MR. CARLYLE AND PÈRE BOUHOURS.
Crying injustice and endless heartburnings are caused in social life by the falsehoods which malicious or foolish people shelter under the familiar quotation rubric, "said he" or "said she." For these we may charitably and to some extent allow uncertainty of human memory to go in extenuation.
Rising above the circle of cackling gossip, we know that, out of a dozen witnesses solemnly adjured to testify as to words spoken in simultaneous hearing of all the twelve, it is rare to find any three of them agreeing as to the precise form of locution used, even where they accord as to meaning and signification of the phrase they report.
We pass from the spoken to the written word, and are struck with the fact that, even in literature and in history, the too common neglect of conscientious accuracy of citations, in accepting them at second hand or from a questionable source, is the fruitful cause of wrong judgment of events, false estimate of men, and uncharitableness without end.
If it is sought to hold a man responsible for opinions which he has deliberately written and printed, he is in justice to be held answerable solely by his own record, neither more nor less. No occasion is there here for conflicting testimony. If arraigned for those opinions, let the accusation run—ipsissimis verbis—with what he has written. Otherwise, flaw fatal will be found, and indictment sternly quashed. Scripta manent—his opinions are recorded, and no subsequent version may be heard from him to vary the obligation therein assumed. Neither, therefore, in justice, shall you admit adverse parol testimony in guise of unfriendly gloss or explanation to hold him responsible for more than he has advanced or assumed.
With swift instinct, we all mistrust reported verbal utterances made by a man whose prejudice or whose passion evidently colors his memory and stimulates his imagination. And, although the excuse of mistake or misunderstanding is not admissible where the repetition or citation of printed words is concerned, yet, when a writer is quoted in the spirit of ridicule, blame, or sarcasm, it should suffice to put the reader on inquiry. Before he adopts and thereby vouches for the attributed phrase, let him look well to it that the text is not tampered with, and that the passage, as given, be not modified—not to say changed—by omission or addition. A mere comma too much or too little, as we well know, may make sad havoc with a sentence, and turn truth into falsehood.
Old authors, and even some few careful writers down to the present day, show their appreciation of this responsibility in quotation by intrenching themselves behind an apud in cases where, from any cause, they are unable to verify the correctness of the passage cited; thus throwing the burden of proof on the reporter named by them.
A remarkable instance of the neglect of some such precautions as are here mentioned may be found in a somewhat familiar citation made—and, we may add, made celebrated—by no less a literary authority than Mr. Carlyle.
It occurs in one of his most admirable productions, entitled The State of German Literature.
This essay, which originally appeared, in 1827, as an article in the Edinburgh Review, is rich in literary research and vigorous thought.
It is valuable not only for what it says concerning German literature, but concerning all literature, and is most generally enjoyed and best remembered by reason of its eloquent pillorying and remorseless flagellation of one Père Bouhours, who, as Mr. Carlyle informs us, propounded to himself the pregnant question: Si un Allemand peut avoir de l'esprit? Indignantly the great Scotch essayist thus bursts out upon the unfortunate Frenchman: "Had the Père Bouhours bethought him of what country Kepler and Leibnitz were born, or who it was that gave to mankind the three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion, it might have thrown light on his inquiry. Had he known the Niebelungen-Lied, and where Reinecke-Fuchs, and Faust, and the Ship of Fools, and four-fifths of all the popular mythology, humor, and romance to be found in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, took its rise; had he read a page or two of Ulrich Hutten, Opitz, Paul Flemming, Logan, or even Lobenstein and Hoffmanswaldau, all of whom had already lived and written even in his day; had the Père Bouhours taken this trouble, who knows but he might have found, with whatever amazement, that a German could actually have a little esprit, or, perhaps, even something better? No such trouble was requisite for the Père Bouhours. Motion in vacuo is well known to be speedier and surer than through a resisting medium, especially to imponderable bodies; and so the light Jesuit, unimpeded by facts or principles of any kind, failed not to reach his conclusions; and, in a comfortable frame of mind, to decide negatively that a German could not have any literary talent."
Now, if Père Bouhours really said what is here attributed to him, this fulmination, all obvious as it is, cannot be looked upon as unprovoked, and we may listen with sense of satisfied justice to the dreadful sentence pronounced upon him, which is substantially that, incarcerated in the immortal amber of this one untimely joke, the helpless Jesuit be doomed therein to live; "for the blessing of full oblivion is denied him, and so he hangs suspended to his own noose, over the dusky pool which he struggles toward, but for a great while will not reach." To these remarks Mr. Carlyle adds the very sensible reflection: "For surely the pleasure of despising, at all times and in itself a dangerous luxury, is much safer after the toil of examining than before it."
This condemnation and sentence are based on a detached phrase separated from its contexts, and Mr. Carlyle fails to tell us in what connection or in what work was made the unfortunate speech for which the French writer is thus beaten with many stripes.
Might it not be that, read in its proper relation, his words signify something very different from the interpretation placed upon them as here severed? So true is this that what Père Bouhours really wrote has a very different signification. Investigation demonstrates this and more, and shows that Père Bouhours not only did not mean to express what is here attributed to him, but that he did not even use the words thus thrust upon him as his own.
Indeed, the ill-used Bouhours is introduced and dispatched so very summarily, that the reader of the Edinburgh essay scarcely obtains more than a glance of a literary criminal rapidly judged and sent to swift execution.
Let us see for a moment what manner of man this Bouhours appeared to the people of his day and generation. As then known, he was a writer of high reputation (hors ligne) and the author of several works, some of which are still read and republished. We find certain of his books on the shelves of our largest American libraries, and a few days since, in looking casually through a catalogue of publications made (1869) at the Armenian convent in Venice, an interesting spot well known to American travellers, we noted two editions of Bouhours's Christian Meditations, one in French and one in a Turkish translation.
Bouhours is also the author of a French translation of the entire New Testament, which is remarkable for its fidelity and its purity of diction.
It is the version adopted by Lallemant in his Reflections on the New Testament. He also wrote Remarks and Doubts concerning the French Language, and Ingenious Thoughts of the Fathers. His Manière de bien Penser is held by the best critics to contain much that evinces acuteness and delicacy of discrimination. Bouhours was always quoted and referred to by his contemporaries with deference.
His Life of St. Francis Xavier was found worthy of an English translation by no less a celebrity than the English poet Dryden; and La Harpe, who is openly unfriendly to Bouhours, says of him, "C'était un homme lettré qui savait l'Italien et l'Espagnol."
The passage incorrectly cited by Mr. Carlyle occurs in Les Entretiens a'Ariste et d'Eugène, a small duodecimo volume published in 1671.
These Entretiens or conversations are supposed to be held by two gentlemen of literary taste, who discuss a variety of subjects pertaining to polite literature.
One of these topics is the French language, which is assumed to be the best of all modern languages, possessing, as it does, the secret of uniting conciseness with clearness, and purity with politeness. On this question of his native tongue, the patriotism of Père Bouhours hurries him into terms of excessive praise. The French language, in his opinion, combines every excellence. The Spanish he characterizes as a noisy torrent flooding its banks and overspreading the country; the Italian, as a gentle rivulet; the French, a majestic stream that never quits its level.
The Spanish, again, he compares to a proud beauty, bold in demeanor and splendid in attire; the Italian, to a painted coquette, ever ornamented for effect; the French, to a modest, agreeable lady, who, if apparently prudish, is neither uncivil nor repulsive. Then, he adds, our own pronunciation is the most natural and pleasing.
Patriotism of so warm a character as this, after elevating French language and literature so freely at the expense of the Spanish and Italian, would hardly be likely to rate the German very high.
Accordingly, in view of the great preponderance of heavy though learned disquisition over that branch of German literature which might be classed as polished and witty, Père Bouhours did really propose the question,
SI UN ALLEMAND PEUT ETRE BEL ESPRIT?
—a proposition very far from identical with that which is attributed to him by Mr. Carlyle, namely:
SI UN ALLEMAND PEUT AVOIR DE L'ESPRIT?
The variation simply being that Bouhours did not, as here alleged, decide negatively that a German could not have any literary talent, but queried if a German could be a wit.
Truly a distinction with a difference.
Hallam, seldom incorrect in such matters, presents the matter fairly in stating that the Père Bouhours "proposed the question whether a German can by the nature of things possess any wit."
The misrepresentation made is a serious one, and the citation as corrected deprives Mr. Carlyle's thunder of its noise, and extracts from his sarcasm all its sting.
We believe it was Thackeray who said that, notwithstanding his profound respect and deep veneration for the twelve apostles, they really were not the sort of persons he should care to invite to a festive dinner party.
Père Bouhours would doubtless, as readily as Mr. Carlyle, concede to Kepler and Leibnitz all the merit the most enthusiastic German could claim for these great men as shining lights of science, but would hardly credit them with the ability to write the Xenien or edit the Kladderadatsch.
When Bouhours published his Entretiens, it is very certain that, if German literature shone in wit, the fact was not known west of the Rhine. Indeed, Mr. Carlyle himself, a few paragraphs further on, unconsciously records the fullest vindication of Père Bouhours. With a patriotism quite as fervent as that of his victim, he informs us that "centuries ago translations from the German were comparatively frequent in England," but to support this statement can only cite Luther's Table Talk and Jacob Boehme. Enumeration most scant and melancholy! The essayist then goes on to say: "In the next century, indeed, translation ceased; but then it was, in a great measure, because there was little worth translating. The horrors of the Thirty Years' War had desolated the country; French influence, extending from the courts of princes to the closets of the learned, lay like a baleful incubus over the far nobler ruins of Germany; and all free nationality vanished from its literature, or was heard only in faint tones, which lived in the hearts of the people, but could not reach with any effect to the ears of foreigners."
But as though not satisfied with a general statement which should justify Père Bouhours, Mr. Carlyle continues until he makes the justification clear in terms and specific by dates, telling us: "From the time of Opitz and Flemming to that of Klopstock and Lessing, that is, from the early part of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century, they [the Germans] had scarcely any literature known abroad, or deserving to be known."
Now, Dominic Bouhours, born in Paris, 1628, asked the famous question, Si un Allemand peut être bel esprit? in 1671, and died in 1702. Thus his earthly career was comprised precisely within the period specified by Mr. Carlyle as that during which the Germans were without not only belles-lettres, but any literature whatever deserving to be known.
But, going back to the middle ages, Mr. Carlyle, strangely enough holds Bouhours responsible, because of his want of familiarity with the Niebelungen-Lied, Reinecke-Fuchs, and other monuments of early German literature. "Had he known the Niebelungen-Lied" is asked mockingly. This is hardly just, when we reflect that no one better than Mr. Carlyle knows that Germany of the Bouhours period was itself, in the main, ignorant of and profoundly indifferent to the merits of these remarkable productions. Only long years afterward, following on ages of oblivion as to their very existence in their own country, were they brought to light, and it is principally owing to the exertions of the comparatively new Romantic school that modern Germany has been made acquainted with the Niebelungen-Lied and other great middle-age poems.
It is true that Bodmer in Switzerland first put a portion of the Niebelungen ("Chrimhilde's Revenge") in print, in 1757; but, as Mr. Carlyle has elsewhere informed us, it was August Wilhelm Schlegel who "succeeded in awakening something like a universal popular feeling on the subject," and he refers to this and the like poems as "manuscripts that for ages have lain dormant," and now come "from their archives into public view," "a phenomenon unexpected till of late"—stating that "the Niebelungen is welcomed as a precious national possession—recovered after six centuries of neglect." From which it would appear that, at his peril, Bouhours, in 1671, must be familiar with "a precious national possession" of the Germans, which they themselves, before and after that period, treated with "centuries of neglect." Being a Jesuit, it is, of course, eminently proper, according to a time-honored custom in English literature, that he should be made responsible for everything—the Spanish Inquisition and Original Sin included.
Mr. Carlyle patriotically closes his eyes to English ignorance and indifference touching German literature, even when claiming for Great Britain only a lesser density of ignorance concerning it than afflicted France.
Writing as late as 1827, he fairly admits that the literature and character of Germany "are still very generally unknown to us, or, what is worse, misknown," that its "false and tawdry ware" reached England before "the chaste and truly excellent," and that "Kotzebue's insanity spread faster by some fifty years than Lessing's wisdom." And the British ignorance, it is admitted, is not confined to German literature. "For what more do we know"—thus Mr. Carlyle clinches the question—"of recent Spanish or Italian literature than of German; of Grossi and Manzoni, of Campomanos or Jovellanos, than of Tieck and Richter?"
Really, when we contemplate the enlightened Englishman of 1827 thus held up to our gaze, how can we withhold from the abused Frenchman of 1671 our profound admiration?
Now, if, on reflection, Mr. Carlyle estimates the imputation on German literature of a lack of wit and humor as a serious offence—if he considers actionable and punishable Father Bouhours's query,
SI UN ALLEMAND PEUT ETRE BEL ESPRIT?
he need not go back two centuries for a criminal of whom to make an example. We have in custody for him one of this century—of this decade—nay, of this very year. He is a living culprit, and, moreover, a distinguished one. Here is a copy of the words in which he offends, and, if we are not mistaken, he may be found in Mr. Carlyle's bailiwick: "There is, perhaps, no nation where the general standard of wit and humor is so low as with the Germans—no other people at least are so easily entertained with indifferent jokes" (Saturday Review, London, March 18, 1871).