Fontenelle’s critical writings. 19. Fontenelle is a critic of whom it may be said, that he did more injury to fine taste and sensibility in works of imagination and sentiment, than any man without his good sense and natural acuteness could have done. He is systematically cold; if he seems to tolerate any flight of the poet, it is rather by caprice than by a genuine discernment of beauty; but he clings, with the unyielding claw of a cold-blooded animal, to the faults of great writers, which he exposes with reason and sarcasm. His Reflections on Poetry relate mostly to dramatic composition, and to that of the French stage. Theocritus is his victim in the Dissertation on Pastoral Poetry; but Fontenelle gave the Sicilian his revenge; he wrote pastorals himself; and we have altogether forgotten, or, when we again look at, can very partially approve, the idylls of the Boulevards, while those Doric dactyls of Theocritus linger still, like what Schiller has called soft music of yesterday, from our school-boy reminiscences on our aged ears.
Preference of French language to Latin. 20. The reign of mere scholars was now at an end; no worse name than that of pedant could be imposed on those who sought for glory; the admiration of all that was national in arts, in arms, in manners, as well as in speech, carried away like a torrent those prescriptive titles to reverence which only lingered in colleges. The superiority of the Latin language to French had long been contested; even Henry Stephens has a dissertation in favour of the latter; and in this period, though a few resolute scholars did not retire from the field, it was generally held either that French was every way the better means of expressing our thoughts, or, at least, so much more convenient as to put nearly an end to the use of the other. Latin had been the privileged language of stone; but Louis XIV., in consequence of an essay by Charpentier, in 1676, replaced the inscriptions on his triumphal arches by others in French.[1034] This, of course, does not much affect the general question between the two languages.
[1034] Goujet, i., 13.
General superiority of ancients disputed. 21. But it was not in language alone that the ancients were to endure the aggression of a disobedient posterity. It had long been a problem in Europe whether they had not been surpassed; one, perhaps, which began before the younger generations could make good their claim. But time, the nominal ally of the old possessors, gave his more powerful aid to their opponents; every age saw the proportions change, and new men rise up to strengthen the ranks of the assailants. In philosophy, in science, in natural knowledge, the ancients had none but a few mere pedants, or half-read lovers of paradox, to maintain their superiority; but in the beauties of language, in eloquence and poetry, the suffrage of criticism had long been theirs. It seemed time to dispute even this. |Charles Perrault.| Charles Perrault, a man of some learning, some variety of acquirement, and a good deal of ingenuity and quickness, published, in 1687, his famous “Parallel of the Ancients and Moderns in all that regards Arts and Sciences.” This is a series of dialogues, the parties being first, a president, deeply learned and prejudiced in all respects for antiquity; secondly, an abbé, not ignorant, but having reflected more than read, cool and impartial, always made to appear in the right, or, in other words, the author’s representative; thirdly, a man of the world, seizing the gay side of every subject, and apparently brought in to prevent the book from becoming dull. They begin with architecture and painting, and soon make it clear that Athens was a mere heap of pig-sties in comparison with Versailles; the ancient painters fare equally ill. They next advance to eloquence and poetry, and here, where the strife of war is sharpest, the defeat of antiquity is chanted with triumph. Homer, Virgil, Horace are successively brought forward for severe and often unjust censure; but, of course, it is not to be imagined that Perrault is always in the wrong; he had to fight against a pedantic admiration which surrenders sound taste; and having found the bow bent too much in one way, he forced it himself too violently into another direction. It is the fault of such books to be one-sided; they are not unfrequently right in censuring blemishes, but very uncandid in suppressing beauties. Homer has been worst used by Perrault, who had not the least power of feeling his excellence; but the advocate of the newer age in his dialogue admits that the Æneid is superior to any modern epic. In his comparison of eloquence, Perrault has given some specimens of both sides to contrast; comparing, by means, however, of his own versions, the funeral orations of Pericles and Plato with those of Bourdaloue, Bossuet, and Fléchier, the description by Pliny of his country seat with one by Balzac, an epistle of Cicero with another of Balzac. These comparisons were fitted to produce a great effect among those who could neither read the original text, nor place themselves in the midst of ancient feelings and habits. It is easy to perceive that a vast majority of the French in that age would agree with Perrault; the book was written for the times.
Fontenelle. 22. Fontenelle, in a very short digression on the ancients and moderns, subjoined to his Discourse on Pastoral Poetry, followed the steps of Perrault. “The whole question as to pre-eminence between the ancients and moderns,” he begins, “reduces itself into another, whether the trees that used to grow in our woods were larger than those which grow now. If they were, Homer, Plato, Demosthenes cannot be equalled in these ages; but if our trees are as large as trees were of old, then there is no reason why we may not equal Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes.” The sophistry of this is glaring enough; but it was logic for Paris. In the rest of this short essay, there are the usual characteristics of Fontenelle, cool, good sense, and an incapacity, by natural privation, of feeling the highest excellence in works of taste.
Boileau’s defence of antiquity. 23. Boileau, in observations annexed to his translation of Longinus, as well as in a few sallies of his poetry, defended the great poets, especially Homer and Pindar, with dignity and moderation; freely abandoning the cause of antiquity where he felt it to be untenable. Perrault replied with courage, a quality meriting some praise where the adversary was so powerful in sarcasm and so little accustomed to spare it; but the controversy ceased in tolerable friendship.
First Reviews—Journal des Sçavans. 24. The knowledge of new accessions to literature which its lovers demanded, had hitherto been communicated only through the annual catalogues published at Frankfort or other places. But these lists of title-pages were unsatisfactory to the distant scholar, who sought to become acquainted with the real progress of learning, and to know what he might find it worth while to purchase. Denis de Sallo, a member of the parliament of Paris, and not wholly undistinguished in literature, though his other works are not much remembered, by carrying into effect a happy project of his own, gave birth, as it were, to a mighty spirit which has grown up in strength and enterprise, till it has become the ruling power of the literary world. Monday, the 5th of January, 1665, is the date of the first number of the first review, the Journal des Sçavans, published by Sallo, under the name of the Sieur de Hedouville, which some have said to be that of his servant.[1035] It was printed weekly, in a duodecimo or sexto-decimo form, each number containing from twelve to sixteen pages. The first book ever reviewed (let us observe the difference of subject between that and the last, whatever the last may be) was an edition of the works of Victor Vitensis and Vigilius Tapsensis, African bishops of the fifth century, by Father Chiflet, a Jesuit.[1036] The second is Spelman’s Glossary. According to the prospectus prefixed to the Journal des Sçavans, it was not designed for a mere review, but a literary miscellany; composed, in the first place, of an exact catalogue of the chief books which should be printed in Europe; not content with the mere titles, as the majority of bibliographers had hitherto been, but giving an account of their contents, and their value to the public; it was also to contain a necrology of distinguished authors, an account of experiments in physics and chemistry, and of new discoveries in arts and sciences, with the principal decisions of civil and ecclesiastical tribunals, the decrees of the Sorbonne and other French or foreign universities; in short, whatever might be interesting to men of letters. We find, therefore, some piece of news, more or less of a literary or scientific nature, subjoined to each number. Thus, in the first number, we have a double-headed child born near Salisbury; in the second, a question of legitimacy decided in the parliament of Paris; in the third, an experiment on a new ship or boat constructed by Sir William Petty; in the fourth, an account of a discussion in the College of Jesuits on the nature of comets. The scientific articles, which bear a large proportion to the rest, are illustrated by engravings. It was complained that the Journal des Sçavans did not pay much regard to polite or amusing literature; and this led to the publication of the Mercure Galant, by Visé, which gave reviews of poetry and of the drama.
[1035] Camusat, in his Histoire Critique des Journaux, in two volumes, 1734, which, notwithstanding its general title, is chiefly confined to the history of the Journal des Sçavans, and wholly to such as appeared in France, has not been able to clear up this interesting point; for there are not wanting those who assert, that Hedouville was the name of an estate belonging to Sallo; and he is called in some public description, without reference to the journal, Dominus de Sallo d’Hedouville in Parisiensi curia senator. Camusat, i., 13. Notwithstanding this, there is evidence that leads us to the valet; so that “ampliùs deliberandum censeo; Res magna est.”
[1036] Victoria Vitensis et Vigilii Tapsensis, Provinciæ Bisacenæ Episcoporum Opera, edente R. P. Chifletio, Soc. Jesu. Presb., in 4to. Divione. The critique, if such it be, occupies but two pages in small duodecimo. That on Spelman’s Glossary, which follows, is but in half a page.
25. Though the notices in the Journal des Sçavans are very short, and when they give any character, for the most part of a laudatory tone, Sallo did not fail to raise up enemies by the mere assumption of power which a reviewer is prone to affect. Menage, on a work of whose he had made some criticism, and by no means, as it appears, without justice, replied in wrath; Patin and others rose up as injured authors against the self-erected censor; but he made more formidable enemies by some rather blunt declarations of a Gallican feeling, as became a counsellor of the parliament of Paris, against the court of Rome; and the privilege of publication was soon withdrawn from Sallo.[1037] It is said that he had the spirit to refuse the offer of continuing the journal under a previous censorship; and it passed into other hands, those of Gallois, who continued it with great success.[1038] It is remarkable that the first review, within a few months of its origin, was silenced for assuming too imperious an authority over literature, and for speaking evil of dignities. “In cunis jam Jove dignus erat.” The Journal des Sçavans, incomparably the most ancient of living reviews, is still conspicuous for its learning, its candour, and its freedom from those stains of personal and party malice which deform more popular works.