A Short History of French Literature

by George Saintsbury

ESSAYISTS, MINOR MORALISTS, CRITICS.

Occasional Writing in the Eighteenth-century. Periodicals.

What may be, for want of a better word, called occasional writing in prose received a considerable development during the eighteenth century. Some of the forms which it had previously taken, the Pensée, the maxim, and so forth, were less practised, though at the beginning and end of our present period two remarkable men, Vauvenargues and Joubert, distinguished themselves in them, and in the form of satirical aphorism Chamfort and Rivarol, before and during the Revolution, brought them to great perfection. But it was powerfully encouraged by the institution of official éloges, pronounced in the French Academy on famous men of the immediate or remoter past, and of prize essays, subjects for which, in ever increasing numbers, were proposed, not merely by that body, but by provincial societies of a similar but humbler kind. More than all this, the growth of periodical literature, though not exactly rapid, was steady, and gave opportunity for the cultivation of the two main branches of occasional writing as it is understood in modern times, namely, social or ethical essays of the Addisonian kind, and critical studies, literary or other. A great impetus was given to this by the novelist Prévost, who, after his return from England, edited, as has been observed, more than one avowed imitation of the English Spectator and Tatler. At the beginning of the century the chief place among newspapers was occupied by the Mercure Galant, which had enjoyed the contempt of La Bruyère, and the management of Visé and Thomas Corneille. Towards the middle and end of the period, the Gazette de France, under the management of Suard, held the principal place with a somewhat higher aim; and of non-official publications the Jesuit Journal de Trévoux and the anti-philosophe Année Littéraire of Fréron were notable. It was not till after the beginning of the Revolution that journalism proper spread and multiplied, and that journalists became a power. A short notice of the chief of these will be found lower down in this chapter, but a full history of French journalism is impossible here.

Fontenelle.

The first place in point of time, and not the least in point of importance, among the occasional writers of the eighteenth century, is due to Fontenelle. The personal name of this curious writer, who is perhaps the most striking example in literary history of multifarious talent and unwearied industry just stopping short, despite their combination, of genius, was Bernard le Bovier, and his mother was a sister of Corneille, whose life Fontenelle himself wrote. He was educated by the Jesuits and studied for the bar, but was unsuccessful as an advocate, and soon gave up active practice. He came to Paris very young, and soon became distinguished, after a fashion, in society and literature. He was one of the last of the précieux, or rather he was the inventor of a new combination of literature and gallantry which at first exposed him to not a little satire. Unfortunately too for him he tried first to emulate his uncles in the drama, for which he had no talent, and one of his plays (Aspar), failing completely, gave his enemies abundant opportunity. No one, however, illustrated better than Fontenelle the saying that 'no man was ever written down except by himself.' He was the butt of the four most dangerous satirists of his time—Racine, Boileau, La Bruyère, and J. B. Rousseau; but though the epigrams which Racine and Rousseau directed against him are among the best in the language, and though the 'portrait' of Cydias, in the Caractères, at least equals them, Fontenelle received hardly any damage from these. Finding that he was not likely to be a successful dramatic poet, even in opera, he turned to prose, and wrote 'dialogues of the dead,' in avowed imitation of Lucian, and a kind of romance called 'Lettres du Chevalier d'Her...,' in which he may be said to have set the example of the elaborate and rather affected style, afterwards called Marivaudage, from his most famous pupil. Even here his success was doubtful, and he again changed his ground. He had paid some attention to science, and he saw that there was an opening in the growing curiosity of educated people for scientific popularising. To this and to literary criticism and history he devoted himself for the remainder of his long life, becoming President of the Academy of Sciences, and virtual dictator of the Académie Française. His Éloges and his academic essays generally were highly popular. But his chief single works are the famous Entretien sur la Pluralité des Mondes, an example of singularly hardy speculation, and of no contemptible learning, artfully disguised by an easy style, and his Histoire des Oracles, of which much the same may be said. With hardly diminished powers Fontenelle achieved an age not often paralleled in literary history, though his contemporary, Saint Aulaire, a minor poet, nearly equalled it. He died in his hundredth year, and almost at the end of it, his long life extending from the very earliest glories of the Siècle de Louis XIV. to the very hottest period of the Encyclopædist battle. The singular variety of his works, and his force of character, disguised under a somewhat frivolous exterior, but enabling him to live down enmity and ridicule which would have crushed most men, would of themselves make Fontenelle a remarkable figure in literature. But his actual work has more merits than that of mere variety. He realised quite as keenly as his enemy La Bruyère the importance of manner in literature, though his taste was hardly so pure. If not exactly an original thinker, he was an acute and comprehensive one, and forestalled most of his contemporaries in taking the direction consciously which they were pursuing almost without knowing it. He fully appreciated the value of paradox as stimulating men's minds and giving flavour to literature; and his positive wit was very considerable. To not many men are more good sayings attributed, and the goodness of these is not always verbal only. The most famous of them, uttered in defence of his peculiar union of heterodoxy and caution, 'I may have my fist full of truth, and yet only care to open my little finger,' may be immoral or not, but it expressed very early, and with singular force, the intellectual attitude of two whole generations.

La Motte.

Inseparable from Fontenelle's name in literary history, as the two were long closely united in life, is the name of La Motte. La Motte was a much younger man than Fontenelle, and he died more than thirty years before him, but during the first thirty years of the century the pair exercised a kind of joint sovereignty in the Belles Lettres. They revived the quarrel of the ancients and moderns, inclining to the modern side. But La Motte's translation of Homer, or rather his adaptation (for he omitted about half), is not of a nature to inspire much confidence in his ability to judge the matter, though his essays and letters on the subject are triumphs of ingenious word-fence. Unlike Fontenelle, La Motte had one considerable dramatic success with the pathetic subject of Inès de Castro, and his fables are not devoid of merit. It was, however, as a prose writer of the occasional kind, and especially as a paradoxical essayist, that he earned and deserved most fame, his prose style being superior to Fontenelle's own.

Vauvenargues.

The next name deserving of mention belongs to a very different writer. Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, covered in his brief space of life not a third of the period allotted to Fontenelle, who was nearly sixty when Vauvenargues was born, and outlived him ten years. Nor did he leave any single work of consequence. Yet his scanty writings are far more valuable in matter, if not in form, than those of the witty centenarian. Vauvenargues was born at Aix, in Provence, on the 6th of August, 1715. His family was ancient and honourable, but appears to have been poor, and his education was interrupted by the bad health which continued throughout his short life. Nevertheless he entered the army at the age of eighteen. After this he had scanty opportunities of study, and it is said that he was ignorant not only of Greek but even of Latin. He served at first in Italy, and then for some years was employed on garrison duty. At the outbreak of the war of the Austrian succession his regiment was sent into Germany, and he had a full share of the hardships of the Bohemian campaign. No promotion came to him, his means were almost exhausted, and in 1744 he resigned his commission, after taking the curiously unworldly step of writing directly to the king, asking for a place in the diplomatic service. An application to the minister of foreign affairs was not much more successful, and Vauvenargues, whose evil star pursued him, had no sooner established himself with his family than a bad attack of small-pox destroyed the little health he still had. He set to work, however, to write, and in the short time before his death actually published some of his works, and left others in a condition ready for publication. He lived in Paris for the last three years of his life, and died in 1747, at the age of thirty-two. Latterly he had made acquaintance with Voltaire, who entertained a very high and generous opinion of his talents, due perhaps partly to the remarkable difference of their respective characters and points of view. Vauvenargues' principal work is an Introduction à la Connoissance de l'Esprit Humain, besides which he left a considerable number of maxims, reflections, etc., on points of ethics and of literary criticism. In the last part of his work there is more curiosity than instruction. It is, however, in its way an instructive thing to see that a man of talent and even of genius could object to Molière for having chosen des sujets trop bas, while he speaks of Boileau in the most enthusiastic terms. The truth (and in the history of literature it is a very important truth) is that Vauvenargues was too little versed in any language but his own to have the requisite range of comparison necessary for literary criticism, and that his real interest in literature was almost entirely proportioned to its bearing upon conduct. His maxims, his Connoissance de l'Esprit, his Conseils à un Jeune Homme, etc., are all occupied almost entirely with questions of morality. Vauvenargues (and in this he was remarkable) stood entirely aloof from the sceptical movement of his age. There was, indeed, a certain scepticism in him, as in almost all thinkers, but it was of the stamp of Pascal's, not in the least mocking or polemical, and even, as compared with Pascal's own, much less strictly theological. In most of his writings he shows himself an earnest and upright man, profoundly convinced of the importance of right conduct, gifted with an acute perception of its usual moving springs and directions, not remarkable for humour or poetical feeling, but serious, sober, and a little stoical. His literary characteristics reflect some of these peculiarities, and also betray something of his neglected education. He is never slovenly in thought, but he sometimes shocked the exact verbal critics of the eighteenth century by such phrases as 'les sens sont flattés d'agir, de galoper un cheval,' whereupon his censor annotates 'négligé. Les sens ne galopent pas un cheval.' A more serious fault is that, in his shorter maxims especially, he does not observe the rule of absolute lucidity which La Rochefoucauld, who was as much his model in point of style as he was his opposite in general views, never breaks through. His sayings (it is a merit as well as a drawback) are often rather suggestive than expressive; they remind the reader of his own curious comparison of Corneille with Racine, 'les héros de Corneille disent souvent de grandes choses sans les inspirer; ceux de Racine les inspirent sans les dire.'

D'Aguesseau.