The writers of memoirs were more happy. At an earlier period, Brantôme (1527-1614), a gentleman attached to the suite of Charles IX. and Henry III., employed his declining years in describing men and manners as he had observed them; and his memoirs are admitted to embody but too faithfully a representation of that singular mixture of elegance and grossness, of superstition and impiety, of chivalrous feelings and licentious morals, which characterized the sixteenth century. The Duke of Sully (1559-1641), the skillful financier of Henry IV., left valuable memoirs of the stirring events of his day. The "Memoirs" of the Cardinal de Betz (1614-1679), who took so active a part in the agitations of the Fronde, embody the enlarged views of the true historian, and breathe the impetuous spirit of a man whose native element is civil commotion, and who looks on the chieftainship of a party as worthy to engage the best powers of his head and heart; but his style abounds with negligences and irregularities which would have shocked the littérateurs of the day.
The Duke de St. Simon (1675-1755) is another of those who made no pretensions to classical writing. All the styles of the seventeenth century are found in him. His language has been compared to a torrent, which appears somewhat incumbered by the debris which it carries, yet makes its way with no less rapidity.
Count Hamilton (1646-1720) narrates the adventures of his brother-in-law, Count de Grammont, of which La Harpe says, "Of all frivolous books, it is the most diverting and ingenious." Much lively narration is here expended on incidents better forgotten.
13. ROMANCE AND LETTER-WRITING.—The growth of kingly power, the order which it established, and the civilization which followed in its train, restrained the development of public life and increased the interests of the social relations. From this new state of things arose a modified kind of romance, in which elevated sentiments replaced the achievements of mediaeval fiction and the military exploits of Mademoiselle de Scudery's tales. Madame de Lafayette introduced that kind of romance in which the absorbing interest is that of conflicting passion, and external events were the occasion of developing the inward life of thought and feeling. She first depicted manners as they really were, relating natural events with gracefulness, instead of narrating those that never could have had existence.
The illustrious Fénelon (1651-1715) was one of the few authors of this period who belonged exclusively to no one class. He appears as a divine in his "Sermons" and "Maxims;" as a rhetorician in his "Dialogues on Eloquence;" as a moralist in his "Education of Girls;" as a politician in his "Examination of the Conscience of a King;" and it may be said that all these characters are combined in "Telemachus," which has procured for him a widespread fame, and which classes him among the romancers. Telemachus was composed with the intention of its becoming a manual for his pupil, the young Duke of Burgundy, on his entrance into manhood. Though its publication caused him the loss of the king's favor, it went through numerous editions, and was translated into every language of Europe. It was considered, in its day, a manual for kings, and it became a standard book, on account of the elegance of its style, the purity of its morals, and the classic taste it was likely to foster in the youthful mind.
Madame de Sévigné made no pretensions to authorship. Her letters were written to her daughter, without the slightest idea that they would be read, except by those to whom they were addressed; but they have immortalized their gifted author, and have been pronounced worthy to occupy an eminent place among the classics of French literature. The matter which these celebrated letters contain is multifarious; they are sketches of Madame de Sévigné's friends, Madame de Lafayette, Madame Scarron, and all the principal personages of that brilliant court, from which, however, she was excluded, in consequence of her early alliance with the Fronde, her friendship for Fouquet, and her Jansenist opinions. All the occurrences, as well as the characters of the day, are touched in these letters; and so graphic is the pen, so clear and easy the style, that we seem to live in those brilliant days, and to see all that was going on. Great events are detailed in the same tone as court gossip; Louis XIV., Turenne, Condé, the wars of France and of the empire are freely mingled with details of housewifery, projects of marriage,—in short, the seventeenth century is depicted in the correspondence of two women who knew nothing so important as their own affairs.
Considerable interest attaches also to the letters of Madame de Maintenon (1635-1719), a lady whose life presents singular contrasts, worthy of the time. To her influence on the king, after her private marriage to him, is attributed much that is inauspicious in the latter part of his reign, the combination of ascetic devotion and religious bigotry with the most flagrant immorality, the appointment of unskillful generals and weak- minded ministers, the persecution of the Jansenists, and, above all, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had secured religious freedom to the Protestants.
PERIOD THIRD.
LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF THE REVOLUTION AND OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (1700-1885).
1. THE DAWN OF SKEPTICISM.—In the age just past we have seen religion, antiquity, and the monarchy of Louis XIV., each exercising a distinct and powerful influence over the buoyancy of French genius, which cheerfully submitted to their restraining power. A school of taste and elegance had been formed, under these circumstances, which gave law to the rest of Europe and constituted France the leading spirit of the age. On the other hand, the dominant influences of the eighteenth century were a skeptical philosophy, a preference for modern literature, and a rage for political reform. The transition, however, was not sudden nor immediate, and we come now to the consideration of those works which occupy the midway position between the submissive age of Louis XIV. and the daring infidelity and republicanism of the eighteenth century.