a tragic passion”); and lastly the composition of long tirades
of smooth but monotonous verses, arranged in couplets tipped
with delicately careful rhymes. Only Thomas Corneille (1625–1709),
the inheritor of an older tradition and of a great name,
deserves to be excepted from the condemnation to be passed on
the lesser tragedians of this period. He was unfortunate in
possessing his brother’s name, and in being, like him, too voluminous
in his compositions; but Camma, Ariane, Le Comte d’Essex,
are not tragedies to be despised. On the other hand, the names of
Jean de Campistron (1656–1723) and Nicolas Pradon (1632–1698)
mainly serve to point injurious comparisons; Joseph François
Duché (1668–1704) and Antoine La Fosse (1653–1708) are of still
less importance, and Quinault’s tragedies are chiefly remarkable
because he had the good sense to give up writing them and to
take to opera. The general excellence of French comedy, on the
other hand, was sufficiently vindicated. Besides the splendid
sum of Molière’s work, the two great tragedians had each, in
Le Menteur and Les Plaideurs, set a capital example to their
successors, which was fairly followed. David Augustin de
Brueys (1640–1723) and Jean Palaprat (1650–1721) brought out
once more the ever new Advocat Patelin besides the capital
Grondeur already referred to. Quinault and Campistron wrote
fair comedies. Florent Carton Dancourt (1661–1726), Charles
Rivière Dufresny (c. 1654–1724), Edmond Boursault (1638–1701),
were all comic writers of considerable merit. But the chief comic
dramatist of the latter period of the 17th century was Jean
François Regnard (1655–1709), whose Joueur and Légataire
are comedies almost of the first rank.
17th-Century Fiction.—In the department of literature which comes between poetry and prose, that of romance-writing, the 17th century, excepting one remarkable development, was not very fertile. It devoted itself to so many new or changed forms of literature that it had no Heroic Romance. time to anticipate the modern novel. Yet at the beginning of the century one very curious form of romance-writing was diligently cultivated, and its popularity, for the time immense, prevented the introduction of any stronger style. It is remarkable that, as the first quarter of the 17th century was pre-eminently the epoch of Spanish influence in France, the distinctive satire of Cervantes should have been less imitated than the models which Cervantes satirized. However this may be, the romances of 1600 to 1650 form a class of literature vast, isolated, and, perhaps, of all such classes of literature most utterly obsolete and extinct. Taste, affectation or antiquarian diligence have, at one time or another, restored to a just, and sometimes a more than just, measure of reputation most of the literary relics of the past. Romances of chivalry, fabliaux, early drama, Provençal poetry, prose chronicles, have all had, and deservedly, their rehabilitators. But Polexandre and Cléopâtre, Clélie and the Grand Cyrus, have been too heavy for all the industry and energy of literary antiquarians. As we have already hinted, the nearest ancestry which can be found for them is the romances of the Amadis type. But the Amadis, and in a less degree its followers, although long, are long in virtue of incident. The romances of the Clélie type are long in virtue of interminable discourse, moralizing and description. Their manner is not unlike that of the Arcadia and the Euphues which preceded them in England; and they express in point of style the tendency which simultaneously manifested itself all over Europe at this period, and whose chief exponents were Gongora in Spain, Marini in Italy, and Lyly in England. Everybody knows the Carte de Tendre which originally appeared in Clélie, while most people have heard of the shepherds and shepherdesses who figure in the Astrée of Honoré D’Urfé (1568–1625), on the borders of the Lignon; but here general knowledge ends, and there is perhaps no reason why it should go much further. It is sufficient to say that Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701) principally devotes herself in the books above mentioned to laborious gallantry and heroism, La Calprénède (1610–1663) in Cassandre et Cléopâtre to something which might have been the historical novel if it had been constructed on a less preposterous scale, and Marin le Roy de Gomberville (1600–1647) in Polexandre to moralizings and theological discussions on Jansenist principles, while Pierre Camus, bishop of Belley (1582–1652), in Palombe and others, approached still nearer to the strictly religious story. In the latter part of the century, the example of La Fontaine, though he himself wrote in poetry, helped to recall the tale-tellers of France to an occupation more worthy of them, more suitable to the genius of the literature, and more likely to last. The reaction against the Clélie school produced first Madame de Villedieu (Cathérine Desjardins) (1632–1692), a fluent and facile novelist, who enjoyed great but not enduring popularity. The form which the prose tale took at this period was that of the fairy story. Perrault (1628–1703) and Madame d’Aulnoy (d. 1705) composed specimens of this kind which have never ceased to be popular since. Hamilton (1646–1720), the author of the well-known Mémoires du comte de Gramont, wrote similar stories of extraordinary merit in style and ingenuity. There is yet a third class of prose writing which deserves to be mentioned. It also may probably be traced to Spanish influence, that is to say, to the picaresque romances which the 16th and 17th centuries produced in Spain in large numbers. The most remarkable example of this is the Roman comique of the burlesque writer Scarron. The Roman bourgeois of Antoine Furetière (1619–1688) also deserves mention as a collection of pictures of the life of the time, arranged in the most desultory manner, but drawn with great vividness, observation and skill. A remarkable writer who had great influence on Molière has also to be mentioned in this connexion rather than in any other. This is Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655), who, besides composing doubtful comedies and tragedies, writing political pamphlets, and exercising the task of literary criticism in objecting to Scarron’s burlesques, produced in his Histoires comiques des états et empires de la lune et du soleil, half romantic and half satirical compositions, in which some have seen the original of Gulliver’s Travels, in which others have discovered only a not very successful imitation of Rabelais, and which, without attempting to decide these questions, may fairly be ranked in the same class of fiction with the masterpieces of Swift and Rabelais, though of course at an immense distance below them. One other work, and in literary influence perhaps the most remarkable of its kind in the century, remains. Madame de Lafayette, Marie de la Vergne (1634–1692), the friend of La Rochefoucauld and of Madame de Sévigné, though she did not exactly anticipate the modern novel, showed the way to it in her stories, the principal of which are Zaïde and still more La Princesse de Clèves. The latter, though a long way from Manon Lescaut, Clarissa, or Tom Jones, is a longer way still from Polexandre or the Arcadia. The novel becomes in it no longer a more or less fictitious chronicle, but an attempt at least at the display of character. La Princesse de Clèves has never been one of the works widely popular out of their own country, nor perhaps does it deserve such popularity, for it has more grace than strength; but as an original effort in an important direction its historical value is considerable. But with this exception, the art of fictitious prose composition, except on a small scale, is certainly not one in which the century excelled, nor are any of the masterpieces which it produced to be ranked in this class.
17th-Century Prose.—If, however, this was the case, it cannot
be said that French prose as a whole was unproductive at this
time. On the contrary, it was now, and only now,
that it attained the strength and perfection for which
it has been so long renowned, and which has perhaps, J. G. de Balzac and modern French
prose.
by a curious process of compensation, somewhat
deteriorated since the restoration of poetry proper
in France. The prose Malherbe of French literature was Jean
Guez de Balzac (1594–1654). The writers of the 17th century
had practically created the literary language of prose, but they
had not created a prose style. The charm of Rabelais, of Amyot,
of Montaigne, and of the numerous writers of tales and memoirs
whom we have noticed, was a charm of exuberance, of naïveté,
of picturesque effect—in short, of a mixture of poetry and prose,
rather than of prose proper. Sixteenth-century French prose
is a delightful instrument in the hands of men and women of
genius, but in the hands of those who have not genius it is full
