- 
 

 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 Ex Libris 
 ISAAC FOOT
 
 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRENCH 
 LITERATURE
 
 L>tA*<^~- N- M^lJ^^r.
 
 
 4Lj 
 
 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON 
 
 tii 
 
 LATE STAFF LECTURER IN LITERATURE TO THE UNIVERSITY EXTENSION BOARD, 
 UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 
 
 WITH MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR BY 
 
 A. A. JACK, M.A., LL.M. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN 
 
 LONDON 
 
 G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. 
 
 1919
 
 
 HB3
 
 WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON 
 
 A MEMOIR 
 
 Mr. Hudson's death on the 12th of August 1918, at 
 Droitwich, came as a shock ; but not altogether to those 
 by whom he was best known as an unanticipated blow. 
 In 1913 he had had a disabling attack of rheumatic fever, 
 and he was well aware his heart was weak. Indeed, he 
 once remarked to one who some eight years ago remon- 
 strated with him for overtaxing his strength that he had 
 good reason to suppose his span of life would be short, 
 and that he had much that he wished to write. 
 
 This is the nemesis of the critical profession. Before 
 one can criticise, one must have read and studied ; and 
 when at fifty " the ship is cheered," one may perhaps hear 
 the evening bell. Not that Mr. Hudson's energy was in 
 any degree abated. His last book on Nineteenth Century 
 Literature was as ripe and easy as anything he had pro- 
 duced, a thing let fall from copiousness and a mind stored 
 to the full. 
 
 Learning is a word that in this country has come to 
 bear a very particular connotation. One must know 
 more about some one subject, however minute or sub- 
 divided, than others do ; or one must labour in the mine 
 and bring to the surface what has not been properly 
 accessible before. But leaving out of account this 
 
 v
 
 vi FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 limited meaning of Learning, there were few literary men 
 in England more generally learned than Mr. Hudson : he 
 knew more about everything than anybody else. 
 
 Starting life as secretary to Herbert Spencer, he had 
 a sound philosophical basis, and wrote books on Spencer 
 and Rousseau. In later years he told The Story of the 
 Renaissance, or wrote of The Man Napoleon, just as when, 
 in California, he had written The Strange Adventures of 
 John Smith. In his list of books there are five with such 
 titles as Studies in Interpretation, The Meaning and Value 
 of Poetry, or Idle Hours in a Library. More directly in 
 the line of his teaching is An Outline History of English 
 Literature, with its accompanying volume of Representa- 
 tive Selections. One finds that he edited or wrote intro- 
 ductions to various works by Carlyle, Dryden, Goldsmith, 
 Addison, Spenser, Bacon, Macaulay ; and in the admirable 
 Poetry and Life series which he originated he was himself 
 responsible for seven monographs. Besides these and 
 many other writings he had to his credit a volume of 
 original verse, The Sphinx and other Poems. 
 
 It would be idle to attempt here to assess the amount 
 of good work, the product of an always living intelligence, 
 enclosed in this little library (some forty publications that 
 appeared mainly in some twenty years), but he himself 
 had a fondness for his volume on Rousseau. Others would 
 put forward claims for his Literary histories ; while there 
 is one book his Introduction to the Study of Literature 
 which is easily the best as it is also the most painstakingly 
 simple introduction to the foundations of Literary appre- 
 ciation. With this exception his specially original work 
 was of a different character, the very modern and charac- 
 teristically lucid introductions to those volumes of The 
 Elizabethan Shakespeare which have been published in this 
 country. Interest in these extended to Germany, and
 
 WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON vii 
 
 it may safely be said that nowhere are the problems 
 of modern Shakespearian criticism handled more com- 
 petently or with a firmer grasp of the essentially modern 
 issues. 
 
 Mr. Hudson did not write on out-of-the-way subjects. 
 His business always was with the best, and his walk conse- 
 quently almost always on trodden ground. But no one 
 was less of the type that smoothly accepts the reigning 
 opinion. He knew exactly what he wanted to bring out. 
 He had the greatest powers of arrangement, and his own 
 and very definite notions about his various subjects. If 
 one wished to show the difference between Compilation 
 and Exposition, one would only have to point to any one 
 of his little masterpieces in the latter art to his Milton 
 or his Gray. 
 
 It was emphatically the skill of an expositor, of a 
 teacher, and it was this skill that served him in peculiar 
 stead throughout his career as an Extension Lecturer. 
 He had started, very happily, as a definite professor in 
 California, and it was there, in Stanford University, that 
 for nine years he laid the foundations of the wide-ranging 
 knowledge essential for his subsequent and more arduous 
 career. When he came to London in 1902, Mr. Churton 
 Collins, already overtasked, was in the evening of his 
 Extension days, and from the first Mr. Hudson, facile 
 princeps among his literary successors, took up without 
 effort the work he was laying down. Dissatisfied with 
 the fragmentary nature of Extension work, he fell in 
 delightedly with Dr. Roberts' scheme of Sessional courses, 
 and, excepting only Professor Gollancz's courses at King's 
 College, it was he, almost unaided, who did the work of 
 the University of London Diploma in Literature. He 
 had two courses for this work : one purely English, 75 
 lectures covering the outline from Chaucer to Tennyson,
 
 viii FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and one General, 25 on Ancient, 25 on Mediaeval, and 
 25 on Modern European Literature. 
 
 Of the first course a fellow-teacher of English may be 
 permitted to say that its circular and recurrent delivery 
 was in itself an arduous task. Sometimes it happened 
 that in one year he would be giving its first portion in one 
 Centre, its second in another, and its third in a third. In 
 any given week he might be lecturing, among his other 
 duties, upon Bacon, Addison, and Burns. Besides, it 
 always happened that the course on General European 
 Literature was running concurrently, and in the Bacon, 
 Addison, Burns week he would also be speaking, perhaps, 
 on Horace, Cervantes, and Moliere. As he lectured with- 
 out notes, or with the scantiest, from a singularly full 
 syllabus only, it meant that he had to have perpetually at 
 his fingers' ends most of the chief books of the chief authors 
 of Europe. 
 
 The powers needed to pursue such a life, and to pursue 
 it with unvarying and even success, are not to be estimated 
 easily. A much greater flexibility of spirit, a much 
 greater control of nerves is required than is demanded 
 from any College teacher. The perfect Extension lecturer 
 (and surely if there is ever to be one Mr. Hudson was 
 he) has no time to air crotchets or to run off on himself 
 rather than on his subject ; and yet how tempting are 
 these diversions. What is one to say of Keats in an hour ? 
 It has been said ; and the one thing that is interesting to 
 oneself is one's own history of personal contact. Never- 
 theless for the auditor who has never even properly heard 
 of the poet, and may not again properly hear, the one 
 thing needful is that the foundations should be well and 
 truly laid. It is difficult to do this constantly and on 
 common topics. To do it as Mr. Hudson did it, and to 
 preserve interest while doing it even in those who had
 
 WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON ix 
 
 heard the main part of the story before ; to do this without 
 ever descending to the popular or deviating from the 
 seriousness of study, to promote always a liberal atmo- 
 sphere while speaking without fence and so as always to 
 be plainly understood, necessitates a forgetfulness of self 
 and a care for one's auditors that is not only a literary 
 but a social virtue. One does not find El Dorados by 
 such conscientiousness, but one must not think, because 
 the rewards in personal reclame are not immediate, that 
 the real rewards are small. And, indeed, what social 
 work, done unostentatiously among us, has been more 
 fruitful ! I should imagine, without attempting a precise 
 estimate, that in his sixteen years in London some ten 
 thousand thinking people, and many of them often, must 
 have heard his voice. These are small numbers, perhaps, 
 when one remembers Robert Chambers or Charles Knight. 
 But the spread of printed information is one thing, and 
 that of personal education necessarily another. In his 
 own sphere, dealing with a restricted public and working 
 with his own method, he has a right to be classed with 
 those great popularisers of knowledge. 
 
 This was the true work of his life, and he would wish 
 it to figure in his epitaph. Among his numerous publica- 
 tions there are several that have already secured their 
 hold in the educational world, and are likely to retain it. 
 They will keep his memory green, as he wished, by the 
 written and not the spoken word. His contributions to 
 the understanding of Shakespeare will preserve his name 
 in Scholarship ; but I am not attempting a presumptuous 
 estimate, and it is true that his national service was as an 
 Extension lecturer. 
 
 It is hard that he should have died just when the 
 social greatness of the work he was doing was coming 
 to be widely understood, and before the cessation of the
 
 x FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 War, when there would have been leisure for due recogni- 
 tion. But I do not think of him as not content. He was 
 a man singularly absorbed in the present labour and 
 satisfied with it. He was not thinking of what the work 
 would lead to, but of the work ; and if he was ever worried, 
 it was not with what his students were thinking about 
 him, but with his thoughts about his students. I think 
 he had a consciousness that he had found work worth 
 doing which no one else could do just as he. Not that I 
 mean that it was a conscious consciousness, or that he 
 flattered himself on that or on any account. It was as a 
 good bowler will take the ball when he begins the over, 
 or some mower will give a contented swing to his scythe. 
 Personally of a natural and unassuming modesty, he 
 would, on question, open his stores without parade, and 
 I can still hear him telling me about Dante as we crossed 
 Blackheath Common " when the clock was striking the 
 hour." To many of us he was an elder brother in the 
 craft that is " so long to lerne " the craft of disinterested 
 teaching ; and it seems to me, as I write this, of all things 
 connected with his death perhaps the most remarkable 
 that I, and I suppose others who were his companions, 
 associated with it so little of the feeling of disaster. I 
 suppose it was because we, and the whole Extension 
 System with us, realised that, though his years were 
 not many, few men had done a more useful life's-work 
 or lived a gentler or more honest life. 
 
 A. A. JACK. 
 
 The following biographical details have been furnished 
 by a near relative. 
 
 William Henry Hudson was born in Victoria Gardens, 
 Kensington, on May 2, 1862. His father, Thomas Hudson,
 
 WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON xi 
 
 a man of marked individuality, was, in his day, a pro- 
 minent advocate of temperance and political reform and 
 an effective platform speaker. His mother, a thoughtful 
 and saintly woman, was a native of Bristol. Though a 
 very intelligent boy and a good average student, he did 
 not labour at his work or look upon the passing of examina- 
 tions as the end of study. Literature claimed him from 
 very early days : he wrote little stories for the entertain- 
 ment of his immediate circle, and one of these, a fairy 
 tale in thirty chapters, is still in possession of the family. 
 In London he attended the old " Brixton Lodge " school : 
 the school-house is still standing, though hidden away 
 behind newer buildings. Here the boy's personality and 
 high spirits soon made him a leader and he became very 
 popular among his fellows. He was an excellent cricketer, 
 strong on the " leg " side and a good bowler. Some 
 time after leaving Brixton Lodge young Hudson ac- 
 companied the family to Bristol, where he entered a 
 solicitor's office. But his heart was not in the law, and 
 he declined the offer of his articles made by his employer. 
 His devotion to literature increased, and he read volumin- 
 ously, assiduously visiting the "Arcades," well known to 
 Bristolians as the special market for second-hand books. 
 In this period, culminating when he was about twenty 
 years of age, he wrote a good deal of poetry for the Bristol 
 papers, and took an active part in temperance and 
 political work. Joining the Bristol Parliamentary Debat- 
 ing Society, he became the leader of an advanced Radical 
 wing, and soon gained a public reputation as a speaker. 
 He also acquired great proficiency as a linguist, and 
 could read most of the masterpieces of European litera- 
 ture in their original language. 
 
 He came to London in the autumn of 1882, and in the 
 following year sailed for New York, where he spent a
 
 xii FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 year in a secretarial capacity. Then returning to London 
 he became in due course private secretary to Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer, and subsequently to Lord (then Sir Frederick) 
 Leighton. 
 
 In 1893 he again went to America, and settled down 
 for some years as a professor in Stanford University, 
 California. A later appointment in the University of 
 Chicago was held during a third visit to the United 
 States. 
 
 During recent years several serious illnesses inter- 
 fered with Mr. Hudson's lecturing and general literary 
 work in London, greatly impairing his health and leading 
 to the fatal attack of the summer of 1918. Towards the 
 close of July he expressed a desire to visit Droitwich 
 to take the baths, from which, some years previously, he 
 had derived saving benefit. Unfortunately, though he 
 reached his destination, he was not able to undergo the 
 special treatment, but gradually grew weaker, and passed 
 away on August 12. He was buried in the St. Andrew's 
 Cemetery outside the town.
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 In two fundamental respects this Short History of French 
 Literature follows the plan of my Outline History of 
 English Literature, explained in the preface to that 
 volume : it attempts to record, not merely the achieve- 
 ments of individual writers, but also the general movement 
 of literature as a whole ; and in doing this, it seeks to 
 exhibit the vital connection of the literature of each 
 period with the changing movements of national life. I 
 have not, however, endeavoured to make the book quite 
 as comprehensive as the Outline History ', and have, indeed, 
 especially in the earlier chapters, ignored many minor 
 writers in order to focus attention upon the few really 
 important men. This is because the book is designed 
 for the English student of French literature, whose first 
 concern is with these important men. For the same 
 reason, in the arrangement of my material I have given 
 what is relatively a large amount of space to modern 
 literature as a division of the subject which is naturally 
 of particular interest to English readers. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that I have freely used 
 not only the standard French histories of French literature, 
 
 xiii
 
 xiv FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 but also innumerable monographs on special authors, 
 epochs, and movements. It would be difficult to indicate 
 in detail my indebtedness to such works, and I must 
 therefore be satisfied with a general acknowledgment of 
 it here. At the same time I think it only fair to myself 
 to state that this is in no sense a mere compilation. I 
 have been a lover of French literature from my boyhood, 
 and a systematic student of it for a longer period than 
 I quite care to remember, and thus this Short History, 
 modest as it is in aim and compass, has really behind it 
 a good many years of independent work. 
 
 W. H. HUDSON. 
 
 PUBLISHERS' NOTE 
 
 THE proofs of this little book were finally corrected by 
 Mr. Hudson in 191 7, but its appearance was delayed, 
 with the approval of the Author, on account of difficulties 
 occasioned by the outbreak of war. In presenting the 
 present memorial edition the publishers would express 
 their indebtedness to Professor Jack, who has courteously 
 revised for the purpose his appreciation of W. H. Hudson 
 which was printed in the issue for October 1 9 1 8 of the 
 University Extension Bulletin. 
 
 Thanks are also due to the Registrar of the University 
 Extension Board for permission to make use of the 
 article by Professor Jack.
 
 LIST OF WORKS BY W. H. HUDSON 
 
 The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer (Appleton, New York). 1894. 
 
 The Strange Adventures of John Smith. 1896. 
 
 Studies in Interpretation (Putnam). 1896. 
 
 The Sphinx and other Poems (Elder & Shepard, San Francisco). 
 1900. 
 
 The Life of Sir Walter Scott (Maclaren). 1901. 
 
 Rousseau and Naturalism in Life and Thought (T. & T. Clark, Edin- 
 burgh). 1903. 
 
 Herbert Spencer (Constable). 1908. 
 
 An Introduction to the Study of Literature (Harrap). 1910. 
 
 The Story of the Renaissance (Cassell). 19 12. 
 
 Idle Hours in a Library (Doxey, San Francisco). 
 
 An Outline History of English Literature (Bell). 191 3. 
 
 Representative Passages from English Literature (Bell). 19 14. 
 
 A Quiet Corner in a Library (Rand McNally & Company, Chicago). 
 
 1915- 
 The Man Napoleon (Harrap). 191 5. 
 
 r France : The Nation and its Development from Earliest Times to the 
 Establishment of the Third Republic (Harrap). 191 7. 
 
 English Literature in the Nineteenth Century (Bell). 1918. 
 
 General Editor of the " Poetry and Life Series," many volumes of 
 which he wrote himself (Harrap). 
 
 The Elizabethan Shakespeare (Harrap) 
 
 The Merchant of Venice. 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost. 
 
 The Tragedie of Julius Caesar. 
 
 The Winter's Tale. 
 
 A Midsummer-Night's Dreame. 
 
 XV
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PACK 
 
 I. The Middle Ages i 
 
 I. Introductory. 2. The Middle Ages. 3. Chansons de 
 Geste. 4. Romans E piques. 5. Didactic Poetry. 6. 
 Popular and Satiric Poetry. 7. Lyrical Poetry. 8. The 
 Drama. 9. Prose. 
 
 II. The Sixteenth Century Poetry and the Drama 2 5 
 
 10. The Sixteenth Century. II. Marot. 12. Ronsard 
 and La Pleiade. 13. Other Poets of the Second Half of 
 the Sixteenth Century. 14. The Drama. 
 
 III. The Sixteenth Century {concluded) Prose . 39 
 
 15. The Prose of the Sixteenth Century. 16. Rabelais. 
 
 1 7. Montaigne. 
 
 IV. The Seventeenth Century Poetry . . 52 
 
 18. The Seventeenth Century. 19. Malherbe. 20. Regnier. 
 21. Boileau. 22. La Fontaine. 23. La Querelle des 
 Anciens et des Modernes. 
 
 V. The Seventeenth Century {continued) The 
 
 Drama . 70 
 
 24. Tragedy before Corneille. 25. The Principles of 
 Classic Tragedy. 26. Corneille. 27. Racine. 28. Other 
 Tragic Poets of the Seventeenth Century. 29. Comedy 
 before Moliere. 30. Moliere. 31. Comedy after Moliere. 
 
 VI. The Seventeenth Century {continued) General 
 
 Prose 92 
 
 32. The Prose of the Seventeenth Century. 33. The 
 Moralists : Pascal. 34. La Rochefoucauld. 35. La 
 Bruyere. 36. Religious Writers. 37. Letters and 
 Memoirs. 
 
 xvii
 
 xviii FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 CHAPTKR TACK 
 
 VII. The Seventeenth Century {concluded) Prose 
 
 Fiction no 
 
 38. The Aristocratic Romance. 39. The Realistic Re- 
 action and the Beginnings of the Modern Novel. 
 
 VIII. The Eighteenth Century General Prose . 121 
 
 40. The Eighteenth Century. 41. The Precursors : Fon- 
 tenelle Montesquieu. 42. Voltaire. 43. Diderot and 
 the Encyclop&iistes. 44. Rousseau. 45. Other Prose 
 Writers. 
 
 IX. The Eighteenth Century {concluded) Poetry, 
 
 the Drama, and the Novel . 154 
 
 46. Poetry. 47. Tragedy. 48. Comedy. 49. The 
 Drame or Trageclie Bourgeoise. 50. The Novel. 
 
 X. The Earlier Nineteenth Century General 
 
 Prose 176 
 
 51. The Earlier Nineteenth Century Romanticism. 52. 
 Mme. de Stael. 53. Chateaubriand. 54. The Critics 
 Sainte-Beuve. 55. Other Prose Writers. 
 
 XI. The Earlier Nineteenth Century {continued) 
 
 Poetry 201 
 
 56. The Romantic School of Poetry. 57. Lamartine. 
 58. Hugo. 59. Vigny. 60. MusseL 61. Gautier. 62. 
 Other Poets. 
 
 XII. The Earlier Nineteenth Century {concluded) 
 
 The Drama and the Novel . . . 224 
 
 63. The Romantic Drama. 64. Dumas. 65. Hugo. 
 66. Vigny. 67. Musset. 68. Other Dramatists. 69. 
 The Novel. 70. The Historical Romance : Vigny 
 M^rimee. 71. Hugo. 72. Dumas. 73. The Novel of 
 Sentiment : George Sand. 74. The Realistic Novel : 
 Balzac. 75. Stendhal Mrimee. 76. Other Novelists. 
 
 XIII. The Later Nineteenth Century General Prose 257 
 
 77. The Later Nineteenth Century. 78. Renan. 79. 
 Taine. 80. Other Critics.
 
 CONTENTS xix 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XIV. The Later Nineteenth Century {continued) 
 
 Poetry 269 
 
 81. Transitional Poetry. 82. The Parnassiens. 83. The 
 Symbolistes. 84. Other Poets. 
 
 XV. The Later Nineteenth Century {concluded) 
 
 The Drama and the Novel . . . 283 
 
 85. The Come'die de Moeurs. 86. The Lighter Drama. 
 87. The Drame Naturaliste and the Romantic Revival. 88. 
 The Roman Realiste. 89. The Roman Naturaliste. 90. 
 Other Novelists. 
 
 Index 301
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 i . Introductory. The French language, which was to 
 form the vehicle of the great literature whose history we 
 are to trace in the following pages, arose directly out of the 
 popular Latin spoken by the Roman conquerors of Gaul. 
 In the course of its development after the Frankish 
 invasion of the fifth century an invasion which contri- 
 buted a good deal to its vocabulary but did not affect its 
 fundamental characteristics it broke up into two large 
 geographical divisions : in the south, the langue d'oc, 
 which had close affinities with the Italian and Spanish 
 modifications of the original lingua romana ; in the 
 north, the langue d'oil, the parent of modern French. 1 
 This langue d'oil was itself subdivided into many dialects, 
 the most important of which were those of Normandy, 
 Picardy, Burgundy, and the lie de France. But the 
 election to the monarchy of Hugh Capet, Duke of France, 
 in 987, made Paris the capital of the kingdom and led 
 to the ultimate triumph of the dialect of the lie de France. 
 From this time on the other dialects of the north, and later, 
 
 1 The terms langue d'oc and langue d'oil are derived from the curious 
 mediaeval practice of describing a language by the word used for the 
 affirmative. Thus Dante speaks of Italian as la lingua di si. 
 
 1 B
 
 2 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the langue d'oc, or provencal, began to sink into mere 
 patois, though it was not until the fourteenth century 
 that, mainly as the result of the political unification of 
 the country, a recognised standard French emerged out 
 of the general linguistic anarchy, and not until the 
 fifteenth that its stability and uniformity were definitely 
 assured. 
 
 It is not necessary for us here to take any account of 
 such experiments as were made in France, either in prose 
 or in verse, before the time of the Capetian dynasty. The 
 history of French literature really begins with the Chansons 
 de Geste of the eleventh century, and these will be our own 
 point of departure. But as the French literature of the 
 Middle Ages from the eleventh century to the fifteenth 
 though very rich, very varied, and in its own way very 
 interesting, is itself a subject for the special inquirer 
 rather than for the general student, a mere sketch 
 of it, in its broader outlines, will for present purposes 
 suffice. 
 
 2. The Middle Ages. It would be an entire mistake 
 to think of these five centuries as if they constituted a 
 single period during which life was fixed, society under- 
 went no change, and thought remained at a standstill, 
 for they were in fact centuries of very great though very 
 gradual transformation. None the less they were broadly 
 characterised by certain common features which we have 
 in mind when, generalising, we speak of them as the 
 Middle Ages. Among these features one of the most 
 important from the point of view of literature was the 
 division of the French people into four sharply distin- 
 guished classes the clergy, the nobility, the bourgeoisie, 
 and beneath these, the great submerged masses, including 
 the artisans of the towns and the peasants and villeins 
 of the country. The clergy held almost unchallenged a
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 3 
 
 monopoly of the learning and intellectual culture of the 
 time ; their principal interest was, of course, in theology 
 and scholastic philosophy ; the language of their choice 
 was their ecclesiastical Latin, but they had also a share, 
 though a small one, in general vernacular literature, and 
 in this their influence told naturally in the direction of 
 didacticism. The nobles cared little for intellectual 
 pursuits ; the feudal system, as it existed in France, 
 made them largely independent of the central authority ; 
 they spent much of their time in private warfare among 
 themselves or in struggles with the crown ; their leisure 
 was devoted mainly to martial exercises and the chase. 
 Hence the literature which they inspired and which was 
 produced for their amusement was fundamentally an 
 aristocratic literature a literature of fighting, of chival- 
 rous sentiment, and, as time went on and the refinements 
 of life began to affect them, of love in the peculiar romantic 
 and courtly acceptation of the term. The temper of the 
 burgher classes was strikingly different ; they represented 
 the practical genius and sound good sense of the nation, 
 its essentially Gallic qualities, its wit, its homely wisdom, 
 its turn for satire. Necessarily, while the prestige of the 
 Church and the power of the feudal system were at their 
 height, the bourgeoisie played an insignificant part in the 
 life of the country ; but as with changing conditions they 
 began to gain slowly in wealth and the influence which 
 wealth brings with it, they began to be a force in society, 
 and the literature which resulted everywhere reflected 
 their own modes of thought and feeling. Much of it is 
 indeed pervaded by their direct hostility to the privileged 
 orders, whose long-continued domination they were coming 
 more and more to resent, while generally it is marked by 
 a strong spirit of reaction against the romantic idealism 
 of the nobility. It is thus, broadly speaking, a popular
 
 4 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 as distinguished from an aristocratic literature a litera- 
 ture in the main realistic in tone and tendency, coarse 
 in material, unconventional and vigorous in style. 
 As for the lower classes, their part was to provide 
 occasional subjects for literature, and chiefly, though 
 not entirely, for jest and satire. Otherwise they did not 
 count. 
 
 While, however, we are justified in speaking of the 
 Middle Ages in these general terms, it is necessary that 
 we should recognise the large changes which, as we have 
 noted, came over French life from the beginning of our 
 period till its close. The eleventh and twelfth centuries 
 embraced the ascendant stages of the mediaeval order ; 
 feudalism and chivalry were now rising towards their 
 height ; in the intellectual sphere the supremacy of the 
 Church was complete. The thirteenth century, though 
 from one point of view it may fairly be regarded as the 
 golden age -of mediaevalism for it was the age of Louis 
 IX., of Thomas Aquinas, of the Mendicant Orders, of the 
 great cathedral builders was none the less profoundly 
 affected by the beginnings of many influences social, 
 as in the growth of the bourgeoisie ; intellectual, as in the 
 spread of education among the laity and the first breath 
 of the spirit of humanism which in the long run were 
 to sap mediaevalism at its foundations. It may thus be 
 described as the springtime of the Renaissance. But the 
 disasters of the fourteenth century, and in particular the 
 desolating Hundred Years' War, and the disorganisation 
 and anarchy which ensued, were fatal to culture, and in- 
 tellectual progress was for the time arrested. Then with 
 the fifteenth century France entered upon a period of 
 comparative calm. In large measure as the result of the 
 Hundred Years' War the power of feudalism was broken ; 
 with feudalism, the ideals and sentiments of chivalry
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 5 
 
 began to wane ; under Louis XL an enormous step was 
 taken towards the subordination of the nobles and the 
 unification of the kingdom ; the bourgeoisie meanwhile 
 continued to gain ground at the expense of the privileged 
 classes. These general changes from century to century 
 should be carefully marked, for their influence will 
 become apparent as we pass the literature of the Middle 
 Ages under brief review. 
 
 3. Chansons de Geste. The chansons de geste (songs 
 of deeds or exploits : Latin gesta), with which our survey 
 begins, were originally composed for recitation, either by 
 the poet himself (trouvere) or by a professional minstrel 
 (Jongleur), in the castles of the feudal nobility, and, 
 taking their tone from the audience to which they were 
 addressed, they dealt almost entirely with incidents of 
 fighting and slaughter. By far the most famous of these 
 is the Chanson de Roland, which probably dates, in the 
 form in which it has come down to us (a form which, 
 however, it reached only after a long course of develop- 
 ment and amplification), from the second half of the 
 eleventh century. Its very slight historical foundation 
 was provided by Charlemagne's expedition against the 
 Saracens in northern Spain, but the actual matter of 
 the poem is pure legend. It tells how Roland, the greatest 
 of Charlemagne's peers, while leading the rear-guard of 
 the king's army through the narrow pass of Roncevaux 
 in the Pyrenees, is, through the treachery of another peer, 
 Ganelon, surprised by the enemy ; how he and his men 
 withstand with desperate courage assault after assault ; 
 how at length, when only two of his barons, Archbishop 
 Turpin and Olivier, are left alive at his side, he consents 
 to sound on his horn a last call for help ; how before 
 help- arrives first Olivier, then Turpin, and then Roland 
 himself are slain ; and how Charlemagne afterwards
 
 6 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 wreaks vengeance upon the Saracens and upon the traitor 
 Ganelon. As in all such poems (and the remark may 
 here be made once and for all), characters, sentiments, 
 and manners are entirely mediaevalised, and thus the 
 poem presents a picture, not of the supposed period of 
 its action, but of the chivalry of its own time. The hero 
 himself, with his prodigious physical strength, his fantastic 
 notions of courage, his keen sense of personal honour, his 
 inordinate pride (dying he recites at length his conquests 
 and triumphs), his devotion to his overlord, stands out 
 in bold relief as an idealised type of mediaeval knighthood 
 in which those who listened to his stirring story would 
 of course see a romantic image of themselves. A strong 
 religious element is also introduced into the poem, in 
 consonance with the spirit of the age : Charlemagne is 
 divinely counselled in dreams ; a miracle is performed 
 in his behalf when " the sun is stopped in heaven " ; 
 angels descend to bear the souls of the dying heroes to 
 paradise. 
 
 Though monotonous in matter and style, the chanson 
 has a great deal of real vigour and a certain Homeric 
 directness and simplicity, while in places it rises to 
 genuine epic grandeur : as in the fine description of the 
 strange darkness at midday and the prodigious storms 
 which occur throughout France while the last great 
 fight is raging, and in the scene of Roland's death, 
 when, placing his sword Durandal and his olifant (ivory 
 horn) beneath him, he lies calmly down, with his face 
 towards Spain, and his right hand, grasping his glove, 
 extended towards heaven in a final act of homage to 
 God. Like all the oldest French poetry the Chanson de 
 Roland is written in decasyllabic couplets linked not by 
 rime but by assonance, or the similarity of sound between 
 the last accented vowels of the adjacent lines without
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 7 
 
 reference to the consonants (bise, dire; albe, Carles, etc.), 
 as, e.g., in the couplet : 
 
 Sun destre guant en ad vers Deu tendut, 
 Angle de 1'ciel i descendent a lui. 1 
 
 Numerous other chansons de geste survive from the 
 eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, but none of 
 them compare for intrinsic value with this really remark- 
 able poem. Many of them, however, resemble it in deal- 
 ing with the legendary exploits and adventures of Charle- 
 magne and his paladins, as, e.g., the twelfth-century Huon 
 de Bordeaux, which has a special interest because it intro- 
 duces the fairy dwarf, Auberon or Oberon "le roy du 
 royaume de la f eerie" who afterwards figured so largely 
 in romantic literature, and whom we remember of course 
 particularly in connection with the Midsummer Night's 
 Dream. 
 
 4. Romans piques. In the formal classification 
 adopted by many French writers on mediaeval literature 
 the roman Spique is distinguished from the chanson de 
 geste because, while the chanson is supposed to have a 
 certain historical basis (how slight that basis was we have 
 now seen), the roman is wholly legend or invention. The 
 most important of the romans ipiques belong to what is 
 known as the Arthurian cycle ; that is, they are out- 
 growths from or graftings upon the ancient Celtic tradi- 
 tion, common to Wales and Brittany, of a certain Artus 
 or Arthur, who like Charlemagne was mediaevalised into 
 a typical king of chivalry, and again like Charlemagne 
 was the founder and head of an ideal order of knighthood. 
 Among the special characteristics of these Arthurian 
 stories are their free use of the marvellous and the 
 
 1 " He holds out towards God his right glove ; the angels of heaven 
 descend to him."
 
 8 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 prominent place given in them to romantic love, a subject 
 which was very much in the background in the earlier 
 martial chansons de geste. As an example of a very large 
 class we may here mention the famous toman (or, more 
 correctly, the two connected rotnans) of Tristan et Iseult, 
 the work of two Anglo-Norman poets, Beroul (about 1150) 
 and Thomas (about 1170). Tristan, nephew of Mark, 
 king of Cornwall, is entrusted with the mission of con- 
 ducting from Ireland the beautiful Iseult la Blonde, who 
 is to be his uncle's bride. They carry with them a power- 
 ful philtre, prepared by the bride's mother, the virtue of 
 which is such that those who drink of it are inspired with 
 a love "a toujours dans la vie et dans la mort." By 
 accident, Tristan and Iseult themselves partake of this 
 potion, and are thereby filled with a guilty passion. For 
 a time they live together in a forest, where they are 
 presently discovered by Mark, who, however, being 
 touched with pity, consents to forgive Iseult on condition 
 that Tristan shall give her up entirely. Tristan after- 
 wards marries another Iseult Iseult aux Mains Blanches 
 but is unable to forget La Blonde, who on her side 
 never ceases to think of him. Wounded by a poisoned 
 arrow, he sends a message to her to come to succour him, 
 and lies impatient on his bed awaiting the returning 
 vessel. The understanding is that if the vessel brings 
 Iseult it will fly a white flag ; if not, a black one. But his 
 wife, who has surprised the secret, deceives him by telling 
 him that the approaching ship is flying a black flag. 
 Thereupon he dies in despair, and Iseult la Blonde, 
 arriving too late, dies at his side. 
 
 The most celebrated of the poets who dealt with the 
 matttre de Bretagne is, however, Chretien de Troyes, 
 who wrote in the latter half of the twelfth century. His 
 works, which are distinguished by considerable delicacy
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 9 
 
 and a real quality of style, include Le Chevalier de la 
 Charette, a tale of Lancelot and Guinevere ; Le Chevalier 
 du Lion, which narrates the love and adventures of Yvain 
 (Gawain) , one of the knights of Arthur's court ; and the 
 unfinished Perceval or Le Conte del Graal. The grail 
 with Chretien is only a talisman which confers happiness, 
 but in the hands of his followers it soon became the 
 mysterious Holy Grail, the quest for which developed 
 into one of the principal episodes of the ever-expanding 
 Arthurian cycle. 
 
 With these romans epiques we may also connect the 
 Lais, or short stories in verse, written towards the end 
 of the twelfth century by a certain Marie de France, of 
 whom we know nothing except that she lived most of 
 her life at the English Court and called herself Marie 
 " de France " to mark her nationality. Her simplicity, 
 tenderness, and skill in story-telling are well exemplified 
 in such characteristic lais as Le Chevrefeuille (on the love 
 of Tristan and Iseult), Les Deux Amans (on a knight's 
 devotion to his mistress), Eliduc (on a wife's sacrifice 
 and her husband's infidelity and remorse), and Lanval 
 (which tells how a knight was loved by a fairy who took 
 him with her to the Island of Avalon) . 
 
 Antiquity, or rather such confused and distorted 
 memories of antiquity as survived during the Middle 
 Ages, also provided material for a number of romans 
 ipiques, of which the best known is the Roman d' Alexandre, 
 composed by Lambert le Tort and revised by Alexandre 
 de Bernay (both twelfth century), and dealing in a most 
 unhistorical and fantastic way with the birth of the 
 Macedonian king, his education under Aristotle, his 
 travels, his prodigious adventures, and his death. The 
 most interesting thing about this poem is its form. Rime 
 by this time had completely displaced assonance, but
 
 io FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 most narrative poems were written either in decasyllabic 
 or in octosyllabic verse. Alexandre is in a verse of twelve 
 syllables which thus came to be known as the alexandrine. 
 This derivation of measure and name was noted by one 
 of the earliest writers on French prosody, Vauquelin de 
 la Fresnaye, in his Art Poitique Frangaise (1605) : 
 
 Nos longs vers on appelle Alexandrines, d'autant 
 Que le Roman qui va les prouesses contant 
 D'Alexandre le Grand, l'un de neuf preux de l'age, 
 En ces vers fut escrit. 
 
 5. Didactic Poetry. Another important branch of 
 the literature of the Middle Ages is didactic poetry, which 
 was written not only to amuse but also to instruct, which 
 thus represents the ethical and scholastic movement in 
 the thought of the time, and which therefore points back 
 directly or indirectly to the influence of the Church. As 
 a fondness for allegory was one of the outstanding features 
 in mediaeval taste, such poetry ran naturally into allegori- 
 cal forms, as in the most famous example of its class, the 
 Roman de la Rose, the translation of which was the first 
 work of our own Chaucer. This poem is in two parts 
 which differ from one another in a most significant way. 
 The first part was written by one Guillaume de Lorris, 
 a " clerk " of the Orleanais, probably about 1230 or a 
 little later, and is the fullest expression that we have of 
 courtly refinement and scholastic subtlety in the treat- 
 ment of love. Adopting a device which was then very 
 popular, the poet writes his "art of love " (for such, as 
 he tells us, his work is designed to be) in the form of a 
 dream, and, as in the majority of such dreams (cp. e.g. 
 Chaucer's Boke of the Duchesse), his supposed experiences 
 have for their setting a beautiful garden on a May morning. 
 (It is a point to note that in the aristocratic poetry of the
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES n 
 
 Middle Ages it is nearly always May.) In this garden he 
 is introduced by Dame Oyseuse (Idleness) to the Palace 
 of Deduyt (Pleasure) ; meets Love attended by his train 
 Doux Regard, Richesse, Jolyvete (Jollity), Courteoise, 
 Franchise, Jeunesse, and the like ; walking in their 
 company, he comes to a bed of roses, and singles out a 
 bud which he attempts to pluck. But it is guarded by 
 Honte, Peur, Danger, and other wardens. Notwithstand- 
 ing these, however, and the counsels of Dame Raison, he 
 kisses the rose ; whereupon Jalousie, awakened by Male- 
 bouche (Slander), shuts Bel-Accueil (Welcome) in a tower, 
 and the poet, filled with despair by his inability to possess 
 himself of the coveted prize, expresses his feelings in a 
 lengthy monologue. Here the poem stops abruptly. 
 But some forty years later it was taken up and continued 
 by another " clerk," Jean Clopinal, known from his birth- 
 place as Jean de Meung. Though he preserves the data 
 and machinery of his predecessor, however, the new 
 poet writes in a totally different spirit. Guillaume de 
 Lorris had been the courtly idealist. Jean de Meung is 
 a realist and a cynic. He scoffs at the romantic woman- 
 worship and the extravagant refinements of love of which 
 the first part of the roman had been the vehicle ; indulges 
 in ferocious satire upon society, and especially upon 
 women, kings, nobles, and monks ; shows his freedom of 
 thought by openly announcing his disbelief in ghosts, 
 sorcery, and the influence of comets on human affairs ; 
 and reveals his enthusiasm for purely secular scholarship 
 by an immense parade of scientific and classical learning. 
 In literary quality Jean de Meung is far below the level 
 of Guillaume de Lorris ; his allegory is often confused ; 
 his prolixity is quite appalling. But his poem, with 
 its astonishingly bold spirit and irreligious tone, is of 
 particular interest because, though nominally intended
 
 12 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 to complete a typical work of mediaeval and courtly 
 idealism, it obviously represents the rising temper of 
 revolt against that idealism. It is therefore significant 
 that while the first part of the poem was extremely popular 
 in aristocratic circles, this second part had an immense 
 vogue among the middle classes. Taken as a whole the 
 Roman de la Rose may thus be said both to sum up 
 medievalism and to mark the beginning of its end. 
 
 6. Popular and Satiric Poetry. The transition is 
 therefore easy from the didactic poetry of the Middle 
 Ages to a quite different kind of poetry a poetry which, 
 instead of painting fancy pictures of knights and ladies, 
 and elaborating the subtleties of courtly love, set out to 
 describe ordinary life and people very much as they 
 actually were, and to turn the shafts of ridicule upon the 
 absurdities and abuses of the time. This popular and 
 satiric poetry was, as we have already indicated, bourgeois 
 in origin, and in it we find all the essential character- 
 istics^ the gaiety, the wit, the shrewdness, the irreverence, 
 the malice (" malice enveloppee de bonhomie ") of the 
 esprit gaulois. It is represented in perfection by the 
 fabliaux, or short humorous stories in verse, of the thir- 
 teenth and fourteenth centuries, with their animation, 
 their comic verve, their piquancy of satire, their prevailing 
 grossness. But its outstanding masterpiece is the beast- 
 epic generally known as the Roman de Renart, but which 
 is really a collection or aggregation of stories dating for 
 the most part, in the form in which we now have them, 
 from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 1 The hero of 
 all these stories, and it is his personality which serves to 
 bind them together and to give them a semblance of unity, 
 
 1 This refers to what is distinguished as the primitive cycle. Further 
 bulky additions were made to them in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries.
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 13 
 
 is Renart the Fox, and their common though not their 
 only theme is the cunning with which he contrives to 
 get the better of his powerful enemies and to turn the 
 weakness of those about him to his own advantage. All 
 the characters Noble the Lion (the king), Brun the Bear, 
 Isengrin the Wolf, Grimbert the Badger, Tibert the Cat, 
 Bernart the Ass (a priest), Chanticler the Cock, Copee 
 the Hen, and the rest of them are sharply defined and 
 individualised (it is worth while to note that they figure 
 under proper names), 1 and the comic situations and 
 dialogues are, at least in the best of the stories, handled 
 with extraordinary vigour. But the most important 
 feature of the poem for us is its moral quality its mock- 
 ing spirit, its unabashed cynicism, its merciless satire of 
 contemporary society and the chivalrous ideals of the 
 aristocracy. Middle -class hostility to the privileged 
 orders to the powerful barons and the corrupt clergy 
 is manifest in it throughout, while the very fact that from 
 first to last cleverness is exhibited as successful against 
 all the odds of strength and position is itself suggestive 
 of the writers' temper and aims. It is, indeed, a kind of 
 anti-romance, in which the fashionable chansons de geste 
 and romans epiques are burlesqued, sometimes even in a 
 direct and specific way. It should, however, be added 
 that the cunning Renart is not always successful ; while 
 he beats the lion, the wolf, the bear, he is beaten in his 
 turn by the cock, the titmouse, the raven, and the cat. 
 But when he suffers defeat it is in all cases at the hands 
 of those who are smaller and weaker than himself, and 
 thus even in the hero's occasional humiliations the general 
 thesis of the stories is clearly maintained. 
 
 1 The popularity of the poem is curiously shown by the fact that 
 Renart, or Renard, here the proper name of the particular fox which 
 is its hero, soon became the generic word for fox, supplanting the 
 original goupil.
 
 14 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 7. Lyrical Poetry. Narrative poetry flourished 
 most in the north ; in the south, and especially among 
 the troubadours of Provence, it was lyrical poetry which 
 was chiefly cultivated. These troubadours (the word is 
 the southern form of the northern trouvire) were some- 
 times noblemen who devoted themselves to lo gai saber 
 (the gay science), as the art of poetry was called, but more 
 often court-poets who either wandered from castle to 
 castle or lived for years in the household of a single patron 
 a Count of Provence, for example, or a Count of 
 Toulouse. Upwards of three hundred and fifty of them 
 are known to us by name, and though the larger part of 
 their production has disappeared, a very great mass still 
 survives. There is, however, a marked sameness in their 
 poetry ; they sing of war, but more particularly of love 
 and the casuistry of love ; but the individual note is 
 almost entirely wanting in their verse, and while they are 
 ingenious, delicate, and remarkably expert in form and 
 style, to which they gave the most assiduous attention, 
 they are eminently artificial. As on account of the 
 language in which they wrote they do not really belong 
 to the main stream of French literary history, their 
 principal interest for us here lies in the fact that their 
 influence presently stimulated the development of a 
 somewhat similar poetry of courtly love (amour courtois) 
 and conventional gallantry in the north. Thibaut IV., 
 Count of Champagne (d. 1253), is regarded as the best 
 of these courtly lyrists, but many other names like 
 those, for example, of Blondel de Nesle, who is tradition- 
 ally associated with Richard Cceur de Lion, Conon de 
 B6thune, and Gui II. of Conci, who took part in the fourth 
 crusade, Jean Bodel of Arras, and Colin Muset, a humble 
 dependant upon the generosity of various noble patrons 
 figure prominently in the annals of their school. Like
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 15 
 
 the troubadours they treated love, their chief subject, in 
 a purely romantic and artificial way ; like the troubadours 
 they cultivated many elaborate and intricate forms of 
 verse. Poetry of this courtly kind continued to be 
 written in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as by 
 Guillaume de Machaut (1284-1370), Eustace Deschamps 
 (1328-1415), Christine de Pisan (1363-1431), Alain 
 Chartier (c. 1390-1441), and Charles d'Orl6ans (1391-1465) ; 
 but as by this time the old ideals and sentiments were 
 fast waning, it tended to become more and more unreal. 
 Hence the increasing devotion to mere form shown in 
 the evolution of complicated stanzas the chant royal, the 
 ballade, the rondeau, the rondeau double, and so on each 
 of which had its fixed rules of construction and riming. 
 Meanwhile, however, a change in the character of this 
 lyrical poetry a change parallel to that which we have 
 already noted in narrative verse was heralded in the 
 work of the trouve're Rutebeuf (d. 1280), whose obvious 
 personal sincerity is in striking contrast with the con- 
 ventional make-believe of his contemporaries, and who, 
 though he maintains the established mechanism of verse, 
 takes for his themes his own struggles and misery, and 
 frequently turns his satire upon the actual topics of the 
 day. This break with tradition gives Rutebeuf a certain 
 historical importance. But it was not till nearly two 
 hundred years later that his real successor appeared in 
 the person of Francois Villon (1431-1465?), the greatest 
 French poet of the Middle Ages and one of the strangest 
 figures in any literature. Of Villon himself, perhaps, 
 the less said the better, for he was not only a Bohemian 
 and a debauchee but also an actual criminal, who in the 
 course of a stormy and errant life killed a priest in a 
 quarrel, was for a time a member of a gang of robbers 
 and cut-throats, underwent several terms of imprison-
 
 16 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 ment, and on two occasions narrowly escaped hanging. 
 Yet vagabond and scoundrel as he was, he was a man of 
 real genius, deep feeling, and remarkable technical skill, 
 and he had moreover the rare merit, as M. Gaston Paris 
 has said, of putting his heart and his life into his verses. 
 The greater part of his work is comprised in two " testa- 
 ments " an earlier Petit Testament, and a later Grand 
 Testament in which, under pretence of bequeathing his 
 possessions, real or imaginary, he discourses about himself, 
 introduces character-studies of his friends and acquaint- 
 ances, and lampoons his enemies. These mock legacies 
 are undoubtedly very clever, but much of their wit is 
 necessarily lost on us to-day. The living Villon is rather 
 to be sought in his ballades, a number of which are in- 
 cluded in the Grand Testament : among them, the most 
 famous of all, the Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis, 
 with its haunting refrain, " Mais ou sont les neiges 
 d'antan ? " Villon is never imitative or conventional ; 
 his verse has always the unmistakable ring of personality 
 and truth ; and his frequent touches of remorse, his 
 genuine emotional quality, his profound sense of the 
 beauty and brevity of life, the tender sadness with which 
 again and again he lingers over the thought of death 
 a sadness shot at times with a spirit of macabre humour 
 suffice to explain the unique appeal which, alone among 
 the poets of his age, he still makes to modern students. 
 He is, however, extremely difficult to read, for his language 
 is very archaic and he often indulges in slang. 
 
 But Villon was a solitary figure in the literature of the 
 fifteenth century, and he exerted no immediate influence. 
 The general tendency was rather away from the realism 
 which he represented towards increasing pedantry, affecta- 
 tion, and devotion to the mere mechanics of verse, as in 
 the writers known as the Grands Rh6toriqueurs, who
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 17 
 
 developed and extended the rules of versification, worked 
 in the most intricate forms of stanza, introduced strange 
 and bizarre methods of riming, and indulged in all sorts 
 of puerile tricks and eccentricities. Neither collectively 
 nor individually have they any real interest for us, and 
 historically they are little more than curiosities. We 
 need not therefore concern ourselves about them here. 
 But one of them Jean Marot may just be mentioned 
 by name because he was the father of the Clement Marot 
 with whom we shall have to deal in the next chapter. 
 
 8. The Drama. The drama in mediaeval France, as 
 elsewhere in Europe, was in origin the offspring of the 
 Church. Its germ was the so-called drame liturgique, 
 which arose by the gradual dramatisation of important 
 incidents commemorated in the ritual of the Christian 
 year those, for example, connected with the festivals of 
 Christmas and Easter and which appears to have assumed 
 definite shape by the early part of the eleventh century. 
 In this primitive liturgical play the altar itself was the 
 stage, the priests were the actors, the language in the 
 main Latin. 1 The first real step in dramatic evolution 
 was the detachment of this play from the services of the 
 Church and its transference from the altar to the open 
 air ; and this change was soon followed by the great 
 amplification of the original material, the introduction of 
 lay actors, and the substitution of the vernacular for the 
 ecclesiastical tongue : as e.g. in La Representation a" Adam, 
 of the twelfth century, which was performed before the 
 church doors, dealt in detail with the whole story of the 
 Fall, and was written in French, though its dialogue was 
 from time to time interrupted by Latin texts recited by 
 
 1 Though not entirely so. In the eleventh-century liturgical drama 
 of The Wise and Foolish Virgins, for instance, there are occasional 
 passages in the vulgar tongue, in this case Provencal. 
 
 C
 
 18 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 priests, who were still apparently the most important if 
 not the only performers. This curious piece, which is the 
 oldest extant example of its class, may be regarded as a 
 connecting link between the liturgical play proper and 
 the fully developed mystire 1 which ultimately evolved 
 out of it. More than sixty mysthres have come down to 
 us, principally from the fifteenth century, most of the 
 earlier specimens having been lost ; and these, which in 
 the aggregate comprise something like a million verses, 
 are usually grouped into three cycles according to the 
 nature of their subject-matter : the Cycle of the Old 
 Testament ; the Cycle of the New Testament and the 
 Apostles ; and the Cycle of the Saints. A few surviving 
 mystlres, however, stand quite outside this classification ; 
 like the Mystere du Si&ge d'Orleans, which deals with Joan 
 of Arc, and the MysUre de la Destruction de Troie (written 
 by Jacques Milet in 1452), both of which are of peculiar 
 interest because of their non-religious themes. The 
 mystlres were, of course, designed primarily for edifica- 
 tion, their express purpose being to instruct the people 
 in the history and doctrines of the Christian religion ; 
 their tone was therefore, in general, grave and serious ; 
 but to strengthen their popular appeal comic scenes, 
 often of a very gross kind, were freely introduced. At 
 first they were performed by very miscellaneous bodies 
 of actors, clerical and secular, but presently companies, or 
 fraternities, as they were called, were organised to take 
 charge of them ; the most famous of which was the 
 ConfrSrie de la Passion, which acquired the monopoly 
 of acting mystlres in Paris under letters-patent from 
 Charles VI. in 1402. For nearly one hundred and fifty 
 
 1 Strictly mistlve, from ministerium, office, representation. The 
 form mystire arose from the confusion of this with the mysteries (mys- 
 teria) of religion. But though etymologically incorrect it is now 
 sanctioned by usage.
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES ' 19 
 
 years after this, this powerful company continued to give 
 performances, now in one place now in another, but in 
 1548 it definitely established itself in part of the Hotel de 
 Bourgogne. This was the first regular theatre in France. 
 That same year, as it happened, the Parliament of Paris 
 prohibited the further representation of religious plays, 
 and thereupon the Hotel de Bourgogne became the first 
 home of the secular drama. 
 
 Side by side with the mysteres another form of religious 
 drama flourished in the miracles, specimens of which have 
 reached us from a period considerably earlier than that 
 of the oldest surviving mysteres themselves. The miracle 
 is technically defined as a dramatic representation in 
 which the Virgin or one of the saints intervenes miracu- 
 lously in human affairs ; as in Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas, by 
 Jean Bodel, in the Miracle de Theophile, by Rutebeuf (both 
 thirteenth century), and in the large collection of Miracles 
 de Notre-Dame preserved in a manuscript of the fourteenth 
 century. The specific character of these pieces is clearly 
 indicated in the descriptive titles of some in this collection ; 
 as, e.g., " Cy commence un Miracle de Nostre Dame, comme 
 elle garda une femme d'estre arse [burnt]," and " Cy com- 
 mence un Miracle de Nostre Dame, coment le roy Clovis 
 se fist chrestienner [became a Christian] a la requeste de 
 Clotilde, sa femme, pour une bataille que il avoit contre 
 Alemans e Senes, dont il ot la victoire, et en le christien- 
 ment envoia Diex [God] la Sainte Ampole [the phial of 
 holy oil]." In general, however, the miracles were marked 
 by a very free handling of their subjects, and by the 
 expansion of the realistic and purely human interest of 
 the story in hand at the expense of its religious significance ; 
 while for the rest the writers drew as they chose upon all 
 sorts of sources, including not only the apocryphal gospels 
 and the lives of the saints but also chansons de geste,
 
 20 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 tomans, and tales of adventure. Hence the miracle at 
 times lost all its distinctive quality and became entirely 
 secular ; as in the Histoire de Gristlidis (fourteenth 
 century), which simply dramatises the then very popular 
 story of the Patient Griselda and her tyrannical husband. 1 
 Here it may be noted in passing that such terms as 
 mystlres, miracles, and the like were so loosely employed 
 during the Middle Ages that exact classification is often 
 quite impossible. 
 
 A third type of didactic play which was cultivated for 
 a time with great industry was the moraliti, which was 
 the direct product of the mediaeval love of allegory. 
 Sometimes the moraliti was specifically religious, as in 
 Bien AvisS ei Mai Avisi, which treats of the contrast 
 as old as the Choice of Hercules and as modern as Hogarth's 
 picture-tale of the two apprentices between the right 
 and the wrong way in life. Sometimes the theme was 
 of an everyday, practical character, as in La Condemna- 
 tion des Banquets, by Nicolas de la Chesnaye (early sixteenth 
 century), which, as the title suggests, is an object lesson 
 on the evils of intemperance and gluttony. Sometimes 
 the ethical intention is reduced to such extremely scanty 
 proportions, as in L'Aveugle et le Boiteux (1496), that it is 
 difficult to discover it at all. Here again classification 
 fails us, for in France as in England the moraliti soon 
 broke through the conventional limits of its original form. 
 Such so-called moralitis as Les Enfants de Maintenant, 
 L' Enfant I ngrat, and L' Enfant Prodigue, with their pictures 
 of family life and their emphasis upon the domestic virtues, 
 are really primitive examples of the type of play which 
 centuries later was to be known as the drame bourgeois. 
 
 Meanwhile, and as early as the second half of the 
 
 1 This is familiar to English readers through the Clerk's Tale of 
 Chaucer, who took it from the Decamerone of Boccaccio, who in turn 
 seems to have derived from an older French story. Pavement des Femmes.
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 21 
 
 thirteenth century, a genuine comic drama began to 
 emerge in two singular plays by Adam de la Halle (1230 ?- 
 1288 ?), who, like Jean Bodel, was a native of Arras. The 
 first of these, Le Jeu d'Adam, or De la Feuille, is hardly 
 more than a satiric dialogue of Aristophanic quality, in 
 which the author makes free with himself, his wife, his 
 domestic troubles, and his friends. The second, Le Jeu 
 de Robin et de Marion, is a kind of opera-comique, which 
 presents in dialogue mingled with lyrics a pretty story 
 of rustic love-making of the sort familiar in the pastourelles 
 of contemporary courtly poets. It can hardly be supposed 
 that these two plays were solitary specimens of real comic 
 drama in their time, though they are the only specimens 
 which we now possess. At any rate, by the fifteenth 
 century comedy was already well established and widely 
 popular in the two forms of sottie and farce. The sottie, 
 which was a short satiric piece, is often hardly distinguish*- 
 able from the moralite, from which it frequently took the 
 machinery of allegory ; as in Le Jeu du Prince des Sots 
 (1512), by Pierre Gringore, or Gringoire, a violent attack 
 upon Pope Julius II. in which the king (in whose interests 
 the play was written) figures as the Prince des Sots, the 
 Church as Mere Sotte, the people as Sotte-Commune, and 
 so on. The farce may be roughly described as a drama- 
 tised form of the fabliau, which it resembled in its general 
 subject-matter and tone, its vivacity, its broad humour, 
 and its extreme coarseness. As an innocent example of 
 the class we may take the one entitled La Cuvette. In this 
 the wife of a certain Jacquenot draws up a list (rollet) of 
 the household duties which her hen-pecked husband is to 
 perform on pain of being beaten for the slightest omission. 
 While engaged in the family washing, however, the wife 
 falls into her tub and is in imminent danger of drowning. 
 She calls loudly to her husband to lift her out ; he con-
 
 22 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 suits his list and replies that this is not in his toilet ; and 
 though he finally consents to save her, it is only after he 
 has put their marital relationship upon a new and more 
 satisfactory footing. But by far the most famous of all 
 the old farces is that of Pathelin, a genuine masterpiece by 
 some unknown writer of the fifteenth century, in which 
 the various types of character introduced are sharply 
 defined, the dialogue is racy and natural, and the situa- 
 tions as they arise are handled with a keen eye to theatrical 
 effect. It is not too much to say that in this brilliant 
 little piece we have a first expression of that true comic 
 spirit which in fulness of time was to culminate in Moli&re. 
 9. Prose. Prose developed much more slowly than 
 verse in the French literature of the Middle Ages, and it 
 was not till the beginning of the thirteenth century that 
 it assumed any importance. Then it began to be used by 
 the chroniclers in place of the Latin which had hitherto 
 been employed by the monkish writers of history. In this 
 new departure the honour of priority belongs to Geoffrey 
 deVillehardouin (ii64?-I2I3), who in his Conqueste de Con- 
 stantinople wrote a simple and straightforward narrative 
 of the principal events of the fourth crusade, in which he 
 had himself taken part. Among the many chroniclers 
 by whom he was followed in the next two centuries three 
 only call for attention here. The first of these is Jean de 
 Joinville (1224-1319), who when a very old man compiled, 
 under the title of the Histoire de Saint Louis, a sort of 
 anecdotal biography of the great king whose personal 
 friend he had been and whom he loved with the most 
 ardent devotion. His narrative is artless and un- 
 methodical, but his sympathy with his subject and the 
 nature of that subject itself combine to make it very 
 attractive. Next comes Jean Froissart (1337-1410?), 
 whose Chroniques, the composition of which extended
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 23 
 
 over many years, deal with the events of his own time 
 (1325-1400) and particularly with the Hundred Years' 
 War. Rambling and unequal, but often picturesque and 
 sometimes wonderfully dramatic, this celebrated work 
 reads more like a romance of chivalry than a piece of 
 sober history ; indeed its actual value as history is often 
 doubtful. But this is a matter which does not immedi- 
 ately concern us. The chief point for us to emphasise 
 is the general character of Froissart's narrative. He 
 opens his prologue with a eulogy of " prouesse," and 
 specially invites young knights to read his book that 
 they may learn from it how to become "preux chevaliers." 
 This strikes the keynote. From first to last his dis- 
 course is of campaigns, expeditions, battles, deeds of 
 daring, jousts, tournaments, brilliant festivities, the glory 
 of arms. A writer of the Court for the Court, he is 
 interested in such things and in such things only. He 
 dwells with unflagging enthusiasm upon the pomp and 
 circumstance of war ; the other side of war the national 
 ruin which it entailed, the misery which followed in its 
 train lies altogether beyond his purview. Hence his 
 Chroniques belong entirely to the aristocratic literature 
 of the time. But the social and political changes which, 
 though he knew nothing of them, the events which he 
 records were helping to bring about, are clearly reflected 
 in the Memoires of Philippe de Commines (1445 ?-i5ii), 
 the last of the mediaeval historians of any note, and who 
 indeed takes us over into the sixteenth century. Com- 
 mines, who for some years held important positions in 
 the service of Louis XI. (a fact of significance in connec- 
 tion with the character of his work) , conceived and treated 
 history in a way very different from that of Froissart. 
 There is no romantic colour, no chivalrous idealism, no 
 picturesqueness in his writing, but if his pages lack grace
 
 24 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and charm, they are on the other hand rich in ideas. He 
 writes, not as a mere story-teller, intent upon the external 
 life and movement of his narrative only, but as a shrewd 
 and quite unscrupulous politician, whose primary interest 
 is in the motives and characters of men and the causes 
 and consequences of events. In reading Froissart we are 
 in the Middle Ages. In reading Commines we feel that 
 we are emerging into the modern world. 
 
 Outside the chronicles there is little of general interest 
 in the French prose of the Middle Ages, and that little 
 is in the form of fiction. This is the place to mention 
 an example of hybrid composition the anonymous 
 " chantefable " of Aucassin et Nicolette (later twelfth 
 century), a charming and tender love-story which is at 
 once an offshoot from the roman in verse and a connect- 
 ing link between this and the roman in prose. But it 
 was not till towards the close of the Middle Ages that 
 prose began to be used freely for fiction, and then it was 
 mainly for short stories and adaptations of tales already 
 told in verse. The principal name in this context is 
 that of Antoine de la Sale (1398-1461), to whom are 
 ascribed Les Quinze Joyes du Manage, a bitter satire on 
 women, Petit Jehan de Saintri, a tale of courtly love, 
 and (probably in collaboration with several other writers) 
 Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, a collection of licentious 
 stories, some imitated from the Italian, some taken from 
 the old fabliaux, and some apparently original.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 
 POETRY AND THE DRAMA 
 
 io. The Sixteenth Century. The sixteenth century 
 is the great age of the French Renaissance, which is com- 
 monly dated from the accession of Francis I. in 1515. As 
 in all such cases where large and complex movements are 
 in question, the assignment of a definite beginning is in 
 the main a matter of convenience only. Yet the associa- 
 tion of the Renaissance with the name of Francis has a 
 certain historical justification, for though the new forces 
 in life and thought had long been at work, it was not till 
 the early years of his reign that their influence was gener- 
 ally felt, while by the time of his death in 1547 their 
 triumph was so complete that all the traditions of the 
 Middle Ages had practically disappeared. Hence his 
 accession seems really to mark the opening of a fresh 
 chapter in the history of French civilisation. Moreover, 
 the part which he personally played in the great revival 
 must not be overlooked. With all his vanity and vices 
 he had a genuine love of learning and art, and as the 
 munificent patron of scholars, painters, and men of letters 
 he did much to encourage the new ideas and tastes. 
 
 With the sixteenth century, then, we enter upon an 
 
 25
 
 26 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 age not only of immensely stimulated intellectual activity, 
 but also of intellectual activity under totally changed 
 conditions. It was an age which, in Michelet's phrase, 
 discovered both the world and man the world, with all 
 its boundless interests and opportunities man, with all 
 his desires and appetites ; an age of reaction against the 
 whole mediaeval order, of general emancipation, of fresh 
 departures in many things. The old repressive view of 
 life, which had long crushed individuality, was now 
 abandoned, together with the asceticism which this had 
 entailed. The universal domination of the Church was 
 challenged. Men sought to liberate themselves from the 
 trammels of theology and effete scholasticism. The 
 spirit of free inquiry and criticism spread far and wide. 
 Philosophy, art, literature, even religion itself, emerged 
 from the shadow of the cloister to unite themselves with 
 all the living interests of the secular world. The intel- 
 lectual horizon expanded on every side ; thought and 
 imagination were dilated ; in France, as in England (to 
 use Mr. Green's words), " the sphere of human interest 
 was widened as it has never been widened before or since 
 by the revelation of a new heaven and a new earth." * 
 Hence arose a new literature, born of new impulses and 
 answering to new needs. 
 
 Among the many forces which co-operated in the 
 creation of the Renaissance spirit one of outstanding 
 importance must be specially recognised that of the 
 printing press, which, introduced into France in 1470, 
 was already active in the early years of the sixteenth 
 century. It would be impossible here to consider in 
 detail, as it would certainly be impossible to exaggerate, 
 the many-sided and profound influence exerted by this 
 " most formidable instrument of the modern reason." 
 
 1 Short History of the English People.
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 27 
 
 On one point, however, stress must be laid. By popular- 
 ising knowledge, disseminating facts, ideas, and specula- 
 tions, and bringing an increasingly wide public into the 
 great intellectual currents of the time, the press was the 
 chief agency in breaking down the mediaeval fabric of 
 thought, destroying the practical monopoly of learning 
 long enjoyed by the clergy, fostering the awakened lay 
 spirit, and thus ensuring that general secularisation of 
 life which was perhaps the central characteristic of the 
 new age. 
 
 These intellectual changes were accompanied by 
 fundamental changes in French society. The Hundred 
 Years' War had, as we have said, struck a deadly blow at 
 the old disruptive feudalism, and had thus prepared the 
 way for Louis XL, whose one great aim it was to suppress 
 the turbulent nobles, gather their scattered fiefs into a 
 homogeneous kingdom, and make the monarchy supreme. 
 His policy of concentration and unification was not to be 
 carried to completion, it is true, till the time of Richelieu, 
 but already under Francis I. the nobles were beginning 
 to lose the semi - independence of their former state ; 
 already they were ceasing to be a feudal aristocracy and 
 were becoming an aristocracy of the Court an aristo- 
 cracy in the modern as distinguished from the mediaeval 
 sense of the term. With Francis, indeed, the Court for 
 the first time became the recognised centre of fashion 
 and culture. Meanwhile a corresponding alteration was 
 taking place in the private life and manners of the nobles 
 themselves. An interest in intellectual things began to 
 be regarded as a qualification of the new type of " gentil- 
 homme." The gloomy old fortresses, whose one purpose 
 it had been to provide defence in case of siege, began to 
 make way for sumptuous palaces, the very architecture of 
 which was an index of the modified tastes of the rising
 
 28 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 generation. At the same time, and largely as a result of 
 the internal repose and prosperity which the country 
 had enjoyed under Francis' predecessor, Louis XII., the 
 bourgeoisie continued to advance, and during the sixteenth 
 century they increased steadily in wealth, prestige, and 
 power. 
 
 All these general movements necessarily affected the 
 literature of the time in many ways. A more special 
 factor in the development of that literature must also be 
 noted the influence of classicism. Charles VIII. 's inva- 
 sion of Naples in 1494 had led to what Michelet called the 
 French " discovery of Italy " the country in which for 
 nearly a century the great revival of classical learning, art, 
 and taste had been at its height. Under the spell of Italy 
 a similar revival now began in France. From this point 
 on, the study of the classics was pursued in France with 
 boundless enthusiasm ; French genius became saturated 
 with ancient culture ; and the rise of the classical move- 
 ment in French literature was the result. Steeped in the 
 spirit of the new humanism, writers turned impatiently 
 from the older literature of their own country to seek 
 their inspiration, their models, their standards of judgment 
 in the works of Graco-Latin antiquity. 
 
 It must finally be remembered that the sixteenth 
 century in France was also the Age of the Reformation. 
 In origin part of the general movement of emancipation 
 from medievalism, the great religious revival was at the 
 outset warmly welcomed by many of the leading French 
 humanists, who saw in it the promise of enlightenment 
 and freedom of thought. But when they learned, as 
 they soon did, that Calvinism meant, not enlightenment 
 and freedom of thought, but gloomy fanaticism and the 
 old tyranny of dogma under a different form, their 
 sympathy changed into apathy or antagonism. Then
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 29 
 
 came the terrible Wars of Religion, which under Francis 
 II., Charles IX., and Henry III. aroused the fiercest 
 passions on one and the other side and drenched the 
 country with blood, and after these, the settlement 
 secured by Henry IV. 's abjuration of Protestantism in 
 1593. Such influence as the Reformation exerted on 
 French literature will be noted from time to time in the 
 following pages. Here it is necessary only to point out 
 that, though there are a few exceptions to be allowed for, 
 the rupture between humanism and Protestantism was 
 practically complete long before the century reached its 
 close. The difference in literary significance between the 
 Reformation in France and the Reformation in England 
 thus becomes apparent. In England the religious revival 
 was one of the chief forces in Elizabethan literature. In 
 France its direct effect on literature was on the whole 
 slight and temporary. 
 
 11. Marot . As we are now prepared to learn, the 
 poetry oTtne first half of the sixteenth century was largely 
 a poetry of the Court, but as such it was associated not 
 only with Francis I. himself, but also with his sister, 
 Margaret of Angouleme (1492-1549), afterwards Duchess 
 of Alengon and Queen of Navarre. She was herself a 
 poet of some little pretension, though her Marguerites de 
 la Marguerite des Princesses, with their mystical piety and 
 allegorical machinery, belong entirely to the outgoing 
 Middle Ages ; and she is also known as the author of the 
 Heptameron, a collection of seventy-two prose tales in the 
 style of the Decamerone, in which, however, the licentious 
 stories themselves are curiously turned to purposes of 
 moral edification. 1 But it is as a patroness of letters that 
 
 1 How much of this work was actually from her pen is a matter of 
 controversy. It seems probable that a good deal of it at least was 
 contributed by her Courtiers, notably by the free-thinking Bonaventure 
 des Periers. 
 
 I
 
 30 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 she is chiefly held in remembrance. She gathered about 
 her many humanists, and gave protection in particular to 
 those who were interested in religious reform. Among 
 these was the writer who occupies the chief place in the 
 poetry of his time. 
 
 Clement Marot, son of Jean Marot, the rMtoriqueur, 
 was born at Cahors in 1496. In 1519 he became vcdet de 
 chambre to Margaret, but later entered the service of the 
 king, whom he accompanied on his ill-fated expedition to 
 Italy. Wounded and captured at Pavia, he was soon 
 allowed to return to France (1525), where, however, his 
 Protestant sympathies got him into serious trouble, for 
 he was twice imprisoned on charges of heresy, and finally 
 compelled to seek safety in flight. After making public 
 recantation of his religious errors (1536) he once more 
 appeared at Court ; but his translation of some of the 
 Psalms into French verse, though encouraged by the king, 
 was condemned by the Sorbonne, and again he hastened 
 to place himself beyond the reach of the long arm of 
 ecclesiastical authority. He first made his home in 
 Geneva, but finding the austere atmosphere of Calvin's 
 little republic intolerable, he went on to Turin, where he 
 died in poverty in 1544. 
 
 Marot wrote much in many forms, in some of which, 
 as in his ballades and rondeaux, he was simply following 
 the traditions of the Middle Ages, while in others, such 
 as his ipigrammes, ipitres, iclogues, and iligies, he worked 
 on classic models. He thus represents the transition in 
 taste from the old to the new, but on the whole he belongs 
 mainly to the old. A man of facile and rather frivolous 
 nature, he had little strong passion to express in his 
 poetry, and though sometimes he strikes a genuine note 
 of pity or indignation, he rarely succeeds when he attempts 
 the higher style. This is shown even in his fifty Psalms,
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 31 
 
 which, though harmonious in versification, have very 
 slight poetic merit. But his charming ease the ease 
 not of mere " happy negligence," but of conscious art 
 his delicate irony, his badinage, his light but certain touch, 
 combine to give him special excellence in the less am- 
 bitious and more informal style of verse. His chansons 
 (e.g. " Qui veult avoir liesse ") and rondeaux [e.g., De sa 
 Grande Amye) are marked by exquisite grace, and some 
 of his ipigrammes and satires deserve high praise. But 
 perhaps he is at his very best in his ipitres, familiar, lively, 
 witty, tender, as, e.g., Adieu aux Dames de la Cour, and the 
 two addressed to the king Pour avoir este derobe and 
 Pour le delivrer de Prison. The description in the former 
 of these of his valet, who was a gourmand, a drunkard, a 
 thief, a liar, and various other things, but for the rest 
 the best fellow in the world, is justly famous, while equally 
 good is the conclusion of the latter in which, writing from 
 prison, he gravely apologises to his royal patron for not 
 presenting his petition to him in person. The historical 
 significance of Marot's work as a whole lies in the fact 
 that he abandoned the pedantry and affectations of the 
 rhetoriqueurs, in which he was bred, and introduced a 
 manner of writing at once natural and courtly. 
 
 Marot for a short time exercised a considerable in- 
 fluence over the poetry of the Court, but those who 
 belonged to his school were only minor poets. Perhaps 
 the most important of his followers was Mellin de Saint- 
 Gellais (i486?-i558), who gained success with the lighter 
 forms of verse, and is credited with the introduction of 
 the Italian sonnet into France. He may be regarded as 
 a link between the poetry of the earlier and that of the 
 later fifteenth century ; in other words, between the 
 school of Marot and that of Ronsard. 
 
 12. Ronsard and la PlSiade. Marot's poetry, as we
 
 32 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 now see, was in various ways representative of the transi- 
 tional taste of his time, but it was little touched by that 
 enthusiasm for classical antiquity which was a leading 
 characteristic of the literature and art of the Renaissance. 
 Such enthusiasm, on the other hand, was the principal 
 motive-force behind the work of the group of writers 
 collectively called La Pl&ade, whose deliberate attempt 
 to revolutionise French poetry is the most noteworthy 
 feature in the history of that poetry during the second 
 half of the sixteenth century. 
 
 Pierre de Ronsard, the leading spirit in the revolution, 
 and "the Prince of Poets," as his contemporaries called 
 him, was born in 1524 in the chateau of La Poissonniere 
 in the valley of ttieToire, near Vendome. As a boy he 
 became page to the Dauphin, on whose death he passed 
 into the service first of the Duke of Orleans and afterwards 
 of Madeleine of France, whom he accompanied to Scotland 
 on her marriage with James Stewart ; and he was later 
 in the suite of the French Embassy at Spiers and at Turin. 
 His career as a courtier was, however, cut short by a 
 serious illness, which left him deaf (1543). Upon this he 
 resolved to devote himself to scholarship and literature, 
 and for the next seven years gave himself up entirely to 
 the study of Greek and Latin under the direction of the 
 well-known humanist, Jean Dorat (or Daurat), Principal 
 of the College Coqueret in Paris. It was then that he 
 ( gathered about him a number of congenial young spirits 
 Remi Belleau, fitienne Jodelle, Joachim du Bellay, and 
 Pontus de Thyard who united themselves into a literary 
 fellowship which was at first called La Brigade ; but when 
 they were presently joined by JeanAntoine de Baif, and 
 their number (with the elderly Dorat as the "dark star " of 
 the constellation) was thus raised to the mystic seven, they 
 changed the name to La Plelade, in imitation of the
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 33 
 
 Seven Poets of Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy Phila- 
 delphus. Ronsard's first book, a volume of Odes, appeared 
 in 1550, and though it encountered violent opposition 
 from adherents of the older school, it gave him at once 
 the premier place among the poets of the day. The rest 
 of his life was uneventful. He enjoyed the special favour 
 of Charles IX. and a position of high distinction at the 
 Court, but after that king's death he retired in failing 
 health to the Abbey of Croix- Val in his native countship, 
 where he passed his remaining years in lettered ease, and 
 where, still at the height of his reputation, he died in 
 
 I585- 
 
 The manifesto of La Pleiade is contained in a small 
 volume of great historical interest, La Deffense et Illustra- 
 tion de la Langue Francoyse, published by Du Bellay in 
 1549-50, which lays down the programme of the school. 
 In respect of language, a strong protest is made against 
 those pedants who, like the extreme classicists in Italy, 
 despised the vernacular tongue and regarded it as un- 
 worthy of consideration beside Latin and Greek. At the 
 same time Du Bellay argues that if native French is to 
 be raised to a plane of equality with Latin and Greek, it 
 must be enriched in various ways, and particularly by the 
 free importation of words and idioms from old French, 
 from the French dialects, from the vocabularies of the 
 arts and sciences, and from the classic languages. In 
 regard to literature the writer undertakes to prescribe 
 " quelz genres de poemes doit elire le poete francois." 
 He should leave entirely alone all the popular forms of 
 old French poetry the rondeau, the ballade, the chant 
 royal, the virelai, and the rest of such trifles (epiceries), 
 and should write epigrams in imitation of Martial, elegies 
 after the fashion of Ovid, Tibullus, and Propertius, epics 
 like the Iliad and the JEneid, eclogues like those of Theo- 
 
 D
 
 34 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 critus and Vergil, odes attuned to the sound of the Greek 
 and Latin lyre, sonnets in the manner of the " learned " 
 and " fluent " poets of Italy, tragedies and comedies 
 having the ancient tragedies and comedies as their 
 " archetypes." Such were the principles which guided 
 the members of La P16iade in their work, and the result 
 was, of course, a great deal of lifeless imitation and not a 
 little absurd pedantry. Yet on the whole the poetry of 
 the Brotherhood is by no means so dry and barren as 
 might have been expected, for notwithstanding their 
 theories they were still touched by the native spirit, and 
 the personal note is often strong in their writings. 
 
 In accordance with the programme of his school, 
 Ronsard himself made an heroic attempt to naturalise in 
 French literature some of the " great forms " of ancient 
 poetry. He did this in his Hymnes, many of which are 
 on the Homeric model, though others, like the Hytnne de 
 I'Eternite and Hytnne de la Mort, are independent develop- 
 ments of the type. He did it in his Odes, which are 
 fashioned on those of Pindar. He did it in his unfinished 
 epic, La Franciade, the theme of which is the exploits of 
 Francus, son of Hector, and the legendary founder of 
 France, and in which all the conventions of the classic 
 epic are laboriously reproduced. 1 But these ambitious 
 experiments, with their parade of erudition, their mytho- 
 logical embroidery, and their overwrought and pedantic 
 style, have only an historical interest. Ronsard's real 
 qualities as a poet must be sought in his minor writings, 
 astTrtlts sonnets (e.g., Sonnets pour Helene) and his informal 
 
 1 It should be noted that this is the last important poem in deca- 
 syllabic verse. In his preface Ronsard says that though he had for- 
 merly thought the alexandrine the finest measure in the language, he 
 had changed his opinion and adopted decasyllabics as the best suited 
 to heroic purposes. Yet he used alexandrines in much of his other 
 work.
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 35 
 
 odes and lyrics (e.g., A Antoine Chasteigner, De V Election 
 de son Sepulchre), which are remarkable for their tender- 
 ness of feeling and their charm of versification. 
 
 After Ronsard the only really important poet of La 
 Pleiade is Du Bellay (1525-1560), whose sonnet-sequences, 
 Les Ruines de Rome (translated by Spenser) and Les 
 Regrets, are grave and lofty in tone and deeply imbued 
 with romantic melancholy, and who is also the author 
 of one most delightful lyric, D'un Vanneur de Ble aux 
 Vents. 
 
 ""13. Other Poets of the Second Half of the 
 Sixteenth Century. Ronsard's most dangerous rival, 
 however, was not a poet of his own fellowship, but an 
 independent disciple who in a general way accepted his 
 principles but adapted them to his own purposes. This 
 was the Protestant Guillaume du Bartas (1544-1590) the 
 " divine " Du Bartas,* as our Gabriel Harvey called him 
 who achieved a fair measure of success with a Biblical 
 epic Judith (1573) and gained enormous popularity with 
 La Sepmaine (1579), an account of the work of creation 
 which at once went through many editions and was 
 translated into many languages (into English by Joshua 
 Sylvester). In the selection of such scriptural subjects 
 we note the influence of the writer's Calvinism. Du 
 Bartas had a bold imagination and considerable poetic 
 power, and in working out his grandiose scheme he 
 occasionally reaches real sublimity (e.g. the opening lines 
 of Livre IV., in which the Deity is compared with a 
 painter contemplating a just-finished landscape). But 
 his style is often vicious, and in particular he goes far 
 beyond the Pleiads themselves in the Latinisation of the 
 French language and the employment of monstrous 
 compound forms (e.g " Le feu donne-clarte, porte-chaud, 
 jette-flamme "). Another Protestant poet who may
 
 36 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 conveniently be mentioned here, though his work actually 
 belongs to the early years of the next century, is Theod ore 
 Agrippa d'Aubigne' (i 550-1620), who was one of the 
 leaders of the Huguenot party under Henry IV., and 
 wrote, along with much prose, a poem entitled Les Tra- 
 giques (1616), in which, in very unequal verse now strong 
 and supple, now rugged and contorted he describes the 
 persecutions of his co-religionists and the horrors of civil 
 war. 
 
 14. The Drama. The reformation of the theatre by 
 the substitution of a drama based on classic models for 
 the mystires, moralitis, sotties, and farces of the mediaeval 
 stage was, as we have seen, one part of the programme of 
 La Pl&ade. The way for this new movement had to 
 some extent been prepared during the first half of the 
 sixteenth century by numerous translations of Greek 
 tragedies and Latin comedies, by imitations of these in 
 Latin for performance by students in universities and 
 colleges, and by occasional experiments in French verse 
 like the Abraham Sacrifiant (1547) a hybrid piece, but 
 more mystery than tragedy of the Protestant humanist, 
 Theodore de Bze. But the foundations of the new 
 drama were laid by Ronsard's young disciple, fitienne 
 Jodelle (1532-1573), in a couple of tragedies Cliopdtre 
 Captive (1552) andDidon se Sacrifiant (1558), and a comedy 
 Engine (1552). The titles of the two tragedies indicate 
 their subjects : the former (which was performed with 
 great applause before Henry II. and his Court) deals with 
 the suicide of the Egyptian queen ; the latter is a close 
 dramatic rendering of the well-known episode in the 
 fourth book of the JEneid. They both make desperately 
 dull reading and their intrinsic merit is very small, 
 though Cliopdtre is on the whole rather the better of the 
 two. But the position which they occupy as the first
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 37 
 
 works of the classic school the school which was to 
 flourish almost unchallenged in France for nearly 300 
 years makes them historically important, and from 
 this point of view the principal thing to emphasise is the 
 fact that, in their simplicity of subject and treatment, 
 the extremely limited range of the characters, their 
 preservation of the unities of plot, time, and place, their 
 entire repudiation of action on the stage, the highly 
 rhetorical quality of their dialogue, and their use of a 
 regular chorus, they reproduce all the structural features 
 of the Senecan drama on which they are modelled. As a 
 point of detail it may be noted that while Cleopdtre is 
 written in a combination of decasyllabics and alexandrines, 
 Didon is throughout in alexandrines with a regular alter- 
 nation of masculine and feminine rimes. This latter play 
 is therefore additionally interesting because it introduced 
 what was thereafter to be accepted by French dramatists 
 as the one proper measure for tragedy. 
 
 Though in the prologue to Engine Jodelle expressed 
 his contempt for the older forms of comic drama, his 
 innovation in comedy has little importance. Eugene 
 owes something indeed both in structure and in char- 
 acterisation to Plautus and Terence, but it is substantially 
 a development of the mediaeval farce ; its comic spirit 
 is of native growth ; its principal figures the abbe 
 Eugene himself, his factotum Messire Jean, Guillaume the 
 stupid husband, and Alix his frivolous young wife are 
 all obviously taken from the social world of the time. 
 The contrast at this point between the new tragedy and 
 the new comedy in France should be carefully marked 
 for its bearings upon the subsequent history of the drama. 
 Tragedy at its rebirth was wholly scholarly and imitative, 
 and scholarly and imitative it remained. Comedy, on 
 the other hand, had its roots in the popular stage, and
 
 38 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 however much it was afterwards affected by classic 
 influences, it never lost the traces of its origin. 
 
 Jodelle's lead in tragedy was followed by numerous 
 other writers of the later sixteenth century, the most 
 important of whom was Robert Gamier (1535-1601). 
 Garnier's plays have not much more dramatic quality 
 than those of Jodelle, but they are greatly superior to 
 these in poetic power and in style. Two of them, how- 
 ever, possess a certain independent interest : Les Juives 
 because of its Biblical subject ; Bradamante because, like 
 this, it is upon a non-classical theme (from Ariosto's 
 Orlando Furioso), because it is an early example of that 
 mixed form of drama, the tragi-comidie, or tragedy with 
 a happy ending, and because it omits the chorus. The 
 best writer of comedy during this period was Pierre 
 Larivey (1540-1611), who, himself the son of an Italian 
 father, produced comedies of intrigue (e.g., Le Laquais, 
 La Veuve, Les Esprits) adapted or imitated from Italian 
 models, though the scenes are laid in France and the 
 characters and manners adjusted to native conditions. 
 At one point he made a significant innovation ; following 
 his Italian originals he adopted prose in place of verse. 
 This change he explains and justifies in a letter to a friend 
 in which he expresses some misgiving as to its success, 
 since his " nouvelle facon d'escrire " had not thus far 
 been much employed "entre noz Francois." But largely 
 owing to the popularity of Italian comedy at the time, 
 prose had established itself as a medium for comedy by 
 the close of the century.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY (concluded) 
 PROSE 
 
 15. The Prose of the Sixteenth Century. Down 
 to the close of the fifteenth century, as we have seen, prose 
 had progressed very slowly in France. In the sixteenth 
 century its development was rapid. This was in the main 
 the natural result of the extension of literary culture and 
 the study of the classics. But social conditions had also 
 much to do with it. In the first place, since excitement 
 about theological questions was now general, writers on 
 both sides were prompted to adopt the language in which 
 they could address the largest audience, and thus the 
 religious controversies of the time contributed greatly 
 not only to the displacement of Latin by French, but also 
 to the establishment of a clear, direct, and unacademic 
 style. Here in particular Protestantism counted, for 
 from the first the reformers were inspired by democratic 
 aims and an earnest desire to reach down to the common 
 man. Secondly, the spread of intellectual interests 
 among the middle classes was a potent factor in the 
 evolution of the new prose. Poetry remained essentially 
 aristocratic. A very considerable portion of the public to 
 
 39
 
 40 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 which the prose writers appealed was composed of the 
 educated members of the bourgeoisie. 
 
 During the sixteenth century, therefore, prose was 
 used for many different purposes. It was used by trans- 
 lators, whose work opened up the treasures of classic 
 literature for those to whom the originals would have 
 remained sealed books ; as by Jacques Amyot (i 514-1593), 
 whose version of Plutarch (Vies des Homtnes Illustres, 
 1558) enjoyed an immense and well-deserved popularity. 1 
 It was used to disseminate knowledge in many learned 
 and scientific writings. It was used for biographies and 
 memoirs, the composition of which (in part owing to the 
 enthusiasm for Plutarch) now became popular (e.g., La Vie 
 de Bayard by " Le Loyal Serviteur " ; the Commentaires 
 of Blaise de Montluc) ; for history (e.g. the Histoire 
 Universelle of D'Aubignac) ; and for political speculation 
 (e.g. the republican tractate, Discours de la Servitude 
 Volontairc, by Montaigne's friend, La Boetie). It was 
 used for religious argument and appeal, as in two acknow- 
 ledged masterpieces of their respective schools, L' Institution 
 Chritienne by Jean Calvin, 2 and L' Introduction d la Vie 
 Devote by Saint Francois de Sales : 8 the one remarkable 
 as literature for the severe simplicity of its style, the other 
 for its poetic beauty. Most of this activity was, however, 
 as will be seen, in fields which lie outside our present 
 inquiry. In the general prose literature of the sixteenth 
 century two names stand out supreme, one in the first, 
 the other in the second half. They are those of Rabelais 
 and Montaigne. 
 
 1 It was in Sir Thomas North's English translation of this that 
 Shakespeare found the material for his Roman plays. 
 
 ' Calvin first published this work in Latin in 1535. His translation 
 of it, which appeared in 1541, is regarded as one of the first monuments 
 of modern French prose. 
 
 This was not published till 1608, but it is always classed among 
 the prose works of the sixteenth century, to which the writer belonged.
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 41 
 
 16. Rabelais. Francois Rabelais was born at Chinon 
 in Touraine7 probably in 1490, though the actual date is 
 uncertain. He was educateH at the convent school of 
 La Baumette near Angers, and about 1509 entered the 
 Franciscan monastery of Fontenay-le-Comte in Poitou. 
 There his enthusiasm for scientific and humanistic studies, 
 and especially for Greek learning, which was then closely 
 associated with heresy, brought him into trouble with 
 the authorities, and in 1524, having obtained permission 
 to transfer himself to the milder rule of St. Benedict, 
 he left the Franciscans, carrying with him that hatred 
 and scorn of monks and monasticism which was after- 
 wards a dominant note of his writings. About 1530 
 he abjured the religious life altogether and went to 
 Montpellier, where he devoted himself to the study of 
 medicine and lectured on Galen and Hippocrates, return- 
 ing thither in 1537 to take his doctor's degree. In the 
 meantime he settled in Lyons, then famous as an intel- 
 lectual centre, where he found congenial companions, 
 pursued his studies in the hospital, edited a number of 
 medical works, and gained a sound reputation in his pro- 
 fession. But he was too restless in temper to remain long 
 in one place. At different times he wandered much 
 about France ; he was in Italy in the suite of Cardinal du 
 Bellay in 1533 and 1536, and again in 1549 '> m x 546-47 
 he was town-physician at Metz ; in 1550 he was appointed 
 to the cure of Meudon, which he held for two years, 
 though it is not certain that he ever performed any of 
 its duties. Resigning in 1552 he went the following year 
 to Paris, where, it is supposed, he died soon after his 
 arrival. 
 
 Rabelais' one great work in literature consists of the 
 chronicles of two fabulous giants La Vie tres Horrlfique 
 du Grand Gargantua and Patitagruel, Roy des Dipsodcs,
 
 42 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 avec ses Faicts et Prouesses Espouvantables which he pro- 
 duced at intervals in the midst of Iris other occupations. 1 
 So far as they can be classified at all, these chronicles may 
 be said to form a kind of burlesque pros e toman d'aventures, 
 though even this"cTescription scarcely ISllgge'sls' Iflelf elilire 
 want of system or sequence. Rabelais wrote on from 
 chapter to chapter in complete indifference to anything 
 like general plan or even consistency, and the result was 
 a mere shapeless mass of episodes and digressions. There 
 is little that is absolutely original in his raw material. He 
 did not invent his gigantesque machinery, which belonged 
 to the folk-lore of his native Touraine, and most of his 
 incidents may be traced back now to one and now to 
 another of the many sources which lay open to a man of 
 his omnivorous reading. But he allowed his wit and 
 fancy to play unchecked upon his material, and the 
 amazing product is entirely his own. His characteristics 
 are so varied that they defy formal analysis. At times 
 he indulges in the wildest extravagances as when 
 Gargantua very nearly swallows half-a-dozen pilgrims 
 with his salad, one of whom sticks in a hollow tooth and 
 sets up a raging toothache. At times he revels in the 
 discovery of some utterly absurd idea, which he pursues 
 through pages of reckless nonsense. His enormous voca- 
 bulary is full of bizarre words fabricated at will to suit 
 his purpose or caprice. In his verbal jugglery and in- 
 numerable tricks of style he exhibits himself as a learned 
 mountebank of infinite resources ; he gives us immense 
 strings of words as in his description of Demosthenes 
 
 1 These comprise five books in all, the first being devoted to Gar- 
 gantua, the remaining four to Pantagruel. The fifth book, however, 
 was not published till twelve years after Rabelais' death, and there 
 has been much controversy concerning its authenticity. It seems 
 probable that it was made up out of notes and fragments which he 
 left behind him in manuscript.
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 43 
 
 rolling his tub (Liv. iii., Prologue), in which we count 
 sixty-one verbs in unbroken succession ; and enormous 
 catalogues, like that of the games of Gargantua (i. 32) 
 which contains no fewer than 195 items, and that of the 
 books in the Library of St. Victor (ii. 7) which runs to 
 140 titles. Above all we have to recognise his outrageous 
 grossness. Licence of language was very great at his time, 
 and he took full advantage of it. The result is that his 
 fun often degenerates into a riot of indecency. 
 
 The abounding humour, the sheer extravagance, and 
 the frequent foulness which are thus among the most 
 obvious features of Rabelais' work are doubtless in a 
 measure to be explained by reference to the promptings 
 of his own nature, for though the legendary distortion of 
 his character into a hard-drinking wastrel and practical 
 joker is now known to be absolutely devoid of foundation, 
 it is still true that he was a lover of broad laughter in 
 whom the old gaulois spirit was strong. But there was, 
 after all, an underlying method in his absurdities. He 
 was not only a great humorist, he was also an earnest and 
 independent thinker, whose whole philosophy of life was 
 in conflict with the orthodox teachings of his age. But 
 it was very dangerous at the time to challenge these 
 teachings openly, and even the suspicion of heresy might 
 easily lead a man to the dungeon or the stake. In these 
 circumstances Rabelais took the one course which seemed 
 open to him. He used his extravagances as a cloak for 
 his opinions of men and things. In his assumed role 
 of irresponsible buffoon he was able to speak his mind 
 freely about many subjects which otherwise he would 
 hardly have dared to touch. 1 But though he thus sought 
 
 1 None the less he stirred up a host of powerful enemies among the 
 theologians and other supporters of the old ideas. His fourth book, 
 though he obtained the royal sanction for it, was condemned by the 
 Sorbonne and prohibited by the Parliament of Paris.
 
 44 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 to provide himself with a safe cover in case of emergency, 
 he did not fail to give the judicious reader due warning of 
 his ultimate intentions (Liv. i., Prologue de I'Auteur). 
 
 It is true that the tendency of modern criticism has 
 been to see more systematic philosophy in Rabelais' pages 
 than he himself ever dreamed of putting there. Thus, 
 for example, to say that he designed to typify in Grand- 
 gousier (Gargantua's father) the whole Middle Ages, in 
 Gargantua the transition from the Middle Ages to the 
 Renaissance, and in Pantagruel the Renaissance itself, 
 is to attempt to reduce his random ideas to too formal a 
 scheme. Yet a certain fairly well-defined theory of life 
 runs through and animates all his work. This theory 
 rests on the principle of the absolute goodness of nature 
 and the excellence of whatever is natural, as it is specific- 
 ally set forth in the allegory of Physis and Antiphysis, 
 the former of which gives birth to beauty and harmony, 
 the latter to excess and discord (iv. 32). Such belief in 
 the goodness of nature, with its necessary corollary, belief 
 in intellectual and moral liberty, brought Rabelais into 
 sharp antagonism with Calvinism on the one hand and 
 with the entire system of mediaeval Christianity on the 
 other, for disbelief in nature, asceticism, and dogmatic 
 tyranny were common features of both the theological 
 schools. His own position in religion was thus that of an 
 independent outsider, whose simple creed was summed 
 up in the doctrine " to serve, love, and fear God." But 
 though he does not spare the Protestants (e.g. iv. 45-47), 
 it Is rather against the Catholics, their superstitious 
 practices (e.g. iv. 29-32), the entire system of ecclesiasti- 
 cisrri (v. 1-6), the pretensions of the papacy (iv. 48-53), 
 and so on, that his most vigorous satire is directed. In 
 particular, he is never weary of pouring ridicule upon 
 monasticism and everything which it stood for and sym-
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 45 
 
 bolised its repudiation of the natural instincts, the 
 spirit of servile obedience which it inculcated, the barren 
 scholasticism which had been fostered by it. Here we 
 have the text of his famous programme of educational 
 reform as outlined in the chapters on Gargantua's early 
 training (i. 21, 23, 24, and cp. Gargantua's letter to his 
 son in ii. 8), and in his great Utopian dream of the Abbey 
 of Thelema (i. 52-57), an institution which was to be dedi- 
 cated to the cultivation of a life of freedom, cleanliness, 
 and right reason, and which was therefore to represent 
 the opposite in every respect of the pinched, anaemic, and 
 unnatural ideals of the religious orders. Furthermore, 
 in his satire upon many things by the way, Rabelais is 
 always the apostle of nature, good sense, and liberty 
 against convention, superstition, and artifice as in his 
 frequent attacks upon the scholastic philosophers, upon 
 the absurdities of the law {e.g. iii. 39-43, v. 14), upon the 
 Latinised French of the Pleiade (ii. 6). Another aspect 
 of his work which must not be overlooked is the excellence 
 of some of the character- drawing. Pantagruel is an 
 admirable portrait of the ideal king ; Frere Jean des 
 Enfommeures is a vigorous sketch of the practical man 
 of action ; while in Panurge, the clever, shifty, unscrupu- 
 lous adventurer, we have a humorous creation which 
 deserves a place not far below Sancho Panza and Falstaff . 
 
 17. Montaigne. Though Rabelais was a product of 
 the early 'Renaissance, the roots of his genius were in the 
 Middle Ages. The great essayist who comes next on 
 our list was, on the other hand, wholly a man of the 
 new time. 
 
 Michel Eyquem was born i n 1533 i n the Chateau of 
 Montaigne, in Perigord, which his great-grandfather had 
 purchased out of money made by commerce in Bordeaux. 
 He was the third child of Pierre Eyquem de Montaigne,
 
 46 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 a man of independent views and not a few eccentricities, 
 who was much in advance of his day in many ways, and 
 notably in respect of education a matter of special 
 interest on account of the lasting influence which at this 
 point he exerted over his son's mind (for Montaigne's own 
 educational theories see Essais, i. 25, and incidentally 
 i. 24, ii. 8, 10, 31). After six and a half years of thorough 
 classical training at the College de Guienne in Bordeaux, 
 then one of the best schools in Ine'counfry, he entered! at 
 thirteen on the study of law, and in due course became 
 
 I successively member of the Cours des Aides of P6rigord 
 and Counsellor to the Parliament of Bordeaux. He did not 
 like his profession, and afterwards wrote with contempt 
 
 I of the wranglings of the lawyers and the abuses which 
 then too often disgraced the administration of justice, 
 but he seems to have performed his duties punctually 
 enough for the sixteen years during which he was occupied 
 with them, though in the meantime he made frequent 
 journeys to Paris and was in occasional attendance at the 
 
 (Court. In 1565 he married the daughter of one of his 
 fellow-counsellors, but his marriage has far less import- 
 ance in his biography than his friendship (which is one of 
 the great friendships of literature) with another of them, 
 fitienne de la Boetie (1530-1563), whom he loved with the 
 dee pest devotio n, and whose memory n6 Cflfiflshe^lenderly 
 till The very end 1 nis owri life (see, B.J"., ESWiS, 1. "27, 
 ii. 3y. On the death of his father in 1569 (his two elder 
 brothers having diea some time Detore) lie succeeded to the 
 family estates and became Sieur de Montaigne. Resigning 
 his official position, he thereupon settTecf'down to the 
 quiet life of a country gentleman, looking after his pro- 
 perty, enjoying a certain amount of outdoor exercise, 
 but most at home in the library which he had arranged 
 for himself in the round tower of his chateau (see iii. 3).
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 47 
 
 Here, surrounded by his books and with his favourite cat 
 as his companion, he passed his days reading, dreaming, 
 writing, in a kind of busy idleness which exactly suited his 
 disposition, and of which the Essais were presently the 
 fruit. This delightful routine of existence was twice 
 interrupted : once by a long journey in Germany, Switz er- 
 land, and Italy, undertaken in part from his curiosity to 
 see!5fherl56mftries, in part in the hope that the medicinal 
 waters of certain foreign health-resorts might afford him 
 relief in the painful malady from which he was suffering 
 (1580-81) ; * and again, far less pleasantly (for public 
 duty always went against the grain with him), by his 
 ele ction to the mayoralty of Bordeau x, an office which he 
 fill ed for two terms (1581-85 ). Alter this he returned to 
 the retirement of his chateau, and there he died in 1592. 
 Montaigne's work in literature is relatively small in bulk 
 and is throughout in a single form, for it is comprised 
 entirely in th ree b ooks of Essais (the first two published 
 in 1580, the thir d in _ig 88), varying greatly in length and 
 numbering 107 in al l. He was not, as he is very anxious 
 to insist, an" author by profession (see Letter to Mme. 
 de Duras, ii. 37), and there is nothing of the professional 
 quality in his pages ; he began to write because he wanted 
 occupation and found r3Ieasure in expressing himself ; 
 and though it is fairly evident that as he went on he came 
 to regard his production more and more seriously, his 
 desultory and haphazard manner remained unchanged to 
 the end. He had read much, and what he read suggested 
 many thoughts and questions to him ; he had seen life 
 and had formed his own judgment of men and affairs ; 
 and it was his aim to set down these results of his studies, 
 his experiences, and his meditations for his own entertain- 
 
 1 The record of this journey is provided by a diary which he meant 
 for his own eye only, and which in fact was not published till 1774.
 
 48 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 ment and the benefit of his readers. But this he did 
 without method, without plan, without regard even for 
 consistency. The stated text of one of his Essais is 
 scarcely more than a point of departure for miscellaneous 
 speculations on all sorts of things ; he wanders from 
 it into bypaths of reminiscence, anecdote, quotation, 
 theory ; he indulges perpetually in digressions ; having 
 once allowed himself to be diverted from the topic nomin- 
 ally in hand, he rarely gets back to it again. The very 
 title which he chose for his discourses, Essais (a word 
 which he employs in its original etymological Jlense), is 
 itself indicative of their character. Moreover, the style 
 which he adopts is in perfect harmony with his manner. 
 In its ease, spontaneity, and entire freedom from bookish- 
 ness and convention, it is a style as far as possible removed 
 from that of formal composition. It is rather the style 
 of good, racy, vigorous conversation. Montaigne cared 
 nothing for the dignity which writers in general were so 
 solicitous to maintain. There are many grave and noble 
 passages in his Essais, but there is nothing forced or 
 strained in them ; their eloquence is simply the elo- 
 quence of sincere emotion expressing itself in appropriate 
 phrases. As he himself declared, he loved homely and 
 natural speech and style, which were the same on paper 
 as they were in the mouth. 
 
 The absolutely personal quality of the Essais is, 
 therefore, their outstanding characteristic. Wide as is 
 their range and varied as are the subjects with which they 
 deal, they form in their entirety a body of literature of 
 the most intimately confidential kind, for their beginning, 
 their middle, and their end is always the writer himself. 
 Montaigne's avowed purpose, and it is this which gives them 
 their substantial unity, was indeed to produce in them a 
 portrait of himself which should be faithful in its minutest
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 49 
 
 particulars to the original from which it was drawn. On 
 this point he is clear and emphatic. " C'est ici un livre 
 de bonne foy, lecteur," lie writes in his preface. " Je veux 
 qu'on me voie en ma facon simple, naturelle et ordinaire, 
 car c'est moy que je peinds. . . . Je suis moy mesme la 
 matiere de mon livre." And again and again in the 
 Essais themselves he strikes the same note, as, e.g., " Ce 
 sont icy mes fantasies, par lesquelles je ne tasche point de 
 donner a cognoiser les choses, mais moy " (ii. 10), and 
 " Le monde regarde toujours devant soy ; moy, je regarde 
 dedans moy ; je n'ay affaire qu'a moy ; je me considere 
 sans cesse, je me controulle, je me gouste . . . je me roule 
 en moy mesme" (ii. 17). In carrying out this purpose 
 of self -delineation Montaigne often loaded TitS page's 
 with private and trivial gossip which is sometimes otiose 
 and occasionally rather unedifying (for autobiographical 
 details see in particular ii. 6, 7, iii. 3, 13). Such details 
 may be disregarded by readers who are not so much in- 
 terested in Montaigne chez lui as Montaigne was himself. 
 The essential feature of the Essais is the perfect frankness 
 with which the writer depicts his character and lays bare 
 his mind ; and at this point his inconsistencies assume a 
 special importance. His intellect was singularly open, 
 flexible, and ondoyant an intellect " toujours ert appren- 
 tissage et en espreuve " (iii. 2) ; he saw many sides to most 
 questions ; he dealt freely now with one side and now 
 with another ; and he never sought to resolve the resulting 
 contradictions of his thought or to gather his opinions 
 into a coherent whole. 
 
 Montaigne's egotism, however, had far wider bearings 
 than might at first sight be supposed. His infinite 
 curiosity about himself was indeed only one aspect of his 
 infinite curiosity about life in general. " Chaque homme 
 porte la forme entiere de l'humaine condition," he writes 
 
 E
 
 50 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 (iii. 2), and his preoccupation with himself was at bottom 
 preoccupation with himself as a sample of humanity. In 
 the words of one of his favourite mottoes (the well-known 
 phrase from Terence), as he was a man nothing human 
 was foreign to him. Hence his fondness for travel" and 
 his insistence upon it as a means of education (i. 25), and 
 his devotion to history which he conceived, in a singularly 
 modern way, as n l'anatomie de la philosophic " (ibid, and 
 ii. 10). His Essais, therefore, are something more than a 
 study of himself ; they are a repertory of observations of 
 life and judgments upon it. There is nothing in the least 
 systematic about his philosophy, it is true, for system- 
 building was impossible to a man of his mental habits ; 
 but his insight, his sagacity, and his honesty combine to 
 make his discursive theorisings wonderfully pregnant and 
 suggestive. At the root of his thought lies his profound 
 and persistent ~s"ce~pticis m th e scepnaSffl SU Well iiicli- 
 cated by his device a pair of scales and his motto 
 " Que scay-je ? " Amid the fierce conflict of creeds which 
 rageiTclL his time and the unmeasured dogmatism of the 
 contending schools he stood apart, the very incarnation 
 of the anti-dogmatic spirit. Wherever he turned he 
 found himself confronted by uncertainties ; all his in- 
 quiries led to the one conviction that nothing is so hopeless 
 as the quest for absolute truth. He dwells upon the con- 
 tradictions in human nature itself and the bewildering 
 variety of opinions which results from these (i. 22) ; upon 
 the purely subjective character of all our thinking (i. 26, 
 40) ; upon the inability of the mind to discover any firm 
 footing for itself either in the wisdom of the past or in 
 the facts of experience (for the fullest expression of his 
 scepticism see ii. 12). His philosophy, therefore, acts as a 
 universal solvent, yet it should be carefully noted that in 
 matters of religion he found an escape from his own logic
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 51 
 
 in the authority of the Church. As a moralist he is usually 
 described as an epic urean, but hi s epicureanism (see 
 particularly iii. 13) was touched and modified by the 
 stoicism of some of his beloved classic authors, notably 
 Plutarch and Seneca, for whom he had the deepest ad- 
 miration (ii. 32). The charge often brought against him 
 on ethical grounds is that his teaching makes for laxity, 
 indifference, and selfishness, and there is a certain amount 
 of justification for it. On the other hand, we have to 
 recognise the marvellous sagacity with which he often 
 discourses on the conduct of life ; the practical helpfulness 
 of his thoughts by the way ; his absolute honesty and 
 truthfulness ; the frequent nobility of his temper, as in his 
 many fine passages on death [e.g. i. 19) ; his large tolerance 
 and sympathy ; and the humane spirit which runs 
 through all his Essais and which led him, always by their 
 general tone and again and again by specific utterance, 
 to condemn the bigotry, the ferocity, and the cruelty of his 
 age. Taken in their entirety, the Essais may without 
 exaggeration be described as the most vital book in the 
 European literature of the sixteenth century, and their 
 influence has been continuous from that time to our own. 
 Such vitality and such influence have to be explained by 
 reference, not to Montaigne's greatness as a thinker, 
 or to the originality of his ideas, but to the whole tone and 
 character of his mind. He wrote as one who had eman- 
 cipated himself from all retrospective habits of thought, 
 and who, instead of relying on the past, subjected all 
 questions anew to reason and common-sense, and every 
 sentence which comes from his pen is instinct with his 
 own individuality. Hence his astonishing freshness after 
 the lapse of more than 'three hundred years ; hence his 
 continued power of stimulating and fertilising other minds.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
 POETRY 
 
 18. The Seventeenth Century. The "grand siecle," 
 as French historians call the seventeenth century though 
 for purposes of literary classification this must be under- 
 stood to extend till the death of Louis XIV. in 1715 
 saw the consolidation of the power of the crown by 
 Richelieu, the last struggles of the feudal nobility in the 
 disturbances of the Fronde, their final subjugation by 
 Mazarin, and the culmination of absolute monarchy 
 under the Roi-Soleil. These political movements have 
 a direct importance for the student of literature. Cen- 
 tralisation in government was accompanied by centralisa- 
 tion in culture, and this in turn was largely responsible 
 for the triumph of classicism. The literature of the 
 sixteenth century had been essentially individualistic ; 
 with few exceptions its writers had followed their own 
 bent and had gone their own way, and little had been 
 accomplished towards the establishment of any general 
 standard of judgment and taste. The outstanding 
 feature of the seventeenth century in literature, as in 
 politics, was the reduction of chaos to order and the 
 achievement of unity under authority, and in the one 
 
 52
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 53 
 
 case as in the other liberty and personality were alike 
 sacrificed. 
 
 When, the Wars of Religion over, peace and prosperity 
 were restored to the distracted country, social evolution 
 began afresh on the lines which have already been 
 indicated, and the transformation of the feudal nobility 
 into a noblesse de cour, which had commenced under 
 Francis I., was now carried to completion. One con- 
 spicuous result which attended the formation of this 
 new societe mondaine was the popularity of those reunions 
 of " honnetes gens " which flourished in large numbers 
 in Paris and in the more important provincial cities 
 during the first half of the century, and played so prominent 
 a part in the social history of the age. The most cele- 
 brated of these salons, as they came to be called, was 
 that of the Hotel de Rambouillet, which for more than 
 thirty years (roughly, from 1610 to 1645) was the principal 
 centre of the literary fife of the metropolis ; but there 
 were others which sprang up in imitation of or in rivalry 
 with it, of scarcely less note. At first the influence of 
 these coteries in refining manners and speech, and foster- 
 ing the arts of polite intercourse, was very much for 
 good. As time went on, however, they brought them- 
 selves into well-merited contempt by the monstrous 
 affectations which they encouraged in their dread of 
 vulgarity and desire for distinction, and, in particular, by 
 their spirit of extravagant gallantry, the artificiality of 
 their tone and tastes, and the " preciosity " which turned 
 their conversation into a jargon intelligible only to the 
 initiated. As they gave women an easy ascendancy in 
 all social affairs, they helped to feminise literature as 
 well as manners ; hence their general tendency was 
 towards the elimination not only of the pedantry and 
 coarseness, but also oi the vigour and raciness of the
 
 54 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 sixteenth-century writers. In this way they left their 
 mark on literature. Otherwise their direct influence 
 upon it was neither deep nor lasting. It was confined 
 in the main to the lighter kinds of poetry and prose 
 (e.g. the vers de sociitt of Vincent Voiture, 1598-1648), 
 and to the romance (see post, pp. 110-115). 
 
 Incidentally the salon led, or at least contributed, 
 to the establishment of an institution of far greater 
 importance than itself, for out of a small and select 
 circle, this time of men of scientific and artistic interests, 
 emerged the Academie Francaise, organised, though not 
 originated, by Richelieu, and incorporated by royal 
 letters-patent in 1635. The Academy carried yet one 
 step farther that movement towards the centralisation of 
 culture which had already appeared in the salon ; as, in 
 Matthew Arnold's words, " a supreme court of literature " 
 and " a sovereign organ of the highest literary opinion," 
 it was in fact a logical development of the great cardinal's 
 policy of absolutism. It meant that in intellectual 
 matters, as in political, a central authority had been set 
 up which was henceforth to be supreme in all questions 
 falling within its jurisdiction. 
 
 This movement towards absolutism in culture was 
 not, however, completed till, on the death of Mazarin 
 in 1661, Louis XIV., then a young man of three-and- 
 twenty, took the reins of government into his own hands. 
 At this point the influence of the salons finally disappeared 
 before that of the Court, which now gave the law in 
 literature as in everything else. The king's personal 
 taste in art is sufficiently indicated by Versailles : it was 
 a taste for the elegant, the grandiose, the correct ; and 
 in literature his taste was the same. Under his autocratic 
 sway it was this taste which now prevailed. 
 
 Yet though an artificial unity was thus secured, dis-
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 55 
 
 turbing forces were at work which in the long run were 
 to prove fatal to its continuance. From quite early in 
 the century onward we can trace the influence of the 
 bourgeois spirit making in many ways against the spirit, 
 first of the salons, and afterwards of Versailles, and this 
 influence gained in strength when, amid the disasters of 
 the closing decades of Louis' reign, the centre of in- 
 tellectual power shifted from the Court to the capital. 
 The results of this change we shall have to consider when 
 we pass on into the eighteenth century. Our present 
 concern is with the poetry of the classical period. 
 
 19. Malherbe. Francois de Malherbe, with whom 
 our study begins, was born at Caen in 1555. His father 
 belonged to the magistrature, and he himself first sought 
 a career in the law, but he presently abandoned the 
 gown for the sword and fought in the Wars of Religion. 
 Though he had already written verses before the close 
 of the sixteenth century, most of his poetry, and all 
 that is at all valuable in it, was produced after 1605, 
 when he settled in Paris and attached himself to the 
 Court. He died in 1628. Malherbe paid for the favours 
 which he received from his royal patrons and others in 
 authority by many poems of a servile character, but he 
 also wrote odes and stances on public occasions {e.g., Sur 
 V Attentat commis en la Personne de Henri le Grand, 1605 ; 
 Ode d la Reine Mere du Roi sur les heureux Succes de 
 sa Regence, 1610 ; Ode au Roi Louis XIII allant chdtier 
 les Rochellais et chasser les Anglais), which, though frigid, 
 are not wanting in strength and dignity. Such poems 
 give him a certain place in the history of his time as the 
 poetic exponent of those ideals of government which it 
 was Richelieu's great work to realise. Otherwise they 
 have little interest for the modern reader. Nor do the 
 rest of his writings make much appeal to us ; in fact
 
 56 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 there is perhaps only one of them which can be said really 
 to live, and that is the Consolation which he addressed to 
 M. du Perier on the death of his daughter Rose a touching 
 poem specially remembered for the often-quoted stanza : 
 
 Mais elle 6tait du monde, ou les plus belles choses 
 
 Ont le pire destin ; 
 Et rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses, 
 
 L'espace d'un matin. 
 
 Malherbe is indeed one of those writers whose historical 
 importance is wholly out of proportion to their intrinsic 
 merits. He was in no sense a great poet ; he had neither 
 imagination, nor vision, nor deep feeling, nor any magic 
 of style ; and his verse, though highly finished, is in 
 general prosaic and cold. But he came at a time when 
 critical ideas were changing in the direction of his own 
 taste ; he had thus the peculiar good fortune to identify 
 himself with the movement of his generation, and his 
 influence helped that movement to prevail. Boileau's 
 famous " enfin Malherbe vint," it is true, over-emphasises 
 his personal part in the reform of French poetry in the 
 early seventeenth century. Yet he certainly did lay 
 down the lines which that poetry was to follow for the 
 next two hundred years, and for this reason he deserves 
 more attention than we should otherwise bestow upon 
 him. 
 
 His poetic principles were largely negative, and were 
 chiefly concerned with matters of technique. He set out 
 to clear the language from the archaisms, provincialisms, 
 and neologisms of the Plelade, and from the affectations 
 and conceits which had been introduced into French 
 poetry under Italian influences. He rejected entirely 
 the theory of Ronsard that poetry should use a specialised 
 kind of diction : the diction of poetry should be just 
 pure French, like that of the best prose. He thus restricted
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 57 
 
 and impoverished the language of poetry as Ronsard had 
 attempted to enlarge and enrich it, and by eliminating 
 the personal factor turned it into a language of mere 
 convention. " Le tyran des mots et des syllabes," as 
 he was called, 1 he gave the most scrupulous attention to 
 the minutest grammatical details, and corrected and 
 re-wrote with such laborious care that, the legend ran, 
 he would use a ream of paper to produce a single stanza. 
 In regard to versification he prescribed many exacting 
 rules, and in particular regulated the alexandrine by 
 banishing enjambement, or the running on of the sense 
 from one couplet to another. Thus by precept and 
 example, as Boileau said, " il reduisit la Muse aux regies 
 du devoir," and became the chief power in the formation 
 of that classical school of poetry of which he is recognised 
 as the first master the school which, repressing entirely 
 the individual element and sedulously avoiding every- 
 thing savouring of extravagance in thought or style, 
 was to take as its watchwords, lucidity, correctness, 
 good sense, elegance, and propriety. 
 
 20. Regnier. " Tout reconnut ses lois," Boileau 
 declares in his too sweeping estimate of Malherbe's 
 influence. As a matter of fact, though the general 
 current of critical opinion was in his favour, and though 
 a few avowed disciples the most prominent of whom 
 was Honore de Buet, Marquis de Racan (1589-1670) 
 soon gathered about him, his laws for the moment were 
 by no means universally accepted. There were those 
 indeed who, in the interests of personal freedom, pro- 
 tested against them, like Th6ophile de Viau (1596-1626), 
 who in his poem, Sur Malherbe et ses Imitateurs, while 
 
 1 " Vous vous souvenez du vieux pedagogue de la cour qu'on 
 appelait autrefois le tyran des mots et des syllabes " (Balzac, Socrate 
 Crttien, x.).
 
 58 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 he acknowledges the skill of the master, refuses to be 
 bound by his rules : 
 
 Imite qui voudra les merveilles d'autrui, 
 
 Malherbe a trs bien fait, mais il a fait pour lui . . . 
 
 J'aime sa renommee et non pas sa le^on . . . 
 
 Je veux faire des vers qui ne soient pas contraints. 
 
 Of these independent writers, who represent the last 
 efforts of the older poetic spirit against the new classical 
 creed, the most important is Mathurin Regnier (1573- 
 1613), a poet of real genius and originality, the author 
 of some minor poems of great beauty and pathos, but 
 ,t>est known by his sixteen satires, which easily rank 
 among the finest things of the kind in French literature. 1 
 It is therefore to be regretted that, himself a loose liver, 
 his verses too often (in Boileau's words) " se sentaient 
 des lieux ou frequentait l'auteur." His essential great- 
 ness lies in the breadth and vigour of his characterisation ; 
 as Boileau justly said, it was he who " du consentement 
 de tout le monde a mieux connu avant Moliere les moeurs et 
 les caracteres des hommes." Historically he is interesting 
 because of his uncompromising antagonism to Malherbe 
 and his doctrines. In his ninth satire he ridicules those 
 who devote all their study to petty details of syntax and 
 versification (" car s'ils font quelque chose, c'est proser 
 de la rime et rimer de la prose ") and think there is 
 nothing good " s'il n'est pas fait a leur mode," and for 
 himself boldly advocates liberty and the rights of genius, 
 which, he declares, are above all the mere rules of art. 
 
 1 The most interesting of these are : II. Les Pontes, a vivid descrip- 
 tion of the literary world of the time ; IX. A Nicole Rapin, an attack 
 on Malherbe ; XII. Son Apologi*e, which contains his theory of satire ; 
 XIII. Macette, a powerful study of a hypocritical old woman Regnier's 
 masterpiece, but to be read only by those who are willing to accept its 
 extreme grossness ; and XV. Le Poile malgri soi, an account of his own 
 manner of writing and of the qualities of his character.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 59 
 
 His own style is strong and free, but often loose and even 
 incorrect, and whether we agree with him or not in his 
 statement that " les nonchalances sont ses plus grands 
 artifices," we must admit that his " nonchalances " are very 
 numerous. In his management of the alexandrine he 
 again defies Malherbe by his continual use of enjambement. 
 
 21. Boileau. Despite the insubordination of Regnier 
 and a few other poets here and there, however, Malherbe 's 
 influence increased steadily after his death, and nearly 
 half a century later his work was completed by a writer 
 who holds an assured place in the history of French 
 literature as " the lawgiver of Parnassus " and the 
 authoritative exponent of the classical creed. The son 
 of a registrar to the Parlement, Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux 
 was born in Paris in 1636. In youth he was destined 
 for the Church, but he soon gave up theology and took 
 to the law, which in turn he abandoned for literature 
 when on his father's death he inherited a fortune which, 
 though small, sufficed to make him independent. Hence- 
 forth his life was that of a typical man of letters, who 
 lives for literature and cares for little else. By his out- 
 spoken criticism he made many bitter enemies among 
 the writers of the day, but on the other hand he enjoyed 
 the friendship of Moliere, Racine, and La Fontaine, and 
 the patronage of the king, and he was long the ruling 
 spirit of the Academy. In his closing years he retired 
 to Auteuil, where he died in 1711. 
 
 Boileau's works include twelve satires which are 
 closely fashioned on classic models ; * twelve epitres, in 
 the ninth of which he discourses on his favourite text, 
 " Rien n'est beau que le vrai " ; a number of odes, 
 
 1 E.g., II. Accord de la Rime et de la Raison, addressed to Moliere ; 
 and IX. A son Esprit, which is specially important as an exposition of 
 his aims as a satirist and a defence of his severity in the treatment of 
 bad literature.
 
 60 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 dpigrammes, and minor poems ; and in prose, a Dialogue 
 sur les Hdros de Romans and Rdflexions sur Longin, both 
 of which are of some interest on the critical side, and 
 will be referred to again later. But for present purposes 
 we need consider only two of his writings which, each 
 in its own way, possess a special importance Le Lutrin 
 (1672-83) and L'Art Poitique (1674). 
 
 Le Lutrin, which was one of Pope's models in The 
 Rape of the Lock, had its origin in an " assez bizarre 
 occasion" a quarrel between the chantre and the 
 trdsorier of the Sainte-Chapelle about the position of the 
 reading-desk and the lawsuit which followed. This 
 incident Boileau takes as the foundation of a " poeme 
 heYoi-comique," a new kind of burlesque in France, 
 though Italy had already produced a well-known specimen 
 in Tassoni's La Secchia Rapita, or Rape of the Bucket 
 (1614). Formerly the method of the burlesque writer 
 had been to select an heroic subject and to turn it into 
 ridicule by treating it in a commonplace and vulgar 
 way, 1 as Scarron had done in his L'neide Travestie 
 (1648-53). Boileau reverses the process by choosing a 
 trivial subject and treating it with epic dignity : the 
 essence of the " mock heroic " being this calculated and 
 sustained discrepancy between matter and style. " C'est 
 un burlesque nouveau, dont je me suis a vise" dans notre 
 langue," he writes in his address to the reader ; " car au 
 lieu que dans l'autre burlesque Didon et nee parloient 
 comme des harengeres et des crocheteurs, dans celui-ci, 
 une horlog&re et un horloger 2 parlent comme Didon et 
 nee." Nor is this all ; for not only are the epic tone 
 and manner adopted throughout, but the poem is laid 
 out on the regular epic plan, with the " supernatural 
 
 1 Cp. " Le Pamasse parla le langage des halles " (L'Art Poitique, i.). 
 * In the final revision of the poem a perruquiere and perruquier take 
 the places of the horlogere and horloger.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 61 
 
 machinery " which was then regarded as indispensable 
 in the epic dreams, omens (in accordance with classic 
 tradition), and (in Chant IV.) a battle in the approved 
 Homeric style. Le Lutrin, though it falls far short of 
 The Rape of the Lock in delicacy of fancy and lightness of 
 touch, may still be read with amusement. In dealing 
 with it historically we must remember that it was the 
 product of an age when the " rules " of the epic were 
 much discussed and numerous bad epics were being 
 written (e.g., La Pucelle d'Orleans, 1656, by one of the 
 principal butts of Boileau's satire, Jean Chapelain). 
 
 Far more importance, however, attaches to L'Art 
 Poetique, a didactic poem in four cantos, in which Boileau 
 formulates his critical creed, and which was long accepted 
 as the great text-book of classicism. This essay in verse 
 and in verse which is on the whole very mechanical 
 and pedestrian is offered as a manual of instruction to 
 the would-be poet who, convinced to begin with that he 
 really is a poet by right of birth (a point upon which, it 
 must not be forgotten, Boileau lays the utmost stress), 
 wishes to use his powers to the best advantage. In the 
 first canto general rules are given of a purely technical 
 character, and a short history of French poetry from 
 Villon to Malherbe is introduced ; in the last, the moral 
 aspects of the poet's life and work are considered ; the 
 intervening cantos are devoted to a discussion (by no 
 means exhaustive) of the genres of poetry and the special 
 laws which govern each. Boileau's central doctrine is 
 that the poet should follow nature, or, as he otherwise 
 expresses it, take reason as his guide : thus 
 
 Jamais de la nature il ne faut s'6carter, 
 
 and 
 
 Aimez done la raison ; que tou jours vos Merits 
 Empruntent d'elle seule et leur luxe et leur prix.
 
 62 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 This doctrine really means that the poet should avoid 
 extravagances, eccentricities, and the cultivation of 
 personal idiosyncrasies of all kinds, and keep steadily to 
 what is natural and reasonable, that is, to what belongs 
 to the normal and general course of experience. In this 
 sense we have to interpret the principle that 
 
 Rien n'est beau que le vrai, le vrai seul est aimable, 
 
 from which all the alleged rules of poetic art are supposed 
 to be derived. But it is important to notice that while 
 Boileau ostensibly rests his case on pure reason, his 
 argument leads to classicism of the narrowest kind. For 
 how are we to know what is natural and reasonable ? 
 how are we to distinguish between what is general and 
 what is particular ? between what is true and what is 
 merely factitious ? The answer is that such knowledge 
 and enlightenment are to be acquired only in the great 
 school of the classics who have provided us with per- 
 manent standards and models. This theory of the 
 dependence of modern literature upon that of the ancients 
 runs through the entire essay, and lies at the root of all 
 its special precepts. 1 
 
 As a piece of constructive criticism L 'Art Poetique 
 strikes us now as singularly jejune, uninspired, and 
 insufficient. Boileau was thoroughly honest ; he was 
 sincerely solicitous for the interests of literature ; and it 
 must be acknowledged that he did good service by 
 clearing away the affectations which infested the minor 
 poetry of his time, and by his constant, though often 
 rather brutal, attacks upon second- and third-rate writers. 
 But his views were narrow, his judgment hard, and the 
 
 1 Pope took over the whole argument about following nature, with 
 its corollary regarding the supremacy of the classics, and applied it 
 to the problem of judgment in literature in his Essay on Criticism, 
 68-140.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 63 
 
 tone of his mind dogmatic. Entirely wanting in the 
 historical sense and in any feeling for the natural and 
 spontaneous growth of literature, he regarded the types 
 of poetry, with all their rules and conventions, as definitely 
 established once and for all, and treated them accordingly 
 in terms of fixed formulas. Moreover he was very 
 inadequately equipped for his task, for his knowledge of 
 literature was extremely circumscribed, his training in 
 the classics was practically confined to the Latins, he 
 was almost entirely unacquainted with contemporary 
 foreign authors, while his blunders of statement reveal 
 a surprising ignorance even of the earlier poetry of his 
 own land. But the limitations of outlook and false 
 conceptions of poetic excellence which resulted from 
 such deficiencies were not perceived at the time, nor 
 indeed for more than a century afterwards. Boileau's 
 right to reign over Parnassus was almost universally 
 acknowledged, 1 and under his rule poetry broke finally 
 with the great national tradition, lost all life, freedom, 
 and spontaneity, and became stereotyped, artificial, 
 formal, and colourless. 
 
 22. La Fontaine. Among the forms of poetry over- 
 looked by Boileau in his classification was the fable. 
 Such omission was the more curious because of the 
 pre-eminence achieved in this particular field by one 
 of his closest friends. 
 
 Jean de La Fontaine, the prince of fabulists, was born 
 in 1 62 1 at Chateau - Thierry in Champagne, where his 
 father was Maitre des Eaux et des ForSts. His education 
 was sadly neglected, but he early began to browse among 
 the old books in his grandfather's well-stocked library, 
 and thus gained a familiarity, rare at the time, with the 
 
 1 " And Boileau still in right of Horace sways " (Pope, Essay on 
 Criticism, 714).
 
 64 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 works of Marot, Rabelais, and other sixteenth-century 
 writers. After studying first for the Church and then 
 for the Bar he was appointed in succession to his father 
 to the rangership of his district, and continued to perform, 
 though very indifferently, the duties of the office for 
 nearly ten years. Meanwhile he was reading widely and 
 dabbling in composition, though it was not till 1654 tnat 
 he took his first real step in authorship with a translation 
 of Terence's Eunuchus. Then he drifted to Paris, where 
 he soon became popular in society, and where the rest 
 of his life was spent. A man of easy-going disposition, 
 egotistical and self-indulgent, though with many lovable 
 qualities which made those about him blind to his faults, 
 he was happy in finding patrons on whose bounty he 
 lived, a detached, amused spectator of the world ; in his 
 naivete, irresponsibility, and frankness very much of a 
 child, but with a shrewd insight into character and an 
 infinite sense of the absurdity of things. Towards the 
 end, as the result of a long illness, he was converted, 
 expressed regret for what was objectionable in some of 
 his writings, made his peace with the Church, and died 
 " tres chr6tiennement " in 1695. 
 
 Though he wrote a couple of comedies (Le Florentin 
 and La Coupe Enchantee) and a number of miscellaneous 
 poems, La Fontaine's fame rests entirely upon his Contes 
 (1664, 1667, 1671, 1675) and his Fables (Livres I. -VI., 
 1668; VII.-XL, 1678; XII., 1694 241 in all). The 
 Contes, which are versions of stories from Boccaccio, 
 Ariosto, Machiavelli, Rabelais, the HeptamSron, the Cent 
 Nouvelles Nouvelles, and various Greek and Latin writers, 
 are little masterpieces of sparkling and delicate art ; but 
 they are marred by a licentiousness so great that though 
 they were extremely popular for that very reason in the 
 libertine society of the time, the last volume was actually
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 65 
 
 suppressed by the police. It is fortunate, therefore, that 
 all their finest qualities their skill in narrative, their 
 wit, irony, and fancy, the grace, variety, and suppleness 
 of their versification, and their peculiar personal charm 
 are to be found without any taint of their lubricity in 
 the Fables, which have certainly never been surpassed in 
 any literature, and which still make so universal an appeal 
 because, as Silvestre de Sacy has well said, " the child 
 rejoices in the freshness and vividness of the story ; the 
 eager student of literature in the consummate art with 
 which it is told ; the experienced man of the world in 
 the subtle reflections on character and life which it 
 conveys . " In the composition of these Fables La Fontaine 
 rarely invented his subject ; occasionally he took some 
 current anecdote {e.g., VII. 2 ; VIII. 7) ; but in general 
 he borrowed his material, and the extent of his reading 
 is shown by the range of his sources, which are sometimes 
 oriental, sometimes classical, sometimes mediaeval, some- 
 times modern. Yet his indebtedness to others began 
 and ended with his material ; by his way of using it he 
 makes it his own ; " son originalite," as Sainte-Beuve 
 pointed out, " est dans sa maniere, non dans sa matiere." 
 According to his view, a fable is compounded of two parts 
 the body and the soul : the body being the story, the 
 soul the interpretation or moral (see his Preface) ; though 
 it should be noted in passing that many of his own Fables 
 are not really fables at all, but simply humorous tales 
 admirably told {e.g., Le Depositaire Infidele), or pretty 
 little idylls {e.g., Les Deux Pigeons, Tircis et Amarante). 
 The story itself he conceives as a comedy in narrative ; 
 hence he describes himself as making of his work 
 
 Une ample comedie a cent actes divers. 
 
 (Le Bdcheron et Mercure.) 
 
 The actors in this comedy, in harmony with the long- 
 
 F
 
 66 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 standing tradition of the fable, are most often animals, 
 whose characters are presented with extraordinary insight 
 and precision ; and it is worth while at this point to 
 remember that La Fontaine was a warm lover of animals 
 and a close observer of their habits. He is, however, 
 equally successful when he works with human figures 
 instead {e.g., L' Enfant et le Mattre de I'Ecole, Le Savetier 
 et le Financier, Le Bticheron et la Mort, La Laitilre et le 
 Pot au Lait). It is indeed all one whether he uses beasts 
 or men ; whichever method he adopts, he portrays with 
 such vividness the outstanding types of the contemporary 
 world king and courtiers, clergy, lawyers, financiers, 
 the bourgeoisie, the peasantry that his Fables as a 
 whole rank second only to the comedies of his friend 
 Moliere as a picture of the society and manners of the 
 seventeenth century. It should also be observed that 
 at times he sets his drama against a background of 
 landscape, and that when he does so, it is a bit of real 
 nature that he gives us, not the artificial decoration 
 which did duty in most of the poetry of his time. As 
 for the " soul " of his Fables, it is a mistake, not the 
 less serious because it is so common, to assume that the 
 morals which he elicits from or appends to his stories are 
 necessarily meant for guidance. He has been condemned, 
 for instance, because he is supposed to teach in Le Chine 
 et le Roseau the wisdom of bending to circumstances 
 instead of standing up against them, and to inculcate in 
 La Chauve-souris et les Deux Belettes the arts of the time- 
 server and trimmer. But in such cases he is merely 
 generalising experience, not laying down rules of conduct, 
 and it is obviously unfair to find fault with him because 
 he depicts the facts of life as he had himself observed 
 them. Dogmatism was indeed quite foreign to his genius 
 and aims, and the relative slightness of the direct didactic
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 67 
 
 element in his work is a significant point of contrast 
 between his method and that of such older fabulists 
 as JEsop and Phaedrus. His philosophy as a whole is 
 that of a shrewd, kindly, but rather cynical spectator of 
 life, who has a quick eye for the vices, folhes, and affecta- 
 tions of the world about him and satirises these, severely, 
 but good-humouredly, throwing his own stress upon the 
 supremacy of nature and the virtue of common-sense. 
 
 Irrespective of his intrinsic merits, La Fontaine is 
 interesting on account of the position which he occupies 
 in the literature of his time. French critics claim him 
 as a classicist because of his avowed admiration of the 
 ancients (see his pitre a Huet), the fine sense of unity 
 which governs his work, his careful craftsmanship, his 
 restraint. But the popular element in his writings, his 
 gauloiserie, and the freedom and variety of his style give 
 him a place by himself among the poets of the seventeenth 
 century. 
 
 23. La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. 
 It was not till the end of the eighteenth century that any 
 attempt was made to repeal Boileau's laws of poetry, and 
 not till the time of the Romantic Movement that they 
 were finally discarded. But during his own lifetime one 
 essential part of his doctrine that regarding the supre- 
 macy of the classics was definitely challenged in the 
 controversy known as La Querelle des Anciens et des 
 Modernes. In part under the influence of Rene Descartes, 
 who in his Discours sur la Methode (1637) na cl built up a 
 system of thought on a basis of pure reason and in entire 
 independence of scholastic and theological dogma, a 
 spirit of defiance against the authority of the past had 
 arisen in science and philosophy which little by little 
 spread to other subjects. Of this spirit the controversy 
 in question was one expression. Though there had
 
 68 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 already been a few preliminary skirmishes, the battle 
 began in earnest with a poem, Le Steele de Louis le Grand, 
 which Charles Perrault x read at a session of the Academy 
 on January 27, 1687. As the object of this poem was to 
 natter the king, who had just recovered from a serious 
 illness, the poet allowed himself to be carried away by 
 his enthusiasm even to the extent of instituting a com- 
 parison between the Age of Louis in France and the Age 
 of Augustus in Rome : 
 
 La belle antiquity fut tou jours venerable, 
 
 Mais je ne eras jamais qu'elle fut adorable. 
 
 Je vois les anciens sans plier les genoux ; 
 
 lis sont grands, il est vrai, mais hommes comme nous. 
 
 Et Ton peut comparer, sans craindre d'etre injuste, 
 
 Le Siecle de Louis au beau Steele d'Auguste. 
 
 Such was his bold thesis, which shocked some of his 
 hearers, among them Boileau, and in support of which 
 he proceeded to maintain in detail the superiority of 
 contemporary art and literature to the art and literature 
 of the past. The poem dropped like a bomb into the 
 literary world, and the discussion which followed divided 
 the critics for some eighteen years into two hostile camps. 
 The cause of the moderns was supported in particular by 
 Fontenelle {Digression sur les Anciens et les Modernes in 
 his Discours sur I Eclogue, 1688) and Perrault himself 
 (ParalUle des Anciens et des Modernes, 1688-97), a whose 
 arguments, often sound, sometimes fantastic, rested 
 
 1 Best known as the author of a delightful collection of prose fairy 
 tales, Histoires du Temps Passi, or Contes de ma Mire I'Oye, 1697. 
 
 1 The best contribution to the discussion was, however, made by 
 Saint-Evremond in his brief essay, Sur les Poimes des Anciens (1685), 
 which reveals an admirable balance of judgment and a quite modern 
 sense of development in literature. Saint-Evremond was then living 
 in exile in England, whither the controversy soon spread, and where it 
 inspired Sir William Temple's worthless Essay on Ancient and Modern 
 Learning and, indirectly, Swift's Battle 0/ the Books.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 69 
 
 ultimately upon the general theory of progress in litera- 
 ture as in civilisation at large. The great champion of 
 the ancients was Boileau, who replied indirectly to Perrault 
 in his Reflexions critiques sur quelques Passages du Rheteur 
 Longin (1693). On the whole, Boileau attacks the ques- 
 tion on its minor issues only, and does not seem to 
 appreciate its fundamental principles. On one point, 
 however, he meets his adversary quite fairly. Perrault 
 had insisted that the current admiration of the ancients 
 was largely superstition. Boileau appeals to the per- 
 manence of taste : " L'antiquite d'un ecrivain n'est pas 
 un titre certain de son merite ; mais l'antique et constante 
 admiration qu'on a toujours eue pour ses ouvrages est 
 une preuve sure et infaillible qu'on les doit admirer." 
 
 By the early years of the eighteenth century the 
 quarrel had died down, leaving behind it little in the way 
 of definite result. Nor in the circumstances was definite 
 result to be expected. The discussion was vitiated by 
 uncritical extravagances on both sides, and even more 
 by the fact that modernists and classicists alike ap- 
 proached the question in a dogmatic spirit and without 
 the slightest sense of the historical meaning of literature 
 and its necessary dependence at all times upon the 
 civilisation and culture of the age out of which it springs.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (continued) 
 THE DRAMA 
 
 24. Tragedy before Corneille. Jodelle and his 
 immediate followers did little to create a living form of 
 tragedy. Even Garnier's merits were rhetorical rather 
 than dramatic, while the six tragedies of Antoine de 
 Montchrestien (1575 ?-i62i) of which L'cossaise, on 
 Marie Stuart, is accounted the best though they have 
 some pathos and a real lyrical note in the choruses, are 
 scarcely more than literary exercises : in fact, it is not 
 certain that they were ever put on the stage. The first 
 step towards vitalising the serious drama was taken by 
 Alexandre Hardy (i569?-i63i ?), a prolific writer of plays 
 for the theatre of the Hotel de Bourgogne, who in the 
 course of thirty years is said to have produced several 
 hundred pieces, of which forty -one survive. In his 
 tragedies (e.g., Marianne, Didon se Sacrifiant, La Mort 
 d'Achille) Hardy adopted the classic form in broad outline, 
 though he eliminated the chorus and dealt very freely 
 with the unities. In his tragi-comedies (e.g., GSsippe ou 
 Les Deux Amis, Fregonde), with their large cast of char- 
 acters and the variety and complexity of their plots, he 
 approached much more nearly to the romantic type of 
 
 70
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 71 
 
 play. In them, indeed, he shows the strong influence of 
 the Spanish romantic drama. Hardy had, what his pre- 
 decessors had not, a genuine sense of the stage, and his 
 merits were those of the practical playwright. Unfor- 
 tunately, he was a very poor writer, and if his pieces 
 possess a strong histrionic element they are entirely 
 destitute of the higher qualities of art. It is, I think, 
 generally recognised that had he been a man of real genius 
 and power he might conceivably have changed the course 
 of French tragedy by deflecting it into the romantic 
 channel. But though he was popular he carried no 
 weight. In the critical discussions which were meanwhile 
 going on about the principles of dramatic art the reguliers 
 (as the supporters of classicism were called) finally 
 triumphed over the irreguliers, and some three years 
 after Hardy's death the Sophonisbe (1634) of Jean de 
 Mairet (1604-86) definitely established the form which 
 was at once to be adopted by " le pere du theatre 
 francais," Corneille. 
 
 25. The Principles of Classic Tragedy. Though 
 the underlying principles of this form of tragedy have 
 already been indicated by the way, a succinct statement of 
 them is desirable. Nominally founded upon the practice 
 of the Greeks and the teachings of Aristotle, classical 
 tragedy was really shaped upon the Latin plays which 
 have come down under the name of Seneca, and which 
 present the type in its severest and stiffest form. At two 
 points the new poets departed from their model : they 
 gave great prominence to the love interest, which had been 
 conspicuous by its absence from the serious drama of 
 antiquity, but had come to be a chief motive in modern 
 literature ; and they dropped the chorus, which they 
 finally felt to be a useless encumbrance, though they 
 retained a kind of attenuated survival of it in the con-
 
 72 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 fidant who is so prominent a figure on their stage. Other- 
 wise they followed the Senecan drama very closely. Their 
 plays were, to begin with, entirely aristocratic in theme 
 and quality ; their subjects were drawn from the great 
 pages of history or legend (by preference from the history 
 or legends of Greece or Rome) ; their actors, whether 
 good or bad, were at least " illustrious," in accordance 
 with the doctrine afterwards enunciated by Voltaire, 
 that " tragedy always requires characters raised above 
 the common plane." x In harmony with their matter 
 their manner and style were uniformly dignified and 
 heroic ; their diction was kept throughout at the ideal 
 pitch of stately nobility ; nothing suggestive of collo- 
 quialism or familiarity was allowed ; while long rhetorical 
 speeches took the place of dramatic dialogue, and de- 
 clamation was substituted for natural talk. Action, and 
 especially violent action, was practically banished ; a 
 classical tragedy might have plenty of stirring incidents 
 in the ground-work of its plot, like Le Cid, with its two 
 duels and big battle ; but such incidents were not repre- 
 sented ; they were merely reported to the audience in set 
 narratives : a method which inevitably tended to the 
 further amplification of the rhetorical element at the 
 expense of the really dramatic. Unity of tone was 
 strictly enforced ; tragedy was wholly and consistently 
 tragic ; no variety was introduced into it ; no touch of 
 humour was ever permitted to mar its sustained solemnity. 2 
 
 1 Remarques sur le Second Discours de Corneille. 
 
 * Already in the seventeenth century there were a few irrlguliers 
 who protested against this dogma of the unity of tone on the ground 
 that since the drama should reflect life, and life itself is made up of 
 tears and laughter, variety and not unity should be the rule (see, e.g., 
 Francois Ogier's preface to the Tyr et Sidon of Jean de Schelandre, 
 1628). The tragi-comedy, which was a play of tragic quality but happy 
 ending, and the heroic comedy, in which comedy itself rose to some- 
 thing approaching tragic seriousness, were attempts to break down the
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 73 
 
 Finally, in regard to construction, the utmost importance 
 was attached to the three unities of time, of place, and 
 of action. The compactest definition of these unities is 
 that given by Boileau in his instructions to the tragic 
 poet : 
 
 Qu'en un lieu, qu'en un jour, un seul fait accompli 
 
 Tienne jusqu'a la fin le theatre rempli ; 
 
 which means that the entire plot of a play was to be con- 
 fined to a single scene, and within a single day, and that it 
 should be composed of a single story without sub-plots or 
 minor incidents of any kind. In practice, it is true, these 
 rules were not always adopted according to the letter ; 
 occasionally the scene shifted from room to room of the 
 same palace, or from street to street of the same city, while 
 the theoretical day of twenty-four hours was stretched to 
 include two days and the intervening night. But into 
 such attempts of dramatists here and there to elude the 
 literal requirements of the law, and the discussions which 
 grew up about these, we need not now enter. The bearings 
 of the unities upon the composition of the drama at two 
 points must, however, be noted. In the first place, 
 simplicity of subject brought with it limitation of char- 
 acter scheme : hence the very small cast of actors in a 
 classical tragedy and the resulting concentration of atten- 
 tion upon them. Secondly, as under the rule of time the 
 dramatist was unable to represent the whole of his action 
 from its rise to its completion, he was forced to confine 
 himself to its closing portions : hence in turn the ex- 
 pansion which these closing portions undergo in his hands. 
 Joined with the almost entire absence of action from the 
 stage, these two features help to explain why classic 
 
 formal divisions between the two types of drama ; but at a time when 
 all literary genres were treated as fixed and permanent, they were not 
 regarded with favour.
 
 74 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 tragedy is essentially a tragedy of character, though 
 necessarily of character conceived and treated in a static 
 rather than in a dynamic manner. 
 
 That all these arbitrary and pedantic laws of con- 
 struction resulted in a type of drama which, while wonder- 
 fully perfect in form, was essentially artificial, it is not 
 now to the point to insist. The whole system of classic 
 tragedy has long since been abandoned as an outworn 
 academic superstition, and its supposed aesthetic founda- 
 tions have little or no meaning for us to-day. But within 
 its cramping limitations some great and lasting work was 
 produced, as we shall see on turning at once to its two 
 supreme masters, Corneille and Racine. 
 
 26. Corneille. Pierre Corneille sprang from a 
 Norman " famille de robe," and was born at Rouen in 
 1606. He was educated at the Jesuit College of his native 
 city, studied law, and became an advocate ; and though 
 he soon abandoned his profession, it has often been sug- 
 gested that the influence of his legal training and the 
 forensic habit of his mind may be recognised in the argu- 
 ments and pleadings which are so prominent in his plays. 
 His heart was, however, already given to the stage, and the 
 success of his comedy of intrigue, Melite (1629), encour- 
 aged him to devote himself to the drama, though it was 
 not till after numerous experiments that he discovered 
 his proper way. Meanwhile he attracted the attention 
 of Richelieu and became one of his " five poets," whose 
 business it was, taking an act apiece, to carry out the 
 designs which the great cardinal put into their hands. 
 But Corneille had the temerity to criticise one of his 
 patron's plots, and their relationship came to an end. 
 This was in 1634. The next year he produced his first 
 tragedy, Miiie, and in 1636 took Paris by storm with 
 Le Cid, the first masterpiece of the classic school. This
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 75 
 
 brilliant play is founded upon a long rambling Spanish 
 drama by Guillem de Castro, Las Mocedades del Cid, 
 which with its crowd of characters, its constant bustle of 
 action, and its total disregard of the unities, is a repre- 
 sentative example of the Spanish romantic stage. In 
 order to reduce his materials to the forms of classic 
 tragedy Corneille prunes away the secondary interests 
 with which the main theme was complicated, discards all 
 the characters that are not absolutely necessary to the 
 working out of his subject, removes the action from the 
 stage (thus, e.g., substituting the Cid's descriptive oration 
 of seventy-three lines for the representation of the battle 
 with the Moors), and confines the plot within the required 
 limits of time and place. Yet, technically, Le Cid is by no 
 means perfect as a classic drama, and the newly established 
 Academy in passing judgment upon it had no difficulty in 
 laying bare its defects. The fact that the blow which is 
 given by the heroine's father to the hero's father is actually 
 given on the stage, was pronounced a breach of decorum ; 
 the love of the Infanta for the Cid was censured as pro- 
 viding at least the rudiments of a sub-plot ; while, as 
 is very obvious, the unity of time, though nominally 
 accepted, is really broken by the impossible concentration 
 of so many events within the period prescribed. This 
 official condemnation of his licences did not, however, 
 interfere with the success of the play, and so far as 
 popular suffrages were concerned, the " Querelle du Cid " 
 ended in his favour. But he had learned his lesson, as 
 we can see from the structural regularity of the plays 
 which followed, notably the four great tragedies Horace 
 (1640), Cinna (1640), Polyeucte (1643), and La Mort de 
 Pompee (1643). These, with Nicodeme (165 1), represent 
 his powers at their highest, though mention must also be 
 made of Le Menteur (1643), the best comedy of the French
 
 76 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 stage before Moliere. In 1647 ms triumph had been 
 completed by his admission to the Academy ; but in 1652 
 the failure of Pertharite discouraged him, and he retired 
 to Rouen, where he busied himself with a critical edition of 
 his writings and a translation into verse of the Imitation of 
 Christ. He returned to the theatre in 1658, but, though 
 he wrote much during the next twelve years, he never 
 repeated his former successes. After the fiasco of his 
 Surdna in 1674 he gave up playwriting entirely, and 
 passed quietly out of the public eye. He died in 
 1684. 
 
 Though Corneille is properly regarded as the real 
 father of French classic tragedy, the natural bias of his 
 genius was undoubtedly towards the romantic. This is 
 shown not only in Le Cid, but also in some of his later 
 plays, like the heroic comedy Don Sanche d'Aragon, the 
 tone and manner of which remind us in advance of Hugo's 
 Ruy Bias. After the strictures of the Academy upon Le 
 Cid he made, it is true, submission to the classic doctrine, 
 yet he always chafed under the restraints which it im- 
 posed upon him. Thus in the extremely interesting 
 examens which he prefixed to his plays in the edition of 
 1661, and in his three Discours on the art of the drama, 
 we find him advocating the most generous possible inter- 
 pretation of the rules, and pleading specifically for " quel- 
 que elargissement " in the matter of the unities of place 
 and time. The modern reader will, in fact, feel that 
 Corneille was sadly hampered, and that he knew that he 
 was sadly hampered, by the limitations of the artificial 
 form in which he was compelled to work, and that his 
 opulent genius would have found greater scope and a more 
 congenial medium in the romantic drama. Yet not- 
 withstanding his restiveness he brought his energies under 
 such thorough control that in Horace, Cinna, and Polyeucte
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 77 
 
 he produced dramas which will endure the test of the most 
 rigorous canons of the classic school. 
 
 In one way in particular he gave a splendid demon- 
 stration of what classic tragedy is capable of accomplishing 
 within its limitations, and he did this by focussing his 
 attention upon the psychological significance of his sub- 
 jects. He did not neglect external incident, as did his 
 younger contemporary Racine ; indeed many of his plays 
 abound in incident and are marked by a strongly melo- 
 dramatic strain. But his primary interest was in the 
 emotional experiences of his characters and their inner 
 conflicts, and especially in the conflict of passion and 
 duty, and the triumph of duty over passion. This 
 motive, in the working out of which he displays his finest 
 qualities, appears in his plays under a variety of forms ; 
 as in Le Cid, in which the pivot of the plot is the successful 
 struggle of honour against love ; in Horace, in which we 
 have the glorification of the old Roman patriotism rising 
 superior to the closest domestic ties ; in Cinna and 
 Nicodeme, which in different ways illustrate the power of 
 a man over himself ; in Polyeude, which is a tragedy of 
 Christian faith crowned by martyrdom. Corneille's plays 
 are a school of noble if at times fantastic sentiment. His 
 characteristic note is the note of high courage ; his 
 favourite theme, the supremacy of the individual will. 
 All his typical figures, good and bad alike, are conceived 
 on the grand scale, and are lifted far above the common 
 plane of humanity by their essential greatness of soul. 
 Extraordinary in themselves, they are, moreover, placed 
 in extraordinary situations, with the result that the 
 emotional conflicts portrayed also assume extraordinary 
 proportions. Romantic exaggeration was thus an out- 
 standing feature of Corneille's art. As his mental bias 
 was thus towards the strong and heroic he was naturally
 
 78 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 more at home with men than with women, and was in 
 general out of his proper element in the treatment of love. 
 His women his " adorable furies " as a contemporary 
 called them with their pride, ambition, and domineering 
 spirit, are indeed more masculine than feminine, while 
 love itself, being commonly employed, not for its own 
 sake, but to create the crisis in which it is to be overcome, 
 is, on the whole, rather ineffectively handled by him. 
 Corneille was a most unequal writer ; many of his plays 
 are far below the level of his best ; and even in his best 
 we come from time to time upon passages of dreary 
 rhetoric or bombastic declaration which have neither 
 poetic value nor dramatic truth. His tendency to de- 
 generate into the mere special pleader and to indulge in 
 fine-spun disquisitions and dialectical subtleties which are 
 singularly inappropriate to the characters on whose lips 
 they are put, is generally recognised as a conspicuous 
 weakness of his work. His greatness in his own chosen 
 field of heroic passion is, however, indisputable, and no 
 one who reads him attentively can fail to admire his 
 tremendous energy, the sweep and vigour of his versifi- 
 cation, and the frequent splendour of his style. 
 
 27. Racine. Corneille's one rival, Jean Racine, was 
 thirty-three years his junior, for he was born in 1639 at 
 La Fert6-Milon in Champagne. He came of a family 
 closely connected on both sides with the Jansenists, and 
 was educated in their well-known schools at Beauvais and 
 Port- Royal. Thoroughly indoctrinated with their moral 
 and religious ideas, he left the latter institution at nineteen 
 to pursue his studies in the College d'Harcourt. At this 
 time or a little later, however, he began to evince a taste 
 for worldly society and decided leanings towards the stage, 
 and misunderstandings with his old teachers, which were 
 presently to develop into an open quarrel, were the result.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 79 
 
 Meanwhile he dabbled in literature, produced some verses 
 on the king's marriage, which, though of slight value, 
 secured for him a place on the royal pension list, and 
 became intimate with Boileau. His first tragedies, La 
 Thebaide ou les Freres Ennemis and Alexandre le Grand, 
 which were produced by Moliere's company in 1664 
 and 1665 respectively, were so obviously reminiscent of 
 Corneille and Quinault (see p. 83) that no one perceived in 
 them the slightest signs of a fresh and original power. 
 But in Andromaque (1667), which, according to Perrault, 
 created as much excitement as Le Cid had done thirty-one 
 years before, all the writer's distinctive qualities were fully 
 revealed. This was followed by a comedy, Les Plaideurs 
 (1668), a pungent satire on the law, after which came 
 six more tragedies Britannicus (1669), Berenice (1670), 
 Bajazet (1672), Mithradite (1673), Iphigenie en Aulide 
 (1674), and PhHre (1677). By this time, however, the 
 influence of his early training was reasserting itself ; he 
 began to be troubled with scruples about the theatre ; and 
 the momentary failure of Phldre, which greatly irritated 
 his extremely sensitive nature, seemed to him a warning 
 voice from heaven. He accordingly made his peace with 
 Port- Royal, gave up playwriting, married, and for more 
 than twenty quiet years divided his time between his 
 family and his duties as one of the king's historiographers 
 royal. His only remaining dramas were two of a religious 
 character, which he wrote at the request of Mme. de 
 Maintenon, for performance by her young ladies at 
 Saint-Cyr Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691). He died in 
 1699. 
 
 The first point to emphasise in the study of Racine is 
 his admirable craftsmanship. In construction and com- 
 position in the laying out of his plan and in the filling 
 in of its details he is a consummate master. The exigent
 
 80 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 rules under which Corneille fretted, fit Racine's genius to 
 a nicety ; indeed, he seems to obey them naturally and 
 spontaneously, not as rules imposed upon him from 
 without, but as conditions involved in his own fundamental 
 conception of dramatic art. Plot, intrigue, action, as 
 ordinarily understood, hardly exist in his plays, and he 
 never allowed himself to be embarrassed by wealth of 
 material. The ideal at which he aimed was concentration 
 of interest through the utmost possible simplification of 
 subject. The invention of a large number of incidents as 
 a means of holding the attention of the spectator was for 
 him a sign not of fertility but of poverty of genius ; the 
 true poet ought to be able to keep attention alive through 
 the five acts of his tragedy " par une action simple, 
 soutenue de la violence des passions, de la beaut6 des 
 sentiments, et de l'elegance de l'expression " (Prdface to 
 Berenice). True to this conception he reduces his drama 
 to a single moral crisis, selecting by preference that final 
 point in the ascending scale when, the passions of his 
 characters being at their highest tension, the smallest 
 event will suffice to precipitate a catastrophe. Even 
 more, then, than the drama of Corneille that of Racine is 
 purely psychological a drama of endless talk, introspec- 
 tion, discussion. Mere external incident has in itself no 
 interest for him ; he treats it as cause or effect only of his 
 real tragedy, which is the tragedy of emotional disturb- 
 ance and conflict in the souls of his characters. As a 
 psychological dramatist, however, he is sharply divided 
 from Corneille, because while he deals at times with other 
 passions, such as loyalty and ambition, he makes love, 
 which with Corneille had been of secondary interest, his 
 central motive. Some problem of love lies indeed at the 
 heart of all his plays. As a French critic has said: 
 " Dans toutes les tragedies de Racine on trouve un per-
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 81 
 
 sonnage qui aime un autre, et n'en est pas aime ; mais 
 cet autre aime un troisieme qui (le plus souvent) lui rend 
 son amour." * The tragical consequences arising from 
 this complex emotional situation provide him with his 
 dominant theme ; but this theme he elaborates under so 
 great a variety of aspects that though his plays resemble 
 one another in data they differ widely in details. In 
 general, however, it may be remarked that, again in 
 contrast with Corneille, he is most successful with his 
 women characters. Love is more powerfully, and, it is 
 commonly agreed, more truthfully depicted in his women 
 than in his men. 
 
 It remains for us to emphasise one aspect of Racine's 
 art which, though of great importance, is likely to escape 
 the notice of the English reader. That he is a typical 
 classicist is easily perceived ; that his classicism involves 
 a distinct tendency towards realism is not so apparent. 
 Indeed, his world is avowedly so remote from that of 
 everyday life (see Preface to Bajazet) , his art is so entirely 
 ideal, the dignity of tragedy is so scrupulously maintained 
 by him, and his tone is throughout so obviously that of 
 conventional gallantry and the etiquette of the Court, that 
 the frequent use of the word realist by his French critics 
 may well cause us some surprise. The nature of his so- 
 called realism will, however, become apparent if we put 
 ourselves at the historical point of view. The bent of 
 Corneille's genius had led him to exploit the exceptional. 
 Racine keeps to what is broadly human in character, 
 sentiment, theme. This is his classicism. But where 
 Corneille had placed persons in themselves extraordinary 
 in extraordinary situations, Racine, repudiating his great 
 forerunner's romantic exaggeration, deals with men and 
 women who masquerade under antique names, it is true, 
 
 1 Petit de Julleville, Le Thddtre en France, p. 163. 
 
 G
 
 82 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 but in whom, none the less, we recognise the qualities, 
 passions, and weaknesses of the human nature with which 
 we ourselves are familiar, and these men and women he 
 places in situations which might arise, and which indeed 
 do often arise, in the common course of life. This is what 
 we mean by his realism. 1 Beneath the highly conven- 
 tional machinery of his tragedies, therefore, we often seem 
 to touch the real springs of motive and action, and even 
 his artificial diction has, in comparison with Corneille's, 
 a frequent note of naturalness and simplicity. 
 
 28. Other Tragic Poets of the Seventeenth 
 Century. However little personal enthusiasm we may 
 be able to feel to-day for Corneille and Racine, they will 
 always remain interesting to us as great masters in their 
 own particular sphere of dramatic art. Their contem- 
 poraries have nothing more than a purely historical 
 significance, but three of them deserve passing mention. 
 Jean de Rotrou (1609-50), the oldest and most important 
 of these, and for a time one of Richelieu's " five poets," 
 was a fertile though unequal writer of comedies, tragi- 
 comedies, and tragedies. His best work is to be found in 
 two plays of the last-named class Saint-Genest (1646), a 
 tragedy of martyrdom, derived from a Spanish drama 
 of Lope de Vega, but in treatment reminiscent of Polyeucte, 
 and Venceslas (1647), a ^ so Spanish in origin, but with 
 unmistakable resemblances here and there to Horace. 
 Thomas Corneille (1625-1709), a younger brother of 
 Pierre, was a successful playwright, distinctly clever in 
 matters of mere technique, and, as we can see in such re- 
 
 1 Though he does not mention Corneille by name, it is clear that he 
 has him in mind when in the first of his two prefaces to Britannicus he 
 writes contemptuously of those tragic poets who abandon the natural 
 to throw themselves into the extraordinary, fill their pages with sur- 
 prising incidents, and put into the mouths of their characters declama- 
 tions which are inappropriate to their personalities and circumstances.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 83 
 
 presentative plays as Laodice (1668), La Mort d' Hannibal 
 (1669), Le Comte d'Essex (1678), and the tragi-comedy of 
 Timocrate (1656), with a strongly romantic turn of mind. 
 This is one of several points of contact between him and 
 his greater brother. On the other hand, Philippe Quinault 
 (1635-88), though now best known as a writer of operas, 
 the work of his later life, anticipated Racine in various 
 ways, and notably in his treatment of love, in his earlier 
 tragedies, of which La Mort de Cyrus (1656) and Astrate 
 (1663) may be cited as examples. After Racine's time 
 tragedy declined, and in the hands of his younger con- 
 temporaries became more and more anaemic. Between 
 his retirement from the stage and the close of the century, 
 indeed, no new writer appeared who calls for even formal 
 recognition. 
 
 29. Comedy before Moliere. In the earlier de- 
 cades of the seventeenth century the comic stage, still 
 asserting its independence of academic influences, was 
 largely occupied with farces which carried on the popular 
 traditions of the Middle Ages. The stock characters 
 which figured prominently in many of these, like the re- 
 sourceful valet and the jealous pedant, were also utilised 
 in comedies of a somewhat higher class and with greater 
 literary pretensions, such as Jodelet ou le Maitre Valet 
 (1645), a brisk play of double disguise, by Scarron (see 
 p. 117), and Le Pedant J one (1654), by Cyrano de Bergerac 
 (see p. 117, n. 1). Comedies of intrigue, with complicated 
 plots, in the fashion either of the Italian or of the Spanish 
 stage, were also popular ; as, e.g., La Sceur (1645) of 
 Rotrou, Les Ennemis Genereux (1654) of Scarron, and the 
 Melite and Menteur of Corneille. Meanwhile, the real 
 comedy of manners began to emerge, giving at times 
 distinct promise of the greater things which were soon to 
 come, as in Corneille's La Veuve (1633) and La Galerie du
 
 84 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Palais (1634), hi s brother's L' Amour a la Mode (1651), and 
 La Belle Plaideuse (1654) by Bois-Robert. Thus, though 
 nothing of permanent importance had yet been accom- 
 plished, considerable progress had been made along many 
 lines in the management of plot, in the portrayal of 
 character, in the representation of social life and manners 
 in the years immediately preceding the rise of the greatest 
 comic dramatist of France and of modern times, Moliere. 
 30. Molire. Jean Baptiste Poquelin was born in 
 Paris in 1622. His father, who was a tradesman in easy 
 circumstances and valet tapissier de chambre du roi (or 
 general superintendent of the royal furniture), gave him 
 an excellent education in the Jesuit College de Clermont, 
 where he was thoroughly grounded in the classics. He 
 also studied philosophy under Gassendi, one of the boldest 
 and most advanced thinkers of the time, to whose influ- 
 ence, which seems to have stimulated his natural tendency 
 towards free thought, we may perhaps trace his fondness 
 for touching on philosophical questions and for ridiculing 
 (as, e.g., in he Manage ForcS) the controversial subtleties 
 and jargon of the schools. He was destined either for his 
 father's calling or for the law, but the stage early began 
 to exert an irresistible fascination over him, and when on 
 coming of age he received his share in the small fortune 
 left by his mother, he abandoned all idea of a commercial 
 or legal career, became an actor (under the name of Moliere, 
 which he now assumed), and in association with a family 
 of comedians, the B6jarts, hired a tennis court, and started 
 a dramatic enterprise which he called the Illustre Theatre 
 (1643). This, however, failed, and in 1646 he and his 
 company were forced to leave Paris and take the road. 
 For twelve years they toured the provinces, during which 
 time Moliere saw much of life under many aspects, laid 
 up a rich store of experiences and observations, and
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 85 
 
 learned the business of playwriting by practical work done 
 not for the critics but for the stage. Of his early essays 
 as a dramatist two only survive La Jalousie du Bar- 
 bouille and Le Midecin Volant : farces of the broadest 
 kind, crude as a whole, but with prophetic touches here 
 and there. 1 But towards the end of his period of appren- 
 ticeship he produced two other plays (both imitated from 
 the Italian), which, though still experimental, properly 
 belong to the body of his work L'tourdi (1655) and Le 
 Dipit Amoureux (1656). In 1658 he was back in Paris, 
 where he performed before the king in Corneille's Nicodeme 
 (as an actor he was ambitious of succeeding in tragic rdles, 
 though his genius was unmistakably for comedy), and in 
 a farce, Le Docteur Amoureux, now lost ; and having 
 gained the royal favour he became head of a company 
 known as the " Troupe de Monsieur," with an assured 
 position both at the Court and in the capital. The next 
 year he opened his real career as a dramatist with Les 
 Prdcieuses Ridicules, a brief but brilliant satire on pre- 
 ciosity and the salons, then already in their decline. 
 Henceforth his life was one of enormous activity ; but 
 though he was the chief actor in his company, and though 
 upon his shoulders as its manager rested the entire burden 
 of its responsibilities, he produced in his remaining 
 fifteen years no fewer than twenty-eight plays small and 
 great, or, on an average, nearly two each year. There 
 is no doubt that this incessant strain was too much for 
 his frail physique, and we cannot wonder that he broke 
 down prematurely under it. His splendid fight against 
 the steady encroachments of disease ended with tragic 
 suddenness one night in February 1673, when, performing 
 
 1 It is not, indeed, absolutely certain that these are his, but it is 
 in the highest degree probable that they are. Details from the former 
 reappear in George Dandin, of the latter in L' Amour Midecin and Le 
 Midecin tnalgrd lui.
 
 86 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the part of the hypochondriac in his last play, Le Malade 
 Imaginaire, he was seized with convulsions on the stage 
 and carried home to die. 
 
 Two facts in Moliere's biography must be emphasised 
 on account of their direct bearing upon his work his 
 marriage and his relations with the king. His marriage 
 with Armande Bejart, which took place in 1662, was an 
 unhappy one, and though in his case, as in the case of all 
 dramatists, we must be on our guard against the tendency 
 to read too much of the man himself into his work, there 
 can, I think, be no question that the conduct of his 
 beautiful but frivolous young wife and his own jealousy 
 have left their mark in the bitterness which often char- 
 acterises his treatment of women, as notably in the case 
 of the coquette, C61imene, in the most personal of his 
 plays, Le Misanthrope. 1 His relations with the king, 
 which were very close, affected him for good and evil. 
 On the one hand, the royal protection provided him with 
 a defence against the many enemies whom he stirred up 
 about him by his bold and pungent satire, and thus 
 enabled him to carry on his mission as the social censor of 
 his time. On the other hand, the king's command com- 
 pelled him occasionally to turn aside from his proper line 
 to manufacture divertissements de circonstance for the 
 amusement of the Court, and as a result his genius was 
 sometimes wasted in hasty and trivial work {e.g., La 
 Princesse d' Elide, Les Amans Magnifiques). 
 
 Ignoring such work, as having no independent interest 
 for us to-day, we may divide the bulk of Moliere's plays 
 into two groups the lighter plays, which for the most 
 
 1 Alceste, the hero of this play, is undoubtedly drawn from one side 
 of Moliere's own character. How far Celimene was fashioned upon his 
 wife is a problem much discussed by the specialists. It is at any rate 
 known that he described her as Lucile in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, 
 
 111. 9.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 87 
 
 part are broadly farcical, and the great comedies of char- 
 acter. This classification, however, is not absolutely 
 exact, because there are a few plays, like George Dandin 
 and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, which are on the border- 
 line between the two divisions, and a couple which lie 
 outside them entirely La Critique de l'cole des Femmes 
 (1663) and L' Impromptu de Versailles (1663) : brilliant 
 and extremely original little pieces, of polemical intention, 
 in which Moliere replies to his critics and carries the war 
 into their camp, and which are therefore of great import- 
 ance for the information which they give us about his 
 dramatic theories. 1 Of his farces [e.g., Le Manage Force, 
 1664 ; Le Medecin malgre lui, 1666 ; M . de Pourceaugnac, 
 1669) it is enough to say, first, that they overflow with fun 
 and gaiety ; secondly, that if their exuberant jesting is at 
 times a little too coarse for modern taste, 2 the laughter 
 which they arouse is nearly always as wholesome as it is 
 hearty ; and, finally, that amid their riotous and appar- 
 ently irresponsible mirth, the serious purpose of the social 
 satirist and reformer is often clear. But delightful as 
 these farces are in their own way (and no lover of rich, 
 broad humour would wish for a moment to depreciate 
 them) it is in the great comedies of character and pre- 
 eminently in L'cole des Femmes (1662), Tartuffe (1664- 
 1669), 3 Don Juan (1665), Le Misanthrope (1666), L'Avare 
 
 1 Another play, the quite unsuccessful heroic comedy, Dom Garde 
 de Navarre, also has no place in the general scheme. 
 
 * The charge of coarseness was brought against Moliere by some of 
 his contemporaries, especially among the pricieuses ; on which point 
 see his defence in La Critique de 1'E.cole des Femmes. As in the case of 
 our own older writers, as, e.g., Shakespeare and Fielding, the matter 
 must be regarded from the historical point of view. It is, I think, 
 generally admitted that in fact Moliere did a great deal to purify the 
 comic stage. 
 
 3 This tremendous attack on religious hypocrisy created so great a 
 disturbance that it was twice prohibited, once immediately on its 
 production in 1664, and again when Moliere attempted to revive it in
 
 88 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 (1668), and Les Femmes Savantes (1672) that Moliere's 
 powers are to be found in their full perfection, and it is by 
 virtue of these that he holds his place secure in the front 
 rank of the dramatists of all the world. In tone these 
 plays differ fundamentally from those of the other group. 
 Life is still regarded in them, it is true, from the comic 
 side, but their ground-work is serious, they carry with 
 them a heavy burden of thought, and in their emotional 
 intensity they often rise to the point at which comedy 
 passes insensibly into tragedy. Moreover, they are all 
 piices d thtee plays with a strongly marked didactic 
 purpose. Moliere saw the superficial absurdities of the 
 society about him and delighted to make merry over 
 them ; but he saw too, and through the medium of a 
 temperament deeply tinged with melancholy, the more 
 dangerous evils which were gnawing at the heart of it ; 
 and though he never forgot that the first business of 
 comedy is " de faire rire les honnetes gens " (Critique de 
 L'cole des Femmes), he held that " le theatre a une grande 
 vertu pour la correction " (Prdface to Le Tartuffe), and 
 true to this conception he deliberately turned his stage 
 into a school for moral reform. 
 
 Naturally, as a comic dramatist, he used by preference 
 the great instrument of ridicule, and the range of his satire 
 is wonderfully wide as wide almost as the society to 
 which he held up the mirror. Foolish ideas about educa- 
 tion manages de convenance, made for wealth or position 
 instead of love the levity of fashionable men and women 
 the affectations of the blue - stockings the empty 
 pretences of would-be poets and critics, philosophers, 
 
 1667. It was not till 1669 that it was definitely authorised on the public 
 stage. The reader of Don Juan must never forget that that powerful 
 study of the libertine who at the last turns hypocrite, was written when 
 Le Tartuffe was under the ban, and was designed by Moliere as a reply- 
 to his enemies.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 89 
 
 lawyers, doctors religious hypocrisy the ambitions of 
 the nouveaux riches who aped their " betters " and were 
 determined to push their way into society the shameless 
 manoeuvres of the aristocracy, who, despising the bour- 
 geoisie, made free with their money and laughed at them up 
 their sleeves : such were some of the subjects and people 
 dealt with by him, with a courage which often seems 
 surprising ; indeed, his lash fell upon almost every form 
 of charlatanism and unreality conspicuous in the metro- 
 politan world of his day. There is nothing particularly 
 original, and certainly nothing idealistic, about his criti- 
 cism of life, but it is essentially healthy and bracing. He 
 is pre-eminently the representative of the bourgeois spirit 
 and the very incarnation of the sanity, the downright 
 practical temper, the sterling good sense of the class from 
 which he sprang. He has a hearty contempt of artifice, 
 convention, the romanesque, and nonsense of all kinds, 
 and like Rabelais, like his own friend La Fontaine, he 
 believes implicitly in liberty, and throws his stress upon 
 nature and the natural. Hence his lifelong hostility to 
 the doctors, whom in no fewer than five plays {Don Juan, 
 L' Amour Medecin, he Medecin malgre lui, M. de Pource- 
 augnac, and Le Malade Imaginaire) he held up to ridicule 
 as pedants who set up to be wiser than nature and as 
 charlatans who concealed their ignorance in mists of 
 pompous phrases. In religion, though there was not 
 the slightest ground for the allegations of impiety made 
 against him by the " devout," he certainly leaned 
 strongly towards free thought. 
 
 As a dramatist Moliere everywhere shows his inside 
 knowledge of the stage and his practical grasp of the 
 principles of stage technique. " On sait bien," he declares 
 in his prefatory note to L' Amour Medecin, " que les 
 comedies ne sont faites que pour etre jouees," and his own
 
 90 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 plays are devised primarily and expressly to meet the 
 requirements of representation. At the same time, he 
 was habitually indifferent in the matter of construction. 
 His plots are carelessly put together ; their conclusions 
 are often forced or lame, as in the case of Le Tartuffe, or 
 brought about by some familiar device, like the discovery 
 of a lost child or the sudden reappearance of some one 
 supposed to be dead. But his intrigues, such as they are, 
 serve his purpose, in his farces for the introduction of 
 effective imbroglios and situations, in his great comedies 
 as machinery for the exposition of character. And ex- 
 position of character was his strongest point. Important 
 and unimportant, his men and women stand upright on 
 their feet ; he has the vitalising touch which gives life to 
 even his minor figures. The most significant feature of his 
 characterisation on the critical side, however, is that it 
 tends always to the typical. Disregarding adjuncts and 
 mere idiosyncrasies, he fastens upon central qualities and 
 dominating motives " humours " as Ben Jonson called 
 them and builds entirely with these. Thus, for example, 
 his Tartuffe is the hypocrite rather than a hypocrite, 
 Harpagon the miser rather than a miser. This method of 
 artificial simplification places him among the classicists 
 who, as we have seen, sought not what was peculiar to 
 the individual as individual, but what was general in 
 humanity. Its disadvantages are obvious, but his genius 
 enabled him to transcend them and to create types which 
 are none the less living people, and which, while necessarily 
 embodying much that was local and temporary in 
 seventeenth-century France, remain fundamentally true 
 for all places and all times. As La Harpe admirably 
 said, " ses comedies . . . pourraient supplier a l'expenence, 
 non parce qu'il a peint des ridicules qui passent, mais 
 parce qu'il a peint l'homme qui ne change point."
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 91 
 
 31. Comedy after Moliere. Moliere had many 
 followers, but of those who can properly be included within 
 our present period two only are important enough to merit 
 reference here Regnard and Dancourt. Jean Francois 
 Regnard (1655-1709) belongs very clearly to the school 
 of Moliere, whom he often imitated closely, but he had 
 nothing of his master's depth and was entirely wanting in 
 his moral earnestness. He was, however, a clever writer, 
 with a happy knack of hitting off superficial peculiar- 
 ities in dialogue which is witty and pointed, and his verse 
 runs with delightful ease. Le Legataire Universel (1708) is 
 the most amusing of his plays, though its fun is little 
 more than buffoonery. His masterpiece, Le Joueur 
 (1696), deals with the passion for gaming which then 
 infested all ranks of society, but without a trace of that 
 moral purpose which Moliere would have imported into 
 his theme. Some of his slighter plays may still be read 
 with pleasure ; as, e.g., the really charming little one-act 
 comedy in prose, Attendez-moi sous I'Orme (1694) . Florent 
 Carton Dancourt (1661-1725), who was, like Moliere, an 
 actor as well as a dramatist, has far less claim than 
 Regnard to literary distinction, but his numerous and 
 lively comedies (e.g. , Le Chevalier a la Mode, La Maison de 
 Campagne, Les Bourgeois de Qualite, La Loterie) caught 
 the taste of the hour and enjoyed a great popularity. He 
 was particularly successful in delineating the manners of 
 contemporary society, and if his plays have lost much 
 of their original interest because they were purely topical, 
 they are for that very reason valuable as documents for 
 the student of French life during the period of that wide- 
 spread moral disorganisation which began in the last years 
 of Louis XIV.'s reign and culminated under the Regency.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (continued) 
 GENERAL PROSE 
 
 32. The Prose of the Seventeenth Century. The 
 forces which we have noted at work in the transformation 
 of poetry in the seventeenth century, and which, while 
 they helped to clear away the pedantry and conceits of 
 earlier writers, destroyed its freedom and spontaneity, 
 also affected prose, but much more favourably. Here the 
 new tendencies were on the whole for good. The purifica- 
 tion of the language was, it is true, attended by consider- 
 able loss of picturesqueness and variety, but it was still 
 a gain when the rule of " le bel usage " was accepted as 
 the governing principle in taste, and when the long 
 trailing sentences of the sixteenth century, with their 
 innumerable conjunctions, relative pronouns, and sub- 
 ordinate clauses, were broken up and reduced to order. 
 Prose now indeed assumed its distinctively modern form, 
 and became for the first time a perfectly adequate medium 
 of communication among educated people on subjects of 
 interest to all. This change in the quality of prose can 
 be traced directly to the influence of the new socUU 
 mondaine, the salons, and the Academy, but it is not so 
 closely associated with any one writer as the corresponding 
 reform of poetry is with Malherbe. One name is, however, 
 
 9*
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 93 
 
 always mentioned in connection with it that of Jean 
 Louis Guez de Balzac (1594-1654), who is chiefly known 
 by nis letters, nominally addressed to many of the great 
 persons of the day, but really intended for general perusal. 
 Both before and after their publication they were read 
 with boundless enthusiasm by a wide circle of admirers. 
 In themselves they possess but little interest for us to-day, 
 for they are essays rather than letters, and while they 
 lack the familiar charm which belongs to the genuine 
 letter, their value as essays is very small. But their 
 importance on the side of style must not be overlooked. 
 Balzac led the way in the new prose, and his two special 
 qualities emphasised by Boileau propriety of diction 
 and skill in sentence-construction give him historically 
 a certain claim to distinction. 
 
 33. The Moralists : Pascal. It has been justly 
 said that " tout grand ecrivafrrrlQ XVIP siecle est double 
 d'un moraliste." * Preoccupation with moral considera- 
 tions is indeed one of the most noteworthy features of the 
 literature of the age. We see this in the tragedies of 
 Corneille and Racine and in the comedies of Moliere. We 
 see it even in the Fables of La Fontaine. In these writers, 
 of course, the prevailing " tendance moraliste " expressed 
 itself only indirectly and under the conditions imposed 
 by their different forms of art. There were, on the other 
 hand, many among their contemporaries who were, as we 
 may say, moralists by profession, and who, to use Nisard's 
 distinction, treated ethical questions " non parmi d'autres 
 choses, mais a part, et comme sujet unique." The 
 majority of them and their name is legion have little 
 interest for the general reader, but three at least belong 
 to the history of literature as such Pascal, La Roche- 
 foucauld, and La Bruyere. 
 
 1 Lintilhac, Precis de la Literature frangaise, ii. ioo.
 
 94 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont-Ferrand in 1623, 
 and was one of the three children of fitiennc P;i 
 President of the Cour des Aides of Montferrand, and a 
 ' yman of fine character and great intellectual powers. A 
 r precocious child, he early showed an astonishing genius 
 for mathematics ; at seventeen he wrote a treatise on 
 conic sections ; at eighteen he invented a calculating 
 machine. In 1646 the whole Pascal family fell under the 
 influence of Jansenism, to which they became converts. 
 Blaise none the less continued his scientific studies and 
 experiments till a breakdown in health in 1652 compelled 
 him to desist. For the next two years he frequented 
 worldly society, and during this period, it would appear, 
 his ' religious fervour somewhat waned. Then, whether 
 x or not, as is often supposed, as the result of a carriage 
 accident, in which he nearly lost his life, he passed through 
 a spiritual crisis during a night of strange mystical ecstasy, 
 the experiences of which he commemorated in a few 
 broken sentences and ejaculations upon a paper which 
 thereafter he always carried sewn in his clothes. After 
 this he renounced the world (1654) and spent the rest of 
 his life in retirement, partly at Port-Royal, partly in Paris. 
 His health had always been poor, and the extreme austeri- 
 ties to which he subjected himself in his endeavour, as 
 his sister Gilberte puts it, " de se perfectionner de plus en 
 plus," told sadly upon him. Worn out with severe and 
 incessant sufferings, borne with saintly resignation, he 
 died in Paris in 1662.^ 
 
 Pascal's character must always remain something of 
 an enigma, for it was compounded of contradictions. To 
 discuss it here is impossible, but stress must be laid upon 
 the fact that he was at once a scientist and a mystic, a 
 logician and a visionary. He "Had In lt~supreme degree 
 what he himself calls the "geometric mind " (" l'esprit de
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 95 
 
 la geometrie "), but his ardent faith and his intense 
 imagination carried him far beyond the regions of 'exact 
 reasoning ; and it is precisely this rare combination of 
 massive intellectuality and high spiritual power which 
 gives their specific quality to his writings. Of these, two, 
 notwithstanding the highly special nature of their subjects, 
 must always be included in any survey of seventeenth- 
 century French literature his Provinciates and his 
 Pensees. 
 
 The Lettres ecrites par Louis de Montalte d un Provincial 
 de ses Amis et aux Reverends Peres Jesuites, stir la Morale 
 et la Politique de ces Peres commonly known for the sake 
 of brevity as Les Provinciates are eighteen controversial 
 tractates in the form of letters, which were published at 
 intervals in 1656 and 1657. They had their origin in a 
 great theological controversy which was raging at the 
 time between the Jansenists and their orthodox opponents 
 on the true nature and action of Divine Grace, Pascal's 
 primary purpose in writing them being to defend his 
 friend, the Port-Royalist Arnauld, against the Sorbonne, 
 which had condemned him for heretical opinions on the 
 points at issue. 1 To this special subject the first four 
 letters are mainly devoted, and to it the writer returns in 
 the last two. But in the intervening twelve V. to XVI. 
 inclusive he substitutes offensive for defensive tactics, 
 and deals at large with the whole question of Jesuit theory 
 
 1 The religious movement known as Jansenism took its name from 
 the Dutch theologian Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638), whose Augustinus, 
 a commentary on the writings of St. Augustine, published two years 
 after his death, gave rise to a long and acrimonious controversy between 
 those who adopted his views on the doctrine of Grace and other subjects, 
 and those who held them to be heretical. These views were in opposi- 
 tion at several important points to the teachings of the Jesuits, who 
 therefore pursued their supporters with unrelenting bitterness. The 
 principal centre of the movement was the lay community established 
 at Port-Royal, near Versailles, the members of which gave their lives 
 to the work of education and the practice of the most austere piety. 
 
 I
 
 96 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and practice ; and this he does with such tremendous 
 power that this part of his work remains the most formid- 
 able attack ever delivered upon the principles of tin- 
 Order. That the Provinciates rank among the master- 
 pieces of polemical literature is universally acfchowli d/ <! 
 Unfortunately, since we cannot n6W be expfcred to taice 
 the faintest interest in the verbal squabbles of Jansenists, 
 Jesuits, New Thomists, and Molinists about Efficacious 
 Grace, Sufficient Grace, and Proximate Power, their 
 subject-matter is against them. Yet their greatness 
 merely as literature must be apparent to any one who 
 dips into their pages. Pascal is not only a m ighty cont ro- 
 versialist ; he is also a consummate literary artist, ancThis 
 skill in conducting an argument and in driving it home, 
 his. irony, now delicate and now scathing, the sparkling 
 comedy of the earlier letters and the vehement eloquence 
 of the later, are an unfailing' source of delight even to 
 those who have no taste for theological discussion as such. 
 It is not without justice that he has been compared'for 
 dramatic quality with Plato, for humour with Lucian and 
 Moliere, for rhetoric with Cicero and Bossuet. In par- 
 ticular, we must recognise the excellence of his style. 
 His purpose being to appeal not to theological experts 
 but to the educated general public, he wrote in a language 
 which, as he declared, he meant to be " intelligible aux 
 femmes mgmes " ; and his lucidity, brilliancy, strength, 
 and grace combine to make his work one of the landmarks 
 of French prose. As Sainte-Beuve said : " Ce n'est cme 
 vers le milieu du XVII' siecle que la prose francaise, qui 
 avait fait sa classe de gfammaire avec Vaugelas, 1 et sa 
 rhdtorique avec Balzac, s'ernancipa tout d'un coup et 
 devint la langue du parfait honnete homme avec Pascal." 
 ~ For some years before his death, as his nephew Etienne 
 
 1 The author of Remarques sur la Langue Francaise, 1647.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 97 
 
 Perier tells us, Pascal had cherished the ambition of 
 writing a great work in defence of Christianity, and had 
 carried the subject about with him continually in his 
 mind ; but ill-health prevented the systematic prosecution 
 of his design, and all that he left behind as a contribution 
 towards it was a mass of notes, which were published in 
 1670 under the title of Pensee s. These notes are in a 
 chaotic state, and though modern editors have attempted 
 to arrange them upon some definite plan, their efforts, 
 which by no means correspond with one another, can be 
 regarded as tentative only. Thus the Pensees are in- 
 organic as well as incomplete and fragmentary ; yet even 
 so, they take a high place in religious literature by reason 
 of the depth and pregnancy of their thought, their psycho- 
 logical penetration, and the concentrated vigour of their 
 expression. It would appear to have been the apologist's 
 intention to meet the " libertins," or free-thinkers, on 
 their own ground that of human nature itself and to 
 build upon this his demonstration, first of natural religion, 
 and then of Christianity. It has been observed by many 
 critics, and must indeed be obvious to every reader, that 
 there is a profoundly sceptical quality in much of his 
 speculation. In exposing the pretensions of the intellect 
 and the weaknesses and inconstancy of mankind he not 
 only follows Montaigne in his most pyrrhonist moods, 
 but often repeats him, for it is noteworthy that he was 
 a great admirer of the sixteenth-century essayist and 
 was evidently much influenced by him. 1 Moreover, his 
 attitude towards life was uncompromisingly pessimistic. 
 But if he seeks to overthrow the entire structure of thought 
 which the intellect of man has painfully erected, and to 
 
 1 See Entrdtien avec M. de Saci, in which he contrasts two types 
 of philosophy stoicism and pyrrhonism (the philosophy of doubt) 
 taking Epictetus as his representative of the former, Montaigne of the 
 latter. 
 
 H
 
 98 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 exhibit the pettiness and misery of the common human 
 lot, it is only that he may clear the way for a reconstruc- 
 tion on the basis of religious faith and hope. Man is a 
 mystery ; he is feeble and wretched ; yet he has the 
 noblest aspirations ; though a single drop of water may 
 destroy him, his capacity for thought makes him greater 
 than the entire universe. Science and philosophy seek 
 in vain to explain this contradiction ; deism is insufficient 
 to account for it ; but Christianity, with its doctrine of 
 the Fall and its promise of salvation through Christ, 
 meets the problem and solves it. Christianity cannot 
 be proved by the intellect only ; its proof lies in its 
 correspondence with the whole nature of man and 
 in the way in which, alone of all systems of thought, 
 it satisfies the totality of his needs. This seems to be 
 the foundation of Pascal's apologia. It may be pointed 
 out that by far the most interesting and suggestive 
 of his Pensdes are those which deal with psychological 
 and moral questions ; those which are concerned with 
 the special evidences of Christianity contained in the 
 Bible and the Fathers are necessarily more limited in 
 their appeal. 
 
 34. La Rochefoucauld . A scion of one of the 
 noblest tamilles of France, Francois, Due de la Roche- 
 foucauld, was born in Paris in 1613, and was thus ten years 
 Pascal's senior. In early manhood he took part in a plot 
 against Richelieu, and later was prominent in the Fronde. 
 Severely wounded at the battle of Porte Saint-Antoine 
 (1652), in which the insurgents under Conde were defeated 
 by the Government forces under Turenne, he retired from 
 public life, and after spending some years in the country 
 to restore his health, shattered by the long-continued 
 strain of excitement and adventure, he settled in Paris, 
 where he became a familiar figure in some of the great
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 99 
 
 salons, notably that of Mme. de Sable. His closing years 
 were uneventful and sad, and he died in 1680. By 
 temperament La Rochefoucauld was predisposed to 
 pessimism : " pour parler de mon humeur," he wrote of 
 himself, " je suis melancholique " (Portrait fait par lui- 
 mSme) ; and the knowledge of the world and of men 
 which he had gained in the course of his political intrigues, 
 and the bitterness of his own thwarted ambitions, com- 
 bined to deepen his natural gloom into the most pro- 
 nounced misanthropy. Hence the unrelieved cynicism 
 of his reading of life in the remarkable little book on 
 which his fame securely rests, his Maximes et Reflexions 
 Morales (1st edition, 1665 ; 6th edition, greatly Enlarged, 
 1678). The writing of Pensees, or brief detached apo- 
 thegms on moral questions, was much cultivated in Mme. 
 de Sable's salon, and other frequenters of it, besides La 
 Rochefoucauld, sedulously practised the art of packing 
 the utmost amount of meaning into the fewest possible 
 words. But no one among them approached him, and 
 few writers of any time or country ever have approached 
 him, in the power of concentrated expression. As a 
 stylist he is indeed a master. As a moralist he is acute, 
 independent, and penetrative, but one-sided and narrow. 
 He traverses a fairly wide field of experience, it is true, 
 but his thought is everywhere dominated by a single 
 purpose to lay bare the actual principles by which, 
 however loth we may be to admit it, we actually govern 
 our lives. Under his remorseless analysis all conduct is 
 reduced to modes of self-interest : " Les vertus se perdent 
 dans Tinteret comme fes fteuves se perdent dans la mer " ; 
 and"~again, " L'interet parte toutes sortes de langues et 
 joue toutes sortes de personnages, meme celui de d6sin- 
 t6res6." Amour-propre, though it may disguise itself 
 in a thousand cunning ways, he finds the real motive force
 
 ioo FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 behind all our actions, great or small, heroic or trivial ; 
 even what passes current as virtue is vitiated at its source' ; 
 our very humility is only a subtle form of vanity, for " le 
 refus des louanges est un de'sir d'etre loue" deux fois," and 
 "on aime mieux dire du marde soi que de n'en parler." 
 Though here and there a different note is struck, as in the 
 finely generous saying, " C'est se donner part aux belles 
 actions que de les louer de""5oh coeur," the tone of his 
 tHought is on the whole p rofoundly misanthr opic, and it is 
 not surprising that he has often been accused of maligning 
 humanity. It must, however, be acknowledged that he 
 
 Itold many unpalatable truths, which are not the less true 
 because they are unpalatable. His radical fault was that 
 he dwelt persistently upon certain facts only, to the total 
 exclusion of all other considerations, the result being that 
 his criticism of life is perverted by his omissions. But 
 it should be noted that by the frequent use of such qualify- 
 
 Iing words as "souvent," " presque," and the like, La 
 Rochefoucauld in the later editions of his book to some 
 extent mitigated the sweeping severity of his judgments. 
 35. La Bruyre. Jean de La Bruyere belonged to 
 the "pet ite bou r geo isie" 75f "PaTts^^ancf was born in that 
 city in 1645. He was educated at the University of 
 Orleans, studied for the Bar, and became an advocate, 
 but he never practised, choosing rather, as he himself 
 says, to live "dans la solitude de son cabinet" and to 
 spend his days in the study of Plato. In 1684, on the 
 recommendation of his friend Bossuet, he was appointed 
 tutor to the young Duke of Bourbon, grandson of the 
 Great Conde\ and remained in the household of Cond6 
 till his death in 1696. A spectator and student of life, 
 he began to write late, and put all his observations and 
 judgments into the one book by which he is remembered, 
 Les Caractdres ou les Mceurs de ce Sihcle (1688), which he
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 101 
 
 published in the first instance as an appendix to a transla- 
 tion trf the Characters of the Greek philosopher, Theo- 
 phrastus. This book has neither system nor plan ; it is, 
 in fact, a kind of medley, made up of many things ; but 
 reflections and portraits, or character-studies, are the 
 principal elements in its composition. " Tout l'esprit 
 d'un auteur," he declares, " consiste a bien definer et bien 
 peindre " ; and in this phrase he provides a key to his 
 own method, for in the main he defines and paints. As 
 a maxim-writer he rarely equals La Rochefoucauld eitEeT" 
 in the penetration of his thought or in the vigour of his 
 expression, though his criticism of life is often very shrewd 
 if seldom very deep, and his style, which was the product 
 of constant care and labour, is one of the best examples 
 of the new seventeenth-century prose. His great success, 
 however, was achieved with his character-studies, in 
 which (as he explained in the Discours which he delivered 
 on his admission to the Academy) he combines a multitude 
 of individual traits, taken now from Tills side now from 
 that, into composite portraits representing some of the 
 outstanding types in contemporary society. From this 
 point of view his book possesses, over and above its 
 intrinsic literary value, a permanent historical interest 
 as a vivid picture of the men and manners of the day. 
 But he was not merely a painter ; he was also, and indeed 
 primarily, a moralist, who in writing sought, what he 
 insists the true philosopher should always seek, not the 
 empty praise of his readers, but " un plus grand succes," 
 which is " de les rendre meilleurs." While not a misan- 
 thrope, like La Rochefoucauld, he had a keen eye'Tor 
 the social evils of his time, which often stirred him to 
 generous indignation. The boldness of some of his 
 opinions indeed surprises us when we come upon them 
 amid his more conventional generalisations. He did not
 
 102 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 hesitate to touch upon the wrongs which were being 
 done by men of rank and power, upon the evils of war, 
 upon the abuses of absolutism. " Le peuple n'a guere 
 d'esprit et les grands n'ont point d'ame", he WfUes mTiis 
 c hap t er, Dii GfawiH | " lMUl-m IT T Ih bonfondset n'a 
 point de dehors ; ceux-ci n'onTquc des dehors < ( qu'une 
 simple superficie. Faut-il opter ? Je ne balam pas; 
 je veux Stre peuple." 'This is a remarkable statement to 
 come from the pen of any man of La Bruyere's position, 
 and I quote it because it illustrates a quality in his thought 
 
 I which has led many French critics to speak of him as a 
 precursor of the democratic writers of the eighteenth 
 century. Still more remarkable and more prophetic is 
 the sympathy which he occasionally showed with the 
 miserable down-trodden masses, as in the famous and 
 often-quoted passage in his chapter, De I' Homm e, in which 
 he describes the wretched peasantry, who to the ordinary 
 
 (observer may seem Utile betxer than beasts, and yet 
 "quand ils se levent sur leurs pieds, ils montrent une 
 face humame, et en ettet, ils sont des hommes." 
 
 30. KELIGIOUS WRITERS. irom these lay moralists 
 we turn naturally to those among their contemporaries 
 within the Church who, though wholly or chiefly theo- 
 logians, have still to be included in any survey of seven- 
 teenth-century literature. The most important of these 
 is Bossuet, the greatest of the pulpit orators of an age 
 particularly rich in pulpit oratory. Like nearly all the 
 notable men of letters of the time, Ja cques Bni gne 
 Bossuet sprang from the middle classes, tie was born at 
 Dijon in 1627, educated at the Jesuit school of his native 
 city, and aTfhe College de Navarre in Paris, and becoming 
 ^ in 1652 a canon of Metz early made his mark as a preacher 
 
 /and as a polemical writer against the Protestants. In 
 1659 he created a sensation by his first sermon in Paris,
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 103 
 
 after which he was soon recognised as the leader of the 
 devout party at Court. In 1669-70 he was Bishop of 
 Condom ; from 1670 to 1681 tutor to the dauphin ; and 
 on resigning his position was appointed Bishop of Meaux. 
 During the last period of his life he was specially active 
 as a controversialist, championing the royal authority 
 and the liberties of the Gallican Church, against Rome 
 and the Ultramontanes, and doing battle both with the 
 Protestants and with the doctrines of Quietism as inter- 
 preted by Fenelon. He died in 1704. Bossuet was a 
 man of strong convictioBS*Ul r l'l!I "HTOHSe religious feeling ; 
 narrow and intolerant ; a pronounced conservative and 
 an ardent supporter of the fixity of dogma and of absolute 
 authority in Church and State. Three of his principal 
 writings are devoted in particular to an exposition at 
 large of his political and theological doctrines : his Poli- 
 tique tiree de I' Venture Sainte (published 1709), which is 
 an elaborate argument on Biblical grounds for the theory 
 of the divine right of kings in its extremest form ; his 
 Discours sur I'Histoire Universelle (1681), prepared in the 
 first instance for the dauphin as a demonstration of the 
 workings of providence in human affairs ; and his Histoire 
 des Variations des Eglises Protestantes (1688), in which he 
 endeavours to establish the supremacy of the one un- 
 divided Church by exhibiting the hopeless want of unity 
 among the schismatics. In other works he upholds the 
 authority of the Church against licence in morals and 
 heretical tendencies in thought, as in his Maximes et 
 Reflexions sur la Comedie (1694), specially remarkable 
 for its bitter attack on Moliere ; and in his Relation sur 
 le Quihisme (ibQoj ,'" WWle "in" others again, as, e.g., the 
 Traite de la Connaissance de Dieu et de Soi-meme (pub- 
 lished 1741), he devotes himself to the task of building 
 up the faith of believers. As an historian and contro-
 
 104 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 versialist, Bossuet, though not a great or original thinker, 
 has been much praised for his thorough grasp of his 
 subjects, his dialectical skill, and the purity of his style, 
 but his sermons, upwards of 200 of which survive, after 
 all "constitute the real corner-stone of MS Ia"me. SoTne of 
 these, as, e.g., those Sur Vimincntc TTrgffite' des Pauvres, 
 Sur la Providence, and Sur la Mort, are sermons in the usual 
 sense of the term ; others, of which t hose on Henrie tte 
 of France, Henrietta of England, and the" Prince de Conde 1 
 are the most celebrated, are funeral oral ions. As an 
 orator he reveals all his gifts in full perfection- his argu- 
 mentative power, his fervour, his imagination. His style 
 is deeply coloured by the influence of the Bible and the 
 Fathers, in the study of which he was steeped. His 
 avowed purpose being only to move and convince, he 
 did not aim at, but rather avoided, mere literary ornament 
 and grace. He is indeed often simple with a kind of 
 Hebraic simplicity ; sometimes he is even rugged ; but 
 what impresses us most in reading him is the stately 
 splendour of his eloquence. 
 
 Bossuet's principal rival as a preacher was the Jesuit, 
 Louis Bourdaloue (1632-1704), a man of extraordinary 
 hone sty and c ourage, whose special characteristic was his 
 logical power, and who in contrast with Bossuet threw 
 the stress of his teaching on the moral rather than on the 
 doctrinal side ; while a little later the reputation of both 
 these great orators was overshadowed by that of their 
 younger contemporary, Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663- 
 1742), who is now remem Bered ^cTuerTjr For his 'funeral 
 oTcttion on Louis XIV., and for the series of Lenten 
 sermons {Petit Careme) which he preached before Louis XV. 
 in 1718. 
 
 But after Bossuet the foremost place among the 
 religious writers of the seventeenth century must be
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 105 
 
 assigned to Fenelo n. Born in 1651, in the Chateau de 
 Fenelon in Pengora, Francois de Salignac de la Mothe 
 Fenelon took holy orders in 1675, was tutor to Louis XIV. 's 
 grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, from 1689 to 1695, and 
 was then presented by the king to the archbishopric of 
 Cambrai. Already he had formed a friendship with the 
 celebrated Quietist, Mme. de Guyon, whose defence he 
 undertook against those who pursued and persecuted her 
 for heresy. This brought him into collision with his old 
 friend Bossuet, and a conflict ensued, conducted on 
 Bossuet's side with great acrimony and on Fenelon's 
 with remarkable dignity and tact. In the end, Bossuet 
 triumphed and Fenelon was condemned by Rome (1699). 
 About the same time he also drew down upon himself 
 the anger of the king by his political views. Henceforth 
 he lived and laboured entirely in and for his diocese, and 
 died, still under a cloud, in 1715. Fenelon was a very 
 voluminous writer, and his works embrace a great variety 
 of subjects theology, ethics, education, philosophy, his- 
 tory, literary criticism. But he is best known by his 
 Telemaque (1699), which, like his Fables and his Dialogues 
 des Moris, he designed for the use of his royal pupil. 
 Starting from the fourth book of the Odyssey, to which it 
 forftTS~ar--kmd of sequel, THimaque recounts the fuHher 
 adventures of the young Prince of Ithaca in search of his 
 father. But it is not merely a story ; it is a roman 
 pddagogique, the narrative of which is simply a vehicle 
 of instruction on the conduct of life, the faithful Mentor 
 being always at hand to point the moral of every incident. 
 It was on account of the enlightened political views 
 expressed in it that the work aroused the wrath of the 
 king. 
 
 37. Letters and Memoirs. The same social condi- 
 tions that favoured the development of the art of polite
 
 106 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 conversation also stimulated that of letter-writing, and 
 the litUrature ipistolaire of the seventeenth century is 
 very lafgU allfl Very "varied. 1 Many of the most prominent 
 professional authors of the time, like Racine, Boileau, and 
 La Fontaine, were also industrious correspondents by the 
 way ; others, like Balzac and Voiture, adopted the form 
 of the letter, though nothing but the form, as their prin- 
 cipal mode of expression ; but the art was cultivated in 
 particular by leisured men of society and by women, 
 and with pre-eminent success by the latter. One of 
 these was the " incomparable ipistolaire," who not only 
 holds an easy supremacy among her contemporaries, but 
 has also her niche in the temple of literary fame. Marie 
 de Rabutin-Chantal was born in Paris in 1626, and at 
 eighteen became the wife of the handsome, dissipated 
 Henri, Marquis de Sevigne\ whose death in a duel in 1650 
 left her a widow with two young children, a daughter and 
 a son. The former, who in 1669 married the Comte de 
 Grignan, Governor of Languedoc, was the principal re- 
 cipient of her letters, though she also carried on a fairly 
 regular correspondence with a few intimate friends. She 
 died while on a visit to Grignan in i6q6 . Mme. de 
 Svigne's abilities were of such a high order that both 
 surprise and regret have sometimes been expressed that 
 she did not, like so many other women of the time, devote 
 herself to the composition of some sustained work. We 
 may, however, safely assume that, as M. Gaston Boissier 
 has suggested, 2 the letter-writing which for more than a 
 quarter of a century fully satisfied all her cravings for 
 self-expression, also offered a more congenial field for her 
 peculiar talents than she would have found even, let us 
 
 1 The vogue of letter- writing is incidentally illustrated in an interest- 
 ing way by the prominence of letters in the fashionable romances dealt 
 with in the next chapter. 
 
 * Mme. de Stvignl (in Les Grands fecrivains Fratifais), Part II. iv.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 107 
 
 say, in the romance. Her letters have the superlative J 
 merit of being real letters, not essays or treatises in | 
 disguise, and they possess all the freedom, expansiveness, 
 and spontaneity which are the special charm of real 
 letters when the writer has interesting things to talk about 
 and knows how to talk about them in an interesting way. 
 Living as she did at the centre of things, at the Court, 
 in the capital, in the salons, she had always an abundance 
 of excellent material for her ready pen, and her keenness 
 of observation, her sound judgment, her never-failing 
 wit and humour, and the ease and naturalness of her 
 style, give vitality and point to everything she touches. 
 Nor is her familiar gossip about domestic affairs less 
 interesting, or for that matter of less value historically, 
 than what she has to tell us about public events and 
 people. But the ultimate secret of the enduring attrac- 
 tion of her letters is after all to be found in their continual 
 revelation of the writer's own personality her warm- 
 heartedness, her gaiety, her unconventional piety, her 
 devotion to her children and grandchildren, her loyalty 
 to her friends. As a point of detail it may be added that, 
 like La Fontaine, whom she greatly admired, she had a 
 genuine feeling for nature. This comes out in particular 
 in the letters written from her beautiful estate of Les 
 Rochers in Brittany. 
 
 With the letter-writers of the seventeenth century we 
 may naturally connect the writers of memoirs, who were 
 also numerous, and who collectively left behind them a 
 vast amount of material of great importance to the student 
 of the politics and social conditions of the time. While 
 their interest is in the main purely historical, two of them 
 have an incontestable right to inclusion here De Retz 
 and Saint- Simon. ~~ 
 
 'rancois Paul Gondi, Cardinal de Retz (1614-79),
 
 108 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 was a fiery, ambitious intriguer, who made himself 
 notorious in many ways during the civil war of the Fronde, 
 and who, as his implacable enemy, La Rochefoucauld, 
 said of him, stirred up IM greatest disorders in Infi'State 
 without knowing "how to profit by them. His Mtmoires, 
 which deal with the stormy years 1643-5 5 rare prolix 
 and rambling, but they are marked by picturesqueness 
 of narrative, a strong dramatic quality, and much power 
 of character-drawing. At these and all other points, 
 however, they yield to those of Louis de Rouvr ay, Due d e 
 S aint-Simon (1675-1755 ), who is inaeea as clearly the 
 first among the memoir- writers as Mine, de Sevigne is 
 among the Tetier-writers of French literature, composed 
 after his retirement from public affairs on the death of 
 the Duke of Orleans in 1723, and covering as they do the 
 thirty-one years between 1691 and 1722, they really, of 
 course, fall outside our present period, but they are always 
 included in it because the author so distinctly belonged 
 to the older generation. Saint-Simon was a man of 
 m any and violent prejudices, a good hater, an obstinate 
 partisan of the aristocracy, an equally ODStmate opponent 
 of the bourgeoisie, whose political and social influence 
 was a source of perpetual irritation to him ; but he was 
 at the same time honest, independent, benevolent, and 
 sagacious, and in such matters as the persecution of Port- 
 Royal and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes he took 
 a firm stand against the forces of reaction. With all his 
 vanity and all his fads he had, moreover, the instincts of 
 the statesman, and he saw quite clearly, what most of 
 his contemporaries never saw at all, that under the 
 reckless follies of its government the country was drifting 
 to certain disaster. If, therefore, the amplest allowance 
 must be made for the continual perversion of his judg- 
 ments by animus and passion, his Mimoires are none the
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 109 
 
 less valuable for the lurid ligh t which they throw up on 
 
 the men and movements of The calamitous closing years 
 of Louis XIV. 's reign and period of the Regency. Though 
 written with total disregard of all considerations of 
 literary art, they are also in their way a masterpiece of 
 literature. With ruthless realism Saint-Simon lays bare 
 before us the baseness and pettiness which were concealed 
 just beneath the pompous masquerade of the Great 
 Monarch's court ; his graphic touch gives dramatic 
 interest to every scene he describes ; the men and women 
 who cross his pages, from the Roi-Soleil himself downward, 
 have the substantial quality of actual humanity; while 
 his-^style, though careless, feverish, contorted, and in- 
 correct, is remarkable for its energy and animation.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (concluded) 
 PROSE FICTION 
 
 38. The Aristocratic Romance. Prose romance, in 
 the form in which it nourished greatly in France during 
 the first three-quarters of the seventeenth century, was, 
 like letter-writing, a creation of the new societe mondaine, 
 and as it reflected the manners, expressed the sentiments, 
 and took the tone of that society, the general epithet, 
 aristocratic, may appropriately be used to describe it. 
 The first stage in its evolution is represented by the 
 roman pastoral, which derives in part from the dramatic 
 pastorals of Italy (e.g. Tasso's Aminta and Guarini's 
 Pastor Fido), but in the main from the immensely popular 
 Spanish romance, the Diana of Montemayor, which, 
 published in 1558, quickly made the tour of Europe and 
 was translated into French twenty years later. As the 
 name implies, this type of fiction belongs to the great 
 arcadian tradition in literature, which originated with 
 the Idylls of the Syracusan poet, Theocritus, and Vergil's 
 imitation of these in his Bucolica, and the revival of 
 which at the time of the Renaissance was one result of 
 the enthusiastic study of the classics. Like the pastoral 
 poem and the pastoral play, the pastoral romance had 
 nothing whatever to do with the crude realities of country
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY in 
 
 life ; it was pastoral only in the accepted conventional 
 sense ; that is, its writers, ignoring all homely details, 
 spent their efforts (as Southey said of our own Sir Philip 
 Sidney) in 
 
 Illustrating the vales of Arcady 
 
 With courteous courage and with loyal loves. 
 
 Thus in the earliest and most representative example of 
 its class in French literature, the Astree (1610-27) f the 
 ex-leaguer, Honore D'Urfe (1568-1625), 1 we are con- 
 cerned, as the Tufnor himseli is at pains to inform us, not 
 with " bergeres necessiteuses," who made their living by 
 the care of their flocks, but with refined ladies who had 
 become shepherdesses " pour vivre plus doucement et 
 sans contrainte," and with gentlemen of the same rank 
 and ideals. The main interest of the narrative is pro- 
 vided by the love of two such transfigured specimens of 
 rusticity, Celadon and Astree, who are separated by 
 jealousies and misunderstandings, but who after many 
 adventures and innumerable difficulties, perplexities, 
 dissensions, and reconciliations, are as the reader will 
 find who has patience to reach the concluding volume 
 happily united at the end. The supposed period of the 
 story is the fourth century of our era, but there is, of 
 course, nothing to remind us in it of the social dissolution 
 of that troublous time ; and though its nominal scene 
 is the region of D'Urfe's own beloved " belle et agreable 
 riviere du Lignon," on the banks of which, as he tells us, 
 "j'ai passe 1 si hereusement mon enfance et la plus tendre 
 partie de ma premiere jeunesse," the country of his 
 imagination is inhabited, not only by the arcadians 
 themselves, who play at simplicity with a pretty grace, 
 
 1 Of the five parts of which this romance is composed, the first 
 three were published during D'Urfe's lifetime, the remaining two after 
 his death, by his secretary, who appears indeed to have been largely 
 responsible for the fifth part.
 
 ii2 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 but also by cavaliers of a quite modern pattern, nymphs, 
 druids, and vestals. It is probable that such fancy 
 pictures of rural life made a peculiar appeal to readers 
 whose minds were still agitated by memories of the long 
 and cruel Wars of Religion. At any rate, the taste of 
 the age for artificial pastoralism of this description is 
 attested not only by the immense and, to us, amazing popu- 
 larity of this particular work among " polite " readers, 
 but also by the praise which it long continued to receive 
 from such competent judges of literature as Mme. de 
 Sevigne\ La Fontaine, and even Boileau. But though 
 the vogue of Astrie endured for many years, and though 
 it gave birth to a large number of imitations, the toman 
 pastoral was soon succeeded by a somewhat different type 
 of fiction, the roman d'aventures, otherwise known as the 
 roman pricieux or roman chevaleresque. The principal 
 difference between these two types lies in the fact that, 
 as Boileau put it, the pastoral romancer had taken as 
 his heroes " des bergers occupes du seul soin de gagner le 
 cceur de leurs maitresses," while the writers of the romans 
 d'aventures selected, " pour leur donner cette strange 
 occupation, non seulement des princes et des rois, mais 
 les plus fameux capitaines de l'antiquite' " ; * but a great 
 expansion of the element of intrigue was also one of their 
 distinguishing features. The lead in this new form was 
 taken by Marin le Roy de Gomberville (1600-74), one of 
 the first members of the Academy, whose Polexandre 
 (1632) recounts the astonishing exploits of a king of the 
 Canary Isles in quest of Queen Alcidiane, whom he 
 pursues over a considerable portion of the world. Then 
 came Gautier de Costes, Seigneur de La Calprenede 
 (1610-63), whose fertility of invention has earned for him 
 the nickname (which, however, must not delude the 
 
 1 Discours, prefixed to Les Hiros de Romans.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 113 
 
 modern reader into any false anticipations regarding the 
 interest to be found in his writings) of " le Dumas pere 
 du dix-septieme siecle," and whose pseudo- historical 
 Cassandre (1642-45), Cleopdtre (1647), and Faramond 
 (1661) delighted " an infinite number of admirers." But 
 even these were outdone in popularity by the romances 
 which the famous precieuse, Madeleine de Scudery 
 (1607-1701),' produced with some assistance from her 
 brother Georges, who, it is supposed, provided the battles 
 and the duels while she was responsible for the character- 
 isation, the psychological analyses, and the interminable 
 moral disquisitions : Ibrahim, ou I'lllustre Bassa (1641) ; 
 Artamene, better known as Le Grand Cyrus (1649-53) 
 the typical work of the entire school ; and the scarcely 
 less representative Clelie (1654-61). These works, as 
 has been well said, form " le dernier terme du roman 
 gallant, qui, apres beaucoup d'excursions en sens divers, 
 revient sur lui-meme, et se consume dans l'analyse 
 minutieuse et sterile de la gallant erie elle-meme." x 
 
 It would be out of place here to undertake any detailed 
 examination of these aristocratic romances, to which few 
 but the very special students of the period or of the history 
 of fiction are likely now to turn, but one or two of their 
 general characteristics must be indicated. First among 
 these to impress, and to terrify, the modern reader is 
 their enormous bulk : Astrie runs (or, more strictly 
 speaking, crawls) to 5500 pages ; Polexandre to nearly 
 6000 ; Cleopdtre appeared in twelve volumes ; Cassandre 
 and Le Grand Cyrus each in ten. 2 This appalling prolixity 
 
 1 Morillot, Le Roman en France, p. 3. 
 
 * For the encouragement of any adventurous student who may 
 feel disposed to embark upon the perusal of one of these romans a longue 
 haleine, it may, however, be said that the type used in them was large 
 and the lines well spaced. In Le Grand Cyrus, for example, I find on a 
 rough average from 140 to 150 words to a page. But then each volume 
 contains something like 1500 pages ! 
 
 I
 
 H4 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 is due in part to the leisurely character of the narrative 
 and the inordinate elaboration of the descriptions ; in 
 part to the immense space given to the dissection of 
 motive and passion, soliloquies, discourses, and dis- 
 quisitions amoureuses ; in part again to the everlasting 
 complication of the main intrigue by innumerable episodes 
 and subordinate actions, nearly every fresh individual 
 introduced, either in the central plot itself or in any 
 offshoot from it, persisting in telling his own story at 
 enormous length. 1 In the second place, stress must be 
 laid upon the fantastic nature of the materials of which 
 these romances are composed. The unreality of D'Urfe's 
 pastoral has already been noted. The unreality of the 
 historical machinery of his successors is equally flagrant. 
 Considerations of place and time are utterly ignored by 
 them. In Ibrahim we are in Turkey ; in CUlie in the 
 Rome of the kings ; in Cassandre in the Persia of Darius ; 
 CUopdtre deals with the love of the great queen's daughter 
 and Juba, Prince of Mauritania ; Le Grand Cyrus is 
 concerned with the gallant adventures of that famous 
 conqueror in his wooing of his cousin, the " incomparable 
 Mandane." But it is all one : Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, 
 Persians, Knights of the Round Table, Paladins of Charle- 
 magne, Peruvian Incas, are only aristocratic men and 
 women of seventeenth-century France, with the manners 
 of the Court in every detail of their behaviour, and the 
 language of the salons perpetually on their lips. Though 
 this total defiance of historical truth was one ground of 
 Boileau's charge against the romances, it must be re- 
 
 1 Morillot (op. cit. p. 4) states that there are forty -five " histoires 
 incidentes " in AstrSe ; Le Breton (Le Roman au XVII* Steele, p. 15) 
 puts the number at " seventy or eighty " ; but I have not myself 
 attempted to check the figures. Other romancers were quite as great 
 sinners in this respect. The result of such abuse of the " story-within- 
 story " device is a complexity which is absolutely bewildering.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 115 
 
 membered that no such truth was ever aimed at in them, 
 and that if their writers sinned grievously in this respect 
 they did so openly. Here, in fact, we touch upon one of 
 their chief sources of interest for their first readers, who 
 recognised in them, as they were intended to recognise, 
 idealised transcripts from contemporary society. Indeed, 
 some of them at least, and notably those of Mile, de 
 Scudery, were romans d clef, in which, as was well under- 
 stood, the leading characters stood for famous persons of 
 the time. Finally, one of their most important general 
 features is their essentially romantic quality. Their 
 plots are compounded of the most extravagant incidents ; 
 their heroes are transcendent types of chivalry and 
 courtesy ; and they are full of high-flown sentiment and 
 over-strained gallantry. These were among the common 
 characteristics of much of the literature produced by the 
 ardent and spirited generation of the Fronde, as we can 
 see even in the tragedies of Corneille. At the same time 
 they reflect the taste of the salons in their fondness for 
 dealing with the refinements of amorous passion and the 
 casuistry of love. It is on this point in particular that 
 Moliere raised the laugh against them in his Precieuses 
 Ridicules. 
 
 39. The Realistic Reaction and the Beginnings 
 of the Modern Novel. With the general change of 
 spirit in the third quarter of the century and the final 
 triumph of classicism the aristocratic romances began to 
 lose their vogue, while Boileau's pungent Dialogue sur 
 les Hews de Romans (which circulated in the salons as 
 early as 1664, though it was not printed until after Mile, 
 de Scudery's death) did much to discredit them even in 
 the circles out of which they had grown and in which 
 they had found their special public. But even in the 
 heyday of their popularity they had called out against
 
 n6 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 them that perennial esprit gaulois which long before had 
 played havoc with romance in the Roman de Renart and 
 Pantagruel. While D'Urfe's pastoral was still, in Perrault's 
 phrase, " les delices et la folie de toute la France," Charles 
 Sorel (1599-1674) poured ridicule upon it in his mock- 
 pastoral, Le Berger Extravagant (1627), wHch narrates tlie 
 history of a young student named Lysis, whose wits are 
 turned by much reading of Astree as those of Don 
 Quixote had been by his books of chivalry who becomes 
 a shepherd for the sake of love, and whose attempt to 
 emulate the performances of Celadon results in a series 
 of ludicrous misadventures. This, however, was not 
 Sorel's first attack upon the vagaries of the romantic 
 school. Five years before he had published his Vraye 
 Histoire Comique de Francion, a work of much "greater 
 general interest because, instead of being a mere parody, 
 it is a tale of manners and intrigue, in which a faithful 
 reproduction of vulgar reality is offered as a substitute 
 for the fine-spun unrealities of poetic fancy. As in Le 
 Berger Extravagant the influence of Cervantes is very 
 apparent, so Francion is evidently in large measure 
 inspired by the picaresque novel of Spain, a form of 
 realistic and satiric fiction which about the middle of the 
 sixteenth century had followed close upon the romances 
 of chivalry and the pastoral romances of that country. 1 
 The hero of this amusing little book is no amorous prince 
 who conquers imaginary kingdoms in the name of his 
 mistress and fills hundreds of pages with his courtly 
 wooing. He is a shrewd young fellow of the world a 
 
 1 This was essentially a novel of low life, and it had a sharper or 
 rascal for its central figure ; hence its name picaresco, from Spanish 
 picaro, a rogue. The first of these picaresque novels was the anonymous 
 Larazillo de Tormes (1554) ; the most celebrated, Mateo Aleman's 
 Guzman de Alfarache (1599), later translated into French by Le Sage, 
 whose indebtedness to the Spanish " rogue-novel " will be noted in 
 its proper place.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 117 
 
 sort of " frere aine de Gil Bias," as M. Le Breton has 
 happily called him ; and his adventures are all on a very 
 common plane and lie among very commonplace people 
 college pedants, lawyers, vagabonds, robbers, country- 
 folk. With all its defects and it is often coarse in 
 matter and crude in style Francion has a good deal of 
 boisterous humour, and its immense success (it was 
 reprinted sixty times within a few years) is at least easier 
 for us now to understand than the popularity of the 
 literature against which it raised the standard of revolt. 
 Next in order of time among the important contribu- 
 tions to the realistic reaction and it is of important 
 contributions only that we can here take any account 
 comes Scarron's Roman Comique (1651-57) .* Paul 
 Scarron (1610-60) was a deformed cripple who for the 
 last twenty years of his life was the victim of terrible t 
 diseases, but his physical sufferings did not repress the 
 natural gaiety of his disposition, which sustained his j 
 courage and inspired his pen to the very end. His 
 humour took, in the main, the form of burlesque, as in 
 L'Eneide Travestie already mentioned, and the spirit of 
 burlesque pervades the work now in question, which, 
 instead of detailing the sentimental experiences of love- 
 lorn princes and princesses, describes in brisk and racy 
 fashion the doings of a company of itinerant actors on 
 their way through Le Mans. The Roman Comique is 
 ill-constructed and shapeless, and its fun too often depends 
 upon the kind of horse-play of which we have a foretaste 
 in the second chapter, when the tragedy of Marianne is 
 
 1 Mention may here be made in passing of the Histoire Comique des 
 Etdts et Empires de la Lune and the Histoire Comique des Etdts et Empires 
 du Soleil of Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac (1610-55). But these are 
 satirical extravaganzas, in which the influence of Rabelais is very 
 apparent, and which in turn gave hints to Swift for his Gulliver's 
 Travels, and they hardly belong to the history of the novel.
 
 n8 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 interrupted by " mille coups de poing, autant de soufflets, 
 un nombre effroyable de coups de pied, des jurements 
 qui ne se peuvent compter." But the characters of the 
 actors themselves and of the provincials with whom they 
 mingle are handled with abundant vigour, those of the 
 old comedian La Rancune and the little avocat Ragotin 
 being indeed genuine creations of a farcical kind, and 
 the successive scenes, though loosely strung together, 
 are full of life. Hence any reader of fairly robust taste 
 may still find plenty of amusement in the book. 
 
 Less vivacious than this, but historically of greater 
 importance, is Le Roman Bourgeois (1666), by Boileau's 
 friend, Antoine Furetiere (1620-85), whose special power 
 lay in his domestic realism. " Je vous raconteray sincere- 
 ment et avec fidelite," he announces, at the outset, 
 "plusieurs historiettes et galanteries arrivees entre des 
 personnes qui ne seront ny heros ny heroines, qui ne 
 dresseront point d'armees, ny ne renverseront point de 
 royaumes, mais qui seront de ces bonnes gens de mediocre 
 condition, qui vont tout doucement leur grand chemin, 
 dont les uns seront beaux et les autres laids, les uns sages 
 et les autres sots ; et ceux-cy ont bien la mine de composer 
 le plus grand nombre." Such is the author's programme, 
 and he carries it out in a series of vivid pictures of middle- 
 class life, done with an accumulation of precise detail 
 which anticipates the method of the " naturalistic " 
 novelists of two centuries later. All through Furetiere 
 indulges in gibes at the fashionable writers, and draws out 
 the contrast between romance and reality. At the same 
 time, as with Moliere, his satire has a double edge, for 
 while he ridicules the aristocracy as seen from the point 
 of view of the bourgeoisie, he is even more severe upon 
 the bourgeoisie themselves, poking fun alike at their 
 boasted domesticity and at the social ambitions which led
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 119 
 
 them to ape the manners of the aristocracy and even to 
 set up salons of their own in imitation of those of the 
 precieuses. Thus, for example, one of his principal figures 
 is an " amphibious " young man named Nicodeme, an 
 avocat by day, but a courtesan when his day's work is 
 over, for he is one of the many of his class who " veulent 
 passer pour des gens de bel air." This Nicodeme makes 
 love to a certain Javotte, the daughter of a procureur, 
 according to the approved methods of " galanterie " : 
 that is, as love is made in Cyrus and Clelie ; but Javotte 
 is a simple-minded young person of sound practical 
 common-sense, and " je n'entends point tout ce que vous 
 dites " is her discouraging reply to his flowery speeches. 
 This same Javotte is presently introduced into one of the 
 salons just referred to, where she creates great merriment 
 by her total ignorance of literary matters, and especially 
 by talking about a poem of four hundred lines as a sonnet. 
 In such scenes we realise the close connection between 
 the satire of Le Roman Bourgeois and that of Les Precieuses 
 Ridicules. 
 
 In the works thus far mentioned, and pre-eminently 
 in this of Furetiere, we can trace the early evolution of 
 the novel under the influence of the bourgeois spirit in 
 its reaction against the aristocratic romance. But we 
 have also to note the transformation of the aristocratic 
 romance itself in the hands of a woman who was herself 
 a representative of the society by which it had been 
 fostered. Mme. de La Fayet te (1 634-03), the writer in 
 question, way 111 ftSlfllSf hie a prominent figure in the 
 Hotel de Rambouillet, and she had already written a 
 sentimental' stofy, La Princesse de Montpensier (1662) 
 and a roman d'aventures in the current style, Zayde (1670), 
 before she broke fresh ground with her one important 
 contribution to literature, La Princesse de CUves (1678).
 
 120 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 The scene of this short, simple, and touching tale is the 
 Court of Henry II., though the historical background is 
 evidently studied from that of Louis XIV. The heroine 
 is a woman who having for some years been the wife of a 
 man whom she esteems but does not love, has her affections 
 suddenly engaged by the Duke of Nemours, whom she 
 happens to meet one night at a ball at the Louvre. 
 Faithful to her duty, yet fearing the strength of her newly- 
 awakened passion, she determines to defend herself against 
 herself by making a full confession to her husband. This 
 she does. The prince is deeply touched by her devotion, 
 but he none the less suffers from the pangs of jealousy, 
 and he is presently seized with a fever and dies. Believing 
 herself to have been the cause of his death, his widow 
 refuses the suit of her lover, and ultimately retires to a 
 convent. Such is a bare outline of this remarkable little 
 book. In matter and tone, as will be seen, it is entirely 
 aristocratic, but it is at the same time intensely human. 
 Its emotional tragedy is treated with great delicacy and 
 skill ; its characters are portrayed with fine insight and 
 a firm touch ; and the power of psychological analysis 
 which had hitherto been wasted on hopelessly impossible 
 subjects, is for the first time directed in it to the problems 
 of actual life. For these reasons it is rightly considered 
 as marking a distinct stage in the development of the 
 prose fiction of its time.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 GENERAL PROSE 
 
 40. The Eighteenth Century. What for the pur- 
 poses of literary classification is known as the eighteenth 
 century is really the period extending from the death of 
 Louis XIV. in 171 5 to the outbreak of the Revolution in 
 1789. In the literature of the earlier part of this period 
 premonitions of approaching change were already ap- 
 parent, though as yet there was no conscious rupture 
 with the preceding generation. In the second half of 
 the century the new spirit became marked and general. 
 Even then the classical tradition was still largely main- 
 tained, amongst its most strenuous theoretical supporters 
 indeed being some of those who in practice were help- 
 ing most to undermine it. But if the doctrines of the 
 classical school continued to receive a certain amount of 
 lip-service their vitality was fatally impaired. In funda- 
 mental character literature now underwent an entire 
 transformation. 
 
 Among the forces which were at work in bringing about 
 this transformation the first place must be given to 
 political and social changes. The "grand siecle " had been
 
 122 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 an age of strong centralised government, of discipline and 
 order in the State, and, superficially at least, of internal 
 repose ; the eighteenth century was a period of disruption, 
 disorganisation, and ever-growing unrest ; and as the 
 unity of classicism had been a result of the one set of 
 conditions, so the break-up of that unity was an inevitable 
 consequence of the other. The later years of Louis XIV.'s 
 reign years of disaster abroad and reaction at home 
 had already heralded the decline of absolute monarchy 
 in France. Then came the moral corruption of tin- 
 Regency (1715- 23), the utter degradation of royalty 
 I thfQUgh the shameless debaucheries of Louis XV. and 
 I the pitiable weakness of his ill-starred grandson and 
 I successor, the appalling abuses of long years of reckless 
 misgovernment, and, stimulated by these things, the 
 spread of that spirit of discontent which was presently 
 to find vent in the Revolution. This spirit was further 
 strengthened by the rapid growth of science and the 
 critical temper fostered by it. At the same time the 
 Church, which had been one of the bulwarks of absolutism, 
 and had stood for authority and unity in religion as the 
 monarchy had stood for authority and unity in the State, 
 by reason of its bigotry, its stolid opposition to progress, 
 and its moral laxity, was fast forfeiting all claim to popular 
 esteem : a fact of capital importance, because it goes a long 
 way to explain the scepticism which was so marked a 
 feature of the later eighteenth century, and which was 
 another potent element in the general disintegration of 
 the old order. Hence the universal intellectual ferment 
 of the time. Nothing was any longer regarded as sacred. 
 Everything was questioned, challenged, criticised. The 
 right of the past to dictate to the present was emphatically 
 repudiated. " Dans les salons, dans les cafes, dans les 
 cenacles litteraires, dans les milieux bourgeois comme
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 123 
 
 chez les grands seigneurs, tout etait discut6, bafoue, battu 
 en breche, et le cynicisme des propos rivalisait avec 
 l'audace de la pensee." x 
 
 It has already been noted that before the end of Louis 
 XIV.'s reign the Court had ceased to exercise an absolute 
 undivided authority over French culture and that the 
 centre of taste had shifted from Versailles to Paris. 
 Among the signs of this change, as the quotation just 
 made will have suggested, was the revival of the salon, 
 which once more became powerful. But the spirit of the 
 new salons was very different from that of the old. Those 
 of the first half of the century indeed, like that of Mme. 
 de Lambert, still devoted themselves chiefly to the 
 interests of gallantry and fashion ; those of the second 
 half, on the other hand the salon of Mme. Geoffrin, of 
 Mme. Du Deff and, of Mme. Lespinasse were centres philo- 
 sophiques, which were frequented by the leading thinkers 
 of the day, in which scientific, political, and social questions 
 formed the principal topics of conversation, and which 
 were notoriously " advanced " in their sympathies. But 
 even more important than the influence of the salons was 
 that of public opinion, now for the first time the dominat- 
 ing force in French life. As one of Diderot's biographers 
 has pointed out, the evolution of literature in the 
 eighteenth century, and especially from 1750 onward, 
 depended ultimately upon a single " social fact " " the 
 extraordinary development of commerce and industry," 
 and as a direct consequence of this a consequence 
 clearly perceived by Voltaire at the time " the note- 
 worthy progress of the middle classes." 2 The Third 
 Estate, increasing steadily in power and in the conscious- 
 ness of power, now gave the tone to literature, because 
 
 1 Marquis de Segur, Au Couchant de la Monarchic 
 * Ducros, Diderot, p. 182.
 
 124 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 it formed the backbone of that wide reading public to 
 which literature was addressed. 
 
 Meanwhile these social and political influences were 
 reinforced by a fresh current which was running strongly 
 in literature itself from its source on our own side of the 
 Channel. For the classicists of the seventeenth century, 
 English literature simply did not exist ; even Boileau, 
 though he had, it is true, read Addison's Latin verses, 
 undertook to discourse on the epic without knowing any- 
 thing of the greatest of modern epics, Paradise Lost, and 
 keenly interested as he was in satire, died in ignorance of 
 Dryden's very name. But in the eighteenth century, 
 English genius and thought everywhere penetrated the 
 genius and thought of France, helping at once to break 
 down the doctrines of classicism and to foster new ideas 
 regarding tolerance, civil and religious liberty, individual 
 rights, the dignity of industry and commerce. The later 
 eighteenth century was indeed an era of pronounced 
 Anglomania ; as a playwright of the time declared : 
 
 Les precepteurs du monde a Londres ont pris naissance, 
 C'est d'eux qu'il faut prendre lecon. 1 
 
 In any consideration of the relations between the two 
 countries during this critical period in the history of 
 European civilisation it must never be forgotten that as 
 Italy had led the way in the great revival of the Renais- 
 sance, so England led the way in the eighteenth-century 
 movement of enlightenment and democratic expansion : 
 the starting-point of this being, on the theoretical side, 
 Newton's scientific discoveries and Locke's philosophical 
 and political doctrines ; on the practical, the overthrow 
 of the Stuarts and the foundations of constitutional 
 
 1 Saurin, L' Anglomane (1772).
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 125 
 
 government. But though it originated in England, this 
 movement passed directly to France, and it was France 
 that carried it forward. Hence the significance of the 
 fact that, as we shall see, nearly all the great intellectual 
 leaders in France for a couple of generations before the 
 Revolution had sat at the feet of English masters and 
 were avowedly exponents of their ideas. Equally im- 
 portant was the influence exerted by those more popular 
 writers who represented the middle-class movement in 
 English literature. Defoe, Addison, Richardson, the 
 dramatists Lillo and Moore, strongly appealed to the 
 French bourgeoisie by the congenial character and tendency 
 of their thought, especially when, as for example, in the 
 case of Richardson and Lillo, they combined domestic 
 interest and a sound utilitarian morality with a large vein 
 of sentimentalism. 
 
 One other important general feature of the literature 
 now to be considered has also to be emphasised its sub- 
 ordination to directly practical aims. Recognising this, 
 some historians of the period have gone so far as to assert 
 that, though the output of books of all sorts was enormous, 
 literature, in the strict sense of the term, had ceased to 
 exist. This is, of course, a rhetorical exaggeration. But 
 it is certainly true that literature was now on the whole 
 cultivated less for its own sake than as a vehicle of ideas. 
 Taken in the mass the literature of the eighteenth century 
 is, in other words, an applied literature rather than a pure 
 literature, and its interest therefore depends more upon 
 its intellectual content than upon its aesthetic qualities. 
 The great outstanding masterpieces of the period the 
 works which exhibit its genius at its highest are not 
 works which belong to the domain of the creative imagina- 
 tion ; they are treatises on political questions, like L'Esprit 
 des Lois and Le Contrat Social ; on history, like the Essai
 
 126 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 sur les Mceurs ; on education, like mile ; on science, like 
 L'Histoire Naturelle. Even poetry and the drama had 
 come to be regarded not as ends in themselves but as 
 means to an end. In particular, in the hands of the 
 dominant " philosophic party," as the leaders of the new 
 movement in thought were collectively called, all types 
 of literature partook of the militant spirit and were 
 employed for propagandist purposes. Critical, sceptical, 
 free-thinking, humanitarian, intensely alive to the abuses 
 of the existing system in Church and State, enthusiastic 
 advocates of progress and enlightenment, sworn foes to 
 obscurantism in every form, the philosophes used litera- 
 ture in the main to make war on authority, dogma, and 
 tradition, and to disseminate their political and religious 
 teachings. The work which they produced has great 
 interest from the historical point of view, especially when 
 it is considered in the light of after events, for if its direct 
 effect on the Revolution is sometimes exaggerated, it is 
 clear that it did much both to subvert the old order and 
 to fashion the minds of " the generation of '89." But 
 as literature it necessarily suffered from the over-stress of 
 polemical intention. 
 
 41. The Precursors : Fontenelle Montesquieu. 
 The history of eighteenth - century literature begins 
 with a number of writers who represent the transition 
 from the old to the new, and are commonly described as 
 the precursors of the philosophes. We will here confine 
 our attention to two of these Fontenelle and Montes- 
 quieu. 
 
 Bernard Le Bouvier de Fontenelle was the son of a 
 sister 6T Corneille, and was born in Corneille's native 
 town, Rouen, in 165%. He was educated for the law, 
 but, encouraged by nis uncle Thomas, turned to literature 
 instead. As a writer for the stage he failed both in tragedy
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 127 
 
 and in comedy, and he achieved only a very moderate 
 success with his Dialogues des Moris (1683) and his Poesies 
 Pastorales (1688), in connection with which last-named 
 work, as we have seen, he entered the field on the hetero- 
 dox side in the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. 
 He found his true line, however, in his entertaining book 
 of popular science, Entretiens sur la Pluralite des Mondes 
 (1686), his Histoire des Oracles (1687) of a decidedly 
 sceptical tendency and his series of lloges des Academi- 
 ciens (1708-19), which he prepared in his official capacity 
 as Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, and which 
 analyse and explain with admirable lucidity the contribu- 
 tions made to science by Newton, Leibnitz, Malebranche, 
 and other leading thinkers. Emphatically a man of the 
 new age, he was much attacked and satirised by his older 
 contemporaries, but he lived long enough to witness the 
 spread of many of the ideas in which he had been specially 
 interested, dying a centenarian in 1757. Fontenelle dis- 
 tinctly marks the beginning of a fresh tendency in the 
 literature of his time, for he was, in the phraseology then 
 current, a combination of savant and bel esprit ; and he is 
 certainly entitled to be regarded as a forerunner of the 
 later eighteenth-century writers for many reasons, and 
 in particular, because of his advocacy of the claims of 
 the moderns in his attack upon the doctrines of classicism, 
 his belief in progress, and his scepticism. The work that 
 he did in popularising science is also significant. " J'ai 
 voulu traiter la philosophic," he declares, in the preface to 
 his Entretiens, " d'une maniere qui ne fut point philo- 
 sophique ; j'ai faclie" de l'amener a un point ou elle ne 
 fut ni trop s&che pour les gens du monde, ni trop badine 
 pour les savants." In thus undertaking to de-specialise 
 science and to make it interesting to the laity, he initiated 
 a movement in which he had many followers, and which
 
 128 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 before his death had already culminated in the Encyclo- 
 pedic 1 
 
 Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Brede and de 
 Montesquieu, was born in the Chateau de la Br6de, near 
 Bordeaux, in 1689. He came of a family of distinction 
 in the noblesse de robe ; entered the profession of the law 
 almost as a matter of course, became Councillor of the 
 Parliament of Bordeaux in 1714, and in 1716 succeeded 
 his uncle as its President. Meanwhile, however, he had 
 fallen under the influence of Newton, and had turned with 
 great ardour to the pursuit of science. In 1728 he was 
 elected to the Academy, after which he spent three years 
 in travel, investigating on the spot the social conditions 
 and political institutions of various foreign countries. 
 For eighteen months of this time, as it is specially im- 
 portant to note, he resided in England, where he devoted 
 himself in particular to the study of the writings of 
 Locke and the principles of the English constitution. 
 On his return to France he made his home at La Brede, 
 though he paid frequent visits to Paris, finding congenial 
 society in the salons of Mme. Du Deffand and Mme. 
 Geoffrin. He died in 1755. Two of Montesquieu's works 
 gave him at once a European reputation, and still assure 
 him a high place among historians and jurists : his Con- 
 siderations sur les Causes de la Grandeur des Rotnains et 
 de leur Dicadence (1734), which is remarkable as an early 
 application of the scientific method to the problems of 
 history ; and his monumental Esprit des Lois (1748), an 
 
 1 --mrri_ljwiii-' 
 
 1 The de-specialisation of knowledge was one very characteristic 
 result of democratic progress in the eighteenth century. Compare 
 Addison's declaration : "It was said of Socrates that he brought 
 philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men ; and I shall be 
 ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought philosophy out of 
 closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assem- 
 blies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses " {Spectator, No. 10).
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 129 
 
 epoch-making volume which, though necessarily in many 
 ways out of date to-day, laid the foundations of the 
 modern comparative study of governments and legisla- 
 tion. These, however, are technical treatises which do 
 not properly concern us here. His principal contribution 
 to general literature is to be found in his earlier Lettres 
 Persanes (1721). The plan of this " most serious oi 
 frivolous books" (often imitated since, as, e.g., by Gold- 
 smith in his Letters from a Citizen of the World) was not 
 original with him ; he borrowed it from the now forgotten 
 Amusements Serieux et Comiques d'un Siamois (1707) of 
 the playwright Dufresny. He imagines two wealthy and 
 cultivated Persian gentlemen, Rica and Usbek, on their 
 travels through Europe ; they visit Paris ; they see life 
 there under many, to them, most curious aspects ; they 
 exchange their impressions and record them for the 
 benefit of their friends ; while at the same time Usbek 
 is kept informed by his correspondents of intrigues which 
 are going on in his harem at home. By the use of this 
 last device the Lettres are made to embody a little Oriental 
 romance of a licentious character which, while it was 
 certainly a concession to the loose taste of the time, 
 helped to carry the writer's ideas into the " tetes bien 
 frisees et poudr6es " of his readers. But the entire interest 
 of the book for us lies in 'the bold satire which his 
 machinery enabled him to direct upon the institutions and 
 society of the day as seen, not by those whose vision had 
 been dulled by familiarity and custom, but through the 
 unprejudiced eyes of two intelligent strangers. Thus the 
 political corruption, the social decadence, the religious 
 insincerity of the last years of the Regency are thrown 
 into high relief. Montesquieu had a keen perception of 
 these things, and whether he writes in a tone of light 
 persiflage of the coquetry of Parisian ladies (26, 52), of 
 
 K 
 
 1
 
 130 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the theatres (28), the cafes (36), the mania for gambling 
 (56) ; or introduces character-studies in the manner of 
 La Bruyere (45, 48, 68) ; or, becoming grave, turns his 
 attention to religion (29, 46, 57), government (80), the 
 laws (95, 116, 117, 129), and literature (36, 133, 137) ; 
 or, in the episodical allegory of the Troglodytes (n-14), 
 paints a picture of an ideal republic based on virtue : 
 it is always as the critic and censor of his age. In their 
 direct social and political purpose the Lettres Persanes 
 distinctly anticipate the later eighteenth-century litera- 
 ture of reform ; in their combination of solid thought 
 and vivacity of style they quite as distinctly point 
 forward to the great writer who comes next on our list. 
 
 42. V oltai re. Francois Marie Arouet, who early 
 took the name of Voltaire, 1 was born in Paris in 1694, 
 was educated at the Jesuit College Louis-le-Grand,'" , 3n"d 
 on finishing his course in the humanities was set by his 
 father, a notary, to the study of law. This, however, 
 proved hopelessly uncongenial to his volatile tempera- 
 ment and was soon abandoned by him. On the other 
 hand, his taste for literature had early asserted itself, and 
 his poetic talents and the wit and charm of his conversa- 
 tion made him popular with the libertins of the so-called 
 Soci6te" du Temple. In 1717 he had the first adventure 
 of a singularly adventurous life : a satire on the Regent 
 
 I was falsely attributed to him and he was thrown into the 
 Bastille, where he remained nearly a year, occupying 
 himself in his enforced leisure with literary work, and 
 especially with an epic poem which later became La 
 Henriade. Soon after his release his tragedy CEdipe was 
 performed with brilliant success at the Th^atrTTrancais 
 
 1 It is almost, though not quite certain, that this is an anagram 
 of Arouet 1. j., that is, Arouet le Jeune : v being substituted for u, and 
 i for;'.
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 131 
 
 (Nov. 1718), and at twenty-four he found himself univer- 
 sally acclaimed as the inheritor of the laurels of Corneille 
 and Racine. This play, which marks the real beginning 
 of a literary career which was to extend through sixty 
 years of incessant and varied activity, is also noteworthy 
 because in the famous couplet : 
 
 Nos pretres ne sont pas ce qu'un vain peuple pense, 
 Notre cr6dulit6 fait toute leur science 
 
 it opened the crusade which to the very end he was to 
 carry on with unflagging vigour against priestcraft and 
 superstition. For seven years after this he led a strenuous 
 and restless life, feted by society, busy with his pen, and 
 at the same time industriously engaged in laying the 
 foundations of that splendid fortune which was presently 
 to prove that with all his other talents he possessed those 
 of a clever financier. Then trouble once more overtook 
 him, for as the result of a quarrel with the Chevalier de 
 Rohan he was again lodged in the Bastille (1726). This 
 time his imprisonment lasted only a fortnight, but though 
 he was then liberated, it was on the express condition 
 that he should leave France, and he accordingly crossed 
 to England, where he remained in exile for nearly three 
 years (1726-29). Voltaire's residence in England was in 
 his own opinion the turning-point in his career, and in 
 that of his early biographer, Condorcet, an event of the 
 utmost significance in the intellectual history of Europe. 
 Through the good offices of Bolingbroke, whom he had 
 known in France, he was introduced into some of the best 
 English society, became acquainted with leading men like 
 Peterborough and Chesterfield, and entered into close 
 relations with Pope, Swift, Young, Thomson, and Gay. 
 He learned to read English well and to write and speak 
 it with considerable fluency, and he made himself familiar
 
 132 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 with a good deal of English literature, including the works 
 of Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden, besides the writings 
 of the men whom he reckoned among his personal friends. 
 This intimate contact with the English spirit did much to 
 enlarge his outlook and to enrich his mind. But most 
 important of all was the influence exerted upon him by 
 English thought. He studied Bacon, Newton, Locke, and 
 the Deists ; he assimilated English ideas about science, 
 religion, philosophy, and government ; and what he 
 learned from books, vitalised by his own observation of 
 English political and social conditions, made a profound 
 and lasting impression upon him. It is not too much to 
 say that these English experiences transformed him from 
 a mere wit and dilettante man of letters into a zealous 
 apostle of liberty and enlightenment. 
 
 On his return to France he produced in rapid succes- 
 sion a number of tragedies and poems, and in 1731 pub- 
 lished his first important prose work, the Histoire de 
 Charles XII. The next decisive event oi nis career, 
 howe^verT'was the appearance in 1734 of his Letires Philo- 
 sophiques sur les Anglais, the direct fruit of his years of 
 exile. The ostensible object of this little book was simply 
 to give some account of English life and thought ; its 
 real purpose was to awaken the minds of French readers 
 to a sense of the intellectual and political despotism under 
 which they were themselves suffering. This purpose was 
 well understood, for innocent as the Lettres were in appear- 
 ance they aroused the wrath of the authorities and were 
 condemned by the Parliament of Paris to be publicly 
 burned by the common hangman. Compelled to fly 
 before the storm, Voltaire sought asylum with his friend 
 Mme. du Chatelet at Cirey, in whose chateau he set up 
 a laboratory and devoted himself to chemistry and physics. 
 After this he found favour for a time at Court, and lived
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 133 
 
 now in Paris, now at Sceaux, now at Nancy, always busy 
 with his pen, and producing, among many other things, 
 the first of his philosophical tales Le Monde comme it va 
 (1746), Zadig (1747), and Micromegas (1747). In 1750, 
 at the invitation of his admirer Frederick II. of Prussia, 
 he migrated to Berlin, with an official position as Kings 
 chamberlain, a handsome pension, and apartments in 
 one of the royal palaces. But quarrels soon broke out 
 between the ill-assorted pair, and, having in the mean- 
 time increased the sum of his work by his Sitcle de Louis 
 XIV., Voltaire quitted Prussia (1753), and settled first at 
 Les Delices, near Geneva (1755-58), where he wrote his 
 notable poems LeDesastre de Lisbonne and La Loi Naturelle 
 (1756) and his Essai sur les Mceurs (1756), and then at 
 Ferney, on the shores of Lake Leman, his home for the 
 rest of his life. During this closing period the works which 
 still flowed from his pen dramas {e.g., Tancrede, 1760), 
 tales (e.g., Candide, 1759), literary criticism (e.g., Commen- 
 taire sur Corneille, 1764), history (e.g., Histoire de la Russie 
 sous Pierre le Grand, 1763 ; Histoire du Parlement de 
 Paris, 1769), philosophy (e.g., Traite sur la Tolerance, 1763 ; 
 Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1764) continued to give 
 evidence of the immense range of his interests and his 
 prodigious industry. It was at this time too that he 
 carried on with greater vigour than ever before his 
 campaign against despotism, and especially against the 
 Church " LTnfame " as he called it which was for 
 him the very incarnation of the spirit of darkness and 
 oppression. Much of his energy was now indeed devoted, 
 not to the denunciation of bigotry and superstition in 
 the abstract, but to the championship of the cause of 
 the victims of ecclesiastical persecution and political in- 
 justice. There were many weaknesses and defects in 
 Voltaire's character : he was vain, irritable, jealous ; his
 
 134 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 moral sense was often at fault ; he was frequently guilty 
 of mean and petty actions and was always too ready on 
 occasion to stoop to the basest arts of prevarication and 
 intrigue. But he was fundamentally noble-minded, 
 generous, and philanthropic, and his sympathies were 
 quickly fired by every instance of concrete wrong. Tf J'ai 
 fait un peu de bien ; e'est mon meilleur ouvrage," he 
 writes of himself in his Epftre d Horace ; but when 
 we remember his splendid services to humanity in 
 the case of the Calas family, of Sirven, of La Barre, 
 of Lally-Tollendal, of Montbailli, of the serfs of Mont 
 Jura, we feel that this is a very modest judgment upon 
 his work. 
 
 In 1778 the " patriarch of Ferney," long the acknow- 
 ledgedTTSa'd of French literature, was induced to under- 
 take a journey to Paris, where he had not been seen for 
 more than thirty years. The capital received him with 
 frantic enthusiasm, which culminated in the great scene 
 in the Com6die Francaise when, after the performance of 
 his last tragedy, Irhne, his bust was crowned on the stage. 
 Excitement and fatigue proved too much for the frail old 
 
 I man. He was struck down by illness, and after several 
 weeks of alternating delirium and torpor died peacefully 
 on the night of May 30. 
 
 Voltaire's writings form a library in themselves ; small 
 and great, they number upwards of 260 separate publica- 
 tions ; they include epic and didactic poems, a large body 
 of miscellaneous verse, tragedies, comedies, histories, 
 biographies, scientific essays, treatises on religion and 
 philosophy, literary criticism, and tales ; while, in addi- 
 tion, he was throughout his fife a tireless correspondent 
 I with all sorts of people, and more than 10,000 letters, 
 which constitute by no means the least interesting part 
 of it, swell the bulk of his work. Such fertility and
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 135 
 
 variety are amazing. But, on the other hand, it is evident 
 that his versatility of interest was a snare to him ; it led 
 him to scatter his powers ; and the result was that though, 
 as the Academy declared, he tried every kind of Uterature 
 and failed in none, he rarely did anything that can be 
 regarded as belonging indisputably to the first rank in 
 its class. Obviously no attempt can be made here to 
 deal with his productions in detail. Something will be 
 said later about his poems as poems and his plays as 
 plays (see post, pp. 154-55, 162-64). For the moment 
 we will confine our attention to his prose and to the 
 philosophy of which his work as a whole is the vehicle. 
 
 Whatever differences may exist regarding the value 
 of Voltaire's matter there can be no dispute as to the 
 supreme excellence of his manner as a prose-writer. He 
 is indeed one of the greatest masters in any language of 
 the purely natural as distinguished from the rhetorical 
 style, and his lucidity, vivacity, ease, and sparkling wit 
 make everything he touches interesting. Of him may be 
 said what has often been said of Macaulay, that he never 
 wrote a dull page or an ambiguous sentence. These 
 qualities are pre-eminent in his brilliant little philosophical 
 tales {e.g., Zadig, Micromegas, Candide) which are perhaps 
 the most thoroughly characteristic of all his writings. 
 They are equally in evidence in his various contributions 
 to history, as, e.g., in his still popular Histoire de Charles 
 XII., which, as Condorcet long ago said, has all the fascina- 
 tion of a romance. But though by sheer charm of treat- 
 ment Voltaire made history into Uterature, his substantial 
 claims as an historian must not be overlooked. His 
 Essai sur les Mozurs, in particular, is an important land- 
 mark in the study of the past. The science of history has 
 developed enormously since his time, and it is easy for us 
 now to detect the faults in this great work its occasional
 
 136 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 inaccuracy in detail, the frequent superficiality of its 
 generalisations, the distortion of the author's judgment 
 in many places by prejudice and polemical purpose. But 
 it is still an epoch-making work, because it attempts a 
 philosophy of history in which the conception of natural 
 evolution is substituted for that of supernatural inter- 
 vention, which had formed the basis of Bossuet's Discours, 
 and because it is a record, not merely of wars and dynasties, 
 but also and chiefly of civilisation and intellectual pro- 
 
 Igress. The fact that such historians as Gibbon, Niebuhr, 
 Grote, and Buckle were directly indebted to it will serve 
 to suggest its significance. 
 
 Voltaire's interpretation of history leads us directly 
 to his philosophy, but before we consider the substance 
 of this it is necessary that we should say a word about 
 the prevailing tone of his writings. He was, it must be 
 remembered, essentially a wit ; his natural weapons were 
 not denunciation, invective, appeal, but irony, satire, and 
 ridicule ; and these weapons he wielded without the 
 slightest respect for the most deeply cherished feelings 
 of those against whom he turned them. Hence the 
 offence which he gave at the time, and which he still 
 gives to many readers, by his mocking and malicious 
 
 I spirit and by his frequent irreverence in the handling of 
 sacred things. Yet he was, at bottom, in deadly earnest, 
 and was often most in earnest when he seemed to be most 
 flippant. Unless this fact is recognised he can never be 
 properly understood. But though, as L ord M orley has 
 said, he " never played the sentimentalist," * and was apt 
 to express his strongest convictions through the medium 
 of his lightest banter, there were occasions on which 
 he was so profoundly moved that he abandoned 
 his usual method, and then the righteous indigna- 
 
 1 Voltaire, p. 314.
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 137 
 
 tion which flames out for a moment in his pages is all 
 the more effective from its contrast with his customary 
 levity. 1 
 
 Having thus cleared the way, we may proceed to a 
 brief epitome of the main principles of his thought. A 
 man of practical and positive temper, he was in philosophy 
 a follower of Bacon and Locke, and his contempt of 
 metaphysics was equalled by his enthusiasm for science. 
 In religion he was bitterly hostile, not to essential 
 Christianity, but to the whole ecclesiastical system of 
 his time, which, with only too good reason, he associated 
 with bigotry, fanaticism, and cruelty ; to Roman Catholi- 
 cism, which he regarded as a perversion of the teachings 
 of Jesus ; and to dogmatic theology in every form, which 
 was for him the chief enemy of enlightenment and pro- 
 gress. While rejecting all revelation, however, he was a 
 consistent Deist, and held so firmly to his belief in God 
 that in his later years he was sneered at by the rising race 
 of atheists as old-fashioned and reactionary. Yet he did 
 not find in this belief any ready-made explanation of the 
 mysteries of the universe and the anomalies and contradic- 
 tions of human life. During his earlier manhood he had 
 indeed been an optimist of the school of Leibnitz, Shaftes- 
 bury, and Pope. But he was already outgrowing his faith 
 in their flimsy doctrines when it was suddenly shattered 
 by the terrible Lisbon earthquake, 2 and from that time 
 
 1 Thus in his persistent and telling attacks upon militarism and the 
 military spirit he is habitually inclined to dwell rather upon the mon- 
 strous absurdity of war than upon its wickedness ; or, more correctly 
 speaking, he seeks to reveal its wickedness by exposing its absurdity. 
 But in reproving the clergy for their indifference to this great subject 
 he rises in places to a level of noble eloquence (see, e.g., Dictionnaire 
 Philosophique, s.v., Guerre). 
 
 * See his fine poem Le Disastre de Lisbonne, ou Ex amen de cet Axiome : 
 Tout est Bien, and the corollary of this, the pulverising satire, Candide 
 ou I'Optimisme.
 
 138 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 onward he relinquished all attempt to solve the ultimate 
 problems of existence and in his further dealings with 
 religion threw his stress entirely upon the practical side. 
 His ethical teachings, as may be anticipated, were utili- 
 tarian in the narrowest sense ; " le bien de la soci&e' " 
 being for him " la seule mesure du bien et du mal moral." x 
 In his social and political views he was, in comparison 
 with many of his contemporaries, distinctly conservative. 
 He was not a Utopian, he was not a prophet of any new 
 order ; he was not a revolutionary, the only revolution 
 that he desired being a peaceful change in men's ideas. 
 He had no organised system to proclaim as a cure for all 
 existing ills. Nor had he any quarrel with society and 
 civilisation, the luxuries and refinements of which he 
 good-humouredly eulogised in his poem Le Mondain, and 
 later defended against Rousseau. At the same time he 
 never ceased to advocate the constitutional liberty which 
 he had learned to love in England, and was zealous in his 
 insistence on the urgent need of many political reforms. 
 On the whole, however, he had little concern with theories 
 of social regeneration as such. These interested him only 
 incidentally. The movement which he led was primarily 
 intellectual ; it was a movement for the emancipation of 
 the mind of man from the trammels of ignorance and 
 superstition. He fought for reason, freedom of thought, 
 tolerance, and humanity ; and he fought for these great 
 principles with so much courage and success that, how- 
 ever deeply we may at times regret his methods, we must 
 still gratefully acknowledge the value of the work which 
 
 1 The thought of duty as the one thing needful in religion is the 
 positive conclusion which emerges out of the philosophic nihilism of 
 Candide. " II faut cultiver notre jardin," is the message with which 
 it concludes ; that is, whatever our hands find to do we should do 
 this with all our might, and not waste our time and energy in futile 
 speculations about things which we can never hope to understand.
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 139 
 
 he did as one of the progressive forces of eighteenth- 
 century history. 
 
 43. Diderot and the Encyclopedistes. By his wit 
 and magic of style Voltaire did more than any other man 
 to popularise the ideas of the philosophes. A more solid 
 contribution to their propaganda was, however, made by 
 Diderot and the group of writers whom he gathered round 
 him in the Encyclopedic 
 
 Denis Diderot was the son of a cutler of Langres, in 
 Cham|5agnef/ where he was born in 1713 and where he 
 received his early education under trre^Jesuits. Having 
 angered his father by rejecting all his proposals that he 
 should enter the Church, study law, or qualify as a 
 physician, he found himself thrown on his own resources, 
 and for some ten years (1734-44) lived a life of poverty 
 and hard struggle as tutor and booksellers' hack, in which 
 latter capacity he wrote whatever he was paid to write, 
 including translations, tales designed to meet the lowest 
 taste for garbage, and even sermons. In 1746 his Pensees 
 Philosophiques were burned by order of the Parliament 
 of Paris ; in 1749 he compromised himself with the 
 authorities still more gravely by the bold speculations of 
 his Lettre sur les Aveugles, for which he was imprisoned 
 in the fortress of Vincennes. For more than twenty 
 years after this (1749-72) he was mainly engaged in the 
 immense and perilous task of the Encyclopedic, though he 
 still made time to pour out an enormous number of mis- 
 cellaneous writings on all sorts of subjects. In later life 
 he fell into serious financial difficulties, from which he was 
 rescued by the Empress Catherine of Russia, who con- 
 stituted herself his benefactress. After a brief visit to 
 her Court (1773) he returned to Paris, where he lived 
 quietly till his death in 1784. 
 
 A man of turbulent, impetuous, prodigal nature,
 
 140 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Diderot squandered his genius as recklessly as he 
 squandered his time, his money, and his health. His 
 mind literally teemed with fresh and original ideas ; 
 the range of his knowledge was so vast that Voltaire 
 called him the " pantophile " ; but while he thought 
 strongly, he could not think coherently, and he lacked 
 entirely the power of concentration. Hence, though he 
 wrote so voluminously, so vigorously, and so suggestively, 
 he left behind him no clear and consistent statement of 
 his philosophy and no finished piece of literary art. Of 
 his general philosophy it is enough to say that he was a 
 thorough-going materialist, though at times his material- 
 ism is hardly distinguishable from pantheism, and that 
 in ethics, while he fully recognised the law of social utility 
 and laid great stress on the domestic virtues, he 
 championed the rights of the natural man against what 
 he held to be the repressive morality of the Christian 
 schools. In his critical theories he anticipated the 
 romanticists in proclaiming the independence of genius, 
 the rejection of rules and convention, and a return to 
 nature ; and though he did not disparage the classics, 
 he reserved his warmest admiration for such radically un- 
 classical writers as Richardson, Lillo, Moore, and Sterne. 
 To this point we will return later when we come to speak 
 of his plays. Apart from these his most interesting work 
 is to be found in his Paradoxe sur le Comidien (1773), 
 which contains a stimulating discussion of the principles 
 of the actor's art ; his curious satire in dialogue, Le Neveu 
 de Rameau (1762) ; his novel, La Religieuse (1760), a 
 powerful, though painful and rather wearisome study of 
 the conventual life ; and Jacques le Fataliste et son Mattre 
 (1773), which is often classed as a romance, but is really 
 little more than a series of conversations interspersed with 
 adventures and anecdotes. Mention should also be made
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 141 
 
 of his notes on the exhibitions of the Salon (1761-81), in 
 which he practically inaugurated the literature of aesthetic 
 criticism. In these again the romantic tendency is upper- 
 most. " Et si l'antique n'avait pas existe* ? " was the 
 disconcerting question which he was accustomed to pro- 
 pound to painters and sculptors who were for ever prating 
 of the antique. 
 
 But the most considerable part of Diderot's work in 
 bulk and in historical importance is that which he did 
 in connection with the Encyclopedic, ou Dictionnaire 
 Raisonne des Sciences, des Arts et des Metiers. The im- 
 mediate model for this great undertaking in its inception 
 a publisher's speculation was the English Encyclopedia 
 of Ephraim Chambers (1727), but the original plan was 
 modified and expanded by him, and, in a measure at 
 least, under the influence of Bayle's Dictionnaire Historique 
 et Critique * it became the organ of the philosophic party. 
 As director-in-chief Diderot was primarily responsible for 
 the entire enterprise, and he also provided innumerable 
 articles on history, philosophy, and the applied sciences. 
 But he also secured the co-operation of most of the lead- 
 ing men of the day in all departments of intellectual 
 activity, who wrote on their own special subjects 
 Montesquieu on taste ; Voltaire on elegance, eloquence, 
 wit, imagination ; Rousseau on music ; Marmontel on 
 literature ; Baron d'Holbach (afterwards famous as the 
 author of the atheistic Systeme de la Nature) on science ; 
 the Abbe Morellet on theology ; Quesnay and Turgot on 
 political economy ; and so on. After Diderot's, however, 
 
 1 Pierre Bayle (164 7- 1706) was the son of a Calvinist preacher of 
 Languedoc. In early life he fled to Geneva to escape persecution as 
 a Protestant, and afterwards held the chair of philosophy and history 
 in the University of Rotterdam until his heterodoxy in turn alarmed the 
 Protestants and he was forced to resign. His Dictionnaire (1696) gives 
 him an important place among the precursors of the eighteenth century.
 
 142 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the name most closely connected with the Encyclopedic is 
 that of the great mathematician Jean Le Rond D'Alembert 
 (1717-83), who was its joint-editor during its early stages, 
 though he severed his association with it in 1759. His 
 Discours Priliminairc, which he wrote as a general preface, 
 though obviously unsatisfactory to us now on both the 
 constructive and the historical side, is still worthy of 
 attention as a noteworthy contribution to the literature 
 of science. 
 
 The object of the Encyclopidie was twofold : it was 
 intended both as a storehouse of information and as an 
 arsenal of weapons for the use of all who were engaged 
 in doing battle with the forces of ignorance and obstruc- 
 tion. In other words, the aim of the editor and his 
 colleagues was not only to place their readers abreast of 
 the most advanced knowledge of their time, but also, as 
 Diderot himself declared, " de changer la facon commune 
 de penser." Even as an encyclopaedia it did good service 
 in the cause of enlightenment. But its principal influence 
 was exerted through the tone and tendency of its thought. 
 On all subjects dealt with it represented the revolt of the 
 modern spirit against authority, tradition, dogmatism, 
 and the dead hand of the past. For this reason it was 
 violently attacked by the conservative party in Church 
 and State ; its articles were mutilated by censorship ; 
 the sale of its successive volumes was more than once pro- 
 hibited ; its editor was in frequent peril of imprisonment 
 and exile. Only his splendid courage and tenacity of 
 purpose indeed enabled him to carry it forward to its 
 conclusion in the teeth of difficulties and dangers which 
 would certainly have proved overwhelming to any less 
 resolute man. 
 
 44. Rousseau. The Encyclopidie was so closely 
 identified with the activities of the philosophic party that
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 143 
 
 encyclopediste came to be used currently as a synonym for 
 philosophe. We have now to turn to the great opponent 
 of the philosophic spirit, the Swiss " Man of Feeling," 
 Rousseau. 
 
 The son of a watchmaker, Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 was born in 1712 in Geneva. He belonged on the paternal 
 sicTe to a French Huguenot family which had sought 
 asylum there about the middle of the sixteenth century, 
 and his mother was the niece of a Swiss Protestant pastor. 
 These facts must be taken into account in any study of 
 his mental and moral evolution, because the Spartan 
 severity of his teaching is in part at least to be explained 
 by reference to his inherited Puritan bias and to the 
 lasting impression made upon him by the austere atmo- 
 sphere of his native city. But Rousseau's philosophy was 
 one thing, his character quite another, and as the deplor- 
 able contradiction between his declamations and his 
 conduct is the most glaring among the many glaring 
 paradoxes in his biography, it is necessary to add that 
 if the ideals which he preached but never put into practice 
 were fostered by the social environment of his childhood, 
 the personal qualities which were to wreck his life his 
 emotional instability, his inordinate vanity, his morbid 
 self-consciousness, the hyper-activity of his imagination 
 were meanwhile stimulated by close companionship 
 with his father, a foolish, frivolous, quarrelsome, and 
 absurdly sentimental man. At thirteen he was appren- 
 ticed to a notary, who soon discharged him as a blockhead. 
 Then he was set to learn engraving, but after three years 
 of utter wretchedness under a brutal master, he ended 
 his slavery by flight. His aimless wanderings brought 
 him to the village of Confignon, where the parish priest, 
 over a good dinner, converted him to Catholicism and 
 passed him on for further counsel and help to a certain
 
 144 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Mme. de Warens at Annecy, with whom he fell in love 
 on the spot, and who in turn sent him to the Hospital 
 for Catechumens in Turin for proper training in his new 
 faith. In due course he was baptized and cast adrift 
 with the benediction of his spiritual advisers and a gift 
 of twenty francs. He enjoyed himself after his shiftless 
 fashion till the money was exhausted ; spent some months 
 in menial service as a lackey ; and then, becoming rest- 
 less, made his way back to Mme. de Warens. In the 
 strangely constituted household of this clever but flighty 
 woman he remained for the most part for the next ten 
 years, though the continuity of his life with her was broken 
 by various extraordinary episodes, as teacher of music in 
 Lausanne, secretary to an impostor who gave himself out 
 as an archimandrite of the Greek Church, servant to an 
 officer with whom he paid his first visit to Paris. In 1741, 
 finding himself ousted in Mme. de Warens' affections by 
 an itinerant hairdresser, he made up his mind to seek his 
 fortune in the French metropolis, which he entered with 
 fifteen livres in his pocket, and a comedy Narcisse and 
 a new system of musical notation as his passports to 
 fame. But he frittered away his time and his money 
 and accomplished nothing towards the realisation of his 
 ambitions. Then through the influence of two society 
 ladies who had taken him up he was appointed secretary 
 to the French ambassador at Venice. His diplomatic 
 career, however, was at the end of ten months abruptly 
 closed by a violent quarrel with his chief, and he drifted 
 back to Paris, where he settled in a dirty little hotel 
 near the Sorbonne, started to earn his living by copying 
 music, and soon after formed an irregular union with a 
 coarse and illiterate servant girl named Therese le Vasseur. 
 Yet though for some years he continued to live in squalid 
 poverty he gradually became intimate with many women
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 145 
 
 of social prominence and with a number of leading men 
 of letters, among them Diderot, at whose invitation he 
 undertook, as we have seen, the articles on music for the 
 Encyclopedic 
 
 We now come to the crisis of his life. In 1749 the 
 Academy of Dijon proposed as the subject for a prize 
 essay the question "Si le retablissement des sciences et 
 des arts a contribue a epurer les mceurs ? " On reading 
 this question in the Mercure de France, Rousseau, accord- 
 ing to his own statement, was seized with a " sudden 
 inspiration " ; he resolved to compete ; he wrote his 
 essay, which from first to last is a violent diatribe against 
 all culture, in a sort of frenzy ; it was crowned by the 
 Academy ; its publication in 1750 created a furor of 
 excitement ; and at thirty-eight he stepped from his 
 obscurity and on the instant became famous as the 
 audacious and eloquent apostle of a new and piquant 
 gospel the gospel of " Back to Nature." Four years 
 later he followed this essay up with a Discours sur I'Origine 
 et les Fondements de I'Inegalite ftarmi les Hommes, which 
 further surprised the world by its startlingly radical 
 central thesis that all civilisation is at bottom corruption. 
 
 This sensational success gave Rousseau an immense 
 vogue in the Parisian salons ; but vain as he was, he was 
 not the man to be tamed by society, and before long he 
 retired in disgust to a cottage called the Hermitage, in 
 the forest of Montmorenci, which had been placed at his 
 disposal by his friend Mme. D'fipinay. There, and a 
 little later at Mont-Louis not far off, he wrote Julie (1761), 
 Le Control Social (1761), and mile (1762). But the 
 political and theological views expressed in the last- 
 named book were unpalatable to the authorities ; it was 
 burned by their order, and an order issued for his arrest. 
 Thereupon he fled from Paris and found shelter for a time 
 
 L
 
 146 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 at Motiers in Neufchatel. Then, driven from this retreat 
 (1764) by the animosity of the inhabitants, which was 
 stirred up against him on religious grounds, he wandered 
 about from place to place, till finally, on the invitation of 
 David Hume, he determined to make his home in England. 
 Long an admirer of England and of many English writers, 
 he came to this country hoping that at length he might 
 reach a haven of rest (1766). But by this time he was a 
 prey to the insidious and subtle form of insanity which 
 is known as the mania of persecution. In his morbid 
 mental state he was suspicious of everything and every- 
 body, and, convinced that the whole world was in league 
 against him, saw only enemies where he had expected to 
 find friends. After months of solitary brooding he 
 returned to France in secret (1767) and for three years 
 led the life of a vagabond. Then, under assurance from 
 the authorities that he would not be molested by them, 
 he settled once more in Paris and to his old task of music- 
 copying. But still his delusions increased ; he believed 
 himself to be dogged by spies as he walked the streets ; 
 he fled in alarm from the very children whom he chanced 
 to meet in his lonely rambles (see his half-crazy dialogues 
 Rousseau Juge de Jean Jacques). At length, after eight 
 years of self-torture, he was induced to accept the offer of 
 a cottage on the Marquis de Girandin's estate at Ermenon- 
 ville, ten miles from Paris. Thither he repaired on May 
 20, 1778, and there he died suddenly on July 2, less than 
 five weeks after Voltaire. 
 
 Though he did not begin his career as an author till 
 he was well on in life, Rousseau's output was very volumin- 
 ous, and it includes treatises on botany, music, and other 
 special subjects, three comedies {Narcisse, Les Prisonniers 
 de Guerre, and U Engagement Timiraire), several operas, 
 a tale {La Reine Fantasque), a prose poem {Le Livite
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 147 
 
 d'Ephraim), controversial essays and pamphlets (Discours 
 sur les Sciences et les Arts, Discours de Vlnegalite, Lettre a 
 D'Alembert sur les Spectacles, etc.), and writings of a 
 purely personal character (Lettres de la Montague, Rousseau 
 Juge de Jean Jacques, Reveries d'un Promeneur Solitaire), 
 besides the four outstanding works with which his name 
 is now chiefly associated the Confessions, Julie, Le Con- 
 trat Social, and mile. The Confessions occupy a place 
 almost by themselves among the masterpieces of auto- 
 biography. It is true that, written as they were in the 
 misery of his later life (1765-70), when his mind was 
 filled with diseased fancies and strange hallucinations, 
 and when he had come to look at every detail of the past 
 and present through a disturbing haze of emotion, they are 
 as a mere record of events entirely untrustworthy. But 
 as a piece of elaborate self-portraiture they are not easily 
 matched in any literature. Rousseau's declared purpose 
 in writing them was to describe himself faithfully and 
 without the slightest reticence in the words of his motto 
 from Persius, intus et in cute ; and if the shameless candour 
 with which he lingers over his sordid intrigues and petty 
 actions is frequently disgusting, his pages none the less 
 provide a painfully interesting study in morbid psychology. 
 Julie, better known by its subtitle La Nouvelle Heloise, is 
 a prolix, unwieldy, and incoherent work, which begins 
 with a romance of guilty love and ends tamely enough in 
 a kind of didactic treatise. In form (it is written in 
 letters), in many particulars of its machinery, and in 
 much of its ethical spirit, it is clearly indebted to Richard- 
 son's Clarissa, which Rousseau pronounced the finest 
 novel in the world, but it is charged with a passion far 
 beyond the little English printer's range of power. As 
 a roman-a-thhe it upholds both the sanctity of natural 
 love against worldly convention and the beauty of
 
 148 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 domestic virtue. A great deal of it is necessarily very 
 wearisome to us to-day, but looking at it historically we 
 can still understand how its overwrought sentiment and 
 its wonderful descriptions of mountains, lakes, and forests 
 seemed nothing short of a revelation of new emotional 
 experiences to the jaded metropolitan readers of its own 
 time. The Contrat Social is a work of a very different 
 character ; it is a treatise written in a style of scientific 
 brevity and precision on the fundamental principles of 
 government and civil society. Logical as it is in method, 
 however, this Bible of the revolutionists (as Lecky aptly 
 called it) 1 is entirely Utopian in theory, for in it, after 
 his habit, Rousseau ignores historical facts and builds on 
 the sandy basis of abstract speculation. But its bold 
 proclamation of the sovereignty of the people made an 
 immense impression in that era of general political un- 
 rest, and so great was afterwards its effect in the hands 
 of the Jacobin leaders that it is no exaggeration to say 
 that, visionary as were Rousseau's doctrines, " his dream 
 became a deed that shook the world." mile is also a 
 treatise, but a treatise thrown roughly into the form of a 
 story. In this epoch-making work the man who had 
 himself been a victim of vicious early influences, had 
 failed as a teacher, and had sent his illegitimate children 
 to the Enfants Trouvis because he did not want to be 
 burdened with them, set up as a missionary of pedagogical 
 reform, and produced a programme of " education accord- 
 ing to nature," which, with all its extravagances and 
 absurdities, is still recognised as a classic in the literature 
 of its subject. This book is further important because 
 in the long episode of the Vicaire Savoyard it contains 
 the completest exposition of the author's religious faith. 
 Like Voltaire, Rousseau was a deist ; but while the 
 
 1 History of England in the Eighteenth Century, v. 345.
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 149 
 
 " philosophic Deity " of Voltaire was a logical abstraction 
 only, Rousseau's God was a living reality, whose existence 
 was proved, not by the arguments of science, but by the 
 evidence of intuition and by those " raisons du cceur que 
 la raison ne connait pas." 
 
 " Tout est bien sortant des mains de l'Auteur des 
 choses, tout degenere entre les mains de l'homme " : 
 these opening words of mile crystallise Rousseau's 
 philosophy. That philosophy rests on the fundamental 
 antithesis between the natural and the artificial between 
 " l'homme naturel," or man as benignant nature intended 
 him to be, and " l'homme de l'homme," or the perverted 
 product of a depraved society. What is natural is good ; 
 every departure from the natural is evil ; therefore 
 civilisation itself is a colossal mistake, and the only way 
 of escape lies in a return to nature. The radical unsound- 
 ness of such a philosophy is of course apparent. Yet 
 wild, paradoxical, reactionary as it was, full as it was of 
 inconsistencies and contradictions, it still had its roots 
 in certain great truths of which at all times it is well that 
 the world should be reminded and which were specially 
 salutary for Rousseau's own generation. For by preach- 
 ing a return to nature he at least opened the eyes of his 
 readers to the essential difference between what is factitious 
 and accidental in life and what is intrinsic and permanent, 
 and made them impatient of the parasitic forms and con- 
 ventions the simulacra and unveracities as Carlyle after- 
 wards called them by which elemental realities have 
 been overlaid. The democratic bearings of his teaching 
 must also be emphasised. Tearing away as he did all 
 the fortuitous wrappings of a highly sophisticated civilisa- 
 tion, he laid bare that underlying humanity which is 
 common to lettered and unlettered, noble and peasant, 
 king and clown.
 
 150 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 In his repudiation of its cherished ideas about progiess 
 and in his attack upon its boasted achievements in science 
 and art Rousseau stood out boldly against the dominant 
 spirit of his age. Furthermore, he sought to break down 
 its hard intellectuality by his appeal to instinct and 
 feeling, to dispel its cynicism by his moral earnestness, 
 to check its effeminacy by his gospel of naturalness and 
 simplicity. At all these points his influence counted 
 enormously ; it swept like a consuming fire through the 
 dry places of the time. In many other ways the potency 
 of his teaching was attested by its amazing practical 
 results. The impulse which he gave to the revolution- 
 ary movement in thought, and the sway which he 
 exercised over the minds and the policy of many of 
 the leaders of the Revolution itself, are familiar to 
 every student of history. In literature he is recog- 
 nised as one of the forerunners of romanticism, which 
 he heralded alike in his passionate love of nature, his 
 extreme individualism, his high-pitched emotionalism, 
 and his subjectivity. As a stylist, too, he was an 
 innovator and a precursor, for (as I have elsewhere said) 
 he abandoned the formal principles of classical prose- 
 writing and " introduced the long, sweeping rhythm, 
 the extended balanced periods, the colour and the 
 music, afterwards characteristic of the whole romantic 
 school." 1 
 y 45. Other Prose - Writers. Though the mass of 
 general prose produced in France during the eighteenth 
 century was very great, and often from the point of view 
 
 1 Rousseau and Naturalism in Life and Thought, p. 240 note. It 
 should, however, be pointed out that in one important respect Rousseau 
 was distinctly unromantic. Romanticism, as we shall see, was strongly 
 impregnated with mediaevalism. He was entirely a man of his time 
 in his admiration of classical antiquity and his ignorance and contempt 
 of the Middle Ages.
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 151 
 
 of the subjects treated very interesting, only a few other 
 writers need to be mentioned in a short history of litera- 
 ture. These we will take chronologically. 
 
 George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-88), is 
 chiefly famous for his massive Histoire NatufeUe''which 
 well exemplifies the eighteenth-century enthusiasm for 
 science and its fondness for reducing all knowledge to 
 system. The consideration of this work does not fall 
 within our province. But the Discours which he delivered 
 on his admission to the Academy, commonly known as 
 his Discours sur le Style (1753), gives him a certain status 
 in literature. The principal interest of this lies in its 
 emphasis upon the purely individual quality in style 
 the quality which classicism tended to repress. Facts 
 and ideas are in themselves impersonal ; " ces choses sont 
 hors de l'homme ; le style est l'homme raeme." This 
 often-quoted dictum is certainly illustrated by Buffon 
 himself. A pompous man, deeply impressed by the 
 grandeur of nature, he strove to make his style consonant 
 with his subject, with the result that it often became 
 inflated and bombastic. 
 
 Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715-47), 
 died too young to leave behind him any adequate memorial 
 of the powers by which he greatly impressed many of his 
 contemporaries, including Voltaire, who had formed a 
 very high opinion of him and was much grieved by his 
 premature death. But his noble character, his fine 
 stoicism, and his delicate feeling give distinction to his 
 Introduction a la Connaissance de VEsprit Humain, his 
 Conseils a un Jeune Homme, and his Maximes et Reflexions. 
 As a pensee-writer and as such he is now chiefly 
 remembered he challenges comparison with La Roche- 
 foucauld. But his genial and sympathetic spirit and his 
 ardent belief in the essential goodness of human nature
 
 152 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 bring him into sharp contrast with the great misanthrope 
 whom to some extent he took as his formal model. 
 
 Je an Jacques Barthflemy (I7i6r 95) deserves passing 
 mention as the author oi Le Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis 
 en Grlce (1788), which did much to popularise the rising 
 science of archaeology and gave an impulse to the study 
 of Greek. Though we should not now think of using it 
 as an authority, it has a place in that Hellenistic revival 
 which some years before had been inaugurated in France 
 by the Comte de Caylus and in Germany by Winckelmann 
 and Lessing. 
 
 The name of Jean Francois Marmontel (1723-90) has 
 already been mentioned in connection with the Encyclo- 
 pidie. He was a fairly voluminous author who enjoyed 
 a considerable reputation during his lifetime, but he is 
 little read to-day. His Contes Moraux (1761) are very 
 dull specimens of the short story ; his Belisaire (1761), 
 which drew down the thunders of the Sorbonne by its 
 advocacy of tolerance, and Les Incas, ou la Destruction de 
 V Empire du Perou (1767), in which he retorted by exhibit- 
 ing the evils of fanaticism, are tiresome excursions into 
 that domain of historical-didactic fiction a taste for which 
 had been created by Tdlemaque and to which Anacharsis 
 also belongs. His most interesting work is to be found 
 in his Mimoires and his Aliments de Littirature, which is 
 made up of the articles which he had contributed to the 
 Encyclopddie. We shall have to refer to him again as a 
 critic when we come to speak of the eighteenth-century 
 drama. 
 
 As a critic, however, he was entirely thrown into the 
 shade by Jean Francois de La Harpe (1739-1803), whose 
 Lycie, a collection of courses of public lectures delivered 
 during many years (published in twelve volumes, 1799- 
 1805), was regarded at the time as the standard authority
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 153 
 
 on the subject. As a comprehensive survey of general 
 literature this work, like Button's Histoire Naturelle in 
 another field, illustrates the popularising and systematis- 
 ing tendency of the century. It is still a useful manual, 
 and its clearness of style makes it pleasant reading. But 
 it is written so entirely from the classicist point of view 
 that its actual value as a piece of criticism is now little 
 more than historical.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY (concluded) 
 POETRY, THE DRAMA, AND THE NOVEL 
 
 46. Poetry. Under the blighting influence of Boileau's 
 repressive doctrines and in the unfavourable atmosphere 
 of a rationalistic age, poetry in the France of the 
 eighteenth century almost ceased to exist. The list of 
 the so-called poets is indeed a long one, and collectively 
 they produced much in many forms ; but with little 
 exception their work is uninspired and mechanical, and 
 its value for us to-day is almost naught. A very 
 brief survey of eighteenth-century poetry will therefore 
 suffice. 
 
 Though Voltaire's true field was obviously prose he 
 wrote a large amount of verse, and, like his prose, this is 
 very varied in character. His most ambitious effort as a 
 poet is La Henriade (1728), an epic in ten cantos, of which 
 the subject is the Wars of Religion, and the hero Henry 
 IV. The choice of such subject and hero was of course 
 dictated by polemical considerations, and the poem is in 
 fact a sustained attack upon superstition and fanaticism 
 and a glorification of tolerance and freedom of thought. 
 In form it is fashioned closely upon the classical epic, 
 especially upon the Mneid, the plan of which it follows 
 
 154
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 155 
 
 in many of its structural details. 1 Entirely deficient in 
 imagination, cold in style, and extremely unsatisfactory 
 in its supernatural machinery, 2 it has no claim to a place 
 beside any of the great epics. But it has its redeeming 
 qualities, for the historical narrative in it is clear and 
 interesting, and some of its descriptions as of the Mas- 
 sacre of Saint Barthelemy (ii.), the Siege of Paris (iv.), 
 the Battle of Ivry (viii.) are done with much graphic 
 power. Voltaire, however, was more at home in his 
 philosophic poems, as, e.g., Discours sur I' Homme and the 
 two really fine poems already mentioned, Le Desastre de 
 Lisbonne and La Loi Naturelle, and in his Epitres, as, e.g., 
 the early A ux Manes de M. de Genouville (which closes 
 in a strain of unusual tenderness), Epitre a Boileau (1769), 
 and Epttre a Horace (1772). His satires {e.g., Le Mondain, 
 Le Pauvre Diable) have all the piquancy and wit that we 
 should expect from the writer ; but still more character- 
 istic are his " petits vers," or light occasional poems, 
 fugitive things of course, but none the less marked by 
 much ingenuity of fancy, and a never-failing charm of 
 style. 
 
 Voltaire's peculiar position in the literature of his 
 century entitles him to consideration in a class by him- 
 self. His contemporaries may most conveniently be 
 dealt with in groups defined by the general nature of 
 their work. 
 
 1 Thus Henry tells his tale to Queen Elizabeth as ^Eneas had told 
 his to Dido, Queen of Carthage, and, like ^Eneas, he is granted a vision 
 of the future history of his people. 
 
 1 According to classic theory, " supernatural machinery " was an 
 indispensable element in an epic. But while, on the one hand, the use 
 of figures from Christian theology had been proscribed by Boileau 
 (L'Art Poitique, iii.), on the other the employment of pagan gods and 
 goddesses would have been absurd in a poem dealing with a modern 
 subject. Voltaire attempts to get out of this difficulty by recourse to 
 allegorical characters La Discorde, La Politique, Le Fanatisme, La 
 Clemence who are as lifeless as allegorical characters in general.
 
 156 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 In lyric poetry the period produced only one writer 
 of any importance, Jean Baptiste Rousseau (1670-1741), 
 who is not to be confused with his greater namesake, with 
 whom indeed he was in no way connected, but whom he 
 resembled in the unhappiness of his life. The son of a 
 shoemaker in Paris and in youth a disciple of Boileau, 
 this Rousseau had just begun to make a mark for himself 
 in literature when, on charge of writing some defamatory 
 epigrams (the authorship of which is still uncertain), he 
 was banished from France (1712), and the remaining 
 years of his life were spent in exile. The fact that his 
 Odes and Cantates earned for him the proud title of " le 
 prince des lyristes " is itself sufficient to show the de- 
 plorable insensibility of his age to all the higher qualities 
 of poetry, for, though eminently correct in versification, 
 they are frigid, pompous, and artificial. The revival of 
 the true spirit of lyrism which came with the romantic 
 movement proved fatal to Rousseau's claims, and the best 
 that we can now say of him is that more than any of his 
 contemporaries he endeavoured to keep the sacred fire 
 alive. 
 
 Didactic verse offered a more congenial field to the 
 writers of the period, but unfortunately, though the moral 
 intention was often excellent, the poetry was generally 
 left out, as in the case of Louis Racine (1692-1763), 
 youngest son of the dramatist, whose Jansenist La Grace 
 (1720) and later and more important La Religion (1742) 
 have been warmly commended for their piety, but deserve 
 little other praise. In the closely allied form of satire 
 the principal name is that of Nicolas Joseph Laurent 
 Gilbert (1751-80), whose early death (see his touching 
 Adieux d la Vie, which still has a place in the anthologies) 
 cut short a promising career. Gilbert was an uncom- 
 promising opponent of the philosophes, against whom he
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 157 
 
 wrote two satires, Le Dix-Huitieme Steele and Mon 
 Apologie. His invectives are often unjust, but the vigour 
 of his verse is beyond question. 
 
 Meanwhile the influence of English literature created 
 a taste for descriptive poetry, which for a time enjoyed 
 considerable popularity. Les Saisons (1769), by Jean 
 Francois de Saint-Lambert (1716-1803), who figures 
 prominently in the biographies of Voltaire and Rousseau, 
 is an avowed imitation of Thomson's Seasons, but the 
 French writer reproduces and accentuates only the worst 
 characteristics of his Scottish original his bombast, 
 inflation, and habit of didactic digression and gives us 
 little or nothing of his real knowledge of nature and feeling 
 for it. This dreary poem was, however, highly approved 
 by the philosophic party in general, whose poetic taste 
 was not their strongest point, and Voltaire went so far 
 as to say of it that it was the only poem of the time which 
 would go down to posterity a prediction which, as I 
 have elsewhere said, strikingly illustrates George Eliot's 
 dictum that of all forms of mistake prophecy is the most 
 gratuitous. Les Mois (1779), by Jean Antoine Roucher 
 (1745-94), and Les Jardins (1782), L' Homme des Champs 
 (1800), and Les Trots Rlgnesde la Nature (1809), by Jacques 
 Delille (1738-1813), translator of the Georgics and later of 
 Paradise Lost, are similarly deficient in hfe, colour, and 
 the true sentiment of the picturesque. Such genuine 
 poetry of nature as the eighteenth century produced is 
 to be sought, not in the prosaic verse of these descripteurs, 
 but rather in the poetic prose of La Nouvelle Heloise, the 
 RSveries d'un Promeneur Solitaire, and Paul et Virginie. 
 
 Far more interesting to us than the ambitious efforts 
 of any of the poets thus far mentioned is the work of 
 some of the writers of lighter verse, two of whom, Gresset 
 and Florian, call for a word of cordial recognition. Jean
 
 158 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Baptiste Louis Gresset (1709-77) tried his hand at serious 
 poetry and at tragedy, but without success. He owes 
 his reputation entirely to one capital comedy, Le Mdchant 
 (1745), and to a humorous poem, Vert-Vert (1734), which 
 was immensely popular at the time and may still be read 
 with pleasure. This lively story of " un perroquet 
 devot " (under which it is easy to detect a playful but 
 trenchant satire of the monastic life) is indeed written 
 with such a delicate touch and with so much wit and 
 fancy that it remains one of the choicest examples in 
 French literature of the " Epopee badine." Like Gresset, 
 Jean Pierre Claris de Florian (1755-94) also lives by 
 virtue of a small part only of his work. He wrote two 
 prose romances of the historical -didactic kind, already 
 referred to, Numa Pompilius and Gonzalve de Cordoue, 
 nouvelles, pastorelles, and plays, but to-day he is remem- 
 bered only for his Fables (1792). As a fabulist he possesses 
 this distinction that of La Fontaine's many followers he is 
 the only one whom we should ever think of putting any- 
 where near that incomparable master. His Fables are, 
 however, very different in quality from La Fontaine's : 
 they are less spontaneous than these, less racy, less 
 imbued with the old esprit gaulois ; nor do they approach 
 them either in intimate familiarity with the characters 
 and ways of animals or in penetrative insight into human 
 nature. But in their own style they are excellent, for 
 Florian was a skilful story-teller and wrote in easy and 
 agreeable verse. Their moral tone, too, is unimpeachable, 
 though they are often coloured by the melancholy bred in 
 the poet's tender nature by his keen sense of the evils of 
 the troubled times on which he had fallen. 
 
 The foregoing sketch will serve to show how much, 
 or rather how little, the eighteenth century contributed 
 to the permanent possessions of French poetry. One
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 159 
 
 writer, however, has still to be considered who stands in a 
 class apart and who, while he belonged entirely to his 
 century, came at its close with the promise of a poetic 
 renaissance after a long period of sterility. Andre 
 Chenier was born in 1762 at Constantinople, where his 
 father, who was the French consul-general there, had 
 married a Greek woman of great beauty and accomplish- 
 ments. Taken as a child to France, he was educated at 
 the College de Navarre in Paris ; entered the army in 1782, 
 but soon left it, disgusted with military life ; travelled 
 for a time in southern Europe ; and then spent some 
 years in Paris, where, in his mother's salon, he became 
 intimate with many artists, poets, and philosophers. 
 From 1787 to 1790 he was secretary to the French embassy 
 in London, but he did not like England or the English 
 people, and his residence here had no influence on his 
 intellectual development. On his return to France he 
 was caught in the political current of the time and became 
 active in journalism. A warm supporter of the Revolu- 
 tion in its early stages he was presently alienated from it 
 by the policy of the Jacobins, whose excesses he de- 
 nounced. This sealed his fate ; he was thrown into the 
 prison of Saint-Lazare, and six months later (July 25, 
 1794) perished by the guillotine, one of the last victims 
 of the Reign of Terror, which ended two days later with 
 the fall of Robespierre. Chenier's work, which did not 
 appear in print until a good many years after his death, 1 
 must be regarded as in the main experimental, but it 
 shows that he was gradually emancipating himself from 
 the cramping conventions of pseudo-classicism and seek- 
 ing new paths for his genius. His Elegies are amorous 
 poems of the artificial kind, in which the influence 
 
 1 During his lifetime he published two poems only, both political, 
 Dithyrambe sur le Jeu de Paume and Hymne aux Suisses de Chateauvieux
 
 160 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 of Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid is very apparent ; 
 his Bucoliques {e.g., L'Aveugle, in which Homer sings to 
 some shepherds of Scyros, and Le Mendiant, in which a 
 wandering beggar recounts his adventures to his host, 
 who turns out to be his own son) are scholarly productions, 
 rich in details drawn directly from Greek literature, though 
 retouched with real poetic imagination. But while in 
 these collections he depended upon the classics for his 
 inspiration, in L' Invention he made a strong plea for a 
 new kind of poetry, modern alike in theme and purpose, 
 though faithful to the principles of the ancients in respect 
 of art : 
 
 Changeons en notre miel leurs plus antiques fleurs ; 
 Pour peindre notre id6e, empruntons leurs couleurs ; 
 Allumons nos flambeaux a leurs feux po^tiques, 
 Sur des pensers nouveaux faisons des vers antiques. 
 
 This declaration, it is true, must be read, not as a formula 
 of what he actually accomplished, but as a programme of 
 what he would have done had his life been spared ; but in 
 L 'Kermis (which he left a mere fragment) he attempted 
 to realise his ideal of what modern poetry might be by 
 putting the science and philosophy of his time into verse. 
 Hence his work is a rather curious compound of old and 
 new. But perhaps its most important feature is the 
 distinctive quality of its classicism. Half Greek by 
 parentage, Ch6nier was wholly Greek by temper and 
 sympathy ; he had nourished his genius on Homer and 
 the Anthology ; and the blood in his veins, the natural 
 bias of his mind, his direct contact through scholarship 
 with the spirit of antiquity, combined to make his Hellen- 
 ism a very different thing from the lifeless pseudo- 
 classicism of his contemporaries. For this reason he has 
 sometimes been compared with our own Keats. Except 
 in their instinctive paganism and in the rich voluptuous
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 161 
 
 quality of their imagination the two men had really very 
 little in common, but they resembled one another in this 
 particular, that each of them in his own way revitalised the 
 treatment of classic themes. On account of the wealth of 
 his imagery, the picturesqueness of his style, the frequent 
 concreteness of his phraseology, and the freedom with 
 which he handled the alexandrine, Chenier has often been 
 described as an ancestor of the romantics. He was, 
 however, rather the f orerunner of the Parnassiens of 
 Leconte de Lisle, for example, and Hereclia than of su ch 
 writers as Lamartine, Alfred de Musset, and Victor Hugo. 
 47. Tragedy. The decline of poetry during the 
 eighteenth century was paralleled by that of tragedy, 
 which meanwhile suffered from a sort of dry rot. Diderot, 
 of whose attempt to transform the serious drama we shall 
 speak later, put his finger upon the chief cause of this 
 decay when he expressly declared that it was due to the 
 tyranny of pedantic laws and superannuated conventions 
 (bienseances). Tragedy had now indeed become a thing 
 of mere rules and system, in which the old subjects were 
 treated over and over again according to the old methods 
 and the traditional characters, motives, and situations 
 reproduced with monotonous regularity, and in which, 
 as Grimm complained, 1 there was nothing even remotely 
 suggestive of truth or nature. Hence, though the followers 
 of Corneille and Racine were very numerous, the history 
 of eighteenth-century tragedy is on the whole, as one 
 French writer has put it, little more than "une vaste 
 
 1 Baron Friedrich Melchior Grimm (1 723-1 807) was a clever and 
 versatile German who spent the greater part of his life in Paris and 
 was an intimate friend of Diderot. His Correspondance Littiraire, 
 Philosophique et Critique, in which for sorAe forty years he kept various 
 German princes in touch with the movement in thought in the French 
 metropolis, is of great interest for the student of the history of the 
 time. 
 
 M
 
 162 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 necrologie." J In tragedy proper two writers only redeem 
 the period from the charge of absolute nothingness, and 
 these are Cr6billon and Voltaire. 
 
 Prosper Jolyot de Cr6billon (1674-1762) won his fame 
 early and then sank into oblivion for the rest of his life. 
 The tradition runs that he once denned his own position 
 in the remark : " Corneille a pris la terre, Racine le ciel ; 
 il me reste l'enfer," and though the saying is probably 
 apocryphal it serves to indicate the peculiar quality of his 
 plays. His aim was to excite terror rather than admira- 
 tion or pity, and to this end he dealt by preference with 
 violent passions and unnatural crimes {e.g., Idominee, 
 1705 ; AtrSe et Thyeste, 1707 ; lectre, 1708 ; Rhadamiste 
 et Zenobie his most notable success 171 1). In style he is 
 unequal, often heavy, sometimes obscure, and his pre- 
 vailing atmosphere is gloomy and oppressive ; but he 
 reveals in places really great dramatic power. 
 
 Cr^billon's star, however, soon paled before that of the 
 protean writer who took possession of tragedy as of all 
 other fields, and who alone sustained the great traditions 
 of the seventeenth century till the eighteenth was drawing 
 to its close. As we have seen, Voltaire's first tragedy, 
 (Edipe, appeared in 1728, his last, Irlne, in 1778 ; and in 
 the intervening sixty years no fewer than twelve others 
 (e.g., Brutus, 1730 ; Zaire, 1732 ; Mahomet, 1742 ; Merope, 
 1743 ; TancrHe, 1760) came from his pen. By his con- 
 temporaries he was confidently placed beside Corneille and 
 Racine, and it was even claimed for him that he combined 
 the peculiar excellences of the two. Modern criticism, 
 on the other hand, lays stress on the fact that he had 
 neither the strength of the one nor the psychological 
 insight of the other, and therefore assigns him to a much 
 lower rank. Clever his plays unquestionably are, but 
 
 1 Lintilhac, Prtcis de la Litter ature Francaise, ii. 262.
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 163 
 
 just as unquestionably they are more than a little factitious j 
 and while their technical skill is often remarkable, their 
 characterisation is generally thin. At the same time no 
 reader of Zaire or Merope will be likely to deny the real 
 tenderness and passion of a few outstanding scenes. 
 That Voltaire used the drama as he used all other forms 
 of literature for the dissemination of his philosophical 
 ideas {e.g., Mahomet ou le Fanatisme, Les Guebres ou la 
 Tolerance, Les Lois de Minos, etc.) is a point to be noted 
 in passing. His place in the evolution of tragedy is a 
 matter of greater importance. In theory he was a stout 
 supporter of the classical tradition of the stage. Yet influ- 
 enced in part by Shakespeare, 1 he broke with that tradi- 
 tion in several respects, and in particular in broadening 
 the basis and extending the range of tragedy. It had 
 come to be almost a convention within a convention that 
 the subjects of tragedy should be taken from Greek or 
 Roman sources, and that its characters should bear Greek 
 or Latin names. This convention he follows in some of 
 his plays (e.g., Brutus, La Mort de Cesar, Merope), but in 
 others he departs from it ; in Tancrede he takes us to the 
 chivalrous Middle Ages ; in Alzire to Peru ; in Mahomet, 
 Zaire, and L'Orphelin de la Chine, to various parts of the 
 east ; in Zulime to Africa : thus at once exemplifying his 
 own cosmopolitanism and unconsciously preparing the 
 way for what Brunetiere calls " la tragdie exotique " of 
 the romantic stage. Even in his purely classical plays, 
 moreover, he anticipates the romantics in his quest for 
 that local colour to which the classical drama before his 
 
 1 In his preface to Zaire (a play which clearly owes much to Othello) 
 he writes : " C'est au theatre anglais que je dois la hardiesse que j'ai 
 eue de mettre sur la scene les noms de nos rois et des anciennes families 
 du royaume. II me parait que cette nouveaut6 pourrait tre la source 
 d'un genre de trag6die qui nous est inconnu jusqu'ici et dont nous 
 avons besoin."
 
 164 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 time had been utterly indifferent. The fact that in his 
 Brutus he insisted that his hero should appear on the 
 scene robed not in eighteenth-century French costume, 
 but as a Roman, is significant in this respect. 
 
 48. Comedy. The comedy of the first half of the 
 eighteenth century was largely dominated by Moliere, as 
 we can see not only in the works of Regnard and Dan- 
 court, which have already been mentioned, but also in 
 such representative plays as Le Philosophe Marie (1727) 
 and Le Glorieux (1732) by Philippe Destouches (1680- 
 1754), La Metromanie (1738) of Alexis Piron (1689-1773), 
 and Le Mechant (1747) of Gresset. To the school of 
 Moliere also belongs the finest comedy of the period, 
 perhaps of the whole century, and the only one which is 
 really entitled to rank with the greatest work of the 
 master Tur caret (1709), by Le Sage, who if he had never 
 written Gil Bias (see post, pp. 170-71) would still have a 
 secure place in the history of literature as the author of 
 this brilliant satiric study of the methods and morals of 
 the new race of successful financiers. But in the work'of 
 another writer, whom we shall also meet again among the 
 novelists, comedy took an entirely fresh turn. Pierre 
 Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux (1688-1763), of whose 
 numerous plays, Le Jeu de V Amour et du Hazard (1730), 
 Les Fausses Confidences (1737), Les Sincdres (1739), and 
 L'preuve (1740) maybe mentioned as the most important, 
 was a deliberate innovator, who sought to substitute for 
 the Molieresque comedy of character and social purpose 
 a type of drama which, though still conceived as comedy, 
 should depend for its main interest upon the delicacy of 
 its psychology. His central theme is always love, and 
 the point of his innovation lies in the fact that while his 
 predecessors on the comic stage had treated love simply 
 as an element in their plots, he takes the passion itself
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 165 
 
 as a subject for analysis. " Dans mes pieces," he writes, 
 " c'est tantot un amour ignore des deux amants, tantot 
 un amour qu'ils sentent et veulent se cacher l'un a l'autre, 
 tantot un amour timide et qui n'ose se declarer, tantot un 
 amour incertain dont ils se doutent sans en etres surs, et 
 qu'ils epient au dedans d'eux-memes avant de lui laisser 
 prendre l'essor." In thus making the psychology of 
 love the substance of his work, Marivaux undertook to do 
 in comedy what Racine had done in tragedy : indeed one 
 of his critics has called him " a Racine in miniature." 
 The word " marivaudage," which is still used to indicate 
 excessive subtlety of thought and over-refinement of style, 
 is enough to suggest his distinctive characteristics. 
 
 By the large admixture of sentiment in his plays and 
 by the expansion which the emotional element under- 
 went in his hands, Marivaux contributed to the develop- 
 ment of what is known as the comedie larmoyante or 
 attendrissante, the analogue of the Sentimental Comedy 
 of our own eighteenth-century stage, and which like this 
 sought rather to draw the tears of the spectators by the 
 exhibition of the virtues and sufferings of private life 
 than to arouse their laughter by ridicule of its follies 
 and absurdities. The real founder of this new type was, 
 however, his contemporary Pierre Claude Nivelle de La 
 Chaussee (1692-1754), whose highly pathetic dramas {e.g., 
 Le Prejuge d la Mode, 1735 ; Melanide, 1741) were recog- 
 nised at the time as an attempt to import the interest of 
 tragedy into the framework of comedy. His lead was 
 followed by a number of minor writers, and curiously 
 enough even Voltaire, though too good a classicist to 
 admit any " melange des genres," yielded a little to the 
 growing taste for sentimentalism in his Enfant Prodigue 
 (1736) and Nanine (1749). The principal importance of 
 the comidie larmoyante, however, must be sought in its
 
 166 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 connection with the drame, to which we have next to turn. 
 But it may at once be added that a successful reaction 
 against the long domination of " the goddess of the woful 
 countenance, the Sentimental Muse," similar to that which 
 in the English drama we associate with the names of 
 Goldsmith and Sheridan, 1 was presently initiated by 
 Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-99), who, 
 in two sparkling and audacious satirical plays, Le Barbier 
 de Sdville (1777) and Le Manage de Figaro (1784), revived 
 the hearty laughter which had hardly been heard in any 
 of the higher forms of comedy since the days of Moliere 
 and Regnard. 
 
 49. The Drame or Tragedie Bourgeoise. Main- 
 taining as they did the complete and permanent separation 
 of the different genres of literature, the classicists had 
 drawn a sharp line of demarcation between tragedy and 
 comedy : tragedy according to their theory being essen- 
 tially aristocratic in the sense that it had to deal with the 
 " sudden turns in the fortunes of illustrious persons " 2 
 and with characters " raised above the common plane " ; 3 
 while comedy was confined to the humorous incidents of 
 middle-class or low life. Already, as we have just seen, 
 the comidie larmoyante had done something towards the 
 obliteration of this academic distinction. But now the 
 question definitely arose, why should this distinction be 
 maintained ? In other words, why should the doings 
 of the middle classes be always taken on the comic side as 
 matters for amusement only ? Why should not " the 
 misfortunes of private life " * also provide subjects of 
 
 1 The quotation just made comes from Sheridan's prologue to The 
 Rivals. 
 
 * D'Aubignac, Poitique du Thidtre. 
 
 Voltaire, Remarques sur le Second Discours de Corneille. 
 
 4 D'Alembert, Lettre a Rousseau, in reply to Rousseau's diatribe 
 against the theatre in his Lettre a d'Alembert sur les Spectacles.
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 167 
 
 tragic interest no less than those taken from ancient 
 history or mythology ? Such questions were now seri- 
 ously discussed by a number of critics, among them 
 Marmontel, who made out a strong case for a " popular 
 tragedy " which should have a recognised status on the 
 boards beside the old " heroic tragedy," and which, while 
 necessarily wanting the " pomp and majesty " of heroic 
 tragedy, would possess the advantage of being nearer to 
 nature and therefore, as the writer argued, more directly 
 influential on the moral side. 1 These new theories, which 
 seemed very radical at the time, were the inevitable result 
 of changing conditions of the gradual collapse of classi- 
 cism, the steady progress of the democratic movement in 
 society, the growing sense that the conventional form of 
 tragedy was obsolete or obsolescent, and that something 
 fresh and more vital was needed to take its place. But 
 they were greatly reinforced by English influences. The 
 London Merchant, or the History of George Barnwell (1731), 
 by George Lillo, and The Gamester (1753), by Edward 
 Moore, both of which were translated, imitated, adapted, 
 eulogised by critics, and received with immense enthusiasm 
 by the public, provided a working-model for those who 
 were convinced that the time was ripe for a new type of 
 play a tragedie bourgeoise (or drame, as it was alternatively 
 called), in which all the emotional interest of tragedy 
 should be sought in subjects taken from ordinary domestic 
 life, and which by realism of treatment should bring 
 tragedy back to that simple truth of nature from which it 
 had long been divorced. 
 
 The most important of these innovators in weight of 
 influence was Diderot, who put his theories into practice 2 
 
 1 PoUique Frattfaise, i. 143-50. 
 
 * For Diderot's dramatic theories, see his essay, De la Po6sie 
 Dramatique : a mon Ami M. Grimm, and his Entretiens sur le Fils 
 Naturel.
 
 168 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 in a couple of prose tragedies, 1 domestic in matter and 
 highly didactic in aim Le Fils Naturel (1757) and Le Fbre 
 de Famille (1758). Unfortunately, however, though a 
 very original and stimulating critic, Diderot was a very 
 poor playwright ; his genius was entirely undramatic ; 
 and these two plays of his, with their mawkish sensibility, 
 their endless wastes of verbiage, their everlasting parade 
 of self-conscious virtue, and their stilted style, are hope- 
 lessly vapid and dull. A far better example of the genre 
 serieux was provided by Diderot's friend and disciple, 
 Michel Jean Sedaine (1719-97), in his Philosophe sans le 
 savoir (1765), a really excellent play, in which a subject, 
 slight in itself, is handled with a capital sense of the stage, 
 and in which there is plenty of clear-cut characterisation 
 and crisp and natural dialogue. After Sedaine, who may 
 justly be regarded as the real precursor of the nineteenth- 
 century drame, the new type was industriously cultivated 
 by many writers, of whom Louis Sebastien Merrier (1740- 
 1814), one of the adapters of Lillo's tragedy (Jenneval, ou 
 le Barnevelt Francais), was the most radical and the most 
 industrious {e.g., Le Deserteur, L'Indigent, La Brouette de 
 Vinaigre). Before he scored his great success with his 
 satiric comedies already mentioned, Beaumarchais had 
 also appeared as the author of two drames sirieux, written, 
 as he himself explains, on the lines laid down by Diderot 
 Eugenie (1767) and Les Deux Amis (1770) while later 
 he returned to the same type in Tarare (1787) and La 
 Mhe Coupable (1792). 
 
 50. The Novel. As in England, where Lillo's experi- 
 ment in domestic tragedy closely corresponded in time 
 
 1 One aspect of the new realism was the substitution (already made 
 by Lillo and Moore in England) of prose for verse. This specially 
 stirred the indignation of Voltaire, who described the introduction of 
 prose into tragedy as " the abomination of desolation in the temple 
 of the muses."
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 169 
 
 with Richardson's new lead in Pamela, so in France, the 
 combination of forces, which resulted in a transformation 
 of the drama, also brought about a parallel transformation 
 of prose fiction. On the social side the rise of the modern 
 novel, as a type of literature the interest of which is 
 centred in ordinary life and people, was directly connected 
 with the democratic movement. On the literary side it 
 was one aspect of the revolt against the tyranny of the 
 past. In dealing with the development of the novel in 
 eighteenth-century England I have elsewhere written : 
 " As practically a new form of literary art, the novel 
 was a sign that literature was beginning to outgrow the 
 cramping limitations of classicism, and to abandon the 
 doctrine that modern genius was bound to go in the leading 
 strings of tradition. In the epic and the drama it was 
 impossible as yet that men should reject altogether the 
 authority of antiquity. In the novel that authority 
 could be ignored. In general, the novel offered a fresh 
 field in which modern writers were able to work inde- 
 pendently." x I reproduce these remarks here because 
 they are equally applicable to the development of the 
 novel in eighteenth-century France. 
 
 First in order of time of the long line of illustrious 
 French novelists, Alain Rene Le Sage was born at Sarzeau 
 in Brittany in 1668. As a youth he studied law, and in due 
 course became a member of the Paris bar, but he soon 
 abandoned his profession for literature, and thenceforth till 
 his death in 1747 he was entirely dependent upon his pen. 
 Of his innumerable comedies two only Crispin Rival de 
 son Maitre and Turcaret survive ; of his many experi- 
 ments in fiction again only two Le Diable Boiteux (1707) 
 and Oil Bias de Santillane (1715-35). Both the scheme 
 and the title of the former of these Le Sage took directly 
 
 1 Outline History of English Literature, pp. 176-77.
 
 170 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 from El Diablo Cojuelo (1641), of the Spanish writer Luis 
 Velez de Guevara, and his originality was therefore con- 
 fined to details. The machinery is furnished by the demon 
 Asmodee who carries the student Cleophas with him over 
 the city of Madrid and, lifting the roofs from the houses, 
 enables his companion to see what is going on inside, and 
 what results is not so much a novel as " un petit tableau 
 des mceurs du siecle " (Preface to final edition), or collec- 
 tion of satiric portraits, sketches, and anecdotes, some- 
 what in the manner of La Bruyere, though set in a fan- 
 tastic framework. In Gil Bias we have another " tableau 
 de mceurs," but on a much larger scale and without the 
 disturbing element of supernaturalism. The hero of this 
 first real masterpiece of French fiction is a young student 
 of Oviedo who, at the opening, sets out to pursue his 
 studies at the University of Salamanca. He is captured 
 by robbers, from whom he presently escapes ; enters the 
 service of a canon ; becomes assistant to a successful 
 physician ; forms a connection with the stage ; after 
 many ups and downs wins the confidence of the prime 
 minister and is appointed his secretary ; gains wealth and 
 power till, by a sudden turn in fortune's wheel, he is over- 
 thrown and disgraced ; recovers his position and returns 
 to court as secretary to another influential nobleman ; 
 and ultimately, marrying for the second time, retires to 
 his castle, where he settles down to peace and happiness 
 after the many vicissitudes of his life. As this bare out- 
 line of the general movement of its narrative will show, 
 the book belongs to the rambling inorganic type of 
 picaresque fiction ; it has no plot, no unity, no logic of 
 events ; its adventures follow one another haphazard ; 
 while, in accordance with the old romantic formula, the 
 main interest is continually interrupted by digressions 
 and intercalated stories in which an unwary reader is
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 171 
 
 likely at times to lose his way. But if it is, technically 
 considered, little more than a huge bundle of episodes, 
 it is also a kind of " com^die humaine." The thread of 
 intrigue is nought, but the passage of the hero through all 
 classes of society, from the lowest to the highest, enables 
 the author to present a vast panorama of contemporary 
 life. Le Sage was a keen observer of all sorts and con- 
 ditions of men, and his character-studies (some of which, 
 like the famous Dr. Sangrado, have become proverbial), 
 while without any particular psychological depth, are 
 marked by a broad truth to nature. As a satirist and 
 he was this from first to last he dwelt almost exclusively 
 upon the immorality of the world to which he held up his 
 mirror. Yet his pages are on the whole wonderfully clean, 
 and his temper so genial that his disciple Smollett even 
 complained of his " lightness of touch " in his treatment 
 of evil and folly. As Sir Walter Scott rightly said of him, 
 " If in his works he has assailed vice rather with ridicule 
 than with reproach, and has at the same time conducted 
 his story through scenes of pleasure and of licence, his 
 Muse has moved with an unpolluted step even when the 
 path was somewhat miry." 
 
 The place which Le Sage occupies in the history 
 of French fiction is somewhat analogous to that of Defoe 
 in the history of English fiction : he forms as it were a 
 connecting link between the picaresque romance and the 
 true novel of manners. Another move was made by 
 Marivaux, who at this point may in turn be compared 
 with Richardson. 1 Marivaux began by parodying Homer 
 
 1 An English translation of Marianne appeared in 1736, and it has 
 been suggested that Richardson was to some extent indebted to this 
 in writing Pamela. There appears, however, to be no ground for the 
 supposition. On the other hand the influence of English literature on 
 Marivaux is shown by Le Spectaieur Franpais ( 1 722-23) , a kind of sketch- 
 book containing the germs of many subjects afterwards worked up by 
 him in his novels.
 
 172 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 (L'lliade Travestie, 1717) and the old romances (e.g., 
 Pharamond, ou Les Folies Romanesques, 1712), and 
 though these experiments in burlesque have long since 
 been forgotten they are interesting as indicative of the 
 bias of his mind. His two novels, both of which he left 
 incomplete, are La Vie de Marianne (1731-41) and Le 
 Paysan Parvenu (1735-36) : the former being the auto- 
 biographical memoirs of a certain Comtesse de . . . from 
 her childhood up ; the latter the history of a young 
 peasant, Jacob, who at eighteen quits his native village 
 to seek his fortune in Paris. Like Gil Bias, these are 
 entirely inorganic ; as in Gil Bias, the adventures, in the 
 one case of the heroine, in the other of the hero, provide the 
 necessary canvas for a series of pictures of life in all sorts 
 of different phases. But Marivaux is more directly 
 realistic than Le Sage. In the first place, instead of 
 disguising his French men and women in Spanish costumes 
 and putting them in a Spanish setting, he portrays them 
 as French men and women moving through French scenes. 
 Secondly, he pays greater attention than Le Sage to the 
 minute details of everyday existence among the " petites 
 gens," who fill a large place in his work ; his description 
 (in Marianne) of Mme. Dutour's linen-draper's shop is, 
 to cite only one example, still famous as a piece of genre 
 painting, while the episode of Madame' s long altercation 
 with the cabman who wants to overcharge her is often 
 reproduced as an admirable specimen of purely realistic 
 art. At one other point Marivaux's originality must be 
 recognised : in his novels as in his plays he gave great 
 prominence to psychological analysis and substituted 
 emotional interest for the interest of satiric humour. 
 With Le Sage we mark the rise of the novel of manners ; 
 with Marivaux that of the novel of sentiment. The 
 novel of passion begins with PreVost. Born in 1697,
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 173 
 
 Antoine Francois Prevost d'Exiles commenced life as a 
 soldier, but after many adventures left the army, entered 
 the Benedictine order, and became a priest. For six years 
 he occupied himself with his religious duties and the study 
 of Christian antiquities, but his restless temper got the 
 better of him, and in 1727 he fled from his convent and 
 from France, finding a home first in Holland and then in 
 England. In 1734, under royal permission, he returned 
 to France as a secular priest and almoner to the Prince de 
 Conti. He died suddenly in 1763. Prevost's writings, 
 which fill more than a hundred volumes, include three 
 gigantic works of fiction Memoir es et Aventures d'un 
 Homme de Qualite (8 vols., 1728-32), Le Philosophe 
 Anglais, ou Histoire de M. Cleveland (8 vols., 1731-39), 
 and Le Doyen de Killerine (6 vols., 1735-40). It should 
 be noted in passing that the dates of these works have a 
 certain importance because they show that though Prevost 
 was afterwards well known as the translator of Richard- 
 son, his own novels preceded those of the English writer 
 and were therefore not (as is sometimes loosely asserted) 
 indebted to them. 1 Of his vast output, however, only a 
 very small fragment survives, though this fragment holds 
 a very high place in French fiction the Histoire du 
 Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaul, which originally 
 formed the seventh volume of the Memoires d'un Homme 
 de Qualite. This deeply pathetic and arresting story can 
 scarcely be said to possess the moral virtue which the 
 author himself claimed for it, but as a study of over- 
 mastering passion it deserves the highest praise. 
 
 1 At the same time he was much influenced by his residence in 
 England and by English literature. Like Marivaux's Spectateur Fran- 
 fais, his periodical, Le Pour et le Contre, is modelled on the Spectator of 
 Addison and Steele. In view of the connection, which we have empha- 
 sised, between the Domestic Drama and the novel, the praise which he 
 gives in it to Lillo's George Barnwell is significant.
 
 174 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 The new fields which had thus been opened up by 
 Marivaux and PreVost naturally proved attractive to 
 many other writers, but the most powerful influence after 
 their time was that exerted by the latter's translations 
 of Richardson's three works. Such influence we have 
 already observed in the one great novel of the second half 
 of the century, La Nouvelle Hdloise, and this in turn 
 enormously increased the popularity of fiction among all 
 classes of readers. Only twenty-eight years, it will be 
 remembered, elapsed between the publication of La 
 Nouvelle Hiloise and the outbreak of the Revolution, 
 but it is estimated that the novels produced during this 
 short period equalled in number, if they did not exceed, 
 those which had appeared in the preceding sixty years of 
 the century. 1 They fall, roughly, into three main groups 
 novels of passion, idyllic or pastoral novels, and peda- 
 gogic novels all of which derived more or less directly 
 from Rousseau, but the novel of manners, generally of a 
 licentious character, was also cultivated by a few writers 
 here and there. In all this mass of work, however, there 
 is nothing that need now detain us except the contribu- 
 tion made to it by one of Rousseau's closest disciples, 
 Bernardin de Saint - Pierre (1737-1814). It was after 
 leading an irregular and wandering life for many years 
 in many countries that, on returning from the lie de France 
 (now Mauritius), this self-engrossed egotist made the 
 personal acquaintance of Rousseau, whose full influence 
 his own peculiar character and experiences had prepared 
 him to receive. Under that influence he wrote his Etudes 
 de la Nature (1784), which sets forth a system of natural 
 theology of a very vague and unsubstantial kind, but is 
 now interesting to us only for its descriptions, and the 
 famous story, Paul et Virginie (1787), a simple and tender 
 
 1 Le Breton, Le Roman au XVIII* Steele, p. 307.
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 175 
 
 idyll, the scene of which is laid in the lie de France, and 
 which was designed to illustrate the author's favourite 
 thesis that " notre bonheur consiste a vivre suivant la 
 nature et la vertu." Tastes change, and most mature 
 readers of to-day will probably agree that the extreme 
 sentimentalism of this little book seems to them more 
 than a trifle sickly ; but its immense popularity at the 
 time of its appearance is not in the least surprising, for 
 its richly picturesque quality was a fresh thing to its own 
 generation, to whose eyes it also opened up the romance of 
 worlds beyond the sea. Another of Saint-Pierre's writ- 
 ings, La Chaumidre Indienne (1790), a mixture of idyll and 
 satire, with a touch of quiet humour not suggested by 
 Paul et Virginie, is still sometimes read by admirers of 
 this, but his Harmonies de la Nature (1796), a sequel to 
 the Jitudes, and other works are practically forgotten.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 the earlier nineteenth century 
 general prose 
 
 51. The Earlier Nineteenth Century Romanti- 
 cism. It will be convenient for us here to follow the 
 practice of many French historians and to deal with the 
 literature of the nineteenth century in two chronological 
 divisions the period before 1850, or the Age of Romanti- 
 cism, and the period after 1850, or the Age of Realism. 
 Owing to the immense wealth and variety of the literature 
 of these two periods we shall be compelled to make 
 our remaining chapters somewhat more comprehensive 
 in character than those which have preceded. While, 
 therefore, our plan will still be to fix attention in the 
 main upon the men of outstanding importance, we shall 
 have to find space for a good many other writers who, 
 whatever their actual status, are of such interest to the 
 modern reader that they merit a certain amount of con- 
 sideration. 
 
 The Revolution, which marks so decisively the begin- 
 ning of a new era in political history, did not at once 
 inaugurate a new era in the history of literature. The 
 disturbances by which it was accompanied and followed 
 were indeed unfavourable to literary art of any kind, and 
 
 176
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 177 
 
 except in political oratory (which scarcely comes under 
 the head of literature proper) the quarter-century from 
 the fall of the Bastille to the close of the Empire produced 
 comparatively little that will need to concern us in these 
 pages. What is perhaps more remarkable is the fact 
 that while everything else belonging to the old order was 
 ruthlessly thrown into the melting-pot, the writers of the 
 time for the most part continued to adhere with servile 
 fidelity to the principles and practice of the classic school. 
 Thus, though a few attempts were made here and there 
 to revitalise the serious drama, 1 tragedy kept in general 
 to the traditional lines, as in the plays of Andr6 Chenier's 
 younger brother, Marie Joseph (Charles IX, 1789 ; 
 Henri VIII, 1791 ; Jean Calas, 1791 ; Caius Gracchus, 
 1792, etc.) ; narrative poetry maintained the forms and 
 conventions of the epic (e.g., Achille a Scyros, by Luce de 
 Lancival ; L'AHantide, by Baour-Lormian) ; while lyrical 
 verse, as represented by Ponce Denis ficouchard Lebrun 
 (1729-1807), Evariste de Parny (1754-1801), Louis de 
 Fontanes (1757-1821), Charles Louis Julian Lioult de 
 Chenedolle (1769-1833), and Charles Hubert Millevoye 
 ( 1 782-1 8 1 6), was still strongly marked by eighteenth- 
 century characteristics. It is true indeed that a careful 
 study of some of these poets, and notably of Chenedolle 
 (Etudes Poetiques, 1820) and Millevoye (e.g., La Chute des 
 Feuilles, Le PoUe M our ant), brings to light various pre- 
 monitions of the coming romantic revival, but in the 
 mass we can regard them only as indicating the final 
 exhaustion of classicism. 2 
 
 1 As, e.g., in Pinto (1801), by Nepomucene Lemercier (1771-1811), 
 and in the melodramas {e.g., Victor, ou V Enfant de la ForSt, 1 798 ; Caslina, 
 ou I'Enfant du Mystere, 1801) of the " Corneille des Boulevards," Guil- 
 bert de Pixerecourt (1773- 1844), a sensational writer of immense 
 fertility of invention but absolutely no literary quality. 
 
 * Reference must, however, be made in passing to the famous 
 outburst of patriotic enthusiasm, La Marseillaise (1792), improvised in 
 
 N
 
 178 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 But though not operative at the time, the stir of new 
 forces through the whole of society was bound before 
 long to be felt in literature, and the destruction of the old 
 social system was presently followed by that of the art 
 which had been fostered by it. What is known as the 
 Romantic Movement, though like all such movements 
 extremely complex in origin and character, may there- 
 fore be broadly interpreted as an offshoot from the 
 revolutionary movement in politics or, more correctly 
 speaking, as another phase of that same great general 
 intellectual upheaval of which the Revolution itself had 
 been the principal manifestation in the sphere of practical 
 activity. This point was seized by Victor Hugo and put 
 by him with his customary emphasis in the preface to 
 his Hernani : " Le romantisme, tant de fois mal dfini, 
 n'est . . . que le lib6ralisme en litterature." Hugo often 
 indulged in rhetorical fireworks, and many of his critical 
 pronouncements are too childish for serious consideration, 
 but in this case he certainly hit the mark. In romanti- 
 cism, standing as it did primarily and fundamentally for 
 the rejection of external authority, ready-made rules and 
 standards, tradition and convention, and for absolute 
 freedom and the right of every one to his own individuality, 
 we have simply the revolutionary spirit of emancipation 
 expressing itself in the new field of literary art. 
 
 At bottom, therefore, romanticism was essentially in- 
 dividualistic. In contrast with classicism, the ideal of 
 which, as we have seen, had been uniformity, and which 
 had striven to eliminate the merely accidental and excep- 
 tional, it threw its stress entirely upon personality, dis- 
 
 a moment of intense poetic fervour by a young officer of the engineers, 
 Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1760-1836). One of the world's great 
 martial songs, this stands by itself, outside the limits of any formal 
 classification.
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 179 
 
 carded uniformity, cultivated the accidental and excep- 
 tional, and proclaimed the liberty and spontaneity of 
 genius. Hence its impatience of the formal restraints of 
 art, its constant striving after originality, its frequent 
 extravagances ; hence its subjectivity, its devotion to 
 the " culte du moi," and that intimately confidential 
 quality which is one of the salient features of romantic 
 literature as a whole. On this side romanticism meant 
 the substitution of sincerity and of the genuine expres- 
 sion of real and fresh emotion for the stereotyped plati- 
 tudes and conventional rhetoric of the decadent classic 
 school. Its repudiation of the principles of that school 
 in other words, its assertion of the right of genius to be a 
 law unto itself was in part the result of this individual- 
 ism, but in part also of the growing conviction that any 
 art which depends upon the mechanical imitation of 
 models must necessarily lapse into sterility, and that a 
 new age demands a new literature to express its spirit 
 and satisfy its needs. The significance of romanticism 
 from this point of view was neatly denned by Stendhal 
 in his Racine et Shakespeare : " Le romantisme est l'art 
 de presenter aux peuples les ceuvres litteraires qui, dans 
 l'etat actuel de leurs habitudes et de leurs croyances, sont 
 susceptibles de leur donner le plus de plaisir possible. Le 
 classicisme, au contraire, leur pr6sente la literature qui 
 donnait le plus grand plaisir possible a leurs arriere-grands- 
 peres." This view we shall meet again presently in the 
 writings of Mme. de Stael. But while in this sense 
 romanticism implied the renovation of literature by con- 
 tact with the living forces of the contemporary world, it 
 none the less nourished itself upon the past, for its abandon- 
 ment of classical antiquity was accompanied by a return 
 to the Middle Ages as a fresh source of inspiration and 
 material. The mediae valism which was (in France as
 
 180 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 well as in Germany and England) so conspicuous a char- 
 acteristic of the whole romantic movement that writers 
 like Heine and Mme. de Stael regarded it as its very 
 essence, was the product of many co-operating causes, 
 particularly of the Catholic revival, which profoundly 
 affected the imaginations of many writers who were not 
 touched by it on the religious side, and of that growing 
 sense of nationality which turned the minds of men back 
 with quickened interest and curiosity to the history and 
 traditions of their own country. But whatever the origin 
 of this renaissance of Gothicism, it is evident that the 
 romantics were naturally carried away by it, because in 
 the literature, art, and legends of the mystical and chival- 
 rous Middle Ages they found precisely the picturesque 
 qualities, the imaginative freedom, the emotional fervour, 
 the combined beauty and strangeness * for which they 
 yearned. In the same way, and by immediate reference 
 to the peculiar temper of romanticism, we can account 
 for that passionate feeling for nature (especially for wild 
 nature), that love of exotic landscape, and that thirst for 
 local colour which we also recognise among its important 
 components. The prevailing melancholy, which was 
 another of its distinctive notes, was again directly associ- 
 ated with its highly wrought sensibility and intense 
 emotionalism, but in this case emphasis must be laid upon 
 the powerful influence of social and political conditions. 
 The failure of the glorious humanitarian promises of '89 
 the moral exhaustion which followed the abnormal 
 excitement of many eventful years and the long strain 
 of the Napoleonic wars the sweeping conservative 
 
 1 Cp. Walter Pater's doctrine that while " order in beauty " is the 
 " essential classical element," it is " the addition of strangeness to 
 beauty that constitutes the romantic character in art " (Appreciations : 
 Postscript).
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 181 
 
 counter-revolution which was ushered in by the Congress 
 of Vienna and Waterloo and for a time crushed the hopes 
 of democracy : all these things combined to breed in the 
 new generation that spirit of disenchantment, dejection, 
 and aimless unrest which in our own literature we 
 epitomise under the name of Byronism. 
 
 Freedom, subjectivity, mediaevalism, picturesqueness, 
 and melancholy, varying of course in their degrees, pro- 
 portions, and forms of expression in different writers in 
 accordance with each one's personal idiosyncrasies, may 
 therefore be regarded as the principal elements of romanti- 
 cism. It remains to note that while the new movement 
 was to a large extent indigenous, it was at all points 
 greatly stimulated by the influence of the foreign litera- 
 tures which now took the place of the literatures of Greece 
 and Rome. The men of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries had found their permanent standards of taste 
 in the masterpieces of classical antiquity. The men of the 
 earlier nineteenth century turned from these to the more 
 congenial literatures of the north, and sought fresh inspira- 
 tion in Burger's ballads, Goethe's Leiden des jungen 
 Werthers, Schiller's Die Rduber, Hoffmann's fantastic 
 tales, the plays of Shakespeare, Young's Night Thoughts, 
 the poems of Ossian, and a little later the work of Byron 
 and Scott. 
 
 This brief preliminary inquiry into the meaning of 
 romanticism has been undertaken only to prepare the 
 way for the more detailed study of the representative 
 writers of the period now under review. Two of these 
 have first to engage our attention who belong to the time 
 immediately preceding the rise of the romantic movement, 
 and are specially important as its recognised precursors 
 Mme. de Stael and Chateaubriand. 
 
 52. Mme. de Stael. Anne Louise Germaine Necker
 
 182 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 was born in Paris in 1766, and was the daughter of the 
 famous Swiss banker and financier and of Suzanne 
 Curchod, who in earlier life had been wooed by',' young 
 Edward Gibbon. A precocious girl, early accustomed to 
 the stimulating atmosphere of the society which gathered 
 at her father's home, but at the same time an enthusiastic 
 student of Richardson and Rousseau, she grew up in- 
 tellectually eager and restless, yet dreamy, sentimental, 
 and imaginative. At twenty she married the Baron de 
 Stael-Holstein, Swedish ambassador in Paris, but the 
 union proved an unhappy one, and a separation took 
 place in 1798. Meanwhile, ten years before this, she had 
 published Six Lettres sur le Caractlre et les Merits de J. J. 
 Rousseau, which show how powerful was the influence 
 that the author of La Nouvelle Heloise continued to 
 exercise over her mind. After the outbreak of the Revolu- 
 tion she remained in France until the ascendancy of the 
 party of violence forced her to fly (Sept. 1792) to her 
 father's estate at Coppet on the Lake of Geneva, whence 
 she issued an eloquent pamphlet in defence of Marie 
 Antoinette. She was in Paris in 1795 and again in 1797, 
 having between these two dates published an essay, De 
 I' Influence des Passions sur le Bonheur des Individus et des 
 Nations (1796) ; but her opinions brought her into colli- 
 sion with Napoleon, by whom she was exiled. She 
 travelled in Germany in 1803 and 1807, and in Italy in 
 1805-6, and after her second marriage in 181 1 to a young 
 Swiss officer, Albert de Rocca, visited Austria, Russia, 
 and England, and made a third tour in Italy. It was not 
 until after the fall of Napoleon that she was allowed to 
 return to Paris, where her salon at once became one of the 
 centres of intellectual activity. She died in 181 7, leaving 
 behind her the manuscripts of two works, Considerations 
 sur les Principaux Evinements de la Rivolution Francaise
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 183 
 
 and Dix Annies d'Exil, which were published after her 
 death. 
 
 Mme. de Stael was a woman of strongly emotional 
 nature, and the fever of her life passed directly into her 
 two novels, the immature Delphine (1802) and the far 
 more important Corinne (1807). Both these prolix and 
 highly sentimental romances of passion (which belong in 
 type to the numerous progeny of La Nouvelle Helo'ise) are 
 studies of the " femme superieure " in conflict with her 
 own temperament and with the social prejudices by 
 which her free development is hampered, but they are 
 studies made from different sides, for while the one 
 portrays the tragic fate of a woman who is bold enough 
 to defy public opinion instead of tamely submitting to 
 it, the heroine of the other an Italian poetess of the 
 richest artistic endowments, in whom we can easily recog- 
 nise an idealised portrait of the writer herself discovers 
 that her genius, though a passport to fame, is a fatal 
 obstacle to happiness. Extremely popular at the time of 
 their appearance, these works have inevitably suffered 
 from radical changes of taste, and to-day we find their 
 method antiquated, their sentiment overstrained, and their 
 style too declamatory. The earlier of the two is now 
 indeed scarcely more than a name, while the later is 
 remembered chiefly for its descriptions of Italy and its 
 many eloquent pages on the masterpieces of sculpture 
 and painting. 
 
 More interest attaches to Mme. de StaeTs excursions 
 into criticism because, whatever judgment may be formed 
 regarding their permanent value, they secure for her the 
 honour which properly belongs to the pioneer. The 
 significance of the first of her two treatises (1800) may be 
 gathered from its title De la Litterature consideree dans 
 ses Rapports avec les Institutions Sociales. This at once
 
 184 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 suggests the application to the study of literature of a 
 method entirely new to that subject, though it was 
 substantially the same as that which Montesquieu had 
 long before employed in the study of jurisprudence the 
 method, namely, of comparative criticism. " Je me suis 
 propose^" the author herself explains, " d'examiner quelle 
 est l'influence de la religion, des mceurs et des lois sur la 
 litterature, et quelle est l'influence de la litterature sur la 
 religion, les mceurs et les lois " ; and, she adds, " il me 
 semble que Ton n'a pas suffisament analyst les causes 
 morales et politiques qui modifient l'esprit de la littera- 
 ture." Her essay of 600 pages is seriously damaged as 
 a whole by the fallacy of its underlying thesis that of 
 the necessary and continuous progress of the human 
 race : a thesis which Mme. de Stael took over from the 
 doctrinaires of the encyclopaedic school, 1 and which 
 forces her to maintain, on purely d priori grounds, the 
 superiority of the literature of each successive generation 
 to that of the generation which had preceded it. Her 
 knowledge was also inadequate to her task, and for this 
 reason she often indulges in superficial views and hasty 
 generalisations. But the substantial importance of her 
 innovation is still incontestable. By connecting literature 
 directly with social life and with the changing spirit of 
 the different races and ages, she for the first time sub- 
 stituted the method of historical interpretation (or, as 
 we should now say, the evolutionary method) for that of 
 the old hard dogmatic criticism, which had judged all 
 literature without reference to its social origins and by 
 fixed and absolute standards. 
 
 1 This thesis, it will be remembered, had already appeared among 
 the arguments of the modernists in the Querelle des Anciens et des 
 Modernes. It was widely current in the later eighteenth century, and 
 will be found developed to its most Utopian conclusions in Condorcet's 
 Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Pr ogres de I' Esprit Humaine (1794).
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 185 
 
 In this work Mme. de Stael showed a marked leaning 
 towards the literatures of England and Germany, 1 and this 
 prepares us for her second treatise, De I'Allemagne (1810), 
 which, while in part, it is true, dictated by political con- 
 siderations and the writer's hatred of Napoleon, was still 
 the product of intellectual and artistic sympathy fostered 
 by her visits to Germany and personal association with 
 some of Germany's leading men. The significance of the 
 book lies primarily in the fact that it did for French readers 
 what a little later Carlyle's essays did for English readers 
 it opened up to them the new world of German poetry, 
 German romance, and German idealistic philosophy, and 
 thus started a current of influence which was presently 
 to help in the destruction of classicism. The bearings 
 of this influence were, moreover, clearly appreciated by 
 Mme. de Stael herself. Distinguishing between two great 
 schools of poetry the southern and pagan (otherwise 
 the classic) and the northern and Christian (which she 
 calls the romantic 2 ) she argues that a slavish adherence 
 to the principles of the former can result only in poetic 
 impotence among modern peoples, that a country's litera- 
 ture can be a living literature only when it is really 
 national, and that it can be national only when it is 
 directly fed by that country's own history and religion. 
 Hence her depreciation of classic and her advocacy of 
 romantic art. " La litterature des anciens est chez les 
 
 1 One of the most noteworthy chapters in the book is that on 
 Shakespeare (Part I. chap. xiii.). 
 
 2 This early use of the word romantic, which she seems to have 
 adopted from Schlegel, and the sense in which she employs it, should 
 be carefully noted. " Le nom de romantique a ete introduit nouvelle- 
 ment en Allemagne pour designer la poesie . . . qui est nee de la 
 chevalerie et du Christianisme. . . . On prend quelquefois le mot 
 classique comme synonyme de perfection. Je m'en sers ici dans une 
 autre acceptation, en considerant la poesie classique comme celle des 
 anciens et la poesie romantique comme celle qui tient de quelque maniere 
 aux traditions chevaleresque " (i. 30).
 
 186 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 modernes une literature transplants. Ces poesies d'apres 
 l'antique, quelque parfaites qu'elles soient, sont rarement 
 populaires, parce qu'elles ne tiennent, dans le temps 
 actuel, a rien de national. La literature romantique est 
 la seule qui soit susceptible encore d'etre perfectionnee, 
 parce qu'ayant ses racines dans notre propre sol, elle 
 est la seule qui puisse croitre et se vivifier de nouveau ; 
 elle exprime notre religion; elle rapelle notre histoire" 
 (ii. n). 
 
 The importance of Mme. de Stael's work as a prepara- 
 tion for romanticism is now apparent. We have next to 
 learn how her teachings were reinforced and supplemented 
 by that of her contemporary Chateaubriand. 
 
 53. Chateaubriand. Francois Rene\ Vicomte de 
 Chateaubriand, was born at Saint-Malo in 1768, and was 
 therefore two years Mme. de Stael's junior. He sprang 
 from an old Breton family which had gradually fallen into 
 decay, and the influence of his Celtic blood can easily be 
 traced in the distinguishing qualities of his character 
 his strong religious feeling, his visionary tendency, his 
 sensibility, his melancholy. These qualities were further 
 intensified by his solitary wanderings as a boy over the 
 sand-dunes about Saint-Malo, by his lonely life in the 
 Chateau de Combourg in the midst of the sombre Breton 
 landscape, and later, as he has himself told us, by his 
 study of Rousseau's RSveries, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's 
 Etudes de la Nature, Goethe's Werther, and the poems of 
 Ossian. Reaching young manhood, he served for a short 
 time in the army, and on a visit to Paris saw something 
 of literary society. But from childhood up he had been 
 
 1 Cp. Ruskin's contention that the classical architecture reintroduced 
 at the Renaissance is with us a form of architecture transplanted from 
 alien conditions, and that Gothic architecture is the only natural and 
 proper expression of the ideals and sentiments of northern and Christian 
 peoples.
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 187 
 
 haunted by dreams of travel, and as his conservative bias 
 made it impossible for him to sympathise with the Revolu- 
 tion, he resolved to set out on quest of adventure beyond 
 the seas. Accordingly, in the spring of 1791, he sailed for 
 North America, where he spent nearly eight months 
 exploring some of the wilder parts of the continent and 
 learning a good deal of native Indian life (see Voyage 
 en Amerique, published in 1826, a picturesque record, 
 though of doubtful accuracy). On his return he married ; 
 joined the army of the emigrants ; was wounded at the 
 siege of Thionville ; and with great difficulty contrived 
 to escape to Brussels, whence he made his way first to 
 Jersey and then to England. He remained in London 
 seven years (1793-1800), living as best he could by teach- 
 ing and translating, and meanwhile reading widely in 
 English literature, to which he afterwards acknowledged 
 his indebtedness. With the permission of the govern- 
 ment he then settled again in France and soon established 
 his reputation with Atala (1801) and Le Genie du Christian- 
 isme (1802). The latter work attracted the attention of 
 Bonaparte, who was just then engaged on his policy of 
 reconciliation with the Papacy, and Chateaubriand was 
 appointed secretary to the embassy in Rome (1803) and 
 minister plenipotentiary in the Valais (1804). But the 
 murder of the Due d'Enghien alienated him from the 
 First Consul, and resigning his official position he started 
 on an extended tour in Greece, Turkey, Palestine, Tunis, 
 and Spain (1806-7) (see Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem, 
 1811). After the Bourbon restoration he became an 
 influential supporter of the legitimist cause, was rewarded 
 for his loyalty with many high honours, and for two years 
 (1822-24) was again in London, not now as a struggling 
 refugee, but as ambassador of France at the Court of 
 St. James. His political career closed with the fall of
 
 188 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Charles X. and the accession of Louis Philippe (1830), 
 on which he retired from public life and busied him- 
 self with his immense autobiography, Memoires d'outre 
 Tombe. He died in the year of revolution, 1848, only 
 a few months after the proclamation of the Second 
 Republic. 
 
 In turning to those portions of Chateaubriand's work 
 of which it is necessary here to take account, we may con- 
 veniently begin with Le G&nie du Christianisme. This 
 voluminous treatise was written, as the author expressly 
 declared, to destroy the influence of Voltaire and the 
 EncyclopMie and to rehabilitate Christianity, and such 
 purpose, he afterwards asserted, was in fact accomplished 
 by it. The effect of the book was certainly remarkable, 
 for it fell into line with the strong neo-Catholic movement 
 of the time and did much to stimulate it. As an 
 apologetic, however, its value is very slight, for Chateau- 
 briand was neither a sound thinker nor a trained contro- 
 versialist, and his defence of the dogmatic principles of 
 the Catholic faith may therefore be ignored. The really 
 interesting parts of the work are those in which he 
 approaches his subject not from the theological but from 
 the aesthetic side, aims to show that Christianity is the 
 most beautiful of all religions, dwells eloquently on the 
 peculiar charm of Christian architecture, symbolism, and 
 ceremonial, and elaborates the thought that the poet or 
 artist in search of fresh inspiration would do well to seek 
 it not in the long-exhausted fables of heathen mythology 
 but in the Bible, in ecclesiastical history, in the lives of 
 the saints and martyrs of the Church. At this point we 
 also note the importance of his detailed examination 
 of some of the representative Christian epics Dante's 
 Divina Commedia, Tasso's Gerusakmme Liberata, Milton's 
 Paradise Lost, Voltaire's La Henriade which he cites in
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 189 
 
 support of his general contention that as a source of poetic 
 material Christianity is infinitely superior to paganism. 1 
 But he was not satisfied with the merely theoretical ex- 
 pression of his views ; he undertook to demonstrate them 
 by a practical illustration ; and this he did in Les Martyrs 
 (1809), a prose epic in twenty-four books dealing with the 
 persecutions of the early Church under Diocletian. This 
 ambitious attempt to prove his thesis must, however, be 
 pronounced a failure ; a few of its scenes and episodes are 
 still remembered and praised for their genuine passion 
 and remarkable descriptive power ; 2 but as a whole it is 
 ruined by its borrowed epic machinery, while its super- 
 naturalism impresses us as singularly unconvincing and 
 out of place. 
 
 It was part of Chateaubriand's plan in preparing Le 
 Genie to develop the " harmonies de la religion Chretienne 
 avec les scenes de la nature et les passions du cceur 
 humain," and out of this sprang one of his most famous 
 works, a " petite histoire " which, intended originally as 
 a mere interlude in his treatise, was detached from it 
 before it was finished and published independently. As 
 in Le Genie he had proclaimed the romantic beauty of 
 Christianity, so now in A tola he set himself to write of the 
 romantic beauty of nature and " the man of nature " ; and 
 here, despite his protest that, unlike Rousseau, he had no 
 enthusiasm for the actual savage as such (probably 
 because he had seen real savages, which Rousseau had 
 not), the connection between his own work and that of 
 " the sophist of Geneva " is very clear. The scene of 
 Aiala is laid in the wilds of North America, and its action 
 
 1 It may be mentioned in passing that he afterwards translated 
 Paradise Lost into French prose, and published it (1836) with a pre- 
 liminary Essai sur la Literature Anglaise. 
 
 2 E.g. the episode of the druidess Vell6da (liv. ix. x.) and the scene 
 in the amphitheatre (liv. xxiv.).
 
 190 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 is very simple. The heroine, who gives her name to the 
 book, is the daughter of the chief of an Indian tribe ; 
 Chactas, the chief of another tribe, is taken prisoner by 
 her father's people and condemned to death at the stake ; 
 she falls in love with him, saves him, and flies with him 
 into the wilderness. But she had been brought up in 
 the Christian faith and consecrated by her dying mother 
 to God and perpetual maidenhood. To this vow she 
 remains faithful through all the tremendous stress of 
 passion and temptation, and finally she commits suicide 
 in a mood of despair. Such is the bare outline of a story 
 which took the critics by surprise and the public by storm, 
 but no mere outline suffices to suggest the peculiar quali- 
 ties which ensured its instant popularity the power with 
 which it portrays the tragic love of two primitive natures, 
 its long highly-wrought descriptions of deserts, forests, 
 and prairies, the local colour and exotic atmosphere which 
 even after Paul et Virginie were practically new to French 
 readers. As Chateaubriand afterwards said, " falling into 
 the midst of the literature of the Empire of that classic 
 school whose very sight, like that of a rejuvenated old 
 woman, inspired boredom," Atala " was a production, as 
 it were, of an unknown kind." A few years later (1807) 
 he followed up this sensational success with another 
 episode detached from Le Genie Reni, ou les Effets de la 
 Passion. 1 This new romance the autobiographical char- 
 acter of which is suggested by the fact that its hero bears 
 the author's own name is substantially a psychological 
 study of his temperament and inner experiences during 
 the days of his youth in Brittany and of his wanderings 
 in America, when his mind was in a state of ferment, and 
 
 1 Rene" had also a place in an immense rambling kind of prose epic, 
 Les Natchez, which was written while Chateaubriand was in exile in 
 London, but not published in its entirety till 1826.
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 191 
 
 he had not yet found a corrective and a stay in religion. 
 But its interest is general as well as personal, because in 
 portraying himself Chateaubriand was also portraying his 
 generation a generation which had been bred in the 
 scepticism of the eighteenth century, had passed through 
 the storms of the great revolutionary upheaval, and now 
 stood on the threshold of the new age deeply touched by 
 that mal du sidcle to which reference has already been 
 made. Towards the end of his life Chateaubriand 
 expressed regret at the malign influence which Rene had 
 exerted over the minds of his younger contemporaries ; 
 had it been possible for him to destroy the book, he 
 declared, he would gladly have done so (Memoir es d' outre 
 Tombe, ii. 1). Perhaps he was inclined to take too much 
 credit, or discredit, to himself for the practical effect of 
 what he had done. The spirit of romantic melancholy 
 was, as we have seen, in the air at the time, 1 and Young 
 France was as ready to receive and welcome Rene as a 
 little earlier Young Germany had been to receive and 
 welcome Werther, and a little later Young England was 
 to receive and welcome Childe Harold. But if he did not 
 create the type of the jaded and disenchanted egotist he 
 certainly helped to popularise and to fix it. As Sainte- 
 Beuve put it : " Le petit livre de Rene garde tou jours 
 l'honneur d'avoir, le premier, etdu premier coup, trouve une 
 expression nette et precise a ce qui semblait ind^finissable ; 
 il a meme donne cette expression tellement noble, flatteuse 
 et seduisante, qu'il a pu sembler dangereux a son heure." 
 
 1 This romantic melancholy was, for example, independently 
 expressed in the Obermann (1804) of Etienne Pi vert de Senancour 
 (1770-1846), well known to English readers through Arnold's two 
 poems Stanzas in Memory of the Author of Obermann and Obermann 
 once more. In his note to these poems Arnold points out the influence 
 of Rousseau upon Senancour and " certain affinities " between him 
 and those " more famous and fortunate authors of his own day 
 Chateaubriand and Mme. de Stael."
 
 192 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 We are now in a position to realise the importance of 
 the place which Chateaubriand occupies, beside Mme. de 
 Stael, among the forerunners of romanticism. Gautier 
 summed up his influence by saying : " II a restaure" la 
 cath^drale gothique, rouvert la grande nature et invente" 
 la m61ancholie moderne," and though allowance has to 
 be made for some rhetorical over-emphasis in this state- 
 ment, it serves to indicate the threefold significance of his 
 work. In the first place, he stirred the imagination of his 
 readers to the romantic beauty of mediaeval Christianity 
 and Gothic art. Secondly, though he did not reopen 
 nature for Rousseau and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre had 
 already done this he greatly extended and deepened the 
 f eeling for nature by his brilliant and varied word-pictures 
 of Brittany, North America, and the Far East. Thirdly, 
 while it is obviously inaccurate to speak of him as the 
 " inventor " of modern melancholy, he interpreted the 
 new spirit of dissatisfaction, craving, and general unrest 
 with so much power, and embodied it so successfully in 
 a single permanent type at once, as it were, synthesis 
 and model that the literature of romantic melancholy 
 may almost be said to date from him. Chateaubriand 
 was not an amiable man ; the personal qualities which 
 are so aggressively prominent in all his work are by no 
 means engaging ; and much of his sentiment seems to 
 us now factitious and theatrical. For these reasons his 
 interest for us to-day is mainly historical. But his 
 imaginative power is undeniable, and as a writer of 
 richly coloured poetic prose he is still recognised as a 
 master. 
 
 54. The Critics Sainte-Beuve. Aided by the im- 
 mense development of the periodical press after the 
 Restoration, criticism from the early twenties of the 
 century onward became an important and increasingly
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 193 
 
 popular branch of literature, and what is particularly 
 noticeable is the fact that in its temper and methods it 
 at once began to reveal the quickening and broadening 
 influences of Mme. de Stael and Chateaubriand. This 
 influence is seen even in academic criticism, as in the 
 Tableau de la Litterature Francaise au Moyen Age and 
 Tableau de la Litterature Francaise au XVIIP Silcle of 
 Abel Francois Villemain (1790-1867) who was successively 
 professor at the Lycee Charlemagne, the cole Normale, 
 and the Sorbonne. Villemain followed the lead of Mme. 
 de Stael in treating literature throughout in direct con- 
 nection with the intellectual and moral movements of 
 society. He was also an exponent of the new cosmopoli- 
 tanism, laying stress on the complex character of French 
 literature {{Tableau de la Litterature Francaise au XVIIP 
 Steele, xiv.) and paying great attention to its many 
 borrowings from the literatures of other countries (ibid., 
 v., vi., vii., xxvi., xxvii., etc.). Though clear and interest- 
 ing his work is wanting in depth and precision, but it was 
 extremely useful at the time and still entitles its author 
 to rank among the pioneers. On the other hand, when 
 the romantic movement was in full swing, conservative 
 criticism still rose in protest against it. Saint-Marc 
 Girardin (1801-73), for example, though mainly occupied 
 with the purely moral aspects of literature, showed himself 
 a stout opponent of the romantics in his Cours de Littera- 
 ture Dramatique ; while an even stronger stand was made 
 against them by Jean Marie Napoleon Desire" Nisard 
 (1806-88) in his Manifeste contre la Litterature Facile 
 (1833) and his monumental Histoire de la Litterature 
 Francaise (1844-61). A man of ripe scholarship and 
 vigorous mind, Nisard was hostile not only to romanticism 
 in creative art but also to the eclectic, flexible, historical 
 type of criticism which had grown up with it and which 
 
 o
 
 194 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 he regarded as radically unsound. He is indeed a belated 
 survivor of the old dogmatic school, the last representative 
 of the spirit of Boileau and La Harpe, untouched and un- 
 modified by the ideas of his own time. His method had 
 therefore nothing in common with that of his contem- 
 poraries in general. Ignoring altogether the connection 
 between literature and history, repudiating all considera- 
 tions of the relations of a given piece of literature to its 
 society and age, taking no account even of biography or 
 the personality of the writers to be discussed, he studies 
 the work before him just as it stands as an example of 
 the genre to which it belongs, compares it with other 
 works of the same genre and with his own abstract con- 
 ception of what that genre should be, and pronounces 
 judgment upon it in accordance with a code of fixed and 
 absolute rules derived from the great classics of the 
 seventeenth century. 
 
 While Nisard was thus making a heroic attempt to 
 re-establish dogmatism and to free literature from " the 
 tyranny of the notion that there is no disputing about 
 tastes," the new tendencies against which he fought 
 found full expression in the writings of the greatest of all 
 French critics, Sainte-Beuve. Born in 1804 at Boulogne- 
 sur-Mer, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was on his 
 mother's side the grandson of an Englishwoman who 
 had married a Boulogne sailor, a fact which, in conformity 
 with his own method, we may hold to explain, in some 
 measure at least, his early and lasting interest in English 
 literature. His father, a commissioner of taxes, died 
 before his birth (see his poem Souvenir) and he was 
 brought up in straitened circumstances, but his mother 
 none the less contrived to give him a good education. 
 At her desire he took up the study of medicine, and 
 though he had no taste for this and abandoned it as soon
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 195 
 
 as possible, it undoubtedly helped to develop in him that 
 habit of scientific research which was afterwards a factor 
 in his criticism. Meanwhile one of his old teachers at 
 the College Charlemagne, M. Dubois, invited him to join 
 the staff of a newspaper, Le Globe, which he had just 
 founded (1824), and in miscellaneous work for this he 
 served his apprenticeship as a writer. In 1827 an article 
 on Hugo's Odes et Ballades brought him into personal 
 relations with the poet and his cenacle (see post, p. 203), 
 and as a recruit to romanticism he published the next 
 year a Tableau de la Poesie Francaise au XVP Steele, 
 which was designed at once to direct attention to the long 
 neglected poets of the time before Malherbe, and to legiti- 
 mise the romantic movement by affiliating it upon the 
 work of Ronsard and his school. This was followed in 
 1829 by a small volume entitled Vie, Poesies, et Pensees de 
 Joseph Delorme, a supposed young medical student " mort 
 d'une phthisie pulmonaire compliquee, a ce qu'on croit, 
 d'une affection de cceur," whom Sainte-Beuve had in- 
 vented as the expositor of his own morbid fancies, and 
 by two collections of verse issued under his own name, 
 Les Consolations (1830) and Les Pensees d'Aout (1837), 
 in which, under the influence of Cowper and Wordsworth, 
 he attempted, though not very successfully, to write a 
 land of poetry nearer to the humble realities of everyday 
 life and more familiar in tone and style than that of either 
 the classics or the romantics (see, in Pensees d'A out, A . M. 
 Villemain and Monsieur Jean, appropriately introduced 
 with a quotation from Crabbe). Between these two 
 dates he had also published his one novel, Volupte (1834), 
 a minute and painful analysis of passion and suffering. 
 As all these books suggest, Sainte-Beuve was passing at 
 this time through a period of great intellectual and moral 
 unrest ; but after being carried away for the moment by
 
 196 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the fervid neo-Catholicism of Lamennais, 1 he subsided 
 into a quiet scepticism, in which for the remainder of his 
 life he found complete satisfaction and peace of mind. 
 Thus far his chief ambition had been to succeed as a 
 poet. Henceforth criticism was to absorb all his energies. 
 In 1837-38 he gave a course of lectures on Jansenism and 
 the Jansenists, out of which presently grew the first of 
 his works in which his peculiar powers were fully mani- 
 fested, his Histoire de Port-Royal. This great undertak- 
 ing occupied him at intervals for nearly twenty years, 
 the first two volumes appearing in 1840, the fifth and 
 last in i860, and it is perhaps worth while to note that it 
 indicates very clearly the change which had gradually 
 come over his mind, for he began it in a spirit of strong 
 sympathy with Jansenist mysticism and ended it as a 
 detached spectator of a movement in which he had ceased 
 to have anything but a critical interest. Another course 
 of lectures ten years later, this time at the University of 
 Li6ge, resulted in a second work on a large scale, Chateau- 
 briand et son Groupe Littiraire (published i860). In the 
 meantime he had been contributing industriously to the 
 Revue de Paris and the Revue des Deux Mondes, and had 
 published three collections of essays Portraits Litteraires 
 (3 vols., 1840), Portraits de Femmes (1840}, and Portraits 
 Contemporains (1846). The principal work of his lite 
 after 1849 is represented by the " feuilletons litteraires " 
 which he wrote for Le Constitutionel, Le Moniteur, and 
 Le Temps, and which were reprinted in his two series 
 of essays, Causeries du Lundi (15 vols., 1851-62) and 
 
 1 Felicit6 Robert Lamennais (1782-1854), who like Chateaubriand 
 was a native of Saint-Malo, was an apostle of democratic and humani- 
 tarian Christianity (see, e.g., Paroles d'un Croyanl, 1834), and one of 
 the most noteworthy figures in the religious revival of the time. His 
 opinions were condemned by Rome, and the work of his last twenty 
 years was done outside the pale of the Church.
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 197 
 
 Nouveaux Lundis (13 vols., 1863-72). He died in 1869, 
 aricTT^y his own wish was buried without religious rites or 
 ceremonial of any kind. 
 
 Though he has sometimes been accused of allowing his 
 judgments regarding contemporaries to be disturbed by 
 personal feeling and even jealousy, and, as Flaubert once 
 told him, of depending too much on his " impression 
 nerveuse," Sainte-Beuve's greatness as a critic has never 
 been seriously questioned. He had indeed in a supreme 
 degree the qualities which are essential to the highest 
 work in criticism : infinite curiosity ; the spirit of eclecti- 
 cism ; hospitality to all ideas, even to those most foreign 
 to his own modes of thought ; the power at once of 
 identifying himself with his subject and of detaching him- 
 self from it ; a passion for truth (the English word 
 " Truth " was the motto engraved on his seal) ; wide, 
 varied, and sound scholarship ; a love of accuracy so great 
 that he was willing to spend hours of laborious research 
 in the verification of a single detail ; extraordinary in- 
 sight, discrimination and tact ; and so remarkable a skill 
 in portraiture that the best of his analytical studies have 
 all the interest and vitality of creative literature. These 
 qualities combine to give to his writings such permanent 
 value that, whatever else he reads or leaves unread, the 
 student of any period of French literature from the 
 sixteenth century to the nineteenth will turn to these as 
 a matter of course. His method may be briefly defined 
 as in essence biographical and psychological. His aim 
 was always to approach his subject in the spirit of scientific 
 impartiality, without bias or prepossession, to penetrate 
 to its centre, to see it on all its sides, to understand, explain, 
 interpret, and to judge it, as it were, from the inside. As 
 early as 1828, in an article on Corneille, he traced the 
 programme which, with certain modifications, he followed
 
 198 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 to the end : " E ntrer en son auteur. s'v installer, le p ro- 
 d uire sons ses aspects divers ; fa fair e vivre, se mouvoir et 
 parler comme il a du le faire ; l e suivre en son in terieur 
 et dans sesmoeurs domestiques aussi avant q u'on le peu t ; 
 le rattacher par tous les cotes acette terre, a cette existence 
 reele, a ces habitudes de chaque jour dont les grands 
 hommes ne dependent pas moins que nous autres, fond 
 veritable sur lequel ils ont pied, d'ou ils partent pour 
 s'elever quelque temps et ou ils retombent sans cesse " : 
 such in effect he conceived to be the critic's primary busi- 
 ness. But in carrying out his task he was careful at all 
 times to place his author back in the surroundings of his 
 own time, and to exhibit their influence upon him ; " l'etat 
 general de la litterature au moment ou un auteur y debute," 
 being, as he further explains in the same essay, as import- 
 ant to a full comprehension of him as " l'6ducation particu- 
 li&re qu'a recue cet auteur et le genie propre que lui a 
 dparti la nature." Criticism in his hands thus became, 
 in his own phrase, " l'histoire naturelle des esprits." 
 But while he had, as he more than once asserted against 
 those who complained that though he was " un assez bon 
 juge," he was a judge without a code, his own well- 
 considered method, it was part of that method to reject 
 formulas and systems of every kind. That he was funda- 
 mentally opposed to the classic dogmatism of Nisard was 
 of course inevitable : "La nature est pleine de vari6tes 
 et de moules divers ; il y a une infinite de formes de 
 talents. Critique, pourquoi n'avoir qu'un seul patron ? " 
 (M. Nisard in Causeries du Lundi, xv.). But on the other 
 hand he protested against the scientific dogmatism of his 
 own disciple Taine (see post, pp. 264-66), who in his anxiety 
 
 Ito explain everything in terms of natural laws and general 
 causes neglected " l'initiative humaine," or the purely 
 personal factor in literature. In the tyranny which any
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 199 
 
 set system exercises over the mind he saw a fatal obstacle 
 to the clearness of vision and the intellectual freedom 
 and flexibility which he regarded as the foundation 
 principles of the critic's art. 
 
 55. Other Prose Writers. There was great 
 activity in religious literature during the first half of the 
 nineteenth century, and in this the reaction against the 
 eighteenth century and the spirit of the Encyclopedic is 
 very marked, as we can see in the extreme dogmatism of 
 the Soirees de Saint-Peter sbourg (1821) and other works of 
 Josep h de Maistr e (1753-1821), and the Recherches Philo- 
 soffiiques sur les Premiers Objets de nos Connaissances 
 Morales (1818) of Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de 
 Bonald (1753-1840), and no less in the fervid and mystical 
 piety of the free-lance Lamennais. In philosophy, not- 
 withstanding the strong impulse given to the scientific 
 movement by the positivism of Au guste Comt e (1798- 
 1857), the same influences were at work, the most popular 
 writers at the moment being Victor Cousin (1792-1867) 
 (e.g., Du Vrai, du Beau, et du Bien, 1840, etc.), who was 
 much indebted to the German transcendentalists, and 
 his follower, Theodore Simon Joufrroy (1796-1842) (e-g., 
 Melanges Philosophiques, 1833 ; C'ours d'Esthetique, 1843). 
 In the same way history responded to the dominant 
 romantic tendencies and became essentially picturesque 
 and dramatic in the hands of Jac gues N icolas Augustin 
 Thierry (1795-1856) (e.g., Lettres sur I' Histoire de France, 
 1520-27 '> Histoire de la Conquite de V Angleterre par les 
 Normands, 1825 ; Recits des Temps MSrovingiens, 1840) ; 
 of Jul es Michelet (1798-1874), who wrote his volu minous 
 Histoire de France (1833-67) with a passionate intensity 
 and in a style and manner which have often been com- 
 pared with those of Carlyle ; and of Michelet's friend 
 Edgar Ouinet (1803-75) (e.g., Les Revolutions d'ltalie,
 
 200 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 1848-52 ; L a Revolution, 186 5). * While his style is 
 romantic, however, the distinct didactic purpose in 
 Quinet's work also connects him with the philosophic 
 school of historians, the chief of which was Francois 
 Pierre (iuillaume Guizot (1787-1874), who in his fftstoire 
 de la Revolution d'Angleterre (1826-56), Histoire de la 
 Civilisation en Europe (1828), and Histoire de la Civilisa- 
 tion en France (1829-32) undertook not merely to narrate 
 events but also to investigate their causes and relation- 
 ships. To this school also belong F ranco is Mignet (1796- 
 1884), whose short Histoire de la RivbluTidri Prancaise 
 (1824) is still a standard authority on the subject, and 
 Charles Alexis Henri Maurice Clerel de Tocqueville (1805- 
 185^)7 the author of two very"lmportant critical studies 
 La Ddmocratie en Amerique (1835-40) and L'Ancien 
 Regime et la Revolution (1856). Another historian who 
 must be mentioned, Louis Adolphe Thier s (1 797-1 877), 
 stands somewhat apart from both the romantic and the 
 philosophical group. His Histoire de la Revolution (1823- 
 1827) and Histoire du Consulat et de V Empire (1845-62) 
 are characterised by clearness of narrative and great 
 wealth of documentary material, but they have none 
 the less been impugned for their want of depth and their 
 neglect of the moral and intellectual aspects of history. 
 
 1 Both Michelet and Quinet wrote much outside history. Michelet's 
 miscellaneous works include a number of curious, rhapsodical, quasi- 
 philosophical books Le Peuple (1846), L'Amour (1858), La Femme 
 (1859), etc. and some books of popular science {e.g., L'Oiseau, 1856). 
 Quinet was the author, among many other things, of Ahasvtrus (1833), 
 a kind of gigantic allegorical mystery-play on the Wandering Jew ; 
 Promtthte (1838), an epic in which the Titan becomes a symbol of the 
 martyrdom and redemption of humanity ; Merlin I'Enchanteur (1869) ; 
 and Du Ginie des Religions (1842), which is full of the poetic mysticism 
 which was one product of the spiritual revival of the time.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY (continued) 
 POETRY 
 
 56. The Romantic School of Poetry. The indi- 
 vidualism which we have noted as one of the chief features 
 of the whole romantic movement naturally found the fullest 
 expression in its poetry. Though, as always happens when 
 a certain kind of taste becomes dominant, the smaller men 
 were powerfully influenced by the greater, and (as Carlyle 
 would say) there were many echoes to a few genuine 
 voices, still the theory common to all was that, whatever 
 his quality, the poet should be himself, depend entirely 
 upon the promptings of his own genius, and utter his 
 individual thought in his individual way. Sir Philip 
 Sidney's admonition " Look in thy heart, and write " 
 might indeed have been taken as their watchword by the 
 entire school. To the critics who continued to praise the 
 classics as the supreme painters of the human heart, 
 Musset replied with the pertinent question " Le cceur 
 humain de qui ? Le cceur humain de quoi ? " and, he 
 would add, " J'ai mon cceur humain, moi ! " And every 
 other poet of the time was equally convinced of the value 
 of his particular " cceur humain " as the ultimate well- 
 spring of inspiration. 
 
 A necessary result of this fundamental individualism
 
 202 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 was the extreme variety by which romantic poetry was 
 characterised. Yet those who contributed to it, however 
 diverse their aims and methods, were at one in rejecting 
 the restraints and limitations which had been imposed by 
 classicism, its colourless uniformity, and its technical 
 conventions. In language and style they sought what 
 was fresh, personal, concrete, vivid, and picturesque, 
 loading their work with images and adjectives, and enrich- 
 ing their vocabulary with unusual words derived from 
 many out-of-the-way sources, and especially with archa- 
 isms. In versification they were also innovators, emanci- 
 pating the alexandrine from the rigorous rules of Malherbe 
 and his followers, reviving the stanza-forms of ancient 
 French poetry, and experimenting freely in all sorts of 
 new metrical effects. 
 
 The romantic movement in English literature before 
 the time of Wordsworth and Coleridge had represented 
 an unconscious striving after fresh ideals in poetry the 
 nature of which was for the moment only vaguely 
 realised. The romantic movement in French literature, 
 on the other hand, was from its inception a conscious 
 and deliberate movement a movement with a definite 
 theory behind it and a programme. Unlike the English 
 movement, too, it was highly centralised. Two coteries, 
 or cinacles, played a prominent part in its history. The 
 first of these, which was founded in 1823, na d its head- 
 quarters in the home of the eccentric Jean Emmanuel 
 Charles Nodier (1780-1844) x and included among its 
 
 1 Charles Nodier is better known to-day for this connection with 
 the early development of romanticism than for his own work. He 
 wrote poems (Essais d'un Jeune Barde, 1804), romantic novels (e.g., 
 Les Proscrits, 1802 ; Jean Sbogar, 1818, etc.), and some excellent 
 stories in the fantastic vein (e.g., Trilby, 1822; La Fie aux Miettes, 
 1832 ; La Neuvaine de la Chandeleur, 1839 ; Le Chien de Brisquet, 
 1844, etc.).
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 203 
 
 members the poets Chenedolle, fimile Deschamps (1791- 
 1871) and his brother Antoine (1800-69), Jules Lefevre 
 (1797-1857), and Jules de Resseguier (1796-1857), and 
 the dramatists, Pierre Alexandre Guiraud (1788-1847), 
 Alexandre Soumet (1788-1845), and Jacques Arsene 
 Polycarpe Francois Ancelot (1794-1854). It was also 
 frequented for a time by Dubois of Le Globe, Sainte- 
 Beuve, Lamartine, and Hugo. But this cenacle was 
 still too much tinged with classicism to satisfy the 
 more radical among the younger spirits, and about 
 1828 another was established about the dominating 
 personality of Hugo, who was from the outset accepted 
 as its chief. Within a couple of years this second brother- 
 hood dispersed, but during its brief existence it included, 
 besides several well-known sculptors and painters of 
 romantic proclivities, most of the poets and dramatists 
 who were specially identified with romanticism in the 
 days of its greatest triumphs, among them Sainte-Beuve, 
 Lamartine, Vigny, Dumas, Musset, and Gautier. 
 
 The first distinctive note of the new poetry was struck 
 in 1820, in a little anonymous volume entitled Medita- 
 tions Poetiques, which, as Gautier afterwards said, seemed 
 to the world of the time " comme un souffle de fraicheur 
 et de rajeunissement." It is with the author of this 
 volume, therefore, that our survey of romantic poetry 
 may properly begin. 
 
 57. Lamartine. Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de 
 Lamartine was born at Macon in 1790. He spent much 
 of his early life at home in the companionship of his five 
 sisters, and during his youth read widely in many litera- 
 tures, fresh fields of interest being successively opened 
 up to him by the Bible, which he was first taught to love 
 by his pious mother ; by Homer, Vergil, and Horace ; by 
 Tasso and Alfieri ; by Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden,
 
 204 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Pope (whom he set above Boileau), Addison, Richardson, 
 Fielding, Young, and Ossian x ; by the great French 
 writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; by 
 Rousseau's Nouvelle Hdloise, which threw him into a 
 transport of admiration ; and by Bernardin de Saint - 
 Pierre, Chateaubriand, and Mme. de Stael. After a 
 visit to Italy (1811-12), during which he met the little 
 cigarette-maker whom he afterwards idealised in Graziella, 
 he returned to his country life of desultory study and 
 dreaming, and though on the first Restoration (1814) he 
 took service in the guard of Louis XVIII. he soon gave 
 up all thought of a military career. Inspired by an un- 
 fortunate love-passion he then wrote his Meditations, the 
 publication of which brought him immediate fame. This 
 was followed by Nouvelles MSditations (1823), La Mori 
 de Socrate (1823), Le Dernier Chant du Pelerinage d' Harold 
 (1825), which deals with Byron's death at Missolonghi, 
 Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses (1830), Jocelyn (1836), 
 La Chute d'un Ange (1838), and Les Recueillements 
 Poitiques (1839). Meanwhile he had been for some 
 years secretary to the embassy in Florence and had 
 married an Englishwoman, Marianne Birch. After the 
 fall of Charles X. he made an extended tour in Greece, 
 Syria, and Palestine (see Voyage en Orient, 1835). On 
 his return he became active in politics and made his mark 
 as a statesman and orator. With the accession of Louis 
 Napoleon he fell into obscurity and poverty, but his hard- 
 ships were at length in a measure relieved by a tardy 
 
 1 The immense influence of the Ossianic poems in Baour-Lormian's 
 translation is one of the most remarkable facts in the early history of 
 French romanticism. " C'etait le moment ou Ossian regnait sur 
 l'imagination de la France," writes Lamartine himself of the time of 
 his youth (Confidences, liv. vi.) ; and elsewhere : " Ossian fut l'Homere 
 de mes premieres annees ; je lui dois une partie de la melancholic de 
 mes pinceaux " (Preface to Meditations). Cp. Jocelyn, vi.
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 205 
 
 pension from the imperial government. His last works 
 were in prose, and include his Confidences, several novels 
 [Raphael, 1849 ' Le Tailleur de Pierres de Saint-Point, 
 1851 ; Graziella, 1852), and two histories, one of the 
 Girondins, the other of the Restoration. He died in 
 1869. 
 
 Lamartine was essentially a lyrical poet, and as a 
 lyrical poet he may be studied to greatest advantage in 
 his earlier verse. His real claim to distinction and it is 
 a very substantial one lies in the fact that he freed the 
 lyric from the mythological absurdities and conventional 
 commonplaces of effete classicism and restored to it all 
 the vital elements of personal sincerity and truth to 
 nature. His own conception of his part in the literary 
 revolution of his time is clearly set forth in the preface 
 to his Meditations : " Je suis le premier qui ai fait des- 
 cendre la poesie du Parnasse et qui ai donne a ce qu'on 
 nommait la Muse, au lieu d'une lyre a sept cordes de con- 
 vention, les fibres meme du coeur de rhomme, touchees 
 et emues par les innombrables frissons de Tame et de la 
 nature." His poetry is thus largely the record of his own 
 passions and sorrows (e.g., Le Lac, L'Isolement, in Medita- 
 tions ; Le Crucifix, in Nouvelles Mlditations), his own 
 love of nature [e.g., Le Vallon, L'Automne, in Meditations ; 
 Milly ou la Terre Natale, Hymne de la Nuit, Hymne du 
 Matin, in Harmonies) , his own deep though vague religious 
 faith (see Harmonies, passim). His prevailing tone is 
 that of tender and pensive melancholy, and we may say 
 of him what an American critic once said of Matthew 
 Arnold, that he is at his best in the mood of lament. 
 Hence his real greatness as an elegiac poet. His principal 
 defects, over and above his often excessive sensibility, are 
 his too great facility, his want of restraint, his indifference 
 to the claims of art. " Je demande grace pour les imper-
 
 206 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 fections de style dont les delicats seront sou vent blesses," 
 he writes in the preface to Harmonies, and he apologises on 
 the ground that " ce que Ton sent fortement s'ecrit vite." 
 Over-rapidity of composition, carelessness, and prolixity 
 have naturally proved most fatal in respect of his longer, 
 non-lyrical poems. La Chute d'un Ange was, as he him- 
 self confessed, " une chute," and neither La Mort de 
 Socrate nor Le Dernier Chant du PUerinage d' Harold now 
 survives except by name. Jocelyn, however, though far 
 too long, may still be read with interest. As the story, 
 told in diary form, of a young priest who, driven by the 
 Revolution to take refuge among the Alps, rescues a 
 fugitive whom he supposes to be a boy, but who afterwards 
 proves to be a woman, and whom he is prevented from 
 marrying by his vows, it represents a first attempt at a 
 new kind of narrative poetry suitable, as Lamartine himself 
 believed, to the taste of an age which had lost its interest 
 in the old " heroic epics " and craved for something more 
 human and real. Jocelyn is in fact an early specimen in 
 European literature of the since popular novel in verse. 
 
 58. Hugo. Innovator as he was, there was nothing 
 of the militant quality in Lamartine's disposition, and 
 notwithstanding his early connection with the two cinacles 
 he took no part in the battle of romanticism and classicism 
 which excited the French public in the decade following 
 the publication of the Meditations. We now come to the 
 great leader of the romantics in this struggle, whose 
 amazing personal force gave precisely the driving power 
 which they required, and whose genius was a chief factor 
 in their success. Though Hugo's career extended far 
 beyond the limits of our present period, we shall deal with 
 his poetry in its entirety both as a matter of convenience 
 and because to the end it belonged essentially to the 
 romantic movement.
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 207 
 
 Victor Marie Hugo was born at Besancon in 1802 
 the year of Chateaubriand's Genie du Christianisme. His 
 father, an officer in Napoleon's army, whose character we 
 can infer from the incident recorded in Apres la Bataille 
 (Legende des Siecles) , took his family with him as his duties 
 called him from place to place, and the future poet spent 
 a roving childhood in Elba, Corsica, Paris, Naples, and 
 Madrid. His education was thus very irregular, and even 
 at the Pension Cordier, to which he was presently sent, 
 he devoted himself with more ardour to poetry than to his 
 prescribed studies. An extremely precocious boy, he was 
 early convinced of his vocation in literature ; at fourteen 
 he wrote in one of his exercise-books : " Je veux etre 
 Chateaubriand ou rien " ; at fifteen he received honour- 
 able mention for an essay submitted in competition to the 
 Academy ; at seventeen he was crowned laureate at the 
 Jeux Floraux of Toulouse ; at eighteen, in collaboration 
 with his brothers, Abel and Eugene, he started a journal, 
 Le Conservateur Litteraire, in support of the conservative 
 party in politics and poetry. In 1822 he published his 
 first volume of verse under the title of Odes et Poesies 
 Diver ses, and four years later reissued this, with many 
 additions, as Odes et Ballades. So far as the contents of 
 the first collection are concerned, they give little sugges- 
 tion of originality either in matter or in form, but in the 
 new ballads there is an unmistakable tendency towards 
 freshness of subject, metrical freedom, and picturesque- 
 ness (e.g., La Chasse du Burgrave ; Le Pas d'Armes du Roi 
 Jean). Then in 1829 came Les Orientales, and in this we 
 are in the full tide of romanticism. Interest in the East, 
 as Hugo points out in his preface, was very strong in 
 France at the time, and of this he takes advantage ; but 
 in so doing he turns it to propagandist account ; " il lui 
 semble," he writes of himself, " que jusqu'ici on a beau-
 
 208 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 coup trop vu l'epoque moderne dans le siecle de Louis 
 XIV et l'antiquit6 dans Rome et la Grece : ne verrait-on 
 pas de plus haut et plus loin, en 6tudiant l'ere moderne 
 dans le moyen age et l'antiquit6 dans l'Orient ? " Many 
 of his poems are to a certain extent topical in the sense 
 that they are directly or indirectly connected with the 
 Greek war of independence in which Byron had recently 
 laid down his life ; others are lyrics or ballads of a mis- 
 cellaneous character ; but whatever the theme, they are 
 all marked by gorgeous colouring, intensity of passion, 
 and astonishing skill in versification. In the range and 
 variety of its metrical effects the little book came indeed 
 as a revelation to its first readers, who were equally sur- 
 prised by the author's happy revival of some of the 
 measures of the older French poets, as in Sara la Baigneuse, 
 and by his inventive daring in such a marvellous tour de 
 force as Les Djinns. Meanwhile Hugo had thrown him- 
 self with characteristic impetuosity into the struggle of 
 the romantics with the classics for possession of the 
 stage (Cromwell, 1827 ; Hernani, 1830), and was also busy 
 with prose romance (Bug-Jargal, published 1826, though 
 written earlier ; Hans d'Islande, 1823 ; Notre- Dame de 
 Paris, 1831) ; but of his work then and later in the drama 
 and the novel we will deal in other places. Four new 
 volumes of verse followed in the next few years Les 
 Feuilles d'Automne in 1831, Les Chants du Crdpuscule in 
 1835, Les Voix Interieures in 1837, an d Les Rayons et les 
 Ombres in 1840 in all of which, though the range of their 
 subject was very wide, the personal note was strong, 
 and which together represent the full maturity of his 
 genius and technique. Politics now began to divide his 
 attention with literature. At the outset a conservative, 
 he had been a warm supporter of the Bourbons ; then he 
 transferred his allegiance to Louis Philippe, by whom he
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 209 
 
 was made a peer (1845) ; but by this time his liberal 
 tendencies were in the ascendant ; after the revolution 
 of 1848 he sat in the Constituent Assembly ; and he was 
 one of those who, in 1851, vainly attempted to rouse the 
 people of Paris against the coup d'etat by which Louis 
 Napoleon overthrew the constitution and prepared the 
 way for the Second Empire. In consequence he was 
 banished, and for eighteen years lived in exile, first in 
 Jersey, where he discharged his indignation in the bitter 
 political satires of Les Chdtiments (1852), and their prose 
 counterpart, Napoleon le Petit (1853), and then from 1855 
 to 1870 in Guernsey, where, reverting to literature, he pro- 
 duced a fine volume of verse, Les Contemplations (1856), 
 the first part of La Legende des Siicles (1859), Les Chansons 
 des Rues et des Bois (1865), a curious volume, nominally 
 criticism, really rhapsody, called William Shakespeare 
 (1864), an d three romances, Les Miserables (1862), Les 
 Travailleurs de la Mer (1866), and L' Homme qui rit (1869). 
 On the fall of the Empire he returned to France, a con- 
 vinced radical and republican, and from that time to his 
 death in 1885 he was the idol of the French people, who 
 saw in him the very incarnation of the spirit and aspira- 
 tions of their new democracy. To these closing years 
 belong in verse, among numerous other volumes, L' Annie 
 Terrible (1871), L 'Art d'itre Grandpere (1877), and the 
 second and third parts of La Legende des Siecles (1877, 
 1883), and in prose, a last romance, Quatre-Vingt-Treize. 
 
 There is a general consensus of opinion among the 
 critics, native and foreign, that Hugo is the greatest of 
 French poets and one of the greatest of all the poets of 
 modern times. His defects are indeed many and obvious. 
 He was, it is admitted, a good deal of a poseur ; his 
 thought is superficial ; his sentiment is often forced and 
 theatrical ; he is wanting in self-control and in balance ; 
 
 P
 
 210 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 he indulges too frequently in mere rhetorical declamation ; 
 his style is at times vitiated by his love of emphasis and 
 antithesis, and his craving for striking and grandiose 
 effects. These faults are especially conspicuous in the 
 poetry of his later years (e.g., Le Pape, 1878 ; L'Ane, 1879 ; 
 Religions et Religion, 1880 ; Les Quatre Vents de VEsprit, 
 1881), in which he loses himself entirely in nebulous 
 metaphysics and his diction, overloaded with mannerisms, 
 degenerates into a kind of caricature of itself. But when 
 all deductions have been made and we have cleared away 
 a vast amount of perishable material, there remains a body 
 of work immense at once in bulk and range, and stamped 
 with all the highest qualities of poetic genius : prodigious 
 imagination, intensity of vision, astonishing descriptive 
 power, supreme command of all the resources of language, 
 verbal magic, and, on the purely technical side, a virtuo- 
 sity which has never been excelled. His extraordinary 
 versatility must also be recognised as an element in his 
 greatness. He is the poet of public events and of domestic 
 joys and sorrows ; of the mighty movements of history 
 and of the humble realities of common life ; of romantic 
 passion and the social enthusiasms of the modern world ; 
 of nature no less than of man ; and his verse adjusts itself 
 with absolute perfection to every mood and theme. Much 
 of his poetry is intimately personal in character. But his 
 conception of the powers and functions of poetry was far 
 larger than that of Lamartine or of the romantics in 
 general. He held that in writing of himself the poet 
 should constitute himself the interpreter of that common 
 humanity to which he belongs (Preface to Contemplations) 
 and of the whole complex life of his own time (Preface to 
 Les Rayons et les Ombres) ; and, for himself, he declares 
 that universal sympathy and the ability, as it were, to 
 gather up and express what the world about him was
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 211 
 
 thinking and feeling, was the ultimate secret of his own 
 poetic success : 
 
 C'est que l'amour, la tombe, et la gloire, et la vie, 
 L'onde qui fuit, par l'onde incessament suivie, 
 Tout souffle, tout rayon, ou prospice ou fatal, 
 Fait reluire et vibrer mon ame de cristal, 
 Mon ame aux mille voix, que le Dieu que j 'adore 
 Mit au centre de tout comme un echo sonore. 1 
 
 Hence the humanitarianism which is throughout a funda- 
 mental characteristic of Hugo's poetry, and which ex- 
 presses itself now in passionate hatred of injustice, oppres- 
 sion, and cruelty, and now in infinite pity for all feeble and 
 defenceless creatures the old, the poor, the outcast, 
 children, animals. In the comprehensiveness of his sym- 
 pathy he even found a place for the toad, the spider, the 
 nettle, which he loved because they were generally de- 
 spised and hated. 2 From this point of view special interest 
 attaches to La Legende des Slides, on the whole the com- 
 pletest embodiment of his philosophy. Suggested ap- 
 parently by Michelet's La Bible de VHumanite, this gigantic 
 work was intended as an epic of man, in which " succes- 
 sivement et simultanement sous tous ses aspects, histoire, 
 fable, philosophic, religion, science," all the great move- 
 ments of the world should be depicted " depuis ve, mere 
 des hommes, jusqu'a la Revolution, mere des peuples " 
 (Preface). This vast design the vastest perhaps that 
 has ever fired the imagination of any poet was not fully 
 carried out in the work itself; 3 there are many serious gaps 
 
 1 Les Feuilles d'Automne, i. 
 
 See, e.g., the beautiful but terrible Le Crapaud (Legende des Sticles), 
 with its plea for " ce pauvre etre ayant pour crime d'etre laid " ; and 
 Les Contemplations, III. xxvii. 
 
 * Two other poems were designed to supplement the work, Dieu 
 and La Fin de Satan. These were published after Hugo's death, the 
 latter having been left unfinished by him.
 
 212 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 in it ; much of its matter is very insufficiently handled ; 
 and it suffers from want of uniformity and method. 
 But it none the less contains the poet's reading of 
 history and his interpretation of human life. His central 
 thought is that of progress : " Du reste, ces poemes, 
 divers par le sujet, mais inspires par la meme pensee, 
 n'ont entre eux d'autre nceud qu'un fil qui s'att^nue 
 quelquefois au point de devinir invisible, mais qui ne 
 casse jamais, le grand fil mysterieux du labyrinthe humain, 
 le Progres." In detail the work is gloomy : " Les tableaux 
 riants sont rares dans ce livre ; cela tient a ce qu'ils ne 
 sont pas frequents dans l'histoire." But its thesis is pro- 
 foundly optimistic, for to Hugo, with his firm faith in 
 God, in man, and in the future, all history seemed to 
 resolve itself into " un seul et immense mouvement 
 d'ascension vers la lumiere." 
 
 59. Vigny. We enter a very different intellectual 
 atmosphere when we pass from Hugo to the next poet on 
 our list. Alfred Victor, Comte de Vigny, was born at 
 Loches in 1797. He came of a family of soldiers, and at 
 sixteen entered the army. But his literary taste soon 
 asserted itself ; in 1820 he became attached to the 
 romantics and collaborated with Hugo in the Conser- 
 vateur ; in 1822 he published his first volume of verse ; 
 and in 1826 an enlarged edition of this and an historical 
 romance, Cinq-Mars. Fourteen years of military service 
 having filled him with disgust with the dull routine of 
 garrison life, he then definitely exchanged the sword for 
 the pen. For some years he devoted himself to the stage 
 (Othello, 1829 ; La Marichale d'Ancre, 1831 ; Chatterton, 
 1835) an d to prose romance (Stello, 1832 ; Grandeur et 
 Servitude Militaires, 1835), but except in the case of 
 Chatterton he never achieved the popular success of 
 Lamartine or Hugo. Like these two famous contem-
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 213 
 
 poraries he was presently drawn into politics, but failing 
 to find the opening he sought he abandoned all thought 
 of a public career and retired, with his invalid wife, an 
 Englishwoman whom he had married in 1828, to the 
 solitude of the Chateau du Maine-Giraud in Charente. 
 He died of a cancer from which he had long suffered while 
 on a visit to Paris in 1863. 
 
 As compared with Lamartine, Hugo, and the romantics 
 generally, Vigny was singularly unproductive, for his 
 collected poems, numbering only thirty-five in all, are com- 
 prised in a volume of some three hundred pages. Apart 
 from the posthumous Les Destinees, Potmes Philosophiques, 
 which include much of his finest work (La Colere de Samson, 
 La Mort du Loup, Le Mont des Oliviers, La Bouteille d la 
 Mer, L' Esprit Pur), these fall, according to his own scheme, 
 into three divisions : Livre Mystique (e.g., Mo'ise, loa, Le 
 Deluge) ; Livre Antique, in two subdivisions Antiquite 
 Biblique (La Fille de Jephte, etc.) and Antiquite Homerique 
 (La Dryade, etc.) ; and Livre Moderne (Dolorida, Le Cor, 
 La Frigate La Serieuse, etc.). But while his matter varies 
 his distinctive qualities are everywhere the same. His 
 conceptions are always noble and his temper heroic ; he is, 
 though a very unequal, a very great artist ; his style is 
 characterised by remarkable dignity and strength ; and 
 if at times we may find him a little cold, we cannot fail 
 to be impressed by the stately and sculpturesque beauty 
 of his verse. Above all, however, he appeals to us by the 
 weight and solidity of his thought. Vigny was essentially 
 an intellectual poet, and though he expressed his ideas 
 not in direct argument but through symbols, 1 a consistent 
 and well-considered philosophy lies at the foundation of 
 
 1 " Le seul mente qu'on n'ait jamais dispute a ces compositions, 
 c'est d'avoir d6vanc6 en France toutes celles de ce genre, dans lesquelles 
 une pensee philosophique est mise en scene sous une forme epique ou 
 dramatique " (Preface to edition of 1837).
 
 214 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 his work. The keynote of that philosophy is pessimism. 
 A proud, unhappy man, who seemed even to those who 
 knew him best "olympian" and austere, 1 but whose 
 apparent insensibility concealed unsuspected depths of 
 passion and sympathy, Vigny was profoundly moved by 
 the doom which so often overwhelms the man of genius 
 in a world which is blind to his greatness and deaf to 
 his message. This is the theme elaborated in Stello in 
 the histories of three young unfortunate poets, Gilbert, 
 Chatterton, and Andr6 Chenier ; it is the theme of 
 Chatterton (a dramatic version of the narrative in Stello), 
 which depicts " l'homme spiritualiste touffe pas une 
 soci6te" materialiste " ; it is again the theme, under slight 
 variations, of Moise, loa, La Cottre de Samson, Le Mont 
 des Oliviers. But while the aristocratic bias of his mind 
 led him to dwell upon the exceptional tragedies of rare 
 and superior natures, he was equally touched by the 
 infinite misery of the common lot of man, and in brooding 
 over this he could find no relief in the ordinary consolations 
 of the moralists, since to him love was a delusion and a 
 snare (La Colore de Samson), Nature, chanted by the 
 romantic poets as the beneficent mother of men, only their 
 living tomb (La Maison du Berger), and God Himself 
 " sourd aux cris de ses creatures." Vigny 's pessimism was 
 thus a very different thing from the sentimental melan- 
 choly which a generation which had nourished itself on 
 RenS often cultivated as a fashionable pose, for it was the 
 product at once of temperament and of reasoned convic- 
 tion. It is, moreover, the pessimism not of a whimperer 
 but of a stoic, who, failing to wring from an indifferent 
 
 1 Sainte-Beuve's description of his moral isolation 
 
 Et Vigny, plus secret, 
 Comme en sa tour d'ivoire, avant midi, rentrait 
 
 has long been famous.
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 215 
 
 heaven any answer to his prayers, is strong enough 
 to reply 
 
 par un froid silence 
 Au silence eternel de la Divinity, 1 
 
 to meet life with a fortitude sustained by the inspiration 
 of a high ideal {V Esprit Pur), and to face death like the 
 wolf driven to bay by the huntsmen : 
 
 G6mir, pleurer, prier, est egalement lache. 
 
 Fais energiquement ta longue et lourde tache 
 
 Dans la voie ou le sort a voulu t'appeler, 
 
 Puis, aprds, comme moi, souffre et meurs sans parler. 2 
 
 For the rest, Vigny's is not a philosophy of mere passive 
 resignation ; as the superb Bouteille d la Mer is written to 
 demonstrate, every man may find a measure of heroic 
 satisfaction in work done without thought of reward for 
 the benefit of humanity. Vigny, as will be seen, is not a 
 poet for those who love smooth things. Many readers 
 will doubtless be repelled by his temper and shocked by 
 his pessimism. But there are others to whom his work 
 will yield " steel and bark for the mind." 
 
 60. Musset. After the poet of virile thought, the 
 poet of youthful passion. The son of a wealthy official 
 in the War Office, Alfred de Musset was born in Paris in 
 1810. While still in his teens he was admitted to Hugo's 
 cenacle, and at twenty published a volume of dramatic, 
 narrative, and lyrical verse, Contes d'Espagne et d'ltalie, 
 which, while it scandalised the old-fashioned critics by its 
 ostentatious Byronism, rather frightened the romantics 
 themselves by its audacity and its extravagances. As 
 the sequel proved, however, the young poet was as yet 
 hardly in earnest. Precociously clever, and fully alive 
 to his cleverness, he had found amusement in imitating 
 
 1 Le Mont des Oliviers. * La Mort du Loup.
 
 216 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the method and style of his friends ; but in his imitation 
 there was a good deal of wilful exaggeration (e.g. in his 
 excessive dislocation of the alexandrine), and in the 
 exaggeration something at least of burlesque ; as in the 
 famous Ballade d la Lune, which seemed to the classics 
 the last word in romantic impertinence, but which many 
 critics now regard as a kind of caprice, and even as more 
 than half a parody. At any rate he soon abandoned 
 romanticism as a formal creed and went his own way, 
 convinced and in this he was true to its inner spirit 
 that the one thing necessary for a poet was, not to have a 
 theory, but, theory or no theory, to find himself and to be 
 himself. His next volume, Un Spectacle dans un Fauteuil, 
 comprising two dramatic pieces La Coupe et les Livres 
 and A Quoi rSvent les Jeunes Filles and a poem, 
 Namouna, in the manner of Byron's Don Juan, appeared 
 in 1832, and this was followed during the next few years 
 by other plays and poems in the Revue des Deux Mondes. 
 Meanwhile he had passed through the great crisis of his 
 life, his liaison with George Sand. The poet and the 
 novelist met in 1833 ; their friendship quickly ripened 
 into love, and at the end of the year they set out together 
 for a tour in Italy. But misunderstandings soon arose 
 between them, and Musset returned to Paris a disillusioned 
 and embittered man (see his autobiographical novel Les 
 Confessions d'un Enfant du Silcle, 1836). His disappoint- 
 ment and the mental agony which followed had a dis- 
 astrous effect upon his excitable nature. They stimulated 
 his genius, it is true, and during the next five years he 
 produced his finest work in verse and prose ; * but unfor- 
 tunately he sought an escape from his unhappiness in 
 
 1 His prose includes, besides the Confessions, a number of admirable 
 stories, published at intervals and collected under the title Contes et 
 Nouvelles. His plays will be referred to in the next chapter.
 
 I 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 217 
 
 dissipation, and in the end became a victim to drink. 
 With his physical and intellectual powers fatally under- 
 mined he sank deeper and deeper into debauchery, and 
 died of heart disease in 1857. 
 
 Despite his impatient rejection of all special dogmas 
 and programmes, 1 Musset, by reason of the strong quality 
 of personal emotion which is the foundation of his work, 
 remained a romantic among the romantics and " le type 
 du romantisme sentimental." 2 " Chacun de nous," he 
 wrote early in life to his brother, " a dans le ventre un 
 certain son qu'il peut rendre, comme un violin ou une 
 clarinette. Tous les raisonnements du monde ne pour- 
 raient faire sortir du gossier d'un merle la chanson du 
 sansonnet " ; and this thought of the poet's dependence 
 upon the inspiration of his own nature reappears fre- 
 quently in his verse, as, e.g. : 
 
 Tu te frappais le front en lisant Lamartine. 
 
 Ah ! frappe-toi le coeur ; c'est la qu'est le genie, 3 
 
 and 
 
 On m'a dit l'an pass6 que j'imitais Byron : 
 
 Vous qui me connaissez, vous savez bien que non. 
 
 Je hais comme la mort l'etat de plagiaire ; 
 
 Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon verre. 4 
 
 It is such absolute sincerity to himself, in all his varying 
 moods of pure sentiment, burning passion, bitter irony, 
 tender regret, joy, and sorrow, that gives a distinctive 
 and peculiar charm to his finest (which is always his most 
 
 1 For his attitude towards the literary theories and quarrels of his 
 time, see Dddicace to Un Spectacle dans un Fauteuil and Les Secrites 
 Pensies de Raphael ; for an amusing satire on the attempts of the 
 romantics to define their own aims, the caustic Lettres de Dupuis et de 
 Cotonet (1836). 
 
 * Strowski, Tableau de la Literature Francaise au XIX' Stick, 194-5. 
 3 A mon Ami, Edouard B. 
 
 * Didicace, Un Spectacle dans un Fauteuil.
 
 I 
 
 218 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 directly personal) poetry to his Lettre d Lamartine, 
 L'Espoir en Dieu, Le Souvenir, and the four wonderful 
 lyrics, Les Nuits, which rank in their kind among the 
 supreme masterpieces of French poetry. His range is 
 narrow ; he is often negligent in technique ; and some- 
 times he may give offence by his frank sensuality (as 
 in Rolla), and by what Lintilhac has aptly called his 
 " Dandysme a la Brummel." But his place with the 
 greatest of French lyrical poets is secure. That place 
 has been well defined by M. Pierre Robert. " C'est 
 le poete de la jeunesse. II a chants le plaisir avec une 
 pointe de libertinage ; puis, frapp au coeur d'un amour 
 violent et tragique, il a chants la passion avec une puis- 
 sance incomparable. II est le plus personnel de nos poetes, 
 le plus sincere, le plus vrai." x 
 
 61. Gautier. Another poet who, like Musset, was 
 admitted while still very young to the inner circle of the 
 romantic brotherhood was Pierre Jules Theophile Gautier. 
 Born in 1811 at Tarbes in the Hautes-Pyrenees, Gautier, 
 though he was taken to Paris when a child of three, 
 retained throughout his life his " fond meridional " and a 
 craving for warm climates and blue skies. His first 
 ambition was to become a painter, and to this end he 
 entered the studio of Rioult. But the influence of his 
 friend Gerard de Nerval, 2 who had been a fellow-student 
 of his at the Lyc6e Charlemagne, turned his attention from 
 art to literature, and, introduced to the cinacle, he became 
 
 1 Les Poites du XIX* Steele, p. 377. 
 
 * Gerard Labrunie, who assumed the name of de Nerval (1808-55), 
 was one of the many eccentrics who figure in the history of romanticism. 
 He led a restless, wandering, dissipated life which ended in insanity 
 and suicide. His Aurllie, ou le Rive et la Vie (1855) has a curious and 
 painful interest as a record of his own madness. He wrote poems, 
 plays, essays, and some really fine fantastic stories collected under the 
 title of Contes et Facities. His translation of Faust was highly praised 
 by Goethe himself.
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 219 
 
 an enthusiastic worshipper of Hugo, and one of his most 
 ardent supporters in the great " battle of Hernani " (see 
 post, pp. 226-7). His first volume of verse, which appeared 
 in 10*32, fell flat, but in 1833 he scored a success (which 
 was perhaps to some extent a " success of scandal ") with 
 Albertus, ou I'Ame et le Peche, which he himself described 
 as a " legende theologique," but is in fact a wild tale of 
 sorcery, sensuous in tone and full of the " satanism " 
 which was very much to the taste of a time which revelled 
 in everything connected with the black art. One feature 
 of this poem its high pictorial quality deserves special 
 attention because it remained a characteristic of Gautier's 
 work to the end. It has often been said of him that 
 though he early gave up the brush for the pen he never 
 ceased to be a painter, and as we can see at once from the 
 famous description of the Flemish landscape with which 
 his story opens, his imaginative conceptions took the form 
 of pictures : 
 
 Sur le bord d'un canal profond dont les eaux vertes 
 Dorment, de nenufars et de bateaux couvertes, 
 Avec ses toits aigus, ses immenses greniers, 
 Ses tours au front d'ardoise ou nichent les cigognes, 
 Ses cabarets bruyants qui regorgent d'ivrognes, 
 Est un vieux bourg flamand tel que les peint Teniers. 
 Vous reconnaissez-vous ? Tenez, voila le saule 
 De ses cheveux blafards inondants son epaule 
 Comme une fille au bain, l'eglise et son clocher, 
 L'etang ou des canards se pa vane l'escadre ; 
 II ne manque vraiment au tableau que le cadre 
 Avec le clou pour l'accrocher. 
 
 While this firmly plastic quality this admirable sense of 
 form, colour, and composition were conspicuous in it 
 throughout, the poem was conceived and executed in the 
 most extravagant spirit of romanticism. Yet in the same 
 year, in a collection of stories and sketches entitled Les
 
 220 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Jeune France, Gautier, with delightful humour, poured 
 ridicule upon the very excesses in which he had himself 
 indulged, and upon the emotional frenzy, the medieval- 
 ism, and the puerile affectations of the young men of his 
 generation who had been swept off their feet by the 
 romantic tide (e.g., Onuphrius, ou les Vexations fantastiques 
 d'un Admit ateur a" Hoffmann ; Daniel Jovard, ou la Con- 
 version d'un Classique; Elias Wildmanstadius, ou I' Homme 
 Moyen Age). At the same time a volume of critical 
 studies in the by-ways of seventeenth-century literature, 
 Les Grotesques, showed his keen interest in such long- 
 neglected writers as Cyrano de Bergerac and Scarron, in 
 whom he recognised the real forerunners of modern 
 romanticism. In 1835 he published a brilliantly written 
 but daringly licentious romance, Mademoiselle de Maupin, 
 in which he endeavoured, and most successfully, to shock 
 the " philistines," and in 1838 a second long poem, La 
 ComSdie de la Mort, still, like Albertus, romantic in theme, 
 but far more restrained in style. By this time, however, 
 he had been compelled by necessity, though much against 
 his will, to turn to journalism for support, and from 1836 
 to nearly the end of his life the greater part of his energy 
 was given to task- work as a critic of literature, the drama, 
 and the salons. His leisure he spent in extensive travels 
 in Italy, Spain, Turkey, and Russia, turning his experi- 
 ences to good account in a number of entertaining and 
 picturesque books. Yet amid the incessant claims of the 
 press he still found time for pure literature. His remain- 
 ing works include maux et CamSes (1852), which contains 
 his finest verse ; in fiction, Le Capitaine Fracasse (1863), 
 a novel of adventure on the lines of Le Roman Comique, and 
 generally considered his masterpiece in prose ; Le Roman 
 de la Momie (1858) ; many shorter novels and tales [e.g., 
 Fortunio, Une Nuit de Clio-pdire, Jean et Jeanette, Jetta-
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 221 
 
 tura, Avatar, La Belle Jenny, La Peau de Tigre, Spirite) ; 
 two charming animal books, Le Paradis des Chats (he had 
 a passion for cats) and Menagerie Intime, and a curious 
 Histoire du Romantisme. He died in 1874. 
 
 Gautier was not a thinker ; he had no theories to 
 expound ; he did not trouble himself about politics, or 
 social movements, or moral problems of any kind (Preface 
 to maux et C amies). His philosophy, such as it was, 
 was purely epicurean : its beginning and its end was his 
 love of all beautiful things. 
 
 II est dans la nature, il est de belles choses, 
 
 Des rossignols oisifs, de paresseuses roses, 
 
 Des poetes reveurs et des musiciens 
 
 Qui s'inquidtent peu d'etre bons citoyens, 
 
 Qui vivent au hasard, etn'ont d'autre maxime, 
 
 Sinon que tout est bien, pourvu qu'on ait la rime, 
 
 Et que les oiseaux bleus, penchant leurs cols pensifs, 
 
 Ecoutent le recit de leurs amours naifs ; 1 
 
 and to this race of happy useless creatures he himself 
 rejoiced to belong. He was, in a word, the pure artist, for 
 whom art was an end in itself, and not a means to an end, 
 and for whom beauty had no connection with utility. " A 
 quoi cela sert-il ? " he asks in the preface to his first poems, 
 and he replies : " Cela sert a etre beau. N'est-ce pas 
 assez ? Comme les fleures, comme les parfums, commes 
 les oiseaux, comme tout ce que l'homme n'a pu detourner 
 et depraver a son usage." The great virtue of his work 
 is the perfection of its technique, its pictorial quality, 
 its fine sensuousness, its feeling for form and colour. 
 " Tout ma valeur," he once told the Goncourts, " est que 
 je suis un homme pour qui le monde visible existe," and 
 it was this constant realisation of the visible world as 
 providing in itself sufficient matter for poetry which set 
 
 1 A un Jeune Tribun. Cp. L'Art in tLmaux et Camies.
 
 222 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 him in a class apart from the romantics in general, with 
 their intense subjectivity, their preoccupation with their 
 own emotions, and their tendency to effusive lyrism. 
 
 62. Other Poets. Among the minor poets of the 
 earlier nineteenth century by far the most interesting to 
 us to-day is Pierre Jean de BeYanger (1780-1857), the 
 greatest song-writer that France has ever produced. The 
 amazing popularity which he enjoyed during his lifetime, 
 and which was in part due to his politics a combination 
 of ardent democracy and devotion to the memory of 
 Napoleon has indeed been followed within recent years 
 by a reaction which was perhaps inevitable, and criticism 
 is now inclined to treat him with a rather supercilious 
 contempt. Against this official attitude of depreciation, 
 however, a protest should certainly be made. Beranger 
 was a lyrical poet of real genius and inspiration ; he wrote 
 with equal success on many subjects and in many tones ; 
 and the best of his chansons have never been surpassed for 
 wit and pathos, lightness of touch, vivacity, and grace. 
 Another poet who, like Beranger, was a strong opponent 
 of the Bourbon Restoration was Jean Francois Casimir 
 Delavigne (1793-1843), but though his political poems, 
 Les Messeniennes (1815-22), created a great sensation at 
 the time of their publication, they are noteworthy rather 
 for their genuine patriotism than for their intrinsic poetical 
 merits. A little later Henri Auguste Barbier (1805-82) 
 also achieved fame as an unsparing satirist of the manners 
 and morals of his age in Les Iambes (1831), a collection of 
 poems vigorous in thought but rather coarse in style. Of 
 his many remaining works only one is now remembered, 
 77 Pianto (1833), which was inspired by the writer's love 
 of Italy in the hour of its political degradation and servi- 
 tude. Both Delavigne and Barbier owed much of their 
 contemporary reputation to the " actuality " of their
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 223 
 
 subjects. The poems of Julien Auguste-Pelage Brizeux 
 (1806-58), on the other hand, are entirely deficient in any 
 such topical interest. Born at Lorient, and a Breton to 
 his finger-tips, Brizeux was throughout his life inspired 
 by a fervent love of his " terre natale " " la terre de 
 granit recouverte de chenes " and of the local legends 
 on which his childish imagination had been fed, and this 
 love was the chief inspiring motive of his verse of his 
 tender and graceful elegies in the series entitled Marie 
 (1831), of his " 6popee rustique," Les Bretons (1845), and 
 of his Histoires Poetiques (1855), in which he drew upon 
 the rich sources of Celtic romance. Brizeux never had a 
 wide public and to-day he is almost completely forgotten. 
 But he was a true poet, if not a great one, and now that 
 the importance of the Celtic Renaissance in literature is 
 recognised there should be an increasing number of 
 readers for his work.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY {concluded) 
 THE DRAMA AND THE NOVEL 
 
 63. The Romantic Drama. The theatre was the 
 great battle-ground of classicism and romanticism, and 
 it was on the stage that romanticism secured its popular 
 triumph. In the opening years of the nineteenth century 
 classic tragedy, though still supported by the conservative 
 critics, was obviously moribund. But meanwhile many 
 influences were at work preparing the way for a renais- 
 sance of the drama in a form which should combine the 
 literary qualities of classic tragedy with the abundant 
 life and vigour of the sensational melodrama, which was 
 the favourite amusement of the general theatre-going 
 public. Mme. de StaeTs De VAllemagne had directed 
 attention to the plays of Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller. 
 Currency was given to Schlegel's severe and often pre- 
 judiced strictures upon the French school by Mme. Necker 
 de Saussure's translation (1814) of his Vorlesungen uber 
 dramatischen Kunst und Litteratur. In particular, there 
 was an increasing interest in Shakespeare, whom the 
 classicists continued to disparage as rude and barbaric, 
 but who for the romantics was " ce Dieu de theatre en qui 
 semblent r6unis, comme dans une trinite" . . . Corneille, 
 
 224
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 225 
 
 Moliere, Beaumarchais " (Hugo's Preface to Cromwell). 
 This interest was greatly stimulated by the appearance 
 in 182 1 of a revised edition of Pierre Le Tourneur's bad 
 prose translation (1776-82), with an important introduc- 
 tion by Guizot, afterwards reprinted separately, by 
 Stendhal's work, Racine et Shakespeare, and by the essays 
 of Barante and Villemain ; while in 1827 a profound 
 impression was made upon critics and public alike by 
 a series of performances of Shakespeare by an English 
 company in Paris. At the same time the periodical 
 criticisms of the stage in journals of advanced opinions 
 like Le Globe and La Revue Frangaise helped to spread a 
 feeling of dissatisfaction with the long-accepted conven- 
 tions of tragedy and a desire for a fresh and freer type of 
 art. Then in 1827 came Hugo's manifesto in his famous 
 Preface to Cromwell, in which, amid much fantastic 
 generalisation and a vast amount of rhodomontade, the 
 writer's conceptions of the new romantic drama were 
 boldly set forth. From this Preface, supplemented by 
 the essays which he prefixed to some of his later plays, a 
 clear view of the cardinal principles of the new school 
 may be obtained. In the first place, Hugo proclaims the 
 necessity of a return to nature, or realism. The drama 
 should cease to present an idealised, that is, an artificially 
 simplified, arranged, incomplete, and therefore falsified 
 image of life. It should hold up the mirror to life itself 
 in all its amplitude, variety, and contradictions. Its 
 primary object should be truth " la resurrection de la 
 vie integrate. " Hence, as no such division exists in 
 actual life, the old arbitrary distinction between tragedy 
 and comedy must be abandoned : the drama must com- 
 bine both in a single genre and find a place in its compre- 
 hensive framework for tears and laughter, beauty and 
 ugliness, the sublime and the grotesque. But this return 
 
 Q
 
 226 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 to nature further involves the substitution of the concrete 
 individual for the abstract type ; for the truth to life 
 which the dramatist is called upon to seek is truth, not 
 to the broad features which are common to humanity at 
 large, but to those infinite varieties of it which are pro- 
 duced by different conditions in different ages and 
 countries. This theory of specific truth (which will be 
 recognised as the application to the drama of the general 
 romantic principle of individualism) in turn leads to 
 what Hugo calls " la caractristique," otherwise " la 
 couleur locale." This for him is essential : " le drame 
 doit etre radicalement impr^gne* de cette couleur des 
 temps ; elle doit en quelque sorte y etre dans l'air, de 
 facon qu'on s'apercoive qu'en y entrant et qu'en en 
 sortant qu'on a change de siecle et d'atmosphre." From 
 all these considerations the rejection of the unities follows 
 as a matter of course. " Croiser l'mute* de temps a l'unite 
 de lieu comme les barreaux d'une cage, et y faire p6dan- 
 tesquement entrer, de par Aristote, tous ces faits, tous 
 ces peuples, toutes ces figures que la Providence deroule 
 a si grandes masses dans la realite" ! C'est mutiler hommes 
 et choses, c'est faire grimacer l'histoire." The new 
 drama must be a free drama in form as well as in spirit, 
 and this freedom must prevail no less in its versification. 
 Hugo accepts the alexandrine as the best medium for the 
 poetic drama, but it must be an alexandrine liberated 
 from all external restraints and flexible enough to meet 
 every demand of dialogue. " Malheur au poete si son 
 vers fait la petite bouche ! " 
 
 The Preface to Cromwell brought the controversy of 
 romanticism and classicism to a head. Two years later 
 it culminated in the great " battle of Hernani," of which 
 Gautier has left us a vivid account in his Hisioire du 
 Romantisme. On the first night of the play the Comdie
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 227 
 
 Francaise was packed with an excited crowd composed 
 of the most fiery partisans of the rival schools. " II 
 suffisait de jeter les yeux sur ce public pour se convaincre 
 qu'il ne s'agissait pas la d'une representation ordinaire ; 
 que deux systemes, deux partis, deux armees, deux 
 civilisations meme ce n'est pas trop dire etaient en 
 presence." All Young France had gathered there, im- 
 patient for the fray, conspicuous among its leaders being 
 Gautier himself in his notorious " gilet rouge " ; " l'or- 
 chestre et le balcon etaient paves de cranes academiques et 
 classiques. ' ' From first to last the performance was accom- 
 panied by lively demonstrations of approval and protest ; 
 every point was made the pretext for charge and counter- 
 charge; the intervals were noisy with disputes in which 
 the opponents sometimes came to blows; and in the end the 
 curtain fell amid a storm. After this, the battle spread from 
 the theatre to the press and raged for many days, but that 
 historic night really assured the victory of romanticism. 
 
 64. Dumas. While, however, the date of this per- 
 formance February 25, 1830 is taken as marking the 
 opening of a new era in the annals of the French drama, 
 Hernani was in fact neither the first example nor the 
 first success of romanticism on the stage. The new type 
 of play in all its essentials, though in prose instead of 
 verse, had already been created just a year before 
 (February n, 1829) by that amazing and fertile genius, 
 Alexandre Dumas (see post, pp. 241-43) in his Henri III 
 et sa Cour. " Je ne me declarerai pas fondateur d'un 
 genre," wrote Dumas himself, with his customary gener- 
 osity, " parce que effectivement, je n'ai rien fonde," and 
 he names among his forerunners Hugo (with reference to 
 the unacted ^Cromwell and its Preface), Merimee (see post, 
 pp. 2^2-53), and the now-forgotten playwrights Vitet, 1 
 
 1 Les Barricades, Les fctats de Blois, La Mort de Henri III (1827-29).
 
 228 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Lceve-Veimars, 1 and Cave* and Dittmer ; 2 but notwith- 
 standing his disclaimer, the honour of priority really 
 belongs to him. Independently or in collaboration Dumas 
 wrote many other plays of the historical-romantic kind, of 
 which the most important are Richard d' Arlington (1831) 
 and La Tour de Nesle (1832), while in Antony (1831) he 
 achieved an equal triumph in the domestic tragedy of 
 modern life. The real sources of his dramatic inspiration 
 must undoubtedly be sought in the popular milodrame, 
 which he simply vitalised by sheer power of genius. In 
 the higher literary qualities his plays are patently defi- 
 cient ; in execution they are often crude ; they depend too 
 much upon purely theatrical tricks and devices ; their 
 psychology has neither depth nor solidity ; their style, 
 judged merely as style, is poor. But whatever their 
 defects as literature, they have extraordinary merits as 
 plays. As we can realise even in reading them, Dumas 
 had the keenest sense of the stage. His technique is 
 bold and simple ; the interest of his plots begins with 
 the very beginning and is sustained with unflagging 
 energy to the end ; his dialogue is vivacious and eminently 
 dramatic ; his characters act their parts before our eyes. 
 To find examples of these qualities we need go no farther 
 than Henri III and Antony. The former is full of life, 
 movement, and passion, and while it is easy enough to 
 sneer at the latter as " glorified melodrama," it is still 
 a masterpiece of clever construction with a denouement 
 which is one of the most striking on the modern 
 stage. 
 
 65. Hugo. But though Dumas possessed all the 
 powers requisite for popular success, he was not the man 
 to convince the critics of the poetic possibilities of the new 
 
 1 Seines Contemporaines and Seines Historiques (1827-30). 
 * Les SoirSes de Neuilly, Esquisses Dramatiques et Historiques (1827).
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 229 
 
 type of play. For this a great poet was needed, and such 
 a great poet appeared in Hugo. 
 
 As we have seen, Hugo had scarcely won his laurels as 
 a lyrist when he turned his attention to the drama. His 
 first play, Cromwell, a huge, straggling piece, which fills 
 a volume of more than 300 pages, was not intended 
 for the stage, and as it stands is quite unactable, but it 
 led the way to Marion Delorme (written in 1829 but, 
 prohibited by the censor, not performed till 1831) and 
 Hernani. Then followed Le Roi s' 'amuse (1832) ; three 
 dramas in prose, of inferior quality Lucrice Borgia 
 (1833), Marie Tudor (1833), and Angelo, Tyran de Padoue 
 (1835) ; Ruy Bias (1838), which repeated the brilliant 
 success of Hernani ; and a grandiose and incoherent 
 " melodrame epique," Les Burgraves (1843). After the 
 failure of this last effort Hugo renounced the stage. His 
 remaining work in the drama comprises a collection of 
 fanciful little pieces entitled Le Theatre en Liberie, and 
 published after his death, and a five-act tragedy, Torque- 
 mada (1882). 
 
 Hugo's dramatic theories have been sufficiently ex- 
 plained, and it is only necessary now to say that his 
 own plays are written in accordance with them. Yet 
 when we compare his principles with his practice a 
 number of serious inconsistencies come to light. While 
 he rejects the artificial simplicity and dignity of classic 
 tragedy, his return to nature most emphatically does not 
 result in a return to truth, for life as he depicts it is life 
 seen through the medium of an imagination which 
 magnifies and distorts everything he looks at. Even the 
 local colour to which he attached so much importance, 
 and of which he makes such prodigal use, is scarcely more 
 than superficial ; he obtains some wonderfully picturesque 
 effects from the setting of his actions and his minutely
 
 230 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 detailed reproduction of the manners of the different 
 times and places in which he lays his scenes ; but his 
 interpretation of history is as a rule unsound. Moreover, 
 at two other points not yet referred to he fails conspicu- 
 ously to fulfil the conditions enunciated in his own 
 programme. The dramatist, he had insisted, should 
 avoid the " tirades " of the classic stage, and be careful 
 always, instead of speaking for his characters, to allow 
 them to speak for themselves. But these excellent 
 precepts are perpetually ignored by him. His plays are 
 full of " tirades," often very eloquent and impressive in 
 themselves (instance the great monologue of Don Carlos 
 in Hernani, iv. 2), but still " tirades " ; while one of his 
 principal failings as a dramatist is his want of objectivity, 
 that is, his inability to stand outside his plot and his 
 characters. Even in theory he had confused the functions 
 of lyrism and of the drama ; " c'est surtout la posie 
 lyrique qui sied au drame," he had written in the Preface 
 to Cromwell ; and this fundamentally vicious misconcep- 
 tion is illustrated at large in his own work. For his plays 
 are not simply poetic ; they are essentially operatic, their 
 dialogues continually overflowing into a lyrism altogether 
 in excess of the demands of the situation in hand and 
 often dramatically out of keeping with it. These are 
 grave defects. But even more important are the violence 
 of his plots and the unreality of his characterisation. 
 His ultra-romantic intrigues are fabricated without 
 reference to the logic of events ; in his love of sensation 
 he has recourse to the crudest devices and spectacular 
 accessories of melodrama ; he revels in the monstrous, 
 in the physically horrible, in the grotesque, which is his 
 substitute for comedy. And as with incident, so with 
 character : truth to nature is everywhere sacrificed to 
 mere effect. His men and women are in a sense alive ;
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 231 
 
 but they live only with the factitious life of the world 
 beyond the footlights ; they are not so much individuals 
 as gigantic embodiments of passion typical creations of 
 the romantic imagination, like Didier, Hernani, Don Ruy 
 Gomes de Silva, Ruy Bias, Don C6sar de Bazan, or 
 strange, incredible compounds of unresolved contradic- 
 tions, like Cromwell, Lucrece Borgia, Triboulet. In view 
 of all these weaknesses it is impossible to class Hugo 
 among the really great dramatists of the world. But 
 we must not therefore overlook the extraordinary qualities 
 which, if they do not redeem his shortcomings, often 
 make us blind to them his tremendous power of imagina- 
 tion, his boundless vigour, his wealth of passion, the skill 
 with which he works up his situations to the highest pitch 
 of emotional intensity, and beyond and above all, the 
 marvellous beauty of much of his poetry. We may find 
 what fault we will with Hernani on the score of its funda- 
 mental theatricality ; but the wonderful love-duet in the 
 fifth act deserves to be placed beside the balcony scene 
 in Romeo and Juliet. 
 
 66. Vigny. Two other writers who have already been 
 considered as poets also claim attention among the 
 dramatists of the earlier nineteenth century Vigny and 
 Musset.* 
 
 The contrast which we have noted between Vigny and 
 Hugo as poets reappears in their work as dramatists, for 
 while Hugo's plays are compounded of sensational interest 
 and passionate lyrism, Vigny's belong to the literature of 
 psychology and thought. His theory of the drama was 
 entirely romantic : "La scene francaise," he wrote in 
 1829, and therefore before the issue had been decided, 
 " s'ouvrira-t-elle, oui ou non, a une tragedie moderne, 
 produisant : dans sa conception un tableau large de la 
 vie, au lieu d'un tableau resserre de la catastrophe d'une
 
 232 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 intrigue ; dans sa composition, des caracteres, non des 
 roles, des scenes paisibles sans drame, melees a des scenes 
 comiques et tragiques ; dans son execution, un style 
 familier, comique, tragique, et parfois epique ? " But 
 while he was thus at one with his romantic contemporaries 
 in his general view of the drama, his own distinctive 
 quality is suggested rather by his further remark that 
 " si l'art est une fable, il doit etre une fable philosophique " 
 (Preface to La MarSchale d'Ancre). He began with two 
 translations, both in verse, from Shakespeare Shylock 
 (1828), which was never acted, and Othello (1829), the 
 success of which undoubtedly contributed to the triumph 
 of the romantic cause. 1 His original dramatic work 
 consists of three plays only a comedy in one act, Quitte 
 Pour la Peur (1833), and two tragedies in prose, La 
 Marechale d'Ancre (1831) and Chatterton (1835). The 
 former of these is an historical study of the minority of 
 Louis XIII. , and is, according to the author's own state- 
 ment, designed to illustrate a number of ideas, and 
 primarily that of the power of destiny, " contre laquelle 
 nous luttons toujours, mais qui l'emporte sur nous des que 
 le caractere s'affaiblit ou s'altere, et qui, d'un pas tres sur, 
 nous mene a ses fins mysterieuses, et souvent a l'expiation, 
 par des voies impossibles a preVoir." Conscientiously and 
 carefully wrought, this piece however impresses us more 
 by its intellectuality than by its creative force, and while 
 it may still be read with interest, its failure on the stage 
 can easily be understood. Chatterton, on the other hand, 
 
 1 Dumas, in his Mimoires, describes the excitement of the romantics 
 in anticipation of the first performance of this play : " Cette future 
 repr6sentation d'Othello faisait grand bruit. Quoique nous eussions 
 mieux aim6 dtre soutenus par des troupes nationales et par un general 
 francais, nous comprenions qu'il fallait accepter les armes qu'on nous 
 apportait contre nos ennemis du moment, de l'instant surtout ou ces 
 armes sortaient de 1'arsenal de notre grand maitre a tous, Shakespeare."
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 233 
 
 has genuine dramatic power, and power of a kind quite 
 different from that which we find in the plays of Dumas 
 or Hugo. Of its central thesis the tragedy of genius in a 
 materialistic society and of the connection of this with 
 Vigny's general philosophy, we have already spoken. 
 The point now to emphasise is that this is presented as 
 a tragedy not of outward incident but of the inner life. 
 "Je crois surtout a l'avenir et au besoin universel de 
 choses serieuses," Vigny declares in his Preface ; " main- 
 tenant que l'amusement des yeux par des surpris enfantins 
 fait sourir tout le monde au milieu meme de ses grandes 
 aventures, c'est, ce me semble, le temps du Drame de la 
 Pensee." And it is entirely as a " drame de la pensee," 
 or psychological drama, that Chatterton must be judged. 
 " L'action materielle est assez peu de chose. . . . C'est 
 l'histoire d'un homme qui a ecrit une lettre le matin et 
 qui attend la reponse jusqu'au soir ; elle arrive, et le tue. 
 Mais Taction morale est tout." In working out his theme 
 Vigny purposely confines himself to the severest simplicity 
 of intrigue, and thus approximates to the type rather of 
 the classic than of the romantic drama. But this, like 
 his adherence to the unity of time, is the result of his 
 deliberate concentration of interest, and has nothing 
 whatever to do with mere academic theory. As the title 
 of the play must necessarily be specially attractive to 
 English readers it may be well to add that Vigny did not 
 attempt to give a literal version of the boy-poet's fate. 
 Kitty Bell, her avaricious and jealous husband " gonfle 
 d'ale, de porter et de roastbeef," the good old quaker, 
 Beckford the Lord Mayor, the young Lord Talbot, are 
 all creatures of the imagination, and Chatterton himself 
 is pure idealisation. " Le Poete 6tait tout pour moi ; 
 Chatterton n'etait qu'un nom d'homme, et je viens 
 d'ecarter a dessein des faits exacts de sa vie pour ne
 
 234 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 prendre de sa destinee que ce qui la rend un example a 
 jamais deplorable d'une noble misere." 
 
 67. Musset. After the success of his Conies d'Espagne 
 et d' Italic Musset turned to the drama, but the failure of 
 his one-act play La Nuit Vdnitienne (1831) was so decisive 
 that he determined to write no more for the stage, and 
 though he continued to use the dramatic form he did so 
 without reference to the practical conditions of representa- 
 tion. Towards the end of his life, indeed, the histrionic 
 possibilities of his plays were suddenly discovered, and 
 henceforth they had their secure place on the boards. 
 But the fact that they were conceived and executed 
 without thought of the mechanical necessities of actual 
 performance is important because it explains one of their 
 salient features their entire freedom from everything 
 suggestive of theatrical convention. From this point of 
 view Musset is by far the most romantic of the romantic 
 dramatists. His earliest work, La Coupe et les Livres, a 
 curious compound of Byron and Die Rduber of Schiller, 
 and A Quoi revent les Jeunes Filles, a graceful but fragile 
 fantasy, were, like Les Matrons du Feu in the volume of 
 1830, merely experimental. But his real power was soon 
 shown in the tragi-comedy On ne badine pas avec V Amour 
 and the fine study of character, Lorenzaccio (1834). These 
 and the other dramas which from time to time he pub- 
 lished in the Revue des Deux Mondes were ultimately 
 collected under the general title of Comedies et Proverbes 
 {e.g., Les Caprices de Marianne, Andre" del Sarte, II ne faut 
 jurer de rien, II faut qu'une Porte soit ouverte ou fermie). 
 Many influences have been detected in Musset's dramatic 
 work ; there is something in it of Shakespeare, something 
 of Byron, something of Racine, something of Moliere, 
 Marivaux, and Beaumarchais. But in reading it we are 
 after all most impressed by its originality ; it is, we feel,
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 235 
 
 his work and his alone work that no other writer could 
 have done. As we should anticipate, he excels particu- 
 larly in the treatment of love, which he portrays under 
 many aspects, now with delicate badinage, now with 
 tragic intensity, but always with wonderful subtlety and 
 discrimination. His plays abound in fancy, wit, and 
 poetry, and whether in verse or in prose they are char- 
 acterised by an unfailing charm of style. As literature 
 they must undoubtedly be regarded as the finest products 
 of the romantic drama of their time. 
 
 68. Other Dramatists. While the struggle of the 
 romantics and the classics was at its height, one writer 
 of some distinction the author of Les Messeniennes 
 endeavoured to keep a middle course between the two 
 extremes. Delavigne's first play, written before the 
 romantic movement on the stage had begun, Les Vepres 
 Siciliennes (1819), was entirely classic in form and style, 
 and the enthusiasm with which it was received seemed 
 for the moment to augur well for a revival of the older 
 type of tragedy. But his Marino Faliero, produced 
 between Henri III and Hernani, showed that he was 
 yielding to some extent to the new influences, and in his 
 later historical dramas, Louis XI (1832), which was based 
 on Scott's Quentin Durward, and Les Enfants d'lidouard 
 (1833), which was derived from Shakespeare, these in- 
 fluences were even more pronounced. Delavigne was, 
 however, a very moderate innovator, and his work 
 represents a land of compromise between the two schools. 
 But a decade later another playwright, Francois Ponsard 
 (1814-67), made a bold attempt to initiate a classic 
 reaction. His first tragedy, Lucrlce, secured a veritable 
 triumph at the Odeon in the very year (1843) in which the 
 failure of Les Burgraves brought Hugo's theatrical career 
 to a close. But this success, which was due in large
 
 236 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 measure to the genius of the great actress Rachel, was 
 not repeated either by Ponsard himself or by the few 
 other poets who followed his lead. The more extravagant 
 tendencies of romanticism, it is true, were now checked, 
 and Corneille and Racine were restored to the stage ; but 
 a return to classicism was obviously impossible, and, as 
 we shall see later, the modern drama took another direc- 
 tion. Even Ponsard is remembered to-day, not for his 
 regular tragedies, but for his comedy of manners, L'Hon- 
 neur et V Argent (1853), and his two historical plays, 
 Charlotte Corday (1850) and Le Lion Amoureux (1866). 
 
 The comedy of the first half of the nineteenth century 
 need not detain us, as apart from the writers who have 
 already been mentioned incidentally, it contains only one 
 name of any importance, that of Augustin Eugene Scribe 
 (1791-1861). For upwards of fifty years Scribe was a 
 prolific and successful caterer for the amusement of the 
 theatre-going public, and in collaboration with numerous 
 other playwrights produced nearly 400 pieces, small 
 and large, of various kinds comedies (e.g., Valerie, Le 
 Mariage d' Argent, La Camaraderie, Bataille de Dames) ; 
 farces and vaudevilles (e.g., La Demoiselle d Marier, Le 
 Charlatanisme) ; emotional dramas (e.g., Adrienne Le- 
 couvreur) ; historical dramas (Bertrand et Raton, Le Verre 
 d'Eau) ; opera-librettos (e.g., La Juive, Les Huguenots, Le 
 Pr ophite). His work has very slight literary value, but 
 he was a consummate theatrical craftsman, and if his 
 methods were mechanical, the perfection of his technique 
 must still be recognised. 
 
 69. The Novel. Apart from the highly poetical 
 romances of Chateaubriand and Mme. de Stael the first 
 quarter of the nineteenth century contributed little of 
 value to prose fiction, though one very notable book 
 stands out as an exception, the short semi-autobiographi-
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 237 
 
 cal Adolphe (1816), by the publicist and statesman Ben- 
 jamin Constant (1767-1830), which, while in the direct 
 line of Rene and Obermann, is remarkable as anticipating 
 the more sober and precise methods of the later analy- 
 tical school. After 1825, however, the novel underwent 
 enormous expansion, and soon became, as it has since 
 remained, the most wide-cultivated and most popular of 
 all the forms of literature. Though, on account of the 
 variety which was henceforth one of its principal charac- 
 teristics, exact classification is impossible, the prose 
 fiction of our present period may conveniently be treated 
 in three divisions the historical romance, the novel of 
 sentiment, and the novel of manners, or realistic novel of 
 modern life. 
 
 70. The Historical Romance : Vigny Merimee. 
 The historical romance was a natural product of the 
 romantic movement which, as we have seen, stimulated 
 an interest in history, especially in national history, a 
 love of local colour, and a sense of the picturesqueness of 
 the past. Many influences would thus have to be taken 
 into account in any consideration of the causes of its 
 rise and popularity, but here we need go no farther than 
 that of Scott, who was as much as Shakespeare the idol 
 of the whole romantic school. The historical romance 
 may indeed be found in germ in Les Martyrs of Chateau- 
 briand, but in germ only. Its immediate literary source 
 was the Waverley Novels. 
 
 The first important example of the new fiction was 
 Vigny's Cinq-Mars, ou une Conspiration sous Louis XIII 
 (1826). This was directly inspired by Scott, yet in one 
 fundamental particular Vigny departed from his master's 
 method. It was Scott's habit to concentrate his interest 
 upon his fictitious characters and to introduce his his- 
 torical characters only in connection with these. Vigny
 
 238 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 found fault with this practice : " Je pensais que les 
 romans historiques de W. Scott 6taient trop facile a faire, 
 en ce que Taction tait placed dans des personnages 
 inventes que Ton fait agir comme Ton veut, tandis qu'il 
 passe de loin en loin a l'horizon une grande figure his- 
 torique dont la presence accroit 1'importance du livre et 
 lui donne une date " (Journal d'un Potie, 1847). His own 
 method therefore is the reverse of this ; the characters 
 of his " premier plan " are all historical ; his fictitious 
 figures are figures in the background only. But, on the 
 other hand, he claimed the right to treat his historical 
 personages with the utmost freedom and to subordinate 
 them to his philosophic purpose, his principle being that 
 " le nom propre n'est rien que l'example et la preuve de 
 l'idee." It was upon this principle, it will be remembered, 
 that he afterwards dealt with the story of Chatterton. 
 Like La Marechale d'Ancre, therefore, Cinq-Mars is 
 written to expound the author's views about History, with 
 the result that the characters are too much simplified in 
 the interest of these views to be quite true to life. Hence, 
 despite its real dramatic power and the erudition which 
 fills its pages, the work is not entirely satisfactory either 
 as fiction or as history. To find Vigny at his best we must 
 turn rather to the three nouvelles Laurette, ou le Cachet 
 Rouge, La Veillee de Vincennes, and La Vie et la Mort du 
 Capitaine Renaud, ou La Canne de Jonc composing the 
 volume entitled Servitude et Grande urs Militair es (1835) : 
 strong and simple stones, imbued with the fine stoical 
 spirit which we have already noted in his poetry. 
 
 * Another writer of the first rank who helped to create 
 the historical romance, though his greatest work in fiction 
 was on other lines (see post, pp. 252-53), was Merimee, 
 whose Chronique du Rlgne de Charles IX appeared three 
 years aitefXinq-Mars. Tnls is specially noteworthy as a
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 239 
 
 scholarly and accurate study of the manners of the age 
 with which it deals. But though historical events are 
 introduced into it, its plot, which is composed of the 
 adventures of a young Calvinist, Bernard de Mergy, at 
 the time of the Massacre of Saint-Barthelemy and the 
 siege of La Rochelle, is entirely fictitious. 
 
 71. Hugo. Hugo's place in the development of the 
 historical rornance is similar to that which he occupies 
 in the romantic drama ; in each case he had his fore- 
 runners, and in each case he established the new type with 
 one brilliant success. His early essays in prose fiction 
 the wildly extravagant Hans d'Islande (1823), the equally 
 extravagant Bug-Jargal (1826), and Le Dernier Jour d'un 
 Condamne (1829), which, like the later Claude Gueux 
 (1834), was a plea for the abolition of capital punishment 
 are hardly worthy of serious attention. It was in 
 Notre -Dame de Paris (1831) that he exhibited all the 
 wonderful powers, and, along with these, all the charac- 
 teristic weaknesses, which had gone to the making of 
 Hernani only a year before. Like Hernani, Notre-Dame 
 is a difficult work to appraise. Its crudely concocted 
 plot moves through scenes of violent sensationalism to a 
 catastrophe of undiluted horror ; its characters the 
 Bohemian girl Esmeralda, Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers 
 (the typical romantic hero), the priest Claude Frollo (the 
 typical romantic villain), the sympathetic monster Quasi- 
 modo the bell-ringer (one of Hugo's many grotesques and 
 a kind of parallel to Triboulet in Le Roi s' amuse) are one 
 and all creatures of the melodramatic stage. Yet not- 
 withstanding its incredible intrigue and its flagrant 
 unreality, it is still a powerful and enthralling romance, 
 and its wealth of local colour (its action passes in the 
 last year of the reign of Louis XI.) makes it intensely 
 picturesque. In particular we must lay stress upon the
 
 240 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 prodigious graphic power with which in its pages Hugo 
 has brought the whole world of fifteenth-century Paris 
 once more to life. The two chapters in the third book 
 Notre-Dame and Paris d Vol d'Oiseau may be cited, 
 among many others, as masterpieces of descriptive 
 writing. 
 
 Later in life Hugo returned twice to historical romance : 
 in L' Homme qui Rit (1869), the scene of which is laid in the 
 England of the Stuarts, but which merely caricatures the 
 life and manners of the time ; and in Quatre-Vingt-Treize 
 (1872), a drama of the Revolution, grandiose and terrific, 
 but somewhat simpler in plot and more sober in style. 
 But meanwhile his humanitarian enthusiasm had led him 
 to turn from the past to the present, and as in Notre-Dame 
 he had painted a detailed picture of Paris in the age of 
 Louis XL, so in L es Miserab les (1862) he produced an 
 immense and crowded panorama of modern French 
 civilisation. This work is therefore interesting as a 
 striking example of the transformation of the romance of 
 past history into the romance of the history of con- 
 temporary life. 1 It is further important as the fullest 
 expression of Hugo's social theories. Straggling and 
 incoherent in plot, it is not so much a novel as a bundle 
 of loosely connected novels, each of which is overlaid 
 with episodes which at times (as in the case of the long 
 account of the battle of Waterloo) have little or nothing 
 to do with the general theme. But confused and digres- 
 sive as the action is, three main lines of interest may be 
 followed through it : the story of the convict Jean 
 
 1 Another modern romance, Les Travailleurs de la Met (1866), may 
 be dismissed with a mere reference. It is a sort of prose epic of the 
 struggle of man with the forces of nature, fantastic in plot, rhapsodical 
 in style, but with many pages of vivid description of the Jersey coast 
 and the sea. It contains one very famous incident the battle of 
 Gilliatt with the gigantic octopus.
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 241 
 
 Valjean, which provides a sort of backbone for the whole ; 
 the story of Fantine, her fall, her misery, her love for her 
 illegitimate child, and her death ; and the love-story of 
 this child, Cosette, and young Marius, which occupies 
 the larger portion of the closing books ; and all these are 
 made the vehicle of Hugo's social gospel- of his optimistic 
 faith in the essential goodness of human nature and the 
 reality of repentance and redemption ; of his charge 
 against the whole system of society, which he ' accuses 
 of being more than half responsible for the crimes which 
 it punishes with a severity which is as senseless as it is 
 brutal ; of his eloquent pleadings for the spirit of brother- 
 hood, sympathy, and love. As a romance, the work is 
 vigorous, dramatic, and, in spite of its inordinate length 
 and prolixity, engrossing. As a social study, it is un- 
 fortunately damaged by the writer's want of mental 
 balance, by its extravagances and violent sensationalism, 
 and even more by its crude psychology, which is still 
 that of melodrama rather than of real life. 
 
 72. Dumas. While historians of literature are always 
 willing to give the author of Henri III and Antony a 
 prominent place among the creators of the romantic 
 drama, they are generally inclined to pass over his prose 
 fiction as unworthy of their attention. But it was in 
 prose fiction that his greatest and most enduring successes 
 were achieved, and as a writer of prose fiction he certainly 
 does not deserve the contempt with which he is commonly 
 treated by the critics. The son of one of Napoleon's 
 generals, and the grandson of a full-blooded Haytian 
 negress, Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was born 
 at Villers-Cotterets (Aisne) in 1802 or 1803. He began 
 life with a magnificent constitution, boundless energy, 
 and an insatiable thirst for adventure, and during a 
 career crowded with varied incident he travelled much, 
 
 R
 
 242 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 dabbled in politics, founded magazines, edited newspapers, 
 made fortunes and lost them, and all the time maintained 
 an almost incredible literary activity. Worn out with 
 his incessant labours, he died in 1870 at his son's villa 
 at Puys near Dieppe. Dumas' collected works fill 277 
 volumes, and include books of travel, plays, and a large 
 number of miscellaneous writings (one of which, Mes 
 Bites, is a delightful record of his love of animals), besides 
 the prose fiction now in question. His reputation rests 
 in the main upon two cycles of romances the D'Artagnan 
 trilogy (Les Trots Mousquetaires, Vingt Ans Aprte, and Le 
 Vicomte de Bragelonne, which Stevenson declared to be 
 the finest romance in the world) and the Valois trilogy 
 (Marguerite de Valois, La Dame de Monsoreau, and Les 
 Quar ante-Cinq) and a few independent romances, like 
 the ever-famous Comte de Monte -Cristo ; though two 
 other series the Regency cycle and the Marie Antoinette 
 cycle must also be taken into account. Though he 
 introduces an abundance of fiction into his narratives, he 
 depends for his chief interest upon historical events and 
 characters, very freely handled, and his work may thus 
 be defined as romanticised history rather than historical 
 romance. In regard to the two charges continually 
 brought against him that of wholesale plagiarism and 
 that of manufacturing his books with the aid of numerous 
 assistants (" Dumas et Compagnie " early became a 
 familiar gibe) little needs to be said. He certainly acted 
 upon the Molieresque maxim of taking his own wherever 
 he found it, and was often guilty of barefaced thefts, and 
 it is equally certain that he was scarcely more than the 
 editor or reviser of a good deal of the matter which 
 appeared under his name. But the distinctive qualities 
 of his work the fecundity of invention, the wit, th,e 
 vivacity, the racy and dramatic dialogue, the easy swing
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 243 
 
 of the narrative, the high spirits, the contagious zest of 
 adventure are all his own. His history may be un- 
 historical, his characterisation superficial, his style careless 
 and faulty. But one merit he has which even the most 
 exigent critic cannot deny him the gift of story-telling. 
 The wonderful chapters in Monte -Cristo describing 
 Edmond Dantes' imprisonment and escape from the 
 Chateau dTf would alone entitle him to a place with the 
 greatest story-tellers in literature. 
 
 73. The Novel of Sentiment : George Sand. The 
 novel of sentiment, or idealistic noveT, "WIffcTr*rTourished 
 side by side with the historical romance, was not like 
 this the creation of the romantic movement ; it was 
 rather the continuation of the tradition initiated by La 
 Nouvelle Heloise and carried on in the early nineteenth 
 century by Rene, Deiphine, and Corinne. Fundamentally 
 personal and subjective, it lent itself freely to all kinds 
 of didactic purposes, and thus easily passed into the 
 roman d these. Naturally, it proved specially attractive 
 to women-writers, one of whom has a recognised standing 
 among the greater novelists of the time. Armandine 
 Lucile Aurore Dupin, whom we always know under her 
 pen-name of George Sand, was born in 1804 in Paris, but 
 spent much of her girlhood at Nohant in Berri, in which 
 beautiful region, which is one of the loveliest in all France, 
 she imbibed that love of nature which was ever after a 
 passion with her. In 1822 she married the Baron Dude- 
 vant, but after nine years of unhappiness separated from 
 him and settled in Paris, with the intention of making her 
 living by her pen. Forming an association with Jules 
 Sandeau (from whom she took her pseudonym) she col- 
 laborated with him in a novel, Rose et Blanche (1831), 
 which was the first step in her literary career. Her later 
 connection with Alfred de Musset has already been referred
 
 244 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 to. After the revolution of 1848 she gave up her Bohe- 
 mian life and retired to Nohant, where she passed her 
 remaining years, and where she died in 1876. Her 
 numerous novels fall into four well-defined groups, the 
 divisions between which are mainly though not entirely 
 chronological. She began with novels of passion and 
 revolt, in which she gave unrestrained expression to her 
 own turbulent feelings, and into which she put a great 
 deal of her personal experience ; e.g., Indiana (1832), 
 Valentine (1833), Lilia (1833), Jacques (1834), all of 
 which deal more or less with the tragedy of misplaced 
 love and uncongenial marriage, and are strongly 
 " feminist " in tone. Then under the influence of 
 Lamennais and Pieire Leroux the Saint-Simonian, she 
 turned her fiction to the service of humanitarian and 
 religious ideas, and wrote the socialistic romances Les 
 Maitres Mosaistes (1838), Le Compagnon du Tour de 
 France (1840), Le Meunier d'Angibault (1845), and the 
 mystical Spiridion (1840). To this group also belong 
 two of her best-known works, Consuelo (1842) and its 
 sequel La Comtesse de Rudolstadt (1843), which together 
 contain the life-history of a famous singer (tempo 1740-86), 
 and are curiously compounded of humanitarian theories 
 and sensationalism. A third division is composed of her 
 romans champitres, or idyllic stories of the peasantry and 
 country life La Mare au Diable (1846), La Petite Fadette 
 (1849), Francois le Champi (1850), Les Maitres Sonneurs 
 (1853), etc. Finally, in Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dori 
 (1853), Le Marquis de Villemer (i860), Jean de la Roche 
 (1861), and other novels, she went back to the purely 
 romantic type of her earliest work, though her manner 
 was now much more subdued and her feminism far less 
 aggressive. George Sand was a rapid and fluent writer, 
 and her novels are largely improvisations. Deficient in
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 245 
 
 restraint and in the faculty of self-criticism, she gave free 
 rein to her exuberant genius, with the result that nearly 
 all her books suffer from prolixity. Her strength lies 
 in her passion, in her emotional sincerity, in her wonderful 
 descriptions of nature, and in the flow and charm of her 
 style. These qualities are to be found in all her writings. 
 But on the whole her simplest work is her best. She is 
 now remembered mainly for her tender and wholesome 
 peasant stories, which, though highly idyllic in tone, are 
 marked by great truth of detail, and which thus most 
 fully achieve her own avowed aim as an artist " idealisa- 
 tion du sentiment . . . dans un cadre de realite " (His- 
 toire de ma Vie, IV e partie, chap. xv.). 
 
 74. The Realistic Novel : Balza c. The realistic 
 movement in fiction, aiming as it (Set at the faithful and 
 impersonal representation of life, was fundamentally 
 opposed to romanticism and arose in reaction against it, 
 yet, as we shall see on turning to the great founder and 
 master of the new school, it was in its inception closely 
 connected with the historical romance. Honore de 
 Balzac was born at Tours in 1799. His father was a 
 southerner, his mother a Parisian and mondaine, and 
 efforts have been made to explain by reference to his 
 parentage the " double nature " of his genius, or combina- 
 tion of romantic and realistic tendencies in it : " father 
 and mother," it has been wittily said, " continued their 
 household disputes in the brain of their son." He was 
 educated at the College de Vendome in his native city 
 (for reminiscences of his schooldays, including his boyish 
 experiments in poetry and his chilblains, see the early 
 part of Louis Lambert), and presently put to the study 
 of law ; but he had made up his mind to be an author, 
 and having obtained his father's consent to a two years' 
 probation, he settled at twenty in a garret in Paris,
 
 246 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 resolved to succeed in literature or perish in the attempt. 
 He tried his hand first in a tragedy on Cromwell, but this 
 proving a total failure, he began to write tales of the most 
 extravagant and sensational kind, which were sold for 
 what they would fetch, published anonymously or under 
 various pseudonyms, and never afterwards acknowledged 
 by him. This hack-work continued for seven or eight 
 years. 1 His real career opened with Les Chouans (1829), 
 a kind of historical novel written under the inspiration of 
 Scott, and the powerful excursion into supernaturalism, 
 La Peau de Chagrin (1831) : books which together mark 
 the transition irom his early to his later work. Mean- 
 while, misled by his inordinate craving for wealth and 
 singularly sanguine temper, he was involving himself in 
 the commercial enterprises and speculations which were 
 to be the curse of his life. His fertile mind teemed with 
 plans for making huge fortunes rapidly, but the practical 
 result was that he was always burdened with debts and 
 harassed with financial difficulties. This fact had a 
 direct bearing upon his literary production and methods. 
 Forced to toil like a slave for publishers to whom he 
 mortgaged his brain and who often paid him outright 
 for a novel before a single page of it had been written, he 
 worked for twenty years at the highest pressure, sitting 
 at his desk sometimes for eighteen or twenty hours at a 
 stretch and keeping his imagination in a sort of fever by 
 enormous potations of coffee. In these circumstances 
 the wonder is, not that he broke down when he did, but 
 that even his " constitution of an ox " stood the strain 
 so long. He died of heart disease in 1850. 
 
 In many of the qualities of his work in the exaggera- 
 
 1 The immediate models of these frenzied productions were the 
 tales of Mrs. Radcliffe, " Monk" Lewis, and R. C. Maturin, for which 
 he had an admiration which clearly shows the romantic bias of his 
 mind.
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 247 
 
 tion so often conspicuous in his characterisation, in his 
 l ove of the gigantic and t he abnormal, 1 in his over- 
 wrought sentimentalism, in his occasional tendency to 
 mysticism, and in the melodramatic machinery of some 
 of his plots Balzac shows his intimate connection with 
 the romanticism of his generation. But in theory he 
 conceived the novel as a realistic representation of life, 
 and in so doing~placed himself beside the historian. The 
 commonly accepted romantic principle was that a writer 
 of fiction must select his material and arrange it with a 
 view to artistic effect. This principle he rejects. Like 
 the historian the novelist is concerned neither with selec- 
 tion nor with arrangement, neither with beauty nor with 
 morality ; he must take life as he finds it and aim only 
 at truth. In this conception he started from Scott. He 
 saw that the author of Waverley had endeavoured to 
 reproduce the past with a great wealth of realistic detail, 
 and he maintained that what his romances had done for 
 the past, the modern novel should do for the present : 
 that is, that it should still be historical, only its history 
 should be that not of some bygone period but of con- 
 temporary society. But while his theory began with 
 Scott it was greatly developed and amplified by certain 
 scientific ideas which he took over from the biologists, 
 especially Cuvier and Sainte-Hilaire. In the animal 
 world species exist, and these species have been moulded 
 and fashioned by the influence of their environments. In 
 the social world species of men exist, and these too have 
 
 1 He once admitted to George Sand that in his own way he was as 
 much an idealist as she was herself. " J'aime aussi les etres excep- 
 tionels ; j'en suis un. . . . Mais ces etres vulgaires m'interessent plus 
 qu'ils ne vous interessent. Je les grandis, je les idealise en sens inverse, 
 dans leur laideur ou leur betise. Je donne a leurs difformites des 
 proportions effrayantes ou grotesque " (G. Sand, Histoire de ma Vie, 
 IV partie, chap. xv.).
 
 248 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 been made what they are by their environments. Accord- 
 ing to Balzac, therefore, men must be considered not as 
 mere individuals but as social units as members of this 
 or that group, class, profession ; they must be placed in 
 their milieu and viewed in their relationship with it ; the 
 whole body of society must be studied as a background 
 and setting for each individual life. Hence the enormous 
 amount of attention which he bestowed not only upon 
 the physical, intellectual, and moral attributes of his 
 characters, but also upon their ancestry, antecedents, 
 surroundings, conditions, habits, and the long explanatory 
 essays with which he continually interrupts his narratives. 
 At the outset, he wrote his social studies independently 
 one of another, but he presently conceived the vast 
 ambition of combining them all into a comprehensive 
 whole a Comedie Humaine, as he ultimately called it 
 which should give in the imaginary society represented 
 in it a complete picture of the real society of the time. 
 "J'ai entrepris l'histoire de toute la Societe," he wrote to 
 a correspondent in 1846. "J'ai exprime' sou vent mon plan 
 dans cette seule phrase : une generation est un drame a 
 quatre ou cinq mille personnages saillants. Ce drame c'est 
 mon livre " (cp. his General Preface of 1842). As it stands 
 (and it is scarcely necessary to say that the immense 
 design was never carried out in its entirety), the Comedie 
 consists of ninety-six novels, tales, and short stories, 
 which, according to his own rather arbitrary arrange- 
 ment, fall into a number of subdivisions : Scenes de la Vie 
 Privie {e.g., La Maison du Chat-qui-Pelote, La Messe de 
 l' A thee) ; Scenes de la Vie de Province {e.g., Euginie 
 Grandet, Illusions Perdues) ; Seines de la Vie Parisienne 
 {e.g., Le Pire Goriot, Cisar Birotteau, La Cousine Bette) ; 
 Seines de la Vie Politique {e.g., Une Episode sous la Terreur); 
 Seines de la Vie Militaire {Les Chouans) ; Seines de la
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 249 
 
 Vie de Campagne {e.g., Le Medecin de Campagne) ; Etudes 
 Philosophiques {e.g., La Peau de Chagrin, La Recherche de 
 I'Absolu) ; and Etudes Analytiques {e.g., Petites Miser es de 
 la Vie Conjugate). Taken as a whole, the Comedie is by 
 no means so complete or so logical in composition as it 
 pleased Balzac to suppose ; there are enormous gaps in 
 it, while some of the stories {e.g., Sur Catherine de Medicis) 
 are simply forced into the scheme. Yet it none the less 
 presents a wonderfully rich, varied, and living picture of 
 French society during the first half of the nineteenth 
 century. 1 It is interesting to note that Balzac systematic- 
 ally employs the device of continually re-introducing the 
 same characters in different books for the purpose both 
 of binding them together and of giving substantial reality 
 to his imaginary world ; men and women who fill import- 
 ant roles in one portion of the Comedie reappear in minor 
 roles in other portions, while some of them, like Rastignac, 
 De Marsay, Bixiou, Horace Bianchon and Vautrin, play 
 conspicuous parts in many dramas. Balzac himself said 
 that his work would need a biographical dictionary. 
 Such a dictionary now exists in a volume of over 500 
 pages. 
 
 Two aspects of Balzac's realism deserve special atten- 
 tion. The first of these is his pre occupation wjthjghat 
 novelists hitherto had ignored as vulgar detail. Love, 
 generally in its vicious phases, fills indeed an immense 
 place in his books ; but money rather than love is the 
 motive force in the society which he portrays. He is 
 quite as much interested in the business activities of his 
 
 1 Omitting a few works which have no real place in it, the period 
 covered by the Comidie is practically coextensive with Balzac's own 
 life. It may be said to begin in Les Chouans with the Breton rising 
 of 1799, the year of his birth, and to end in 1846, when, in La Cousine 
 Bette, the infamous Baron Hulot (brother of the General Hulot of Les 
 Chouans), after the death of his saintly wife, marries his cook.
 
 250 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 characters, in their incomes, investments, and speculations, 
 as he is in their intrigues and marriages ; he has, in fact, 
 a perfect mania for figures and statistics, and there are 
 pages in some of his novels Char Birotteau is an excellent 
 example which make us wonder whether we are reading 
 a novel or a financial newspaper. Secondly, his theory of 
 realism led him unfortunately to dwell with monotonous 
 iteration upon the base and ugly side of life. The view 
 which he gives us not only of society but also of human 
 nature itself is profoundly gloomy and even repulsive. 
 There are a few exceptions to be allowed for, but speaking 
 generally the Comedie Humaine is a big bundle of tragedies, 
 and tragedies of the most sordid and depressing kind. 
 His stress is laid for the most part upon evil and depravity 
 in all their forms, and though at times he attempts by 
 way of contrast to portray simple goodness and virtue, 
 he rarely succeeds in making them anything but silly and 
 ridiculous. Thus his world is not a healthy world to live 
 in. But it is a world which only the mightiest power of 
 genius could have called into being. With all his defects 
 and limitations he is one of the greatest of novelists. His 
 interpretation of life is falsified by over-emphasis and 
 one-sidedness ; the philosophy which he is so fond of 
 parading at times savours of charlatanism ; he is often 
 heavy and dull ; his style is forced, tortuous, pedantic, and 
 frequently bad. But as a creator of character and as a 
 painter of manners he*ranks with the su preme masters o f 
 fiction. 
 
 ""W Stendhal Merimee. Balzac shows us the trans- 
 formation of the historical romance into the novel of 
 manners. In the hands of Stendhal the novel of sentiment 
 develops into the psychological novel. Henri Beyle, 
 generally known by his pen-name of Stendhal, was bom 
 at Grenoble in 1783 ; served for a time in the Napoleonic
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 251 
 
 army ; followed the disastrous Russian campaign of 1 812 ; 
 lived now in Paris and now in Italy ; was consul at Trieste 
 from 1830 to 1833, and at Civita Vecchia from 1833 to 
 1841 ; and died in Paris in 1842. Of a strongly analytical 
 and critical habit of mind, he wrote on art (Histoire de la 
 Peinture en Italie, etc.), on music {Vie de Rossini, etc.), 
 on psychology {De V Amour), on literature {Racine et 
 Shakespeare). His work in fiction comprises three novels, 
 the early and negligible Armance (1822), Le Rouge et le 
 Noir (1831), and La Chartreuse de Parme (1839), and the 
 same analytical and critical quality is uppermost in these. 
 We have seen that he made common cause with the 
 romantics and contributed to their propaganda ; but 
 romanticism for him meant freedom from tradition and 
 formula and the assertion of individuality ; its imagina- 
 tive excesses, its emotional fervour, its mysticism and 
 sentimentalism were entirely foreign to his positive and 
 cynical temper and his devotion to " de petits faits vrais." 
 Even his manner of writing was as far as possible removed 
 from the lyrical and rhetorical style so much in favour with 
 his contemporaries ; he abhorred " le style contourne," 
 cultivated the plain and exact expression of his ideas, and 
 boasted that while engaged in composition he would read 
 " chaque matin deux ou trois pages du Code Civil afin 
 d'etre toujours naturel." In the matter of his novels he 
 reveals the influence of romanticism in the melodramatic 
 machinery of his plots and in his fondness for dealing 
 with exceptional characters (like Julien Sorel in Le Rouge 
 et le Noir, and Fabrice del Dongo "in La Chartreuse de 
 Parme) in exceptional circumstances. But his strength 
 lies in his close and patient attention to minute detail 
 and the rigorous precision of his psychological analysis. 
 
 Though Stendhal was little appreciated during his life- 
 time he said himself, " j'aurai du succes vers 1880 "
 
 252 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 he had a small group of admirers, prominent among whom 
 was Pr osper Merim ee, whose name is now very commonly 
 linked with his own. The son of a well-known painter, 
 Merimee was born in Paris in 1803 ; after 1830 entered 
 the service of the government - ; held various important 
 offices ; under the Empire was closely associated with 
 the Court, and died in 1870, soon after the fall of the 
 dynasty to which he had long been personally attached. 
 Essentially a scholar by temperament and training, he 
 did much sound work in historical research, but his 
 archaeological and critical writings need not now detain 
 us, though it may be mentioned, as an illustration of his 
 breadth of interest and cosmopolitanism, that he was the 
 first to " discover " Russian literature and to introduce 
 such masters as Pushkin and Turgenev to the French 
 public. Here we are concerned only with his original 
 contributions to literature. Early in life he fell under 
 the influence of romanticism and began his career with 
 two clever mystifications, Le Theatre de Clara Gazul 
 (1825), a collection of plays which he gave out as transla- 
 tions from a Spanish actress, and published with a portrait 
 of himself disguised in female costume as a frontispiece ; 
 and Guzla (1827), which in the same way he offered as a 
 literal version of some Illyrian poems. To this period 
 also belong an historical drama, La Jacquerie (1829) and 
 the Chronique du Rigne de Charles IX, to which reference 
 has already been made. But all this work was little 
 more than experimental. He found his true line later 
 in a series of tales and stories, about twenty in number, all 
 of which are excellent, while some of them (e.g., Columb a, 
 Mateo Falcone, Carmen, la Venus d'llle, L'Enler: 
 la Redoiite, La Partie de Trictrac) are masterpieces in their 
 kind. Like Stendhal he was fond of exploring the psy- 
 chology of strong and unusual characters in strikingly
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 253 
 
 dramatic situations ; like Stendhal he had a keen sense 
 of the value of significant detail " trouver le trait qu'il 
 faut," he wrote in his essay on Pushkin, " c'est la le pro- 
 bleme a resoudre." But while Stendhal had chosen a large 
 canvas he on the other hand sought concision and con- 
 centration. More than Stendhal, too, and more than any 
 other writer of the time, he adopted an attitude of com- 
 plete detachment from his subjects and the impassivity 
 and impartiality of the pure artist. His work is remark- 
 able for the rare combination in it of strength with sobriety 
 and restraint, and his style for its purity and precision. 
 
 76. Other Novelists. The output of fiction during 
 the second quarter of the nineteenth century was so 
 enormous that only a few other writers can even be 
 mentioned here, and so varied that any exact classifica- 
 tion of these would be impossible. Our simplest plan 
 therefore will be to take them chronologically. 
 
 First in sequence of date, and during his long lifetime 
 one of the most popular of all, comes Charles Paul de 
 Kock (1794-1871), whose novels, which nUmbeflieafly *a 
 hurldred, and of which the earlier Gustave le Mauvais 
 Sujet (1821), Frdre Jacques (1822), and La Laitiere de 
 Montfermil (1827) will serve as typical examples, deal 
 almost entirely with the contemporary world of shop- 
 keepers, students, grisettes, and the petite bourgeoisie. 
 Carelessly written, and coarse though genial in tone, these 
 belong to the old gaulois tradition in French literature, 
 and while they have little other claim to attention (except 
 perhaps as amusing pictures of the manners of the time) 
 they have plenty of spicy humour and vivacious dialogue. 
 Xavier Boniface Saintine (1798-1865), a voluminous 
 writer of plays, survives as the author of one book of a 
 very different character, the still familiar Picciola (1836), 
 a highly pathetic story of a political prisoner and his
 
 254 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 flower. Charles de Bernard (1804-55), though now, un- 
 accountably, almost as much neglected by the critics as 
 either of these, was a writer of far greater importance. 
 He was a friend and in a sense a disciple of Balzac, but 
 the influence of the master upon him must not be exagger- 
 ated, for his temper was much less pessimistic, his touch 
 much lighter, and he excelled particularly in a field in 
 which Balzac failed, that of social comedy and satire ; 
 as, e.g., in Gerfaut (1836), his best work, Les Ailes d'Icaire 
 (1839), also a thoroughly good novel, L' Homme Sirieux 
 (1847), etc. He has sometimes been compared with 
 Thackeray, who greatly admired his work and took one 
 of his stories as the foundation of his own Bedford Row 
 Conspiracy. His exact contemporary, Delphine Gay, 
 Madame de Girardin (1804-55), was also successful as a 
 painter of society (Lettres Parisiennes, etc.) and as a 
 story-teller of much delicacy and grace {e.g., Le Lorgnon, 
 Contes d'une Vieille Fille a ses Neveux, La Canne de M. 
 Balzac, etc.). Jules Gabriel Janin (1804-74), wno gave 
 most of his energies to dramatic criticism, belongs on 
 the contrary to the romantics, though the best known 
 of his fantastic tales, the strange and bizarre L'Ane Mort 
 et la Femme Guillotinie (1827), is rather a parody of the 
 " genre frn6tique " than a serious contribution to it. 
 limile Souvestre (1806-54) deserves to be held in kindly 
 remembrance ior ms stories of his native Brittany {Les 
 Dernier Bretons, 1835-37, Le Foyer Breton, 1844, etc.), 
 and no less for one very charming little book of quite a 
 different class Un Philosophe sous les Toits (1850). The 
 many novels of the journalist and miscellanist Jean 
 Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808-90) the autobiographical 
 Sous les Tilleuls (1833), the very clever Fa Diize (1834), 
 Feu Bressier (1848), etc. also stand apart from and well 
 above the average fiction of their generation, for they are
 
 THE EARLIER NINETEENTH CENTURY 255 
 
 original in idea, full of humour, and fresh in style. 
 Leonard Sylvain Jules Sandeau (1811-83), who has 
 already been named in connection with George Sand, 
 was a successful playwright who also wrote novels of a 
 leisurely kind, in which we have an agreeable blend of 
 sentiment and satire, romance and realism, and which 
 are specially excellent for their pictures of old-fashioned 
 country life and society ; as, e.g., Mademoiselle de la 
 Seigliere (1848), Sacs et Parchements (185 1) the former 
 dramatised under the same title, the latter as Le Gendre 
 de M. Poirier Le Docteur Herbieu (1841), Madeleine 
 (1848), etc. These still make pleasant reading, but it can 
 hardly be maintained that literature would be much the 
 poorer for their loss. On the contrary, one work by Henry 
 Murger (1822-61) keeps its place as a genuine "human 
 document of unique character and interest his Scenes de 
 la Vie de Boheme (1845). Murger was personally familiar 
 with the by-ways of Bohemia, with its struggling young 
 artists and poets, their ambitions, their poverty, their 
 dissipations, and the tragedy and comedy of the Scenes 
 and they are rich alike in pathos and in humour are 
 directly made out of the materials furnished by his own 
 experiences. Though he returned several times to the 
 same region for his inspiration, as in Les Buveurs d'Eau 
 and Le Pays Latin, his other books are of a much more 
 commonplace kind. This one production, however, is his 
 sufficient passport to immortality. 
 
 It remains to note that the introduction in the late 
 thirties of the " systeme du roman feuilleton," or practice 
 of running a novel in sections through a newspaper, gave 
 an enormous impetus to the manufacture of fiction in- 
 tended for popular consumption. With the exception of 
 Dumas, by whom this system was freely employed, the 
 most famous of the feuilletonists was Eugene Sue (1804-
 
 256 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 1857), who after experimenting with no great success with 
 a number of Byronic romances and romances of the sea, 
 made a tremendous hit with Les My stir es de Paris (1842), 
 a gigantic and lurid melodrama of the underworld of the 
 capital, and Le J uif Errant (1844-45), m which the legend 
 of the Wandering Jew is utilised for another thrilling 
 narrative of a very similar kind and on the same vast 
 scale. Very long, very complicated in plot, compounded 
 of entanglements, surprises, and horrors of all descriptions, 
 and entirely innocent of any quality of art, these depend 
 for their interest wholly upon the excitement of their 
 sensationalism. It should, however, be added that they 
 are novels of direct humanitarian purpose, and that they 
 did so much to spread socialistic ideas among the masses 
 that their author has a substantial claim to a place among 
 the literary precursors of the revolution of 1848. Sue's 
 chief rivals were Frederic Soulie 1 (1800-47), with his Deux 
 Cadavres (1832), Memoires du Diable (1837-38), etc., and 
 Paul Feval (1817-87), with his Club des Phoques (1841), 
 Les My stores de Londres (1844), Le Fils du Diable (1847), 
 etc. Innumerable other writers followed the lead of these 
 with more or less success, but we cannot burden our 
 pages with their names, for their work scarcely attains 
 the dignity of literature.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 GENERAL PROSE 
 
 77. The Later Nineteenth Century. By the 
 middle of the century romanticism had spent its force. 
 It had done a magnificent work for literature ; it had 
 liberated genius from the trammels of artificial rules and 
 conventions ; it had opened up fresh sources of inspira- 
 tion ; it had revivified poetry, the drama, fiction, and even 
 criticism. It thus left behind it a rich heritage and in 
 many directions a permanent influence. But it was as 
 a movement too violent to be lasting, and an inevitable 
 reaction against its excesses presently set in which in 
 turn affected all departments, even poetry, in which it 
 had naturally been strongest. Thus in general terms 
 it may be said that as, in the mass, the literature of the 
 first half of the century had been imaginative and 
 emotional, so in the mass, that of the second half was 
 intellectual and critical. As we may put it in a phrase, 
 a period of dominating romanticism was now succeeded 
 by a period of dominating realism, though it must not be 
 forgotten that before the century closed the excesses of 
 realism itself led to a revival of the idealistic spirit. The 
 reaction in question might on a broad view be interpreted 
 
 257 s
 
 258 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 simply as an illustration of the familiar principle that as 
 generation follows generation the pendulum of taste often 
 swings from one extreme to another. But it was also in 
 large measure the result of the co-operation of many extra- 
 literary causes ; of political changes after the revolution 
 of 1848 and again after the disaster of 1870 ; of the ever- 
 deepening influence of science and scientific methods ; 
 of the growth of industrialism and commerce. Such 
 movements in thought and in society all contributed to 
 the formation of a positive and utilitarian temper, a 
 temper at once anti- visionary, anti-utopian, and anti- 
 sentimental in a word, anti-romantic. This was now 
 the prevailing temper in literature, which exhibits the 
 general tendency of the time in its impatience of every- 
 thing mystical and extravagant and its preoccupation 
 with actuality and concrete fact. 1 
 
 It will be noted that in the rapid survey which follows 
 a very small space is given to general prose. The signifi- 
 cance of this brevity of treatment will be readily understood 
 in the light of a single consideration. One very marked 
 tendency in the intellectual as in the industrial evolu- 
 tion of the period in question was the tendency towards 
 ever-increasing subdivision of labour and concomitant 
 specialisation. The result was that while literature as a 
 whole was moulded by the new influences and impregnated 
 with the new ideas, an immense and varied body of purely 
 
 1 The fundamental change in the character of French literature 
 during the period now under review, and which the reader may study 
 in detail in M. Georges Pellissier's admirable work, Le Mouvement 
 LitUraire au XIX 1 Siecle, was of course only a local phase of a general 
 change which came over all European literatures about the same time. 
 It is particularly interesting at this point to compare the whole move- 
 ment of French literature between 1850 and 1880 with that of 
 our own literature of the mid-Victorian era, for which see my Short 
 History 0/ English Literature in the Nineteenth Century, Part II. 
 chap. i.
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 259 
 
 professional literature now sprang up a literature pro- 
 duced by experts and addressed primarily to experts. 
 Such literature, while extremely valuable in itself, does 
 not, however, properly fall within the scope of a book 
 like the present. It belongs rather to the history of the 
 particular subjects concerned or to that of general culture 
 and intellectual development. The case of history itself 
 may be cited as an illustration. The most salient feature 
 of history as written in the later nineteenth century is 
 that in spirit and method it is essentially scientific. But 
 a scientific treatise on history no more comes under the 
 head of general literature than a treatise on biology or 
 economics. The name of Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges 
 (1830-89), for example, has a high place among those of 
 the founders of the modern historical school, but his Cite 
 Antique and Institutions de V Ancienne France are works 
 of science, not of art. Hence rich, varied, and important 
 as is the prose literature of the later nineteenth century 
 on many lines, it provides comparatively little of which 
 we have here to take cognizance. As students of litera- 
 ture we are concerned only with writers whose produc- 
 tions, whatever their subject-matter, have in themselves 
 an independent interest as literature. Such interest 
 certainly attaches to the work of the great historian Renan, 
 who, though he gave most of his life to labours in a highly 
 specialised field, was at the time of his death universally 
 regarded as the first man of letters in France, perhaps in 
 Europe. 
 
 78. Renan. Ernest Renan was born in 1823 in the 
 little car^iearal town of Treguier (C6tes-du-Nord). His 
 father, the captain of a fishing smack, belonged to an old 
 Breton stock, and though his own character was curiously 
 modified by a strain of Gascon blood, which he derived 
 from his mother's side, and which has been held to explain
 
 260 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 his vivacity and his epicureanism, the roots of his essenti- 
 ally poetic nature, as he himself insisted, ran deep down 
 into his native soil. He was thus one of those great 
 writers, like Chateaubriand and Lamennais, who " have 
 small share in that Latin order which is the birthright of 
 a Bossuet, a Racine, or even a Voltaire," and whose 
 " genius is a sort of hippogriff, as Renan used to say of 
 himself, belonging to no known race of mortal herds." 1 
 A boy of deeply religious nature, he was early destined 
 for the priesthood, and underwent the necessary training 
 in the seminaries of Saint-Nicolas du Chardonet, Issy, and 
 Saint-Sulpice. But the study of Hebrew, which he took 
 up as part of his curriculum, and of German, which he 
 added on his own account, unsettled his mind, and in 
 1845, having completely lost his faith in Christianity, he 
 quitted Saint -sulpice and gave iip ail tnougKt of the 
 Church. He now turned with increased enthusiasm to 
 history and philology, especially to the history and philo- 
 logy of the Semitic races, and soon established his reputa- 
 tion with a volume on Averroes et I'Averroisme (1852), 
 which shows an extraordinary knowledge of the philo- 
 sophic thought of the Middle Ages, and a Histoire Ginerale 
 Ides Langues Semitiques (1854), which is still regarded as 
 marking an epoch in the study of the Semitic tongues. 
 After travels in Italy and the East, undertaken with a 
 view to his future work, he was appointed in 1861 Pro- 
 fessor of Hebrew in the College de France, and though on 
 (the publication of his Vie de Jdsus, which raised a storm, 
 he was deprived of his cnair, he was reinstated in the 
 College as Director by the Republican Government in 
 1870. For twenty-two years more he led a life of quiet 
 but ceaseless activity, patient, cheerful, and serene under 
 all the weaknesses and pains which advancing age brought 
 
 1 Mme. Darmesteter, Life of Renan, pp. 3, 4.
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 261 
 
 with it, happy in his family and his friendships, happy 
 in the work which with unfailing courage he carried on 
 to the end. H e died in 189 2. 
 
 Apart from tnose already mentioned, Renan's writings 
 on his own special lines of study include some collections 
 of essays and lectures on religious and ethical questions 
 and a large volume, L'Avenir de la Science (written in 1848, 
 but not published till 1890), besides the two closely con- 
 nected series of works on which his fame as an historian 
 rests, Le s Origines du Christianisme {Vie de Jesus, 18 63 ; 
 Les Ap dtres, iobb ; ^aint-Paul, 1 809 ; L' Antichrist ',1873 ; 
 Les TZvdngiles, 1877 '> L'lZglise Chrelienne, 1879 ; Marc- 
 Aurele, 1881) and L'Histoire du Peuple d' Israel (5"voTs., 
 1888^92). Regarding the scholarship of these twelve 
 massive volumes only the expert is qualified to speak, 1 "SCnd 
 we~will therefore confine our attention to their general 
 characteristics of spirit, method, and style. Despite his 
 early rupture with Christianity, Renan retaineTJ a. "pro- 
 found emotional sympathy with the faith he had left 
 behind him. Late in life it gave him a peculiar pleasure 
 to TecaU not only the surroundings of his childhood at 
 home and in the quaint old-world city of his birth, but 
 also the years he had spent in his preparation for the 
 career he had been forced to abandon and their lasting 
 influence upon his mind. In the beautiful opening para- 
 graph of the Preface to his Souvenirs d'Enfance el de 
 JeiMesse he wrote : " Une des legehdes les plus repandues 
 en Bretagne est celle d'une pretendue ville dTs, qui, a 
 une epoque inconnue, aurait ete engloutie par la mer. 
 On montre, a divers endroits de la cote, l'emplacement de 
 cette cite fabuleuse, et les pecheurs vous en font d'etranges 
 recits. Les jours de tempete, assurent-ils, on voit, dans 
 le creux des vagues, le sommet des fleches de ses eglises ; 
 les jours de calme, on entend monter de l'abime le son
 
 262 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 de ses cloches, modulant l'hymne du jour. II me scmble 
 souvent que j ai au fond du coeur unc ville d'ls qui sonno 
 encore des cloches obstindcs a convoquer aux ofTi< i 
 des fideles qui n'entendent plus. Pa rlois je m'arrete'po ur 
 preter Toreille a ces tremblantes vibrations, qui me parais - 
 sent venir de profondeurs infinies, comme des voix cTun 
 autre "monde." Such a passage ;is tin's enables us to 
 understand why, h eterodox as h e was (and " pour moi," 
 he declares at the end oi the same prefa ce, je ne suis 
 jamais plus ferine en ma foi libdrale que quand j\ m.ikv 
 aux miracles de la foi antique "), his attitude towards the 
 traditional faith was so entirely different from that of the 
 contemporary rationalistic school. 1 H e wro te as one 
 who had indeed emancipated himself completely from all 
 theological prepossession and modes of thought but was 
 still inspired by the deepest religious feeling. Ariel as in 
 spirit' so in method he was only partly modern. He pro- 
 claimed his adherence to the principles of scientific history 
 by the emphasis which he laid upon the importance of 
 patient and laborious research, the disinterested examina- 
 tion of every text and document, the need of an alert and 
 vigilant criticism to control every detail. But he claimed 
 a right to do precisely what the scientific historian was 
 most sedulous to avoid to allow his imagination to play 
 freely upon the materials provided by research. The 
 mere collection and colligation of facts was important, 
 but for him it was only the first step ; " le talent de 
 l'historien consiste a faire un ensemble vra i avec 'flies 
 traits que ne sontvrais qu'a demi " (Preface to In VTtftt 
 Jisus, i3tVe65tion), an'OW a reconstruction of the past 
 one thing besides scholarship is always necessary : " e'est 
 
 1 Compare, for example, his own tender and human, if romantic, 
 Vie de Jdsus with Strauss' hard and entirely destructive Leben Jesu, 
 the translation of which was George Eliot's first work in literature.
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 263 
 
 que les textes ont besoin de l'interpretation du gout, qu'il 
 faut les solliciter doucement "(Vie de Jesus, introduction) . 
 In fits "gentle ' Solicitation " of his documents he certainly 
 took great liberties with them, trusting too much to his 
 intuition and often letting his fancy lead him too far into 
 the bypaths of speculation. Herein lies the weakness of 
 his work on the scientific side. But however much Jthe 
 historian may be impugned, the artist remains supreme. 
 It is his power to evoke the past and to make it living to 
 the imagination, his extraordinary skill in description and 
 portraiture, and, added to these, the rare and winning 
 beauty of his incomparable style, that in their combina- 
 tion" have secured for his historical writings a place among 
 the masterpieces of nineteenth-century prose literature. 
 
 Outside such special work Renan is best remembered 
 for his charming and tender Souvenirs d'Enfance et de 
 Jeunesse (1883), which are not only delightful as auto- 
 biography but are furthermore invaluable for the light 
 which they throw upon his complex and elusive char- 
 acter. But his Dialogues Philosophiques (1876) and 
 Dromes Philosophiques (1878-86) have also to be taken 
 into account. These two series the pastime of his 
 leisure hours have earned for their writer a somewhat 
 equivocal reputation ; he has been accused of exhibiting 
 in them a spirit of flippancy in the treatment of serious 
 things and even of moral laxity. They must however 
 be read as the expression, under a light ironical form, of 
 one of his deepest convictions the conviction, namely, 
 that as absolute truth is everlastingly beyond our reach, 
 all questions may be regarded from many sides. This 
 explains his choice of the dramatic method as the one 
 most suited for his purpose. " La forme du dialogue est, 
 en l'6tat actuel de l'esprit humaine, la seule qui, selon moi, 
 puisse convenir a l'exposition des idees philosophiques.
 
 264 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Les vrites de cet ordre ne doivent etre ni directement 
 niees, ni directement affirmees ; elles ne sauraient etre 
 l'objet de demonstrations. Ce qu'on peut, c'est de les 
 presenter par leurs faces di verses, d'en montrer le fort, 
 le faible, la necessity les equivalences. Tous les hauts 
 probl ernes de rhumanite* sont dans ce cas " (Preface to 
 Dr antes Philosophiques) . However disturbing some of 
 the results which Renan attained by its use, this method 
 harmonised admirably with the qualities of his intellect, 
 which was as supple and " ond oyant " as that of Moiilaig im' 
 himself, and as free from every trace oT dogmatism. In 
 this fespect lie 'feseMs" a struori^ 6611 Va5T ' with the 
 masterful and aggressive writer who comes next on 
 our list. 
 
 79. Taine . Hippolyte Adolphe Taine was born at 
 Vouziers (Xrdennes) in 1828, studied at the College de 
 Bourbon and the cole Normale Superieure, and early 
 made his mark with two works in which not only the 
 peculiar vigour of his mind but also the essentials of his 
 critical method were already exhibited his doctoral 
 thesis (1853) on La Fontaine (later revised and amplified 
 into a volume entitled La Fontaine et ses Fables, i860), 
 and a prize essay on Livy (1854). Debarred by his 
 religious opinions from following a university career, he 
 devoted himself for the next ten years to independent 
 literary work, but his steadily growing reputation as a 
 thinker ultimately broke down the opposition of the 
 conservative party, and in 1864 he was appointed to the 
 chair of aesthetics at the cole des Beaux Arts in Paris. 
 Four volumes on La Philosophie de I' Art (1865-69) stand 
 to his credit as the direct products of his academic lectures, 
 but in the meantime his interest in psychology continued 
 unabated, and in 1870, in his treatise, De I' Intelligence, 
 he made a noteworthy contribution to the constructive
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 265 
 
 thought of the scientific or materialistic school. After 
 this he turned to history, and was occupied till his death 
 in 1893 with a series of volumes on Les Origines de la 
 France Contemporaine (L'Ancien Regime, 1875 ; La 
 Revolution ",1878-85' ; Le Regime MocCerne, left incomplete, 
 1890), which he undertook as an exhaustive inquiry into 
 thcrcauses and results of the Revolution, ai RPfllnTn ^ by 
 the solidity of their erudition, their vast accumulation of 
 details, the breadth and clearness of their design, the 
 range of their generalisations, their analytical and syn- 
 thetic power, and the energy and incisiveness of their 
 style, take' rank among the greatest achievements in 
 
 modern historical literature. n '"-""""' '"" * 
 
 Varied as Taine's writings are in subject-matter, they 
 are marked by a fundamental unity of purpose and 
 method, for whether he deals with psychology, or with 
 art, or with literature, or with politics and society, his 
 aim is always to reduce his facts to order and system by 
 the help of the same general laws. These laws he took 
 over from biology. Thus the division of his work which 
 is of greatest interest to us here his literary criticism 
 represents a bold attempt to apply to the phenomena of 
 literature the evolutionary principles which had gradually 
 been established in the domain of physical science. His 
 method is fully explained in the introduction to the work 
 in which it is illustrated on the largest scale his Histoire 
 de la Litter ature Anglai^e (1863). No writer, nowever 
 great, however independent he may seem to be, is really 
 original. He does not stand outside of or above the 
 conditions of time and place. On the contrary, he and 
 the creations of his genius are the resultants of certain 
 co - operating factors the race to which he belongs, 
 and whose temperament and disposition he shares ; the 
 complex of physical and social surroundings into which
 
 266 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 he is born ; and the dominating tendencies in the society 
 and culture of his country and time. Hence the triple 
 formula of " the race, the milieu, and the moment," by 
 the use of which Taine " explains " Shakespeare, Bacon, 
 Swift, Byron, Dickens, as he had previously explained 
 La Fontaine and Livy, and as elsewhere in his Essais de 
 Critique (1858, etc.) he explains Racine, Stendhal, and 
 Balzac, and in his writings on art, Phidias, Raphael, and 
 Rembrandt. The Histoire is a learned, brillia nt, a nd 
 fascinating work wfiiclr no English studen foi Engi ish 
 literature should leave unread. But it has the defects 
 which we shbuld allllCltba't'e. The method adopted is 
 fruitful and stimulating, and is a fine corrective of the 
 lyrical vagaries of romantic criticism. But in his rigorous 
 application of the deterministic theory Taine leaves no 
 room for the incalculable element of individuality or the 
 initiative power of genius, and while properly emphasising 
 the influence of the age upon even the greatest writer he 
 ignores the influence which in turn every great writer 
 exerts upon his age. Moreover, he is too systematic, and 
 is at times guilty of forcing his facts to fit into his generalisa- 
 tions. Thus, though in his attempt to red uce criticis m 
 to a " histoire na'turelle des esp nts "'Ke^&erTEeTTTIug e^ry 
 from Sainte-Beuve, his work throughout is marked by 
 a rigidity and a dogmatic hardness against which, as we 
 have seen, Sainte-Beuve was himself among the iirst to 
 protest. 1 "'Bui as both phiiosopfier and critic ne came 
 precisely at the time when the world was ready for him ; 
 and he summed up the new tendencies in thought and 
 expressed them with so much power that more than any 
 other single writer he contributed to the general move- 
 ment from romanticism to realism. 
 
 80. Other Critics. In the enormous development of 
 
 1 See Causeries du Lundi, t. xiii.
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 267 
 
 criticism along many different lines during the second half 
 of the nineteenth century the writer who in weight and 
 influence stands nearest to Taine is Ferdinand Brunetiere 
 ( 1 849-1 907), a man of sound and massive learning, 
 dictatorial temper, and very pronounced views. The most 
 important feature of his criticism on the theoretical side 
 is his application to literature of the principle of evolution 
 in his doctrine of the " evolution des genres," or gradual 
 transformation of the various types of literature epic, 
 drama, lyric, and so on under the changing influences of 
 successive generations (see, e.g., L' Evolution des Genres 
 dans I'Histoire de la Litterature, 1890 ; L'Evolution de la 
 Poesie Lyrique au XIX e Siicle, 1893 ; Histoire de la 
 Litterature Francaise, 1880-98 ; L' Evolution de la Critique, 
 1890). Guided by this principle, Brunetiere is specially 
 strong in analysing movements and tendencies. But he 
 did not, like Taine, merge criticism in history or content 
 himself with a mere scientific " explanation " of authors 
 and their works. He reserved the right of passing judg- 
 ment, and in so doing he was largely swayed by ethical 
 considerations. He was firmly convinced of the moral 
 responsibilities of literature, and for this reason was an 
 uncompromising opponent of the doctrine of art for art's 
 sake and the theories and practice of the realistic school 
 of fiction (Le Roman Naturaliste, 1883). Another critic 
 who was similarly concerned with the ethics of literature 
 is Edmond Henri Adolphe Scherer (1815-89). Clear in 
 thoug nT a i ld llldepeildelrt In 6pinioh, but deficient in 
 flexibility and apt to be too severe where his sympathies 
 were not engaged, Scherer cared far more about the 
 philosophic content of literature than about its form and 
 style, and was on the whole singularly indifferent to all 
 questions of art. Yet he too conceived it as the business 
 of the critic to " account for " his author by placing him
 
 268 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 back in his environment before proceeding to a judicial 
 estimate of his production. He had a wide and accurate 
 knowledge of English literature, and his studies of English 
 writers in his Etudes Critiques sur la Littirature Con- 
 tem poraine (1863 -^j) afe 6t great value. Differing widely 
 in Winder and outlook Brunetiere and Scherer alike re- 
 present the historical tendency in the criticism of their 
 time. On the other hand, in the writings of mile Faguet 
 (b. 1849) i e -S- ms series of Etudes on the sixteenth, seven- 
 teenth, eighteenth, and nirieteHn tll (HaUUfll W6 hMl he 
 eclecticism, the breadth and the disinterested curiosity of 
 Sainte-Beuve, while in those (if Jutes Le maltre (p. 1853 ) 
 [e.g*., Les Contemporains, 1886-96 ; Impressions cle Theatre, 
 1888, etc.) criticism is avowedly treated only as a record 
 of personal taste. For Paul Charles Joseph Bourget 
 (b. 1852), as for Taine, fTT e taSK O f t he critic is tha'fo f an 
 experimental psychologist ; in his Essais de Psychologie 
 Contemporaine (1884-85) he undertakes a minute and 
 systematic inquiry into the mental and moral qualities 
 of the authors chosen for discussion, and who are so chosen 
 because he regards them as in their various ways typical 
 of their age. Finally, to mention only one more repre- 
 sentative writer, we have in mile Hennequin (1858-88) 
 a further development of the scientmc hrethod. His 
 Critique Scientifique (1889) is an essay in what, with a 
 lapse into barbarism which horrified the purists, he 
 called " esthopsychologie." His procedure, however, is 
 very different from that of Taine, for he rejects Taine's 
 fundamental hypothesis of the fixed relation between an 
 author and his race and milieu, and treats individual 
 genius not as a resultant but as an original and creative 
 force. His book is much marred by its scientific termino- 
 logy, but it is ingenious and suggestive.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY (continued) 
 POETRY 
 
 81. Transitional Poetry. In following the change 
 which came over French poetry with the exhaustion of 
 romanticism we find, as we should expect, a certain number 
 of writers who represent the transition from old to new. 
 Foremost among these is one who has already been con- 
 sidered, Theophile Gautier, in whose work we have noted 
 the rise of a reaction against the extreme subjectivity of 
 romantic literature, who boasted, as we remember, that 
 for him the "visible world" existed, and who, when he 
 laid it down as a rule "qu'un homme ne doit jamais 
 laisser passer de la sensibilite dans ses ceuvres, que la 
 sensibilite est un cote inferieur en art et en litterature," 
 clearly formulated that doctrine of impersonality in poetry 
 which was to be one of the central principles of the Par- 
 nassian School. With him we have now to associate two 
 of his friends and disciples, Banville and Baudelaire. 
 
 Theodore Faullain de Banville (1823-91) resembles 
 Gautier in his devotion to " le realisme pittoresque," and 
 in the immense importance which he attached to form 
 (see his Petit Traite de la Versification Francaise, 1872). 
 His work as a whole (e.g., Les Cariatides, 1842 ; Les 
 
 269
 
 270 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Stalactites, 1846 ; Les Exilis, 1867) is marked by a 
 wonderful technical perfection, and his mastery of the 
 most intricate and difficult stanzaic forms, like the ballade, 
 the rondeau, and the rondeau double of the mediaeval poets, 
 earned for him the nickname of " le roi des rimes." It is, 
 however, in general the work of a consummate virtuoso, 
 and it suffers from want of substance and from its poverty 
 of both thought and passion. It is, in a word, a poetry 
 of beautiful form but without soul. He is at his best in 
 his lighter moods, and notwithstanding his theoretical 
 impersonality, the real charm of his verse as of his prose 
 {e.g., Mes Souvenirs, 1852 ; Esquisses Parisiennes, 1859) 
 lies in its essentially personal qualities in his gaiety, his 
 wit, his cheery pagan temper. This is especially true of 
 the " clowneries," or humorous fantasies, of his Odes 
 Funambulesques (1857, 1867), and of his Ballades Joyeuses 
 
 (1873). 
 
 Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821-67) published only 
 one volume of verse, Les Fleurs du ^Mal (1857), which 
 was dedicated to Gautier, and which gained temporary 
 notoriety through the criminal prosecution of its author 
 on the ground that it contained offences against morals. 
 His other writings include a collection of Petits Pohmes en 
 Prose, a book on Wagner (1861), some critical essays on art 
 and literature, and a volume, partly original, partly made 
 up of matter derived from De Quincey and Edgar Allan 
 Poe, entitled Les Paradis Artificiels : Opium et Haschich 
 (1861). He also made an admirable translation of Poe's 
 Tales, his enthusiasm for the American writer being a 
 clear indication of the bias of his own genius. A man of 
 morbid and brooding temperament, haunted by melan- 
 choly fancies which, like funeral hearses, passed unceas- 
 ingly through his mind (Spleen), loathing the simple and 
 the natural, and living habitually in the region of strange
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 271 
 
 sensations and abnormal ideas, Baudelaire everywhere 
 shows a perverse love of dwelling upon monstrous and 
 repulsive subjects, and despite his rich imagination and 
 the solemn music of his verse (e.g., L'Albatros, Don Juan 
 aux Enfers, Le Balcon, Madrigal Triste, Spleen, L'Horloge), 
 the atmosphere of his poetry is profoundly unwholesome. 
 That atmosphere cannot perhaps be better suggested than 
 by a quotation from the poem, Ave atque Vale, inscribed 
 to his memory by his great English admirer, Swi nburne : 
 
 Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother, 
 
 Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us ; 
 
 Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous, 
 
 Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other 
 
 Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime ; 
 
 The hidden harvest of luxurious time, 
 
 Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech ; 
 
 And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep 
 
 Make the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep ; 
 
 And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each, 
 
 Seeing as men sow they reap. 
 
 In his adherence to the doctrine of art for art's sake, and 
 in his preoccupation with sensuous beauty, Baudelaire was 
 a follower of Gautier. On the other hand, in his fondness 
 for seeking out the latent affinities which exist between 
 dissimilar things " les parfums, les couleurs et les sons 
 se r^pondent " (Correspondances) he anticipates at one 
 point the later Symbolistes. 
 
 82. The Parnassiens. From these transitional 
 poets we pass to the so-called Parnassian School, who 
 represent the dominant tendency in French poetry 
 between i860 and 1880. The title Parnassian is in no 
 sense descriptive ; it arose accidentally out of a publisher's 
 anthology, L e Parn asse Contemporain (1866), and was to 
 begin with used only as a collective name for the contri- 
 butors to this enterprise ; but it presently came to be
 
 272 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 transferred to the group of young poets (chiefly composed 
 of these contributors) who gathered about Leconte de 
 Lisle in his salon, and were more or less in sympathy with 
 him In his aesthetic ideas regardiag the impersonality of 
 all great art, the elimination of the disturbing element of 
 individual feeling in the treatment of external things, and 
 the supreme importance of form. The members of this 
 new ednaele, however, differed widely among themselves 
 in quality and aim, and "Parnassian" must therefore be 
 regarded as a term of very general connotation. In fact, 
 strictly speaking, there are only two among the many 
 poets to whom it was applied who fully embody the prin- 
 ciples of the school Leconte de Lisle himself and Her^dia. 
 Charles Marie Rene" Leconte de Lisle (1818-94), though 
 of French parentage, was a native of the lie de Bourbon, 
 a fact which helps to explain the exotic character of much 
 of his work. After travelling in the East, he settled in 
 Paris in 1845, and for a time was active in politics, but on 
 the establishment of the Second Empire he withdrew from 
 public affairs, and henceforth devoted himself entirely to 
 literature. His principal collections of original verse are 
 Polmes Antiques (1852), Polmes Barbares (1862), and 
 Poemes Tragiques (1884). In these his subjects are 
 largely mythological or legendary, and are taken mainly 
 from Greek antiquity (e.g., Hettne, Niobe, L'Enfance 
 d'HerakUs) l or from the East (e.g., Bhagavat, Surya, La 
 Vision de Brahma, L'Apotheose de Mouca-al-Kebyr, Qain) ; 
 though he makes occasional excursions into other times 
 
 1 It is significant of Leconte de Lisle's Hellenism that both in his 
 original poems and in his translations of Theocritus, the Iliad and the 
 Odyssey, he breaks with the long-accepted tradition of Latin classicism, 
 and not only uses Greek proper names instead of their Latin equivalents, 
 but also spells these approximately in the Greek way. Thus he sub- 
 stitutes Zeus for Jupiter, H6rakles for Hercule, Alkestis for Alceste, 
 Les Moires (Moipa) for Les Parques, and so on.
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 273 
 
 and regions (e.g., Le Cceur de Hialmar, Les Elfes), and often 
 confines himself to the painting of exotic landscapes (e.g., 
 La Bernica, La Fontaine aux Lianes) or to the description 
 of wild animals (e.g., Le Rive du Jaguar, Les Elephants, La 
 Panthere Noire, etc.). His work is thus substantially a 
 series of tableaux historiques interspersed with scenes from 
 nature, and both in its range of matter and in the power 
 with which it presents the spirit of the ages dealt with in 
 concentrated imaginative form it may be compared with 
 La LSgende des Siicles. Unlike Hugo, however, Leconte 
 de Lisle was inspired with no didactic aim, and indeed ex- 
 pressly asserted his complete detachment from all personal 
 and social considerations. " Bien que l'art puisse donner, 
 dans une certaine mesure, un caractere de generalite a tout 
 ce qu'il touche," he wrote in the preface to the first edition 
 of his Poemes Antiques, " il y a dans l'aveu publique des 
 angoisses du cceur une vanite et une profanation gratuites. 
 D' autre part, quelque vivantes que soient les passions 
 politiques de ce temps, elles appartient au monde de 
 Taction ; le travail speculatif leur est etranger. Ceci 
 explique l'impersonnalite et la neutralite de ces etudes." * 
 Yet in spite of his firm conviction that art should have 
 nothing to do with the private sentiments and opinions of 
 the artist, he does not succeed in his attempt to escape 
 completely out of himself, and his poetry, while only rarely 
 directly expressive of his ideas, is throughout a luminous 
 record of the impressions which life makes upon him. 
 Like Vigny he is a pessimist, whose imagination is 
 burdened with a persistent sense of the sufferings of the 
 world and the tragedy of man : 
 
 1 This preface was omitted in later editions, but it should be con- 
 sulted as a clear exposition of the writer's principles. The student of 
 English literature will do well to compare Matthew Arnold's views as 
 set forth in the preface to his poems of 1853. 
 
 T
 
 274 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Sombre douleur de l'homme, 6 voix triste et profonde, 
 Plus forte que les bruits innombrables du monde ; 
 Cris de l'ame, sanglot du coeur supplici6, 
 Qui t'entend, sans fr6mir d'amour et de piti6 ? * 
 
 But in his pessimism he differs from Vigny at two import- 
 ant points ; he does not find a stronghold in stoicism, but 
 turns rather to buaanism witri 115 Adenine M "frirvana, 
 or the extinction of the individual consciousness (e.g., 
 Si VAurore, Dies Irae) ; and he seeks spiritual solace and 
 refreshment in nature {e.g. , Nox, M idi). His poetry is 
 laboriously fashioned and finished, and has great beauty 
 of form ; his versification is pure and regular ; his austere 
 style, as Gautier put it, has something of a " neigeuse et 
 sereine froideur." 
 
 Leconte de Lisle's closest disciple, Jose Maria de 
 Heredia, or in the commonly adopted French form of 
 the name, Heredia (1842-1905), was born in Santiago de 
 Cuba and was a descendant of one of the old Spanish 
 conquistador es, though he had some French blood in him 
 on his mother's side. Educated in France, where he 
 finally made his home, he early became attached to 
 Leconte de Lisle, whose ideas about form and the im- 
 personality of art he accepted to the full, though he did 
 not share his pessimism. His work consists almost 
 exclusively of sonnets, written during many years, pub- 
 lished separately or in small groups from time to time in 
 the reviews, and ultimately collected, 118 in numb er, 
 under the title of Les Trophees, in 1893, when the mov< - 
 ment out of which fhey had sprung was already a thing 
 of the past. They resemble Leconte de Lisle's poems in 
 presenting us with a succession of pictures and portraits, 
 taken mainly from the past or from remote countries, 2 
 
 1 Bhagavat, in Poitnes Antiques. 
 
 1 It should be noted that the selection of subjects distant in time
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 275 
 
 and they were arranged by the author himself in sections 
 according to the subject-matter : Greece (e.g., Hercule et 
 les Centaures), Rome and the Barbarians {e.g., Antoine et 
 Cleopdtre, La Trebbia, Aux Montagues Divines), the Middle 
 Ages and the Renaissance {e.g., Vitrail, Le Vieux Orfevre, 
 Entail, Les Conquer ants), the Orient and the Tropics (e.g., 
 La Vision de Khem, Les Samurais), with a concluding 
 section entitled Nature and Dreams (e.g. the sequence, La 
 Mer de Bretagne). Heredia was a consummate literary 
 craftsman, who deliberately adopted the sonnet as " le 
 plus beau des poemes a forme fixe," the very brevity and 
 difficulty of which seemed to him to demand " une con- 
 science dans Texecution et une concentration dans la 
 pense qui ne peuvent qu'exciter et pousser a. la perfec- 
 tion l'artiste digne de ce beau n om " ; and in the flawless 
 precision of his workmanship he deserves a place among 
 the greatest sonnet-writers of the world. His radical 
 defect is perhaps the result as much of his theories as of 
 his genius a want of breadth and humanity. Even 
 mTJre" than his master he was an exponent of the principle 
 of artistic detachment and indifference, and his c omp lete 
 objectivity is the more striking, because in all times and 
 countries the sonnet has generally" been adopted as a 
 medium of personal expression. 
 
 "- In the work of another of Leconte de Lisle's personal 
 adherents, Rene Francois Armand Sully - Prudhomme 
 (1839-1907), we" have a body of poetry which, though 
 starring from the Parnassian doctrine, has little in common 
 with its extremer implications. His first book of verse, 
 Stances et Poemes (1865), was warmly praised by Sainte- 
 Beuve, and this was followed by a number of other 
 
 and place was a natural corollary of the theory that the poet should 
 get as far away from himself as possible. Cp. Matthew Arnold's 
 preface, just referred to.
 
 276 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 volumes of which Les preuves (1866), Les Solitudes 
 (1869), Les Vaines Tendresses (1872), La Justice (1878), 
 and Le Bonheur (1888) are the most important. He 
 also wrote several suggestive works on aesthetics and 
 philosophy, and in 1901 was awarded the Nobel Prize 
 for literature. Sully - Prudhomme's earlier poetry was 
 Parnassian in its plastic quality and in its attention to 
 form, but he never sought, or at least he never attained, 
 the indifference which for the moment was the reigning 
 ideal in art. On the contrary, even his first writings 
 contained many revelations of his tender and sympathetic 
 nature and of his preoccupation with the inner world of 
 thought and feeling, and this subjective side of his genius 
 found freer and fuller expression in his later work. Ulti- 
 mately his interest in science and metaphysical problems 
 led him on to philosophical speculation, and convinced 
 that it was within the capacity of poetry to embrace and 
 interpret " outre tous les sentiments, presque toutes les 
 idees," he wrote La Justice and Le Bonheur. Though 
 marked by high purpose and great nobility of thought, 
 these experiments in didacticism cannot, however, be 
 regarded as successes ; they have many memorable 
 passages, but judged as wholes they prove very clearly 
 that the writer lacked the intellectual and imaginative 
 power necessary to surmount the difficulties of his 
 ambitious task. He will be remembered rather for some 
 of his shorter poems as, e.g., La Vase Brisie, Jeunes Filles 
 (Stances et Polmes), Premiere Solilude (Les Solitudes), Homo 
 Sum, Un Songe (Les Epreuves), Aux Amis Inconnus, La 
 Coupe, L'Rtoile au Cceur (Les Vaines Tendresses) which 
 are characterised by great subtlety, delicacy, and grace. 
 
 Another writer who is commonly included in the same 
 group, but whose association with it was hardly more 
 than personal, is Francois fidouard Joachim Coppee (1842-
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 277 
 
 1908), a very attractive poet, whose work deserves to be 
 better known to English readers than it is. Coppee 
 began as a Parnassian in Le Reliquaire (1866), but he 
 soon detached himself from the school, finding his true 
 line as a realistic poet of modern life of the city streets 
 and faubourgs, the working - classes, the sorrows and 
 heroism of the poor in La Greve des Forgerons (1869), 
 Les Humbles (1872), Promenades et Interieures (1872), 
 Contes en Vers (1881, 1887), etc. This rejection of the 
 aristocratic ideal of art was, it may be mentioned in 
 passing, strongly disapproved by Leconte de Lisle him- 
 self, who saw in it only a sacrifice on the altar of popularity. 
 Coppee's literary ancestry has been sought by critics who 
 are determined to find a pedigree for everybody, in Victor 
 Hugo {e.g., Les Pauvres Gens) and in Sainte-Beuve, and 
 through the latter it may be traced back to Cowper, 
 Crabbe, and Wordsworth. But such an inquiry into 
 origins is, I think, ingenious rather than convincing, and 
 it seems safer to connect the realistic movement in poetry 
 directly with the spread of social interests and the parallel 
 realistic movement in the drama and the novel. 1 Coppee 
 is not always successful in overcoming the difficulties 
 which confront the poet who seeks his material in the 
 commonplaces of actual life ; he lapses occasionally into 
 the baldly prosaic, and on the other hand his sentiment 
 is sometimes strained into sentimentalism. But at its 
 best his work has strength and true pathos. 
 
 Among minor writers of the Parnassian group we 
 may just mention Armande Silvestre (1 837-1 901), who 
 achieved some distinction as a poet witn Les Renaissances 
 (1869), La Chanson des Heures (1878), and La Chanson des 
 
 1 Another writer of some note, Eugene Manuel (1823-1901), may 
 also be mentioned as an independent representative of the same tend- 
 ency in verse. See his Pages Intimes (1866) and Polmes Populaires 
 (1871).
 
 278 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 toiles (1885), though his contemporary popularity rested 
 upon his Rabelaisian tales in prose ; Leon Dierx (b. 1838), 
 a compatriot of Leconte de Lisle {e.g./PoImes et Poisies, 
 1864 ; Les Livres Closes, 1867); Henri Cazali s (1840-1909), 
 a physician, who published a beautiful poem of oriental 
 mysticism, L'lllusio n (1878), under the pseudonym of 
 Jean Lahor; and Catulle Mendes (1841-1909), whose verse 
 (e.g., PhilomMe, 1863 ; Hesftirus, 1872), while excellent in 
 technique, is deeply tainted with the sensuality which 
 mars his numerous unwholesome novels. These, how- 
 ever, are scarcely important enough to call for more than 
 casual reference, and the many other members of the 
 school must be passed over in silence. 
 
 83. The Symbolistes. During the seventies of the 
 century the domination of Parnassianism, which was 
 largely neo-classic in tendency, was definitely challenged, 
 and about 1880 it was finally broken, by a revival under a 
 changed form of the spirit of romanticism. The poets 
 who rose in reaction against the clear-cut precision and 
 the technical restraints of Leconte de Lisle and his school 
 first called themselves Decadents, but afterwards adopted 
 the name of Symbolistes. The title was not well chosen, 
 but it served to indicate one special feature of their new 
 conception of art its mystical or transcendental quality. 
 Their principle was to proceed not by exact statement but 
 by subtle suggestion ; to substitute impression for mere 
 description, and instead of addressing the intellect, to 
 evoke moods and feelings by the magic of words and the 
 rhythm of verse. Hence their deliberate cultivation of 
 the vague and obscure, their love of elusive fancies, fleet- 
 ing sensations and half-realised ideas, their attempt to 
 penetrate beneath the surface of conscious experience 
 into that twilight region which in turn seemed to them 
 to lead out into the infinite. Hence their further develop-
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 279 
 
 ment of Baudelaire's doctrine of latent analogies and 
 correspondences. Hence, too, their repudiation of the 
 Parnassian theory in accordance with which poetry had 
 been correlated with painting in favour of a diametrically 
 opposed theory which associated it with music as in- 
 tellectually the least substantial and emotionally the most 
 suggestive of all the arts. 
 
 The leader and theorist of this new school was Stephane 
 Mallarme (1842-98). Yet Mallarme's influence, immense 
 as it was, was mainly a matter of personal ascendancy ; 
 he was the guide and inspirer of the many young men who, 
 Tuesday by Tuesday, sought his companionship in his 
 rooms in the Rue de Rome ; * but he was himself a very 
 unprolific writer, and what is most important in his 
 work, including his admirable translations of some of the 
 poems of Poe, will be found in two slender volumes, 
 Poemes Completes (1887) and Vers et Prose (1893). No 
 one who reads L' Apres-Midi d'un Faune, Les FenStres, 
 L'Azur, and Herodiade can doubt for a moment that he 
 was a true poet if not a great one. But on the whole his 
 paradoxical attempt " after an impossible liberation of 
 the soul of literature from . . . the mere literature of 
 words " 2 ended, as might have been expected, in un- 
 intelligibility. As Faguet has said, we read him as we 
 should listen to a piece of music, " sans le moindre inten- 
 tion de comprendre ce qu'il veut dire et en goutantseule- 
 meht la suggestion des mots et des sonorites." 3 
 
 It is as a theorist only that Mallarme deserves the 
 place of priority in the history of the Symbolist movement. 
 The one really important original representative of that 
 movement is Paul Verlaine (1844-96), whose biography 
 
 1 For an account of his salon see Arthur Symons' The Symbolist 
 Movement in Literature, pp. 155 ff. 
 * Symons, op. cit. p. 126. 
 3 Petite Histoire de la Literature Franfaise, p. 298.
 
 280 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 is a pitiful record of vagabondage, dissipation, repentance, 
 remorse, relapse, poverty, beggary, and disease, but who 
 had in him the soul of a poet and was endowed with a 
 marvellous gift of song. Verlaine's earlier work, the 
 Pohmes Saturniens (1866), Les FStes Galantes (1869), and 
 La Bonne Chanson (1870), show in various ways the 
 influence of Banville, Baudelaire, and Leconte de Lisle. 
 His distinctively personal note was first heard in Romances 
 sans Paroles (1874), and then again, after a long period 
 of silence, during which he had undergone a term of 
 imprisonment and had been converted to Catholicism, in 
 Sagesse (1881), a collection of lyrics steeped in the spirit 
 of mystical piety. His later volumes include Jadis et 
 Naguere (1884), Amour (1888), ParalUlement (1889), and 
 Bonheur (1891). A creature of instinct and impulse, 
 weak, undisciplined and capricious, and wholly lacking 
 in self-restraint and intellectual balance, Verlaine was 
 essentially the poet of fugitive moods and passing impres- 
 sions. His conception of poetry will be found in the verses 
 entitled Art Poetique (in Romances sans Paroles), and in 
 these, as the following extract will show, he embodies 
 some of the leading ideas of the whole Symbolist school : 
 
 De la musique avant toute chose. 
 Et pour cela prefere l'impair 
 Plus vague et plus soluble dans 1'air, 
 Sans rien en lui qui pse ou qui pose. 
 
 II faut aussi que tu n'ailles point 
 Choisir les mots sans quelque m6prise ; 
 Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise 
 Ou l'lndecis au Precis se joint. . . . 
 
 Car nous voulons la Nuance encor, 
 Pas de couleur, rien que la Nuance I 
 Oh ! la nuance seule fiance 
 Le rSve au rSve et la flilte au cor N
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 281 
 
 These stanzas may be taken as a key to his own poetry, 
 which, generally vague, frequently obscure, and some- 
 times apparently without any definite meaning even his 
 landscape painting, as Mr. Symons has said, " is always 
 an evocation in which outline is lost in atmosphere " 
 is often exquisitely beautiful in its verbal magic and 
 haunting melody. In his metrical freedom (a freedom 
 which we are told by one who knew him well, he learned 
 in part from his study of English models) x he broke away 
 more completely than any writer hitherto had done from 
 the rhetorical and prosodial traditions of French verse, 
 and at this point his influence was very strong on the 
 younger generation of poets. 2 
 
 84. Other Poets. Though few poets of the closing 
 decades of the nineteenth century detach themselves 
 conspicuously from the mass, the period was one of great 
 activity, and in the more important writers, as in their 
 minor contemporaries, we find, not a single central move- 
 ment, but a bewildering diversity of tendencies and aims. 
 There were those who, calling themselves " Vivants," 
 returned to the earlier traditions of Romanticism, like 
 Jean Richepin (b. 1849), a man f strong personality and 
 roSiist and unconventional style {e.g., La Chanson des 
 Gueux, 1876 ; Les Blasphemes, 1884). There were those 
 who showed the influence of Parnassianism in their 
 leanings towards the antique and the plastic quality of 
 their art, like Henri de Regnier (b. 1864) (e.g., Poemes, 
 
 1 Symons, op. cit. p. 84. 
 
 * The prosodial revolution which he may be said to have inaugurated 
 was carried on by a small group of writers among them Marie Kry- 
 sinska, Gustave Kahn, Rene Ghil, Vi616-Grimn, and Francis Jammes 
 who adopted in part or entirely the so-called vers libre verse irregular 
 in metrical construction and sometimes unrimed. This innovation in 
 French poetry can, however, for the present at least, be regarded only 
 as an experiment, and we must not be tempted into any discussion of 
 it here.
 
 282 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 1887, 1892, 1896 ; Les Jeux Rustiques et Divins, 1897 ; 
 Les Medailles d'Argile, 1900). There were those in whom, 
 as in Albert Samain (1850-10 00), the Parnassian influence 
 was blended with that of Symbolism (e.g., Au Jar din de 
 V Infante, 1893 ; Aux Flancs du Vase, 1898). There were 
 those who, like Te an Moreas (18^6-1 010^. a naturalised 
 Greek, were alternately Parnassian, romantic, and symbol- 
 ist (e.g., Les CantiUnes, 1886 ; Le Pllerin Passioni, 1891 ; 
 Poisies, 1898) ; those who like F rancis Jammes (b. 1868 ) 
 may be connected with the religious element in Verlaine 
 (e.g., Giorgiques ChrStiennes, 1911-12), and those who, 
 like Maurice Bouchor (b. 1855), were specially marked by 
 their mystical idealism (e.g., Les Sytnboles, 1888-95). But 
 we cannot now undertake any further inquiry into the 
 various developments of recent French poetry. A mere 
 catalogue of names would have little interest, and the 
 subject is too large for detailed treatment in these pages.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY (concluded) 
 THE DRAMA AND THE NOVEL 
 
 85. The Comedie de Mceurs. The failure of Les 
 Burgraves, which as we have seen brought Hugo's con- 
 nection with the theatre to a close, also marked the end 
 of romantic tragedy. At the same time, and notwith- 
 standing his momentary success, Ponsard's attempt to 
 initiate a classic revival proved completely abortive. 
 The rising realistic tendency in literature was in fact 
 fatal to both the romantic and the classic type of play, 
 and under the combined influence of Scribe on the stage 
 and of Balzac in the novel, the older forms of tragedy gave 
 way to a drama of serious purpose based on the facts and 
 problems of modern life. Though generally called the 
 Comedie de Mceurs a very appropriate title, since it was 
 the analogue and in part the product of the roman de 
 mceurs this new type may also be regarded as a trans- 
 formation of the eighteenth-century drame. 
 
 The two great masters of the comedie de mceurs are 
 the younger Dumas and mile Augier. 
 
 Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-95) was the natural but 
 legitimised son of the famous romancer, and it is a curious 
 fact that though the strongest affection existed between 
 
 283
 
 284 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the two, the younger man's rigid moral idealism was in 
 large measure a reaction against the elder's bohemianism 
 and disorderly habits of life. In 1848 he made a great 
 hit with a novel of passion, La Dame aux Camillas, and 
 after this produced other novels (e.g., L' Affaire CUmen- 
 ceau, 1866). But the immense success of the dramatised 
 version of La Dame (1852) attracted him to the stage, and 
 it was for the stage that his best work was done. Of his 
 sixteen plays Le Demi-Monde (1855), La Question d' Argent 
 (1857), L'Ami des Femmes (1864), Les Idles de Madame 
 Aubray (1867), and Une Visite de Noces (1871) are generally 
 considered the most important. Dumas inherited from 
 his father a real dramatic instinct, a strong sense of the 
 stage and a keen feeling for theatrical situations and 
 effects, and, along with these, a pronounced romantic bias 
 often noticeable in the character of his plots and his fond- 
 ness for the violent and the abnormal. But he was by 
 conviction and purpose a realist and a didactic realist, 
 who conceived the stage as the most fitting place for the 
 discussion of moral problems and believed that it could 
 be used as a powerful agent in social reform. Both his 
 matter and his manner were often, as he admitted, cal- 
 culated to upset " les idees recues, des conventions 
 tablies, les pr^juges et le qu'on dira-t-on, dans lesquelles 
 la society vit tant bien que mal " (Preface to Le Fits 
 Naturel), and his plays in fact seldom failed to arouse a 
 storm of controversy ; but he never deviated from the 
 course which he had marked out for himself in advance. 
 As a moralist he worked in two different directions, for 
 while on the one hand he pleaded the cause of the victims 
 of social prejudice and legal injustice, and especially that 
 of the women against whom the unchristian bigotry of 
 the world bars the way to redemption, on the other he 
 sought to arrest the decomposition of modern society by
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 285 
 
 proclaiming the sanctity of marriage and the family. As 
 a dramatist he insisted upon the substitution of the logic 
 of passion for the arbitrary procedure of the romantic 
 stage : " 2 et 2 font 4, et 4 et 4 font 8. Le theatre est 
 aussi impitoyable que 1'arithmetique " (Preface to Les 
 I dees de Madame Aubray). The chief defect of his plays 
 as plays is the occasional subordination of dramatic 
 interest to thesis, and their consequent tendency to run 
 into talk, discussion, and declamation : one of their most 
 significant structural features being the frequent introduc- 
 tion of a character (technically known as raisonneur) 
 whose function is that of chorus to the action and who 
 is really the representative of the author and the mouth- 
 piece of his ideas (e.g. Olivier de Jalin in Le Demi-Monde). 
 But their genuine acting quality is amply attested by 
 their practical success on the boards, while their intel- 
 lectuality, their dialectical subtlety, their mordant wit, 
 and their brilliant and incisive style make them always 
 remarkable as literature. As the principal founder of 
 the modern problem-play Dumas has an important place 
 in the history of the European drama. 
 
 More broadly, a large share in the evolution of that 
 drama must also be assigned to his contemporary Gujl- 
 laume Victor mile Augier (1820-89). Under the in- 
 fluence Of Ponard ana ueiavigne, Augier began with a 
 number of plays in verse La Cigue (1844), which is 
 Greek in theme, Un Homme de Bien (1845), a comedy of 
 the older classical type, L' Aventurie're (1848), the scene 
 of which is laid in the Italy of the Renaissance, etc. 
 From these experiments he passed on to Gabrielle (1849), 
 which, though still in verse, was modern in subject and 
 realistic in manner, and which, as the younger Dumas 
 declared, was " la premiere reVolte contre le theatre de 
 Scribe " ; meaning thereby, the first revolt, not against
 
 286 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 the technique of Scribe, which indeed both he and Augier 
 largely adopted, but against his mechanical methods in 
 the handling of passion and character. Then following 
 the lead of Dumas, Augier turned to the prose comedy 
 of manners, and in 1854 produced in Le Gendre deJ A. 
 Poirier * one of the classics , of the modern st age. This, 
 however, was only the opemng of a career of unbroken 
 and well-earned success, the principal landmarks of which 
 are perhaps Les EffrontSs (1861), Maitre Gudrin (1864), 
 and Les Fourchambault (1878). In a general estimate of 
 Augier's work there is little need for qualifications. His 
 plays, one and all, are admirable in structure and com- 
 position, thoroughly dramatic in interest, robust and 
 natural in style, and full of sound, generous, healthy 
 sentiment and sane and practical morality. In particular, 
 stress must be laid upon the vitality of his characterisa- 
 tion ; his personages are not mere puppets ; they are 
 figures of flesh and blood, and some of them, like M. 
 Poirier, Maitre Guerin, and Giboyer, have definitely taken 
 their places as types beside the great creations of the 
 older drama. Voltairian in his opinions and thoroughly 
 anti-romantic in temper, Augier was a capital representa- 
 tive of what was best in the middle classes of his time 
 and a consistent interpreter of many of their ideas regard 
 ing love, marriage, and the family. Yet he was an out- 
 spoken critic of their weaknesses and failings, and continu- 
 ally satirised their sordid notions of worldly success and 
 their besetting sins of narrowness and hypocrisy. 
 
 86. The Lighter Drama. Side by side with the 
 more serious comedy of manners the various lighter forms 
 of drama flourished greatly, especially under the Second 
 Empire. Among the innumerable caterers for public 
 
 1 This, as we have already noted, was based on Sandeau's novel, 
 Sacs el Parchements, and was written with Sandeau's co-operation.
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 287 
 
 amusement none was more successful than Victorien 
 Sardou (1831-1908), whom we include under theffTSSBnt 
 head "beCanser'^ta-tever the nature of his work, it was 
 designed expressly for the footlights and to meet the 
 demands of popular taste. Sardou was a man of extra- 
 ordinary versatility of talent, and in his long and prolific 
 career produced plays in all sorts of styles : vaudevilles 
 {e.g., Divorcons) ; comedies of manners (e.g., Nos Intimes, 
 La Famille Benottori) ; comedies of intrigue [e.g., Les 
 Pattes de Mouche) ; political comedies (e.g., Rabagas) ; 
 historical dramas (e.g., Madame Sans-Gene, La Haine, 
 Patrie, Thermidor). Many of his later melodramas (e.g., 
 La Tosca) were written for Sarah Bernhardt, and he also 
 provided two plays for Sir Henry Irving Robespierre 
 and Dante. Sardou was the successor of Scribe, and 
 what has been said about Scribe may with equal justice 
 be applied to him. He was an adroit and dextrous crafts- 
 man and a master of all the resources of the stage, but 
 despite his surprisingly clever technique he cannot be 
 described as a great dramatist, because his work as a 
 whole is devoid of depth and sincerity. Far less copious, 
 but possessed of a much higher literary quality, fidouard 
 Pailleron (1834-99) deserves to be remembered as trie 
 auth'dr of"OTle" "delightful piece of " marivaudage," L'Etin- 
 celle (1879), an d on e very brilliant satirical comedy, Le 
 Monde ou Von s' ennui (1881). Of the many other success- 
 ful playwrights of the time we must not pause here to 
 take account, but an exception must be made in favour 
 of one of them the inimitable Eugene Marin Labiche 
 (1815-88) who was for many years t,ne most popular 
 dramatist in France, and whose popularity rested on 
 really firm foundations. Labiche worked in the lighter 
 forms of comedy only, but his humour was so abundant, 
 his wit so spontaneous and keen, his dialogue so racy and
 
 288 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 sparkling, he had such a wonderful fertility in the inven- 
 tion of comic incidents and situations and such a happy 
 knack of hitting off characters, that in his own special 
 way he is fully entitled to a place among the masters. 
 There is moreover at times a deeper meaning to his mirth 
 than might at first sight be supposed. Plays like La 
 Cagnotte and Un Chapeau de Paille d'ltalie may be little 
 more than tissues of irresistible buffooneries, but in Le 
 Voyage de M. Perichon, for example, and La Poudre aux 
 Ycux, there is more genuine human nature and more 
 psychology than in many far more pretentious pieces. 
 
 87. The Drame Naturaliste and the Romantic 
 Revival. The evolution of the realistic novel of manners 
 into the rotnan naturaliste of Zola and his school was 
 followed by a parallel movement in the drama. Zola 
 himself and a few other theorists under his immediate 
 influence made the first attempts in the drame naturaliste, 
 but without much success, and the new type is principally 
 associated with the name of Henri Becque (1837-99), who 
 illustrated its formula in some half-dozen plays of which 
 Michel Pauper (1870), Les Corbeaux (1882), and La Pari- 
 sienne (1885) will serve as examples. Becque's avowed 
 purpose was to liberate the drama entirely from all 
 lingering theatrical and literary conventions, and to make 
 it the absolutely faithful reflection of life as it is. He 
 wrote, accordingly, without the slightest concern about 
 technique in the usual acceptation of the term ; reduced 
 his plots to the smallest possible proportions, providing 
 only just enough thread of intrigue to hold the successive 
 scenes together ; handled these scenes without regard to 
 progression, climax, or mere stage effect ; and in the 
 fashioning of his dialogue aimed at all times to avoid 
 those very qualities of wit and fancy which the ordinary 
 dramatist was most sedulous to cultivate for the display
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 289 
 
 of his own cleverness. Though it was part of his pro- 
 gramme to present his "tranches de vie" not only with- 
 out commentary but also without any disturbing touch 
 of doctrinal purpose, he showed the bias of his school in 
 his preoccupation with the sordid and ugly, and the 
 general tone of his work is profoundly pessimistic and 
 even brutal. With his vigorous propaganda in favour of 
 naturalism we must also connect the foundation in 1887 
 by an enterprising actor, Andre Antoine, of the Theatre 
 Libre, which was opened to give hospitality to those 
 native playwrights of talent whose ideas about art were 
 too advanced for the general public, and which also served 
 to introduce to a select circle of enthusiasts the works of 
 some of the leaders of the new drama abroad, like Tolstoi, 
 Ibsen, and Hauptmann. In its more aggressive features 
 the whole movement was scarcely more than a passing 
 fashion. But it certainly helped to broaden and deepen 
 the art of the stage and to break down the Sardouesque 
 tradition of the " well-made play," and its influence is 
 clearly marked in the later French drama, as, for example, 
 in the writings of Georges Ancey (L'cole des Veufs, 1891, 
 L'Avenir, 1899, etc.) ; Ju les Lem aitre (Le Depute" Leveau, 
 1891, Mariage Blanc, iSgi^eicY; Eugene Brieux (Blan- 
 chette, 1892, L'livasion, 1896, etc.) ; and Paul Hervieu 
 (Les Tenailles, 1895, La Loi de V Homme, 1897, etc. J ! 
 
 Meanwhile the poetic drama, though apparently dead, 
 was only dormant, and after the disasters of 1870 it began 
 to evince fresh signs of life, the excesses of naturalism 
 presently causing a distinct reaction in its favour. In 
 1875 a friend and disciple of Hugo, Henri de Bornier 
 (1825-1901), made a strong appeal to romantic !58nT3m1ht 
 with La Fille de Roland, and he was followed by C oppee 
 {Les Jacobites, 1881, Severo Torelli, 1883, Pour la 
 Couronne, 1895, etc.) ; by Richepin (Nana Sahib, 1883, 
 
 u
 
 290 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Par la Glaive, 1892, Le Chemineau, 1897, etc.), and by 
 other writers. But it was reserved for E dmond Rostan d 
 (b. 1864) to prove triumphantly with Les Romanesque?' 
 (1894), Cyrano de Bergerac (1897) the most brilliant 
 theatrical success of recent times and L'Aiglon (1900), 
 that public and critics alike were ready and eager to 
 welcome an author who was at once a dramatist and a 
 poet, and who was able to captivate their imaginations 
 with * dashing romance and enchant their ears with 
 musical verse. 
 
 88. The Roman Realiste. The influences which we 
 have traced in the development of the drama in the later 
 nineteenth century also, and even more powerfully, affected 
 prose fiction : the novel of sentiment and the historical 
 romance lost their vogue, and for some thirty years the pre- 
 dominant type was the realistic novel of contemporary life. 
 In the decade following Balzac's death an active campaign 
 in favour of realism was conducted by a number of young 
 writers who fought under his banner, foremost among 
 whom was Jules Fleury-Husson, always known by his 
 pen-name of Champfleury (1821-89), whose novels (e.g., 
 Les Bourgeois de Molinchart, 1855), though now almost 
 forgotten, embodied and helped to popularise the leading 
 ideas of the school. But the triumph of that school 
 dates from the publication in 1857 of Madame Bovary, by 
 Gustave Flaubert (1821-80), in which Sainte-Beuve at 
 once detected the rise of a new force in literature and 
 which critics as far apart as Zola and Brunetiere after- 
 wards agreed in regarding as a landmark in the history 
 of the modern novel. Flaubert has been described as a 
 romanticist born out of his proper time, and there was 
 indeed a great deal of romanticism in his intellectual com- 
 position ; he confessed himself to a natural taste for the 
 extraordinary and the fantastic ; and in Hirodias and
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 291 
 
 La Legende de Saint- Julien V Hospitaller (in Trois Contes), 
 in La Tentation de Saint- Antoine (1874), as well as in 
 his second masterpiece, Salammbd (1862), he sought an 
 imaginative escape out of that "vie ordinaire" which 
 he held "en execration." But he subjected his tempera- 
 ment to the severest artistic discipline, and in particular 
 opposed the emotional and sentimental tendencies of 
 romanticism with his central doctrine of the absolute 
 impersonality and indifference of art : " l'artiste doit 
 s'arranger de facon a faire croire a la posterite qu'il n'a 
 pas vecu." Such was his ideal of the " impersonnalite 
 surhumaine " which he admired in Shakespeare. Life 
 for him was in fact only so much subject-matter for art ; 
 its possible ethical significance did not in the least interest 
 him ; his one concern was with the fidelity of his treat- 
 ment and the perfection of his technique. It was in the 
 spirit of complete detachment and with the most laborious 
 care that in Madame Bovary he traced step by step the 
 gradual declension of his heroine from weakness to vice 
 and from vice to suicide, painting his characters in the 
 minutest detail against a background, painted with equal 
 minuteness, and provided by the manners of the provin- 
 cial bourgeoisie to which they belonged ; and though in 
 Salammbd he forsook the present to undertake an elaborate 
 reconstruction of Carthaginian civilisation after the first 
 Punic War, his method was still the same, for he prepared 
 himself for this massive work by exhaustive studies and 
 by a journey to Tunis in quest of local colour. Entirely 
 absorbed in his art, Flaubert had a passion for form and 
 style which he carried indeed to the point of mania ; he 
 would spend days in the revision of a page and hours 
 over a single phrase. In Madame Bovary he produced 
 what is undoubtedly one of the greatest of realistic novels. 
 But in his other work on the same line he paid the penalty 
 
 u 2
 
 2Q2 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 of his " documentary " method, for both L'ducaiion 
 Sentimentale (1870) and the unfinished Bouvard et Picuchet 
 are as dull as the life which they depict. 
 
 This method was carried even further by two brothers, 
 Edmond (1822-96) and Jules (1830-70) de Goncourt, who 
 for ten years wrote m collaboration, tnOUfn after the 
 younger's death the elder continued to produce novels 
 on his own account. The Goncourts boasted specially of 
 the documentary value of their work : " un des caracteres 
 particuliers de nos romans ce sera d'etre les romans les 
 plus historiques de ce temps-ci, les romans qui fourniront 
 le plus de faits et de vrites vraies a l'^iistoire morale de 
 ce siecle " [Journal, i. 362) .* Their novels {e.g., Charles 
 Demailly, i860 ; Sceur Philomlne, 1861 ; Renee Mauperin, 
 1864 ; Germinie Lacerteur, 1865, etc.) are very unequal, 
 generally very tedious, and always very gloomy and 
 morbid ; their interest is pathological rather than psycho- 
 logical ; they are frequently marred by a brutal frankness 
 of description and a grossness of phrase which made even 
 Flaubert declare that henceforth he might be considered 
 as respectable, and they are written in a feverish, con- 
 torted style which adds still further to our distress in 
 reading them. 
 
 89. The Roman Naturaliste. Though it is difficult 
 to draw any clear line of demarcation between realism 
 and naturalism, we will follow the usual practice of French 
 critics and adopt the latter term to designate the particular 
 development of realism which we find in the writings of 
 Zola and his disciples. It was the aim of mile Zo la 
 (1840-1900) to make the novel absolutely scientific by 
 
 1 The novels of the Goncourts are little read now except by professed 
 students of literature, but the Journal in which for many years they 
 recorded the events of their lives retains its interest as a mine of in- 
 formation regarding the literary and artistic world and people of their 
 time.
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 293 
 
 carrying over into it the most modern ideas about deter- 
 minism, environment, heredity, and physiological psycho- 
 logy which had been expounded by biologists like Claude 
 Bernard and evolutionary philosophers like Taine. In 
 the Preface to the second edition of his early Therese 
 Raquin (1867) he wrote : " J'ai simplement fait sur deux 
 corps vivants le travail analytique que les chirurgiens font 
 sur les cadavres." In these audacious words he already 
 suggested that conception of the " experimental" novel 
 which he afterwards formulated in full : " Le romancier 
 est fait d'un observateur et d'un experimenteur. L'obser- 
 vateur, chez lui, donne les faits tels qu'il les a observes, 
 pose le point de depart, etablit le terrain solide sur lequel 
 vont marcher les personnages et se developper les pheno- 
 menes. Puis l'experimenteur parait et institue l'experi- 
 ence, je veux dire fait mouvoir les personnages dans une 
 histoire particuliere pour y montrer que la succession des 
 faits y sera telle que l'exige le determinisme des pheno- 
 menes mis a l'etude " (Le Roman Experimental). Such 
 was Zola's doctrine. Its demonstration is to be found in 
 the twenty inter-related volumes a new comedie humaine, 
 but far more systematic and logical than Balzac's 
 collectively entitled Les Rougon-Macquart : Histoire 
 Naturelle et Sociale d'une Famille sous le Second Empire 
 (1861-93). The design of this colossal work is to follow 
 the fortunes of the various members of a single family 
 through all the different environments in which they 
 respectively play their parts, and in so doing to present a 
 complete picture of the many-sided civilisation of the 
 period. The plan was a great one, and we cannot but 
 admire the consistency with which it was carried out. 
 Unfortunately, however, Zola has chosen a family of 
 degenerates, and his chronicles afS~a*"frtrge" "mass oFcorrup- 
 tion* which is often shocking in its intolerable foulness
 
 294 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and is vitiated as a social study by its everlasting pre- 
 occupation with " la b6te humaine." * Moreover, for all 
 hitparade Of theories, Zola was anything but an impartial 
 observer and " expenmenteUT," and lfl BIS' VlOlUHCU and 
 
 >W^I -| ii j- ., .1 'I If -||ll> >^ I || Milieu... | 
 
 excesses, and in the imaginative power with which he 
 perpetually intensifies and distorts his subjects, he really 
 belongs to the romantics, though his romanticism, in 
 Brunetiere's happy phrase, takes the perverted form of 
 "romantisme a rebours." His scientific pretensions are 
 now exploded and a large part of his work is dead. But 
 three portions of it at least survive L'Assommoir, the 
 most tremendous exposure of the evils of drink in any litera- 
 ture, 2 Germinal, which deals with miners and strikes, and 
 has justly been called an "epopee sociologiquc," and La 
 Dibdcle, a powerful study of the disasters of 1870. After 
 completing his immense task Zola wrote a second sequence 
 of novels : Trois Villes Lourdes, Rome, Paris (1894-98), 
 and embarked upon a third, Les Quatres Jivangiles. 
 The latter, left unfinished at his death, was intended to 
 embody his gospel of social reconstruction, and reveals the 
 pessimist of the Rougon-Macquart series in the new role 
 of apostle of humanity and preacher of faith and hope. 
 
 Of the many other writers who are also roughly classed 
 as naturalists the most important are Fabre, Mairpassant, 
 Huysmans, and Daudet. The novels of^erdinanaFabre 
 (1827-98), wMcnTwtth little grace of style, are marked 
 by great simplicity and truthfulness, are interesting as 
 showing the specialising tendency which has since been 
 increasingly apparent in French fiction, for they deal 
 almost entirely with his native region of the Cevennes 
 
 1 For a general summary of the history of this remarkable family, 
 and for their genealogical tree, see the closing volume of the series, 
 he Docteur Pascal. 
 
 Dramatised for the English stage, under the title of Drink, by 
 Charles Reade.
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 295 
 
 (e.g., Le Chevrier, 1868 ; M on Oncle Cilestin , 1881), or 
 with clerical life and maxmersje. g, L'Abbi Yigrane, 1873). 
 Guy de Maupassant (1850-93) was Flaubert's disciple, 
 and learned his first lessons in the art of literature directly 
 from him. He wrote a number of novels (UneVie, 1883 ; 
 Pierre et Jean, 1888 ; Notre Cceur, 1890, etc.)", but it is as 
 one of the greatest masters of the nouvelle and short story 
 thatThe holds his distinctive place in the history of modern 
 fiction. He was, on the whole, the completest exponent of 
 the doctrines of naturalism, for Ms one and only aim 
 was to depict life as he saw it (Preface to Pierre ei Jean), 
 and he never allowed his vision to be disturbed by any 
 ulterior consideration, scientific, philosophical, or ethical. 
 He exhibits at times a genuine quality of humour, though 
 it is humour of a rather grim kind ; b ut in commo n with 
 most of his school, he dwells almost exclusively upon the 
 base and evil aspects of life, and the tone of his tales is 
 in general gloomy and depressing. Joris Karl Huysmans 
 ( 1 848-1 907) was one of the group of ycung writers who 
 gathered about Zola in the early years of his propagand- 
 ism, and formed what was for the moment known as 
 "l'ficole de MSdan." His first novels (Marihe, 1878; 
 Les SaeuVl TSKttCi88o, etc.) were heavy, unclean, bitterly 
 pessimistic books, which exemplified the creed of natural- 
 ism at its worst. Then he became absorbed in the study 
 of demonology and magic (A Rebours, 1884 > Ld-Bas, 
 1890), which however proved to be only the first stage in 
 a long and curious intellectual pilgrimage, which ended at 
 last in mystical piety (see En Route, 1895 ; La CathHrale, 
 1898). Alphonse Daudet (1840-97), while commonly in- 
 cluded among the naturalists, really occupies a position 
 far apart from them, for though his watchword was 
 " d'apres nature," and his method " documentary," 
 there is nothing in his writings to suggest the aloofness
 
 296 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and indifference of the scientific school. On the contrary, 
 the personal note in them is very strong, and much of 
 their peculiar charm is due to his exquisite sensibility, his 
 tenderness, and his emotionalism. These qualities are 
 present in all his work : in Le Petit Chose (1868), which is 
 largely autobiographical ; irT tromont Jeune et Risler 
 Aini (1874), perhaps his greatest book and a novel of 
 enormous depth and power ; in Jack (1876), a painfully 
 pathetic record of a child's martyrdom ; in Le Nabob 
 (1877), Les Rois en Exit (1879), an d L'Immortel (1880), all 
 elaborate pictures of Parisian manners ; in Numa Rou- 
 mestan (1881) and L' Evangeliste (1883), the one a study 
 of the southern temperament, the other of morbid piety ; 
 in Sa ho (188 4), which is the tragedy of a young man's 
 infatuation for an artist's mo3 eI f and all these snow the 
 same wonderful skill in creating character and atmosphere, 
 the same subtlety of insight and fineness of touch, the 
 same vividness of description, the same grasp or life . 
 Daudet, in my own judgment, stands well to the fore 
 among The i" greatest of TTuropeah "hoveTIst^","ancT he is at 
 the same time one of those writers whom we not only 
 admire, but for whom, as for Dickens, with whom he has 
 often been compared, and by whom he was evidently 
 influenced, we feel a warm personal affection. Tt is only 
 exigencies of spare which compel us here to dismiss him 
 with so brief a reference, for he really deserves a much 
 fuller consideration. It must, however, be added, in 
 order to make our rapid view of him even approximately 
 complete, that two of his books, not yet named, Tartarin 
 de Tarascon (1872) and Tartarin s ur les Aty es X1885), 
 wrlich^give the comedy, as SSuma Rownes Tan gives the 
 tragedy of the " meridional," are' masterpieces of humorous 
 extravaganza, and that the stories collected in Conies d u 
 Lundi (1873) are unexcelled for delicacy and grace.
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 297 
 
 90. Other Novelists. Even during the period of its 
 greatest ascendancy the power of realism was often 
 challenged, not only by writers like George Sand, whose 
 work to the last was but little modified by its influence, 
 but also by various younger novelists who still carried 
 on the traditions of romantic idealism. The year after 
 the publication of Madame Bovary Octave Feuillet (1821- 
 1890) scored an immense~iuccess with nis extremely senti- 
 mental Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre, and this he 
 afterwards followed up with other novels {e.g., M. de 
 Camors, 1867 ; Julie de Trecceur, 1872) which, though 
 more robust in character, belong to the same general 
 class of society fiction, and are marked by the same aristo- 
 cratic tone and the same respectable but worldly morality. 
 The Dominique (1863) of the celebrated landscape painter 
 E ugene Fromentin (1820-7 6) also deserves mention as a 
 remarkable piece of psychological analysis in the manner 
 of the earlier generation. Feuillet and Fromentin will 
 serve as examples of the novelists who were entirely 
 independent of the realistic movement. After these we 
 come to a number of writers of varying degrees of merit, 
 who may be described as eclectics, because while they 
 adopted more or less fully the methods of the realists, 
 they did so without reference to any of the special theories 
 of the school ; like An dre* Theuriet (1833-1 907), the author 
 of many charming novels of the country and provincial life 
 (Le Fils Maugars, 1879 ; Sauvageonne, 1880 ; Le Manage 
 de Gerard, 1889, etc.), which though soundly realistic in 
 quality are deeply imbued with sentiment, and in their 
 poetic descriptions of nature often remind us of the 
 idyllic stories of George Sand. Such work as Theuriet's 
 clearly suggests the new and healthy tendency in fiction 
 to break away from the trammels of dogma and system 
 and to develop freely along lines as multifarious as the
 
 298 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 personalities of the writers. This tendency became in- 
 creasingly apparent after 1880, with the result that though 
 the novels produced since that date may still be arranged 
 in groups autobiographical novels, sociological novels, 
 sentimental novels, novels of provincial manners, historical 
 novels, humorous novels, and so on the outstanding fact 
 is that " de nos jours les genres les plus divers voisinent 
 sans mesentente." * To illustrate this variety it is only 
 necessary to refer to the three most important figures in the 
 literature of the closing years of the century Paul Bourget, 
 Pie rre Loti (Marie Julien Viaud), and Anafble Ffahce 
 (Jacques Anatole Thibaut). Of these three .Bourget 
 (b. ^8527 is "most closely associated with the realists, but 
 in fiction as in criticism his chief interest has always been 
 in moral psychology, and his mature novels (L e Disc iple, 
 1889 ; Cosmopolis, 1892 ; L'tape, 1902, etc.) are mainly 
 concerned with the problems of the inner life. Pierre Loti 
 (b. 1850) is less a novelist than a poet and a painter, who 1 
 has drawn for his materials and settings upon his own 
 experiences as a naval officer in many parts of the world 
 [e.g., Le Manage de Loti, 1880 ; Le Roman d'un Spahi, 
 1 881 ; L e PScheur d'lslande^ 1886 ; Madame Chrysan- 
 theme, 1887), ana is speciallyremarkable for the brilliancy 
 of his word-pictures. But though his strength lies in 
 description he is sharply distinguished from the realists 
 by the essentially personal quality of all his writing ; his 
 art is in fact pure impressionism, and as his transcripts 
 from nature are steeped in the melancholy of his tempera- 
 ment, so his style, technically open to criticism but 
 extraordinarily vigorous and vivid, is absolutely his own. 
 Equally personal in another way is the fascinating work 
 of Anatole France (b. 1844), for whom fiction is in the 
 main a medium of ideas. That work is indeed so varied 
 
 1 Hisloire Illustrie de la Literature Frangaise (pub. H. Didier), p. 626.
 
 THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 299 
 
 in character, and so deeply impressed by the changes which 
 the writer's mind has undergone in the course of his long 
 career, that no adequate account of it can be given in a 
 few sentences. Speaking generally, however, we may say 
 that even when it approximates most closely to the type 
 of the regular novel, as in the delightful Crime de Sylvestre 
 Bonnard (1881), Thais (1890), Le Lys Ro uge (1894), and 
 that powerful picture of revolutionary Paris, Les Dieux 
 ont Soif (1912), it is still everywhere impregnated with his 
 individuality and his philosophy, while in many of his books, 
 as in" Le Livre de mon Ami (1885), La Rdtisserie de la Reine 
 Pedauque (1893), the four volumes making up the Histoire 
 ConTemporaine (L'Orme du Mail, Le Mannequin d' Osier, 
 L'Anneau d'Amethyste, and M. Bergeret d Paris, 1897- 
 1901), and the Swift-like satire L'lle des Pinguoins (1909), 
 the form of fiction is employed only as a convenient 
 vehicle of his opinions on men and things. As a philo- 
 sopher, Anatole France belongs to the school of Montaigne 
 and Renan ; a man of versatile and acute intellect, he 
 employs his varied and curious learning, his dialectical 
 skill and his irony to ridicule the pretensions of theology, 
 metaphysics, and science in their quest for absolute truth, 
 and to expound a thoroughly subjective conception of 
 life. But pungent as is his wit, there is nothing hard about 
 his nature ; on the contrary, his universal scepticism is 
 accompanied by cheerful tolerance, and his satire softened 
 by frequent touches of tenderness and sympathy. 
 
 It would be out of keeping with the plan of this book 
 to enter into any further consideration of recent French 
 fiction, and I will therefore content myself with saying 
 that it gives every sign of continued vitality and growth. 
 We have only to turn to the sound and admirable work 
 of some of the most prominent of contemporary writers 
 to De toute son Ame (1897), La Terre qui Meurt (1899),
 
 300 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 and the striking story of lost Alsace, Les OberU (1901), 
 of Rene" Bazin (b. 1853), f r example, or to L'Enfant d 
 la B a Tt lst f UtfB ( I ' tjo^) Tfl Rene" Boylesve (b. 1867), or to Le 
 Pays Natal (1900) and Les Roquevillard (1906) of Henry 
 Bordeaux (b. 1870) to feel assured that at least in this 
 one fertile and ever-widening field the French literature 
 of the immediate future will be fully worthy of the great 
 traditions of the past.
 
 INDEX 
 
 (i) French Authors 
 
 Adam de la Halle, 21 
 
 Alembert, d', 142, 166 
 
 Amyot, 40 
 
 Ancelot, 203 
 
 Ancey, 289 
 
 Aubignac, d', 166 
 
 Aubigne, d', 36, 40 
 
 Aucassin et Nicolette, 24 
 
 Augier, 285-6 
 
 Aveugle et le Boiteux, U, 20 
 
 Bodel, 14, 19, 21 
 
 Boileau, 56, 57, 58, 59"63i 67, 68, 69, 
 
 73. 106, H2, 114. 115, 118, 124, 154, 
 
 194 
 Bois- Robert, 84 
 Bonald, 199 
 
 Bonaventure des Periers, 29 n. 
 Bordeaux, 300 
 Bornier, 289 
 Bossuet, 96, 100, 102-4, io 5 I 36, 
 
 260 
 
 Balf, 32 
 
 
 
 Bouchor, 282 
 
 
 Balzac, H. de, 245-50, 254, 266, 
 
 283, 
 
 Bourdaloue, 104 
 
 
 290, 293 
 
 
 
 Bourget, 268, 298 
 
 
 Balzac, J. L. G. de, 57 
 
 > 93 
 
 96, 
 
 Boylesve, 300 
 
 
 106 
 
 
 
 Brieux, 289 
 
 
 Banville, 269-70 
 
 
 
 Brizeux, 223 
 
 
 Baour-Lormian, 177 
 
 
 
 Brunetiere, 267, 268, 290 
 
 
 Barante, 225 
 
 
 
 Buff on, 151 
 
 
 Barbier, 222 
 
 
 
 
 
 Barthelemy, 152 
 
 
 
 Calvin, 40 
 
 
 Baudelaire, 270-71, 279 
 
 
 
 Cave, 228 
 
 
 Bayle, 141 
 
 
 
 Cazalis, 278 
 
 
 Bazin, 299 
 
 
 
 Champfleury, 290 
 
 
 Beaumarchais, 166, 168, 
 
 234 
 
 
 Chanson de Roland, 5-7 
 
 
 Becque, 288-9 
 
 
 
 Chapelain, 61 
 
 
 Belleau, 32 
 
 
 
 Charles d' Orleans, 15 
 
 
 Beranger, 222 
 
 
 
 Chartier, 15 
 
 
 Bernard, C. de, 254 
 
 
 
 Chateaubriand, 181, 186-92, 193, 196, 
 
 Bernay, 9 
 
 
 
 204, 236, 237, 260 
 
 
 Beroul, 8 
 
 
 
 Chenedolle, 177, 203 
 
 
 Beze, 36 
 
 
 
 Chenier, A., 159-61 
 
 
 Bien Avisi et Mai Avist, 
 
 20 
 
 
 Chenier, M. J., 177 
 
 
 Blaise de Montluc, 40 
 
 
 
 Chretien de Troyes, 8, q 
 
 
 Blondel deNesle, 14 
 
 
 
 Christine de Pisan, 15 
 
 
 ?OI
 
 302 
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 / 
 
 Clopinal, see Jean de Meung 
 Colin Muset, 14 
 Commines, 23, 24 
 Comte, 199 
 
 Condemnation des Banquets, 20 
 Condorcet, 131, 184 
 Conon de Bethune, 14 
 Constant, 237 
 Coppee, 276-7, 289 
 Corneille, P., 72, 74-8, 80, 81, 82 
 85. 93. "5. 126, 131, 161, 162 
 Corneille, T., 82, 83, 84, 126 
 Cousin, 199 
 Cuvette, La, 21-2 
 Cyrano de Bergerac, 83, 117 n., 
 
 Dan court, 91, 164 
 Daudet, 295-6 
 Delavigne, 222, 235 
 Delille, 157 
 Descartes, 67 
 Deschamps, A., 203 
 Deschamps, Emile, 203 
 Deschamps, Eustace, 15 
 Des touches, 164 
 
 Diderot, 139-42, 145, 161, 167-8 
 Dierx, 278 
 Dittmer, 228 
 Dorat, 32 
 Du Bartas, 35 
 Du Bellay, 32, 33, 34, 35 
 Dufresny, 129 
 Dumas fils, 283-5, 286 
 Dumas pert, 203, 227-8, 232, 
 241-3, 283 
 
 Enfant Ingrat, V , 20 
 Enfant Prodigue, U. 20 
 Enfants de Maintenant, Les, 20 
 
 Fabre, 294-5 
 Faguet, 268, 279 
 Fenelon, 103, 105 
 Feuillet, 297 
 Feval, 256 
 
 Flaubert, 197, 290-92 
 Florian, 158 
 Fontanes, 177 
 Fontenelle, 68, 126-8 
 ..France, A., 298-9 
 Francois de Sales, St., 40 
 Froissart, 22, 23, 24 
 
 Furetiefe, 11 8- 19 
 Fustel de Coulanges, 259 
 
 Gamier, 38, 70 
 
 Gautier, 192, 203, 218-22, 226, 227, 
 269, 271, 274 
 
 Ghil, 281 ft. 
 
 Gilbert, 156-7 
 
 Girardin, F. A., see Saint - Marc 
 , 83, Girardin 
 
 , 236 Girardin, Mme. (Delphine Gay), 254 
 
 Gomberville, 112 
 
 Goncourt, . and J., 292 
 
 Gresset, 157-8, 164 
 
 Grimm, 161 n. 
 
 Gringore, 21 
 
 Gui de Conci, 14 
 
 Guiraud, 203 
 
 Guizot, 200, 203 
 
 Hardy, 70-71 
 
 Hennequin, 268 
 
 Herddia, 161, 274-5 
 ^^Hervieu, 289 
 
 Histoire de Grise'lidis, 20 
 
 Holbach, d', 141 
 
 Hugo, 76, 161, 178, 195, 203, 206-12, 
 213, 215, 219, 225-7, 228-31, 233, 
 235. 239-41, 273, 277, 283, 289 
 
 Huon de Bordeaux, 7 
 
 Huysmans, 295 
 
 Jammes, 281 n., 282 
 233, Janin, 254 
 
 Jean de Meung, n- 12 
 Jodelle, 32, 36-8, 70 
 Joinville, 22 
 Jouffroy, 199 
 
 Kahn, 281 n. 
 Karr, 254-5 
 Kock, 253 
 
 Labiche, 287-8 
 La BoCtie, 40, 46 
 Bruyere, 100-2 
 La Calprenede, n 2- 13 
 La Chaussee, 165 
 La Fayette, Mme. de, 119-20 
 La Fontaine, 59, 63-7, 89, 93, 106, 
 
 zi2, 266 
 La Harpe, 152-3
 
 INDEX 
 
 303 
 
 Lahor, see Cazalis 
 
 Lamartine, 161, 203-6, 212, 213, 217, 
 
 218 
 Lambert le Tort, 9-10 
 Lamennais, 196 n., 199, 244, 260 
 Larivey, 38 
 
 La Rochefoucauld, 98-100, 101, 151 
 Lebrun, 177 
 Leconte de Lisle, 161, 272-4, 275, 
 
 277, 278 
 Lefevre, 203 
 Lemaitre, 268, 289 
 Lemercier, 177 n. 1 
 Le Sage, 116 n., 164, 169-71, 172 ^ 
 Le Tourneur, 225 
 Lceve-Veimars, 228 
 Lords, 10-12 
 Loti, 298 
 " Loyal Serviteur, Le," 40 
 
 Machaut, 15 
 
 Mairet, 71 
 
 Maistre, 199 
 
 Malherbe, 55-7, 58, 59, 61, 92, 195, 
 
 202 
 Mallarme, 279 
 Manuel, 277 n. 
 Margaret of Navarre, 29, 30 
 Marie de France, 9 
 Marivaux, 164-5, 171-2, 234 
 Marmontel, 141, 152, 167 
 Marot, C, 29-31, 64 
 Marot, J., 17 
 Massillon, 104 
 Maupassant, 295 
 Mellin de Saint-Gellais, 31 
 Mendes, 278 
 Mercier, 168 
 
 Merimee, 227, 238-9, 252-3 
 Michelet, 199, 200, 211 
 Mignet, 200 
 Milet, 18 
 Millevoye, 177 
 Moliere, 22, 58, 66, 79, 84-90, 91, 93, 
 
 96, 103, 115, 118, 119, 164, 166, 
 
 234 
 
 ontaigne, 40, 45*51. 97 
 Montchrestien, 70 
 Montesquieu, 128-30, 184 
 Moreas, 282 
 Morellet, 141 
 Murger, 255 
 
 M 
 
 Musset, 161, 201, 203, 215-18, 234-5, 
 
 243 
 My stir e du Siege cCOrlians, 18 
 
 Nerval, 218 n. 
 Nisard, 93, 193-4, 198 
 Nodier, 202 n. 
 
 Ogier, F., 71 n. 2 
 
 Pailleron, 287 
 Parny, 177 
 Pascal, 93-8 
 "Pathelin, 22 
 Perrault, 68, 69, 79 
 Piron, 164 
 Ponsard, 235-6, 283 
 Prevost, 172-3 
 
 Quesnay, 141 
 Quinault, 83 
 Quinet, 199, 200 
 
 Rabelais, 41-5, 64, 89, 117 n. 
 
 Racan, 57 
 
 Racine, J. 59. 77, 78-82, 93, 106, 
 
 131, 161, 162, 165, 234, 236, 260, 
 
 266 
 Racine, L., 156 
 Regnard, 91, 164, 166 
 Regnier, H. de, 281-2 
 Regnier, M., 57-9 
 Renan, 259-64 
 
 Representation cCAdam, 17-18 
 Resseguier, 203 
 Retz, 107-8 
 Richepin, 281, 289-90 
 Roman de Renart, 12-13 
 Ronsard, 32-5, 56, 57, 195 
 Rostand, 290 
 Rotrou, 82-3 
 Roucher, 157 
 Rouget de Lisle, 177 n. 2 
 Rousseau, J. B., 156 
 Rousseau, J. J., 138, 141, 142-50, 174, 
 
 182, 183, 186, 189, 192, 204 
 Rutebeuf, 15, 19 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, 96, 191, 194-9, 203, 
 
 214 n., 266, 268, 275, 277 
 Saint-Evremond, 68 n. 2 
 Saintine, 253-4
 
 304 
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 Saint-Lambert, 157 
 
 Saint-Marc Girardin, 193 
 
 Saint - Pierre, Bernardin de, 174-5, 
 
 186, 190, 192, 204 
 Saint-Simon, 108-9 
 Sale, A. de la, 24 
 Samain, 282 
 
 Sand, G., 216, 243-5, 247 ., 297 
 Sandeau, 243, 255, 286 n. 
 Sardou, 287, 289 
 Scarron, 60, 83, 117-18, 220 
 Schelandre, 72 n. 2 
 Scherer, 267-8 
 Scribe, 236, 283, 285, 287 
 Scudery, G. de, 113 
 Scudery, Mdlle. de, 113, 114, 115 
 Sedaine, 168 
 Sen an co ur, 191 n. 
 SevignS, Mme. de, 106-7, "2 
 Silvestre, 277-8 
 Sorel, 117 
 Souli6, 256 
 Soumet, 203 
 Souvestre, 254 
 Stael, Mme. de, 179, 180, 181 -6, 
 
 191 *., 192, 193, 204, 224, 236 
 Stendhal, 179, 225, 250-52, 266 
 Sue, 255-6 
 Sully- Prudhomme, 275-6 
 
 Taine, 198, 264-6, 293 
 
 Theuriet, 279 
 
 Thibaut de Champagne, 14 
 
 Thierry, 199 
 
 Thiers, 200 
 
 Thomas, 8 
 
 Thyard, 32 
 
 Tocqueville, 200 
 
 Turgot, 141 
 
 Urfe, H. d\ 111-12, 114, 116 
 
 Vaugelas, 96 
 
 Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, 10 
 
 Vauvenargues, 15 1-2 
 
 Verlaine, 279-81 
 
 Viau, 57-8 
 
 Vi616-Griffin, 281 
 
 Vigny, 203, 212-15, 231-4, 237-8, 273, 
 
 274 
 Villehardouin, 22 
 Villemain, 193, 225 
 Villon, 15-16, 61 
 Vitet, 227 
 Voiture, 54, 106 
 Voltaire, 72, 123, 130-39, 141, 146, 
 
 148, 149, 151, 154-5. 157, 162-4, 
 
 165, 166, 188, 260 
 
 Zola, 288, 290, 292-4, 295
 
 INDEX 
 
 305 
 
 (2) English Authors quoted or referred to 
 
 Addison, 125, 128 n., 173 n., 204 
 Arnold, M., 54, 191, 205, 273 n., 275 n. 
 
 Bacon, 132, 137, 266 
 Buckle, 136 
 
 Byron, 181, 191, 208, 216, 217, 234, 
 266 
 
 Carlyle, 149, 185 
 Chatterton, 232, 233, 238 
 Coleridge, 202 
 Cowper, 195, 277 
 Crabbe, 195, 277 
 
 Defoe, 125, 171 
 De Quincey, 270 
 Dickens, 266, 296 
 Dryden, 132, 203 
 
 Eliot, George, 260 n. 
 
 Fielding, 87 n. 2, 204 
 
 Gay, 131 
 Gibbon, 136, 182 
 Goldsmith, 129, 166 
 Grote, 136 
 
 Harvey, Gabriel, 35 
 Hume, 146 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 90 
 
 Keats, 160, 161 
 
 Lewis, M. G., 246 n. 
 
 Lillo, 125, 140, 167, 168 n., 173 n. 
 
 Locke, 124, 132, 137 
 
 Maturin, 246 n. 
 
 Milton, 124, 132, 188, 189 n. 1, 203 
 
 Moore, E., 125, 140, 167, 168 n. 
 Morley, Lord, 136 
 
 Newton, 124, 132 
 
 Ossian, 181, 186, 204 n. 
 
 Pater, 180 n. 
 Poe, 270, 279 
 Pope, 60, 61, 62, 63 n., 131, 137, 204 
 
 Radcliffe, Mrs., 246 n. 
 
 Richardson, 125, 140, 147, 169, 171, 
 
 174, 182, 204 
 Ruskin, 186 n. 
 
 Scott, 171, 181, 235, 237, 238, 246, 247 
 
 Shaftesbury, 137 
 
 Shakespeare, 7, 87 n. 2, 132, 181, 185 
 
 n. 1, 203, 209, 224-5, 232, 234. 235, 
 
 237, 266, 291 
 Sheridan, 166 
 Sidney, in, 201 
 Southey, 111 
 Spenser, 35 
 Steele, 173 n. 
 Sterne, 140 
 Stevenson, 242 
 
 Swift, 68 n. 2, 117 n., 131, 266 
 Swinburne, 271 
 Sylvester, 35 
 Symons, A., 279, 281 
 
 Temple, Sir W., 68 n. 2 
 Thackeray, 254 
 Thomson, 131, 157 
 
 Wordsworth, 195, 202, 277 
 
 Young, 131, 181, 204 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Editilmrgk.
 
 Works by the Same Author 
 
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 J BAR ^ J 
 
 m 
 
 
 
 |AR 2 & I* 
 
 )70 a 
 
 
 F/ 
 
 II 
 
 JAN ! 
 
 > w* 
 
 
 ll 
 
 JAN 
 
 -J ii4 
 
 
 
 
 UANl 
 
 9 1971 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 1972 9 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTED IN USA. 
 
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