Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/703

 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FICTION.] FRANCE 667 harmless has since become so well-recognized a function of the novelist that Marivaux, as one of the earliest to dis charge it, deserves notice. The name, however, of Jean ROUS- Jacques llousseau is of fur different importance. His two great works, the Nouvdle Heloise and fimile, are as far as possible from being perfect as novels. But no novels in the world have ever had such influence as these. To a great extent this influence was due mainly to their attractions as novels, imperfect though they may be in tliis character, but it was beyond dispute also owing to the doctrines which they contained, and which were exhibited in novel form. They had not only a greater popularity than any other works of the same class during the century, not only a more important political and philosophical influ ence, but also a far greater practical influence than is generally supposed. As the fact has been lately treated as doubtful, it may be well to repeat that the Emile did actually to a great extent put a stop to the habit previously pre vailing among French mothers of refusing to nurse their own infants, and that the recommendation which the same book contained that all children should be taught a trade undoubtedly contributed to the preservation and power of self-support of great numbers of the emigrants during the French llevolutiou. Great as has been the influence of prose fiction in various ways, this is perhaps the most direct and certain instance of its influence upon the daily life and conduct of large classes of men. Certainly it is the earliest of such instances, and this makes it remarkable in the his tory of literature. Such are the principal developments of fiction during the century; but it is remarkable that, varied as they were, and excellent as was some of the work to which they gave rise, none of these schools were directly very fertile in results or successors. The period with which we shall next have to deal, that from the outbreak of the Revolution to the death of Louis XVIII., is curiously bar ren of fiction of any merit. It has been frankly noticed by French writers that sinse the Middle Ages many if not most of their great literary developments have needed the stimulus of foreign example and importation. Thus, in part of the 1C th century the influence of Italy was predominant and productive, in the 17th that of Spain, in the 18th that of England. Less powerful during the thirty years of war, English influence began again to assert itself in the 19th century. Byron and Shakespeare, well or ill understood, were responsible for much of the development on the poeti cal side of the romantic movement. But their influence was as nothing compared with that of Scott on the prose side, and especially on the side of prose fiction. As yet, however, this influence was remote. The result of its working was that the prose romance began once more to be written in the later days of the Restoration, with the astonishing success which in the course of the last half-cen tury has placed the French novel in quantity and general excellence, if not in the quality of a few chosen examples, at the head of the fictitious literature of modern Europe. 18^/t Century History. It is not, however, in any of the departments of belles Icttres that the real eminence of the 18th century as a time of literary production in France consists. In all serious branches of study its accomplish ments were, in a literary point of view, remarkable, uniting as it did an extraordinary power of popular and literary expression with an ardent spirit of inquiry, a great specula tive ability, and even a far more considerable amount of laborious erudition than is generally supposed. The popu lar and rather desultory character of many of these re searches and speculations makes it somewhat difficult to arrange them in an orderly fashion under the heads of separate departments of science. Historical, theological, metaphysical, physical, economical, political, and moral speculations confuse themselves constantly in the same author, and very often in the same work, and any division that can be adopted must be almost of necessity in many respects a cross division. The advantages, however, of maintaining some sort of order are so unmistakable that we shall continue to observe the arrangement hitherto adopted. The historical studies and results of the 18th century speculation in France are of especial and pecu liar importance. There is no doubt that what is called the science of history dates from this time, and though the beginning of it is usually assigned to the Italian Vico, its complete indication may perhaps with equal or greater justice be claimed by the Frenchman Turgot. Before Turgot, however, there were great names in French histori cal writing, and perhaps the greatest of all is that of Montesquieu (1689-1755). The three principal works of Montes- this great writer are all historical and at the same time &amp;lt; political in character. In the Lettres Pcrsanes he handled, with wit inferior to the wit of no other writer even in that witty age, the corruptions and dangers of contemporary morals and politics. The literary charm of this book the plan of which was suggested by a work of Dufresny (1648- 1721), a comic writer not destitute of merit is very great, and its plan was so popular as to lead to a thousand imita tions, of which all, except those of Voltaire and Goldsmith, only bring out the immense superiority of the original. Few things could be more different from this lively and popular book than Montesquieu s next work, the Grandeur et Deca dence des Remains, in which the same acuteness and know ledge of human nature are united with considerable erudi tion, and with a weighty though perhaps somewhat grandilo quent and rhetorical style. His third and greatest work, the FjS}&amp;gt;rit des Lois, is again different both in style and character. Its defect is too hasty and sweeping generalization on facts insufficiently collected and observed. But this defect is as nothing as compared with the merits of its fertility in ideas, its splendid breadth of view, and the felicity with which the author, in a manner unknown before, recognizes the laws underlying complicated assemblages of fact which had up to that time been considered as connected only by the hazards of fate or by arbitrary causes. The etyle of this great work is equal to its substance ; less light than that of the Letters, less rhetorical than that of the Grandeur des Remains, it is still a marvellous union of dignity and wit. Around Montesquieu, partly before and partly after him, is a group of philosophical or at least systematic historians, of whom the chief are Dubos (1670-1742), Boulainvilliers (1658-1722), and Mably (1709-1785). Dubos, whose chief work is not historical but aesthetic (Reflexions sur la Poesie et la Peinture}, wrote a so-called Histoire Critique de I Etablissement de la Monarchic Fran^aise, which is as far as possible from being in the modern sense critical, inasmuch as, in the teeth of history, and in order to exalt the Tiers Etat, it pretends an amicable coalition of Franks and Gauls, and not an irruption by the former. Boulainvilliers, on the other hand, maintained the rights of the nobility in virtue and as a consequence of the Frankish conquest. Mably (Observations sur I Histoire de la France) had a much greater influence than either of these writers, and a decidedly mis chievous one, especially at the period of the Revolution. He, more than any one else, is responsible for the ignorant and childish extolling of Greek and Roman institutions, and the still more ignorant depreciation of the Middle Ages, which was for a time characteristic of French politicians. Montesquieu was, as we have said, followed by Turgot (1727-1781), whose writings are few in number, and not re markable for style, but full of original thought. Turgot in his turn was followed by Condorcet (1743-1794), whose tendency is somewhat more sociological than directly his torical. Towards the end of the period, too, a considerable