A Short History of French Literature Part 40

[Sidenote: Sainte-Beuve.]

It is very seldom that the two different forces of criticism and creation work together as they did in the case of the Romantic movement.

Each had numerous representatives, but the point of importance is that each was represented by one of the greatest masters. Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, the critic not merely of the Romantic movement, but of the nineteenth century, and in a manner the first scientific and universal critic that the world has seen, was born at Boulogne on the 23rd of December, 1804. His father held an office of some importance; his mother was of English blood. He was well educated, first at his native town, then at Paris. He began by studying medicine, but very soon turned to literature, and, as has been said, distinguished himself on the _Globe_.

The most important of his articles in this paper were devoted to the French literature of the sixteenth century, and these were published as a volume, in 1828, with great success. Sainte-Beuve at once became the critic _en t.i.tre_ of the movement, though he did not very long continue in formal connection with it. It was some time, however, before he resigned himself to purely critical work. _Les Poesies de Joseph Delorme_, _Les Consolations_, and _Volupte_ were successive attempts at original composition, which, despite the talent of their author, hardly made much mark, or deserved to make it. He did not persevere further in a career for which he was evidently unfitted, but betook himself to the long series of separate critical studies, partly of foreign and cla.s.sical literature, but usually of French, which made his reputation.

The papers to which he chiefly contributed were the _Const.i.tutionnel_ and the _Moniteur_, and during the middle of this century his Monday _feuilletons_ of criticism were the chief recurring literary event of Europe. These studies were at intervals collected and published in sets under the t.i.tles _Critiques et Portraits Litteraires_, _Portraits Contemporains_, _Causeries du Lundi_, and _Nouveaux Lundis_, the last series only finis.h.i.+ng with his death in 1869. Besides this he had undertaken a single work of great magnitude in his _Histoire de Port Royal_, on which he spent some twenty years. He was elected to the Academy in 1845, and after the establishment of the Empire he was one of the few distinguished literary men who took its side. The first reward that he obtained was a professors.h.i.+p in the College de France; but some years before his death he received the senators.h.i.+p, a lucrative position, and one which interfered very little with the studies of the occupant. In character Sainte-Beuve strongly resembled some of the epicureans of his favourite seventeenth century; but whatever faults he may have had were redeemed by much good-nature and an entire absence of literary vanity.

[Sidenote: His Method.]

[Sidenote: Dangers of the Method.]

The importance of Sainte-Beuve in literature is historically, and as a matter of influence, superior even to that of the great poet with whom he was for some time in close friends.h.i.+p, though before very long their stars fell apart. Until his time the science of criticism had been almost entirely conducted on what may be called pedagogic lines. The critic either constructed for himself, or more probably accepted from tradition, a cut-and-dried scheme of the correct plan of different kinds of literature, and contented himself with adjusting any new work to this, marking off its agreements or differences, and judging accordingly. Here and there in French literature critics like Saint-Evremond, Fenelon, La Bruyere in part, Diderot, Joubert, had adopted another method, but the small acquaintance which most Frenchmen possessed of literature other than their own stood in the way of success. Sainte-Beuve was the first to found criticism on a wide study of literature, instead of directing a more or less narrow study of literature by critical rules. Victor Hugo himself has laid down, in the preface to the _Orientales_, one important principle--the principle that the critic has only to judge of the intrinsic goodness of the book, and not of its conformity to certain pre-established ideas. There remains the difficulty of deciding what is intrinsically good or bad. To solve this, the only way is, first, to prepare the mind of the critic by a wide study of literature, which may free him from merely local and national prejudices; and, secondly, to direct his attention not so much to cut-and-dried ideas of an epic, a sonnet, a drama, as to the object which the author himself had before him when he composed his work. In carrying out this principle it becomes obviously of great importance to study the man himself as well as his works, and his works as a whole as well as the particular sample before the judge. Sainte-Beuve was almost the first in France to set the example of the _causerie critique_, the essay which sets before the reader the life, circ.u.mstances, aims, society, and literary atmosphere of the author, as well as his literary achievements. This accounts for the extreme interest shown by the public in what had very commonly been regarded as one of the idlest and least profitable kinds of literature. At the same time the method has two dangers to which it is specially exposed. One is the danger of limiting the consideration to external facts merely, and giving a gossiping biography rather than a criticism. The other, and the more subtle danger, is the construction of a new cut-and-dried theory instead of the old one, by regarding every man as simply a product of his age and circ.u.mstances, and ticketing him off accordingly without considering his works themselves to see whether they bear out the theory by facts. In either case, the great question which Victor Hugo has stated, 'L'ouvrage est-il bon ou est-il mauvais?' remains unanswered in any satisfactory measure. Sainte-Beuve himself did not often fall into either error. His taste was remarkably catholic and remarkably fine. The only fault which can justly be found with him is the fault which naturally besets such a critic, the tendency to look too complacently on persons of moderate talent, whose merits he himself is perhaps the first to recognise fully, and to be proportionately unjust to the greater names whose merits, on good systems and bad alike, are universally acknowledged, in whose case it is difficult to say anything new, and who are therefore somewhat ungrateful subjects for the ingenious and delicate a.n.a.lysis which more mixed talents repay. But study of the work of such a man as Sainte-Beuve is an almost absolute safeguard against the intolerance of former days in matter of literature, and this is its great merit.

[Sidenote: Dumas the Elder.]

Around Victor Hugo were grouped not a few writers who were only inferior to himself. But, before mentioning the members of what is called the _cenacle_, or innermost Romantic circle, a third name of almost equal temporary importance to those of Hugo and Sainte-Beuve must be named--that of Alexandre Dumas. This writer, one of the most prolific, and in some respects one of the most remarkable of dramatists and novelists, was the son of a general in the revolutionary army, and was born, on the 23rd of July, 1806, at Villers Cotterets. He had hardly any education; but, coming to Paris at the age of twenty, he was fortunate enough to obtain a clerks.h.i.+p in the household of the Duke of Orleans. He tried literature almost at once, and in 1829 his _Henri III. et sa Cour_ was played, and was a great success. This was a year before _Hernani_, and though Dumas had no pretence to rival Hugo in literary merit, his drama was quite as revolutionary in style, events, language, and general arrangement as Hugo's. But he had not heralded it by any general defiance, and it possessed (what his greater contemporary's dramatic work never fully possessed) the indefinable knowledge of the stage and its requirements, which always tells on an audience. After the Revolution of July, the daring play of _Antony_ achieved an almost equal success, despite its attacks on the proprieties, attacks of which at that time French opinion was not tolerant in a serious play. Then he returned to the historical drama in the _Tour de Nesle_, another play of strong situations and reckless sacrifice of everything else to excitement. After this Dumas published many plays, of which _Don Juan de Marana_ and _Kean_ are perhaps the most extravagant, and _Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle_, 1839, the best. But before long he fell into a train of writing more profitable even than the drama. This was the composition of historical romances something in Scott's manner. The most famous of these, such as the _Three Musketeers_, _La Reine Margot_, and _Monte Cristo_, were produced towards the latter part of the reign of Louis Philippe, his early patron. He travelled a great deal, making books and money out of his travels; and sometimes, as when he was the companion of Garibaldi, finding himself in curious company. No man, probably, ever made so much money by literature in France as Dumas, though he was not equally skilled in keeping it. He died, in the midst of the disasters of his country, on Christmas Eve, 1870. Dumas' literary position and influence are not very easy to estimate, because of the strange extent to which he carried what is called collaboration, and his frank avowal of something very like plagiarism in many of the works which he wrote una.s.sisted. Endeavours have even been made to show that his most celebrated works are the production of hack writers whom he paid to write under his name. Nor is there the least doubt that he did resort on a large scale to something like the practice of those portrait painters who employ their pupils to paint in the draperies, backgrounds, and accessories of their work. But that Dumas was the moving spirit still, and the actual author of what is best and most peculiar in the works that go by his name, is sufficiently proved by the fact that none of his a.s.sistants, whose names are in many cases known, and who in not a few instances subsequently attained eminence on their own account, have equalled or even resembled his peculiar style. Dumas' dramatic work is of but little value as literature properly so called. His forte is the already mentioned playwright's instinct, as it may be termed, which made him almost invariably choose and conduct his action in a manner so interesting and absorbing to the audience that they had no time to think of the merits of the style, the propriety of the morals, the congruity of the sentiments. His plays, in short, are intended to be acted, not to be read. Of his novels many are disfigured by long pa.s.sages of the inferior work to be expected from mere hack a.s.sistants, by unskilful insertions of pa.s.sages from his authorities, and sometimes by plagiarisms so audacious and flagrant, that the reader takes them as little less than an insult. His best work, however, such as the whole of the long series ranging from _Les Trois Mousquetaires_ through _Vingt Ans apres_ to _Le Vicomte de Bragelonne_, a second long series of which _La Reine Margot_ is a member, and parts of others, has peculiar and almost unique merits. The style is not more remarkable as such than that of the dramas; there is not always, or often, a well-defined plot, and the characters are drawn only in the broadest outline. But the cunning admixture of incident and dialogue by which Dumas carries on the interest of his gigantic narrations without wearying the reader is a secret of his own, and has never been thoroughly mastered by any one else.

[Sidenote: Honore de Balzac.]

While Dumas thus gave himself up to the novel of incident, two other writers of equally remarkable genius, and of greater merely literary power, also devoted themselves to prose fiction, and by this means exercised a wide influence on their generation. Honore de Balzac was born at Tours, on the 20th of May, 1799. He was fairly well educated, but his father's circ.u.mstances compelled him to place his son in a lawyer's office. This Balzac could not endure, and he very shortly betook himself to literature, suffering very considerable hards.h.i.+ps. The task he attempted was fiction, and his experience in it was unique. For years he wrote steadily, and published dozens of volumes, not merely without attaining success, but without deserving any. But few of these are ever read now, and when they are opened it is out of mere curiosity, a curiosity which meets with but little return. Yet Balzac continued, in spite of hards.h.i.+p and of ill success, to work on, and in his thirtieth year he made his first mark with _Les Derniers Chouans_, a historical novel, which, if not of great excellence, at least shows a peculiar and decided talent. From this time forward he worked with spirit and success in his own manner, and in twenty years produced the vast collection which he himself termed _La Comedie Humaine_, the individual novels being often connected by community of personages, and always by the peculiar fas.h.i.+on of a.n.a.lytical display of character which from them is identified with Balzac's name. The most successful of these are concerned with Parisian life, and perhaps the most powerful of all are _Le Pere Goriot_, _Eugenie Grandet_, _La Cousine Bette_, _La Peau de Chagrin_, _La Recherche de l'Absolu_, _Seraphita_. The last is the best piece of mere writing that Balzac has produced. He had also a wonderful faculty for short tales (_Le Chef-d'oeuvre Inconnu_, _Une Pa.s.sion dans le Desert_, etc.). He tried the theatre, but failed. Notwithstanding Balzac's untiring energy (he would often work for weeks together with the briefest intervals of sleep) and the popularity of his books, he was always in pecuniary difficulties. These were caused partly by his mania for speculation, and partly by his singular habits of composition. He would write a novel in short compa.s.s, have it printed, then enlarge the printed sheets with corrections, and repeat this process again and again until the expenses of the mere printing swallowed up great part of the profits of the work. At last he obtained wealth, and, as it seemed, a prospect of happiness. In 1850 he married Madame Hanska, a rich Polish lady, to whom he had been attached for many years. He had prepared for a life of opulent ease at Paris with his wife; but a few months after his marriage he died of heart disease. Balzac is in a way the greatest of French novelists, because he is the most entirely singular and original.

It has been said of him, with as much truth as exaggeration, that he has drawn a whole world of character after having first created it out of his own head. Balzac's characters are never quite human, and the atmosphere in which they are placed has something of the same unreality (though it is for the most part tragically and not comically unreal) as that of d.i.c.kens. Everything is seen through a kind of distorting lens, yet the actual vision is defined with the most extraordinary precision, and in the most vivid colours. Balzac had great drawbacks. Despite his n.o.ble prefix he cannot conceive or draw either a gentleman or a lady.

His virtuous characters are usually virtuous in the theatrical sense only; his scheme of human character is altogether low and mean. But he can a.n.a.lyse vice and meanness with wonderful vigour, and he is almost unmatched in the power of conferring apparent reality upon what the reader nevertheless feels to be imaginary and ideal. It follows almost necessarily that he is happiest when his subject has a strong touch of the fantastic. The already mentioned _Peau de Chagrin_--a magic skin which confers wis.h.i.+ng powers on its possessor but shrivels at each wish, shortening his life correspondingly--and _Seraphita_, a purely romantic or fantastic tale, are instances of this. Almost more striking than either are the _Contes Drolatiques_, tales composed in imitation of the manner and language of the sixteenth century. Here the grotesque and fantastic incidents and tone exactly suit the writer, and some of the stories are among the masterpieces of French literature. The same sympathy with the abnormal may be noticed in the _Chef-d'oeuvre Inconnu_, where a solitary painter touches and retouches his supposed masterpiece till he loses all power of self-criticism, and at lasts exhibits triumphantly a shapeless and unintelligible daub of mingled colours. Balzac's style is not in itself of the best; it is clumsy, inelastic, and dest.i.tute of the order and proportion which distinguish the best French prose, but it is not ill suited to the peculiar character of his work.

[Sidenote: George Sand.]

With Balzac's name is inseparably connected, if only from the striking contrast between them, that of George Sand. Amandine Lucile Aurore Dupin, who took the writing name of George Sand, was born at Paris in 1804, and had a somewhat singular family history, of which it is enough to say here that she was descended through her father's mother from Marshal Saxe, the famous son of Augustus of Saxony and Aurore von Koningsmarck. At the age of eighteen she married a man named Dudevant, and was very unhappy, though it is rather difficult to determine on whom the blame of the unhappiness ought to rest. They separated after a few years, and she came to Paris, from her home at Nohant in Berry, to seek a living. She found it soon in literature, having met with a friend and companion in the novelist Jules Sandeau, and with a stern and most useful critic in Henri de Latouche. Her first novel of importance was _Indiana_, published in 1832. This was followed by _Valentine_, _Lelia_, _Jacques_, etc. The interest of all or most of these turns on the sufferings of the _femme incomprise_, a celebrated person in literature, of whom George Sand is the historiographer, if not the inventor. A long series of novels of this kind gave way, between 1840 and 1849, first to a series of philosophical rhapsodies, of which _Spiridion_ is the chief, and then to one in which the political aspirations of the socialist Republicans appear. Of these, _Consuelo_, which is perhaps popularly considered the author's masterpiece, was the chief. Her private history was somewhat remarkable, and she succeeded in making at least two men of greater genius than herself, Alfred de Musset and Chopin, utterly miserable. They, however, afforded the subjects of two noteworthy books, _Elle et Lui_, and _Lucrezia Floriani_, the latter perhaps the most characteristic of all her early works. After the establishment of the Second Empire her tastes and habits became quieter. She lived chiefly, and latterly almost wholly, at Nohant, being greatly attached to the country; and she wrote many charming sketches of country life with felicitous introduction of _patois_, such as _La Mare au Diable_, _Francois le Champi_, _La Pet.i.te Fadette_. Some voluminous memoirs, published in 1854, dealt with her own early experiences. She lived till the age of seventy-two, dying in 1876, and never ceased to put forth novels which showed no distinct falling off in fertility or imagination, or in command of literary style. She must have written in all nearly a hundred books. As the chief characteristics of Balzac are intense observation, concentrated thought, and the most obstinate and unwearying labour, so the chief characteristic of George Sand is easy improvisation. She had an active and receptive mind which took in the surface of things, whether it was love, or philosophy, or politics, or scenery, or manners, with remarkable and indifferent facility. She had also a style which, if it cannot be ranked among the great literary styles from its absence of statuesque outline, and from its too great fluidity, was excellently suited for the task of improvisation. Her novels, therefore, slipped from her without the slightest mental effort, and appear to have cost her nothing. It is not true, in this case, that what has cost nothing is worth nothing. But even favourable critics admit that it is peculiarly difficult to read a novel of George Sand a second time, and this is perhaps a decisive test. She is, indeed, far more of an improvising novelist than Dumas, to whom the term has more often been applied, though she wrote better French, and attempted more ambitious subjects. The better characteristics of her novels reappeared, perhaps to greater advantage, in her numerous and agreeable letters, especially those to the novelist Flaubert.

[Sidenote: Merimee.]

In striking contrast with these three novelists was Prosper Merimee, also a novelist for the most part, but, unlike them, a comparatively infertile writer[292], and one of the most exquisite masters of French prose that the nineteenth century has seen. Merimee was born in 1803, and was therefore almost exactly of an age with the writers just mentioned. For a time he took a certain share in the Romantic movement, but his distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic was a kind of critical cynicism, partly real, partly affected, which made him dislike and distrust exaggeration of all kinds. He accordingly soon fell off. Possessing independent means, and entering the service of the government, he was not obliged to write for bread, and for many years he produced little, devoting himself as much to archaeology and the cla.s.sical languages as to French. He accepted the Second Empire apparently from a genuine and hearty hatred of democracy, and was rewarded with the post of senator.

But he had to a.s.sist Napoleon III. in his _Caesar_, and to dance attendance on the Court, the latter duty being made somewhat less irksome to him by his personal attachment to the Empress. Two collections of letters, which have appeared since his death, one addressed to an unknown lady, and the other to the late Sir Antonio Panizzi, while adding to Merimee's literary reputation, have thrown very curious light on his character, exhibiting him as a man who, with very genuine and hearty affections, veiled them under an outward cloak of cynicism, for fear of being betrayed into vulgarity and extravagance. He died in 1870, at the beginning of the troubles of France, by which he was deeply afflicted. The entire amount of Merimee's work is, as has been said, not large, and during the last twenty years of his life it is almost insignificant. But such as it is, it has an enduring and monumental value, which belongs to the work of few of his contemporaries. He began by a curious practice, which united the romantic fancy for strange countries and strong local colour with his personal longing for privacy and the absence of literary _eclat. Le Theatre de Clara Gazul_--plays, nominally by a Spanish actress--was produced when he was but one-and-twenty; two years later, with an audacious anagram on the t.i.tle of his previous work, he published, under the t.i.tle of _La Guzla_, some nominal translation of Dalmatian prose and verse, in which he utilised with extraordinary cleverness the existing books on Slav poetry. _La Famille de Carvajal_ was a further _supercherie_ in the same style. In the very height and climax of the Romantic movement Merimee produced two works, attesting at once his marvellous supremacy of style, his strange critical appreciation of the current forces in literature, his penetrating insight into history, and the satiric background of all his thoughts and studies. These were _La Jacquerie_, and a _Chronique du Regne de Charles IX_. These books, with Balzac's _Contes Drolatiques_ (which they long preceded), are the most happy creative criticisms extant of the middle ages and the Renaissance in France. They are not fair or complete: on the contrary, they are definitely and unfairly hostile. But the mastery at once of human nature and of literary form which they display, the faculty of vivid resurrection indicated by them, the range, the insight, the power of expression, are extraordinary. During the rest of his life Merimee, with some excursions into history (ancient and modern), archaeology, and criticism, confined himself for the most part to the production, at long intervals, of short tales or novels of very limited length. They are all masterpieces of literature, and, like most masterpieces of literature, they indicate, in a comparatively incidental and by-the-way fas.h.i.+on, paths which duller men have followed up to the natural result of absurdity and exaggeration. _Colomba_, _Mateo Falcone_, _La Double Meprise_, _La Venus d'Ille_, _L'Enlevement de la Redoute_, _Lokis_, have equals, but no superiors either in French prose fiction or in French prose. Grasp of human character, reserved but masterly description of scenery, delicate a.n.a.lysis of motive, ability to represent the supernatural, pathos, grandeur, simple narrative excellence, appear turn by turn in these wonderful pieces, as they appear hardly anywhere else except in the author to whom we shall come next. It is noteworthy, however, that Merimee is a master of the simple style in literature as Gautier is of the ornate. One cannot be said to be greater than the other, but between them they exhibit French prose in a perfection which, since the seventeenth century, it had not possessed.

[Sidenote: Theophile Gautier.]

Theophile Gautier was born considerably later than most of the writers just mentioned. His birth-year was 1811, and he was a native of Tarbes in Gascony. His education was partly at the grammar school of that town, and partly at the Lycee Charlemagne, where he made friends with Gerard de Nerval, who was destined to have a great influence on his life.

After leaving school he was intended for the profession of art. But, like Thackeray, to whom he had many points of resemblance, he had much less artistic faculty than taste. Gerard introduced him to the circle of Victor Hugo, and he speedily became one of the most fervent disciples of the author of _Hernani_. In a red waistcoat which has become historic, and in a ma.s.s of long hair which he continued to wear through life, he was the foremost of the Hugonic _claque_ at the representation of that famous play. Young as he was, he soon justified himself as something more than a hanger-on of great men of letters. In 1830 itself he produced a volume of verse, and this was followed by _Albertus_, an audacious poem in the extremest Romantic style, and by a work which did him both harm and good, _Mademoiselle de Maupin_. In this the most remarkable qualities of style and artistic conception were accompanied by a wilful disregard of the proprieties. Before long his unusual command of style, which was partly natural, partly founded on a wide and accurate study of the French writers of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, recommended him to newspaper work, at which he toiled manfully for the remainder of his life. There was hardly a department of belles lettres which he did not attempt. He travelled in Algeria, in Russia, in Turkey, in Spain, in Italy, in England, and wrote accounts of his travels, which are among the most brilliant ever printed. He was an a.s.siduous critic of art, of the drama and of literature, and the only charge which has ever been brought against his work in this kind is that it is usually too lenient--that his fine appreciation of even the smallest beauties has made him overlook gross defects. His work in prose fiction was incessant, in poetry more intermittent, and all the more perfect. When the Empire established itself, Gautier, who had no political sympathies, but was, in an undecided sort of way, a conservative from the aesthetic point of view, accepted it. But he gave it no active support, beyond continuing to contribute to the _Moniteur_, and received from it no patronage of any kind. Nor did he sacrifice the least iota of principle, insisting, in the very face of _Les Chatiments_, on having his praise of Victor Hugo inserted in the official journal on pain of his instant resignation. He led a pleasant but laborious life in one of the suburbs of Paris, with a household of sisters, daughters, and cats, to all of whom he was deeply attached. Here he lived through the Prussian siege. On the restoration of order he manfully grappled with his journalist work again, all hopes of lucrative appointments having gone with the Empire.

But his health had been broken for some time, and he died in 1872. The works by which Gautier will be remembered are, in miscellaneous prose, a remarkable series of studies on curious figures, chiefly of the seventeenth century, called _Les Grotesques_, and a companion series on the partakers in the movement of 1830, besides his descriptive books. In novel writing there must be mentioned an unsurpa.s.sed collection of short tales (the best of which is _La Morte Amoureuse_); _Le Roman de la Momie_, a clever _tour de force_ reviving ancient Egyptian life; and, lastly, _Le Capitaine Fraca.s.se_, a novel in the manner of Dumas, but fas.h.i.+oned in his own inimitable style. In verse, he wrote, besides work already mentioned, the _Comedie de la Mort_, some miscellaneous poems of later date, and, finally, the _emaux et Camees_. In prose he is, as has been said, the greatest recent master of the ornate style of French, as Merimee is the greatest master of the simple style. His mastery over mere language is accompanied by a very fine sense of the total form of his tales, so that the already-mentioned _Morte Amoureuse_ is one of the unsurpa.s.sable things of literature. In general writing he has a singular faculty of embalming the most trivial details in the amber of his style, so that his articles can be read again and again for the mere beauty of them. As a poet he is specially noteworthy for the same command of form joined to the same exquisite perfection of language. In _emaux et Camees_ especially it is almost impossible to find a flaw; language, metre, arrangement, are all complete and perfect, and this formal completeness is further informed by abundant poetic suggestion. The chief fault, if it be a fault, which can be found with Gautier is, that he set himself too deliberately against the tendencies of his age, and excluded too rigidly everything but purely aesthetic subjects of interest from his contemplation, and from the range of his literary energy.

[Sidenote: Alfred de Musset.]

The most happily-gifted, save one, of the great men of 1830, the weakest beyond comparison in will, in temperament, in faculty of improving his natural gifts, has yet to be mentioned. Alfred de Musset was born at Paris in 1810. His father held a government place of some value; his elder brother, M. Paul de Musset, was himself a man of letters, and at the same time deeply attached to his younger brother; and the family, though after the death of the father their means were not great, constantly supplied Alfred with a home. He was, fortunately or unfortunately, thrown, when quite a boy, into the society of Victor Hugo, the _cenacle_ or inner clique of the Romantic movement. When only nineteen Musset published a volume of poetry, which showed in him a poetic talent inferior only to Hugo's own, and, indeed, not so much inferior as different. These _Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie_ were quickly followed up by a volume ent.i.tled _Un Spectacle dans un Fauteuil_, and Musset became famous. Unfortunately for him, he became intimate with George Sand, and the result was a journey to Italy, from which he returned equally broken in health and in heart. His temperament was of almost ultra-poetic excitability, and he had a positively morbid incapacity for undertaking any useful employment, whether it was in itself congenial or no. Thus he refused a well-paid and agreeable position in the French emba.s.sy at Madrid; and though he had written admirable prose tales for his own pleasure, he was either unwilling or unable to write them under a regular commission. As he grew older he unfortunately became addicted to the constant and excessive use of stimulants. He was elected to the Academy in 1852, but produced little of value thereafter, and died in 1857. Alfred de Musset's work, notwithstanding his comparatively short life and his want of regular energy, is not inconsiderable in amount, and in quality is of the highest merit and interest. His poems, its most important item, are deficient in strictly formal merit. He is a very careless versifier and rhymer, and his choice of language is far from exquisite. He has, however, a wonderful note of genuine pa.s.sion, somewhat of the Byronic kind, but quite independent in species, and entirely free from the falsetto which spoils so much of Byron's work. Besides this his lyrics are, in what may be called 'song-quality,' scarcely to be surpa.s.sed.

_Les Nuits_, a series of meditative poems in the form of dialogues between the poet and his muse on nights in the month of May, August, October, and December; _Rolla_, an extravagant but powerful tale of the _maladie du siecle_; the addresses to Lamartine and to Malibran, and a few more poems, yield to no work of our time in genuine, original, and pa.s.sionate music. Next to his poems in subject, though not in merit, may be ranked the prose _Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle_. His prose tales, _Emmeline_, _Frederic et Bernerette_, etc., are of great merit, but inferior relatively to his poems, and to his remarkable dramas. These latter are among the most original work of the century. It was some time before they commended themselves to audiences in France, but they have long won their true position. They are of very various kinds. Some, and perhaps the happiest, are of the cla.s.s called, in French, _proverbes_, dramatic ill.u.s.trations, that is to say, of some common saying, _Il ne faut jurer de rien: Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermee_, etc.

The grace and delicacy of these, the ingenuity with which the story is adapted to the moral, the abundant wit (for wit is one of Musset's most prominent characteristics) which ill.u.s.trates and pervades them, make them unique in literature. Others, such as _Les Caprices de Marianne_, _Le Chandelier_, are regular comedies, admitting, as against the cla.s.sical tradition, that a comedy may end ill; and others, as _Lorenzaccio_, nearly attain to the dignity of the historic play. The dramatic instinct in Musset was very strong, and may, perhaps, be said to have exceeded in volume, originality, and variety, if not in intensity, the purely poetical. Altogether, Musset is the most remarkable instance in French literature, and one of the most remarkable in the literature of Europe, of merely natural genius, hardly at all developed by study, and not a.s.sisted in the least by critical power and a strong will. What, perhaps, distinguished him most is the singular conjunction of the most fervid pa.s.sion and the most touching lyrical 'cry' with the finest wit, and with unusual dramatic ability.

[Sidenote: Influence of the Romantic Leaders.]

These eight sum up whatever is greatest and most influential in the generation of 1830. Victor Hugo gave direction and leading to the movement, identified it with his own masterly and commanding genius, furnished it, at brief intervals, with consummate examples. Sainte-Beuve supplied it with the necessary basis of an immense comparative erudition, by which he was enabled to disengage and to exhibit to those who run the true principles of literary criticism, and to point the younger generation to the sources of a richer vocabulary, a more flexible and highly-coloured style, a more cosmopolitan appreciation.

Alexandre Dumas, with less strictly literary virtue than any other of the group, occupied the important vantage grounds of the theatre and the lending library in the Romantic interest. Balzac, equalling the others in the range of his field, added the special example of a minute psychological a.n.a.lysis, and of the most untiring labour. George Sand taught the secret of utilising to the utmost the pa.s.sing currents of personal and popular sentiment and thought. Merimee, the master least followed, supplied, in the first place, the necessary warning against a too enthusiastic following of school models; and, in the second, himself held up a model of prose style of severity and exactness equal to the finest examples of the cla.s.sical school, yet possessing to the full the romantic merits of versatile adaptability, of glowing colour, of direct and fearless phrase. Gautier exhibited, on the one hand, a model of absolute perfection in formal poetry, the workmans.h.i.+p of a gem or a Greek vase; on the other, the model of a prose style so flexible as to serve the most ordinary purposes, so richly equipped as to be equal to any emergency, and yet, in its most elaborate condition, worthy to rank with his own verse. Lastly, again as an outsider (a position which he shares in the group with Merimee, though in very different fas.h.i.+on), Musset brought the most natural and unaffected tears and laughter by turns, to correct the too scholastic and literary character of the movement, and to show how the most perfectly artistic effect could be produced with the least apparatus of formal study or preparation.

Under the influence partly of these men, and directly exercised by them, partly of the general movement of which they were the leaders and exponents, the literature of France has developed itself for the rest of the century. It remains to give a brief sketch of its princ.i.p.al ornaments during that time. Many names, whose work is intrinsically of all but the highest interest and merit, will have to be rapidly dispatched, but their chief achievements and their significance in the general march can at least be indicated.

[Sidenote: Minor Poets of 1830.]

At the head of the poets of this minor band has to be mentioned Millevoye, who might, perhaps with equal or greater appropriateness, have found a place in the preceding book. He is chiefly remarkable as the author of one charming piece of sentimental verse, _La Chute des Feuilles_; and as the occasion of an immortal criticism of Sainte-Beuve's, 'Il se trouve dans les trois quarts des hommes un poete qui meurt jeune tandis que l'homme survit.' The peculiarity of Millevoye and his happiness was that he did not survive the death of the poet in him, but died at the age of thirty-four. Except the piece just mentioned, he wrote little of value, and his total work is not large.

But he may be described as a simpler, a somewhat less harmonious, but a less tautologous Lamartine, to whom the G.o.ds were kind in allowing him to die young. A curious contrast to Millevoye is furnished by his contemporary, Ulric Guttinguer. Guttinguer was born in 1785, and, like Nodier, he joined himself frankly to the Romantic movement, and was looked up to as a senior by its more active promoters. Like Millevoye, he has to rest his fame almost entirely on one piece, the verses beginning, 'Ils ont dit: l'amour pa.s.se et sa flamme est rapide;' but, unlike him, he lived to a great age, and was a tolerably fertile producer. By the side of these two poets ranks Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, who shares, with Louise Labe and Marie de France, the first rank among the poetesses of her country. Madame Desbordes-Valmore was born in 1787, and died in 1859. Her first volume of poems was published in 1819, and, as in all the verse of this time, the note of sentiment dominates. She continued to publish volumes at intervals until 1843, and another was added after her death. Great sweetness and pathos, with a total absence of affectation, distinguish her work. Perhaps her best piece is the charming song, in a kind of irregular rondeau form, _S'il avait su_. Jean Polonius, whose real name was Labenski, was a Russian, who contributed frequently to the _Annales Romantiques_, and subsequently published two volumes of French poetry. Emile and Antoni Deschamps were the translators of the Romantic movement. Antoni accomplished a complete translation of Dante, Emile translated from English, German, and Italian poets indifferently. They also published original poems together, and separately. Madame Tastu was also a translator, or rather a paraphraser, and an author of original poems of a sentimental kind. Lastly, Jean Reboul, a native of Nimes, and born in a humble situation, deserves a place among these.

Three poets deserving of all but the first rank, and belonging to the generation of 1830 itself, require each a somewhat longer notice.

[Sidenote: Alfred de Vigny.]

Alfred de Vigny was born at Loches, on the 27th of March, 1799. He was a man of rank, and his marriage in 1826 with an Englishwoman of wealth gave him independence. He left the army, in which he had served for some years, in 1828, and spent the rest of his life, until his death in 1864, in literary ease. He had been for some time a member of the Academy. His poetical career was peculiar. Between 1821 and 1829 he produced a small number of poems of the most exquisite finish, which at once attained the popularity they deserved, and were repeatedly reprinted. But for thirty-five years he published hardly anything else in verse, his _Poemes Philosophiques_ not appearing (at least as a volume) until after his death. Yet he was by no means idle. He had written and published in 1826 the prose romance of _Cinq Mars_, and he followed this up, though at considerable intervals, with others, as well as with dramas, of which _Chatterton_ is the best and best known. He also translated _Oth.e.l.lo_ and _The Merchant of Venice_. Alfred de Vigny may perhaps be best described as a link between Andre Chenier and the Romantic poets. He is not much of a lyrist, his best and most famous poems (_Mose_, _Eloa_, _Dolorida_) being in Alexandrines, and the general form of his verse inclines to that of the eighteenth-century elegy, while it has much of the cla.s.sical (not pseudo-cla.s.sical) proportion and grace of Chenier.

But his language, and in part his versification, are romantic, though quieter in style than those of most of his companions, whom it must be remembered he for the most part forestalled. In _Mose_ much of what has been called Victor Hugo's 'science of names' is antic.i.p.ated, as well as his large manner of landscape and declamation. _Eloa_ suggests rather Lamartine, but a Lamartine with his weakness replaced by strength, while _Dolorida_ has a strong flavour of Musset. The remarkable thing is that in each case the peculiarities of the poet to whom Vigny has been compared were not fully developed until after he wrote, and that therefore he has the merit of originality. It is probable, however, that, exquisite as his poetical power was, it lacked range, and that he, having the rare faculty of discerning this, designedly limited his production. The best of the posthumous poems already mentioned are fully worthy of his earlier ones, but they display no new faculty.

[Sidenote: Auguste Barbier.]

If Alfred de Vigny is a poet of few books, Auguste Barbier is a poet of one. Born in 1805, Barbier never formed part of the Romantic circle, properly so called, but he shared to the full its inspiring influence.

He began by an historical novel of no great merit, but the revolution of 1830 served as the occasion of his _Iambes_, a series of extraordinarily brilliant and vigorous satires, both political and social. The most famous of all these is _La Curee_, a description of the ign.o.ble scramble for place and profit under the new Orleanist government. No satirical work in modern days has had greater success, and few have deserved it more; the weight and polish of the verse being altogether admirable.

Satire is, however, a vein which it is very difficult to work for any length of time with any novelty, as may be seen sufficiently from the fact that the works of all the best satirists, ancient and modern, are contained in a very small compa.s.s. Barbier endeavoured to secure the necessary variety of subjects by going to Italy in _Il Pianto_, and to England in _Lazare_, but without success, though both contain many examples of the nervous and splendid verse in which he excels. During the last forty years of his life he wrote much, and he was elected to the Academy in 1869, but _Les Iambes_ will remain his t.i.tle to fame.

[Sidenote: Gerard de Nerval.]

A name far less generally known, but deserving of being known very well indeed, is that of Gerard de Nerval, or, as his right appellation was, Gerard Labrunie. He was born in 1805, and was one of the most distinguished pupils of the celebrated Lycee Charlemagne, where he made the acquaintance of Theophile Gautier. Gerard (as he is most generally called) was a man of delicate and far-ranging genius, afflicted with the peculiar malady which weighs on some such men, and which may perhaps be described as an infirmity of will. He was not idle, and there was no reason why he should not be prosperous. At an early age he translated _Faust_, to the admiration of Goethe. His _Travels in the East_ were widely read, and every newspaper in Paris was glad of his co-operation; yet he was frequently in distress, and died in a horrible and mysterious manner, either by his own hand or murdered by night prowlers. He has been more than once compared to Poe, whom, however, he excelled both in amiability of temperament and in literary knowledge. But the two have been rightly selected by an excellent judge as being, in company with a living English poet, the chief masters of the poetry which 'lies on the further side between verse and music.' Most of Gerard's work is in prose, taking the form of fantastic but exquisite short tales ent.i.tled _Les Filles de Feu_, _La Boheme Galante_, etc. His verse, at least the characteristic part of it, is not bulky; it consists partly of folksongs slightly modernised, partly of sonnets, partly of miscellaneous poems.

But, if the expression 'prose poetry' be ever allowable, which has been doubted, it is seldom more applicable than to much of Gerard de Nerval's work, both in his description of his travels and in avowed fiction.

Some minor names remain to be mentioned. Mery, one of the most fertile authors of the century, was a writer of verse as well as of prose, and displayed much the same talent of brilliant improvisation in each capacity. Auguste Brizeux, a Breton by birth, made himself remarkable by idyllic poetry (_Marie_, _La Fleur d'Or_) chiefly dealing with the scenery and figures of his native province. Amedee Pommier is a fertile and not inelegant verse writer, of no very marked characteristics.

Charles Dovalle, who was shot in one of the miserable duels between journalists so common in France, at the age of twenty-two, would probably have done remarkable work had he lived. Hegesippe Moreau, to whom a life but very little longer was vouchsafed, devoted himself partly to baccha.n.a.lian and satirical work, for which he had not the slightest genius, but produced also some poems of country life, which rank among the sweetest and most natural of the century. Much of his work is little more than a corrupt following of Beranger. In the same way the imitation of Lamartine was not fortunate for Victor de Laprade (_Psyche_, _Les Symphonies_, _Les Voix de Silence_). This imitation is not so much in subject (for M. de Laprade was a philosopher rather than a sentimentalist) as in manner and versification. His verse is also much more strongly impregnated than Lamartine's with cla.s.sical culture. With due allowance for difference of dates and countries, there is a considerable resemblance between Laprade and Southey. Both had the same accomplishment of style, the same unquestioning submission to the dogmas of Christianity, the same width of literary information. It is unfortunate for France that Laprade was somewhat deficient in humour, a rare growth on her soil at all times.

[Sidenote: Curiosites Romantiques.]

[Sidenote: Petrus Borel.]

[Sidenote: Louis Bertrand.]

All these names are more or less widely known, but there is a cla.s.s of 'oublies et dedaignes,' as one of their most faithful biographers has called them, who belong to the movement of 1830, and whose numbers are probably, while their merit is certainly, greater than is the case at any other literary epoch. Few of them can be mentioned here, but those few are worthy of mention, and it may perhaps be said that the native vigour of most of them, though warped and distorted for the most part by oddities of temperament or the unkindness of fortune, equals, if it does not surpa.s.s, that of many of their more fortunate brethren. The first of these is Petrus Borel, one of the strangest figures in the history of literature. Very little is known of his life, which was spent partly at Paris and partly in Algeria. He was perhaps the most extravagant of all the Romantics, surnaming himself 'Le Lycanthrope,' and identifying himself with the eccentricities of the _Bousingots_, a clique of political literary men who for a short time made themselves conspicuous after 1830. Borel wrote partly in verse and partly in prose. His most considerable exploit in the former was a strange preface in verse to his novel of _Madame Putiphar_; his best work in prose, a series of wild but powerful stories ent.i.tled _Champavert_. His talent altogether lacked measure and criticism, but it is undeniable. Auguste Fontaney was born in 1803 and died in 1837, having, like many of the literary men of his day, served for a short time in diplomacy. He was a frequent contributor to the early Romantic periodicals, and somewhat later to the _Revue des Deux-Mondes_. His work is very unequal, but at its best it is saturated with the true spirit of poetry. Felix Arvers, like our own Blanco White, has obtained his place in literary history by a single sonnet, one of the most beautiful ever written. Auguste de Chatillon was both poet and painter; his chief t.i.tle to remembrance in the former capacity being a volume of cheerful verse ent.i.tled _A l'Auberge de la Grand' Pinte_.

Napoleon Peyrat, who, after the fas.h.i.+on of those times (in which Auguste Maquet, a fertile novelist, and a journalist, and a collaborateur of Alexandre Dumas, called himself Augustus Mackeat, and Theophile Dondey anagrammatised his surname into O'Neddy), dubbed himself Napol le Pyreneen, survives, and justly, in virtue of a single short poem on _Roland_, possessed of extraordinary _verve_ and spirit. Last of all has to be mentioned Louis Bertrand, a poet possessed of the rarest faculty, but unfortunately doomed to misfortune and premature death. Born at Ceva in Piedmont, in 1807, and brought up at Dijon, he came to Paris, found there but scanty encouragement, and died in a hospital in 1841. His only work of any importance, _Gaspard de la Nuit_, a series of prose ballads arranged in verses something like those of the English translation of the Bible, and testifying to the most delicate sense of rhythm, and the most exquisite power of poetical suggestion, did not appear until after his death. He and Borel perhaps only of the names contained in this paragraph represent individual and solid talent: the others are chiefly noteworthy as instances of the extraordinary stimulating force of the time on minds which in other days would probably have remained indocile to poetry, or at least unproductive of it.

[Sidenote: Second Group of Romantic Poets.]

Three distinct stages are perceptible in French poetry since the date of the Romantic movement, and we have now exhausted the remarkable names belonging to the first. Another opens with those poets who, being born in or about 1820, came to years of discretion in time to see the first force of the movement spent, and found the necessity of striking out something of a new way for themselves. Of this group three names stand pre-eminently forward, those of Baudelaire, Banville, and Leconte de Lisle, while some others may be mentioned beside them.

[Sidenote: Theodore de Banville.]

Theodore de Banville was born in 1820, of a good family, his father being an officer in the navy. He began to write very early with the _Cariatides_, and continued for fifty years to be active in prose and poetry. M. de Banville displayed at once a remarkable mastery of rhyme and rhythm, and it is in the exhibition of this that he chiefly excelled. Under his auspices not merely the graceful metrical systems of the Pleiade, but the older forms of the mediaeval poets, Ballades, Rondeaux, Triolets, etc., were once more brought into fas.h.i.+on. But M. de Banville was by no means only a clever versifier. His serious poetry (_Cariatides_, _Stalact.i.tes_, _Odelettes_, _Les Exile's_, _Trente-six Ballades_) is full of poetical language and sentiment, his lighter verse (_Occidentales_, _Odes Funambulesques_) is charming, his prose is excellent, and he was no mean hand at drama (_Gringoire_).

[Sidenote: Leconte de Lisle.]

As M. de Banville sought for poetical novelty in an elaborate manipulation of the formal part of poetry, so M. Leconte de Lisle has sought it in a wide range of subject. He is a great translator of Greek verse. But in his original poems (_Poesies Antiques_, _Poesies Barbares_, _Poemes et Poesies_) he has gone not merely to the cla.s.sics but to the East and to mediaeval times for his inspiration. A tendency to load his verse with exotic names in unusual forms (he was one of the first Frenchmen to adopt the fas.h.i.+on of spelling Greek names with a strict transliteration) has brought, not perhaps altogether undeservedly, the charge of affectation on M. Leconte de Lisle. But he is a poet of no small power, not merely in outlandish subjects such as _Le Ma.s.sacre de Mona_, _Le Sommeil du Condor_, _Le Runoia_, etc., but in much simpler work, such as the beautiful _Requies_.

[Sidenote: Charles Baudelaire.]