Tantôt elle étale en ses bords
Que l'ire de Neptune outrage,
Des gens noyés, des monstres morts,
Des vaisseaux brisés du naufrage . .
Tantôt, la plus claire du monde,
Elle semble un miroir flottant
Et nous représente à l'instant
Encore d'autres cieux sous l'onde.
Le soleil s'y fait si bien voir,
Y contemplant son beau visage,
Qu'on est quelque temps à savoir.
Si c'est lui-même ou son image."

And in the "Contemplateur" the contemplation of this same sunset over the sea becomes a sort of hallucination, in which all the strength (if not the profundity) and the very spirit of symbolical poetry burst forth suddenly ::

It must also be said that even in "Moïse," a badly constructed poem which contains some ridiculous lines, but is not altogether wearisome, there are descriptive passages where all Saint-Amant's love for nature is to be seen, and where his facility in describing it charmingly comes back to him. Perhaps Boileau might not have cared to write the following lines; perhaps he could not have done so :

"Le fleuve est un etang qui dort au pied des palmes,
De qui l'ombre plongée au fond des ondes calmes

Sans agitation semble se refraîchir

Et de fruits naturels le cristal enrichir ;

Le firmament s'y voit, l'astre du jour y roule ;

Il s'admire, il éclate en ce miroir qui coule,

CYRANO DE BERGERAC

Et les hôtes de l'air en ce miroir divers
Volant d'un bord à l'autre y nagent à l'envers,
Et mille rossignols perchés sur les buissons
Font au loin retentir leur douce violence

Et rendent le bruit même agréable au silence."

381

Saint-Amant did not obtain by any false pretences the great reputation which he had in his lifetime, nor did he merit the ridicule with which the group of 1660 attempted to cover him. He had one misfortune-that, after having been successful too early in second-rate work, he was too slow in producing his masterpiece. "Moïse" appeared in 1653, and it was a poem in the style of 1630; and the school of 1660 was already quite prepared to cast into the shade the productions of a preceding generation. Two judgments pronounced upon Saint-Amant-one by a partisan, the other by an enemy-ought to be remembered. Furetière said of him, "He is the burgomaster of the idyll." Boileau wrote: "He had sufficient genius to write works displaying riotous imagination and extravagant satire, and he won some success in serious poems." It is difficult to understand why Boileau is always more just in prose than in verse.

Cyrano de Bergerac must also be placed in the group of grotesques, though, in truth, Cyrano cannot be easily classified. As a comic poet he is a predecessor of Scarron; as a tragic one he is the successor of Garnier, who is a perfect classic, while as a fantastic poet he is, in some light verses, and above all in his prose works, as much a grotesque as Théophile de Viau was. To sum up, he was a virtuoso, a very versatile genius who could write easily in all styles, and succeeded brilliantly enough in them all. An adventurer, a soldier, a bully, a duellist, and, all said and done, something of a madman, who died at the age of thirty-five after a most wild life, he has left behind him the "Lettres," which are often as imaginary as those we give in our "causeries" or our "chroniques "-a tragedy, the "La Mort d'Agrippina"; a comedy, "Le Pedant joué"; a fantastic novel entitled "Les Etats et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil." We shall return later to his dramas. His "Lettres" are full of faults of taste,

but likewise of pleasing fancies. In them we learn that an aqueduct is "a liquid serpent, a bone, the marrow of which flows," that a tree is "a lizard turned upside down, which pricks the sky and bites the earth"; that Pygmalion is "the only man who ever married a dumb wife "; and it is here that one also learns that in spring "it seems as if every leaf took the form and the note of a nightingale." Madame de Sévigné was to say later, "A bird is a leaf which sings."

His "Etats de la Lune et du Soleil" is still read. In it we see something of the violent imagination and paradoxical satire of "Gulliver's Travels." There is a certain philosophic imagination, a considerable amount of irreligious boldness, a spirit of burlesque often piquant, and an art of narration by no means to be despised, which recommend these odd accounts of voyages. They are extravagant rather than extraordinary, and contain much rubbish.

Cyrano is interesting in literary history, because he represents, more than the other writers of this period, a tendency which almost all of them had a philosophic tendency, materialistic or naturalistic, as the case may be, analogous to that of the eighteenth century. In the history yet to be written of the authors who in the seventeenth century continued the traditions of the sixteenth century, and served as a link between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, Cyrano, from this point of view, will occupy a very important position, and will long claim attention.

The whole period from 1600 to 1630 is, as we have seen, above everything else, a period of varied styles. There are classical writers so correct that they are to serve as models for the school of 1660, such as Malherbe and Colomby; semiclassical writers such as Racan, "romantics" who are sometimes "classics," like Théophile-" romantics" imperceptibly shading off into burlesques like Saint-Amant; "fantastics "like Cyrano de Bergerac, foreshadowing Diderot. Everywhere anarchy, but in literature there is nothing to repel one in anarchy; indeed, it renders literary history all the more interesting.

CHAPTER II

THE DRAMA FROM HARDY TO CORNEILLE

On the stage also irregularity reigned. Hardy and the "fantastics" had already shattered the classical mould which Jodelle, Garnier, and Montchrétien had constructed and insisted upon. From 1610 to 1630 every kind of dramatic work was seen on the stage-pastorals which were really novels in dialogue form, tragi-comedies which were historical comedies, comedies which were farces, and even tragedies which, by chance, intention, or imitation, were tragedies proper. Something has already been said of Racan's drama entitled "Les Bergeries"; it is the very type of the pastoral adored on the stage until 1635 perpetual anachronism-Diana, Druids, soothsayers, the whole machinery on the banks of the Seine and in the most modern language. The play is simply a pretext for gallant speeches which are often very pleasing, for descriptions often very beautiful, and reveries which are frequently highly poetical.

"Sylvanire, ou la Morte Vive," belonging to the same class -"a rustic poem in irregular verse"-must not be forgotten, because it is the work of the great romancer, Honoré d'Urfé. As examples of the tragi-comedy or romantic tragedy must be mentioned "Les Funestes Amours de Belcar et de Méliane," by Daniel d'Anchères, who, under the name of Jean de Schélandre, had written the Shakespearian play of "Tyr et Sidon," and above all the celebrated "tragedy" of "Pyrame et Thisbe," by Théophile de Viau, which has remained celebrated as an example of extraordinarily bad taste and

ridiculous metaphorical style without any beauties to compensate for these strange defects.

The first dramatist to return to tragedy proper was Jean de Mairet. His earliest works were the tragi-comedy ("Chryseide et Arimant") and the pastoral ("Silvie"). In 1629 he produced the first tragedy of the seventeenth century which really conformed to the rules of tragedy, and is, moreover, a very agreeable play. This was "Sophonisba," which effaced all preceding "Sophonisbas," and was the model of all later ones. Mairet had facility, wit, a certain art of composition, but no genius. It is not astonishing, therefore, that when Corneille appeared Mairet's fame was somewhat eclipsed, and that he was one of those who thought the "Cid" detestable. On the whole the period between 1610 and 1630 is one of the least fertile in French poetical drama.