Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/696

 660 F RANG E [LITERATURE. death. But, ulso at the beginning of the century, another writer composed on a larger plan an entire history of France. This was Mezeray (1610-1685) whose work, though not exhibiting the perfection of style at which some of his con temporaries had already arrived, and though still more or less uncritical, yet deserves the title of history. The example of Mezeray and De Thou was followed by a large number of writers, some of extended works, some of histories in part. Mezeray himself is said to have had a considerable share in the Histoire du Roi Henri le Grand by the Archbishop Perefixe (1605-1670); Maimbourg wrote histories of the Crusades and of the League; Pellisson (1624-1693) gave a history of Louis XIV. Still later in the century, or at the beginning of the next, many lengthy historical works were composed. The Pere d Orleans (1644-1698) wrote a history of the revolutions of England, the Pere Daniel (1649-1728), like D Orle ans a Jesuit, composed a lengthy history of France and a shorter one on the French military forces. Finally, at the end of the period, comes the great ecclesiastical history of Fleury (1640-1723), a work which perhaps belongs more to the section of erudition than to that of history proper. Three small treatises, however, composed by different authors towards the middle part of the century, supply remarkable instances of prose style in its application to history. These are the Conjurations du Comte de Fiesque, written by the famous Cardinal de Ketz (1614-1679), the Conspiration de Walstein of Sarrasin, and the Conj uration ~des Espaynols contre Venise, composed in 1672 by the Abbe de St Real, the author of various his torical and critical works deserving less notice. These three works, whose similarity of subject and successive composi tion at short intervals leave little doubt that a certain amount of intentional rivalry animated the two later authors, are among the earliest and best examples of the monographs for which French, in point of grace of style and lucidity of exposition, has long been the most successful vehicle of expression among European languages. Among other writers of history, as distinguished from memoirs, need only be noticed Agrippa d Aubigne, whose Histoire Uni- verselle closed his long and varied list of works, and Varillas (1624-1696), a historian chiefly remarkable for his extreme untrustworthiness. In point cf memoirs and correspond ence the period is hardly less fruitful than that which pre ceded it. The Eeyistres-Journaux of Pierre de 1 Etoile (1540-1611), only now being published as a whole, consist of a diary something of the Pepys character, kept for nearly forty years by a person in high official employment. The memoirs of Sully (1560-1641), published under a curious title too long to quote, date also from this time, as do the Letters of Cardinal d Ossat (1536-1604), much and de servedly praised by Lord Chesterfield as models of business writing, and the Negociations of the President Jeannin (1544-1622), who conducted the affairs of Henry IV. in Holland. The king himself has left a considerable corre spondence, which is not destitute of literary merit, though not equal to the memoirs of his wife. The rule of Richelieu was scarcely favourable to memoir writing ; but both this and earlier times found chronicle in the singular Historiettes of Tallernant des Reaux (1619- ? ), a collection of anec dotes, frequently scandalous, reaching from the times of Henry IV. ^to those of Louis XIV., to which may be joined the Letters of Guy Patin (1 602-1 676). The early years of the latter monarch and the period of the Fronde had the Cardinal de Retz himself, than whom no one was certainly better qualified for historian, not to mention a crowd of others, of whom Madame de Motteville (1621-1689) is per haps the principal. From this time memoirs and memoir writers went ever multiplying. The queen of them all is Madame de Sevigne (1627-1696), on whom, as on most of the great and better-known writers whom we have had and shall have to mention, it is impossible here to dwell at length. The last half of the century produced crowds of similar but inferior writers. The memoirs of the Duchesse d Orleans, of Fouquet, of Bussy-Rabutin (author of a kind of scandalous chronicle called Histoire Amoureme dcs Gaules), and of Madame tie Maintenon, perhaps deserve notice above the others. But this was in truth the style of composition in which the age most excelled. Memoir writing became the occupation not so much of persons who made history, as was the case from Comines to De Retz, as of those who, having culture, leisure, and oppor tunity of observation, devoted themselves to the task of recording the deeds of others, and still more of regarding the incidents of the busy, splendid, and cultivated if some what frivolous world of the court, in which, from the time of Louis XIV. s majority, the political life of the nation and almost its whole history were centred. Many, if not most, of these writers were women, who thus founded the cele brity of the French lady for managing her mother-tongue, and justified by results the taste and tendencies of the blue stockings and precieuses of the Hotel Rambouillet and similar coteries. The life which these writers saw before them furnished them with a subject to be handled with the minuteness and care to which they had been accustomed in the ponderous romances of the CleUe type, but also with the wit and terseness hereditary in France, and only tem porarily absent in those ponderous compositions. The efforts of Balzac arid the Academy supplied a suitable lan guage and style, and the increasing tendency towards epi grammatic moralizing, which reached its acme in La Roche foucauld (1663-1 680) and La Bruyere (1639-1696), added in most cases point and attractiveness to their writings. 17/A Century Philosophers and Theologians. To these moralists we might, perhaps, not inappropriately pass at once. But it seems better to consider first the philosophical and theological developments of the age, which must share with its historical experiences and studies the credit of pro ducing these writers. Philosophy proper, as we have already had occasion to remark, had hitherto made no use of the vulgar tongue. The 16th century had contributed a few vernacular treatises on logic, a considerable body of political and ethical writing, and a good deal of sceptical speculation of a more or less vague character, continued into our present epoch by such writers as La Mothe le Vayer (1588-1672), the last representative of the orthodox doubt of Montaigne and Charron. But in metaphysics proper it had not dabbled. The 17th century, on the con trary, was to produce in Descartes (1596-1650) at once a master of prose style, the greatest of French philosophers, and one of the greatest metaphysicians, not merely of France and of the 17th century, but of all countries and times. Even before Descartes there had been considerable and important developments of metaphysical speculation in France. Early in the century, the Italian Lucilio Vanini was burnt at Toulouse, nominally, like Bruno, for atheism, but really for the adoption of the negative philosophy of Pomponatius and others. The first eminent philosopher of French birth was Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). Gassendi devoted himself to the maintenance of a modernized form of the Epicurean doctrines, but he wrote mainly, if not en tirely, in Latin. Another sceptical philosopher of a less scientific character was the physicist Naude, who, like many others of the philosophers of the time, was accused of atheism. But as none of these could approach Descartes in philosophical power and originality, so also none has even a fraction of his importance in the history of French litera ture. It is with this latter alone that we are here concerned. Descartes stands with Plato, and possibly Berkeley and Malebranche, at the head of all philosophers in respect of style; and in his case the excellence is far more remarkable