CHAPTER 2
FRENCH HUMANISM AND MONTAIGNE
THE fall
of Florence in 1530, together with the building of the new royal château at
Fontainebleau and the marriage of the second son of Francis I with Catharine de
Medici, had led to a large influx of Italians, mostly Florentines, into France.
On the accession of Catharine’s husband, Henry II, to the throne, they began to
make their influence felt alike in politics, society, literature, and art. The
result was that the Renaissance in France entered upon a distinctly Italian
phase of development, which lasted for forty years, though after the first
five-and-twenty of these a species of reaction ensued.
At the
same time a change took place in the character of French humanism. Instead of
being more or less encyclopedic, it began to specialize in particular branches
of knowledge, and in two of them, philology and jurisprudence, speedily took
the lead. The quarter of a century from 1547 to 1572 was the golden age alike
of French philology and French jurisprudence. Moreover French literature, both
poetry and prose, now received a strong and lasting impulse from humanism,
which had hitherto neglected the vernacular language.
Turnèbe. Lambin. Dorat
A few
days after the death of Francis I, Adrien Tournebus (1512-65), known to scholars as Turnebus, was appointed to succeed Jacques Toussain (Tusanus) as regius professor of Greek at Paris. The difference between
the two men marks the change in the character of French humanism.
Toussain was nicknamed “the living library”; Turnèbe, to call him by the French form of his Latinized
name, though a man of wide interests, devoted himself to the task of
reconstructing, translating, and commenting on classical texts. His name stood
so high in his own day that German professors raised their caps when they
mentioned it in their lectures, while to Montaigne’s partial eyes he seemed the
greatest man of letters the world had seen for a thousand years. His most
notable contributions to scholarship were editions of Philo, Aeschylus, and
Sophocles, all of which he printed himself in his capacity of King’s printer
for Greek. His edition of Philo was the first complete one; the merits of that
of Sophocles have been pointed out in an earlier volume; that of Aeschylus was
of no less value. His other works include Latin translations of Philo and
various treatises of Plutarch and Theophrastus, and commentaries on Cicero,
Varro, Horace, and the elder Pliny. In 1564, the year before his death, he
published the first volume of his Adversaria, a collection of critical, explanatory, and
illustrative notes on passages of classical authors. A second volume was added
in 1565, and a third in 1573. The historian de Thou prophesied for it
immortality, and scholars may still consult it with profit.
His
friend and colleague Denys Lambin (1516-72), though a
professor of Greek, made his mark chiefly as a Latin scholar. According to H.
A. J. Munro, “his knowledge of Cicero and the older Latin writers, as well as
the Augustan poets, has never been surpassed and rarely equaled”. He edited
brilliantly Plautus, Lucretius, Cicero, and Horace. In his Lucretius he
acknowledges his obligations to Turnèbe and Jean Dorat (Auratus) who also held a
chair of Greek in the Royal College. Gottfried Hermann is said to have regarded Dorat as the most illustrious of Eschylean critics, and his emendations, though less numerous than those of Turnèbe, go somewhat deeper. But he is chiefly known as a
teacher of genius. For a time he was tutor to some of the royal princes and
princesses and in various noble families, one of his pupils being Jean Antoine
de Baïf, the future poet. Being appointed about the
year 1544 to the headship of the College of Coqueret at Paris he began to lecture on Greek poetry to an enthusiastic class, which
included Baïf and his friend, Pierre de Ronsard, and,
somewhat later, Joachim du Bellay. Thus the group of French poets known under
the name of the Pléiade had its origin in Dorat’s lecture-room. Hitherto
Frenchmen had read the great classical authors for their subject-matter. Dorat taught them to appreciate the perfection of classical
form.
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The
leader of this youthful band of humanists who now set themselves to
revolutionize French poetry was Ronsard, but it was du Bellay who wrote their
manifesto. This work, which appeared in 1549 under the title of Defence et
Illustration de la Langue Française, is less
remarkable for sustained argument than for its confident and vigorous
eloquence, and for its grasp of the vital principle, that without style there
can be no great poetry. If Frenchmen, du Bellay says in effect, would make
their language “illustrious”, they must abandon the inferior forms of poetry
hitherto in fashion, and take for their models the Greek and Latin poets, or
the modern Italians. They must write odes like Horace, eclogues like Theocritus
and Virgil, elegies like Ovid, sonnets like Petrarch. Poetry is an art, and
therefore natural capacity is not sufficient in itself; it must be trained and
cultivated by study and labor.
The Pléiade
Another
important principle, namely, that poetic style is distinct from prose style,
requiring an embellished and heightened diction, though fully recognized by du
Bellay, is more clearly enunciated by Ronsard in his preface to the Franciade and in
his Abrégé de l’art poétique. It is this part of the poetical theory and
practice of the Pléiade which, from Boileau downwards, has been most misunderstood. The
borrowing of Greek and Latin words and forms of syntax was only one of the many
devices recommended by Ronsard for the purposes of poetic diction; it was the
one which met with the strongest opposition, and which with his usual prudence
he soon greatly modified in his own poetry. In fact so far from “his Muse
speaking French in Greek and Latin”, as Boileau has
it, his best poems contain no word or expression which is not of the purest
French.
On the
other hand, a feature of the Pléiade poetry which
recent research has brought to light is that its direct debt to Italian models
is far larger than to classical ones. Petrarch, Ariosto, Bembo, Sannazaro, and many less known poets of the Italian
Renaissance, are freely laid under contribution. Another Italian who had great
influence on the whole movement was the Florentine exile, Luigi Alamanni, who, since 1530, had resided at the French Court,
and had received many substantial marks of favor from Francis I. He was a poet
of no great originality, but he had a strong feeling for style, and was an
ardent classicist. Ronsard's Pindaric odes resemble his hymns in structure,
while du Bellay, when recommending in his Deffence certain
kinds of poetry, is possibly influenced by the practice of the seigneur Loys Aleman.
The new
school of poetry naturally did not supplant its predecessor without a struggle;
but by the year 1554 the victory was assured, and Ronsard was hailed as the
“prince of French poets”. His followers were originally known as the Brigade;
but now he and six others assumed, in imitation of a group of Alexandrian poets
of the third century BC, the name of the Pléiade. His
colleagues were Dorat, du Bellay, Baïf,
Estienne Jodelle, Remy Belleau, and Pontus de Tyard. In 1560 the crown was put on Ronsard’s reputation by
the publication of his collected poems in four volumes. It is significant
partly of the pedantry of the age, and partly of the close connection of the new
poetry with humanism, that the first book of the Amours was provided with a
commentary from the pen of Marc-Antoine Muret (Muretus), who, having abandoned French poetry for classical
scholarship, was on his way to become the foremost Latin stylist in Europe.
There is
no great depth or originality of thought in Ronsard’s poetry, no intense
passion; but his best pieces are signal examples of the power of style when it
has imagination or emotion to support it. The famous ode, À Cassandre, the equally fine one
beginning Pourquoi chétif laboureur, several of the sonnets to Marie and to
Hélène, including the perfect Quand vous serez bien vieille, with many passages in the elegies,
hymns, and other longer poems, bear witness that Ronsard was not only a great artist
in verse, but a true poet.
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Du
Bellay’s genius was somewhat longer in finding its true bent. It was not till
1558, less than two years before his early death, that he produced a really
original work in Les Regrets, mostly written at Rome, whither he had gone as
secretary to his cousin the Cardinal. In form a sonnet-sequence, it departs
widely from the favorite Petrarchian pattern. Instead
of being addressed to some more or less imaginary mistress, it is A journal intime of the poet’s thoughts and impressions, in which he
records the ennui of his life, the corruptions of the Roman Curia, and his
longing for his native land. Though du Bellay had a slighter poetic endowment
than Ronsard, possessing less imagination and less mastery of his art, he represents
almost better the delicacy of perception and the refined grace which are proper
to the French genius. It is the latter quality which is preeminent in the
well-known D’un vanneur de blé.
The close
relations of the Pléiade with the Court made its
members ardent Royalists. This was especially the case with Ronsard, who had
been page in succession to two of the sons of Francis I. Moreover, like du
Bellay, he was dependent on the royal favor for the Church preferment which was
in those days the recognized method of rewarding men of letters. It was this
attachment to the throne which led him, who had all a humanist’s aversion from
political or religious strife, to take up a militant attitude in the great
struggle, and in the two Discours des misères de se
temps, written towards the close of the year 1562, to throw all the blame
of the war on the Protestants. This led to reprisals from the Huguenot camp,
and Ronsard was attacked in several venomous poems, which along with much that
was false contained a certain amount of truth, especially as regards the
irregularities of his life and the licentiousness of some of his verses. Stung
to fury, he replied in another Discours, which was too violent to be effective. Moreover,
he could not do away with the fact that in his own person he was a conspicuous
example of the corruption from which the Church was suffering.
Amyot
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If Dorat’s lectures gave a stimulus to French poetry, the work
of another scholar largely contributed to the successful development of French
prose. In 1559, the year between the publication of du Bellay’s Regrets and
that of Ronsard’s collected poems, Jacques Amyot (1513-93), formerly a poor scholar of the college of Navarre, and now abbot of Bellozane, published a complete translation of the Lives of
Plutarch. The translation of the Moralia or moral treatises of the same author followed in
1572, when Amyot was Grand Almoner of France and
Bishop of Auxerre, to both of which posts he had been
appointed by his former pupil, Charles IX. His Plutarch is one of the rare
instances of a translation which has taken its place as an original work in the
literature of its adopted country; and the secret of its success lies in the
double fidelity with which the translator has preserved at once the meaning of
the original author and the spirit of his own language. Though Amyot’s scholarship is very seldom at fault, he never
allows either the Greek idiom or Plutarch’s idiosyncrasies to color his own style. And that style, from its high artistic
qualities, its feeling for order and proportion and harmony, was of the
greatest service to a language which, in spite of Rabelais and Calvin, still
stood in need of considerable molding before it could become a perfect
instrument for the expression of thought. Hardly less important was the
influence of Amyot’s work on the moral and
intellectual development of the nation. In the evil days upon which France had
fallen, Plutarch’s examples of lofty patriotism were
an encouragement and an invitation to her worthier sons. They helped to
strengthen the mental and moral fiber of the nation and to prepare the way for
her regeneration. Moreover, the moral treatises stimulated that interest in the
causes and phenomena of human conduct, which, beginning with the Essays of
Montaigne, has given rise to so many masterpieces of French literature.
Henri Estienne
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Another
French scholar of this period who did not disdain to cultivate his own language
was Henri Estienne (1528-98). Trained in Latin and Greek from his childhood,
and endowed with a rare natural instinct for language, he knew Greek as if it
were his native tongue. His home was at Geneva, where he had inherited the
printing-press of his father, Robert Estienne; but, with a full share of the
restlessness which is so characteristic of the Renaissance, he was a constant
traveler, especially during the last eighteen years of his life. The best part
of his work was done between 1554 and 1579, and it was enormous. About one hundred
and thirty editions of Greek and Latin authors issued from his press,
comprising eighteen first editions of Greek authors, and such important
undertakings as Plato, Plutarch, and an edition of Aeschylus in which for the
first time the Agamemnon was printed in its entirety and as a separate play.
They were all, or nearly all, of his own editing; and in spite of the rapidity
with which he worked, he was at once a scrupulous and a careful editor.
Moreover, owing to his instinctive knowledge of the Greek language, he was the
first to show what conjecture could do towards restoring really corrupt
passages. But his greatest legacy to scholarship is the Thesaurus Graecae Linguae (1572). After making due allowance for the materials collected by his father
and for the assistance given him by the German scholar Sylburg,
it stands forth as a monument of industry and sound learning, and remains to
this day the most complete Greek dictionary. He also wrote several French works
which, though they bear evident marks of haste, are remarkable not only for
their racy and picturesque language, but for the logical construction of the
sentences, a rare quality at that time. Three of these writings (1575-9) are
devoted to establishing the merits of the French language and its superiority
over Italian, one of them being especially directed against the prevailing
fashion of interlarding French with Italian words and forms. They were signs of
the growing reaction against Italian influences in France.
Ramus. Cujas
The
services of Pierre de la Ramée, better known as Ramus (1515-72), to the French language were of a different
character. His only French writings were a French grammar, a few speeches and
prefaces, and a translation of his famous treatise on logic (1555); but this last
is important as almost the first scientific work written in the vernacular, and
as a practical expression of Ramus’ view that learned
as well as popular works should be written in French. It was one of the many
reforms advocated by this many-sided and original thinker, whose reforming
spirit, rather than his actual achievements, makes him of such importance in
the history of thought. The fame of the Ramist logic
was due far less to its intrinsic merits than to its patronage by Protestant
universities (excepting Oxford); but it still has an historical interest as a
revolt against the Aristotelian tyranny. The man himself was greater than his
work. As president of the College of Presles and regius professor of eloquence and philosophy he was for
more than a quarter of a century a power in the university life of Paris. This
was due partly to his brilliance as a lecturer, but chiefly to the breadth of
his views and the dignity of his character.
From
humanist logic we turn to humanist jurisprudence. Its pioneer in France was
Pierre de l’Estoile (Stella), the grandfather of the
well-known diarist, who began to lecture at Orleans in 1512; but its real
founder was the Italian, Andrea Alciati, who, coming
to Bourges in 1528, definitely restored the Corpus Juris to the place which had been usurped by the Gloss. Under the wise patronage of
Margaret, Duchess of Berry, daughter of Francis I, and afterwards wife of
Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, Bourges became the
first school of jurisprudence in Europe, and was illustrated by such names as
Baron, Baudouin, Duaren, Doneau, Hotman, and, greatest of
all, Cujas. The services of Jacques Cujas (1522-90), “the pearl of jurists”, to jurisprudence
were similar to those of Turnèbe in the field of
classical scholarship. He resolved the Corpus Juris into its component parts, purified the text, and enriched it with a commentary.
His labors included Papinian, Ulpian, Paul,
Justinian’s Institutes, the last three books of the Codex Justinianeus, three books of the Codex Theodosianus,
and the Lex Romana Burgundiorum.
On the
other hand, Hugues Doneau or Donellus (1527-91) aimed at a philosophical
conception of the Roman law as a whole, a task which was rendered easier by the
publication in 1583 of an edition of the whole Corpus iuris civilis by Denys Godefroi, father of a greater son, Jacques Godefroi. The text was a mere reproduction of earlier
editions, but it remained the standard one till the close of the eighteenth
century. The commentary has still some value. Mention also may be made of Barnabé Brisson, a man of great
erudition, who wrote a dictionary of Roman law and who paid the penalty of
political ambition. Having been appointed by the League First President of the
Paris Parliament in the room of the royalist de Harlay,
he was three years later put to death by the stalwarts of the party (November,
1591). With the almost solitary exception of Brisson,
the great French jurists did not practice; but their influence on the whole bar
and bench was immense. The French lawyers of this time, to use the words of Sir
Henry Maine, “in all the qualities of the advocate, the judge, and the
legislator, far excelled their compeers throughout Europe”. Estienne Pasquier, Antoine Loisel, the
brothers Pithou, Guy du Faur de Pibrac, Pierre Seguier and his son Antoine, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, and his
brother-in-law, Achille de Harlay - all these great advocates and magistrates, most of whom also achieved high
distinction in literature, had sat at the feet of “le grand Cujas”.
Moreover, they were all ardent humanists, and their speeches bristled with
references to classical authors.
The St Bartholomew and humanism
A sound
training in Roman law was absolutely necessary in those provinces of France
which acknowledged that law as the basis of their jurisprudence; but part of
France was subject, not to the Droit Écrit, but to the Droit Coutumier, or law based on local usage. Of this vast and
varied domain Charles Dumoulin (1500-66) was the
master whose European reputation vied with that of Cujas.
But, unlike Cujas, he took an active part in the
political and religious disputes of his day, and especially opposed the
publication of the decrees of the Council of Trent in France. Even Dumoulin did not escape the influence of Roman law, for it
was from the jurists of the Antonine era that he
derived those ideas of the law of Nature which were destined to play at a later
date so important a part in the history of French thought.
The
Massacre of St Bartholomew, with its sequels on a smaller scale in large towns
like Orleans, Bourges, Bordeaux, and Toulouse, dealt a blow to French humanism
from which it never recovered. The Religious Wars in themselves had been a
serious hindrance to the pursuit of learning, but down to the Massacre they had
been relieved by considerable intervals of peace. Even Protestant professors,
especially if they made no parade of their religious opinions, had been able to
continue their teaching in comparative security. Now, all was changed. Ramus, hunted down by a rival professor, perished in the
Massacre; Lambinus died of the shock a month later; Doneau and Hotman fled from
Bourges to Geneva; and the same city provided a refuge for the younger
Scaliger, the rising hope of French scholarship. When Scaliger returned to
France in 1574, Cujas and Dorat were almost the only scholars left in the land; and a year later even Cujas was driven by religious disturbances from Bourges, as
he had already been driven from Valence eight years earlier.
Scaliger. Casaubon. P. Pithou
Joseph
Justus Scaliger (1540-1609) |
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Joseph
Scaliger (1540-1609) is the greatest name in the history of French classical
scholarship. To a mastery over Greek and Latin and a critical sense equal, if
not superior, to that of any of his predecessors, he added a range of learning,
a sureness of method, and a constructive power that have never been surpassed.
The first fruits of his labors after his return to France were editions of
Festus, and of the Latin elegiac poets Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius. But,
having shown his capacity for the restoration of texts, he turned to a new
field of labor, and in his edition of Manilius (1577)
produced what was practically a treatise on ancient astronomy. This was the
prelude to the great work of his life, the creation of a scientific system of
ancient chronology, which he accomplished by his De emendatione temporum (1583) and Thesaurus temporum (1606). The latter included a marvelous reconstruction of the lost first book
of Eusebius’ Chronicle, the very existence of which he had divined. If the
discovery of an Armenian translation in the last century has somewhat modified
his results, it has detracted nothing from the brilliance of his conjectures.
But when his master-work was published he was no longer living in France. In
1593 he had accepted an invitation to become a professor at the new University
of Leyden.
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Three
years later a French scholar was restored to France in the person of Isaac
Casaubon (1559-1614), who had been living for nearly twenty years at Geneva,
where he had married the daughter of Henri Estienne. He had neither Scaliger’s
constructive genius nor his instinctive feeling for language, but, thanks to
his patient industry and lively memory, he acquired, as Scaliger himself
admitted, an even greater knowledge of Greek. His special aim was, in Mark Pattison's
words, “to revive the picture of the ancient world”, a work which his special
gifts enabled him to carry out with great success. His editions of Athenaeus, Theophrastus, and Strabo, have never been
superseded; while those of Polybius, Persius, Suetonius,
and the Scriptures Historiae Augustae, are indispensable to students of those
particular authors. He was professor at Montpellier till 1600, when Henry IV
summoned him to Paris and made him one of the regius professors of Greek. But the assassination of the King deprived him of his only
protector; and he gladly accepted an invitation, with the offer of a prebendal stall, from Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of
Canterbury. It was no longer possible for a scholar who was a Protestant to
make a livelihood in France.
The
decline of scholarship in France was partly due to the fact that the study of
Greek, though it had flourished greatly for a time, had never taken deep root.
At the first touch of adversity it began to wither; and henceforth French
culture and civilization became almost exclusively Latin. After the departure
of Scaliger the most learned man in France was Pierre Pithou (1539-96), and Scaliger could say of him that he was nothing of a Greek
scholar. But he was an excellent Latin scholar, and we owe to him editiones principes of Phaedrus (1596), the Pervigilium Veneris (1577), Salvianus (1580), and the Edict of Theodoric (1579). He also edited Petronius, and the Lex Visigothorum.
The text of most of these editions was based on manuscripts in his own library.
His many-sided activity also displayed itself in the publication of medieval
historical texts, and in various short treatises, of which the best known is Les libertés de l’Église gallicane. We shall
meet him again as one of the authors of the Satire Ménippée.
Jesuit learning. Desportes and da Bartas
One
effect of the Counter-Reformation in France was to divert the energies of
French scholars from pagan to Christian studies. This was in a large measure
due to the Jesuits. They saw that, if they wished to dominate thought, they
must train men to vie with Scaliger and Casaubon in learning. Partly as a
result of this policy, a succession of excellent editions of Christian writers
began to issue from the Paris presses early in the seventeenth century. Thus Fronton
du Duc (1558-1624) edited St John Chrysostom (1621-4)
and a collection of minor writers under the title of Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum (1624); Jacques Sirmond (1559-1652) edited Sidonius Apollinaris (1614) and a
large number of writers on ecclesiastical history and doctrine. Denys Petau (1583-1652) edited Synesius (1612) and Epiphanius (1622). All these were Jesuits, and the two latter had been educated in Jesuit
colleges. Another illustrious pupil of the Jesuits, though he never became a
Jesuit, was Nicolas Rigault (1577-1654), who, after
editing a few classical authors, turned his attention to the Latin Apologists
and Fathers and produced important editions of Tertullian (1634) and Cyprian (1648). All this hardly accords with the theory that Jesuit education owing to
its excessive devotion to style and language did not produce men of learning.
Even more eminent instances to the contrary are Ducange and Adrien de Valois.
French
poetry cannot be said to have suffered from the Massacre of St Bartholomew to
the same extent as French scholarship; but nevertheless a certain deviation in
its development may be traced to this period. Within a month of the massacre
Ronsard published the first books of his epic, La Franciade, but he never completed it,
and eighteen months later retired from the Court. Though he lived till 1585,
his work was practically done. After his retirement the poetical stream divided
into two channels, the one represented by the Catholic courtier and
ecclesiastic Philippe Desportes, and the other by the
Huguenot country gentleman and soldier Salluste du Bartas. Both were disciples and admirers of Ronsard, but
they deviated from his methods in exactly opposite directions. Desportes (1546-1606) has more esprit and less imagination
than Ronsard; his language is less poetical but more lucid and correct; and he
is an excellent writer of courtly songs. If in his choice of frivolous subjects
and in his devotion to Italian models he went even beyond his predecessor, his
style marks a return to the more genuinely French tradition of Marot. On the
other hand, du Bartas (1544-90) deliberately chose
sacred subjects as a protest against the frivolous and pagan character of the
contemporary muse. He wrote the epics, Judith and La Semaine - the latter a long poem on the Creation, which was received with acclamation
not only in France but in all Protestant countries. But his work has not stood
the test of time, and nowhere has it been rejected more decisively than in
France. For, though he has imagination of the highest order, his execution is
seldom equal to his conception. La Semaine is a poem
of splendid single lines and a few fine passages; but even these are marred by
blemishes of bad taste or provincialism; the rest is a dreary waste. “Notre
Milton manqué”, is the French verdict, and the verdict is just.
D‘Aubigné. Historical research
It was
the perusal of part of La Semaine which moved another
Huguenot, Agrippa d’Aubigné (1550-1630), to write a
rival epic on the same subject. It was a complete failure. In 1577 he began a
new one, taking for his subject the great religious struggle, and entitling it Les Tragiques.
Constant fighting left him little leisure for poetry, but he wrote as furiously
as he fought; and the poem, though not printed till 1616, seems to have been
practically completed before the death of Henry III. An epic in intention, or
rather, as the author describes it, a poem in seven tableaux, it is chiefly the
satirical parts which have any merit. The description of the mignons, the portrait
of Henry III, the account of the young man’s arrival at Court, evidently a
personal reminiscence, show a concentrated energy and a fire of declamation
equal to anything in Juvenal. But on the whole Les Tragiques is, like La Semaine, a
poem of fine passages and still finer single lines.
To one
department of study, that of historical research, the Massacre of St
Bartholomew gave a certain indirect impetus. The treatment which the
Protestants had received from their rulers led them to investigate the origin
and limits of the royal authority. Among numerous treatises on the subject, two
stand forth conspicuous, the Vindiciae contra tyrannos, written almost certainly by Duplessis-Mornay,
and not, as was long supposed, by Hubert Languet, and the Franco-Gallia (1573)
of François Hotman. While the former is mainly
philosophical in character, the latter, though a pièce de circonstance written with a
definite political object, pursues a strictly historical method. In masterly
fashion Hotman establishes the German origin of the
Franks and gives the true explanation of the Salic law; his whole work is based on the best original authorities, and it is a sign
of his historic insight that he was the first to recognize the importance of
Gregory of Tours. Six years later Claude Fauchet (1530-1601) published the first part of his Recueil des antiquités Gauloises et Francoises, in which, independently of Hotman, he pointed out that the Franks were a German tribe.
His work was eventually carried down to the close of the Carolingian dynasty.
Bodin. Pasquier
Another
writer who, like Hotman, had a wider knowledge and a
rounder conception of history than any of the professed historians was Jean Bodin (1530-96). In his Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (1566) he had declared that political
history is the only true history; ten years later appeared his great work, the Six livres de la République, which laid the foundations of modern
political science. It had a great success; and, when Bodin went to England in 1579, he found a Cambridge professor lecturing on it in a
Latin translation. This was so bad that he made a new one himself which, owing
to the improvements he introduced, is superior to the original version. Though
neither an Aristotle nor a Montesquieu, he is an enlightened and independent
thinker, of great learning and sound judgment. His chief contribution to
political science is his theory of sovereignty, which Hobbes borrowed from him;
and he was the first to work out in detail the effect of climate and situation
on national character and government. His defence of lawful monarchy, which he
distinguishes from despotism as that in which the monarch obeys the laws of
Nature, is what one might expect from a distinguished and active member of the politique party. It was no doubt provoked by the
republican theories of the Protestants, and especially by those of the
Franco-Gallia. Equally characteristic of his party are his views on the
religious question. A prince, he says, should not allow the religion
established in his State to be made the subject of controversy; but if
religious factions spring up he must not put them down by force. This was also
the view of Montaigne.
Fauchet’s work on the origin and early history of
the nation was preceded by the Recherches de la
France of Estienne Pasquier (1529-1615), who had
won great distinction as advocate for the University of Paris in her first
dispute with the Jesuits. The first book appeared in 1566, but the whole work
was not published in a complete form till after the author's death. It contains
much valuable information on various subjects, especially on the history of
French institutions and French poetry, and is written in a style which, though
not quite of the first rank, gives it considerable literary importance. Pasquier’s antiquarian researches were largely inspired by
his patriotism. The same patriotism and the same interest in the early history
of his country led Pierre Pithou to edit from his own
manuscripts two collections of French medieval chroniclers (1588 and 1596).
Similar work was done by the diplomatist, Jacques Bongars (1554-1612), a man of many-sided learning, who at the close of his active life
published, under the title of Dei gesta per Francos, a
collection of contemporary writers on the French crusades. These were the
forerunners of André Duchesne (1584-1640) and Adrien de Valois (1607-92), the former of whom, at the date of Bongars’
death, had already been giving to the world for some years the fruits of his
marvelous erudition.
In spite
of all this historical research no great result was achieved in the actual
writing of history. It is true that in 1576 Bernard du Haillan (circ. 1536-1610) produced the first modern history of France written in
French. His work, as he claims in his preface, is far superior in treatment to
that of a mere chronicler like his contemporary Belleforest;
but his standard of research is anything but a high one, and his history is
after all little more than a reproduction in elevated language of the Grandes Chroniques with rhetorical additions translated from the Latin History of Paolo Emilio of
Verona. The only writer who dealt with the later history in a really critical
spirit was Nicolas Vignier (1530-96), whose critical
sense had been stimulated by the study and practice of medicine. His principal
works are a Sommaire de l’ histoire des Français (1579) and a Bibliothèque historiale (1588), the latter a universal history on the pattern of that of Diodorus, in the preface to which he speaks with equal
contempt of the Miroirs historiaux,
and the inventions de rhétorique and harangues forgées à crédit of the school of Paolo Emilio.
De Thou. Memoirs. Montluc
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Contemporary
history was treated with greater success. Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553-1627) produced in his Latin History of his Times (from 1543 to
1607) a work which not only achieved an immediate continental reputation, but
retained it till the close of the eighteenth century. The first part appeared
in 1604, the complete work in 1620-1. It is a testimony to the Catholic
historian’s honesty and impartiality that his work was formally condemned by
the Congregation of the Index; but his very endeavors to avoid giving offence
to either Catholics or Protestants have caused modern critics to accuse him,
not unjustly, of timidity. Moreover, the difficulties which beset a writer of
contemporary history were increased in his case by the use of the Latin
language and subservience to Latin models. That his work should fail to satisfy
the modern scientific standard is only to be expected, but we also miss in it
that atmosphere of contemporary thought which makes contemporary narratives
valuable as historical documents.
It is
this atmosphere which, accompanied by a large measure of fair-mindedness, gives
value to the Huguenot history, Histoire Universelle (1616-20), of Agrippa d’Aubigné.
Save however for a few chapters in which he gives some excellent summaries of
the political and religious situation, it partakes more of the nature of personal
memoirs than of a regular history. It was supplemented by the charming
autobiography (Vie à ses enfants) which he wrote towards the end of his
long life (circ. 1625), and which closes the long series of memoirs in which so
many of the leading actors in the stirring drama of the Religious Wars recorded
their manifold experiences.
The
earlier memoirs of the sixteenth century were rather contemporary narratives
than personal reminiscences. Such are the political and military memoirs of
Guillaume and Martin du Bellay for the reign of Francis I, and the account of
the campaigns in the Low Countries from 1551 to 1559 by François de Rabutin. The first man who set the example of employing the
evening of an active life in writing down his own experiences for the benefit
of posterity seems to have been the celebrated Gascon commander, Biaise de Monluc (1502-77), the hero of the siege of Siena, who began to write his Commentaires in 1574. In the opinion of French judges he is
the first in merit as well as in time. His style at the outset is somewhat
stiff and awkward, but, once at his ease, he writes with all the racy and
picturesque charm which makes Frenchmen the best raconteurs in the world. His
book was written chiefly for the instruction of soldiers - Henry IV called it
“the soldiers’ Bible” - but it is at the same time an admirable reflection of
that intensity of life which is so marked a feature of the Renaissance.
It is
likewise characteristic of the Renaissance that a rough soldier like Monluc should have borrowed not only the idea but the title
of his work from Caesar's Commentaries. In the memoirs of Michel de Castelnau, which he began to write in 1575 when he was
ambassador to the English Court, we find numerous references to ancient history
with other touches of pedantry common to the books of the day. Though his book
is unimportant from a literary point of view, it is among our surest sources of
information for events between 1559 and 1569.
La Noue.
Brantôme
The Discours politiques et militaires of the Protestant leader, François de La Noue (1531-91), which he wrote while a prisoner in the
fortress of Limburg (1580-5), are, as the title indicates, a series of
reflections suggested by the author’s political, military, and moral
experiences, rather than personal memoirs. They are a noble contribution to
that work of moral reconstruction of which France was so urgently in need, and
they breathe a spirit of lofty and hopeful patriotism, akin to that of
Plutarch, the careful reading of whose works was one of the consolations of La Noue’s imprisonment.
With
Pierre de Bourdeilles, Abbé de Brantôme (1534-1614), as with Montluc, the
predisposing cause of his memoirs was the love of posthumous fame, but the
immediate cause was a bodily accident. In Brantôme’s case it was a fall from his horse, which, like Monluc’s gunshot wound, put an end to his active career in 1584. His Vies des grands capitaines, dames illustres, and dames galantes,
which make up the greater part of his work, though biographical in form, are so
full of personal reminiscences that they fairly come under the category of personal
memoirs. But they are at the same time a valuable historical document, not
because Brantôme has been at any pains to control the copious and varied
information which his insatiable and aimless curiosity led him to collect, but
because the whole courtly society of the later French Renaissance is here
mirrored before our eyes in all its manifold aspects. Vice and virtue have no
meaning for Brantôme; he cares only for intensity of life. When he is not an
actor in the drama he is content to sit among the spectators, to applaud but
not to criticize.
Montaigne’s Essays
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It was
far otherwise with Michel de Montaigne. He, too, was an interested
spectator in the stirring drama of his day, but he was a deeply reflecting one,
a critic of singular sincerity, shrewdness, and penetration. “There are some
men, and these not the worst, who look for no other profit but to watch how and
why everything is done, and to be spectators of the lives of others, in order
to judge of them, and by them to regulate their own”. It was in the year 1571,
on his thirty-eighth birthday, that Montaigne, having resigned his post of
councilor in the Parlement of Bordeaux, retired to the château which three years earlier he had inherited
from his father. Here his Essays grew as he grew, and became part and parcel of
his existence. Originally undertaken as an occupation to vary the monotony of
country life, and as an outlet for his vagabond fancies, the earliest essays
consist of little more than anecdotes culled from his favorite books and
pointed with some moral reflection of his own. But before long he found wings;
and the nineteenth essay, written in March, 1572, already shows that realistic
grasp of the facts of life, combined with an imaginative portrayal of them,
which is the goal of all artistic achievement. The subject, That philosophy is
to learn how to die, was peculiarly suited to the times; for to the men of the
Renaissance death, like the sword of Damocles, seemed to be forever suspended
over the banquet of life, and struck them a chill withal the colder from the
passionate intensity of their enjoyment.
It was
soon after writing this essay that, gradually and with some hesitation, a plan
began to shape itself in Montaigne’s mind, which, carried into execution in his
own desultory fashion, gave unity and cohesion to his book. His Essays from the
first revealed his interest in human nature, in the study and analysis of human
motives. But, living as he did somewhat out of the world, he had little
opportunity for observation at first hand. It was chiefly from books that he
got his material, from Plutarch and Seneca, and his favorite historians, where
he found “man drawn more to the life and more completely than elsewhere”. There
was one man, however, with whom he was in daily intercourse, and whom he had
unrivalled opportunity of observing - and that was himself. On this subject he
believed that he was the “most learned man alive”. So he would make his book a
portrait of himself-not a grand imaginative portrait to be hung up in some
public place, but a likeness “simple, natural and ordinary, without study
and without artifice”. Such was the portrait he offered to the world in
1580 in the form of two books of Essays.
Immediately
after their publication he set out for an extended tour through Germany to
Italy, from which, at the end of eighteen months, he was recalled by the news
that he had been elected Mayor of Bordeaux. He accepted the post unwillingly,
and only after being practically compelled by the King; but he served two terms
of office, four years in all, acting throughout with judgment and moderation.
When, during his second term the death of Anjou (which left Henry of Navarre
next in succession to the throne) rendered the state of affairs more critical,
and there was a danger of Bordeaux being seized by the League, he showed
vigilance, promptitude and coolness. Then, released from office, he returned to
his beloved Essays, and, encouraged by the success of his design, continued it
with increasing freedom and boldness. The old Essays were expanded and new ones
written; and thus enlarged a new edition of his work in three books was
published in 1588. It is in the third book that Montaigne reaches the full
maturity of his genius. The Essay on Repentance shows a profound knowledge of
human nature; that on the Art of Conversation roused Pascal’s admiration for
its “incomparable author”; finest perhaps of all is the Essay on Vanity,
containing the splendid burst of eloquence on the grandeur of Rome, and rich in
details of Montaigne’s life and character. After this he wrote no fresh Essays,
but went on correcting and adding to the old ones down to his death on
September 13, 1592.
Montaigne and the Wars of Religion
The term
of Montaigne’s literary labors was almost coincident with what may be called
the acute stage of the Wars of Religion, that which followed the Massacre of St
Bartholomew. His attitude towards the great struggle was peculiarly his own. He
was on friendly terms with the leaders of both parties, and was even entrusted
by them with delicate negotiations. His was the only country-house in France,
he believed, “which, with no guard or sentinel but the stars”, was left “to the
protection of heaven”. Yet it was never pillaged. It was not, however, to any
hesitation between the rival forms of religion that his neutrality was due.
Distrust of change and respect for duly constituted authority combined to make
him, outwardly at least, a loyal adherent of the Catholic Church. He had no
doubt that “the best and the soundest cause was that which maintained the
ancient religion and government of the country”. Nor had he any sort of
sympathy with Protestantism. That enquiring habit of mind which seemed to him
so desirable in all other matters was, he held, wholly out of place in the
sphere of religion. He objected to the promiscuous singing of Psalms, and he
regarded the translation of the Holy Scriptures into the vernacular as more
dangerous than useful. But he was deterred from taking a side, partly by his
love of ease and tranquility and independence, but still more by his love of
toleration. It is worthy of note that he dedicated his edition of La Boëtie’s writings in terms of warm admiration to the fallen
statesman, Michel de l’Hôpital, the one man who had
tried to carry out a tolerant policy. In Montaigne’s case toleration sprang not
so much from any philosophical principle as from a hatred of civil war. It was
“a monstrous war”. Nor did he believe religion to be the real cause of it.
“Pick out from the Catholic army all the men who are actuated either by a pure
zeal for religion or by loyalty to their country or their Prince, and you will
not find enough to form one complete company”. He was especially shocked by
what he calls the “horrible impudence” with which the rival parties
interchanged their principles, as for instance that of the right of rebellion
in defence of religion, which, originally set up by the Protestants after the
Massacre of St Bartholomew, was adopted by the League as soon as the death of
Anjou had made Henry of Navarre heir to the throne. But, however parties might
shift and multiply, he never budged. He was always a royalist and a patriot.
Thus, on the death of Henry III, he found himself in agreement with the now
united Politique party, ready to recognize the
legitimate successor, the strongest and the ablest man in France. Twice Henry
IV, when he was only King of Navarre, had visited him at his château, and now
in July, 1590, during the siege of Paris, he summoned him to his presence with
the offer of some post or pension. Montaigne declined the offer in a noble and
dignified letter, and, while he expressed himself willing to obey the summons,
pleaded his age and infirmities. Though he did not live to welcome the final
close of the struggle and Henry’s triumphal entry into his capital, he saw at
any rate the League scotched by Mayenne’s summary
execution of some of its leaders, and witnessed the formation of a strong Politique party in Paris.
Montaigne’s skepticism
Thus it
was in no indifferent spirit that Montaigne from his quiet corner looked on the
troubles of his country. Rather they color his whole book, or what is almost
the same, his whole estimate of man. It was the self-seeking, the
dissimulation, the want of principle of most of the party leaders which made
this partisan of truth doubt at times of its very existence. It was the
singular corruption of the age which, added to his inborn dislike of taking a
side, and his love of balancing contrary arguments without coming to a final
decision, gave to his mind its skeptical quality, and made it a congenial soil
for the doctrines of the Greek skeptics. But Montaigne’s skepticism was never
crystallized into a definite system either for his own use or for that of
others. His skeptical habit did not prevent him from holding very definite
opinions on many subjects, on politics, morals, education, literature. The sum
of his moral philosophy was rather the old precept, “to live according to
Nature”; though, like Rabelais and like the Renaissance generally, he
interpreted it in a very different fashion from either the Academy or the
Porch. For him as for them it meant that every man should follow his own
nature; and towards the close of his life, in his last Essay, he could say
“that he was grateful for what Nature had done for him”, “that he loved life
and cultivated it as it had pleased God to grant it to him”. His imagination
might sometimes soar to lofty heights (as it sometimes descended to unsavory
depths), but at heart he was no transcendentalist. “The fairest lives are, in
my opinion, those which conform to the common human pattern, well-ordered, but
without miracle or extravagance”. This was his conclusion of the whole matter.
This
sober and tempered estimate of human nature marks the close of the Renaissance.
We are far from Pico della Mirandola’s treatise On the Dignity of Man, far even from Rabelais’ Abbey of Thelema and Oracle of the Bottle. Man is no longer the
centre of the universe: he is rather in Pascal’s phrase “the epitome of an
atom, or at best a thinking reed”. So too Montaigne’s attitude towards that
literature which had impressed the earlier humanists with so strong a sense of
human dignity differs considerably from theirs. Yet he had been educated on
thoroughly humanistic lines. So anxious was his father to carry out the
humanistic theory that boys should learn to speak as well as write pure Latin
that from his infancy no other language was spoken in his presence. At the age
of six he was sent to the College of Guienne at
Bordeaux, a revival on humanistic lines of the old College of Arts, and already
under its principal, André de Govea, the most
flourishing place of education in the kingdom. Here he studied under
distinguished scholars, among whom were George Buchanan and Marc-Antoine Muret, and acted in Latin plays which those scholars wrote
for their pupils. His studies were mainly in Latin; and, though he probably
exaggerates when he says that he knew little or no Greek, he was never anything
of a Greek scholar. But he studied with none of the enthusiasm and ardor which
we find in the early humanists, or even in some of his own contemporaries.
“Greek and Latin”, he wrote afterwards, “are no doubt fine accomplishments, but
we pay too dear for them”. And though in his retirement he learnt to love the
classical writers, and pillaged them in his Essays, taking, as he quaintly
says, “a wing here and a leg there”, his love stopped short of superstition.
They were to him great writers dealing with a world which he thought in many
respects better than his own; but they were not the only great writers, and
their opinions, like those of everyone else, had to be brought to the bar of
common sense. This attitude of Montaigne’s to the classics was a wholesome
correction to the pedantry which in his day had largely taken the place of the
simple enthusiasm of the early Renaissance. Though he has not escaped the
charge of pedantry himself, he at any rate recognized that mere erudition was
neither learning nor wisdom. He valued the classical writers mainly as
interpreters of life, and he approached them in that spirit of free enquiry
which was after all the chief characteristic of the Renaissance. If his
cultivation of that spirit produced on the one hand a tendency to skepticism
and inaction, on the other it fostered common sense and independence of
thought. For his professed disciples, the libertins of the seventeenth
century, half free-thinkers, half sensualists, he may have been a dangerous
teacher; but France and the world at large owe a great debt to the sincerity
and practical good sense which, underlying his skepticism and love of paradox,
form the real basis of his character.
La Satyre Ménippée. Du Vair
Some six
months after Montaigne’s death a member of the Politique party in Paris, Pierre
Le Roy, a canon of the Sainte-Chapelle, turned the
weapon of ridicule against the League by writing a short burlesqued account of
the meeting of the Estates, held in the spring of 1593. It is not clear that in
this form it was ever published, but it circulated freely in manuscript. A year
later, having been to some extent recast, and with very considerable additions,
it was printed under the title of La Satyre Ménippée. In this
enlarged form it was the joint production of several writers, including Pierre Pithou and two other scholars of repute, Florent Chrestien and Jean Passerat. The whole period of the French Religious Wars is
remarkable for the quantity and quality of its pamphlet literature. Ever since
the Tigre of Hotman, published in the year of the
conspiracy of Amboise (1560), there had been a long succession of pamphlets,
many of considerable literary merit. But it is only the Satyre Ménippée, the last missile of the war,
which has attained to the position of a French classic. The merit of its
conception and initial design, to which sufficient justice has perhaps hardly
been done, is due, as we have seen, to Le Roy; but the comparatively easier
task of filling in the details has been carried out with equal success.
Designed to be at once a comedy and a party manifesto, the speakers of the
League party in the Estates are by a happy stroke, while preserving their own
idiosyncrasies, compelled, as in a Palace of Truth, to reveal their real aims
and ambitions. Mayenne, the papal Legate, the French
pensioners of Spain, each in turn disclose their selfish and antinational
policy. Finally, the Sieur d’Aubray,
the leader of the Paris Politiques, in a long speech,
in which burlesque and irony are allowed no place, and which good authority
ascribes to Pierre Pithou, declares the sentiments of
his party. It is an excellent piece of reasoned logic, and in its finest
passages reaches a high standard of patriotic eloquence, not unworthy of a
Demosthenes, a Cicero, or a Burke.
Quiescendum - this
was the motto on the bookplate of Jacques Gillot, one
of the authors of the Satyre Ménippée, at
whose house the other contributors used to meet, and it expressed the longing
for peace and repose felt by the whole of France. The first task which awaited
Henry IV, after he had cleared the kingdom of its enemies without and within,
was reconstruction. The Theatre d’Agriculture of Olivier de Serres (1539-1619), which had only been waiting for a favorable moment for
publication, and which was now published with the King’s warm approval (1600),
dealt in adequate fashion with the true basis of the material prosperity of the
nation. But before this an attempt had been made to reconstruct the moral basis.
In a series of lectures of which the most important is the De la constance et consolation es calamitez publiques, written apparently in September or October, 1590, though not published till
1594, Guillaume du Vair (1556-1621), a councilor of
the Paris Parlement and the most eloquent speaker of
his day, urged his countrymen not to despair of their country; and in one of
these treatises, La philosophie morale des Stoïques, offered them a moral code
based not on a revealed religion, but on that Stoic law of Nature with which
the study of the Roman law had familiarized French writers.
The same
lines were followed in his De la Sagesse (1601) by
the popular preacher, Pierre Charron (1541-1603), who
borrowed literally and liberally from his predecessor, adding little of his own
but a more systematic arrangement. Unfortunately he combined with this system
of positive morality an equally systematic réchauffé of Montaigne’s skeptical tirades, thus elaborately wrecking the foundation of
human reason upon which his superstructure was built. Yet all this was done in
perfect good faith, and there can be little doubt that Charron,
however much it may have tickled his vanity to pose as an esprit fort, was a
sincere Christian.
Malherbe and Regnier
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The love
of order which manifests itself in the divisions and subdivisions of Charron’s book appears also in the poems of Jean Bertaut, Bishop of Séez (1552-1611), published in the same year. In his preference for serious
subjects, whether religious or official, and in his habitual use of the
Alexandrine line, he is the forerunner of the man in whom the new order of
literature was embodied. It was in the year 1605 that François Malherbe
(1555-1628), the future dictator and legislator of the French Parnassus, came
to reside in Paris, and before long directed his critical batteries against the
poetry of the Pléiade in general and that of Desportes, the reigning chief of the school, in particular.
As he left no treatise on the art of poetry we have to gather his views from
the uncivil comments which he inserted on the margins of a copy of Desportes’ works. They are based on the heresy, that
versification apart, there is practically no difference between poetry and
prose. This was a direct denial of the cardinal doctrine of the Pléiade. “C'est proser de la rime et rimer de la
prose”, said Mathurin Régnier (1573-1613), the nephew of Desportes, in a satire
which he wrote in defence of the old school, and in which he attacked in
nervous and pregnant lines the theory and practice of the new. The last poet of
the Pléiade, the first great French satirist, Régnier stands between two ages. Like Ronsard, Du Bellay,
and Desportes, he “takes his property wherever he
finds it”, from Horace and Juvenal, from Ariosto and Berni,
from Ronsard and Desportes themselves; and even more
than his predecessors he is indifferent to order and composition and
grammatical correctness. But in his close and sincere observation of life,
especially in its social aspects, and in his firm and manly versification he
announces the great writers of the reign of Louis XIV.
At the
time of Regnier’s early death in 1613 the cause for
which he pleaded was already a losing one. By 1624, the year in which Richelieu
became first minister, the success of the new school was assured. At his death
in 1628 Malherbe was the recognized dictator of French literature. None but a
prosaic age could have hailed him as a great poet, and French lyric poetry
would never have withered as it did under his cold touch, had it not been for
the barrenness of the soil. The only merits of Malherbe’s own poetry are an
occasional felicity of expression, and a versification which, though it lacks
the charm of mystery and variety, compels admiration by its sustained dignity
of movement and its virile harmony. But without such an instrument the
classical drama of France would never have attained its perfection. Further,
Malherbe’s critical theories were of the greatest service to French prose. The
qualities of purity, clearness, and precision upon which he insisted, and which
he illustrated in his own prose style, were just those which we miss in
Montaigne’s otherwise incomparable art; but they were needed in order to make
French the language of educated Europe. Even before Malherbe’s death there
appeared a new writer who, by adding to these qualities those of balance and
harmony in the architecture of the sentence and period, completed the lesson
which his master had begun. “This young man will go further in prose than
anyone has yet done in France”, prophesied Malherbe. But the work of Jean Guez de Balzac, and the verification of this prophecy, lie
beyond the limits of this chapter.
