Chénier.
André Marie de Chénier[285], beyond question the greatest poet of the eighteenth century in France, was born at Constantinople, where his father was consul-general, in 1762. His mother was a Greek. His family returned to France when he was a child; he was educated carefully, and for a short time served in the army, but soon left it. After a time he was attached (in 1787) to the French embassy in London. Here he spent four years. Returning to France he sympathised, but on the moderate side, with the Revolution. The growth of the Jacobin spirit horrified him, and the excesses of the summer of 1792 decided his attitude and his fate. He wrote frequently in the Journal de Paris, the organ of the moderate royalist party. Although he did not in any way put himself forward, he was at last arrested in March, 1794, and was guillotined on the seventh Thermidor, two days only before the event which would have saved him, the fall of Robespierre. His poems were not published till long after his death, and the text of them is even now in an unsatisfactory condition, many having been left unfinished and uncorrected by the author. André Chénier is sometimes considered as a precursor of the Romantic reform, but this is a mistake. His critical comments on Shakespeare and other writers, his favourite studies, which were confined to the Greek and Latin classics and the humanists of the Italian Renaissance, above all his poems themselves, prove the contrary. A Greek by birthplace, and half a Greek by blood, his tastes and standards were wholly classical. But the fire and force of his poetical genius made the blood circulate afresh in the veins of the old French classical tradition, without, however, permanently strengthening or renovating it. The poetry of Chénier is still in the main the poetry of Racine, though with infinitely more glow of colour and variety of harmony. His poems are mostly antique in their titles and plan, eclogues, elegies, and so forth, and are not free from a certain artificiality inseparable from the style. La Jeune Tarentine, La Jeune Captive, L'Aveugle, and some others, are of extreme merit, and all over his work (much of which is in the most fragmentary condition) lines and phrases of extraordinary beauty are scattered. The noble Iambes, or political and satirical poems, which he wrote in prison, just before his death, bear out, perhaps better than anything else, his well-known saying, as he touched his head when sentence had been passed, 'et pourtant il y avait quelque chose là.'
Minor Poets.
A few other poets or verse-makers of merit before the revival of poetry proper must be rapidly noticed. The fable of La Fontaine was cultivated vigorously, in particular by Florian, a favourite pupil of Voltaire, who will reappear in these pages. Florian's fables are graceful copies of his master. Those of Arnault, with less grace, have more originality; often, indeed, Arnault's short moral poems are not so much fables as what used to be called in English 'emblems.' The most famous of these, which of itself deserves to keep Arnault's memory green, is 'La Feuille.' Marie Joseph Chénier, the younger brother of André, and, unlike him, a fervent republican, is chiefly known as a dramatist. He had, however, a vein of satirical verse, which was not commonplace. Another dramatist, Andrieux, also deserves mention in passing. Superior to either of these as a poet, and wanting only the good-fortune of having been born a little later, was Nepomucène Lemercier, a playwright of no small merit, and a poet of extraordinary but unequal vigour. The Panhypocrisiade, a kind of satirical epic par personnages (to use the old French expression for a dramatic narrative), is his principal work, and a very remarkable one. Last of all have to be mentioned Fontanes and Chênedollé, who are the characteristic poets of the Empire, with the exception of an epic school of no value. The chief importance of Fontanes in literature is derived not from any performances of his own, but from the fact that he was the appointed intermediary between Napoleon and the men of letters of the time, and was able to exercise a good deal of useful patronage. Chênedollé was in production, if not in publication, for he published late in life, a precursor of Lamartine, much of whose style and manner may be found in him. An amiable appreciation of natural beauty, and a tendency to facile pathos, derived from the contemplation of natural objects, distinguish him from his predecessors.
Light verse. Piron.
Désaugiers.
The vigorous, if not always edifying, work of the song-writers and authors of vers de société during this century remains to be noticed. The example of La Fontaine's tales was followed by many writers of more talent than scruple, but their literary value is not sufficient to entitle them to a place here. No history of French literature, however, would be complete without a notice of Piron, the greatest epigrammatist of France, and one of her keenest and brightest wits. Piron's temper was an idle one, and he did little solid work in literature, except his epigrams and one comedy, La Métromanie. He wrote many vaudevilles and operettas, and no one, with the possible exception of Catullus, has ever excelled him in the art of packing in a few light and graceful lines the greatest possible quantity of malicious wit. Panard, also a vaudevillist, is remarkable for the number and excellence of his drinking songs, and the variety and melody of their rhythm. Collé, author of amusing but spiteful memoirs, and, like Piron and Panard, a writer of comic operettas, excelled rather in the political chanson. Gentil Bernard, the Cardinal de Bernis, the Abbé Boufflers, and Dorat, were all writers of vers de société, the last being much the best. Their style of writing was frivolous and conventional in the extreme, but long practice and the vogue which it enjoyed in French society had brought it to something like the condition of a fine art. Dorat was surnamed by a contemporary the 'glowworm of Parnassus.' The expression was not an unhappy one, and may be fairly applied to the other authors who have been mentioned in his company. He himself was a rather voluminous author in different styles. The literary baggage of the others is not heavy. Vadé, a writer of light and trifling verse, who died comparatively young, devoted himself to composing poems in the 'poissard' dialect of Paris, which are among the best of such things. At the close of the century, and deserving more particular notice, appeared Désaugiers, the best light song-writer of France, with the single exception of Béranger, and preferred to him by some critics. Désaugiers escaped the revolution by good fortune, had a short but rather adventurous career of foreign travel, and then settled down to vaudeville-writing, song-making, and jovial living in Paris. He was a great frequenter of the Caveau, a kind of irregular club of men of letters which had been instituted by Piron and his friends, and which long continued to be a literary and social rendezvous. Désaugiers was the last of the older class of Chansonniers, who relied chiefly on love and wine for their subjects, and who, if they touched on politics at all, touched on them merely from the personal and satirical point of view, with occasional indulgence in cheap patriotism. His songs have great sweetness and ease, but they contain nothing that can compare with Béranger in his more serious and pathetic mood[286].
This is a sketch, necessarily and designedly rapid, of the poetical history of the eighteenth century in France. The matter thus rapidly treated is of no small interest to professed students of literature; it abounds in curious social indications; it gives frequent instances of the extremest ingenuity applied to somewhat unworthy use. But in the history of the literature as a whole, and to those who have to regard it not as a collection of curiosities, but as a fruitful field of great and noble work, it cannot but be of subordinate interest, and as such requires but cursory treatment here[287].
FOOTNOTES:
[284] Editions of almost all authors of any merit from the beginning of the eighteenth century are common and accessible enough. They will, therefore, not be specially indicated henceforward unless there is some special reason for the citation, such as the peculiar elegance or literary merit of a particular edition, or else the comparative rarity of the book in any form.