A Short History of French Literature Part 32

Fenelon was a man of almost universal reading, and one of the most original and soundest literary critics of his time. Fenelon felt deeply for the misery of the French people; Bossuet does not appear to have troubled himself about it. Finally Bossuet, with all his merits, had grave faults of moral character, while to Fenelon--quite as justly as to Berkeley--every virtue under heaven may be a.s.signed. Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fenelon[280] was born at the castle of the same name in the province of Perigord, on August 16th, 1661. He was educated first at home, then at Cahors, and then at the College de Plessis at Paris. He finally studied in a theological seminary for some years, and did not formally enter the Church till he was four-and-twenty. He then devoted himself partly to the poor, partly to education, especially of girls, and his treatise on this latter subject was his first work. In 1687 he was appointed preceptor to the Duke de Bourgogne, son of Bossuet's pupil, and heir to the throne. For the duke he wrote a great number of books, among them _Telemaque_ (or at least the first sketch of it). In 1697 he was appointed archbishop of Cambray. Into his connection with Madame Guyon, the celebrated apostle of quietism, and his consequent quarrel with Bossuet, there is no need to enter further.

Whichever of the two may have been theologically in the right, there are no two opinions on the question that Bossuet was in the wrong, both in the acrimony of his conduct and the violence of his language. In the latter respect, indeed, he brought down upon himself a well-deserved punishment. Fenelon was the mildest of men, but he possessed a faculty of quiet irony inferior to that of no man then living, and he used it with effect in the controversy against Bossuet's declamatory denunciations. When, at last, the matter had been referred to the Pope, and judgment had been given against himself, Fenelon at once bowed to the decision and acknowledged his error. Louis, however, had many more reasons for disliking him than the mere odium theologic.u.m with which Bossuet had inspired him. Fenelon was known to disapprove of much in the actual government of France, and the surrept.i.tious publication of _Telemaque_ completed his disgrace. He was banished from court and confined to his diocese, in which he accordingly spent the last part of his life, doing his best to alleviate the misery caused on the borders by the war of the Spanish succession, and dying at Cambray in 1715.

Fenelon was an industrious writer. Few of his finished sermons have been preserved; but these are excellent, as are also his fables written for the Duke de Bourgogne, his already-mentioned _Education des Filles_, and his _Dialogues des Morts_, also written for the Duke, in which the form is borrowed from Lucian, but in which moral lessons are subst.i.tuted for mere satire. Like Bossuet, Fenelon was a Cartesian, and his _Traite de l'Existence de Dieu_ is a philosophico-religious work of no small merit.

In literary history he is remarkable for having directly opposed the victorious work of Boileau. He has left several exercises in literary criticism, such as his _Lettre sur les Occupations de l'Academie Francaise_, one of the latest of his works; his _Dialogues sur l'Eloquence_, and a contribution to the famous dispute of ancients and moderns in correspondence with La Motte. He regretted the impoverishment of the language, and the loss of much of the energy and picturesque vigour of the sixteenth century. In his controversy with Bossuet, though the matter is not strictly literary, there is, as has been noticed, much admirable literary work; but his chief claim to a place in literary history is, of course, _Telemaque_, which work he had antic.i.p.ated by the somewhat similar _Aventures d'Aristonous_. It has often been regretted that cla.s.sics in any language should be used for purposes of instruction in the rudiments, and hardly any single work has suffered more from this practice than _Telemaque_, for learners of French are usually set to read it long before they have any power of literary appreciation. A continuous narrative, moreover, is about the least suited of all literary forms to bear that process of cutting up in short pieces which is necessary in education. The pleasure of the story is either lost altogether, or antic.i.p.ated by surrept.i.tious reading on the part of the pupil, after which the mechanical plodding through matter of which he has already exhausted the interest is disgusting enough. Yet it can hardly be doubted that if _Telemaque_ had not, in the case of most readers, this fatal disadvantage, its beauties would be generally acknowledged. Its form is somewhat artificial, and the author has, perhaps, not escaped the error of most moral fiction writers, that of making his hero too much of a model of what ought to be, and too little of a copy of what is. But the story is excellently managed, the various incidents are drawn with remarkable vividness and picturesqueness, the descriptions are uniformly excellent, and the style is almost impeccable. Even were the moral sentiments and the general tendency of the book less excellent than they are, its value as a model of French composition would probably have secured it something like its present place side by side with La Fontaine's Fables as a school-book. It is fair to add that in the character of Calypso, where the need of the author for a 'terrible example' freed him from his restraints, very considerable powers of character-drawing are shown, and the same may be said of not a few of the minor personages.

[Sidenote: Ma.s.sillon.]

The third greatest name of the period in this cla.s.s of men of letters is beyond all question that of Ma.s.sillon. He, like Fenelon, belongs to the second, if not the third, generation of the Siecle de Louis Quatorze, being nearly forty years younger than Bossuet. He was a long liver, and his death did not occur till far into the reign of Louis XV., when the reputation of Voltaire was established, and the eighteenth-century movement was in full swing. But his literary and oratorical activity had ceased for nearly a quarter of a century at the time of his death. Jean Baptiste Ma.s.sillon[281] was a native of Hieres, and was born on June 24, 1663. His father was a notary, and he himself was destined for the same profession; but his vocation for the Church was strong, and he was at last permitted to enter the Oratorian Congregation. His apt.i.tude for preaching was soon discovered, and when very young he distinguished himself by _Oraisons Funebres_ on the archbishops of Lyons and Vienne. He was of a retiring disposition, and, wis.h.i.+ng to avoid publicity, joined a stricter order than that of the Oratory, but was induced, and indeed ordered, by the Cardinal de Noailles, who heard him preach in his new abode, not to hide his light under a bushel, but to come to Paris and do the Church service. He obeyed, and was established in the capital in 1696. His fame soon became great, and he preached before the king more than one course of sermons.

He was appointed bishop of Clermont in 1717, and in the same year preached the celebrated _Pet.i.t Careme_, or course of Lent sermons, before Louis XV. In 1719 he was elected of the Academy. He preached his last sermon at Paris in 1723, and then retired to his diocese, where he spent the last twenty years of his life, dying of apoplexy at the age of eighty, Sept. 28, 1742.

Ma.s.sillon has usually, and justly, been considered the greatest preacher, in the strict sense of the word, of France. Only Bossuet and Bourdaloue could contest this position; and though both preceded him, and he owed much to both, he excels both in sermons properly so called.

Bossuet was, perhaps, a greater orator, if the finest parts of his work only are taken; but he was, as has been said, unequal, and in the two great objects of the preacher, exposition of doctrine and effect upon the consciences of his hearers, he was admittedly inferior to Ma.s.sillon.

The latter, moreover, has, of all French preachers (for Fenelon, it must be remembered, has left but few sermons), the purest style, and possesses the greatest range. His special function was considered to be persuasion; yet few pulpit orators have managed the sterner parts of their duty more forcibly. Ma.s.sillon's sermon on the Prodigal Son, and that on the Deaths of the Just and the Unjust, are models of his style.

It is, moreover, very much to his credit that he was the most uncompromising, despite his gentleness, of all the great preachers of the time, and, therefore, the least popular at court. Louis the Fourteenth's famous epigram, to the effect that other preachers made him contented with them, but Ma.s.sillon made him discontented with himself, was somewhat comically ill.u.s.trated by the fact that, after the second course of sermons preached before him, that of Lent 1704, the preacher, though then in the very height of his powers, was never asked again to preach at court. We are, however, more concerned with the manner than with the matter of his orations. He had (after the example of Bourdaloue, it is true) entirely discarded the frippery of erudition with which most of his predecessors had been wont to load their sermons, as well as the occasional oddities of gesticulation and anecdote which had once been fas.h.i.+onable. His style is simple, straightforward, and yet extremely elegant. In the commonplaces of French literary history of the old school he is called the Racine of the pulpit, a compliment determined by the extreme purity and elegance of his style, but not otherwise very applicable, inasmuch as one chief characteristic of Ma.s.sillon is an energy and masculine vigour of expression in which Racine is, for the most part, wanting.

[Sidenote: Bourdaloue.]

If we have postponed Bourdaloue to Ma.s.sillon, despite the order of chronology, it has been in accordance with Bourdaloue's own remark when Ma.s.sillon made his first reputation, 'He must increase, but I must decrease.' This remark is characteristic of the disposition of the man, which was as stainless as Ma.s.sillon's own. Louis Bourdaloue was born at Bourges on the 20th August, 1632, and was thus not many years the junior of Bossuet. He entered the Society of Jesus early, and served it as professor of philosophy and kindred subjects. But his superiors soon discovered his talents as a preacher, and he was sent to make his way before the court, where he became a great favourite, especially with Madame de Sevigne, who was no mean critic. He died in 1704.

The chief characteristic of Bourdaloue's eloquence is a remarkable absence of ornament, and a strict adherence to dialectical order. None of the great French preachers admit of logical abstraction and _precis_ so well as he. Another peculiarity is his preference for ethical subjects. More than any of his contemporaries he was an expounder of Christian morality, and his sermons are wont to deal with simple virtues and vices rather than with points of devotional piety. He was, like Ma.s.sillon, and even more than Ma.s.sillon, absolutely fearless and uncompromising, preaching against adultery in the very face of Louis XIV. in his early days, and sparing no vice or folly of the court. But, perhaps owing to the somewhat severe and exclusively intellectual character of his oratory, it does not appear to have produced the effects, salutary doubtless for the hearers, but somewhat inconvenient for the preacher, which attended the more cunningly-aimed attacks of Ma.s.sillon.

The example of the three great preachers--Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Ma.s.sillon--raised up many imitators, some of whom, such as De la Rue, Cheminais, and others, were popular in their day. There are, however, four orators--two Roman Catholics, and two belonging to the French Protestant Church--to whom is usually and rightly accorded the second rank, while sectarian partiality sometimes claims even the first for them. These were Flechier, Mascaron, Claude, and Saurin.

[Sidenote: Minor Preachers.]

Esprit Flechier was born at Pesmes in 1632. For a time he was a member of the congregation of the Brothers of Christian Doctrine, which, however, on an alteration of its const.i.tution by a new superior-general (he had been introduced to it by his uncle, who held that office), he quitted. He then went to Paris and tried various methods of gaining a livelihood, such as writing verses in Latin and French, and teaching in a school. In these early days he indulged in various forms of miscellaneous literature. The most curious and interesting of these works is a little account of the _Grands Jours d'Auvergne_, a sort of provincial a.s.size which he visited. This has much liveliness, and the sketches of character and manners show a good deal of skill. But at length he found his proper sphere in the pulpit. He acquired reputation by his _Oraison Funebre_ on Turenne. He became a member of the Academy (being admitted on the same day as Racine); and he was appointed, first, to the bishopric of Lavaur, then to that of Nimes, where, in a very difficult position (for the revocation of the edict of Nantes had exasperated the Protestants, who were numerous in the diocese), he made himself universally beloved. He died in 1710. The most famous of Flechier's discourses are those on Madame de Montausier (the heroine of the _Guirlande de Julie_[282] and the idol of the Hotel de Rambouillet), that on Madame de Montausier's husband, and that on Turenne. Flechier represents a somewhat older style of diction and expression than either of his great contemporaries, Bossuet and Bourdaloue; and his style, unlike some other work of this older school, is not characterised by many striking occasional phrases, but his sermons as a whole are vigorous and well expressed.

Jean Mascaron was born at Ma.r.s.eilles in 1634. It is worth noticing that almost all these orators came from the south of France. He preached frequently before the king, and did not hesitate to rebuke his vices, notwithstanding or because of which he was appointed to the bishopric of Tulle, whence he was afterwards translated to Agen. He died in 1703.

Mascaron is chiefly remembered for his _Oraison_ on that same death of Turenne which gave occasion to so many orators. He is usually reproached with a certain affectation of style, and there is justice in the reproach.

Of the two Protestant divines who have been mentioned Claude was the less distinguished, though he sustained on pretty even terms a public controversy with Bossuet himself. Jacques Saurin was of less political influence with his own sect, but he possessed greater eloquence, and critics of his own persuasion in France and Switzerland have equalled him to Bossuet. His works, moreover, long continued to be the most popular body of household divinity with French Protestants. He was born at Nimes, 1677, and was thus considerably younger even than Ma.s.sillon.

The revocation of the edict of Nantes (which had formed the subject of some of Claude's most famous discourses) prevented him from making a name for himself in France. He was at first appointed, in 1701, after studying at Geneva, to a Walloon congregation in London, but soon moved, in consequence of weak health, to the Hague. He there became a victim of the petty dissensions which seem to have been more frequent among Dutch Protestant sects than anywhere else, and to the vexation of these is said to have been partly due his comparatively early death in 1730. He left a very considerable number of sermons and some theological treatises. He was admittedly a great orator, excelling in striking pictures and forcible imagery.

It will have been observed that, though this age contributes more to theology of the literary kind than almost any other, its most memorable contributions are almost exclusively oratorical. Incidentally, however, much that was intended to be read, not heard, was of course written. But less of it has been thought worthy the attention of posterity. The chief theological names in this department have already been named in naming those of the other. Of the school of Port Royal, who preached little but wrote much, J. J. Duguet, a man of great talent and saintly life, deserves mention.

FOOTNOTES:

[279] Bossuet's works are extremely voluminous. The most important of them are easily obtainable in the _Collection Didot_ and similar libraries.

[280] There is a fairly representative edition of Fenelon in five vols.

large 8vo. Didot. Separate works are easily accessible.

[281] Edition as in Fenelon's case. Selections of all the orthodox sermon-writers are abundant.

[282] This was an alb.u.m to which the poets of the day, from Corneille downwards, contributed verses, each on a different flower.

INTERCHAPTER III.

SUMMARY OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE.

The tendencies of the period which has been surveyed in the foregoing book must be sufficiently obvious from the survey itself. They had been, as far as the unsatisfactory result of them went, indicated with remarkably prophetic precision by Regnier in lines quoted above[283].

The work, not merely of Malherbe, which the satirist had directly in view, but of Boileau, who succeeded Malherbe and completed his task, had tended far too much in the direction of subst.i.tuting a formal regularity for an elastic freedom and of discouraging the more poetical utterances of thought. In prose, however, the operation of not dissimilar tendencies had been almost wholly good. For it is in the nature of prose not to admit of too absolute regulation, and it is at the same time in its nature to require that regulation up to a certain point. If the French vocabulary had been somewhat impoverished, it had been considerably refined. All good authorities admit that the influence of the salon-coteries and the _precieuses_--mischievous as it was in some ways--was of no small benefit in purifying not merely manners but speech. A single book, the _Historiettes_ of Tallemant des Reaux, shows sufficiently the need of this double purification. French literature has at no time been distinguished by prudery, but from the fifteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century (for, as has been pointed out, the courtly literature at least of the middle ages is free from this defect) it had added to its liberty in choice and treatment of subjects a liberty which amounted to the extremest licence in the choice of words.

It had become in fact exceedingly coa.r.s.e. The poetry of the Pleiade was not as a rule open to this charge, but the early poetry and prose of the seventeenth century must submit to it. One effect of the process of correction and reform was a decided improvement in this matter.

But the vocabulary was by no means the only thing that underwent revision. Other const.i.tuents of literature shared in the same experience, and much more beneficially, for the expurgation of the dictionary was unfortunately made to involve the weeding out of many terms which were not open to the slightest exception, and the loss of which deprived the tongue of much of its picturesqueness. No such concomitant defect attended the reformations in grammar which, begun by the grammarians of the sixteenth century, were pursued still more systematically by Vaugelas and his followers. There can hardly be too much precision observed in matters of accidence and syntax; while it is desirable that the vocabulary should be as rich as possible, provided that its terms are vernacular or properly naturalised. The same may be said of some at least of the reforms of Malherbe in prosody and the minutiae of poetical art. So too the advance made to something like a uniform orthography was of no small importance. The result of this general criticism was the group (or rather groups, for they may be divided into at least two, the earlier comprising Descartes, Corneille, Pascal, Saint Evremond, La Rochefoucauld, Bossuet, Madame de Sevigne, La Fontaine, and Moliere, in other words, most of the greatest names) ill.u.s.trating the so-called _Grand Siecle_, or Siecle de Louis Quatorze.

The two names that stand first in this list, Descartes and Corneille, represent at once the initial change and in addition the greatest accomplishment in the direction of change effected by any individual.

The others worthily followed where they led. This group, as has been more than once pointed out, does not s.h.i.+ne in poetry proper. But it has hardly a rival in prose and in that measured and declamatory or easy and pedestrian verse which is half prose, half poetry.

Long, however, before the century ended, the evils which invariably attend upon a critical period, especially--it is paradoxical but true--when it is at the same time a period of considerable creative power, began to manifest themselves. These evils may be briefly described as the natural results of the drawing up of too straight and definite rules for each department of literature, and the following with too great exactness of the more brilliant examples in each kind. The one practice leads to what is called, in Sterne's well-known phrase, 'looking at the stop-watch;' the other, to an endeavour to be like somebody. It was not till the eighteenth century that these evils were fully patent; and then, though they were somewhat mitigated in departments other than the Belles Lettres by the eager spirit of enquiry and adventure which characterised the time, they are evident enough. The mischief showed itself in various ways. Besides the two which have been already indicated, there was a third and subtler form, which has produced some curious and interesting work, but which is obviously an indication of decadence. Those who did not resign themselves to the mere recasting of old material in the old moulds, or to simple following of the great models, were apt to echo, aloud or silently, La Bruyere's opening sentence, 'tout est dit,' and to draw from this discouraging fact the same conclusion that he did--that the only way to innovate was to vary in cunning fas.h.i.+on the manners of saying. In itself there might be no great harm in the conclusion, especially if it had led to a revolt against the narrow limits imposed by current criticism. But it did not, it only led to an attempt to innovate within those limits, which could only be done by a kind of new 'preciousness'--an affectation in short.

This affectation showed itself first (though La Bruyere himself is not quite free from it, enemy of Fontenelle as he was) in Fontenelle, who was a descendant of the old _precieuse_ school itself, and reached a climax in the author from whose name it thenceforward took its name of _Marivaudage_.

Thus the literary produce of the seventeenth century was better than its tendency. The latter has been sufficiently described; a very few words will suffice for the former. In the special characteristics of the genius of French, which may be said to be clearness, polish of form and expression, and a certain quality which perhaps cannot be so well expressed by any other word as by alertness, the best work of the seventeenth century has no rivals. Except in Corneille and Bossuet, it is not often grand, it is still seldomer pa.s.sionate, or suggestively harmonious, or quaintly humorous, or even picturesquely narrative. But the charm of precision, of elegance, of expressing what is expressed in the best possible manner, belongs to it in a supreme degree. There are not many things in literature more absolutely incapable of improvement in their own style, and as far as they go, than a scene of Moliere, a _tirade_ of Racine, a maxim of La Rochefoucauld, a letter of Madame de Sevigne, a character of La Bruyere, a peroration of Ma.s.sillon, when each is at his or her best. The reader may in some cases feel that he likes something else better, but he is incapable of pointing out a blemish. If he objects, he must object to something extra-literary, to the writer's conception of human nature, his political views, his range of thought, his selection of subject. When the one supreme question of criticism formulated by Victor Hugo, 'l'ouvrage est-il bon ou est-il mauvais?'

(not 'aimez-vous l'ouvrage?' which is the illegitimate question which nine critics out of ten put to themselves), is set in reference to the best work of this time, the answer cannot be dubious for one moment in the case of any one qualified to give an answer at all. It is good, and in very many cases it could not possibly be better.

FOOTNOTES:

[283] p. 267.

BOOK IV.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER I.

POETS.

[Sidenote: Literary Degeneracy of the Eighteenth Century.]

The literature of the eighteenth century, despite the many great names which adorn it, and the extraordinary practical influence which it exercised, is, from the point of view of strict literary criticism, which busies itself with form rather than matter, a period of decadence.

In all the departments of Belles Lettres a servile imitation of the models of the great cla.s.sical period is observable. The language, according to an inevitable process which the more clearsighted of the men of Louis the Fourteenth's time, such as Fenelon and La Bruyere, themselves foresaw and deprecated, became more and more incapable of expressing deep pa.s.sion, varied scenery, the intricacies and eccentricities of character. For a time a few survivors of the older cla.s.s and manner, such as Fontenelle, Saint Simon, Ma.s.sillon, resisted the tendency of the age more or less successfully. As they one by one dropped off, the militant energy of the great _philosophe_ movement, which may be said to coincide with the second and third quarters of the century, communicated a temporary brilliance to prose. But during the reign of Louis XVI., the Revolution and the Empire (for in the widest sense the eighteenth century of literature does not cease till the Restoration, or even later), the average literary value of what is written in French is but small, and, with few exceptions, what is valuable belongs to those who, consciously or unconsciously, were in an att.i.tude of revolt, and were clearing the way for the men of 1830.

[Sidenote: especially manifest in Poetry.]

Poetry and the drama naturally suffered most from this course of events, and poetry pure and simple suffered even more than the drama. By the opening of the eighteenth century epic and lyric in the proper sense had been rendered nearly impossible by the full and apparently final adoption of the conception of poetry recommended by Malherbe, and finally rendered orthodox by Boileau. The impossibility was not recognised, and France, in the opinion of her own critics, at last got her epic poem in the _Henriade_, and her perfect lyrists in Rousseau and Lebrun. But posterity has not ratified these judgments. Fortunately, however, the men of the eighteenth century had in La Fontaine a model for lighter work which their principles permitted them to follow, and the irresistible attractions of the song left song-writers tolerably free from the fatal restrictions of dignified poetry. Once, towards the close of the century, a poet of exceptional genius, Andre Chenier, showed what he might have done under happier circ.u.mstances. But for the most part the history of poetry during this time in France is the history of verse almost uninspired by the poetic spirit, and dest.i.tute even of the choicer graces of poetic form.

[Sidenote: J. B. Rousseau.]

For convenience' sake it will be well to separate the graver and the lighter poets, and to treat each in order, with the proviso that in most cases those mentioned in the first division have some claim to figure in the second also, for few poets of the time were wholly serious. The first poet who is distinctively of the eighteenth century, and not the least remarkable, was Jean Baptiste Rousseau[284] (1669-1741).