Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities

by Anne C. Lynch Botta

The age of Descartes was an interesting era in the annals of the human mind. The darkness of scholastic philosophy was gradually clearing away before the light which an improved method of study was shedding over the natural sciences. A system of philosophy, founded on observation, was preparing the downfall of those traditional errors which had long held the mastery in the schools. Geometricians, physicians, and astronomers taught, by their example, the severe process of reasoning which was to regenerate all the sciences; and minds of the first order, scattered in various parts of Europe, communicated to each other the results of their labors, and stimulated each other to new exertions.

One of the most eminent contemporaries of Descartes was Pascal (1628- 1662). At the age of sixteen he wrote a treatise on conic sections, which was followed by several important discoveries in arithmetic and geometry. His experiments in natural science added to his fame, and he was recognized as one of the most eminent geometricians of modern times. But he soon formed the design of abandoning science for pursuits exclusively religious, and circumstances arose which became the occasion of those "Provincial Letters," which, with the "Pensées de la Religion," are considered among the finest specimens of French literature.

The abbey of Port Royal occupied a lonely situation about six leagues from Paris. Its internal discipline had recently undergone a thorough reformation, and the abbey rose to such a high reputation, that men of piety and learning took up their abode in its vicinity, to enjoy literary leisure. The establishment received pupils, and its system of education became celebrated in a religious and intellectual point of view. The great rivals of the Port Royalists were the Jesuits. Pascal, though not a member of the establishment, was a frequent visitor, and one of his friends there, having been drawn into a controversy with the Sorbonne on the doctrines of the Jansenists, had recourse to his aid in replying. Pascal published a series of letters in a dramatic form, in which he brought his adversaries on the stage with himself, and fairly cut them up for the public amusement. These letters, combining the comic pleasantry of Molière with the eloquence of Demosthenes, so elegant and attractive in style, and so clear and popular that a child might understand them, gained immediate attention; but the Jesuits, whose policy and doctrines they attacked, finally induced the parliament of Provence to condemn them to be burned by the common hangman; and the Port Royalists, refusing to renounce their opinions, were driven from their retreat, and the establishment broken up. Pascal's masterpiece is the "Pensées de la Religion;" it consists of fragments of thought, without apparent connection or unity of design. These thoughts are in some places obscure; they contain repetitions, and even contradictions, and require that arrangement that could only have been supplied by the hand of the writer. It has often been lamented that the author never constructed the edifice which it is believed he had designed, and of which these thoughts were the splendid materials.

6. THE RISE OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF FRENCH LITERATURE.—When Louis XIV. came to the throne (1638-1715), France was already subject to conditions certain to produce a brilliant period in literature. She had been brought into close relations with Spain and Italy, the countries then the most advanced in intellectual culture; and she had received from the study of the ancient masters the best correctives of whatever might have been extravagant in the national genius. She had learned some useful lessons from the polemical distractions of the sixteenth century. The religious earnestness excited by controversy was gratified by preachers of high endowments, and the political ascendency of France, among the kingdoms of Europe, imparted a general freedom and buoyancy. But of all the influences which contributed to perfect the literature of France in the latter half of the seventeenth century, none was so powerful as that of the monarch himself, who, by his personal power, rendered his court a centre of knowledge, and, by his government, imparted a feeling of security to those who lived under it. The predominance of the sovereign became the most prominent feature in the social character of the age, and the whole circle of the literature bears its impress. Louis elevated and improved, in no small degree, the position of literary men, by granting pensions to some, while he raised others to high offices of state; or they were recompensed by the public, through the general taste, which the monarch so largely contributed to diffuse.

The age, unlike that which followed it, was one of order and specialty in literature; and in classifying its literary riches, we shall find the principal authors presenting themselves under the different subjects: Racine with tragedy, Molière with comedy, Boileau with satirical and mock- heroic, La Fontaine with narrative poetry, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Massillon with pulpit eloquence; Patru, Pellisson, and some others with that of the bar; Bossuet, de Retz, and St. Simon with history and memoirs; Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère with moral philosophy; Fénelon and Madame de Lafayette with romance; and Madame de Sévigné with letter-writing.

The personal influence of the king was most marked on pulpit eloquence and dramatic poetry. Other branches found less favor, from his dislike to those who chiefly treated them. The recollections of the Fronde had left in his mind a distrust of Rochefoucauld. A similar feeling of political jealousy, with a thorough hatred of bel esprit, especially in a woman, prevented him from appreciating Madame de Sévigné; and he seems not even to have observed La Bruyère, in his modest functions as teacher of history to the Duke of Burgundy. He had no taste for the pure mental speculations of Malebranche or Fénelon; and in metaphysics, as in religion, had little patience for what was beyond the good sense of ordinary individuals. The same hatred of excess rendered him equally the enemy of refiners and free- thinkers, so that the like exile fell to the lot of Arnauld and Bayle, the one carrying to the extreme the doctrines of grace, and the other those of skeptical inquiry. Nor did he relish the excessive simplicity of La Fontaine, or deem that his talent was a sufficient compensation for his slovenly manners and inaptitude for court life. Of all these writers it may be said, that they flourished rather in spite of the personal influence of the monarch than under his favor.

7. TRAGEDY.—The first dramas of Racine (1639-1699) were but feeble imitations of Corneille, who advised the young author to attempt no more tragedy. He replied by producing "Andromaque," which had a most powerful effect upon the stage. The poet had discovered that sympathy was a more powerful source of tragic effect than admiration, and he accordingly employed the powers of his genius in a truthful expression of feeling and character, and a thrilling alternation of hope and fear, anger and pity. "Andromaque" was followed almost every year by a work of similar character. Henrietta of England induced Corneille and Racine, unknown to each other, to produce a tragedy on Berenice, in order to contrast the powers of these illustrious rivals. They were represented in the year 1670; that of Corneille proved a failure, but Racine's was honored; by the tears of the court and the city. Soon after, partly disgusted at the intrigues against him, and partly from religious principle, Racine abandoned his career while yet in the full vigor of his life and genius. He was appointed historiographer to the king, conjointly with Boileau, and after twelve years of silence he was induced by Madame de Maintenon to compose the drama of "Esther" for the pupils in the Maison de St. Cyr, which met with prodigious success. "Athalie," considered the most perfect of his works, was composed with similar views; theatricals having been abandoned at the school, however, the play was published, but found no readers. Discouraged by this second injustice, Racine finally abandoned the drama. "Athalie" was but little known till the year 1716, since when its reputation has considerably augmented. Voltaire pronounced it the most perfect work of human genius. The subject of this drama is taken from the twenty-second and twenty-third chapter of II. Chronicles, where it is written that Athaliah, to avenge the death of her son, destroyed all the seed royal of the house of Judah, but that the young Joash was stolen from among the rest by his aunt Jehoshabeath, the wife of the high-priest, and hidden with his nurse for six years in the temple. Besides numerous tragedies, Racine composed odes, epigrams, and spiritual songs. By a rare combination of talents he wrote as well in prose as in verse. His "History of the Reign of Louis XIV." was destroyed by a conflagration, but there remain the "History of Port Royal," some pleasing letters, and some academic discourses. The tragedies of Racine are more elegant than those of Corneille, though less bold and striking. Corneille's principal characters are heroes and heroines thrown into situations of extremity, and displaying strength of mind superior to their position. Racine's characters are men, not heroes,—men such as they are, not such as they might possibly be.

France produced no other tragic dramatists of the first class in this age.
Somewhat later, Crébillon (1674-1762), in such wild tragedies as "Atrea,"
"Electra," and "Rhadamiste," introduced a new element, that of terror, as
a source of tragic effect.

Cardinal Mazarin had brought from Italy the opera or lyric tragedy, which was cultivated with success by Quinault (1637-1688). He is said to have taken the bones out of the French language by cultivating an art in which thought, incident, and dialogue are made secondary to the development of tender and voluptuous feeling.

8. COMEDY.—The comic drama, which occupied the French stage till the middle of the seventeenth century, was the comedy of intrigue, borrowed from Spain, and turning on disguises, dark lanterns, and trap-doors to help or hinder the design of personages who were types, not of individual character, but of classes, as doctors, lawyers, lovers, and confidants. It was reserved for Molière (1622-1673) to demolish all this childishness, and enthrone the true Thalia on the French stage. Like Shakspeare, he was both an author and an actor. The appearance of the "Précieuses Ridicules" was the first of the comedies in which the gifted poet assailed the follies of his age. The object of this satire was the system of solemn sentimentality which at this time was considered the perfection of elegance. It will be remembered that there existed at Paris a coterie of fashionable women who pretended to the most exalted refinement both of feeling and expression, and that these were waited upon and worshiped by a set of nobles and littérateurs, who used towards them a peculiar strain of high-flown, pedantic gallantry. These ladies adopted fictitious names for themselves and gave enigmatical ones to the commonest things. They lavished upon each other the most tender appellations, as though in contrast to the frigid tone in which the Platonism of the Hotel required them to address the gentlemen of their circle. Ma chère, ma précieuse, were the terms most frequently used by the leaders of this world of folly, and a précieuse came to be synonymous with a lady of the clique; hence the title of the comedy. The piece was received with unanimous applause; a more signal victory could not have been gained by a comic poet, and from the time of its first representation this bombastic nonsense was given up. Molière, perceiving that he had struck the true vein, resolved to study human nature more and Plautus and Terence less. Comedy after comedy followed, which were true pictures of the follies of society; but whatever was the theme of his satire, all proved that he had a falcon's eye for detecting vice and folly in every shape, and talons for pouncing upon all as the natural prey of the satirist. On the boards he always took the principal character himself, and he was a comedian in every look and gesture. The "Malade Imaginaire" was the last of his works. When it was produced upon the stage, the poet himself was really ill, but repressing the voice of natural suffering, to affect that of the hypochondriac for public amusement, he was seized with a convulsive cough, and carried home dying. Though he was denied the last offices of the church, and his remains were with difficulty allowed Christian burial, in the following century his bust was placed in the Academy, and a monument erected to his memory in the cemetery of Père la Chaise. The best of Molière's works are, "Le Misanthrope," "Les Femmes Savantes," and "Tartuffe;" these are considered models of high comedy. Other comedians followed, but at a great distance from him in point of merit.