RENAISSANCE 391
- m
of eminence visited France. Among these Del Rosso, Primaticcio, Del Sarto, and Da Vinci are the most famous. But their example was not productive of a really great school of French painting. It was left for the Poussins and Claude Lorraine in the next century, acting under mingled Italian and Flemish influences, to embody the still active spirit of the classical revival. These three masters were the contemporaries of Corneille, and do not belong to the Renaissance period. Sculpture, on the contrary, in which art, as in architecture, the mediaeval French had been surpassed by no other people of Europe, was practised with originality and power in the reigns of Henry II. and Francis I. Ponzio and Cellini, who quitted Italy for France, found themselves outri vailed in their own sphere by Jean Goujon, Cousin, and Pilon. The decorative sculpture of this epoch, whether combined with architec- ture or isolated in monumental statuary, ranks for grace and suavity with the best of Sansovino's. At the same time it is unmistakably inspired by a sense of beauty dif- ferent from the Italian, more piquant and pointed, less languorous, more mannered perhaps, but with less of empty rhythmical effect. All this while, the minor arts of enamelling, miniature, glass-painting, goldsmith's work, jewellery, engraving, tapestry, wood-carving, pottery, <fec., were cultivated with a spontaneity and freedom which proved that France, in the middle point between Flanders and Italy, was able to use both influences without a sacrifice of native taste. It may indeed be said in general that what is true of France is likewise true of all countries which felt the artistic impulses of the Renaissance. Whether we regard Spain, the Netherlands, or Germany at this epoch, we find a national impress stamped upon the products of the plastic and the decorative arts, notwith- standing the prevalence of certain 'forms derived from the antique and Italy. It was only at a later period that the formalism of pseudo-classic pedantry reduced natural and national originality to a dead unanimity. French literature was quick to respond to Renaissance influences. De Comines, the historian of Charles VIII. 's expedition to Naples, differs from the earlier French chroniclers in his way of regarding the world of men and affairs. He has the perspicuity and analytical penetration of a Venetian ambassador. Villon, his contemporary, may rather be ranked, so far as artistic form and use of knowledge are concerned, with poets of the Middle Ages, and in particular with the Goliardi. But he is essentially modern in the vividness of his self-portraiture, and in what we are wont to call realism. Both De Comines and Villon indicate the entrance of a new quality into litera- ture. The Rhetoriqueurs, while protracting mediaeval traditions by their use of allegory and complicated metrical systems, sought to improve the French language by introducing Latinisms. Thus the Revival of Learning began to affect the vernacular in the last years of the 15th century. Marot and his school reacted against this pedantry. The Renaissance displayed itself in their effort to purify the form and diction of poetry. But the decisive revolution was effected by Ronsard and his comrades of the Pleiade. It was their professed object to raise French to a level with the classics, and to acclimatize Italian species of verse. The humanistic movement led these learned writers to engraft the graces of the antique upon their native literature, and to refine it by emulating the lucidity of Petrarch. The result of their endeavour was immediately apparent in the new force added to French rhythm, the new pomp, richness, colouring, and polish con- ferred upon poetic diction. French style gradually attained to fixity, and the alexandrine came to be recognized as the standard line in poetry. D'Aubigne's invective and Regnier's satire, at the close of the 16th century, are as modern as Voltaire's. Meanwhile the drama was emerging from the medieval mysteries; and the classical type, made popular by Garnier's genius, was elaborated, as in Italy, upon the model of Seneca and the canons of the three unities. The tradition thus formed was continued and fortified by the illustrious playwrights of the 17th century. Translation from Greek and Latin into French progressed rapidly at the commencement of this period. It was a marked characteristic of the Renaissance in France to appropriate the spoils of Greece and Rome for the profit of the mother tongue. Amyot's Plutarch and his Daphnis and Chloe rank among the most exquisite examples of beautiful French prose. Prose had now the charm of simplicity combined with grace. To mention Brantome is to mention the most entertaining of gossips. To speak of Montaigne is to speak of the best as well as the first of essayists. In all the literary work which has been mentioned, the originality and freshness of the French genius are no less conspicuous than its saturation with the new learning and with Italian studies. But the greatest name of the epoch, the name which is synonymous with the Renaissance in France, has yet to be uttered. That, of course, is Rabelais. His incommensurable and indescrib- able masterpiece of mingled humour, wisdom, satire, erudi- tion, indecency, profundity, levity, imagination, realism, reflects the whole age in its mirror of hyper- Aristophanic farce. What Ariosto is for Italy, Cervantes for Spain, Erasmus for Holland, Luther for Germany, Shakespeare for England, that is Rabelais for France. The Renaissance cannot be comprehended in its true character without familiarity with these six representatives of its manifold and many-sided inspiration. The French Renaissance, so rich on the side of arts and French letters, was hardly less rich on the side of classical studies, scholar- The revival of learning has a noble muster-roll of names ^^'^ in France : Turnebe, the patriarch of Hellenistic studies ; f orma . the Ltiennes of Paris, equalling in numbers, industry, and tion in learning their Venetian rivals ; the two Scaligers ; impas- France, sioned Dolet ; eloquent Muret ; learned Cujas ; terrible Calvin ; Ramus, the intrepid antagonist of Aristotle ; De Thou and De Beze ; ponderous Casaubon ; brilliant young Saumaise. The distinguishing characteristics of French humanism are vivid intelligence, critical audacity and polemical acumen, perspicuity of exposition, learning directed in its applications by logical sense rather than by artistic ideals of taste. Some of the names just mentioned remind us that in France, as in Germany and Holland, the Reformation was closely connected with the revival of learning. Humanism has never been in the narrow sense of that term Protestant ; still less has it been strictly Catholic. In Italy it fostered a temper of mind decidedly averse to theological speculation and religious earnestness. In Holland and Germany, with Erasmus, Reuchlin, and Melanchthon, it developed types of character, urbane, reflective, pointedly or gently critical, which, left to themselves, would not have plunged the north of Europe into the whirlpool of belligerent reform. Yet none the less was the new learning, through the open spirit of inquiry it nourished, its vindication of the private reason, its enthusiasm for republican antiquity, and its proud assertion of the rights of human independence, linked by a strong and subtle chain to that turbid revolt of the individual consciousness against spiritual despotism draped in fallacies and throned upon abuses. To this rebellion we give the name of Reformation. But, while the necessities of antagonism to papal Rome made it assume at first the form of narrow and sectarian opposition, it marked in fact a vital struggle of the intellect towards truth and freedom, involving future results of scepticism and rationalistic audacity from which its earlier champions
