A Short History of French Literature Part 19

[Sidenote: Roger de Collerye.]

[Sidenote: Minor Predecessors of Marot.]

Roger de Collerye[167] was a Burgundian, living at the famous and vinous town of Auxerre, and he has celebrated his loves, his distress, his amiable tendency to conviviality, in many rondeaux and other poems, sometimes attaining a very high level of excellence. 'Je suis Bon-temps, vous le voyez' is the second line of one of his irregular ballades, and the nickname expresses his general att.i.tude well enough.

Mediaeval legacies of allegory, however, supply him with more unpleasant personages, Faute d'Argent and Plate-Bourse, for his song, and his mistress, Gilleberte de Beaurepaire, appears to have been anything but continuously kind. Collerye has less perhaps of the _rhetoriqueur_ flavour than any poet of this time before Marot, and his verse is very frequently remarkable for directness and grace of diction. But like most verse of the kind it frequently drops into a conventionality less wearisome but not much less definite than that of the mere allegorisers.

Jehan Bouchet[168], a lawyer of Poitiers (not to be confounded with Guillaume Bouchet, author of the _Serees_), imitated the _rhetoriqueurs_ for the most part in form, and surpa.s.sed them in length, excelling indeed in this respect even the long-winded and long-lived poets of the close of the fourteenth century. Bouchet is said to have composed a hundred thousand verses, and even M. d'Hericault avers that he read two-thirds of the number without discovering more than six quotable lines. Such works of Bouchet as we have examined fully confirm the statement. Still, he was an authority in his way, and had something of a reputation. His fanciful _nom de plume_ 'Le Traverseur des Voies Perilleuses' is the most picturesque thing he produced, and is not uncharacteristic of the later middle age tradition. Rabelais himself, who was a fair critic of poetry when his friends were not concerned, but who was no poet, and was even strikingly deficient in some of the characteristics of the poet, admired and emulated Bouchet in heavy verse; and a numerously attended school, hardly any of the pupils being worth individual mention, gathered round the lawyer. Charles de Bordigne is only remarkable for having, in his _Legende de Pierre Faifeu_, united the _rhetoriqueur_ style with a kind of Villonesque or rather pseudo-Villonesque subject. The t.i.tle of the chief poems of Symphorien Champier, _Le Nef des Dames Amoureuses_, sufficiently indicates his style. But Champier, though by no means a good poet, was a useful and studious man of letters, and did much to form the literary _cenacle_ which gathered at Lyons in the second quarter of the century, and which, both in original composition, in translations of the cla.s.sics, and in scholarly publication of work both ancient and modern, rendered invaluable service to literature. Gratien du Pont[169] continued the now very stale mediaeval calumnies on women in his _Controverses des s.e.xes Masculin et Feminin_. Eloy d'Amerval, a Picard priest, also fell into mediaeval lines in his _Livre de la Deablerie_, in which the personages of Lucifer and Satan are made the mouthpieces of much social satire.

Jean Parmentier, a sailor and a poet, combined his two professions in _Les Merveilles de Dieu_, a poem including some powerful verse. A vigorous ballade, with the refrain _Car France est Cymetiereaux Anglois_, has preserved the name of Pierre Vachot. But the remaining poets of this time could only find a place in a very extended literary history. Most of them, in the words of one of their number, took continual lessons _es oeuvres Cretiniques et Bouchetiques_, and some of them succeeded at last in imitating the dulness of Bouchet and the preposterous mannerisms of Cretin. Perhaps no equal period in all early French history produced more and at the same time worse verse than the reign of Louis XII. Fortunately, however, a true poet, if one of some limitations, took up the tradition, and showed what it could do. Marot has sometimes been regarded as the father of modern French poetry, which, unless modern French poetry is limited to La Fontaine and the poets of the eighteenth century, is absolutely false. He is sometimes regarded as the last of mediaeval poets, which, though truer, is false likewise. What he really was can be shown without much difficulty.

[Sidenote: Clement Marot.]

Clement Marot[170] was a man of more mixed race than was usual at this period, when the provincial distinctions were still as a rule maintained with some sharpness. His father, Jean Marot, a poet of merit, was a Norman, but he emigrated to Quercy, and Marot's mother was a native of Cahors, a town which, from its Papal connections, as well as its situation on the borders of Gascony, was specially southern. Clement was born probably at the beginning of 1497, and his father educated him with some pains in things poetical. This, as times went, necessitated an admiration of Cretin and such like persons, and the practice of rondeaux, and of other poetry strict in form and allegorical in matter.

As it happened, the discipline was a very sound one for Marot, whose natural bent was far too vigorous and too lithe to be stiffened or stunted by it, while it unquestionably supplied wholesome limitations which preserved him from mere slovenly facility. It is evident, too, that he had a sincere and genuine love of things mediaeval, as his devotion to the _Roman de la Rose_ and to Villon's poems, both of which he edited, sufficiently shows. He 'came into France,' an expression of his own, which shows the fragmentary condition of the kingdom even at this late period, when he was about ten years old. His father held an appointment as 'Escripvain' to Anne of Brittany, and accompanied her husband to Genoa in 1507. The University of Paris, and a short sojourn among the students of law, completed Clement's education, and he then became a page to a n.o.bleman, thus obtaining a position at court or, at least, the chance of one. It is not known when his earliest attempt at following the Cretinic lessons was composed; but in 1514, being then but a stripling, he presented his _Jugement de Minos_ to Francois de Valois, soon to be king. A translation of the first Eclogue of Virgil had even preceded this. Both poems are well written and versified, but decidedly in the _rhetoriqueur_ style. In 1519, having already received or a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of 'Facteur' (poet) to Queen Claude, he became one of the special adherents of Marguerite d'Angouleme, the famous sister of Francis, from whom, a few years later, we find him in receipt of a pension. He also occupied some post in the household of her husband, the King of Navarre. In 1524 he went to Italy with Francis, was wounded and taken prisoner at Pavia, but returned to France the next year.

Marguerite's immediate followers were distinguished, some by their adherence to the principles of the Reformation, others by free thought of a still more unorthodox description, and Marot soon after his return was accused of heresy and lodged in the Chatelet. He was, however, soon transferred to a place of mitigated restraint, and finally set at liberty. About this time his father died. In 1528 he obtained a post and a pension in the King's own household. He was again in difficulties, but again got out of them, and in 1530 he married. But the next year he was once more in danger on the old charge of heresy, and was again rescued from the _chats fourres_ by Marguerite. He had already edited the _Roman de la Rose_, but no regular edition of his own work had appeared. In 1533 came out not merely his edition of Villon, but a collection of his own youthful work under the pretty t.i.tle _Adolescence Clementine_. In 1535 the Parliament of Paris for a fourth time molested Marot.

Marguerite's influence was now insufficient to protect him, and the poet fled first to Bearn and then to Ferrara. Here, under the protection of Renee de France, he lived and wrote for some time, but the persecution again grew hot. He retired to Venice, but in 1539 obtained permission to return to France. Francis gave him a house in the Faubourg Saint Germain, and here apparently he wrote his famous Psalms, which had an immense popularity; these the Sorbonne condemned, and Marot once more fled, this time to Geneva. He found this place an uncomfortable sojourn, and crossed the Alps into Piedmont, where, not long afterwards, he died in 1544.

Marot's work is sufficiently diverse in form, but the cla.s.sification of it adopted in the convenient edition of Jannet is perhaps the best, though it neglects chronology. There are some dozen pieces of more or less considerable length, among which may specially be mentioned _Le Temple de Cupido_, an early work of _rhetoriqueur_ character for the most part, in dizains of ten and eight syllables alternately, a Dialogue of two Lovers, an Eclogue to the King; _L'Enfer_, a vigorous and picturesque description of his imprisonment in the Chatelet, and some poems bearing a strong Huguenot impression. Then come sixty-five epistles written in couplets for the most part decasyllabic. These include the celebrated _Coq-a-l'ane_, a sort of nonsense-verse, with a satirical tendency, which derives from the mediaeval _fatrasie_, and was very popular and much imitated. Another mediaeval restoration of Marot's, also very popular and also much imitated, was the _blason_, a description, in octosyllables. Twenty-six elegies likewise adopt the couplet, and show, as do the epistles, remarkable power over that form.

Fifteen ballades, twenty-two songs in various metres, eighty-two rondeaux, and forty-two songs for music, contain much of Marot's most beautiful work. His easy graceful style escaped the chief danger of these artificial forms, the danger of stiffness and monotony; while he was able to get out of them as much pathos and melody as any other French poet, except Charles d'Orleans and Villon. Numerous _etrennes_ recall the _Xenia_ of Martial, and funeral poems of various lengths and styles follow. Then we have nearly three hundred epigrams, many of them excellent in point and elegance, a certain number of translations, the Psalms, fifty in number, certain prayers, and two versified renderings of Erasmus' _Colloquies_.

It will be seen from this enumeration that the majority of Marot's work is what is now called occasional. No single work of his of a greater length than a few hundred lines exists; and, after his first attempts in the allegorical kind, almost all his works were either addressed to particular persons, or based upon some event in his life. Marot was immensely popular in his lifetime; and though after his death a formidable rival arose in Ronsard, the elder poet's fame was sustained by eager disciples. With the discredit of the Pleiade, in consequence of Malherbe's criticisms, Marot's popularity returned in full measure, and for two centuries he was the one French poet before the cla.s.sical period who was actually read and admired with genuine admiration by others besides professed students of antiquity. Since the great revival of the taste for older literature, which preceded and accompanied the Romantic movement, Marot has scarcely held this pride of place. The Pleiade on the one hand, the purely mediaeval writers on the other, have pushed him from his stool. But sane criticism, which declines to depreciate one thing because it appreciates another, will always have hearty admiration for his urbanity, his genuine wit, his graceful turn of words; and his flashes of pathos and poetry.

It is, as has been said, one of the commonplaces of the subject to speak of Marot as the father of modern French poetry; the phrase is, like all such phrases, inaccurate, but, like most such phrases, it contains a certain amount of truth. To the characteristics of the lighter French poetry, from La Fontaine to Beranger, which has always been more popular both at home and abroad than the more ambitious and serious efforts of French poets, Marot does in some sort stand in a parental relation. He retained the sprightliness and sly fun of the Fabliau-writers, while he softened their crudity of expression, he exchanged clumsiness and horse-play for the play of wit, and he emphasised fully in the language the two characteristics which have never failed to distinguish it since, elegance and urbanity. His style is somewhat pedestrian, though on occasion he can write with exquisite tenderness, and with the most delicate suggestiveness of expression. But as a rule he does not go deep; ease and grace, not pa.s.sion or lofty flights, are his strong points. Representing, as he did, the reaction from the stiff forms and clumsily cla.s.sical language of the _rhetoriqueurs_, it was not likely that he should exhibit the tendency of his own age to cla.s.sical culture and imitation very strongly. He and his school were thus regarded by their immediate successors of the Pleiade as rustic and uncouth singers, for the most part very unjustly. But still Marot's work was of less general and far-reaching importance than that of Ronsard. He brought out the best aspect of the older French literature, and cleared away some disfiguring enc.u.mbrances from it, but he imported nothing new. It would hardly be unjust to say that, given the difference of a century in point of ordinary progress, Charles d'Orleans is Marot's equal in elegance and grace, and his superior in sentiment, while Marot is not comparable to Villon in pa.s.sion or in humour. His limitation, and at the same time his great merit, was that he was a typical Frenchman. A famous epigram, applied to another person two centuries later, might be applied with very little difficulty or alteration to Marot. He had more than anybody else of his time the literary characteristics which the ordinary literary Frenchman has. We constantly meet in the history of literature this contrast between the men who are simply s.h.i.+ning examples of the ordinary type, and men who cross and blend that type with new characters and excellences. Unquestionably the latter are the greater, but the former cannot on any equitable scheme miss their reward. It must be added that the positive merit of much of Marot's work is great, though, as a rule, his longer pieces are very inferior to his shorter.

Many of the epigrams are admirable; the Psalms, which have been unjustly depreciated of late years by French critics, have a sober and solemn music, which is almost peculiar to the French devotional poetry of that age; the satirical ballade of _Frere Lubin_ is among the very best things of its kind; while as much may be said of the rondeaux 'Dedans Paris' in the lighter style, and 'En la Baisant' in the graver. Perhaps the famous line--

Un doux nenny avec un doux sourire,

supposed to have been addressed to the Queen of Navarre, expresses Marot's poetical powers as well as anything else, showing as it does grace of language, tender and elegant sentiment, and suppleness, ease, and fluency of style.

[Sidenote: The School of Marot.]

Marot formed a very considerable school, some of whom directly imitated his mannerisms, and composed _blasons_[171] and _Coq-a-l'ane_ in emulation of their master and of each other, while others contented themselves with displaying the same general characteristics, and setting the same poetical ideals before them. Among the idlest, but busiest literary quarrels of the century, a century fertile in such things, was that between Marot and a certain insignificant person named Francois Sagon, a belated _rhetoriqueur_, who found some other rhymers of the same kind to support him. One of Marot's best things, an answer of which his servant, Fripelipes, is supposed to be the spokesman, came of the quarrel; but of the other contributions, not merely of the princ.i.p.als, but of their followers, the _Marotiques_ and _Sagontiques_, nothing survives in general memory, or deserves to survive. Of Marot's disciples, one, Mellin de Saint Gelais, deserves separate mention, the others may be despatched in pa.s.sing. Victor Brodeau, who, like his master, held places in the courts both of Marguerite and her brother, wrote not merely a devotional work, _Les Louanges de Jesus Christ notre Seigneur_, which fairly ill.u.s.trates the devotional side of the Navarrese literary coterie, but also epigrams and rondeaux of no small merit.

etienne Dolet, better known both as a scholar and translator, and as the publisher of Marot and (surrept.i.tiously) of Rabelais, composed towards the end of his life poems in French, the princ.i.p.al of which was taken in t.i.tle and idea from Marot's _Enfer_, and which, though very unequal, have pa.s.sages of some poetical power. Marguerite herself has left a considerable collection of poems of the most diverse kind and merit, the t.i.tle of which, _Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses_[172], is perhaps not the worst thing about them. Farces, mysteries, religious poems, such as _Le Triomphe de l'Agneau_, and _Le Miroir de l'ame Pecheresse_, with purely secular pieces on divers subjects, make up these curious volumes. Not a few of the poems display the same n.o.bility of tone and stately sonorousness of verse, which has been and will be noticed as a characteristic of the serious poetry of the age, and which reached its climax in Du Bartas, D'Aubigne, and the choruses of Garnier and Montchrestien. Bonaventure des Periers, an admirable prose writer, was a poet, though not a very strong one. Francois Habert, 'Le Banni de Liesse,' must not be confounded with Philippe Habert, author of a remarkable _Temple de la Mort_ in the next century. Gilles Corrozet, author of fables in verse, who, like many other literary men of the time, was a printer and publisher as well, Jacques Gohorry, a pleasant song writer, Gilles d'Aubigny, Jacques Pelletier, etienne Forcadel, deserve at least to be named. Of more importance were Hugues Salel, Charles Fontaine, Antoine Heroet, Maurice Sceve. All these were members of the Lyonnese literary coterie, and in connection with this Louise Labe also comes in. Salel, famous as the first French translator of the Iliad, or rather of Books I-XII thereof, distinguished himself as a writer of _blasons_ in imitation of Marot, as well as by composing many small poems of the occasional kind. Charles Fontaine exhibited the fancy of the time for conceits in the ent.i.tling of books by denominating his poems _Ruisseaux de la Fontaine_, and was one of the chief champions on Marot's side in the quarrel with Sagon, while he afterwards defended the _style Marotique_ against Du Bellay's announcement of the programme of the Pleiade. But perhaps he would hardly deserve much remembrance, save for a charming little poem to his new-born son, which M. a.s.selineau has made accessible to everybody in Crepet's _Poetes Francais_[173]. He also figures in a literary tournament very characteristic of the age. La Borderie, another disciple of Marot, had written a poem ent.i.tled _L'Amye de Cour_, which defended libertinism, or at least worldly-mindedness in love, in reply to the _Parfaite Amye_ of Antoine Heroet, which exhibits very well a certain aspect of the half-amorous, half-mystical sentiment of the day. Fontaine rejoined in a _Contr'Amye de Cour_. Maurice Sceve is also a typical personage. He was, it may be said, the head of the Lyonnese school, and was esteemed all over France. He was excepted by the irreverent champions of the Pleiade from the general ridicule which they poured on their predecessors, and was surrounded by a special body of feminine devotees and followers, including his kinswomen Claudine and Sibylle Sceve, Jeanne Gaillarde, and above all Louise Labe. Sceve's poetical work is strongly tinged with cla.s.sical affectation and Platonic mysticism; and his chief poem, _De l'Objet de la plus haute Vertu_, consists of some four hundred and fifty dizains written in what in England and later has been, not very happily, called a metaphysical style. Last of all comes the just-mentioned Louise Labe, 'La belle Cordiere,' one of the chief ornaments of Lyons, and the most important French poetess of the sixteenth century. Louise was younger, and wrote later than most of the authors just mentioned, and in some respects she belongs to the school of Ronsard, like her supposed lover, Olivier de Magny. But the Lyons school was essentially _Marotique_, and much of the style of the elder master is observable in the writings of Louise[174].

She has left a prose _Dialogue d'Amour et de Folie_, three elegies, and a certain number of sonnets. Her poems are perhaps the most genuinely pa.s.sionate of the time and country, and many of the sonnets are extremely beautiful. The language is on the whole simple and elegant, without the over-cla.s.sicism of the Pleiade, or the obscurity of her master Sceve. Strangely enough the poems of this young Lyonnese lady have in many places a singular approach to the ring of Shakespeare's sonnets and minor works, and that not merely by virtue of the general resemblance common to all the love poetry of the age, but in some very definite traits. Her surname of 'La belle Cordiere' came from her marriage with a rich merchant, Ennemond Perrin by name, who was by trade a ropemaker. Her poems have had their full share of the advantages of reprints, which have of late years fallen to the lot of sixteenth-century authors in France.

[Sidenote: Mellin de St. Gelais.]

Mellin de Saint Gelais[175], the last to be mentioned but the most important of the school of Marot, has been very variously judged. The mere fact that he was probably the introducer of the sonnet into France (the counter claim of Pontus de Tyard seems to be unfounded) would suffice to give him a considerable position in the history of letters.

But Mellin's claims by no means rest upon this achievement. He was a man of higher position than most of the other poets of the time, being the reputed son of Octavien de Saint Gelais, and himself enjoying a good deal of royal favour. In his old age, as the representative of the school of Marot, he had to bear the brunt of the Pleiade onslaught, and knew how to defend himself, so that a truce was made. He was born in 1487, and died in 1558. His name is also spelt Merlin, and even Melusin, the Saint Gelais boasting descent from the Lusignans, and thus from the famous fairy heroine Melusine. In his youth he spent a good deal of time in Italy, at the Universities of Bologna and Padua. On returning to France, he was at once received into favour at court, and having taken orders, obtained various benefices and appointments which a.s.sured his fortune. It is remarkable that though he violently opposed Ronsard's rising favour at court, both the Prince of Poets and Du Bellay completely forgave him, and pay him very considerable compliments, the latter praising his 'vers emmielles,' the former speaking, even after his death, of his proficiency in the combined arts of music and poetry.

Saint Gelais was a good musician, and an affecting story is told of his swan-song, for which, as for other anecdotes, there is no s.p.a.ce here.

His work, though not inconsiderable in volume, is, even more than that of Marot and other poets of the time and school, composed for the most part of very short pieces, epigrams, rondeaux, dizains, huitains, etc.

These pieces display more merit than most recent critics have been disposed to allow to them. The style is fluent and graceful, free from puns and other faults of taste common at the time. The epigrams are frequently pointed, and well expressed, and the complimentary verse is often skilful and well turned. Mellin de Saint Gelais is certainly not a poet of the highest order, but as a court singer and a skilful master of language he deserves a place among his earlier contemporaries only second to that of Marot.

[Sidenote: Miscellaneous Verse. Anciennes Poesies Francaises.]

Something of the same sort may be said of all the writers in verse of the first half of the century. Their importance is chiefly relative. Few of their works are conceived or executed on a scale sufficient to ent.i.tle them to the rank of great poets, and, saving always Marot, the excellence even of the trifling compositions to which they confined themselves is very unequal and intermittent. But all are evidences of a general diffusion of the literary spirit among the people of France, and most of them in their way, and according to their powers, helped in perfecting the character of French as a literary instrument. The advance which the language experienced in this respect is perhaps nowhere better shown than in the miscellaneous and popular poetry of the time, a vast collection of which has been made accessible by the reprinting of rare or unique printed originals in the thirteen volumes of MM. de Montaiglon and de Rothschild's _Anciennes Poesies Francaises_, published in the _Bibliotheque Elzevirienne_[176]. This flying literature, as it is well called in French, lacks in most cases the freshness and spontaneity of mediaeval folk-song. But it has in exchange gained in point of subject a wide extension of range, and in point of form a considerable advance in elegance of language, absence of commonplace, and perfection of literary form and style. The stiffness which characterises much mediaeval and almost all fifteenth-century work has disappeared in great measure. The writers speak directly and to the point, and find no difficulty in so using their mother tongue as to express their intentions. The tools in short are more effective and more completely under the control of the worker. A certain triviality is indeed noticeable, and the tendency of the middle ages to perpetuate favourite forms and models is by no means got rid of. But much that was useless has been discarded, and of what is left a defter and more distinctly literary use is made. Had French remained as Marot left it, it would indeed have been unequal to the expression of the n.o.blest thoughts, the gravest subjects, to the treatment and exposition of intricate and complicated problems of life and mind. But in his hands it attained perhaps the perfection of usefulness as an exponent of the pure _esprit gaulois_, to use a phrase which has been tediously abused by French writers, but which is expressive of a real fact in French history and French literature. It had been suppled and pointed: it remained for it to be weighted, strengthened, and enriched. This was not the appointed task of Marot and his contemporaries, but of the men who came after them. But what they themselves had to do they did, and did it well. To this day the lighter verse of France is more an echo of Clement Marot than of any other man who lived before the seventeenth century, and, with the exception of his greater follower, La Fontaine, of any man who came after him at any time[177].

FOOTNOTES:

[165] _De_ Belges, though the less usual, is the more accurate form. We are at length promised a complete edition of him in the admirable series of the Belgian Academy, one of the best in appearance and editing, and by far the cheapest of all such series. He was born in 1475, held posts in the household of the Governors of the Netherlands, was historiographer to Louis XII., and died either in 1524 or in 1548.

[166] See _Poetes Francais_, i. 532. It is perhaps well to say that M.

C. d'Hericault, though a very agreeable as well as a very learned writer, is particularly open to the charge that his geese are swans.

[167] Ed. C. d'Hericault. Paris, 1855.

[168] See _Poetes Francais_, vol. i. _ad fin._, for the poets mentioned in this paragraph and others of their kind.

[169] He was in his old age conspicuous among the enemies of etienne Dolet. See _etienne Dolet_, by R. C. Christie. London, 1880.

[170] Ed Jannet et C. d'Hericault. 4 vols. Paris, 2nd ed. 1873. M.

d'Hericault has prefixed a much larger study of Marot than is to be found here to his edition of the 'beauties' of the poet, published by Messrs. Garnier. The late M. Guiffrey published two volumes of a costly and splendid edition, which his death interrupted.

[171] The _blason_ (description) was a child of the mediaeval _dit_.

Marot's examples, _Le beau Tetin_ and _Le laid Tetin_, were copied _ad infinitum_. The first is panegyric, the second abuse.

[172] Ed. Frank. 4 vols. Paris, 1873-4.

[173] i. 651.

[174] Ed. Tross. Paris, 1871.

[175] Ed. Blanchemain, 3 vols. Paris, 1873.

[176] This great collection, which awaits its completion of glossary, etc., was published between 1855 and 1878, and is invaluable to any one desiring to appreciate the general characteristics of the poetical literature of the time.

[177] Much help has been received in the writing of this chapter, and indeed of this book, from the excellent work of MM. Hatzfeld and Darmesteter, _Le Seizieme Siecle en France_ (Paris, 1878), one of the best histories extant in a small compa.s.s of a brief but important period of literature. We may hope for a still more elaborate study of the same subject in English from Mr. Arthur Tilley, of King's College, Cambridge.

An introductory volume to this study appeared in 1885.

CHAPTER III.

RABELAIS AND HIS FOLLOWERS.

[Sidenote: Fiction at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century.]

At the beginning of the sixteenth century prose fiction in France was represented by a considerable ma.s.s of literature divided sharply into two separate cla.s.ses of very different nature and value. On the one hand the prose versions of the Chansons de Gestes and the romances, Arthurian and adventurous, which had succeeded the last and most extensive verse rehandlings of these works in the fourteenth century, made up a considerable body of work, rarely possessing much literary merit, and characterised by all the faults of monotony, repet.i.tion, and absence of truthful character-drawing which distinguish late mediaeval work. On the other hand, there was a smaller body of short prose tales[178] sometimes serious in character and of not inconsiderable antiquity, more frequently comic and satirical, and corresponding in prose to the Fabliaux in verse. It has been pointed out that in the hands, real or supposed, of Antoine de la Salle this latter kind of work had attained a high standard of perfection. But it was as yet extremely limited in style, scope, and subject. Valour, courtesy, and love made up the list of subjects of the serious work, and the stock materials for satire, women, marriage, priests, etc., that of the comic. Although we have some lively presentment of the actual manners of the time in Antoine de la Salle, it is accidental only, and of its thoughts on any but the stock subjects we have nothing. There was thus room for a vast improvement, or rather for a complete revolution, in this particular cla.s.s of work, and this revolution was at a comparatively early period of the new century effected by the greatest man and the greatest book of the French Renaissance.

[Sidenote: Rabelais.]

Francois Rabelais[179] was born at Chinon about 1495 (the alternative date of 1483 which used to be given is improbable if not impossible), and at an early age was destined to the cloister. He not only became a full monk, but also took priest's orders. Before he was thirty he acquired the reputation of a good cla.s.sical scholar, and this seems to have brought him into trouble with his brethren the Cordeliers or Franciscans, who were at this time among the least cultivated of the monastic orders. With the consent of the Pope he migrated to a Benedictine convent, and became canon at Maillezais. This migration, however, did not satisfy him, and before long he quitted his new convent without permission and took to the life of a wandering scholar. The tolerance of the first period of the Renaissance however still existed in France, and he suffered no inconvenience from this breach of rule.

After studying medicine and natural science under the protection of Geoffrey d'Estissac, Bishop of Maillezais, he went to Montpellier to continue these studies, and in the early years of the fourth decade of the century practised regularly at Lyons. He was attached to the suite of Cardinal du Bellay in two emba.s.sies to Rome, returned to Montpellier, took his doctor's degree, and again practised in several cities of the South. Towards 1539 Du Bellay again established him in a convent, probably as a safeguard against the persecution which was then threatening. But the conventual life as then practised was too repugnant to Rabelais to be long endured, and he once more set out on his travels, this time in Savoy and Italy, the personal protection of the king guaranteeing him from danger. He then returned to France, taking however the precaution to soften some expressions in his books. At the death of Francis he retired first to Metz, and then to Rome, still with Du Bellay. The Cardinal de Chatillon, soon after gave him the living of Meudon, which he held with another in Maine for a year or two, resigning them both in 1551, and dying in 1553. Such at least are the most probable and best ascertained dates and events in a life which has been overlaid with a good deal of fiction, and many of the facts of which are decidedly obscure. Rabelais did not very early become an author, and his first works were of a purely erudite kind. During his stay at Lyons he seems to have done a good deal of work for the printers, as editor and reader, especially in reference to medical works, such as Galen and Hippocrates. He edited too, and perhaps in part re-wrote, a prose romance, _Les Grandes et Inestimables Chroniques du Grant et enorme Geant Gargantua_. This work, the author of which is unknown, and no earlier copies of which exist, gave him no doubt at least the idea of his own famous book. The next year (1532) followed the first instalment of this--_Pantagruel Roi des Dipsodes Rest.i.tue en Son naturel avec ses Faicts et Proueses Espouvantables_. Three years afterwards came _Gargantua_ proper, the first book of the entire work as we now have it. Eleven years however pa.s.sed before the work was continued, the second book of _Pantagruel_ not being published till 1546, and the third six years later, just before the author's death, in 1552. The fourth or last book did not appear as a whole until 1564, though the first sixteen chapters had been given to the world two years before. This fourth book, the fifth of the entire work, has, from the length of time which elapsed before its publication and from certain variations which exist in the MS. and the first printed editions, been suspected of spuriousness. Such a question cannot be debated here at length. But there is no external testimony of sufficient value to discredit Rabelais' authors.h.i.+p, while the internal testimony in its favour is overwhelming[180]. It may be said, without hesitation, that not a single writer capable of having written it, save Rabelais himself, is known to literary history at the time. It has been supposed, with a good deal of probability, that the book was left in the rough. The considerable periods which, as has been mentioned, intervened between the publications of the other books seem to show that the author indulged a good deal in revision; and, as the third book was only published just before his death, he could have had little time for this in the case of the fourth. This would account for a certain appearance of greater boldness and directness in the satire as well as for occasional various readings. In genius both of thought and expression this book is perhaps superior to any other; and, if it were decided that Rabelais did not write it, much of what are now considered the Rabelaisian characteristics must be transferred to an entirely unknown writer who has left not the smallest vestige of himself or his genius.

It is not possible to give here a detailed abstract of _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_: indeed, from the studied desultoriness of the work, any such abstract must of necessity be nearly as long as the book itself[181]. It is sufficient to say that both Gargantua and his son Pantagruel are the heroes of adventures, designedly exaggerated and burlesqued from those common in the romances of chivalry. The chief events of the earlier romance are, first, the war between Grandgousier, Gargantua's father, the pattern of easy-going royalty, and Picrochole, king of Lerne, the ideal of an arbitrary despot intent only on conquest; and, secondly, the founding of the Abbey of Thelema, a fanciful inst.i.tution, in which Rabelais propounds as first principles everything that is most opposed to the forced abstinence, the real self-indulgence, the idleness and the ignorance of the debased monastic communities he knew so well and hated so much. Pantagruel is Gargantua's son, and, like him, a giant, but the extravagances derived from his gianthood are not kept up in the second part as they are in the first. A very important personage in _Pantagruel_ is Panurge, a singular companion, whom Pantagruel picks up at Paris, and who is perhaps the greatest single creation of Rabelais. Some ideas may have been taken for him from the Cingar of Merlinus Coccaius, or Folengo, a Macaronic Italian poet[182], but on the whole he is original, and is hardly comparable to any one else in literature except Falstaff. The main idea of Panurge is the absence of morality in the wide Aristotelian sense with the presence of almost all other good qualities. After a time, in which Pantagruel and his companions (among whom, as in the former romance, Friar John is the embodiment of hearty and healthy animalism, as Panurge is of a somewhat diseased intellectual refinement) are engaged in wars of the old romance kind, a whim of Panurge determines the conclusion of the story. He desires to get married; and an entire book is occupied by the various devices to which he resorts in order to determine whether it is wise or not for him to do so. At last it is decided that a voyage must be made to the oracle of the Dive Bouteille. The last two books are occupied with this voyage, in which many strange countries are visited, and at last, the oracle being reached, the word _Trinq_ is vouchsafed, not only, it would seem, to solve Panurge's doubts, but also as a general answer to the riddle of the painful earth.

Besides his great work, Rabelais was the author of a few extant letters, and probably of a good many that are not extant, of a little burlesque almanack called the _Pantagrueline Prognostication_, which is full of his peculiar humour, of a short work ent.i.tled _Sciomachie_, describing a festival at Rome, and of a few poems of no great merit. In _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_, however, his whole literary interest and character are concentrated. Few books have been the subject of greater controversy as to their meaning and general intention. The author, as if on purpose to baffle investigation, mixes up real persons mentioned by their real names, real persons mentioned in transparent allegory, and entirely fict.i.tious characters, in the most inextricable way. Occasionally, as in his chapters on education, he is perfectly serious, and allows no touch of humour or satire to escape him. Elsewhere he indulges in the wildest buffoonery. Two of the most notable characteristics of Rabelais are, first, his extraordinary predilection for heaping up piles of synonymous words, and huge lists of things; secondly, his habit of indulging in the coa.r.s.est allusions and descriptions. Both of these were to some extent mere exaggerations of his mediaeval models, but both show the peculiar characteristics of their author. The book as a whole has received the most various explanations as well as the most various appreciations. It has been regarded as in the main a political and personal satire, in every incident and character of which some reference must be sought to actual personages and events of the time; as an elaborate pamphlet against the Roman Catholic Church; as a defence of mere epicurean materialism, and even an attack on Christianity itself; as a huge piece of mischief intended to delude readers into the belief that something serious is meant, when in reality nothing of the kind is intended. Even more fantastic explanations than these have been attempted; such, for instance, as the idea that the voyage of Pantagruel is an allegorical account of the processes employed in the manufacture of wine. The true explanation, as far as there is any, of the book seems, however, to be not very difficult to make out, provided that the interpreter does not endeavour to force a meaning where there very probably is none. The form of it was pretty well prescribed by the old romances of adventure, and must be taken as given to Rabelais, not as invented by him for a special purpose; a war, a quest, these are the subjects of every story in verse and prose for five centuries, and Rabelais followed the stream. But when he had thus got his main theme settled, he gave the widest licence of comment, allusion, digression, and adaptation to his own fancy and his own intellect. Both of these were typical, and, except for a certain deficiency in the poetical element, fully typical of the time. Rabelais was a very learned man, a man of the world, a man of pleasure, a man of obvious interest in political and ecclesiastical problems. He was animated by that lively appet.i.te for enjoyment, business, study, all the occupations of life, which characterised the Renaissance in its earlier stages, in all countries and especially in France. Nor had science of any kind yet been divided and subdivided so that each man could only aspire to handle certain portions of it. Accordingly, Rabelais is prodigal of learning in season and out of season. But independently of all this, he had an immense humour, and this pervades the whole book, turning the preposterous adventures into satirical allegories or half allegories, irradiating the somewhat miscellaneous erudition with lambent light, and making the whole alive and fresh to this day. The extreme coa.r.s.eness of language, which makes Rabelais difficult to read now-a-days, seems to have arisen from a variety of causes. The essence of his book was exaggeration, and he exaggerated in this as in other matters. His keen appet.i.te for the ludicrous, and a kind of shamelessness which may have been partly due to individual peculiarity, but had not a little also to do with his education and studies, inclined him to make free with a department of thought where ludicrous ideas are, as it has been said, to be had for the picking up by those whom shame does not trouble at the expense of those whom it does. But besides all this, there was in Rabelais a knowledge of human nature, and a faculty of expressing that knowledge in literary form, in which he is inferior to Shakespeare alone. Caricatured as his types purposely are, they are all easily reducible to natural dimensions and properties; while occasionally, though all too rarely, the author drops his mask and speaks gravely, seriously, and then always wisely. These latter pa.s.sages are, it may be added, unsurpa.s.sed in mere prose style for many long years after the author's death.

Altogether, independently of the intrinsic interest of Rabelais' work, we go to him as we can go to only some score or half score of the greatest writers of the world, for a complete reflection of the sentiment and character of his time. As with all great writers, what he shows is in great part characteristic of humanity at all times and in all places, but, as also with all great writers except Shakespeare, more of it is local and temporary merely. This local and temporary element gives him his great historical importance. Rabelais is the literary exponent of the earlier Renaissance, with its appet.i.te for the good things of the world as yet unblunted. Yet even in him there is a foretaste of satiety, and the Oracle of the Bottle has something, for all its joyousness, of the conclusion of the Preacher.