The Later Renaissance

by David Hannay

Du Bartas.

Guillaume Salluste, Seigneur du Bartas, was born in or about 1544, at Montfort, near Auch, in Gascony. He served Henry IV. both in diplomacy and in war, and died in 1590 of wounds received at the battle of Ivry. Du Bartas was one of the many of his time who in a once favourite phrase were “tam Marte quam Mercurio,” equally devoted to arms and to letters. On the suggestion of Jeanne d’Albret, the Queen of Navarre, he began by writing a poem on the story of Judith; but his fame was gained by the Semaine, or “Week of Creation,” published in 1579. It was followed by the Uranie, the Triomphe de la Foi, and the Seconde Semaine, of which part was published in 1584, and which remained unfinished at his death. Du Bartas is an interesting figure, and his literary fortune has been curious. With men of his class in France a profession of Protestantism was commonly only a form of political opposition. They were “of the Religion” because they were the enemies of the House of Guise, and the great majority of them fell away from it in the following generations. But with Du Bartas the religious enthusiasm was manifestly real. He was of the Puritan type, and in that lies part, at least, of the explanation of his strange literary fortune in his own country. He was at first extraordinarily popular. Even Ronsard praised him, and sent him a present of a pen. But his party began to claim that he was the superior of the courtier poet. This not unnaturally drew from Ronsard the emphatic denial of the sonnet to Daurat, and the opinion of Frenchmen has been favourable to the older poet. Du Bartas has been treated with neglect, and even contempt, by his own countrymen.[94] Abroad he has had better fortune. He was widely translated. The English version of Joshua Sylvester was long popular with us, and in comparatively recent times he has been praised by Goethe for showing qualities wanting in other Frenchmen. But Frenchmen, to whom the Puritan type has always been uncongenial, have disliked him on those very grounds. They have always insisted on looking exclusively at his faults, his want of taste, his provincialism, and his pedantry. All are undeniable, but the critics who have endeavoured to secure justice for the Pléiade ought to have remembered that this last was only an exaggeration of the teaching of Ronsard and Du Bellay. They had recommended adaptation of the language of classic poetry, Greek and Latin. They had used inversions, and had argued that French writers were entitled to form compound words on the Greek model. Du Bellay, for example, justifies the construction of such a word as “fervêtu.” Du Bartas certainly took a very wide licence in this respect. He wrote such lines as—

“Le feu donne-clarté, porte-chaud jette-flamme;”

and careful examiners have found more than three hundred examples of such words in his verse. As the French have not chosen to make use of a freedom legitimate enough in a language which contains such words as marche-pied and aigredoux, Du Bartas has suffered for his boldness. It is easy enough to find pedantry and bad taste in him; and it would be easy, by confining attention to the “Pindaric” side of Ronsard, to show that he was a stilted and pompous writer. But it is no less the case that there is a vehement grandeur in Du Bartas which is painfully rare in the correct poetry of France. It may be fairly said that if the quality of the French mind, which Frenchmen call “le bon sens français,” achieved one of its triumphs when it wholly rejected Du Bartas, it also condemned its literature to possess no Milton. When it is your exclusive ambition to be without fault, to be merely correct, your safest course is to abstain. If you will keep from the “wine cup” and “the red gold,” from love, adventure, and ambition, then you may “easy live and quiet die”; but you will hardly do anything passionate. Nothing is so “correct” as cold water.

Agrippa D’Aubigné.

Theodore Agrippa D’Aubigné, the contemporary, friend, and kindred spirit of Du Bartas, was a gentleman of an ancient family in Saintonge. His long life was full of agitation and many-sided activity. Jean D’Aubigné, his father, was Chancellor of Navarre. The son was born in 1550, and received a careful education, by which he unquestionably profited, though we may doubt the exact accuracy of his own assertion that he could read Greek, Latin, and Hebrew at the age of six. Jean D’Aubigné was a vehement Calvinist. It is one of the best-known stories of the time that he made his son, then a mere boy, swear, in the presence of the decapitated heads of La Renaudie and the other chiefs of the conspiracy of Amboise, to revenge their deaths. D’Aubigné kept this “oath of Hannibal” to the end of his life. When only nine years old he risked the stake, “his horror of the Mass having overcome his fear of the fire.” He took part in the defence of Orleans in the first war of Religion, and from thence escaped to Geneva, where he studied under Theodore Beza. At a later time he served under Condé, and then attached himself to Henry of Navarre. It was his good fortune to be in hiding for a duel when the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew took place. He remained with Henry at the French Court. During this period he seems to have so far departed from the rigidity of his principles as to bow down with his master “in the temple of Rimmon.” At this time he certainly met Ronsard, and fell under his influence. He wrote court poetry, composed a tragedy, and belonged to the Academy of Baïf. When Henry of Navarre made his escape, D’Aubigné accompanied him. The Bearnais had no more daring or faithful servant, and none who spoke to him with a ruder frankness. The abjuration of Henry IV. was a bitter blow to D’Aubigné, and he risked his master’s favour by his blunt condemnation of that politic act. Yet Henry knew the essential fidelity of D’Aubigné, and left him the possession of his offices of Governor of Saintonge and Vice-Admiral of Poitou. After the murder of the king he took part in the unfortunate opposition to Marie de Medici. The publication of his Histoire Universelle aroused enemies against him, and in 1620 he fled to Geneva, where he died in 1630, energetic to the last—“lassé de vains travaux, rassasié, et non ennuyé de vivre,” as he describes himself in his will. The prose work of D’Aubigné is very large, and will be dealt with elsewhere.[95] His poetry is divided into the lighter verse which he wrote under the influence of Ronsard, and Les Tragiques, which unquestionably show the influence of Du Bartas. If his own words are to be taken in the literal sense, they were written in the very stress of the war with the League; but there is internal evidence that this can only be true of the three first. The others were at least largely written after the peace of Vervins in 1598. There are seven poems in Les Tragiques, called Misères, Princes, La Chambre Dorée, Les Feux, Les Fers, Vengeances, Jugement. They are historical poems, written in verse which is sometimes heavy, but often magnificent, and always animated by a grim force. D’Aubigné denounces wickedness in the form of a Latin satirist; but the spirit comes from the Hebrew prophet, and that is perhaps belittled if we call it satire.

It would be difficult to find a sharper contrast than is shown between the long restless life of D’Aubigné and the career of Mathurin Regnier. He was born at Chartres in 1573, in a family of the middle class, and was nephew to the prosperous court poet Desportes. His family destined him to the Church, and he was tonsured at the age of eleven. By the influence, in all probability, of his uncle, he was appointed to a place in the suite of the Cardinal Joyeuse, French Ambassador in Italy. Later on he was provided for by a canonry in his native town, and died there in 1613. The character of Regnier may unfortunately be described nearly in the terms which the Duke of Wellington used of an English military adventurer who had served under him in the Peninsula. He was, said the Duke, “a brave fellow, but a sad drunken dog.” A considerable poet, but a sad drunken dog, is, it is to be feared, the description of Regnier. His habits rather than the quality of his verse justify the epithet of “cynical” which has been applied to him.[96] Although he wrote other verse, including some fine lyrics, Regnier is chiefly memorable as a satirist. This he was in the proper sense of the word. He attacked vices, and did not only say savage things about people whom he disliked. In the form of his verse Regnier was so far correct that he escaped the condemnation which the school of Malherbe passed on all the other poets of his century. Yet he kept much of the freedom of the earlier time, and in his ninth satire he pointed out with admirable precision exactly what were the weaknesses of the reform of Malherbe. There is an individuality and an air of sincerity in Regnier which saves his work from the too common fault of modern satire—which is to be a mere echo of Juvenal, verse written not because the author feels any indignation, but only because he thought it a distinguished action to imitate the classics and scold his contemporaries.

The ambition of the Pléiade included the reform of dramatic as well as of other literature. Its poets wished to replace the Mysteries, Moralities, “Sotties,” and “Farces” by tragedy and comedy. Their chances of success in this field might have seemed, if anything, more promising than elsewhere. The taste for the theatre was very strong in France. In Paris there existed a guild, established by charter from the king in 1402, for the performance of mysteries and moralities, which possessed a theatre at the Hospital de la Trinité, near the gate of St Denis. Two other societies, the Clercs de la Bazoche, or Clerks of the Parliament of Paris, and the Enfants sans Souci, a body of volunteers who performed farces, existed by the side of, and to some extent under the control of, the chief guild, which was called the Confrérie de la Passion. In the provinces there were numerous societies named puys which existed to produce plays. And while the stage enjoyed so much popularity, a number of causes were at work to render it no longer possible to continue the religious plays of the Middle Ages. The influence of the Renaissance helped to discredit their form, while the spread of the Reformation began to make their old downright realistic piety look ridiculous. As early as 1540 the Parliament of Paris had protested against the performances of the Confrérie de la Passion as leading to scandal. In 1548 it was strictly forbidden to present religious mysteries.

The dramatic work of the Pléiade.

As the poets of the Pléiade were just about organising themselves in those years, and were to present their first attempt to repeat the classic models in French in 1552, it would seem on the face of it that they had a singularly favourable opportunity. They had only to step into the place left vacant. But that was in reality far from being the case. Although the Confrérie de la Passion was forbidden to play sacred mysteries, it was left in possession of its exclusive privilege to open a theatre in Paris, and was thus able to silence all rivals. The tradesmen and artisans who formed the guild were little likely to favour their contemptuous literary rivals, while the poets were as little disposed to go cap in hand to such masters. Thus the men of letters were practically shut out from the real stage, and were driven to seek a chance of getting their pieces acted at Court or in colleges. They had no access to any body of actors. We need not attach too great importance to this exclusion from the real theatre. If Jodelle and Garnier had possessed dramatic genius of a high order, their works would bear witness for them. In time, too—the date is 1588—the Confrérie de la Passion did consent to the establishment of an independent theatre. After the restoration of peace in 1593 there was always one in Paris. Thenceforward it was within the power of any Frenchman who possessed the necessary faculties to be the Lope de Vega or the Shakespeare of his country. If none appeared, it was doubtless because no such Frenchman was born; and perhaps in the long-run the non-appearance of the right man is the one adequate explanation of the want of any form of literature in any country. Yet it may be allowed that the monopoly of the Confrérie did have a certain effect on the dramatic work of the Pléiade by confining them to coteries and colleges, and so intensifying whatever tendency there was in them to produce mere school exercises on a classic model. It must also be kept in mind that the sacred mysteries continued to be acted in the provinces. A few traces of them are to be found to this day in the form of the religious marionette plays performed in Brittany. In Paris itself the Confrérie de la Passion continued to give profane mysteries, which appear to have been long straggling successions of scenes taken from history, or from the tales of chivalry through Ariosto. Its stage has this much vitality, that it was used for political purposes by the League. But all this belongs to the history of the stage proper or to curiosity, not to literature.