Contemporary with Fontenelle and La Motte was the Chancellor D'Aguesseau, one of the most prominent figures of the earlier reign of Louis XV., a steady defender of orthodoxy—yet, as was seen in the case of the Encyclopædia, willing to assist enlightenment—a man of irreproachable character, and a writer of some merit. D'Aguesseau was born in 1668, and died in 1751. He early received considerable preferment in the law, and held the seals at intervals for the greater part of the last thirty years of his life. He was a defender of Gallicanism—indeed, he was suspected of Jansenist leanings—and a man of great benevolence in private life. His legal and historical learning was immense, and he was not without some tincture of science. He deserves a place here chiefly for his speeches on public occasions, which were in effect elaborate moral essays. An important part of them consists of what were called Mercuriales (that is to say, discourses pronounced on certain Wednesdays (Die Mercurii) by the first president of the Parliament of Paris) on the abuses of the day, the duties of judges, the nature of justice, and similar subjects.
Duclos.
Another writer, who has been mentioned more than once before, held somewhat aloof from the Encyclopædists, though he was not, like D'Aguesseau, definitely orthodox, or, like Vauvenargues, severely moral. Charles Pinaud Duclos was one of the most miscellaneous of the miscellaneous writers of the time. He held the office of historiographer royal, and produced some remarkable works of the historical kind, one of which has been noticed. He composed novels in a fanciful style midway between Crébillon and Marivaux. He also wrote on grammar, but some of his best work consists of short academic essays, and of a moral study called Considérations sur les Mœurs de Notre Temps, which is both well written and shows discernment. Duclos' character has been somewhat variously represented, but the unfavourable reports (which are in the minority) may probably be traced to the studied brusqueness of his manners, and to his unwillingness to make common cause with the philosophe coterie, though, if some stories are to be believed, he often conversed and argued quite in their style.
Marmontel.
Yet another typical figure of the same numerous class is Jean François Marmontel, one of the most eminent professional men of letters of the second class. Marmontel's moral tales, his Bélisaire, and his plays have already been noticed, but his main place in literature is that of a journalist and critic. He was born at Bort, in the district of Limoges, in 1723, and obtained some provincial reputation in letters. Introduced to Voltaire in 1746, he began as a dramatist, and, after some failures, acquired the protection of Madame de Pompadour. He was made editor of the Mercure, which gave him an influential position and a competence. He afterwards succeeded Duclos as historiographer, notwithstanding the outcry which had been made against his Bélisaire. He had contributed almost all the minor articles on literary subjects to the Encyclopædia, and these were collected and published as Éléments de Littérature in 1787. He died in 1799. The Éléments de Littérature are, with the Cours de Littérature of La Harpe, the chief source of information as to eighteenth-century criticism of the fashionable kind in France. They are very voluminous, and, from the circumstances of their original form, deal with a vast number of subjects. The style is for the most part simple and good, destitute alike of the dryness and of the bombast which were the two faults of contemporary writing. But Marmontel's system of criticism will not bear a moment's examination. It consists simply in the assumption that Racine, Boileau (though he was at first recalcitrant to Boileau, and had to be admonished by Voltaire that ça porte malheur), and their contemporaries are infallible models, and in the application of this principle to all other nations. The passion for finding plausible general reasons also leads Marmontel into grotesque aberrations, as where he gives three reasons for English success in poetry as contrasted with our inferiority in the other arts. First, Englishmen, loving glory, saw early that poetry acquired glory for a nation. Secondly, being naturally given to sadness and meditation, they wish for emotions to distract and move them. Thirdly, their genius is proper to poetry. This last remark, the reader should observe, comes from a countryman of Molière, a man who must have read the Malade Imaginaire, and who was moreover a man of much more than ordinary talent. Marmontel often has acute remarks, and his blunders and absurdities are rather symptomatic of the false state in which criticism was at the time than of individual shortcomings.
La Harpe.
Somewhat younger than Marmontel was La Harpe, who pursued the same lines of dramatic poetry and literary criticism, the latter with more success in his kind, so much so, that Malherbe, Boileau, and he may be ranked together as the three representatives of the infancy, flourishing, and decadence of the 'classical' theory of literary criticism in France. La Harpe was born at Paris in 1739, was brought up by charity, gained a reputation as a brilliant exhibitioner at the Collége d'Harcourt, and, after the mishap of being imprisoned for a libel, obtained new success at the Academy competitions. He acquired the favour of Voltaire, and fairly launched himself in literature. For many years he furnished tragedies to the stage, and criticised the literary work of others with a singular mixture of acuteness, pedantry, and ill-temper. He was converted from Republicanism by an imprisonment during the Terror, and became a violent conservative and defender of orthodoxy. He died in 1803. His principal critical work is his Cours de Littérature, which was the work chiefly of his later days. La Harpe had very considerable talent, which was however warped by the false and narrow system of criticism he adopted, and by his personal ill-temper and overbearing disposition. He is even more than Boileau the type of the schoolmaster-critic, who marks passages for correction according to cut-and-dried rules instead of attempting to judge the author according to his own standard. Yet, if he is the most typical example of the school, he is also perhaps the best. In dealing with authors of his own century, he is especially worthy of attention, because for the most part they themselves had before them the standards which he used, and his method is therefore relevant as far as it goes. La Harpe wrote well in the fashion of his day.
Thomas.
With Duclos, Marmontel, and La Harpe, Thomas is usually named. This writer, like others of our present subjects, was chiefly a composer of academic Éloges, Mémoires, Discours, and the like. He also wrote a book on Les Femmes, a subject which he treated, as he did most things, with seriousness, and with a mixture of declamation and sentimentality. His literary value is but small.
Orthodox Apologists.