." Marmontel calls attention to the fact that 
 " not one of the principal personages in the Tartuffe 
 is comic in himself. They all become comic by 
 their opposition." 
 
 In 1672 Moliere produced Les Femmes Savantes. 
 The Academie Franqaise now offered him a chair 
 in that learned body, on condition that he would 
 no longer appear as an actor. He declined, although 
 Boileau and his other friends urged him to accept. 
 " The Academy," said he to Boileau, " is rich 
 enough. It has Corneille, Racine, yourself, and 
 many other great writers. I am but a comedian, 
 and I will not insult a profession I like, however
 
 110 French Literature. 
 
 humble it may be, by abandoning it after having 
 followed it for twenty -five years. My honor will 
 not allow me to do so." 
 
 The truth was, he felt himself near his end, and 
 had probably the true workman's wish to die at his 
 work. He wrote but two other plays, La Comtesse 
 d 1 Escarbagnas and the Afalade Imaginairt; the 
 most popular of all his pieces, this last. It was 
 written in February, 1673. On the 17th day of the 
 month, while playing the part of Argan in the 
 fourth representation of the play, and while pro- 
 nouncing the juro in the last scene, lie burst a 
 blood-vessel. Baron took him home ; and, before 
 his wife, whom he incessantly called for, could be 
 brought to his bedside, he died. 
 
 As he died in a state of excommunication, the 
 cure of St. Eustache refused him Christian burial. 
 His widow applied to the Archbishop of Paris, and, 
 on his refusal, to the King ; but the selfishness and 
 superstition of that monarch made him receive her 
 with marked coldness, though Moliere while alive 
 and able to amuse had been so great a favorite with 
 him. Still, he wrote to the Archbishop, desiring 
 him to permit burial of some sort in consecrated 
 ground. "It was decided that & handful of earth 
 should be granted, but that the body should be carried 
 immediately to the burying ground, and not remain 
 in the church. On the 21st of February, accord- 
 ingly, the coffin was transported at night, by two 
 ecclesiastics, to the cemetery of St. Joseph in the 
 Rue Montmartre, followed by more than two hun- 
 dred persons, each carrying a torch." In 1792, his 
 remains were removed, and again in 1817. They 
 were placed then in Pere-la-Chaise, after having 
 received the honors of high mass in the church of 
 St. Germaine des Pres. 
 
 His plays may be divided into four groups ; first, 
 the pieces with, music and dancing interspersed 
 among the parts, pastorals or masques like those of 
 Ben Jonson ; secondly, farces and pasquinades ;
 
 Afoliere. Ill 
 
 thirdly, comedies of the simpler type; and fourthly, 
 the more complex comedies, where ridicule takes 
 the form of satire rather than that of caricature. 
 
 Tli3 striking features of Moliere's genius, the 
 more salient qualities of his art, are the merriment 
 that oozes at every pore, as it were, from his intel- 
 lectually joyous nature, the fertility of invention he 
 displays, his variety of situations, his facility of 
 production, his ease, grace, and harmony of versifi- 
 cation, and his readiness to catch at every fresh 
 incident or suggested character. An instance of 
 this mercurial quickness is given in the history of 
 that fine satirical comedy, Les Fdcheux ; 
 
 " At the first representation the scene of the chasseur 
 was wanting. After the performance, Louis XIV., ad- 
 dressing himself to Moliere and pointing with his finger 
 to Monsieur de Soyecourt, the Grand Veneur, said, 
 * There is an original you have not yet copied.' The next 
 day the incomparable scene of Eraste and Dorante was 
 added to the piece ; and it is amusing enough that Mon- 
 sieur de Soyecourt himself should have been the very per- 
 son to furnish Moliere with all the technical terms so 
 skilfully employed by him in that dialogue." 
 
 The pastoral of Melicerte is a fragment Moliere 
 being hurried by the impatience of the King, and 
 never finishing it. Had it been completed, it 
 would have taken high rank as a piece in the man- 
 ner of Theocritus, of Tasso in his Aminta> and of 
 Guarini in his Pastor Fido. 
 
 The farces are drawn mainly in motive and man- 
 ner from the Italian and Spanish dramatic litera- 
 ture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in 
 which the amusing and clever valets play so prom- 
 inent a part. Such pieces are Les Fourberies de 
 Scapin, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, La Comtesse d? 
 Escarbagnas, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Le Medecin 
 Malgre lui, George Dandin, Le Sicilien, L* Amour 
 Medecin, Le Mariage Force, Sganarelle, and Les 
 Precieuses Ridicules, The Harlequin and Pantaloon
 
 112 French Literature. 
 
 of tlie Italian stage, representing impuatJA. ji 
 ness and stupid credulity, recur again and again in 
 these pieces, and by their constant contrast give rise 
 to ludicrous scenes and awaken laughter in the 
 audience. As in the case of the Arlecchino and the 
 Pantaleone, the same names are used for the same 
 types of character in different plays and different 
 situations. Moliere's names for tiiem are generally 
 Mascarille and Sganarelle, though occasionally the 
 tricky valet bears a different name, as in the case 
 of Scapin. 
 
 These characters were borrowed, though in the 
 hands of Moliere they grew into creations in which 
 comic wit by the force of a rich imagination allied 
 itself with the very poetry of merriment. But in 
 his soubrettes Moliere was wholly original. The 
 clear, sharp wit of the French woman, so much in- 
 sisted on by Taine, in his contest between the 
 English and the French feminine character, sug- 
 gested to the great comic artist this expansion of 
 the comic field. He was the first to put on the 
 stage this type, and to this day the name of Les 
 Servantes de Moliere is the technical term for this 
 class of stage-characters. Keen perception, rough 
 matter-of-fact common-sense, hard-headed direct- 
 ness, and a simplicity in no way related to stupid- 
 ity, are their traits. Such is Nicole, the faithful 
 servant of Monsieur Jourdain. 
 
 Of the comedies proper, the Ecole des Maris, the 
 $cole des Femmes, the Etourdi, the Avare, Don 
 Garde de Navarre, the Depit Amoureux, and the 
 Malade Imaginaire may be named as the chief. In 
 these we generally find his Mascarille and Sgana- 
 relle still figuring, but it is as wholly subordinate 
 characters. The sensible servante is in them all, 
 under various names. Another character appears, 
 he who is styled by the French the Raisonneur, 
 and who represents the judgment of the intelligent 
 and cultivated part of the community. In the 
 $cole d" Maris, Ariste has this part to represent j
 
 113 
 
 in the ficole dot, Femmes, Chrysalde ; in the Afalade 
 Imayinaire, Beralde. 
 
 But it is in the complex comedies, as I have 
 ventured to call them, that Moliere reaches his 
 highest excellence. In Don Juan, Les Femmes 
 Savantes, Le Tartuffe, and Le Misanthrope, we find 
 him exalting comedy into a philosophy of human 
 nature, a philosophy that laughs only because it 
 holds it to be wiser to laugh than to weep, but 
 which looks too profoundly into the human heart 
 not to see the darker side of its folly. The slighter 
 characters that people his other pieces pass out of 
 sight or make but a little show in these higher 
 manifestations of his now mature genius. For the 
 first time characters of a really complex structure 
 take their places on the stage, creations such as 
 Don Juan, the abhorrer of cant, pushed by his cli- 
 max of infamy into the very gulf of hypocrisy he 
 had always scoffed at; such as Tartuffe, the ser- 
 pent-like hypocrite, of hypocrites; such as Al- 
 ceste, the Misanthrope, wnose resentment against 
 his fellowmen springs from the revolt of an enthu- 
 siastic, generous, and truthful spirit against the 
 hollowness of society around him. 
 
 Moliere's style, always clear and direct, rises with 
 the strongly conceived characters and the energetic 
 movement of the plot in these plays. He writes 
 poetry both tender and strong in almost every line. 
 It is, however, the poetry of reasoned sentiment, 
 not the instinctive lyrical burst of song into which 
 Aristophanes rises so naturally. 
 
 Penetrating into the basis of his genius by study- 
 ing him in these plays where he is at his best, we 
 may confidently say that a warm and loving heart, 
 enlightened by sound judgment and working in 
 the interests of truth through the form of comedy, 
 is the power that gives unity and vitality to Mo- 
 liere's productions. There is, of course, much 
 more in his genius than this, an exquisite sense 
 of the ludicrous, wonderful powers of observation, 
 3
 
 114 French Literature. 
 
 a fine perception of the proprieties of social life, the 
 large miscellaneous information which seems to be 
 a special gift with great poets, tact in the selection 
 of harmonious traits and effective contrasts, the en- 
 thusiasm of the satirist, timed and moderated by 
 the judgment of one who knew well king, court, 
 and people, and many other qualities of the master 
 in his art. It took many splendid qualities to 
 make a Moliere, but at the bottom of them all and 
 rising through them all was the good heart.
 
 Racine. 115 
 
 IX, 
 
 RACINE. 
 
 CORXEILLE had taken Koman stories for his 
 subjects and Latin literature for inspiration. Kacine 
 was a good Greek scholar, and went to tlte higher 
 literature for models. Corneille, influenced partly 
 by the tone of the Spanish drama, which he studied 
 early in his career and to which he owed the con- 
 ception of his Cid, introduced into French dramatic 
 literature that grand and stately declamation which 
 is its main characteristic. Racine kept up this 
 tradition, but gave to his verse greater harmony 
 and grace. There is a singularly close resemblance 
 between the relation borne by Racine to Corueille 
 and that borne by Pope to Dryden, even though 
 Pope utterly lacked the dramatic element. Pope, 
 like Racine, was more polished and "correct." 
 Dryden, like Corneille, had more native force and 
 vigor. The resemblance is borne out by the fur- 
 ther facts, that Dryden drew much of his dramatic 
 inspiration from the Spanish literature; and that 
 Dryden translated Virgil, while ^Pope selected 
 Homer for his great experiment in translation. 
 They ought indeed to have exchanged their parts, 
 for the genius of Corneille and of Dryden had far 
 more affinity with the glowing energy of the Hel- 
 lenic mind than with the cold and orderly move- 
 ment of the Roman. 
 
 So much for the general place which Racine 
 occupies in French literature. Let us now take a 
 rapid survey of his life and works. 
 
 Jean Racine was born at Ferte* Milon, on the 
 21st December, 1639, of a respectable family. 
 Losing both his parents at the age of four, sent by
 
 116 French Literature. 
 
 his maternal grandfather to the college of Beauvais, 
 going to Port Koyal at the age of sixteen and 
 remaining there three years, he finished his train- 
 ing for life at tl^e college d'Harcourt. 
 
 His characteristic tendencies showed themselves 
 first during his residence at Port Eoyal, the famous 
 seat of mysticism in France. His grandmother and 
 his aunt Agnes were recluses there, and the youth 
 was much beloved by the austere heads of that 
 singular institution, for he was a quick and eager 
 student and of an ardent and affectionate disposition. 
 But his passion for poetry and romance greatly 
 shocked those grave masters, religious zealots as 
 they were. It was all very well so long as he 
 showed that able scholar, Claude Lancelot, his 
 understanding and appreciation of Euripides and 
 Sophocles. But, when he was caught devouring 
 Bishop Heliodorus's Byzantine romance, The 
 Loves of Ttieagenes and Chariclea, the worthy sacristan 
 snatched the volume from his hands and threw it 
 into the fire. A second copy underwent the same 
 fate ; but the third young Jean brought himself to 
 the ascetic master, saying : u You may put this in 
 the fire too, for now I have it all by heart." 
 
 This little story is valuable, as indicating charac- 
 ter. It shows the eager bent of his mind toward 
 art, the sweetness of his temper, and the resolute- 
 ness of his wiU. It also indicates the natural revolt 
 of youth and warm blood against the spirit of as- 
 ceticism. Good men who unhappily lack imagina- 
 tion are still to be found setting their faces against 
 the healthy instincts of nature, under the delusion 
 that joy and sin are nearly related. 
 
 His first literary venture, being coupled with the 
 adroitness of the born courtier, was a success. On 
 the marriage of the young king with the Spanish 
 Infanta, he wrote an ode called La Nymphe de la 
 Seine, which struck the fancy of Chapelain, favorite 
 poet of the court, who recommended it to the notice 
 of the minister, Colbert. Racine received a purse
 
 Racine. 117 
 
 of a hundred louis, and afterward a pension of six 
 hundred livres. 
 
 But, in spite of this invitation given him by 
 fortune to adopt the career of court-poet, his uncle, 
 who held a high ecclesiastical position at Uzes in 
 Languedoc, put before him such strong induce- 
 ments to wait for Church-preferment, that he yielded 
 and went to live with his kinsman. Systematic 
 theology, however, proved to the born poet as dry 
 a study, as the ascetic habits of Port Royal had 
 been uncomfortable practice. He returned to Paris. 
 There, with Boileau and La Fontaine already his 
 friends, he began his dramatic career. 
 
 His first acted tragedy was Les Frtres Ennemis, 
 played in 166-i. It is founded on that stern story 
 set forth by the great dramatists of Athens in the 
 Seven Against T/iebes and the Antigone, the fatal 
 struggle between Eteocles and Polynikes. But, 
 able as 'the play was, the representation of hot and 
 furious hatred did^not suit well Racine's essentially 
 tender spirit. If was the influence of Corneille 
 which dominated over this first offering to the 
 stage. 
 
 His next piece, Alexandre, gave too ample evi- 
 dence of the natural leaning of Racine's mind 
 toward the exhibition of tender passion rather than 
 vehement action. Corneille, to whom he read it 
 before representation, told him: "I judge by this 
 play that your talent is eminently poetic, not dra- 
 matic." Even Boileau, his devoted friend and 
 counsellor, did not scruple to criticise severely the 
 transformation of the splendid conqueror into a 
 love-sick and languishing young Frenchman. 
 
 About this time his relations with the Church 
 obtained him the presentation to the priory of 
 Epinay ; but, his claim being disputed, a lawsuit 
 followed, which he afterward found useful in fur- 
 nishing material for his comedy of the Plaideurs. 
 
 Hardly was he free from the entanglements 
 of the law, when he became involved in a quarrel
 
 118 French Literature. 
 
 with the Port Royal community. Soic from a 
 letter of remonstrance on the life he was leading, 
 written him by his aunt, he took offence at a pas- 
 sage in a criticism of the Jansenist of Port Royal. 
 Pierre Nicole, on Desmaret's worthless work on 
 the Apocalypse, in which criticism the composition 
 of novels and plays was discredited as irreligious 
 and prejudicial to morality. Taking Nicole's cen- 
 sure as specially designed for him, so lately rebuked 
 by his Port Royalist aunt, he made a hot and able 
 reply to it. To this Nicole made no retort, but the 
 cudgels were taken up by three others of the Port 
 Royal community. Racine prepared a second letter, 
 but Boileau, his staunch friend, dissuaded him from 
 publishing it, saying: "This letter will do honor 
 to your ability, but not to your heart. You bitterly 
 attack here men of great merit, to whom you 
 owe no little of what you are." Boileau's warm, 
 frank friendship was through life verv useful to 
 Racine, and Racine repaid it with unceasing trust 
 and fervent gratitude. He said to Boileau on his 
 death-bed : " I look upon it as a happiness to die 
 before you." 
 
 He owed much more to Boileau than this moder- 
 ating touch of the satirist on his shoulder when he 
 was in the act of charging down upon the instruc- 
 tors of his youth. For Boileau was his able and 
 calm censor and critic, and to his judicious counsel 
 he owed that spirit of careful selection which made 
 his language so pure and at the same time so rich. 
 It is true, there are other charms about Racine 
 which native genius alone could form, but to the 
 constant watchfulness of Boileau over his style was 
 due some share even in that intellectual lucidity, 
 that exquisite delicacy of feeling which the clean 
 style so well expressed. 
 
 The first work which exhibited these high quali- 
 ties and the further gifts of orderly plot, consistent 
 characterization, and general fidelity to the man- 
 ners of the age portrayed, was the Andro?naque }
 
 Racine. 119 
 
 which appeared in 1667. This was Racine's first 
 marked success, and it was the advent upon 
 the stage of the tragedy founded upon love. 
 Corneille had painted moral grandeur. Racine 
 painted now the heart's alternate transports and 
 agonies, exciting a pathetic interest which moved 
 even more deeply and universally than the lofty 
 themes of the elder dramatist. In the Hermione 
 of this play, that great actress, Mademoiselle 
 Champmesle for whom he afterwards created the 
 character of Phodre, made her first appearance. 
 
 Racine's next play was suggested by the amuse- 
 ment he had afforded his friends, Boileau, La Fon- 
 taine, Chapelle, and Furetiere, at an entertainment, 
 by his description of the trial which had put an 
 end to his project of taking holy orders. His re- 
 cital produced such merriment, that they insisted 
 upon his making a comedy of the incidents he had 
 described. 
 
 Thus was produced the Plaideurs. The plot of 
 the comedy runs thus : Monsieur Perrin Daudin, 
 a judge in Lower Normandy, is so much in love 
 with his profession that he has condemned his cock 
 to be beheaded for not waking him up one morn- 
 ing early enough, accusing the poor bird of having 
 been bribed to this act of negligence. His son, 
 Leander, convinced that he has a veritable craze, 
 persuades the porter, Petit Jean, to keep him con- 
 fined to the house and to let no law-pleadings 
 come near him. He escapes, however, out of the 
 window, but is secured again by his son, his secre- 
 tary, and Petit Jean ; and Leander now consults with 
 the secretary about delivering a letter in disguise 
 to Isabelle, daughter to Chicaneau, a client as crazy 
 as the judge. At this point Chicaneau enters, and 
 is soon joined by the Countess Pimbesche. Both 
 are anxious to consult the judge. The lady is very 
 litigious, has been at law forthirty years, and yet com- 
 plains that there now remain to her only four or five 
 trifling cases, one against her husband, one against her
 
 120 French Literature. 
 
 father, one against her children, buo has ample 
 provision made for her, " but," she asks, " what is life 
 without Law ? " Chicaneau also tells his grievances, 
 beginning with the rolling of an ass's colt in his 
 meadow fifteen or twenty years back. Suit upon 
 suit, appeal upon appeal, had followed, until on his 
 finally losing his cause, he was condemned to pay 
 six thousand francs. They try to console each 
 other, but end in a quarrel and mutual insults, 
 which give rise to a new law-suit. 
 
 Meanwhile Leander's emissary, in the disguise of 
 a sheriff's officer, has contrived to deliver the note 
 to Isabelle. Her father, coming in as she is read- 
 ing it, asks what it is. She tears it up, saying it 
 is a summons. The messenger behaves so as to 
 get a beating from old Chicaneau, and begs him to 
 go on with further injuries, as the action he will be 
 able to bring will save him and his four small 
 children from want for the rest of their lives. 
 Chicaneau, alarmed, gets his daughter to write an 
 apology, which she words so as to make it a full 
 consent to her marriage with Leander. 
 
 Judge Daudin, shut up in the house, now appears 
 on the roof, and from that elevated position holds 
 a consultation with his clients in the street. Re- 
 moved from the house-roof, he holds forth to his 
 audience through the grating of his cellar. At last, 
 his son puts before him a case of a thoroughly 
 domestic character. The dog, Citron, has abstracted 
 a capon. Petit Jean prosecutes the case, the secre- 
 tary defends, Leander plays audience. Petit Jean, 
 not skilled in legal technicalities, although a 
 prompter has on that account been assigned him, 
 constantly makes blunders. The secretary's plead- 
 ing wanders off to Aristotle, Pythagoras, the 
 Corinthians, and finally to the creation of the world. 
 "Ah !" cries the poor judge, who has in vain been 
 trying to bring him to the point, "pass on to <he 
 Deluge." But the pleader sticks fast to the ^gin- 
 ning of things, and at last the judge falls Asleep.
 
 Racine. 121 
 
 His son, seeing him after a time waking up, urge* 
 h'm to pass sentence, on which he cries out: "To 
 the galleys with him!" "What! a dog to the 
 galleys?" "Oh!" cries the judge, "he has filled 
 my head with the chaos he has been describing. 
 Finish the pleading." The defendant's counsel now 
 presents a couple of pups to the court, pleading 
 their pitiful condition if made orphans. The 
 judge's indecision is broken in upon presently by 
 the entrance of the fair Isabelle and her father. 
 The parties are all brought to consent to the match 
 between Isabelle and Leander, the judge being 
 made well content with a promise of many causes 
 to be tried at home, only he insists that in future 
 the speeches of counsel must not be so long. 
 
 Much of the fun of this piece lay in the mimicry 
 of prominent advocates of the day and of a judge 
 who was given to exercising his profession in his 
 own family. The king was greatly amused by this 
 comedy; and Moliere, who was not at this time 
 on good terms with Racine, gave it emphatic praise. 
 
 Racine's next piece, although comparatively a 
 failure, had an important effect on the conduct of 
 his king. Louis had been in the habit of engag- 
 ing personally in the court-ballets, of which he was 
 very fond. But, as Nero, in this new tragedy of 
 Racine's, the Britannicus, is censured for making 
 himself "a spectacle to the Romans," tlie king 
 renounced the practice forever. 
 
 Berenice was Racine's next play. It is said to 
 have been written at the request of Henrietta, the 
 English princess, sister to Charles II. and wife to 
 Louis XIV.'s brother, her motive being a desire to 
 see represented the sorrows of the Emperor Titus and 
 of Berenice, the Jewish princess whom he loved and 
 would have married but for the emphatic disap- 
 probation of the Roman people. These love-sor- 
 rows she is said to have felt a deep sympathy for, 
 regarding her own case and Louis's as somewhat 
 similar to Titus and Berenice's.
 
 122 French Literature. 
 
 Unfortunately, tlie tneme was such that there 
 could be no action in the play, none of that move- 
 ment toward a definite end which makes the true 
 drama. Chapelle, Racine's friend, being urged by 
 him to give his opinion frankly, replied with the 
 couplet : 
 
 " Marion pleure, Marion crie, 
 Marion veut qu'on la marie." 
 
 Even the king made fun of it. Meeting the court 
 physician on coining out of the theatre, after the 
 play was over, he said to him gravely : " I have 
 just been on the point of sending for you to attend 
 a princess who wanted to die, but did not know 
 how to set about it." 
 
 After Berenice came Bajazet, acted in 1672, and 
 Mithridate, acted in 1673. The latter was a great 
 success, and has this historical souvenir connected 
 with it, that Charles XII. of Sweden pored over it 
 many hours in his dreary days at Bender, no other 
 play being so great a favorite with him. 
 
 The next year, 1674, Racine produced his Iplii- 
 genie, in which Mademoiselle Champmesle, enacting 
 the heroine, brought many tears from the eyes of 
 the courtiers. This great actress having besought 
 Racine to create for her a part in which she could 
 portray all the passions, he wrote and brought out 
 in 1677 the greatest of all his plays, the Phddre. 
 
 As in Iphiyenie, he had purposely departed from 
 the plot of his master, Euripides, so in PhMre, he 
 depicts a character very different from the guilty 
 Phaedra of the Greek dramatist. This character, 
 always a grand one on the French stage, whether 
 illustrated by a Rachel or by a Sara Bernhardt, 
 and indeed bearing the same relation to other parts 
 in French dramatic literature that Hamlet does to 
 others in English, deserves special study. Phaedra, 
 in Euripides, is intended to be hateful, an object of 
 horror : the whole interest of the audience is to be
 
 Racine. 123 
 
 concentrated on Hippolytus. She comes on the 
 stage to die; she has no vestige of hope ; she 
 looks ghastly and frightful ; possessed and cursed by 
 Aphrodite, she is really a madwoman ; she has, 
 however, in her frenzy, the cunning of madness ; 
 and, with the horrible hate that grows out of ac- 
 cursed and ungratified love, she dies leaving a lie 
 behind her the accusation of her step-son to his 
 father. The Greek Phaedra on the modern stage 
 would have made a poor acting part, because call- 
 ing forth no atom of sympathy, but only loathing 
 and disgust. 
 
 Racine changed the situation and the character. 
 In his hands, Phedre becomes a woman, humanized 
 from the monster that Euripides painted ; she ex- 
 cites our sympathy, moves our deep compassion, 
 softens horror into pity. Infirmity of will is the 
 keynote to her character; desperate pressure of 
 circumstance breaks through the guards of con- 
 science and duty, and she gives way to crime 
 through weakness to resist temptation. The Greek 
 Phaedra is a depraved wretch or a stark madwoman. 
 The French Phedre is a poor weak and sinful 
 woman, struggling pitifully against the evil she is 
 yet not strong enough to resist. 
 
 Noble as this play is, it did not at once take 
 possession of the stage. A miserable conspiracy 
 formed by a miserable court clique banished 
 PhMre from the stage for a year. Pradon, a hack 
 writer, was induced by Madame Deshoulieres (an 
 enemy of both Boileau and Racine), her brother, 
 the Due de Nevers, and others, to write a play on 
 the same subject. They then hired the chief places 
 in the two theatres for the first five nights, left 
 ;hose in Racine's house vacant, and filled those in 
 the other, so that Pradon's play seemed to be the 
 favorite. This mean trick did not prevent the 
 ultimate success of Phedre; but Racine was dis- 
 gusted, and never again wrote a play on any but a 
 Biblical subject.
 
 124 French Literature. 
 
 He began to think of joining the Carthusians ; but 
 his confessor persuaded him to marry instead. He 
 married a lady with an utter distaste for plays and 
 poetry, but of excellent sense and good humor, pleas- 
 ing in countenance, and wholly indifferent to wealth 
 or rank. Bulwer-Lytton, who in his own experi- 
 ence had little reason to regard a wife with literary 
 tastes as specially desirable, has this comment on 
 Eacine's family life : 
 
 " It has been said that the wife of Racine had so little 
 participation in the artistic life of her spouse, that she 
 had never even read his plays. But, as Racine was ten- 
 derly attached to her, and of a nature too sensitive not 
 to have needed some sort of sympathy in those to whom 
 he attached himself, and as, by all accounts, his marriage 
 was a very happy one, so it is fair to presume that the 
 sympathy withheld from his artistic life was maintained 
 in the familiar domestic every-day relationship of his pos- 
 itive existence, and that he did not ask the heart of 
 Madame Racine to beat in unison with his own over the 
 growing beauties of those children whom she was not 
 needed to bring into the world. Why ask her to shed a 
 mother's tears over the fate of Britannicus, or to recoil 
 with a mother's horror from the guilt of Phedre ? they 
 were no offspring of hers." 
 
 After giving up the theatre, Racine sought a 
 reconciliation with the recluses of Port Royal, and 
 was forgiven his bitter letter. Appointed now with 
 Boileau to be historiographer to the king, he and 
 hisfriend had to follow that vainglorious campaigner 
 into Flanders, and on this journey Racine's inno- 
 cence and simplicity about the common things of 
 every-day life was the occasion of much diversion 
 to the courtiers. 
 
 Rapine's pen had lain idle for twelve years, when 
 Madame de Maintenon induced him to compose a 
 piece for the young damsels of St. Cyr, in which 
 human love should have no part. He wrote his 
 , to fulfil the lady's bidding, greatly to the
 
 Racine. 125 
 
 delight of the court, who beheld in King Assuerus 
 Louis himself, in Vashti Madame de Moutespan, in 
 Esther Madame de Maintenon, and in Haman the 
 minister Louvois. 
 
 Athalle was written for the same young ladies, 
 but Madame de Maintenon changed her mind, and 
 would not have them act it. The play, when 
 printed, at first made little impression. But a gen- 
 tleman, in redeeming a forfeit when playing with a 
 gay party some games at a chateau near Paris, was 
 condemned to read the first act of Athah'e as a pen- 
 alty, and having, greatly to his own surprise as well 
 as that of his friends, found it impossible to stop 
 until he had read the whole play, spoke so highly 
 of it, that they decided to hear him read it aloud 
 the next day. This resulted in a change of public 
 opinion as to the merits of the piece. Boileau de- 
 clared it to be Racine's masterpiece, though the 
 author preferred Phedre. 
 
 Some lines in this poem on absolute power are 
 thought to have giverf offence to the king. But his 
 anger did not show itself until on Madame de 
 Maintenon's persuading the poet to draw up a me- 
 morial which should enlighten Louis as to the suf- 
 ferings of his people, the king ceased to notice him 
 or to speak to him. Louis had accustomed his peo- 
 ple and especially those who were much at court 
 to live on the hope of his smile resting upon 
 them; and poor Racine is supposed to have sunk 
 under the mortification of his master's neglect. He 
 died on the 21st of April, 1699. His wife had 
 borne him seven children, two sons and five daugh- 
 ters. 
 
 He was of middle size, with pleasant, frank, and 
 cheerful countenance ; was a good father, husband, 
 and friend, and a sincerely pious man; so good a 
 scholar that he is said to have once entertained a 
 company with the (E<I!j>x Ti/rannus before him in 
 Greek, while he gave it out to them in ready and 
 eloquent French, llis only fault^was a tendency to
 
 126 French Literature. 
 
 severe and satirical treatment of those who attacked 
 him. 
 
 His skill in depicting the tender passions, his 
 grace and purity of style, his facility and the ex- 
 quisite felicity of his easy-flowing verse, his com- 
 parative freedom from that monotonously declama- 
 tory rhetoric which disfigures French tragedy, his 
 masterly clearness, furnish reasons enough for the 
 high place which is universally conceded him by 
 his countrymen.
 
 Jnder Louis XIV. 127 
 
 X. 
 
 UNDEE LOUIS XIV. 
 
 LA FONTAINE said, " Moli&re is my man ; " and 
 there was indeed the same vein of rich humor in 
 them both, though developed in different directions. 
 They were staunch friends through life, and they 
 lie at this day near each other in Pere la Chaise. 
 
 Geruzez says of La Fontaine's genius, " it is the 
 flower of Gallic wit with a perfume of antiquity. 
 He recalls Phcedrus and Horace, but he is also a 
 result of Villon and Rabelais. In him we find 
 blended all that is most exquisite in classic anti- 
 quity and in the Middle Ages, and that without a 
 trace of effort, so that he reproduces the charm of 
 a double tradition with the air of perfect orig- 
 inality." 
 
 Jean de La Fontaine was born at Chateau-Thierry, 
 in Champagne, in 1621. He was idle in his youth, 
 but became a great reader when he had once dis- 
 covered his taste for poetry. 
 
 Though selfish and immoral, there was a child- 
 like good-nature about his manner which seems to 
 have had a singular charm for many of his most 
 distinguished contemporaries ; and Moliere, Boileau, 
 Racine, and Fenelon were all fond of him. He died 
 at Paris in 1695. 
 
 His earlier works were Tales and Novels in 
 Verse (Contes et Nouvelles en Vers). But he is 
 chiefly known by his Select Fables in Verse 
 (Fables Choisies inises en Vers). The style of 
 La Fontaine is inimitable in its arch sim- 
 plicity, its merry, childlike malice, its air of 
 cool, sardonic effrontery. His very immoralities 
 seem like the irresponsible pranks of a Puck.
 
 128 French Literature. 
 
 His narrative is limpid in ease and grace, and he 
 enters into the story with such zest as to give it a 
 marvelously lifelike naturalness. His fables are 
 such witty satires on humanity, that they have 
 always been a delight to all ages and classes ot 
 readers. Imagine Chaucer, in one of his merry moods, 
 passed by some process of transmigration into the 
 pungent spirit of Heine, and the result of the trans- 
 fusion would be just such a delicious sub-acid frmt 
 as La Fontaine makes among the dainties of litera- 
 ture. 
 
 In treating of the literary splendor of the age of 
 Louis XIV., I have taken the great masters of 
 tragedy and of comedy separately, and first after 
 them, as was just, I have named the great fabulist, 
 whom many French critics consider so unique as to 
 have no true analogue in any other literature. To 
 these must now be added a cluster of writers whose 
 relations to one another were peculiar. 
 
 There is the Due de La Rochefoucauld, whose 
 name calls upon that of Madame de Sevigne and 
 that of Madame de La Fayette. There is also that 
 Paul de Gondi, who became the famous Cardinal de 
 Retz and was the friend of Madame de Se'vigne', 
 Corneille, Moliere, and Boileau, as well as the 
 author of most valuable and entertaining Memoires. 
 Both La Rochefoucauld and the Cardinal were 
 formed, as thinkers and political writers, by their 
 share in the troubles of the Fronde. 
 
 Fran9ois, Due de La Rochefoucauld and Prince 
 de Marsillac, was born in 1613. When the tumult- 
 uous scenes of the Fronde were over, he gave 
 himself up to literary pursuits, and composed his 
 Memoires and also his better known work, called 
 Reflections or Moral Sentences and Maxims (Reflex- 
 ions ou Sentences et Maximes Morales), a work in 
 which the bitter experiences he bad had of human 
 selfishness and duplicity in a period of great dis- 
 order and corruption only too strongly pointed his 
 epigrammatic observations. It is to him that we
 
 Under Lows XIV. 129 
 
 owe that striking definition of hypocrisy, as " the 
 homage that vice renders to virtue." It is to him, 
 too, unfortunately, that we owe many a pithy 
 maxim of Macchiavellian heartlessness, emphasiz- 
 ing the folly of putting faith in man. He was a 
 keen observer, but he had a wretched world 
 to observe in the days of the Fronde. It was 
 but natural then, that he should take the narrow 
 view of life and trace all the springs of human 
 action to the low motive of self-love. Setting out 
 from this philosophic basis, most of his maxims, 
 though often brilliant, witty, and amusingly tart, are 
 thoroughly cynical. 
 
 With all these Macchiavellian spurts of venom 
 against human nature, La Rochefoucauld, according 
 to the testimony of the best among his contempo- 
 raries, was in his own character singularly chival- 
 rous, high-minded, and honorable. One of his biog- 
 raphers said of him, " He gave the example of all 
 the virtues of which he would seem to deny the 
 existence." He ridicules bravery as a madness. 
 Yet in more than one hard-fought battle he showed 
 all the splendid courage of his race. He says that 
 men "in the adversity of their best friends always 
 find something that does not displease them," and, 
 again, " we have always sufficient strength to bear 
 the ills of another." Yet this man, who sneered 
 at friendship, was a devoted friend to those he 
 loved; and of this proclaimer of man's innate 
 selfishness, Madame de Sevigne' tells us, that in his 
 last painful illness, he thought more of others than 
 of himself. Cardinal de Retz, in his Memoires, tes- 
 tifies that, in all the relations of private life, he 
 was the honestest man of his age. 
 
 This contrast between La Rochefoucauld's charac- 
 ter and his writings is worth noting, as a warning 
 to every man to look into his own heart as Mon- 
 taigne did. as well as into that of his neighbor, for 
 in this instance the hearts into which the brilliant 
 duke looked wer far meaner than his own, and 
 9
 
 130 French Literature, 
 
 the reflections they caused him to make worked 
 incalculable injury to his country. Voltaire tells 
 'is, that the book which most contributed to form 
 the taste of the French nation was these very Max- 
 ims of La Eochefoucauld ; and thousands of ob- 
 serving historical-critics concur in assuring us that 
 this taste for brilliant mockery of man's nature, 
 this spirit of disbelief in virtue, had more to do 
 with bringing on the great Eevolution than any 
 other one thing. In that time of horror La Roche- 
 foucauld's descendant perished. 
 
 One of La Rochefoucauld's dearest friends was 
 Madame de La Fayette (1623-1693), a woman of 
 charming wit and irreproachable character. Be- 
 fore knowing La Rochefoucauld, she had already 
 written Za'ide, a romance of pure imagination. In 
 her later work, La Princesse de C&ves, she mingled 
 with the fiction a large share of the life around her. 
 The scene is laid in the time of Henri II., but it is 
 really the court of Louis XIV. that appears under 
 thin disguises. Madame de Montespan is painted 
 in the character of the Duchesse de Yalentinois. 
 The Duchesse D'0rle*ans appears masquerading as 
 the young Queen of Scotland, Fran9ois II.'s wife. 
 La Fayette is masked as the Prince de Cleves, and 
 La Rochefoucauld as the Due de Nemours. Guizot 
 says: "This delicate, elegant, and virtuous tale, 
 with its pure and refined style, enchanted the court, 
 which recognized itself at its best and painted 
 under its brightest aspect." The Princesse de 
 Cloves had a great success. It was a new order of 
 romance. While the court and characters of 
 Louis XIV. have been transferred to the days of 
 Henri II. and Francois II., the historical events of 
 the earlier time have been kept unchanged, and 
 there is a tone of truth and nature about the work 
 which gives it a high place as an artistic creation. 
 
 Another friend of the brilliant duke's was that 
 Madame de Sevigne', whose letters are the most 
 famous in the world. She was herself famous in
 
 Under Louis XIV. . 131 
 
 her day, without reference to those letters on which 
 her fame now rests. Sbe was full of charm ; lively, 
 tender, sympathetic, witty, good, perfectly natural 
 and unaffected, she kept many friends and made 
 no enemies. One of her critics says of her, that so 
 happy, pure, and sensible was her nature, Menage 
 and Chapelain could instruct her without making 
 her pedantic, the Hotel Rambouillet could enrich 
 her code of propriety with maxims of social manners 
 without spoiling her clearness of perception, the 
 friendship of Port Royal could be assured her with- 
 out her sharing in the austerity of that school, and 
 she could even undergo the slanders of Bussy- 
 Rabutin without losing her fair fame or her good 
 temper. Madame de La Fayette said that her wit 
 really dazzled the eyes. One can well believe even 
 this apparent extravagance, so charmingly does her 
 love of fun bubble up and sparkle as it runs over 
 every here and there in her letters, and her eyes 
 seem to dance with delight as she sketches with 
 felicitous touches some absurd scene that she has 
 witnessed and laughed at merrily. She must have 
 been a refreshing companion, so unquenchable was 
 her gayety, and so buoyant her spirits. In her 
 letters there is endless variety, sparkling wit, ani- 
 mated narrative, arch humor, keen observation, 
 warmth of feeling, force and weight of reflection. 
 She is never tedious ; whatever her subject, she is 
 always entertaining. 
 
 She was independent, too, and never ceased to 
 let fall thoughts that were little in accordance with 
 the air of that abject court in which despotism had 
 become firmly seated in the person of Louis XIV. 
 Her faithfulness to old ties was shown in her never- 
 concealed attachment to the Arnaulds, her prefer- 
 ence for Corneille when Racine had become the 
 popular idol, her constant kindness to Cardinal de 
 Retz. It is from a letter of hers to her daughter 
 in 1672, that we learn how the literary men of the 
 day gathered around the old hero of the Fronde
 
 132 French Literature. 
 
 in spite of his political disgrace. ' Jorneille," 
 says she, " has read him a piece which will be 
 played shortly, and which recalls the ancients. 
 Moliere will read him Saturday his Trissotrin, 
 which is a very merry thing. Despreaux [Boileau] 
 will give him his Lutrin and his Art of Poetry. 
 There is all one can do to please him." 
 
 Before we tarn to De Retz, it will be well for 
 me to gather in a brief paragraph the principle 
 facts of this gifted woman's life. Marie de Rabutin- 
 Chantal (1626-1696) was born at Paris. She was 
 the only daughter of Celse-Benigne de Rabntin, 
 Baron du Chantal, and his wife, Marie de Coulanges. 
 Left early an orphan, she was brought up by the 
 abbe de Coulanges, her mother's brother. Menage 
 taught her Latin, Italian, and Spanish; Chapelain 
 also assisted in training her mind. At eighteen she 
 was married to the Marquis Henri de Sevigne, of 
 an ancient family of Brittany. He was not a good 
 husband in any way, but she was not long troubled 
 with him, as in about seven years after their union 
 he was killed in a duel. She now devoted herself 
 to the education of her son and daughter. When 
 she at last returned to Paris, the most distinguished 
 men of the day paid their court to her ; but she 
 steadily declined all offers of marriage. Her affec- 
 tion for her daughter seems to have been her 
 strongest passion. This daughter having married 
 the Comte de Grignan, Governor of Provence, was 
 obliged to part from her mother. It is to this 
 separation that we owe that unrivaled series of 
 letters, which gives us so faithful a picture of court, 
 capital, and provincial life in that remarkable age. 
 The loving mother died of small-pox, while on a 
 visit to her daughter at the Chateau de Grignan. 
 
 At the time Madame de Sevigne wrote that letter 
 in which she related how Corneille, Moliere, and 
 Boileau were joining in the effort to entertain the 
 fallen statesman, Cardinal de Retz had given him- 
 self up to literary recreations. He had begun those
 
 Under Louis XIV. .133 
 
 Memoires, which recount the events and depict the 
 characters of the Fronde. 
 
 Paul de Gondi (1614-1679) was not meant by 
 nature for an ecclesiastic. The traditions and rules 
 of a great family forced him into orders, that he 
 might be bishop of Paris in the place of a brother 
 who had died. It was to no purpose that he fought 
 duels, carried off an heiress, conspired against 
 Kichelieu ; he had to abide by his vocation. But 
 he devoted himself to politics, aspired to be the 
 chief of a party, conducted the intrigues of the 
 Fronde, and had finally to succumb to the growing 
 strength of the monarchy. His Memoires are full 
 of admirable reflections based on his experience in 
 politics. They abound also in finely drawn por- 
 traits of the characters of his time. 
 
 Having now given some account of the chief 
 literary lights of the age of Louis XIV., I have 
 reached the point where it is fitting to bring forward 
 the great critic of that period, whose satires were 
 to lay down the principles of good taste and to cast 
 ridicule upon the writers who violated them. This 
 was Boileau, who, while his genius bears some 
 resemblance to that of Horace, has on the whole 
 more points of affinity with Pope. 
 
 Nicolas Boileau-Despre'aux (1636-1711) was 
 born at Paris. He tried law and theology in suc- 
 cession, but finally gave himself up wholly to litera- 
 ture. His works were the Satires, the Epttres, the 
 Art poetique, and Lutrin. In the first, he declared 
 war on all bad writers, and especially covered with 
 ridicule the taste for Spanish emphasis, Italian 
 concetti and plays on words, the sentimental jargon 
 of the precieuses, and the buffoonery and license 
 which were defacing literature at the beginning of 
 his career, when Chapelain was still the leading 
 court poet and Scarron the favorite writer of 
 comedy. 
 
 Boileau, as a poet, lacks freshness, grace, and 
 joyousness. But he makes up for these deficiencies
 
 134: French Literature. 
 
 by good sense, pure taste, and the propriety, force, 
 and correctness of Ins style. The Epistles are 
 superior to the Satires. Their versification is 
 stronger, sweeter, and more flexible. The Art of 
 Poetry is based on Horace's work of the same 
 name. It summed up the laws of poetry, and in- 
 deed of good writing in general, for that generation, 
 and formed the literary creed of the seventeenth 
 century. It is expressed in easy and elegant verses. 
 
 Boileau, less gifted than Corneille, Moliere 
 Kacine, and La Fontaine, possessing neither cre- 
 ative imagination nor lyrical enthusiasm, and lack- 
 ing also deep sensibility, was useful to his more 
 gifted friends in curbing their exuberance and di- 
 recting their taste. His Lutrin, a comic epic in six 
 cantos, may be compared with Pope's similar effort, 
 The Rape of the Lock, by many considered the 
 most charming of his poems. 
 
 Boileau's letters are also of great value, twenty 
 of them having been addressed to Racine, and all 
 of them giving much information about the liter- 
 ary history of the time. Their chief value, how- 
 ever, consists in the confirmation they furnish of 
 the high character which his contemporaries give 
 of Boileau. We see by these letters, how pure, 
 generous, and high-minded, how impulsive and 
 warm-hearted this keen satirist was. When, on 
 the death of the minister Colbert, orders were 
 given to stop Corneille's pension, Boileau flew to 
 the king, made an earnest remonstrance against 
 the ungenerous course of the government, and 
 threatened to resign his own pension, if Corneille's 
 were not restored. He was just as bold in his de- 
 nunciation of the persecution directed against the 
 nuns of Port Royal and the noble Arnauld. He 
 helped his friends out of pecuniary embarrassments, 
 reconciled some who had quarreled, gave good ad- 
 vice to Racine, nnd was on friendly terms with 
 the most opposite parties. 
 
 Among those whom Boileau satirized more se-
 
 Under Louis XIV. 135 
 
 verelv than, in the judgment of some later critics, 
 their faults deserved were Br^beuf and Quinault. 
 
 Brebeuf had some ability. His Pharsale is still 
 considered the most faithful translation of Lucan's 
 historical epic. His religious poetry, too, is praised 
 by Geruzez. As for Quinault, his rivalry with 
 Racine had something to do with the rigor of 
 Boileau's criticism. His Aslarte was a tragedy of 
 great merit. His comedies, Les Rivales and La 
 Mere Coquette, still hold their place in collections 
 illustrative of French Comedy. His great operas, 
 Armide, Atys, and others, set to music by Lully, 
 were the productions of a master in that style of 
 dramatic production. His rank, according to mod- 
 ern critics, is just below that of the most eminent 
 dramatists. His skill lies in softening hearts, en- 
 chanting the imagination, delighting the ear with 
 the melody of his verse. Voltaire even goes so 
 far as to claim for him a place by the side of the 
 great masters. Brebeuf lived from 1618 to 1661; 
 Quinault, from 1637" to 1688. 
 
 A successor to the Countess de La Fayette as 
 romancer and to Moliere as dramatist was Jean 
 Fran9ois Regnard (1655-1709), who traveled exten- 
 sively in early life. In Italy he met the Eloise 
 whom he celebrates in his novel La Provenqale. 
 Taken by Algerine pirates, he passed two years in 
 Constantinople as a captive. As a dramatist his 
 rank is very high. His best plays are Le Joueur, 
 Les Folies, and Le Legataire universel. He also 
 wrote an account of his travels. 
 
 Another group that helped greatly to give lustre 
 to the age of Louis XIV. was that of the great 
 preachers. The Church at no period of French 
 history showed such splendor of eloquence as in 
 this reign. Churchmen of great intellectual power 
 had before this time found in politics a tempting 
 sphere for activity. But the instinct of monarch- 
 ical prudence now kept them out of this field, in 
 which Richelieu, Mazarin, and De Retz had so long
 
 136 French Literature. 
 
 displayed their abilities. The result was the trans- 
 fer of all the ability in the Church to the more 
 legitimate domain of pulpit eloquence. It was 
 largely to this change in the social conditions that 
 France owed the magnificent prose of Bossuet, 
 Bourdaloue, Fenelon, and Massilon. In the order 
 of time, as well as in that of genius, Bossuet holds 
 the first place. 
 
 Jacques Benigne Bossuet (1627-170-i) was born 
 at Dijon. Profoundly versed in theology, trained 
 in the philosophy of Des Cartes, disputant against 
 the Protestants, main agent in securing the freedom 
 of the Gallican Church from the aggressions of the 
 Papal See, opponent of Fenelon in the controversy 
 about the Quietists, author of a great number of 
 polemical writings, and of a universal history down 
 to the time of Charlemagne, his life was one of 
 ceaseless activity. His master-pieces, however, 
 were his funeral sermons on the decease of great 
 personages, and these have always been held to be 
 magnificent specimens of pulpit eloquence. 
 
 Bourdaloue was of the school of Bossuet, and the 
 abbe Maury said of him that he was one of the fin- 
 est of Bossuet's works. Louis Bourdaloue (1632- 
 1704) was born at Bourges. Like Bossuet, he was 
 in character sound and true to the core, and his elo- 
 quence was such as to make men forget how great 
 had been that of his brilliant predecessor. Madame 
 de Sevigne' said that she went to hear him more 
 eagerly than she attended the grand festivals of the 
 court, though she leaned to the school of Port 
 Eoyal, and Bourdaloue was of the Society of Jesus. 
 Yet he had recourse to none of the means of attrac- 
 tion furnished by impassioned declamation or 
 ornate language. His style was simple and direct. 
 Clear reasoning and perfect order in the arrange- 
 ment of his thoughts formed his principal charm. 
 
 Voltaire styles Bossuet and Fenelon the Eagle 
 and the Swan. In treating of Bossuet, I have al- 
 ready mentioned, in passing, the contest between
 
 Under Louis XIV. 137 
 
 the Eagle and the Swan. Let us see what a close 
 observer, whose memoirs were not published unti 7 
 many years after liis death, has to tell us of thi; 
 Swan, and try to seize the secret of his charm : 
 
 " That prelate," says the Due de St. Simon, " was a 
 tall thin man, well-made, pale, with a large nose, eyes 
 whose fire and intelligence shot out like a torrent, and a 
 countenance the like of which I have never seen any- 
 where and which no one who had once seen it could ever 
 forget. In it were gathered all things, and the contraries 
 it expressed were not at war with one another. There 
 was in it gravity and gallantry, seriousness and gaiety ; it 
 had a trace equally of the doctor, the bishop, and the 
 great lord ; what was diffused over it and over his whole 
 person, was refinement, wit, the graces, delicacy, and, 
 above all, nobility. It required an effort to cease gazing 
 upon him. One could not leave him, nor resist him, nor 
 fail to seek him again. It is this gift, so rare and which 
 he had in so high a degree, which kept all his friends so 
 attached to him throughout his life, in spite of his fall, 
 and which, when they were scattered, drew them together 
 again to talk of him, to regret him, long for him, hold 
 themselves more and more attached to him, with the love 
 of the Jews for Jerusalem, and to sigh for his return and 
 hope always, as that unhappy people still expect and sigh 
 for the Messiah." 
 
 Such a picture reveals to us a man of singular 
 lovableness, and is the best answer to the cvnical 
 philosophy of the good Due de La Rocnefou- 
 cauld. 
 
 The longing of Fenelon's friends for his return, 
 of which St. Simon speaks, was never to be grati- 
 fied. He died in exile from the court, being re- 
 stricted to the limits of his diocese of Cambrai. 
 
 Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon (1651- 
 1715) was born in the chateau Fenelon, province of 
 Pe'rigord. To beginners in the study of French he 
 is generally well known as the author of Telemaque, 
 that classical romance, which he wrote for the in- 
 struction of Louis's grandson, the young Duke of
 
 138 French Literature. 
 
 Burgundy, in the duties of a prince to his people. 
 He was fond of this work of education, and his first 
 publication was a treatise on the Education of 
 Girls. 
 
 As to the Telemaque, Macaulay has well observed 
 that, low as its place may be in the list of prose 
 epics or of works on politics and morals, it is, when 
 we consider the spirit of the age in which it was 
 written, one of the most original works that have 
 ever appeared. 
 
 " No person," Macaulay goes on to say, " will do justice 
 to Fe'nelon, who does not constantly bear in inind that 
 Telemachus was written in an age and nation in which bold 
 and independent thinkers stared to hear that twenty mil- 
 lions of human beings did not exist for the gratification 
 of one. That work is commonly considered as a school 
 book, very fit for children, because its style is easy and 
 it morality blameless ; but unworthy of the attention of 
 statesmen and philosophers. We can distinguish in it, if 
 we are not greatly mistaken, the first faint dawn of a long 
 and splendid day of intellectual light, the dim promise of 
 a great deliverance, the undeveloped germ of the charter 
 and of the code." 
 
 Louis himself, at least, seems to have felt in- 
 stinctively the danger of such sentiments to absolute 
 monarchy, for Fenelon's final fall from court-favor 
 was due to the publication of Telemaque from a 
 copy stolen by a servant. Fenelon had outlived 
 the results of his contest with Bossuet about the 
 doctrines of Madame Guyon and her followers, the 
 Quietists. He had submitted to the decision of 
 Rome against him, and the storm had blown over. 
 But the appearance of Telemaque roused the jealous 
 king's hottest anger. He looked on the book as a 
 satire on his court. Sesostris was Louis himself; 
 Calypso, Madame de Montespan ; Protesilaus, the 
 minister Louvois ; Eucharis, Mademoiselle de 
 Fontanges. 
 
 Younger than Fenelon, and resembling nim some-
 
 Under Louis XIV. 
 
 what in independence of thought, Massillon come* 
 on the stage of public fame as the immediate suc- 
 cessor of Bourdaloue in renown for pulpit-oratorj. 
 Bourdaloue, when he heard of his first brilliant 
 efforts, quoted from Scripture the passage: "He 
 must increase, but I must decrease." 
 
 Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663-1742) was born at 
 Hieres. Like Bourdaloue, he aimed to influence 
 his hearers by naturalness of style and impressive- 
 ness of manner. Louis XIV. gave a striking criti- 
 cism of his peculiar power as a preacher, when he 
 said that in hearing other preachers lie felt satisfied 
 with them, but in hearing Massillon he felt dissatis- 
 fied with himself. Physically as well as mentally 
 he was well qualified for his vocation, having an 
 imposing majesty in his manner, a penetrating voice, 
 and great animation in his delivery when he reached 
 the more impassioned passages of his sermons. 
 
 The name of Massillon closes the list of the great 
 preachers of this age. Fenelou did not preach as 
 often as Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Massillon ; but 
 his few sermons were of great merit. There were 
 others, Mascaron, Flechier, La Rue, and Cheminais, 
 who, beside any less shining examples of pulpit- 
 oratory, would have borne the name and fame 
 of great orators. There were, also, among the 
 Protestants, Claude, Beausobre, and Saurin, whose 
 learning and eloquence were recognized even by 
 their opponents. 
 
 Esprit Flechier (1632-1710), besideshis deservedly 
 high reputation as a preacher, merits especial honor 
 for his gentleness to the Protestants, when, after the 
 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he used hii 
 authority as Bishop of Nismes in the spirit of tolera- 
 tion, conciliation, and charity. 
 
 In philosophy, this period produced Malebranche 
 as the successor of Des Cartes, and La Bruyere as 
 its moralist. 
 
 Nicolas Malebranche (1631-1715) was born at 
 Paris. His great work was his De la Recherche de
 
 140 French Literature. 
 
 la Verite, or The Search after Truth, in which h 
 built up a system of mystic idealism. In his view, 
 God is the place of spirits, as space is the place of 
 bodies; the human soul lives in Him, and from 
 Him draws its life and light, and according to its 
 purity of origin from this source does it see the 
 essence of truth. Whatever may be said of the 
 metaphysics of Malebranche, the critics are agreed 
 in commending his style as precise, luminous, and 
 flexible. 
 
 Jean de La Bruyere's fame rests upon a single 
 work, "The Characters of Theophrastus, translated 
 from the Greek, with the Characters or the Morals 
 of this Age" (Les Caracteres de Theophraste, traduits 
 du Grec, avec les Caracteres ou les Mceurs de ce 
 Siecle), in which he gives delicate and subtle deline- 
 ations of the characters of the men and women of 
 his day. He was born at Dourdan, in Normandy, 
 in 1639, and died in 1696. 
 
 The scholars of the period were Baluze, Monfau- 
 con, Mabillon, Tillemont, and Ducange. The his- 
 torians were Pellisson, author of the Histoire de 
 Louis XIV., Mezerai, author of the Histoire de 
 France; Perefixe, author of the Histoire de Henri 
 IV; Maimbourg, who wrote accounts of the Cru- 
 sades and of the League; Varillas; Saint-Re'al; 
 Daniel; Dorldans; Rapin Thoyras; Vertot; the 
 Comte de Boulainvilliers ; and the Abbe" Fleury. 
 
 It was in this age also, that Pierre Bayle (1647- 
 1706) put forth his remarkable Dictionnaire His- 
 torique et Critique. It had been preceded by Louis 
 Moreri's similar work, and also by Thomas Cor- 
 neille's Dictionnaire des Arts et des Sciences. Bayle 
 had passed from Protestantism to Romanism and 
 then back again to Protestantism ; had written 
 many controversial works, mainly in advocacy of 
 the principles of toleration; had become a professor 
 of philosophy in Rotterdam, and had there become 
 involved in controversies with leading Protestant 
 writers, especially with the theologian, Jurieu. He
 
 Under Lout's XIV. lii 
 
 was an independent thinker, and the uncompromis- 
 ing bigotry of tbe rival Churches with which lie 
 had to deal led him to skepticism. His style is 
 clear, but he indulges in endless digressions. His 
 Dictionary, being proscribed in Holland and France, 
 naturally obtained a wide circulation in both coun- 
 tries. It has had a great influence on the literature 
 and philosophy of Europe. Bayle's private char- 
 acter was excellent. 
 
 During the latter years of this reign, the Due de 
 Saint-Simon was secretly writing his Memoires. 
 But, as he continued his observations into the next 
 reign, the consideration of them will be more fit- 
 tingly taken up in another part of this sketch. 
 
 Here should be mentioned Montfleury (1640- 
 1685), the son of an actor and himself a famous 
 actor, as well as author of several comedies, La 
 Femme Jv.ije et Partie, La Fille Capitaine, and 
 L'Ecole du Jaloux. La Fontaine, too, as a writer 
 of comedy, deserves a. separate mention. Le Flo- 
 rentin, a little piece written to sting Lulli, who had 
 rejected an opera of his in favor of Quinault's 
 Alceste, was his only comedy that took a perma- 
 nent place on the French stage. Boursault (1658 
 1701) had a great success with his Le Hercure 
 yalant, Esope a la cour, and fisope a la ville. His 
 Les Mots d la mode makes fun of words newly 
 brought in by fashion. Baron (1655-1729) has 
 been mentioned in the sketch of Moliere. He 
 wrote comedies with less ability than he played 
 them. Of seven, the Homme d bonne fortune alone 
 has kept the stage.
 
 142 French Literature. 
 
 XL 
 
 UNDEE LOUIS XV. 
 
 Before taking a final leave of the age of Louis 
 XIV., it will be well to mention briefly a few 
 writers, not heretofore named, who properly belong 
 to it : 
 
 Charles Perrault (1628-1703) is chiefly known 
 now by his exquisite Fairy Tales. He was, how- 
 ever, the author of many other and more serious 
 works. His famous controversy with Boileau, on 
 the respective merits of the ancients and moderns, 
 originated in a poem which he read before his fellow 
 Academicians, entitled Le Sibcle de Louis le Grand 
 or The Age of Louis the Great, in which he con- 
 tended that modern authors were greater than the 
 most eminent of the Greek and Roman writers. 
 He seconded this poetical claim for the moderns by 
 the publication of a learned treatise, entitled Par- 
 allele des Ancients et des Modernes, or Parallel be- 
 tween the Ancients and Moderns. Boileau at- 
 tacked him and his propositions in his Reflections 
 on ^LoTLg\rms, (Reflexions sur Longin\ to which Per- 
 rault replied by his Defence of Women (Apologie 
 des Femmes). This controversy led Perrault to 
 make a special study of his contemporaries, which 
 induced him to write his Hommes Illustres du 
 Sttcle de Louis XIV., or Illustrious Men of the Age 
 of Louis XIV. This work contains two hundred 
 critical biographies. The silly controversy about 
 the merits of the ancients and moderns, having 
 passed over into England and engaged the pens of 
 Temple, Boyle, Bentley, Atterbury, and others, 
 finally gave us Swift's Battle of the Books. 
 
 In his old age Perrault produced the charming
 
 Under Louis XV. 143 
 
 Contes des Fees, which he was stimulated to write 
 by the delight inspired in himself and his little 
 friends by the Neapolitan tales of Signer Basile's 
 Pentamerone. Bluebeard, The Sleeping Beauty, 
 Puss in Boots, Riquet with the Tuft, and Little Red 
 Hiding Hood are among these pleasant creations, or 
 rather revivals of old folk-lore. 
 
 Another author of pleasing fairy-tales was the 
 Comtesse d'Aunoy (1650-1705), to whom we owe 
 The Yellow Dwarf, The White Cat, and Cherry 
 and Fair Star. Her sentimental novels, Hippolyte 
 and Comte de Dug las have passed into oblivion, and 
 her historical memoirs are not considered trust- 
 worthy. Along with these should be mentioned 
 Madame Villeneuve's Conies Marines, published in 
 1740, in which appeare.d the charming story of 
 Beauty and the Beast. 
 
 Two oriental scholars, D'Herbelot and Galland, 
 deserve mention as aiding in the delightful task of 
 entertaining the young? 
 
 Barthelemy d'Herbelot (1625-1 695) was professor 
 of Syriac in the College of France. His Biblio- 
 thZque Orientale, or Eastern Library, was published 
 after his death by Galland. This work contained 
 a great store of information about the manners and 
 customs and legends of the Arabians, Persians, and 
 Turks, from which writers fond of the marvelous 
 drew their material for a vast number of oriental 
 tales. Among these may be mentioned the Persian 
 Tales, of Petit de la Croix, and Gueullette's Tartar 
 Tales, Chinese Tales, and Mongol Tales. But by far 
 the richest collection was Galland's translation of 
 the famous Arabian Nights' Entertainments. 
 
 Antoine Galland (1646-1715) was a distinguished 
 orientalist and numismatist. Accompanying the 
 French ambassador, Nointel, to Constantinople, he 
 made some travel in the East, and, after twice again 
 visiting those lands, he became professor of Arabic 
 in the College of France. Besides his great trans- 
 lation, he wrote several works on the East and on
 
 144 French Literature. 
 
 numismatics, a collection of Eastern sayings, and 
 The Indian Tales and Fables of Bidpai and Lok- 
 man. 
 
 The wonderful tales of the Thousand and one 
 Nights were at first thought to be the invention of 
 Galland's own genius, in spite of his assertion that 
 they were translated from the Arabic. But it has 
 long ago been well ascertained that they are genu- 
 ine Arabian tales, though probably originating 
 from various sources, Indian, Persian, Arabian, and 
 even perhaps, in some cases, Greek. The Baron 
 de Sacy's opinion as to the origin of the book is 
 thus stated : 
 
 "It appears to me that it was originally written in 
 Syria, and in the vulgar dialect ; that it was never com- 
 pleted by its author; that, subsequently, imitators en- 
 deavored to perfect the work, either by the insertion of 
 novels already known, but which formed no part of the 
 original collection, or by composing some themselves, 
 with more or less talent, whence arise the great varia- 
 tions observable among the different MSS. of the collec- 
 tion ; that the inserted tales were added at different 
 periods, and perhaps in different countries, but chiefly in 
 Egypt ; and, lastly, that the only thing which can be 
 affirmed, with much appearance of probability, in regard 
 to the time when the work was composed, is that it is 
 not very old, as its language proves, but still that, when 
 it was brought out, the use of tobacco and coffee was un- 
 known, since no mention of either is made in the work." 
 
 Louis the Great left behind him a widow who 
 did not long survive him. This remarkable woman, 
 Francoise D'Aubigne, Marquise de Maintenon 
 (1635-1719), born in a prison; grand -daughter of 
 the great Huguenot captain, and destined to be the 
 greatest enemy of the Huguenots ; glad to escape 
 from poverty by marrying at the age of sixteen the 
 crippled Scarron ; in her widowhood rearing the 
 children of Louis XIV. by his mistress Madame de 
 Montespan ; fascinating the monarch and becoming 
 his wife because she would not be his mistress;
 
 Under Louis XV. 145 
 
 unhappy in the midst of splendor and power this 
 singular child or varying fortunes and of a charac- 
 ter in which good and evil were curiously mingled, 
 belongs to literature through her letters, published 
 in nine volumes nearly half a century after death. 
 They are written with much skill and evince in- 
 tellectual powers of no common order, but differ 
 from most French letters in being serious and 
 reflective. 
 
 The Rtine de Golconde, or Queen of Golconda, of 
 the Chevalier de Boufflers (1644-1711) ought to be 
 mentioned, as well as his Lettres a sa Afore, as grace- 
 fully written and pleasing. He was also the author 
 of many little pieces of gay poetry. 
 
 David Augustin Drueys (1640-1733) renovated 
 the old farce of Patelin, and also, in conjunction 
 with Jean Palaprat, produced two works, Le Grand- 
 eur and Le Muet. 
 
 When Louis XIV. died (1715), his great-grand- 
 son came to the throne with the title of Louis XV.; 
 but the government was for seven years conducted 
 by Philippe, Due D'Orleans, as Regent. The Car- 
 dinal Dubois, who had been Philippe's tutor and 
 had corrupted his character, became prime minis- 
 ter. France was brought to the verge of ruin by the 
 Regent's folly in authorizing the financial schemes 
 of John Law, the Scottish adventurer. The de- 
 bauchery which the Regent had made fashiona- 
 ble continued to characterize the court of the King 
 after he began his personal reign. Ruled in succes- 
 sion by Madame de Pompadour and Madame du 
 Barry, Louis engaged in inglorious wars, made bad 
 alliances and humiliating treaties of peace, coerced 
 the Parlements, exhausted the resources of the 
 country to enrich vile favorites, and left his grand- 
 son, Louis XVI., a heritage of hatred which kept 
 steadily gathering into the storm which was to 
 sweep away all the old institutions of the land. 
 
 To this dissolute period belongs the poet, Jean- 
 Baptiste Rousseau (1670-1741), who must not be 
 10
 
 146 French Literature. 
 
 confounded with the sentimental Jean Jacques. He 
 produced religious poems and licentious epigrams 
 with the same facility. He belonged to a school 
 which is traceable to Chapelle, the father of French 
 epicurean poetry. Chapelle (1626-1684), the con- 
 temporary of Moliere, Racine, and Boileau, indoc- 
 trinated into the taste for voluptuous song the 
 Abbe* de Chaulieu and the Marquis de la Fare, and 
 these led J. B. Eousseau astray. 
 
 Chaulieu (1639-1720) became a veritable pagan 
 in sentiment, and was called the Anacreon of the 
 Temple. There is much charm in his poems. La 
 Fare (1644-1712) was inferior as a poet to Chau- 
 lieu, but he wrote Memoir es, of which historians 
 have gladly availed themselves. 
 
 J. B. Rousseau, who followed these poets in their 
 epicurean vein, produced also fine odes of admir- 
 able harmony, and was the introducer of the can- 
 tata into French literature. He also attempted the 
 opera, but was driven from this field by the successes 
 of Danchet, La Motte, and Fontenelle. 
 
 Madame Dacier, the learned lady of this age who 
 edited so many classical works, had a hot contro- 
 versy with La Motte on the merits of Homer; and 
 La Motte is better remembered by the wit which 
 he displayed in this controversy than by his poetry. 
 Fontenelle came to La Motte's assistance in this af- 
 fair, while Rousseau warmly espoused the other 
 side. But this was an insignificant incident in the 
 career of Fontenelle. He was a man of much 
 greater force than those with whom I have just 
 grouped him. 
 
 Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757), 
 the nephew of the two Corneilles, Pierre and 
 Thomas, at first followed them in the dramatic ca- 
 reer. But his Aspar and Idalie having failed, he 
 betook himself to other literary fields. Besides his 
 Entretiens sur la pluralite des Mondes, his Histoire 
 des Oracles, his Histoire de V Academic des Sciences, 
 his Eloyes des Savants^ and other scholarly and sci-
 
 Under Louis XV. 147 
 
 entific works, he produced Psyche, Bellerophon, and 
 other operas, a musical and dramatic pastoral called 
 Endymion, and a number of comedies, fables, and 
 epigrams. At the age of ninety-two he still wrote 
 madrigals, and when he lay on his death-bed, hav- 
 ing almost completed his hundredth year, he uttered 
 his last bon mot, saying: "I do not suffer, my 
 friends; but I feel a sort of difficulty in living any 
 longer." He was a great social favorite. One of 
 those ladies, who delighted to be numbered among 
 his friends was Madame de Staal, whose piquant 
 Memoires reveal to us the life of that little court of 
 the Duchesse du Maine at Sceaux, which was in 
 opposition to the court of the Regent. Another 
 of his lady friends was that Marquise de Lambert, 
 whose salon was open to him in Paris, and whom 
 we know as a moralist through her Conseils ad- 
 dressed to her son and daughter. 
 
 Quite apart from these shunners of the dissolute 
 revelry of the Regent's court was one who had be- 
 longed always to that gay circle of which Bussy- 
 Rabutin and Saint- Evremond were fair specimens. 
 This was the Comte de Hamilton. He and Saint- 
 Evremond were both about equally French and 
 English at different periods of their lives. Saint- 
 Evremond's wit had got him into trouble and forced 
 him to spend his last years in England. Hamil- 
 ton's fate was also, from other causes, to make him 
 divide his life between France and England. 
 
 Antoine, Comte de Hamilton (1646-1720), sprung 
 from the illustrous Scottish family of that name, 
 was born in Ireland. Brought up in France during 
 the English Revolution, he returned to London 
 at the Restoration. The Revolution of 1688 
 drove him again to France, where he passed the 
 thirty years he was still to live. Although a for- 
 eigner, he is ranked with the leading French mem- 
 oir-writers, on account of his Memoires du Cheva- 
 lier de Grammont, his brother-in-law. This work 
 is a sprightly and witty picture of the dissolute
 
 148 French Literature. 
 
 court of Charles II. of England. Hamilton carries 
 to perfection the art of relating little trifles in such 
 a way as to give them importance. His badinage, 
 less elegant than Voltaire's is perhaps more charm- 
 ing, because more natural. His style is character- 
 ized by French critics, as having all the ease and 
 grace of the best conversation. The coolness with 
 which he narrates the foul and sometimes inhuman 
 incidents, which made up the life of that shameless 
 court of the Kestoration, is perhaps the strongest 
 evidence we can have of the utter corruption of 
 heart and mind which then debased the society in 
 which royalty moved, both in France and Eng- 
 land. 
 
 Turning to the theatre, we find this intermediate 
 period which fills the gap between Moliere and 
 Yoltaire filled by Destouches, Crebillon, Lesage, 
 Lafosse, La Grange-Chancel, and Marivaux. 
 
 Destouches (1680-1754) was particularly success- 
 ful in the comedy of character. Le Glorieux is 
 pronounced by Geruzez to be almost a masterpiece, 
 and Le Philosophe marie to be but little inferior to 
 Le Glorieux. 
 
 Crebillon, the dramatist, must be distinguished 
 from his son, the romancer, whom Sterne bantered 
 for a contest in which each should try to shock the 
 public by indecency more strikingly than his rival. 
 The elder Crebillon made his sensations by an 
 appeal to another vulgar taste of human nature. 
 
 Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon (1674-1762) was 
 born at Dijon. His tragic vein was not deficient 
 in blood at least. He took pleasure in painting 
 crime, and his Electre, Atree, Idomenee, are all trag- 
 edies of the frightful kind. His Rhadamiste et 
 Zenobie had a great success, and is considered by 
 French critics as really fine, true to nature and ter- 
 rible at the same time. 
 
 About this time Lesage produced his Turcaret. 
 He had already written his satirical romance, Le 
 Diable boiteux.
 
 Under Louis XV. 149 
 
 Alain Rene Lesage (1668-1747) was born at 
 Sarzeau, in what is now the department of Morbi- 
 han. From a lawyer he became a writer. Turca- 
 ret was so bitter a satire on the financiers of the 
 day, that he is said to have been offered 100,000 
 francs to suppress it, but he refused to do so. His 
 great work, however, was the immortal Gil Bias 
 of Santillane. There he paints human nature at 
 large, and the keenness of observation, wit, fertility 
 of invention, variety and picturesqueness of the in- 
 cidents, are only equaled by the ease and anima- 
 tion of the style. 
 
 But there was another student of human nature, 
 who was at this time recording in private his ob- 
 servations in a very different mood and in a differ- 
 ent manner, thougn with as trenchant a burin. 
 This was the Due de Saint-Simon, who spent his 
 last years in composing those Memoires, which are 
 among the finest in French literature. 
 
 Louis de Rouvroi, Due de Saint-Simon, (1675- 
 1755) belonged to a noble family which claimed 
 descent from Charlemagne. Pride was the master- 
 principle of his character, his ruling passion through 
 life. Fanatical on the subject of aristocratic rights 
 and privileges, he was as hostile almost to the 
 court as to the middle class of society. " He was 
 as nearly," says Macaulay, " an oppositionist as 
 any man of his time. His disposition was proud, 
 bitter, and cynical. In religion he was a Jansenist : 
 in politics, a less hearty royalist than most of his 
 neighbors. His opinions and his temper had pre- 
 served him from the illusions which the demeanor 
 of Louis produced on others. He neither loved 
 nor respected the King." If such were his feelings 
 toward Louis XI V., they were even more unfriendly 
 to the infamous governments which came after the 
 great monarch. 
 
 To such a man it was a dark joy to paint the 
 true characters of those whom he looked upon 
 daily with scorn. Pluming himself on his penetra-
 
 150 French Literature 
 
 tion, and enjoying with an artist's rapture the skill 
 with which he could secretly transfer in burning 
 words to his manuscript the conceptions which his 
 mind had formed of the characters revealing them- 
 selves unconsciously before that questioning eye, 
 he produced for later generations a vast gallery of 
 pen-pictures which vividly illustrate that age of 
 vice and worthlessness. 
 
 "The Due de Saint-Simon," says Bulwer-Lytton, "is 
 partly the Tacitus, partly the Juvenal of the old French 
 regime. Of his style it may be said, as it was of Ter- 
 tullian's, that 'it is like ebony, ^at once dark and splendid.' 
 He stands amid the decay of a perishing social system. 
 The thorough rot of the old regime is clear to his sancti- 
 monious and solemn eye, through 4he cracks of the satin- 
 wood which veneers its worm-eaten substance and 
 bungled joinery. I am far from saying that men, on the 
 whole, were rather good than otherwise, and women, on 
 the whole, rather better than the men, in the world which 
 Saint-Simon knew; but his world was very contracted. 
 His personal vanity served to contract it still more. 
 Marmontel said of him, ' that all which he saw in the nation 
 was the noblesse ; all that he saw in the noblesse was the peer- 
 age; and all that he saw in the peerage was himself an 
 exaggerated judgment, as definitions of character con- 
 densed into sarcasms usually are, but not without a large 
 foundation of truth." 
 
 The Souvenirs of Madame de Caylus describe the 
 same society. Marthe Marguerite de Villette de 
 Murcay, Marquise de Caylus (1673-1729) was a 
 descendant of the D'Aubigne' family, converted to 
 Eomanism by her kinswoman, Madame de Mainte- 
 non. She was famous as a leader of society, and 
 was complimented by Racine in the prologue to his 
 play of Esther. Her worthless husband having 
 died, she offended tlie King then in his highly 
 moral stage under Madame de Maintenon's influ- 
 ence by becoming the mistress of the Due de Ville- 
 roi, but on the death of Madame de Maintenon 
 she was allowed to return to the court, over which
 
 Under Louis XV. 151 
 
 the Regent and Dubois were by that time presiding. 
 In her memoirs she testifies to Louis the XIV.'s 
 excellence in language. 
 
 We have seen Port Royal destroyed against the 
 protests of Pascal. It left, however, three disciples, 
 whose virtues were to prove the excellence of the 
 school in which they were trained. These were 
 the younger Racine, Rollin, and Daguesseau, warm 
 friends and steady believers, in an age of faithless- 
 ness and skepticism. 
 
 Lonis Racine (1692-1763), son of Jean, was a 
 gentle poet, more remarkable for being one of the 
 first among his countrymen to study English liter- 
 ature, than for his own productions, which lack 
 vigor. He attempted the translation of Milton's 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 Charles Rollin (1661-1741) was principal of the 
 College of Beauvais at the time of the elder 
 Racine's death, and it was to his care that young Louis 
 was intrusted by -iris father. Rollin's whole life 
 was passed in the business of education, and he 
 was twice Rector of the University of Paris. His 
 Histoire ancienne, though for several generations a 
 most popular work, has been wholly superseded by 
 the greater accuracy of modern methods in the 
 study of history, and a philosophic treatment of the 
 subject which never entered into the thoughts of 
 Rollin. His utter ignorance of the principles of 
 historical criticism makes him regard all ancient 
 authorities as of about equal value. Villemain, 
 however, praises him highly both as man and his- 
 torian. 
 
 Henri Frangois Daguesseau (1668-1751), Chan- 
 cellor of France, was the great jurist of his age. 
 He lost his high office on account of his firm oppo- 
 sition to the wild schemes of the speculator Law. 
 In his retirement he composed his Considerations sur 
 les Ifonnaies and the Mtmoire sur le commerce des ac- 
 tions de le compaynie des Indes, profound treatises on 
 political economy. When the Mississippi scheme
 
 152 French Literature. 
 
 failed, Lh,guesseau was recalled and restored to his 
 place. Eesisting the Regent again, when Dubois 
 was allowed to take precedence of the Princes of 
 the Blood, he was a second time sent to his country 
 house at Fresne. He was, however, restored to his 
 functions, and exercised them until when more than 
 eighty years of age he retired from his high post. 
 His eloquence, learning, probity, and wonderful 
 memory are warmly praised by Saint-Simon, in a 
 passage in which he strongly censures him for those 
 very political virtues which to other minds and in 
 freer lands so greatly enchance the glory of his 
 character. To his works already mentioned should 
 be added his Meditetions, his Metaphysiques, the 
 Essai dune Institution au Droit Public, an unfin- 
 ished work called Reflexions diverses sur Jesus 
 Christ, and the famous Mercuriales. 
 
 These last were set discourses, delivered either 
 by the Procureur General or one of his substitutes, 
 the Advocats-Gene'raux, at the opening of the terms 
 of the Parlement. It was in the exercise of this 
 office that Daguesseau delivered the eighteen Mer- 
 curiales, which are published in his works. These 
 discourses were lectures on various points of official 
 duty, to which the Parlement was bound needfully 
 to listen. Daguesseau's subjects are the indepen- 
 dence of the advocate, the love of the profession, 
 the dignity of the magistrate, and other qualities 
 required of him. Hugh S. Legard, in the account 
 of him which he gave in the Southern Review says: 
 
 " His mind and his heart were equally and perfectly 
 well disciplined. He had received the sort of education 
 which metaphysicians have mentioned as the best practi- 
 cal fruit of mental philosophy. All the powers and ca- 
 pacities of his intellectual and moral being seem to have 
 been cultivated with a view to its highest perfection. His 
 was that harmony of character, the music of the well-at- 
 tuned soul, in which the Platonists in their dreams of that 
 perfection make it to consist. Truth and beauty eter- 
 nal truth, the unblemished form of ideal beauty which
 
 Under Louis XV. 158 
 
 can neither vary nor fade away were never revealed in 
 greater purity and loveliness to the vision of any man. 
 In those admirable discourses the Mercuriahs Dagues- 
 seau has embodied, so to speak, his conceptions of excel- 
 lence, and not the mere naked conceptions, as a metaphy- 
 sician might have done, but glowing with life, radiant with 
 glory, clothed in such shapes and hues as genius is sure 
 to bestow upon the objects of its ' desiring phantasy.' 
 His works are justly pronounced, by his last editor, one 
 of the best courses of lectures on rhetoric and morals, 
 that is anywhere to be found. Throughout the whole 
 range of his inquiries involving all the subjects that are 
 most interesting to man as a social and responsible being 
 religion, ethics, jurisprudence, political justice, and po- 
 litical economy, literature, metaphysics the same en- 
 larged views, the same refined criticism, the same sound 
 judgment are everywhere displayed, in a style, which we 
 cannot better characterize than by saying that it is in 
 every respect worthy of the age of Racine and Boileau 
 and Bossuet and Fenelon.'' 
 
 Pure as Daguesseau in character, but exceedingly 
 unlike him in judgment, was the abbe de Saint- 
 Pierre (1658-174:3). Romantic and impracticable 
 schemes were the dream of his life. He must not 
 be confounded with Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the 
 author of Paul et Virginie, who lived a century 
 later. The Abbe de Saint-Pierre's numerous writ- 
 ings, setting forth all sorts of projects for the ad- 
 vancement of society and the furtherance of human 
 happiness, have all passed out of date. But some 
 of his ideas were carried out after the expulsion of 
 the Bourbons from the throne. These dreams of 
 political and social reform were supplemented by 
 Quesnay's dissertations on political economy and 
 Montesquieu's thoughts on the philosophy of his- 
 tory. 
 
 Frangois Quesnay (1694-1774), eminent as a phy- 
 sician, is noted as the earliest writer on political 
 economy and as the inventor of the term. His 
 principal works were Maximes Generales du Gou- 
 vernement Economique d'un Royaume Ayricole, Le
 
 154 French Literature. 
 
 Droit Naturel, Probllmes Economiques, and Dia- 
 logues sur le Commerce et sur les Travaux des Arti- 
 sans. He was also one of the contributors to the 
 famous Encyclopedic, edited by D'Alembert and 
 Diderot. 
 
 Montesquieu's place in the thought of this age is 
 a high one. His views were noble and his scope of 
 view was wide. His learning was sufficient to 
 serve as a basis for his sound judgment to build 
 upon, and his imagination served him well in ena- 
 bling him to bring charmingly witty satire to the 
 aid of his good sense and just discrimination in the 
 sphere of political thought. 
 
 Charles de Sconedat, Baron de la B rede et de 
 Montesquieu (1689-1755) was born at his father's 
 chateau of Brede, near Bordeaux. He became 
 early in life President of the Parlement of Bor- 
 deaux. His first work was the famous Persian Let- 
 ters (Lettres Persanes), a satire still diverting to the 
 modern reader from its exquisite humor and the 
 pungency of its criticisms of contemporary man- 
 ners and customs, as well as from the variety of 
 its topics. These keen thrusts at folly, sometimes 
 taking the neatest epigrammatic form, are put into 
 the supposed correspondence of a Persian resident 
 in Paris. 
 
 Montesquieu had been anticipated, in this idea 
 of imagining a foreigner's surprise at the customs 
 of the country, by Dufresny (1648-1724), the writer 
 of comedies, in his Amusements serieux et comiques. 
 But Montesquieu's execution of the idea is far 
 richer, stronger, and more subtle. In invention, 
 wit, humor of contrast, political insight, compre- 
 hensiveness in scope of his satire, he has so enlarged 
 and enriched the conception as to have made it 
 fairly his own. 
 
 Travel abroad, especially in England, aided 
 greatly in enlightening Montesquieu's mind on 
 political questions. It was after his return from 
 England that he published the work which showed
 
 Under Louis XV. 155 
 
 the thoughtfulness and vigorof his mind ; his Causes 
 of the Greatness and Decline of the Romans (Con- 
 siderations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains 
 et de leur decadence). The style of this work is 
 marked by a sententious precision of statement 
 which is brilliant and effective. A work, however, 
 of fur higher aim was his Spirit of Laws(s/?n des 
 Lois), which sought to examine and describe in a 
 systematic manner the relation between the laws of 
 different states and the genius and fortunes of the 
 races constituting them. The Spirit of Laws was 
 immensely popular, especially in England. 
 
 In one part of his subject, the origin of the 
 French monarchy, Montesquieu had been preceded 
 by two antagonistic writers, the Cornte de Boulain 
 villiers (1658-1722) and the Abbe Dubos (167<K 
 1742), both of whom he handsomely complimented, 
 while differing from the views of both. The 
 Abbe Dubos had produced an excellent work in his 
 Reflexions sur la pojsie et la peinture, which might 
 well be set off against his vagaries on the subject 
 of the philosophy of history. 
 
 Montesquieu's personal character was as noble as 
 his works were strong and sensible. His tempera- 
 ment was sunny and sweet. It is given to few men, 
 as Geruzez remarks, to say as Montesquieu did : 
 " Every day I wake up to see the light again with 
 an ineffable joy." 
 
 He delighted in solitary reflection, and yet, on 
 the other hand, few social spirits have found greater 
 pleasure in intercourse with their fellows than he. 
 D'Alembert testifies to his charm in society, com- 
 menting on his genial gaiety, his agreeable powers 
 in conversation, his wit free from bitterness and 
 sarcasm, his skill in story -telling, and his occasional 
 fits of absence of mind made amusing by his 
 pleasant way of recovering himself.
 
 156 French Literature. 
 
 XII. 
 
 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 IN judging a man's character, it is unwise and 
 unjust to separate him from his age. It is pecul- 
 iarly fitting that he should be judged by his age, 
 when, as in the case of Voltaire, his is the greatest 
 nameof his age. His varied excellence, his immense 
 influence, his prolonged period of intellectual work, 
 entitle him to an extraordinary place in the litera- 
 ture of his country. On the other hand, his open 
 unbelief, the mockery which he directed against 
 everything held sacred by others, the bitterness of 
 his assaults upon Christianity, have combined to 
 give him a bad eminence, and to fill the minds of 
 many good men with a horror of him and his 
 writings. 
 
 But, when we come to look deeply into the his- 
 tory of his times, it is easy to see how a mind, 
 clear, subtle, bold, and naturally honest, was 
 brought to indignant revolt against such religion 
 as he saw around him the horrible hypocrisy of 
 Louis XIV.'s court in those later years when 
 Madame de Maintenon was making the outward 
 profession of piety fashionable while its lack of 
 depth kept it from seeking the truth for itself with 
 vital earnestness. For, brilliant as was Voltaire's 
 intellect, it had no capacity for original thought. 
 
 But, behind this passion against the frauds which 
 he took to be religion and this passion was really 
 a form of his ardent enthusiasm for the principles 
 of toleration there were, under all his frivolity 
 and vanity, some noble traits in Voltaire's charac- 
 ter. The courage, the skill, the steady obstinacy, 
 with which he defended and rescued the unfortu-
 
 Voltaire. 157 
 
 nate ^amily of Galas from the furious bigots of 
 Toulouse ; the intrepidity with which he opposed 
 the fanaticism which had cut out the tongue of poor 
 La Barre ; the wit and penetration which exposed 
 the wretched mask of piety worn by those to 
 whom the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was 
 due, ought to weigh for something in the scale 
 against that ribaldry and blasphemy at which good 
 men rightly shudder. There was something sound 
 about the heart of that man, who could for years 
 wear mourning on the anniversary of the massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew's Day, and whose fury at the 
 thought of the shameful scenes enacted then made 
 those who lived about him declare that he actually- 
 had a fever on each recurrence of the day. Indeed, 
 the strongest unselfish feeling of his heart, a feeling 
 that seems to have really amounted to a passion, was 
 the hatred of intolerance. It was his strongest virtue, 
 and it gathered other virtues about it, for neither 
 vices nor virtues dwell alone. It led him to do 
 justice to Saint Louis, in spite of his scorn for the 
 Middle Ages of which, indeed, the eighteenth cen- 
 tury was profoundly ignorant; and to Henri IV., 
 because that monarch preferred the peace of his 
 country to the uncertain triumph of the creed for 
 which he had fought. 
 
 Nor was his tolerance the fruit of total indiffer- 
 ence in religious matters. He turned away in dis- 
 gust from the atheism of D'Holbach and Lamettrie, 
 Grimm and Diderot. He was, in truth, a sincere 
 deist, and always spoke with reverence of the 
 Supreme Ruler of the universe. His disbelief in 
 Christianity was the natural result of the corrupt 
 form of Christianity which was all that the society 
 of his day had to show him in the way of religious 
 life. 
 
 Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1778), the younger 
 son of the Sieur Arouet, who owned, it is said, a 
 small estate called Voltaire though, according to 
 Garlyle, the name is simply an anagram of A
 
 158 French Literature. 
 
 le jeune v9u,s born at Chatenay, near Sceaux. His 
 mother, Marguerite d'Aumart, was of a noble fam- 
 ily of Poitou. It was not until he was twenty 
 years of age that he assumed the name of Voltaire. 
 His father was able to give him a good edu- 
 cation and leave him a competent fortune. 
 He was early introduced by his godfather, 
 the Abbe de Chateauneuf, into fashionable society, 
 and especially to the celebrated Ninon de 1'Enclos, 
 the beautiful, graceful, witty, and accomplished 
 Aspasia of her age. The mistress, in succession, of 
 most of the great men of her long life, she was yet 
 admired by the most respectable women among her 
 contemporaries as a model of taste and elegance. 
 Her mental powers were such, that Scarron, 
 Moliere, and La Eochefoucauld are said to have con- 
 sulted her before giving the final shape to some 
 of their work. 
 
 She was now no longer young, but still held her 
 place in society by her many charms. Indeed, she 
 had won a fresh popularity by her refusal to accept 
 the offers of her old friend, Madame de Maintenon, 
 to introduce her at court, provided she would be- 
 come devout. The gay world outside the court 
 honored her for this honesty in vice, for it was 
 thought a degrading hypocrisy as in fact it was 
 to be devout at Louis's court, where fashion had 
 put on that mask so lately. This remarkable 
 woman was eighty -five when Voltaire was presented 
 to her. But the boy of twenty pleased her. As 
 Bulwer Lytton says: 
 
 " Ninon de 1'Enclos took a fancy to this brilliant 
 boy ; Ninon de 1'Enclos took a fancy to a great many 
 brilliant boys, much more adapted to strike the eye and 
 the senses of an antiquated beauty than the spindle- 
 shanked son of the notary Arouet ; but Ninon distin- 
 guished young Arouet from other brilliant boys in this 
 
 she left him two thousand francs. The youth destined to 
 convulse nations . knew by intuition that a man who 
 would raise himself into a power should begin by secur-
 
 Voltaire. 159 
 
 ing a pecuniary independence. It has been said of some 
 writers that, from the first, they always tenderly nursed 
 their fame. Voltaire did not do that ; he sported with 
 his fame, but he always tenderly nursed his fortune. He 
 early foresaw that his future life would be, as he defined 
 it later, a combat, and accordingly took care betimes to 
 provide himself with the sinews of war. By skilful spec- 
 ulations in the commerce of Cadiz, and in the purchase 
 of corn in Barbary still more happily by obtaining, 
 through what we should now call a job, an interest dans 
 les vivres de farmee I'ltalie, which brought him in 
 800,000 francs, he established a capital which, as he 
 invested it in life annuities, yielded an income far above 
 that enjoyed by the average number of the half-ruined 
 nobles of France." 
 
 But, before the period of these financial successes, 
 he had offended his father by his verse- writing and 
 frequenting gay society, besides falling into a love- 
 scrape at the Hague when there with the Marquis 
 de Chateauneuf ambassador to Holland; had re- 
 gained his fatlfer's favor by consenting to enter an 
 attorney's office ; had been suspected of writing a 
 political satire on the government of Louis XIV., 
 then lately deceased ; and had been sent to the 
 Bastille. There he finished his tragedy of (Edipe 
 and began the poem called at first La Ligue, which 
 appeared afterwards as the Henriade. 
 
 Released from prison on the establishment of his 
 innocence, his CEdipe was performed in 1718, and 
 met with brilliant success. It was really an able 
 play, and would have been finer still, had not the 
 wretched taste of the day and the insistance of the 
 players who knew the public taste, forced Voltaire 
 to mingle with the terror and horror of his Greek 
 subject the incongruity of a love story. In the 
 plays with which he next tried his fortune before 
 the Parisian audiences, he was not so successful. 
 
 Meanwhile he had been to Holland again, and 
 before his return to France had made at Brussels 
 the acquaintance of the poet Rousseau, who then
 
 160 French Literature. 
 
 resided t^ere. They soon quarreled, however. 
 Shortly after, a dispute at the dinner-table of the 
 Due de Sulli with the Chevalier de Kohan resulted 
 in the latter employing his lackeys to waylay and 
 beat Voltaire. On Voltaire's challenging him to 
 fight, the despicable courtier procured a lettre de 
 cachet to be issued, by which his adversary was 
 consigned for the second time to the Bastille. 
 
 Released at the end of six months, with orders to 
 quit Paris, he withdrew to England. This visit, 
 like the similar one of Montesquieu, had impor- 
 tant bearings on his future political and philo- 
 sophical thought. Voltaire was much struck with 
 the practical workings of the English Constitution. 
 He learned something too of the scientific work of 
 Newton, the metaphysical speculations of Locke, 
 Shaftesbury, and Bolingbroke, and the literature at 
 the head of which even the men of that age of 
 " town-wits " reckoned that monstrous Shakspeare 
 whose genius neither they nor Voltaire could ever 
 comprehend. 
 
 Returning to France at the end of two years, he 
 met in the gay Parisian circles a fascinating Mar- 
 quise of twenty-four, to whom he attached himself. 
 This lady, the wife of the Marquis du Chatelet, had, 
 as Mademoiselle Gabrielle Emilie de Breteuil, been 
 of great assistance to the gambling ladies of the 
 court by her wonderful calculating powers. Mar- 
 ried while a mere child to a man many years older 
 than herself, and living in a society that rather 
 plumed itself on its immoralities, she accepted Vol- 
 taire's addressea The debts of the husband being 
 heavy enough to force him to economy, he deter- 
 mined to retire to his estate of Cirey in Cham- 
 pagne. Voltaire, who had lent him money, and 
 was on excellent terms with him, made one of the 
 country party. The Marquis did not remain long 
 in his rural retreat, though he would occasionally 
 leave Paris for a brief visit to the little establish- 
 ment at Cirey.
 
 Voltaire. 161 
 
 In this seclusion Voltaire seems to have passed 
 his happiest years. Here he studied physical and 
 mathematical science with Madame du Chatelet, 
 and composed most of his philosophical works. 
 He also wrote here his Zaire, Ahire, Mahomet, and 
 the Histoire de Charles XII. In 1737, the subject 
 of the prize essay to be furnished the Academy of 
 Science was The Nature of Fire and its Propagation. 
 Both Voltaire and Madame du Chatelet competed 
 for the prize, but neither he nor she was successful. 
 Their essays, however, were printed as a mark of 
 approval. The prize was gained by the great sci- 
 entist Euler. The paper prepared by Voltaire is 
 considered, by so high an authority in scientific 
 matters as Lord Brougham, as indicating his pos- 
 session of the scientific genius in a high degree. 
 His interest in science and his Lettres sur lesAnylais 
 did a great work in widening the views of his 
 countrymen and opening up to them new fields of 
 effort. 
 
 To wean Madame du Chatelet from her distaste 
 for historical studies, he sketched out a great plan 
 of history and began his Essai sur les Mwurs. This 
 is really a sketch of the history of civilization from 
 the time of Charlemagne, and with all its faults, 
 and especially its failure to trace the beneficent 
 effects of Christianity on the corrupt Roman world 
 and the barbaric world of the Teutonic invaders of 
 the empire, it possesses great merits. It is, in the 
 main, candid, just, and generous in its treatment of 
 men and races. 
 
 Madame du Chatelet's death in 1748 brought 
 this part of Voltaire's life to a close. About this 
 time an affront to his pride that stung him to the 
 quick made him desirous of leaving France. The 
 small wits of the day, eager to spite him, found out 
 a way to wound his self-love. His place as incon- 
 testably the first of French tragic poets was assailed. 
 " Old Crebillon," says Macaulay, " who, many years 
 before, had obtained some theatrical success, and 
 11
 
 162 French Literature. 
 
 who had long been forgotten, came forth from his 
 garret in one of the meanest lanes near the Rue St. 
 Antoine, and was welcomed by the acclamations of 
 envious men of letters, and of a capricious populace. 
 A thing called Catiline, which he had written in 
 his retirement, was acted with boundless applause. 
 Of this execrable piece it is sufficent to say, that 
 the plot turns on a love affair, carried on in all the 
 forms of Scudery, between Catiline, whose confidant 
 is the Praetor Lentulus, and Tullia, the daughter of 
 Cicero. The theatre resounded with acclamations. 
 The king pensioned the successful poet ; and the 
 coffee-houses pronounced that Voltaire was a clever 
 man, but that the real tragic inspiration, the celes- 
 tial fire which glowed in Corneille and Racine, was 
 to be found in Cre'billon alone." 
 
 Voltaire's furious anger drove him to the folly 
 of competing with Cre'billon. His plays were on 
 the same subjects as those Cre'billon had treated, 
 and were not very well received. Frederick the 
 Great's flattering invitations to come to Berlin 
 reaching him at this time, when he was disgusted 
 with Paris and also released by Madame du Chate- 
 let's death from ties of any kind in France, he ac- 
 cepted in an evil hour the Prussian King's overtures. 
 He had complained of absolutism in union with 
 the hypocrisy of a religion such as that Madame 
 de Maintenon had forced on the court of Louis XIV. 
 He had suffered from that absolutism two imprison- 
 ments in the Bastille, and exile after the second. 
 He was now to experience the tender mercies of 
 absolutism associated with infidelity and with the 
 name of philosophy. 
 
 But the treatment which he received from Fred- 
 erick, however disgraceful to the King, was richly 
 deserved by Voltaire ; for by his own confession his 
 insincerity from the very beginning of their inter- 
 course fully equaled that of the Prussian monarch. 
 It is needless to go in detail through the whole 
 story. It is told by Macaulay in his liveliest man-
 
 Voltaire. 163 
 
 ner, in the essay on Frederick the Great. In brief 
 outline, this episode in Voltaire's life runs thus : 
 
 Frederick, whose whole reading was in French 
 literature, and who sincerely admired Voltaire as 
 its greatest glory, however extravagant and ful- 
 some were the flatteries which he addressed to the 
 poet, invited him at this time to his court, to ac- 
 cept the office of Chamberlain, the cross of an 
 Order, and a pension of about four thousand dollars 
 for life. He was allowed to bring with him his 
 niece, Madame Denis. In the correspondence be- 
 tween the King and the philosopher, excessive lau- 
 dations were lavished on both sides. " He treated 
 me," said Voltaire afterwards, " as a divine man ; I 
 treated him as a Solomon." The invitation was 
 accepted, and in 1750 Voltaire left Paris for Berlin, 
 not to return until thirty years had been passed in 
 exile. 
 
 Arrived at Berlin, he was welcomed with eager 
 delight. The King and his courtiers played at 
 philosophy. The atheists Frederick had gathered 
 about him grew jealous of the more brilliant and 
 satirical deist. Intrigues and quarrels followed. 
 The King, who had requested Voltaire to criticise 
 and correct his own royal and very bad verses, was 
 told of a speech of the malicious wit's about Fred- 
 erick's sending him his dirty linen to wash. Vol- 
 taire was told of a speech of the King's about his 
 only caring to squeeze the orange and intending to 
 throw it away when he had swallowed the juice. 
 Then Voltaire attacked with his bitter ridicule 
 Maupertuis the philosopher, whom Frederick had 
 made President of the Royal Academy of Prussia. 
 Frederick wrote in the President's defence, and, by 
 way of further criticism, ordered Voltaire's witty 
 pamphlet, La Diatribe (TAkdkia, to be burned by 
 the hands of the common hangman. Voltaire's 
 rage was soon curbed by the reflection that he was 
 in the power of a despot. He dissembled for a time, 
 and at last obtained permission to leave the king-
 
 }64 French Literature. 
 
 <lom. At Frankfort he was arrested by a brutal 
 emissary of the King's, on the pretence that he had 
 carried oft' Frederick's poetry with him. The book 
 had inadvertently been brought away in his bag- 
 gage. It was returned, but Voltaire and his niece 
 were still detained for a time and treated with 
 great indignity, a large sum of money being ex- 
 torted from them by the wretches who kept them 
 confined. When Voltaire made Europe ring with 
 his indignant account of the outrage, Frederick dis- 
 owned responsibility for the act ; but its perpetra- 
 tors were never punished. A sort of reconciliation 
 was patched up years afterwards between the 
 King and Voltaire, and their correspondence was 
 renewed ; but there was never again cordiality or 
 confidence between them. 
 
 Voltaire now took up his residence in Switzer- 
 land at a place near Geneva, which he called Les 
 Delices. Later, he purchased Ferney on the shores 
 of the lovely Lake Leman near the French frontier, 
 where he lived through the closing yea*"! of his 
 life. 
 
 From this place of refuge he poured forth a mul- 
 titude of pamphlets, tales, poems, and histories, 
 avowing only the great dramatic and historical 
 works and some of the poems ; denying, sometimes 
 vehemently, and even to his best friends, his author- 
 ship of a whole literature of satires, pasquinades, 
 criticisms, and dissertations political, metaphysical, 
 and theological. As Macaulay well says: "From 
 the time when his sojourn beneath the Alps com- 
 menced, the dramatist, the wit, the historian, was 
 merged in a more important character. He was 
 now the patriarch, the founder of a sect, the chief 
 of a conspiracy, the prince of a wide intellectual 
 commonwealth. He often enjoyed a pleasure dear 
 to the better part of his nature, the pleasure of vin- 
 dicating innocence which had no other helper, of 
 punishing tyranny in high places. He had also the 
 satisfaction, not less acceptable to his ravenous van-
 
 Voltaire. 165 
 
 ity, of hearing terrified Capuchins call him the 
 Antichrist." 
 
 Here, in his old age, at war with all the world, 
 his most generous actions were performed. The 
 grand-niece of the great Corneille was in want : be 
 provided for her, had her carefully educated at Fer- 
 ney under his own eye, and issued a fine edition of 
 Corneille's works purposely to raise from its pro- 
 ceeds a sum sufficient for her support. 
 
 Jean Galas of Toulouse, a Protestant, was by the 
 fanatical parlement of that city unjustly and inhu- 
 manly to be broken on the wheel for the pretended 
 murder of his son because of his intention to abjure 
 heresy. The awful sentence was carried out, and 
 the property of Galas was confiscated. The young- 
 est son was banished, but, captured by the monks, 
 was forced to become a Catholic. The daughters 
 were sent to a convent. The widow Galas escaped 
 to Switzerland, _and aroused the interest of Voltaire, 
 whose indignation found vent in his work Sur la 
 Tolerance, in which the fanaticism which had ruined 
 this poor family was exposed in burning words. 
 The affair was investigated, and the innocence of 
 all the accused was fully established. Louis XV. 
 gave the sum of 30,000 livres to the survivors. 
 But neither the Parlement of Toulouse, nor the 
 Dominican monks who had kindled the flame of 
 fanaticism, were punished. 
 
 Similar exertions in behalf of humanity were made 
 by Voltaire in the case of the cruel punishment in- 
 flicted on the boy La Barre for blasphemy by the 
 fanaticism of the priests at Abbeville. 
 
 Meanwhile the old patriarch of letters kept up a 
 voluminous correspondence with able men in all 
 ranks of life and in every part of Europe, a corre- 
 spondence, the political dexterity of which, in addi- 
 tion to the genius pat forth in his other writings, 
 acknowledged and unacknowledged, created and 
 maintained for him an influence which made men 
 count him as one of the great powers of Europe.
 
 166 French Literature. 
 
 Amid all these labors and triumphs, the old 
 Frenchman's heart still longed for a sight of Paris. 
 The marriage of a young lady who was under 
 Madame Denis's charge took him at last to the 
 scene of his early dramatic successes. His tragedy 
 of Irtne had just been finished, and he was to see it 
 played before an audience of another generation 
 from that which had witnessed the performance of 
 Zaire and Merope. 
 
 The people of Paris were in a tumult of enthu- 
 siasm at the sight of the old patriarch, who had for 
 two generations been at the head of French litera- 
 ture and had for a score of years past been keeping 
 Europe in a ferment with his war against tyranny, 
 injustice, and superstition. They followed his car- 
 riage through the streets. They were hours stand- 
 ing before his windows. They supported his feeble 
 steps when he came down the stairway. His bust 
 was crowned with applause at the theatre. He was 
 surrounded everywhere with marks of respect and 
 evidences of attachment. Cries of joy, bursts of 
 acclamation, tears of enthusiastic emotion, greeted 
 him wherever he showed himself. But what moved 
 him most, says Condorcet, was a simple little inci- 
 dent that recalled, not the great works of wit and 
 fancy which he had written, but one brave and un- 
 selfish service to outraged humanity. " Who is it 
 they are following ? " asked a stranger, who chanced 
 to be in Paris at this time, of an old woman in the 
 streets " Who is the old man the people are 
 crowding after?" The good woman knew nothing 
 of him as the author of Zaire and Candide. She 
 knew but one title that he had to the people's af- 
 fection. "Do you not know?" said she, "It is the 
 preserver of the family of Galas." 
 
 Others valued him as the great literary master. 
 But all welcomed him to the great capital with such 
 an ovation as it has been rarely the lot of a writer 
 to receive from his countrymen. It was too much 
 for the delighted old man. "They wish, "said he,
 
 Voltaire. 167 
 
 with sincerer tears than he had ever shed before, " to 
 make me die with pleasure." He lost his sleep from 
 excitement and fatigue. The next day he was to re- 
 ceive the eulogies of the Academy. To gain 
 strength for the occasion, he took a dose of opium 
 to woo back the needed sleep. The dose was too 
 large for the old man of eighty-four. He fell 
 into a lethargy, and died, after writing in his last 
 days some words of praise for a decree of the 
 King's, reversing the unjust doom by which the elder 
 Lally-Tollendal had perished. The son had pro- 
 cured this reversal, in great measure through Vol- 
 taire's earnest representations of the injustice of 
 the sentence against the old general. 
 
 Of Voltaire's works, so numerous are they, it 
 will be useless to attempt to name any but the more 
 important in the many departments of literature 
 which he essayed. 
 
 His chief epic, the Hgnriade, only serves to show 
 how little adapted French genius is for epic poetry. 
 It is little more than a long poetical argument for 
 tolerance, with a hero whom he would have been 
 glad to describe as of no religion at all, though he 
 professes two. But Voltaire's contemporaries read 
 and admired those ten thousand Alexadrines. 
 
 His other epic, the Pucelle, shameful as it is to 
 France and to Voltaire that any Frenchman should 
 have written so vile and false a calumny of the 
 sublime Maid of Orleans, the great heroine of 
 France, is in literary excellence a far finer work, the 
 most poetical, indeed, of all his writings. Lord 
 Brougham says of it: "In brilliant imagery, in 
 picturesque description, in point and epigram, in 
 boundless fertility of fancy, in variety of striking 
 and vigorous satire, all clothed in verse as natural 
 as Swift's, and far more varied as well as harmo- 
 nious, no prejudice, however naturally raised by 
 the moral faults of the work, can prevent us from 
 regarding it as the great masterpiece of his poetical 
 genius." What ;i pity it is that, like Byron in the.
 
 168 French Literature. 
 
 case of his Don Juan, he should have put his high- 
 est powers into a work, the very conception of 
 which is an infamy, and in composing which he 
 seems to have cast all the restraints of decency or 
 even common good feeling to the winds ! 
 
 His chief tragedies were CEdipe, Zaire, Alzire, 
 Mahomet, Merope, Oreste, Rome sauvee, Semiramis, 
 the Orphelin de la Chine, TancrMe, and Irtne. 
 They exhibit great genius, but lack that intense 
 tone of reality which alone makes a play a true 
 mirror of human life. They are made from the 
 brain, not from the soul. Well-contrived plots, 
 well-conceived characters, occasionally fine stage- 
 effects, brilliant declamation, go to make up plays that 
 may read well and act well. But something more 
 is needed for really great plays. In Voltaire's, as in 
 Sheridan's, and, to some extent, in those of Beau- 
 marchais, the characters all talk well, many of them 
 too well for the parts they are to fill. All speak 
 the same terse, epigrammatic language. It was 
 Moilere's deliberate avoidance of this, which 
 brought upon him Boileau's charge that he some- 
 times debased the language by introducing provin- 
 cialisms and patois. 
 
 But Moliere was right and Boileau wrong. Vol- 
 taire's more serious passages, too, are mere rhetoric; 
 he never rises to the eloquence of deep emotion. 
 The peculiar monotony of French heroic verse, in- 
 deed, makes it difficult for the swell of feeling to 
 rise into, anything higher than grandiose declama- 
 tion. Thomas Moore, the delicacy of whose ear 
 for the music of verse no one will dispute, notes in his 
 diary the curiously marked sing-song of the French 
 tragic metre: "Mademoiselle Duchesnois in Jean ne 
 (K Arc. Attended watchfully to her recitative, and 
 find that, in nine lines out of ten, 'A cobbler there 
 was and he lived in a stall,' is the tune of the 
 French heroics." It is true that Corneille and 
 Racine were able to put some heart into even this 
 monotonous verse.
 
 Voltaire. 169 
 
 The subject of Zaire was suggested by Othello. 
 It is considered the finest of his tragedies. Oros- 
 mane, Nerestau, Lusignan, and the heroine Zaire 
 are all masterly creations; and the plot is very hap- 
 pily contrived. Alzire is not so pathetic as Zaire, 
 but it is more brilliant. The scene of the play is 
 that New World, so inviting to fiction, in the fresh- 
 ness of its mingled charm as the sphere in which 
 the deeds of the Spanish Conquistadores con- 
 trast with the wildness of the primeval forest and 
 the picturesqueness of the natives. Alvares, 
 Zamore, Gusman, and, above all, Alzire are ad- 
 mirably conceived characters ; and the old lesson 
 of tolerance which is wrought out in the working 
 of the play is fortunately not allowed to obtrude 
 itself to the detriment of its dramatic interest. 
 
 Mahomet lacks the elements of power the poet 
 could easily have given it in full accordance with 
 historic truth, had he not been dominated by his 
 disbelief in the sincerity of religious faith. He 
 makes the grand mistake of conceiving the Arabian 
 prophet as an impostor. He did not realize the 
 absurdity of making a Tartuffe the founder of a 
 great religion. Mahomet, Omar, and Seide are all 
 so tainted with fraud, that they fail to infuse into 
 the play the essence of dramatic effect. Geruzez 
 well observes, that the Mahomet painted by Vol- 
 taire, far from conquering and converting half the 
 world, would never have succeeded in making a 
 zealot of a single camel-driver. Nothing that he 
 has written shows more strikingly the fatal defect 
 in his genius. "Genius," says Bulwer-Lytton, 
 "may be world- wide, but it should not be world- 
 limited. Voltaire never escapes 'this visible diur- 
 nal sphere.' With all his imagination, he can not 
 comprehend the enthusiasm which lifts itself above 
 the earth." 
 
 Aferope was taken from a piece of the Italian 
 Scipione Maffei, while some of its dramatic effects 
 were borrowed from the Ama^is of La Grange-Chan-
 
 170 French Literature. 
 
 eel. It is the best of Voltaire's plays on Greek legend- 
 ary subjects. Oreste, which he took from Sopho- 
 cles, was spoiled by his concentrating the interest 
 on Clytemnestra. 
 
 His comedies, Nanine and the Enfant prodiyue, 
 the best among his efforts in that branch of the 
 dramatic art, show conclusively that he had no gift 
 in that direction. He, who was so witty, so mali- 
 ciously diverting in his romances, satires, and 
 pamphlets, was in the domain of dramatized mirth 
 a failure. His genius was too subjective for 
 comedy. He could approach Corneille and Racine, 
 but was not able to follow Moliere even afar off. 
 His critical spirit, however, enabled him to cope 
 with Boileau and Pope in didactic poetry. His 
 Discours sur VHomme is a work of great merit. It 
 was more natural to him to address the understand- 
 ing than to move the heart; and the serious reason- 
 ing, with which he sets forth the doctrines of toler- 
 ance and humanity, has the great advantage of sin- 
 cerity, and is couched in clear, strong, and harmo- 
 nious verse. No didactic poetry, indeed, is finer. 
 
 His historical works, besides the Essai sur les 
 moeurs et T esprit des nations, to which I have al- 
 ready alluded, were the Histoire de Charles XII., a 
 model of graceful narrative, and the Siecle de Louis 
 XIV., which would have been much more valuable, 
 had he not unhappily written it on a bad plan, de- 
 stroying its unity by dividing it into separate sub- 
 jects. 
 
 Among the romances, the best are Zadiy, the 
 Ingenu, and Candide. The last is particularly 
 charming. Dr. Johnson, who had a special horror 
 of Voltaire, held it in the greatest admiration. 
 Nothing can be more easy, light, and graceful tban 
 the wit and humor of this tale. 
 
 In his letters and his Memoires, the richness of 
 his fancy, the keenness of his Vision, the neatness 
 of his phrase, the trenchant force and swiftness of 
 his wit, the soundness of his common-sense, the
 
 Voltaire. 171 
 
 grace of his kindlier mood, the point in which he 
 condensed his thought, give him an eminence be- 
 low only the very highest in those departments of 
 literature. Indeed, when we see how nearly he 
 touches the supreme of excellence in tragedy, satire, 
 didactic verse, history, tales, romances, letters, 
 memoirs, controversial pamphlets, scientific essays, 
 anything and everything except comedy, we can- 
 not fail to be amazed at the fertility and versatility 
 of his genius, and the wide sweep and sparkle of 
 his powers. If he lacked depth, he had everything 
 else.
 
 172 French Literature. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 ROUSSEAU, THE STAGE, AND THE ENCYCLOPEDISTS. 
 
 YOLTAIRE was the strongest representative of 
 the skeptical and scoffing spirit of his age. Rous- 
 seau was the representative of the protest of the 
 human heart against this endless negation. In 
 him this protest took the form of sentimentalism, 
 warmed into intense fervor by an imagination 
 thrilled through with sensuous passion. His pro- 
 test was not directed consciously against the de- 
 structive philosophy of the age, for, while these 
 philosophers tried to disprove the laws on which 
 the accepted conventions of society rested, Rous- 
 seau scorned the conventions themselves, strove to 
 overbear them with the enthusiasm of his senti- 
 mental creed, and struck at the foundations of all 
 society with such wild logic as he had at his com- 
 mand. His was, then, no formal opposition to the 
 thought of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists, but the 
 vague yet powerful cry of the oppressed, which be- 
 came later a furious cry that found its logical out- 
 come in the rude force of revolt, and has in our 
 day reached its climax in the lawlessness of com- 
 munism. 
 
 His influence as a social force has been more in- 
 tense than that of Voltaire; but the thought of 
 Voltaire, commending itself as it does to the 
 worldly-minded in civilized communities, has been 
 and, most likely, will continue to be the dominant 
 influence, until the world is really Christianized. 
 Botli have exerted an influence that can be traced 
 .in the whole body of European literature since their 
 time. Both have been more powerful as destroyers
 
 Rousseau, the Stage, and the Encyclopedists. 173 
 
 than as builders. The one has been the subtle, 
 vivid, keenly flashing, blinding, and blasting 
 lightning, playing in graceful wantonness among 
 the clouds, and striking ever and anon where none 
 could foretell the fall of the thunderbolt. The 
 other has been the furious rainstorm of the tropics, 
 that submerges all that lies within its scope, yet 
 with a lurid beauty and a dreadful grandeur in the 
 mighty surge of its forest-filling waters. 
 
 This great genius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, infi- 
 nitely little in his private character, his self-con- 
 fessed meannesses, his selfish vices, and the childish 
 suspiciousness of his nature, but certainly great as 
 a writer, was born at Geneva in 1712 (died 1778). 
 His family was of French origin. His father was 
 a watchmaker. The motherless boy was brought 
 up by an aunt, schooled by a Protestant pastor, 
 put to studying law with a gentleman who decided 
 that he was unfit for that profession, and finally 
 apprenticed to an engraver who treated him harshly 
 and from whom he ran away. Pitied by Madame 
 de Warens, a lady of Savoy, he was placed by her 
 at a charity school in Turin. Running away from 
 this place also, he lived for a time with the wife of 
 a soldier, and was kicked out of doors by the 
 returning husband. Becoming a lackey in the 
 house of the Countess of Yercelli, and stealing a 
 silk ribbon, he accused a maid of the theft, and 
 was dismissed with her. Returning, after a course 
 of wandering, to Madame de Warens, he was 
 received by her according to his account as her 
 lover, though to keep up appearances he called 
 her i; Mamma." Going with her to live at Char- 
 mettes, he grew melancholy and had to seek medi- 
 cal treatment at Montpellier. On his way, he fell 
 in love with a young lady. Finding, on coming 
 back to Madame de Warens, that she had taken 
 another lover, he went to Lyon and became tutor 
 in a private family there. Believing himself an 
 inventor in musical science, fee went on from Lyon
 
 174 French Literature. 
 
 to Paris to read a paper before the Academic des 
 Sciences, which body received his project very 
 coldly. Becoming secretary to the French ambas- 
 sador at Venice, he went with that official to Italy. 
 On his return to Paris, having made acquaintance 
 with men like Diderot, D'Holbach and Grimm, one 
 of that circle, Madame D'Epinay, placed him in 
 a delightful suburban residence called the Hermit- 
 age, where he lived for years with a girl of the 
 people, Therese le Yasseur. Their children' five 
 in number Rousseau the sentimentalist sent to the 
 Foundling Hospital, though he finally married the 
 mother. 
 
 The philosophical coterie, which had tried to 
 make a pet of him, at last tired of him and threw 
 him oft' unceremoniously. Cast adrift again, he 
 was for a time protected by the Duke and Duchess 
 of Luxembourg, but in the end went back to 
 Switzerland. Invited by David Hume, the Scot- 
 tish freethinker, to visit him, he went over to Eng- 
 land in 1766. The two philosophers failed to 
 agree, however ; and, coming back to France, 
 Rousseau was given shelter by the Prince de Conti 
 in the castle of Trye. But he soon had to leave 
 this asylum. The last eight years of his life were 
 spent in great obscurity in Paris. In the early 
 part of the year in which he died, De Girardin gave 
 him shelter from his persecutors, imaginary or real, 
 at his estate of Ermenonville, near Paris, and in 
 this retreat the poor creature died. 
 
 In his Confessions we see him revealing as great 
 a moral obliquity in his character as Benvenuto 
 Cellini does in his, only in totally opposite direc- 
 tions. Cellini's strange blindness of the moral 
 sense is only an exaggeration of what was common 
 to Italians in his age. But in Rousseau's case, the 
 type is peculiar; and, were it not for the man's 
 genius, few would hesitate in pronouncing his 
 moral disease insanity. 
 
 Mean and low as was so large a part of his life,
 
 Rousseau, the Stage, and the Encyclopedists. 175 
 
 shameful as were some of its incidents, valueless as 
 were his social speculations, there was a moral 
 force in his vindication of the claims of the mean- 
 est human soul, his arraignment of civilization with 
 its luxuries and corruptions, and his sincere praise 
 of nature and her august simplicities. There was, 
 too, a splendid power in his eloquent prose and in 
 the tender accents in which he portrayed an impas- 
 sioned and voluptuous love. 
 
 It is this strength and skill of literary art, com- 
 bined with his air of speaking in the name of 
 virtue, that has made his writings so seductive to 
 the young. He moves them to sympathy by his 
 eloquence, and then his promise of a new world 
 built on the ruins of our corrupt civilization appeals 
 to that sanguine spirit which is the spring from 
 which youthful ardor so easily and eagerly leaps 
 upward. Taking his stand on that State of Nature, 
 which existed solely in his imagination, he put 
 forth the lying oracle that "all men are equal," to 
 which the world still owes some of its most dan- 
 gerous social tendencies. 
 
 He was nearly forty years of age, when he first 
 found where his power lay. A thesis announced 
 by the academy of Dijon: "Has the Progress of 
 the Sciences and the Arts contributed to corrupt 
 or to purify Morals ? " called forth his first real 
 literary effort. This was his Discours sur les lettres. 
 After this carne his discourse Sur Torigine et 
 les fondements de Vinegalite parmi les hommes. In 
 this prelude to the Contrat Social, he pleads against 
 the rights of property. These theses were followed 
 by his impassioned romance, La Nouvelle Helo'ise ; 
 his sophistical Utopia, fimile, ou de V Education ; 
 his Contrat Social, a treatise on government, 
 packed with crazy political and social theories 
 which made it the Bible of the Terrorists of 1793; 
 his Confessions singular work of a half-madman, 
 amazing one by its shameless avowals of infamy 
 and its measureless vanity ; and the Reveries, won-
 
 176 French Literature. 
 
 # 
 
 erfully fresli and vivid recitals of his impressions 
 after long walks in the outskirts of Paris. To these 
 works must be added the Lettre d d 1 Alembert sur 
 les Spectacles, written against the theatre and 
 dramatic authors ; and the Lettres de Montagne and 
 Lettre a VArcheveque de Paris, polemical tracts ; Le 
 Devin de Village, an opera in which both words and 
 music are his ; the Dictionnaire de Musique ; and, 
 lastly, his Correspondance. 
 
 A curious proof that there was something sound 
 and pure at the bottom of Rousseau's wild rhap- 
 sodies, is the fact, that, while Voltaire's scoffing 
 spirit has infested much of the literature since his 
 day without bringing with it Voltaire's earnest 
 battle for tolerance and gallant defence of the op- 
 pressed, Rousseau's love for nature and faith in the 
 soul's immortality inspired in turn Bernardin de 
 Saint-Pierre and De Chateaubriand to a purer and 
 higher tone than Rousseau himself reached, though 
 his genius was far greater than that of either of these 
 followers of his. 
 
 But Rousseau whom I have assigned to this 
 place in my sketch because his genius and its influ- 
 ence entitle him to be named directly after Vol- 
 taire, did not begin to write his most characteristic 
 works until Buffon had already become famous, 
 and the Encyclopedists were enjoying the full 
 measure of their renown. 
 
 We must turn back, therefore, a few years to 
 sketch their place in literature, and also to mention 
 briefly some of those minor writers who were 
 thought worthy of Voltaire's satire. 
 
 .Lefranc de Pompignan (1709-1784), the friend 
 of the lyrist J. B. Rousseau, shared with him Vol- 
 taire's ridicule. Yet he was by no means despic- 
 able as a writer, whether of prose or of verse ; and 
 he was, besides, a man of worth in his private 
 character. His sacred songs have some merit ; his 
 ode on the death of J. B. Rousseau extorted admi- 
 ration even from Voltaire ; and his tragedv of
 
 Rousseau, the Staye, and the Encyclopedists. 177 
 
 Didon is a work of some merit. He was a man 
 of more than ordinary acquirements, too, adding to 
 his classical learning some knowledge of English 
 and Italian literature. 
 
 Another of those assailed by Voltaire was Gres- 
 set (1709-1777), a poet who fairly rivaled the 
 great literary man of the age in the lighter forms 
 of verse. It was of him that Voltaire said, on 
 his quitting the Society of Jesus, "A poet the more 
 and a Jesuit the less is a great blessing to the 
 world." Bui Voltaire took to heart Gresset's pub- 
 lished letter against Comedy, declaring maliciously 
 that Gresset had not sinned very grievously in 
 that way. Yet Gresset's single comedy, Le Me- 
 diant, is good enough to receive warm praise from 
 Villemain. 
 
 Piron also (1689-1773) was an object of Vol- 
 taire's attack, but he can hardly be said to have 
 come oif the worse in the war of epigrams. His 
 single comedy, La>* Metrornanie, is full of wit and 
 fire. Both he and Gresset wrote tragedies also, 
 but these were soon forgotten. Gresset's little 
 poem of Vertvert is a graceful and sportive effusion. 
 Some of his other pieces, La Chartreuse, Le Careme 
 Impromptu, Le Lutrin Vivant, and Les Ombres, are 
 lively and elegant poems, in which the verse flows 
 with great ease and naturalness. 
 
 Gilbert the satirist (1751-1780), who died at 
 twenty-nine, cannot be numbered among those 
 whom Voltaire assailed. He was an adversary to 
 whom, for some reason, the bitter controversialist 
 made no reply. Short as was Gilbert's career, his 
 satire was strong enough to take a place in litera- 
 ture. 
 
 But Voltaire did not show the same forbearance 
 toward Freron the critic (1719-1776), who in his 
 journal made weekly assaults on the philosophy 
 of the day, and especially on Voltaire. The epi- 
 grams of the wits are said to have killed poor 
 Freron, but this may be as apocryphal as the old
 
 178 French Literature. 
 
 story of the death of Keats having been hastened 
 by hostile criticism. 
 
 ' To the Abbe Guenee (1717-1803), who wrote 
 the Le.ttres de quelques Juifs, and to the writer of 
 comedy, Marivaux (1688-1763), Voltaire showed a 
 more forgiving spirit, looking upon them as men 
 of merit, whom he would be sorry to regard as en- 
 emies. 
 
 Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux was 
 the author of many comedies, the style of which 
 sinned by excess of fine points and straining after 
 wit. This mannerism gave the language a new 
 word, marivaudage. The best of his comedies 
 were Les Fausses Confidences and Le jeu de T Amour 
 et du Hasard. He is not deficient in depicting 
 character, but his dialogue lacks naturalness and 
 is too brilliant for truth to nature. In romance he 
 succeeded better, his Mariane taking high rank 
 among French works of fiction. He also wrote a 
 romance called Le Paysan Parvenu.. 
 
 Besides these writers, who were associated with 
 Voltaire's career, either as mercilessly satirized by 
 him, or as his assailants whom he saw fit to spare, 
 there were others, younger men, whom he gener- 
 ously aided and drew to his side as friends. Among 
 these were Marmontel and La Harpe. 
 
 Jean Frangois Marmontel (1728-1799), after 
 making himself some reputation as a poet in 
 Toulouse, went to Paris on Voltaire's invitation in 
 1746. He had no great success, however, with his 
 tragedies and operas, but through Madame de Pom- 
 padour's influence got a secretaryship at Versailles, 
 and, later, was put in charge of the Mercure. In this 
 paper he began to publish his Gontes Moraux, which 
 have had great popularity, and have been translated 
 into many languages. lie wrote also a political ro- 
 mance called Belisaire, which contained a chapter 
 on toleration that raised the ire of the doctors of the 
 Sorbonne. Belisaire was condemned as heretical 
 and blasphemous. The tempest it raised gave rise
 
 Rousseau, the Stage, and the Encyclopedists. 179 
 
 to a whole literature of pamphlets, epigrams, and 
 caricatures. Out of this tumult Marmontel emerged 
 as historiographer of France, the wits winning the 
 day at court against the clerical party. He was a 
 contributor to the famous Encyclopedic, being as- 
 signed the departments of poetry and general litera- 
 ture. This contribution he also published separa- 
 tely, under the title, Elements de Litlerature. This 
 is a body of judicious and able criticism. Another 
 work of his, which Geruzez classes with the Beli- 
 saire, calling them both " poems in prose," is Les 
 Incas. His Memoir -es are said to be very entertain- 
 ing 
 
 Jean Fran9ois de La Harpe (1739-1803) was 
 called the French Quintilian. He was an excellent 
 critic, and is now chiefly remembered by his Lycee, 
 on Cours de Litterature Ancienne et Moderne. His 
 first essays in literature were satirical verses, which 
 got him into trouble with the government. He 
 next tried dramatic writing, producing Warwick, 
 Philocttte, and Melanie, which had better success 
 than Marmontel's tragedies. But his success in 
 these efforts was not so great as to satisfy him, and 
 he abandoned the drama. He visited Voltaire at 
 Ferney in 1766, and was his guest for two years. 
 On his return to France, he devoted himself to 
 criticism, becoming a regular contributor to the 
 Mercure. 
 
 Both Marmontel and La Harpe lavished eulogies 
 on Voltaire. La Harpe was, in the closing years 
 of his life, a participant in the thrilling scenes of 
 the Revolution, and was at first a strong republican ; 
 but, suffering imprisonment under the Directory, 
 his views underwent some change. 
 
 Saint-Lambert (1717-1803) was still more ex- 
 travagant in his praise of Voltaire. He set him 
 above Corneille and Racine. This overstrained 
 homage occurs in a poem called Les Saisons, a work 
 of no great merit. His prose is still heavier. The
 
 180 French Literature. 
 
 Catechisme universel is a work in which the hard, 
 materialistic philosophy of the age is formulated. 
 
 Les Saisons was the first swallow of a great flock 
 of descriptive poems, Delille's Les Jardins, 
 Lemierre's Les Pastes, Bosset's L 1 Agriculture, and 
 Boucher's Les Mois. Delille had already won some 
 reputation by his fine translation of Virgil's Georgics. 
 
 Lebrun (1729-1807) wrote odes inferior only to 
 those of J. B. Bousseau, while he perhaps excelled 
 him in his epigrams. He also paid homage to 
 Voltaire. 
 
 De Belloy (1727-1775), a tragic writer of no great 
 power, macle a great success in his Siege de Calais 
 by his fortunate choice of a subject which possessed 
 national interest. 
 
 Lemierre (1723-1793), besides that descriptive 
 poem of which mention has already been made, 
 produced tragedies that deserved their success. 
 
 Guismond de La Touche (1725-1760), in his 
 Iphigenie en Tauride; Saurin (17Q6-1781), in his 
 Spartacus; La Noue (1701-1761), in his Mahomet 
 II. and his much-applauded comedy of La Coquette 
 corrigee ; and Ducis, in his transfers to the French 
 stage of Shakspeare's Hamlet, Borneo and Juliet, 
 King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello, all deserve brief 
 mention. They were all admirers of Voltaire and 
 received his gracious approval, although he ex- 
 pressed some regret, in view of the irregularity of 
 Ducis's plots, at having made Shakspeare known to 
 his countrymen. 
 
 But the great effort of that age of free-thinkers, 
 in the way systematizing their philosophy, was the 
 Encyclopedic. Voltaire, who did not wholly sym- 
 pathize with its founders, declared that it was built 
 half of marble and half of mud. It was, indeed, a 
 sort of Tower of Babel. Its authors were of vari- 
 ous shades of revolutionary opinion and held differ- 
 ent degrees of skeptical doctrine. Their theories 
 were not harmonious. Besides the troubles caused 
 by their own divisions and discrepant views, their
 
 Rousseau, the Stage, and the Encyclopedists. 181 
 
 essays as fast as published were vehemently assailed 
 from without. Still, the work was finally published, 
 in twenty-eight volumes, with a supplement, later 
 on, in five volumes, and, finally, an analytical index 
 in two volumes. Biography and History were 
 deliberately excluded. The topics which found 
 admission were discussed with greater originality 
 than any compilation of the sort had yet shown, 
 and the articles were prepared with great ability. 
 It was received with immense enthusiasm. 
 D'Alembert traced the plan, and Diderot in the 
 main charged himself with the task of editing. 
 The chief writers in it were, besides the editors, 
 Grimm, Rousseau, Voltaire, Dumarsais, D'llolbach, 
 and Jaucourt. D'Alembert's preface was consid- 
 ered a master-piece. 
 
 Jean-le-Rond d'Alembert (1717-1783) was one 
 of the most distinguished mathematicians of his 
 time. He was the illegitimate son of Madame de 
 Tencin and a M.^Destouches. Exposed by his un- 
 natural mother on the steps of the Church of St. 
 Jean-le-Rond, and put by the guard who found him 
 there in the hands of a poor glazier's wife, he was 
 brought up by her, the father secretly allowing him 
 a sum of 1200 francs a year. He lived for nearly 
 forty years with his good foster-mother, pursuing 
 his favorite studies in that humble home, and shar- 
 ing with her his slender income. She, though 
 loving him well, used to expostulate with him on 
 the subject of his studies, saying : " You will never 
 be anything but a philosopher ; and what is a phil- 
 osopher but a fool, who torments himself while 
 alive, that folk may talk about him after he is 
 dead ! " He did make an effort to seek a profitable 
 career for his abilities, trying first law and then 
 medicine ; but his passion for science was too strong. 
 His treatises on scientific subjects, however, soon 
 won him reputation. He was through life singu- 
 larly indifferent to riches and distinctions. Fred- 
 erick of Prussia offered him the presidency of his
 
 182 French Literature. 
 
 Academy, but he declined the honor. Catherine 
 II. of Russia invited him to take charge of her 
 son's education, at 100,000 francs a year ; but he 
 declined this also. He never married, though he 
 was for many years greatly attached to Mademoi- 
 selle Espinasse, whose death was thought to have 
 hastened his. He was a man of great benevolence ; 
 and, though his views on the subject of Christian- 
 ity are well known from his private correspondence 
 with Yoltaire and Frederick the Great, he re- 
 frained from attacking religion in his published 
 writings. 
 
 It was not so with Diderot. Sincere, eloquent, 
 and outspoken, a fatalist, an eager talker, and an 
 unwearied worker, he proclaimed his infidelity with 
 the zeal of an apostle. 
 
 Denis Diderot (1713-1784), like D'Alembert, 
 practised that practical charity which the Gospel he 
 disbelieved so strongly enjoins, and which Chris- 
 tianity introduced into the spirit of society. Being 
 in his early life reduced to want, he made a vow 
 never to disregard the prayers of the needy. This 
 resolution he faithfully kept. When in compara- 
 tive wealth, he was thronged by applicants for 
 help in various ways, and he is said to have been 
 always ready to furnish the aid sought for. He 
 married while still very poor, and this forced him 
 to great exertions. A translation of the History 
 of Greece from an English work brought him a 
 hundred crowns. Finding himself successful in 
 literary work, he now wrote his Essai sur le Merite 
 et la Vertu, the Pensees Philosopliiques, the Inter- 
 pretation de la Nature, and the Lettre sur les 
 Aveugles. This last work sent him to the prison of 
 Vincennes for three months. He wrote also for the 
 stage, but was unsuccessful in his dramatic attempts. 
 His best work was what he did for the Encyclo- 
 pedie. Finding himself obliged, in his later years, 
 to sell his library, to provide for his only daughter, 
 he was urged by the impress Catherine to come to
 
 Rousseau, the Stage, and the Encyclopedists. 183 
 
 Russia arid be librarian, at a salary of one thousand 
 francs, she purchasing his library on condition that 
 lie would accompany it. He went to St. Peters- 
 burg though merely to thank the Empress, while 
 declining to assume the offered post, and died on 
 his return the next year. 
 
 Among his romances, the most powerful are 
 Jaques le Fataliste, and Le Neveu de Rameau. His 
 writings are full of fire and passion, but have the 
 negligent style of an improviser. Indeed, he af- 
 fected conversational carelessness in writing, under 
 the conviction that naturalness was a virtue always 
 to be aimed at ; and it was this labored abruptness 
 and disconnectedness in the dialogue which chiefly 
 spoiled his plays, Le Pere de famille and Le Fils 
 naturel. 
 
 Friedrich Melchior, Baron Grimm,(1723-1807) was 
 born at Regensburg, (Ratisbon) on the Danube. Ac- 
 companying the yourg Count of Schonberg to the 
 University at Leipsic, and afterwards to Paris, he 
 became a permanent resident. in the French capital, 
 Rousseau introducing him to Diderot and other 
 eminent literary persons, and thus opening up to 
 him a brilliant future. Diderot and D'Alernbert 
 employed his pen in their Encyclopedic. Becoming 
 secretary to the Duke of Orleans, he acquired much 
 reputation in Germany by the literary bulletins 
 which he sent periodically to some of the petty 
 princes of the empire. But Diderot and the Abb6 
 Raynal supplied him with much of the material 
 used in these critical letters. He received his title 
 of Baron from the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. 
 When the Revolution came, he took refuge in Goth a. 
 Besides what he supplied to the Encyclopedic, his 
 literary remains are Correspondance Litteraire, Philo- 
 sophique et CV ///</>/'. with a suplement entitled Cor- 
 respondance inedite de Grimm et Diderot. 
 
 Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Baron von Holbach 
 (1723-1789) was born at Heidelsheim, in the Palat- 
 inate. He took up his residence in Paris early in
 
 18-i French Literature. 
 
 life. He was a pleasant social companion, and, 
 having inherited wealth, was able to entertain in 
 fine style. His guests were the most eminent 
 literary men of his time, Diderot, Helvetius, 
 Raynal, Rousseau. Buftbn, and the like. He was 
 one of the extreme antagonists of religion. His 
 chief work was the Sys&me de la Nature, in which he 
 sought to deduce a moral scheme from natural 
 principles. The book advocated materialism and 
 atheism in their crudest forms. That he was kind- 
 hearted and unselfish must be granted even by those 
 who are most shocked at his doctrines. The 
 Jesuits were especially obnoxious to him; yet, 
 when they fell into disgrace, he made his house a 
 refuge for several of them. 
 
 Claude-Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771), sprung 
 from a family of Swiss origin, was born at Paris. 
 After leading the gay and profligate life of a 
 courtier for some two years, he grew disgusted with 
 its frivolity, married the charming daughter of the 
 Cornte de Ligneville, and retired to a little estate at 
 Yore", where he spent his time in bringing up his 
 children, caring for the welfare of the peasantry, 
 and writing his philosophical books. His De 
 VEsprit was devoted to his favorite theory, that 
 sensibility is the source of all the higher operations 
 of the mind, and that matter alone exists. The 
 Sorbonne and the Parliament of Paris condemned 
 the book. Helvetius also left a posthumous \vork, 
 De VHomme, d?. ses Facultes, et de son Education. 
 
 Guillaume Thomas Francois Raynal (1711-1796) 
 .was an abbe, whose sympathy with the skeptical 
 thought of the age soon drove him from the Church 
 into literature. He became one of the editors of 
 the ftfercure. In conjunction with Diderot, he 
 wrote the Histoire Philosophique et Politique des 
 fitablissements et du Commerce des Europeens dans 
 les deex Indes, a work which from its strictures on 
 superstition excited the ire of the clerical party, 
 who procured its condemnation by the Parlement.
 
 Rousseau, the Stage, and the Encyclopedists, 185 
 
 To the student of English, literature this book is 
 perhaps known only from the extraordinary rhap- 
 sody into which Raynal bursts, when treating of the 
 birthplace of that Mrs. Draper, whom Sterne affected 
 to adore under the name of his " Brahmine." It 
 begins: "Territory of Anjinga, you are nothing; 
 but you have given birth to Eliza. One day these 
 commercial settlements founded by Europeans on 
 the coast of Asia will exist no more. The grass 
 will cover them, or the avenged Indian will have 
 built over their ruins ; but if my writings have any 
 duration, the name of Anjinga will remain in the 
 memory of men." There are three more pages of 
 this absurd rubbish. 
 
 Among these sentimental skeptics were Ma- 
 dame Du Deffand and Madame D'fipinay. 
 
 Marie de Vichy Chamroud, Marquise du Def- 
 fand (1697-1780), was born of a noble family of 
 Burgundy. She eflrly gave evidence of the bold- 
 ness of judgment which won her so many admirers 
 in her mature years. Massillon was deputed by 
 her parents to win her to acquiescence in their 
 creed. But the great preacher did not succeed in 
 this mission, though he was himself greatly im- 
 pressed by her beauty and intellectual charm. 
 Her marriage with the Marquis du Deffand was an 
 unhappy one, and they were soon separated. She 
 then plunged into all the gallantries and follies of 
 that depraved society which constituted the Re- 
 gent's court. She gathered about her all the bril- 
 liant men of her day. She kept up a correspondence 
 with some of the foremost thinkers in Europe. She 
 made her soire'es at her hotel in the Rue St. Dom- 
 inique the gathering-point for all that was select in 
 Parisian society, including the eminent foreigners 
 who visited that city. 
 
 Becoming blind when between fifty and sixty 
 years old, she chose Mademoiselle d 1'Espinasse as 
 reader and companion. But growing jealous aftet 
 a time of the attentions p." 1 id this young lady, she
 
 186 French Literature, 
 
 parted with her. Her rival, however, took away 
 from the saloon of the marquise, D'Alembert and 
 many more of her admirers. The correspondence 
 of Madame du Deffand with D'Alembert, Henault, 
 Montesquieu, the Duchesse du Maine, Horace Wai- 
 pole, and Voltaire, is of great interest as making 
 part of the memoirs of that age of materialism in 
 philosophy and of corruption in society. 
 
 Louise Florence Petronille de la Live d'fipinay 
 (1725-1783) married her cousin, and, like the Mar- 
 quise du Deffand, failed to find happiness in mar- 
 ried life. Her husband was a debauchee. Her taste 
 was for men of genius. When Rousseau came to 
 Paris, she took a fancy to him and gave him the 
 Hermitage for a residence. This was a little 
 house in the woods of Montmorency on land of her 
 husband's. Rousseau and Grimm, however, quar- 
 reled and involved Madame D'fipinay in the dis- 
 pute, which ended in Rousseau's becoming again a 
 wanderer and eventually calumniating the woman 
 who had befriended him. She had, however, to 
 the last, a select circle of literary men around her. 
 Under the direction of Diderot, she took Grimm's 
 place, on his leaving Paris, in preparing for the 
 German princes, criticisms of French literature. 
 She also produced an educational work of some 
 merit, Conversations d*]Emile. To this must be 
 added her work called Les Confessions du Comte 
 de * * * , together with a large correspondence 
 carried on with Grimm, Diderot, Rousseau, and 
 others. 
 
 Another famous entertainer of literary men in 
 this period, and herself a little of an author was 
 Madame Geofirin. 
 
 Marie Therese Geoffrin (1699-1777) was born at 
 Paris. Her father was a valet-de-charnbre named 
 Rodet. But her marriage to a very rich manufact- 
 urer and his death soon after left her at an early 
 age the mistress of an immense fortune. She drew 
 literary men around her, and her wealth was of
 
 Rousseau, the Stage, and the Encyclopedists. 187 
 
 great assistance in the publication of the Encyclo- 
 pedie. She is said to have contributed no less than 
 100,000 francs for that purpose. She was not only 
 liberal to men of letters, but bestowed her gifts 
 with a delicacy which gave them double value. 
 Her attentions to distinguished foreigners won h3r 
 their esteem and affection. Poniatowski, to whom 
 she had been particularly kind, announced to her 
 his elevation to the throne of Poland in the words: 
 'Mamma, your son is king." He afterwards in- 
 duced her to visit Warsaw, and received her there 
 with a truly royal welcome. Her treatise, Sur la 
 Conversation, and her Lettres were published after 
 her death by Morellet. 
 
 Madame D'Houdetot and Madame Suard should 
 also be mentioned as eighteenth century queens of 
 society. Some of Madame D'Houdetot's sweet- 
 verses still hold a place in collections of French 
 poetry. Madame Geoffrin, Madame d'Houdetot, 
 and Madame Suard were all famous in their day 
 for their salons, where all that was witty, elegant, 
 and distinguished found a glad welcome and con- 
 genial surroundings.
 
 188 French Literature. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 WE have not yet completed the roll of Voltaire's 
 and Eousseau's contemporaries. But the ablest of 
 them, Buffon, must be reserved until some minor 
 writers, not mentioned yet, have been disposed of. 
 
 Charles Pineau Duclos (1704-1772) was a Bre- 
 ton. As a writer of romance and history, he was 
 held in great estimation by his contemporaries. 
 His romances were Acajou et Zirphile and La Bar- 
 onne de Luz. His principal serious work was the 
 Histoire de Louis XI. He also produced memoirs 
 of the reigns of Louis XIV. and XV. He was cold 
 and mannered in his historical writings. 
 
 Dumarsais (1676-1756) was of note mainly as a 
 grammarian. Geruzez praises his method as supe- 
 rior to that of Duclos, who labored in that field 
 also. The same critic accords to another gramma- 
 rian, Beauzee (1717-1789), superiority in originality 
 and profundity ; and to still another, Court de Gebe- 
 lin (1725-1784), excellence in invention, whatever 
 that may mean. To Rulhie're (1735-1791) he also 
 accords superiority over Duclos, as historical writer, 
 eulogizing the Histoire de TAnarclne de Poloyne, in 
 which he thinks Rulhiere has shown himself an 
 able painter and profound political thinker. Duclos's 
 true title to remembrance, in Geruzez's judgment, 
 rests on his Considerations sur les Mceurs. 
 
 Vauvenargues (1715-1747) was a writer, like La 
 Rochefoucauld, of thoughts and maxims. De- 
 voted, in spite of frequent illness, to earnest inquiry 
 into moral truth and the nature of man, he might, 
 had he lived longer, have taken an eminent place 
 among moralists. The contrast in spirit and tone
 
 On the Eve of the Revolution. 189 
 
 which he presents to the age in which he lived adds 
 to his merit, and it is refreshing to find so pure a 
 believer in virtue amid that throng of scoffers. 
 
 It is a credit to Voltaire, that he held Vauven- 
 argues in high regard and esteem. Duclos and 
 Van ven argues stand together in the unspiritual at- 
 mosphere of their age as almost the only sober 
 thinkers. 
 
 The Gomte de Tressan (1705-1783) led the way 
 in resuscitating the literature of the Middle Ages, 
 the fabliaux and the legends of the Round Table. 
 
 Classical studies were kept from utter decline by 
 the labors of the President de Brosses (1706-1777). 
 
 One of the first of the many attempts which 
 have been made to introduce the modern reader to 
 the inner life of antiquity, was the Voyage du 
 Jenne Anacharris en Grece, by Jean Jacques Bar- 
 tlielemy (1716-1795). The Abbe makes his Ana- 
 charsis journey from Scythia to Athens and there 
 observe the peculiarities of Greek life and manners. 
 Though full of anachronisms, the characteristics of 
 Greek life at several different periods being con- 
 founded together, it is a work of some charm, 
 helped greatly to popularize the knowledge of an- 
 cient life, and has been imitated in later times by 
 Becker in his Gallus for Roman and Charicles for 
 Hellenic life. Barthelemy was a man of extensive 
 learning. Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, and 
 Chaldee were among his studies. His first distinc- 
 tion was that obtained by his discovery of the Pal- 
 myran alphabet. The Revolution deprived him of 
 his offices, and rudely disturbed his studies. 
 Among his works were Reflexions sur I 1 Alphabet et 
 la Lanf/ue de Palmyre, Explication de la Mosaique 
 de Palestrine, and a romance entitled Caryte et 
 Poly 'dor e. 
 
 Another man of learning was the eminent phy- 
 sician, Paul Joseph Barthez (1734-1806). lie 
 founded at Montpellier a medical school which had 
 a great reputation all over Europe. He was ruined by
 
 190 French Literature. 
 
 the Revolution; but Napoleon recalled him from 
 exile, and bestowed honors and dignities upon him. 
 His Nouveaux Elements de la Science de VHomme ad- 
 vocated a system founded on dynamical principles. 
 He wrote also Nbuvelle Mecanique des Mouvements de 
 I Homme et des Animaux, Traitement des Maladies 
 Goutteuses, and Consultation de Medicine. These are 
 purely scientific works ; but I shall more than once 
 have occasion to mention medical writers and other 
 specialists among the attractive writers in the French 
 language, for that clearness of statement and liveli- 
 ness of illustration, as well as enthusiasm of tone, 
 which have only in our day made science popular 
 with the great mass of English readers, were culti- 
 vated at a much earlier period by the French men 
 of science. 
 
 Another earnest worker in these times was 
 Thomas (1732-1785), a philosophical writer in the 
 manner of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. There 
 is too much strain and emphasis, however, in his 
 sententious utterances. His Eloyes have too much 
 of the rhetorician's art about them to please, though 
 the sentiments are noble. In his verses the same 
 vice of self-conscious effort spoils the effect. 
 
 Among the scholarly minds of the period was the 
 Abbe de Mably (1709-1785), the author of Les En- 
 tretiens de Phocion and Observations sur VHistoire de 
 France. He compared, greatly to the discredit of 
 the moderns, the institutions of the ancient repub- 
 lics with those of his own day. 
 
 Of .writers for the stage, besides those already 
 mentioned, there were Mercier (1740-1814), and 
 Sedaine (1717-1797). Sedaine was an uneducated 
 genius. His Philosophe sans le Savoir, produced 
 for the Theatre Francais; Le Deserteur and Rich- 
 ard Cceur-de-Lion, written for the Opera Comique ; 
 arid Aline, Reine de Golconde, written for the Grand 
 Opera, were pieces characterized by excellent taste 
 and exquisite naturalness. 
 
 Jacques Cazotte (1720-1792), was first brought
 
 On the. Eve of the Revolution. 191 
 
 into notice by a mock romance and a coarse song. 
 He afterwards wrote his Roman d 1 Olivier and Le 
 D table Amour eux. He also continued with admirable 
 skill Voltaire's account of the civil war in Geneva. 
 Suddenly he became notorious as a pretender to the 
 gift of prophecy ; and La Harpe tells a story of his 
 breaking out, in the time of his mysticism, at the 
 close of a gay banquet, into a rhapsody in which 
 he related to the carousers around him, with all the 
 precision of a Highland Scot's vision of second- 
 sight, the fate which awaited each one of them. 
 He himself, adhering to the royal cause during the 
 revolutionary storm, fell a victim to the rage and 
 fear of the bloody tribunals of that time. 
 
 I have mentioned La Harpe before, in treating 
 of the friends and eulogizers of Voltaire. 
 
 Jean Pierre Claris de Florian (1755-1794) was 
 one of those poets and romancers who pretend only 
 to amuse. Protected by the Due de Penthievre, 
 he was suspected of "incivism" on the outbreak of 
 the Revolution, and suffered imprisonment. His 
 first literary success was a poetical epistle called 
 Voltaire et le Serf du Mont Jura. His eclogue, 
 Ruth, was also crowned by the Academy. In his 
 Qalatee, he imitated Cervantes; and in his Numa 
 Pompilius, Fenelon. Other works of his were his 
 Fables; his GonsalvedeCordove; a romance founded 
 on the story of William Tell, which he worked 
 at during his imprisonment, but never finished; 
 and an abridgement of Don Quixote. His best work 
 was a pastoral entitled Estelle. 
 
 A poet imbued with thoroughly Hellenic tastes 
 and genius makes a marked contrast to the super- 
 ficially romantic tone of Florian. This was Andre- 
 Marie de Chenier (1762-1794). Born in Constanti- 
 nople, he traveled much in after years. His poems 
 were for the most part idyllic. Such are Le Men- 
 dicant, UAveuyle, and Le Jeune Malade. Shortly 
 before the Revolution, he produced his Elegies, the 
 Art d 1 Aimer, & Invention, Hermes, Susanne, andZa
 
 192 French Literature. 
 
 Liber te. He took an active part in the Revolution, 
 opposing the Jacobins and the execution of the 
 King. Resisting the arrest of a lady in whose 
 house he was living at Passy, he was arrested and 
 imprisoned. Before his execution, he wrote some 
 striking poems. 
 
 Marie-Joseph de Che'nier (1764-1811), younger 
 brother of Andre", was also born in Constantinople. 
 His first tragedy, Azemire, was almost a failure. 
 His next, Charles IX., still keeps a place on the 
 stage. After these appeared Henry VIII., Anne de 
 Boulen, the Mort de Galas, Gains Gracchus, Timo- 
 leon, Fenelon, and Cyrus. He also put on the stage 
 a version of Lessing's Nathan the Wise, and trans- 
 lations of the (Edipus Turannos and CEdipus at 
 Colonos of Sophocles. His lyric poems are fall of 
 freshness and elevation of tone. His Epitres are 
 able, and one of them, the Epitre sur la Calomnie, 
 is considered by French critics as worthy of the 
 highest praise. His Satires are also ranked very 
 high by his countrymen. His imitations of Ossian 
 will recall to the minds of readers of history the 
 prevalence of a taste in France for that wild and 
 cloudy bombast, which marked the effort of the 
 revolutionary spirit to shake off even in literary art 
 the bonds of order, and which made Napoleon in 
 his early days an enthusiastic admirer of Macpher- 
 son's rhapsodies. Chenier was also eminent as a 
 prose- writer. His Tableau de la litterature frangaise 
 depuis 1789 enjoys a high reputation. He took a 
 more prominent part than his brother in the stormy 
 scenes of the Revolution, being at the head of 
 several of the public bodies so rapidly organized in 
 those ever-changing days. He, however, gave in 
 his adhesion to the Empire, and it was at Napole- 
 on's request that he prepared his work on recent 
 French literature. Among many odes of his was 
 the famous Chant du Depart. 
 
 Sjbastien Roch-Nicholas Chamfort (1741-1794) 
 was the illegitimate son of a strolling actress. He
 
 On the Eve of the Revolution. 193 
 
 began life with only the name " Nicolas "; but, 
 getting into the College des Grassins, he worked 
 well and won prizes. Assuming the name of 
 " Chamfort," he began his literary career by writ- 
 ing sermons for lazy cure's at a louis apiece. Com- 
 peting successfully for one of the Academy prizes, 
 the gay world was henceforward, open to him. His 
 brilliant and bitter talk made him much admired. 
 Madame Helvetius entertained him for some years 
 at Sevres. He won other prizes, and finally went 
 to court under the protection of the Duchesse de 
 Grammont. Retiring to Auteuil, after attaining a 
 brilliant place in the world and experiencing only 
 disgust with it, he there fell in love with a lady of 
 the household of the Duchesse du Maine, and mar- 
 ried her. But, six months after the nuptials, his 
 wife died, leaving him more bitter than ever in his 
 views of life. When Mirabeau began to undertake 
 the perilous task of guiding the storm of the 
 Eevolution, Chamfort came heartily to his side, and 
 helped him with the literary part of his orations; 
 for, though Mirabeau was a marvel in delivery, it 
 was to Chamfort and Dumont, it seems, that he was 
 mainly indebted for his ideas and their form. 
 
 Chamfort took an earnest part in the struggle, 
 and was one of the storming party that broke first 
 into the Bastille. But, criticising the Convention 
 as bitterly as he had criticised the court, he fell 
 before that new tyranny. It was he who made 
 the political fortune of the Abbe Sie*yes, by giving 
 him the striking title to his pamphlet: "What is 
 the Third Estate? Everything. What has it? 
 Nothing." He left few writings. His fame rested 
 chiefly on his brilliant talk. His best works were 
 an IJJloge of Moliere and one of La Fontaine, as well 
 as a pretty comedy entitled La Jeune Indienne. 
 
 Over aprainst the pessimist, Chamfort, who de- 
 spaired of human nature and was always saying 
 bitter things of it, should be set the sweet temper 
 13
 
 194 French Literature. 
 
 and joy in God and nature of Bernardin de Saint- 
 Pierre. 
 
 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814) was one 
 of those souls that remain optimist in spite of many 
 and long -continued trials. His imagination was 
 always pleasing itself with charming illusions, and 
 dissappointments had no power to embitter his 
 spirit. The justice and mercy of God, the consola- 
 tions of human love, and the ineffable charm of na- 
 ture were for him beautiful verities that took the 
 sting from all that was painful in the immediate 
 present. His Etudes de la nature is a work that re- 
 veals at once his key-note, belief in the possible 
 harmony of God, Nature, and Man. His style is 
 as beautiful, as his imagination is rich, pure, and 
 chaste. His Vceuxd'un Solitaire breathes the same 
 spirit, while it is to that dominant note of Christian 
 philosophy that his tropical tales, Paul et Virginie 
 and the Chaumiere indienne, owe their freedom from 
 the taints which like subjects handled by Eousseau 
 would infallibly have had. Paul et Virginie, the 
 delight of childhood, even in translated form, is 
 really a work of genius. As Geruzez says of it, " it 
 has that grace of eternal youth which time withers 
 not." Few prose idylls have ever been written with 
 a skill so poetic and artistic. The grouping, the 
 coloring, the atmospheric tone are all those of the 
 painter. Everything about the story is picturesque. 
 To the colder criticism of the mature mind it is too 
 much so; there is too much of that theatrical 
 grace and beauty for absolute truth to nature. But 
 to the guileless fancy of childhood it is true and 
 charming. 
 
 The Abbe" PreVost (1697-1763) ought not to be 
 forgotten when mention is made of the romancers 
 of this period. Kousseau's contemporary, he 
 painted in his Manon Lescaut a picture of passion 
 as glowing as that of the Nouvelle Helo'ise, yet free 
 from the over-strained sentiment and the disordered 
 morality of Kousseau. It is the most wonderful
 
 On the Eve of the Revolution. 195 
 
 picture of single-minded devotion to an unworthy 
 mistress in all literature. 
 
 Among the scientific contributors to the Encyclo- 
 pedic was Condorcet. 
 
 Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de 
 Condorcet (1743-1794), was one of the most emi- 
 nent scientists of his age. His Essai sur le Calcul 
 Integral gained him early in life a seat in the 
 Academic des Sciences. His Eloyes des Academi- 
 ciens Morts avant 1699 won him still higher 
 honors. He won also a prize from the Berlin Acad- 
 emy by his theory of comets. His Eloges et Pensees df. 
 Pascal does credit to his heart as well as his 
 head. During the Revolution he took a prominent 
 part, acting in general with the Girondists, and 
 falling with them when they fell. During his 
 time of concealment he wrote his Esquisse des Pro- 
 grbs de T Esprit Humain. He was finally arrested, 
 and one morning was found dead in prison. 
 
 The great master of style among the writers who 
 were now devoting themselves to that study of na- 
 ture which became so absorbing a passion in the 
 next century, was Buffon. 
 
 George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, (1707- 
 1788), after traveling through France and Italy 
 with Lord Kingston and his tutor, a man of scien- 
 tific tastes, accompanied them to England, where, 
 to improve his English, he translated works of 
 Newton and Hales. Appointed in 1739 Intendant 
 of the Royal Garden and Museum, his mind was 
 directed especially to the study of zoology, which 
 resulted in his undertaking his Histoire Naturelle, a 
 work covering thirty-six volumes. It was from 
 this work that Oliver Goldsmith avowedly bor- 
 rowed the greater part of his Animated Nature. 
 The task to which Buffon devoted fifty years of his 
 life was no less than the description and explana- 
 tion of nature as a whole and in all its parts. His 
 work has no great scientific value now, but his 
 method is still esteemed by scientists. " Up to his
 
 196 French Literature. 
 
 time," says Cuvier, "the history of nature had 
 been written with fulness only by compilers who 
 had no ability; the other general works offered 
 only dry nomenclatures. Excellent and very nu- 
 merous observations existed, but all upon parlk-u- 
 lar points. Button conceived the project of com- 
 bining, on a vast plan and with the eloquent dic- 
 tion of Pliny, the profound views of Aristolle with 
 the exactness and the minuteness of detail with 
 which the moderns had observed facts." 
 
 Button did not begin his life-work until he was 
 thirty-three years old. But he had early prescribed 
 for himself a system of study, which he would not 
 permit himself to deviate from, setting apart a cer- 
 tain number of hours each day for this purpose. 
 At six every morning it was a servant's duty to 
 wake him up. This duty was discharged by the 
 same man for sixty years, and this faithful valet's 
 testimony was that his master had never once 
 broken the rule which he had imposed upon him 
 self. Method like this tells. A vast deal of work 
 can be accomplished by the man who so regulates 
 his life. It goes far to sustain Button's own defini- 
 tion of genius, as "a long patience." 
 
 His account of the origin of the earth and the 
 growth of fauna and flora upon it, with their subse- 
 quent development from natural causes, is of 
 course in many points behind the present lights of 
 science. But, viewed as a whole, it is safe to say 
 that his theory is in the main that which the as- 
 tronomers and geologists of our day still hold. In- 
 stead of the nebular hypothesis, however, he sup- 
 poses the earth to have been brought into being by 
 the collision of a comet with the sun, a part of the 
 incandescent mass of that luminary having been 
 struck off' into space and by the laws of gravitation 
 and centrifugal force assuming its ultimate shape 
 and rotation. 
 
 Leaving this subject and his investigation of in- 
 organic matter, as well as the history of the vege-
 
 On the Eve of the Revolution. 197 
 
 table kingdom which he handles very superfi- 
 cially we come to the animal kingdom, where he 
 is more at home. He begins by rejecting all sys- 
 tems of classification. He figures to himself a man 
 who sees for the first time the creatures around 
 him, animate and inanimate, without any precon- 
 ceived notions to embarrass his judgment. He 
 then traces the process of natural classification 
 which must go on in such a man's mind the sep- 
 aration of the animate from the inanimate; the 
 division of objects into animal, vegetable, and min- 
 eral; the division of the animals into quadrupeds, 
 birds, and fishes; the separation of the quadrupeds 
 into the domesticated and the wild. Buffon took 
 this method himself. Later, however, he modified 
 the disdain of scientific method with which he 
 had set out, notably in his natural history of 
 birds. 
 
 In truth, what Buffon really excelled in was his 
 eloquent manner of setting forth what he knew, 
 rather than in profound or accurate knowledge. 
 Yet his knowledge was beyond doubt copious and 
 extensive. He was aided, too, by Daubenton in 
 the preparation of the details of his work. Com- 
 bining the dry facts of anatomy and physiology 
 with an animated description of the habits of ani- 
 mal life and the homes and haunts of the creatures 
 whose framework Daubenton had just analyzed, he 
 made a long step towards popularizing science, a 
 rare feature of genius in his time, and one that con- 
 stituted no small part of his charm. 
 
 In his history of man, he is decidedly antago- 
 nistic to the school which in our day seeks to con- 
 nect man closely with the rest of the animal crea- 
 tion. "Man," says he emphatically, " is not more 
 reasonable, not more spiritual, for having abun- 
 dantly exercised his ears and his eyes. One does 
 not see that people of obtuse senses, the short- 
 sighted, the deaf, the defective in the sense of smell, 
 have less intelligence than others. This is an evi
 
 198 French Literature. 
 
 dent proof that there is in man something more than 
 an interior animal sense." He declares for the ex- 
 istence of the soul. It is, he says, of a different 
 nature from matter, and thought is its form. As 
 a naturalist, he takes pains to deny to the brutes 
 any share in this unique possession. 
 
 Style was a study with Buffon. He labored 
 strenuously to express himself in the best manner, 
 correcting again and again, reading aloud what he 
 had written, to have the witness of his ears to the 
 perfection of his periods, and in his heart believing 
 that he improved in this matter as he grew older. 
 His supreme value for style made him even unjust 
 to extemporaneous oratory; nor is it likely that he 
 could really understand the fiery and impassioned 
 eloquence of an age less cold, didactic, and skepti- 
 cal than that in which he lived. 
 
 The corruption of the court, a ruinous financial 
 system, the wide spread of atheistic doctrines and 
 theories subversive of all government, the oppres- 
 sive privileges of the nobility maintained, in the 
 face of the growing wealth and knowledge of the 
 commons, were now rapidly driving the country 
 toward revolution. An eager, inventive, fertile, 
 and brilliant spirit, of boundless audacity, nerve, 
 and coolness, came to the front ; and, first by open 
 conflict with the corrupt judiciary of the land, and 
 then by bold dramatic lessons, did more to open the 
 eyes of the people to the true state of affairs than 
 any other one man. This was Beaumarchais. In 
 the course of his long law-suit against Goesman, a 
 Counsellor of the Maupeou Parlement, he clearly 
 set before the world the monstrous character of that 
 justice which should have been the last and sure 
 resort of the oppressed. He took to the theatre 
 the same gayly mocking, penetrating wit, taking 
 society to pieces with the scalpel of an Aristophanes 
 and showing the sores that were eating into every 
 vital part. 
 
 The philosophic spirit was already reigning on
 
 On the Eve of the Revolution. 
 
 the boards, as in every department of literature. 
 Tragedy was full of tirades against fanaticism ; 
 comedy sparkled with epigrammatic sayings that 
 cut at the root of authority. But Beaumarchais 
 was bolder, wittier, more terribly iconoclastic than 
 his fore-runners. His Figaro was the very incarna- 
 tion of the spirit of revolution. It is amazing that 
 an arbitrary government tottering on the verge of 
 ruin should have been so mad as to have permitted 
 the representation of the Mariaye de Fiyaro. 
 
 Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732- 
 1799) was the son of a watchmaker and began his 
 career in the same business. Inventing a new kind 
 of escapement, he had to maintain his right to the 
 invention before the Academy of Sciences. This 
 was his first law-suit. Making himself useful to 
 the King's daughters by his skill on the harp and 
 the guitar, he was recommended by them to Paris- 
 Duverney, one of Louis XV.'s ministers. Showing 
 himself gifted in the management of financial mat- 
 ters, he was warmly befriended by that minister, 
 whose kindness he rewarded by securing what Paris- 
 Duverney had during nine years been longing for, 
 namely, a visit from Louis to the tlcole Militaire, 
 which the minister had created and for which lie 
 desired the prestige of royal commendation. Beau- 
 marchais persuaded the princesses to visit the 
 school, and the apathetic monarch was then induced 
 to follow their example. In favor with the court, 
 and made wealthy by marriage, Beaumarchais now 
 began to devote himself to literature. His first 
 play, Eugenie, proving successful, he followed it up 
 with Les Deux Amis, which was not so well re- 
 ceived. They are serious pieces, very different in 
 spirit from those which we now most naturally as- 
 sociate with the name of the gay and brilliant 
 Beaumarchais. 
 
 He was interrupted in his dramatic writing by 
 his two famous suits, the one against De la Blache, 
 the heir of Paris-Duverney, the other against Goes-
 
 200 French Literature. 
 
 snan, the Counsellor of the Maupeou Parlement. 
 Fifteen louis intended to bribe the Counsellor, and 
 imprudently retained by his wife, were the cause 
 of this last suit. Those wonderful JUemoires, in 
 which he convulsed the country with laughter or 
 moved it to bitter indignation, at will in which 
 he mingled all the witty turns of comedy with the 
 invective of a splendid eloquence in which he 
 ruined the reputation of his judges and made his 
 own, though he lost his case, taught Beaumarchais 
 where his true strength lay, and made him give up 
 forever the serious drama except in the third 
 piece of his Figaro trilogy, La MZre Coupable 
 and turn his attention to comedy. 
 
 Le Barrier de Seville was at first only a comic 
 opera, filled with pretty Italian and Spanish airs 
 which Beaumarchais had picked up in his travels. 
 The Italian comedians refused it, the chief actor 
 having once been a barber and objecting to appear 
 in the too familiar character of Figaro. The 
 French players accepted it, but it failed at the first 
 representation. Beaumarchais cut it down from 
 five acts to four, and then it had a brilliant success. 
 Few comedies are so amusing. Its successor, La 
 Folle Journee, ou le Mariage de Figaro, is also 
 amusing, but richer in intrigue, more definitely 
 political in its tone and allusions, and bolder in its 
 revelations of the ingrained immorality and invet- 
 erate clinging to the oppressive privileges which 
 characterized the French noblesse of that age. It 
 was immensely popular. There were more than a 
 hundred successive representations. This success 
 was perhaps as much due to the delight which the 
 public took in the many indecent situations which 
 occur in the play, as to their comprehension of the 
 political satire and sympathy with its bitter pun- 
 gency. The king and the court understood the at- 
 tacks on all existing institutions put into Figaro's 
 mouth ; and the play was at first prohibited. For 
 four years Beaumarchais, with his usual persever-
 
 On the Eve of the jRevoi&tiicft. 2C1 
 
 ance, struggled against tliis resolution of the gov- 
 ernment. He was so persistent that at last the 
 government yielded ; and the laugh that Figaro 
 raised was in the course of a very few years 
 changed to the ringing notes of the Yz Ira and the 
 Marseillaise. " It is only little men who fear little 
 writings," he had made Figaro say ; and the king 
 and every courtier feared to be classed among these 
 "little men." 
 
 Not quite half a century later, Legare, then 
 United States' Minister at Brussels, jots down in 
 his diary a conversation with Prince Auguste 
 d'Arenberg about Goinon's Jfemoiret, in which 
 mention is made of the prodigious run of the Mar- 
 riage of Figaro. The Prince remarked: "The 
 other evening they acted this same piece, the im- 
 pression made by which, half a century ago, I so 
 well remember; on our boards, it fell lifeless as it 
 were. The subject was out of date. What was 
 bold then, is now banal what hit most forcibly, 
 has, through subsequent changes, become inappi'- 
 cable. In short nothing could be more flat. The 
 famous monologue of the great barber was received 
 without one token of effect." 
 
 The Kev? 1n .tion of the English Colonies in 
 America nov/ began, and Beaumarchais undertook 
 to furnish arms and supplies to the colonies. H< 
 carried on this financial operation under the dis- 
 guise of a Spanish mercantile house, and was ex- 
 ceedingly useful to the Americans at a critical 
 period. He never recovered the whole of the sum 
 due him in this business, and it was not until many 
 years after his death that the Congress cr '.ho 
 United States paid the amount to his heirs. 
 
 A few years before the Revolution of 1789, he 
 undertook a complete edition of Voltaire's works, 
 and lost an immense sum by it. During the Revo- 
 lution, he lost the rest of his fortune by bad specu- 
 lations, came very near losing his life, was impris- 
 oned for a time, and afterward became a refugee.
 
 202 French Literature. 
 
 Returning to France when a time of comparative 
 quiet had come, he wrote an account of his experi- 
 ences in Mes Six Epoques and a powerful but rather 
 painful comedy of intrigue almost a tragi-com- 
 edy entitled L'Autre Tartuffe, ou La Mere Coup- 
 able, in which the Almaviva family, Figaro, and 
 Suzanne are once more introduced. Tins vvns rep- 
 resented for the first time at Theatre du Marais the 
 26th of June, 1792. Nearly seven years later 
 Beaumarchais died suddenly and without sickness. 
 
 His Tarare was an opera of no great meri t. He 
 was not skilled in verse-making, and all his plays 
 are in prose. He made some songs of which the 
 best is Robin, but he was only moderately success- 
 ful in this department. His fame must rest on the 
 pleadings in the Goesman case and the wit and 
 boldness of Figaro in the two comedies produced be- 
 fore the Revolution, in which he figures. Even 
 Figaro is not himself in La Mere Coupable. 
 
 Among those who made their reputation be- 
 fore the Revolution and perished under Jacobin 
 rule, was Bailly. 
 
 Jean Sylvain Bailly (1736-1793), born in Paris, 
 was eminent in science and literature. His earlier 
 works were on astronomical subjects. He also pro- 
 duced for the Academy of Sciences eloquent Eloges 
 on Charles V., Moliere, Corneille, Lacaille, Leib- 
 nitz, Cook, and Gresset. He was prominent in the 
 early stages of the Revolution, as President of the 
 National Assembly and afterwards as Mayor of 
 Paris; but, refusing to give way to the populace 
 when they proceeded to violence, he became un- 
 popular. While with his friend, La Place, at 
 Melun, he was seized, brought to Paris, accused of 
 being a royalist, condemned, and executed. His 
 Memoirs were published after his death. 
 
 Jean Baptist Louvet de Couvray (1760-1797), 
 the author of Faublas, that romance of ill-fame, 
 but also of a remarkably pure tale, Emilie de Ver- 
 mont, barely escaped the guillotine in Robespierre's 
 time.
 
 Chateaubriand and Madame de StaeL 203 
 
 XV. 
 
 CHATEAUBRIAND AND MADAME DE STAEL. 
 
 I HAVE nothing to do here with the stormy 
 scenes of the French Eevolution. Nor need I stop 
 to dwell upon the metaphysical oratory of the Gi- 
 rondists and the blood-thirsty declamations of the 
 Mountain, the horrible Carmagnoles of Barere, and 
 the paper Constitutions of the Abb Sieyes. The 
 successive oratorical triumphs of Mirabeau, of Dan- 
 ton, and of Eobespierre belong to the province of 
 the historian. Such men have no place in a sketch 
 of literature. Only those actors in the scenes of 
 revolutionary change, such as Bailly and General 
 Dumouriez, who left Memoirs behind them, are en- 
 titled to literary mention. 
 
 The great literary names of the Napoleonic 
 period are those of the Emperor's declared enemies, 
 Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael. Napoleon 
 gathered eminent scientific men around him; and 
 of these something must be said. But we can 
 better pursue the thread of literary development by 
 taking up first the purely literary producers of this 
 transitional period. 
 
 Fnm^ois- Rene, Vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768- 
 184:8), was born at St. Malo, in Bretagne, and 
 was educated at the College of Eennes. In his 
 Memoirs, he describes vividly the terrible life of 
 isolation in which he grew up, under the stern dis- 
 cipline of his father, in the sombre castle of Com- 
 bourg. Born and bred in that province in which 
 more than anywhere else in France the noble still 
 maintained unquestioned state and the priest still 
 commanded reverence, he was to witness more
 
 204 French Literature. 
 
 strikingly than most men the contrast between 
 feudal and revolutionary France. 
 
 In early life he was procured a commission as 
 sub-lieutenant in the regiment of Navarre. He took 
 leave of his father at the old castle, never to see him 
 again. Arrived in Paris, his brother insisted on 
 presenting him at Court, and he records in his 
 Memoirs the impressions made on him by his first 
 sight of that Court, which was so soon to be 
 brought face to face with the prison and the guillo- 
 tine. After a brief stay in Bretagne, he was once 
 more in Paris and at Court after the opening of the 
 States-General in the fatal year, 1789. He gives a 
 graphic picture of the confused and disorderly con- 
 dition of Parisian society at this time. The army 
 sympathizing with the people, the regiment of Na- 
 varre soon became involved in the general defec- 
 tion. Its colonel, the Marquis of Mortemart, with 
 most of the officers, emigrated ; but Chateaubriand 
 withdrew from the service, took up a scheme for 
 getting up an expedition to search for the North- 
 west passage, and set out for America. 
 
 Wandering in the wilds of America, and at the 
 same time poring over the kindling rhapsodies of 
 Kousseau, he received profound impressions both 
 from the grandeur and awful wildness of nature in 
 the primeval forests of the New World and from 
 the impassioned fervor of the wandering Genevese. 
 But both impressions swayed his genius too much 
 in one direction, and produced in him that straining 
 after effect which was his bane. The result was 
 that in all his works he gave way so much to the 
 temptation to make fine pictures that, on the whole, 
 he must be regarded as no more than a grand rhetori- 
 cian. His political pamphlets, with all their in- 
 consistencies, must be considered his ablest produc- 
 ions, as they are in the main free from the rhapsod- 
 ical finery with which, in the effort to embellish, 
 he really marred the purity of his style in his more
 
 Chaleauhriaad an<l Madame de Stael. 205 
 
 labored works. The language in these is clear, 
 firm and energetic. 
 
 Reading, while still in this country, in an English 
 paper which fell into his hands in the hut of an 
 American backwoodsman near the Blue Mountains, 
 the account of the flight of Louis XVI. to Va- 
 rennes, he at once returned to France. Joining the 
 " Army of the Princes," wounded at the disastrous 
 siege of Thionville, and left for dead in a ditch, he 
 eventually escaped to England, where he lived by 
 giving lessons in French, writing for Peltier the 
 newspaper man whom Mackintosh afterwards de- 
 fended for his "libel "on Napoleon and translat- 
 ing obscure pamphlets. He almost died, however, 
 of starvation, during the bitter experiences of these 
 early London days. It was in London, neverthe- 
 less, that he published his first work. This was an 
 essay Sur les Revolutions anciennes et modernes, 
 considerees dans leurs Rapports avec la Revolution 
 Fftncaise. The tone^of this work was skeptical, 
 and its political principles republican. But the 
 skepticism, which had been prompted by personal 
 sufferings, soon passed away. In 1800, he returned 
 to France, and wrote for the Mercure, publishing in 
 this journal his romance of Atala, with a preface 
 in which he took occasion to eulogize the First 
 Consul. 
 
 The following year, he still further pleased the 
 Head of the State by the publication of his Genie 
 da ('//r/'xtianisme, which chimed in well with Napo- 
 leon's desire to propitiate the Church and to re-es- 
 tablish public worship in France. Both these 
 works were welcomed with delight by the public. 
 A burst of enthusiasm was accorded his Genius of 
 /A///////. The criticism of Fontanes, in an ar- 
 ticle which appeared in the Moniteur Universelle at 
 the time the work was published, is on the whole 
 just and accurate: "The author has aimed at pre- 
 senting not the theological proofs of religion, but
 
 206 French Literature. 
 
 the picture of its benefits; he appeals rather to the 
 feelings than to the reason." 
 
 Alala and Rene are both episodes in an extended 
 romance called Les Natchez, and were published be- 
 fore it. The story of Atala gives a vivid picture 
 of fanaticism in the wild forest world. Its faults 
 are the extravagance of the language and the strain- 
 ing after pathetic effects. " Rene" says De Veri- 
 cour, "is the personification of one of those moral 
 maladies which so often assail human nature, 
 blighting all freshness and vigor in the soul. Rene 
 is the type of morbid reverie of the bitterness re- 
 sulting from social inaction, blended with a proud 
 scorn and self-satisfaction. His haughty and soli- 
 tary soul finds in disdain an inexplicable source of 
 superiority over all men and things." 
 
 A favorite now with Napoleon, Chateaubriand 
 was sent by him to Rome as Secretary of Legation ; 
 and, later, he was made ambassador to the little 
 republic of Valais. When, however, the execution 
 of the Due d'Enghien took place, Chateaubriand 
 resigned his post and retired from public life in 
 disgust. 
 
 Two years later, he went on an eastern tour, 
 visiting Greece, Palestine, Egypt, and Carthage, 
 and returning to France by way of Spain. The 
 literary fruit of this trip was his Itineraire de Paris 
 a Jerusalem. Les Martyrs had been given to the 
 world a year or so before. 
 
 After the first fall of Napoleon, he issued his 
 brilliant pamphlet Sur Bonaparte et les Bourbons, 
 full of jierce invective against the fallen giant, and 
 throbbing with all the rancor of furious party-spirit. 
 It may be compared with the anti- Caesarian temper 
 of Cicero after the assassination of the great Im- 
 perator. 
 
 After the battle of Waterloo, Chateaubriand 
 became Minister of State under Louis XVIII. His 
 Monarchic selon la Charte was intended to give 
 popularity to the cause of the Bourbons, but its
 
 Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael. 207 
 
 insistence upon the sacredness of the charter gave 
 offense to the stubborn and wrongheaded fanatics 
 of royalty whom it sought to defend. At last he 
 became as obnoxious to the Court, as Clarendon be- 
 came to that of Charles II. when its dislike to 
 honesty and good counsel grew extreme ; and he 
 was dismissed from office. 
 
 lie had begun his Memoires d'outre Tombe as far 
 back as in 1811, in the retirement of a little coun- 
 try-house, near the village of Aulnay. But this 
 work was frequently interrupted by the cares of 
 political life, and the greater part of it was reserved 
 for the employment of his later years. 
 
 In 1826, he prepared the first edition of his col- 
 lected works. His publisher gave him for the 
 copyright of this edition 600,000 francs; but 
 Chateaubriand returned 100,000. 
 
 When the "Revolution of July" came (in 1830), 
 he was- staying at Dieppe with that famous queen 
 of the salon, Mada-me de Recamier, who idolized 
 him somewhat as Mrs. Thrale idolized Dr. John- 
 son. He hastened at once to Paris. But on the 
 elevation of Louis Philippe to the throne, he refused 
 to take the oath of allegiance. After this event he 
 wrote several other political pamphlets, such as 
 De la Restauration et de la Monarchic Elective, and 
 Du Bannissement de la Famille de Charles X.; his 
 Histoire du Congres de Verone ; his Etudes his- 
 toriyues ; an Essai sur la Literature anglaise ; 
 a very poor translation of Milton's Paradise Lost ; 
 and the Memoires d'outre Tombe, remarkable 
 for the cruel personalities and pitiless egotism 
 which have in our day been the distinguishing 
 traits of Carlyle's last remains. Sainte-Beuve, 
 in his Critiques et Portraits Litteraires, has de- 
 scribed in his lively style the readings given of 
 the first part of these Memoirs before the brilliant 
 circle that was wont to gather at the Abbaye-aux- 
 bois in 1834. 
 
 French critics rank Chateaubriand as the great-
 
 208 French Literature. 
 
 est colorist and the most harmonious prose writer 
 in their literature. His political career was certainly 
 full of apparent inconsistencies. But his aim seems 
 to have been to uphold a constitutional govern- 
 ment in France, and both the legitimist and the 
 republican extremists of his time made that an 
 impossibility. 
 
 I have spoken of Madame de Eecamier's devo- 
 tion to him in his later days. Some space should 
 be devoted to this famous woman, who represented 
 in her day the sort of influence exercised in earlier 
 French society by the ruelles of the Marquise de 
 Eambouillet and the salons of the Duchesse du 
 Maine and of Madame d'Houdetot. She belongs to 
 literature through the literary atmosphere to which 
 her fascinating powers acted as a sort of electric 
 gathering point, as well as in virtue of the Souvenirs 
 et Correspondance tires des Papiers de Madame 
 Recamier. 
 
 Jeanne FranQoise Julie Adelaide Bernard Re*- 
 camier (1777-1849), daughter of a banker of Lyon, 
 and wife of a rich banker many years older than 
 herself, was beautiful in person and endowed with 
 wonderful grace and charm. She was the warm 
 friend of Madame de Stael, and, in his later years, 
 of Chateaubriand. When he lost his wife, Chateau- 
 briand tried to induce Madame de Recamier, who 
 had for many years been a widow, to marry him. 
 But she preferred their old relations of friendship. 
 Sainte-Beuve has described these relations in his 
 fine manner ; and, though I have not room for the 
 entire passage, a sketch based upon it will not be 
 out of place here. 
 
 Hers was a salon in which met, under a most 
 charming influence, the most illustrious characters 
 of the age. Chateaubriand reigned there, and, 
 when he was present, everything took its cue and 
 color from him. He was not always there, how- 
 ever. There was talk in that company on all 
 subjects, always with the air of private confidence,
 
 Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael. 209 
 
 and in tones less loud than elsewhere. There was 
 nothing commonplace there. But the air of reserve, 
 which belonged to its gentle spirit of discretion and 
 good taste, was tempered by a general kindliness by 
 which the new-comer felt himself put at his ease 
 and was made one of the social " initiated." Famil- 
 iarity was preserved from any descent into those 
 liberties, which it is prone to, by the air of distinc- 
 tion which the manners of all insensibly took in 
 that gracious presence. The charming mistress of 
 the house knew how to throw an expression of in- 
 terest not insincere, for her ready sympathies really 
 went out to each guest into her reception of every 
 remark. She had that quick bright look and smile 
 of comprehension, which to all who essay parlor 
 conversation must always be so winning. No one 
 visited there without taking away a gratified sense 
 of having pleased by some good expression, indicat- 
 ing excellence of head or heart. This delicate 
 flattery was the -most powerful of her charms. If 
 Chateaubriand was the pride of her salon, she her- 
 self was the soul of it. There was no form of dis- 
 tinction which she did not woo to her little salon of 
 the Abbaye ; and, once charmed to her presence, it 
 was sure to be put in a good light there and with 
 fit surroundings, so as to feel at home and proud to 
 own allegiance to the queen of a society so con- 
 genial. 
 
 She had also that tact, that practical sagacity, 
 which creates usages from the simplest observation, 
 surprising secrets that common experience offers, 
 but which conventional art so easily ignores. A 
 little story I have read somewhere illustrates this 
 well. Some one is said to have remarked her sur- 
 prise that even strangers seemed to feel at once at 
 their ease in Madame de Eecamier's salon, and that 
 the very furniture had a cosy look about it, seats of 
 various kinds falling into natural groups before the 
 room was half filled. " Why," said Madame de 
 Re"camier, "it is very simple. When a really con-
 
 210 French Literature. 
 
 genial party has spent the evening here, I order 
 the room to be left undisturbed. The furniture \* 
 best arranged for friendly intercourse, just as they 
 have left it." 
 
 Of this society Chateaubriand, in the twenty 
 years which remained to them both, was the centre, 
 the great interest of her life, the interest to which 
 she subordinated everything. He had his antip- 
 athies, his aversions, his bitternesses. She it was 
 vho soothed, and tried to temper and correct this 
 querulous side of his old age. She had the tact (; 
 make him talk when he was too prone to silence, 
 to imagine good-natured speeches for him which no 
 doubt he had made in privacy but did not seem in- 
 clined to utter before witnesses. She had the 
 address to stir him up even into gaiety. She could 
 stimulate him into his finer moods and fire him into 
 trains of thought that made him eloquent. 
 
 It was, then, to this glorious woman a creature 
 gifted with a genius for sympathy and a social 
 magnetism of marvelous sweetness and power 
 that Chateaubriand owed all the happiness of his 
 declining years. He lived to witness the opening 
 scenes of the Eevolution of 1848. Louis de 
 Lomdnie, in the Revue des Deux Mondes for mid- 
 July, 1848, describes his dying hours thus : 
 
 " M. de Chateaubriand departed at a moment when 
 the sophisms and the errors which he had combated all 
 his life through were causing blood to flow in our streets. 
 The battle of June that terrible convulsion, which 
 threatened to carry away not alone the republic, but also 
 society itself was the torment of his latest days. Seated 
 before his open windows, and already enfeebled by the 
 approach of death, he was to be seen, pale, silent, and 
 sombre, his head bowed upon his breast, listening to the 
 distant rumblings of civil war. Every cannon-shot drew 
 from him sighs and groans ; but he was still permitted, 
 whilst deploring the necessity of the combat, to rejoice in 
 the victory ; and to quit us without despairing of the 
 futurity of France."
 
 Chateaubriand a/l M-adame de Stael. 211 
 
 "It was well for his peace of mind that he did not 
 live a few years longer, to witness the establish- 
 ment of the second Empire. 
 
 Madame de Recamier's friend of earlier days, the 
 other great Frenchwoman of the Napoleonic age, 
 and Chateaubriand's compeer in the literary field, 
 was the Baronne de Stael-Holstein. 
 
 Anne-Marie Louise Germaine Necker (1766- 
 1817) was a woman of remarkable powers, a writer 
 whose mingled charms of thought, sentiment, 
 and fancy give her deserved eminence in the 
 literature of France. Her father was that able 
 and honest Jacques Necker, citizen of Geneva 
 and banker of Paris, who was thrice called to 
 the post of Comptroller-General of the Finances in 
 the ruinous days of the monarchy on the eve of the 
 .Revolution, and whose splendid economic abilities 
 would have saved the country from coming horrors, 
 had he not been over-ruled by an infatuated Court. 
 .Her mother was that beautiful and accomplished 
 .Mademoiselle Susanne Curchod, whose hand Gib- 
 bon resigned in obedience to the will of his father, 
 during the davs of his early training at Lausanne. 
 
 Necker was something more than a great banker 
 
 and a brilliant master of political economy. He 
 
 was a man who had an enlightened taste for what 
 
 was best in literature and society; and his house 
 
 was open at all times to the most remarkable men 
 
 of the day. His daughter was therefore at an early 
 
 age under impressions well fitted to develop in 
 
 her intellectual tastes of a high order. The strict- 
 
 .ness of her mother's ideas made it difficult for her 
 
 .to sympathize with a child of fervid temperament, 
 
 t bred in a hot-house atmosphere of sentiment and 
 
 !speculative thought. For, the young girl was from 
 
 .the first a creature of injpulsive and ardent genius. 
 
 , At the age of twelve, she wrote a play, which was 
 
 .acted by herself and some of her young friends. 
 
 (Her remarkable conversational powers, even in 
 
 .childhood, attracted the attention of the eminent
 
 212 French Literature. 
 
 men who came to her father's house. She not only 
 listened eagerly to the talk of such men as Gibbon, 
 Marmontel, Grimm, and the Abbe Eaynal ; but 
 she was petted by them and encouraged to join in 
 their conversation. Her father, too, was fond of 
 talking to her on themes which it would have 
 seemed absurd to touch upon with most children 
 of her age. He was proud of her intellect, and 
 aimed to infuse into her his own lofty views and 
 thoughtful philosophy of life. From this familiar 
 and affectionate intercourse sprang that devoted 
 love and pride with which through life she re- 
 garded the memory of her father. The warmest 
 feelings of her nature seem to have been lavished 
 upon him. Had she possessed the gift of beauty, in 
 dition to her other gifts, she might have been 
 wooed with ardor enough to awaken her heart to 
 the passion of love. But, being ugly, her heart 
 was never warmed into the fulness of life, and her 
 vivacious intellect usurped all the intensity of pur- 
 pose and fire of brilliant energy which might other- 
 wise have been developed in her affections. 
 
 She made one of those matches called in the 
 heartless societies of cities a mariaye de convenance, 
 in a cool and business-like spirit. Being herself a 
 great heiress, she could afford to dispense with 
 money in her choice. Her mother insisted that 
 she should marry a Protestant, and her father chose 
 for her Eric, Baron de Stael-Holstein, an attache to 
 the Swedish embassy, who was expected to become 
 ambassador himself. The fact that he would reside 
 rermanently in Paris was perhaps the greatest in- 
 Jucement to the match. The Baron was a hand- 
 some man, though twice her age, was of noble birth, 
 and bore a fair character. But there is little rea- 
 son to believe that this girl of twenty, who had 
 wept over Clarissa Harlowe, had a spark of love to 
 give him. She married to have a proper establish- 
 ment in Paris, and to open a salon of her own, in 
 which she" would be the acknowledged queen of a 
 
 \
 
 Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael. 213 
 
 brilliant circle. Swiss by blood, she was yet al- 
 most a typical Frenchwoman in her vivacity, her 
 gift for conversation, and her brilliant fancy. That 
 she added to these charms a masculine vigor of 
 thought, mingled from time to time with the play 
 of witty repartee and graceful sally, only enhanced 
 the attractiveness of her salon by making it unique. 
 
 Her first literary work,the Lettres sur Rousseau, be- 
 longs to this period, and shows that she, like Cha- 
 teaubriand, had received her earliest and profoundest 
 impressions from the impassioned sentimentalist of 
 Geneva. Fervid in style, and important as an in- 
 dication of tendency, this production is yet imma- 
 ture and far from indicating the powers displayed 
 in her later works. 
 
 The avalanche of revolution soon came, to throw 
 these days of triumph forever into a past as remote 
 almost to memory as those of the fabled Age of 
 Gold. But the troubles that swept over society, 
 involving Necker and his people in the common 
 ruin, served to bring out the better qualities in 
 Madame de StaeTs nature. Her father had failed 
 to reconcile or satisfy the contending Court and 
 People, and had retired to Coppet in Switzerland. 
 From that retreat he sent pamphlet after pamphlet 
 of warning into the France he had striven so hard 
 to save, and which had so often rejected his coun- 
 sels. But there were none to heed his words. She, 
 as Necker's daughter and an ambassador's wife, 
 possessed for a while, in the midst of that seething 
 sea of furious humanity, personal security and some 
 influence. She tried to get the royal family se- 
 cretly to England. She tried to save the Queen's 
 life though she had never been a favorite with 
 Marie Antoinette by her Reflexions sur le Proems 
 de la Reine, par Une Femme. She hid some of the 
 proscribed in her house. She prevailed upon some 
 of the revolutionary chiefs to grant mercy in a few 
 instances. After Kobespierre's death, she published
 
 French Literature. 
 
 two pamphlets in favor of peace, one of which was 
 praised by Pitt in the English Parliament. 
 
 When at last it was evident that no more was to 
 be done, she joined her friends in England, while 
 her husband took refuge in Holland so as to be 
 ready at once to resume his diplomatic functions 
 upon the coming of a lull in the revolutionary fury. 
 Her fellow refugees in England were Talleyrand, 
 De Narbonne whose life she had saved and the 
 D'Arblay who afterwards married Miss Burney, the 
 author of Evelina. The exiles were very poor, but 
 not very unhappy, in spite of the stupid insular 
 coldness of their English neighbors, who did not 
 understand the intimacy of Madame de Stael and 
 De Narbonne, and talked slanderous gossip about 
 them. 
 
 When something like regular government was 
 re-established in France, the Baron de Stael resumed 
 his post as ambassador in Paris ; and his wife passed 
 her time agreeably enough for some years, living 
 alternately with her father at Coppet and with her 
 husband at Paris. 
 
 But when Napoleon became the ruling power in 
 France, his perception of the fact that she would 
 always indignantly oppose his successive steps to- 
 wards absolutism made him resolute to keep at 
 least her social influence outside of the game. He 
 first prohibited her residence in Paris, and ended 
 by exiling her from France altogether. They were 
 not only thoroughly antipathetic natures; but 
 it is evident from her Considerations sur la 
 Revolution Fran<;aise, that she read his charac- 
 ter earlier and better than any one else read 
 it as the world is only recently beginning to 
 understand it and that his keen eye perceived 
 this fact and his prompt will decided him to be rid 
 at once of what was likely to be a real and great 
 danger. She was never blind to his transcendant 
 genius; and that she was not dazzled by it to the 
 point of ignoring even for a moment his monstrous
 
 Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael. 215 
 
 egotism, is a wonderful proof of the clearness of her 
 vision. 
 
 Before the final edict of the First Consul had 
 banished her from France, she had greatly increased 
 her literary reputation by the publication of her work 
 Sur la Litterature consideree dans ses Rapports avec 
 VEtat Moral et Politique des Nations, and her ro- 
 mance of Dalphine. The " Literature considered in 
 its Connection with Social Institutions" is a wort 
 of real philosophic merit. In this treatise, "all hei 
 efforts are directed to one end to show that there 
 is a progress ; that the advance of knowledge has 
 been real and constant, in spite of vicissitudes; that 
 we can trace the law of the moral improvement of 
 man through all the obscurities of time ; and 
 that the human race is tending, however slowly, 
 towards a state of perfection." 
 
 Delphine is a romance full of eloquence and 
 passion, but tarnished with more than doubtful mo- 
 rality. Indeed, it was denounced as highly immoral 
 by the court journals of the day, though their ad- 
 verse criticisms were prompted by the wish to 
 seize any and every excuse for putting a ban upon 
 her and her father, who about this time incurred 
 Napoleon's enmity by the publication of his "Last 
 Political and Financial Views." 
 
 She took greatly to heart her exile from her be- 
 loved Paris. In the lovely scenes of her residence 
 at Geneva, with the beautiful Lake before her eyes, 
 she exclaimed : " O for the rivulet in the Rue du 
 Bac! I would rather live in Paris in the fourth 
 story and with a hundred a year. I dp not dissem- 
 ble: a residence in Paris has always appeared to me 
 the most desirable of all. I was born there; I 
 passed my childhood and my early youth there. It is 
 there alone that I can find any trace of the generation 
 that knew my father, of the friends with whom I 
 underwent the dangers of the Revolution. French 
 conversation exists only in Paris, and conversation 
 has been, since my infancy, my greatest pleasure,"
 
 216 French Literature. 
 
 Such are the feelings that she expresses and dwells 
 upon again and again, in her Dix Annees cTExil. 
 
 During Napoleon's absence in the north at the 
 time he was planning an invasion of England, she 
 ventured to go to a little country-seat of hers some 
 ten leagues from Paris. But her inexorable enemy 
 became aware of her presence and ruthlessly or- 
 dered her to remove to a distance of forty leagues 
 from Paris. In spite of the zealous intercessions in 
 her favor of Joseph and Lucien Bonaparte, this 
 mandate was put in force, and she was obliged to 
 shift from place to place, under the odious pressure 
 of the gendarmes. She could not long remain in 
 France, or even in Switzerland, and decided on going 
 to Germany. Joseph Bonaparte gave her letters of 
 introduction for Berlin, and she set out, accom- 
 panied by her devoted friend, Benjamin Constant. 
 
 At Weimar, she enjoyed the society of Goethe, 
 Schiller, Wieland, and the Duke and Duchess 
 of Weimar ; studied the German language and 
 literature ; and took notes for the great work 
 in which she was to reveal this new world of 
 thought to the French. At Berlin, she heard the 
 news of the death of the Due d'Enghien ; and it was 
 here also that the intelligence reached her, a little 
 later, of the prostration of her father. She hastened 
 to go to him, but was informed of his death before 
 reaching the confines of Germany. Beaching 
 Switzerland in an agony of grief and self-reproach 
 at her absence from him who had always been her 
 idol, her first desire was to pen a suitable tribute to 
 his memory. Her Vie privee de M. Necker, though 
 naturally the over-strained estimate of a too partial 
 biographer, is a singularly touching memoir. 
 
 From Switzerland she went to Italy, and on her 
 return composed, while residing alternately at Cop- 
 pet and Geneva, her Qorinne, ou V Italic. As a story, 
 it has always seemed to me a wretched failure, the 
 characters morbid and their conduct affected and 
 aimless, the whole conception of their relations un-
 
 Chateaubriand and Afadame de Stael. 217 
 
 real in the extreme. But, as a picture of Italy, as 
 an impassioned and eloquent delineation of that 
 sunny land, the home of art and beauty, its charm 
 is undoubtedly great; and the enthusiasm with 
 which it was written, the deep melancholy which 
 rests like a lovely veil over its richest bits of color- 
 ing, the excellence of its criticisms on art and liter- 
 ature, combined to give it a prodigious success. It 
 was, however, only the Italy of history, the Italy of 
 a glorious past and a rich inheritance in genius, 
 that she found so near her heart and took such de- 
 light in painting. She had little relish for nature's 
 charms. She said once to Mole, the author of Es- 
 sais de Morale et de Politique, " If it were not for 
 respect due to public opinion, I would not open my 
 window to see the Bay of Naples ; while I would 
 travel five hundred miles to talk with a man of 
 ability." 
 
 She now took up her residence in Vienna, and 
 there busied herself in collecting materials for her 
 great work, De VAllemayne, a picture of German 
 morals, literature, and philosophy. This is the most 
 ambitious, the most highly labored, and perhaps 
 the ablest of her writings. The judgment of Sir 
 James Mackintosh on it is, that it is "probably the 
 most elaborate and masculine production of the 
 faculties of woman." He asks, " What woman, 
 indeed, or, AVC may add, how many men, could have 
 preserved all the grace and brilliancy of Parisian 
 society in analyzing its nature explained the most 
 abstruse and metaphysical theories of Germany pre- 
 cisely, yet perspicuously and agreeably and com- 
 bined the eloquence which inspires exalted senti- 
 ments of virtue, with the enviable talent of gently 
 indicating the defects of men or of nations, by the 
 skilfully softened touches of a polite and merciful 
 pleasantry ? " 
 
 Napoleon proscribed this book, as he had perse- 
 cuted the author. The printed copies were ordered 
 to be seized and burned, and Madame de Stael vraa
 
 218 - .French Literature. 
 
 notified that she was banished entirely from France, 
 the letter of the Minister of Police declaring em- 
 phatically : " We are not yet reduced to seek for 
 models in the nations you admire." 
 
 Her friends, too, were persecuted for her sake. 
 Schlegel, who had been for years the tutor of her 
 two sons, was ordered to quit Geneva and Coppet. 
 De Moiitmorenci and Madame Re'camier were con- 
 demned to perpetual exile for the crime of visiting 
 her at Coppet. As Napoleon's power enlarged its 
 circle, she was forced to get farther and farther 
 away. She went to Russia, to Sweden, and to 
 England. In London, she published her work on 
 Germany, as it had been suppressed in Paris. 
 
 During this period of her stay in England, Rogers 
 writes to Moore whose poetry he tells him she 
 greatly admires in August, 1813, his impressions 
 of her : " Strong feeling delights her most. The 
 death of Clarissa, she says [Richardson's heroine], 
 comes to her constantly as one of the events of her 
 life. Her daughter [the Duchesse de Broglie] you 
 would like; she is very pleasing, and dances a 
 ^hawl-dance beautifully. The mother, too, you 
 vvould like very good-natured, very lively, and 
 eloquent. She speaks English well, but not 
 fluently. Pray come and meet her. She dines 
 with me next Friday." 
 
 ! At last the Restoration came, and she returned 
 to her beloved Paris, occupied herself with writing 
 her Dix Annees dExil, had restitution made her 
 at last of the two million livres due from the royal 
 treasury on her father's account, and, dying at Paris 
 after a vain effort to restore her health by a trip to 
 Italy, was buried at Coppet. Pier will revealed 
 the fact that she had secretly married some six 
 years before a young French officer named Rocca, 
 who had been kindly received by her on his com- 
 ing wounded from Spain to Geneva, and who had 
 conceived a passion for her on account of her kind 
 freart and, the charm of her conversation.
 
 Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael. 21S 
 
 Few women liave written so ably as she on so 
 many different subjects. To few of her sex has it 
 been given to discuss political, social, philosophical, 
 and literary questions with equal force, wit, and 
 grace. But it may safely be said that no :woman 
 has blended as she did the very different gifts .of 
 literary skill and conversational ability. The many 
 eminent men whom she met in her career all testify- 
 to the brilliancy of her conversation. Bat all, ex- 
 cept her French admirers, agree in hinting or openly 
 declaring that their admiration was not unmingled 
 with decided weariness. She talked too much. 
 Talleyrand, with that marvelous wit of his which 
 has more surprise in it than any one else's, said in 
 his gentlest tones, when taxed with liking to be 
 with Madame Grant after having enjoyed intimacy 
 with Madame de Stael, "One must have been fond 
 of Madame de Stael to get a relish for the happi: 
 ne.ss of loving a fool." Schiller, in a letter to Goethe 
 full of praise of he*, is forced to let fall the sen- 
 tence, " One's only grievance is the altogether unr 
 precedented glibness of her tongue." Goethe, also 
 full of praise in his Dichtung und Wahrheit^ 
 charges her with " never granting, on the most im ; 
 portant topics, a moment of reflection." Bryon's 
 references to her in his private journals are gener- 
 ally complimentary. He liked her and admired 
 her works. In London he saw a good deal of her, 
 and in Switzerland she was kind to him. " In her 
 own house," he says, "she was amiable; in any 
 other person's you wished her gone, and in her own 
 again." 
 
 These criticisms go to show that she was some- 
 what overpowering in general society. But she 
 was a devoted daughter, a staunch friend, a good 
 mother. There was nothing frivolous about her. 
 In her writings she is remarkable for sustained and 
 even impassioned earnestness. Except Talleyrand 
 and Napoleon neither of whom can be considered 
 typical Frenchmen her countrymen did not find
 
 220 French Literature. 
 
 her tiresome in conversation. The charm of her 
 enthusiasm almost converted Benjamin Constant 
 from Voltairism. He even testifies that she under- 
 stood the art of listening and practiced it to per- 
 fection : 
 
 " Since I know her better," he writes from Switzerland 
 to Madame de Charriere, " I find great difficulty in not 
 praising her incessantly, and in not manifesting to all 
 those to whom I speak my interest and my adnfl ration. 
 I have rarely seen a similar combination of surprising 
 md attractive qualities, so much brilliancy and justice, a 
 benevolence so expansive and so highly cultivated, so 
 much generosity, a politeness so gentle and so uniform in 
 public, so many charms, so much simplicity and freedom 
 in private. She is the second woman I have found who 
 might have taken the place of the whole universe to me, 
 who would have been of herself a world for me ; you 
 know who was the first. Madame de Stae'l has infinitely 
 more wit in intimate conversation than in public ; she un- 
 derstands perfectly how to listen, which neither you nor I 
 thought. She feels the wit of others with as much pleas- 
 ure as her own. She makes those whom she loves valued 
 with an ingenious and constant attention which proves as 
 much kindness as intellect. In a word, she is a being 
 apart, a superior being such as we meet perhaps one in a 
 century, and such that those who approach her, know her, 
 and are her friends, need ask no other happiness." 
 
 Surely, the woman who could call forth such a 
 eulogy from a man of Constant's extraordinary 
 abilities and world-weary spirit, must have pos- 
 sessed no ordinary share of goodness as well as 
 charm of mind and manner. 
 
 Along with Madame de Stae'l may be named a lady 
 of far inferior powers, but who, through her Exiles 
 of Siberia, is known in all lands. This was Madame 
 Sophie Cottin (1773-1807), whose maiden name 
 was Eistaud. She was born at Tonneins and edu- 
 cated at Bordeaux. Married very early in life to 
 a Parisian banker, she was a childless widow at 
 twenty. She wrote a number of romances, Claire 
 cTAlbe, Malvina. Amelie Mansfield, Mathilde, ou 
 Malek Adhel, and Elisaltit\ QU les Exiles de Siberie,
 
 The Scientific Period. 223 
 
 XVI. 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC PERIOD. 
 
 THE other eminent exiles, who have a place in 
 literature, must first have our attention. We can 
 then pass on to the men of science who illustrated 
 this period. 
 
 The twenty-years' friend of Madame de Stae'l and 
 the impassioned lover of Madame de Recamier when 
 he was nearer fifty than forty that Benjamin Con- 
 stant who promised so much and performed so 
 little was recognized in his day as the most bril- 
 liant of talkers. Acute and sparkling in his books; 
 elegant and animated in his letters ; pungent, dar- 
 ing, and witty in his,. speeches from the tribune, he 
 possessed powers which might have given him a 
 noble place in history ; but his early loss of faith 
 in anything spoilt him for life. His story is the 
 story of a man of consummate ability whose whole 
 career was marred by his utter lack of serious in- 
 terest in life. What he did accomplish he owed to 
 the influence of the Baronne de Stael. 
 
 Henri Benjamin Constant de Rebeque (1767- 
 1830) was born at Lausanne and educated in Ger- 
 many and Scotland. In 1796, he published in 
 Paris a pamphlet which won him some reputation 
 as a political thinker. But he had already been 
 many years under the fatal influence of that fair 
 friend, Madame de Charriere, to whom he owed 
 the loss of all true interest in life. 
 
 Isabelle de Charriere was the daughter of a 
 Dutch baron, who had married her brother's Swiss 
 teacher, and had written several works, among 
 them Caliste. Her beauty and intellectual charms 
 had completely enchained Constant, though she
 
 222 French Literature. 
 
 was nearly thirty years older. In the midst of 
 those great events whicli were changing the world 
 around him, in that momentous year, 1790, he 
 writes to her a morbid revelation of the nothingness 
 of existence to him. " I see no motives for any- 
 thing in this world," he says, " and I have no taste 
 for anything." Two years later, he writes to her 
 in the same bitter spirit : " Sick of everything, 
 tired of everything, bitter egotist, with a sort of 
 sensibility which serves only to torment me, fickle 
 to a degree that might well make me pass for mad, 
 subject to fits of melancholy which interrupt all 
 my plans and make me act, while they last, as if I 
 had given up everything ; how can you expect 
 me to succeed, to please, to live ? " 
 
 Two years later still, however, he met Madame 
 de Stael in Switzerland. We have already seen 
 how powerfully she impressed him. Her firm con- 
 victions of truth and duty did much to cure him 
 of his feverish unbelief, his jaundiced views of life. 
 Her real goodness of heart attached him to her at 
 once and for ever. They lived much in each other's 
 society both at Coppet and in Paris ; and, as we 
 have seen, he was her escort on her first visit to 
 Germany. Sainte-Beuve thus describes the life 
 they led together at Coppet : 
 
 " Literary or philosophical conversations, always piquant 
 or elevated, began about eleven in the morning, when 
 they met at breakfast. These were resumed at dinner, 
 continuing until supper, which took place at eleven in 
 the evening, and were often kept up till midnight. 
 Benjamin Constant and Madame de Stael took the 
 lead in the conversation. It was then that Benjamin 
 Constant who, when younger, we have hitherto seen 
 only blase, substituting for his too inveterate raillery a 
 factitious enthusiasm, always a marvelously witty talker, 
 but with whom wit had ended by inheriting the 
 fire of all the other more powerful faculties and pas- 
 sions it was then that he showed himself naturally 
 with spirit what Madame de Stael has proclaimed
 
 The Scientific Period. 223 
 
 him, the first mind in the world ; he was certainly 
 the greatest among distinguished men. The minds 
 of these two at least always agreed ; they were sure 
 of understanding each other. Nothing, according to wit- 
 nesses, was so dazzling and superior as their conversation 
 in this choice circle, these two holding the magic raquette 
 of discourse and sending backwards and forwards for 
 hours, without ever missing, the volant of a thousand in- 
 terchanged thoughts." 
 
 It was through her influence upon him, so much 
 more wholesome than that of Madame de Gharri ere, 
 that he began that political career in which he 
 labored to some purpose in later days by the side 
 of men like General Foy and Manuel and Lafay- 
 ette. 
 
 Three years after his pamphlet of 1796, Napoleon 
 placed him on the " Tribunat." But he offended 
 the First Consul by the spirit with which he op- 
 posed the successive steps towards the assumption 
 of supreme power which Napoleon was now taking, 
 and he was dismissed from office and banished. 
 Accompanying Madame de Stael to Germany, he 
 published in 1813 his famous pamphlet, Sur V Es- 
 prit de Conquete. On the fall of Napoleon in 1814, 
 he returned to Paris, where his pen was busy in 
 producing political pamphlets. In these he de- 
 scribed Napoleon as a Genghis Khan and his rule as 
 a u government of Mamelukes." 
 
 Yet, when the Emperor appeared once more in 
 Paris, he strangely passed over to his side and be- 
 came one of his Councillors of State. It is now 
 pretty well ascertained since the publication of 
 his letters to that woman who "understood the art 
 oflistening" that this piece of political tergiver- 
 sation was due to his mad love for Madame de 
 Recamier, to whom he was now devoting all his 
 powers of persuasion. His motive was simply that 
 he might still live in Paris and be near her. He 
 could have had little real hope of winning her af- 
 fection by a course so repugnant to her own views,
 
 224 French Literature. 
 
 when his most ardent supplications had been 
 unavailing before, though he had then been writing 
 in the interest of her party. But he seems to have 
 been in despair at the thought of being parted from 
 her, and perhaps he may have believed in the 
 charm of ambition for a heart like hers. 
 
 On the return of the Bourbons, he wrote so able 
 an exculpation of his conduct to Louis XVIII., that 
 he was readily pardoned. A friend remarking to 
 him : " So, your memorial has succeeded! It has 
 persuaded the King," "I don't wonder," said 
 Constant ; "it almost persuaded my own self! " 
 
 In 1818, the Chamber of Deputies witnessed the 
 appearance, as members, of three men greatly 
 dreaded by the favorers of absolute government. 
 These were Lafayette, Manuel, and Constant. 
 Later, the liberal party mustered also such able 
 men as Foy, Lafntte, and Dupont-de-1'Eure ; and, 
 later still, Casimir Perier. 
 
 Constant's eloquent oratory, his keen perception, 
 his pungent wit, and his brilliant readiness as a 
 pamphleteer, made him a valued leader of the lib- 
 eral party. He died shortly after the revolution 
 which drove Charles X. from the throne. He had 
 been twice married, having been divorced from his 
 first wife. His whole career was singularly in- 
 fluenced by women. 
 
 Among his works are his Discours Prononces d 
 la Chambre des Deputes, his Cours de Politique Con- 
 stitutionelle, his Memoires sur les Cent Jours, and hia 
 De la Religion consideree dans sa Source, ses Formes, 
 et ses Developpements, which was not wholly pub- 
 lished until after his death. It was of the book on 
 religion that the story is told of Constant's answer- 
 ing, when a friend asked him how he could recon- 
 cile the statements of his latter volumes with those 
 of his first, published so long ago: "There is 
 nothing that can be arranged so easily as facts." 
 Tins book, which is in five volumes, occupied him 
 at intervals for thirty years. It is said to have
 
 The Scientific Period. 225 
 
 t>een planned and the outline of it written on the 
 backs of packs of playing cards. As a supplement 
 to this, he wrote his Du Polytheisme Romain, con- 
 sideree dans ses Rapports avec la Philosophic 
 Grecque et la Religion Chretienne. 
 
 He seems to have had the same faculty of tiring 
 out the patience of his English friends, as his be- 
 loved paragon, Madame de Stae'l ; for Thomas 
 Moore tells an amusing story, in one of his journals, 
 of Lord Lansdowne's escape from hearing him read 
 a novel, by adroitly making use of Madame Con- 
 stant's cat to cover his abrupt departure. 
 
 There were other exiles, besides these more emi- 
 nent ones, who did literary work of some impor- 
 tance. Among these were the brothers De Maistre 
 and General Dumouriez. 
 
 The Comte Joseph De Maistre (1753-1821) was 
 born at Chambery, of a noble French family which 
 had settled in Savoy. During the occupation of 
 Savoy by the French in 1792, he withdrew from 
 the country. "When his king retired to the island 
 of Sardinia, the only part of his dominions where 
 he could still exercise sovereignty, De Maistre joined 
 his court there, and was sent as ambassadorto Saint 
 Petersburg in 1803. There he remained until 1817, 
 when he was recalled to Turin, to fill high posts at 
 home. His later years were spent in his native 
 country. His only title to a place in the history of 
 French literature rests on the fact that his excellent 
 works were written in French. 
 
 His first work was his Considerations sur la 
 France, which appeared in 1796. Later, he pro- 
 duced an essay Sur le Principe Generateur des Con- 
 stitutions Politiques, his work Du Pape, that De 
 T K'jlise Gallicane, and the work by which he is now 
 chiefly known, Les Soirees de Saint -Petersbourg. 
 This last work is full of elevated thoughts and is 
 written with great spirit and liveliness. It has done 
 ^ooil service in the cause of the religious party; but 
 the defect of De Maistre, as an influence on the 
 15
 
 226 French Literature. 
 
 Catholic side, is that he represents the most arbi- 
 trary and inflexible school of thought. Toleration 
 and conciliation are ideas beyond his sphere. To 
 the works already mentioned, must be added a 
 posthumous publication, Examen de la Philosophic 
 de Bacon, as well as the Lettres et Opuscules. 
 
 His brother, Xavier De Maistre, (1764-1852), 
 who was also born at Chambery, took refuge in 
 Russia during the revolutionary storm, and entered 
 the Russian military service, in which he rose to 
 the rank of general. Literature, science, and the 
 fine arts were, however, the chief occupations of his 
 life. He was successful in both prose and poetry, 
 was a fine landscape painter and an able chemist 
 and physician. During a visit to Italy in 1794, 
 while busying himself with studies in water-color 
 painting and India-ink drawing, he began, as a sort 
 or relaxation, the work on which his fame chiefly 
 rests, his Voyage autour de ma Chambre, in which 
 the thoughts are no less charming than the style. 
 He also wrote Le Lepreux de la Vallee d'Aoste, Le 
 Prisonnier du Caucase, Prascovie ou la Jeune Sibe- 
 rienne, and L' Expedition nocturne autour de ma 
 Chambre. He died at Saint-Petersburg. 
 
 General Dumouriez belongs to literature only 
 through his memoirs, which are indeed very en- 
 tertaining. 
 
 Charles Fran9ois Dumouriez (1799-1823) was born 
 at Cambrai, served in Germany during the Seven 
 Years' War and in the occupation of Corsica by the 
 French; held the office of commandant of Cher- 
 bourg under Louis XVI.; joined the Jacobin Club 
 during the revolutionary period; led the French 
 revolutionary army in its earlier campaigns; 
 won the victory of Jemappes, in which the Austrians 
 were badly defeated ; began to distrust the political 
 heads of the revolution in Paris ; opened negotia- 
 tions with the Austrian general; tried to bring the 
 army over to his views when ordered by the home 
 government to return to Paris and stand his trial ;
 
 The Scientific Period. 227 
 
 failed in this effort, and escaped to the ranks of the 
 enemy. The Convention set a price of 300,000 
 francs on his head. He wandered about Europe, 
 and finally settled in England, where he died. His 
 later years were employed in writing his Memoires. 
 
 Dumont, the pupil of Bentham after having been 
 the co-adjutor of Mirabeau, also spent a large part 
 of his life in England. 
 
 Pierre fitienne Louis Dumont (1759-1825) was 
 born at Geneva, became a Protestant minister in 
 that city ; went to Saint Petersburg to take charge 
 of the French Protestant church there ; passed from 
 there to England; formed a strong alliance with 
 the Whigs ; repaired to Paris at the outbreak of 
 the Eevolution; became very intimate with Mira- 
 beau and wrote the ablest speeches delivered by 
 that brilliant declaimer; returned to England in 
 1791 ; attached himself to the famous utilitarian 
 philosopher and legislative reformer, Jeremy Ben- 
 tham, and ultimately translated to the world into per- 
 spicuous French the incoherent and involved Eng- 
 lish in which that strong thinker, but most muddy 
 writer, put his ideas. 
 
 Dumont published in Geneva, successively, his 
 Traite de Legislation Civile et Penale, his Theorie 
 des Peines et des Recompenses, his Tactique des As- 
 semblees Legislatives, his Preuves Judiciaires and 
 his Organisation Judiciaire et Codification, the last 
 appearing after his death. Another posthumous 
 work was his Souvenirs sur Mirabeau et sur les deux 
 premieres Assemblies Legislatives. He died at 
 Milan. Macaulay, in reviewing Dumont's Recol- 
 lections of Mirabeau, pays him a handsome trib- 
 ute: 
 
 " M. Dumont," he writes, " was one of those persons, 
 the care of whose fame belongs in an especial manner to 
 mankind, for he was one of those persons who have, for 
 the sake of mankind, neglected the care of their own 
 fame. . . . Possessed of talents and acquirements which 
 made him great, he wished only to be useful. In the
 
 228 French Literature. 
 
 prime of manhood, at the very time of life at which amb* 
 tious men are most ambitious, lie was not solicitous to pro- 
 claim that he furnished information, arguments, and 
 eloquence to Mirabeau. In his later years he was per- 
 fectly willing that his renown should merge in that of 
 Mr. Bentham." 
 
 The literary strength ol' France, as has lieen seen, 
 lay in this age with those whom Napoleon could 
 not win to his side. Those who submitted to the 
 Empire could point to no such literary names as 
 Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, and the De Mais- 
 tres, among their number. But there was some 
 literary ability enlisted on the side of the Empire 
 also. If Napoleon failed to propitiate Madame de 
 Stael and Madame de Kecamier, he had 011 his 
 pension list a literary woman of very different 
 character in Madame de Genlis. If he could not 
 command the eloquence of Chateaubriand and the 
 grace of the De Maistres, he had the science of 
 Champollion, Cuvier, Fourier, De Sacy, Arago, Gay- 
 Lussac, Fresnel, and Ampere, and the dramatic 
 skill of Andrieux, Legouve, Arnault, fitienne, Des- 
 augiers, and Lemercier, to give splendor to his 
 reign. 
 
 Stephanie Felicite', Comtesse de Genlis (1746- 
 1830) was born at Champ9^ri, near Autun, in Bur- 
 gundy, of an old but impoverished family. Born 
 Mademoiselle Ducrest, she married at fifteen the 
 Cornte de Genlis, and became a member of the 
 household of the Duchesse de Chartres, wife of that 
 prince who was afterwards known as Eyalite. Ap- 
 pointed to train his children, she wrote a number 
 of works for them, Theatre a V usage des Jeunes 
 Personnes, Adele et Theodore ou Lettres sur V Edu- 
 cation, Les Veillees du Chateau on, GOUTS de Morale a 
 T usage des Enfants. Like that scandal of the house 
 of Orleans, for whom she compromised her reputa- 
 tion, she showed sympathy with the revolutionary 
 party in the early stages of the great movement; 
 but she was soon obliged to take refuge in Belgium.
 
 The Scientific Period. 229 
 
 Going later to Switzerland, and from there to 
 Altona in Germany, she wrote during her stay there 
 a romance called Les Chevaliers du Gygne ou la 
 Cour de Charlemagne, and a pamphlet entitled Precis 
 de la Conduite de Madame de Genlis pendant la 
 Revolution. 
 
 On Napoleon's becoming Consul, she returned to 
 Paris, and accepted a pension. Residing in Paris 
 until her death, she produced a number of sketches 
 of fashionable life : her Observations Critiques pour 
 servir d VHistoire Litteraire du 19me si&cle, her 
 Dictionnaire Critique et Raisonne des Etiquettes de 
 la Cour, des Usages du Monde, etc., and her Diners 
 du Baron d'Holbach. After reaching her eightieth 
 year, she composed her Memoires. There is much 
 malicious gossip in all these later works; and her 
 " moral " stories, once so popular, are as far from 
 being immaculate as was her private character. 
 
 Jurisprudence, practical science, and the stage 
 were all given a considerable share of Napoleon's at- 
 tention. Assembling the chief lawyers of the land, 
 with Cambaceres at their head, he committed to 
 them the great undertaking of compiling a code 
 for France. Their deliberations produced the Code 
 Civil des Francais, the Code de Procedure, the Code 
 Penal, the Code d 1 Instruction Criminelle, and com- 
 mercial and militar}'- codes. Much of this legis- 
 lation is still in force. 
 
 Cuvier, though submitting to the Empire, was in 
 no sense a partisan, but simply an eminent scientist 
 who lived calmly through that period and worked 
 on undisturbed after the fall of Napoleon. 
 
 Georges Chretien Leopold Dagobert, Baron Cuvier 
 (1769-1832), was born at Mompelgard, then a town 
 of Wurtemberg. Early evincing a passion for 
 natural history, educated at Stuttgart, becoming 
 private tutor in the family of the Comte d'He'ricy 
 near Fecamp in Normandy, making the acquaint- 
 ance of Geoffrey St. Hilaire and other eminent 
 Parisian scientists, appointed through their in-
 
 230 French Literature. 
 
 fluence professor in the ficole Centrale of the Pan- 
 the'on, becoming soon after assistant to Mertrud in 
 the study of comparative anatomy at the Jardin 
 des Plantes, he rose to distinction as a master in 
 scientific investigation. Succeeding Daubenton in 
 the College de France, and becoming Perpetual Sec- 
 retary of the Institute, he soon stood high in the 
 Emperor's favor, and was commissioned by him in 
 1808 to superintend the institution of academies in 
 the countries newly acquired by France. Later, he 
 became a member of the Council of State. 
 
 After the fall of Napoleon, he was made Chancel- 
 lor of the University of Paris, became a Cabinet 
 Minister under Louis XVIII., opposed, under 
 Charles X., the government measures for restrict- 
 ing the freedom of the press, was made a peer of 
 France under Louis Philippe, and died shortly after 
 being named Minister of the Interior. 
 
 His scientific work consists chiefly in creating 
 the modern method of classification in zoology, and 
 in raising comparative anatomy to the dignity of a 
 science. His chief writings were his Legons d'Ana- 
 tomie Comparee, Memoir e pour servir a VHistoire de 
 VAnatomie des Mollusques, Recherches sur les Osse- 
 ments Fossiles des Quadruples, Discours sur les 
 Revolutions de la Surf ace du Globe et sur les Change- 
 ments qu'elles ont produits dans le Rbgne Animal, 
 and a number of eulogies delivered by him on scien- 
 tific men. Both his valuable works on natural his- 
 tory and his eulogies on men of science are distin- 
 guished by the precision, clearness, ease, and ele- 
 gance of their style. 
 
 But his genius was not confined to that branch, 
 which he may almost be said to have created. His 
 retentive memory, profound legislative knowledge, 
 and judicial cast of mind enabled, him when Presi- 
 dent of the Council of State, to sum up the deliber- 
 ations of his colleagues with a rapidity and succinct- 
 ness which often amazed them; and his own contri- 
 butions to legislation were exceedingly valuable.
 
 The Scientific Period. 231 
 
 "Once," says De Vericour, "in the Chamber of 
 Peers, when a military question was mooted, and 
 confusion ensued in the debate, Cuvier rose and 
 solved the difficulty with the ease of a man who 
 had passed his life in the study of tactics." 
 
 Nor was he famous only as a student of nature 
 and a masterly writer on his special subjects. 
 " Nothing," says De Vericour, " could surpass the 
 elaborate eloquence of his lectures. Whether lec- 
 turing at the Jardin des Plantes on comparative 
 anatomy, at the College de France on the history 
 of natural philosophy, or at the Athenee Royal on 
 subjects selected for a cultivated audience, accus- 
 tomed to hear Chenier, Ginguene, Guizot, and 
 others, he was always profound and never tedious. 
 His great understanding seemed for the time to be 
 communicated to his hearers ; and he led them, 
 without fatigue, to the comprehension of the most 
 elevated and recondite views." 
 
 There were two Champollions. The elder, who 
 lived to edit the manuscripts of his more distin- 
 guished brother, is known as Champollion-Figeac. 
 
 Jean Jacques Champollion-Figeac (1778-1867) 
 was eminent, like his younger brother, as an ar- 
 chaeologist. He was born at Figeac in the depart- 
 ment of Lot. Librarian and Professor of Greek 
 Literature at Grenoble, afterwards Conservator of 
 MSS. in the Imperial Library at Paris, and then 
 Librarian under Louis Napoleon of the palace of 
 Fontainebleau, he published successively Anti- 
 quites de Grenoble, Annales des Lagiades et figypte, 
 Ancienne, Les Tournois du Roi Rene, and Notice 
 sur les Afanuscrits Autographes de Champollion le 
 Jeune. He left a son, who has worked in the same 
 field of research, and published antiquarian and 
 philological works. 
 
 The greater Champollion, the famous Egyptolo- 
 gist, Jean Francois Champollion (1790-1832), was 
 also born at Figeac. Early interested in Egyptian 
 antiquities by Baron Fourier, studying in Paris,
 
 282 French Literature. 
 
 made Professor of History in the Lyceum at Greno- 
 ble, publishing in 1811 his figypte sous les Phara- 
 ons, publishing in 1821 his essay, Sur V ficriture 
 Hieratique des Anciens figyptiens, he was still some- 
 what in the dark as to the true principle to be em- 
 ployed in deciphering the ancient Egyptian inscrip- 
 tions, until he became aware of the views of that 
 great English Egyptologist, Dr. Thomas Young. 
 Young lacked grace and perspicuity as a writer, but 
 his scientific genius was amazing." Admired by 
 Arago, Gay-Lussac, and Fresnel for his successful 
 effort to establish the undulatory theory of light, he 
 showed the same lightning glance of intuitive per- 
 ception when he turned his attention to the great 
 work of deciphering the Eosetta Stone, given up in 
 despair even by Silvestre de Sacy, the great orient- 
 alist Young began by ascertaining the original 
 identity of the demotic, enchorial, or abridged char- 
 acters with the sacred. He also divined the fact 
 that phonetic characters were often interspersed 
 with the symbolic. To these discoveries he added 
 the important one, that the characters enclosed in 
 an oval ring were proper names. The Greek text, 
 which had been easily read and the mutilated parts 
 supplied by Person and Heyne, helped at this point. 
 The phonetic principle was discovered, and a fair 
 beginning of analysis made. 
 
 At this stage, Champollion took up Young's 
 methods, and with masterly ingenuity interpreted 
 monument after monument, and constructed a more 
 perfect alphabet than Young's. The works on 
 Egypt, after he had fairly got on the right track of 
 investigation, were his celebrated Lettre a Monsieur 
 Dacier, the Precis du Systime Hieroglyphique, the 
 Pantheon jfigyptien, the Lettres au Due de Slacas, 
 and his posthumous Orammaire figyptienne. 
 
 Charles X. appointed him in 1828 to accompany 
 a scientific expedition to Egypt and on his return 
 to Paris he filled the new chair of Egyptian An-
 
 The Scientific Period. 233 
 
 tiquities in the College de France, but died soon 
 after beginning his course of lectures. 
 
 Antoine Isaac, Baron Silvestre de Sacy (1758- 
 1838), another great orientalist, was born at Paris. 
 Early in life he began his oriental studies with He- 
 brew, to which he added in the course of time a 
 knowledge of Syriac, Aramaic, Samaritan, Arabic, 
 Persian, and Turkish, besides the European lan- 
 guages, ancient and modern. His first elaborate 
 work was the Annales de Mirkhond, a translation 
 from the Persian. He refused the chair offered him 
 in 1795 in the newly-founded ficole des Langues 
 Orientales, being unwilling to take the oaths re- 
 quired of him. But, in 1803, he became Professor 
 of Persian in the College de France. In 1808 he 
 became a member of the Corps Le'gislatif. Other 
 high positions were filled by him after the fall of 
 Napoleon. In 1822 he founded, with Abel Remu- 
 sat, the Societe Asiatique. He produced a prodig- 
 ious number of essays, memoirs, and pamphlets, 
 besides his larger works. Of these the chief were 
 his Grammaire Arabe ; his Chrestomathie Arale ; 
 his Antholoyie Grammaticale Arabe; his Memoires 
 sur Diverses Antiquities de la Perse, translation of 
 Abdollatis's Egypt, and editions of various oriental 
 books ; his Memoires sur TEtat actuel des Samari- 
 tans ; and his Expose de la Reliyion des Druses. His 
 son has been an able journalist. 
 
 Jean Pierre Abel Remusat, (1788-1832), the dis- 
 tinguished Chinese scholar, who founded with De 
 Sacy the Societe Asiatique, was born at Paris. His 
 first publication was an essay Sur la Lanyue et la 
 Litterature Chinoises. While serving as a surgeon 
 in Napoleon's military hospitals, he produced his, 
 Uranographie Monaole and his discourse Sur la 
 Nature monosyllabique attribute Communement a la 
 Langue Chinoise. On the Restoration, he became 
 Professor in the chair of Chinese newly founded in 
 the College de France, delivering a brilliant inaugu- 
 ral address, which De Sacy made haste to bring
 
 234 French Literature. 
 
 before the journal -reading public in the form of an 
 analysis prepared for the Moniteur. 
 
 After publishing numerous and able works on 
 his special studies, Remusat died at Paris of chol- 
 era. His chief works were his Recherches sur les 
 Langues Tartares, Elements de la Grammaire Chin- 
 oise, Recherches sur V Origine et la Formation de 
 VEcriture Chinoise, Etude historique sur la Medecine 
 des ChinoiS) Tableau Complet des Connaissances des 
 Chinois en Histoire Naturelle (which, however, he 
 did not complete), Sur la Pierre lu, Notice sur la 
 Chine et ses Habitants, Sur V Extension de V Empire 
 Chinois en Occident depuis le Premier Siecle avant 
 Jesus- Christ jusqu 'd nos Jours. 
 
 Frangois Arago (1786-1853), the famous scien- 
 tist, was born at Estagel, near Perpignan, in the de- 
 partment of the Eastern Pyrenees. He early made 
 his reputation as an astronomer, and was employed 
 by the government, with other eminent men of 
 science, to measure an arc of the meridian. During 
 his solitary residence in the little island of Ivica, 
 while engaged in extending the arc from Barcelona 
 to the Balearic Isles, war broke out between France 
 and Spain, and he had a series of trying adventures, 
 ending with his capture and slavery in Algiers. 
 
 On his return to France, what he had endured in 
 the cause of science won him unusual honors from 
 the Academy of Sciences. In 1812, he began his 
 fascinating lectures on astronomy, which drew listen- 
 ers of all classes. Four years later, he established, 
 along with Gay-Lussac, iheAnnales de Chimie et de 
 Physique; and the two scientists, ignorant at that 
 time that Dr. Thomas Young had already done it, 
 proved the undulatory theory of light. A year or 
 so later, Arago published his Recueil d 1 Observations 
 geodesiques, astronomiques, et physiques. His next 
 work was in the department of electro-magnetism, 
 in which he discovered the development of mag- 
 netism by rotation. 
 
 Two visits made to England gave him early rec-
 
 The Scientific Period. 235 
 
 ognition abroad. He also acquired special renown 
 as a writer by the eloges which he delivered in his 
 capacity of Perpetual Secretary of the Academy. 
 These biographical sketches have great literary 
 merit. He also took part in the political move- 
 ments of his time ; held office as a republican min- 
 ister ; was an actor in the revolutions of 1830 and 
 1848 ; and refused to take the oath of allegiance to 
 Louis Napoleon on the establishment of the Second 
 Empire. 
 
 His chief works were the Astronomic populaire 
 and the Notices scientifiques et biographiques, in 
 which the clear style, the precise and rapid de- 
 scriptive power, and the tact in putting salient 
 points in a picturesque grouping have contributed 
 to render science at once attractive and intelligible 
 to the ordinary reader. 
 
 Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac (1778-1850), the great 
 chemist and physicist, is naturally named in the 
 same breath with Arago. He was born at St. 
 Leonard, in the department of Upper Vienne. He 
 early worked, in concert with Biot and Alexander 
 von Humboldt, on magnetic and chemical prob- 
 lems. In 1808, he announced his discovery of the 
 law of volumes for gases. By Napoleon he was 
 directed to give special attention to chemical inves- 
 tigations ; and, with The'nard, he published the re- 
 sults of these inquiries in the Recherches Physico- 
 chimiqncs. His discoveries belong to a history of 
 chemical progress, and need not detain us here. 
 He continued his scientific work uninterruptedly 
 after the Restoration, and in 1839 was made a 
 peer of France. 
 
 Augustin Jean Fresnel (1788-1827) was born at 
 Broglie, in the department of Eure. Receiving a 
 thorough education as an engineer, he was employed 
 by the government in that capacity until 1815. He 
 was busy during the Hundred Days in making in- 
 vestigations into the polarization of light. Una- 
 ware of what Young had published on the subject
 
 236 French Literature. 
 
 of the transmission of light, he too proved th< 
 undulatory theory, refuting the corpuscular theory 
 advanced by Newton. His chief work was the 
 memoir jointly produced by himself and Arago on 
 this subject. 
 
 Fourier, whom Arago succeeded in the secre- 
 taryship of the Academy of Sciences, was eminent 
 as a mathematician. He must be carefully distin- 
 guished from Fourier the Socialist. 
 
 Jean Baptiste Joseph, Baron Fourier (1768-1830), 
 was born at Auxerre. After completing his educa- 
 tion in military schools, he accompanied Napoleon to 
 Egypt, and wrote the fine historical introduction to 
 the Description de VEyyple. As prefet of the de- 
 partment of Isere, he drained the marshes in Bour- 
 goin, near Lyon, which had long been an engineer- 
 ing problem. After the Eestoration, he devoted 
 himself wholly to scientific research, producing the 
 Theorie Analytique de la Chaleur, the Memoire sur 
 les Temperatures du Globe Terrestre et des Espaces 
 Planetaires, and a work published after his death, 
 entitled Analyse des Equations Determinees. 
 
 Guillaume, Baron Dupuytren (1777-1835), famous 
 as surgeon and anatomist, was born at Pierre- 
 Bumere, in Limousin. He was not only a skillful 
 practitioner, but also the inventor of methods of 
 surgical operation and of valuable instruments. 
 He wrote little, however, his chief works being his 
 Lemons or ales de Clinique Chirurgicale faites a 
 V Hotel- Dieu, and his Triate Theorique et Pratique 
 des Blessures par Armes de Guerre. 
 
 To these must be added the elder Ampere. 
 
 Andre Marie Ampere (1775-1836), born at Lyon, 
 was a scientist of great merit. His electro-dynamic 
 theory and his early suggestion of the identity of 
 electricity with magnetism have set him high in 
 the roll of savants. His father perished under the 
 guillotine in 1793. Young Ampere devoted him- 
 self then wholly to the study of nature. His first 
 work was an essay Sur la TJieorie Matliematique du
 
 The Scientific Period. 237 
 
 a calculation of the chances in gaming. The 
 results of his studies in electricity appeared in his 
 Recueil cT Observations Electro-dynamiques, and his 
 Theorie des Phenome'nes Electro-dynamiques. An 
 account of his son, so famous as a philologist, must 
 be reserved for another part of this sketch. 
 
 The Michaux, father and son, may well close 
 this list of scientists. 
 
 Andre Michaux (1746-1802) studied under the 
 botanist Jussieu and the astronomer Lemonnier. 
 He traveled for botanical purposes in England, in 
 the region of the Pyrenees, and, later, into Persia. 
 There he was so fortunate as to cure the Shah of a 
 dangerous disease, and hence the two years he spent 
 in Persia were spent to great advantage. Later 
 still, he traveled in North America at the expense 
 of the government; but, on his way back, was ship- 
 wrecked, and lost most of his specimens. The 
 Directory did not treat him well, and in 1800 he 
 sailed for Madagascar, still intent on botanical re- 
 searches. There he died, two years after. His 
 chief works were Histoire des Chenes de TAmerique 
 Septentrionale, a work on the flora of North 
 America. 
 
 His son, Franyois Andre Michaux (1770-1855), 
 visited this country three times on governmental 
 service. His chief work was Histoire des Arbres 
 fores tiers de VAmerique Septentrionale. He suc- 
 ceeded in introducing a number of our forest trees 
 into France. 
 
 Another botanist, Ambroise Marie Francois Jo- 
 seph Beauvois de Palisot (1752-1820), ought also to 
 be named here. He had adventures in Africa and San 
 Domingo. His works were Flore d'Oicare et de 
 Benin, Insects recueillies en Afrique et en Amerique, 
 and Muscoloyie, ou Traite sur les Mousses. 
 
 Eminent as a naturalist, especially in ichthyol- 
 ogy, was Bernard Germain Etienne de Laville, 
 Count de Lacepede (1756-1825), a friend of Buf- 
 fon's. He produced works on the natural history
 
 238 French Literature. 
 
 of Reptiles, of Fishes, of the Cetacea, and of Man. 
 An elegant writer, and an accomplished musician, 
 he added to these an aesthetic work, La Poetique de 
 la Musique. He also wrote two romances. In his 
 habits simple and domestic, kind and amiable in 
 social intercourse, he was an honor to the great body 
 of scientists which France produced in this age.
 
 Tlie Socialists and their Contemporaries. 239 
 
 XVII. 
 
 THE SOCIALISTS AND THEIR CONTEMPORARIES. 
 
 IF this was eminently a period of scientific ad- 
 vance, it was also as markedly a period of social- 
 istic speculation, based upon a materialistic philos- 
 ophy. The metaphysics of Condillac and Helvetius 
 being in vogue, that school of thought which looks 
 to the physiological nature of man as accounting for 
 all his faculties worked out steadily its logical re- 
 sults. The chief exponents of this philosophy were 
 Cabanis and Volney. 
 
 Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis (1757-1808) was 
 born at Cosnac, in the department of the Lower 
 Charente. A liberal in politics and a friend of 
 Mirabeau, he took* a prominent part in the revolu- 
 tionary period, but abhorred the extremes to 
 which his party went. His philosophical work, 
 written from the standpoint of his medical studies, 
 was entitled Rapports du Physique et du Moral de 
 THornme. He traces all ideas to sensation, and re- 
 gards the brain as performing its functions under 
 identically the same laws as those which regulate 
 the processe of digestion. 
 
 Some years after the death of Cabanis, his friend, 
 De.stutt de Tracy, put his system into more detailed 
 metaphysical form, in his Elements d 1 Ideologic. 
 Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy, Comte de 
 Tracy (1754-1836), was a sharer in the councils of 
 the revolutionary party in 1789, served the Empire 
 as Senator, and opposed re-actionary measures after 
 the Restoration. Besides his metaphysical work 
 and several writings on political economy, he pro- 
 duced able Commentaires sur 'IS Esprit des Lois' de 
 Montesquieu, in 1828,
 
 240 French Literature. 
 
 The most pronounced of the materialists, in car- 
 rying the metaphysical doctrine to its legitimate 
 results in the field of religious thought, was Volney, 
 the ardent traveler and student of Eastern tongues. 
 
 Constantin Fra^ois Chassebceuf, Comte de 
 Volney (1757-1820), was born at Craon, in Anjou. 
 He assumed the name of Volney, in addition to the 
 family name of Chassebceuf, after reaching man- 
 hood, just as Arouet had assumed that of Voltaire. 
 After attaining a thorough education and studying 
 successively both law and medicine, he went travel- 
 ing in Egypt and Syria, having inherited a suffi- 
 cient fortune from his mother. The work of 
 Travels which he published on his return gained 
 him great reputation. He took an active part in 
 the great Eevolution, was imprisoned in 1793, and 
 only set free by the fall of Robespierre. Soon after, 
 he published his famous work, Les Ruines, in which 
 he set forth his political and religious creed, the 
 latter being a disbelief in all religions. His con- 
 tribution to the materialistic philosophy was his 
 Catechisme, which teaches that morality is a purely 
 physical science, to be mastered by the same meth- 
 ods as the other natural sciences. He was made 
 professor in the ficole Normale, and his brilliant 
 discourses were eagerly listened to ; but that school 
 was soon suppressed, and he came over to this 
 country, returning to France, however, after a few 
 years' absence. Napoleon had once regarded him 
 with favor ; but, as he opposed the Empire, he was 
 always during its existence sneered at by the 
 Emperor as one of the "ideologists," who, whatever 
 their abilities, were impracticable. He was forced 
 to keep his seat in the Senate, but his work was 
 mainly literary, most of his writings, indeed, being 
 purely linguistic. After the Restoration, he was 
 called to the House of Peers, having already been 
 made Count by Napoleon. 
 
 A direct outcome of these ideas in philosophy 
 was that school of socialistic thought which ex-
 
 Vhe Socialists and their Contemporaries. 2-il 
 
 pounded its views in the doctrines of Saint-Simon 
 and Charles Fourier. 
 
 Claude Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760- 
 1825), was born at Paris of a family that boasted 
 descent from Charlemagne through the Counts of 
 Vermandois. He was cursed from early youth 
 with the same inordinate pride which characterized 
 his singular kinsman of an earlier generation, the 
 Due de Saint-Simon. His disciples declare that 
 before he was seventeen, he was used to have his 
 valet wake him up every morning with the words : 
 " Arise, my Lord Count, you have great things to 
 do." He received a fair education, D'Alembert 
 being one of his teachers. He served when quite 
 young among the French volunteers under "Wash- 
 ington, reaching the rank of colonel, and distin- 
 guishing himself at the siege of Yorktown. Made a 
 prisoner while on his way home, he was taken to 
 Jamaica, where he remained until the declaration 
 of peace. Two years later, he resigned from the 
 army, traveled in Holland and Spain, took a warm 
 interest in various industrial schemes, came back to 
 France on the outbreak of the Revolution and voted 
 for the abolition of titles of nobility,butin the main 
 took no share in the tumults of the period. 
 
 He bought up confiscated property, began to 
 conceive his project of establishing a new social 
 system, undertook the study of the sciences by 
 listening to the talk of learned professors, married, 
 and lavished in profuse hospitalities the fortune he 
 had made by speculation. It was at this time that 
 he is said to have visited Madame de Stael at 
 Coppet and proposed marriage to her, having first 
 divorced his wife, addressing the Baroness in these 
 strange words : " Madame, you are the most extra- 
 ordinary woman in the world, as I am the most 
 extraordinary man in it ; we should without doubt 
 have a child more extraordinary still." But the 
 lady treated it as a jest. 
 
 Finding himself by this time in want of means, 
 16
 
 242 French Literature. 
 
 he published at Geneva a Lettre d*un Habitant de 
 Geneve a ses Contemporains, proposing the found- 
 ing of a subscription list for the benefit of men of 
 genius. As this brought in no funds and he began 
 to suffer great privations, his career would have 
 soon been cut short by starvation, had not Diard, an 
 old friend, taken pity on him and given him shelter 
 in his house. Here he produced his Introduction 
 aux Travaux Scientifiques du Dix-nouvieme Siecle. 
 Diard's death plunged him again into misery, and 
 his sufferings forced him to write to Cuvier and 
 others: "I am dying of hunger. For a fortnight 
 my only fare has been bread and water. I work 
 without fire, and I have had to part with even my 
 clothes to get means to continue my work." 
 
 It is not easy to get at the cause of his failure to 
 take advantage of the great name he bore, when 
 the Kestoration had brought back the prestige of 
 the old nobility. His disciples claim that he 
 scorned such vulgar ambition. Others suppose 
 that he had offended too deeply to win forgiveness. 
 
 In 1819, he put forth a pamphlet called Parabole, 
 reflecting bitterly on the aristocracy. For this he 
 was indicted and narrowly escaped severe punish- 
 ment. But he had already won admirers and 
 followers. Augustin Thierry assisted him in pre- 
 paring his Reorganisation de la Societe Europeenne. 
 His disciples also helped him in his IS Industrie ou 
 Discussions Politiques, Morales, et Philosophiques, 
 the third volume being by Comte. To these suc- 
 ceeded Le Systtme Industriel and Le Catechisme 
 Industriel. His publications having exhausted his 
 finances, he tried to commit suicide by firing a 
 pistol at his head. He lost an eye, but recovered 
 life and reason. He now wrote his most remark- 
 able book, Le Nouveau Christianisme. In this 
 work, he claims that all his ideas on progressive 
 social development are based on the words of Jesus 
 Christ, that Christianity has been cramped and 
 distorted by rigid dogmas and ecclesiastical organ-
 
 The Socialists and their Contemporaries. 243 
 
 izations, that Protestantism and Catholicism alike 
 have gone astray from the purpose of the Founder, 
 that the great duty of humanity is to ameliorate 
 the condition of that vast majority the poor. 
 
 After finishing this work, Saiut-Sirnon eank into 
 a languor, and died. Rodrigues, Comte, and others 
 of his disciples were around him in his last mo- 
 ments, and reported his dying utterances with the 
 same spirit of reverence with which Plato and 
 Xenophon recorded those of Socrates. Soon after 
 his death, the periodical he had hoped to establish, 
 Le Pro'lucteur, appeared. Olinde Rodrigues was 
 editor ; the contributors were Bazard, Enfantin, 
 Cerclet, Buchez, Michel Cavalier, Carnot, Fournel, 
 Barroult, Chasles, Duveyrier, Annand Carrel, 
 Reynaud, Pierre Leroux, Saint-Cheron, Gueroult, 
 and Charton. It died soon, however, for want of 
 funds. 
 
 Some of the leading Saint-Simonians then began 
 to put forth the new doctrines in lectures They 
 proposed the adoption of a system of rewards as a 
 reform in jurisprudence, the abolition of the death- 
 pena'lty and the substitution of reformatory dis- 
 cipline, the adoption of civil-service reform, the 
 enfranchisement of women, the abolition of mar- 
 riage, and the eventual division of property according 
 to the share of each man or woman in promoting 
 social welfare. 
 
 All agitation, though its aim be destruction of 
 existing organizations, tends to produce organiza- 
 tion of its own. The Saint-Simonians soon or- 
 ganized a hierarchy, claiming that they were restor- 
 ing the true religion and that Saint-Simon was a 
 veritable prophet. They even adopted a peculiar 
 costume. 
 
 When the Revolution of 1830 came, Bazard and 
 Enfantin, the chiefs of the new Church, had all 
 Paris placarded with a scheme for the salvation and 
 regeneration of France. Members of the govern- 
 ment, however, denounce' I their sect as advocates
 
 244 French Literature. 
 
 for community of property and community of 
 women. Proselytes to the new doctrine meantime 
 became numerous. The prospects of the society 
 seemed brighter than ever, when discord came, at 
 the first blush of prosperity, to blight all the fair 
 promise. Bazard died broken-hearted. Enfantin 
 estranged many of the best men in the society. 
 The funds were squandered in the great " Festival 
 of Sanctification." Government prosecuted the 
 chiefs, and troops were sent to break up their 
 meetings and shut up their churches and schools. 
 Enfantin retired to his house at Menilmontant with 
 forty disciples, put forth from that retreat his 
 Catechisme et Gendse du Saint- Simonisme, admitted 
 the public to witness the worship of the sect, and 
 drew down once more the interference of the police. 
 After a short imprisonment, he went to Egypt with 
 some few followers. Returning in the course of 
 two years, he settled in the neighborhood of Lyon. 
 Appointed in his later years a member of the Scien- 
 tific Commission for Algiers, he wrote on his return 
 from Africa a sensible book, called Colonisation de 
 TAlyerie. He also appeared before the public after 
 the Revolution of 1848, editing a paper in which 
 he again brought forward Saint-Simonian doc- 
 
 Barthe'lemy Prosper Enfantin (179 6-1864) had 
 fought, when a mere boy, against the allies on the 
 heights of Montmartre and St. Chaumont, and had 
 on this account been expelled from the ficole 
 Poly technique. His chief works were Doctrine d( 
 Saint-Simon (written with others), Traite de V Econ- 
 omic Politique,La Religion Saint- Simonienne, Moral, 
 Le Livre Nonveau, Correspondance Philosophique 
 et Religieuse, Correspondance Politique, and La Vie 
 Eternelle, Passee, Presente, Future. 
 
 Charles Fourier was before the public in advance 
 of Saint-Simon. But it was not until the Saint- 
 Simonians had attracted the attention of the public, 
 that Fourier's speculations excited remark.
 
 The Socialists and their Contemporaries. 245 
 
 Fran9ois Marie Charles Fourier (1772-1837) was 
 oorn at Besangon. His father, who was a merchant, 
 gave him a good education. He then lived, as mer- 
 chant's clerk, at Lyon, Rouen, Marseille, and Bor- 
 deaux. He also traveled on commercial business in 
 Holland and Germany. Being a close observer and 
 having a remarkable memory, he acquired a vast 
 amount of useful knowledge during these journeys. 
 The fine fortune left him by his father was lost in 
 the Revolution. He was forced into two year's ser- 
 vice in the cavalry, which bad health released him 
 from, at the end of that time. Going into business 
 again, he employed his leisure in studying social 
 problems. 
 
 His books, developing his system, were Theor'ie 
 des Quatre Mouvements et des Destinees Generales, 
 Traite d 1 Association Domestique Ayricole, Le Nou* 
 veau Monde Industrial et Societaire, Pidyes et Char- 
 latanisme des Deux Sectes Saint-Simon et Owen, 
 promettant V association et progre~s, and La Famse In- 
 dustrie, Morcelee Repugnante, MensonyZre, et I An- 
 tidote, T Industrie Naturelle, Combinee, Attrayante, 
 Veridique, donnant Quadruple Produit. 
 
 Fourier based his system upon a wild theory of 
 the constitution of the universe, which need not be 
 stated here, as he himself bitterly complained that 
 these speculative notions were selected for ridicule, 
 while his main scheme was ignored by the critics. 
 This, stated in his own words, was a practical sys- 
 tem embodying " the art of organizing a well-com- 
 bined industry, from which will result morality, 
 harmony amongst the three classes^the rich, the 
 poor, and the middle class the impossibility of 
 revolutions, universal unity, and perfectibility." He 
 proposed an equal division of men, the smallest sub- 
 division being a group, comprising from twelve to 
 sixteen families: from twenty-four to thirty-two of 
 these groups were to constitute a phalanx. Each 
 phalanx, comprising about 1800 people, was to live 
 in a building called a Phalanstery, in the middle of
 
 246 French Literature. 
 
 a large and highly cultivated domain, supplied with, 
 workshops, studios, and all the appliances requisite 
 for industr}', art, comfort, and amusement. His cal- 
 culation was that such a Phalanstery would not 
 require greater expense than four hundred cottages 
 in an ordinary French parish of the same number 
 of inhabitants, and that a well-built Phalanstery 
 would outlast such cottages six or seven times. The 
 institution was to be a grand co-operative concern, 
 thus minimizing expenses. Distribution was to be 
 regulated according to the capital brought into the 
 common stock and to the labor performed. So 
 many Phalansteries were to form a city, and these 
 again one great metropolis; the Bosphorus being in 
 his view the most convenient site for this metrop- 
 olis. There were also to be special corporations, 
 called Industrial Armies, commanded by those ex- 
 celling in each branch of industry, art, or science, 
 and destined to march to each point where their 
 services might be immediately required, whether to 
 build, to dig canals, to drain lands, or for any other 
 great work needing concentrated action. The chief of 
 the whole federal body was to be styled " Omniarch." 
 Fourier's idea, it will be seen, is that of compre- 
 hending all humanity in one great industrial asso- 
 ciation, the members of which are all to hold shares 
 in the common stock a monster co-operative so- 
 ciety, in short. 
 
 Fourier's views were taken up after his death, 
 and attained more importance eventually than any 
 other socialist system. La Phalange, a periodical 
 edited by Victor Considerant, author of La Destinee 
 Sociale, became the exponent of Fourierism. With 
 the financial aid of a young Englishman, named 
 Young, Considerant established in 1882 a Phalan- 
 stery on the model planned by his master ; but the 
 experiment failed. Later in life, he established a 
 similar community in Texas ; but this also proved 
 abortive. 
 
 Both the Saint-Si monians and the Fourierites
 
 The Socialists and their Contemporaries. 247 
 
 have passed away. But the great question of the 
 organization of labor remains as difficult to settle as 
 ever. The worst forms of discontent with the rela- 
 tions subsisting between capital and labor have been 
 the crude and brutal Communism and Nihilism of 
 recent times. These, however, can hardly be said 
 to have a literature. 
 
 Having now treated of those philosophical and 
 socialist elements which sprung up in the soil of 
 the French Revolution and produced literary fruit 
 either during the Empire or soon after, I find it 
 fitting to proceed to the stage "as it was under 
 Napoleon. 
 
 As has been said, the Emperor favored the stage, 
 at least so far as the ancient tragedy was concerned. 
 Plays on the classic model and on classic subjects 
 were the order of the day ; and they had the great 
 advantage of being acted by that great tragedian, 
 Talma, ably assisted by Mademoiselle Duchesnois. 
 The play-writers of this period were Andrieux, 
 Raynouard, Legouve, Arnault, fitienne, Desaugiers, 
 and Lemercier. 
 
 Fran9ois Guillaume Jean Stanislas Andrieux 
 (1759-1833) was born at Strasbourg. After being 
 a short time in public life, he was removed by 
 Napoleon from the presidency of the Tribunal, and 
 then devoted himself to literature. His chief pro- 
 ductions were the comedies, Les fitourdis, Anaxi- 
 mandre, Molibre avec.ses Amis, Le Vieux Fat, the 
 tragedy of Brutus, and some pretty tales in verse, 
 of which Le Afeunier de Sans-Soiici is the best. As 
 Professor of Literature in the College de France, 
 he charmed his classes by his easy, familiar style 
 of lecturing. Some of his lectures were published 
 under the title of La Philosophic des Belles Lettres. 
 As Perpetual Secretary of the Academy, he was an 
 active worker in the preparation of its famous 
 Dictionary. 
 
 Fran9ois Juste Marie Raynouard (1761-1836), 
 born at Brignoles in Provence, attained greater
 
 248 French Literature. 
 
 fame as a philologist than as a dramatic writer. 
 After practising law with great success ; escaping 
 during the Revolutionary troubles the fate of his 
 friends, the Girondists, by being forgotten in prison ; 
 and, on the fall of Robespierre and his own release 
 from confinement, resuming the practice of his pro- 
 fession, he fir.ally retired from it with a competency 
 secured, and, betaking himself to Paris, gave him- 
 self up to literary work. Besides a poem called 
 Socrate au Temple d 1 Aglaure, lie produced a number 
 of plays. These were Eleonore de Bavibre, Les 
 Templiers, Sctpio, Les $tats de Blois, Don Carlos, 
 Charles 1., Debora, and Jeanne $ Arc a Orleans. Of 
 these, Les Templiers was the most successful. 
 
 Before the Restoration, he had begun to take an 
 absorbing interest in the Provencal language and 
 the old literature of his native country ; and to the 
 study of these he devoted himself through the rest 
 of his life. His researches have proved very valu- 
 able to linguists, however subsequent investigation 
 has been forced to modify and even wholly set 
 aside some of his theories. His chief linguistic 
 works were Elements de la Orammaire Romane, 
 Choix de Poesies Originales des Troubadours, Oram- 
 maire comparee des Langues de VEurope Latine 
 dans leur Rapports avec la Langue des Troubadours, 
 Observations Philologiques sur le Roman du Rou, 
 Influence de la Langue Romane, Lexique Roman 
 ou Dictionnaire de la Langue des Troubadours. 
 
 Of Marie Joseph de Chenier I have already given 
 an account, in connection with the sketch of his 
 brother Andre, who perished in the Revolution. 
 Here, it need only be mentioned that he takes rank 
 among the most distinguished of the play-writers 
 of the period. 
 
 Gabriel Marie Jean Baptiste Legouve' (1764- 
 1812), born at Paris, devoted himself wholly to 
 literary pursuits. Among his poems, La Sepulture, 
 Les Souvenirs, La Melancolie, and La Merite des 
 Ferames, the last is a graceful tribute to the ex-
 
 The Socialists and their Contemporaries. 249 
 
 cellences of the sweeter part of humanity. His 
 successful tragedies were La Mort d'Abel, Epicharis 
 et Neron, and La Mort de Henri IV. 
 
 Antoine Vincent Arnault (1766-1834) produced 
 a great number of tragedies, the best known of 
 which are Marius a Minturnes, Les Veniticns, and 
 Germanicus. His residence in Venice on diplo- 
 matic business helped him to make his " Venetians" 
 effective. Napoleon was greatly pleased with this 
 play, and his favor was prejudicial to Arnault when 
 the Bourbons came back. Arnault also wrote in 
 prose Vie Politique et Militaire de Napoleon, and 
 Les Memoires d'un Sexayenaire. He was one of the 
 contributors to the Nouvelle Bioyraphie des Con- 
 temporains. His Fables have some merit from their 
 vivacity and mischievous wit. 
 
 Charles Guillaime lltienne (1770-1845), born 
 in the village of Chamouilly, came young to Paris, 
 and plunged at once into literary efforts. A lively 
 comedy, Brueys et Palaprat, brought him immedi- 
 ate reputation. He was censor of the press under 
 Napoleon, but, losing his post at the Restoration, 
 became an opposition journalist. After the Revolu- 
 tion of 1830, he was made a peer of France. Of 
 his many dramatic works, the finest are Les Deux 
 Gendres, one of the best comedies of the Empire, 
 and Joconde, a work that was produced for the Op- 
 e*ra Comique. 
 
 Marc-Antoine Desaugiers (1772-1827) was a 
 joint-producer, with many writers for the stage, of 
 comedies, operas, and vaudevilles ; but he is best 
 known by his songs. They have a gaiety so fresh 
 and companionable, so much dash, and so hearty a 
 swing, that they have always been popular. His 
 being like Tom Moore, in singing as well as writing 
 his songs, gave the same kind of personal charm to 
 his society. He warmly befriended Beranger, his 
 country's greatest song- writer, in the beginning of 
 the latter's career. 
 
 Nepomucene Lemercier (1772-1840) was born
 
 250 French Literature. 
 
 at Paris. His chief plays were the tragedies of 
 Agamemnon and Fredegonde et Brunehaut, the 
 dramas of Richelieu and Pinto, ou la Journee des 
 Dupes, and some comedies which had but slight 
 success. A very remarkable work of his was Ins 
 satirical poem called La Panhypocrisiaae. He also 
 put forth a Cours de Literature Dramatique, which 
 gives evidence of fine powers of observation, as 
 well as of a delicacy of taste far from being so 
 perceptible in his dramatic works. 
 
 I have mentioned, above, his dramas separately 
 from his tragedies ; and this is a fitting place to ex- 
 plain what the French mean by the Drame as dis- 
 tinguished from the Tragedie. The whole differ- 
 ence may perhaps be best summed up in the state- 
 ment that the Tragedie is the play of the classical 
 taste and is subject to the rules of classic art ; 
 while the Drame is the play of the romantic school, 
 disregarding the unities and combining at will the 
 elements of comedy with those of tragedy. 
 
 The other literary men of this period, not hitherto 
 mentioned, were the historians Daru, Michaud, and 
 Sismondi; the poets, Fontanes, Viennet, and 
 Millevoye ; and some of the members of the Bona- 
 parte family, including Napoleon himself. 
 
 Pierre Antoine Noel Bruno, Comte Daru (1767- 
 1829) was born at Montpellier. He entered the 
 army while still a mere boy. Hs was one of the 
 many prisoners of the Reign of Terror whom the 
 fall of Robespierre released. During his imprison- 
 ment he employed himself in translating Horace, 
 subsequently publishing this Traduction en Vers 
 des Poesies d'Horace. At the same time appeared 
 his Cleopedie, on la Theorie des Reputations en 
 Litterature. Napoleon held him in high favor, and 
 employed him as one of his most trusted ministers. 
 After the Restoration, he devoted himself wholly 
 to literary work. His chief productions were the 
 Histoire de la Repiiblique de Venise, the Histoire de 
 Bretagne, his poetical Discours sur les Facultes
 
 The Socialists and their Contemporaries. 251 
 
 Oe I'Homme. his Discours sur la Liberte de la Presse, 
 his Elopes, and a criticism of Chateaubriand's 
 " Genius of Christianity." 
 
 Count Daru's great work was his History of 
 Venice, in seven volumes. He had peculiar facilities 
 for making this a thorough work. The removal 
 of the republic's archives by the French revolution- 
 ary government to Paris, and Daru's position as 
 Napoleon's favored minister, enabled him to make 
 use of abundant materials which had hitherto been 
 carefully kept concealed from the world. De 
 Vericour gives this history very high praise for 
 accuracy and judgment, though he remarks that 
 the style lacks animation. 
 
 Joseph Michaud (1767-1839) was born in Savoy, 
 and wrote in early life a Voyage au Mont Blanc. 
 Finding his way to Paris through the influence of 
 the Comtesse de Eeauharnais, he there became an 
 associate of the revolutionary leaders; but, remain- 
 ing at heart a conservative, lie ventured after the 
 fiill of Eobespierre to advocate in La Quotidienne 
 the restoration of the monarchy. Condemned first 
 to death and then to exile instead, he set out to 
 find a refuge in the Jura mountains. Eeturning to 
 Paris in 1799, he published some years later his 
 Printemps d'un Proscrit, a poem which has some 
 fine passages. In partnership with a younger 
 brother, who was a printer, he undertook next the 
 Biographic Moderne, which comprised sketches of 
 the revolutionary leaders. On the return of the 
 Bourbons, he sided heartily with the government 
 party, published Le dernier Kegne de Bonaparte^ 
 resumed the editorship of La Quotidienne, and 
 began to write his great work, L'Histoire des 
 Croisades. 
 
 His friend, Madame Cottin, who was then writing 
 her novel of the Crusading days, Malek Adhel, having 
 begged him to look up some authorities for her, he 
 became interested in the subject, and his study of 
 the period ended in his seriously setting to work
 
 252 French Literature. 
 
 at a history of it. De Vericour gives him credit 
 for a graceful, fluent, and figurative style, but 
 charges him with great lack of perspicuity and 
 accuracy. 
 
 Michaud's other works were his Correspondance 
 d 1 Orient, his Histoire de V Empire de Mysore, a Col- 
 lection de Memoires sur V Histoire de France, and the 
 Biibliotheque des Croisades. 
 
 Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi 
 (1773-1842) was born, of a house sprung from 
 Italian ancestry, at Geneva, in Switzerland. His 
 education was still in progress when the necessities 
 of his parents forced him to enter a counting-house 
 at Lyon. He did his work fairly, and in after-life 
 regarded this practical training as of great value to 
 him. The Revolution came, and he had to return 
 to Geneva. But the family soon ceased to feel safe 
 there, and took refuge in England, soon however to 
 return. Still feeling uneasy, they bought a little 
 farm near Pescia, in Tuscany. Here Sismondi be- 
 gan to prepare materials for his History of the Italian 
 Republics. Meanwhile, he had seen something of 
 the society which gathered around Madame de 
 Stae'l, and had been classed by Napoleon as one of 
 those " ideologists " whom he so constantly sneered 
 at. 
 
 Before his history was finished, he put forth a 
 work on political economy entitled De la Richesse 
 commerciale. His Histoire des Republiques itali- 
 ennes, in sixteen volumes, when it did appear, estab- 
 lished his reputation. This was confirmed by his 
 Histoire de la Litterature du Midi de V Europe, and 
 his greatest work, the Histoire des Frangais. De 
 Vericour eulogizes his learning, research, and 
 penetration ; the purity of his style ; and the 
 picturesqueness with which he has succeeded in in- 
 vesting the scenes of his first subject, the Italian 
 city-commonwealths. But he charges him with 
 inequality of style and with the obtrusion upon the 
 narrative of philosophical reflections which break
 
 The Socialists and their Contemporaries. 253 
 
 the spell of illusion for the reader and chill his in- 
 terest. Guizot also, in his History of Civilization, 
 while criticising Sismondi's History of the French 
 closely, gives it very high praise. 
 
 We turn now to the poets. Louis, Marquis de 
 Fontanes (1757-1821), sprung from an old Huguenot 
 family of Languedoc, was born at Niort. He early 
 won at Paris a reputation for elegant and graceful 
 poetry, publishing there, before the Eevolution, Le 
 Cri de Mon Coeur, Le Verger, and translations from 
 English poetry. He took the popular side when 
 the great crash came, became famous as an orator, 
 warmly admired Napoleon, and kept his favor to 
 the last. After the Restoration, he was raised to 
 the peerage by Louis XVIII. 
 
 Jean Louis Guillaume Yiennet was born at 
 Beziers in 1777. Intended for a priest, he became 
 a soldier on the outbreak of the Revolution, and 
 after the Restoration betook himself to literature. 
 He was successful S journalist, satirist, dramatist, 
 and romancer. Among his works may be named 
 La Philippide, his Promenade philosophique au 
 Cimetiere du Pere La Chaise, his Satires, his 
 Epitres, his play of Michel Bremond, and his 
 Fables. 
 
 Charles Hubert Millevoye (1780-1816) attempted 
 every branch of poetry, but did not succeed in 
 works of the highest order. In little poems of 
 pure sentiment he proved himself a poetic artist of 
 exquisite charm and grace. La Chute des Feuilles 
 is considered his finest poem. Among the others, 
 in which his chaste and melancholy sweetness show 
 to best advantage, are L' Amour maternel, UAn- 
 niversaire, La Demeure abandonnee, Le Poele mou- 
 rant, and Les Souvenirs. His dramatic attempts 
 and his more ambitious poems, the Charlemagne 
 and the Alfred, will not be remembered. 
 
 The Ernperor himself has some claim to a place 
 in the literature of his age. Napoleon Bonaparte 
 (1769-1821), born at Ajaccio in the island of
 
 254: French Literature. 
 
 Corsica shortly after it fell under French rule, 
 received a French education and used the language 
 always with power, if not with accuracy. The 
 great events of his life belong to history, and need 
 not be recounted here. His literary works consist 
 of tliose brilliantly eloquent proclamations to his 
 soldiers and bulletins of his campaigns, which are 
 certainly the productions of a very high order of 
 oratorical genius; his messages and addresses to 
 various state bodies ; his correspondence private 
 and public ; and his Memoires historiques, written 
 under his dictation at St. Helena. In these cam- 
 paign memoirs, his style is simple, precise, and 
 direct. 
 
 His brother, Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino 
 (1775-1840), was also born at Ajaccio and educated 
 in France. He was President of the Council of 
 Five Hundred, when that 18th Brumaire dawned 
 which was to see his military brother all powerful 
 over the destinies of France ; and it was to Lucien's 
 help on that occasion that Napoleon owed his suc- 
 cess. For a time he continued docile to the will of 
 the more imperious Bonaparte ; but, opening his 
 eyes at last to Napoleon's arbitrary character and 
 boundless ambition, he began to oppose him. 
 Matters were brought to a crisis by Lucien's re- 
 fusal to divorce his second wife, Madame Jouber- 
 thon, the widow of a stockbroker, even for the 
 bribe of the crowns of Italy and Spain. Retiring 
 to his estate of Canino, in the province of Viterbo, 
 Lucien devoted himself to art, science, and litera- 
 ture. It was by the Pope that he was created 
 Prince of Canino and Musignano, and Rome was 
 his favorite resort. Pursued by Napoleon's hostil- 
 ity, he at last set sail for America, but was cap- 
 tured by the English and taken to England. On 
 Napoleon's retirement to Elba, Lucien was allowed 
 to return to Rome, where he had been living at the 
 time of his attempt to get to America. His 
 abilities might have given him a fair place in
 
 The Socialists ami lh>ir Contemporaries. 255 
 
 literature, had he not made the mistake of trying 
 to produce epic poems. His Charlemagne ou Vfiglise 
 delivree, in twentj'-four cantos, which was written 
 and published in London ; and his La Cyrneide ou 
 La Corse Sauvee, were both tedious efforts. The 
 pretended memoirs of Lucien are not considered 
 authentic by modern critics. 
 
 Lucien's eldest son, Charles Lucien Jules Laurent 
 Bonaparte (1803-1857), born at Paris, won some 
 fame as a naturalist, and especially as an orni- 
 thologist. He wrote one or two works on natural 
 history. Another son, Louis Lucien Bonaparte, 
 attained some eminence as a chemist, mineralogist, 
 and linguist. 
 
 Louis Bonaparte (1778-1846), Napoleon's third 
 brother, whom he made King of Holland, and 
 forced to marry his adopted daughter, Hortense 
 Engenie Beauharnais, lived in retirement after the 
 fall of the Empejor, and formally separated from 
 his wife. This brother of one emperor and father 
 of another wrote a novel, descriptive of Dutch 
 manners and customs, Afarie, ou les Hollandaises ; 
 Documents sur le Gouvernement de la Hollande; 
 Histoire du Parlement Anglais ; and a criticism of 
 Norvins' Napoleon. 
 
 Hortense Eugenie Beauharnais (1783-1837), the 
 daughter of Josephine by her first husband, Gen- 
 eral Beauharnais, was born at Paris. Her father 
 was one of the early victims of the Revolution. 
 Her mother was protected by Barras, and after her 
 marriage with Napoleon, soon rose to the highest 
 position in the State. Hortense perferred General 
 Desaix, but the will of Napoleon forced her to marry 
 Louis and become Queen of Holland. After suffer- 
 ing great anxieties about her two sons during the 
 risings of the Carbonari in Italy, where one of the 
 young men died, she settled permanently in the 
 residence at Arenenberg, in the canton Thurgau, 
 which had been her habitual resort since the over- 
 throw of Napoleon. She was a good song- writer.
 
 256 French Literature. 
 
 Her best known song is that Partantpour la Syrie, 
 which her son afterwards made the national air of 
 France. She also wrote La Heine Hortense en 
 Italic, en France, et en Angleterre, pendant I'Annee 
 1831. 
 
 In connection with the Bonapartes, may be men- 
 tioned Madame de Remusat, whose Memoirs, pub- 
 lished by her grandson in 1879, give so intimate a 
 view of the Napoleonic court. 
 
 Claire Elisabeth Jeanne Gravion de Vergennes, 
 Comtesse de Remusat (1780-1821) was a grand- 
 niece of Louis XYI.'s minister, Vergennes. Her 
 career is fresh in the minds of the readers of the 
 Memoirs and Letters lately before the public. She 
 also wrote an essay Sur V Education des Femmes. 
 
 The sprightly but superficial Memoirs of the 
 Duchesse d'Abrantes, and the Memoirs of Las 
 Cases should also find a place here. The title of 
 the well-known work by Marshal Junot's wife is 
 Memoires ou Souvenirs Mstoriques sur Napoleon, la 
 Revolution, le Directoire, le Consulat V Empire, et la 
 Restauration, and is certainly full of promise, but 
 there is really little in the book of historic value. 
 
 Emmanuel Auguste Dieudonne, Comte de Las 
 Cases (1766-1842), was born in the chateau of Las 
 Cases, near Revel. He was in the naval service 
 when the Revolution broke out, served later in the 
 Prince of Conde's army, was an exile in England, 
 supporting himself by teaching, and came back to 
 France on Napoleon's settling a firm government. 
 Getting the Emperor's attention by his fine 
 Atlas historique, he was employed by him. After 
 Waterloo, on the dethroned Emperor's sentence of 
 imprisonment, Las Cases offered to share his fate. 
 During his stay at St. Helena, he acted as aman- 
 uensis for Napoleon ; but he was removed some 
 time before the Emperor's death. After that event, 
 he published the Memorial de Sainte-Helbne. He 
 was in public life for a time after the Revolution 
 of 1830.
 
 The Socialists and their Contemporaries. 257 
 
 To these may be added the Memoirs of the Comte 
 Miot de Melito, diplomatist under the Empire, and 
 an acute and cool observer of persons and events ; 
 as well as the Letters, recently published by Pallain, 
 of that singular being, the Machiavelli of modern 
 times, Charles Maurice de Talley rand-Peri gord, 
 Prince de Benevento, so often master of the destinies 
 of France, subtlest of diplomatists, and keenest of 
 wits. 
 
 Some mention may be made here also of Memoirs 
 of a very different kind those of Vidocq, the de- 
 tective. Fran9ois-Jules Vidocq (1775-1850), born 
 at Arras, successively thief, swindler, soldier, galley- 
 slave, highwayman, informer, spy, chief of police, 
 and autobiograplier, put forth his book when Sue's 
 novel was most in vogue, with the title, Les Vrais 
 Mys&res de Paris. In these Memoirs of Vidocq 
 occurs a song in the flash dialect, which Marginn 
 translated into the corresponding English thieves' 
 dialect. Both versions may be found in the 
 "Noctes Ambrosianae." 
 17
 
 258 French Literature. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 AFTER THE RESTORATION. 
 
 THE philosophers and the socialist dreamers of 
 whom I have already spoken were an outcome of 
 the French Revolution. But there was at the same 
 time an under-current of thought and feeling, which 
 began shortly after the Restoration to take definite 
 form as a powerful re-action against the tendencies 
 and forces which at once produced and followed 
 the Revolution. Especially was there a re-action 
 against infidelity, helped into its earlier literary, 
 expression by the somewhat vague religious senti- 
 ment of Chateaubriand and the Protestant con- 
 victions of Madame de Stael, and carried to ultra- 
 montane extremes by Joseph De Maistre. Similar 
 views to those of De Maistre, but expressed more 
 temperately and with more emphasis given to the 
 political side of the question, were at about the 
 same time strongly brought forward by De Bonald. 
 
 Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald 
 (1753-1840), was born at Monna, near Milhau, in 
 Aveyron. He was one of the emigrants, when the 
 fury of the Revolution burst upon society. His 
 first work of note, Theorie du Pouvoir Politique et 
 Religieux, foretold the Restoration. When Na- 
 poleon had established a strong government, De 
 Bonald returned to France, and entered the public 
 service. After the Restoration, he was raised to 
 the peerage by Louis XVIII. He refused to take 
 the oath of allegiance to the new government after 
 the Revolution of July. Besides the work men- 
 tioned above, he published Legislation Primitive, 
 and Recherches Philosophiques sur les Premiers 
 Objets des Connaissances Morales. His style is con-
 
 After the Restoration. 259 
 
 fused, and his views, as already stated, were ex- 
 treme ; but he did good service against the mate- 
 rialism of the physiological school. 
 
 Another, but a much more gentle advocate of the 
 claims of the church than De Bonald, De Maistre, 
 or De Lamennais, was Pierre Simon Ballanche 
 (1776-1847). According to De Vericour, Ballanche 
 was as full of charity and Christian unction as Fene- 
 lon, and might be classed as a Catholic transcendental - 
 ist. He styles him " the most poetic philosopher and 
 prose writer of the nineteenth century," and states 
 that " all his works are marked by the most touch- 
 ing sympathy for his fellow-creatures ; and the en- 
 couragements he gives them glow as if with pro- 
 phetic fire." His works were Du Sentiment considere 
 dans la Litterature et dans les Arts, a prose poem 
 called Antigone, an essay Sur les Institutions sociales 
 dans leur Rapport av ec les Idees nouvelles, Le Vie.il- 
 lard et le Jeune Homme, a novel entitled Uhomme 
 sans Nom, the Vision d'Hebal, and, above all, 
 Palincjenesie Sociale. 
 
 But the greatest, and at one time apparently the 
 most hopeful movement in the bosom of the Catholic 
 Church, because it aimed at reconciling the author- 
 ity of the Church with the yearning of the age for 
 free government, was the Liberal Catholic move- 
 ment headed by Montalembert, De Lamennais, and 
 Lacordaire. Montalembert was much the youngest 
 of these; but his position, his genius, and his undy- 
 ing hopefulness of nature identify him with the 
 movement as its especial protagonist. 
 
 Charles Forbes, Comte de Montalembert (1810- 
 1870), was of an ancient family of Poitou. A bom 
 orator, and an admirer of the English Constitution, 
 of Burke and of Grattan, he was fated to spend his 
 life and his glowing energies in the tormenting task 
 of trying to reconcile his love of liberty with his 
 devotion to the Holy Roman Church, and to con- 
 tend in vain for a basis of compromise between the 
 church and the state.
 
 260 French Literature. 
 
 His whole career was greatly influenced by those 
 two able men, the Abbe de Lamennais and the Pere 
 Lacordaire. These two men planned and published 
 UAvenir as the exponent of their views. Their 
 great object was to place the Church at the head 
 of the liberal movement. They were cordially 
 joined by Montalernbert. But it was not long before 
 they contrived to embroil themselves with both the 
 Government and the Church. UAvenir was con- 
 demned at Rome. Montalembert and Lacordaire 
 submitted , but De Lamennais broke away in wrath 
 from the Church, published his famous Paroles dun 
 Croyant, wildly and fiercely renouncing a body 
 which he now believed to be at war with liberty. 
 
 Montalembert turned to literature for solace, pub- 
 lished his Du Vandalisme en France, a plea for the 
 old cathedrals; and his Histoire de S. Elisabeth, a. 
 devout and enthusiastic study of holy life in the 
 " Ages of Faith." On reaching the age which per- 
 mitted his joining in the debates of the Chamber as 
 a peer of France, he began that wonderful oratorical 
 career in which his genius showed itself at its best. 
 Sainte-Beuve thus describes him : 
 
 "When he re-appeared in the Chamber, [his first ap- 
 pearance had been when he stood his trial before his peers 
 for opening a school in defiance of the law, along with 
 Lacordaire and De Coux.] he had the right to say any- 
 thing, to dare anything, so long as he retained that ele- 
 gance of aspect and diction which never forsook him. He 
 could utter with all freedom the most passionate pleadings 
 for that liberty which was the only excess of his youth. 
 He could develop without interruption those absolute 
 theories which from another mouth would have made the 
 Chamber shiver, but which pleased them from his. He 
 could even give free course to his mordant and incisive 
 wit, and make personal attacks with impunity upon poten- 
 tates and ministers. In one or two cases the Chancellor 
 called him to order for form's sake ; but the favor which 
 attends ability carried everything before it. His bitterness 
 and he was sometimes bitter from him seemed almost
 
 After the Restoration. 261 
 
 amenity, the harshness of the meaning being disguised by 
 the elegance of his manner and his perfect grace." 
 
 In 1837, Montalembert married the beautiful 
 and accomplished daughter of Count Felix de Merode, 
 a nobleman of an ancient Belgian house, and with 
 her he lived a happy and contented home life, at 
 the same time enjoying as an orator many public 
 triumphs. He resolutely opposed to the last the 
 arbitrary measures of the Second Empire, and the 
 efforts of that party in the Church which aimed at 
 establishing the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, 
 though on his deathbed, soon after the success of 
 that party, he gave in his adhesion to what he said 
 he did not pretend to understand. Besides his works 
 already mentioned, he published, among other 
 writings, Les Moines d 1 Occident depute $. Benoit 
 jusqu 1 d S. Bernard, L'Eylise libre dans VEtat libre, 
 and Le Pape et Ed Pologne. 
 
 One of the most touching incidents in Monta- 
 lembert's life was that related of his daughter's 
 announcing to her parents her desire to become a 
 nun; and, on their tenderly seeking to know what 
 secret sorrow might be prompting the wish, her 
 pointing to a passage in one of her father's worka 
 in which he eloquently declared that blighted 
 hearts were a poor sacrifice to offer to God. 
 
 Hughes Felicite Robert de Lamennais (1782- 
 1854) was born at Saint Malo. He took the ton- 
 sure in 1811, going into the little seminary of Saint 
 Malo, and being ordained priest some years later 
 by the Bishop of Rennes. A tract against Na- 
 poleon obliged him to take refuge in England. 
 Other works of his had already given him some 
 reputation as an assailant of the materialistic phi- 
 losophy of the day ; but the appearance in 1817 of 
 the first volume of his Essai sur I 1 Indifference en 
 Matibre de Religion gave him at once European 
 celebrity. The remaining three volumes were 
 equally successful, and, when, he went to Rome,
 
 262 French Literature. 
 
 Pope Leo XII. declared him to be " the last Father 
 of the Church." His later course I have already 
 described. After the Paroles d\m Croyant, which 
 proclaimed his rupture with the Church, he put 
 forth a series of works, advocating the most extreme 
 democratic doctrines. He ceased to believe with 
 the Church on many vital points, and tried to con- 
 struct from his natural lights a system of Christian 
 metaphysics. His most labored production of this 
 peroid was his Esquisse d'une Philosophic. 
 
 Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire (1802-1861) was 
 born at Eecey-sur-Ource, Cote-d'or, the son of a 
 village doctor. Montalembert, in his short biog- 
 raphy of Le Pbre Lacordaire, says : 
 
 " He had, like all the young people of his day, lost the 
 faith at school, and had not recovered it either at the law 
 school or the bar, in which he was enrolled for two years. 
 To all outward seeming, nothing distinguished him from 
 his contemporaries. He was a deist, as all the youth was 
 then ; he was, above all, liberal, like the whole of France, 
 but without excess. He had said it again and again : no 
 man or book was the instrument of his conversion. A sud- 
 den and secret flash of grace opened his eyes to the 
 nothingness of irreligion. In a single day he became 
 Christian, and the very next day from Christian he 
 wished to be priest." 
 
 He soon became famous as a great preacher, pro- 
 foundly in earnest and of a brilliant eloquence. I 
 have already the story of his association with Mont- 
 alembert and De Lamennais in the publication of 
 L'Avenir. From the time of the papal condemna- 
 tion of that journal, he devoted himself to his pul- 
 pit duties. His sermons at Notre Dame drew im- 
 mense audiences. He produced a Life of Saint- 
 Dominic, and, moved by his enthusiasm for that 
 order, became a Dominican friar. This led to his 
 preaching in different parts of France. After the 
 Eevolution of 1848, he for a short time went into 
 political life, as one of the representatives from
 
 After tht Restoration. 263 
 
 Marseille. Preaching, at various times, again at 
 Notre-Dame, he finally gathered a number of his 
 sermons of both the earlier and later periods, and 
 published them under the title, Conferences de Notre 
 Dame de Paris. His Oraisons funebres are also 
 esteemed by French critics as worthy to be placed 
 beside those of the great preachers of the seven- 
 teenth century. 
 
 "We have now reached the point at which it will 
 be fitting to take up those metaphysical thinkers 
 who have mainly directed the thought of France 
 in the last generation. These are Cousin, 
 Jouffroy, Damiron, and Comte. Cousin was pre- 
 ceded by Eoyer-Collard, whose busy share in politi- 
 cal life has somewhat obscured his claims to notice 
 as a philosopher. 
 
 Pierre Paul Eoyer-Collard (1763-1845) was born 
 at Sompuis, Maine.- He was at first prominent in the 
 agitations of the Revolution, but was forced to live 
 in obscurity during the Reign of Terror, even follow- 
 ing the plough to escape the sharp-eyed messengers 
 of the Jacobins. When Napoleon came into power, 
 Royer-Collard was placed in the chair of philosophy 
 in the University of France, and devoted himself 
 with great singleness of purpose to the study of 
 metaphysics. He rejected the system of Condillac, 
 studied by preference the Scottish philosophers 
 Reid and Dugald Stewart and began that system 
 of eclecticism which Cousin afterwards developed 
 with so much brilliancy. The Restoration broke 
 in upon these studies, as Royer-Collard was soon 
 drawn into political life. After 1842, however, he 
 lived in retirement. He published little ; but his 
 influence on both political and philosophical 
 thought was very great. His library-room served 
 as a sort of salon in which were to be met men like 
 Cousin, Guizot, the Due de Broglie, Casimir Perier, 
 De Barante, Villemain, Ampere, and De Remusat. 
 His earnest and upright character, his moderate 
 and sensible views, the simplicity of his life, and
 
 264 French Literature. 
 
 his love for books caused him to be highly esteemed 
 by such men as these. 
 
 Victor Cousin (1792-1867), the head of the school 
 of Eclectic Philosophy, was born at Paris, the son 
 of a clock-maker. He was at first Greek tutor in the 
 ficole Norm ale, but before long was appointed as- 
 sistant to Royer-Collard, and, on the retirement of 
 the latter from his professorship, became his suc- 
 cessor. He expounded the doctrines of the Scottish 
 metaphysicians with great clearness and power, 
 added to them with discreet eclecticism principles 
 borrowed from the great German thinkers Kant, 
 Fichte, Jacobi, and Schelling; and finally drew 
 largely from Hegel 'also, combining them all into a 
 symmetrical whole, equally brilliant and seductive 
 as seeming to harmonize views at first sight discord- 
 ant. His audiences were large and enthusiastic. 
 As a lecturer he was always a splendid success. 
 Eare lucidity of exposition, a style recalling tliat of 
 Plato, extraordinary powers of generalization, ad- 
 mirable taste and skill in illustrating the deepest 
 metaphysical subtleties from history, art, science, 
 and daily life, were qualities which gave a new 
 charm to a study commonly reputed dry and repul- 
 sive. He took some part in public life when the 
 Revolution of 1830 made his friend Guizot Prime 
 Minister. His chief works were the Histoire de la 
 Philosophie auXVIIP SiZcle; Fragments litter air es ; 
 Fragments philosophiques ; a translation of Plato ; 
 literary studies of Pascal, Jacqueline Pascal, and 
 J. J. Rousseau ; the Du Vrai, du Beau, et du Bien; 
 an Introduction a T Histoire de la Philosophie ; Etudes 
 sur les Femmes Illustres et la Societe du XVII 6 
 Sibcle ; Des Principes de la Revolution fran^aise ; 
 and Lemons de Philosophie sur Kant. His ablest 
 scholars were Jouffroy and Damiron. 
 
 Theodore Simon Jouffroy (1796-1842) became a 
 professor in the College de France. He published 
 translations of Reid and Stewart. His best known 
 original work is the Melanges Philosophiques.
 
 After the Restoration. 265 
 
 Jean Philibert Damiron (1794-1862) was also a 
 Professor of Metaphysics, and published several 
 philosophical works, among them a Cours de Phil- 
 osophic and an essay on Philosophic en France an 
 19* Siecle. Another of Cousin's pupils was Louis 
 Eugene Marie Bautain (1796-1867), born at Paris. 
 He wrote La Morale de VEvanyile comparee a la 
 Morale des Philosophes, Philosophic-psychologic ex- 
 perimentale, Philosophic morale, Philosophic du 
 Christianisme, La Religion et la Liberte considerees 
 dans leurs Rapports, and La Morale de VEvanyile 
 comparee aux divers Systemes de Morale. 
 
 Others of this school were Bouillet, De Cardail- 
 lac, Mazure, Ozaneaux, Hippeau, Tissot, Gamier, 
 Poret, Caro, Paffe, Caunes, and Geruzez. 
 
 Among the opponents of eclecticism was Pierre 
 Leroux (1798-1871), once a Saint Simonian. His 
 Refutation de TBclectisme was the ablest of the 
 many attacks made on the system of Cousin. Pierre 
 Leroux, after separating from Enfantin, joined 
 Reynaud in editing the Revue Encyclopedique, and, 
 on its failure, the Encyclopedic Nouvelle. About 
 the time of his attack on eclecticism, he published 
 also his work De THumanite, de son Principe, et de 
 son Avenir, in which he set forth his own philo- 
 sophical views, a sort of modified eclecticism with a 
 belief in the old anima-mundi theory of the ancients 
 superadded to it. Later, he associated himself with 
 Viardot and Madame Dudevant in the publication 
 of the Revue Independante. He was also the author 
 of a philosophic poem, of a drama called Job, and 
 of a translation of Goethe's Werther. 
 
 Auguste Comte (1796-1857), the founder of the 
 Positive Philosophy, was another of those who had 
 once been Saint-Simonians. After breaking away 
 from that school, he became Professor of Mathe- 
 matics in the ficole Poly technique. His works 
 were Cours de Philosophic Positive; Discours sur 
 V Ensemble du Positivisme ; System* de Politique 
 Positive ; and Catechisme Positiviste, ou Sommaire
 
 266 French Literature. 
 
 Exposition de la Religion Universelle. He produced 
 also works on analytical geometry and on astron- 
 omy. His main idea was that Theology was the 
 law of man's childhood, Metaphysics the law of his 
 youth, and Positivism the law of his maturity, this 
 Positivism being the search of humanity after the 
 laws that produce phenomena. Positivism, then, 
 limits all legitimate speculation to observed facts. 
 It makes a religion of science, and ignores all that 
 park of nature within and without us which science 
 can not grasp and analyze. 
 
 The great question of the organization of labor 
 which the socialists brought into prominence was 
 treated with especial attention by two antagonistic 
 thinkers, Louis Blanc and Michel Chevalier. 
 
 Jean Joseph Louis Blanc was born in 1813. In 
 a Socialist Review, which he founded in Paris in 
 1838, he brought out his chief work on Socialism, 
 the Organisation du Travail, afterwards publishing 
 it in a separate form. This book won him great 
 popularity among the industrial classes. He next 
 published his Histoire de dix Ans, which overthrew 
 the government. His Histoire de la Revolution 
 frangaise followed, in which he prophesied the 
 triumph of Socialism. When the Revolution of 
 1848 came, Blanc was put at the head of the com- 
 mission on the labor question. Involved in the 
 insurrections which followed the attempt to inaugu- 
 rate national workshops, he was forced to escape to 
 London. During his exile, he wrote his Appel aux 
 Honnetes Gens and his Catechisme des Socialistes. 
 These were followed by Pages d> Histoire de la 
 Revolution de Fevrier, Plus de Girondins, and La 
 Republique Une et Indivisible. On the fall of the 
 Second Empire at Sddan, Blanc returned to France. 
 His French Revolution is an able work. 
 
 Michel Chevalier was born at Limoges in 1806. 
 He was educated to be an engineer. In his early 
 life, he was an active Saint-Simonian; and, when 
 the division took place in that sect, he followed
 
 After the Restoration. 267 
 
 Enfanwii, helped in preparing the Livre Nouveau, 
 and suffered imprisonment for his ardent advocacy 
 of that cause. Later, however, he retracted all 
 that he had advanced against Christianity and the 
 institution of marriage. He was sent by the gov- 
 ernment to the United States, on a special mission 
 of inquiry into our canal and railroad system. He 
 also visited England with a similar purpose. Pub- 
 lishing works of industrial information based on 
 these travels of investigation, and pursuing a career 
 of earnest devotion to his profession, he gained in 
 time a position of distinction in the state. In reply 
 to Blanc's work, he wrote his Lettres sur T Organ- 
 isation du Travail. He also published works on 
 political economy and on Mexico. 
 
 Among the writers on political philosophy must 
 be classed Charles de Remusat, De Tocqueville, 
 Guizot, De Cormenin, and the Emperor Louis 
 Napoleon. 
 
 Fra^ois Marie Charles, Comte de Remusat 
 (1797-1875), the son of a Proven9al gentleman, 
 Auguste Laurent, Comte de Remusat, and of that 
 Madame de Remusat whose Letters and Memoirs 
 have lately been put before the world, was born at 
 Paris, and began his political career as a journalist 
 under the influence of Guizot; but at a later period 
 he pursued a more independent course. The most 
 important of his earlier essays were Sur la Re- 
 sponsibilite des Afinisteres, Sur la Liberte de la 
 Presse, Sur la Procedure par Juris en Afattire 
 Criinindle, and Sur les Amendements a la Loi des 
 Elections. He figured among those journalists 
 whose protest emphasized the popular discontent 
 with the governmental measures which produced 
 the Revolution of 1830. He went then into public 
 life and held some important offices, continuing to 
 serve the State in such capacities after the Revolu- 
 tion of 1848. When Louis Napoleon overthrew 
 the republic, De Remusat was exiled for a time. 
 During the Second Empire he devoted himself to
 
 268 French Literature. 
 
 literature and science. His works on non-political 
 subjects were Essais de Philosophic, Histoire d" 1 Abe- 
 lard, Saint Anselme de Canterbury, UAnyleterre au 
 dix'huitieme Siecle, Passe et Present, Bacon, Hart- 
 ley, Histoire de la Philosophic anglaise de Bacon d 
 Locke, and a philosophical drama entitled Abelard. 
 Charles Henri Alexis Cleret de Tocqueville 
 (1805-1859) was born at the chateau of Verneuil, 
 near Mantes, in the department of Seine-et-Oise. 
 In 1831 he came to the United States with Gustave 
 de Beaumont on a mission from the Government to 
 examine and report on the practical working of the 
 penitentiary system. He used the occasion to 
 study the influence of a democratic form of gov- 
 ernment on the institutions, social manners, and 
 literature of a country. On returning, besides 
 publishing with his colleague a report Du Systeme 
 penitentiaire aux Etats- Unis, he put forth the result 
 of his studies in his great work, De la Democratic 
 en Amerique. Royer-Collard styled this work " a 
 continuation of Montesquieu." A great sensation 
 was produced by it, and De Tocqueville at once 
 took rank as the greatest thinker of his day in the 
 science of political philosophy. The clearness and 
 keenness of his vision in a sphere of observation 
 where the facts are exceedingly complex, the fair- 
 ness of his judgments, the thoroughness with 
 which he had digested the vast array of facts before 
 him, and the sirnplicitj^, force, warmth, and vivacity 
 of his style won him golden opinions from the 
 most judicious critics on both continents. When 
 he visited England, he received an enthusiastic 
 welcome from the Whig leaders. There he mar- 
 ried an English lady. Later, though at first de- 
 feated, he was in the end sent to the Chamber by 
 the people of that Norman department in which 
 the old family estate of Tocqueville lay. He was 
 one of the strongest opponents of the Socialist 
 movement. When Louis Napoleon destroyed the 
 liberty of the people, De Tocqueville retired to his
 
 After the Restoration. 269 
 
 Norman estate and devoted himself to agriculture. 
 There be wrote Uancien Regime et la Revolution. He 
 died at Cannes, whither he had gone for his health. 
 In 1860, De Beaumont published his friend's 
 (Euvres et Correspondance inedites, with a biograph- 
 ical notice. 
 
 Gustave de Beaumont (1802-1866) was born at 
 Beaumont-la Chartre, in the department of Sarthe. 
 His course was, throughout, that of his friend, De 
 Tocqueville. He was Lafayette's grandson, and he 
 married his cousin, the daughter of Georges La- 
 fayette. Besides the Penitentiary Eeport which he 
 prepared in conjunction with De Tocqueville, he 
 produced J/an'e, ou VEsclavaye aux Etats- Unis, and 
 Ulrlande, sociale, polilique, et reliyieuse. 
 
 Franyois Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787-1874) 
 has Avon his greatest literary distinction as a his- 
 torian. But he was also a remarkable orator, 
 statesman, and publicist. He was born at Nirnes, 
 of Protestant parents. His father, a lawyer, per- 
 ished on the revolutionary scaffold. By his mother 
 he was then taken to Geneva. He betook himself 
 to Paris in 1805, and devoted himself to literary 
 pursuits. His first important publication was a 
 Didionnaire des Synonymes fran^ais, after which 
 he put forth the Vie de Corneille et de Shakspeare, 
 and a translation of Gibbon, with valuable histor- 
 ical notes. In 1812, he was appointed Professor of 
 History, and began that series of historical works 
 on which his fame chiefly rests. After the Resto- 
 ration he took part in politics, writing his Histoire 
 des Orifjines du Gouvernement Representatif, and 
 other works on the philosophy of political in- 
 stitutions. 
 
 In conjunction with other men of letters, he pub- 
 lished two most valuable collections of Memoirs 
 throwing light on French history, numbering in all 
 fifty-seven volumes. Besides, also, editing several 
 works, he published his Histoire de la Revolution 
 d Anyleterre, and his Histoire de la Civilisation en
 
 270 French Literature. 
 
 France. After the Eevolution of 1830, he stren- 
 uously supported Casirnir Perier, held several high 
 offices in the State, and labored earnestly for im- 
 provements in education. After serving as ambas- 
 sador to England, he became Prime Minister until 
 the fall of Louis Philippe. His restrictive measures, 
 his cold and austere manner, and his rigid impassi- 
 bility, together with the general offensiveness to 
 the nation of the government which he represented, 
 made Guizot at this time one of the most unpopular 
 men in France. 
 
 Escaping to London when the crash came, he 
 was there well received, in spite of his identifica- 
 tion with the selfish policy which the " Citizen- 
 King " had pursued both at home and abroad. 
 
 His pamphlet entitled Guizot a ses Amis failed to 
 restore the confidence of the French people. The 
 violent seizure of the government by Louis Na- 
 poleon in December, 1851, put an end to Guizot's 
 intrigues to bring about a restoration of the mon- 
 archy ; and he returned to his literary labors, 
 writing Memoires pour servir a THistoire de mon 
 Temps, Meditations sur Vfitat actuel de la Religion 
 chretienne, Melanges biographique et litteraires, and 
 Melanges politiques et historiques. Besides these 
 works may also be named his Monk, ou Chute de 
 la Republique et Retablissement de la Monarchic en 
 Angleterre; Washington, son Caractere et son In- 
 fluence dans la Revolution d 1 Amerique, Etudes sur 
 les Beaux-arts, and a History of France as told to 
 his grandchildren. This last-mentioned work was 
 published after his death. 
 
 Politically, Guizot's position was that of a Con- 
 stitutionalist,equally opposed to absolute monarchies 
 and to republican governments. His horror of dis- 
 order led him to prefer authority to liberty, when 
 there was strong danger of liberty's degenerating 
 into anarchy. His style of oratory was incisive 
 and impressive ; he kept steadily to his subject, 
 and allowed nothing to draw him away from it.
 
 After the Restoration. 271 
 
 His speeches were wholly impersonal, in spite of 
 the temptation which must often have assailed him 
 to indulge in recrimination when Berryer, Barrot, 
 Thiers, Arago, and Mauguin rained upon him their 
 fierce philippics. 
 
 As a writer, his chief qualities are great erudition, 
 a passion for order and for generalization, elevation 
 of sentiment, loftiness of view, impartiality, and 
 closeness of analysis. His style is defective. It 
 lacks the charm which we look for when reading a 
 great French writer. Nor does Guizot impress the 
 reader as one who knows the human heart. The 
 vast fund of knowledge displayed has all been 
 drawn from books. There is nothing to indicate 
 personal observation as the source of anything he 
 has written, or to point to his possession of that 
 gift of sympathy by which imaginative men of 
 genius are able to re-animate the people of the past 
 and set them vividly before us. 
 
 We turn now to an agitator in behalf of popular 
 rights, who left behind him the reputation of hav- 
 ing been the greatest of pamphleteers. This was 
 Courier. 
 
 Paul Louis Courier (1772-1825) was born at 
 Paris. He served in the Italian campaign, resigned 
 from the army after the battle of Wagram, acquired 
 some literary reputation as a translator from the 
 classics ; but directly after the Restoration began 
 his brilliant career as a pamphleteer. Living on a 
 small estate in Touraine, he poured forth one after 
 the other caustic criticisms on the course of the 
 government, the keen and cutting irony of which 
 recalled the masterly style of Pascal. For one po- 
 litical diatribe the government had him prosecuted 
 and condemned to imprisonment. His inimitable 
 wit and the Attic simplicity of his style give his 
 productions high literary value. His last piece, 
 put forth the year before his assassination, with 
 the title Pamphlet des Pamphlets, was styled by
 
 272 French Literature. 
 
 Armand Carrel who published in, 1835 a complete 
 edition of his works The Swan's Death -song. 
 
 Beranger, with his pungent sarcasm and biting 
 scorn, was about the same time making his politi- 
 cal songs as dreadful to the Ministry as were 
 Courier's pamphlets. But in one respect Courier 
 differed widely from Beranger as a political agita- 
 tor : he abhorred the Napoleonic legend which with 
 Beranger had become the natural rallying point 
 against the evils of Bourbon rule. 
 
 Another of the formidable enemies of the re- 
 actionary government was De Cormenin. 
 
 Louis Marie de la Haye, Yicomte de Cormenin 
 (1788-1868), was born at Paris. He had an im- 
 mense political influence through the whole period 
 which elapsed from the time of the Restoration to 
 the day of his death. His pamphlets were almost 
 as famous as those of Courier. His work, Le Droit 
 Adtninistratif, his Etudes sur les Orateurs Parle- 
 mentaires, and his Le Droit de Tonnage en Algerie 
 were all works of merit. Les Entretiens de Village 
 was another work of his. 
 
 Another historian, who was also orator and 
 statesman, was Thiers. 
 
 Louis Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) was born at 
 Marseille. Studying law at Aix, he formed there 
 a close intimacy with Mignet the historian, and 
 with him sought Paris to begin his career there as 
 political journalist. His Histoire de la Revolution 
 frangaise by its clearness of narration, accuracy, 
 and vigor of style, at once gave him reputation. 
 His fatalist theory, by which he justified all the 
 excesses of each party in its hour of triumph, 
 detracts greatly from the philosophic value of this 
 work. When the struggle began which led to the 
 overthrow of the government in 1830, Thiers by 
 working heartily 'with the Liberals had no small 
 share in bringing about the revolution. He now 
 became one of the leading public men of France, in 
 spite of the ludicrous appearance which he presented
 
 After the Restoration. 273 
 
 in the Chamber with his diminutive person and 
 huge spectacles. His parliamentary oratory, how- 
 ever, soon won him attention, and he was always a 
 prominent member of the government or of the 
 opposition. When the republic, set up in 1848, 
 was overthrown by Louis Napoleon in 1851, Thiers 
 was banished. He was soon, however, allowed to 
 return. He had been working for many years on 
 his Histoire du Consulat et de TEmpire. At last 
 this work was published in 1860. A few years 
 after, he again entered public life, this time as a 
 member of the party in opposition. On the down- 
 fall of the Second Empire, he once more came into 
 prominence, was put at the head of the Provisional 
 Government, made peace with Prussia, and became 
 President of the new republic, giving way in 1873 
 to Marshal MacMahon. 
 
 Narcisse Achille, Comte de Salvandy (1796- 
 1856), born at Condom, was another of those 
 engaged in political life who also wrote history. 
 He put forth many political pamphlets ; wrote, 
 after a travel into Spain, a romance styled Alonzo ; 
 and published, in 1829, his Histoire de Pologne 
 avant et sous le Roi Jean SobiesTci. The style of 
 this history, according to De Vericour, is too often 
 declamatory and pompous. 
 
 Among recent historians, one of the most emi- 
 nent was Pierre Lanfrey (1828-1877). He was 
 born in Savoy. His first work was UEglise et les 
 Philosophes du 18* Siecle. After this came his 
 Histoire politique des Papes and Le Retablissement 
 de la Pologne. But the great work of his life was 
 his Histoire de Napoleon /., published in six 
 volumes. It is a very thorough study of the 
 imperial period, and exposes with unrelenting clear- 
 ness of narrative and fulness of detail the selfish 
 character of the first Emperor. When the Franco- 
 German war came on, Lanfrey took the field with 
 the garde mobile, and fought like a true Frenchman. 
 Later, he was appointed by Thiers ambassador to
 
 274 French Literature. 
 
 Switzerland. On MacMahon's election to the 
 presidency, Lanfrey resigned this post. Some two 
 years before his death, he was elected life-senator. 
 
 The Emperor Louis Napoleon must be classed 
 among those writers who have written history from 
 a political motive. With the startling and roman- 
 tic events of his life we have nothing to do here. 
 His career belongs to history. His literary work 
 may be summed up in a few words. 
 
 Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1873) 
 was born in the purple, in the palace of the Tuile- 
 ries. Daring his wandering life, before the Revolu- 
 tion of 1848 opened the way for him to gain a 
 political foothold in France, he published at various 
 times his Reveries Politiques, Projet de Constitution, 
 Deux Mots U M. de Chateaubriand sur la Duchesse 
 de Berri, Considerations Politiques et Militaires sur 
 la Suisse, Manuel d 1 Artillerie, and Idees Napoleoni- 
 ennes. While imprisoned in the fortress of Ham, 
 he wrote his Aux Manes de TEmpereur, Fragments 
 Historiques, Analyse de la Question de Suisse, Reponse 
 a M. de Lamartine, and Extinction du Pauperisme, 
 besides assisting in editing the Dictionnaire de la 
 Conversation. While Emperor, he published his 
 Vie de Jules Cesar, intended to set forth the 
 Napoleonic theory of politics, already announced 
 in that famous passage of the first Napoleon's on 
 Les Saitveurs des Nations. 
 
 Another political writer, and one of marked 
 ability, was that PreVost-Paradol, whose suicide 
 while ambassador at Washington was believed to 
 have been caused by his despair when the Emperor 
 allowed the war-party at court to force his judg- 
 ment. 
 
 Lucien Anatole Prdvost-Paradol (1829-1870) 
 was born at Paris. Distinguished as journalist, he 
 published at different times an JKloge de Bernardin 
 de Saint- Pierre, Revue de THistoire universelle, Du 
 Role de la Famille dans I 1 Education, Etudes sur les 
 Moralities, Precis de VHitfoire universelle, De la
 
 After the Restoration. 275 
 
 Liberte des Guiles en France, Essais de Politique et 
 de la Litterature, and Quelques Pages d 1 Histoire con- 
 temporaine. 
 
 Turning now to those historians, not so closely 
 connected with the political history of their times, 
 we find, among those whose fame had begun before 
 the liestoration, Philippe Paul de Se"gur, who was 
 born at Paris in 1780. His father, the Comte 
 Louis Philippe de Segur, was for many years 
 ambassador at St. Petersburg and a great favorite 
 with the Empress Catharine II., and was himself 
 the author 'of many works, among them Pensees 
 Politiques, Histoire de Frederic Guillaume II., 
 Contes, Fables, Chansons, et Vers, and Memoir es ou 
 Souvenirs et Anecdotes. The son was one of Napo- 
 leon's generals, and wrote the history of the disas- 
 trous Russian campaign in which he shared. This 
 work is entitled Histoire de Napoleon et de la Grande 
 Armee en 1812. ft was a great success. He after- 
 wards wrote a Lettre sur la Campayne du General 
 Macdonald dans les Grisons ; and two histories, 
 Histoire de Russie et de Pierre le Grand, and His- 
 toire de Charles VIII., Roi de France. 
 
 Antoine Guillaume Prosper Brugiere, Baron de 
 Baraute (1782-1866), was born at Riom. He was 
 early employed in diplomatic service. On the 
 Restoration, he was still employed in various pub- 
 lic capacities, but kept up throughout his state 
 service his devotion to letters. After the Revolu- 
 tion of 1830, he was again an ambassador, but 
 retired from public life on the establishment of the 
 republic in 1848. His great work was his Histoire 
 des Dues de Bourgogne. Among his other writings 
 were La Litterature franchise pendant le dix-huitieme 
 Si&cle, Les Etudes litteraires et historiques, and Le 
 Parlement et la Fronde. In his History of the 
 Dukes of Burgundy, he gives a simple, clear, and 
 elegant narrative of events in a lively, dramatic 
 style, telling his story without stopping to investi- 
 gate and explain in tiie presence of the reader. It
 
 276 French Literature. 
 
 is a bright, busy, and picturesque recital full of 
 stirring incidents, luminously put before the mind 
 in a most attractive manner. 
 
 Augustin Thierry and his brother Amede'e were 
 both historians, though the former has left a repu- 
 tation far more brilliant and solid than the latter. 
 
 Jacques Nicolas Augustin Thierry (1795-1856) 
 was born at Blois. His first work was De la reor- 
 ganisation de la Societe Europeenne. This work 
 considers the question of uniting all Europe under 
 one government. Starting with so close an approx- 
 imation to the Saint-Simonian doctrines, Thierry 
 was soon a declared advocate and assistant of Saint- 
 Simon. Later, he worked with Comte and Dunoyer. 
 Having published in 1820 some letters, in a journal, 
 on French history, he became interested in historical 
 subjects, and in 1825 published his Histoire de la 
 Conquete de VAngleterre par les Normands, which 
 at once gave him high rank among historians. His 
 Lettres sur I 1 Histoire followed ; but, after that, he 
 became nearly blind in consequence of his arduous 
 studies. Going to Hyeres for his health, he met 
 there and married Julie de Querengal, a lady who 
 had herself some literary reputation. His eyesight 
 being partly restored, and his wife aiding him faith- 
 fully in his work, he next published Dix Ans 
 deludes historiques, and Recits des Temps Mero- 
 vinyiens. His last work was an essay Sur V Histoire 
 de la Formation et du Progres du Tiers IJJtat. His 
 researches threw great light upon early French 
 history and dissipated a host of errors which had 
 been repeated without investigation by writer aftei 
 writer. 
 
 Ame'dee Thierry was born at Blois in 1797. Besides 
 his Resume de V Histoire de Guyenne, he wrote a book 
 of profound historical research which gave him 
 great reputation. This was his Histoire de la Gaule 
 sous la Domination des Romains. Of this work his 
 brother wrote, in his history of his own historical 
 ideas and labors, given as a preface to his Dix
 
 After the Restoration. 277 
 
 Ans oT fitudes historiques: " He was preparing to give 
 to the public one half of the prolegomena of the 
 history of France the Keltic origins, with an 
 account of the Gallic migrations, and a picture of 
 Gaul under the Roman administration. For my 
 own part, I undertook to give the other part, that 
 is to say, the Germanic origins, and a picture of the 
 great invasions which caused the ruin of the West- 
 ern Roman empire. I experienced a heartfelt 
 delight at the idea of this fraternal association at 
 the hope of fixing our two names on the double 
 basis upon which must be placed the edifice of our 
 national history." 
 
 I have already had occasion to mention Mignet, 
 in speaking of Thiers, who studied law with him 
 at Aix, whence they went to Paris together, to 
 engage in literary life. 
 
 Frangois Auguste Alexis Mignet was born at 
 Aix in Provence in 1796. He began literary work 
 as a journalist. Having given lectures on history 
 which were well received, he was encouraged to 
 undertake his Histoire de la Revolution Franchise, 
 which treated that great series of events from a 
 philosophical point of view. He takes, however, 
 the same fatalist views which his friend Thiers held 
 and expressed. After the Revolution of 1830, 
 Mignet held office for a time; but that of 1848 
 drove him into private life. His later works were 
 Notices historiques, Memoir es sur des Questions 
 d'Histoire, 'Histoire d 1 Antonio Perils, Histoire des 
 Negociations relatives a la Succession (VEspagne, 
 Histoire de Marie Stuart, Histoire de V Abdication et 
 des demises Annees de Charles- Quint, and Rivalite 
 de Francois I. et de Charles V. His style is firm 
 and pure, his matter the result of profound research 
 and penetrating insight into the entanglements of 
 politics. Conciseness is a marked characteristic 
 of his style. The Eloges pronounced by Mignet 
 must also be mentioned. They are striking pictures 
 of a number of eminent men.
 
 278 French Literature. 
 
 We come now to a historian of a different order. 
 Michelet, the disciple of Vico and Niebuhr. the 
 seeker after symbolic truths in historical facts, is a 
 marked contrast to men like Thiers, Mignet, and 
 the Thierrys. A poetic imagination, a rare ability 
 in painting individuals and masses, a brilliant and 
 glowing style, and a great fund of knowledge united 
 to form in Michelet, in many respects, a model his- 
 torian. But his visionary theories made his nar- 
 rative too often unsound in its general tenor. 
 
 Jules Michelet (1798-1874) was born at Paris, 
 studied under Villemain and Leclerc, and early be- 
 came a Professor of History. His chief works 
 were a Precis de VHistoire moderne, a translation of 
 Vice's works, Introduction a VHistoire universelle, 
 Histoire romaine, Les Memoires de Luther, Les Ori- 
 gines du Droit franc, aise, Histoire de France, Histoire 
 de la Revolution fran^aise, and Les Femmes de la 
 Revolution. 
 
 Entering into controversy with the Jesuits, he 
 brought out against them Des Jesuites ; DuPretre, 
 de la Femme, et de la Famille ; and Du Peuple. He 
 took no part in the stir of the Eevolution of 1848, 
 which swept so many literary men into the vortex 
 of politics. But when the republic fell, he refused 
 to take the oath of allegiance to Louis Napoleon. 
 Besides his historical and controversial works, he 
 wrote those fanciful and rhetorical and somewhat 
 hysterical books by which perhaps he is best known 
 in this country, V Oiseau, L'Insecte, L* Amour, La 
 Femme, La Mer, La Sorci&re, La Bible de THuman- 
 ite, and Nos Fils. The Memoirs of his wife may 
 also be given a place here. 
 
 Merle D'Aubigne, as the historian of the Kefor- 
 mation, holds a high rank in the estimation of many 
 in England and this country. His work, however, 
 in the judgment of impartial critics, is as full of 
 prejudice in one direction as Audin's bitter life of 
 Luther is in the other. 
 
 Jean Henri Merle d'Aubigne (1794-1872) was
 
 After the Restoration. 279 
 
 born at Eaux- Vives, near Geneva. Studying under 
 Neander at Berlin, he afterwards became pastor of 
 the French Protestant church at Hamburg. Later, 
 he lived in Brussels, and, later still, returned to 
 Geneva and became Professor of Church History 
 there. His great work was the Histoire de la Refor- 
 mation au seizilme Sibcle. He wrote also Le Protec- 
 teur, ou la Republique cFAngleterre aux Jours de Crom- 
 well; Trois Slides de Lutte en Ecosse ; Histoire de la 
 Reformation en Europe au Temps de Calvin. 
 
 In closing the sketch of historical writers, I must 
 merely mention such works as Dulaure's history of 
 Paris ; other writers on the Revolution besides those 
 already mentioned Lacretelle, Tissot, Labaume, 
 Montgaillard, Cony, and De Norvins ; Bignon's 
 history of France under Napoleon ; and the volumi- 
 nous productions of Capefigue his history of Philip 
 Augustus; of the Restoration; of France in the 
 Middle Ages; of .the Reform, the League, and 
 Henri IV.'s reign; of Richelieu, Mazarin, and the 
 Fronde; of Louis XIV.'s reign; of the Regent 
 Philip of Orleans ; and of Europe during the Con- 
 sulate and Empire of Napoleon. 
 
 Just as briefly must be named Mazure's History 
 of the English Revolution of 1688 ; Armand Car- 
 rel's History of the English Restoration ; Fauriel's 
 History of Southern Gaul under the dominion of the 
 German conquerors ; Delecluze's History of Florence ; 
 St. Hilaire's History of Spain ; and General Foy's 
 History of the Peninsular War. 
 
 Duret, Wallon, Jung, Double, Jonquiere, and 
 Lacroix have also produced historical works. 
 
 Mention should also be made of three valuable 
 works on the subject of the Huguenots : Peyrat's 
 Histoire des Pasteurs du Desert ; Coquerel's Histoire 
 des figlises du Desert ; and Crottet's Histoire des 
 ^Jglises Reformees de Pons, Gemozac, et Montange, en 
 Saintonge. 
 
 Able histories of the civil war in the United 
 States have been produced by the Comte de Paris 
 and by Ernest Grasset.
 
 280 French Literature. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 POETS AND PLAYWEITEES. 
 
 THE Restoration opens with two lyric poets, whose 
 influence dominates the age. The one, the Poet of 
 the People, is Beranger. The other, the Poet of 
 the Sentimentalists, is Lamartine. 
 
 But, before we take up these poets, some men- 
 tion must be made of the Hymn of Revolution, La 
 Marseillaise, and its author, Rouget de Lisle. In 
 the year 1792, a young officer of engineers, who had 
 been a teacher of music, was urged by the Mayor 
 of Strasbourg, a noble Alsatian, the Baron Dietrich, 
 to compose a patriotic song for the ceremonies 
 about to be observed in that city. He composed it 
 that night, both words and music, and called it 
 Chant de Guerre de I'Armee du Rhin. It was sung 
 with great enthusiasm by the volunteers; but the 
 song did not make its way to Paris, until Barbaroux 
 and the young men of Marseille poured into Paris, 
 chanting it. The Parisians named it the "Mar- 
 seillaise Hymn." Heine wrote of this song, during 
 the revolutionary year of 1830 : 
 
 " A strong joy seizes me, as I sit writing. Music 
 resounds under my window, and in the elegiac rage of 
 its large melody, I recognize that hymn with which hand- 
 some Barbaroux and his companions once greeted the 
 city of Paris. What a song! It thrills me with fiery 
 delight. It kindles within me the glowing star of enthu- 
 siasm, and the swift rocket of satire. Swelling, burning 
 torrents of song rush from the heights of freedom, in 
 streams as bold as those with which the Ganges leap 
 from the heights of Himalaya ! I can write no more. 
 This song intoxicates my brain. Louder and nearer 
 advances the powerful chorus Aux armes, citoyens \ "
 
 Poets and Play writers. 281 
 
 It is indeed a martial chant of wonderful power. 
 Few songs have so stirred the souls of men. 
 
 "When we come to Beranger, we find that he is to 
 be viewed under two aspects, as a political power, and 
 as a poet. We have already seen how strong a 
 force was arrayed against Bourbonism in the par- 
 liamentary eloquence of such men as Constant^ 
 Foy, and Royer-Collard, by the socialist ferment, 
 and by the stinging pamphlets of Courier and De 
 Cormenin. But the songs of Beranger made their 
 work tenfold easier by creating a political atmos- 
 phere in which the fire of free speech could live. 
 
 Pierre Jean de Beranger (1780-1857) was born 
 at Paris in the house of his mother's father, a 
 tailor in the Rue Montorgueil. He seems to have 
 been early indoctrinated in republican principles by 
 his aunt with whom he lived fora time at Peronne. 
 A born song- wri tor, he early began to pour forth 
 his thoughts and fancies in verse. His songs not 
 finding a market, he sent some of them to Lucien 
 Bonaparte, already famous for his devotion to liter- 
 ature. By him he was warmly encouraged and 
 helped in the most delicate manner, for which Be- 
 ranger was always deeply grateful. By Desaugiers, 
 the then acknowledged lyrist of France, who recog- 
 nized his merit, he was introduced to the choice 
 spirits of the day, constituting the Caveait, a social 
 club of poets, dramatists, journalists, painters, and 
 musicians, meeting at a cafe near the Palais Royal. 
 This was in 1809. Desangiers had read Beranger's 
 little satire, Le Roi tfYvetot, and predicted his 
 future fame. By Lucien Bonaparte's influence, 
 Beranger received a small governmental appoint- 
 ment which gave him a sufficient support and left 
 him leisure for literary work. During the Hun- 
 dred Days, Napoleon offered him the post of censor, 
 but this he declined. 
 
 In 1815, he published his first collection of songs, 
 which brought him at once great popularity. 
 When he next published, some of his songs brought
 
 282 French Literature. 
 
 down upon him the vengeance of the government. 
 One in particular, Les Adieux a la Gloire, Decembre 
 1830, was too bitter not to awaken the resentment 
 of the Ministry. He was sentenced to three 
 months' imprisonment in the debtor's prison of 
 Sainte-Pelagie and to pay a fine of live hundred 
 francs. His works, however, were so popular as to 
 yield profits which fully indemnified him for all 
 losses. His next publication brought him again 
 under the frown of the government. This time his 
 sentence was nine months in the prison of La Force 
 and a fine of ten thousand francs. His friends paid 
 the fine, and the government only succeeded in 
 advertising him as a political martyr. The songs 
 of Beranger became a great power in France and 
 one of the agencies which expelled the Bourbons 
 for the second time. 
 
 Under Louis Philippe, Beranger's friends became 
 the rulers of the state. But the poet refused to 
 profit by the change. It was an age of literary 
 statesmen, and Beranger was one of the very few 
 men of literary fame who did not take the political 
 fever. His publisher, Perrotin, treated him gener- 
 ously, and the poet lived at his ease and was con- 
 tent. After the Kevolution of 1848, he was elected 
 a member of the Constituent Assembly, but he 
 soon resigned this public trust. When Louis Na- 
 poleon overthrew the republic, feeling how much 
 he owed to the work Beranger had done in keeping 
 the memory of the first Empire in the hearts of the 
 people, he urged the poet to accept some reward at 
 his hands. But Beranger, though tempted by the 
 charming importunity of the Empress Eugenie, 
 resolutely kept his independence. He had not flat- 
 tered the first Emperor during the time of his 
 power, and he refused to bind himself in his old 
 age to the support of the nephew. He died at the 
 ripe old age of seventy-five, honored at the last by 
 a funeral escort of a hundred thousand men in
 
 Poets and Playwriters. 283 
 
 arms, the government fearing the excitement of the 
 people on such an occasion. 
 
 His songs are of many kinds, the frivolous and 
 impure, the deeply feeling and impassioned, the gay 
 and joyous, the keenly satirical, the tender, and the 
 lofty in tone. Sometimes he sings his country's 
 glory and misfortunes, the grandeur of the Empire, 
 and the woeful fall of the soldier Emperor. Some- 
 times his strain is of liberty and equality, the rights 
 of man, individualized into the right of the French- 
 man to rule himself. Sometimes his theme is purely 
 of practical politics under a corrupt and corrupting 
 government, and takes the form of a bitter satire 
 like Monsieur Judas. Sometimes his songs are gay, 
 sprightly, and humorous, such as Roger Bonttmps 
 or Le Petit Homme Gris. Sometimes the sharns 
 and oppressions of the passing time make every 
 line thrill with revolutionary throbs. His higher 
 strains are real odes. Nothing can be finer than 
 Mon Ame, or Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens, or Le Cinq 
 Mai, or La Bonne Vieille, or Mon Habit. Such noble 
 effusions condone the offense of his shocking Madame 
 Greyoire, Ma Grand 'mere, and similiar outrages on 
 decency. 
 
 He knew what he could do, and wisely confined 
 himself to that. When urged by Lebrun to apply 
 for a chair in the Academy, he declined in a grace- 
 ful letter in which he said : "I am only a singer, 
 gentlemen; let me die a singer." It would have 
 been better for his fame, had he restricted himself 
 to even less than what he could do, and blotted 
 many a ribald song before it reached the hand of 
 the printer. His works furnish an apt illustration 
 of the truth, that there are cases in which a part is 
 greater than the whole. 
 
 Lamartine was a literary worker of greater pre- 
 tensions, but the quality of his work was neither so 
 fine nor so strong. Still his writings were im- 
 mensely popular in their day, and have warm ad- 
 mirera even in this generation. In spite, too, of a
 
 284 French Literature. 
 
 taint of vanity which was his most marked weak- 
 ness, his character was a right noble one. 
 
 Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) was born at 
 Macon. In his Memoirs he gives a charming recital 
 of the simple home-life in which he grew up, and of 
 the troubles which his family underwent during the 
 Keign of Terror. He traveled in Italy in his 
 youth, and again after the fall of Napoleon. In 
 1820, the publication of lui&Meditattons Poetiques 
 won him renown and a position on the staff of the 
 French embassy at Naples, and, later, at Florence. 
 He married an English lady ; published his Nou~ 
 velles Meditations Poetiques, his Mori de Socrate, and 
 his Dernier Chant de Childe Harold; fought a duel 
 with Colonel Pepe ; produced his Harmonies Poe- 
 tiques et Religieuses ; and travelled in the East. On 
 his return from the Levant, he entered public life, 
 became a distinguished orator in the Chamber, 
 published in his Voyage en Orient, an account of his 
 Eastern pilgrimage, and put forth successively his 
 narrative poems, Jocelyn and La Chute d'un Ange, 
 and his confused and rhetorical Histoire des Giron- 
 dins. When the Revolution of 1848 came, he was 
 perhaps the foremost man in France ; but he nobly 
 threw away his popularity by refusing to authorize 
 the violence of the anarchists of that critical period. 
 The overthrow of the republic by Louis Napoleon 
 put an end to his public career. His other works 
 were his Elegies, Epitres, Confidences, Histoire de la 
 Revolution franchise, Cour familier de la Litterature, 
 Fior d'Aliza, and Histoire de la Restauration. 
 
 There is undoubtedly both passion and imagina- 
 tion in his poems, and the lyric vein is strong in 
 him. But to a foreign ear the sentiment does seem 
 overstrained, arid the tender melancholy too often 
 savors of affectation. To the modern Frenchman the 
 muse of Lamartine seems almost as insipid as to the 
 foreigner; and the criticism of our day detects a 
 flavor in almost all the fine writing admired by 
 that generation which our taste stamps as " not
 
 Poets and Playv:riters. 285 
 
 genuine." His verse, however, has great charm 
 from its melody and its elegant smoothness. The 
 prevailing element in his earlier poems was their 
 deep seriousness, their expression of religious 
 ecstasy in the presence of nature's loveliness in 
 fine, the blending of religious sentiment with 
 aesthetic sentiment, both very vague and somewhat 
 crude. Such are Le Lac, Le Vallon, Le Golfe de 
 Baia, and Le Temple. The success of Jocetyn 
 adds one more instance to the many proofs 
 literature furnishes us of the charm for the ordi- 
 nary reader a story has that is told in verse. 
 The taste for romance and the taste for poetry 
 are gratified at the same time. Walter 
 Scott's, Moore's and Byron's romantic poems, Mrs. 
 Browning's Aurora Leiyh, and the younger Bul- 
 wer's Lucile are all evidences of the value of a dis- 
 tinct story in making poetry acceptable to the 
 masses. For this peason, Tenm-son's Princess and 
 Idyls of the King will always be the most popular 
 of his poems. 
 
 By different sections of the public both Beranger 
 and Lamartine were idolized during a great part ol 
 their lives. But, if Lamartine's fame as a poet has 
 undergone great obscuration for a number of years, 
 the day will never come when his conduct during 
 the Revolution of 1848 shall not be set down to hia 
 honor as man and patriot. Of that splendid 
 action Bulwer-Lytton happily says: 
 
 " When Alphonse Lamartine, by an immortal speech, 
 in which there is no wit and no sparkle, struck down tc 
 his feet the red flag, we recognize intuitively the differ, 
 ence between the maxim-maker's knowledge of the con. 
 ventional world [He has been speaking of La Rochefou. 
 cauld's cynical Maxims] and the poet-orator's knowledge 
 of the universal human heart. Honor to Alphonse 
 Lamartine's knowledge of the heart in that moment 
 which saved the dignity of France and the peace ot 
 Europe, no matter what were hi.s defects in the knowl- 
 edge of the world defects by which rulers destined to
 
 286 French Literature. 
 
 replace him learned to profit ! Honor to that one tri- 
 umph of poetry put into action! " 
 
 The passion of regret for the glories which France 
 had won under the star of Napoleon, and lost with 
 the return of the Bourbons, had inspired Beranger 
 to fire the hearts of his countrymen with indigna- 
 tion against the new order of things. The same 
 impulse produced the Messeniennes of Delavigne, 
 and the same popular sympathy went out to meet 
 and to welcome his strains. 
 
 Jean Fra^ois Casimir Delavigne (1793-1843) 
 was born at Havre. He published his elegies when 
 the soil of France was still humbled by the presence 
 of the allied armies, borrovving his title from Bar- 
 thelemy's account in the Voyage (VAnacharsis of 
 how Tyrtasus had stirred the souls of the Lacede- 
 monians in their wars with the Messenians. De 
 Vericour says of these elegies, that many of them 
 are remarkable for their rich coloring, splendid 
 imagery, energy of thought, and metrical harmony; 
 and he specifies the Waterloo, Parthenope, and 
 Napoleon as among the finest. La Parisienne was 
 written under the impulse of enthusiasm awakened 
 by the July revolution. Casimir Delavigne refused 
 employment under Louis Philippe, and devoted 
 himself to the production of plays. The chief of 
 these were Les Vepres Siciliennes, Les Comediens, 
 Marino Faliero, Louis XI., Les Enfants d 1 Edouard, 
 Don Juan d'Autriclie, and La Fille du Cid. In 
 his dramatic works he tried to blend the principles 
 and spirit of the classic tragedy with those of the 
 romantic drama. But Victor Hugo, Alexandre 
 Dumas, and Alfred de Vigny had, after the Kevolu- 
 tion of 1830, boldly forsaken the old school and 
 declared war with its whole spirit and method, and 
 put upon the stage dramas conceived in the roman- 
 tic spirit ; and the efforts of Casimir Delavigne were 
 not able to restore the popularity of the older sys- 
 tem. He was successful, however, in comedy. His
 
 Poets and Play writers. 287 
 
 $cole aes Vieillards, brilliantly performed by Talma 
 and Mademoiselle Mars, brought him a triumph, 
 which ought to have tempted him to renewed efforts 
 in that branch of literary art. Retiring to Lyon 
 for change of air, when his health began to give 
 way, he died in that city. After his death ap- 
 peared his Ballades italiennes, which revealed the 
 fine lyrical ability he possessed. 
 
 Among the poets of this period must also be 
 named Madame Desbordes-Valmore (1787-1859), 
 whose literary labors comprised elegiac and idyllic 
 verse, fables, and romances. Tenderness and 
 pathos, gentle piety, and sweet consolation are her 
 special qualities. Her romance, Une Raillerie de 
 V Amour, has its scene in the days of the Empire. 
 Others were Les Veillees des Antilles and IJ Atelier 
 d"un Peintre. The poems were published under 
 the titles of Elegies et Romances, Pleurs, and Pau- 
 vres Fleurs. 
 
 Alexandre Soumet (1788-1845), another poet of 
 this period, produced elegies, tragedies, and epics. 
 La Pauvre Fille is considered a masterpiece in 
 delicacy of sentiment and beauty of style. His 
 tragedies were Saiil, Clytemnestre, Jeanne d*Arc, 
 Elisabeth de France, Cleopatre, and Norma. His 
 epics were Jeanne d'Arc and La Divine Epopee. 
 
 Alexandre Guiraud (1788-1847) wrote a great 
 number of tragedies, the finest of which was his 
 Macchabees ou le f Martyre. He also produced 
 Pof-mes et Chants Eleyiaques. 
 
 fimile Deschamps, who was born at Bourges in 
 1791, translated some of Shakespeare's plays, Schil- 
 ler's "Bell," and other works, and published a book of 
 original poems, Les Poesies des Creches, which are 
 graceful and elegant. 
 
 Arsene Ancelot (1794-1854), born at Havre, 
 was successful on the stage with his plays of Louis 
 IX., Le Maire du Palais, Fiesque, and Olga. He 
 gained some distinction also by his poem of Marie 
 de Brabant, his romance of Lllomme du Monde,
 
 288 French Literature. 
 
 and his Epitres Familttres. His style is 'pure and 
 elegant. 
 
 Jean Eeboul (1796-1864), the baker-poet of 
 Nimes, was a follower of Lamartine. Besides his 
 Odes and his Elegies, he produced a poem in ten 
 cantos, called Le Dernier Jour du Monde. 
 
 Madame Amable Tastu was b9rn at Metz in 
 1798. She won fame first by her Eloge de Madame 
 de Seviyne. Her Education Maternelle and her 
 Histoire de la Litterature have also taken rank 
 among the standard works for the young. Her 
 finest poems were La Vieille de Noel, L'Etoile de la 
 Lyre, Le Retour h la Chapelle, and Le Dernier Jour 
 de VAnnee, the last being regarded by French critics 
 as a masterpiece of touching thought expressed in 
 most harmonious verse. 
 
 But it was the romantic school of poets who 
 carried everything before them in the great revolu- 
 tion which literary taste began to undergo about 
 the time of the political revolution of 1830. The 
 chief of these were De Vigny, Hugo, and Dumas ; 
 and the stage was their field of battle with the old 
 classic taste. 
 
 The new school, as has been said, inspired by 
 the strong spirit of reaction against the taste of the 
 old Bourbon period and by the study of English 
 literature, insisted upon the free representation of 
 mingled comedy and tragedy, as they are found in 
 life. They also forsook the fields of ancient his- 
 tory and mythology, which had furnished materials 
 for most of the productions of the earlier play- 
 writers, and ransacked all history for suitable dra- 
 matic situations. Unfortunately, there was too 
 often a preference for the horrible and the grotesque. 
 
 Alfred Victor, Comte de Vigny (1797-1863) 
 was born at Loches in Touraine. He served in 
 the army for a time; but, marrying in 1826 a 
 wealthy Englishwoman, he withdrew from the ser- 
 vice and gave his time to litera-ture. His taste is 
 pure and refined. In the war with the classic
 
 Poets and Play writers. 289 
 
 school, his course was moderate. Before 1830, he 
 had published several volumes of poems and his 
 famous historical romance of Cinq-Mars. After 
 that period, he published one or two novels; but, 
 in the year that followed the Revolution, he put on 
 the stage a play which had a powerful influence in 
 winning popularity for the romantic drama. This 
 was his Marechale (TAncre, the scene of which be- 
 longs to the same period as that of his romance of 
 Cinq- Mars the age of Louis XIII. He also pro- 
 duced Le More de Venise, taken from "Othello," 
 and Chatterton, founded on his story of Stello ou 
 Les Diables Bleus. 
 
 Cinq Mars is an able delineation of the condition 
 of France under the rule of Richelieu, and still 
 retains its place among the recognized classics of 
 French literature. De Vigny's Servitude et Gran- 
 deur Militaire, hovtever, is regarded by the critics 
 as a still abler work than Cinq-Mars. It is a col- 
 lection of stories illustrative of military life, and is 
 full of admirable reflections. It is tinged too with, 
 a tone of melancholy which makes it very attrac- 
 tive to meditative minds. Another work of De 
 Yigny's was his Consultations du Docteur Noir. 
 After his death some poems of his entitled Les 
 Destinees were published. 
 
 But the foremost spirit of the romantic school 
 was that versatile writer, Victor Hugo, poet, drama- 
 tist, romancer, pamphleteer, and politician, who 
 has been well styled "half-charlatan, half genius." 
 
 Victor Marie, Vicomte Hugo, was born at Besan- 
 9011 in 1802. His father was a soldier of Napoleon. 
 His mother was a native of La Vendee and hence a 
 devoted royalist. Victor Hugo was early in the 
 field as a poet. His genius being essentially lyric, 
 his first important productions were Odes et Ballades, 
 the Odes being royalist in tone and the Ballads 
 medieval in subject. To these succeeded with 
 many other works intervening his poems of Les 
 Orientales, Les Chants du Crepuscule, Les Rayons 
 19
 
 290 French Literature. 
 
 et les Ombres, Les Voix Interieures, and Les Feuilles 
 cFAutomne. Bold in imagery, picturesque, defiant 
 of all the old rules of restriction, these poems had a 
 singular effect upon the age and did more than per- 
 haps anything else, except his plays, to secure the 
 triumph of the principles of the romantic school. 
 His play of Marion Delorme, which appeared on the 
 eve of the Revolution of 1830, was the strongest 
 agent in bringing about this change in public taste. 
 He had before put on the stage Cromwell and Her- 
 nani ; but these were greatly inferior dramas to 
 Marion Delorme. His other plays were Le Roi 
 s'amuse, Ruy Bias, Marie Tudor, Lucrece Borge, 
 Angelo, Les Burgraves, and Torquemada, in all of 
 which he takes great liberties with history and is 
 often offensive to common decency of feeling, but 
 never fails in a certain spasmodic power which 
 strikes the imagination. The evident straining after 
 effect ; the delight in conceiving monstrosities ; the 
 crudity of perpetual antithesis in style, character, 
 and situation; the lavish use of lurid tints; the 
 tedious working over and over the meaningless 
 parts of the picture, and putting in minute and in- 
 significant details, are blots that must make the 
 greater part of his work forfeit the title of really 
 high art. 
 
 His romances were written on the same system. 
 Originality was too often sought at the expense of 
 good taste. Yet there is power in them all, a wild 
 erratic genius that one must admire in some sort, 
 even while condemning. The chief of these were 
 Hans d'lslande, a grotesque romance of the North- 
 ern regions; Les Derniers Jours d'un Condamne ; 
 that great, wild creation, Notre-Dame de Paris, a 
 romance of Paris in the fifteenth century, a real 
 prose- poem of fantastic but wonderfully picturesque 
 conceptions ; Claude Gueux ; Bug-Jargal, an amus- 
 ingly incredible negro story ; the five-fold romance 
 of the angelic convict, Jean Valjean, Les Miserables ; 
 L'Homme Qui Bit ; Quatre-vingt-treize ; and Les
 
 Poets and Ptaytoriters. 291 
 
 Travailleurs de la Mer. In spite of the extrava- 
 gance of thought, conception, and language, these 
 are all works of remarkable power. 
 
 Meanwhile, he was living a life of mingled storm 
 and sunshine. Louis Philippe made him a Peer of 
 France. But he sympathized with the Revolution 
 of 1848, and became one of the leaders in the short- 
 lived republic. Prince Napoleon warned him of 
 the designs of Louis Napoleon, and urged him and 
 his party to take measures to prevent the coup 
 d'etat. But Victor Hugo declined to move, on the 
 ground that illegal measures to prevent illegality 
 are not justifiable. The threatened evil came, and 
 Hugo remaining irreconcilable was banished by the 
 Emperor. The exiled poet went to live in the isle 
 of Jersey, and from that retreat launched the bit- 
 terest pamphlets against the successful criminal. 
 Napoleon le Petit, the book of poems called Les 
 Chdtiments, and EHistoire (Tun Crime were all in- 
 spired by his wrath at this event. On the fall of 
 the Second Empire, he came back to France. 
 
 Notes made upon his original manuscripts which 
 he has carefully preserved show, it is said, that 
 Victor Hugo has always written with great rapidity. 
 His drama of Cromwell, written at the age of twenty- 
 five, was finished in three months. Notre-Dame de 
 Paris cost him four months and a half. Marion 
 Delorme was written in twenty-four days ; Hernani, 
 in twenty-six ; Le Roi s'amuse, in twenty ; Ruy 
 Bias, in two months and three days ; and Les Bur- 
 graves, in thirty-nine days. His death made a 
 greater impression than that of any man of our 
 time. 
 
 The success of the romantic school on the stage 
 was aided materially by Vitet's historical plays, 
 written for the closet and not intended to be 
 acted. 
 
 Louis Vitet was born at Paris in 1801. His 
 fame rests chiefly on his art-criticism, in which his 
 excellent taste and the clearness and precision of
 
 292 French Literature. 
 
 his style make him an acknowledged master. He 
 published also besides his Histoire de Dieppe and 
 his Vie de Le Sueur, a drama of the time of the 
 League, called Les Barricades, in which Henri 
 III. and the Due de Guise appear as promi- 
 nent characters ; another drama of the same period, 
 called Les Etats de Blois ; and still another, called 
 La Mort de Henri III. 
 
 Among the minor poets of the period before the 
 Second Empire must be briefly named Porch at, 
 author of the dramas, Jeanne d 1 Arc and Winlcelried; 
 the novels, Les Colons du Village and Trois Mois 
 sous la Neige ; and poems published under the title 
 Fables et Paraboles. 
 
 Under the same head comes Julien Auguste 
 Pelage Brizeux (1803-1858), author of Marie, a 
 graceful fiction in which the simple life and pic- 
 turesque features of the Breton peasantry are por- 
 trayed, and of a poem called Les Bretons. 
 
 Here also comes Joseph Mery (1798--1866), born 
 at Marseille, an improvise! 1 of odes, satires, romances, 
 dramas, comedies, and criticisms. He worked at 
 first in concert with Burthelemy. His natural gifts 
 were remarkable, but he lacked the patience to 
 produce finished works. His brightest productions 
 were Nuits au Glaises, Heva, La Guerre du Nizam, 
 Les Confessions de Marion Delorme, Nuits d 1 Orient, 
 Un Carnaval de Paris and Poesies intimes. 
 
 By the side of these must be placed Edgard 
 Quinet, born in 1803, translator of Herder, author 
 of an ambitious epic novel called Ahasverus and a 
 poem entitled Napoleon, neither of which met with 
 marked success. He attained distinction, however, 
 as a historian by his work, Les Epoques chevaler- 
 esques du XI I e Si&cle. 
 
 It was to the elder Dumas that Hugo and De 
 Vigny owed most for able help in fighting out the 
 battle of romanticism with classicism. By himself, 
 and also with the aid of co-workers, he issued a 
 host of pieces for the stage, as well as of romances,
 
 Poets and Play writers. 29$ 
 
 wonderful in their vivacity and brilliancy, and by 
 reason of their sensational incidents, lucidity, lively 
 coloring, and brisk dialogue admirably suited to 
 win popularity. 
 
 Alexandre Dumas (1803-1870) was the son of 
 General Dumas and the grandson of the Marquis 
 de la Pailleterie and a negro woman. He was 
 born at Villers-Cotterets. His first appearance 
 as a writer was in a volume of Nouvelles ; but it 
 was three years later and just on the eve of the 
 Revolution of 1830 that he acquired fame by the 
 production on the stage of his first and best play, 
 Henri III. et sa Cour. The characters are presented 
 in this piece with great force and originality, and 
 the plot is admirably developed. From this time 
 he became a great man in the eyes of the Parisians, 
 and one of the greatest of men in his own estima- 
 tion for his vanity was prodigious. 
 
 He produced also for the stage Antony, Christine, 
 Therese, Anyele, ifean, Don Juan de Marana, Calig- 
 ula. Some of these plays are wretched stuff, and 
 others are stolen goods. His system of using hack- 
 writers to work up a book, which he would then 
 embellish with some of his characteristic passages, 
 lifted into gaiety by sheer flow of animal spirits, 
 enabled him to flood the market with literature of 
 very varying quality. His best romances were 
 Les Trois Moitsquetaires. Le Comte de Monte- Or is to, 
 and La Reine Maryot. Thackeray speaks warmly 
 of these books, as engaging companions of the 
 youthful imagination. 
 
 " Of your heroic heroes," he says, " I think our 
 friend Monseigneur Athos, Count de la Fere, is my favor- 
 ite. I have read about him from sunrise to sunset with 
 the utmost contentment of mind. He has passed through 
 how many volumes ? Forty ? Fifty ? I wish for my part 
 there were a hundred more, and would never tire of him 
 rescuing prisoners, punishing ruffians, and running scoun- 
 drels through the midriff with his most graceful rapier. Ah, 
 Athos, Porthos, and Araniis, you are a magnificent trio."
 
 294 French Literature. 
 
 As to Dumas' Memoir es, the reader will find those 
 pleasantly garrulous and amusingly coxcombical 
 revelations as entertaining as his romances. His 
 vivacious and slightly impudent manner makes 
 him always amusing. 
 
 But of all writers for the stage under the restored 
 Bourbons and the Second Empire, Scribe was the 
 most sparkling and the most unwearied. His 
 pieces were chiefly vaudevilles; and, as he had 
 many collaborators, they were produced with amaz- 
 ing rapidity. The plots were taking; the dialogue, 
 quick, light, and bright; the air of the scene deli- 
 cately mocking; and there was just enough sensi- 
 bility to move a merry audience to a momentary 
 tenderness without exciting deep emotion. 
 
 Augustin Eugene Scribe (1791-1861) was born 
 at Paris. His most striking pieces were Bertrand 
 et Raton, Le Manage d 1 Argent, Une Chame, Le 
 Verre dEan., La Camaraderie, La Bataille de 
 Dames, Adrienne Lecouvreur, Les Contes de la 
 Reine de Navarre, and Les Doigts de Fee. In the 
 composition of more than four hundred pieces 
 which bear his name he was aided by Brazier, 
 Carmouche, Delavigne, Delestre, Durnersan, Dupin^ 
 Duveyrier, Legouve, Lemoine, Mazeres, Mesleville, 
 Eougemont, Varner, and others. He wrote also 
 the libretti for a number of operas, besides writing 
 several novels. 
 
 Among the poets who stood side by side with 
 Hugo in the struggle for the principles of the ro- 
 mantic school was Henri Auguste Barbier (1805- 
 1882), born at Paris. He came into notice just 
 after the Revolution of 1830 by the publication 
 of his lambes, satirical poems of great wildness and 
 vehemence. Later, he put forth, in his Pianto, a 
 harmonious and elegant poem, his impressions of 
 Italy. To this succeeded his Lazare. 
 
 Leon Gozlan (1806-1866), born at Marseille, may 
 be classed among the play writers, as he produced 
 many dramas, comedies, and vaudevilles, which were
 
 Poets and Playwriters. 295 
 
 well received. He was, however, also the author 
 of a vast number of novels and romances. French 
 critics find fault with, his style, as injured by mere- 
 tricious graces to an extent which good taste must 
 condemn. 
 
 Madame de Girardin, born Delphine Gay, at Aix- 
 la-Chapelle (180-1-1865), is another who may be 
 classed among the contributors to the literature of 
 the stage, although she won fame as a novelist also. 
 She was in her day the pet of French literary so- 
 ciety, having many personal charms, not the least 
 among which was her unaffected simplicity and 
 sweetness of character. Here was one of the last 
 of the salons, after her marriage with the journalist, 
 fimile de Girardin. Hugo, Lamartine, Dumas, Sainte- 
 Beuve, Mery, Gautier, Sue, and Balzac were all at dif- 
 ferent periods frequenters of her house. She gave 
 to the theatre, besides lively comedies like Le 
 Chapeau cfun H&rloger, one piece of graceful senti- 
 ment and a quiet vein of pathos, which still keeps 
 the stage. This is La Joie fait Peur. She also 
 published a collection of poems. But her novels 
 were her most important works. Many of these 
 were solely her own work ; but one, La Croix de 
 Berny, she wrote in concert with Gautier, Mery, 
 and Sandeau. Her most striking romance was one 
 entitled Le Lorgnon. Her Lettres Parisiennes, pub- 
 lished, as well as the novels, under the pseudonym 
 of the Vicomte de Launay, are very lively, and are 
 regarded as giving a perfect picture of French so- 
 ciety from 1836 to 1848. 
 
 Both Theophile Gautier and Sainte-Beuve were 
 responsible in their time for some poetry ; but the 
 one is so much better known as a story-teller and 
 the other as a critic, that they hardly belong among 
 the poets. The same thing may be said of Edmond 
 About, his failure as a writer of comedy and his 
 success as a teller of stories relegating him to 
 another part of this work than this which treats of 
 playwriters.
 
 296 French Literature. 
 
 Ernest Legouve is therefore the next on our list. 
 He was born at Paris in 1807. Alone, or in con- 
 cert with others, he produced a number of success- 
 ful dramatic works, of which the most striking were 
 Guerrero, MMee, and Un Jeune Homme qui nefait 
 JRien. He wrote also the romances of Beatrix and 
 Edith de Falsen, as well as a work entitled Histoire 
 morale des Femmes. 
 
 Gerard de Nerval (1808-1855) was born at Paris, 
 and produced Elegies nationales et Satires politiques, 
 a translation of "Faust," and, in prose, his Voyage 
 en Orient, besides some romances. 
 
 Charles Lafont (1809-1864) was born at Lie'ge. 
 His two tragedies, Ivan de Russie and Daniel, were 
 much praised for elegance of style. He wrote 
 also a poetic drama entitled Un Chef-d'oeuvre in- 
 connu, some vaudevilles, and his Legendes de la 
 Charite. 
 
 Madame Louise Revoil-Colet was born at Aix in 
 1810. Besides publishing a great many romances, 
 translations, and dramatic pieces, she wrote poetry 
 of graceful elegance. 
 
 Leonard Sylvain Jules Sandeau was born at 
 Aubusson in 1811. He began his literary career by 
 working in concert with Madame Dudevant, and 
 when they parted, she used the half of his name as 
 her nom de plume. Besides many charming ro- 
 mances, he wrote a great number of able comedies. 
 The principal romances of his workmanship were 
 Madame de Somerville, Mademoiselle de la Seigltire, 
 Catherine, Mariana, Valcreuse, Sacs et Parchemins, 
 and La Maison de Penarvan. The best comedies 
 included several of these tales dramatized, and also 
 Le Gendre de M. Poirier. 
 
 Victor de Laprade was born at Montbrison in 
 1812. His poems were a collection called Odes et 
 Poemes, the chief of which was Psyche ; another, 
 called Poemes evangeliques ; and still another, called 
 Idylles heroiques. 
 
 Joseph Autran was born at Marseille in 1813.
 
 Poets and Playwriters. 297 
 
 His first poem was an ode in honor of Lamartine, 
 entitled Depart pour V Orient. His later poems 
 were Ludibria Ventis, Poemes de la Mer, Melianah, 
 Laljoureurs et Soldats, and La Vie rurale. His 
 tragedy of La Fille d'Eschine was a success. He 
 also wrote in prose a work called Italie et Scmaine 
 sainte h Rome. 
 
 Madame Anai's Segalas was born at Paris in 
 1813. Her poetry is likened by the critics to that 
 of Madame Tastu. 
 
 Fran9o'is Ponsard (1814-1867) was born at 
 Vienne in Dauphine. His first publication was a 
 translation of Byron's " Manfred." He next wrote 
 a tragedy called Lucrtce, which was brought out as 
 a re-action in the classic taste against the romantic 
 school. It had a great success, and is still ranked 
 as a standard work. Later, he produced Aynh de 
 Meranie, Charlotte Corday, and a comedy called 
 Horace et Lydie, 'to which Rachel's acting gave 
 brilliant success. L'Honneur et T Argent again 
 brought fame to him after the failure of his tragedy 
 of Ulysse and his poem of Hombre. It was remark- 
 able for its purity and high tone. His comedy of 
 La Bourse was too hastily produced, and did" not 
 sustain the reputation he had won. His last works 
 were Le Lion Amoureux and the drama of Galilee. 
 
 It is with design that I have sketched rapidly 
 the places of these minor poets in a general account 
 of French literature like this, before taking up 
 Alfred de Musset, who, as a perfect representative 
 of the blase type of brilliant young Frenchmen of 
 the Restoration period, deserves more extended 
 notice. 
 
 Louis Charles Alfred de Musset (1810-1857) 
 was born at Paris. "At twenty he came before the 
 public with his Conies en Vers, which at once gave 
 him high rank among the poets of his day. The 
 sensuousness of these poerns was as noticeable as 
 their elegance. Later, he published Nouvelles in 
 prose, Comedies et Proverbes^ and two Recueih de
 
 298 French Literature. 
 
 Poesies, consisting of elegies, tales, satires, songs, 
 sonnets, and other forms of verse. His comedies 
 still hold the stage and are full of grace and wit. 
 Few writers for the theatre command with such 
 ease the graceful tone of the best society. In 
 skepticism, and license he has been compared to 
 Byron and to the younger Bulwer; but none deny 
 the exquisite beauty, tenderness, and power of the 
 greater part of what he has written. There is a 
 quality in his best work, hard to define but full of 
 attraction to the cultivated taste, an airy lightness 
 of touch with the suggestion of strength in its very 
 ease. His liaison with Madame Dudevant, and its 
 subsequent rupture, was the occasion of several 
 books on both sides by themselves and their friends; 
 but the literature of Elle et Lid and Lui et Elle is 
 not particularly edifying. 
 
 Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) should be men- 
 tioned along with De Musset, as an extreme type 
 of the same pessimist spirit. He was the chief of 
 those poets outside of society who delighted in the 
 name of " Bohemians." There is a sombre beauty 
 in many of his poems, which entitles them, in spite 
 of their grossness and affectation of diabolism, to 
 some share of that admiration which genius in any 
 form must always elicit. He had a great admira- 
 tion for Edgar Allan Poe, and made an exceedingly 
 able translation of his works. 
 
 Octave Feuillet, one of the most delightful of 
 living authors, was born at Saint-Lo in 1812. He 
 has been best known in this country as a romancer. 
 But he has also been brilliantly successful with 
 comedies, vaudevilles, and other stage pieces, rival- 
 ing Alfred de Musset in that exquisite grace in 
 which he excelled. Feuillet's finest romances were 
 Bellah, La petite Comtesse, Le Roman d'un Jeune 
 Homme Pauvre, Sibylle, M. de Camors, and Le 
 Journal cTune Femme. His best pieces for the 
 stage were dramatizations of some of these ro- 
 mances, and La Nuit Terrible, Le Bourgeois de
 
 Poets and Playwriters. 299 
 
 Pome, La Crise, Peril en la Demeure, La Fee, Le 
 Village, Dalila, La Tentation, Montjoye, La Belle 
 au Bois Dormant, Le Cas de Conscience, Julie, and 
 La Cle d'Or. His latest play, just announced, is 
 Un Roman Parisien. 
 
 Smile Augier was born at Valence in 1820. His 
 little two-act comedy, La Cigue, first brought him 
 into notice. With Ponsard he then stood forth as 
 ready to form the nucleus of a reaction against the 
 excesses of romanticism on the stage. His princi- 
 pal pieces have been Un Homme de Bien, L'Aven- 
 turiZre, Gabrielle, Philiberte, Les Effrontes, La 
 Pierre de Touche, Le Oendre de M. Poirier, and, above 
 all, La Jeunesse, one of the best of modern comedies. 
 Lively wit, skilful art, strong and piquant language, 
 are his most marked qualities. 
 
 Pierre Dupont was born at Lyon in 1821. A 
 book, called Les Paysans, containing six songs, 
 gave him popularity, the airs as well as the words 
 being his own composition. He wrote also the 
 text for the Legend of the Wandering Jew, illus- 
 trated by Gustave Dore. 
 
 Henri Murger (1822-1861) was a Bohemian after 
 Baudelaire's own heart. His Le Bonhomme Jadis 
 is one of the pieces most frequently played at the 
 Comedie fra^aise. Adeline Protat, Le Pays latin, 
 Les Baveurs d'Oau, and LesVacances de Camille are 
 considered his best productions. He is most famous, 
 however, for having produced La Vie de Boheme, 
 which describes the reckless, miserable, and yet 
 from time to time wildly and desperately gay life 
 of the literary gipsies of Paris. 
 
 Victorien Sardou, still the inexhaustible caterer 
 for the stage-loving public of Paris, was born at 
 Paris in 1831. Representing at the Ode"on, when 
 still quite young, La Taverne des fitudiants, a three- 
 act comedy, he suffered the discouraging experience 
 of an ignominious failure. Working then for six 
 years before again trying his fortune with the pub- 
 lic, he brought out a comedy called Les Pattes de
 
 SOO French Literature, 
 
 Mouche, which was received with great applause. 
 He was from that time a favorite with the Parisian 
 public. His best pieces were Les Femmes Fortes, 
 Nos Intimes, Les Ganaches, La Perle noire, Les 
 Vieux Gar^ons, La Famille Benoiton, and Nos bons 
 Villayeois. 
 
 Most of the popular novelists of our day have 
 put one or more pieces on the stage. But they will 
 come more fitly before us in another place, es- 
 pecially as their plays are generally dramatized 
 from their novels. Such, for instance, is Jules 
 Claretie's Monsieur le Ministre; and such is the 
 Pere de Martial, of the Louisianian Albert Delpit. 
 
 Adolphe Belot and Jules Verne are among these 
 romancers, who are also producing plays and fairy- 
 pieces for the stage. Other living dramatists who 
 may be named are Ferdinand Dugue, Emile Ber- 
 gerat, Auguste Vacquerie, Frangois Coppee, Edouard 
 Pailleron, Eugene Guiraud, Grangeneuve, and 
 Marras. 
 
 Something must be said of the extraordinary re- 
 vival of Provengal poetry. The ancient poetry of 
 Provence was in no sense a part of French litera- 
 ture. The race which created it was not under the 
 dominion of French, kings. The language in which 
 it took form was a cultivated tongue before the 
 Trouveres had composed a single lay in the old 
 French tongue. It is different, however, with the 
 Provengal literature of recent production. The 
 race from which the modern Provengal poets spring 
 has long been a component part of the French 
 nation ; the language in which they express them- 
 selves is as recognized a patois or dialect of French 
 as the Lowland Scottish is of English. The Pro- 
 vengal poets, then, have the same place in French 
 literature as that held in English literature by 
 writers like Burns and Hogg. 
 
 Th'e most eminent of the Provengal poets of 
 modern times, the "last of the Troubadours," as he 
 has been called, was Jacques Jasmin (1798-1864).
 
 Poets and Playwriters. 301 
 
 He was born at Agen. In his Soubenis he gives a 
 humorous account of his early life, stating that he 
 was of humble birth and was taught the trade of a 
 hair-dresser, which he considered not amiss, as it 
 was concerned, as well as his other business of mak- 
 ing poems, with head-work. His poems possess both 
 pathos and wit; and that peculiar quality of rustic 
 or childlike archness and freshness, which is the 
 charm of dialect, is of course largely present in a 
 poetry that springs so directly from the soil and 
 has suffered no sophistication from books or the 
 society of cities. Jasmin's chief works were Lou 
 Chalwari, LSAbuylo de Castel-Cuille, and Las Papil- 
 lotos de Jasmin. 
 
 Another of these Provencal poets, Frederic Mis- 
 tral, was born near Saint-Remy in 1830. His poems 
 have been numerous, the chief of them being his 
 Alireio, of which a fine translation has been made 
 by our American poet, Mrs. Margaret J. Preston.
 
 302 French Literature. 
 
 XX. 
 
 ROMANCERS. 
 
 IN no field of literary labor has the harvest been 
 so abundant in modern France, as in that of prose 
 fiction. I shall not attempt to arrange and classify 
 the writers of romance, but give them for the most 
 part in chronological order. Some have been 
 named already, because their productions entitled 
 them to be ranked as poets or as workers for the 
 stage, as well as romancers. Of this class were 
 Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and Octave Feuil- 
 let. 
 
 The first on our list must be Nodier, Paul de 
 Kock, and the writer who called himself Saintine. 
 
 Charles Nodier (1783-1844) was born at Besan- 
 9on. He was an eminent philologist, a graceful poet, 
 and a charming story-teller. Besides two linguis- 
 tic works, the Dictionnaire des Onomatopees and the 
 Elements du Linguistique, he produced Jean Sbogar, 
 Thertse Aubert, Adtte, Smarra, Trilby, Les Souvenirs 
 de la Revolution et de T Empire, and Les Contes 
 fantastiques. 
 
 To Saintine we owe the exquisite moral and 
 religious romance of Picciola. His real name was 
 Joseph Xavier Boniface (1797-1865), a native of 
 Paris. His romances and poems were put forth 
 under the pseudonym of Saintine, while to his 
 comedies and vaudevilles, of which he wrote a vast 
 number in concert with Scribe, he signed the name 
 of Xavier. The story of the little prison-grown 
 plant, which converts Charney from skepticism, is 
 his finest romance, and it is a masterpiece. Among 
 his other stories may be named Mutile and Les 
 Soirees de Jonathan.
 
 Romancers. 303 
 
 Charles Paul de Kock (1794-1871), born at 
 Plassy, near Paris, besides stories in verse and 
 vaudevilles, wrote upwards of fifty novels. His 
 romances are frankly coarse, but their gayety, their 
 racy humor, and their truth to life the sort of life 
 led by fast young men in Paris have given them 
 a longer lease of life than they really deserve. 
 Still, they are not so demoralizing as the more 
 subtly depraving sentimental romances which came 
 later from more powerful pens. Among his books 
 may be mentioned Les Enfants de Boulevard, Une 
 Grappe de Groseille; Ninie Guignon, La Fee aux 
 Amourettes ; Les Petits Ruisseaux, Ma Petite Con- 
 sine, Le Demon de V Alcove, Ni Fille, ni Femme, 
 Friquette, and Un Jeune Homme mysterieux. 
 
 His son, Henri de Kock, has followed in the same 
 path. La Dame aux Emeraudes, Minette, and 
 L'Amant de Lucette may be named as samples of 
 his writings. 
 
 Rodolphe Toepffer (1799-1846), the son of an 
 able painter, was a Genevese writer and professor 
 of literature. His moral romances, Nouvelles gene- 
 voises, Rosa et Gertrude, and Le Presbytere, won 
 him much reputation. His Voyages en Ziy-Zag 
 was a book of travel-sketches, which he illustrated 
 himself. His essay on the Beautiful, under the 
 title Reflexions et Menus propos dun Peintre Gene- 
 vois is an assthetic treatise of great value. 
 
 Balzac deserves more extended mention than 
 this sketch can afford him. Not only were his 
 romances very numerous, but they were careful 
 art-studies which entitle him to a higher place 
 among French romancers than perhaps any other 
 can justly claim. 
 
 Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) was born at Tours. 
 He wrote at first under various assumed names, and 
 was long unsuccessful and very poor. Giving up 
 at last the manner which he had borrowed from, 
 Pigault and Lebrun, and writing in an original 
 style his Les Derniers Chouans, ou la Bretagne ev$
 
 304 French Literature. 
 
 1800, he found his work for the first time well re- 
 ceived by the public. After this book came his 
 Physiologie du Manage, Scenes de la Vie Privee, 
 Scenes de la Vie de Province, Scenes de la Vie Paris - 
 ienne, Le Medecin de Campagne, Le P&re Goriot, 
 La Peau de Chagrin, Histoire Intellectuelle de Louis 
 Lambert, La Recherche de VAbsolu, Les Parents 
 Pauvres, Eugenie Grandet, Le Lis dans la Vallee, 
 Le Cure de Village, Histoire de Cesar Birotteau, and 
 a mystico- metaphysical novel entitled Seraphita. 
 He is considered to have shown wonderful penetra- 
 tion into the mysteries of the female heart. In his 
 Contes Drolatiques, he imitated the wild, fantastic 
 humor of Rabelais, using also the quaint style of 
 that author. He aspired to group all the varieties 
 of human character into a complete whole, and de- 
 scribed his romances under the general title of 
 Comedie humaine. There can be no question as to 
 his wonderful grasp of the methods of analysis in 
 observing human nature. His fault lay in over- 
 working minute details and losing sight of that 
 symmetry which is essential to perfection in form. 
 His literary habits were eccentric, and many curious 
 stories are told of his mode of working after hav- 
 ing gathered material for a novel. He married in 
 later life [a Polish lady, who had long lived with 
 him. 
 
 Melchior Frederic Soulie' (1800-1847) was born 
 at Foix. His romances glow with imagination, 
 and have a fresh and sparkling style. Among the 
 best were Les Deux Cadavres, Le Comte de Toulouse, 
 Le Vicomte de Beziers, Le Conseiller d'Etat, and Les 
 Memoires du Didble. 
 
 Prosper Merimee (1803-1870) took high rank as 
 romancer, but he was also historian, playwriter, and 
 archaeologist. He was born at Paris, the son of a 
 distinguished painter. Merimee made early ac- 
 quaintance with English and Spanish literature, 
 and came forward as an enthusiastic adherent of the 
 romantic school. His first work, Le Theatre de
 
 Romancers. 305 
 
 Clara Gazul, purporting to be dramatic pieces trans- 
 lated from the Spanish, did not meet with success. 
 His next, La Guzla (the name, an anagram of the 
 earlier nom de plume) was an effort to popularize 
 the folk-song of Illyria and Montenegro. It was 
 much admired in Germany, but its popularity was 
 confined to literary circles. 
 
 After the Revolution of 1830, Merime'e entered 
 public life, like so many of the literary men of the 
 day. Meanwhile he kept writing for the reviews a 
 series of wild and thrilling tales in a strong, clear 
 condensed style, a style of restrained power which 
 made all his stories very fascinating. The chief of 
 these was Colomba, a Corsican tale of horror. 
 Others, equally well-told, were Matteo Falcone and 
 L'Enlbvement de la redoute. Besides these, his 
 other most striking tales were Arsene Guillot and 
 Carmen. The opera of Carmen is founded on this 
 tale. His historical studies bore fruit in works on 
 episodes in Roman history ; an episode in Russian 
 history, worked up in Les Faux Demetrius ; and 
 his Chronique du Regne de Charles IX. One of the 
 ablest of these historical studies was his La Jacque- 
 rie, a study of one of the most frightful outbursts 
 of ignorant and oppressed humanity in French his- 
 tory, a series of occurrences which was at once a 
 prelude though at a great distance in time to the 
 Revolution of 1789, and a prophecy of that tremen- 
 dous convulsion. 
 
 Among the works of this polished cynic, but 
 most gifted artist in word-painting, must also be 
 named his fantasy-piece, Venus d llle ; Le Double 
 Meprise, a picture of modern society; and the sin- 
 gular Lettres d Une Inconmie, which made so great 
 a stir when they appeared shortly after his death. 
 They seemed to have been addressed to some 
 woman who possessed the fascinating qualities, 
 though probably not the beauty, of Madame de 
 Recamier, and who enjoyed the adoration of her 
 admirer, but was able to be as obdurate to him as 
 20
 
 306 French Literature. 
 
 that lady was to Benjamin Constant. She was an 
 Englishwoman. 
 
 Eugene Sue, though now known best by the 
 Mysteries of Paris and The Wandering Jew, began 
 his fame by the production of sea-stories. In this 
 line he ranks with Cooper and Marryatt, showing 
 great fertility of fancy and that boyish spirit of fun 
 and frolic which is so natural to the sailor. De 
 Vericour names Corbiere and Lecomte as other 
 writers of nautical novels during the same period. 
 
 Marie Joseph Eugene Sue (1804-1857) was born 
 at Paris. Becoming an army-surgeon, he served 
 under the Due d'Angouleme in the expedition into 
 Spain. Transferred thence to the navy, he was 
 present at the battle of Navarino, and saw enough 
 of life at sea to fit him for writing those stories 
 with which he began his literary career. Of his 
 earlier works the chief were Atar Outt, a frightful 
 story of revenge; Salamander, also full of horror; 
 and Vigie de Koatven, the story of a prosperous vil- 
 lain. This indeed is the blot upon Sue's fiction. 
 His villains always triumph. 
 
 After leaving the ocean as the scene of his tales, 
 Sue, in the new field which he chose and in which 
 he developed a socialist tendency, first showed his 
 peculiar power in Mathilde, ou les Memoir es d'une 
 jeune Femme. But his Mystires de Paris and Le 
 Juif Errant were the works which really estab- 
 lished his fame. They created wild excitement, and 
 enriched their author, so large were the sales. His 
 power in these romances is that acquired over the 
 reader's imagination by complicated, intricate, and 
 exciting plots, appealing strongly to the passion of 
 curiosity. No English novelist has ever shown 
 this art in anything like the same degree of skill as 
 it is to be found in a goodly number of French 
 romancers. These thrilling romances of Sue's were 
 followed by Martin, V Enfant Trouve ; Les Sept 
 Pechees Capitaux; and Les My stores du Peuple. In 
 his later works he developed socialist tendencies.
 
 Romancers. 307 
 
 He was in public life when the Second Empire 
 came; and, being identified with the extreme wing 
 of the republican party, he was banished by Louis 
 Napoleon. 
 
 We now reach the most remarkable woman of 
 recent times, the "George Sand" of literature. 
 Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, who became the 
 Baronne Dudevant by her marriage, was born (180-1 
 1876) at Paris. Her father was descended from 
 the famous Marshal de Saxe. While still Made- 
 moiselle Dupin, she was moved at one time to take 
 the veil, but the reading of J. J. Eousseau's works 
 changed her purpose. Married to the Baron Dude- 
 vant at an early age, she lived with him for nine 
 years'. At the end of that time, finding her wedded 
 life intolerable and discovering that her husband 
 had neither love for her nor confidence in her, she 
 got him to consent to a formal separation, and went 
 to Paris to engage in literary work. In concert 
 with Jules Santleau, she wrote Rose et Blanche. 
 After parting with Sandeau, she kept by the advice 
 of Delatouche, the editor of the Figaro, for which 
 she wrote her earlier romances, the first half of 
 Sandeau's name and signed her works George Sand, 
 Delatouche holding that the public would not give 
 a woman due credit for her writings. Her Indiana 
 gave the first indication of her splendid powers. 
 In these earlier works, her pent-up wrath at the 
 broken illusions of the woman-heart thrown upon 
 a cold, heartless, and corrupt world, found vent in 
 a reckless plea for passion and a scorn for the mar- 
 riage-tie, which would have utterly condemned her 
 works with the moral part of the French reading 
 public, had it not been for the fascinating style and 
 enchanting glow of feeling which showed a fresh- 
 ness of heart that seemed incompatible with real 
 depravity. 
 
 Indiana was followed by Valentine, Lelia, Jacques, 
 Andre, Leone Lenni, and ftimon. The delirium of 
 passion and of outraged feeling seemed to pass
 
 308 French Literature. 
 
 away with these earlier romances. Her travels in 
 Italy and Spain may have had something to do 
 with soothing her mind. The influence of Lamen- 
 nais, too, who was then engaging her services as 
 a writer for his journal, Le Monde, may have had 
 some effect in awakening her to that spirit of 
 Christian resignation which her Lettres h Marcie 
 breathed. Certainly, the whole atmosphere of her 
 literary work became purer and sweeter. Andre 
 and Simon were a definite contrast in spirit to 
 works like Indiana and Lelia. But she seems 
 at all times to have been remarkably susceptible 
 to influences from without, the influence of scenery 
 and the influence of society. Many writers have 
 spoken of her masculine tastes and masculine type 
 of mind. No greater mistake, it seems to me, 
 could be made. Few women have ever possessed 
 in a higher degree than she the essentially femi- 
 nine gift of assimilating through sympathy all 
 the spirit, thoughts, and qualities of every man in 
 whom she became deeply interested, and reproduc- 
 ing with definitely feminine art what she had thus 
 absorbed. She was a highly gifted woman, doing 
 in literature what every superior woman does in 
 society, the written sexual transmutation of the 
 one answering to the spoken and acted of the 
 other. Her travels suggested L 1 Uscoque, Les Mai- 
 tres Mosa'istes, Mauprat, and La Derniere Aldini. 
 Her studies in philosophical speculations bore fruit 
 in the mystical Spiridion, and her essay in prose- 
 poetry, Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre. Her political 
 ideas took form in Le Compaynon du Tour de 
 France and Pauline. 
 
 About this time, her literary success having 
 secured her a comfortable maintenance, she obtained 
 a divorce. In the Revue Independante, which she 
 started with Viardot and Leroux, she published 
 Horace, Consuelo, and La Comtesse de Rudolstadt. 
 These were followed by Jeanne and Le Meunier 
 tfAngibault. In all these later works, the political
 
 Romancers. 309 
 
 tone is strongly democratic, and in the last-men- 
 tioned her views are decidedly socialistic. 
 
 She went back, however, at a later date, to purely 
 literary romances. Such were Isidora, Teverino, 
 La Petite Fadette, Francois -le-Champi, Les Maitres 
 Sonneurs, La Filleule, and, above all, that charm- 
 ing little prose idyll, La Mare au Diable. 
 
 Her Letters dun Voyageur described " with pathos 
 and animation the reminiscences of her youth, the 
 course of her affections, the blight and desolation of 
 her soul under accumulated sorrows; but she 
 no longer speaks in a wrathful and .passionate tone; 
 her spirit is subdued and chastened ; and she pours 
 forth the natural and plaintive effusions of one 
 wounded in the tenderest sensibilities, stricken as a 
 mother, a friend, a lover, and a wife. The countries 
 she has visited in her travels are also sketched 
 with great force and vigor of delineation, which 
 leaves a vivid impression on the mind of the 
 reader." This is the judgment of De Vericour. 
 
 After the Revolution of 1848, she produced some 
 pieces for the stage. Among her successes were 
 JFrangois-le-Champi, Claudie, Le Pressoir, Le Man- 
 age de Victor ine, and Maitre Favilla. Especially 
 was Le Marquis de Villemer a striking dramatic 
 success. Among her later works we may cite also 
 Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dore, Jean de la Roche, 
 Mademoiselle de la Quintinee, and La Confession 
 cTune Jeune Fille. Among those autobiographical 
 pieces which, taken together, would make a large 
 group of memoirs, were her Histoire de Ma Vie, 
 Journal d'un Vogageur pendant la Guerre (published 
 in 1871), and Impressions et Souvenirs. 
 
 Respecting her relations with a succession of 
 men eminent in different spheres of art and litera- 
 ture, I choose to say nothing here, though there 
 is quite a literature on that single subject. 
 
 The writer, whose works go by the name of De 
 Stendhal, is stated by De Vericour to be Bayle, 
 French Consul at Civita Yecchia not long before
 
 310 French Literature. 
 
 1848. The pessimist view of life is that taken in his 
 novels. They were Rouge et Noir, La Chartreuse 
 de Parme, and L'Abbesse de Castro. Besides these, 
 he produced biographies of Haydn, Mozart, and 
 Metastasio, a descriptive work, called Promenade 
 dans Rome ; a work on Italian painting, called 
 Histoire de la Peinture en Italic, and a book of 
 travels. 
 
 fimile Souvestre (1806-1854) was born at Morlaix 
 in Bretagne. His amiable and cheerful spirit 
 makes him a marked contrast to De Stendhal. 
 His romances illustrate Breton life, with its roman- 
 tic scenery, its rugged coast, and its simple people. 
 Les Derniers Bretons was the first of these. It was 
 followed by his ficlielle des Femmes, Riche et Pauvre, 
 and the Memoires d'un Sans-culotte. This last 
 deals with the struggle in La Vendee between the 
 royalists and the republicans. Les Confessions d'un 
 Ouvrier, Au Coin du Feu, Memorial de Famille, Le 
 Foyer breton, L'ffomme et V Argent, and Pierre et 
 Jean were others of his works. But that which is 
 most readily mentioned when the name of Souvestre 
 comes up, is his Philosophe sous les Toils. 
 
 Leon Gozlan (1806-1866) already mentioned 
 among the play- writers born at Marseille, besides 
 furnishing the theatre with numerous dramas, 
 comedies, and vaudevilles, was the author of an 
 archaeological romance of history, entitled Les 
 Tourelles ou Les Chateaux de France. Another 
 romance of his was Le Notaire de Chantilly. 
 
 Theophile Gautier (1811-1872) was born at 
 Tarbes. One of the most original and one of the 
 most productive, both in prose and verse, of recent 
 French authors, he belongs, like most of the 
 modern artists in fiction, to the sensuous school. 
 Trained to be an artist with pencil and brush, he 
 has carried the qualities proper to that form of 
 production into literature. There is wonderful 
 picturesqueness in his visions of the past, a fine 
 taste for classic beauty in all his work. But his
 
 Romancers. 311 
 
 fancy is pagan, sensual, and impure in too many of 
 bis romances. The voluptuous visions he sets 
 before the mind are powerful creations; but, as is 
 so apt to be the case with an imagination so un- 
 restrained, there is a monotony in his passion for 
 portraying the naked form of woman, which in- 
 evitably narrows the sphere of his genius. His 
 most famous novels were Mademoiselle de Maupin, 
 Le Capitaine Fracasse, and Spirite. Shorter sketches 
 of Poesque fancy were La Morte Amoureuse, Une 
 des Nuits de Cleopatre, Clarimonde, Arria Marcella, 
 Le Pied de la Momie, Omphale, and Le Roi Can- 
 daules. 
 
 Both Ernest Feydeau and fimile Bergerot wrote 
 memoirs inspired by their admiration for Gautier ; 
 and Maxime du Camp has recently given in the 
 Revue des Deux Mondes interesting reminiscences 
 of literary and artistic life in Paris at the time 
 when he and Gautier and Arsene Houssaye were 
 publishing the Revue de Paris. It was in the pages 
 of this review that Baudelaire, Flaubert, and 
 Eugene Fromentin first became known to the 
 public. 
 
 Gautier's place as journalist critic was as high as 
 that which he attained as a romancer. But he had 
 to submit to a great deal of over- work, harassed as 
 he was by his creditors and hardly dealt with by 
 his family. During this period, his literary work 
 was done altogether in the printing-office ; and he 
 once said : " Schiller, in order to set his fancy 
 working, inhaled the odor of rotten apples ; I be- 
 lieve I could not write without smelling the stench 
 of printer's ink." 
 
 Among his poems may be named La Comedie de 
 la Alort and fimaux et Camees. It was from ex- 
 perience gathered from the fate of his first poem, 
 that he warned Flaubert against indulging his 
 passion for following his own theories of art. "I 
 know all about that," said he to Flaubert. " Every- 
 body goes through that phase, just as children have
 
 312 French Literature. 
 
 the measles. When I used to live with Arsena 
 Houssaye, Camille Rogier, and Gerard de Nerval, 
 we had just such ideas. I know what it is to write 
 chefs d'oBuvre: I wrote La Comedie de la Mort ; I 
 gave away two volumes of prose in order to have 
 my verses published, of which seventy-five copies 
 were sold. Everybody can write chefs d'ceuvre, if 
 he will only believe in them." 
 
 In his youth, Gautier was one of the most ex- 
 travagant of the romantic school, emphasizing his 
 artistic and literary creed by wearing a flaming 
 crimson waistcoat and keeping his hair in long 
 waving masses. Of course he outlived these 
 follies, and his genius was evident in masterly 
 creations and polished language even in his most 
 fantastic days. In few literary works is the artist 
 so manifest as in his. He was also a remarkable 
 instance among recent French writers of perfect in- 
 difference to political life and complete devotion to 
 the literary profession. He traveled a good deal, 
 and his travels bore fruit in his Voyage en Italic, 
 Voyage en Russie, Voyage en Espagne, and L* Orient. 
 
 Jean Alphonse Karr was born at Paris in 1808. 
 He has published many romances, in a style 
 remarkable for clearness and precision, and with a 
 singular vein of humor running like an oddly tinted 
 thread through all that he has written. He began 
 with Sous les Tilleuls, the story of his first dis- 
 appointment in love. This, being well received, 
 was followed by Une Heure trop tard. After these 
 came Fa Dttze, Vendredi Soir, Le Chemin plus court, 
 Einerley. Grenevi&ve, Clotilde, Hortense, Am Rauchen, 
 Pour ne pas etre Treize, De Midi a Quatorze Heures, 
 Feu Bressier, Voyage autour de mon Jardin, La 
 .famille Alain, Histoire de Rose et de Jean Duchemin, 
 Le& Fees de la Mer t Clovis Gosselin, Agathe et Cecile, 
 Fort en Theme, Soirees de Sainte-Adresse, Les 
 Femmes, Raoul, Lettres ecrites de mon Jardin, Au 
 Bord de la Mer, Promenades hors de mon Jardin, La 
 Penelvpe Normande, La Peche en Eau douce et en
 
 Romancers. 813 
 
 Eau salee, the last being a treatise on fishing, of 
 which he is very fond, as he is also of gardening. 
 
 Xavier Marmier, famous for his travels as well 
 as for his numerous translations from the German, 
 was born at Pontarlier in 1809. Being a master 
 of most of the languages of northern Europe, be 
 was made professor of foreign literature at Eennes ; 
 but he has traveled since in all the continents, 
 studying languages, manners, and literature every- 
 where. His romances were Les Fiances de Spitz- 
 berg, Gazida, HelZne, Suzaine, and others. 
 
 Bon Louis Henri Martin was born at St. Quentin 
 in 1810. His first publication was a novel entitled 
 Tour du Loup, written in concert with a young 
 friend. After this, he produced many other ro- 
 mances, among them Tancrede de Rohan. He con- 
 ceived, with Lacroix, the idea of compiling a his- 
 tory of France, made up of extracts from different 
 authors, which Lacroix assisting him only with 
 the first volume he carried on alone to its com- 
 pletion. His other important works have been 
 L'Abbaye au Bois, ou la Femme de Chambre ; 
 Histoire de Soissons ; De la France, de son genie 
 et deeses destinees ; Daniel Mauin; IS Unite 
 Italienne et La France ; Jean Reynaud ; Pologne et 
 Moscovie ; Vercingetorix ; La Russie d 1 Europe ; His- 
 toire de France populaire ; and Etudes d'archeologie 
 Celte. 
 
 Edouard Kene Lefebvre Laboulaye, born at Paris 
 in 1811, is one of the ablest and most versatile of 
 modern French writers. He was first known in 
 letters by his Histoire du droit de propriete en 
 Europe. Later, he published an essay Sur de 
 Savigny, a work entitled Des Recherches sur la Con- 
 dition civile et politique des Femmes, and an essay 
 Sur les Lois criminelles des Romains. Besides the 
 works on jurisprudence, which are very learned and 
 very clear in style, and his Histoire politique des 
 Btats Unis, he has produced imaginative and satiri- 
 cal works of a high degree of humor and power.
 
 314 French Literature. 
 
 His best works of political satire are his Paris en 
 Amerique and that exquisite satirical fairy-tale, Le 
 Prince Caniche, with its inimitable exposition of 
 the " Gobemouchian " theory of government. He 
 has also written, in his Contes bleus, some of the 
 best of modern fairy-tales for children; an Arabian 
 romance of much charm entitled Abdallah ; and a 
 collection of tales, called Souvenirs (Pun Voyageur. 
 
 Louis Veuillot, a writer on the clerical side, was 
 born at Baynes in 1813. He returned from a visit 
 to Rome in 1838 a vehement ultramontane journal- 
 ist. Among his works, polemical, political, and 
 satirical, were Les Libres Penseurs, LEsclave Vin- 
 dex, Les Franeais en Algerie, Les Odeurs de Paris, 
 and Parfum de Rome. He also wrote a strikingly 
 original romance entitled Corbin et d 1 Aubecourt. 
 
 Auguste Maquet was born at Paris in 1813. 
 Dumas was struck with the ability displayed in his 
 drama, Bathilde, and proposed that they should 
 work together. Many of Dumas's romances were 
 thus composed. But in 1851, Maquet began to 
 write under his own name. Among these romances, 
 which Dumas did not retouch, are Histoire de la 
 Bastille; Prisons de T Europe; Belle Gabrielle ; Le 
 Beau d'Argennes ; Dettes de Cozur ; L'Envers et 
 LEndroit ; La Maison du Baiyneur ; and La Rose 
 blanche. He also put upon the stage the opera, La 
 Fronde; and the plays, Le Chateau de Gautier, Le 
 Comte de Lavernie, and La Belle Gabrielle. 
 
 Louis Amedee Bngene Achard was born at 
 Marseille in 1814. His stories make up more than 
 thirty volumes. Among them may be named the 
 pretty romance of Belle Rose and La Robe de Nessus, 
 Maurice de Treuil, Madame Rose, Le Clos-Pommier, 
 L Ombre de Ludovic, La Famille Guillemot, Le Due 
 de Carlepont, Histoire d'un Homme, L 'Eau qui Dort, 
 La Mis^re d'un Millionaire, and Madame de Sareus. 
 
 Jean Mace", born at Paris in 1815, ranks among 
 the story-tellers only by his Contes du petit Chateau, 
 fairy-tales which in my opinion are very far from
 
 Romancers. 315 
 
 being first-rate, although commended by so high att 
 authority as Laboulaye. While educating the girls 
 of Alsace, Mace' conceived the idea of simplifying 
 and popularizing science for children, and began by 
 his Bouchee de Pain, which he followed up by a 
 number of other educational works of the same 
 sort. This notion of always instructing, of making 
 very sure to " point a moral," is what makes his so- 
 called fairy-tales so very far away from the ideal 
 type. 
 
 Arsene Houssaye was born in 1815. He appeared 
 as an author first in a romance entitled Couronne de 
 Bluets. His later work has been principally that 
 of journalist and art-critic. Among his works are 
 L 1 Histoire du Quarante-et-untime Fautenilde V Acad- 
 emic franr ais ; L'eventail brise; Une histoirc 
 etranye ; Les larmes de Jeanne ; Lucie ; La robe de 
 la mariee ; Roman des femmes qui ont aimee ; Une 
 trayique aventure;' Les trois Duchesses ; and Vie de 
 Leonardo da Vinci. I have already mentioned his 
 engaging with Theophile Gautier and Maxime du 
 Camp in the revival of the defunct Revue de Paris. 
 This was in October, 1851, and the monthly was 
 kept up until January, 1858. 
 
 Paul Henri Corentin FeVal was born in 1817. 
 Of his numerous novels, always lively and entertain- 
 ing, may be named Alizia Pauli ; Les Amours de 
 Paris ; Les Fanfarons du Roi ; La Maison de 
 Pilate ; Les Nuits de Paris ; Le Roi des Gueux 
 and La Fontaine aux Perles. 
 
 Erckmann and Chatrian are two writers, whose 
 works have attained great popularity both in France 
 and abroad, on account of their real merit and the 
 freshness of the scenes and simplicity of the life 
 depicted, as well as the pathos of the stories told, 
 but partly also from the sympathy lately aroused 
 for Alsace, and largely too from the circumstance 
 of constant copartnership in the production of their 
 romances. The marriage of two minds has always 
 been an interesting fact in the history of literature.
 
 316 French Literature. 
 
 ftmile Erekmann was born at Phalsbourg in 
 1822 ; Alexandra Chatrian^ at Soldatenthal in 
 1826. Since 1847, they have worked together in 
 the composition of their Alsatian tales, signing 
 them with the double name, Erckmann-Chatrian. 
 Their works first attained popularity on the publica- 
 tion of Llllustre Docteur Matheus in 1859. Among 
 their best romances may be named: Conies des 
 bords du Rhin ; Le Fou Yegof ; Le Joueur dt Clar- 
 inette ; La Maison Foresti^re ; Le Consent de 1813; 
 Madame There'se ; L 'Invasion et Waterloo ; Le 
 Grand-pbre Lebigre ; Lami Fritz ; Les Deux Fibres 
 and Brigadier Frederic. Some of these stories 
 have also been thrown into the form of comedies. 
 Their play of Rantzan, produced by the Come'die 
 frangaise, is a sort of bourgeois Romeo and Juliet. 
 It is a dramatization of Les Deux Fr'eres. 
 
 The younger Dumas, born at Paris in 1824, made 
 his reputation by that immoral but very popular 
 story, La Dame aux Camelias, from which the op- 
 era of La Traviata was afterwards taken. Among 
 his other romances are, Le Roman d'une Femme ; 
 La Dame aux Perles ; Diane de Lys ; La Femme 
 du Claude ; Les idees de Madame Aubray Une 
 Visite de Noces ; Le Bijou de la Reine ; and La Prin- 
 cesse de Bagdad. He has also written plays. 
 
 One of the most vivacious and fantastic of 
 French romancers, Edmond About, who of late 
 years betook himself wholly to political journalism, 
 is but lately dead. He died in 1885. 
 
 Edmond Francois Valentine About was born at 
 Dieuze, Meurthe, in 1828. His La Grtce Contem- 
 poraine, an extravagantly satirical sketch of mod- 
 ern Greece, brought him at once into notice. It 
 was followed by the publication in the Revue des 
 Deux Mondes of his autobiographical romance, 
 Tolla. He now tried the stage ; but his comedy of 
 Guillery ou I'Effronte was a failure. He returned 
 to romance ; and Les Manages de Paris, Le Roi 
 des Montagnes, Gcnnaine, and Les Echasses de
 
 Romancers. 817 
 
 Jfaitre Pierre showed where his true powers lay. 
 Others of his romances are L'Homme a I'oreHle 
 cassee, T rente et Quarante, Le nez d'un notaire, La 
 Viei-lle Roche, Madelon, and 'LInfame. Some of his 
 political pamphlets, such as La Question Romaine, 
 and La Rome Contemporaine, made a great noise 
 in their day. 
 
 As a story-teller, About reminds me of two 
 very dissimilar writers in English literature, the 
 English satirist Peacock and our own Poe in his 
 quality of fantastic romancer. There is no poetic 
 imagination in About's whimsical fancies, however, 
 nor any of that air of a reserved force, which is 
 manifest in the artistic creations of Poe. 
 
 Another political writer who has used romance 
 as the vehicle of satire is Rochefort. Victor Henri, 
 Comte de Rochefort-Lucay, was born at Paris in 
 1830. His father was a great royalist, but his 
 mother taught the-" youth democratic principles. 
 As a journalist, he was a thorn in the side of the 
 Napoleonic government, and spent much of his time 
 in prison or in exile. After the fall of the Empire, 
 he was involved in the proceedings which resulted 
 in the temporary establishment of the Commune. 
 For complicity in their atrocities, he was tried with 
 other Communists by the government of Thiers, 
 condemned, and imprisoned. Escaping from the 
 penal colony in the Pacific, to which he had been 
 transported, he returned by way of the United 
 States to Europe, was allowed to go back to Parts, 
 on the declaration of amnesty in 1880, and has since 
 then written his story of Mademoiselle Bismarck, in 
 which Gambetta and other political leaders are said 
 to figure under fictitious names. 
 
 Victor Cherbuliez was born in 1832. After a 
 fantasy-piece entitled Un Cheval de Phidias, he 
 published a series of romances. Among these are 
 Le Comte Kostia ; Le Prince, Vitale; Paule Mere; 
 Le Roman dune honnete Femme ; L'idee de Jean
 
 318 French Literature. 
 
 Teterol; Les Amours fragiles ; and Noirs et Rouges. 
 There is a good deal of artistic power in his works. 
 
 Ludovic Halevy, the son of Leon HaleVy and 
 nephew of the great composer of music, was born 
 at Paris in 1834. His father, born in 1802, was in 
 his youth a Saint-Simonian, and, later, a professor 
 of literature and author of Fables, La Grece Tra- 
 gique, and a play entitled Electre. The son wrote 
 the libretti for many well-known operas, and a 
 number of romances. Among these is L'Abbe 
 Constantin, a story of exquisite simplicity and 
 sound moral tone. The light touch of Halevy is 
 an artistic gift which all can feel the charm of, but 
 which only trained critics perceive and appre- 
 ciate. 
 
 One of the most delightful purveyors of amuse- 
 ment for children in these days is Madame la Com- 
 tesse de Segur (nee Kostopchine), who has written 
 a host of amusing books, always bright and im- 
 aginative, sunny and sweet, with never a taint of 
 evil about them. Her Nouveaux Contes de Fees is 
 one of the best of fairy-tale books. Her other 
 books are Apres la Pluie le beau Temps; Come- 
 dies et Proverbes ; Diloy le Chemineau; Frangois le 
 Bossu ; Jean qui grogne et Jean qui rit; La For- 
 tune de Gaspard; La /Swur de Gribouille; L'Au- 
 berge de I'Auge gardien; Le General Dourakine; 
 Les bons Enfants ; Les deux Nigauds ; Les Mal- 
 heurs de Sophie; Le Mauvais Genie; Les Petites 
 Filles Modeles; Les Vacances ; Memoir es d'une 
 Ane; Pauvre Blaise; Quel Amour d Enfant! 
 and Un bon Petit Diable. 
 
 I have but space to touch lightly upon other 
 romancers of note. The passion for crude art, 
 taking form in pictures of coarse and depraved life, 
 in sensual passion untinged by any light of wit or 
 coloring of humor, in minute studies of horrors, 
 seems to have taken possession of- those who cater 
 for the public taste in our day. 
 
 Ernest Feydeau's Fanny, with its "sickly and
 
 Romancers. 319 
 
 an wholesome sentimentality ; " Flaubert's Madame 
 Bovary, with its revolting scenes ; Adolphe Belot'a 
 Femme de Feu, with its debasing tendencies ; Zola's 
 Rougon-Macquart family, in the whole of the abom- 
 inable series in which those brutal specimens of 
 humanity figure, are types of the worst features of 
 the prevailing "realism," so much vaunted by the 
 admirers of that school. 
 
 Charles de Bernard, Jules Claretie, Smile Gab- 
 oriau, Jules Verne, Alphonse Daudet, make another 
 and a very varied group. I can only mention a 
 few of their stories. De Bernard is responsible for 
 Les Ailes d'leare; Un Reau-Pere; Gerfaut; Le 
 Nozud Gordien; Le Paratonnerre ; Le Paravent; 
 La Peau du Lion. Among Claretie's works may 
 be named Une Maitresse ; Les Amours d'un In- 
 terne; and Le Renegat. 
 
 Gaboriau, who died some years ago, wrote a vast 
 number of police-court stories, with intricate plots 
 woven about crime. The names of some of these 
 are L' Affaire Lerouge; L* Argent des Autres ; La 
 Clique doree ; Les Comediennes adorees ; La Corde 
 au Cou ; Le Crime d'Orcival; Le Dossier, No. 113; 
 Les Esclaves de Paris; Manages dAventure ; 
 Monsieur Lecoq; La Vie Infernale ; and Petit 
 Vieux des Batignolles. 
 
 Verne's flighty and fantastic stories amusing, if 
 there were any end to that string of extravagancies 
 are so well known by translations, that it will be 
 enough to name one or two, such as Autour de la 
 Lune ; De la Terre a la Lune ; Vingt-mille Lieues 
 sous les Mers ; Voyage au Centre de la Terre ; and 
 Uih Mysterieuse. 
 
 Daudet, who plumes himself as much on realistic 
 pictures as Zola, though he refrains from sinking 
 quite so low, that is, into utter filth, has acknowl- 
 edged that his characters are taken from the. life, 
 many being drawn from persons now living. This, 
 he states, is the case with all the characters in Fro- 
 rrwnt jeune et Risler aine, except Zizi Delobelle.
 
 320 French Literature. ., 
 
 Among his other books may be named Jack ; Les 
 Lettres de mon Moulin; Les Hois en Exile; Le 
 Nabob ; and Nwna Roumestan. His Tartarin de 
 Tarascon is an amusing extravaganza, much en- 
 joyed by children. His brother Ernest has written 
 Le Mari and Henriette, and, recently, a memoir of 
 t'ne youth of himself and Alphonse, entitled Mon 
 Frere et Moi: /Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse. 
 Of Zola, it would be superfluous to say more than 
 is contained in these words from a review of his 
 Pot-Bouille in an American journal, as they apply 
 with equal fitness to all his books: 
 
 " There is not one decent character in the book ; not 
 one redeeming trait of manhood ; not one pure woman ; 
 not one touch of humor ; not even an innocent child. It 
 reeks with filth. It is a veritable hot-bed of indescribable 
 grossnesses and will besmear every one who touches it." 
 
 This vile literature comprises La Conquete de 
 Plassans ; La Faute de VAbbe Mouret; Nana; 
 Venire de Paris ; L'Assommoir ; and one or two 
 more, the latest being Pot-Bouille. 
 
 Turning from this reeking atmosphere to pure 
 air, we find it in the sweet society to which Mad- 
 ame Durand introduces us. This is the writer who 
 puts to her books the name of Henry GreVille. 
 Her stories have been mainly of Eussian life. But, 
 whatever her theme, she gives always delightful 
 pictures of domestic life and hearty, natural char- 
 acters. A criticism in the same journal quoted 
 above well says : 
 
 " A keenly sympathetic temperament, a pure and lim- 
 pid style, and the easy flow of natural and graceful dia- 
 logue unite in the charm of her work. There is some- 
 thing idyllic in the sweet lessons of self-devotion to 
 another vvliich she is continually teaching, and which, 
 however often they may be told, never lose their original 
 freshness and simple eloquence. . . . And there is not one 
 of her books that is not pure in motive, word, and deed 
 which is suying a great deal as French novels go."
 
 Romancers. 321 
 
 Her books are numerous. Among them I may 
 name Cite Menerd, La Niania, Sonia, Dosia, Ariad- 
 ne, and La Princesse d'Ogheroff. 
 
 Nor is Madame Durand the only pure romancer. 
 Madame Craven's religious novels, Recit d'une 
 Soeur, Fleurange, and Anne Severin are also entitled 
 to respect from the lofty tone and untainted atmos- 
 phere which they breathe. To her literature also 
 owes Une Annee de Meditations, Le Travail dune 
 Ante, La Sceur Nathalie Narlschkin, and Eliane. 
 One of the most popular of living romancers is 
 Andre* Theuriet, the author of La Chanson du Jar- 
 dinier and Madame Heurteloup. He lias also 
 written Sous Bois, Mademoiselle Guignon, Le Man- 
 age de Gerard, Ondine, La Fortune dAngele, and 
 Itaymonde. 
 
 Edouard, Vicomte de Beaumont- Vassy, a kins- 
 man of Gustave de Beaumont, has written, besides 
 a historical work, several romances of some merit, 
 among them Une Marquise d Autrefois. 
 
 To the Marquis de Chennevieres we owe some 
 pretty stories about peasant life in the province of 
 Perclie. These are told in his Contes de Saint- 
 Sautin. 
 
 Among other novelists may be mentioned Delpit, 
 the author of Le Mariage d'Odette and Le Fils de 
 Coralie; Brehat, of whose numerous tales we may 
 mention LAuberge du Solett d'Or, La Cabane du 
 Sabotier, and La Sorcie~re Noire, Capendu, the 
 author of La Popote and LePre Catelan ; Berthet, 
 the author of Le Val d'Andorre and La Bastide 
 rouge ; Xavier de Montepin, who wrote among 
 other tales La Compare Leroux, Viveurs d' Autrefois, 
 Les Viveurs de Paris, and Les Viveurs de Prov- 
 ince; and De Goncourt, the author of Les Fibres 
 Zemganno, Gavarni, and La Maison dun Artiste. 
 Arrnand de Pontmartin, who is more famous as 
 a critic, wrote about a dozen novels, of which the 
 most striking were Or et Clinquant, Les Jeudis de 
 Madame Charbonneau, Les Memoires dun Notaire,
 
 322 French Literature. 
 
 Pourquoi je reste a la Camqagne, and Entre Chien 
 et Loup. 
 
 Madame Charles Eeybuad wrote Mademoiselle 
 de Malepeire, Mise Brun, and Le Cabaret de Gau- 
 bert. Ponson du Terrail is responsible for a host of 
 sensational stories, such as Un Crime de Jeunesse, 
 Les Fils de Judas^ Memoires dun Gendarme, Les 
 Mysferes des Bois, Nuits du Quartier Breda, and Le 
 Secret du Docteur Rousselle. 
 
 There are also Georges Ohnet, whose Le Maure 
 de Forges is, I believe, his masterpiece ; Jacques Vin- 
 cent, with his Le Cousin Nott ; fimile Kichebourg, 
 with his Le Missel de la Grand m^re ; and Lucien 
 Biart, with his Jeanne de Maurice. 
 
 The opposition of the French Society for the Pro- 
 tection of Animals to the abuses of the practice of 
 vivisection has given origin to a special form of 
 fiction, that devoted to inculcating humanity to the 
 dumb creatures under man's protection. The So- 
 ciety gave a gold medal a few years ago to Aure- 
 lieu Scholl for his pathetic little story, Le Roman 
 de Follette. 
 
 A charming story of a wandering troupe of per- 
 forming animals by Hector Malot, entitled, Sans 
 Famille, and translated into English with the title, 
 " No Relations," seems to have been inspired by the 
 same gentle motive. Malot has written a number 
 of novels. Romain Kalbris is a romance for chil- 
 dren. Of his other works I may name Cara, Le 
 Docteur Claude, La Boheme tapdgeuse, and Une 
 Femme d Argent. 
 
 Pleasing tales have been written by Louis ^nault, 
 Daniel Lesueur, and A. Gennevraye.
 
 Critics and Scientists. 32(5 
 
 XXL 
 
 CRITICS AND SCIENTISTS. 
 
 D'IsRAELi's epigram on the critics has no appli- 
 cation in the case of the best French critics. They 
 have been remarkably able men, who have, besides 
 producing original works of merit, raised criticism 
 into a powerful, attractive, and useful branch of 
 literature. The excellence to which French criti- 
 cism has attained in modern times is largely due to 
 the new direction given to it by Villemain. His 
 criticism was a great advance upon that of Laharpe 
 and Diderot. His lectures on literature were 
 eloquent and fascinating, delivered in a style of 
 elegant and graceful ease, that possessed all the 
 elasticity which characterizes the best conversation. 
 
 Abel Fran9ois Villemain (1790-1780) was born at 
 Paris, and became in early life a Professor of Liter- 
 ature. His lectures, with those of Guizot and 
 Cousin, always drew immense audiences, and counted 
 among the most brilliant and fruitful intellectual 
 events of the Restoration period. Besides his Eloges 
 of Montaigne and Montesquieu, his History of Crom- 
 well, his drama entitled Lascaris, ou les Grecs du 
 XV. Siecle, translations from Cicero and Pindar, and a 
 history of lyric poetry, he produced Discours et 
 Melanges litteraires, Tableau de V Eloquence chreti- 
 enne au IV e Siecle, tudes d'Histoire Moderne, 
 Etudes de Litterature, and Chateaubriand, sa Vie, 
 ses crits, et son Influence litteraire et politique. 
 Two delightful volumes were all put forth by him, 
 entitled Souvenirs contemporains d'Histoire et de la 
 Litterature. 
 
 He mingled for a time, like m^st or ihe literary 
 men of the day, in political life, was minister under
 
 324 French Literature. 
 
 Louis Philippe, became a Peer of France and Per' 
 petual Secretary of the Academie Fran$aise; but 
 all his earlier and most of his later years were given 
 up to literary labor. One of the weightiest influ- 
 ences which he applied to the discussion of literature 
 was that derived from his study of English literature. 
 Amply stored with all the arsenal of knowledge the 
 past could give, his mind was enabled to keep a just 
 poise between the claims of the classic and the ro- 
 mantic schools and to act as mediator between them. 
 He might justly be styled the first great historical 
 critic. 
 
 In the order of time, Patin, Vinet, Chasles, 
 Ampere, Girardin, and even Janin may be entitled 
 to mention before Sainte-Beuve. But his is the 
 great name in criticism, easily the superior of them 
 all, and the artist and poet among critics. He 
 stands naturally by the side of Villemain. 
 
 Charles Augustin Saint-Beuve (1804-1869) was 
 born at Boulogne-sur-Mer after his father's death. 
 His mother, a woman of fine education and char- 
 acter, took great pains with his education. Her 
 family was of English origin, and through her he 
 early acquired a knowledge of the English language 
 and literature. Beginning life as a medical student, 
 he was easily drawn into literary circles and critical 
 work by his enthusiasm for Victor Hugo's Odes et 
 Ballades and the principles of the romantic school. 
 He was soon moved to try his own powers in the field 
 of poetry. His Poesies de Joseph Delorme won the 
 plaudits of Beranger and other literary men, though 
 it did not hit the taste of the public. Les Conso- 
 lations, his next poetic effort, was more successful. 
 With Pensees dAout, he retired from the domain 
 of poetry. His poetry is, in the main, an imitation 
 of the mild muse of Crabbeand Wordsworth, familiar, 
 grave, and self-communing verse for which the 
 French have no great taste fortunately. 
 
 Besides these three collections of poetry, he pro- 
 duced several volumes of Portraits litteraires,
 
 Critics and Scientists. 325 
 
 Jlistoire de la Potsie francaise au XVIe Stide, His- 
 toire de Port Royal, a romance entitled Volupte ; 
 and, above all, his delightful series of biographical 
 and critical sketches which appeared under the title 
 of Causeries de Lundi. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve was especially a student of the en- 
 vironment of the writer he was criticising. He 
 made it his first business to inquire who and what 
 the author was ; what produced, what developed, 
 and what modified him. He was sympathetic and 
 appreciative in his judgments, but at the same time 
 a little cynical ; impartial, tolerant, and inclined to 
 skepticism in religious matters ; subtle in analysis ; 
 piquant, animated, richly descriptive in style ; and 
 remarkably gifted in combining biographic details 
 and suggestive allusions with purely literary criti- 
 cism. 
 
 Henri Joseph Guillaume Patin was born at Paris 
 in 1793. His main claim to a place in literature is 
 his Etude sur les Tragiques Grrecs. 
 
 Alexandre Vinet (1797-1847) was born in the 
 village of Grassier, Canton de Vaud. He was Pro- 
 fessor of French Literature successively at Bale and 
 at Lausanne. His principles led him to infuse into 
 his literary studies Christian and philosophic ideas, 
 while his taste for art enriched and beautified the 
 moral conceptions with which he inspired his essays. 
 Etudes sur Pascal, Histoire de la Litterature Fran- 
 qaise au XVIII Q Stide, Etudes sur la Litterature 
 Francaise au XIX* iSiecle, Essais de Philosophic 
 Morale et Religieuse, Discours Religieux, Etudes 
 jZvangeliques, and Ecrits Polemiques constitute his 
 contributions to literature. 
 
 Victor Euphemion Philarete Chasles (1798-1873) 
 was born at Mainvilliers. He wrote Etudes sur les 
 Homrnes et les Mceurs au XIX e Sttcle and other 
 critical works, besides an account of his travels. His 
 specialty was English literature. The articles making 
 up the books issued by Philarete Chasles were
 
 326 French Literature. 
 
 originally contributions to the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes and the Journal des Debats. 
 
 Jean Jacques Ampere (1800-1 864),, the son of 
 that Andre Marie Ampere who has been spoken of 
 already in this work as an illustrious scientist of the 
 Napoleonic period, was born at Lyon. He soon won 
 a brilliant reputation for large and comprehensive 
 literary research, traveling as he did in Italy, Ger- 
 many, and the Scandinavian lands, and, later, in the 
 eastern Mediterranean, and studying language and 
 literature wherever he went. He was very success- 
 ful as a professor in inspiring enthusiasm for lin- 
 guistic and literary studies, and at the same time he 
 wrote on many subjects. His Litterature et Voy- 
 ages told the story of his travels and studies. The 
 brilliancy of his style and the correctness of local 
 coloring and historic fact give great interest to 
 his La Grece, Some et Dante; Etudes Litteraires 
 d'apres Nature; VHistoire Romaine d Rome; and 
 Cesar. His Histoire Litter air e de la France avant 
 le douzieme Siecle is a careful and philosophic resume 
 of the great work of. the Benedictines on the same 
 period, giving an account of literary work done on 
 the soil of Gaul before it became France, and at the 
 same time treating of the influence of the Latin, 
 Germanic, and Keltic languages upon the formation 
 of the French tongue. 
 
 Jules Gabriel Janin (1804-1874) was born at St. 
 fitienne, in the department of the Loire. Thackeray, 
 in that satirical little sketch on "Dickens in France," 
 which was after his death re-published in " Early 
 and Late Papers," describes our critic thus : 
 
 " Who is Janin? He is the critic of Prance. J. J. in 
 fact the man who writes a weekly feuilleton in the 
 Journal des Debats with such indisputable brilliancy 
 and wit, and such a fine mixture of effrontery, and 
 honesty, and poetry, and impudence, and falsehood, 
 and impertinence, and good feeling, that one can't 
 fail to be charmed wilh the compound, and to look 
 rather eagerly tor tlie Monday paper; Jules Janin is the
 
 Critics and Scientists. 327 
 
 man, who, not knowing a single word of the English 
 language, as he actually professes in the preface, has 
 helped to translate the Sentimental Journey" 
 
 And, then, Thackeray goes on to abuse him 
 heartily for not liking Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby. 
 But, in spite of this fierce little satire, Jules Janin, 
 the " King of the feuilleton," as Heine called him, 
 is not to be despised. He was for Paris the sort of 
 piquant, racy, jolly old gossip that not Aristoph- 
 anes, but some human counterpart of his Dionusos 
 might have been for Athens. There was just the 
 sort of flavor about his wit and wisdom that the true 
 Parisian has a relish for ; and the favor of Paris 
 made Janin a rich man before he died. 
 
 He wrote a goodly number of novels, among them 
 EAne mort et la Jeune Femme guillotinee, that ill- 
 omened title with which Thackeray jeers him at 
 every turn in the paper just cited. He wrote also 
 accounts of his little trips. But nothing else that 
 he wrote got him anything like the kind and amount 
 of reputation which he gleaned from his weekly 
 feuilletons, brimming with high spirits and kind, 
 hearty, good feeling, as well as much ready wit and 
 some tenderness. Pontmartin, his fellow critic, said 
 that he could not withhold his affection and sym- 
 pathy from one " gifted with that faculty of vibration 
 which responds to every incident of public life, to 
 every episode of literary life, by a page, a line, a 
 word the page true, the line piquant, the word 
 just." It is Pontmartin who gives in eloquent 
 words the story of Janin's creation of the feuilleton, 
 and then adds : " It was in September, 1830, that 
 this dramatic and literary royalty, which still 
 endures, began ; and since that time there has never 
 been a play, a book, a work of art, an actor, a great 
 man, an event, a success, a misfortune, a fashion, 
 an absurdity, a caprice, an illustrious death, which 
 has not been reflected in these rapid pages, steno-
 
 328 French Literature. 
 
 graphed by a hand which nothing wearies, under 
 the dictation of each day." 
 
 Such and so various was Janin's matter. His 
 manner was all his own. Never was there just such 
 a style, quaint, inverted, fantastic, grotesque, run- 
 ning through the whole gamut of tones with a sort 
 of Merry Andrew lightheartedness, even as the birds 
 sing. In any other man's work it would be rightly 
 thought affected, as would Charles Lamb's; but it 
 was the natural expression of that " fat and witty 
 child," as Dumas called him, just as Lamb's letters 
 show how little affectation there was in the printed 
 Elia. Janin's principal feuilletons were collected 
 and published under the title, Histoire dramatique 
 et litteraire. 
 
 Nisard stands apart from these critics, as a bitter 
 assailant of the principles of romanticism. 
 
 Jean Marie Napoleon Desire Nisard was born at 
 Chatillon-sur-Seine in 1806. He began as a jour- 
 nalist in opposition to the government of Louis XVIII. 
 After the Eevolution of 1830, he at first supported 
 the new government, but was soon once more in 
 opposition. He changed again, however, and in the 
 end was a zealous supporter of Louis Philippe's 
 government. When that government fell, he was 
 for a time in obscurity, but emerged with the rise 
 of Louis Napoleon to power, and thenceforward was 
 somewhat notorious as an advocate of arbitrary 
 measures. Meanwhile, as a critic, he avowed loy- 
 alty to the literary spirit of the past, especially 
 ridiculing the excesses of the romantic school in his 
 criticisms of Victor Hugo and De Lamartine. His 
 Poetes Latins de la Decadence seems to have been 
 purposely written to point the resemblance between 
 the Latin literature of the age of Lucan and the 
 literature of modern France. His other works, be- 
 sides translations from the Latin classics, where 
 Histoire de la Litter ature Fran^aise, Souvenirs 
 d 1 Angleterre, and a volume of Melanges. 
 
 Gustave Planche (1808-1857) was an austere and
 
 Critics and Scientists. 329 
 
 bitter critic. He wrote, however, in a pure and 
 elegant style ; and his essays on English literature 
 were particularly useful to his contemporaries at a 
 time when the French were only beginning to take 
 some interest in the great body of literature produced 
 on the other side of the Channel. His articles 
 appeared in the Artiste, the Revue des Deux Afondes, 
 the Journal des Debats, and the Chronique de 
 Paris. 
 
 Ange Henri Blaze de Bury was born at Cavaillon 
 in 1816. He was the son of a celebrated composer 
 of music, and seems to have always taken a great 
 interest in music and musicians. Besides translating 
 " Faust," and other poems of Goethe, he wrote a 
 volume of Poesies, Etudes on Mozart, Eossini, Beetho- 
 ven, and other contemporary musicians, and an 
 eloquent and enthusiastic account of German litera- 
 ture, called Eerivaina et Poetes de I'Allemagne. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve's greatest rival was the Comte 
 Armand de Pontmartin, born in 1811, and living 
 alternately at Paris and at his estate of Les Angles 
 near Avignon. Sainte-Beuve denied that Pont- 
 martin was a critic at all in the true sense of the 
 term, and described him as " an amiable talker and 
 literary chronicler after the fashion of good society 
 and the drawing-room." I have already spoken of 
 De Pontraartin's novels. His critical essays were 
 republished, from the journals in "which they first 
 appeared, in several series, with such titles as 
 Causeries Litteraires, Cauteries du Samedi, and 
 Nouveaux Samedis. His religious, moral, and 
 political character remains steadfast in its attach- 
 ment to the old principles of the aristocratic race to 
 which he belongs. His style is rich, animated, 
 flexible, and impassioned. His literary criticism is 
 keen and earnest, based upon great underlying 
 principles which force him to condemn much that 
 he admits to be forcible and seductive. To Balzac 
 he objects that his art is morbid and corrupting, 
 and that he destroys pure and noble illusions ; to
 
 330 French Literature. 
 
 Victor Hugo, that he stirs up animosity between 
 class and class, and that his genius is too often 
 delirious ; to Sainte-Beuve, that he lacks genuine- 
 ness, has no convictions, and is a time-server, un- 
 happy, irascible, and sour in temper beneath his 
 fine phrases. There is bitter satire in all this, but 
 enough of truth to have made it very telling. 
 
 fimile Montegut was born at Limoges in 1826. 
 His article in the Revue des Deux Mondes on the 
 philosophy of Kalph Waldo Emerson gave him his 
 first reputation. His criticisms were extended over 
 the field of contemporary French, English, and 
 American literature. He also translated Macaulay's 
 History of England and Emerson's Essays. 
 
 One of the youngest and most brilliant of French 
 critics is Taine. He has the credit, even among 
 English and American critics, of having produced 
 the best of all histories of English literature. His 
 knowledge of this subject is far beyond that pos- 
 sessed by Chateaubriand, Philarete Chasles, and 
 others who have treated it in French. 
 
 Hippolyte Adolphe Taine was born at Vouziers, 
 Ardennes, in 1828. His earlier works were essays 
 on La Fontaine and Livy, and a work entitled Les 
 Philosophes Francois au dix-neuvieme Siecle. Later 
 on, he brought out his Essais de Critique et d'His- 
 toire, his Philosophic de I' Art, and his famous His- 
 toire de la Litterature Anglaise. In this last he 
 carries to its extreme the doctrine of environment 
 and of original race-characteristics, and with the 
 most brilliant diction heaps up facts upon facts, with 
 a breathless prodigality of circumstance and of 
 illustration, to build up the theory that is to 
 account for every phenomenon of genius. It is all 
 very fine and philosophical, but perhaps ignores too 
 readily the force of individual character and gifts 
 quite irrespective of any known or knowable cause 
 in past or present. Taine has since written Notes 
 sur I' Angleterre, Les Origines de la France Contem-
 
 Critics and Scientists. 331 
 
 poraine, Voyage aux Pyrenees, Voyage en Italie, 
 and Vie et Opinions de M. Graindorge. 
 
 fimile Gigault de la Be'dolliere, born in 1814, was 
 in early life a favorer of Saint-Simon's doctrines ; 
 but he outgrew those notions. Becoming a jour- 
 nalist, he produced a great number of essays, ro- 
 mances, poems, and translations. His Soirees 
 d'Hiver, Les Industriels, Histoire de la Garde 
 Nationale, and Mceurs et Vie privee des Franqais 
 are his most important original works. 
 
 Many of the professors of literature in French 
 colleges have written excellent histories of French 
 literature, either in whole or in part. Among these 
 I should name fimile Chasles, who wrote a Histoire 
 Nationale de la Litterature Franchise, divided into 
 four books of Origines, namely Le Genie Gaulois, ou 
 la Race; Les Gallo-Romains, et la Civilisation; 
 Les Gallo-Francs, et V Epopee; and Les Gallo- 
 Bretons, et V Esprit' Romanesque. This work was 
 published in 1870. 
 
 To Geruzez we owe La Litterature Francaise du 
 Moyen Age aux Temps Modernes and La Littera- 
 ture Francaise pendant la Revolution. He is a 
 spirited and agreeable writer. 
 
 To Demogeot we are indebted for Tableau de la 
 Litterature Franqaise au 17 e Siecle. Demogeot 
 lays especial stress upon the revelations which the 
 old memoirs give of the inner social life. 
 
 To De Vericour we owe Milton et la Poesie 
 Epique and a valuable work in English on Modern 
 French Literature, bringing us down to the Revolu- 
 tion of 1848. De Vericour gave especial weight to 
 philosophical and political developments. 
 
 Other historians of French literature besides those 
 already named are Aubertin, Baron, Saint-Marc 
 Girardin, Godefroy, Nettement, Albert, and Char- 
 pentier. Baret, Bida, Fauriel, and Gaston Paris on 
 old French and Proven9al literature ; Villemarque on 
 that of Bretagne ; Assailly on the Minnesingers ; 
 Bossert on German literature down to the Middle
 
 332 French Literature. 
 
 Ages , Courriere on Slavonic literature ; Gidel on 
 modern Greek literature ; Roux on modern Italian 
 literature, represent some of the authorities in the 
 critical study of literatures. 
 
 In the field of biography, Sainte-Beuve supplies 
 sketches of Boileau, Chateaubriand, Chenier, De 
 Comines, Courier, Delavigne, Diderot, Fenelon, 
 Hugo, LaBruyere, La Fontaine, La Harpe, Lamar- 
 tine, Lamennais, La Rochefoucauld, Lebrun, Lesage, 
 Littre, Malherbe, Marivaux, Marmontel, Massillon, 
 Millevoye, Moliere, De Musset, Racine, Reynard, 
 Renan, Saint-Pierre, Saint-Simon, Scribe, George 
 Sand, Madame de Stael, De Tocqueville, and De 
 Vigny. 
 
 Lomenie gives us Beaumarchais et son Temps ; 
 Littrt), Comte et la Philosophic Positive; Guizot, 
 Corneille et son Temps and a number of other lives ; 
 Flourens, lives of Buffon and Cuvier; Levallois, 
 D'Haussonville, and Pons, each a work on Sainte- 
 Beuve ; Walkenaer, Memoires sur Madame de 
 Sevigne ; and De Falloux, Madame Swetchine, sa 
 Vie et ses (Euvres. 
 
 Here will fitly come the consideration of a few 
 essayists on moral, religious, or philosophical subjects, 
 whose works cannot be conveniently classed under 
 any general head. 
 
 fimile Edmond Saisset (1814-1863) was born at 
 Montpellier. Besides furnishing a great many arti- 
 cles on philosophy to the Dictionnair.e des Sciences 
 Philosophiques and the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
 he produced an essay Sur la Philosophic et la Re- 
 ligion au XIX e Siecle, and another De, Philosophic 
 Religieuse which have been highly commended. 
 
 Jean Charles Leveque was born at Bordeaux in 
 1818. His work entitled La Science du Beau 
 Etudiee dans ses Principes, ses Applications et son 
 Histoire; his fitudes de Philosophic Grecque et 
 Latine ; and his Du Spiritualisme dans I 1 Art, have 
 all won high honor. 
 
 Jules Francois Suisse Simon was born at Lorient
 
 Critics and Scientists. 333 
 
 in 1814. He was a follower of Cousin in philosophy ; 
 but, having entered political life, he has made a 
 greater name there than in literary work. He re- 
 fused to take the oath of allegiance to the Second 
 Empire, but after its downfall became a prominent 
 personage in the political world. Among his works 
 are Le Devoir, La Religion naturelle, La Liberte 
 de Conscience, La Liberte, L'Ouvriere, EEcole, and 
 L'Ouvrier de huit Ans. He is remarkable for inde- 
 pendence of thought, for his steady maintenance of 
 the rights of the people, his defense of liberty of the 
 press, and of the interests of the laboring class, 
 especially women laborers. 
 
 Pierre Jules Hetzel, whose pseudonym was P. J. 
 Stahl, was born in 1814. He has been called the 
 French Sterne. His chief works are Scenes de la Vie 
 des Animaux, Le Diable h Paris, Tom Pouce, His- 
 toire dun Homme enrkume, Le Voyage dun Etudi- 
 ant, and Bttes et Geni. His sketches were highly 
 praised by Madame Dudevant and Louis Ratisbonne. 
 
 Among the friends and ardent admirers of La- 
 mennais was a young poet, Georges Maurice de 
 Guerin, who died before reaching the age of thirty. 
 His memory was kept sacred even more than by 
 the few remains of his published a generation later 
 through the charming journal and letters of his 
 sister, Mademoiselle Eugenie de Guerin, whose 
 devout and poetical soul shines sweetly in the naive 
 style which was so natural to her. The book issued 
 with the literary remains of Maurice de Guerin is 
 entitled Journal, Lettres et Fragments de M. Gue- 
 rin. His sister's writings are issued with the same 
 title, except that Mademoiselle Eugenie takes the 
 place of M. 
 
 One of the greatest names in the France of our 
 days is that of Renan. Unquestionably a great 
 thinker in many fields of thought, his attitude 
 toward Christianity has done much to obscure the 
 real merit of his character and writings for those of 
 us who believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is indeed
 
 334 French Literature. 
 
 the Son of God, and that he came into the world to 
 save sinners. 
 
 Joseph Ernest Renan was born at Fre*guier in 
 1823. He early won distinction in linguistic studies, 
 and was especially noted for his acquaintance with 
 the Semitic languages. His first work of impor- 
 tance was his Histoire generate et Systemes compares 
 des Langues Semitiques. This was followed by his 
 Etude de la Langue Grecque au Moyen Age. His 
 other historical, linguistic, and ethical works were 
 his Sur Averroes et VAverroisme, his Mission de 
 Phenice, Etudes d'Histoire Heligieuse, Essais de 
 Morale et de Critique, La Reforme Intellectuelle et 
 Questions Contemporaines, Dialogues et Fragments 
 Philosophiques, and Melanges d' .Histoire et de Voy- 
 age. He has also written a singular satirical poem 
 called Caliban. 
 
 But the writings by which he has most stirred 
 the world are those which make up a series to which 
 he gives the name, Origines du Christianisme. 
 The first part of this was La Vie de Jesus. This 
 was followed by the Histoire des Apotres, Saint 
 Paul, Antichrist, and La seconde Generation Chre- 
 tienne : Les Evangiles, 
 
 Renan began with a proneness to dissent from 
 recognized religious and political creeds, with a 
 scorn for mere utilitarian or materialistic conceptions 
 in philosophy, and with a vague elevation of senti- 
 ment, which powerfully drew him towards the 
 moral side of Christ's teachings. Sympathizing 
 rather with the transcendental school of thought 
 than with materialist skepticism, he was essentially 
 an idealist, and, like all gifted idealists from Plato 
 to John Ruskin, a great word-painter. 
 
 Rejecting miracles, however, with as firm a belief 
 in the immutability or the secularly slow mutability 
 of nature as the narrowest of our modern philoso- 
 phers, and trying to explain the presence of the 
 miraculous element in the narrative that has come 
 down to us, not by the theory of imposture, but by
 
 Critics and Scientists. 335 
 
 that of reverent wonder producing innocent distor- 
 tion of the facts, he attempts on this hypothesis to 
 reconstruct the history of Christ and the early 
 Church. Of course, it all results in his calling on 
 us to believe far greater wonders in the moral sphere 
 than any recorded miracles are for us in that of the 
 intellect. There is also something so illogical and 
 uncritical in the arbitrary rejection of one statement 
 of a series of authors some of them stating facts as 
 eye-witnesses to accept other statements made at 
 the same time, and to build huge inferences upon 
 them, that one is apt to refuse Renan credit for the 
 really fine things he does say, and the good inten- 
 tion which prompts him throughout. Some good- 
 will is due for his persistent protest against the mate- 
 rialistic tendencies of the age. 
 
 Renan takes high rank among philologists, and 
 may well lead us to name a few of his compeers in this 
 field. Perhaps the most distinguished of them was 
 Littre, who died in 1881. 
 
 Maximilien Paul mile Littre was born at Paris 
 in 1801. He early gave himself up to linguistic 
 studies. He had, however, also studied medicine ; 
 and his first publication, (Euvres d' Hippocrate, was 
 in that field. Taking a great interest in Comte's 
 doctrines, he next put forth a lucid exposition of his 
 system in De la Philosophic Positive. Master of the 
 old French used by the Trouveres, he published in 
 the Revue des Deux Mondes an article called La 
 Poesie Homerique et VAneienne Poesie Francaise, 
 in which he gave a translation of the first book of 
 the Iliad into old French, it opens thus : 
 
 " Chante 1'ire, 6 deesse, d'Achile fil Pelee, 
 
 Greveuse et qui douloir fit Grece la louee 
 
 Et choir ens en enfer mainte ame desevree, 
 
 Baillant le cors as chiens et oiseaus en curee 
 
 Ainsi de Jupiter s'acomplit la pense*e, 
 
 Du jour ou la querelle se leva primerin 
 
 D' Atride roi des hommes ? d'Achile le divin."
 
 836 French Literature. 
 
 Other books of his, besides the " Dictionary," 
 which was the great work of his life, were Histoire 
 de la Langue Frangaise, Paroles de Philosophic Pos- 
 itive, Auguste Comte et la Philosophie Positive, 
 Auguste Comte et /Stuart Mill. His article in 
 the Revue des Deux Mondes, Des Origines organ- 
 iques de la Morale, brought on him the accusation of 
 atheism. But the work which gave him his greatest 
 renown was his Dictionnaire de la Langue Frangaise, 
 the most complete thing of the kind in any language. 
 
 Other eminent philological writers are Alart, Bar- 
 bier de Meynard, Boissier, Chatelain, Cornu, Bida, 
 Cosquin, David, D'Herbomez, Godefroy, Gras, 
 Luchaire, Gaston Paris, Holland, Senart, Thomas, and 
 Tournier. Graux and Paulin Paris have recently 
 died. 
 
 Turning to writers dealing with religion on the 
 philosophical and historical side, we have Jean Joseph 
 Franois Poujoulat (1808 1880), who began his 
 career by travelling and laboring with Michaud, 
 when the historian was studying the scenes of the 
 Crusades, His principal works were Histoire de 
 Jerusalem, Histoire de St. Augustin, and a review of 
 Kenan's Vie de Jesus. 
 
 fitienne Vacherot was born in 1809. He was, 
 under the ban of the Second Empire for refusing to 
 take the oath of allegiance, and was also imprisoned 
 for his La Democratic^ His principal works were 
 Histoire critique de TEcole d 1 Alexandrie, La Meta- 
 physique et la Science, Essai de Philosophie critique, 
 and La Religion. 
 
 An able writer on the history of the Early Church, 
 J. B. Charpentier, was also a writer on literary his- 
 tory. The work I refer to is entitled Les Etudes 
 sur les Peres de I'Eglise. The literary works are 
 Histoire de la Renaissance des Lettres en Europe au 
 XV e Siecle, Essai sur I Histoire litteraire du Moyen 
 Age, and Tableau de la Litterature Franqaise aux 
 XV e et XV I e Siecles. He also published in 1853 a 
 Logique Franchise.
 
 Critics and Scientists. 337 
 
 One of the most eminent of Protestant theologians 
 is Pressense. Edmond Dehoult de Pressens^ was 
 born at Paris in 1824. He studied in Swiss and 
 German universities, became the friend of Neander 
 during his student life at Berlin, took high rank as a 
 prsacher, writer, and legislator, and became widely 
 known as a vigorous advocate of moderate principles 
 in government, free education, and liberal views on 
 most subjects. His works are Conferences sur le 
 Christianisr.ie dans son Application aux Questions 
 sodales, Du Catholicisime en France, Histoire des 
 Trois Premiers Siecles de VEglise Chretienne, L'ficole 
 Critique et Jesu- Christ, La Liberte religieuse en 
 Europe depuis 1870. 
 
 Bishop Dupanloup was a vigorous writer on the 
 Catholic side. Felix Antoine Philibert Dupanloup 
 (1802-1878) was born in Savoy. He was much 
 interested in the subject of education. Among his 
 works are De V Education, La femme studieuse, 
 L' Enfant, and Le Mariage Chretien. 
 
 Naming now a few of those who have been most 
 remarkable in science or in writings on industrial 
 progress, we have to consider the works of a great 
 surgeon like Velpeau, of a master in archaeological 
 research like Quatrefages, of a microscopist and 
 discoverer of the germs of disease like Pasteur, of an 
 authority in architecture like Viollet-le-Duc, and of 
 an authority in taste and the philosophy of digestion 
 like Brillat-Savarin. 
 
 Alfred Armand Louis Marie Velpeau (1795-1867) 
 was one of the greatest of surgeons. Among the 
 works which he found time to write, in the midst of 
 his arduous duties, the most valuable are his Traite 
 de FAnatomie Chirurgicale and his Nouveaux Ele- 
 ments de Medicine Operatoire. 
 
 Claude Fra^ois Lallemand (1790-1854), born at 
 Metz, was also a famous medical authority. His 
 most important work was Recherches anatomico- 
 pathologiques sur T EncephaJes et ses Dependances. 
 
 Felix Archimede Pouchet (1800-1872), born at
 
 338 'French Literature. 
 
 Rouen, was a most prolific writer on medical matters. 
 His experiments on spontaneous generation were 
 made in opposition to those of Pasteur. His most 
 important works were Theorie Positive de V Ovulation 
 spontanee et de la Fecundation des Mammiferes et 
 de I'Espfae humaine, Histoire des /Sciences naturelles 
 au Moyen Age, Traite de la Generation spontanee, 
 Les infiniment Grands et les infiniment Petits. 
 
 Claude Servais Pouillet (1791-1868) was a much- 
 admired lecturer. He also invented instruments 
 for measuring the varying compressibility of gases, 
 originated a theory of the cause of the sun's heat, 
 and invented an instrument for measuring its heat. 
 He wrote many scientific works on electricity, the 
 elasticity of fluids, the latent heat of vapors, the 
 height, speed, and direction of clouds, and other 
 subjects of kindred nature. His principal work was 
 Notions generates de Physique et de Meteo^ologie. 
 - Louis Pasteur, the great chemist, was born at 
 Dole in 1822. His discoveries have been exceed- 
 ingly valuable to mankind, and there is good rea- 
 son to hope that through his researches measures 
 may be taken by which many terrible scourges of 
 humanity will cease to ravage civilized lands, even 
 as the advance of smallpox has been checked by 
 inoculation and vaccination. His writings have 
 been Nouvel Exemple de Fermentation, Etudes sur 
 le Vin, Etudes sur le Vinaigre, Etudes sur la Mala- 
 die des Vers de Soie, and a few other works. His 
 controversy with Pouchet on the subject of sponta- 
 neous generation has already been mentioned. Pas- 
 teur argued against spontaneous generation, and his 
 experiments have proved that all fermentation and 
 many forms of disease are due to the development 
 of germs of microscopic minuteness. Pasteur was a 
 pupil of the famous chemist Dumas; and his first 
 step in the great discoveries he made was taken in 
 conducting the investigation, committed to him by 
 Dumas, into the disease which threatened to destroy 
 all the silk- worms of France and Italy.
 
 Critics and Scientists. 339 
 
 One of the most eminent of living scientists is 
 Jean Louis Armarid de Quatrefages de Breau, born 
 in 1810. His essay entitled Theorie dun Coup de 
 Canon, his work Sur les Aerolithes and that De 
 I' Extroversion de la Vessie, his Etudes sur les Types 
 i /' rieurs de V Embranchement des Anneles, his 
 J*hysiologie comparee, Metamorphose de rHomme et 
 des Animaux indicate the variety of his studies. 
 He has also written Les Polynesians et leur Migra- 
 tions, Charles Darwin et ses Precurseurs Francois, 
 La Race Prussienne, and L'EspZce humaine. 
 
 One of the greatest of recent French geologists 
 was Jean Baptiste Elie de Beaumont (1798-1874), 
 born at Canon. In conjunction with Dufrenoy, he 
 devoted many years to the preparation of a geologi- 
 cal map of France. His chief writings were Coup 
 d'CEil sur les Mines, Observations Geologiques sur les 
 
 . differentes Formations sur le Systime des Vosges, 
 Recherches sur quelquesunes des Revolutions de la 
 Surface du Globe, and Voyage Metallurgique en 
 Angleterre. 
 
 Here, perhaps, though somewhat out of place, 
 may be mentioned a writer in French, who takes 
 rank as the father of geology as a science, the great 
 Swiss investigator, Horace Benedict de Saussure 
 (1740-1799), born at Conches near Geneva. Four 
 years before his death Geneva was annexed to 
 France. Hence he may in more than one sense be 
 considered as entitled to a place in French litera- 
 ture. His Voyages dans les Alpes marked an era in 
 the history of modern science. Besides this work 
 and sveral in Latin, he wrote Observations sur 
 r Ecorce des Feuilles et des Petales, and Sur'lHy- 
 
 ' grometrie. This last Cuvier considered one of the 
 
 ' most important contributions to science in that age. 
 One of the ablest chemists and writers on chemi- 
 cal subjects France has produced is Jean Baptiste 
 Dumas, born at Alais in the department of Gard in 
 1800. Lavoisier, about 1787, when he gave it its 
 
 1 earlier nomenclature, may be almost said to have
 
 340 French Literature. 
 
 organized chemistry into a science. Other French- 
 men, Berthollet, Fourcroy, Vauquelin, Gay-Lussac, 
 Becquerel, Ampere, Decandolle, and Provost, did 
 much to further its progress. Dumas's contributions 
 to the advance of the science have been very impor- 
 tant. His chief works are Traite de Chimie appli- 
 quee aux Arts, Lemons sur la Philosophic chimique, 
 and Essai sur la Statique chimique des Etres 
 Organises. 
 
 A writer who has done much to popularize scien- 
 tific studies is Jean Francois Elisee Keclus, born in 
 the Gironde in 1830. Driven into exile by the 
 establishment of the Second Empire, he traveled in 
 many parts of the world. Returning to France in 
 1857, he became successively editor of several im- 
 portant periodicals, and wrote his books of travel and 
 his La Terre. He was implicated in the disorders 
 of the Commune, and again became an exile, to 
 return however under the general amnesty. His 
 Les Continents and L' Ocean are handsomely illus- 
 trated books. 
 
 Figuier and Flammarion also have been prolific 
 writers on scientific subjects. 
 
 Guillaume Louis Figuier was born in 1819. His 
 works are La Terre avant le Deluge, La Terre et les 
 Mers, Histoire des Plantes, Zoophytes et Mollusques, 
 Les Insectes, Les Poissons, Les Mammifires, 
 L'Homme primitif, Les Races humaines, Savants de 
 I'Antiquite, Savants du Moyen Age, Savants de la 
 Renaissance, Savants du 12 e Siecle, Savants du 18 e 
 Siecle, Le Savant du Foyer, and Les grandes Inven- 
 tions. 
 
 Camille Flammarion, eminent as an astronomer, 
 was born in 1842. He has been, like Reclus, an 
 expert in balloon ascensions. His principal works 
 are La Pluralite des Mondes Habites, Les Mondes 
 imaginaires et les Mondes reels, Les Merveilles ce- 
 lestes, Dieu dans la Nature, Histoire du del, Contem- 
 plations scientifiques, Voyages aeriens, L" 1 Atmosphere t
 
 Critics and Scientists. 341 
 
 Histoire dun Plaritte, Les Terres du Ceil. His 
 style is very animated and picturesque. 
 
 Guillemin is another author of illustrated scientific 
 books, such as Les Cometes, Le del, Les Phe7iomenes 
 de la Physique, Les Applications de la Physique. 
 
 In architecture we have Eugene Emmanuel Viollet- 
 le-Duc, born at Paris in 1814. Besides his His- 
 toire dune Maison, and other works on architectural 
 subjects, he has written a Memoir e sur la Defense de 
 Paris. 
 
 In literature on the arts we have Auguste 
 Alexandre Philippe Charles Blanc (1813-1882), 
 born at Castres and trained to be an engraver. He 
 held for many years the post of Director of the Fine 
 Arts. He has published many works on artists, 
 among which is his finely illustrated Histoire des 
 Peintres de toutes^ les Ecoles : Ecole Franchise, 
 Ecole HoUandaise, Ecole J<lamande, r Ecole Anglaise, 
 Ecole Espagnole, cole Italienne, Ecole Allemande. 
 One of his most valuable works is his Grammaire 
 des Arts du Dessin. 
 
 Other writers on art are Jacquemart, with his 
 Histoire de la Ceramique de tons les Temps ; Du- 
 plessis, with his Les Aferveilles de la Gravure ; and 
 Sauzay, with his La Verrerie depuis les Temps les 
 plus recules jusqii 1 a nos Jours. 
 
 In gastronomy, we have the famous Brillat- 
 Savarin (1755-1826), with his wise and witty 
 lucubrations on the art of living well, in his Phy- 
 siologie du Gout.
 
 342 French Literature. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 FRENCH WRITERS OF LOUISIANA. 
 
 In 1682, La Salle descended the Mississippi, 
 claimed for France the magnificent valley, and 
 named the land Louisiana, in honor of the Grand 
 Monarque. 
 
 But the first French colony settled in the great 
 valley was that planted by Iberville at Biloxi in 
 1699. The colony was removed to New Orleans 
 by Bienville in 1706, and remained under French 
 rule until 1762, when it was by secret treaty trans- 
 ferred to Spain, which took possession some years 
 later and held it until 1800. It was then again 
 restored to France. Three years later, Napoleon 
 sold it to the United States for fifteen millions of 
 dollars. 
 
 The vast region originally embraced under the 
 term Louisiana has been cut up -into a number of 
 different States. But much the larger portion of 
 the French population are those whose ancestors 
 settled in the lands now within the State of Louis- 
 iana. 
 
 These French families, amid all the changes that 
 have come over the land, have clung closely to 
 their language and traditions. Their mode of life 
 has remained unchanged, and they have largely 
 indulged in the practice of sending their sons to 
 France for their education. Many wealthy families 
 have gathered large libraries; the literature of the 
 fatherland has been, as a general rule, the only lit- 
 erature read ; refined and cultivated social influences 
 in the great sea- port have increased the devotion to 
 this literature ; and there has naturally been a ten- 
 dency to develop a home literature in the tongue
 
 French Writers of Louisiana. 343 
 
 still used in tli e bosom of very many families, where 
 English is never heard. 
 
 A few, at least, of these writers should be given 
 a place in a sketch of French literature prepared 
 for use in this country. At the head of this liter- 
 ary body, by common consent, stands Gayarre, who 
 has for a series of years been giving interesting Con- 
 ferences in New Orleans on the scenes and incidents 
 of the first French Revolution, after a life spent in 
 literary labor in two tongues, principally on histor- 
 ical works. 
 
 Charles E. Arthur Gayarre was born in 1805 of an 
 old Louisianian family of Spanish descent. His first 
 work was an essay on the history of his native 
 State. This was followed by his Histoire de la 
 Lnnisiane, which reached the period of Spanish 
 rule, and was warmly praised in France for its clear- 
 ness, simplicity, and_- good taste. Several other 
 works on Louisiana, its Romance, and its History ; 
 a dramatic novel ; a history of Philip II., of Spain ; 
 a comedy ; some pamphlets, and some lectures, 
 make up the rest of what he has published, and 
 these writings were in English. 
 
 Victor Sejour, an actor as well as dramatic 
 author, whose life has been mainly spent in France, 
 though he was of New Orleans parentage, was born 
 in that city in 1809. His chief works have been 
 de Napoleon, a drama in verse entitled, 
 , La Chute de Sejan, a prose drama called 
 III-, L' Argent du Diable, Les Noces Veni- 
 tiennes. Andre, Gerard, and Le Martyr du Cceur, the 
 last written in conjunction with Bresil. 
 
 Frai^ois Dominique Rouquette was born at New 
 Orleans in 1810, and educated at Nantes in France. 
 He has published two collections of poems, Les 
 Meschacebennes and Flews d'Amerique, to the latter 
 of which writers like Mery and fimile Deschamps 
 have awarded high praise. 
 
 The brother of this poet, the Abbe* Adrien Rou- 
 quette, also a poet, has died but a short time ago. A
 
 344 French Literature. 
 
 famous recluse, wlio only came to the city to get 
 books, he was reputed to be familiar with all the 
 wild things of the woods, from the Indians to the 
 birds. Like his brother, he was born at New 
 Orleans and educated at Nantes. To his first pub- 
 lication, Les Savanes, Poesies Americaines, Sainte- 
 Beuve, Auguste Brizeau, and Barthelemi all gave 
 a cordial welcome. This collection was followed by 
 a volume of sacred poems, enti titled Fleurs Sau- 
 vages, and a work in eloquent prose called La The- 
 baide en Amerique, ou Apologie de la Vie Solitaire 
 et Contemplative. His later works were L 'Anto- 
 niade, ou la Solitude avec Dieu . Poeme Eremetique ; 
 Le Conciliabule Infernal; and Poemes Patriotiques. 
 He also issued some of his poems in English. 
 
 Charles Delery was born in 1815, of a Louisian- 
 ian family of Acadian French origin. He studied 
 medicine in Paris. His earliest production was a 
 pamphlet, Essai sur la Liberte. Later, he published 
 fitudes sur les Passions ; Ftivre Jaune ; Confederes 
 et Federaux; and Memiore sur Tfipidemie de Ftivre 
 Jaune qui a regne a la Nouvelle Orleans et dans les 
 Campagnes. 
 
 Charles Oscar Dugue was born at New Orleans 
 in 1821, and educated in Paris. His first publica- 
 tion was a volume of poems, entitled Essais Poe- 
 tiques. This was followed by a drama called Milo 
 ou la Mort de la Salle, and another play, entitled 
 Le Cyyne ou Mingo. He has also written some 
 philosophical works. 
 
 L. Placide Canonge, now music-critic for 
 L'Abeille, the able French paper of New Orleans, 
 has been a prolific writer for the stage. He was 
 born in 1822, and educated in Paris. He began his 
 literary work with a vaudeville, Le Maudit Passe- 
 port. Following this, came the plays of Oaston de 
 St. Elme, L* Ambassadeur d 1 Autriche, Un Grand 
 d'Espange, Histoire sous Charles Quint, France et 
 Espagne, Gomte de Monte Cristo, Comte de Car- 
 magnola, and the comedy of Qui perd gagne. He
 
 French Writers of Louisiana 345 
 
 re-published also from Girardin's paper, La Presse, 
 political articles which he had contributed to it 
 during the eventful struggles of 1848. This series 
 was entitled Institutions Americaines. His lyrics 
 are remarkable for fire, sweetness, and tenderness. 
 The most touching of these is his Brise du Sud, 
 written in exile. Educated in France at the time 
 when the enthusiasm of the romantic school was at 
 its highest, he has imbibed all the fervor and fresh- 
 ness which that school wished to import into 
 literature. 
 
 Henri Vignaud was born in 1828. He began 
 life as a journalist in the town of Thibodaux, 
 Louisiana. His first work was L* Anthropologie, 
 published serially in La Renaissance Louisianaise, 
 a periodical established in New Orleans in 1860 by 
 himself, Canonge, and Hiriart. He went to Paris 
 in 1862, engaged in journalism there, and became 
 later a member of the United States legation in 
 Paris, after having had some diplomatic experience 
 as attache, to the Roumanian legation. He holds 
 high rank as a theatrical critic. His literary work 
 has consisted chiefly of critical work for journals 
 and memorials to scientific societies. Albert 
 Delpit and Eugdne Guiraud should be named along 
 with Yignaud, as Louisianians of literary mark 
 now resident in Paris. I have already spoken of 
 their novels, plays, and operas. 
 
 Adolphe Calongue was born at New Orleans in 
 1836. His literary productions have been poerns, 
 among which may be mentioned his Hymne a la 
 Memoire de Madame la Generale Beauregard and 
 his ode Sur le SuppHee de Maximilien. 
 
 In 1847, there appeared a series of sketches, 
 spirited and graphic, of the celebrities of the 
 New Orleans of that time, forty-eight in all. It 
 was published anonymously, but is generally 
 accredited to Cyprien Dufour, an able lawyer 
 of the Crescent City. The work is entitled 
 jEsquisses Locales, and contains felicitous por-
 
 346 French Literature. 
 
 traitures of Gayarre, 1'Abbe* Eouquette, and ^lacide 
 Canonge, as they were thirty-five years ago. 
 
 There was published a few years ago in New 
 Orleans a romance, L 1 Habitation des St- Ybars, by 
 Dr. Alfred Mercier, Secretary of the Athenee 
 Louisianaise. This work is intended to depict life 
 on a Louisianian plantation before the war, but the 
 narrative laps over the war, and presents also a 
 picture of its results. The style is vivid and glow- 
 ing, and some of the scenes are attractive ; but the 
 general spirit of the book is sombre, and it closes 
 with a perfect glut of horrors. It surely can not be 
 in all respects a true delineation of family life 
 among the French people of Louisiana. The most 
 interesting thing in the book is its too infrequent 
 introduction of the patois used by the colored 
 people, the Creole or Gumbo French. 
 
 Of recent publication also are HHistoire des Etats- 
 Unis, suivie de VHistoire de la Louisiane, by 
 Madame M. D. Girard ; and Histoire de la Louisiane, 
 racontee aux Enfants Louisianais, by Madame Laure 
 Auqlry. 
 
 Among the poets of an earlier day should have 
 been mentioned Louis Allard and Constant 
 Lepouse. 
 
 Since the manuscript of this work passed out of 
 my hands, works of fiction have appeared in France, 
 which so fully substantiate the confident hope, ex- 
 pressed in the foregoing pages, of the re-appear- 
 ance of better taste and purer genius, that I must 
 name at least one or two of these recent works be- 
 fore closing. 
 
 'A work of admirable humor and freshness of 
 style and spirit, La Neuvaine de Colette, appeared 
 anonymously a winter ago in the pages of the Revue 
 des Deux Mondes. It was welcomed witli eager 
 praise by a public sated at last with the dreary 
 meannesses and revolting details of the so-called 
 realistic school. It became immensely popular. 
 
 A still more favorably received story, because of
 
 34:7 
 
 its patrioric purpose it deals with the stress of the 
 Franco-Prussian war was Mademoiselle Solange, 
 by Francois de Julliot. Its well-drawn characters, 
 its provincial atmosphere, its truth to nature in the 
 delineation of the heroine's growth in character and 
 her waking to nobler aims in life at the touch of 
 feeling for her country's needs, make it a delightful 
 romance. 
 
 Family affection, girlish grace, womanly pride 
 and strength of character, purity of life, and nobility 
 of purpose, triumphing over self-seeking and love 
 of luxury, are still to be found in the works of genius 
 offered us by French literature, as well as by all the 
 great literatures of the world. 
 
 A great people, with a great language and a liter- 
 ature in the past of immense range and variety, 
 cannot continue to produce imaginative art of a 
 wholly debasing kind. Genius is a ferment that 
 clears in the end, and leaves as its product a pure 
 and refreshing wine.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAC.K ! PAGE 
 
 About 27,310 Bernard 3)9 
 
 Abrantes (Madame d') 256 Bertaut 68 
 
 Aehard 314 Berthet 341 
 
 Aime of Vareunes 40 Beze ide) ... . 02 
 
 Alembert (d'l 16. 1S2 Biart .. ..322 
 
 A lexandre of Beruay 40 Bida 29, 4 2 
 
 Alexandrine verse 40 Blanc (Charles). 341 
 
 Allard 346 UltUlv (Louw) 206 
 
 Ampere (J.J.) 326 Blaze de Bury 28,329 
 
 Ampere < A. Ml 16 Bodin ". 76 
 
 Auivot 7'.' B etie ulela) 71 
 
 Anais-Segalas 'Madame) 297 Boileau 118, 133 
 
 Aneelot 27 Bonaparte (Luctea) 254 
 
 Andrieux.. . 247 Bonaparte (Charles) 255 
 
 Audrv (Madame) 3)6 Bonaparte i Louis) 255 
 
 Arago 2H i Honaidide) 25S 
 
 Arnaiild 93.95 honiface 303 
 
 Arnault 24.) I ossuet 14,130 
 
 An.uet 157 Bmifflers 145 
 
 Anlnir iK'iiiK) .Jf. 40 Boulsinvilliera 140 
 
 AuhiKiieid'i ".. 67 Boiirdaloue 14,136 
 
 Aulign6( Merle d 1 ) 278 Boursanlt 141 
 
 Auca-sin et Nicolette 4.' l'.ie..euf 135 
 
 AiiKier 20!) Breliat 321 
 
 Aotioy (the Countess d'j 1 13 Hi-nlat-Savariu 341 
 
 Autran 2".'0 Hrizeux 292 
 
 Ba'if 63 Browses (de) 1^9 
 
 Bailly 20 i Bioii^liain, ..n La Pucelle 167 
 
 Ballanche .. .. 259 lirnius. Romance of 40 
 
 Baldwin <.f Flnnders 41.53 Buffon 16.195 
 
 Balz.iu iljuez lei ','.) ' Bulwer-Lytton, on Montaigne.. 12 
 
 Balzac CHonorddf) 26. 3- M " " Lesage 17 
 
 Baranteidei 29,273 " " Moliere. 103, 1(19 
 
 Barhier 2'.U " "Racine 124 
 
 Baron 108. 1W. HI " " Saint-Simon ISO 
 
 Bartasidin 67 " " " Voltaire.15", 109 
 
 Barth6lemy (I'AbW) 188 " " Lamartine.. 2S5 
 
 Burtiiez 1S-.I Byron, on Madame de Stael 219 
 
 Basselin :'', < ilianis 239 
 
 Baudelaire 2S Calas. Voltaire's defence of the 
 
 Bautain 26'. family 165 
 
 Bayle 1i Calpivne.ie (Lai 07 
 
 Bay le (Consul) 30J Calongne 345 
 
 Beast-fable 41 Calvin. 6-2 
 
 Beanliarnais ( Hortensei.. . . 2 ".5 ('ancmire 344 
 
 Beaumarchais If rii|>enVne 2;'. 
 
 Beaiiuiont Kiel 26<l ('apelirlu 321 
 
 Beaumuiit V.tssv 3.'l Carrel 272,279 
 
 Beaumont (Elie de) :^'i c i.vhis < Madame de) l.Ml 
 
 Bfaiixee 1-S Cfi/otte 1!XI 
 
 IV-.lolliere 3il Chamfort 13 
 
 Helliyniii) (M Champollion 2il 
 
 Bellman ... 6-1 t;6 Cliampgiu'on-FIgeae 231 
 
 Belloy (de) 1*0 : Chapelain 87.88 
 
 l:el,,t 27. *K"I. 319 Cliapelle 14tj 
 
 ItArangpr (d) 21. 2*. 272. 2<] Charl.-s d'Oi leans 55 
 
 Uenutrdin de Saint- Pierre. . . 16, 194 (Jhari>entier 336 
 
 349
 
 350 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Charriere (Madame de) ~2l 
 
 Charron 70 
 
 Chat-tier 53 
 
 Chasles (Pliilarete) 325 
 
 Chasles (fimile) 3:;i 
 
 Chateaubriand (de) ....20, 203, 210 
 
 Chaulieu U'Abb6 de) 146 
 
 Cheaier (Andre) 191 
 
 Chenier (Marie Joseph) 192 
 
 Chennevieres 321 
 
 Cherbuliez 31" 
 
 Chevalier 200 
 
 Chrestien '.. ... 77 
 
 Chrestien of Troyes 40 
 
 Christine de Pisan 53 
 
 Claretie 300, 319 
 
 Code Napol6on 229 
 
 Comities (de) 10, 50 
 
 Comte 205 
 
 Condillac 10 
 
 Condprcet 195 
 
 Considerant 240 
 
 Constant 21 0. 221 , 225 
 
 Constant, on Mud. de Stael. . . . 220 
 
 Coqnerel 27'.) 
 
 Cormeiiin 272 
 
 Corneille (Pierre.) 13.88 
 
 Corneiile (Tin. mas) 14 J 
 
 Cottin (Madame) 220, 251 
 
 Coney (tie) 41 
 
 Courier 2',i 
 
 Court de Gebelin 188 
 
 Cousin 29. 2tJ3 
 
 Craven (Madame) 21), 321 
 
 Crebillon (de) 10, 1-18 
 
 Crottet 279 
 
 Crusades, changes produced by 4S 
 
 Cnvelier 53 
 
 Cmier 229 
 
 Cnvier, on Buff on 19.~> 
 
 Cyrano de Bergerac 100 
 
 Dacier (Madame) 146 
 
 Daguesseau 151, 153 
 
 I>am iron 205 
 
 Danehet 240 
 
 Darn 250 
 
 Daubenton 197, 230 
 
 D'Anbigne, 07 
 
 D'Aubign-HMerle) 278 
 
 Daudet 27, 319 
 
 Daurat 03 
 
 Deffand (Madame du) 185 
 
 D.-luvigne 280 
 
 Delery 344 
 
 Delille 180 
 
 Demogeot Si. 331 
 
 Delpit 300,321 
 
 Desaugiers 219 
 
 Desbordes-Valmore (Madame). 287 
 
 Descartes 92 
 
 Deschamps 52 
 
 Desmarets 86, 87, 99 
 
 Desportes 68 
 
 Destouches 148 
 
 Diderot 10, 182 
 
 Drneys 145 
 
 Ducis 180 
 
 Duclos 188 
 
 Dudevant (Madame). . . .26, 307-309 
 
 Uupuytren 
 
 f!lie de Beaumont, 
 ftnanlt 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dufour 34.-) 
 
 Dugue 344 
 
 iManarsais. li^8 
 
 Dumas (Alexandra) 24, 293 
 
 iJiimas (:e Jeiine) 316 
 
 Dumas (ehemis-t) 339 
 
 Dniiiont Ai7 
 
 Dmnoiiriex 203, 226 
 
 iHipanloup 337 
 
 Dupont i 29'J 
 
 Durand (Madame) 320 
 
 230 
 339 
 322 
 180 
 244 
 186 
 815 
 76 
 45 
 332 
 279 
 138 
 298 
 315 
 318 
 310 
 340 
 31!) 
 139 
 110 
 
 279 
 191 
 
 253 
 205 
 146 
 23(i 
 246 
 49 
 1 
 
 Kn fan tin 
 
 itpinay ( Madame de) 
 
 KrckmaiiP-Chatrian 27, 
 
 fitienne (fistienne) 
 
 Kabliaux 
 
 Fallonx (de) 
 
 Kauriel 
 
 Fenelon 14,137, 
 
 Feuillet 
 
 Ft''val 
 
 Feydeau 27. 
 
 Fignier 
 
 Flammarion 
 
 Flaubert 
 
 Fleuhier 
 
 Fleury (I'Abbe) .... 
 Florence (Deleelnze's Histoiy 
 of). 
 
 Florian 
 
 F'ontanes 
 
 Fontaues, on Chateaubriand... 
 Fontenelle 
 
 Fourier 
 
 Fourier (Charles) 
 
 Frangoisof Rues... 
 
 Franks 
 
 French People 
 
 Language 
 
 " Heroic Metre 
 
 " Fiction 
 
 Freron 
 
 Fresnel 
 
 Froissart 
 
 Gaboriau 
 
 Galland 
 
 Gamier. 
 
 .241- 
 
 Gautier of Coinsv 
 
 Gautier (Theophile) 295, 
 
 ' on Art 
 
 Gayarre 
 
 'Gay-Lussac 
 
 Geiee 
 
 Genlis (Madame de) 
 
 Gennevraye 
 
 Geoffrin (Madame) 
 
 (ierson... 
 
 310- 
 
 Gt'-rnzez 
 
 Geruzez, on 1'Hopital 
 
 "La Fontaine 
 
 Gilbert 
 
 Gillot 
 
 Girard 
 
 Girardin (Madame de) 
 
 Gotnbault , 
 
 168 
 23 
 177 
 235 
 50 
 319 
 143 
 6S 
 46 
 312 
 312 
 343 
 
 49 
 228 
 322 
 186 
 
 53 
 331 
 
 71 
 127 
 177 
 
 340 
 
 295 
 
 97
 
 IXDEX. 
 
 351 
 
 PACK 
 
 Gomberville 'J7 
 
 Goncourt (de) 321 
 
 Gondi (Paul de) 13-3 
 
 Gournay i Mademoiselle de) 74 
 
 QoKlan. 294, 310 
 
 Graindor of Douai 39 
 
 Grasset 279 
 
 Grebau (the brothers) 54 
 
 -t 177 
 
 Greville 28,320 
 
 Grimm 183 
 
 Gueneed'Abbe) 178 
 
 Guerin (Maurice de) 333 
 
 Gueriu (Eugenie de) 333 
 
 Guillaume of Lorris 47 
 
 Guillemiu 341 
 
 Guiraud 287 
 
 Guizot 29, 269 
 
 on the Crusades 48 
 
 " la Princesse de Cleves.130 
 " " Philippe de Comines, 56 
 
 Guy-Patin 99 
 
 Halevy 318 
 
 Hamilton (de) 147 
 
 Hardy 86 
 
 Heine, on the Marseillaise. ... 280 
 
 Helvetius 184 
 
 Herberay des Essarts 62 
 
 Herbelot (d') 113 
 
 Heroic Age 3* 1 
 
 Hetzel 883 
 
 Hoi bach (d') 1*3 
 
 Houdetot (Madame d'.i 187 
 
 Hugo 25,289-291 
 
 Hundred Years' War 49 
 
 Houssaye 315 
 
 Huon of Villeneuve 39 
 
 Huon le Roy 46 
 
 Jacquemart 341 
 
 Jacqueuiart GelSe 49 
 
 Janin 28,326 
 
 Jasmin 300 
 
 Jean Borel 40 
 
 Jean of Boves 46 
 
 Jeau of Flagy 39 
 
 Jean of Meuug 47, 48 
 
 Jean Michel of Angers. 54 
 
 Jodelle 66 
 
 Join ville (de) 47 
 
 Jouffroy 29, 264 
 
 Karr ( Alphonse) 312 
 
 Hook (Paul del 26, 302 
 
 Kock (Henri de) 303 
 
 Laboulaye 29, 313 
 
 La Bruyere 139 
 
 Lacepede 237 
 
 Lacordaire 29, 262 
 
 La Fayette (Madame de) 130 
 
 Lafont 296 
 
 La Fontaine 14,127,141 
 
 La Harpe idei 179 
 
 Lallemand 337 
 
 Lally-Tollendal 167 
 
 Laniartine (de) 28, 29, :>S4 
 
 Lambert the Short 40 
 
 Lamennais (de) 29, 261 
 
 Lamotte 14C 
 
 Lancelot 96 
 
 Lanfrey 273 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Language, French 1 
 
 Langue d'Oil 9 
 
 Langue d'Oc .....' 9 
 
 La Xoue 180 
 
 La Noue (de) 76 
 
 La Prade 296 
 
 La Touche 180 
 
 Las Cases 256 
 
 Lays of Exploits . . . 32 
 
 Lebrun ... 180 
 
 Legare, on Daguesseau 152 
 
 Legare. quoting Prince d'Aren- 
 
 berg on Figaro 201 
 
 Legouve (E.) 296 
 
 Legouve(G.) 248 
 
 Lemaistre 93 
 
 Lemaistre de Sacy 96 
 
 Lemercier 249 
 
 Lemierre 180 
 
 Lemoine (Le Pere) 99 
 
 LenonnaBt 29 
 
 Lepouse 346 
 
 Leroux 265 
 
 Leroy ( Pierre) 77 
 
 Leroy ( Huon) 46 
 
 Lesage 17, 148 
 
 Lesueur 322 
 
 Leveque 332 
 
 L'Hopital (De) 70 
 
 Lingua-Franca 47 
 
 Lisle. Rouget (de) 280 
 
 Littre 335 
 
 Lomenie (de) 332 
 
 Lome'nie (de), on Chateaubri- 
 and 210 
 
 Louis Napol6on ~'74 
 
 Louvet 202 
 
 Lovers of Provence (The) 42 
 
 Mably (1'Abbe de) 190 
 
 Macaulay, on Provence 8 
 
 " Feneion 138 
 
 " Saint-Simon 143 
 
 " Voltaire 161. 164 
 
 ' " Dumont 2\!7 
 
 Mace 3!4 
 
 Mackintosh, on Mad. de Stael.. 217 
 
 Maillard 54 
 
 Maimbourg 140 
 
 Mainteuon (Madame de) 144 
 
 Mairet 87 
 
 Maistre (Joseph de) 225 
 
 Maistiv i Xa vier de) 2^6 
 
 Malebrauclie 140 
 
 Malherbe 77 
 
 Malot 322 
 
 Maquet 314 
 
 Marguerite of Navarre . . .10, 60, 62 
 
 Marivaux (de.) 178 
 
 Marmier 313 
 
 Blarmontel 109, 178 
 
 Marot CO 
 
 Marseillaise, La 280 
 
 Martin 313 
 
 Mascaron 139 
 
 Massillon 14, 139 
 
 Maynard 77, 78 
 
 Mazure 279 
 
 Menage 108 
 
 Blenot 54
 
 352 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 FAGS 
 
 Mercier 346 
 
 Merimee 304, 305 
 
 Mery 292 
 
 Mezerai 140 
 
 Michaud 251 
 
 Michaux 237 
 
 Michelet 29, 278 
 
 Mignet 277 
 
 Milievoye 253 
 
 Miotde M61ito '. 257 
 
 Mirabeau 193, 203 
 
 Mistral 301 
 
 Mole ei7 
 
 Moliere 14, 103, 1 14 
 
 Monstrelet 51 
 
 Montegut 330 
 
 Montepin 321 
 
 Montaigne (de) 12, 72 
 
 Montaigne, on Amyot 72 
 
 Montalembert (de) 29, 259 
 
 " on Lacor- 
 
 daire .... 262 
 
 Montesquieu (de) 15, 154, 155 
 
 Montfleury 141 
 
 Montluc (Blaise de) 76 
 
 Montausier 81 
 
 Moore, on French Heroic Verse, 168 
 
 " " Constant 225 
 
 Mornay, Philippe de 83 
 
 Murger 299 
 
 Musset (de) 28, 297 
 
 Mystery and Miracle Plays 54 
 
 Memoirs of Bernard Palissy. . . 61 
 
 the Leaguers 83 
 
 " the Huguenots 83 
 
 " Richelieu 86 
 
 " Richelieu's Time.. 102 
 " Cardinal de Retz.. 132 
 " the Due de Saint- 
 Simon 141,149 
 
 " La Fare 146 
 
 " Mad. de Staal 147 
 
 Voltaire 170 
 
 " Rousseau 174 
 
 Bailly -. 202 
 
 " Chateaubriand .... 206 
 Madame de Stael.. 219 
 
 " Dumouriez 226 
 
 Dumont 227 
 
 Madame de Genlis, 229 
 
 Arnault 249 
 
 Napol6on 254 
 
 Mad. de Remusat. . 256 
 Mad. d'Abrantes.. 26b 
 
 " Las Cases 256 
 
 " Miot de Melito .... 257 
 
 " Vidocq 257 
 
 " Madame Michelet. 278 
 
 " Dumas 294 
 
 Napoleon 253 
 
 Napoleon (Louis) 273 
 
 Necker 21 1 
 
 Nerval (de) 296 
 
 Nicole 96 
 
 Nisard 328 
 
 Nodier 302 
 
 Ogier le Danois 38 
 
 Ohnet 322 
 
 Orleans (Charles of) 55 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Palisot 237 
 
 Palissy 61 
 
 Paris, le Comte de 279 
 
 Pascal 14,93 
 
 Pasquier 75 
 
 Pasquier, oil Montaigne 73 
 
 Passerat 77 
 
 Pasteur 33tf 
 
 Patin 325 
 
 Pellisson 140 
 
 Pereflxe 140 
 
 Perrault 14;i 
 
 Perrotin, the publisher 38J 
 
 Pey rat 27<J 
 
 Piancelle 46 
 
 Piron 177 
 
 Pithou 77 
 
 Planche 328 
 
 Plessis-Mornay (du) 83 
 
 Pousard 297 
 
 Poutmartin (de) 28, 321, 329 
 
 on Janin 327 
 
 Pompignan (de) 176 
 
 Porchat 292 
 
 Pouchet 337 
 
 Pouillet 333 
 
 Poujoulat 336 
 
 Port Royal 92 
 
 Preaching Friars 54 
 
 Prevost (!' Abbe) 194 
 
 Prevost Paradol 274 
 
 Preston (Mrs.), trans, of Mireio. 301 
 
 Pressens6 337 
 
 Provencal Lang, and Lit 9 
 
 Quatrefages (de) 339 
 
 Quesnay 153 
 
 Quinault 135 
 
 Quinet 292 
 
 Rabelais 11, 61 
 
 Racan (de) 77, 78 
 
 Racine (Jean). 13, 115, 135 
 
 Racine (Louis) 151 
 
 Raimbert of Paris 39 
 
 Rambouillet (Madame de) 79 
 
 Rapin 77 
 
 Raynal (!' Abbe) 184 
 
 Raynouard 247 
 
 Reboul 288 
 
 Recamier (Madame de). . . .207, 223 
 
 Reclus 340 
 
 Regnard 135 
 
 Regnier 77 
 
 R6musat (de) 267 
 
 R6musat (Madame de) 256 
 
 Remusat 233 
 
 Renan 333 
 
 Reynard the Fox 44 
 
 Reybaud (Madame) 322 
 
 Richard the Pilgrim 39 
 
 Richebourg 322 
 
 Richelieu 12,85 
 
 Rochefoucauld (de la) 128 
 
 Rochefort 317 
 
 Revoil-Colet (Madame) 296 
 
 Renaissance 58 
 
 Rodrigues 243 
 
 Rogers, on Madame de Stag! . . 218 
 
 Roland, Song of 32, 38 
 
 Rollin 151
 
 INDEX. 
 
 353 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ronsard 63, 64 
 
 Rosset 180 
 
 Kotron 66 
 
 Koucher 180 
 
 Round Table Cycle 32 
 
 RonquetteiF. D.) 343 
 
 Rouquette (A.) 343 
 
 Rousseau (J. B.) 140 
 
 Rousseau ij. J.) 16, 172-176 
 
 Hoyer-Collard 263 
 
 Rues (Francois de) 49 
 
 Rulhiere 188 
 
 Rutebeuf 46 
 
 Ryer <du) 90 
 
 Sacy (de) 233 
 
 " on The Arabian Nights' 
 
 Entertainments.... 144 
 
 Paint-Amant 99 
 
 Sainte-Beuve 28, 324 
 
 on Constant 222 
 
 " Montalembert,260 
 
 Saint-Evremond 147 
 
 Saint Gelais ide) 63 
 
 Saintiiie 29, 302 
 
 Saint-Lambert 179 
 
 Saint-Pierre (Bernardin de) 153 
 
 Saint Simon (Due de) 137, 149 
 
 " " on Fene- 
 
 lon.... 137 
 Saint-Simon (Comte de). . ..241-244 
 
 Saisset 332 
 
 Salon of the Hotel Rambouillet, 80 
 
 Mad. da Maine 147 
 
 de Lambert 147 
 
 du Deffand 186 
 
 Geoffrin 187 
 
 d'Houdetot 187 
 
 Simrd 187 
 
 deRf'camier, 208-210 
 
 de Stael 222 
 
 deGirardin 295 
 
 Salvandy 273 
 
 Sand '. ...24,307-309 
 
 Sa ndeau 27, 296 
 
 Sarrey. <>n the French stage.. . 22 
 
 Sar-inii 299 
 
 sarrnzin 82 
 
 Sa;yre Menippe 76 
 
 Siimin 180 
 
 SiinsMire (del 339 
 
 S:i i] vijriiy (de) 101 
 
 Soarrori 100 
 
 Srh"ll '.. 322 
 
 Scribe 294 
 
 8cuderi (George) 88 
 
 Scnderl (Mile, de) 82,96,98 
 
 Sc.iaine 190 
 
 Sf.gala* 'Madame Anals) 297 
 
 St'^ur i dei 275 
 
 Segur (de) Madame 29, 318 
 
 S.'-j.'iir 343 
 
 Seville i Madame de)...9, 130-132 
 
 Sieyes 193,203 
 
 Simon 332 
 
 Sismondi (de) 250 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Sorel 101 
 
 Souli6 304 
 
 Soumet 287 
 
 Souvestre 310 
 
 Spain (St. Hilaire's History of i. 279 
 
 Staal (Madame de) 147 
 
 Stael HolsteiinMad.de), 20, 211-220 
 
 Stahl 333 
 
 Stendhal (de) .309 
 
 Suard (Madame; 1ST 
 
 Sue 25,306,307 
 
 Taine 28,330 
 
 Tallemant desReaux... f-0 
 
 Talleyrand 257 
 
 on Mad. de Stael.. 219 
 
 Tastu Oladamei 288 
 
 Terrail (Du) 322 
 
 Thackeray, on Dumas 293 
 
 " Janin 326 
 
 Theophile Viaud .. 78 
 
 Theuriet 321 
 
 Thierry 29,276.277 
 
 Thiers 29,272 
 
 Thomas 190 
 
 Tillemont 140 
 
 Tissot 265,279 
 
 Tocqueville (de) 268 
 
 Toepffer 303 
 
 Tracy (de) 239 
 
 Tressan (de) 189 
 
 Troubadours and TrouTeres..9, 52 
 
 Turold 39 
 
 Urfe(d') 77 
 
 Vacherot... 336 
 
 Varillas 140 
 
 Vaudeville, Origin of 53 
 
 Vauquelin de la Fresnaye 68 
 
 Vauvenargues 188 
 
 Velpeau 337 
 
 Vericour(de) 331 
 
 " " on Chateaubriand 'M6 
 
 " " Cuvier 231 
 
 Vertot 140 
 
 Verne (Jules) 27, 319 
 
 Veiiillot 314 
 
 Viaud 78 
 
 Vidocq 257 
 
 Viennet 253 
 
 Vignaud 345 
 
 Vigny (del 28, 288 
 
 Villehardoum 41 
 
 Viilemain 3-J3 
 
 Villemain, on Beaumarchais. . JH 
 
 " Froissart 51 
 
 Villeneuve (Madame) 143 
 
 Villon 55 
 
 Vincent 322 
 
 Vinet 325 
 
 Viollet-le-Duc 341 
 
 Vitet 291 
 
 Voiture 82 
 
 Volney 240 
 
 Voltaire 15, 156-171 
 
 AValkenaer 332 
 
 Zola 30, 27,319,320