[Sidenote: Beaumarchais.]
Beyond all doubt, however, the most remarkable, if not the best, dramatist of the late eighteenth century is Beaumarchais. Some critics have seen in the enormous success of the _Barbier de Seville_, 1775, and the _Mariage de Figaro_, 1784, nothing but a _succes de circonstance_ connected with the political ideas which were then fermenting in men"s minds. This seems to be unjust, or rather it is unjust not to recognise something very like genius in the manner in which the author has succeeded in shaping his subject, without choosing a specially political one, so as to produce the effect acknowledged. The wit of these two plays, moreover, is indisputable. But it may be allowed that Beaumarchais" other productions are inferior, and that his _Memoires_, which are not dramatic at all, contain as much wit as the Figaro plays.
As a satirist of society and a contributor of ill.u.s.trations to history, Beaumarchais must always hold a very high place, higher perhaps than as an artist in literature. Of his life, it is enough to say that he was born in 1731; became music master to the daughters of Louis XV.; engaged in a law-suit, the subject of the _Memoires_, with some high legal functionaries; made a fortune by speculating and by contracts in the American war, and lost it by further speculations, one of which was the preparation of a sumptuous edition of Voltaire. Besides the Figaro plays, his chief dramatic works are _Eugenie_, _Les Deux Amis_, and lastly, _La Mere Coupable_, in which the characters of his two famous works reappear.
After Beaumarchais, but few comic authors demand mention. Collin d"Harleville, one of the pleasantest writers of light comedies in verse, produced _Les Chateaux en Espagne_, _L"Inconstant_, _L"Optimiste_, and _Le Vieux Celibataire_, 1792, all sparkling pieces, which only need freeing from the restraints of rhyme. Andrieux, the author of _Les etourdis_, 1787, _Le Tresor_, _Le Vieux Fat_, and others, has something of the same character. Nepomucene Lemercier distinguished himself in comedy, chiefly by _Plaute_, in irregular verse, and by a comedy-drama, _Pinto_, in prose. These have his usual characteristics of somewhat spasmodic genius. Fabre d"Eglantine, the companion of Danton and Camille Desmoulins on the scaffold, is better remembered for his death than for his life. But his _Intrigue Epistolaire_ and _Philinte de Moliere_ shew talent. _Le Sourd_, by Desforges, is an amusing play.
[Sidenote: Characteristics of Eighteenth-century Drama.]
It will be seen that the positive achievements of drama during this period were considerably superior to those of poetry. The tragedies of Voltaire are prodigies of literary cleverness. In comedy proper Lesage produced work of enduring value; Destouches, Marivaux, Piron, Gresset, and some others, work which does not require any very great indulgence to ent.i.tle it to the name, in the right sense, of cla.s.sical; Beaumarchais, work which is indissolubly connected with great historical events, and which is not unworthy the connection. Moreover, as a matter of general literary history, the drama during this time displays numerous evidences of life and promise, as well as of decadence. The gradual recognition of the vaudeville as a separate literary kind gave occasion to much work, the ephemeral character of which should not be allowed to obscure its real literary excellence, and founded a school which is still living and flourishing with by no means simulated life.
The attempt of La Chaussee and Diderot to widen the range and break down the barriers of legitimate drama was premature, and not altogether well directed; but it was the forerunner of the great and durable reaction of nearly a century later. Still the actual dramatic accomplishment of this period, though in many ways interesting, and to a certain extent positively valuable, is not of the first cla.s.s. It is made up either of clever imitations and variations of modes which had already been expressed with greater perfection, and with far greater genius, by the preceding century, or of what may be fairly called dramatic pamphleteering, or else of tentative and immature experiments in reform, which came to nothing, or to very little, for the time being. Even its most gifted pract.i.tioners regarded it as a kind of journey-work, which was understood to lead to honour and profit, rather than as an art, in which honour and profit, if not entirely to be ignored, are altogether secondary considerations. Hence, in a lesser degree, the drama of the eighteenth century shares the same disadvantage which has been noted as characterising its poetry. Its value is a value of curiosity chiefly, a relative value. Indeed, as a mere mechanical art, drama sank even lower than poetry proper ever sank; and for fifty years at least before the romantic revival it may be doubted whether a single play was written, the destruction of which need greatly grieve even the most sensitive and appreciative student of French literary history.
CHAPTER III.
NOVELISTS.
The peculiarity of the eighteenth century in France as regards literature----that is to say, the application of great talents to almost every branch of literary production without the result of a distinct original growth in any one department----is nowhere more noticeable than in the department of prose fiction[288]. The names of Lesage, Prevost, Marivaux, Voltaire, Rousseau, are deservedly recorded among the list of the best novel writers. Yet, with the exception of _Manon Lescaut_, which for the time had no imitators, of the great works of Lesage which, admirable in execution, were by no means original in conception, and of the exquisite but comparatively insignificant variety of the prose _Conte_, of which Voltaire was the chief pract.i.tioner, nothing in the nature of a masterpiece, still less anything in the nature of an epoch-making work, was composed. The example of _Manon_ was left for the nineteenth century to develop, the others either died out (the adventure romance, after Lesage"s model, flourishing brilliantly in England, but hardly at all in France), or else were subordinated to a purpose, the purpose of advocating _philosophe_ views, or of pandering to the not very healthy cravings of an altogether artificial society. Yet, so far as merely literary merits are concerned, few branches of literature were more fertile than this during the period.
[Sidenote: Lesage.]
The first, and on the whole, the most considerable name of the century in fiction is that of the author of _Gil Blas_. Alain Rene Lesage was born at Sarzeau, near Vannes, on the 8th of May, 1668, and died at Boulogne on the 17th of November, 1747. He was bred a lawyer, and should have had a fair competence, but, being early left an orphan, was deprived of most of his property by the dishonesty of his guardian. He married young, moreover, and, unlike most of the prominent men of letters of his day, never seems to have enjoyed any solid patronage or protection from any powerful man or woman. This is indeed sufficiently accounted for by anecdotes which exist showing his extreme independence of character. Like most men of talent in such circ.u.mstances, he turned, though not very early, to literature, and began by a translation of the "Letters" of Aristaenetus. No great success could have awaited him in this line, and perhaps the greatest stroke of good-fortune in his life was the suggestion of the Abbe de Lyonne that he should turn his attention to Spanish literature, a suggestion which was not made more unpalatable by the present of a small annuity. He translated the "New Don Quixote" of Avellaneda (than which he might have found a better subject), and he adapted freely plays from Rojas, Lope de Vega, and Calderon. It was not, however, till he was nearly forty that he produced anything of real merit. The _Diable Boiteux_ appeared in 1707, and was at once popular. Still Lesage did not desert the stage, and the production of his admirable comedy _Turcaret_ ought to have secured him success there. But the Comedie Francaise was at that time more under the influence of clique than at any other time of its history; and Lesage, disgusted with the treatment he received from it, gave himself up entirely to writing farces and operettas for the minor theatres, and to prose fiction. _Gil Blas_, his greatest work, originally appeared in 1715, but was not completed till twenty years later. He also wrote--besides one or two bright but trifling minor works of a fict.i.tious character, _La Valise Trouvee_ (a letter-bag supposed to be picked up), _Une Journee des Parques_, a keen piece of Lucianic satire, etc.--many other romances in the same general style as his great works, and more or less borrowed from Spanish originals. The chief of these are _Guzman d"Alfarache_, _Estevanille Gonzalez_, _Le Bachelier de Salamanque_, and a curious Defoe-like book ent.i.tled _Vie et Aventures de M. de Beauchene_. In his old age he retired to the house of his second son, who held a canonry at Boulogne, and resided there for some years, until, in 1747, he died in his eightieth year. His works have hitherto been very insufficiently collected and edited.
_Le Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_ are far the greatest of Lesage"s romances, and, as it happens, they are the most original, little except the starting-point being borrowed in the one case, and nothing but a few detached details in the other. Lesage was, however, true to the general spirit of his model, the picaroon romance of Spain, a kind of Roman d"Aventures transported from the days and conventional conditions of chivalry to those of ordinary but still adventurous life in the Peninsula. The directly satirical intention predominates in the _Diable Boiteux_, the more purely narrative faculty in _Gil Blas_. In both the piercing observation of human character, which Lesage possessed in a greater degree perhaps than any other French writer, appears, and so does his remarkable power of making the results of this observation live and move. No French writer is so little of a mere Frenchman as Lesage, and in this point of cosmopolitan humanity he may be compared, without extravagance, in kind if not in degree, to Shakespeare. Besides his skill in character-drawing, and his faculty of spicing his narrative with epigram, Lesage also possessed extraordinary narrative ability. His books are not remarkable for what is called plot, that is to say, the action rather continues indefinitely in a straight line than converges on a given and definite point. But this continuance is so adroitly managed that no break is felt, and the succession very seldom becomes tedious. The novel of Lesage is the immediate parent and pattern of that of Fielding and Smollett in England. It is somewhat remarkable that it had no successors of importance or merit in France. This is probably to be accounted for by the cosmopolitan tone which has been already remarked upon. Indeed Lesage, as a rule, has had less justice done to him by his countrymen than any other of their great writers. Yet his style, looked at merely from the point of view of art, is excellent, and perhaps superior to that of any of his contemporaries properly so called.
Close in the track of Madame de la Fayette followed Madame de Fontaines (Marie Louise Charlotte de Givri), the date of whose birth is unknown, but who died in 1730. She was a friend of Voltaire"s youth, and her best work is named _La Comtesse de Savoie_, the date of the story being the eleventh century. She also wrote a short story of less merit called _Amenophis_. Madame de Tencin (Claudine Alexandrine Guerin), the mother of D"Alembert, the friend of Fontenelle, and one of the most famous salon-holders of the early eighteenth century, was a more fertile and a cleverer writer. She was born in 1681, and died in 1749. She had a bad heart, but an excellent head, and she showed her powers in the _Memoires du Comte de Comminges_ and the _Siege de Calais_, besides some minor works. The fault of almost all romances of the La Fayette school, the habit of throwing the scene into periods about which the writers knew nothing, appears in these works.
[Sidenote: Marivaux.]
But the first writer of fiction after Lesage who is worthy of separate mention at any length (for in these later centuries of our history there are, as any reader of books will understand, vast numbers of pract.i.tioners in every branch of literary art who are entirely unworthy of notice in a compendious history of literature) is Marivaux, an original and remarkable novelist, who, though by no possibility to be ranked among the great names of French literature, occupies a not inconsiderable place among those who are remarkable without being great.
Pierre Carlet de Marivaux, whose strict paternal appellation was simply Pierre Carlet, was born at Paris on the 8th of February, 1688. His father was of Norman origin, and held employments in the financial branch of the public service. Very little is known of the son"s youth, and indeed not much of his life. He is said to have produced his first play, _Le Pere Prudent et Equitable_, at the age of eighteen, and his dramatic industry was thenceforward considerable. As a romancer he worked more by fits and starts. His first attempt at prose fiction is said to have been--for the authenticity of the attribution is not certain--a romance in a kind of pseudo-Spanish style, called _Les Effets surprenants de la Sympathie_, published six years later. Then he took to the sterile and ign.o.ble literature of travesty, attacking Homer and Fenelon in the style of Scarron and Cotton. This brought him, through La Motte, under the influence of Fontenelle, to whom he owed not a little.
He made a fortune and lost it in Law"s bubble. Then he turned journalist, and after writing social articles in the _Mercure_, started a periodical himself, the nature of which is sufficiently shown by its borrowed t.i.tle, _Le Spectateur Francais_, 1722. At a later period he began another paper of the same kind, _Le Cabinet du Philosophe_, 1734.
His plays, which have been already noticed, were written partly for the Comedie Francaise, and partly for a very popular Italian company which appeared in France during the second quarter of the century. But for the present purpose his works which concern us are the famous romance of _Marianne_, 1731-1742, and the less-known one of the _Paysan Parvenu_, 1735. His dramas, rather than his fictions, procured him a place in the Academy in 1742, and he died in 1763.
_Marianne_ has been said to be the origin of _Pamela_, which may not be exactly the fact, though it is difficult not to believe that it gave Richardson his idea. But it is certain that it is a remarkable novel, and that it, rather than the plays, gave rise to the singular phrase _Marivaudage_, with which the author, not at all voluntarily, has enriched literature. The plot is simple enough. A poor but virtuous girl has adventures and recounts them, and the manner of recounting is extremely original. A morally faulty but intellectually admirable contemporary, Crebillon the younger, described this manner excellently by saying that the characters not only say everything that they have done and everything that they have thought, but everything that they would have liked to think but did not. This curious kind of mental a.n.a.lysis is expressed in a style which cannot be defended from the charge of affectation notwithstanding its extreme ingenuity and occasional wit. The real importance of _Marianne_ in the history of fiction is that it is the first example of the novel of a.n.a.lysis rather than of incident (though incident is still prominent), and the first in which an elaborate style, strongly imbued with mannerism, is applied to this purpose. The _Paysan Parvenu_, the t.i.tle of which suggested Restif"s novel _Le Paysan Perverti_, and which was probably not without influence on _Joseph Andrews_, is not very different in manner from _Marianne_, and, like it, was left unfinished after publication in parts at long intervals.
[Sidenote: Prevost]
A third eminent writer of novels was, in point of production, a contemporary of Lesage and Marivaux, though he was nearly thirty years younger than the first, and fully ten years younger than the second, and he more than either of them set the example of the modern novel. The Abbe Prevost, sometimes called Prevost d"Exilles, was born at Hesdin, in Picardy, in April, 1697. He was brought up by the Jesuits, and after a curious hesitation between entering the order and becoming a soldier (he actually served for some time) he joined the famous community of the Benedictines of Saint Maur, the most learned monastic body in the Roman church. When he did this he was four-and-twenty, and he continued for some six years to give himself up to study, not without interludes of professorial work and of preaching. He became, however, disgusted with his order, and unfortunately left his convent before technical permission had been given; a proceeding which kept him an exile from France for several years. It was at this time (1728) that he threw himself into novel-writing, taking his models, and in some cases, his scenes and characters, from England, which he visited, and of which he was a fervent admirer. He obtained permission to return in 1735, and then started a paper called _Le Pour et le Contre_, something like those of Marivaux, but more like a modern critical review. He received the protection of several persons of position and influence, notably the Prince de Conti and the Chancellor D"Aguesseau, and for nearly thirty years led a laborious literary life, in the course of which he is said to have written nearly a hundred volumes, mostly compilations. His death, which occurred in November, 1763, was perhaps the most horrible in literary history. He was on his way from Paris to his cottage near Chantilly, when he was struck by apoplexy. A stupid village doctor took him for dead, and began a post-mortem examination to discover the cause.
Prevost revived at the stroke of the knife, but was so injured by it that he expired shortly afterwards.
His chief works of fiction are the _Memoires d"un Homme de Qualite_, 1729, _Cleveland_, and the _Doyen de Killerine_, 1735, romances of adventure occupying a middle place between those of Lesage and Marivaux.
But he would have been long forgotten had it not been for an episode or rather postscript of the _Memoires_ ent.i.tled _Manon Lescaut_, in which all competent criticism recognises the first masterpiece of French literature which can properly be called a novel. Manon is a young girl with whom the Chevalier des Grieux, almost as young as herself, falls frantically in love. The pair fly to Paris, and the novel is occupied with the description of Manon"s faithlessness--a faithlessness based not on want of love for Des Grieux, but on an overmastering desire for luxury and comfort with which he cannot always supply her. The story, which is narrated by Des Grieux, and which has a most pathetic ending, is chiefly remarkable for the perfect simplicity and absolute life-likeness of the character-drawing. The despairing constancy of Des Grieux, conscious of the vileness of his idol, yet unable to help loving her, the sober goodness of his friend Tiberge, the roystering villany of Manon"s brother Lescaut, and, above all, the surprising and novel, but strictly practical and reasonable, figure of Manon, who, in her way, loves Des Grieux, who has no objection to deceive her richer lovers for him, but whose first craving is for material well-being and prosperity--make up a gallery which has rarely been exceeded in power and interest.
A novelist of merit, slightly junior to these, was Madame Riccoboni (Marie Jeanne Laboras de Mezieres), who was born in 1713, married an actor and dramatic author of little talent, and died at a great age in 1792. Her best works of fiction are _Le Marquis de Cressy_, _Mylady Catesby_, and _Ernestine_, with an exceedingly clever continuation (which, however, stops short of the conclusion) of Marivaux"
_Marianne_. All these books are constructed with considerable skill, and are good examples of what may be called the sentimental romance. Duclos, better known now for his historical and historical-ethical work, was also a novel-writer at this period. The _Lettres du Marquis de Roselle_, of Madame Elie de Beaumont, rather resembles the work of Madame Riccoboni.
The works of the three princ.i.p.al writers who have just been discussed belong to the first half of the century, and do not exhibit those characteristics by which it is most generally known. Marivaux is indeed an important representative of the laborious gallantry which descended from the days of the _precieuses_--Fontenelle being a link between the two ages--and Prevost exhibits, in at least its earlier stage, the sensibility which was one of the great characteristics of the eighteenth century. But neither of them can in the least be called a _philosophe_.
On the other hand, the _philosophe_ movement, which dominated the middle and latter portions of the age, was not long in invading the department of fiction. Each of the three celebrated men who stood at its head devoted himself to the novel in one or other of its forms; while Montesquieu, in the _Lettres Persanes_, came near to it, and each of the trio themselves had more or fewer followers in fiction.
[Sidenote: Voltaire.]
No long work of prose fiction stands under the name of Voltaire, but it may be doubted whether any of his works displays his peculiar genius more fully and more characteristically than the short tales in prose which he has left. Every one of them has a moral, political, social, or theological purpose. _Zadig_, 1748, is, perhaps, in its general aim, rather philosophical in the proper sense; _Babouc_, 1746, social; _Memnon_, 1747, ethical. _Micromegas_, 1752, is a satire on certain forms of science; the group of smaller tales, such as _Le Taureau Blanc_, are theological or rather anti-theological. _L"Ingenu_, 1767, and _L"Homme aux Quarante ecus_ (same date), are political from different points of view. All these objects meet and unite in the most famous and most daring of all, _Candide_, 1758. Written ostensibly to ridicule philosophical optimism, and on the spur given to pessimist theories by the Lisbon earthquake, _Candide_ is really as comprehensive as it is desultory. Religion, political government, national peculiarities, human weakness, ambition, love, loyalty, all come in for the unfailing sneer. The moral, wherever there is a moral, is, "be tolerant, and _cultivez votre jardin_," that is to say, do whatsoever work you have to do diligently. But in all these tales the destructive element has a good deal the better of the constructive. As literature, however, they are almost invariably admirable. There is probably no single book in existence which contains so much wit, pure and simple, as the moderate sized octavo in which are comprised these two or three dozen short stories, none of which exceeds a hundred pages or so in length, while many do not extend beyond two or three. Nowhere is the capacity of the French language for _persiflage_ better shown, and nowhere, perhaps, are more phrases which have become household words to be found. Nowhere also, it is true, is the utter want of reverence, which was Voltaire"s greatest fault, and the absence of profundity, which accompanied his marvellous superficial range and acuteness, more constantly displayed.
[Sidenote: Diderot.]
No inconsiderable portion of the extensive and unequal work of Diderot is occupied by prose fiction. He began by a licentious tale in the manner, but without the wit, of Crebillon the younger; a tale in which, save a little social satire, there was no purpose whatever. But by degrees he, like Voltaire, began to use the novel as a polemical weapon.
The powerful story of _La Religieuse_, 1760, was the boldest attack which, since the Reformation and the licence of Latin writing, had been made on the drawbacks and dangers of conventual life. _Jacques le Fataliste_, 1766, is a curious book, partly suggested, no doubt, by Sterne, but having a legitimate French ancestry in the _fatrasie_ of the sixteenth century. Jacques is a manservant who travels with his master, has adventures with him, talks incessantly to him, and tells him stories, as also does another character, the mistress of a country inn.
One of these stories, the history of the jealousy and attempted revenge of a great lady on her faithless lover by making him fall in love with a girl of no character, is admirably told, and has often since been adapted in fiction and drama. Other episodes of _Jacques le Fataliste_ are good, but the whole is unequal. The strangest of all Diderot"s attempts in prose fiction--if it is to be called a fiction and not a dramatic study--is the so-called _Neveu de Rameau_, in which, in the guise of a dialogue between himself and a hanger-on of society (or rather a monologue of the latter), the follies and vices, not merely of the time, but of human nature itself, are exposed with a masterly hand, and in a manner wonderfully original and piquant.
[Sidenote: Rousseau.]
[Sidenote: Crebillon the Younger.]
Neither Voltaire, however, nor Diderot devoted, in proportion to their other work, as much attention to prose fiction as did Jean Jacques Rousseau. Even the _Confessions_ might be cla.s.sed under this head without a great violation of propriety, and Rousseau"s only other large books, _La Nouvelle Helose_, 1760, and _Emile_, 1764, are avowed novels. In both of these the didactic purpose a.s.serts itself. In the latter, indeed, it a.s.serts itself to a degree sufficient seriously to impair the literary merit of the story. The second t.i.tle of _Emile_ is _L"Education_, and it is devoted to the unfolding of Rousseau"s views on that subject by the aid of an actual example in Emile the hero. It had a great vogue and a very considerable practical influence, nor can the race of novels with political or ethical purposes be said to have ever died out since. As a novel, properly so called, it has but little merit.
The case is different with _Julie_ or _La Nouvelle Helose_. This is a story told chiefly in the form of letters, and recounting the love of a n.o.ble young lady, Julie, for Saint Preux, a man of low rank, with a kind of afterpiece, depicting Julie"s married life with a respectable but prosaic free-thinker, M. de Wolmar. This famous book set the example, first, of the novel of sentiment, secondly, of the novel of landscape painting. Many efforts have been made to dethrone Rousseau from his position of teacher of Europe in point of sentiment and the picturesque, but they have had no real success. It is to _La Nouvelle Helose_ that both sentimental and picturesque fictions fairly owe their original popularity; yet _Julie_ cannot be called a good novel. Its direct narrative interest is but small, its characters are too intensely drawn or else too merely conventional, its plot far too meagre. It is in isolated pa.s.sages of description, and in the fervent pa.s.sion which pervades parts of it, that its value, and at the same time its importance in the history of novel-writing, consist.
Some lesser names group themselves naturally round those of the greater _Philosophes_ in the department of prose fiction. Voltaire"s style was largely followed, but scarcely from Voltaire"s point of view, and those who practised it fell rather under the head of _Conteurs_ pure and simple than of novelists with a purpose. The prose _Conte_ of the eighteenth century forms a remarkable branch of literature, redeemed from triviality by the exceptional skill expended on it. The master of the style was Crebillon the younger, in whom its merits and defects were both eminently present. Son of the tragic author, Crebillon led an easy but a rather mysterious life, married an Englishwoman, and was supposed by his friends to be dead long before he had actually quitted this world. His works, of which it is unnecessary to mention the names here, exhibit the moral corruption of the times in almost the highest possible degree. But they abound in keen social satire, in acute literary criticism, and in verbal wit. What is more, they show an extraordinary mastery of the art of narrative of the lighter kind. Around Crebillon are grouped a large number of writers, some of whom almost rival him in delicate literary knack, and most of whom equal him in perverse immorality of subject and tone. Much of the formal exercise of this tale literature was a tradition from the slightly earlier school of fairy tale-writing, which has already been noticed. Voisenon, Caylus, Boufflers, Moncrif (the most original and most eccentric of all), La Morliere, are names of this cla.s.s. Their prose may, on the a.n.a.logy of Vers de Societe, be called Prose de Societe, and of a very corrupt society too. But its formal excellence is considerable.
Of exceptional excellence among the short tales of this time, and free from their drawbacks, is the _Diable Amoureux_, 1772, of Cazotte, a singular person, strongly tinged with the "illuminism," or belief in occult sciences and arts, which was a natural result of the _philosophe_ movement. Cazotte"s melancholy story has a place in all histories of the French Revolution, and his name was (probably) borrowed by La Harpe for a bold and striking apologue, the authenticity or spuriousness of which is very much a matter of guess-work. The _Diable Amoureux_ is a singularly powerful story of its kind, uniting, in the fashion so difficult with tales of _diablerie_, literary verisimilitude and exactness of presentation with strangeness of subject.
Voltaire"s chief pupils and followers, while taking his own view of the utility of the prose tale for controversial purposes, followed another model for the most part in point of form. The immense influence of _Telemaque_ was felt by Voltaire himself, though in his case it resulted in history pure and simple. Marmontel in his _Belisaire_, and Florian in his _Numa Pompilius_ and _Gonsalve de Cordoue_, returned to the historical romance. Something of the same cla.s.s, though based upon much more solid scholarship, was the _Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis_ of the Abbe Barthelemy. All these books, like their predecessor, have somewhat pa.s.sed out of the range of literature proper into that of school books.
They are, however, all good examples of the easy, correct, and lucid, if cold and conventional, tongue of the later eighteenth century.
[Sidenote: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.]
Rousseau had a far more important disciple in fiction. Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was born at Havre in 1737. He was by profession an engineer, and both professionally and on his private account wandered about the world in a curious fashion. At last he met Rousseau, and the influence of Jean Jacques developed the sentimental morality, the speculative republicanism, and the ardent, if rather affected, love of nature which had already distinguished him. His best book, _Paul et Virginie_, is perhaps the only one of his works which can properly be called a novel; but _La Chaumiere Indienne_ deserves to be cla.s.sed with it, and even the _etudes de la Nature_ are half fiction.
_Paul et Virginie_ was written when the author"s admiration of nature and of the savage state, imbibed from Rousseau or quickened by his society, had been further inflamed by a three years" residence in Mauritius. Like the books mentioned in the last paragraph, _Paul et Virginie_ has lost something by becoming a school-book, but its faults and merits are in a literary sense greater than theirs. The over-ripe sentiment and the false delicacy of it will always remain evidence of the stimulating but unhealthy atmosphere in which it was written. But it cannot be denied that, both here and elsewhere in Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, there is a very remarkable faculty of word-painting, and also of influencing the feelings.
[Sidenote: Restif de la Bretonne.]
The later eighteenth century saw a vast number of novelists and novels, few of which were of much literary value, while most of them displayed the evil influences of the time in more ways than one. Dulaurens, a vagabond and disreputable writer, is chiefly remembered for his _Compere Mathieu_, a book presenting some points of likeness to _Jacques le Fataliste_, and like it inspired partly by Sterne, and partly by Sterne"s master, Rabelais. Writers like Louvet and La Clos continued the worst part of Crebillon"s tradition without exhibiting either his literary skill or his wit. A much more remarkable name is that of Restif de la Bretonne, who has been called, and not without reason, the French Defoe. He was born at Sacy in Burgundy in 1734, and died at Paris in 1806. Although of very humble birth, he seems to have acquired an irregular but considerable education, and, establishing himself early in Paris, he became an indefatigable author. About fifty separate works of his exist, some of which are of great extent, and one of which, _Les Contemporaines_, includes forty-two volumes and nearly three hundred separate articles or tales. Restif, whose entire sanity may reasonably be doubted, was a novelist, a philosopher, a social innovator, a diligent observer of the manners of his times, a spelling reformer. His work is for the most part dest.i.tute of the most rudimentary notions of decency, but it is apparently produced in good faith and with no evil purpose. His portraiture of manners is remarkably vivid. It is in this, in his earnest but eccentric philanthropy, and in his grasp of character, not seldom vigorous and close, that he chiefly resembles Defoe. He has been called in France the Rousseau of the gutter, which also is a comparison not without truth and instruction, despite the jingle ("Rousseau du ruisseau") by which it was no doubt suggested.
The law which seems to have ordained that, though the eighteenth century in France should produce no masterpiece in fict.i.tious literature, or only one, all the most distinguished literary names should be connected with fiction, extended to the long and, in a literary sense, dreary debateable land between the eighteenth century itself and the nineteenth. Of this period the two dominant names are beyond question those of Chateaubriand and of Madame de Stael. Both attempted various kinds of writing, but some of the most important work of both comes under the heading of the present chapter, and both as literary figures are best treated here.
[Sidenote: Chateaubriand.]
Francois Auguste de Chateaubriand was born at Saint Malo, where he is now buried, in 1768, and died in 1848. He belonged to a family which was among the n.o.blest of Britanny and of France, but which was not wealthy, and he was a younger son. Intended at first for the navy, he was allowed, at the outbreak of the Revolution, to indulge his fancy for travelling, and journeyed to North America. There he learnt the anti-monarchical turn which things had taken in France. He at once returned and joined the emigrants at Coblentz. He was seriously wounded at the siege of Thionville, and had some difficulty in making his way, by Holland and Jersey, to England, where he lived in great poverty.
Chateaubriand"s acceptance of the Legitimist side had been but half-hearted, and his first published work, _Sur les Revolutions Anciennes et Modernes_, still expresses the peculiar liberalism which--it is sometimes forgotten--was much more deeply rooted in the French n.o.blesse of the eighteenth century than in any other cla.s.s. This opened the way to his return at the time that Napoleon, then entering on the consulate, endeavoured, by all the means in his power, to conciliate the emigrants. The _Genie du Christianisme_, which had been preceded by _Atala_ (a kind of specimen of it), was his first original, and his most characteristic, work. This curious book, which it is impossible to a.n.a.lyse, consists partly of a rather desultory apology for Christian doctrine, partly of a series of historical ill.u.s.trations of Christian life: it appeared in 1802. It suited the policy of Napoleon, who made Chateaubriand, first, secretary to the Roman Emba.s.sy, and then amba.s.sador to the Valais. But Chateaubriand had never given up his legitimism, and the murder of the Duke d"Enghien shocked him irresistibly. He at once resigned his post, and thenceforward was in more or less covert opposition, though he was not actually banished from France. Pursuing the vein which he had opened in the _Genie_, he made a journey to the East, the result of which was his _Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem_, and the unequal but remarkable prose epic of _Les Martyrs_.
This, the story of which is laid in the time of Diocletian, shifts its scene from cla.s.sical countries to Gaul, where the half-mythical heroes of the Franks appear, and then back to Greece, Rome, and Purgatory. The fall of Napoleon opened once more a political career, of which Chateaubriand had always been ardently desirous. His pamphlet, _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_, was, perhaps, the most important literary contribution to the re-establishment of the ancient monarchy. During the fifteen years which elapsed between the battle of Waterloo and the Revolution of July, Chateaubriand underwent vicissitudes due to the difficulty of adjusting his liberalism and his legitimism, sentiments which seem both to have been genuine, but to have been quite unreconciled by any reasoning process on the part of their holder. Yet, though he had again and again experienced the most ungracious treatment both from Louis XVIII. and Charles X., the July monarchy had no sooner established itself than he resigned his positions and pensions, and took no further official part in political affairs during the rest of his life. In his latter days he was much with the celebrated Madame Recamier, and completed his affectedly-named but admirable _Memoires d"Outre Tombe_,--an autobiography which, though marred by some of his peculiarities, contains much of his most brilliant writing. Of the works not hitherto noticed, _Rene_, _Le Dernier Abencerage_, _Les Natchez_, and some sketches of travels and of French history, are the most remarkable.
For some thirty years, from 1810 to 1840, Chateaubriand was unquestionably the greatest man of letters of France in the estimation of his contemporaries. His fame has since then diminished considerably, and much has been written to account for the change. It is not, however, very difficult to understand it. Chateaubriand is one of the chief representatives in literature of the working of two conditions, which, while they lend for the time much advent.i.tious importance to the man who takes full advantage of them, invariably lead to rapidly-diminished estimates of him when they have ceased to work. He was a representative at once of transition and reaction--of transition from the hard and fast cla.s.sical standards of the eighteenth century to the principles of the romantic and eclectic schools, of reaction against the _philosophe_ era. He was one of the earliest and most influential exponents of the so-called _maladie du siecle_, of what, from his most ill.u.s.trious pupil, is generally called Byronism. His immediate literary teachers were Rousseau and Ossian. He was not a thoroughly well-educated man, and he was exceptionally deficient in the purely logical and a.n.a.lytic faculty as distinguished from the rhetorical and synthetic. What he could do and did, was to glorify Christianity and monarchism in a series of brilliantly-coloured pictures, which had an immense effect on an age accustomed to the grey tints and monotonous argument of the opposite school, but which, to a posterity which is placed at a different point of view, seem to lack accuracy of detail and sincerity of emotion.
Nevertheless Chateaubriand, if not a very great man, was a very great man of letters. His best pa.s.sages are not easily to be surpa.s.sed in brilliancy of style and vividness of colouring. If the sentiment of his _Rene_ seems hollow now-a-days, it must be remembered that this is almost entirely a matter of fashion and of novelty. The _Genie du Christianisme_, despite many defects of taste, more of insight, and most of mere learning, remains one of the most eloquent pleadings in literature, and not one of the least effective; while the _Itineraire_ is the pattern of all the picturesque travels of modern times. All these works, and most of the rest, are practically novels with a purpose. Even in the autobiography the historic part is entirely subdued and moulded to the exigencies of the dramatic and narrative construction. Regarded merely as an individual writer, Chateaubriand would supply a volume of "Beauties" hardly inferior to that which could be gathered from any other prose author in France. Regarded as a precursor, he deserves far more than any other single man, and almost more than all others put together, the t.i.tle of father of the Romantic movement.
[Sidenote: Madame de Stael.]
His chief rival in the literature of the empire was also essentially, though not wholly or professedly, a novelist. Anne Louise Germaine Necker, who married a Swedish diplomatist, the Baron de Stael Holstein, and is, therefore, generally known as Madame de Stael, was the daughter of the great financier Necker, and of Susanne Curchod, Gibbon"s early love. She was introduced young to salon life in Paris, and early displayed ungovernable vanity, and much of the _sensibilite_ of the time, that is to say, an indulgence in sentiment which paid equally little heed to morality and to good sense. Her marriage was one purely of convenience: and while her husband, of whom she seems to have had no reason whatever to complain, obtained some wealth by it, she herself secured a very agreeable position, inasmuch as the king of Sweden pledged himself either to maintain M. de Stael in the Swedish emba.s.sy at Paris, or to provide for him in other ways. She approved the early stages of the Revolution, but was shocked at the deposition and death of the king and queen. Whereupon she fled the country. Before she was thirty she had written various books, _Lettres sur J. J. Rousseau_, _Defense de la Reine_, _De l"Influence des Pa.s.sions_, and other pieces of many kinds. When the influence of Napoleon became paramount, Madame de Stael, who had returned to Paris, found herself in an awkward position, for she was equally determined to say what she chose, and to have gallant attentions paid to her, and Napoleon would not comply with either of her wishes. She, therefore, had to leave France, but not before she had published her first romance, _Delphine_, and a book on literature. She now travelled for some years in Germany and Italy in the company of Benjamin Constant, who was the object of one of her numerous accesses of affection. _Corinne_, her princ.i.p.al novel, and her greatest work but one, appeared in 1807, her book _De l"Allemagne_ being suppressed in Paris, whither she had returned, but which she soon had to leave again. The Restoration gave her access once more to France, and enabled her to resume possession of property which had been unjustly seized, but she died not long afterwards, in 1817. Her _Dix Annees d"Exil_ and her _Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise_ were published posthumously, the latter being one of her chief works. She had married secretly, in 1812, a M. de Rocca, a man more than young enough to be her son.