Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/417

 FRANCE (LANGUAGE AND LITEEATURE) 405 the funeral orations of Bossuet, full of pathos and religious melancholy ; of Fie" chier, remark- able for artistic finish ; the sermons of Bourda- loue, the powerful dialectician, of Massillon, the most exquisite and most attractive of preachers, and of Fenelon, two of whose sermons place him in the same rank with Bossuet. Tragedy, in the hands of Racine, lost perhaps a little of the imposing character with which it had been in- vested by Corneille, but teemed with the most touching human feelings, clothed in a language unapproachable for correctness, elegance, and sweetness. Andromaque, IpJiigenie, and Phedre remind us of the productions of ancient Greece, while Athalie brings on the stage in a style of adequate splendor an episode of the Hebrew annals. Comedy, which had been successfully attempted by Corneille in Le menteur, reached its highest pitch with Moliere ; his master- pieces, Le misanthrope, Tartufe, L'Avare, and Les femmes savantes, are profound and humor- ous creations. L'Ecole des maris and ISficole des femmes, which are scarcely inferior, Amphy- trion, a licentious but exceedingly attractive comedy, Lefestin de Pierre, a strange mixture of the comic and dramatic elements, several farces, Le bourgeois gentilhomme and Le ma- lade imaginaire, afford abundant evidence of Moli^re's flexibility of genius no less than of his power of observation. After him, but at a great distance in point of merit, Regnard, Dancourt, and Dufresny furnished the French stage with light comic sketches. Fable, through La Fon- taine's genius, was but comedy on a smaller scale ; this inimitable poet, whose popularity is unrivalled as it is unfailing, had presented in his collection of fables " a drama in a hundred acts," animated by truthfulness and keenness of observation, transparency of narrative, and humorous fancy. Most of these qualities are also found in his miscellaneous poems, and especially in his "Tales," whose licentiousness, however, renders them unfit for general read- ing. Didactic, philosophical, and satirical poetry, that is, poetry under its less poetical forms, had as its representative Boileau, who finished the work previously undertaken by Malherbe ; his Art poetique, his Epitres, his Satires, as well as his heroico-comic poem Le lutrin, are remarkable for good sense and sym- metry ; they abound with wise maxims and common truths finely expressed, but are en- tirely deficient in poetical enthusiasm. Moral philosophy was not neglected. Malebranche, the disciple of Descartes, the sagacious and imaginative author of La recherche de la verite, Bossuet in his Connaissance de Dieu et de soi- meme, F6nelon in his treatise De V existence de Dieu, and Pascal in fragments which have been collected under the title of Pensees, consider- ed the highest problems of humanity from a Christian point of view ; while La Rochefou- cauld in his Sentences et maximes wrote a libel upon mankind, and La Bruyere in his Carac- teres drew vivid and amusing sketches of human characters, manners, and oddities. History, which under the pens of Saint-Re" al and Yertot was but a faint imitation of the style of ancient historians, was treated with some energy by Mezeray in his Histoire de France, and with ingenuity by Fleury in his Histoire de VEglise, while Bossuet clothed it with an imposing char- acter of eloquence in his Discours sur Phis- toire universelle, and with the earnestness of theological ^discussion in his Histoire des varia- tions des Eglises protestantes. The personal Memoires of Cardinal de Retz concerning the wars of the Fronde are among the masterpieces of familiar history. Hamilton's Memoires du comte de Gramont brings us to lighter kinds of literature. The novels of Mme. de Lafay- ette, Zalde and La princesse de Cleves, pre- sent a faithful though somewhat ideal picture of elegant society, into which we penetrate through the familiar letters written by Mme. de Sevigne" to her daughter and friends ; these letters furnish us with a complete and lively panorama of the social life of th'e age. Fe"ne- lon's Telemaque, which is written in an epic form, and can scarcely be ranked among nov- els, created a deep sensation at the end of the 17th century, being considered an indirect censure of Louis XIV., gained great popularity on the same account during the following reign, and deservedly keeps a high rank among French standard works ; it marks the crowning point of a remarkable literary period. We now reach the age that has been called philosophical par excellence, A number of free thinkers, among whom Bayle, the author of the great Dictionnaire Jiistorique, is the leading spirit, and certain poets, Chaulieu especially, had been paving the way for the coming philoso- phers. The 17th century had been on the whole a religious age; the 18th was eminently an age of skepticism and infidelity. Literature now became a means of conveying bold opin- ions or assaulting time-honored creeds and in- stitutions. Four men of genius, Montesquieu, Voltaire, J. J. Rousseau, and Buffon, exercised the most powerful influence over their con- temporaries, while each acted a different part in the general struggle. Montesquieu, a writer of unusual scope of mind, combining a mascu- line vigor with great brilliancy of style, com- menced his career by publishing Les lettres persanes, a satire on French manners, govern- ment, and even religion. He illustrated the philosophy of history in his Considerations sur la grandeur et la decadence des Romains, a mas- terpiece of historical style ; and finally pro- duced the Esprit des lois, a profound disquisi- tion upon general legislation " a book," says Vinet, " with which genius was inspired by jus- tice and humanity." Voltaire, the true per- sonification of his age, protean in disposition as well as in talents, was destined by his faults no less than his good qualities to ^ be- come at once a leader; and the power he seized when still young, he preserved unimpaired to his last moment. He was for half a century the king of public opinion. His wonderfulter-