CHAPTER III

FRENCH SEVENTEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ITS

EUROPEAN INFLUENCE

THE literature of France in the seventeenth century has always been regarded, both by other European peoples and (with the exception of a few writers whose influence is not perhaps of much weight) by the French themselves, as most thoroughly representative of the literature of which it forms part.

In no other period have the distinguishing characteristics of French intellect and genius method, logical sequence of ideas, and lucidity of style been so conspicuous. The classical tradition of Greece and Rome, followed by the great poets and prose-writers of the sixteenth century, with a zeal as overmastering as it was injudicious, and transmitted by them to those of the seventeenth, was handled by their successors with so fine an insight, so sure a sense of proportion, and so instinctive an art of combining national originality with the inspirations of classical tradition in short, with such felicity and propriety and skill — as to have resulted in a success almost unparalleled in the whole history of literature.

Innumerable influences were intermingled and interwoven at this period of literary workmanship; but three of them, at least, proved so strong, so striking, and so continuous throughout the whole of the century, that a kind of authoritative rank ought to be assigned to them. These are the influence of Montaigne, that of Malherbe, and that of Descartes.

By virtue of the power which Montaigne exercised, he belongs rather to the seventeenth than to the sixteenth century. Every seventeenth century man of letters read his works incessantly and was deeply imbued with their spirit. In all these writers are to be found deep traces, echoes, imitations, and even plagiarisms, of Montaigne. It is a striking indication of this all-pervading influence that the two chief representatives in the seventeenth century of whatsoever in it was most Christian and most Catholic, the two most deeply religious men of the age, and therefore those furthest removed from the spirit of Montaigne that is to say, Pascal and Bossuet - found Montaigne as it

Montaigne, Descartes, and Malherbe

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were blocking their way, and became intent upon refuting his principles. This proves how living was the influence exercised by Montaigne on the minds of men, and how those who differed from him in their ways of thought and feeling, still felt it incumbent on them to wage war against him as against a present, and indeed an omnipresent, adversary.

Although Montaigne represented the classical tradition in perfection, and borrowed from it all that was most refined and best suited to the French mind, he himself represented, or it might even be said evolved, the true French spirit. From him his compatriots learnt delicacy of treatment, and derived the taste for a searching but dexterously and gracefully conducted analysis of ideas, together with their love of the study of characters, pursued with ardour but not without the sure touch. of the master's hand — in short, every tendency proper to the humanist and the moralist who is at the same time a man of genius. The literature of the seventeenth century, which concerned itself almost exclusively with the study of man, owes its bent in large measure to him. In a word, Montaigne might almost be described as the literary father-confessor of the seventeenth century.

Descartes, himself a moralist (for we must not forget his marvellous Traité des Passions), bestowed on the seventeenth century those qualities which Montaigne either naturally lacked or did not deign to acquire -careful arrangement, a sense of order, the rectilinear sequence of ideas, the art of boldly tracing the grand outlines of general conceptions with a sure touch and a master-hand. Teacher, in this respect, of Bossuet, of Bourdaloue, of Boileau, even of Molière and of Racine, as well as of Malebranche, he mapped out the high-roads along which the French intellect was to travel; had Montaigne been the only writer to exercise a controlling influence over French minds, they might, perhaps, have become too much attached to winding by-paths; had Descartes been the sole influence, they might have fallen into the habit of keeping to the high-road. Thus, it is fortunate that one of those two great personalities revealed the charm of the labyrinths of literature through which the visitant strays, not however dropping the thread from his hand, while the other grandly opened out the royal highway straight through the forest intellectual.

Last, Malherbe, following in the footsteps of Ronsard, but with none of Ronsard's defects, taught Frenchmen, first of all, the use of plain, clear, and concise language, which had rejected everything superfluous and bore no trace of piecing; more especially, he taught them rhetorical poetry, eloquence clothed in noble verse, the amplitude and the movement of stately sentences. He taught the French to become perfect orators in verse as well as in prose; for we learn from poets how to write prose; and his influence, which, in a measure, had long been latent, made itself felt to an enormous extent throughout the

C. M. H. V.

5

The Classical School: Corneille.- Bossuet

66 School of 1660, the central rallying-place of all French literary effort. The members of this School included orators in verse as well as orators in prose, who set forth abstract ideas in harmonious and ample stylein other words, in the style best fitted for them, since it placed their finest qualities in the strongest light.

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In Montaigne, then, we find a delicacy of diction which is full at the same time of grace and of strength; in Descartes order and strength in composition; in Malherbe a sure and expressive oratorical form and in one and all we find reasonableness. These qualities in combination formed the essence of the classical French of 1660, which in its turn has exercised so profound and, all things considered, so salutary an influence on the different literatures of Europe.

The School of 1660 included at least a dozen writers of the first rank, each with his own distinctly defined originality, but each possessing qualities common to all, and each exhibiting close affinities to the rest. Only a few of the chief among these writers can be here mentioned and characterised.

Corneille, who, however, preceded the others, and who only belongs to this group in the sense in which a father belongs to his family, was as much of a Stoic as was Montaigne; but, although he took delight in posing as such, he was, in the main, the poet of that doctrine of free will, of which Descartes was the convinced and eloquent exponent. Corneille sang of magnanimity, of loftiness of soul; though he was not thereby prevented from frequently drawing base and vile characters, or from displaying singular penetration in the analysis of complex individualities. But he is pre-eminently the poet of the human will. He pourtrays man struggling against the blows of Fate and prevailing against them, by means of his trust in himself and in the inward strength with which he feels himself endowed. He depicted those "warrior souls" whom Bossuet was later to call to mind; and at his bidding there passes before our eyes a long procession of combatant spirits. Corneille remains the very type of those artists who aspire towards the things that are great and who hold that the highest kind of beauty is to be found in the beauty of holiness.

Bossuet pressed the most powerful eloquence, and a "verbal," but yet disciplined, "vehemence " into the service of the religion he expounded. The impetuous arguments with which he stormed the enemies' citadel were tempered by order and method, and each was advanced in its own place and season. Indeed, he conveys the impression of a general who has weighty and powerful forces under his control, which he pushes to the front with equal rapidity and precision, in an assault that never breaks the ranks or mars the symmetry of their lines.

La Fontaine, the most self-contained and original of the poets and indeed of all the writers of the seventeenth century, owes little to Montaigne, little to Malherbe, although he loved him greatly, and

La Fontaine.

Boileau.

Molière

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little to Descartes, although he read him incessantly and rendered him worthy homage. He was a sixteenth century poet, matured by the ideas of the seventeenth century and the various influences that circulated round him. His ingenuity rises into elegance, while the freshness of his originality might have tempted him to superfluity, had it not been kept within nice and just limits by the good taste of the time, so that he actually became concise, while remaining easy and supple. He had at his command an inconceivable variety of turns of style and mannerisms, derived, in the first instance, from his own intellectual nature and, secondarily, from his wide reading of authors of every age, country, and style; above all else he had the quality of life that sense which makes even the slightest of his stories a miniature drama and endows each of his characters with a physiognomy all its own in its features, actions, and bearing. The most poetical of French poets, he stands as it were alone, and seems beyond the reach of extraneous influences, because he outvies them all.

Boileau is, strictly speaking, the pupil of Malherbe, and whether for better or for worse, just as one may view it a pupil turned teacher, a pupil, that is to say, who fears to go further than his master and shrinks from nothing so much as from being original. Possessed of wit, especially of that satirical wit which is not the highest kind, he had good judgment, a logical mind, and even eloquence; he knew how to draw a portrait or at least how to block out a sketch; his style, when defining literary precepts, was clear and fairly powerful; he discoursed on questions of morals as one possessing authority and capable of some emphasis; and he could be carried away by feverish indignation in rebuking an indifferent writer. He ought to be, although he probably is not, the idol of the "Aesthetic School," since he exhibited against the writers of other Schools than his own a spirit of indignation which found its vent in invective such as is usually reserved for criminals. Thus he possessed all the qualities, together with the chief failing, of men of letters.

Everything that can be said about Molière has been said—as to his wonderful gift for making even the most complex of his characters alive and real, until their conversation and even their very gestures have become proverbial; his comic power, or, in other words, his art of arousing, and of at the same time satisfying, more and more fully as he proceeds, the interest of curiosity seasoned by malice; his depth of conception, which is a very different thing from close observation of life, and which consists in the creation of characters capable of being viewed from ever fresh standpoints, and possessing an inexhaustible interest for those who subject them to analysis, so that they offer a new revelation to readers of each successive generation. But it has not been sufficiently pointed out that, like Corneille, like Boileau and like La Bruyère at later date, Molière has often, indeed almost always, the dogmatism of a preacher;

68

Racine. Influence on German literature

that his most important comedies are theses; that his aim was to teach, to exercise moral control, to impress his precepts on all who listened to him; and he too would have applauded the saying "Woe to him who is content with applause." In common with most of the French writers of the seventeenth century, he was an eloquent expounder of morality; and such he intended to be.

Finally (for we must not unduly prolong this rapid survey) Racine showed throughout his work what Corneille showed only on occasion, that he was a delicate and subtle and profound painter of the passions. It is true that, strictly speaking, he only studied the three passions of love and jealousy and ambition; but he treated these with great skill in all their devious movements, he traced their development, and he depicted every shade in their operation, even the most fleeting, without, however, losing himself in a maze of detail, and never forgetting the broad outline. Hence his gallery of living portraits, admirably managed from the point of view of technique, which time will never obliterate or change or tarnish.

These great men were the admiration of all Europe in their day, and they exercised a very powerful influence over the European literatures of their times. In Germany this influence lasted for nearly a century from the Thirty Years' War until the middle of the eighteenth century. Mention must be made of Martin Opitz, who, copying the example of his Dutch master Daniel Heinsius, had imbibed the leading principles of French literature in such a degree as to earn for himself the name of the "German Malherbe"; he was a pronounced partisan of the system of imitation, and, far more like Ronsard than Malherbe, he strove to introduce into the literature of his own country the distinguishing beauties of every other literature.

We should also mention Fleming, who imitated the French, especially where they in their turn had borrowed from the Italian School;Andreas Gryphius, a rather florid copyist of Corneille, a writer who, had he been French, would have found an acknowledged place between Rotrou and Ryer; the various imitators of the French Romances of the first half of the seventeenth century-imitators who really derive more from the Spanish influence in French literature than from French literature itself. Nor, above all, must we forget Gottsched, translator of Racine's Iphigénie and author of The Dying Cato, the German ultra-classic, who was, at the same time, the most thorough-going of the imitators of the French School, and also the last, or nearly the last, of these copyists; and who was speedily dethroned by the National School. And, for a moment, we feel impelled to call from oblivion the worthy and genial fabulist Gellert, who derived almost as much inspiration from La Fontaine as from his own kindly nature, and who thus possessed two excellent sources, from which in point of fact he might have drawn far more than he did.