[572] Goujet, i., 426.
His letters. 17. The letters of Balzac are in twenty-seven books; they begin in 1620 and end about 1653; the first portion having appeared in 1625. “He passed all his life,” says Vigneul-Marville, “in writing letters, without ever catching the right characteristics of that style.”[573] This demands a peculiar ease and naturalness of expression, for want of which they seem no genuine exponents of friendship or gallantry, and hardly of polite manners. His wit was not free from pedantry, and did not come from him spontaneously. Hence, he was little fitted to address ladies, even the Rambouillets; and indeed he had acquired so laboured and artificial a way of writing letters, that even those to his sister, though affectionate, smell too much of the lamp. His advocates admit that they are to be judged rather by the rules of oratorical than epistolary composition.
[573] Mélanges de Littérature, vol. i., p. 126. He adds, however, that Balzac had “un talent particulier pour embellir notre langue.” The writer whom I quote under the name of Vigneul-Marville which he assumed was D’Argonne, a Benedictine of Rouen.
18. In the moral dissertations, such as that entitled the Prince, this elaborate manner is of course not less discernible, but not so unpleasant or out of place. Balzac has been called the father of the French language, the master and model of the great men who have followed him. But it is confessed by all that he wanted the fine taste to regulate his style according to the subject. Hence, he is pompous and inflated upon ordinary topics; and in a country so quick to seize the ridiculous as his own, not all his nobleness, purity, and vigour of style, not the passages of eloquence which we often find, have been sufficient to redeem him from the sarcasms of those who have had more power to amuse. The stateliness, however, of Balzac is less offensive and extravagant than the affected intensity of language which distinguishes the style of the present age on both sides of the Channel, and which is in fact a much worse modification of the same fault.
Voiture.—Hotel Rambouillet. 19. A contemporary and rival of Balzac, though very unlike in most respects, was Voiture. Both one and the other were received with friendship and admiration in a celebrated society of Paris, the first which, on this side of the Alps, united the aristocracy of rank and of genius in one circle, that of the Hotel Rambouillet. Catherine de Vivonne, widow of the Marquis de Rambouillet, was the owner of this mansion. It was frequented, during the long period of her life, by all that was distinguished in France, by Richelieu and Condé, as much as by Corneille, and a long host of inferior men of letters. The heiress of this family, Julie d’Angennes, beautiful and highly accomplished, became the central star of so bright a galaxy. The love of intellectual attainments, both in mother and daughter, the sympathy and friendship they felt for those who displayed them, as well as their moral worth, must render their names respectable; but these were in some measure sullied by false taste and what we may consider an habitual affectation even in their conduct. We can scarcely give another name to the caprice of Julia, who, in the fashion of romance, compelled the Duke of Montausier to carry on a twelve years’ courtship, and only married him in the decline of her beauty. This patient lover, himself one of the most remarkable men in the court of Louis XIV., had many years before presented her with what has been called The Garland of Julia, a collection to which the poets and wits of Paris had contributed. Every flower, represented in a drawing, had its appropriate little poem, and all conspired to the praise of Julia.
20. Voiture is chiefly known by his letters; his other writings, at least, are inferior. These begin about 1627, and are addressed to Madame de Rambouillet and to several other persons of both sexes. Though much too laboured and affected, they are evidently the original type of the French epistolary school, including those in England who have formed themselves upon it. Pope very frequently imitated Voiture, Walpole not so much in his general correspondence, but he knew how to fall into it. The object was to say what meant little with the utmost novelty in the mode, and with the most ingenious compliment to the person addressed; so that he should admire himself, and admire the writer. They are, of course, very tiresome after a short time; yet their ingenuity is not without merit. Balzac is more solemn and dignified, and it must be owned that he has more meaning. Voiture seems to have fancied that good sense spoils a man of wit. But he has not so much wit as esprit; and his letters serve to exemplify the meaning of that word. Pope, in addressing ladies, was nearly the ape of Voiture. It was unfortunately thought necessary, in such a correspondence, either to affect despairing love, which was to express itself with all possible gaiety, or where love was too presumptuous, as with the Rambouillets, to pour out a torrent of nonsensical flattery, which was to be rendered tolerable by far-fetched turns of thought. Voiture has the honour of having rendered this style fashionable. But if the bad taste of others had not perverted his own, Voiture would have been a good writer. His letters, especially those written from Spain, are sometimes truly witty, and always vivacious. Voltaire, who speaks contemptuously of Voiture, might have been glad to have the author of some of his jeux d’esprit; that, for example, addressed to the Prince of Condé in the character of a pike, founded on a game where the Prince had played that fish. We should remember also, that Voiture held his place in good society upon the tacit condition that he should always strive to be witty.[574]
[574] Nothing, says Olivet, could be more opposite than Balzac and Voiture. L’un se portoit toujours au sublime, l’autre toujours au délicat. L’un avoit une imagination enjouée, qui faisoit prendre à toutes ses pensées un air de galanterie. L’un même lorsqu’il vouloit plaisanter, étoit toujours grave; l’autre, dans les occasions même sérieuses, trouvoit à rire. Hist. de l’Académie, p. 83.
Establishment of French Academy. 21. But the Hotel Rambouillet, with its false theories of taste derived in a great measure from the romances of Scudery and Calprenède, and encouraged by the agreeably artificial manner of Voiture, would have produced, in all probability, but a transient effect. A far more important event was the establishment of the French Academy. France was ruled by a great minister who loved her glory and his own. This, indeed, has been common to many statesmen, but it was a more peculiar honour to Richelieu, that he felt the dignity which letters confer on a nation. He was himself not deficient in literary taste; his epistolary style is manly and not without elegance; he wrote theology in his own name, and history in that of Mezeray; but, what is most to the present purpose, his remarkable fondness for the theatre led him not only to invent subjects for other poets, but, as it has been believed, to compose one forgotten tragi-comedy, Mirame, without assistance.[575] He availed himself fortunately of an opportunity which almost every statesman would have disregarded, to found the most illustrious institution in the annals of polite literature.
[575] Fontenelle, Hist. du Théâtre, p. 96.
22. The French Academy sprang from a private society of men of letters at Paris, who, about the year 1629, agreed to meet once a week, as at an ordinary visit, conversing on all subjects and especially on literature. Such among them as were authors communicated their works, and had the advantage of free and fair criticism. This continued for three or four years with such harmony and mutual satisfaction, that the old men, who remembered this period, says their historian, Pelisson, looked back upon it as a golden age. They were but nine in number, of whom Gombauld and Chapelain are the only names by any means famous, and their meetings were at first very private. More by degrees were added, among others Boisrobert, a favourite of Richelieu, who liked to hear from him the news of the town. The Cardinal, pleased with the account of this society, suggested their public establishment. This, it is said, was unpleasing to every one of them, and some proposed to refuse it; but the consideration that the offers of such a man were not to be slighted overpowered their modesty; and they consented to become a royal institution. They now enlarged their numbers, created officers, and began to keep registers of their proceedings. These records commence on March 13, 1634, and are the basis of Pelisson’s history. The name of French Academy was chosen after some deliberation. They were established by letters patent in January, 1635; which the parliament of Paris enregistered with great reluctance, requiring not only a letter from Richelieu, but an express order from the king; and when this was completed in July, 1637, it was with a singular proviso that the Academy should meddle with nothing but the embellishment and improvement of the French language, and such books as might be written by themselves, or by others who should desire their interference. This learned body of lawyers had some jealousy of the innovations of Richelieu; and one of them said it reminded him of the satire of Juvenal, where the senate, after ceasing to bear its part in public affairs, was consulted about the sauce for a turbot.[576]