Part 7 (1/2)
GIL VICENTE.--Gil Vicente, a prolific poet who wrote forty-two dramatic pieces, two thirds in Spanish and the rest in Portuguese, touched every branch of theatrical literature; he produced religious plays (_autos_), tragedies, romantic dramas, comedies, and farces. His chief works are _The Sibyl Ca.s.sandra_, _The Widow_, _Amadis de Gaule_, _The Temple of Apollo_, _The Boat of h.e.l.l_. His comedies possess a vivacity that is Italian rather than Portuguese. Tradition has it that Erasmus learnt Portuguese for the sole purpose of reading the comedies of Gil Vicente.
CHAPTER XV
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: FRANCE
Of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Fontenelle, Bayle. Of the Eighteenth: Poets: La Motte, Jean Baptiste Rousseau, Voltaire, etc. Prose Writers: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, Jean Jacques Rousseau, etc. Of the Nineteenth Century: Poets: Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Musset, Vigny, etc.; Prose Writers: Chateaubriand, Michelet, George Sand, Merimee, Renan, etc.
FONTENELLE.--The eighteenth century, which was announced, and announced with great precision, by La Bruyere, was inaugurated by his enemy Fontenelle. Fontenelle, nephew of Corneille, began with despicable trifles, eclogues, operas, stilted tragedies, letters of a dandy, so he might be justly regarded as an inferior Voiture. Very soon, because he possessed the pa.s.sion of the eighteenth century for science and free-thought, he showed himself to be a serious man, and because he had wit he showed himself an amusing serious man, which is rare. His _Dialogues of the Dead_ were very humorous and, at the same time, in many pa.s.sages profound; he wrote his _Discourses on the Plurality of_ (Habitable) _Worlds_; then because he was perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences, came his charming and often astonis.h.i.+ng _Eulogies of Sages_, which ought to be regarded as the best existent history of science in the seventeenth century and in the eighteenth up to 1740.
BAYLE.--Bayle, a Frenchman who lived in Holland on account of religion, a journalist and lexicographer, in his _News of the Republic of Letters_ and in his immense _Dictionary_, gave proof of broad erudition about all earthly questions, especially philosophical and religious, guiding his readers to absolute scepticism. Fontenelle and Bayle are the two heralds who opened the procession of the eighteenth century. Successively must now be examined first the poets and then the prose writers of the first half of that era.
LA MOTTE.--La Motte, as celebrated in his own time as he is forgotten in ours, was lyricist, fabulist, dramatic orator, epical even after a certain fas.h.i.+on. He wrote odes that were deadly cold, fables that were often quite witty but affected and laboured, comedies sufficiently mediocre, of which _The Magnificent Lover_ was the most remarkable, and a tragedy, _Inez de Castro_, which was excellent and enjoyed one of the greatest successes of the French stage. Finally, becoming the partisan of the modernists against the cla.s.sicists, he abridged the _Iliad_ of Homer into a dozen books as frigid as his own lyric poems. He had parodoxical ideas in literature, and, being a poet, or believing himself one, he considered that verse enervated thought and that sentiments should only be written in prose. It was against these tendencies that Voltaire so vigorously reacted.
J.B. ROUSSEAU; POMPIGNAN.--Beside La Motte, being more gifted as a poet, Jean Baptiste Rousseau was conspicuous. He wrote lyrical poems which were cold as lyrics but were well composed and, sometimes at least, attained a certain degree of eloquence. From Malherbe to Lamartine, lyrical poetry was almost completely neglected by French poets, or at least very badly treated. Jean Baptiste Rousseau had the advantage of being nearly solitary and for approximately century was regarded as the greatest national lyrical poet.
Le Franc de Pompignan has endured much ridicule, not the least being for a certain naive vanity perceptible directly he pa.s.sed from the south to the north of France; but he had some knowledge; he was acquainted with Hebrew, then a sufficiently rare accomplishment, and he was an a.s.siduous student of cla.s.sic literature. His tragedy, _Dido_, succeeded; his _Sacred Songs_ enjoyed popularity, no matter what Voltaire might say, and deserved their success; in his odes, which were too often cold, he rarely succeeded--only once triumphantly, in his ode on the death of Jean Baptiste Rousseau.
THE _HENRIADE_.--So far as poets, strictly speaking, were concerned, the foregoing are all that have to be indicated in the first half of the eighteenth century, except the ingenious and frigid _Henriade_ of Voltaire.
DRAMATIC POETS.--To counterbalance, the dramatic poets are numerous and not without merit. Let us recall _Inez de Castro_ by De la Motte.
Campistron, the feeble pupil of Racine (and, moreover, there could be no pupil of Racine, so original was the latter, so closely was his genius a.s.sociated with his mind), perpetrated numerous tragedies and operas which enjoyed the success obtained by all imitative works: that is, a success which arouses no discussion, and which today appears to be the climax of tediousness.
CReBILLON.--Crebillon followed, vigorous, energetic, violently shaking the nerves, master of horror and of terrors, not lacking some a.n.a.logy with Shakespeare, but without delicacy or depth, never even giving a thought to being psychological or a moralist, writing badly and to a certain extent meriting the epithet of ”the barbarian” bestowed on him by Voltaire.
The latter was infatuated with the drama, having the feeling for beautiful themes and for new and original topics, adapting them to the stage with sufficient apt.i.tude, delighting, in addition, in pomp, mimicry, and decorativeness, and causing tragedy to lean towards opera, which in his day was no bad thing; but weak in execution, never creating characters because he could not escape from himself, as moderate in psychology and morality as Crebillon himself and replacing a.n.a.lysis of pa.s.sion by these and philosophical commonplaces. He left tragic dramas which until about 1815 enjoyed success, but which then fell into a disregard from which there is no probability they will ever emerge.
COMIC POETS.--The comic poets of this period were highly agreeable. The most notable were Destouches, Regnard, La Chaussee. Destouches was the very type of the comic writers of the eighteenth century already alluded to, who took a portrait by La Bruyere and turned it into a comedy, and that is what was called a comedy of character. Thus he wrote _The Braggart_, _The Irresolute_, _The Ungrateful_, _The Backbiter_, _The Spendthrift_, etc. Sometimes he took pains to be a trifle more original, as in _The False Agnes_, _The Married Philosopher_; sometimes he borrowed a subject from a foreign literature and adapted it fairly dexterously for the Gallic stage, as in _The Impertinent Inquisitive_, taken from _Don Quixote_ and _The Night Drum_, borrowed from an English author. His versification was dexterous and correct without possessing other merit.
REGNARD.--Regnard, on the contrary, was an original genius, though frequently imitative of Moliere. He possessed the comic spirit, gaiety, animation, the sense of drollery, and a prodigious capacity for humorous verse of great flexibility and incredible ease, highly superior in point of form to that of Boileau and even of Moliere, for he suggests a Scarron perfected by Moliere himself and by the Italian poets. Still alive and probably imperishable are such works as _The Gamester_, _The Universal Legatee_, _The Unexpected Return_.
THE DRAMA: LA CHAUSSeE.--La Chaussee possessed a vein of the popular novel, the serial, as we should say, and at the same time a taste for the stage. The result was he created a new species, which in itself is no small achievement. He created _the drama_: that is, the stage-play wherein common people, and no longer kings and princes, affect us by their misfortunes. This has been called by all possible names; when it is a comedy it is described as a tearful comedy; when a tragedy, as a dramatic tragedy. This is the drama we have known in France for a hundred and fifty years; such as it already existed in the sixteenth century under the t.i.tle of the morality play, such as Corneille, who foresaw everything, antic.i.p.ated and predicted in his preface to _Don Sancho_: ”I would rather say, sir, that tragedy should excite pity and fear, and that in its essentials, since there is necessity for definition. Now if it be true that this latter feeling is only excited in us when we see those like ourselves suffer, and that their misfortunes put us in fear of similar calamities, is it not also true that we can be more strongly moved by disasters arriving to people of our own rank, having resemblance to ourselves, than by the picture of the overthrow from their thrones of the greatest monarchs, who can have no relation to us except in so far as we are susceptible to the pa.s.sions that overwhelmed them, which is not always the case?” This domestic tragedy La Chaussee wrote in verse, which is not against French rules, and which has been done by dramatists a hundred and twenty years later; but it is probably an error, being even more unlikely that citizens would express themselves in metre than that kings and heroes should give utterance with a certain solemnity which entails rhythm. Thus he wrote _The Fas.h.i.+onable Prejudice_, _The School of Friends_, _Melanide_, very pathetic, _The School of Mothers_, etc. It must be stated that he wrote his plays in verse somewhat systematically; he had made his first appearance in literature by a defence of versification against the doctrines of La Motte.
PIRON.--According to the old system, but in original verse, Piron, after having met with scant success in tragedy, wrote the delicious _Metromania_ which, with _The Turcaret_ of Le Sage, _The Bad Man_ of Gresset, the masterpieces of Marivaux and the two great comedies of Beaumarchais rank among the seven or eight superior comedies produced in the eighteenth century.
GREAT PROSE WRITERS: MONTESQUIEU.--In prose, writers, and even great writers, were abundant at this period. Immediately after Fontenelle and Bayle appeared Montesquieu, sharp, malicious, satirical, already profound, in _The Persian Letters_, a great political philosopher and master of jurisprudence in _The Spirit of Laws_, a great philosophical historian in _The Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans_. The influence of Montesquieu on Voltaire, no matter what the latter may have said; on Rousseau, however silent the latter may have been about it; on Mably, on Raynal, on the encyclopaedists, on a large portion of the men in the French Revolution, on the greatest minds of the nineteenth century, has been profound and difficult to measure. As writer he was concise, collected, and striking, seeking the motive and often finding it, seeking the formula and invariably finding it--Tacitus mingled with Sall.u.s.t.
LE SAGE; SAINT-SIMON.--In considering Le Sage and Saint-Simon, it is not, perhaps, the one who is instinctively thought of as a novelist who really was the greater romancer. They each wrote at the same time as Montesquieu. Saint-Simon narrated the age of Louis XIV as an eyewitness, both with spirit and with a feeling for the picturesque that were alike inimitable, expressed in a highly characteristic fas.h.i.+on, which was often incorrect, always incredibly vigorous, energetic, and masterful. Le Sage, in the best of all French styles, that of the purest seventeenth century, narrated Spanish stories in which he mingled many observations made in Paris, and set the model for the realistic novel in his admirable _Gil Blas_. As a dramatist he will be dealt with later.
MARIVAUX; PReVOST.--Marivaux also essayed the realistic novel in his very curious _Marianne_, full of types drawn from contemporary life and drawn with an art which was less condensed but as exact as that of La Bruyere, and in his _Perverted Peasant_ with an art which was more gross, but still highly interesting.
The Abbe Prevost, much inferior, much overpraised, generally insipid in his novels of adventure, once found a good theme, _Manon Lescaut_, and, though writing as badly as was his wont, evoked tears which, it may be said, still flow.
HISTORY: DRAMA.--In history Voltaire furnished a model of vivid, rapid, truly epic narration in his _History of Charles XII_, and an example, at least, of exact doc.u.mentation and of contemporaneous history studied with zeal and pa.s.sion in his _Philosophical Letters on England_. On the stage, in prose there were the pretty, witty, and biting light comedies of Dancourt, De Brueys and Palaprat, and Dufresny, then the delicious drama, at once fantastic and perceptive, romantic and psychological, of Marivaux, who, in _The Legacy_, _The False Confidences_, _The Test_, _The Game of Love and of Shame_, showed himself no less than the true heir of Racine and the only one France has ever had.
VOLTAIRE.--In the second portion of the eighteenth century, Voltaire reigned. He multiplied historical studies (_Century of Louis XIV_), philosophies (_Philosophical Dictionary_), dramas (_Zare_, _Merope_, _Alzire_ [before 1750], _Rome Saved_, _The Chinese Orphan_, _Tancred_, _Guebres_, _Scythia_, _Irene_), comedies (_Nanine_, _The Prude_), romances(_Tales and Novels_), judicial exquisitions (the Calas, Labarre, and Sirven cases), and articles, pamphlets, and fugitive papers on all conceivable subjects.
THE PHILOSOPHERS.--But the second generation of philosophers was now reached. There was Diderot, philosophical romancer (_The Nun_, _James the Fatalist_), art critic(_Salons_), polygraphist (collaboration in the Encyclopaedia); there was Jean Jacques Rousseau, philosophic novelist in _The New Heloise_, publicist in his discourse against _Literature and the Arts and Origin of Inequality_, schoolmaster in his _Emilius_, severe moralist in his _Letters to M. d'Alembert on the Spectacles_, half-romancer, charming, impa.s.sioned, and pa.s.sion-inspiring in the autobiography which he called his Confessions; there was Duclos, interesting though rather tame in his _Considerations on the Manners of this Century_; there was Grimm, an acute and subtle critic of the highest intelligence in his _Correspondence_; then Condillac, precise, systematic, restrained, but infinitely clear in the best of diction in his _Treatise on the Sensations_; finally Turgot, the philosophical economist, in his _Treatise on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth_.
BUFFON; MARMONTEL; DELILLE.--Philosophy, meditation on great problems, filled almost all the literary horizon, while scientific literature embraced a score of ill.u.s.trious representatives, of which the most impressive was Buffon, with his _Natural History_. Nevertheless, in absolute literature there were also names to cite: Marmontel gave his _Moral Tales_, his _Belisarius_, his _Incas_, and his _Elements of Literature_.