A Short History of French Literature Part 38

Rousseau was a man of middle age before he produced any literary work of importance. He had in his youth been given to music, and indeed throughout his life the slender profits of music copying were almost his only independent source of income. His knowledge of the subject was far from scientific, but he produced an operetta which was not unsuccessful, and, but for his singular temperament, he might have followed up the success. His first literary work of importance was a prose essay for the Dijon Academy on the subject of the effects of civilisation on society. Either of his own motion, or at the suggestion of Diderot, Rousseau took the apparently paradoxical line of arguing that all improvements on the savage life had been curses rather than blessings, and he gained the prize. In 1755 his _Discours sur l'Origine de l'Inegalite_ appeared at Amsterdam; in 1760 his famous novel _Julie_, and in 1764 _Emile_, both of which have been spoken of already. Between the two appeared the still more famous and influential _Contrat Social_.

Of the other works of Rousseau published during his lifetime, the most famous, perhaps, was his letter to D'Alembert on the subject of the introduction of theatrical performances into Geneva, a characteristic paradox which made a bitter enemy of the most powerful of French men of letters. Besides these, the _Reveries d'un Promeneur Solitaire_, the _Lettres de la Montagne_, and above all, the unique _Confessions_, have to be reckoned. The last, like several of Rousseau's other works, did not appear till after his death.

Of all the writers mentioned in this chapter the influence of Rousseau on literature and on life was probably the largest. He was the direct inspirer of the men who made the French Revolution, and the theories of his _Contrat Social_ were closer at the root of Jacobin politics than any other. His fervid declamation about equality and brotherhood, and his sentimental republicanism, were seed as well suited to the soil in which they were sown as Montesquieu's reasoned const.i.tutionalism was unsuited to it. Rousseau, indeed, if the proof of the excellence of preaching is in the practice of the hearers, was the greatest preacher of the century. He denounced the practice of putting infants out to nurse, and mothers began to suckle their own children; he recommended instruction in useful arts, and many an _emigre_ n.o.ble had to thank Rousseau for being able to earn his bread in exile; he denounced speculative atheism, urging the undogmatic but emotional creed of his _Vicaire Savoyard_, and the first wave of the religious reaction was set going to culminate in the Catholic movement of Chateaubriand and Lamennais. But in literature itself his influence was quite as powerful.

He was not, indeed, the founder of the school of a.n.a.lysis of feeling in the novel, but he was the populariser of it. He was almost the founder of sentimentalism in general literature, and he was absolutely the first to make word-painting of nature an almost indispensable element of all imaginative and fict.i.tious writing both in prose and poetry. Some of his characteristics were taken up in quick succession by Goethe in Germany, by Bernardin de St. Pierre and Chateaubriand in France. Others were for the time less eagerly imitated, and though Madame de Stael and her lover Benjamin Constant did something to spread them, it was reserved for the Romantic movement to develop them fully. It was singular, no doubt, and this is not the place to undertake the explanation of the singularity, that Rousseau, who detested most of the conclusions, and almost all the methods of the Encyclopaedists, should be counted in with them, and should have undoubtedly helped in the first place to accomplish their result. But such is the case. His peculiar literary characteristics are perhaps better exhibited in the _Confessions_ and in the miscellaneous works, than in either of the novels. The _Contrat Social_ is a very remarkable piece of pseudo-argument. It is felt from the first that the whole a.s.sumption on which it reposes is historically false and philosophically absurd. Yet there is an appearance of speciousness in the arguments, an adroit mixture of logic and rhetoric, of order and method, which is exceedingly seductive. The _Confession du Vicaire Savoyard_, with many pa.s.sages allied to it in the smaller works, has, despite the staleness of the language (which was hackneyed by a thousand empty talkers during the Revolution), not a little dignity and persuasive force. But it is in the _Confessions_ that the literary power of the author appears at its fullest. Never, perhaps, was a more miserable story of human weakness revealed, and the peculiar thing is that Rousseau does not limit his exhibitions of himself to exhibitions of engaging frailty. The acts which he admits are in many cases indescribably base, mean, and disgusting. The course of conduct which he portrays is at its best that of a man entirely dest.i.tute of governing will, petulant, often positively ungrateful, always playing into the hands of the enemies whom his hallucinations supposed to exist, and frustrating the efforts of the friends whom he allows himself, if only for a time, to have possessed. Yet the narrative and dramatic skill with which all this is presented is so great, that there is hardly room for a sense of repulsion which is merged in interest, not necessarily sympathetic interest, but still interest. Of the feeling for natural beauty, which is everywhere present in these remarkable works, it is enough to say that in French prose literature, it may almost be said in the prose literature of Europe, it was entirely original. Part of Rousseau's devotion to nature arose no doubt from his moody and retiring temperament, which led him to rejoice in anything rather than the society of his fellow men. But this would not of itself have given him the literary skill with which he expresses these feelings. It is not so much in set descriptions of particular scenes as in slight occasional thoughts, embodying the emotions experienced at the sight of a flower, a lake-surface, a mountain side, a forest glade, that this mastery is shown. Yet of the more elaborate pa.s.sages of this kind in other writers few can surpa.s.s the best things of the _Nouvelle Helose_, the _Confessions_, and the _Reveries_. There is nothing novel to readers of the present day in such things, though they are seldom done so happily.

But to the readers of Rousseau's day they were absolutely novel. It is in this that the main literary importance of Rousseau consists, though it must not be forgotten that he is in many ways a master of French prose. His contemporaries made use of his Genevan origin to find fault with his style; but with a few insignificant exceptions the criticism has no foundation. It has been very frequently renewed, and sometimes with little better reason, in the case of Swiss authors.

Round these chiefs of the Encyclopaedic movement were grouped many lesser men, some of whom will be most conveniently noticed here. Marmontel, Morellet, and Saint-Lambert, whose chief importance lay in other directions, were contributors. The Chevalier de Jaucourt, a man of no original power, but a hack-writer of extraordinary apt.i.tude, took considerable part in it. There were others, however, who, partly within and partly without the range of the Encyclopaedia, had no small share in the promotion of what has been called the _philosophe_ movement. Some of these have found their place under the head of Essayists. There is, however, one remarkable division, which must be treated here--the division of economists--before we pa.s.s to the philosophers properly so called, who either continued the metaphysics of Locke in a directly materialist sense, or who, restraining themselves to sensationalism, made the most of the English philosopher in that direction.

[Sidenote: Political Economists. Vauban, Quesnay, etc.]

The science of 'Political Arithmetic,' as it was first called in England, had a somewhat earlier birth in France than in England itself.

It is remarkable that the complete establishment of the royal authority under Louis XIV. preceded but by a very few years the examination of the economic condition of the kingdom by unsparing examiners. The two chief of these, both of whom fell into disgrace for their doings, were the great engineer Vauban, and the great theologian Fenelon. The latter was attracted to the subject chiefly by compa.s.sion for the sufferings of the people, and expressed his opinion in a manner more rhetorical than scientific. Vauban's course was naturally different. In the later years of his life he set himself to the collection of statistical facts as to the economic condition of France, and the result was the two books called _Oisivetes de M. de Vauban_ and _La Dime Royale_, 1707. The former of these contained the facts, the latter the deduction from them, which was, to put it briefly, that the existing system of privilege, exemption, and irregular taxation was a loss to the Crown, and a torment to the people. Vauban received the reward of his labours, attention to which would probably have prevented the French Revolution, in the shape of the royal displeasure, and nothing came immediately of his investigations. In the next century, however, a regular sect of political economists arose. They had, indeed, been preceded by an eccentric man of letters, the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, who occupied his life in propounding Utopian schemes of universal peace and general prosperity. But the first and greatest of the economists properly so called was Quesnay. The extreme misery of the common people attracted his attention, and set him upon calculating the causes and remedies of periodical failings. He was himself a frequent contributor to the Encyclopaedia. Many others of the _philosophe_ set occupied themselves with these and similar subjects, notably the Abbes Morellet and Galiani.

The former was a man of a certain vigour (Voltaire called him 'L'Abbe Mord-Les'), the latter has been noticed already. His _Dialogue sur le Commerce des Bles_ acquired for him a great reputation.

[Sidenote: Turgot.]

Very many writers, among them the father of the great Mirabeau (in his curious and able, though unequal and ill-proportioned _Ami des Hommes_), attacked economical subjects at this time. But Turgot, though not remarkable for the form of his writings, was the most original and influential writer of the liberal school in this department. He was a Norman by birth, and of a good legal family. He was born in 1727, and, being destined for the Church, was educated at the Sorbonne. Turgot, however, shared to the full the _philosophe_ ideas of the time as to theological orthodoxy, and did not share the usual _philosophe_ ideas as to concealment of his principles for comfort's sake. He refused to take orders, turning his attention to the law and the Civil Service instead of the Church. His family had considerable influence, and at the age of twenty-four he was appointed intendant of Limoges, a post which gave him practical control of the government of a large, though barren and neglected, province. His achievements in the way of administrative reform here were remarkable, and, had they been generally imitated, might have brought about a very different state of things in France.

After the death of Louis XV., he was recommended by Maurepas to a far more important office, the controllers.h.i.+p of finance. Here, too, he did great things; but his attack on the privileged orders was ill-seconded, and, after holding his post for about two years, he had to resign, partly, it is true, owing to a certain unaccommodating rigidity of demeanour, which was one of his least amiable characteristics. He died in 1781. Turgot's literary work is not extensive, and it is not distinguished by its style. It consists of certain discourses at the Sorbonne, of memoirs on various political occasions, of some letters on usury, of articles in the Encyclopaedia, of which the most noteworthy is one on endowments, etc. All are remarkable as containing the germs of what may be accepted as the modern liberal doctrines on the various points of which they treat, while the second Sorbonne discourse is ent.i.tled to the credit of first clearly announcing the principle of the philosophy of history, the doctrine, that is to say, that human progress follows regular laws of development, certain sets of causes invariably tending to bring about certain sets of results.

[Sidenote: Condorcet.]

With the name of Turgot that of Condorcet is inseparably connected, and though far less important in the history of thought, it is perhaps more prominent in the history of literature, for the pupil and biographer (in both of which relations Condorcet stood to Turgot) was, though a far less original and vigorous thinker, a better writer than his master and subject. Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, styled Marquis de Condorcet, was born in 1743, near St. Quentin, and early distinguished himself both in mathematics and in the belles lettres. He became Secretary of the Academy in 1777, and he afterwards wrote the Life of Turgot, whose method of dealing with economic questions (a more practical and less abstract one than that of the earlier economists) he had already followed. He took a considerable part in the French Revolution, serving both in the Legislative a.s.sembly and in the Convention. In the latter he became identified with the Girondist party, and shared their troubles.

His best known work, the _Esquisse des Progres de l'Esprit Humain_, was written while he was a fugitive and in concealment. He was at last discovered and arrested, but the day after he was found dead in his prison at Bourg la Reine, having apparently poisoned himself (March, 1794). Condorcet's works are voluminous, and partake strongly of the _philosophe_ character. He is not remarkable for originality of thought, and may indeed be said to be for the most part a mere exponent of the current ideas of the second stage of the _philosophe_ movement. But his style has great merits, being clear, forcible, and correct, suffering only from the somewhat stereotyped forms, and from the absence of flexibility and colour which distinguish the later eighteenth century in France.

[Sidenote: Volney.]

One more remarkable name deserves to be mentioned in this place as the last of the _Philosophes_ proper, that is to say, of those writers who carried out the general principles of the Encyclopaedist movement with less reference to specialist departments of literature than to a certain general spirit and tendency. This was Constantin Francois de Cha.s.seboeuf, Comte de Volney, by which latter name he is generally known. Volney was born in 1757, at Caron, in Anjou, and was educated at Angers, and afterwards at Paris. He studied both medicine and law, but having a sufficient fortune, practised neither. In 1783 he set out on his travels and journeyed to the East, visiting Egypt and Syria; an account of which journey he published four years later. When he returned to France he was from the beginning a moderate partisan of the Revolution, and, like most such persons, he was arrested during the Terror, though he escaped with no worse fate than imprisonment.

Immediately after Thermidor, Volney published his most celebrated work, _Les Ruines_, a treatise on the rise and fall of empires from a general and philosophical point of view. Shortly after this he visited the United States, whence he returned in 1798. He had known Napoleon in early days, and on the establishment of the Consulate he was appointed a senator; nor was his resignation accepted, though it was tendered when Bonaparte a.s.sumed the crown. His counts.h.i.+p was Napoleonic, but he was always an opponent of the emperor's policy. Accordingly, after the Restoration, he was nominated by Louis XVIII. as a member of the new House of Peers. He died in 1820. Besides the books already noticed he published some studies in ancient history and many miscellaneous works, including a project of a universal language. Volney was, as has been said, the last of the _philosophes_, exhibiting, long after a new order of thought had set in, their acute but negative and one-sided criticism, their sterile contempt of Christianity and religion generally, their somewhat theoretic acceptance of generalisations on philosophy and history, and of large plans for dealing with politics and ethics. As a traveller his observation is accurate and his expression vivid; as a philosophical historian his acuteness is perhaps not sufficiently accompanied by real breadth of view.

[Sidenote: La Mettrie]

[Sidenote: Helvetius]

Between these philosophers, in the local and temporary sense of the word, who dealt only with what would now be called the sociological side of philosophy in its bearings on politics, religion, ethics, and economics, and the strictly philosophical school of Condillac and his followers, a small but very influential sect of materialists, who were yet not purely philosophical materialists, has to be considered. Three members of this school have importance in literature--La Mettrie, Helvetius, and Holbach. La Mettrie was a native of Britanny: he entered the medical service of the French army, acquired a speedy reputation for heterodoxy and disorderly living, and fled for shelter to the general patron of heterodox Frenchmen, Frederick of Prussia; at whose court he died, at a comparatively early age, it is said in consequence of a practical joke. La Mettrie's chief work is a paradoxical exercise in materialist physics called _L'Homme-Machine_, in which he endeavours to prove the purely automatic working of the human frame, and the absence of any mind in the spiritualist sense. This he followed by a similar but less original work, called _L'Homme-Plante_, and by some other minor publications. La Mettrie was a very unequal thinker and writer, but he has, as Voltaire (who disliked him) expressed it, _traits de flamme_ both in thought and style. Claude Adrian Helvetius was of Swiss descent, and of ample fortune. Born in 1715, he was appointed to the high post of Farmer-General when he was little more than twenty-three; but he did not hold this appointment very long, and became Chamberlain to the Queen. He was very popular in society, and was of a benevolent and philanthropic disposition, though he seems to have got into trouble at his country seat of Vore by excessive game preserving. He married, in 1751, the beautiful Mademoiselle de Ligneville, who was long afterwards one of the chief centres of literary society in Paris. In 1758 his book _De l'Esprit_ appeared, and made a great sensation, being condemned as immoral, and burnt by the hangman. Helvetius subsequently travelled in England and Germany, dying in 1771. A second treatise, _De l'Homme,_ which appeared posthumously, is much inferior to _De l'Esprit_ in literary merit. It was even more fiercely a.s.sailed than its predecessor, and Diderot himself, the leader of the more active section of the _philosophe_ party, wrote an elaborate refutation of it, which, however, has only recently been published. The book _De l'Esprit_ is wanting in depth, and too anecdotic in style for a serious work of philosophy, though this very characteristic makes it all the more amusing reading.

It endeavours to make out a theory of morals based on what is called the selfish system; and it was the naked manner in which this selfish system of ethics, and the materialist metaphysics which it implies, are manifested in the book which gave occasion to its ill repute. As a mere work of literature, however, it is well, and in parts even brilliantly written, and amid much that is desultory, inconclusive, and even demonstrably unsound, views of extreme shrewdness and originality on social abuses and inconsistencies are to be found.

[Sidenote: Systeme de la Nature.]

None of the writers. .h.i.therto mentioned made open profession of atheism, and it is doubtful whether even Diderot deserves the appellation of a consistent atheist. There was, however, a large anti-theistic school among the _philosophes_, which increased in numbers and strength towards the outbreak of the Revolution. The most striking work by far of this school (which included Damilaville, Naigeon, and a few other names of no great distinction in literature) was the _Systeme de la Nature_, which appeared in 1770. This remarkable book, which even Voltaire and Frederick II. set themselves seriously to refute, contains a complete materialist system in metaphysics and theology. It represents the existence of G.o.d as a mere creation of the superst.i.tion of men, unable to a.s.sign a cause for the evils under which they suffer, and inventing a supernatural ent.i.ty to satisfy themselves. The book (to consider its literary style only) is extremely unequal, pa.s.sages of remarkable vigour alternating with long and dreary tracts of inconclusive and monotonous declamation. It appeared under the name of a dead man, Mirabaud, a person of some slight and chiefly official name in science and letters.

It is, however, believed, if not certainly known, to be the work of the Baron d'Holbach (who unquestionably wrote various other books of a similar tendency), with the a.s.sistance of divers of his friends, and especially of Diderot. The _Systeme_ is a very singular production, animated by a kind of fanatical, and in parts almost poetical aspiration after the annihilation of all supernatural belief, which is hardly to be found elsewhere except in Lucretius. It had great influence, though that influence was one of repulsion as well as of conversion, and it may be said to be, up to the present day, the furthest step taken in the direction of philosophical as opposed to political Nihilism. It should, however, be observed that in parts there is a strong political tinge observable in it.

[Sidenote: Condillac.]

In all this century of so-called philosophy, France possessed hardly more than one really eminent and considerable metaphysician. This was etienne Bonnot de Condillac, brother of the Abbe de Mably, who was born in 1715, and died in 1780. Condillac himself was an abbe, and possessing a sufficient benefice, he lived for the most part quietly upon it, and took no part in the political, or even the literary life of the times.

In 1746 he published his _Essai sur l'Origine des Connoissances Humaines_; in 1749 his _Traite des Systemes_, a work critical rather than constructive; and in 1754 the _Traite des Sensations_, his princ.i.p.al work, which completes his theory. The influence of Locke was the most powerful single influence in the _philosophe_ movement of France, and Condillac took up Locke's work at exactly the point where his master had faltered. He set to work to show with great plausibility that, according to Lockeian principles, the addition of ideas of reflection to ideas of sensation is unsustainable, and that all ideas without exception are merely transformed sensations. One of the ill.u.s.trations which he used to support his views, that of a statue supposed to be endowed with a single sense, and successively developing first the others, and then the powers usually cla.s.sed as reflection, is famous in the history of philosophy. It concerns us only as giving an instance of the method of Condillac, which is remarkable for vividness and adaptation to the ordinary comprehension. Unlike the style of Locke himself, Condillac's style is not in the least slovenly, but polished and lucid, excellently suited to such a public as that of the eighteenth century, which was at once intelligent enough to understand, and educated enough to demand, finish of manner in discussing abstract points.

After Condillac the history of philosophy in France during the rest of the period is of no great interest to literature. He himself was continued and represented chiefly by Destutt de Tracy. The reaction against the extreme idealist and materialist constructions of Locke respectively, which had been brought about in England by Reid and Stewart, acquired in the last years of the eighteenth century, and the beginning of the nineteenth, a considerable following in France. Its chiefs were Maine de Biran, Royer Collard (who also obtained reputation as an orator and parliamentary politician), and Jouffroy. They belong, however, rather to the history of philosophy than to that of literature.

[Sidenote: Joseph de Maistre.]

After this long list of writers who advocated, more or less openly, revolution in matters political and religious, but especially in the latter, two authors who with Chateaubriand, but in a definitely philosophical manner, set the example of reaction, and who to a great extent indicated the lines which it was to follow, must be mentioned.

These are Joseph de Maistre, and Louis de Bonald. Joseph, Count de Maistre, was born at Chambery, in 1753, of a n.o.ble Savoyard family, which is said to have come originally from Languedoc. His father held important employments in the duchy, and Joseph himself entered its civil service. When, after the French Revolution, Savoy was invaded, and in a short time annexed, he returned to Lausanne, and there wrote _Considerations sur la France_, his first work of importance. For some years he was employed at Turin in the administration of such of his continental dominions as were left to the King of Sardinia; and then, after the practical annexation of Piedmont, he held a similar employ in the island of Sardinia itself. At the beginning of the present century, he was sent to St. Petersburg to plead the cause of his master. Here he remained till after the overthrow of Napoleon, and wrote, though he did not publish, most of his books. In 1816 he returned to Turin, and died a few years afterwards--in 1821. The three chief works of Joseph de Maistre are _Du Pape_, 1817, _De l'eglise Gallicane_, and the unfinished _Soirees de St. Petersbourg_. The two first compose a complete treatise on the power and position of the pope in relation both to the temporal and to the ecclesiastical form of national government. The author is the most uncompromising of ultramontanes. According to him the pope is the source of all authority on earth, and temporal princes are little more than his delegates. Except in relation to religious error, Joseph de Maistre is not hostile to a certain ordered measure of liberty accorded by their rulers to peoples and individuals. But, strongly impressed by the social and moral, as well as the political and religious anarchy brought about first by the _philosophe_ movement, and then by the Revolution, he sees the only chance of rescue in the establishment of a hierarchy of government culminating in that from which there is no appeal, the single authority of the pope. He is thus a legitimist with a difference. The _Soirees de St. Petersbourg_, which are unfinished and not entirely uniform in plan, deal nominally with the providential government of the world, but diverge to a large number of subjects. It is in this book that the author develops the kind of modified terrorism which is often, though not altogether justly, considered to be his chief characteristic, eulogising the executioner as the foundation of society.

Joseph de Maistre is unquestionably one of the greatest thinkers and writers of the eighteenth century. Paradoxical and strained as his system frequently appears, it is rigorously logical. An ordered theocracy seems to him the only polity capable of giving peace and true prosperity to the world, and he shapes all his theories so as to fit in with this central conception. On detached subjects his thoughts are always vigorous, and often strikingly original. His reading was great, and his skill in polemics of the very highest. No one possesses in larger measure the art of hostile criticism without descending to actual abuse. These merits of themselves imply purely literary accomplishments, clearness, distinctness, forcible expression, in a rare kind and degree.

But Joseph de Maistre is more than this as a writer. He possesses, though he only occasionally exercises it, a brilliant faculty of rhetoric. His phrase is more than merely clear and forcible; it has a peculiar incisiveness and sharpness of outline which impress it on the memory, while, sparing as he is of ornament, his rare pa.s.sages of description and fancy have great merit. The surest testimony to his value is the fact that, though both in his own day and since by far the larger number of writers and thinkers have held views more or less opposed to his, no one whose opinion is itself of the least importance has ever spoken of him without respect and even admiration. Those who, like Lamartine, qualify their admiration with a certain depreciation, show inability to recognise fully the beauty of strength undisguised by conventional elegance and grace of form.

[Sidenote: Bonald.]

Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald, who is usually named with Joseph de Maistre as the leader of the Catholic-monarchist reaction, was a weaker thinker, and a writer of less accomplishment, though in both respects he has perhaps been somewhat unfairly criticised. Born at Milhaud, in the district of Rouergue, in 1754, he discharged various civil and military employments in his native province during his youth; was elected in 1790 member of the Departmental a.s.sembly, but emigrated next year; served in Conde's army, and then established himself at Heidelberg. His first work was seized by the Directory, but he returned to France soon afterwards, and was not molested. He published a good deal during the first years of the century, and, like many other royalists, received overtures from Napoleon through Fontanes. These he did not exactly reject, but he availed himself of them very sparingly.

The Restoration, on the contrary, aroused him to vigour. It was owing to him chiefly that the law of divorce was altered. He entered the Academy, and in 1823 was made a peer; an honour which he resigned at the revolution of July. He died in 1840.

Bonald's princ.i.p.al work is his _Legislation Primitive_. He also wrote a book on divorce, and a considerable number of miscellaneous political and metaphysical works. His chief subjects of discussion were, first, the theory of the revelation of language; and secondly, the theory of causality: in respect of both of which he combated the materialist school of the eighteenth century. In politics Bonald was a thoroughgoing legitimist and monarchist of the patriarchal school. Although an orthodox and devout Catholic, he does not lay the stress on the temporal power of the pope that the author of _Du Pape_ does. With him the king is the immediate instrument of G.o.d in governing. He has been accused of reducing things too much to formulas, and of repeating his formulas too often. But this itself was in great part the effect of reaction against the vague declamation of the _philosophes_.

CHAPTER VII.

SCIENTIFIC WRITERS.

As the sciences divide and subdivide themselves more and more, the works which treat of them become less and less the subject of strictly literary history. Besides this truth, it is necessary to remember the fact that a large number of treatises, scientific in subject, were in the eighteenth century professedly popularised and addressed to unprofessional audiences. Fontenelle, D'Alembert, and many other authors already mentioned, were _savants_, but their manner of handling their subjects was far from being strictly or wholly scientific. Yet there remain a certain number of writers, who, their reputation being derived wholly or mainly from their treatment of subjects of science and erudition, are better dealt with separately.

[Sidenote: Buffon.]

The head and chief of these is beyond all question Buffon. George Louis Leclerc, who was made Count de Buffon by Louis XV., was born at Montbard in Burgundy, on Sept. 7, 1707; his father was a man of wealth and of position in the _n.o.blesse de robe_. Buffon was destined for the law, but early showed an inclination towards science. He became acquainted with a young English n.o.bleman, Lord Kingston, who with his tutor was taking the then usual grand tour, and was permitted by his father to accompany him through France and Italy, and to visit England. On the English language he spent considerable pains, translating Newton, Hales, and Tull the agriculturist. When he returned to France he devoted himself to scientific experiments, and in 1739 he was appointed intendant or director of the Jardin du Roi, which practically gave him command of the national collections in zoology, botany, and mineralogy. He was thus enabled to observe and experiment to his heart's content, and to collect a sufficient number of facts for his vast Natural History. Buffon, however, was only half a man of science. He was at least as anxious to write pompous descriptions and to indulge in showy hypotheses, as to confine himself to plain scientific enquiry. He accordingly left the main part of the hack-work of his _Histoire Naturelle_ (a vast work extending to thirty-six volumes) to a.s.sistants, of whom the chief was Daubenton, himself contributing only the most striking and rhetorical pa.s.sages. The book was very remarkable for its time, as the first attempt since Pliny at a collection of physical facts at once exhaustive, and in a manner systematised, and though there was much alloy mixed with its metal, it was of real value. Buffon's life was long, and he outlived all the other chiefs of the _philosophe_ party (to which in an outside sort of fas.h.i.+on he belonged), dying at Paris in the year 1788. It is perhaps easier to condemn Buffon's extremely rhetorical style than to do justice to it. To a modern reader it too frequently seems to verge on the ridiculous, and to do more than verge on the trivial. It is necessary, however, to take the point of view of the time. Buffon found natural science in a position far below that a.s.signed to literary erudition and to the arts in general estimation. He also found it customary that these arts and letters should be treated in pompous _eloges_. His real interest in science led him to think that the shortest way to raise it was to treat it in the same manner, and there is little doubt that his method was effectual in its degree. It is perhaps curious that he, the author of the phrase 'Le style c'est l'homme,' should have so completely exemplified it. Many authors of elaborate prose have been perfectly simple and unpretentious in private life. Buffon was as pompous and inflated as his style. Anecdotes respecting him are numerous; but perhaps the most instructive is that which tells how, having heard some one speak of the style of Montesquieu, he asked, 'Si M. de Montesquieu avait un style?' It is needless to say that from any just standpoint, even of purely literary criticism, the hollow pomp of the _Histoire Naturelle_ sinks into insignificance beside the nervous and solid yet graceful vigour of the _Esprit des Lois_.

[Sidenote: Lesser Scientific Writers.]

No single scientific writer equals the fame of Buffon, but there are not a few who deserve to be mentioned after him. Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, a Breton by birth, who was a considerable mathematician and a physicist of more eccentricity than merit, owes most of his literary celebrity to the patronage of Frederick the Second, and the pitiless raillery of Voltaire, who quarrelled with him on his visit to Berlin, where Maupertuis was president of the Academy. Maupertuis' chief scientific performance was his mission to Lapland to determine the measurement of a degree of longitude in 1736. Of this mission he published an account. At the same time a similar mission was sent to South America under La Condamine, who underwent considerable hards.h.i.+p, and, like Maupertuis, published his adventures when he came back.

Mathematics were indeed the favourite study of the time. Clairaut, De Moivre, Euler, Laplace, all wrote in French, or belonged to French-speaking and French-descended races; while Voltaire's own contributions to the reception of Newton's principles in France were not small, and his beloved Madame du Chatelet was an expert mathematician.

Voltaire also devoted much attention to chemistry, which was the special subject of such of the Baron d'Holbach's labours as were not devoted to the overthrow of Christianity. It was not, however, till the eve of the Revolution that the most important discoveries in this science were made by Lavoisier and others. The Empire was a much more favourable time for science than for literature. Bonaparte was fond of the society of men of science, and pleased by their usual indifference to politics. Monge, Berthollet, Champollion, were among his favourites. Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Cuvier were, however, the chief men of science of this period, and Cuvier at least had no mean command of a literary style sufficient for his purposes. His chief work of a literary-scientific character was his discourse _Sur les Revolutions de la Surface du Globe_. Earlier than this the physician Cabanis, in his _Rapports de Physique et de Morale_, composed a semi-materialist work of great excellence according to eighteenth-century standards. b.i.+.c.hat's _La Vie et la Mort_, the work of an anatomist of the greatest talent, who died young, also belongs to literature.

[Sidenote: Voyages and Travels.]

Some contributions to letters were also made by the voyages of discovery which formed part of the general scientific curiosity of the time. The chief of them is that of Bougainville, 1771, which, giving the first clear notion to Frenchmen of the South Sea Islands, had a remarkably stimulating effect on the imaginations of the _philosophe_ party.

[Sidenote: Linguistic and Literary Study.]

In works of pure erudition more directly connected with literature, the age was less fruitful than its immediate predecessor. The laborious studies of the Benedictines, however, continued. One work of theirs, important to our subject, was projected and in part carried out under the superintendence chiefly of Dom Rivet. This was the _Histoire Litteraire de la France_--a mighty work, which, after long interruption by the Revolution and other causes, was taken up again, and has proceeded steadily for many years, though it has not yet reached the close of the middle ages. This work was part, and a very important part, of a revival of the study of old French literature. The plan of the Benedictines led them at first into the literature of mediaeval Latin.

But the works of the Trouveres, of their successors in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and of the authors of the French Renaissance, also received attention, scattered at first and desultory, but gradually co-ordinating and regulating itself. La Monnoye, Lenglet-Dufresnoy, the President Bouhier, and many others, collected, and in some cases edited, the work of earlier times. The Marquis de Paulmy began a vast _Bibliotheque des Romans_, for which the Comte de Tressan undertook the modernising and reproducing of all the stories of chivalry. Tressan, it is true, had recourse only to late and adulterated versions, but his work was still calculated to spread some knowledge of what the middle ages had actually done in matter of literature. La Curne de Sainte Palaye devoted himself eagerly to the study of the language, manners, and customs of chivalry. Barbazan collected the specially French product of the Fabliau, and, with his successor Meon (who also edited the _Roman du Renart_), provided a great corpus of lighter mediaeval literature for the student to exercise himself upon. By degrees this revived literature forced itself upon the public eye, and before the Republic had given place to the Empire, it received some attention at the hands of official teachers of literature who had hitherto scorned it. M. J.

Chenier, Daunou, and others, undertook the subject, and made it in a manner popular; while towards the extreme end of the present period Raynouard and Fauriel added the subject of Provencal literature to that of the literature of Northern France, and helped to propagate the study abroad as well as at home.

In the older fields the renown of France for purely cla.s.sical scholars.h.i.+p diminished somewhat as compared with the days of Huet, Menage, Dacier, and the Delphin cla.s.sics. The princ.i.p.al work of erudition was either directed towards the so-called philosophy in its wide sense of enquiry and speculation into politics and manners, or else to mathematics and physics. The Benedictines confined themselves for the most part to Christian antiquity. Yet there were names of weight in this department, such as the President Henault, a writer something after the fas.h.i.+on of Fontenelle, but on cla.s.sical subjects; and the President de Brosses, also an archaeologist of merit, but chiefly noteworthy as having been among the founders of the science which busies itself with the manners and customs of primitive and prehistoric man[291].

FOOTNOTES:

[291] I owe to M. Scherer the indication of a misprint of '_des_ Brosses' for 'de' in former editions. M. Scherer says that I 'have never heard' of the President's pleasant _Lettres sur l'Italie_, because I do not mention them. He also says that what I do say of De Brosses is 'egalement surprenante pour ce qu'elle avance et par ce qu'elle omet.' I am, therefore, justified in supposing that M. Scherer 'has never heard'

of the _Lettres sur Herculanum_, the _Navigations aux Terres Australes_, or the _Culte des Dieux Fetiches_.