LECTURE X.
FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
Expression not only serves to appreciate the different arts, but the different schools of art. Example:—French art in the seventeenth century. French poetry:—Corneille. Racine. Molière. La Fontaine. Boileau.—Painting:—Lesueur. Poussin. Le Lorrain. Champagne.—Engraving.—Sculpture:—Sarrazin. The Anguiers. Girardon. Pujet.—Le Nôtre.—Architecture.
We believe that we have firmly established that all kinds of beauty, although most dissimilar in appearance, may, when subjected to a serious examination, be reduced to spiritual and moral beauty; that expression, therefore, is at once the true object and the first law of art; that all arts are such only so far as they express the idea concealed under the form, and are addressed to the soul through the senses; finally, that in expression the different arts find the true measure of their relative value, and the most expressive art must be placed in the first rank.
If expression judges the different arts, does it not naturally follow, that by the same title it can also judge the different schools which, in each art, dispute with each other the empire of taste?
There is not one of these schools that does not represent in its own way some side of the beautiful, and we are disposed to embrace all in an impartial and kindly study. We are eclectics in the arts as well as in metaphysics. But, as in metaphysics, the knowledge of all systems, and the portion of truth that is in each, enlightens without enfeebling our convictions; so, in the history of arts, while holding the opinion that no school must be disdained, that even in China some shade of beauty can be found, our eclecticism does not make us waver in regard to the sentiment of true beauty and the supreme rule of art. What we demand of the different schools, without distinction of time or place, what we see in the south as well as in the north, at Florence, Rome, Venice, and Seville, as well as at Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Paris,—wherever there are men, is something human, is the expression of a sentiment or an idea.
A criticism that should be founded on the principle of expression, would somewhat derange, it must be confessed, received judgments, and would carry some disorder into the hierarchy of the renowned. We do not undertake such a revolution; we only propose to confirm, or at least elucidate our principle by an example, and by an example that is at our hand.
There is in the world a school formerly illustrious, now very lightly treated:—this school is the French school of the seventeenth century. We would replace it in honor, by recalling attention to the qualities that make its glory.
We have worked with constancy to reinstate among us the philosophy of Descartes, unworthily sacrificed to the philosophy of Locke, because with its defects it possesses in our view the incomparable merit of subordinating the senses to the mind, of elevating and ennobling man. So we profess a serious and reflective admiration for our national art of the seventeenth century, because, without disguising what is wanting to it, we find in it what we prefer to every thing else, grandeur united to good sense and reason, simplicity and force, genius of composition, especially that of expression.
France, careless of her glory, does not appear to have the least notion that she reckons in her annals perhaps the greatest century of humanity, that which embraces the greatest number of extraordinary men of every kind. When, I pray you, have politicians like Henry IV., Richelieu, Mazarin, Colbert, Louis XIV. been seen giving each other the hand? I do not pretend that each of them has no rival, even superiors. Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, perhaps excel them. But Alexander has but a single contemporary that can be compared with him, his father Philip; Cæsar cannot even have suspected that Octavius would one day be worthy of him; Charlemagne is a colossus in a desert; whilst among us these five men succeed each other without an interval, press upon each other, and have, thus to speak, a single soul. And by what officers were they served! Is Condé really inferior to Alexander, Hannibal, and Cæsar; for among his predecessors we must not look for other rivals? Who among them surpasses him in the extent and justness of his conceptions, in quickness of sight, in rapidity of manœuvres, in the union of impetuosity and firmness, in the double glory of taker of cities and gainer of battles? Add that he dealt with generals like Merci and William, that he had under him Turenne and Luxemburg, without speaking of so many other soldiers who were reared in that admirable school, and at the hour of reverse still sufficed to save France.
What other time, at least among the moderns, has seen flourishing together so many poets of the first order? We have, it is true, neither Homer, nor Dante, nor Milton, nor even Tasso. The epic, with its primitive simplicity, is interdicted us. But in the drama we scarcely have equals. It is because dramatic poetry is the poetry that is adapted to us, moral poetry par excellence, which represents man with his different passions armed against each other, the violent contentions between virtue and crime, the freaks of fortune, the lessons of providence, and in a narrow compass, too, in which the events press upon each other without confusion, in which the action rapidly progresses towards the crisis that must reveal what is most intimate to the heart of the personages.