A History of French Literature

Michelet's faults as an historian are great, and such as readily strike an English reader. His rash generalisations, his lyrical outbreaks, his Pindaric excitement, his verbiage assuming the place of ideas, his romantic excess, his violence in ecclesiastical affairs, his hostility to our country, his mysticism touched with sensuality, his insistence on physiological details, his quick and irregular utterance—these trouble at times his imaginative insight, and mar his profound science in documents. He died at Hyères in 1874, hoping that God would grant him reunion with his lost ones, and the joys promised to those who have sought and loved.

EDGAR QUINET (1803-1875), the friend and brother-in-arms of Michelet in his attack upon the Jesuits, born at Bourg, of a Catholic father and a Protestant mother, approached the study of literature and history with that tendency to large vues d'ensemble which was natural to his mind, and which had been strengthened by discipleship to Herder. Happy in temper, sound of conscience, generous of heart, he illuminated many subjects, and was a complete master of none. A poet of lofty intentions, in his Ahasvérus (1833)—the wandering Jew, type of humanity in its endless Odyssey—in his Napoléon, his Prométhée, his vast encyclopædic allegory Merlin l'Enchanteur (1860), his poetry lacked form, and yielded itself to the rhetoric of the intellect.

In the Génie des Religions Quinet endeavoured to exhibit the religious idea as the germinative power of civilisation, giving its special character to the political and social idea. La Révolution, which is perhaps his most important work, attempts to replace the Revolutionary hero-worship, the Girondin and Jacobin legends, by a faithful interpretation of the meaning of events. The principles of modern society and the principles of the Roman Catholic Church, Quinet regarded as incapable of conciliation. In the incompetence of the leaders to perceive and apply this truth, and in the fatal logic of their violent and anarchic methods, lay, as he believed, the causes of the failure which followed the bright hopes of 1789. In 1848 Quinet was upon the barricades; the Empire drove him into exile. In his elder years, like Michelet, he found a new delight in the study of nature. La Création (1870) exhibits the science of nature and that of human history as presenting the same laws and requiring kindred methods. It closes with the prophecy of science that creation is not yet fully accomplished, and that a nobler race will enter into the heritage of our humanity.

II

Literary criticism in the eighteenth century had been the criticism of taste or the criticism of dogma; in the nineteenth century it became naturalistic—a natural history of individual minds and their products, a natural history of works of art as formed or modified by social, political, and moral environments, and by the tendencies of races. Such criticism must inevitably have followed the growth of the comparative study of literatures in an age dominated by the scientific spirit. If we are to name any single writer as its founder, we must name Mme. de Staël. The French nation, she explained in L'Allemagne, inclines towards what is classical; the Teutonic nations incline towards what is romantic. She cares not to say whether classical or romantic art should be preferred; it is enough to show that the difference of taste results not from accidental causes, but from the primitive sources of imagination and of thought.

The historical tendency, proceeding from the eighteenth century, influenced alike the study of philosophy, of politics, and of literature. While Cousin gave an historical interpretation of philosophy, and Guizot applied history to the exposition of politics, a third eminent professor, ABEL-FRANÇOIS VILLEMAIN (1790-1870) was illuminating literature with the light of history. An accomplished classical scholar, a student of English, Italian, and Spanish authors, Villemain, in his Tableau de la Littérature au Moyen Âge, and his more admirable Tableau de la Littérature au XVIIIe Siècle, viewed a wide prospect, and could not apply a narrow rule to the measurement of all that he saw. He did not formulate a method of criticism; but instinctively he directed criticism towards history. He perceived the correspondence between literary products and the other phenomena of the age; he observed the movement in the spirit of a period; he passed from country to country; he made use of biography as an aid in the study of letters. His learning was at times defective; his views often superficial; he suffered from his desire to entertain his audience or to capture them by rhetoric. Yet Villemain served letters well, and, accepted as a master by the young critics of the Globe, he prepared the way for Sainte-Beuve.

While such criticism as that of Villemain was maintained by Saint-Marc Girardin (1801-73), professor of French poetry at the Sorbonne, the dogmatic or doctrinaire school of criticism was represented with rare ability by DÉSIRÉ NISARD (1806-88). His capital work, the Histoire de la Littérature Française, the labour of many years, is distinguished by a magisterial application of ideas to the decision of literary questions. Criticism with Nisard is not a natural history of minds, nor a study of historical developments, so much as the judgment of literary art in the light of reason. He confronts each book on which he pronounces judgment with that ideal of its species which he has formed in his own mind: he compares it with the ideal of the genius of France, which attains its highest ends rather through discipline than through freedom; he compares it with the ideal of the French language; finally, he compares it with the ideal of humanity as seen in the best literature of the world. According to the result of the comparison he delivers condemnation or awards the crown. In French literature, at its best, he perceives a marvellous equilibrium of the faculties under the control of reason; it applies general ideas to life; it avoids individual caprice; it dreads the chimeras of imagination; it is eminently rational; it embodies ideas in just and measured form. Such literature Nisard found in the great age of Louis XIV. Certain gains there may have been in the eighteenth century, but these gains were more than counterbalanced by losses. To disprove the saying that there is no disputing about tastes, to establish an order and a hierarchy in letters, to regulate intellectual pleasures, was Nisard's aim; but in attempting to constitute an exact science founded upon general principles, he too often derived those principles from the attractions and repulsions of his individual taste. Criticism retrograded in his hands; yet, in retrograding, it took up a strong position: the influence of such a teacher was not untimely when facile sympathies required the guidance or the check of a director.

The admirable critic of the romantic school, CHARLES-AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE (1804-69), developed, as time went on, into the great critic of the naturalistic method. In his Tableau de la Poésie Française au XVIe Siècle he found ancestors for the romantic poets as much older than the ancestors of classical art in France as Ronsard is older than Malherbe. Wandering endlessly from author to author in his Portraits Littéraires and Portraits Contemporains, he studied in all its details what we may term the physiology of each. The long research of spirits connected with his most sustained work, Port-Royal, led him to recognise certain types or families under which the various minds of men can be grouped and classified. During a quarter of a century he investigated, distinguished, defined in the vast collection of little monographs which form the Causeries du Lundt and the Nouveaux Lundis. They formed, as it were, a natural history of intellects and temperaments; they established a new method, and illustrated that method by a multitude of examples.

Never was there a more mobile spirit; but he was as exact and sure-footed as he was mobile. When we have allowed for certain personal jealousies or hostilities, and for an excessive attraction towards what may be called the morbid anatomy of minds, we may give our confidence with scarcely a limit to the psychologist critic Sainte-Beuve. Poet, novelist, student of medicine, sceptic, believer, socialist, imperialist—he traversed every region of ideas; as soon as he understood each position he was free to leave it behind. He did not pretend to reduce criticism to a science; he hoped that at length, as the result of numberless observations, something like a science might come into existence. Meanwhile he would cultivate the relative and distrust the absolute. He would study literary products through the persons of their authors; he would examine each detail; he would inquire into the physical characteristics of the subject of his investigation; view him through his ancestry and among his kinsfolk; observe him in the process of education; discover him among his friends and contemporaries; note the moment when his genius first unfolded itself; note the moment when it was first touched with decay; approach him through admirers and disciples; approach him through his antagonists or those whom he repelled; and at last, if that were possible, find some illuminating word which resumes the results of a completed study. There is no "code Sainte-Beuve" by which off-hand to pronounce literary judgments; a method of Sainte-Beuve there is, and it is the method which has best served the study of literature in the nineteenth century.

Here this survey of a wide field finds its limit. The course of French literature since 1850 may be studied in current criticism; it does not yet come within the scope of literary history. The product of these years has been manifold and great; their literary importance is attested by the names—among many others—of Leconte de Lisle, Sully Prudhomme, Verlaine, in non-dramatic poetry; of Augier and the younger Dumas in the theatre; of Flaubert, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Zola, Daudet, Bourget, Pierre Loti, Anatole France, in fiction; of Taine and Renan in historical study and criticism; of Fromentin in the criticism of art; of Scherer, Brunetière, Faguet, Lemaître, in the criticism of literature.

The dominant fact, if we discern it aright, has been the scientific influence, turning poetry from romantic egoism to objective art, directing the novel and the drama to naturalism and to the study of social environments, informing history and criticism with the spirit of curiosity, and prompting research for laws of evolution. Whether the spiritualist tendency observable at the present moment be a symptom of languor and fatigue, or the indication of a new moral energy, future years will determine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following notes are designed as an indication of some books which may be useful to students.

Of the many Histories of French Literature the fullest and most trustworthy is that at present in course of publication under the editorship of M. Petit de Julleville, Histoire de la Langue et de la Littérature française (A. Colin et Cie.). M. Lanson's Histoire de la Littérature française should be in the hands of every student, and this may be supplemented by M. Lintilhac's Littérature française (2 vols.).

The works of Mr. Saintsbury, Géruzez, Demogeot, are widely known, and have proved useful during many years. Much may be learnt and learnt pleasantly from Paul Albert's volumes on the literature of the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Two volumes out of five of M. Charles Gidel's Histoire de la Littérature française (Lemerre) are occupied with literature from 1815 to 1886. M. Hermann Pergamini's Histoire générale de la Littérature française (Alcan) sometimes gives fresh and interesting views. For a short school history by an accomplished scholar, none is better than M. Petit de Julleville's Histoire de la Littérature française, which, in 555 pages, packs a great deal of information. The Histoire élémentaire de la Littérature française, by M. Jean Fleury, has been popular; it tells much of the contents of great books, and makes no assumption that the reader is already acquainted with them. Dr. Warren's A Primer of French Literature (Heath, Boston, U.S.A.) is well proportioned and well arranged, but it has room for little more than names, dates, and the briefest characterisations. Dr. Wells's Modern French Literature (Roberts, Boston, U.S.A.) sketches French literature to Chateaubriand, and treats with considerable fulness the literature from Chateaubriand and Mme. de Staël to the present time. For the present century M. G. Pellissier's Le Mouvement littéraire au XIXe Siècle is valuable.

Of elder histories that by Nisard is by far the most distinguished, the work of a scholar and a thinker. (See the final section of the present volume.)

The student will find Merlet's Études littéraires sur les Classiques français (2 vols.), revised and enlarged by M. Lintilhac, highly instructive; the second volume is wholly occupied with Corneille, Racine, and Molière.

For the history of the French theatre the best introduction is M. Petit de Julleville's Le Théâtre en France; it may be supplemented by M. Brunetière's Les Époques du Théâtre français. Learning wide and exact, and original thought, characterise all the work of M. Brunetière; each of his many volumes should be searched by the student for what he may need. The studies of M. Faguet on the writers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries are the work of a critic who is penetrating in his psychological study of authors, and who, just or unjust, is always suggestive. For numberless little monographs the student may turn to Sainte-Beuve. Monographs on a larger scale will be found in the admirable series of Grands Écrivains français (Hachette); the Classiques populaires (Lecène, Oudin et Cie.) are in some instances no less scholarly. The writings of Scherer, of M. Jules Lemaître, and of M. Anatole France are especially valuable on nineteenth-century literature. The best study of French historical literature is Professor Flint's The Philosophy of History (1893).

Provided with such books as these the student will hardly need the general histories of French literature by German writers. I may name Prof. Bornhak's Geschichte der Französischen Literatur, and the more popular history by Engel (4th ed., 1897). Lotheissen's Geschichte der Französischen Literatur im XVII. Jahrhundert seems to me the best book on the period. The monographs in German are numberless.

The editions of authors in the Grands Écrivains de la France are of the highest authority. The best anthology of French poetry is Crépet's Les Poètes français (4 vols.). Small anthologies of French poetry since the fifteenth century, and of French lyrical poets of the nineteenth century, are published by Lemerre.

The list which follows is taken partly from books which I have used in writing this volume, partly from the Bibliography in M. Lintilhac's Histoire de la Littérature française. To name English writers and books seems unnecessary.

THE MIDDLE AGES

Histoire littéraire de la France (a vast repertory on mediæval literature).

GASTON PARIS. La Littérature française au moyen Âge. 1890.

AUBERTIN. Hist. de la Langue et de la Litt. françaises au moyen Âge. 2 vols. 1883.

G. PARIS. La Poésie du moyen Âge. 2 vols. 1887.

LÉON GAUTIER. Les Épopées françaises. 2nd edition. 4 vols. 1878-94.

J. BÉDIER. Les Fabliaux, Études de Litt. populaire et d'Histoire litt. du moyen Âge. 1895.

L. SUDRE. Les Sources du Roman de Renart. 1893.

LENIENT. La Satire en France au moyen Âge. 1883.

E. LANGLOIS. Origines et Sources du Roman de la Rose. 1890.

A. DÉBIDOUR. Les Chroniqueurs. 2 vols. 1892. (Classiques populaires.)

A. JEANROY. Les Origines de la Poésie lyrique en France. 1889.

CLÉDAT. Rutebeuf. 1891. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

MARY DARMESTETER. Froissart. 1894. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

A. SARRADIN. Eustache Deschamps. 1879.

C. BEAUFILS. Étude sur la Vie et les Poésies de Charles d'Orléans. 1861.

A. CAMPAUX. François Villon. 1859.

A. LONGNON. Étude biographique sur. Fr. Villon. 1877.

LECOY DE LA MARCHE. La Chaire fr. au moyen Âge. 1886.

PETIT DE JULLEVILLE. Les Mystères. 2 vols. 1880.

PETIT DE JULLEVILLE. Les Comédiens en Fr. au moyen Âge. 1885.

PETIT DE JULLEVILLE. La Comédie et les Moeurs en France au moyen Âge. 1886.

PETIT DE JULLEVILLE. Répertoire du Théâtre comique en France au moyen Âge. 1885.

FAGUET. XVIe Siècle. 1894. (On Commines.)

MERLET. Études litt. (On Villehardouin, Froissart, Commines.) Edited by Lintilhac. 1894.

L. CLÉDAT. La Poésie du moyen Âge. 1893. (Classiques populaires.)

SIXTEENTH CENTURY

A. DARMESTETER ET A. HATZFELD. Le XVIe Siècle en France. 1878.

FAGUET. XVIe Siècle. 1894.

SAINTE-BEUVE. Tableau historique et critique de la Poésie fr. au XVIe Siècle.

L. FEUGÈRE. Caractères et Portraits litt. du XVIe Siècle. 1859.

EGGER. L'Hellénisme en France. 1869.

FAGUET. La Tragédie fr. au XVIe Siècle. 1883.

E. CHASLES. La Comédie en France au XVIe Siècle. 1862.

E. BOURCIEZ. Les Moeurs polies et la Litt. de Cour sous Henri II. 1886.

P. STAPFER. Rabelais. 1889.

R. MILLET. Rabelais. 1892. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

E. GEBHART. Rabelais, la Renaissance et la Réforme. 1895.

HAAG ET BORDIER. La France protestante. 2nd edition. (Vols. i.-vi. have appeared.)

F. BUNGENER. Calvin, sa Vie, son OEuvre et ses Écrits. 1862.

A. BIRSCH-HIRSCHFELD. Geschichte der Französischen Litteratur, seit Anfang des XVI. Jahrhunderts. Erster Band: Das Zeitalter der Renaissance. 1889.

EBERT. Entwickelungs-Geschichte der Fr. Tragödie, vornämlich im XVI. Jahrhundert. 1856.

F. GODEFROY. Histoire de la Litt. fr. depuis le XVIe Siècle jusqu'à nos Jours. 1878.

G. MERLET. Les grands Écrivains du XVIe Siècle. 1875.

C. LENIENT. La Satire en France, ou la Litt. militante au XVIe Siècle. 1886.

E. COUGNY. Guillaume du Vair. 1857.

A. SAYOUS. Études litt. sur les Écrivains fr. de la Réformation. 1854.

A. VINET. Moralistes des XVIe et XVIIe Siècles. 1859.

P. STAPFER. Montaigne. 1895. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

P. BONNEFON. Montaigne, l'Homme et l'OEuvre. 1893.

SAINT-MARC GIRARDIN. Tableau de la Litt. fr. au XVIe Siècle. 1862.

CH. NORMAND. Monluc. (Classiques populaires.)

G. BIZOS. Ronsard. (Classiques populaires.)

GÉRUZEZ. Essais d'Histoire litt. 1853.

P. MORILLOT. Discours sur la Vie et les OEuvres d'Agrippa d'Aubigné. 1884.

H. PERGAMINI. La Satire au XVIe Siècle et les Tragiques d'Agrippa d'Aubigné. 1881.

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

F. LOTHEISSEN. Geschichte der Französischen Litteratur im XVII. Jahrhundert. 2 vols. 1897.

A. DUPUY. Histoire de la Litt. fr. au XVIIe Siècle. 1892.

LE R. PÈRE G. LONGHAYE. Histoire de la Litt. fr. au XVIIe Siècle. 1895.

J. DEMOGEOT. Tableau de la Litt. fr. au XVIIe Siècle avant Corneille et Descartes. 1859.

LE DUC DE BROGLIE. Malherbe. 1897. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

V. COUSIN. La Société fr. au XVIIe Siècle. 1858.

V. COUSIN. Mme. de Sablé. 1882.

V. COUSIN. Jacqueline Pascal. 1878.

V. COUSIN. La Jeunesse de Mme. de Longueville. 1853.

V. COUSIN. Mme. de Longueville et la Fronde. 1859.

G. LARROUMET. Introduction to edition of Les Précieuses ridicules. 1884.

A. LE BRETON. Le Roman au XVIIe Siècle. 1890.

SAINTE-BEUVE. Portraits de Femmes. 1855.

A. BOURGOIN. Valentin Conrart. 1883.

A. BOURGOIN. Les Maîtres de la Critique au XVIIe Siècle. 1889.

PELLISSON ET D'OLIVET. Histoire de l'Académie fr. 2 vols. 1858.

E. ROY. Étude sur Charles Sorel. 1893.

P. MORILLOT. Scarron et le Genre burlesque. 1888.

P. MORILLOT. Le Roman en France depuis 1610 jusqu'à nos Jours.

A. FOUILLÉE. Descartes. 1893. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

F. BOUILLIER. Histoire de la Philosophie cartésienne. 2 vols. 1868.

E. RIGAL. Alexandre Hardy et le Théâtre fr. 1889.

E. RIGAL. Esquisse d'une Histoire des Théâtres de Paris de 1548 à 1635. 1887.

GUIZOT. Corneille et son Temps. 1880.

G. REYNIER. Thomas Corneille, sa Vie et son Théâtre. 1892.

P. MONCEAUX. Racine. (Classiques populaires.)

SAINTE-BEUVE. Port-Royal. 7 vols. 1888.

E. DESCHANEL. Le Romantisme des Classiques. 1883.

P. STAPFER. Racine et Victor Hugo. 1887.

G. LARROUMET. La Comédie de Molière. 1889.

H. DURAND. Molière. 1889. (Classiques populaires.)

MAHRENHOLTZ. Molières Leben und Werke. 1881.

V. FOURNEL. Le Théâtre au XVIIe Siècle: la Comédie. 1888.

H. RIGAULT. Hist. de la Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. 1856.

P. MORILLOT. Boileau. (Classiques populaires.)

G. LANSON. Boileau. 1892. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

G. LAFENESTRE. La Fontaine. 1895. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

H. TAINE. La Fontaine et ses Fables. 1879.

PRÉVOST-PARADOL. Les Moralistes fr. 1865.

P. JANET. Les Passions et les Caractères dans la Litt. du XVIIe Siècle. 1888.

PELLISSON. La Bruyère. 1892. (Classiques populaires.)

JACQUINET. Des Prédicateurs du XVIIe Siècle avant Bossuet. 1863.

G. LANSON. Bossuet. 1891. (Classiques populaires.)

A. FEUGÈRE. Bourdaloue, sa Prédication et son Temps. 1874.

LEHANNEUR. Mascaron. 1878.

L'ABBÉ FABRE. Fléchier orateur. 1885.

L'ABBÉ BAYLE. Massillon 1867.

G. BIZOS. Fénelon. 1887. (Classiques populaires.)

P. JANET. Fénelon. 1892. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

R. VALLERY RADOT. Mme. de Sévigné. 1888. (Classiques populaires.)

G. BOISSIER. Mme. de Sévigné. 1887. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

CTE. D'HAUSSONVILLE. Mme. de la Fayette. 1891. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

G. BOISSIER. Saint-Simon. 1892. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

J. BOURDEAU. La Rochefoucauld. 1895. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

H. HETTNER. Literaturgeschichte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts: Zweiter Theil. 1872.

VILLEMAIN. Tableau de la Litt. au XVIIIe Siècle. 4 vols. 1841.

DE BARANTE. Tableau de la Litt. fr. au XVIIIe Siècle. 1856.

BERSOT. Études sur le XVIIIe Siècle. 1852.

VINET. Hist. de la Litt. fr. au XVIIIe Siècle. 1853.

J. BARNI. Hist. des Idées morales et politiques en France au XVIIIe Siècle. 1865.

CARO. La Fin du XVIIIe Siècle. 1881.

TAINE. Les Origines de la France contemporaine. 1882. (Vol. i.)

A. SOREL. Montesquieu. 1889. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

H. LEBASTEUR. Buffon. 1888. (Classiques populaires.)

M. PALÉOLOGUE. Vauvenargues. 1890. (Grands Écrivains fr.)

G. DESNOIRESTERRES. Voltaire et la Société au XVIIIe Siècle. 8 vols. 1871-76.

E. FAGUET. Voltaire. 1895. (Classiques populaires.)