not mention Pierre de Marivaux (1688–1763) in this connexion
as the equal of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), but merely
as being in his way almost equally original and equally remote
from any suspicion of school influence. He began with burlesque
writing, and was also the author of several comedies, of which
Les Fausses Confidences is the principal. But it is in prose fiction
that he really excels. He may claim to have, at least in the
opinion of his contemporaries, invented a style, though perhaps
the term marivaudage, which was applied to it, has a not altogether
complimentary connotation. He may claim also to have
invented the novel without a purpose, which aims simply at
amusement, and at the same time does not seek to attain that
end by buffoonery or by satire. Gray’s definition of happiness,
“to lie on a sofa and read endless novels by Marivaux” (it is
true that he added Crébillon), is well known, and the production
of mere pastime by means more or less harmless has since become
so well-recognized a function of the novelist that Marivaux, as
one of the earliest to discharge it, deserves notice. The name, J. J. Rousseau.
however, of Jean Jacques Rousseau is of far different
importance. His two great works, the Nouvelle
Héloïse and Émile, are as far as possible from being
perfect as novels. But no novels in the world have ever had
such influence as these. To a great extent this influence was
due mainly to their attractions as novels, imperfect though they
may be in this character, but it was beyond dispute also owing
to the doctrines which they contained, and which were exhibited
in novel form.
Such are the principal developments of fiction during the century; but it is remarkable that, varied as they were, and excellent as was some of the work to which they gave rise, none of these schools was directly very fertile in results or successors. The period with which we shall next have to deal, that from the outbreak of the Revolution to the death of Louis XVIII., is curiously barren of fiction of any merit. It was not till English influence began again to assert itself in the later days of the Restoration that the prose romance began once more to be written.
18th-Century History.—It is not, however, in any of the departments of belles-lettres that the real eminence of the 18th century as a time of literary production in France consists. In all serious branches of study its accomplishments were, from a literary point of view, remarkable, uniting as it did an extraordinary power of popular and literary expression with an ardent spirit of inquiry, a great speculative ability, and even a far more considerable amount of laborious erudition than is generally supposed. The historical studies and results of 18th-century speculation in France are of especial and peculiar importance. There is no doubt that what is called the science of history dates from this time, and though the beginning of it is usually assigned to the Italian Vico, its complete indication may perhaps with equal or greater justice be claimed by the Frenchman Turgot. Before Turgot, however, there were great names in French historical writing, and perhaps the greatest of all is that of Charles Secondat de Montesquieu (1689–1755). The three principal works of this great writer are all historical and at the same time political in character. In the Lettres persanes he handled, with wit inferior to the wit of no other writer even in that witty age, the corruptions and dangers of contemporary morals and politics. The literary charm of this book—the plan of which was suggested by a work, the Amusements sérieux et comiques, of Dufresny (1648–1724), a comic writer not destitute of merit—is very great, and its plan was so popular as to lead to a thousand imitations, of which all, except those of Voltaire and Goldsmith, only bring out the immense superiority of the original. Few things could be more different from this lively and popular book than Montesquieu’s next work, the Grandeur et décadence des Romains, in which the same acuteness and knowledge of human nature are united with considerable erudition, and with a weighty though perhaps somewhat grandiloquent and rhetorical style. His third and greatest work, the Esprit des lois, is again different both in style and character, and such defects as it has are as nothing when compared with the merits of its fertility in ideas, its splendid breadth of view, and the felicity with which the author, in a manner unknown before, recognizes the laws underlying complicated assemblages of fact. The style of this great work is equal to its substance; less light than that of the Lettres, less rhetorical than that of the Grandeur des Romains, it is still a marvellous union of dignity and wit. Around Montesquieu, partly before and partly after him, is a group of philosophical or at least systematic historians, of whom the chief are Jean Baptiste Dubos (1670–1742), and G. Bonnot de Mably (1709–1785). Dubos, whose chief work is not historical but aesthetic (Réflexions sur la poésie et la peinture), wrote a so-called Histoire critique de l’établissement de la monarchie française, which is as far as possible from being in the modern sense critical, inasmuch as, in the teeth of history, and in order to exalt the Tiers état, it pretends an amicable coalition of Franks and Gauls, and not an irruption by the former. Mably (Observations sur l’histoire de la France) had a much greater influence than either of these writers, and a decidedly mischievous one, especially at the period of the Revolution. He, more than any one else, is responsible for the ignorant and childish extolling of Greek and Roman institutions, and the still more ignorant depreciation of the middle ages, which was for a time characteristic of French politicians. Montesquieu was, as we have said, followed by Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727–1781), whose writings are few in number, and not remarkable for style, but full of original thought. Turgot in his turn was followed by Condorcet (1743–1794), whose tendency is somewhat more sociological than directly historical. Towards the end of the period, too, a considerable number of philosophical histories were written, the usual object of which was, under cover of a kind of allegory, to satirize and attack the existing institutions and government of France. The most famous of these was the Histoire des Indes, nominally written by the Abbé Guillaume Thomas François Raynal (1713–1796), but really the joint work of many members of the Philosophe party, especially Diderot. Side by side with this really or nominally philosophical school of history there existed another and less ambitious school, which contented itself with the older and simpler view of the science. The Abbé René de Vertot (1655–1735) belongs almost as much to the 17th as to the 18th century; but his principal works, especially the famous Histoire des Chevaliers de Malte, date from the later period, as do also the Révolutions romaines. Vertot is above all things a literary historian, and the well-known “Mon siège est fait,” whether true or not, certainly expresses his system. Of the same school, though far more comprehensive, was the laborious Charles Rollin (1661–1741), whose works in the original, or translated and continued in the case of the Histoire romaine by Jean Baptiste Louis Crévier (1693–1765), were long the chief historical manuals of Europe. The president Charles Jean François Hénault (1685–1770), and Louis Pierre Anquetil (1723–1806) were praiseworthy writers, the first of French history, the second of that and much else. In the same class, too, far superior as is his literary power, must be ranked the historical works of Voltaire, Charles XII., Pierre le Grand, &c. A very perfect example of the historian who is literary first of all is supplied by Claude Carloman de Rulhière (1735–1791), whose Révolution en Russie en 1762 is one of the little masterpieces of history, while his larger and posthumous work on the last days of the Polish kingdom exhibits perhaps some of the defects of this class of historians. Lastly must be mentioned the memoirs and correspondence of the period, the materials of history if not history itself. The century opened with the most famous of all these, the memoirs of the duc de Saint-Simon (1675–1755), an extraordinary series of pictures of the court of Louis XIV. and the Regency, written in an unequal and incorrect style, but with something of the irregular excellence of the great 16th-century writers, and most striking in the sombre bitterness of its tone. The subsequent and less remarkable memoirs of the century are so numerous that it is almost impossible to select a few for reference, and altogether impossible to mention all. Of those bearing on public history the memoirs of Madame de Staël (Mlle Delaunay) (1684–1750), of Pierre
