Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/700

 F K A N C E [LITERATURE. mises. There is neither compromise nor commonplace in La Rochefoucauld. We have dwelt on these two remark able books somewhat longer than on most single chef d ceuvres of French literature, because of their extraordinary and enduring effect on the literature which followed them an effect perhaps superior to that exercised by any other single work except the Roman de la Rose and the fissais of Montaigne. 17^/i Century /Savants. Of the literature of the 17th century there only remains to be dealt with the section of those writers who devoted themselves to scientific pursuits or to antiquarian erudition of one form or another. It was in this century that literary criticism of French and in French first began to be largely composed. It was very far, however, from attaining the excellence or observing the form which it afterwards assumed. The institution of the Academy led to various linguistic works. One of the earliest of these was the Rcmarqnes of the Savoyard Vaugelas (1585-1650), afterwards re-edited by Thomas Corneille. Pellisson wrote a history of the Academy itself when it had as yet but a brief one. The famous Examen du Cid was an instance of the literary criticism of the time. Later, Boileau set the example of treating such subjects in verse, and in the latter part of the century Reflexions, Discourses, Observations, and the like, on particular styles, literary forms, and authors, became exceedingly numerous. In earlier years France possessed a numerous band of classical authors of the first rank, such as Scaliger and Casaubon, who did not lack followers. But all or almost all this sort of work was done in Latin, so that it contributed little to French literature properly so-called. On the other hand, mathematical studies were pursued by persons of far other and far greater genius, and, taking from this time forward a considerable position in education and literature in Franco, had much influence on both. The mathematical discoveries of Pascal and Descartes are well known, and from their time forward until the Revolution men of letters, such as Voltaire and Diderot, who would in England have been likely to hold aloof from such studies, devoted themselves thereto. Of science proper, apart from mathematics, France did not produce many distinguished cultivators in this century. The philosophy of Descartes was not on the whole favourable to such investigations, which were in the Contro- next century to be pursued with ardour. Its tendencies versy found more congenial vent and are more thoroughly exem- between p}^fi e( j j ri th e famous quarrel between the ancients and the and mo- mo ^ erns ) which was long carried on in the latter part demy, of the century between Boileau and Madame Dacier, on ths one hand, and Perrault on the other, and which was so curiously renewed in England. The discussion was con ducted, as is well known, without very much knowledge or judgment among the disputants on the one side or on the other. But at this very time there w r ere in France .students and scholars of the most profound erudition. We have already mentioned Fleury and his ecclesiastical history. But Fleury is only the last and the most popular of a race of omnivorous and untiring scholars, whose labours have ever since, until the modern fashion of first-hand investiga tions came in, furnished the bulk of historical and scholarly references and quotations. To this century belong Tille- mont (1637-1698), whose enormous Histoire des Emperenrs and Memoires pour servir a I Histoire Ecclesiastiijue served Gibbon and a hundred others as quarry ; Ducange (1614- 1G88), whose well-known glossary was only one of numerous productions; Mabillon (1622-1707), one of the most volu minous of the voluminous Benedictines ; and Montfaucon (1655-1741), chief of all authorities of the dry-as-dust kind on classical archaeology and art. Opening of tJie ISth Century. The beginning of the 18th century is among the dead seasons of French literature. All the greatest men whose names had illustrated the reign of Louis XIV. in profane literature passed away lung before him, and the last if the least of them, Boileau and Thomas Corneille, only survived into the very earliest years of the new age. The political and military disasters of the last years of the reign were accompanied by a state of things in society unfavourable to literary development. A show, purely external and hypocritical, of devotion, put on to please the aged monarch, covered an interior of frivolity and licentiousness which was for the time dissevered from such intellectual activity as lias often accompanied similar states of morality in France. The devotion to pure litera ture and philosophy proper which Descartes and Corneille had inspired had died out, and the devotion to physical science, to sociology, and to a kind of free-thinking optimism which was to inspire Voltaire and the Encyclopedists had not yet become fashionable. Fenelon and Malebranche still survived, but they were emphatically men of the last age, as was Massillon, though he lived till nearly the middle of the century. The characteristic literary figures of the opening years of the period are D Aguesseau, Fontenelle, St Simon, personages in many ways interesting and remark able, but purely transitional in their characteristics, and neither themselves indicating new and original paths to others, nor following out to their extremity and climax the I paths which others had struck. Fontenelle (1657-1757) is, indeed, perhaps the most typical figure of the time. lie was a dramatist, a moralist, a philosopher, physical and metaphysical, a critic, a historian, a poet, and a satirist. The manner of his works is always easy and graceful, and their matter rarely contemptible. We may adopt the same division of subjects in this period as heretofore, with I one important addition a separate heading, namely, for the essayists and literary critics who before the end of the century became of remarkable prominence. The spread of culture, however, and the increase of the mass of literature produced, render it more and more necessary to limit the notice given to those names whose bearers are in one way or another important. Modern literature once fairly con stituted, the rank and file of its practitioners must be left unnientioned. 18^ Century Poetry. The dispiriting signs shown dur ing the 17th century by French poetry proper received entire fulfilment in the following age. The two poets who were most prominent at the opening of the period were the Abb6 de Chaulieuc (1639-1720) and the Marquis de la Fare (1644-1712), poetical or rather versifying twins who are always quoted together, and the fact of whose quotation as the chief poets of any period, however short, is sufficient proof of the low estate into which poetry must at that period have fallen. They were both men who lived to a great age, yet their characteristics are rather those of their later than of their earlier contemporaries. They derive on the one hand from the somewhat trifling school of Voiture, on the other from the Bacchic sect of St Amand ; and they succeed in uniting the inferior qualities of both with the cramped and im poverished though elegant style of which Fe&quot;nelon had com plained. It is only fair to say that the abbe is not nearly so bad a poet as the marquis. Their compositions are as a rule lyrical, as lyrical poetry was understood after the days of Malherbe, that is to say, quatrains of the kind ridiculed by Moliere, and Pindaric odes, which have been justly described as made up of alexandrines after the manner of Boileau cut up into shorter or longer lengths. They were followed, however, by the one poet who succeeded in pro ducing something resembling poetry in this artificial style. J. B. Rousseau (1674-1741). Rousseau, who in someJ. respects was nothing so little as a religious poet, was never- K theless strongly influenced, as Marot had been, by the Psalms