BOILEAU AND LA FONTAINE
The great name in criticism of the second half of the seventeenth century is that of Boileau. But one of whom Boileau spoke harshly, a soldier, a man of the world, the friend of Ninon de l'Enclos, a sceptical Epicurean, an amateur in letters, Saint-Évremond (1613-1703), among his various writings, aided the cause of criticism by the intuition which he had of what is excellent, by a fineness of judgment as far removed from mere licence as from the pedantry of rules. Fallen into disfavour with the King, Saint-Évremond was received into the literary society of London. His criticism is that of a fastidious taste, of balance and moderation, guided by tradition, yet open to new views if they approved themselves to his culture and good sense. Had his studies been more serious, had his feelings been more generous and ardent, had his moral sense been less shallow, he might have made important contributions to literature. As it was, to be a man of the world was his trade, to be a writer was only an admirable foible.
NICOLAS BOILEAU, named DESPRÉAUX, from a field (pré) of his father's property at Crosne, was born in Paris, 1636, son of the registrar of the Grand Chambre du Palais. His choice of a profession lay between the Church and that with which his father was connected—the law; but though he made some study of theology, and was called to the bar, his inclination for literature could not be resisted. His whole life, indeed, was that of a man of letters—upright, honourable, serious, dignified, simple; generous to the friends whose genius he could justly applaud; merciless to books and authors condemned by his reason, his good sense, his excellent judgment. He was allied by an ardent admiration to Racine, and less intimately to Molière, La Fontaine, and Chapelle; Jansenist through his religious sympathies, and closely attached to the venerable Arnauld; appointed historiographer to the King (1677) together with Racine; an Academician by the King's desire, notwithstanding the opposition of his literary enemies. In his elder years his great position of authority in the world of letters was assured, but he suffered from infirmities of body, and from an increasing severity of temper. In 1711 he died, bequeathing a large sum of money to the poor.
Boileau's literary career falls into three periods—the first, militant and destructive, in which he waged successful war against all that seemed to him false and despicable in art; the second, reconstructive, in which he declared the doctrine of what may be termed literary rationalism, and legislated for the French Parnassus; the third, dating from his appointment as historiographer, a period of comparative repose and, to some extent, of decline, but one in which the principles of his literary faith were maintained and pressed to new conclusions. His writings include twelve satires (of which the ninth, "A son Esprit," is the chief masterpiece); twelve epistles (that to Racine being pre-eminent); the literary-didactic poem, L'Art Poétique; a heroi-comical epic, Le Lutrin; miscellaneous shorter poems (among which may be noted the admirable epitaph on Arnauld, and an unhappy ode, Sur la Prise de Namur, 1693); and various critical studies in prose, his Lucianic dialogue Les Héros de Roman, satirising the extravagant novels not yet dismissed to oblivion, and his somewhat truculent Réflexions sur Longin being specially deserving of attention. The satires preceded in date the epistles; of the former, the first nine belong to the years 1660-67; the first nine of the epistles to the years 1669-77; three satires and three epistles may be described as belated. The year 1674 is memorable as that in which were published L'Art Poétique and the first four chants of Le Lutrin.
The genius of Boileau was in a high degree intellectual, animated by ideas; but it is an error to suppose that a sensuous element is absent from his verse. It is verse of the classical school, firm and clear, but it addresses the ear with a studied harmony, and what Boileau saw he could render into exact, definite, and vivid expression. His imagination was not in a large sense creative; he was wholly lacking in tenderness and sensibility; his feeling for external nature was no more than that of a Parisian bourgeois who enjoys for a day the repose of the fields; but for Paris itself, its various aspects, its life, its types, its manners, he had the eye and the precise rendering of a realist in art; his faithful objective touch is like that of a Dutch painter. As a moralist, he is not searching or profound; he saw too little of the inner world of the heart, and knew too imperfectly its agitations. When, however, he deals with literature—and a just judgment in letters may almost be called an element in morals—all his penetration and power become apparent.
To clear the ground for the new school of nature, truth and reason was Boileau's first task. It was a task which called for courage and skill. The public taste was still uncertain. Laboured and lifeless epics like Chapelain's La Pucelle, petty ingenuities in metre like those of Cotin, violence and over-emphasis, extravagances of sentiment, faded preciosities, inane pastoralisms, gross or vulgar burlesques, tragedies languorous and insipid, lyrics of pretended passion, affectations from the degenerate Italian literature, super-subtleties from Spain—these had still their votaries. And the conduct of life and characters of men of letters were often unworthy of the vocation they professed. "La haine d'un sot livre" was an inspiration for Boileau, as it afterwards was for our English satirist Pope; and he felt deeply that dignity of art is connected with dignity of character and rectitude of life—"Le vers se sent toujours des bassesses de coeur." He struck at the follies and affectations of the world of letters, and he struck with force: it was a needful duty, and one most effectively performed. Certain of the Epistles, which are written with less pitiless severity and with a more accomplished mastery of verse, continue the work of the Satires. From Horace he derived much, something from Juvenal, and something from his predecessor Regnier; but he had not the lightness nor the bonhomie of Horace, nor his easy and amiable wisdom.
In the Art Poétique Boileau is constructive; he exhibits the true doctrine of literature, as he conceived it. Granted genius, fire, imagination—the gifts of heaven—what should be the self-imposed discipline of a poet? Above all, the cultivation of that power which distinguishes false from true, and aids every other faculty—the reason. "Nothing," declares Boileau, "is beautiful save what is true;" nature is the model, the aim and end of art; reason and good sense discern reality; they test the fidelity of the artistic imitation of nature; they alone can vouch for the correspondence of the idea with its object, and the adequacy of the expression to the idea. What is permanent and universal in literature lives by the aid of no fashion of the day, but by virtue of its truth to nature. And hence is derived the authority of the ancient classics, which have been tried by time and have endured; these we do not accept as tyrants, but we may safely follow as guides.
To study nature is, however, before all else to study man—that is, human nature—and to distinguish in human nature what is universal and abiding from what is transitory and accidental; we cannot be expected to discover things absolutely new; it suffices to give to what is true a perfect expression. Unhappily, human nature, as understood by Boileau, included little beyond the court and the town. Unhappily his appreciation of classical literature was defective; to justify as true and natural the mythology of Greece he has to regard it as a body of symbols or a moral allegory. Unhappily his survey of literature was too narrow to include the truths and the splendours of Mediæval poetry and art. For historical truth, indeed, he had little sense; seeking for what is permanent and universal, he had little regard for local colour and the truth of manners. To secure assent from contemporary minds truth must assume what they take to be its image, and a Greek or Roman on the stage must not shock the demand for verisimilitude made by the courtly imagination of the days of Louis Quatorze. Art which fails to please is no longer art.
To the workmanship, the technique of poetry, Boileau attaches a high importance. Its several species—idyl, elegy, ode, sonnet, epigram, rondeau, ballade, madrigal, satire, epic, tragedy, comedy—are separated from one another by fixed boundaries, and each is subject to its own rules; but genius, on occasion, may transcend those rules, and snatch an unauthorised grace. It is difficult to understand why from among the genres of poetry Boileau omitted the fable; perhaps he did not regard its form, now in verse and now in prose, as defined; possibly he was insensible of the perfection to which the fable in verse had been carried by La Fontaine. The fourth chant of the Art Poétique is remarkable for its lofty conception of the position of the poet; its counsels express the dignity of the writer's own literary life. He has been charged not only with cruelty as a satirist, but with the baseness of a flatterer of the great. It would be more just to notice the honourable independence which he maintained, notwithstanding his poetical homage to the King, which was an inevitable requisition. Boileau's influence as a critic of literature can hardly be overrated; it has much in common with the influence of Pope on English literature—beneficial as regards his own time, somewhat restrictive and even tyrannical upon later generations.
Le Lutrin (completed in 1683) is not a burlesque which degrades a noble theme, but, like Pope's far more admirable Rape of the Lock, a heroi-comic poem humorously exalting humble matter of the day. It tells of the combats of ecclesiastics respecting the position of a lectern, combats in which the books of a neighbouring publisher serve as formidable projectiles. The scene is in the Sainte-Chapelle and the Palais de Justice. Boileau's gift for the vivid presentation of visible detail, and his skill in versification, served him here better than did his choice of a subject. On the whole, we think of him less as a poet than as the classical guardian and legislator of poetry. He was an emancipator by directing art towards reason and truth; when larger interpretations of truth and reason than his became possible, his influence acted unfavourably as a constraint.