A Short History of French Literature Part 33

Rousseau's life was a singular and rather an unfortunate one. In the first place he was exiled for a piece of scandalous literature, of which in all probability he was quite guiltless; and, in the second, meeting in his exile with Voltaire, who professed (and seems really to have felt) admiration for him, he offended the irritable disciple and was long the b.u.t.t of his attacks. Here, however, Rousseau concerns us as a direct pupil of Boileau, who, with great faculties for the formal part of poetry, and not without some tincture of its spirit, set himself to be a lyric poet after Boileau's fas.h.i.+on. He tried play-writing also, but his dramas are quite unimportant. Rousseau's princ.i.p.al works are certain odes, most of which are either panegyrical after the fas.h.i.+on of the celebrated Namur specimen (though he is seldom so absurd as his master), or else sacred and drawn from the Bible. The _Cantates_ are of the same kind as the latter. These elaborate and formal works, which owed much of their popularity to the vogue given to piety at court in the later years of Louis XVI., are curiously contrasted with the third princ.i.p.al division of his poems, consisting of epigrams which allow themselves the full epigrammatic licence in subject and treatment. The contrast is, however, probably due to a very simple cause, the state of demand at the time, and perhaps also to the study of Marot, the only pre-seventeenth century poet of France who was allowed to pa.s.s muster in the school of Boileau. Rousseau's merits have been already indicated, and his defects may be easily divined, even from this brief notice. He is almost always adroit, often eloquent, sometimes remarkably clever; but he is seldom other than artificial, never pa.s.sionate, and only once or twice sublime.

Nor is it superfluous to mention that he is more responsible than any other person for the intolerable frippery of cla.s.sical mythology which loads eighteenth-century verse.

La Motte-Houdart (1672-1731), a successful dramatist, an excellent prose-writer, and an ingenious but paradoxical critic, was at the time considered Rousseau's rival in point of ode-making. His work displays the same defects in a greater and the same merits in a lesser degree, but his fables in the style of La Fontaine are not unhappy.

Lagrange-Chancel, a partisan of the d.u.c.h.ess du Maine, is chiefly famous for his ferocious satires on the Duke of Orleans. Louis Racine (1692--1763), undeterred by his father's reputation and the dissuasion of the redoubtable Boileau, attempted poetry of a serious kind. He was brought up by the Jansenists, and his two chief works are poems on 'Grace' and 'Religion.' The latter is better than the former; but both exhibit a considerable faculty in the style of verse which his father had made fas.h.i.+onable. The 'Sacred Odes' of Louis Racine are, like most French poetry of the kind, stiff with a double mannerism, literary and devotional.

[Sidenote: Voltaire.]

It would not be easy to give a clearer idea of the strange conception of poetry which prevailed in France at this time than is given in the simple statement that Voltaire was acknowledged to be its greatest poet.

It is probable that few Englishmen think of Voltaire as a poet at all; and he has indeed no claim to the t.i.tle except such as may be derived from his remarkable skill in the mechanism of the art of poetry, and from the extraordinary felicity of his light occasional pieces. It is, however, as a poet that he was chiefly regarded by his contemporaries; and though he will figure in almost every one of the chapters of this book, such brief notice of his life as can alone be attempted in this volume may best be given here. He was born in Paris in 1694, being the younger son of a wealthy notary. The Jesuits had charge of his education, and he very early displayed inclinations towards verse which were not agreeable to his father. His youth seemed destined to sc.r.a.pes.

He became identified with the party hostile to the Regent, and was twice imprisoned in the Bastile (the second time in consequence of no fault of his own), while he was at least twice bastinadoed by personal enemies.

Being sent in the suite of an amba.s.sador to Holland, he became entangled in a foolish love affair, and had to be hastily recalled. But by degrees his literary talent developed itself. His first visit to the Bastile is identified, more or less correctly, with the composition of _Oedipe_, his second with that of the _Henriade_. After his second release he had to go to England, and there the poem was published. He was soon enabled to return to France, and from that time forward was careful to keep himself out of difficulties by residing first with his friend, Madame du Chatelet, at the remote frontier chateau of Circy, then with Frederick II. at Berlin, then on the neutral territory of Switzerland, or close to its border, at Les Delices and Ferney. During the whole of his long life his literary production was incessant, and the form most congenial to him was poetry, or at least verse. Besides the _Henriade_, his only poem of great bulk is the scandalous burlesque epic of the _Pucelle_, nominally imitated from Ariosto, but dest.i.tute of the poetical feeling prominent in the _Orlando_. Voltaire's talent, however, was so much greater in the lighter kinds of poetry than in the severer, that the _Pucelle_ is not only more amusing, but actually better as poetry, than the _Henriade_, the latter being stiff in plan and servilely modelled on the cla.s.sical epics, declamatory in tone, tedious in action, and commonplace in character. Besides these two long poems Voltaire produced an immense quant.i.ty of miscellaneous work, tales in verse, epistles in verse, discourses in verse, satires, epigrams, _vers de societe_ of every possible kind. These are almost invariably distinguished by the felicity of expression--spoilt only by too close adherence to the mannerism of the time--the brilliant wit, the keen observation which are identified with the name of Voltaire. The number and the small individual size of these works make it impossible to particularise them here. But _Le Pauvre Diable_ may be specified as an almost unique example of easy Horatian satire less conventional than most of its kind; and the verses to the Princess Ulrique of Prussia as a model of artificial but exquisitely polished gallantry in verse.

[Sidenote: Descriptive Poets. Delille.]

Le Franc de Pompignan had the misfortune to incur the enmity of Voltaire, and has consequently borne in France the traditional ignominy which in England hangs on certain victims of Dryden and Pope. He had, however, some poetical talent, which was shown princ.i.p.ally in his ode on the death of J. B. Rousseau. The charming poem of _Ver-Vert_ (the burlesque history of a parrot, the pet of a convent) made, and not unjustly, the reputation of Gresset. This reputation his other poetical works--though he wrote a comedy of much merit--failed to sustain. Saint Lambert, the rival of Voltaire in love if not in literature, imitated Thomson's _Seasons_ very closely in a poem of the same name, which set the fas.h.i.+on of descriptive poetry in France for a considerable time. The three most remarkable of his followers, all considerably superior to himself in power, were Lemierre, Delille, and Roucher. Some paradoxical critics have endeavoured to make Lemierre into a great poet; but his poems (_La Peinture_, _Les Fastes_, etc.), written on ill-selected subjects and in a style full of conventional mannerism, have at best the occasional striking lines which are to be found in Armstrong and other followers of Young or Thomson in England. Jacques Delille and his extraordinary popularity form, perhaps, the greatest satire on the taste of the eighteenth century in France. His translation of the Georgics was supposed to make him the equal of Virgil, and brought him not merely fame, but solid reward. His princ.i.p.al work was the poem of _Les Jardins_, which he followed up with others of a not dissimilar kind.

Though he emigrated he did not lose his fame, and to the day of his death was considered to be the first poet of France, or to share that honour with Lebrun-_Pindare_. Delille has expiated his popularity by a full half-century of contempt, and his work is, indeed, valueless as poetry. But it is interesting as one of the most striking examples of talent, adjusting itself exactly to the demands made on it. The age of Delille wished to see everything described in elegant periphrases, and the periphrases arranged in harmonious verses. Delille did this and nothing more. Chess is 'le jeu reveur qu'inventa Palamede.' Backgammon is 'le jeu bruyant ou, le cornet en main, L'adroit joueur calcule un hasard incertain.' Sugar is 'le miel Americain Que du suc des roseaux exprima l'Africain.' In short, poetry becomes an elaborate conundrum; nothing is called by its proper name when a circ.u.mlocution is in any way possible. Given the demand, Delille may justly claim the honour of supplying it with unequalled adroitness. Roucher, the author of _Les Mois_, who fell a victim to the guillotine, was a member of this school, possessing not a little vigour, though he was not free from the defects of his predecessors. To these may, perhaps, be joined the pastoral and idyllic poet Leonard.

[Sidenote: Lebrun.]

It has been said that the glory of Delille as the greatest poet of the last quarter of the century was shared by a writer whom his contemporaries surnamed (absurdly enough) Pindar. Escouchard Lebrun had a strange resemblance to J. B. Rousseau, of whom, however, he was by no means a warm admirer. Like his forerunner, he divided his time between bombastic lyrics and epigrams of very considerable merit. Lebrun was not dest.i.tute of a certain force, but his time was too much for him. He was a very long-lived man, and in his old age celebrated by turns the Republic and Bonaparte. His chief rivals as poets of the Republic were M. J. Chenier and the hunchback Desorgues, a voluminous and vigorous but crude and unfinished writer, who died in a madhouse at the age of forty-five.

Two young poets, who lived about the middle of the century, are usually mentioned together, from the fact of the younger of them having used the misfortunes of the elder to point his own complaints. Malfilatre, a Norman by birth, had the ill-luck to write a piece of verse which gained a provincial success. He at once set out for Paris to make his fortune.

He obtained the post of secretary to the Count de Lauraguais, wrote verses not without grace and full of a certain tender melancholy, and died at the age of thirty, his health broken by privations and disappointment. Gilbert, a stronger man, but who has been somewhat honoured by being called the French Chatterton, died still younger, after writing some vigorous satire, and a 'complaint' or elegy which has a good deal of pathos. But he did not, as is generally said, die of want, though he did die in a public hospital, having been carried thither after a fall from his horse.

[Sidenote: Parny.]

The places accorded by their contemporaries to Delille and Lebrun really belonged to two writers of very different character and fortune, Parny and Andre Chenier. Evariste de Parny, a native of the island of Bourbon, was called by the aged Voltaire 'mon cher Tibulle,' and displays, with much of the frivolity and false gallantry of the time, an extraordinary command of simple elegiac verse, and a manner almost antique in its simplicity and sweetness. Parny's best piece, a short epitaph on a young girl, is one of the best things of its kind in literature. His merits, however, are confined to his early works. In his maturer years he wrote long poems, on the model of the _Pucelle_, against England, Christianity, and Monarchism, which are equally remarkable for blasphemy, obscenity, extravagance, and dulness. His friend Bertin, like him a creole, resembled him in the command of graceful elegiac and epistolary verse, but had not what Parny sometimes had, genuine pa.s.sion.

[Sidenote: Chenier.]

Andre Marie de Chenier[285], beyond question the greatest poet of the eighteenth century in France, was born at Constantinople, where his father was consul-general, in 1762. His mother was a Greek. His family returned to France when he was a child; he was educated carefully, and for a short time served in the army, but soon left it. After a time he was attached (in 1787) to the French emba.s.sy in London. Here he spent four years. Returning to France he sympathised, but on the moderate side, with the Revolution. The growth of the Jacobin spirit horrified him, and the excesses of the summer of 1792 decided his att.i.tude and his fate. He wrote frequently in the _Journal de Paris_, the organ of the moderate royalist party. Although he did not in any way put himself forward, he was at last arrested in March, 1794, and was guillotined on the seventh Thermidor, two days only before the event which would have saved him, the fall of Robespierre. His poems were not published till long after his death, and the text of them is even now in an unsatisfactory condition, many having been left unfinished and uncorrected by the author. Andre Chenier is sometimes considered as a precursor of the Romantic reform, but this is a mistake. His critical comments on Shakespeare and other writers, his favourite studies, which were confined to the Greek and Latin cla.s.sics and the humanists of the Italian Renaissance, above all his poems themselves, prove the contrary.

A Greek by birthplace, and half a Greek by blood, his tastes and standards were wholly cla.s.sical. But the fire and force of his poetical genius made the blood circulate afresh in the veins of the old French cla.s.sical tradition, without, however, permanently strengthening or renovating it. The poetry of Chenier is still in the main the poetry of Racine, though with infinitely more glow of colour and variety of harmony. His poems are mostly antique in their t.i.tles and plan, eclogues, elegies, and so forth, and are not free from a certain artificiality inseparable from the style. _La Jeune Tarentine_, _La Jeune Captive_, _L'Aveugle_, and some others, are of extreme merit, and all over his work (much of which is in the most fragmentary condition) lines and phrases of extraordinary beauty are scattered. The n.o.ble _Iambes_, or political and satirical poems, which he wrote in prison, just before his death, bear out, perhaps better than anything else, his well-known saying, as he touched his head when sentence had been pa.s.sed, 'et pourtant il y avait quelque chose la.'

[Sidenote: Minor Poets.]

A few other poets or verse-makers of merit before the revival of poetry proper must be rapidly noticed. The fable of La Fontaine was cultivated vigorously, in particular by Florian, a favourite pupil of Voltaire, who will reappear in these pages. Florian's fables are graceful copies of his master. Those of Arnault, with less grace, have more originality; often, indeed, Arnault's short moral poems are not so much fables as what used to be called in English 'emblems.' The most famous of these, which of itself deserves to keep Arnault's memory green, is 'La Feuille.' Marie Joseph Chenier, the younger brother of Andre, and, unlike him, a fervent republican, is chiefly known as a dramatist. He had, however, a vein of satirical verse, which was not commonplace.

Another dramatist, Andrieux, also deserves mention in pa.s.sing. Superior to either of these as a poet, and wanting only the good-fortune of having been born a little later, was Nepomucene Lemercier, a playwright of no small merit, and a poet of extraordinary but unequal vigour. The _Panhypocrisiade_, a kind of satirical epic _par personnages_ (to use the old French expression for a dramatic narrative), is his princ.i.p.al work, and a very remarkable one. Last of all have to be mentioned Fontanes and Chenedolle, who are the characteristic poets of the Empire, with the exception of an epic school of no value. The chief importance of Fontanes in literature is derived not from any performances of his own, but from the fact that he was the appointed intermediary between Napoleon and the men of letters of the time, and was able to exercise a good deal of useful patronage. Chenedolle was in production, if not in publication, for he published late in life, a precursor of Lamartine, much of whose style and manner may be found in him. An amiable appreciation of natural beauty, and a tendency to facile pathos, derived from the contemplation of natural objects, distinguish him from his predecessors.

[Sidenote: Light verse. Piron.]

[Sidenote: Desaugiers.]

The vigorous, if not always edifying, work of the song-writers and authors of _vers de societe_ during this century remains to be noticed.

The example of La Fontaine's tales was followed by many writers of more talent than scruple, but their literary value is not sufficient to ent.i.tle them to a place here. No history of French literature, however, would be complete without a notice of Piron, the greatest epigrammatist of France, and one of her keenest and brightest wits. Piron's temper was an idle one, and he did little solid work in literature, except his epigrams and one comedy, _La Metromanie_. He wrote many vaudevilles and operettas, and no one, with the possible exception of Catullus, has ever excelled him in the art of packing in a few light and graceful lines the greatest possible quant.i.ty of malicious wit. Panard, also a vaudevillist, is remarkable for the number and excellence of his drinking songs, and the variety and melody of their rhythm. Colle, author of amusing but spiteful memoirs, and, like Piron and Panard, a writer of comic operettas, excelled rather in the political chanson.

Gentil Bernard, the Cardinal de Bernis, the Abbe Boufflers, and Dorat, were all writers of _vers de societe_, the last being much the best.

Their style of writing was frivolous and conventional in the extreme, but long practice and the vogue which it enjoyed in French society had brought it to something like the condition of a fine art. Dorat was surnamed by a contemporary the 'glowworm of Parna.s.sus.' The expression was not an unhappy one, and may be fairly applied to the other authors who have been mentioned in his company. He himself was a rather voluminous author in different styles. The literary baggage of the others is not heavy. Vade, a writer of light and trifling verse, who died comparatively young, devoted himself to composing poems in the 'poissard' dialect of Paris, which are among the best of such things. At the close of the century, and deserving more particular notice, appeared Desaugiers, the best light song-writer of France, with the single exception of Beranger, and preferred to him by some critics. Desaugiers escaped the revolution by good fortune, had a short but rather adventurous career of foreign travel, and then settled down to vaudeville-writing, song-making, and jovial living in Paris. He was a great frequenter of the Caveau, a kind of irregular club of men of letters which had been inst.i.tuted by Piron and his friends, and which long continued to be a literary and social rendezvous. Desaugiers was the last of the older cla.s.s of _Chansonniers_, who relied chiefly on love and wine for their subjects, and who, if they touched on politics at all, touched on them merely from the personal and satirical point of view, with occasional indulgence in cheap patriotism. His songs have great sweetness and ease, but they contain nothing that can compare with Beranger in his more serious and pathetic mood[286].

This is a sketch, necessarily and designedly rapid, of the poetical history of the eighteenth century in France. The matter thus rapidly treated is of no small interest to professed students of literature; it abounds in curious social indications; it gives frequent instances of the extremest ingenuity applied to somewhat unworthy use. But in the history of the literature as a whole, and to those who have to regard it not as a collection of curiosities, but as a fruitful field of great and n.o.ble work, it cannot but be of subordinate interest, and as such requires but cursory treatment here[287].

FOOTNOTES:

[284] Editions of almost all authors of any merit from the beginning of the eighteenth century are common and accessible enough. They will, therefore, not be specially indicated henceforward unless there is some special reason for the citation, such as the peculiar elegance or literary merit of a particular edition, or else the comparative rarity of the book in any form.

[285] Chenier has been somewhat unfortunate in his editors. The only complete and accurate edition (though it is far from perfect) is that of M. Gabriel de Chenier. 3 vols. 1879.

[286] Excellent selections from many of these lighter poets have recently been put forth under the editors.h.i.+p of M. Octave Uzanne.

[287] Rouget de L'Isle, the author of the famous _Ma.r.s.eillaise_, deserves mention for that only. He published poems, but their singular difference from, and inferiority to, his masterpiece were the chief causes of the scepticism (apparently ill-founded) which has sometimes been displayed as to his authors.h.i.+p of it.

CHAPTER II.

DRAMATISTS.

[Sidenote: Divisions of Drama.]

[Sidenote: La Motte.]

At the beginning, and indeed during the whole course, of the eighteenth century, the theatre continued to enjoy all the vogue which the extraordinary brilliancy of the authors of the preceding age had conferred on it. There were three tolerably distinct kinds of dramatic work--tragedy, comedy, and opera--the latter either artificial or comic, and subdividing itself into a great many cla.s.ses, from the dignified opera of the Comedie Francaise and the Comedie Italienne, down to the vaudevilles and operettas of the so-called 'fair' theatre, _Theatre de la Foire_. Towards the middle of the century there grew up a fourth cla.s.s, to which the not very appropriate and still less definite name of _drame_ is applied. This was subdivided, also somewhat arbitrarily, into _tragedie bourgeoise_ and _comedie larmoyante_. Thus the dramatic author had considerable liberty of choice except in tragedy proper, where the model of Racine was enforced on him with pitiless rigour. La Motte, who was, as has been said, a brilliant writer of prose, endeavoured to break these bonds, first, by decrying the alleged superiority of the ancients; secondly, by attacking the theory of the unities; and, lastly, by boldly denying the necessity of verse in tragedy, and still more the necessity of rhyme. He was, of course, answered, and the only one of the answers which has much interest for posterity is that which Voltaire prefixed to the second edition of _Oedipe_. This is, as always with its author, lively and ingenious, but ill-informed, dest.i.tute of true critical principles, and entirely inconclusive. La Motte himself wrote a tragedy, _Ines de Castro_, in which he did not venture to carry out his own principles, and which had some success. But the justice of his strictures was best shown by the increasing feebleness of French tragedy throughout the century. Were it not for the prodigious genius of Voltaire, not a single tragedy of the age would now have much chance of being read, still less of being performed; and were it not for that genius, and the unequal but still remarkable talent of Crebillon the elder, not a single tragedy of the age would be worth reading for any motive except curiosity, simple or studious.

[Sidenote: Crebillon the Elder.]

Crebillon was born in 1674, and lived to the age of eighty-nine. His family name was Jolyot, and the most remarkable thing about his private history is, that, being clerk to a lawyer, he was enthusiastically encouraged by his master in his poetical attempts. His first acted tragedy, _Idomenee_, appeared in 1703; his last, 'The Triumvirate,' more than fifty years later. In the interval he was irregularly busy, and the duel of tragedies, which in his old age his partisans got up between him and Voltaire, was not entirely in favour of the more famous and gifted writer. Crebillon's best works were _Atree_, 1707, and _Rhadamiste et Zen.o.bie_, 1711, the latter being his masterpiece. He had in the eyes of the minute critics of his time some technical defects of style and construction. But, despite the restraints of the French stage, he succeeded in being truly tragical and truly natural; and not a few of his verses have a grandeur which has been said to be hardly discoverable elsewhere in French tragedy between Corneille and Hugo.

[Sidenote: Voltaire and his followers.]

Voltaire's own tragedies have been very differently judged by different persons. It has been said that they owed their popularity chiefly to the adroit manner in which, without going too far, the author made them opportunities for insinuating the popular opinions of the time. Yet _Zare_ at least is still a successful and popular play on the stage; and it is admitted that Voltaire had both a most intimate acquaintance with the objects and methods of the playwright, and an extraordinary affection for the theatre. If to this be added his astonis.h.i.+ng dexterity as a literary workman, his acuteness in discerning the taste of the public, and his complete mastery of the language, and if it be remembered that the cla.s.sical French tragedy is almost wholly a _tour de force_, it will appear that it would have been very surprising if he had not succeeded in it. His tragedies, however, are by no means of equal merit. The best is, beyond all doubt, the already-mentioned _Zare_, 1732, in which Voltaire took just so much from the _Oth.e.l.lo_ of that Shakespeare whom he was never tired of decrying as would suffice to animate and support his own skilful workmans.h.i.+p. The earlier play, _Oedipe_, 1718, was astonis.h.i.+ngly successful, and is still astonis.h.i.+ngly clever. _La Mort de Cesar_, another Shakespearian adaptation, is less happy. In _Alzire_, a play written in the time of the poet's greatest intimacy with Madame du Chatelet, and dedicated to her, his extraordinary talent once more appears, as also in _Le Fanatisme_, better known as _Mahomet_, 1742. The best, however, of his plays, next to _Zare_, is probably _Merope_, 1743, which is a prodigy of ingenuity. The author has deliberately eschewed the means whereby both Corneille and Racine respectively alleviated the dryness and dulness of the Senecan model--the heroic virtues of the one, and the sighs and flames of the other. The play probably is the most perfect carrying out of the model pure and simple, and its inferiority is the inferiority of the kind, not of the individual. Indeed it may be questioned whether, on the mere technical merits, Voltaire is not superior to both Corneille and Racine, though he is of course very far inferior to them as a poet, and as a draughtsman of character. Voltaire wrote many other plays, earlier and later, of which _Tancrede_ is the only one which requires special mention. Nor, except Crebillon, do the tragic contemporaries and successors of Voltaire require more than very short notice. Le Franc de Pompignan wrote a respectable _Didon_; Saurin, who was in some sort a follower of Voltaire, a more than respectable _Spartacus_. The subject had perhaps the chief part in the success of the _Siege de Calais_ of Pierre Burette, who called himself De Belloy, and who followed it up by other patriotic tragedies or dramas. But he had the merit of attempting, though not with much success, some innovations on the meagreness of the established model. The tragedies of La Harpe are written throughout with the cold correctness (as correctness was then held) which characterised his work generally.

Almost all the men of letters of this time wrote plays of this kind, but they are for the most part valueless. Ducis is remarkable for a serious, and to a certain extent successful, attempt to inoculate the French tragedy with Shakespearian force. Versions of _Hamlet_, of _Macbeth_, and other plays appeared from his hands, which were also busy during a long life with dramatic work of all sorts. These versions have naturally been regarded in England as mere travesties, but there seems no reason to doubt that they really operated favourably as schoolmasters to bring their audience somewhat nearer to dramatic truth. The cla.s.sical tragedy was indeed expiring of simple old age, and most of the names of its pract.i.tioners, which emerge during the last quarter of the eighteenth and the first of the nineteenth century, are those of innovators in their measure and degree, whose innovations, however, were obliterated and made forgotten by the great romantic reform. Marie Joseph Chenier followed Voltaire's manner very closely (subst.i.tuting for Voltaire's bait of insinuated free-thinking that of republicanism more or less violently expressed) in _Charles IX._, _Cyrus_, _Caius Gracchus_, _Henry VIII._, _Tibere_, the last a work of some merit. Legouve dramatised Gessner's _Death of Abel_ on the principles of Boileau. Nepomucene Lemercier, the strange failure of a genius who has been already noticed in the last chapter, produced much more remarkable work. His _Agamemnon_, his _Fredegonde et Brunehault_ and some others display his merits, and show that he was striving after something better. But, like most transitional work, they are unsatisfactory as a whole. The _Hector_ of Luce de Lancival, the _Templiers_ of Raynouard, and many other pieces, were once popular, but are now utterly forgotten.

[Sidenote: Lesage.]

The list of comic writers, along with whom, for convenience' sake, those of the authors of opera and _drame_ may be included, is far longer and more important. It includes two men, Lesage and Beaumarchais, of European reputation, half-a-dozen others, Destouches, Marivaux, Piron, Gresset, Sedaine, who have produced work of remarkable character and merit, and a crowd of clever playwrights who amused their own times, and would amuse ours, if it were not that all comedy, save the very highest, is of its nature ephemeral. The list is worthily opened by Lesage, who, during the greater part of his life, earned by vaudevilles and operettas, composed either alone or in co-operation for the Theatre de la Foire, the bread which his incomparable novels would hardly have sufficed to procure him. This lighter dramatic work is, it may be observed, among the chief products of the century, and it has continued up to the present day to form one of the staple elements in the journey-work of French literature. Little of it has permanent qualities, yet the remarkable talents of many of the men who composed it make it, ephemeral as it is, interesting historically and even intrinsically. It derived partly from the indigenous farce, partly from the Italian comedy of stock personages, and partly from the merry-andrew performances already mentioned. The theatres at which it was performed were the object of much jealousy from the Comedie Francaise, and restrictions of the most annoying kind were placed on it. Once an edict forbade more than a single actor to appear--a condition surmounted by the ingenuity of Piron. Sometimes it was confined to dumb show, ill.u.s.trated by songs on placards which the audience chanted. Often the audience joined in the chorus, and it may be said generally that singing was always included.

Besides this rapid and perishable kind of work Lesage has left two pieces in the true style of Moliere. The more extravagant and farcical side of the master's genius is represented by _Crispin Rival de son Maitre_, 1707, a lively piece, the subject of which is indicated by its t.i.tle, and which carries off the extreme and probably intentional improbability of its plot by its brisk and rapid action, its vivid pictures of character, and the shower of wit which the dialogue everywhere pours out. _Turcaret_, 1709, is a regular comedy of the highest merit. It has been found fault with by some French critics, enamoured of the ruling pa.s.sion and central situation theory; but this is really a testimony to its merit. _Turcaret_ is in the strictest sense a criticism of life at the time, and the author shows the true prodigality of genius in filling his canvas. It is often described as a satire on the corruption and vices of the financiers, who were the curse of France at the time; and this it is in part. But there are combined with this satire of the loose morals of the n.o.bility, the follies of provincial coteries, the meanness of the trading cla.s.ses; while each character, instead of being an abstraction, is as sharp and individual as Gil Blas himself. Like Lesage, Piron worked much for the theatre; indeed he made his _debut_, as has been said, by venturing on a task which even Lesage had declined,--the writing of a comic opera with a single actor only. Like Lesage, too, he has left one comedy of durable reputation, _La Metromanie_, which, if it falls short of _Turcaret_ in holding up the mirror to nature, equals it in wit, and has for a French audience the attraction of being written in very good verse, while _Turcaret_ is in prose. With perhaps less genius than Piron, and certainly with less than Lesage, Destouches devoted himself to a higher cla.s.s of work on the whole, and has left more pieces that are remembered. _Le Philosophe Marie_, 1727, and _Le Glorieux_, 1732, are among the cla.s.sics of French comedy. _Le Dissipateur_, _Le Tambour Nocturne_, _L'Obstacle Imprevu_ have also much merit; and if _La Fausse Agnes_ has something of the farcical in it, it is farce of the right kind. Destouches wrote seventeen comedies; and, if bulk and general merit of work are taken together, he deserves the first place among the comic dramatists of the century in France.

[Sidenote: Comedie Larmoyante. La Chaussee. Diderot.]

In contrast to these three writers, who all followed the traditions of the comedy of Moliere and Regnard, Nivelle de la Chaussee invented, or at least brought into fas.h.i.+on, what was called _comedie larmoyante_, or _drame_. La Chaussee was a good deal ridiculed by his contemporaries, notably by Piron, who devoted to him some of his most admirable epigrams. But he was popular, and not altogether undeservedly popular, though his drama occupied in French literary history something of the same place as that of Lillo and Moore in English. La Chaussee was followed by a greater writer, but a worse dramatist, than himself. While La Chaussee was a clever versifier and an adroit playwright, Diderot understood the theory both of poetry and of the theatre much better than he understood the practice. Thus _L'ecole des Meres_, _La Gouvernante_, _Le Prejuge a la Mode_ are better plays than _Le Pere de Famille_ or _Le Fils Naturel_. It ought to be said that Diderot succeeded better in two small pieces, _La Piece et le Prologue_ and _Est-il Bon? Est-il Mechant?_ which were never acted. It should perhaps also be explained that the peculiarity of what was almost indifferently called _tragedie bourgeoise_ and _comedie larmoyante_ is the choice of possible situations in real life, which neither of the two conventional treatments of heroic tragedy and comedy purely comic can afford. Many writers followed La Chaussee and Diderot. Of these the most important perhaps was Saurin, who, not content with regular tragedy and comedy, obtained much success with _Beverley_, an adaptation of Moore's _Gamester_, of which Diderot wrote an unacted version.

_L'ecole des Bourgeois_ and _L'Embarras des Richesses_, by D'Allainval, one of the few French writers who experienced the privations of their English contemporaries in Grub Street, are good pieces, and so are the short _La Pupille_ and the _Originaux_ of f.a.gan, a clerk in the public service, who, like Lesage and Piron (Colle and Panard may be added), wrote vaudevilles, _parades_, etc. for the Theatre de la Foire. In the t.i.tles of most of these pieces the close following of Moliere, which was usual, and wisely usual, during the first half of the century, may be noticed.

[Sidenote: Marivaux.]

The same tradition is observed in one of the best comedies of the century, the _Mechant_ of Gresset, which, like his poem of _Ver-Vert_, had a great success, and deserved it, being equally good as literature and as drama. Marivaux, without, perhaps, attaining as positive an excellence, was more original, and very much more productive. The fullest edition of his dramatic works contains thirty-two pieces, and even this is not complete. Several of them, _Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard_, 1730, _Le Legs_, 1736, _Les Fausses Confidences_, 1737, have continued to be popular. All the work of Marivaux, dramatic and non-dramatic, is pervaded more or less by a peculiarity which at the time received the name of Marivaudage. This peculiarity consists partly in the sentiment, and partly in the phraseology. The former is characteristic of the eighteenth century, disguising a considerable affectation under a mask of simplicity, and the latter (sparkling with abundant, if somewhat precious wit) is ingeniously constructed to suit it and carry it off.

Of the three greatest literary names of the time, Diderot, it has been seen, tried the theatre not too happily. Voltaire, as successful in tragedy as his models permitted him to be, was not successful at all in comedy, and, indeed, rarely tried it. His best piece, _Nanine_, a dramatisation of _Pamela_, or at least suggested by it, is chiefly remarkable for being written in decasyllabic verse. The third, Rousseau, who lived to denounce the theatre, wrote a short operetta, _Le Devin du Village_, which is not without merit. Desmahis, a protege of Voltaire, produced, in 1750, a good comedy, _L'Impertinent_, on a small scale; and La Noue, another of his favourites (for he was as indulgent to his juniors as he was jealous of men of his own standing), the _Coquette Corrigee_. A third member of the same cla.s.s, Saurin, already twice mentioned, must be mentioned again, and still more deservedly, for _Les Moeurs du Temps_. The best dramatists, however, among the immediate followers of the _Philosophes_ were Sedaine and Marmontel. Sedaine is, indeed, with the possible exception of Beaumarchais, the best dramatist of the last half of the century. _Le Philosophe sans le Savoir_, 1765, and _La Gageure Imprevue_, 1768, are both admirable pieces. The author, like many of his predecessors, was a constant worker for the Opera Comique, and one of the best of the cla.s.s. Marmontel also adopted this line of composition, to which the musical talent of Gretry gave, at the time, great advantages. His best light dramatic work is a kind of comedy vaudeville, the _Ami de la Maison_.