Chapter I: From Malherbe to Boileau (1)

THE SUPPLANTING OF ITALY BY FRANCE—BRILLIANCY OF THE FRENCH
REPRESENTATIVES—MALHERBE—THE ‘COMMENTARY ON DESPORTES’—WHAT CAN BE
SAID FOR HIS CRITICISM—ITS DEFECTS STIGMATISED AT ONCE BY
REGNIER—HIS ‘NINTH SATIRE’—THE CONTRAST OF THE TWO A LASTING ONE—THE
DIFFUSION OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CRITICISM—VAUGELAS—BALZAC—HIS
LETTERS—HIS CRITICAL DISSERTATIONS—OGIER AND THE PREFACE TO ‘TYR ET
SIDON’—CHAPELAIN: THE HOPELESSNESS OF HIS VERSE—THE INTEREST OF HIS
CRITICISM—THE ‘SENTIMENTS DE L’ACADÉMIE SUR LE CID’—PREFACES—‘SUR
LES VIEUX ROMANS’—LETTERS, ETC.—CORNEILLE—THE THREE ‘DISCOURSES’—THE
‘EXAMENS’—LA MESNARDIÈRE—SARRASIN—SCUDÉRY—MAMBRUN—SAINT-EVREMOND—HIS
CRITICAL QUALITY AND ACCOMPLISHMENT—HIS VIEWS ON CORNEILLE—ON
CHRISTIAN SUBJECTS, ETC.—ON ANCIENTS AND MODERNS—GUI PATIN: HIS
JUDGMENT OF BROWNE—TALLEMANT, PELLISSON, MÉNAGE, MADAME DE
SÉVIGNÉ—THE ‘ANA’ OTHER THAN MÉNAGE’S, ESPECIALLY THE
‘HUETIANA’—'VALESIANA'—‘SCALIGERANA’—AND ‘PARRHASIANA’—PATRU,
DESMARETS, AND OTHERS—MALEBRANCHE—THE HISTORY OF BOILEAU’S
REPUTATION—THE ‘ART POÉTIQUE’—ITS FALSE LITERARY HISTORY—ABSTRACT OF
IT—CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF IT—WANT OF ORIGINALITY—FAULTS OF
METHOD—OBSESSION OF GOOD SENSE—ARBITRARY PROSCRIPTIONS—BOILEAU’S
OTHER WORKS—THE ‘SATIRES’—THE ‘EPIGRAMS’ AND ‘EPISTLES’—PROSE: THE
‘HÉROS DE ROMAN’; THE ‘RÉFLEXIONS SUR LONGIN’—THE “DISSERTATION ON
'JOCONDE'”—A “SOLIFIDIAN OF GOOD SENSE”—THE PLEA FOR HIS PRACTICAL
SERVICES—HISTORICAL EXAMINATION OF THIS—CONCLUDING REMARKS ON HIM—LA
BRUYÈRE AND FÉNELON—THE “DES OUVRAGES DE L’ESPRIT”—GENERAL
OBSERVATIONS—JUDGMENTS OF AUTHORS—FÉNELON: THE ‘DIALOGUES SUR
L’ELOQUENCE’—'SUR LES OCCUPATIONS DE L’ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE'—AND ITS
CHALLENGE TO CORRECTNESS—THE ABBÉ D’AUBIGNAC—HIS ‘PRATIQUE DU
THÉÂTRE’—RAPIN—HIS METHOD PARTLY GOOD—HIS PARTICULAR ABSURDITIES AS
TO HOMER IN BLAME—AS TO VIRGIL IN PRAISE—AS TO OTHERS—THE READING OF
HIS RIDDLE—LE BOSSU AND THE ABSTRACT EPIC—BOUHOURS—ENCYCLOPÆDIAS AND
NEWSPAPERS—BAYLE—BAILLET—THE ETHOS OF A CRITICAL PEDANT—GIBERT—THE
ANCIENT AND MODERN QUARREL—ITS SMALL CRITICAL VALUE.

The causes of the transference of the course of critical empire, northwards as well as westwards, from Italy to France, in the seventeenth century, lie (except in so far as they will body themselves forth in the plain tale of this course which follows) somewhat outside the plan which has been traced for our History. [Sidenote: _The supplanting of Italy by France._] They belong, in part at least, to that “metacritic” and guesswork which we endeavour to exclude. Indeed, as usually, and more than as usually, in such case, the old puzzle of “the egg from the Owl, or the Owl from the egg?” besets us specially in this division of the History of that Art for which some have had it that the bird of Pallas is a specially suitable symbol. We can see the importance of the establishment of the French Academy, when only the first third of the century had passed, of the extraordinary influence of coteries like that of the Hotel Rambouillet, of the coincidence of the towering ambition of a youthful king and the concentrated force of his at least partially reunited kingdom, with the existence of a remarkable knot of great men of letters, including one critic of the most masterful, if not quite the most masterly, type. But can there possibly be any causation in this latter coincidence? Can we say why Conrart’s Academy, instead of lasting for a time and then breaking up, became a national institution? why the Rambouillet blue-stockings were more influential than those who haunted Mrs Montagu’s peacock-room, or put rubbish into the Bath-Easton vase? Only by guessing, or by arguing in stately circle about national temperaments. And we endeavour to avoid both these things here.[292]

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Footnote 292:

I am not aware of any History of the subject of this Book as a whole:
nor even of any devoted to French seventeenth-century Criticism
extensively but exclusively. The nearest thing to this latter is M.
Bourgoin’s excellent _Les Maîtres de la Critique au 17ème Siècle_
(Paris, 1889), giving studies of Malherbe, Chapelain, Saint-Evremond,
Boileau, and La Bruyère. For the inevitable, though tedious, quarrel
of Ancients and Moderns, H. Rigault’s book on the subject (Paris,
1859) is, and is likely to remain, a standard. Monographs are, of
course, innumerable; and the very large proportionate space given in
the usual French literary histories to this period, makes these
specially pertinent. Two of the largest volumes of M. Petit de
Julleville’s book, for instance—with ample bibliographies—contain the
seventeenth century only.

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What is certain is, that while on the one hand Italy is scarcely less addicted to criticism, and scarcely less fruitful of [Sidenote: _Brilliancy of the French representatives._] critics, in the seventeenth century than in the sixteenth, and while the authority of Scaliger, Castelvetro, Minturno, Piccolomini, is felt[293] all over Europe, the contemporary practitioners of the art exercise no such authority, and are of almost the least importance. A page for every score that we gave them in the last Book will nearly suffice in this. In France, on the other hand, no part of the century is not full of the critical labour, and no part is without critics to whom, whether we grant the epithets “good” or “great” or not, we cannot possibly refuse those of “important,” “influential”—in more than one or two cases even “epoch-making.” In the first generation we have the half-revolution, half-reaction of Malherbe, who, for good or for ill, determined the main course of French poetry for two whole centuries, and great part of that course for three. In the second we have the similar work in prose, of Balzac by counsel and example, by example of Descartes and Pascal; the contest over the _Cid_, and the purblind but still intentionally business-like investigations of Hédelin-d’Aubignac; the constant debates of the Academy: and, perhaps most important of all, the general _engouement_ for literary discussion of pedant and fine gentleman, of prude and coquette alike. From the third come the ambitious code-making of Boileau; the squabble, tedious and desultory, but in intention at least wholly critical, of the Ancients and Moderns; the immense collections of Baillet and others; the work, not bulky but full of germ and promise, of Saint-Evremond, Madame de Sévigné, Boileau, La Bruyère, Fénelon. What century earlier (some may say, what century later) will give us, in any country, a critical galaxy like this, where the stars dart, in at least most cases, so many other rays besides those of criticism?

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Footnote 293:

Felt rather than acknowledged, it is true. We by no means uncommonly
find hard words used of Scaliger, whose Homerophobia shocked orthodox
French critics of this time more than his Virgiliomania conciliated
them. Yet they owed him almost everything.

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It is possible—as the historian of such a subject as this could wish that it were possible oftener—to do justice to Malherbe’s undoubtedly prominent position in the history of criticism without wasting much space on him. [Sidenote: _Malherbe._] The universally known phrase of Boileau,[294] though containing an innuendo of the grossest critical injustice, and led up to by a passage of astounding historical ignorance or falsification, is yet substantially true. The stage of French poetry which Malherbe started was a new stage; it was a stage not at once, but before long, acquiesced and persevered in by all but the whole population of the French Parnassus; and it cannot be said that seventy years of almost unceasing effort have done more than partially substitute a fresh one. Further, it is undoubtedly in favour of Malherbe, though the compliment may seem a left-handed one, that he was not a man of commanding genius in any way; that he left no important critical work; that his creative work is very scanty, far from consummate as a rule, and by no means all in the style he himself approved; and that even the secondhand accounts which we have of his doctrines are scrappy, vague, and indirect. For it is quite clear that a man who exercises such influence, and exercises it practically at once, in such circumstances, must have hit upon the right string, must have coincided strangely with the general feeling, temper, aspirations, taste of his countrymen. Our documents for these doctrines are an extensive, but fragmentary, commentary on Desportes (the still more destructive and characteristic handling of Ronsard seems either to be a myth or never to have been preserved on paper), the _Life_ by Racan,[295] some phrases in the _Letters_, the vivid and admirable attack of Regnier,[296] and the remarks of writers in his own and the next generation.

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Footnote 294:

_Enfin Malherbe vint._ The edition in the _Grands Ecrivains_, by M.
Ludovic Lalanne (5 vols., Paris, 1862-69), is not only by far the
best, but in our case indispensable, as giving the full commentary on
Desportes.

Footnote 295:

The _Historiette_ of Tallemant (ed. Monmerqué, i. 236-278) is
apparently based upon a fuller version of Racan, and must be compared.

Footnote 296:

In the Ninth Satire (_v. infra_). Regnier was Desportes’ nephew, and
is said by the anecdotists (see last note) to have been incensed
against Malherbe, not merely by the latter’s literary opposition to
his uncle, but by a piece of gross rudeness of Malherbe’s to Desportes
in the latter’s own house, where Regnier himself had introduced him.

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All concur in showing Malherbe to us as, on the one hand, mainly a verbal critic, and on the other, as verbal critics usually, but by no means always or necessarily are, singularly unable to rise above the word, or its nearest neighbour, the mere sense. Both these things made him the natural enemy (though, for his earlier years at least, he was a more or less disloyal follower) of the Pléiade. Their abundant word-coinages and word-borrowings shocked him; he did not want, and could not feel,[297] the poetic _souffle_ which they managed to give by means, or in despite, of their vocabulary. Racan, a rather simple but absolutely honest creature, confesses that his master _n’aimait du tout les Grecs_, regarded Pindar especially as a maker of _galimatias_, liked Statius and Seneca best of the Latins,[298] and (it was generous) classed the Italians with the Greeks. On the other hand, in French, he had at least the merit of knowing exactly what he wanted, and exactly how to get it. He it was who first invented those rigid laws of rhyme, which even French classicism never quite adopted—the proscription of the different use of _a_ and _e_ in such rhymes as _ance_ and _ence_, _ent_ and _ant_; the rule against simples and compounds of them, and even words which commonly go together, out of verse, as _père_ and _mère_. He was equally rigid on the cæsura: and Racan is not to be suspected of catering for laughers, though Tallemant might be, when he tells us that, while actually in the death-struggle, Malherbe revived himself to tell his nurse that she had used a word _qui n'ètoit pas bien Français_.

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Footnote 297:

The French critics, however, have perhaps taken too literally his
reported blasphemy, that he did not value a good poet above a good
player at ninepins. Malherbe was a Norman—that is to say, a
parcel-Englishman—and may well have had something of that English
humour of disparaging his own matters which is so incomprehensible to
the French.

Footnote 298:

The version in Tallemant adds that he _dis_liked Virgil. He also
scoffed at the idea of “number” (rhythm) in prose.

Footnote 299:

Ed. Lalanne, iv. 249-473. There is an elaborate and standard monograph
on this by M. Brunot, _La Doctrine de Malherbe_ (Paris, 1891); but, as
in other cases, I am obliged to postpone the comment to the text.

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It is, however, in the Commentary on Desportes,[299] and there only, that we have the real Malherbe at first hand for our purpose. [Sidenote: _The_ Commentary on Desportes.] It is a very remarkable piece, and the first of the kind in modern times;[300] though Gellius and Macrobius no doubt set a certain pattern for it in ancient. Nor am I acquainted with anything more thorough in the particular species; the modern Zoilus, as a rule, is equally inferior to Malherbe in thoroughness, acuteness, and learning. More than 200 pages—a large page and a small type—are occupied in M. Lalanne’s edition (the only one) with the citations and remarks, the former being rigidly confined to the line or two (rarely more) that Malherbe annotated. It would be almost worth while to reprint[301] the original volume as it exists scored by the critic’s hand, and I do not know that it would be at all unfair to Desportes; for it is not the author who comes worst out of the exposure.

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Footnote 300:

There are things of Castelvetro’s in the _Opere Varie_ not wholly
dissimilar; but these were then unpublished.

Footnote 301:

I have sometimes wondered whether the fact that, according to the
Racan-Tallemant anecdote, Malherbe only “struck through” his copy of
Ronsard without annotating it, is not an involuntary testimony to the
Prince of Poets. Malherbe, for all his rancour and narrowness, was no
fool; and he must in his mind have anticipated a famous later sentence
about the eagle floating

“Beyond the arrows, shouts, and views of men.”

Desportes is not exactly an eagle, and Malherbe has better game with
him, but still not the best of the game.

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Whatever may be said against Malherbe, he cannot be accused of verbiage. He constantly contents himself with a single word—_bourre_ (“padding”), _cheville_ (“expletive”), or simply _note_ or _nota_, which expresses, much more forcibly, the “Will the reader believe,” or “It will hardly be credited” of our less succinct Aristarchs. It is curious how sensitive Malherbe’s ear is to certain suggestions of real or fancied cacophony, or absurdity, in juxtaposition of different words. There is no doubt that the French habit of delivering verse in a sort of recitative or singsong, running the syllables very much together, putting strong emphasis on certain vowels and slurring others, makes things like the famous “vaincu Loth” and “vingt culottes,” “vieillard stupide” and “vieil as de pique” less of mere childishness with them than with us. Malherbe seems to have a perfect obsession of this kind, especially in the direction of alliterated syllables. Thus he annotates the harmless line—

“Si la foi plus certaine en une âme non feinte”—
_n’en, nu, n’a_;

and, still more in the style of the two later jokes—

“Mais vous, belle tyranne, aux Nérons comparable”—
_Tira nos nez_!

Indeed, he never loses an opportunity of blackmarking this collocation of letters in different words, a point to which the later Latin rhetoricians had perhaps made the French specially attentive, but notice of which, except in the rarest cases, would be thought unworthy of anybody but a schoolboy (or a comic journalist of not the highest class) in England.

It was perhaps a little dangerous for Malherbe to be so prodigal of the words “pedantry” and “stupidity” as he is; while time and use have sometimes made his peremptory judgments look rather foolish. For instance, Desportes had used _poumons_ in the plural, as we have practically always used “lungs” in English. “On ne dit,” says our usher, with an almost audible bang of the ferule on the desk,—“On ne dit point qu’un homme ait des poumons: et ne m’allègue pas qu’il y a plusieurs lobes au poumon, car tu serais un sot.” Poor posterity! It has been (in France) tolerably docile to Malherbe, but it has in this respect undoubtedly written itself down an ass—or perhaps him. For no Frenchman now would hesitate to use the word in the plural. He is constantly objecting to _consommer_ in the sense of _consumer_; he ejaculates (with the sort of indignant bark which we hear so often from him and from critics of his kind) on

“Et pensant de mes faits l'étrange frénésie”

“Je ne sais si c’est allemand ou anglais: mais je sais bien que ce n’est pas français”; stigmatises (surely with injustice?) _trop injuste Amour_ as a _mauvais vocatif_, and shows his own want of poetic imagination and poetic sympathy by scouting as bad the beautiful epithet _amoureuse_ in

“Enflammant l’air d’amoureuse clarté,”

for which some of us would excuse Desportes many worse things than he has actually done. On the other hand, the mere grammarian comes out in his note on

“Où de tant de beauté ton œil eut jouissance
Que le seul souvenir chasse au loin ma souffrance,”—
“_Le seul souvenir de quoi?_”

I should rather like to give more of this; but the reader will no doubt say _Sat prata_. [Sidenote: _What can be said for his criticism._] We must not be too hard on it. In the first place, it is (as criticism of the Zoilus kind is by no means always) transparently honest criticism. Malherbe does not garble; he does not foist his own misconception, not to say his own stupidity, on his author, and then condemn him for it; he does not, like Boileau, fling offensive and contemptuous epithets broadcast without anything to support them. Further, there can be not the very slightest doubt that such an office as his could, at the time, be very usefully filled. The French sixteenth century, like our own, had poured, and the early French seventeenth century had, also like our own, begun to pour, a vast and rather indiscriminately selected reinforcement of word and phrase and image into the language. All this wanted sorting, arranging—in some cases, though no doubt not in so many as Malherbe thought, rejecting and clearing out. The mere French grammar, which Vaugelas was soon to write, had not been written; and the Arts Poetic in existence were, as we have already seen, either technical and higgledy-piggledy, or like that of Vauquelin (which appeared just as Malherbe was beginning his crusade, and of which it would not be uninteresting to have a copy annotated by him as he annotated Desportes), almost as higgledy-piggledy, and much vaguer, on all technical points except some of the crotchets of the Pléiade. Indeed, the best justification for Malherbe is the French poetical history of the next thirty or forty years. He may claim some, though but little, of the merit of such different poets as Corneille and Voiture; the defects, where they really existed, of Boileau’s victims can seldom or never be charged upon him, and might sometimes have been avoided by listening to his precepts.

This, I think, is fairly generous as well as just; generosity may now make her bow and leave justice unfettered; but justice herself need not go beyond that admirable pronouncement of Regnier, which has been already referred to. [Sidenote: _Its defects stigmatised at once by Regnier._] The great satirist, the passionate poet, could hardly have needed a personal grievance to spur him on to the composition of his Ninth Satire, though the generosity of his character might have induced silence had not Malherbe broken their friendship. The address to “Rapin[302] le favori d’Apollon et des Muses”[303] begins by graceful compliments, but turns soon and sharply on

“Ces resveurs dont la Muse insolente
Censurant les plus vieux, arrogamment se vante
De reformer les vers.”

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Footnote 302:

Not to be confounded with the critic and versifier, René Rapin, who
was not born till after Regnier’s death, and whom to call “favourite,
&c.,” would indeed have been a dreadful thing to do; still less with
the historian Rapin de Thoyras, who was a generation later again. This
Rapin was Nicolas, part author of the glorious _Satire Menippée_,
victor in the burlesque contest of the Flea (see Southey’s _Doctor_),
a good versifier in Latin, and no ill one in French, though he was of
the (in France not very numerous) partisans of classical metres. He
died in 1608, not long after the date of this satire.

Footnote 303:

I read my Regnier in two editions, both very desirable as books, and
of different merits otherwise. The one, that of Prosper Poitevin
(Paris, 1860), is very compact; and, besides other matter, has the old
commentary of Brossette, which is extremely interesting as expressing
the views of a disciple of Boileau on a poet whom, to do him justice,
Boileau could not but admire, though he characteristically belittled
him. The other, that of E. Courbet (Paris, 1875), has a text adjusted
in the scrupulous modern manner, and some important additions to the
biography.

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If we have given Malherbe the credit of being the first modern critic to play the awful Aristarch with a contemporary in the true and full Aristarchian manner, Regnier must deserve that of being the first poet of genius in modern times to undertake a real _chevauchée_ in the interests of the true criticism against the false. [Sidenote: _His_ Ninth Satire.] The Satire is not faultless; there is some divagation, and an attempt (giving some countenance to the deplorable excesses, in the opposite direction of insulting poverty, which Boileau and Pope permit themselves) to set the profits and prosperity of Desportes against the comparative neediness of Malherbe. But this neediness was only comparative; and Regnier has the good taste never to name his adversary, and to let the arrows find their mark without vulgar personal abuse. The spirit of the piece is delightful; its straight hitting never baulks the game; and the verse is often of the very first quality. Read—I only wish I had room to quote—the passage, which only Juvenal and Dryden have equalled, on Malherbe’s contempt alike of the Greeks and the Pléiade (20-27); that on his elevation of the mere vernacular, as the test of language, which follows; the denunciation of his arrogant assumption of knowledge as being his own peculiar, which follows that; and the famous diatribe of forty verses long, and with every other verse a triumph, which scoffs at the anxiety—

“Prendre garde qu’un _qui_ ne heurte une diphtongue,”

which labels the whole proceeding—

“C’est proser de la rime et rimer de la prose;”

compares it to the tricks of rouging and dressing up in women, and contrasts the natural beauties of poetry with all this powder and pomatum.

The first hundred lines are the best part of the satire, and the remainder is, to a certain extent, amplification and repetition. Yet it is good art, and good sense, not merely in the scattered phrases—

“Sans juger nous jugeons,”

and

“Votre raison vous trompe, aussi bien que vos yeux,”

and

“O débile raison! où est ores ta bride,”

which hit at once the foible and the forte of the criticism of the century; but in the final sting—

“Mais, Rapin, à leur gout si les vieux sont profanes,—
Si Virgile, le Tasse, et Ronsard sont des ânes—
Sans perdre en ces discours les temps que nous perdons,
Allons comme eux aux champs, et mangeons des chardons!”

One might write a whole essay on these wonderfully prophetic and (no doubt to the writer half-unconsciously) many-sided[304] lines. After two centuries Europe did “go to the fields”—and she found something better to eat there than thistles.

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Footnote 304:

For instance, the _yoking_ of Virgil, Tasso, and Ronsard. This
Pisgah-sight of literature was what the Renaissance, and the whole
neo-classic period, almost invariably failed to attain.

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For the moment, as we have seen before in other cases, the voice crying in the wilderness found only a wilderness to cry in. [Sidenote: _The contrast of the two a lasting one._] Men could not mistake the vigour and verve of Regnier’s verse, but they either disregarded his doctrine or misunderstood it. Malherbe was their music-maker then; they understood _him_.[305] In the contrast of these two we have practically a contrast which subsists to the present day, and which we do not find by any means so sharply accentuated in ancient criticism—that of the critic who looks only at the stop-watch, and of the critic who looks beyond it; of the critic of form and the critic of spirit. But the curious thing is that for the last three centuries the antagonists have behaved exactly like Hamlet and Laertes, or even like that puzzling pair in the lower circles of the _Inferno_. They take from time to time each other’s parts, each other’s weapons, and renew the contest with changed persons, or at least rapiers. At first sight it may seem as if Malherbe and, after him, Boileau were simply insisting on form and expression; as if Regnier, and those who at longer intervals have followed him, were those who say that “all depends upon the subject.” But a more accurate acquaintance with the History which is to follow will show us that this is far from being the case. Malherbe had so little opportunity of shaping, or took such little trouble to shape, his critical ideas that it is perhaps the safer way not to draw up any complete creed for him, as M. Brunot and Mr Spingarn have done. But in Boileau, as we shall see, there is a distinct attempt, which has been practically followed by all of his side since, to prescribe expression, subject, spirit, and everything—to insist not merely that the work shall be good, but that it shall be good according to sealed patterns, in choice of subject as well as in method, in method as well as in form, in form as well as in language.

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Footnote 305:

There was, however, a remnant. Even Balzac called him “Le tyran des
mots et des syllabes;” even Chapelain recognised (acutely enough) the
fact that his methods were rhetorical rather than poetical; even
Tallemant practically summed him up, once and for all, in the words,
“Il n’avait pas beaucoup de génie: la méditation et l’art l’ont fait
poëte.” But the majority and the hour were with him.

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There can be very little doubt that the private discussions which, as we know from Racan, Malherbe used, for years before his death, to hold with Racan himself and others, and the letters which he also exchanged with younger men, had a very great deal to do with the wide development of criticism in the second third of the century. [Sidenote: _The diffusion of seventeenth century criticism._] The fact of this development is certain; it is vouched for by the appearance of literary subjects in the _Ana_, and in Tallemant’s _Historiettes_, by the foundation of the Academy, by the _Cid_ quarrel, practically by almost everything we know of the time that concerns literature. But we must deal, according to our wont, with the matter _par personnages_. Of such personages we have, in the first place, Vaugelas, Balzac, Ogier, and Chapelain, to whom we may join Ménage, Gui Patin, Tallemant himself, and the far greater names of Saint-Evremond and Corneille. Then we can take Boileau—at least in reputation one of the culminating points or personages of our history—and the less exclusively critical deliverances of La Bruyère, of Fénelon, and of Malebranche; can give some account of the Quarrel—tenacious of life, if scarcely vivacious—of the Ancients and Moderns; diverge to the scholastic and somewhat dismal but important performances of La Mesnardière and others, of Hédelin and Le Bossu, Rapin and Bouhours, and end by some account of the miscellaneous compilations and observations of journalists and _savants_. The matter is abundant in all conscience; it is at least sufficiently varied, and the real greatness of some at least of the persons concerned should save it from being insipid.

We may all the better pass directly from Malherbe to Vaugelas[306] because this is about the last place in this _History_ where we can give special attention to _merely_ verbal and grammatical criticism. [Sidenote: _Vaugelas._] In this Malherbe had at least the absolute, and almost admirable, courage of his opinions. On the one hand he transfers the prudery of the Ciceronians (_v. supra_, p. 12) to French, and will not allow even an analogue such as _accroît_ on the strength of _surcroît_. On the other he bars all the delightful Pléiade diminutives, likes not technical terms, is so horrified at any indelicate suggestion that his countrymen really need not have ridiculed our “sho[c]king,” and has a whole black list of “plebeian” expressions. Everything is to be “according to rule,” and the rule is to be drawn with as few exceptions as possible—and with as few inclusions.

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Footnote 306:

Those who wish for something more on this subject, without attacking
Vaugelas for themselves, may be strongly recommended to the full and
excellent article of M. Brunot in Petit de Julleville (vi. 674-690),
one of the very best papers in the book.

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It is no wonder that Regnier opened the full broadside of his magnificent poetical rhetoric against this system; and it is only a pity that nobody less fantastic than Mlle. de Gournay—Montaigne’s _fille d’alliance_, and almost the first as almost the oddest of blue-stockings—took up the parable more practically against it. But the set of the tide, as we have said, was with him. La Mothe le Vayer, a little later, in his _Considérations sur l’Eloquence Française de ce temps_ “transacts,” though he is on the whole on the side of liberty. And _enfin Vaugelas vint_, the Savoyard[307] who was to teach France French. His famous _Remarques_ did not appear till 1647, when he was fifty-two, and only three years before his death, but the book expresses work much older.[308]

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Footnote 307:

He is often called this, but not quite fairly, for he was born in
Bresse.

Footnote 308:

For other grammarian-rhetoricians of 1610-1660 see M. Brunot as above.
On the _Art Poétique_ of P. de Deimier (1610), compare also
Rücktaschel _ubi sup._

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Vaugelas, to do him justice, has not the “pistolling ways” of Malherbe. Usage is his standard, but, as in the old jest, the coin is no sooner in the child’s pocket than he is told not to spend it. It is _good_ usage only that you must follow; and the goodness of course is _penes nos_. It would be neither interesting nor proper here to discuss Vaugelas’ merely grammatical precepts, but it is permissible to point out that he, first of all moderns—or at any rate more than any early modern—contributed to bring about the disastrous idea that grammar exists independently, instead of being a generalisation, partly from the usage which even great writers cannot violate, partly from their own. But it is worth observing that, according to him, you must not use technical words, popular words, improper words (it is dreadful to say “breast,” for do we not talk of a “breast of mutton or veal”?), poetical words in prose, archaisms, neologisms, which last he hates more than anything else. And when he comes to style, Purity, Clearness, Sobriety, and so forth are of course his cardinal virtues.

Jean Guez de Balzac, who, in the rather idle nomenclature of traditional literary history, has usually been styled “the Malherbe of French prose,” is on the whole more important in the history of French style than in that of French criticism. [Sidenote: _Balzac._] He was not, as we have seen from the phrase quoted above, by any means an indiscriminate admirer of his correspondent—in fact, though not exactly a Gascon,[309] he was enough of a Southerner to feel nettled at the Northern arrogance which undertook _dégasconner la France_. But he was himself an ardent disciple of “purity,” and the principal objection that even posterity has made to his _Socrate Chrétien_, his _Aristippe_, his _Prince_, and most of his elaborate Letters, all of which were fanatically admired by contemporaries, is that they are scarcely more than pieces of epideictic, with very little substance in them.

-----

Footnote 309:

He was born in Angoulême.

-----

These same letters, moreover, contain numerous critical passages; while a whole division of his _Works_[310] is critical. [Sidenote: _His Letters._] The interest, however, of the most literary part of the _Letters_, those to Chapelain, as a whole, is not so much on Balzac’s side as on Chapelain’s; and the subjects of them will, at any rate in part, be best treated when we come to discuss that (in the latter part of his own lifetime and since) much-enduring writer. To Bois-Robert Balzac confides (III. 7) that he only cares for verses as he does for melons—both must be in absolute perfection if they are to please him; also that the philosopher’s stone will be found as soon as the sort of eloquence that _he_ values. The thousand pages of the _Letters_ are sprinkled with finery of this sort; but better matter is not very common. The somewhat hollow elegance which the French allow to be the chief merit of Balzac does not lend itself well to real criticism: nor, to do him justice, does he much attempt this, even to men of letters like Conrart, Heinsius, Descartes, or to Chapelain himself. Sometimes he drops into verbal criticism, as in VI. 57, where he consents to call Mlle. de Gournay herself _traductrice_ and _rhétoricienne_, but not _poétesse_ or _philosophesse_. The letter to Scudéry in reference to his attacks on _The Cid_ is very sensible and in good taste; but (as Balzac indeed generally is) much more ethical and “gentlemanly” than æsthetic (XII. 20). Even when he writes directly to Corneille (XVI. 9) about _Cinna_ he cannot get much beyond elegant generalities as to this Rome being the Rome _de Tite Live_. So that it is not surprising, when we come to the Chapelain Letters themselves (of which, besides a few stray ones earlier, there are six entire Books, XVII.-XXII.) that although most of them touch literature, and many contain critical remarks or judgments,[311] there is little of much interest. Only now and then do we come across such a refreshment as: “Why, sir, what prodigy do you tell me of? Is it possible that any one with a drop of common-sense in him can prefer the Spanish poets to the Italians? and take the visions of a certain Lope de Vega for reasonable compositions?” (XX. 127). His remarks on Ronsard and Malherbe, “the Martyr and the Tyrant” (XXII. 20), are fair, and with room one might extend the anthology. But on the whole, though Balzac was a very handsome letter-writer, and could, and did, give all the Frank Churchills of Europe lessons in that art, he was not very much of a critic.

-----

Footnote 310:

Pp. 509-689 of the second of two stately folios (Paris, 1665). The
_Letters_ are in the first.

Footnote 311:

Balzac himself rather mincingly deprecates this word. “Je ne donne” he
says to Chapelain (XX. 25) “jamais de jugement; mais je dis
quelquefois mon avis.”

-----

His set Critical Dissertations quite confirm this verdict. [Sidenote: _His Critical Dissertations._] He opens them with a great deal about Discipline, _Justesse_, _Bienséance_, the Mean, and the like. He tells us (vol. ii. p. 537) that any one who likes Ariosto would prefer a Siren to a beautiful woman—the answer to which challenge may be justly suspended by the true critic till he has a Siren produced before him. There might be much to be said for her. He has some not unpleasant remarks on the obligatory subject of the great sonnet-duel between Voiture’s “Uranie” and Benserade’s “Job”: but he has not, so far as I remember, discovered the critical truth that their beauty lies in the singular charm of the _first_ line of the one and the _last_ of the other. He is in one place (ii. 597) almost savage with Montaigne, of whom he says that, though he be adopted father to Mlle. de Gournay, esteemed by Father Paul, and “_allégué par le Chancelier Baccon_” (_sic_), he can see nothing in his Essays but equivoques and mistakes of judgment. This, however, is said chiefly in reference to Montaigne’s Latinity and knowledge of Latin: and elsewhere (pp. 657-662) there is a set judgment much more favourable, though still smacking of the double prejudice against a prophet of his own country and a man of the last generation. But his Dissertation on or against the Burlesque[312] style, when one remembers the excesses in which, from Scarron down to Dassoucy, men were about to indulge, is not contemptible: and there are amusing things in his _Barbon_, a sort of elaborate Theophrastian portrait of a young pedant, from which Scriblerus may have borrowed.

-----

Footnote 312:

With this it is interesting to compare the disquisition written to
Balzac, and apparently at his request, _De Ludicra Dictione_ (opening
his _Opera_, fol., Amst., 1709) by François Vavasseur, a Jesuit
Professor, who also wrote not a bad book on _Epigrams_ and some other
literary work, besides sermons and theological treatises. Vavasseur is
at once refreshingly logical and audacious. The Greeks (he is bold
enough even to face the retort of “Aristophanes”?) did not use
_ludicra dictio_ or burlesque language. Nor did the Romans: for
Lucilius _desideratur_ (scarcely so much as to warrant the conclusion
to those who know the fragments well), and as for Petronius and
Apuleius, decent people never mention _them_. Secondly, the ancient
critics give no precepts for it. Thirdly, there is no reason for using
it. Fourthly, there are many reasons for _not_ using it. So that is
settled. One may like Vavasseur.

-----

Vaugelas, as we have seen, did not finally elaborate his work till some twenty years after Malherbe’s death, and Balzac, though a correspondent of the Norman poet, outlived him by more than a quarter of a century. [Sidenote: _Ogier and the Preface to_ Tyr et Sidon.] But in the very year (1628) of that death appeared a document on the other side, and taking that side in flank at the point where it was, with the majority, to be most victorious. This was the _Preface_ of François Ogier to the second edition of the _Tyr et Sidon_ of Daniel d’Anchères, or rather (for this is a mere anagram) Jean de Schélandre.[313] The play is almost the only worthy representative, in French, of that English-Spanish drama which set the Unities at defiance;[314] the Preface, written twenty years after the first appearance of the play, but seven before the author’s death, is a brief but extraordinarily remarkable vindication, in principle, of Schélandre’s practice. Until M. Asselineau, in 1854, published an article on the subject, and the _Bibliothèque Elzévirienne_, two years later, included both play and preface in the eighth volume of the invaluable _Ancien Théâtre Français_, both were practically unknown. Even then notice of them was for a long time confined to literary historians; and of late an attempt has been made to put the _Preface_ aside as the mere freak of a student, in opposition to the taste of the time and the necessities of the stage. That the general course of literature in France followed for a time the line which Ogier argued against, and to which Schélandre ran counter, is perfectly true. But this is quite indifferent (except as a matter to be registered) to history, which knows perfectly well that Athanasius and his world are always changing places and principles. Moreover, it is quite a mistake to think that Ogier writes merely from the study, and with no consideration of the stage. Like Cinthio, like Patrizzi, like Castelvetro himself, he is no mere study-theorist. On the contrary he carries the war into the enemy’s camp with a refreshing audacity and no small force. It is the _classical_ arrangement, he says, which _offense le judicieux spectateur_, with its improbable and unnatural coincidences and tallyings. How, he asks, in a passage interesting to compare with Sidney’s satirical description of the opposite style, do the identifying rings, the shepherd-fosterers, the good old nurses, always turn up _comme par art de magie_ exactly at the right moment? How is it that Creon, and the old attendant of Laius, and the Corinthian who picked Œdipus up, all rendezvous at Athens in the nick of time? Is verisimilitude observed even in the _Agamemnon_? Is there anything dramatic at all—anything more than sheer narration—in the _Persæ_? Can the extreme defenders of the Unity of Time work out the _Antigone_ on their lines? or the _Heautontimoroumenos_? Then he proceeds to account (not at all badly) for the practice of the ancients, and then to revert to the only sound argument—that of Cinthio and Pigna in the matter of the _Romanzi_, of Il Lasca in reference to Italian comedy—that Athens and Rome, and the lives and customs of both, are _not_ modern countries and their lives and customs, that the practice of the one can give no final and prohibitive rule to the practice of the other.[315]

-----

Footnote 313:

Some authorities give _this_ as the anagram, the other as the name.
But it does not in the least matter.

Footnote 314:

The Pleiad tragedies (_v. supra_, p. 127) had been Senecan, but not
quite “regular”; and though Hardy broke loose from Time and Place, it
was not always very violently.

Footnote 315:

Ogier, like his Italian predecessors, is firm on the pleasure-giving
quality of dramatic art. His manner is well illustrated by his remark
that the constant arrival of messengers is more suitable to a good inn
than to a good tragedy. One wonders whether he knew the Spaniards (_v.
inf._ ch. 2).

-----

We are not in the least concerned to argue for this Preface. It is enough to point out its bold and independent spirit, and to lay special stress on the fact that Ogier fully admits that he is defending, if not a heresy, an orthodoxy which is not popular, offers to explain “pourquoi nous nous sommes jetez à quartier du chemin ordinaire,” speaks of the Unity of Time as “cette règle que nos critiques veulent nous faire garder si religieusement à cette heure,” indirectly condemns the Unity of Place in his arguments, and vindicates the full tragi-comic blending of Actions. Now, this was in 1628, eight years before the _Cid_ and the _Sentiments de l’Académie_, even a year before Mairet’s _Sophonisbe_ earned the reputation of being the first French piece that was absolutely “correct.” This is of itself enough to show how erroneous is the idea, once common and still repeated, that the discussion over the _Cid_, with Scudéry for mover, was in the nature of a surprise, and that Chapelain, if he most certainly did not invent the Unities, introduced them into France.

Although M. Bourgoin, and one or two others, have done something of late years to relieve Chapelain himself of the weight—not so much of obloquy as of contemptuous ignoring—which rested on him for nearly two centuries, even they have for the most part lain under that curious fear of Boileau which we shall have to notice so often. [Sidenote: _Chapelain: the hopelessness of his verse._] Sainte-Beuve (who knew his French seventeenth century as no other man ever has known, or probably ever will know it, and who had in his own possession the _MS._ Letters which do Chapelain not a little credit) takes a kind of apologetic tone on the subject, and seems never to have made up his mind to treat Chapelain as a whole. It is, indeed, only on the prose side that he can be approached without fear of disaster. There are good things even in the _Pucelle_, but they are ill to win. You may read Le Moyne, Desmarets, Saint-Amant, not without satisfaction of the true poetic sort, especially in the first case. I think I once got through some part of Scudéry’s _Alaric_. But the _Pucelle_ has a double touch-me-not-ishness—of _niaiserie_, and of what Boileau (for once justly) calls “hardness”; there is something really impregnable about her. And the minor pieces—fine as is the Richelieu Ode in parts—hardly save their captainess.

Chapelain as a critic is quite another person. He still writes somewhat heavily: and (among his other faithfulnesses to the Pléiade[316]) goes in the teeth of Malherbe and Vaugelas by his use of classicised words. [Sidenote: _The interest of his criticism._] But he almost deserves the name of the first properly equipped critic of France in point of knowledge: and (shocking as the statement may appear) I am not sure that he was not the last, till almost within the memory of an aged man. Not only did he know Italian literature thoroughly—that was not in his time uncommon for Frenchmen—and Spanish—that also was not far to seek—but he was accurately drilled in the theory and practice of Italian criticism. He is constantly referring to it in his correspondence with Balzac; he (that is to say, the transparently identical author of the main part at least of the Censure of the _Cid_) not merely rests his objections on these critics, but refers to the controversies over the _Gerusalemme_ and the _Pastor Fido_, as he does elsewhere to that between Castelvetro and Caro. Above all, he, almost alone of his time, knew old French literature. It has not been noticed, I think, either by M. Feillet, who published, or by M. Bourgoin, who discusses, his most interesting and remarkable dialogue, _Sur la Lecture des Vieux Romans_, that his devotion to _Lancelot_ was almost certainly one of his debts to Ronsard. For the Prince of Poets, as we saw, expressly enjoined the reading of _Lancelot_ and the other romances in order to enrich the vocabulary.

-----

Footnote 316:

His mother was deeply devoted to this school, and had in her youth
known Ronsard personally. The gibing part of the anecdote about the
author of the _Pucelle_ being “bred a poet” was never very funny, and
is now more than very stale. The historical part remains and
flourishes.

-----

The blot on Chapelain’s critical record in the general estimation is, of course, his[317] Censure of the _Cid_ above referred to. [Sidenote: _The_ Sentiments de l’Académie sur le Cid.] Even those who admit that critical like other thought is free, and that a critic is not to be sentenced to Malebolge because he is unfortunate enough not to like the great work of a great man, must acknowledge a certain striking poetical justice in the spectacle of the censor of the _Cid_, for want of correctness, being pitilessly flogged thirty years later by a correcter than he. Nor, nowadays, do we admit much excuse in the undoubted fact that this censure was practically forced on the Academy, and on Chapelain, by the sordid jealousy of Richelieu.

-----

Footnote 317:

It is formally the Academy’s and not his. But there is no real doubt
that nearly all of it expresses his sentiments, and that much of it is
actually his in language. The whole history of the _Cid_ dispute is
minute and complicated, and may be found in many books. The persons
chiefly responsible for it, besides Richelieu and Chapelain, were
Georges de Scudéry, an eccentric failure of a genius, Mairet, a
playwright of talent, and Claveret, one of none. In all cases, it is
to be feared, the extraordinary success of the piece was the exciting
cause.

-----

But even in this censure it is possible, even for one who frankly puts Corneille at the head of all French Tragedy, to acknowledge some critical merits. The first (not perhaps quite the least) of these is that it is strictly _civil_; the second is that, meticulous, purblind, peddling, prudish—a score of similar epithets if you please—as it is, it does adopt an intelligible code of critical judgment, and does apply that code with legal propriety. Moreover, as we have seen, it is quite a mistake to represent this code as being invented for the occasion—suddenly foisted upon France to gratify the envy of Scudéry and Mairet, or the less excusable malignity of Richelieu. The code had been growing for more than a century; it had been gaining wider and wider acquiescence every day; the protests against it, however gallantly made, had fallen practically unheard. Eight years before we have Ogier explicitly admitting it as the code of _nos critiques_—as the accepted opinion. We may be fully entitled—some of us intend, for us and for our house, to do so, whether entitled or not—to hold the Unities things vainly invented in two cases, and mischievous, if exclusively and universally enforced, in the third.[318] We may think the objections to Corneille’s diction hypercritical, and the objection to Chimène’s conduct utterly absurd.[319] But Chapelain, and those about Chapelain, were also quite entitled to think differently, and there is no reason to believe their opinion feigned, though they might not have put it so forcibly save to curry favour with the Cardinal. After all, Corneille hardly disputed their verdict except in detail; and, whether luckily or unluckily, tried to do as they told him afterwards.

-----

Footnote 318:

Of course there is much to be said for them, rightly understood, from
the point of view of mere _theatrical_ arrangement: while mediocre
writers are more safely to be trusted with than without them. But we
are speaking of _literature_, not the theatre; and in literature the
weak brother is rather a nuisance to be extirpated, than a person to
be provided for, or conceded to.

Footnote 319:

M. Jules Lemaître’s article on the subject in Petit de Julleville (iv.
273 _sq._) most ingenuously cites the virtuous authority of M. Dumas
_fils_ in support of Chapelain, and is not far from opining in the
same sense. It is always difficult for a Frenchman to pardon an honest
love. If Chimène had been married and Rodrigue her gallant, it would
have been quite different. She might have overlooked the blood of
20,000 fathers.

-----

Chapelain’s other critical exercises are numerous: they are quite interesting, and there ought to be some accessible collection of them, for at present they have to be hunted up in half-a-dozen different books or collections, some of them very hard to get at. [Sidenote: _Prefaces._] It is probable, though disputed, that he wrote the Introduction to a translation of _Guzman d’Alfarache_, which may have been done in his twentieth year, and in which the author (according to the Pléiade view) by no means magnifies his office as translator. He certainly wrote, some years later, the prefatory panegyric to Marini’s _Adone_, where he practises, in a fashion familiar to students of Italian criticism, an elaborate scholastic division of kinds and qualities, with definitions and connections of them. [Sidenote: Sur les Vieux Romans.] We need not trouble ourselves with his Academic discourse, against Love and for Glory, which is full of _précieuse_ personification, but pass to his most interesting works, the _Dialogue on the Romances_ and the critical _Letters_. In the first[320] he maintains the case of the Arthurian romances against Ménage and Sarrasin, not with a thorough-going championship (that would be wholly anachronistic), but with singular sense, knowledge, and even, as far as it goes, appreciation. He does not affect to admire the composition or the style in _Lancelot_. But he knows something of the origin (it is extraordinary that he allows it to be, in part at least, English). He will not allow that, barring style and expression, there is any necessary gulf between _Lancelot_ and Homer (wherein he is a hundred years ahead in sense of Blair, who was a hundred years ahead of him in time), delights (taught to do so, as we said, by Ronsard) in the vocabulary, and feels and rejoices in the point of honour (“la crainte perpetuelle qu’ils ont de rien faire et de rien dire dont leur reputation puisse souffrir la moindre tache”),[321] their jealousy of their word, their devotion (so different from “our _galanterie_”) to their ladies. _Quia multum amavit!_ Moreover, the document is connected in a rather fascinating manner with another,[322] in which the same interlocutors, with others, appear, which refers to it, and in which not only does Sarrasin confess that he had been brought by Chapelain to a state of mind different from that which is to be seen in his _Discours_ noticed below, but Chapelain himself reinforces his argument with a long citation from, and discussion of, an episode in _Perceforest_—that huge and interesting romance which is almost inaccessible to modern readers, in consequence of the depraved persistence of modern scholars and Societies in reprinting the same text in idle emulation of each other, instead of giving what are practically _anecdota_.

-----

Footnote 320:

_De la lecture des Vieux Romans_, ed. Feillet, Paris, 1870.
Unfortunately printed in very small numbers, but still obtainable for
less than half its weight in silver.

Footnote 321:

It is really refreshing to find Mr. Burke saying ditto to M. Chapelain
some 150 years afterwards, in a sentence as well known to all the
world as that in the text is unknown to all but a few.

Footnote 322:

_S’il faut qu’un Jeune Homme soit Amoureux._ Sarrasin, _Œuvres_, _ed.
cit. inf._, 139-235.

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The Letters (published, with some omissions, by M. Tamizey de la Roque in 1880, and supplemented fourteen years later by some more in the Transactions of a learned Society[323]) are crammed with references to books, and contain not a little real criticism. [Sidenote: _Letters, &c._] And lastly, the famous list[324] of characterisations of French men of letters which Chapelain drew up for Colbert’s use in allotting pensions, though it has been laughed at in parts, is for its date (some of its subjects, including Molière, had not yet done anything like their best work) as sound, as sensible, and, at the same time, as benevolent a hand-list of the kind as you shall discover in the records of the centuries.

-----

Footnote 323:

_Mémoires de la Société de l’Histoire_, vol. xxi., Paris, 1894.

Footnote 324:

This, with other things, will be found in Chapelain’s _Mélanges de
Littérature_ (Paris, 1726).

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On the whole we may say that Chapelain only wanted the proverbial “That!” to make a good and perhaps a really great critic. Not all, though a good deal, of the deficiency must be put down to the transition character of time, taste, literary diction, and everything, in midst of which he found himself. The point of critical genius, the ability to grasp and focus and methodise, must have been wanting too. But he had knowledge, both of literature and of criticism; he had obviously catholic, if not unerring, sympathies; he had acuteness and penetration, if not quite combination and the architectonic; and he was entirely free from that ill-nature which, while it may seem to assist the critic, really disables him. _Critique manqué_, perhaps, on the whole; but still on his day a critic and no mean one.