The mémoire was not the only setting for French portraits at this time. There were the French romances, and notably the Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus and the Clélie of Madeleine de Scudéry. The full significance of the Grand Cyrus has been recovered for modern readers by Victor Cousin, with great skill and charm, in his Société française au XVIIe siècle, where he has shown it to be, 'properly speaking, a history in portraits'. The characters were drawn from familiar figures in French society. 'Ainsi s'explique', says Cousin, 'l'immense succès du Cyrus dans le temps où il parut. C'était une galerie des portraits vrais et frappants, mais un peu embellis, où tout ce qu'il y avait de plus illustre en tout genre—princes, courtisans, militaires, beaux-esprits, et surtout jolies femmes—allaient se chercher et se reconnaissaient avec un plaisir inexprimable.'[9] It was easy to attack these romances. Boileau made fun of them because the classical names borne by the characters were so absurdly at variance with the matter of the stories.[10] But instead of giving, as he said, a French air and spirit to Greece and Rome, Madeleine de Scudéry only gave Greek and Roman names to France as she knew it. The names were a transparent disguise that was not meant to conceal the picture of fashionable society.
The next stage was the portrait by itself, without any setting. At the height of the popularity of the romances, Mlle de Montpensier hit upon a new kind of entertainment for the talented circle of which she was the brilliant centre. It was nothing more nor less than a paper game. They drew each other, or persons whom they knew, or themselves, and under their real names. And they played the game so well that what was written for amusement was worth printing. Divers Portraits, Imprimés en l'année M DC LIX was the simple title of the first collection, which was intended only for the contributors.[11] When it reached its final form in 1663, it contained over a hundred and fifty portraits, and was offered to the public as La Galerie des Peintures, ou Recueil des portraits et éloges en vers et en prose, contenant les portraits du Roy, de la Reyne, des princes, princesses, duchesses, marquises, comtesses, et autres seigneurs et dames les plus illustres de France; la plupart composés par eux-mêmes.[12] The introductory defence of the portrait cites Suetonius and Plutarch, and Horace and Montaigne, but also states frankly the true original of the new fashion—'il faut avouer que nous sommes très redevables au Cyrus et à la Clélie qui nous en ont fourni les modèles.' About the same time Antoine Baudeau, sieur de Somaize, brought out his Grand Dictionnaire des Précieuses,[13] in which there are many portraits in the accepted manner. The portrait was more than a fashion at this time in France; it was the rage. It therefore invited the satirists. Molière has a passing jest at them in his Précieuses Ridicules;[14] Charles Sorel published his Description de I'isle de la Portraiture et de la ville des Portraits; and Boileau wrote his Héros de Roman.
The effects of all this in England are certainly not obvious. It is quite a tenable view that the English characters would have been no less numerous, nor in any way different in quality, had every Englishman been ignorant of French. But the mémoires and romances were well known, and it was after 1660 that the art of the character attained its fullest excellence. The literary career of Clarendon poses the question in a simple form. Most of his characters, and the best as a whole, were written at Montpelier towards the close of his life. Did he find in French literature an incentive to indulge and perfect his natural bent? Yet there can be no conclusive answer to those who find a sufficient explanation in the leisure of these unhappy years, and in the solace that comes to chiefs out of war and statesmen out of place in ruminating on their experiences and impressions.
* * * * *
Something may have been learned also from the other kind of character that is found at its best in modern literature in the seventeenth century, the character derived from Theophrastus, and depicting not the individual but the type. In France, the one kind led on to the other. The romances of Scudéry prepared the way for the Caractères ou les Moeurs de ce Siècle of La Bruyère. When the fashionable portrait of particular persons fell out of favour, there arose in its place the description of dispositions and temperaments; and in the hands of La Bruyère 'the manners of the century' were the habits and varieties of human nature. In England the two kinds existed side by side. They correspond to the two methods of the drama. Begin with the individual, but draw him in such a way that we recognize in him our own or others' qualities; or begin with the qualities shared by classes of people, embody these in a person who stands for the greatest common measure of the class, and finally—and only then—let him take on his distinctive traits: these are methods which are not confined to the drama, and at all stages of our literature have lived in helpful rivalry. Long before France had her La Bruyère, England had her Hall, Overbury, and Earle.[15] The Theophrastan character was at its best in this country at the beginning of the seventeenth century when the historical character was still in its early stages; and it was declining when the historical character had attained its full excellence. They cannot always be clearly distinguished, and they are sometimes purposely blended, as in Butler's character of 'A Duke of Bucks,' where the satire on a man of pronounced individuality is heightened by describing his eccentricities as if they belonged to a recognized class.
The great lesson that the Theophrastan type of character could teach was the value of balance and unity. A haphazard statement of features and habits and peculiarities might suffice for a sketch, but perspective and harmony were necessary to a finished portrait. It taught that the surest method in depicting character was first to conceive the character as a whole, and then to introduce detail incidentally and in proper subordination. But the same lesson could have been learned elsewhere. It might have been learned from the English drama.
[Footnote 1: North's Plutarch went into five editions between 1579 and 1631; Thucydides was translated by Hobbes in 1629, and Polybius by Edward Grimeston in 1633; Xenophon's Anabasis was translated by John Bingham in 1623, and the Cyropædia by Philemon Holland in 1632; Arthur Golding's version of Cæsar's Gallic War was several times reprinted between 1565 and 1609; Philemon Holland, the translator-general of the age, as Fuller called him, brought out his Livy in 1600, and his Suetonius in 1606; Sallust was translated by Thomas Heywood in 1608, and by William Crosse in 1629; Velleius Paterculus was 'rendred English by Sir Robert Le Grys' in 1632; and by 1640 there had been six editions of Sir Henry Savile's Histories and Agricola of Tacitus, first published in 1591, and five editions of Richard Grenewey's Annals and Germany, first published in 1598. See H.R. Palmer's English Editions and Translations of Greek and Latin Classics printed before 1641, Bibliographical Society, 1911.]
[Footnote 2: 'Thucydides … in whom (I beleeve with many others) the Faculty of writing History is at the Highest.' Thucydides, 1629, 'To the Readers.']
[Footnote 3: Philemon Holland's Livy, 1600, 'Dedication to
Elizabeth.']
[Footnote 4: Sir Henry Savile's Tacitus, 1591, 'A.B. To the Reader.']