[478] Bouterwek, 252. Rapin says, Théophile a l’imagination grande et le sens petit. Il a des hardiesses heureuses à force de se permettre tout. Réflexions sur la Poétique, p. 209.
Voiture. 23. The poems of Gombauld were, in general, published before the middle of the century; his epigrams, which are most esteemed, in 1657. These are often lively and neat. But a style of playfulness and gaiety had been introduced by Voiture. French poetry under Ronsard and his school, and even that of Malherbe, had lost the lively tone of Marot, and became serious almost to severity. Voiture, with an apparent ease and grace, though without the natural air of the old writers, made it once more amusing. In reality, the style of Voiture is artificial and elaborate, but, like his imitator Prior among us, he has the skill to disguise this from the reader. He must be admitted to have had, in verse as well as prose, a considerable influence over the taste of France. He wrote to please women, and women are grateful when they are pleased. |Sarrazin.| Sarrazin, says his biographer, though less celebrated than Voiture, deserves perhaps to be rated above him; with equal ingenuity, he is far more natural.[479] The German historian of French literature has spoken less respectfully of Sarrazin, whose verses are the most insipid rhymed prose, such as he not unhappily calls toilet-poetry.[480] This is a style which finds little mercy on the right bank of the Rhine; but the French are better judges of the merit of Sarrazin.
[479] Biogr. Univ. Baillet, n. 1532.
[480] Bouterwek, v. 256. Specimens of all these poets will be found in the collection of Auguis, vol. vi.: and I must own, that, with the exceptions of Malherbe, Regnier, and one or two more, my own acquaintance with them extends little farther.
Sect. IV.
Rise of Poetry in Germany—Opitz and his followers—Dutch Poets.
Low state of German literature. 24. The German language had never been more despised by the learned and the noble than at the beginning of the seventeenth century, which seems to be the lowest point in its native literature. The capacity was not wanting; many wrote Latin verse with success; the collection made by Gruter is abundant in these cultivators of a foreign tongue, several of whom belong to the close of the preceding age. But among these it is said that whoever essayed to write their own language did but fail, and the instances adduced are very few. The upper ranks began about this time to speak French in common society; the burghers, as usual, strove to imitate them, and what was far worse, it became the mode to intermingle French words with German, not singly and sparingly, as has happened in other times and countries, but in a jargon affectedly pie-bald and macaronic. |Literary Societies.| Some hope might have been founded on the literary academies, which, in emulation of Italy, sprung up in this period. The oldest is The Fruitful Society, (die fruchtbringende Gesellschaft) known also as the order of Palms, established at Weimar in 1617.[481] Five princes enrolled their names at the beginning. It held forth the laudable purpose of purifying and correcting the mother tongue and of promoting its literature, after the manner of the Italian academies. But it is not unusual for literary associations to promise much and fail of performance; one man is more easily found to lay down a good plan, than many to co-operate in its execution. Probably this was merely the scheme of some more gifted individual, perhaps Werder, who translated Ariosto and Tasso;[482] for little good was affected by the institution. Nor did several others which at different times in the seventeenth century arose over Germany, deserve more praise. They copied the academies of Italy in their quaint names and titles, in their bye-laws, their petty ceremonials and symbolic distinctions, to which, as we always find in these self-elected societies, they attached vast importance, and thought themselves superior to the world by doing nothing for it. “They are gone,” exclaims Bouterwek, “and have left no clear vestige of their existence.” Such had been the meister-singers before them, and little else in effect were the Academies, in a more genial soil, of their own age. Notwithstanding this, though I am compelled to follow the historian of German literature, it must strike us that these societies seem to manifest a public esteem for something intellectual, which they knew not precisely how to attain; and it is to be observed that several of the best poets in the seventeenth century belonged to them.
[481] Bouterwek, x. 35.
[482] Id. p. 29.
Opitz. 25. A very small number of poets, such as Meckerlin and Spee, in the early part of the seventeenth century, though with many faults in point of taste, have been commemorated by the modern historians of literature. But they were wholly eclipsed by one whom Germany regards as the founder of her poetic literature, Martin Opitz, a native of Silesia, honoured with a laurel crown by the emperor in 1628, and raised to offices of distinction and trust in several courts. The national admiration of Opitz seems to have been almost enthusiastic; yet Opitz was far from being the poet of enthusiasm. Had he been such his age might not have understood him. His taste was French and Dutch; two countries of which the poetry was pure and correct but not imaginative. No great elevation, no energy of genius will be found in this German Heinsius and Malherbe. Opitz displayed, however, another kind of excellence. He wrote the language with a purity of idiom, in which Luther alone, whom he chose as his model, was superior; he gave more strength to the versification, and paid a regard to the collocation of syllables according to their quantity, or length of time required for articulation, which the earlier poets had neglected. He is therefore reckoned the inventor of a rich and harmonious rhythm; and he also rendered the Alexandrine verse much more common than before.[483] His verse is good; he writes as one conversant with the ancients, and with mankind; if he is too didactic and learned for a poet in the higher sense of the word, if his taste appears fettered by the models he took for imitation, if he even retarded, of which we can hardly be sure, the development of a more genuine nationality in German literature, he must still be allowed, in a favourable sense, to have made an epoch in its history.[484]