Comedy in the sixteenth century, dating from Jodelle'sEugène, is either a development of the mediæval farce, indicated in point of form by the retention of octosyllabic verse, or an importation from the drama of Italy. Certain plays of Aristophanes, of Terence, of Plautus were translated; but, in truth, classical models had little influence. Grévin, while professing originality, really follows the traditions of the farce. Jean de La Taille, in his prose comedyLes Corrivaux, prepared the way for the easy and natural dialogue of the comic stage. The most remarkable group of sixteenth-century comedies are those translated in prose from the Italian, with such obvious adaptations as might suit them to French readers, by PIERRE DELARIVEY(1540 to after 1611). Of the family of the Giunti, he had gallicised his own name (Giunti, i.e.Arrivés); and the originality of his plays is of a like kind with that of his name; they served at least to establish an Italian tradition for comedy, which was not without an influence in the seventeenth century; they served to advance the art of dialogue. If any comedy of the period stands out as superior to its fellows, it isLes Contents(1584), by Odet de Turnèbe, a free imitation of Italian models united with something imported from the SpanishCelestina. Its intrigue is an Italian imbroglio; but there are lively and natural scenes, such as can but rarely be found among the predecessors of Molière. In general the comedy of the sixteenth century is wildly confused in plot, conventional in its types of character, and too often as grossly indecent as the elder farces. Before the century closed, the pastoral drama had been discovered, and received influences from both Italy and Spain; the soil was being prepared for that delicateflower of poetry, but as yet its nurture was little understood, nor indeed can it be said to have ever taken kindly to the climate of France.
While on the one hand the tendencies of the Pléiade may be described as exotic, going forth, as they did, to capture the gifts of classical and Italian literature, on the other hand they pleaded strenuously that thus only could French literature attain its highest possibilities. In the scholarship of the time, side by side with the humanism which revived and restored the culture of Greece and Rome, was another humanism which was essentially national. The historical origins of France were studied for the first time with something of a critical spirit by CLAUDEFAUCHETin hisAntiquités Gauloises et Françoises(1579-1601). HisRecueil de l'Origine de la Langue et Poésie Françoise, in spite of its errors, was an effort towards French philology; and in calling attention to the trouvères and their works, Fauchet may be considered a remote master of the school of modern literary research. ESTIENNEPASQUIER(1529-1615), the jurist who maintained in a famous action the cause of the University against the Jesuits, in hisRecherches de la Francetreated with learning and vigour various important points in French history—civil and ecclesiastical—language, literary history, and the foundation of universities. HENRIESTIENNE(1531-98), who entered to the full into the intoxication of classical humanism, was patriotic in his reverence for his native tongue. In a trilogy of little treatises (1565-79), written with much spirit, he maintained that of modern languages the French has the nearest affinity to the Greek, attempted to establish its superiority to Italian, andmuch more to Spanish, and mocked the contemporary fashion of Italianised French.
The study of history is supported on the one hand by such erudite research as that of Fauchet and Pasquier; on the other hand it is supported by political philosophy and speculation. To philosophy, in the wider sense of the word, the sixteenth century made no large and coherent contribution; the Platonism, Pyrrhonism, Epicureanism, Stoicism of the Renaissance met and clashed together; the rival theologies of the Roman and Reformed Churches contended in a struggle for life. PIERRE DE LARAMÉE(1515-72) expressed the revolt of rationalism against the methods of the schoolmen and the authority of Aristotle; but he ordinarily wrote in Latin, and hisDialectique, the first philosophical work in the vulgar tongue, hardly falls within the province of literary history.
The philosophy of politics is represented by one great name, that of JEANBODIN(1529-96), whoseRépubliquemay entitle him to be styled the Montesquieu of the Renaissance. In an age which tended towards the formation of great monarchies he was vigorously monarchical. The patriarchal power of the sovereign might well be thought needful, in the second half of the century, as a barrier against anarchy; but Bodin was no advocate of tyranny; he condemned slavery, and held that religious persecution can only lead to a dissolution of religious belief. A citizen is defined by Bodin as a free man under the supreme government of another; like Montesquieu, he devotes attention to the adaptation of government to the varieties of race and climate. The attempts at a general history of France in the earlier part of the sixteenth century preservedthe arid methods and unilluminated style of the mediæval chronicles;3in the second half of the century they imitated with little skill the models of antiquity. Histories of contemporary events in Europe were written with conscientious impartiality by Lancelot de la Popelinière, and with personal and party passion, struggling against his well-meant resolves, by Agrippa d'Aubigné. The greatHistoria mei Temporisof De Thou, faithful and austere in its record of fact, was a highly-important contribution to literature, but it is written in Latin.
3The narrative of the life of Bayard, by his secretary, writing under the name of "Le Loyal Serviteur" (1527), is admirable for its clearness, grace, and simplicity.
With a peculiar gift for narrative, the French have been long pre-eminent as writers of memoirs, and already in the sixteenth century such personal recitals are numerous. The wars of François I. and of Henri II. gave abundant scope for the display of individual enterprise and energy; the civil wars breathed into the deeds of men an intensity of passion; the actors had much to tell, and a motive for telling it each in his own interest.
TheCommentairesof BLAISE DEMONLUC(1502-77) are said to have been named by Henri IV. "the soldier's Bible"; the Bible is one which does not always inculcate mercy or peace. Monluc, a Gascon of honourable birth and a soldier of fortune, had the instinct of battle in his blood; from a soldier he rose through every rank to be the King's lieutenant of Guyenne and a Marshal of France; during fifty years he fought, as a daring captain rather than as a great general, amorous of danger, and at length, terriblydisfigured by wounds, he sat down, not to rest, but to wield his pen as if it were a sword of steel. HisCommentaireswere meant to be a manual for hardy combatants, and what model could he set before the young aspirant so animating as himself? In his earlier wars against the foreign foes of his country, Monluc was indeed a model of military prowess; the civil wars added cruelty to his courage; after a fashion he was religious, and a short shrift and a cord were good enough for heretics and adversaries of his King. An unlettered soldier, Monluc, by virtue of his energy of character and directness of speech, became a most impressive and spirited narrator. His Memoirs close with a sigh for stern and inviolable solitude. Among the Pyrenean rocks he had formerly observed a lonely monastery, in view at once of Spain and France; there it was his wish to end his days.
From the opposite party in the great religious and political strife came the temperate Memoirs of Lanoue, the simple and beautiful record of her husband's life by Madame de Mornay, and that of his own career, written in an old age of gloom and passion, by D'Aubigné. The ideas of Henri IV.—himself a royal author in hisLettres missives—are embodied in theOEconomies Royalesof the statesman Sully, whose secretaries were employed for the occasion in laboriously reciting his words and deeds as they had learnt them from their chief. The superficial aspects of the life of society, the manners and morals—or lack of morals—of the time, are lightly and brightly exhibited by PIERRE DEBOURDEILLE, lord of BRANTÔME, Catholic abbé, soldier and courtier, observer of the great world, gossip of amorous secrets. HisVies des Hommes Illustres et des Grands Capitaines, hisVies desDames Illustres et des Dames Galantes, and hisMémoirescontained matter too dangerous, perhaps, for publication during his lifetime, but the author cherished the thought of his posthumous renown. Brantôme, wholly indifferent to good and evil, had a vivid interest in life; virtue and vice concerned him alike and equally, if only they had vivacity, movement, colour; and although, as with Monluc, it was a physical calamity that made him turn to authorship, he wrote with a naïve art, an easy grace, and abundant spirit. To correct and complete Brantôme's narrative as it related to herself, Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, first wife of Henri IV., prepared her unfinished Memoirs, which opens the delightful series of autobiographies and reminiscences of women. Her account of the night of St. Bartholomew is justly celebrated; the whole record, indeed, is full of interest; but there were passages of her life which it was natural that she should pass over in silence; her sins of omission, as Bayle has observed, are many.4
4TheMémoires-Journeauxof Pierre de l'Estoile are a great magazine of the gains of the writer's disinterested curiosity. TheLettresof D'Ossat and theNégotiationsof the President Jeannin are of importance in the records of diplomacy.
The controversies of the civil wars produced a militant literature, in which the extreme parties contended with passion, while between these a middle party, the aspirants to conciliation, pleaded for the ways of prudence, and, if possible, of peace. FRANÇOISHOTMAN, the effect of whose LatinFranco-Gallia, a political treatise presenting the Huguenot demands, has been compared to that of Rousseau'sContrat Social, launched his eloquent invective against the Cardinal de Lorraine, in theEpistre envoyée au Tigre de la France. Hubert Languet, the devoted friendof Philip Sidney, in hisVindiciæ contra Tyrannos, justified rebellion against princes who violate by their commands the laws of God. D'Aubigné, in hisConfession de Sancy, attacked with characteristic ardour the apostates and waverers of the time, above the rest that threefold recanter of his faith, Harlay de Sancy. Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde, in hisTableau des Différands de la Religion, mingles theological erudition with his raillery against the Roman communion. Henri Estienne applied the spirit and learning of a great humanist to religious controversy in the second part of hisApologie pour Hérodote; the marvellous tales of the Greek historian may well be true, he sarcastically maintains, when in this sixteenth century the abuses of the Roman Church seem to pass all belief. On the other hand, Du Perron, a cardinal in 1604, replied to the arguments and citations of the heretics. As the century drew towards its close, violence declined; the struggle was in a measure appeased. In earlier days the Chancellor, Michel de l'Hospital, had hoped to establish harmony between the rival parties; grief for the massacre of St. Bartholomew hastened his death. The learned Duplessis-Mornay, leader and guide of the Reformed Churches of France, a devoted servant of Henri of Navarre, while fervent in his own beliefs, was too deeply attached to the common faith of Christianity to be an extreme partisan. The reconciliation of Henri IV. with the Church of Rome, which delivered France from anarchy, was, however, a grief to some of his most loyal supporters, and of these Duplessis-Mornay was the most eminent.
The cause of Henri against the League was served by the manuscript circulation of a prose satire, withinterspersed pieces of verse, the work of a group of writers, moderate Catholics or converted Protestants, who loved their country and their King, theSatire Ménipée.5When it appeared in print (1594; dated on the title-page 1593) the cause was won; the satire rose upon a wave of success, like a gleaming crest of bitter spray. It is a parody of the Estates of the League which had been ineffectually convoked to make choice of a king. Two Rabelaisian charlatans, one from Spain, one from Lorraine, offer their drugs for sale in the court of the Louvre; the virtues of the Spanish Catholicon, a divine electuary, are manifold—it will change the blackest criminal into a spotless lamb, it will transform a vulgar bonnet to a cardinal's hat, and at need can accomplish a score of other miracles. Presently the buffoon Estates file past to their assembly; the hall in which they meet is tapestried with grotesque scenes from history; the order of the sitting is determined, and the harangues begin, harangues in which each speaker exposes his own ambitions, greeds, hypocrisies, and egoism, until Monsieur d'Aubray, the orator of thetiers état, closes the debate with a speech in turn indignant, ironical, or grave in its commiseration for the popular wrongs—an utterance of bourgeois honesty and good sense. The writers—Canon Pierre Leroy; Gillot, clerk-advocate of the Parliament of Paris; Rapin, a lettered combatant at Ivry; Jean Passerat, poet and commentator on Rabelais; Chrestien and Pithou, two Protestants discreetly converted by force of events—met in a room of Gillot's house, where, according to the legend, Boileau was afterwards born, and there concocted the venom of their pamphlet. Its wit, in spite ofsome extravagances and the tedium of certain pages, is admirable; farce and comedy, sarcasm and moral prudence alternate; and it had the great good fortune of a satire, that of coming at the lucky moment.
5Varro, who to a certain extent copied from Menippus the Gadarene, had called his satiresSaturæ Menippeæ; hence the title.
The French Huguenots were not without their poets. Two of these—Guillaume Saluste, Seigneur du Bartas, and Agrippa d'Aubigné—are eminent. The fame of DUBARTAS(1544-90) was indeed European. Ronsard sent him a pen of gold, and feared at a later time the rivalry of his renown; Tasso drew inspiration from his verse; the youthful Milton read him with admiration in the rendering by Sylvester; long afterwards Goethe honoured him with praise beyond his deserts. To read his poems now, notwithstanding passages of vivid description and passages of ardent devotional feeling, would need rare literary fortitude. His originality lies in the fact that while he was a disciple of the Pléiade, a disciple crude, intemperate, and provincial, he deserted Greece and Rome, and drew his subjects from Hebraic sources. HisJudith(1573), composed by the command of Jeanne d'Albret, has more of Lucan than of Virgil in its over-emphatic style.La Sepmaine, ou la Création en Sept Journées, appeared in 1578, and within a few years had passed through thirty editions. Du Bartas is always copious, sometimes brilliant, sometimes majestic; but laboured and rhetorical description, never ending and still beginning, fatigues the mind; an encyclopædia of the works of creation weighs heavily upon the imagination; we sigh for the arrival of the day of rest.
THÉODORE-AGRIPPA D'AUBIGNÉ(1550-1630) was not among the admirers of Du Bartas. His natural temper was framed for pleasure; at another time he might have been known only as a poet of the court, of lighter satire, and oflove; the passions of the age transformed him into an ardent and uncompromising combatant. His classical culture was wide and exact; at ten years old he translated theCrito; Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish were at his command. He might, had France been at peace with herself, have appeared in literature as a somewhat belated Ronsardist; but his hereditary cause became his own. While still a child he accepted from his father, in presence of the withering heads of the conspirators of Amboise, the oath of immitigable vengeance. Pursuits, escapes, the camp, the battle-field, the prison, the court made up no small part of his life of vicissitude and of unalterable resolve. He roused Henri of Navarre from the lethargy of pleasure; he warned the King against the crime of apostasy; he dreaded the mass, but could cheerfully have accepted the stake. Extreme in his rage of party, he yet in private affairs could show good sense and generosity. His elder years were darkened by what he regarded as treason in his King, and by the falling away from the faith of that son who, by an irony of fate, became the father of Madame de Maintenon. Four times condemned to death, he died in exile at the age of eighty.
D'Aubigné's satirical tale,Les Aventures du Baron de Fæneste, contrasts the man whoappears—spreading his plumes in the sunshine of the court—with the man whois, the man who lives upon his estate, among his rustic neighbours, tilling his fields and serving his people and his native land. As an elegiac poet D'Aubigné is little more than a degenerate issue from the Pléiade. It is in his vehement poem of mourning and indignation and woe,Les Tragiques, begun in 1577 but not published till 1616, that his power is fully manifested. To D'Aubigné, asits author, the characterisation of Sainte-Beuve exactly applies: "Juvénal du xvi. siècle, âpre, austère, inexorable, hérissé d'hyperboles, étincelant de beautés, rachetant une rudesse grossière par une sublime énergie." In seven books it tells of the misery of France, the treachery of princes, the abuse of public law and justice, the fires and chains of religious persecution, the vengeance of God against the enemies of the saints, and the final judgment of sinners, when air and fire and water become the accusers of those who have perverted the powers of nature to purposes of cruelty. The poem is ill composed, its rhetoric is often strained or hard and metallic, its unrelieved horrors oppress the heart; but the cry of true passion is heard in its finer pages; from amid the turmoil and smoke, living tongues of flame seem to dart forth which illuminate the gloom. The influence ofLes Tragiquesmay still be felt in passages of Victor Hugo's fulgurant eloquence.
In the midst of strife, however, there were men who pursued the disinterested service of humanity and whose work made for peace. The great surgeon Ambroise Paré, full of tolerance and deeply pious, advanced his healing art on the battle-field or amid the ravages of pestilence, and left a large contribution to the literature of science. Bernard Palissy, a devout Huguenot, was not only the inventor of "rustic figulines," the designer of enamelled cups and platters, but a true student of nature, who would substitute the faithful observation of phenomena for vain and ambitious theory. Olivier de Serres, another disciple of Calvin, cultivated his fields, helped to enrich France by supporting Henri IV. in the introduction of the industry in silk, and amassed his knowledge andexperience in his admirably-writtenThéâtre d'Agriculture. At a later date Antoine de Montchrestien, adventurous and turbulent in his Protestant zeal, the writer of tragedies which connect the sixteenth century with the classical school of later years, became the advocate of a protectionist and a colonial policy in hisTraicté de l'OEconomie Politique; the style of his essay towards economic reform has some of the passion and enthusiasm of a poet.
A refuge from the troubles and vicissitudes of the time was sought by some in a Christianised Stoicism. Guillaume du Vair (1556-1621), eminent as a magistrate, did not desert his post of duty; he pleaded eloquently, as chief orator of the middle party of conciliation, on behalf of unity under Henri of Navarre. In his treatise on French eloquence he endeavoured to elevate the art of public speaking above laboured pedantry to true human discourse. But while taking part in the contentious progress of events, he saw the flow of human affairs as from an elevated plateau. In the conversations with friends which form his treatiseDe la Constance et Consolation ès Calamités Publiques, Du Vair's counsels are those of courage and resignation, not unmingled with hope. He rendered into French the stoical morals of Epictetus; and in his ownSainte PhilosophieandPhilosophie Morale des Stoïqueshe endeavoured, with honest purpose, rather than with genius, to ally speculation to religion, and to show how human reason can lead the way to those ethical truths which are the guiding lights of conduct.
Perhaps certitude sufficient for human life may be found by limitation; a few established truths will, after all, carry us from the cradle to the grave; and beyond the bounds of certitude lies a limitless and fascinatingfield for observation and dubious conjecture. Amid the multitude of new ideas which the revival of antiquity brought with it, amid the hot disputes of the rival churches, amid the fierce contentions of civil war, how delightful to possess one's soul in quiet, to be satisfied with the needful knowledge, small though it be, which is vouchsafed to us, and to amuse the mind with every opinion and every varying humour of that curious and wayward creature man! And who so wayward, who so wavering as one's self in all those parts of our composite being which are subject to the play of time and circumstance? Such, in an age of confusion working towards clearness, an age of belligerency tending towards concord, were the reflections of a moralist, the most original of his century—Michel de Montaigne.
MICHELEYQUEM, SEIGNEUR DEMONTAIGNE, was born at a château in Périgord, in the year 1533. His father, whom Montaigne always remembered with affectionate reverence, was a man of original ideas. He entrusted the infant to the care of peasants, wishing to attach him to the people; educated him in Latin as if his native tongue; roused him at morning from sleep to the sound of music. From his sixth to his thirteenth year Montaigne was at the Collège de Guyenne, where he took the leading parts in Latin tragedies composed by Muret and Buchanan. In 1554 he succeeded his father as councillor in the courtdes aidesof Périgueux, the members of which were soon afterwards incorporated in the Parliament of Bordeaux. But nature had not destined Montaigne for the duties of the magistracy; he saw too many sides of every question; he chose rather to fail in justice than in humanity. In 1565 he acquired a large fortune by marriage, and having losthis father, he retired from public functions in 1570, to enjoy a tranquil existence of meditation, and of rambling through books. He had published, a year before, in fulfilment of his father's desire, a translation of theTheologia Naturalisof Raimond de Sebonde, a Spanish philosopher of the fifteenth century; and now he occupied himself in preparing for the press the writings of his dead friend La Boétie. Love for his father and love for his friend were the two passions of Montaigne's life. From 1571 to 1580 he dwelt in retreat, in company with his books and his ideas, indulging his humour for tranquil freedom of the mind. It was his custom to enrich the margins of his books with notes, and his earliest essays may be regarded as an extension of such notes; Plutarch and Seneca were, above all, his favourites; afterwards, the volume which he read with most enjoyment, and annotated most curiously, was that of his own life.
And, indeed, Montaigne's daily life, with outward monotony and internal variety, was a pleasant miscellany on which to comment. He was of a middle temperament, "between the jovial and the melancholic"; a lover of solitude, yet the reverse of morose; choosing bright companions rather than sad; able to be silent, as the mood took him, or to gossip; loyal and frank; a hater of hypocrisy and falsehood; a despiser of empty ceremony; disposed to interpret all things to the best; cheerful among his children; careless of exercising authority; incapable of household management; trustful and kind towards his neighbours; indulgent in his judgments, yet warm in his admiration of old, heroic virtue. His health, which in boyhood had been robust, was shaken in middle life by an internal malady. Hetravelled in the hope of finding strength, visiting Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Tyrol, and observing, with a serious amusement, the varieties of men and manners. While still absent from France, in 1581, he learned that he had been elected mayor of Bordeaux; he hesitated in accepting an honourable but irksome public office; the King permitted no dallying, and Montaigne obeyed. Two years later the mayor was re-elected; it was a period of difficulty; a Catholic and a Royalist, he had a heretic brother, and himself yielded to the charm of Henri of Navarre; "for the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, for the Guelph a Ghibelline." When, in 1585, pestilence raged in Bordeaux, Montaigne's second period of office had almost expired; he quitted the city, and the election of his successor took place in his absence. His last years were brightened by the friendship—almost filial—of Mlle. de Gournay, an ardent admirer, and afterwards editor, of theEssais. In 1592 Montaigne died, when midway in his sixtieth year.
The first two books of theEssaiswere published by their author in 1580; in 1588 they appeared in an augmented text, with the addition of the third book. The text superintended by Mlle. de Gournay, based upon a revised and enlarged copy left by Montaigne, is of the year 1595.
The unity of the book, which makes no pretence to unity, may be found in the fact that all its topics are concerned with a common subject—the nature of man; that the writer accepts himself as the example of humanity most open to his observation; and that the same tranquil, yet insatiable curiosity is everywhere present. Man, as conceived by Montaigne, is of all creatures the most variable, unstable, inconstant. The speciesincludes the saint and the brute, the hero and the craven, while between the extremes lies the average man, who may be anything that nature, custom, or circumstances make him. And as the species varies indefinitely, so each individual varies endlessly from himself: his conscience controls his temperament; his temperament betrays his conscience; external events transform him from what he was. Do we seek to establish our moral being upon the rock of philosophical dogma? The rock gives way under our feet, and scatters as if sand. Such truth as we can attain by reason is relative truth; let us pass through knowledge to a wise acceptance of our ignorance; let us be contented with the probabilities which are all that our reason can attain. The truths of conduct, as far as they are ascertainable, were known long since to the ancient moralists. Can any virtue surpass the old Roman virtue? We believe in God, although we know little about His nature or His operations; and why should we disbelieve in Christianity, which happens to be part of the system of things under which we are born? But why, also, should we pay such a compliment to opinions different from our own as to burn a heretic because he prefers the Pope of Geneva to the Pope of Rome? Let each of us ask himself, "Que sais-je?"—"What do I really know?" and the answer will serve to temper our zeal.
While Montaigne thus saps our confidence in the conclusions of the intellect, when they pass beyond a narrow bound, he pays a homage to the force of will; his admiration for the heroic men of Plutarch is ardent. An Epicurean by temperament, he is a Stoic through his imagination; but for us and for himself, who are no heroes, the appropriate form of Stoical virtue ismoderation within our sphere, and a wise indifference, or at most a disinterested curiosity, in matters which lie beyond that sphere. Let us resign ourselves to life, such as it is; let us resign ourselves to death; and let the resignation be cheerful or even gay. To spend ourselves in attempted reforms of the world, of society, of governments, is vain. The world will go its own way; it is for us to accept things as they are, to observe the laws of our country because it is ours, to smile at them if we please, and to extract our private gains from a view of the reformers, the enthusiasts, the dogmatists, the credulous, the combatants; there is one heroism possible for us—the heroism of good sense. "It is an absolute perfection, and as it were divine," so we read on the last page of Florio's translation of theEssais, "for a man to know how to enjoy his being loyally. We seek for other conditions because we understand not the use of ours; and go out of ourselves, forasmuch as we know not what abiding there is. We may long enough get upon stilts, for be we upon them, yet must we go with our legs. And sit we upon the highest throne of the world, yet sit we upon our own tail. The best and most commendable lives, and best pleasing me are (in my conceit), those which with order are fitted, and with decorum are ranged, to the common mould and human model; but without wonder or extravagancy. Now hath old age need to be handled more tenderly. Let us recommend it unto that God who is the protector of health and fountain of all wisdom; but blithe and social." And with a stanza of Epicurean optimism from Horace the Essay closes.
Such, or somewhat after this fashion, is the doctrine of Montaigne. It is conveyed to the reader without system,in the most informal manner, in a series of discourses which seem to wander at their own will, resembling a bright and easy conversation, vivid with imagery, enlivened by anecdote and citation, reminiscences from history, observations of curious manners and customs, offering constantly to view the person of Montaigne himself in the easiest undress. The style, although really carefully studied and superintended, has an air of light facility, hardly interposing between the author and his reader; the book is of all books the most sociable, a living companion rather than a book, playful and humorous, amiable and well bred, learned without pedantry, and wise without severity.
During the last three years of his life Montaigne enjoyed the friendship of a disciple who was already celebrated for his eloquence as a preacher. PIERRECHARRON(1541-1603), legist and theologian, under the influence of Montaigne's ideas, aspired to be a philosopher. It was as a theologian that he wrote his book of theTrois Verités, which attempts to demonstrate the existence of God, the truth of Christianity, and the exclusive orthodoxy of the Roman communion. It was as a philosopher, in theTraité de la Sagesse, that he systematised the informal scepticism of Montaigne. Instead of putting the question, "Que sais-je?" Charron ventures the assertion, "Je ne sais." He exhibits man's weakness, misery, and bondage to the passions; gives counsel for the enfranchisement of the mind; and studies the virtues of justice, prudence, temperance, and valiance. God has created man, says Charron, to know the truth; never can he know it of himself or by human means, and one who despairs of reason is in the best position for accepting divine instruction;a Pyrrhonist at least will never be a heretic; even if religion be regarded as an invention of man, it is an invention which has its uses. Not a few passages of theSagesseare directly borrowed, with slight rehandling, from Montaigne and from Du Vair; but, instead of Montaigne's smiling agnosticism, we have a grave and formal indictment of humanity; we miss the genial humour and kindly temper of the master; we miss the amiable egotism and the play of a versatile spirit; we miss the charm of an incomparable literary style.
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
LITERARY FREEDOM AND LITERARY ORDER
LITERARY FREEDOM AND LITERARY ORDER
With the restoration of order under Henri IV. the delights of peace began to be felt; a mundane society, polished and pleasure-loving, began to be constituted, and before many years had passed the influence of women and of thesalonappeared in literature. Should such a society be permitted to remain oblivious to spiritual truth, or to repose on the pillow of scepticism provided by Charron and Montaigne? Might it not be captured for religion, if religion were presented in its most gracious aspect, as a source of peace and joy, a gentle discipline of the heart? If one who wore the Christian armour should throw over his steel some robe of courtly silk, with floral adornments, might he not prove a persuasive champion of the Cross? Such was the hope of FRANÇOIS DESALES(1567-1622), Bishop of Geneva, when, in 1608, he published hisIntroduction à la Vie Dêvote. The angelic doctor charmed by his mere presence, his grace of person, his winning smile,his dove's eyes; he showed how amiable piety might be; his eloquence was festooned with blossoms; he strewed the path to heaven with roses; he conquered by docility; yet under his sweetness lay strength, and to methodise and popularise moral self-superintendence was to achieve much. TheTraité de l'Amour de Dieu(1616), while it expounds the highest reaches of mystical devotion, yet presents religion as accessible to every child of God. With his tender and ardent devotion, something of a poet's sentiment for nature was united; but mysticism and poetry were both subservient to his aim of regulating the conduct of the heart; he desired to show how one may remain in the world, and yet not be of the world; by personal converse and by his spiritual letters he became the director of courtiers and of ladies. The motto of the literary Academy which he founded at Annecy expresses his spirit—flores fructusque perennes—flowers for their own sake, but chiefly for the sake of fruit. Much of the genius for holiness of the courtly saint has passed into the volume of reminiscences by Bishop Camus, his companion and disciple—l'Esprit de Saint François de Sales.
A mundane society, however, where fine gentlemen and ladies meet to admire and be admired, needs other outlets for its imagination than that of the primrose way to Paradise. The labour of the fields had inspired Olivier de Serres with the prose Georgics of hisThéâtre d'Agriculture, a work directed towards utility; the romance of the fields, and the pastoral, yet courtly, loves of a French Arcady, were the inspiration of the endless prose bucolics found in theAstréeof HONORÉ D'URFÉ. The Renaissance delight in the pastoral had passed from Italy to Spain; through theDianaof the Spanish Montemayorit passed to France. After a period of turbulent strife there was a fascination in visions of a peace, into which, if warfare entered, the strange irruption only enhanced an habitual calm. A whole generation waited long to learn the issue of the passion of Celadon and Astrée. The romance, of which the earliest part appeared in 1610, or earlier, was not completely published until 1627, when its author was no longer living.1The scene is laid in the fields of d'Urfé's familiar Forez and on the banks of the Lignon; the time is of Merovingian antiquity. The shepherd Celadon, banished on suspicion of faithlessness from the presence of his beloved Astrée, seeks death beneath the stream; he is saved by the nymphs, escapes the amorous pursuit of Galatea, assumes a feminine garb, and, protected by the Druid Adamas, has the felicity of daily beholding his shepherdess. At length he declares himself, and is overwhelmed with reproaches; true lover that he is, when he offers his body to the devouring lions of the Fountain of Love, the beasts refuse their prey; the venerable Druid discreetly guides events; Celadon's fidelity receives its reward in marriage, and the banks of the Lignon become a scene of universal joy. The colours of theAstréeare faded now as those of some ancient tapestry, but during many years its success was prodigious. D'Urfé's highest honour, of many, is the confession of La Fontaine:—
TheAstréewon its popularity, in part because it united the old attraction of a chivalric or heroic strain with that of the newer pastoral; in part because it idealised the gallantries and developed the amorous casuistry of theday, not without a real sense of the power of love; in part because it was supposed to exhibit ideal portraits of distinguished contemporaries. It was the parent of a numerous progeny; and as the heroic romance of the seventeenth century is derived in direct succession from the loves of Celadon and Astrée, so the comic romance, beside all that it owes to the tradition of theesprit gaulois, owes something to the mocking gaiety with which d'Urfé exhibits the adventures and emotional vicissitudes of his inconstant shepherd Hylas.
1It should be noted that the close of theAstréeis by D'Urfé's secretary Baro.
In the political and social reconstruction which followed the civil and religious wars, the need of discipline and order in literature was felt; in this province, also, unity under a law was seen to be desirable. The work of the Pléiade had in a great measure failed; they had attempted to organise poetry and its methods, and poetry was still disorganised. To reduce the realm of caprice and fantasy to obedience to law was the work of FRANÇOIS DEMALHERBE. Born at Caen in 1555, he had published in 1587 hisLarmes de Saint Pierre, an imitation of the Italian poem by Tansillo, in a manner which his maturer judgment must have condemned. It was not until about his fortieth year that he found his true direction. Du Vair, with whom he was acquainted, probably led him to a true conception of the nature of eloquence. Vigorous of character, clear in understanding, with no affluence of imagination and no excess of sensibility, Malherbe was well qualified for establishing lyrical poetry upon the basis of reason, and of general rather than individual sentiment. He chose the themes of his odes from topics of public interest, or founded them on those commonplaces of emotion which are part of the possession of all men who think and feel.If he composed his verses for some great occasion, he sought for no curiosities of a private imagination, but considered in what way its nobler aspects ought to be regarded by the community at large; if he consoled a friend for losses caused by death, he held his personal passion under restraint; he generalised, and was content to utter more admirably than others the accepted truths about the brevity and beauty of life, and the inevitable doom of death. What he gained by such a process of abstraction, he lost in vivid characterisation; his imagery lacks colour; the movement of his verse is deliberate and calculated; his ideas are rigorously enchained one to another.
It has been said that poetry—the overflow of individual emotion—is overheard; while oratory—the appeal to an audience—is heard. The processes of Malherbe's art were essentially oratorical; the lyrical cry is seldom audible in his verse; it is the poetry of eloquence thrown into studied stanzas. But the greater poetry of the seventeenth century in France—its odes, its satires, its epistles, its noble dramatic scenes—and much of its prose literature are of the nature of oratory; and for the progress of such poetry, and even of such prose, Malherbe prepared a highway. He aimed at a reformation of the language, which, rejecting all words either base, provincial, archaic, technical, or over-learned and over-curious, should employ the standard French, pure and dignified, as accepted by the people of Paris. In his hands language became too exclusively an instrument of the intelligence; yet with this instrument great things were achieved by his successors. He methodised and regulated versification, insisting on rich and exact rhymes, condemning all licence and infirmity of structure,condemning harshness of sound, inversion, hiatus, negligence in accommodating the cesura to the sense, the free gliding of couplet into couplet. It may be said that he rendered verse mechanical; but within the arrangement which he prescribed, admirable effects were attainable by the mastery of genius. He pondered every word, weighed every syllable, and thought no pains ill-spent if only clearness, precision, the logic of ordonnance, a sustained harmony were at length secured; and until the day of his death, in 1628, no decline in his art can be perceived.
Malherbe fell far short of being a great poet, but in the history of seventeenth-century classicism, in the effort of the age to rationalise the forms of art, his name is of capital importance. It cannot be said that he founded a school. His immediate disciples, MAYNARDand RACAN, failed to develop the movement which he had initiated. Maynard laid verse by the side of verse with exact care, and sometimes one or the other verse is excellent, but he lacked sustained force and flight. Racan had genuine inspiration; a true feeling for nature appears in his dramatic pastoral, theBergeries(1625); unhappily he had neither the culture nor the patience needed for perfect execution; he was rather an admirable amateur than an artist. But if Malherbe founded no school, he gave an eminent example, and the argument which he maintained in the cause of poetic art was at a later time carried to its conclusion by Boileau.
Malherbe's reform was not accepted without opposition. While he pleaded for the supremacy of order, regularity, law, the voice of MATHURINREGNIER(1573-1613) was heard on behalf of freedom. A nephew of thepoet Desportes, Regnier was loyal to his uncle's fame and to the memory of the Pléiade; if Malherbe spoke slightingly of Desportes, and cast aside the tradition of the school of Ronsard, the retort was speedy and telling against the arrogant reformer, tyrant of words and syllables, all whose achievement amounted to no more thanproser de la rime et rimer de la prose. Unawares, indeed, Regnier, to a certain extent, co-operated with Malherbe, who recognised the genius of his younger adversary; he turned away from languid elegances to observation of life and truth of feeling; if he imitated his masters Horace and Ovid, or the Italian satiric poets, with whose writings he had become acquainted during two periods of residence in Rome, his imitations were not obsequious, like those of the Pléiade, but vigorous and original, like those of Boileau; in his sense of comedy he anticipates some of Molière's feeling for the humorous perversities of human character; his language is vivid, plain, and popular. The classical school of later years could not reject Regnier. Boileau declared that no poet before Molière was so well acquainted with the manners and characters of men; through his impersonal study of life he is indeed classic. But his ardent nature rebelled against formal rule; he trusted to the native force of genius, and let his ideas and passions lead him where they would. His satires are those of a painter whose eye is on his object, and who handles his brush with a vigorous discretion; they are criticisms of society and its types of folly or of vice, full of force and colour, yet general in their intention, for, except at the poet who had affronted his uncle, "le bon Regnier" struck at no individual. Most admirable, amid much that is admirable, is the picture of the old worldling Macette, whoseveil of pretended piety is gradually dropped as she discourses with growing wantonness to the maiden whom she would lead in the way she should not go: Macette is no unworthy elder of the family of Tartufe. Regnier confesses freely the passions of his own irregular life; had it been wisely conducted, his genius might have carried him far; as it was, he passed away prematurely at the age of forty, the victim of his own intemperate pursuit of pleasure.
Still more unfortunate was the life of a younger poet, who, while honouring the genius of Malherbe, pronounced, like Regnier, for freedom rather than order, and maintained that each writer of genius should be a law to himself—a poet whom his contemporaries esteemed too highly, and whom Malherbe, and afterwards Boileau, unjustly depreciated—THÉOPHILE DEVIAU. A Huguenot who had abjured his faith, afterwards pursued as a libertine in conduct and as a freethinker, Théophile was hunted, imprisoned, exiled, condemned to execution, and died exhausted in 1626, when only six-and-thirty years old. He has been described as the last lyrical poet of his age, and the first of the poetical exponents of the new preciosity. His dramaticPyrame et Thisbé, though disfigured by thoseconcettiwhich the Italian Marini—an honoured guest at the French court—and the invasion of Spanish tastes had made the mode, is not without touches of genuine pathos. The odes of Théophile are of free and musical movement, his descriptions of natural beauty are graciously coloured, his judgment in literary matters was sound and original; but he lacked the patient workmanship which art demands, and in proclaiming himself on the side of freedom as against order, he was retrograding from the position whichhad been secured for poetry under the leadership of Malherbe.
With social order came the desire for social refinement, and following the desire for refinement came the prettinesses and affectations of over-curious elegance. Peace returned to France with the monarchy of Henri IV., but the Gascon manners of his court were rude. Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet, whose mother was a great Roman lady, and whose father had been French ambassador at Rome, young, beautiful, delicately nurtured, retired in 1608 from the court, and a few years later opened hersalonof the Hôtel de Rambouillet to such noble and cultivated persons as were willing to be the courtiers of womanly grace and wit and taste. The rooms were arranged and decorated for the purposes of pleasure; thechambre bleuebecame the sanctuary of polite society, where Arthénice (an anagram for "Catherine") was the high priestess. To dance, to sing, to touch the lute was well; to converse with wit and refinement was something more admirable; thesalonbecame a mart for the exchange of ideas; the fashion of Spain was added to the fashion of Italy; Platonism, Petrarchism, Marinism, Gongorism, the spirit of romance and the daintinesses of learning and of pedantry met and mingled. Hither came Malherbe, Racan, Chapelain, Vaugelas; at a later time Balzac, Segrais, Voiture, Godeau; and again, towards the mid-years of the century, Saint-Évremond and La Rochefoucauld. Here Corneille read his plays from theCidtoRodogune; here Bossuet, a marvellous boy, improvised a midnight discourse, and Voiture declared he had never heard one preach so early or so late.
As Julie d'Angennes and her sister Angélique attained an age to divide their mother's authority in thesalon, itssentiment grew quintessential, and its taste was subtilised well-nigh to inanity. They censuredPolyeucte; they found Chapelain's unhappy epic "perfectly beautiful, but excessively tiresome"; they laid their heads together over Descartes'Discours de la Méthode, and profoundly admired the philosopher; they were enraptured by the madrigals on flowers, more than three score in number, offered as theGuirlande de Julieon Mademoiselle's fête; they gravely debated the question which should be the approved spelling,muscadinormuscardin. In 1649 they were sundered into rival parties—UranistesandJobelins—tilting in literary lists on behalf of the respective merits of a sonnet by Voiture and a sonnet by Benserade. The wordprécieuxis said to date from 1650. The Marquise de Rambouillet survived Molière's satiric comedyLes Précieuses Ridicules(1659) by several years. Mme. de Sévigné, Mme. de la Fayette, Fléchier, the preacher of fashion, were among the illustrious personages of the decline of hersalon. We smile at its follies and affectations; but, while it harmed literature by magnifying things that were petty, it did something to refine manners, to quicken ideas, to encourage clearness and grace of expression, and to make the pursuit of letters an avenue to social distinction. Through the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and thesalonswhich both in Paris and the provinces imitated its modes, and pushed them to extravagance, the influence of women on literature became a power for good and for evil.
The "Works," as they were styled, of VINCENTVOITURE(1598-1648)—posthumously published—represent one side of the spirit of thesalon. Capable of something higher, he lived to exhibit his ingenuity and wit in little ways, now by a cleverly-turned verse, nowby a letter of gallantry. Although of humble origin, he was for long a presiding genius in thechambre bleueof Arthénice. His play of mind was unhappily without a subject, and to be witty on nothings puts a strain on wit. Voiture expends much labour on being light, much serious effort in attaining vanities. His letters were admired as models of ingenious elegance; the life has long since passed from their raillery and badinage, but Voiture may be credited with having helped to render French prose pliant for the uses of pleasure.
The dainty trifles of the school of preciosity fluttered at least during the sunshine of a day. Its ambitious epics, whatever attention they may have attracted in their time, cannot be said to have ever possessed real life. The great style is not to be attained by tagging platitudes with points. TheSaint Louisof Lemoyne, theClovisof Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, theAlaricof Scudéry, theCharlemagneof Louis le Laboureur remain only as evidences of the vanity of misplaced ambition. During twenty years JEANCHAPELAIN, a man of no mean ability in other fields, was occupied with hisLa Pucelle d'Orléans; twelve cantos at length appeared magnificently in 1656, and won a brief applause; the remaining twelve cantos lie still inedited. The matter of history was too humble for Chapelain's genius; history is ennobled by an allegorical intention; France becomes the soul of man; Charles, swayed between good and evil, is the human will; the Maid of Orleans is divine grace. The satire of Boileau, just in its severity, was hardly needed to slay the slain.
In the prose romances, which are epics emancipated from the trammels of verse, there was more vitality. Bishop Camus, the friend of François de Sales, hadattempted to sanctify the movement which d'Urfé had initiated; but the spirit of theAstréewould not unite in a single stream with the spirit of theIntroduction à la Vie Dévote. Gomberville is remembered rather for the remorseless war which he waged against the innocent conjunctioncar, never to be admitted into polite literature, than for his encyclopædic romancePolexandre, in which geography is illustrated by fiction, as copious as it is fantastic; yet it was something to annex for the first time the ocean, with all its marvels, to the scenery of adventure. Gombauld, theBeau Ténébreuxof the Hôtel de Rambouillet, secured a reading for his unreadableEndymionby the supposed transparence of his allusions to living persons. Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin relieved the amorous exaltations of hisAriane, a tale of the time of Nero, by excursions which touch the borders of comedy. These are books on which the dust gathers thick in ancient libraries.
But the romances of LACALPRENÈDEand of GEORGESand MADELEINE DESCUDÉRYmight well be taken down by any lover of literature who possesses the virtue of fortitude. Since d'Urfé's day the taste for pastoral had declined; the newer romance was gallant and heroic. Legend or history supplied its framework; but the central motive was ideal love at odds with circumstance, love the inspirer of limitless devotion and daring. The art of construction was imperfectly understood; the narratives are of portentous length; ten, twelve, twenty volumes were needed to deploy the sentiments and the adventures. InCassandre, inCléopâtre, inPharamond, La Calprenède exhibits a kind of universal history; the dissolution of the Macedonian empire, the decline of the empire of Rome, the beginnings of the Frenchmonarchy are successively presented. But the chief personages are idealised portraits drawn from the society of the author's time. The spirit of the Hôtel de Rambouillet is transferred to the period when the Scythian Oroondate was the lover of Statira, daughter of Darius; the Prince de Condé masks inCléopâtreas Coriolan; Pharamond is the Grand Monarch in disguise. Notwithstanding the faded gallantries and amorous casuistry of La Calprenède's interminable romances, a certain spirit of real heroism, offspring of the writer's ardent imagination and bright southern temper, breathes through them. They were the delight of Mme. de Sévigné and of La Fontaine; even in the eighteenth century they were the companions of Crébillon, and were not forgotten by Rousseau.
Still more popular wasArtamène, ou le Grand Cyrus. Mdlle. de Scudéry, the "Sapho" of her Saturdaysalon, a trueprécieuse, as good of heart and quick of wit as she was unprepossessing of person, supplied the sentiment and metaphysics of love to match the gasconading exploits of her brother's invention. It was the time not only of preciosity, but of the Fronde, with its turbulent adventures and fantastic chivalry. Under the names of Medes and Persians could be discovered the adventurers, the gallants, the fine ladies of the seventeenth century. InCléliean attempt is made to study the curiosities of passion; it is a manual of polite love and elegant manners; in itscarte de Tendrewe can examine the topography of love-land, trace the routes to the three cities of "Tendre," and learn the dangers of the way. Thus the heroic romance reached its term; its finer spirit became the possession of the tragic drama, where it was purified and rendered sane. The modern novel had wanderedin search of its true self, and had not succeeded in the quest. WhenGil Blasappeared, it was seen that the novel of incident must also be the novel of character, and that in its imitation of real life it could appropriate some of the possessions which by that time comedy had lost.
The extravagances of sentiment produced a natural reaction. Not a few of the intimates of the Hôtel de Rambouillet found a relief from their fatigue of fine manners and high-pitched emotions in the unedifying jests and merry tales of the tavern. A comic, convivial, burlesque or picaresque literature became, as it were, a parody of the literature of preciosity. Saint-Amand (1594-1661) was at once a disciple of the Italian Marini, the admired "Sapurnius" of thesalon, author of at least one beautiful ode—La Solitude—breathing a gentle melancholy, and a gay singer of bacchic chants. Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, in his comedyLes Visionnaires(1637), mocked theprécieuses, and was applauded by the spectators of the theatre. One of his heroines is hopelessly enamoured of Alexander the Great; one is enamoured of poetry, and sees life as if it were material for the stage; and the third is enamoured of her own beauty, with its imagined potency over the hearts of men. As early as 1622 CHARLESSORELexpressed, in hisHistoire Comique de Francion, a Rabelaisian and picaresque tale of low life, the revolt of theesprit gauloisagainst the homage of the imagination to courtly shepherdesses and pastoral cavaliers. It was reprinted more than forty times. InLe Berger Extravagant(1628) he attempted a kind of Don Quixote for his own day—an "anti-romance"—which recounts the pastoral follies of a young Parisian bourgeois, whose wits have been setwandering by such dreams as theAstréehad inspired; its mirth is unhappily overloaded with pedantry.
The master of this school of seventeenth-century realism was PAULSCARRON(1610-60), the comely little abbé, unconcerned with ecclesiastical scruples or good manners, who, when a paralytic, twisted and tortured by disease, became the husband of D'Aubigné's granddaughter, destined as Madame de Maintenon to become the most influential woman in all the history of France. In hisVirgile Travestihe produced a vulgar counterpart to the heroic epics, which their own dead-weight would have speedily enough borne downwards to oblivion. HisRoman Comique(1651), a short and lively narrative of the adventures of a troupe of comedians strolling in the provinces, contrasted with the exaltations, the heroisms, the delicate distresses of the ideal romance. TheRoman Bourgeois(1666) of ANTOINEFURETIÈREis a belated example of the group to whichFrancionbelongs. The great event of its author's life was his exclusion from the Academy, of which he was a member, on the ground that he had appropriated for the advantage of his Dictionary the results of his fellow-members' researches for the Dictionary, then in progress, of the learned company. HisRomanis a remarkable study of certain types of middle-class Parisian life, often animated, exact, effective in its satire; but the analysis of a petty and commonplace world needs some relief of beauty or generosity to make its triviality acceptable, and such relief Furetière will not afford.
Somewhat apart from this group of satiric tales, yet with a certain kinship to them, lie the more fantastic satires of that fiery swashbuckler—"démon des braves"—CYRANO DEBERGERAC(1619-55),Histoire Comiquedes États et Empires de la Lune, andHistoire Comique des États et Empires du Soleil. Cyrano's taste, caught by the mannerisms of Italy and extravagances of Spain, was execrable. To his violences of temper he added a reputation for irreligion. His comedyLe Pédant Jouéhas the honour of having furnished Molière with the most laughable scene of theFourberies de Scapin. The voyages to the moon and the sun, in which the inhabitants, their manners, governments, and ideas, are presented, mingle audacities and caprices of invention with a portion of satiric truth; they lived in the memories of the creator of Gulliver and the creator of Micromégas.