III. The Second Influx of Italian Ideas
The second influx of Italian critical ideas into France came through two channels. In the first place, the direct literary relations between Italy and France during this period were very marked. The influence of Marino, who lived for a long time at Paris and published a number of his works there, was not inconsiderable, especially upon the French concettists and précieux. Two Italian ladies founded and presided over the famous Hotel de Rambouillet,—Julie Savelli, Marquise de Pisani, and Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet. It was partly to the influence of the Accademia della Crusca that the foundation of the French Academy was due. Chapelain and Ménage were both members of the Italian society, and submitted to it their different opinions on a verse of Petrarch. Like the Accademia della Crusca, the French Academy purposed the preparation of a great dictionary; and each began its existence by attacking a great work of literature, the Gerusalemme Liberata in the case of the Italian society, Corneille's Cid in the case of the French. The regency of Marie de Medici, the supremacy of Mazarin, and other political events, all conspired to bring Italy and France into the closest social and literary relationship.
But the two individuals who first brought into French literature and naturalized the primal critical concepts of Italy were Chapelain and Balzac. Chapelain's private correspondence indicates how thorough was his acquaintance with the critical literature of Italy. "I have a particular affection for the Italian language," he wrote in 1639 to Balzac.[427] Of the Cid, he says that "in Italy it would be considered barbarous, and there is not an academy which would not banish it beyond the confines of its jurisdiction."[428] Speaking of the greatness of Ronsard, he says that his own opinion was in accord with that of "two great savants beyond the Alps, Speroni and Castelvetro";[429] and he had considerable correspondence with Balzac on the subject of the controversy between Caro and Castelvetro in the previous century. In a word, he knew and studied the critics and scholars of Italy, and was interested in discussing them. Balzac's interest, on the other hand, was rather toward Spanish literature; but he was the agent of the Cardinal de la Valette at Rome, and it was on his return to France that he published the first collection of his letters. The influence of both Chapelain and Balzac on French classicism was considerable. During the sixteenth century, literary criticism had been entirely in the hands of learned men. Chapelain and Balzac vulgarized the critical ideas of the Italian Renaissance, and made them popular, human, but inviolable. Balzac introduced into France the fine critical sense of the Italians; Chapelain introduced their formal rules, and imposed the three unities on French tragedy. Together they effected a humanizing of the classical ideal, even while subjecting it to rules.
It was to the same Italian influences that France owed the large number of artificial epics that appeared during this period. About ten epics were published in the fifteen years between 1650 and 1665.[430] The Italians of the sixteenth century had formulated a fixed theory of the artificial epic; and the nations of western Europe rivalled one another in attempting to make practical use of this theory. It is to this that the large number of Spanish epics in the sixteenth century and of French epics in the seventeenth may be ascribed. Among the latter we may mention Scudéry's Alaric, Lemoyne's Saint Louis, Saint-Amant's Moyse Sauvé, and Chapelain's own epic, La Pucelle, awaited by the public for many years, and published only to be damned forever by Boileau.
The prefaces of all these epics indicate clearly enough their indebtedness to the Italians. They were indeed scarcely more than attempts to put the rules and precepts of the Italian Renaissance into practice. "I then consulted the masters of this art," says Scudéry, in the preface of Alaric, "that is to say, Aristotle and Horace, and after them Macrobius, Scaliger, Tasso, Castelvetro, Piccolomini, Vida, Vossius, Robortelli, Riccoboni, Paolo Beni, Mambrun, and several others; and passing from theory to practice I reread very carefully the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Æneid, the Pharsalia, the Thebaid, the Orlando Furioso, and the Gerusalemme Liberata, and many other epic poems in diverse languages." Similarly, Saint-Amant, in the preface of his Moyse Sauvé, says that he had rigorously observed "the unities of action and place, which are the principal requirements of the epic; and besides, by an entirely new method, I have restricted my subject not only within twenty-four hours, the limit of the dramatic poem, but almost within half of that time. This is more than even Aristotle, Horace, Scaliger, Castelvetro, Piccolomini, and all the other moderns have ever required." It is obvious that for these epic-makers the rules and precepts of the Italians were the final tests of heroic poetry. Similarly, the Abbé d'Aubignac, at the beginning of his Pratique du Théâtre, advises the dramatic poet to study, among other writers, "Aristotle, Horace, Castelvetro, Vida, Heinsius, Vossius, and Scaliger, of whom not a word should be lost." From the Italians also came the theory of poetry in general as held throughout the period of classicism, and expounded by the Abbé d'Aubignac, La Mesnardière, Corneille, Boileau, and numerous others; and it is hardly necessary to repeat that Rapin, tracing the history of criticism at the beginning of his Réflexions sur la Poétique, deals with scarcely any critics but the Italians.
Besides the direct influence of the Italian critics, another influence contributed its share to the sum of critical ideas which French classicism owes to the Italian Renaissance. This was the tradition of Scaliger, carried on by the Dutch scholars Heinsius and Vossius. Daniel Heinsius was the pupil of Joseph Scaliger, the illustrious son of the author of the Poetics; and through Heinsius the dramatic theories of the elder Scaliger influenced classical tragedy in France. The treatise of Heinsius, De Tragœdiæ Constitutione, published at Leyden in 1611, was called by Chapelain "the quintessence of Aristotle's Poetics"; and Chapelain called Heinsius himself "a prophet or sibyl in matters of criticism."[431] Annoted by Racine, cited as an infallible authority by Corneille, Heinsius's work exercised a marked influence on French tragedy by fixing upon it the laws of Scaliger; and later the works of Vossius coöperated with those of Heinsius in widening the sphere of the Italian influence. It is evident, therefore, that while French literature had already during the sixteenth century taken from the Italian Renaissance its respect for antiquity and its admiration for classical mythology, the seventeenth century owed to Italy its definitive conception of the theory of poetry, and especially certain rigid structural laws for tragedy and epic. It may be said without exaggeration that there is not an essential idea or precept in the works of Corneille and D'Aubignac on dramatic poetry, or of Le Bossu and Mambrun on epic poetry, that cannot be found in the critical writings of the Italian Renaissance.
IV. The Influence of Rationalistic Philosophy
The influence of rationalistic philosophy on the general attitude of classicism manifested itself in what may be called the gradual rationalization of all that the Renaissance gave to France. The process thus effected is most definitely exhibited in the evolution of the rules which France owed to Italy. It has already been shown how the rules and precepts of the Italians had originally been based on authority alone, but had gradually obtained a general significance of their own, regardless of their ancient authority. Somewhat later, in England, the Aristotelian canons were defended by Ben Jonson on the ground that Aristotle understood the causes of things, and that what others had done by chance or custom, Aristotle did by reason alone.[432] By this time, then, the reasonableness of the Aristotelian canons was distinctly felt, although they were still regarded as having authoritativeness in themselves; and it was first in the French classicists of the seventeenth century that reason and the ancient rules were regarded as one and inseparable.
Rationalism, indeed, is to be found at the very outset of the critical activity of the Renaissance; and Vida's words, already cited, "Semper nutu rationis eant res," represent in part the attitude of the Renaissance mind toward literature. But the "reason" of the earlier theorists was merely empirical and individualistic; it did not differ essentially from Horace's ideal of "good sense." In fact, rationalism and humanism, while existing together throughout the Renaissance, were never to any extent harmonized; and extreme rationalism generally took the form of an avowed antagonism to Aristotle. The complete rationalization of the laws of literature is first evident toward the middle of the seventeenth century. "The rules of the theatre," says the Abbé d'Aubignac, at the beginning of his Pratique du Théâtre, "are founded, not on authority, but on reason," and if they are called the rules of the ancients, it is simply "because the ancients have admirably practised them." Similarly, Corneille, in his discourse Des Trois Unités, says that the unity of time would be arbitrary and tyrannical if it were merely required by Aristotle's Poetics, but that its real prop is the natural reason; and Boileau sums up the final attitude of classicism in these words:—
"Aimez donc la raison; que toujours vos écrits
Empruntent d'elle seule et leur lustre et leur prix."[433]