INITIATION INTO LITERATURE

BY

ÉMILE FAGUET

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY

SIR HOME GORDON, BART. 

The Translator begs to acknowledge with appreciation the courtesy of theAuthor in graciously consenting to make some valuable additions, at hisrequest, specially for the English version. 

PREFACE

This volume, as indicated by the title, is designed to show the way tothe beginner, to satisfy and more especially to excite his initialcuriosity. It affords an adequate idea of the march of facts and ofideas. The reader is led, somewhat rapidly, from the remote origins tothe most recent efforts of the human mind. 

It should be a convenient repertory to which the mind may revert in orderto see broadly the general opinion of an epoch--and what connected itwith those that followed or preceded it. It aims above all at being _aframe_ in which can conveniently be inscribed, in the course offurther studies, new conceptions more detailed and more thoroughlyexamined. 

It will have fulfilled its design should it incite to research andmeditation, and if it prepares for them correctly. 

E. FAGUET. 

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

ANCIENT INDIA

The Vedas. Buddhist Literature. Great Epic Poems, then very Diverse, muchShorter Poems. Dramatic Literature. Moral Literature. 

CHAPTER II

HEBRAIC LITERATURE

The Bible, a Collection of Epic, Lyric, Elegiac, and SententiousWritings. The Talmud, Book of Ordinances. The Gospels. 

CHAPTER III

THE GREEKS

Homer. Hesiod. Elegiac and Lyric Poets. Prose Writers. Philosophers andHistorians. Lyric Poets, Dramatic Poets. Comic Poets. Orators. Romancers. 

CHAPTER IV

THE LATINS

The Latins, Imitators of the Greeks. Epic Poets. Dramatic Poets. GoldenAge: Virgil, Horace, Ovid. Silver Age: Prose Writers, Historians, andPhilosophers: Titus-Livy, Tacitus, Seneca. Decadence Still Brilliant. 

CHAPTER V

THE MIDDLE AGES: FRANCE

_Chansons de Geste: Song of Roland_ and Lyric Poetry. PopularEpopee: _Romances of Renard_. Popular Short Stories: Fables. Historians. The Allegorical Poem: _Romance of the Rose_. Drama. 

CHAPTER VI

THE MIDDLE AGES: ENGLAND

Literature in Latin, in Anglo-Saxon, and in French. The Ancestor ofEnglish Literature: Chaucer. 

CHAPTER VII

THE MIDDLE AGES: GERMANY

Epic Poems: _Nibelungen_. Popular Poems. Very Numerous Lyric Poems. Drama. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE MIDDLE AGES: ITALY

Troubadours of Southern Italy. Neapolitan and Sicilian Poets: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio. 

CHAPTER IX

THE MIDDLE AGES: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

Epic Poems: _Romanceros_. Didactic Books. Romances of Chivalry. 

CHAPTER X

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: FRANCE

First Portion of Sixteenth Century: Poets: Marot, Saint-Gelais; ProseWriters: Rabelais, Comines. Second Portion of Sixteenth Century: Poets:"The Pleiade"; Prose Writers: Amyot, Montaigne. First Portion ofSeventeenth Century: Intellectual and Brilliant Poets: Malherbe, Corneille; Great Prose Writers: Balzac, Descartes. Second Portion ofSeventeenth Century: Poets: Racine, Molière, Boileau, La Fontaine; ProseWriters: Bossuet, Pascal, La Bruyère, Fénelon, etc. 

CHAPTER XI

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: ENGLAND

Dramatists: Marlowe, Shakespeare. Prose Writers: Sidney, Francis Bacon, etc. Epic Poet: Milton. Comic Poets. 

CHAPTER XII

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: GERMANY

Luther, Zwingli, Albert Dürer, Leibnitz, Gottsched. 

CHAPTER XIII

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: ITALY

Poets: Ariosto, Tasso, Guarini, Folengo, Marini, etc. Prose Writers:Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Davila. 

CHAPTER XIV

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

Poets: Quevedo, Gongora, Lope de Vega, Ercilla, Calderon, Rojas, etc. Prose Writers: Montemayor, Cervantes, etc. Portugal: De Camoèns, etc. TheStage. 

CHAPTER XV

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: FRANCE

Of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Fontenelle, Bayle. Of theEighteenth: Poets: La Motte, Jean Baptiste Rousseau, Voltaire, etc. ;Prose Writers: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, Jean Jacques Rousseau, etc. Of the Nineteenth Century: Poets: Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Musset, Vigny, etc. ; Prose Writers: Chateaubriand, Michelet, George Sand, Mérimée, Renan, etc. 

CHAPTER XVI

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ENGLAND

Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Pope, Young, MacPherson, etc. ProseWriters of the Eighteenth Century: Daniel Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Swift, Sterne, David Hume. Poets of the Nineteenth Century: Byron, Shelley, the Lake Poets. Prose Writers of the Nineteenth Century: WalterScott, Macaulay, Dickens, Carlyle. 

CHAPTER XVII

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: GERMANY

Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland. ProseWriters of the Eighteenth Century: Herder, Kant. Poets of the NineteenthCentury: Goethe, Schiller, Körner. 

CHAPTER XVIII

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ITALY

Poets: Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Monti, Leopardi. Prose Writers:Silvio Pellico, Fogazzaro, etc. 

CHAPTER XIX

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: SPAIN

The Drama still Brilliant: Moratin. Historians and Philosophers, Novelists, Orators. 

CHAPTER XX

RUSSIAN LITERATURE

Middle Ages. Some Epic Narratives. Renaissance in the SeventeenthCentury. Literature Imitative of the West in the Eighteenth Century. Original Literature in the Nineteenth Century. 

CHAPTER XXI

POLISH LITERATURE

At an Early Date Western Influence Sufficiently Potent. Sixteenth CenturyBrilliant; Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries highly Cultured;Nineteenth Century Notably Original. 

INDEX

INITIATION INTOLITERATURE

CHAPTER I

ANCIENT INDIA

The _Vedas_. Buddhist Literature. Great Epic Poems, then veryDiverse, much Shorter Poems. Dramatic Literature. Moral Literature. 

THE _VEDAS_. --The ancient Indians, who spoke Sanscrit, possess aliterature which goes back, perhaps, to the fifteenth century beforeChrist. At first, like all other races, they possessed a sacredliterature intimately bound up with their religion. The earliest volumesof sacred literature are the _Vedas_. They describe and glorify thegods then worshipped, to wit, Agni, god of fire, of the domestic hearth, of the celestial fire (the sun), of the atmospheric fire (lightning);Indra, god of atmosphere, analogous to Zeus of the Greeks; Soma, themoon; Varuna, the nocturnal vault, the god who rewards the good andpunishes the evil; Rudra, the irascible god, more evil than welldisposed, though sometimes helpful; others too, very numerous. 

The style of the _Vedas_ is continually poetic and metaphorical. They contain a sort of metaphysics as well as continual allegories. 

BUDDHA. --Buddhism, a philosophical religion, sufficiently analogous toChristianity, which Sakyamuni, surnamed Buddha (the wise), spread throughIndia towards 550 B. C. , created a new literature. It taught, as will beremembered, the equality of all castes in the sight of religion, metempsychosis, charity, and detachment from all passions and desires inorder to arrive at absolute calm (_nirvana_). The literature itinspired was primarily _gnomic_, that is, sententious, analogous tothat of Pythagoras, with a tendency towards little moral tales andparables, as in the Gospel. 

This literature subsequently expanded into large and even immense epicpoems, of which the principal are the _Mahabharata_ and the _Ramayana_. 

THE _MAHABHARATA_; THE _RAMAYANA_. --The _Mahabharata_ (that is, the_great history of the Bharatas_) is a legend or a novel in verseintersected with moral digressions, with episodes vaguely related to thesubject, with discourses and prayers. There are charming episodes full ofdelicate sensibility, of moving tenderness--that is to say, of humanbeauty, comparable to the farewells of Hector and Andromache in Homer;and everywhere, amid tediousness and monotony, is found a powerful andsuperabundant imagination. 

The _Ramayana_, the name of the author of which, Valmiki, has comedown to us, is a poem yet more vast and unequal. There are portions whichto us are quite unreadable, and there are others comparable to the mostimposing and most touching in all epic poetry. Reduced to its theme, thesubject of _Mahabharata_ is extremely simple; it is the history ofPrince Rama, dispossessed of his throne, who saw his beloved wife, Sita, ravished by the monstrous demon Ravana, who made alliance with the goodmonkeys and with them constructed a bridge over the sea to reach theisland on which Sita was detained, who vanquished and slew Ravana, whore-found Sita, and finally went back happily to his kingdom, which hadalso been re-conquered. 

The most noticeable exterior characteristic of the _Mahabharata_ isthe almost constant mingling of men and animals, a mingling which onefeels is in conformity with the dogma of the transmigration of souls. Notonly monkeys but vultures, eagles, gazelles, etc. , are brought into thework and form important personages. We are in the epoch when the animalsspoke. Battles are numerous and described in great detail; the_Ramayana_ is the _Iliad_ of the Indians; pathetic scenes, aswell as those of love, of friendship, of gratitude are not rare, and aresometimes exquisite. The whole poem is imbued with a great feeling ofhumanity, heroism, and justice. Victory is to the good and right istriumphant; the gods permit that the just should suffer and be compelledto struggle; but invariably it is only for a time and the meritedhappiness is at the end of all. 

After these two vast giant epics there were written among the Indians anumber of shorter narrative poems, very varied both in tone and manner, which suggest an uninterrupted succession of highly important andanimated schools of literature. Nearer to our own time--that is, towardsthe fifth or sixth century of our era, lyric poetry and the drama were, as it were, detached from the epopee and existed on their own merits. Songs of love, of hate, of sadness, or of triumph took ample scope; theywere more often melancholy than sad, for India is the land of optimism, or at least of resignation. 

DRAMATIC POETRY. --As for the dramatic poetry, that is very curious; it isnot mixed with epopee in the precise sense of the word; but it iscontinually mingled with descriptions of nature, with word-paintings ofnature and invocations to nature. The Indian dramatic poet did notseparate man from the air he breathed nor from the world around him; inrecalling the moment of the day or night in which the scene takes place, _the actual hour_, the poet, no doubt in obedience to a law dictatedto him by his public, kept his characters in communication with earthand heaven, with the dawn he described, the moon he painted, the eveninghe caused to be seen, the plants he portrayed as withering or reviving, the birds which he showed everywhere in the country or returning to theirhabitation, etc. 

From the purely dramatic aspect, these plays are often affecting orcurious, possessing penetrating and thoughtful psychology. The mostcelebrated dramas still left to us of the Indian stage are _The Chariotof Baked Clay_ and the affecting and delicate _Sakuntala_ the gemof Indian literature, the work of the poet Kalidas, who was also aremarkable lyric poet. 

GNOMIC POETRY. --Gnomic, that is sententious, poetry, which, it has beenindicated, very early enjoyed high appreciation among the Indians, longcontinued to obtain their approval. It was always wise and oftenintellectual. The collection of Barthari, who belonged to the sixth orseventh century A. D. , contains thoughts which would do honour to thehighest moralists of the most enlightened epochs. "The fortune, ample orrestricted, which the Creator hath inscribed on thy forehead thou wiltassuredly attain; wert thou in the desert or in the gold-mines of Meru, more couldst thou not acquire. Therefore, of what avail to tormentthyself and to humiliate thyself before the powerful. A pot does not drawmore water from the sea than from a well. "

And this might be by a modern man opposing La Rochefoucauld: "The modestman is one poor in spirit, the devout a hypocrite, the honest man isartful, the hero is a barbarian, the ascetic is a fool, the unreserveda chatterbox, the prudent a waverer. Tell me, which is the virtue amongall the virtues that human malice cannot vilify?"

Here, finally, is a truth for all time: "It is easy to persuade theignorant, still easier to persuade the very wise; but he who hath acommencement of wisdom Brahma himself could not cajole. "

Indian literature continued to be productive, though losing much of itsfecundity, until the fifteenth or sixteenth century of our era. Withoutexaggeration, it is permissible to conject that its scope extended overtwenty-five centuries. It possesses the uniquely honourable trait that itis, assuredly, the only one which owes nothing to any other and isliterally indigenous. 

CHAPTER II

HEBRAIC LITERATURE

The Bible, a Collection of Epic, Lyric, Elegiac, and SententiousWritings. The Talmud, Book of Ordinances. The Gospels. 

THE BIBLE. --The Hebrew race possessed a literature from about 1050 B. C. It embodied in poems the legends which had circulated among the peoplesince the most remote epoch of their existence. It was those poems, gathered later into one collection, which formed what, sinceapproximately the year 400, we call the Bible--that is, the Book ofbooks. 

In the Bible there are histories (_Genesis_, _History of the Jewsup to Joshua_, the _Book of Joshua_, _Judges_, _Kings_, etc. ), thenanecdotal episodes (_Ruth_, _Esdras_, _Tobit_, _Judith_, _Esther_), thenbooks of moral philosophy(_Proverbs of Solomon_, _Ecclesiastes_, _Wisdom_, _Ecclesiasticus_), then books of an oratorical and lyricalcharacter (_Psalms of David_ and all the _Prophets_). Finally, a singlework, still lyrical but in which there are marked traces of the dramatictype (the _Song of Songs_). 

THE TALMUD. --To the works which have been gathered into the Bible, it isnecessary to add the Talmud, a collection of commentaries on the civiland religious laws of the Jews, which forms an indispensable supplementto the Bible, to anyone desiring to understand the Hebraic civilisation. 

THE GOSPELS. --The Gospels, published in the Greek tongue, have nothingHebraic except that they were compiled by Jews or by their immediatedisciples and that they have preserved something of the manner of writingof the Jews. 

BIBLICAL WRITINGS. --The Biblical writings, regarded solely from theliterary point of view, form one of the finest monuments of humanthought. The sentiment of grandeur and even of infinity in _Genesis_;the profound and simple sensibility as in the _History of Joseph_, _Tobit_, and _Esther_; eloquence and exquisite religious sentiment as inthe _Book of Job_ and the _Psalms of David_; ecstatic lyricism, vehementand fiery, accompanied with incredible satiric force as in the_Prophets_; wisdom alike equal to that of the Stoics and of the seriousEpicureans as in _Ecclesiastes_ and the _Proverbs_; everywheremarvellous imagination, always concise at least, if not restrained;lyrical sensuality which recalls the most perturbed creations of eroticGreeks and Latins, whilst surpassing them in beauty as in the _Song ofSongs_; and throughout there is this grandeur, this simple majesty, thiseasy and natural sublimity which in the same degree is to be found onlyoccasionally in Homer and which appears to be the privilege of thepeople who were the first to believe in a single God. That is whatmakes, almost in a continuous way, the astonishing beauty of the Bible, and which explains how whole nations, of other origin, have made down toour own day, and still continue to make, the Bible their uninterruptedstudy, and draw from it courage, serenity, exaltation of soul, and asingular ferment of their poetic and literary genius. 

As has been the case with many other literary monuments, it is possible, without owning that it is desirable, that the Bible may even survive thenumerous and important religions which have been born from it. 

CHAPTER III

THE GREEKS

Homer. Hesiod. Elegiac and Lyric Poets. Prose Writers. Philosophers andHistorians. Lyric Poets. Dramatic Poets. Comic Poets. Orators. Romancers. 

HOMER. --The most ancient Greek writer known is Homer, and it cannot beabsolutely stated in what epoch he lived. 

Since the seventeenth century it has even been asked if he ever existedand if his poems are not collections of epic songs which had circulatedin ancient Greece and which at a very recent epoch, that of Pisistratus, had been gathered into two grand consecutive poems, thanks to somerearrangement and editing. At the commencement of the nineteenth centurythe erudite were generally agreed that Homer had never existed. Nowthey are reverting to the belief that there were only two Homers, one theauthor of the _Iliad_ and the other of the _Odyssey_. 

THE _ILIAD_. --The _Iliad_ is the story of the wrath of Achilles, of hisretreat far from his friends who were endeavouring to capture Troy and ofhis return to them. 

It is the poem of patriotism. It is filled with the spirit that when apeople is divided against itself, all misfortunes fall on and overwhelmit. Achilles, unjustly offended, deprived his fellow-countrymen of hissupport; they are all on the point of perishing; he returns to them inorder to avenge the death of his dearest friend and they are saved. 

The _Iliad_ is almost entirely filled with battles, which are veryskillfully diversified. Some episodes, such as the farewell of Hector tohis wife Andromache when he quits her for the fight, or King Priamcoming, in tears, to ask Achilles for the corpse of his son Hector thathe may piously inter it, are among the most beautiful passages that evercame from a human inspiration. 

THE _ODYSSEY_. --The _Odyssey_ is also the poem of patriotism, of the _little homeland_, of the native land. It is the story ofUlysses, after the siege of Troy, reconquering Ithaca, the small islandof which he is king, and taking ten years to acquire it. What makes theunity of the poem, what forms the backbone of the poem, is the smokewhich rises above the house of Ulysses, which he always perceives in thedream of his hopes and desires, which invincibly attracts him, which hedesires to see again before he dies, and the thought of which sustainshim in his trials and causes him to scorn all joys on his road thither. The thousand adventures of Ulysses, his sojourn with the nymph Calypso, his terrible perils in the cave of the giant Polyphemus and near the isleof the Sirens, the tempests which he survives, the hospitality hereceives from King Alcinoüs, the visit he pays to the dead--among whom isAchilles regretting the earth and preferring to be a ploughman among theliving rather than king among the dead; these are vigorous, curious, interesting, touching, picturesque scenes from which all subsequentliteratures have drawn inspiration and which still delight all races. 

HESIOD. --Posterior, very probably, to Homer, Hesiod has left two greatpoems, one on the families of the gods (_Theogenia_) and the otheron the works of man (_Works and Days_). The _Theogenia_ is veryvaluable to us because we learn from it and it makes us understand howthe Greeks understood the divinity, its different manifestations, and, soto say, its evolution through the world. _Works and Days_ is a poemfilled with both sadness and courage, the author finding the world wickedand men unjust; but always concluding that with energy, perseverance, andobstinacy it is possible to save oneself from anything, and that there isonly one real misfortune, which is to know despair. 

ELEGIACAL AND LYRICAL POETS. --Almost from the most remote antiquity, fromthe seventh century, perhaps the eighth century before the Christian era, the Greeks possessed elegiacal and lyrical poets--that is to say, poetswho put into verse their personal sentiments, the joys and sorrows whichthey felt as men. Such were Callinos, the satiric Archilochus, thesatiric Simonides of Amorgos, the martial Tyrtaeus. Then there werethe poets who made verses to be set to music: Alcaeus, Sappho, Anacreon, Alcman. Alcaeus appears to have been the greatest lyrical Greek poetjudging by the fragments we possess by him and by the lyrical poems ofHorace, which there are reasons for believing were imitated from Alcaeus. 

Of the poetess Sappho we have too little to enable us to judge her veryexactly; but throughout antiquity she enjoyed a glory equal to that ofthe greatest. She specially sang of love and in such a manner as to leadto the belief that she herself had not escaped the passion. 

Anacreon sang after the same fashion and with a charm, a grace, a wittyingenuity which are fascinating. He was the epicurean of poetry (beforethe birth of Epicurus) and from him was born a type of literature knownas anacreonotic, which extended right through ancient times and has beenprolonged to modern times. 

PROSE WRITERS. --Finally prose was born, in the sixth century beforeChrist, with the philosophers Thales, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and withthe historians, of whom only one of that epoch has remained famous, namely Herodotus. 

HERODOTUS. --Herodotus, in a general history of his own time and of thatimmediately preceding it, is often not far from epic poetry. His style isat once limpid and warm, he possesses a pleasing power of distinction, the taste for and curiosity about the manners of foreign peoples, alaughing and easy imagination without any pretence at the philosophy ofhistory or of moralising through history. He was, above all, a delightfulwriter. 

AESOP. --To this period (albeit somewhat at hazard) it is possible toascribe Aesop, about whom nothing is known except that he wrote thefables which have been imitated from generation to generation. Thecollection that we possess under his name is one of these imitations, perpetrated long after his death, but as to which it is impossible toassign a date. 

PINDAR. --Pindar, the Theban, broadened and extended the lyrical type. Under him it preserved its power, its high spirits, its verse and, so tosay, its fine fury; but he introduced into the epic the narration ofancient legends, the acts and gestures of the ancient heroes, andeffected this so admirably that the most lyrical of Grecian lyricists isan historian. Capable of sustained elevation, of sublime thoughts andexpressions, of a fine disorder which has been overpraised, and which onclose expression is found to be very careful, he has been regarded as thevery type of dignified and poetic style, and more or less to be imitatedby all ambitious poets commencing with Ronsard. The wise, like Horace, have contented themselves with praising him. From fragments left to us heis infinitely impassioned to read. 

GREEK TRAGEDY. --Greek tragedy, which is one of the miracles of the humanbrain, began in the sixth century B. C. It was born of the dithyramb. Thedithyramb is a chant in chorus in honour of a god or a hero. From thischorus emerged a single actor who sang the praises of the god, and towhich the choir replied. When, instead of one actor, there were two whoaddressed one another in dialogue and were answered by the choir, thedramatic poem was founded. When there were three--and there were hardlyever any more--tragedy, as the Greeks understood it, existed. 

THESPIS; AESCHYLUS; SOPHOCLES. --Thespis was the earliest known to us whotook rudimentary tragedies from town to town in Attica. Then cameAeschylus, whose tragedy, already rigid and hieratical, was verypowerful, imbued with terrible majesty; then came Sophocles, a religiousphilosopher, having a feeling for the old religion and the art of givingit a moral character, great lyrical poet, master of dialogue, eloquent, moving, knowing how to construct and carry on a dramatic poem withinfinite skill, to whom, in fact, can be denied no quality of dramaticpoetry and who attains a conception of perfection. 

EURIPIDES. --Euripides, less religious as a philosopher, sometimessuggesting the sophist and a little the rhetorician, but full of ideas, eloquent, affecting, "the most tragic" (that is, the most pathetic) ofall the acting dramatists, as Aristotle observed, the most modern, too, and the one we best understand, has been the true source whence have beenfreely drawn the tragedies of modern times, more particularly of our own. 

The greatest works of Aeschylus are _Seven Against Thebes_ and_Prometheus Bound_; the greatest of Sophocles: _Antigone_, _Oedipusthe Tyrant_ and _Oedipus at Colonos_; the greatest of Euripides:_Hippolytus_ and _Iphigenia_. 

After Euripides tragedy was exhausted and only produced very second-rateworks. 

COMEDY. --Comedy enjoyed a longer existence. Very obscure in origin, nodoubt proceeding from the opprobrious jests exchanged by the lowerclasses in mirthful hours, it was at first freely fantastical, composedin dialogue, oratorical, lyrical, satirical, even epical at times. Liketragedy, it possessed a chorus for which the lyrical part was speciallyreserved. It was personal--that is, it directly attacked knowncontemporaries, often by name and often by bringing them on the stage. The celebrated authors of this "ancient comedy" were Eupolis, Cratinos, of whom we have only fragments, and Aristophanes, whose work has comedown to us. 

ARISTOPHANES. --Aristophanes was a great poet, with incisive humour andalso incomparable lyrical power, with voluntary vulgarity which is oftenshocking and an elevation of ideas and language which frequently raisehim to the heights of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Here was one of thegrandest poetic minds that the world has produced. His most considerableachievements are _The Frogs_, the earliest known work of literarycriticism, in dramatic form too, wherein he sets up a parallel betweenAeschylus and Euripides and cruelly jeers at the latter; _TheClouds_, in which he mocks the sophists; _The Wasps_, wherein heridicules the Athenian mania for judging, and magnificently praises theold Athenians of the time of Marathon. 

MENANDER. --To this "ancient comedy, " immediately succeeded the "middlecomedy, " in which it was forbidden to introduce personalities and ofwhich Aristophanes gave an example and a model in his _Plutus_. Later, in the fourth century before Christ, with the refined, witty, anddiscreet Menander, the "new comedy" was analogous to that of Plautus, ofTerence, and that of our own of the seventeenth century. 

THUCYDIDES. --To return to the time of Pericles; Attic prose developed inthe hands of historians, sages, and philosophers. Thucydides founded truehistory, scientific, drawn from the sources, supported and strengthenedby all the information and corroboration that the skilled historian cangather, examine, and control. As a writer, Thucydides was terse, bare, limpid, and possessed an agreeable sober elegance. He introduced into hishistory imaginary discourses between great historical personages whichallowed him to show the general state of Greece or of particular portionsof Greece at certain important times. It is not known why thesediscourses were written in a style differing from that of the rest of thework, wise, even beautiful, but so extremely concise and elliptic as, inconsequence, to be extremely difficult to understand. 

HIPPOCRATES. --Hippocrates created scientific medicine, the medicine ofobservation, denying prodigies, seeking natural causes for diseases, andalready setting up rational therapeutics. There are seventy-two workscalled "Hippocratical, " which belong to his school; some may be byhimself. 

SOPHISTS AND ORATORS. --The language grew flexible in the hands of thelearned, subtle, and ingenious sophists (Gorgias, Protagoras) whoattacked Socrates by borrowing his weapons, as it were, and making themperfect. 

A new type of literature was created: the oratorical. Antiphon was theearliest in date alike of the Athenian orators and of the professors ofeloquence. In a crowd after him came Isocrates, Andocides, Lysias, Aeschines, Hyperides, and the master of them all, that astonishinglogician, that impassioned and terrible orator, Demosthenes. 

THE PHILOSOPHERS: PLATO. --Contemporaneously the philosophers, quite asmuch as the sophists, even confining the matter to the literary aspect, cast immortal glory on Attica. Imbued with the spirit of Socrates, evenwhen more or less unfaithful to him, Plato, psychologist, moralist, metaphysician, sociologist, marvellous poet in prose, seductive andfascinating mythologist, really created philosophy in such fashion thateven the most modern systems, if not judged by how much they agree ordiffer from him, at least invariably recall him, whether they seem adistant echo of him or whether they challenge and combat him. 

ARISTOTLE; XENOPHON; THEOPHRASTUS. --Aristotle, pre-eminently learned, admirably cultivated naturalist, acquainted also with everything known inhis day, more prudent metaphysician than Plato but without his depth, aprecise and sure logician and the founder of scientific logic, a clearand dexterous moralist, an ingenious and pure literary theorist;Xenophon, who commanded the retreat of the ten thousand, moralist andIntelligent pedagogue displaying much attractiveness in his_Cyropoedia_, the sensible, refined, and delightful master offamiliar and practical life in his _Economics_; Theophrastus, botanist, very witty satirical moralist, highly caustic andrealistic--these three established Greek wisdom for centuries, andprobably for ever, erecting a solid and elegant temple wherein humanityhas almost continuously sought salutary truths, and where some at leastof our descendants, and those not the least illustrious, will alwaysperform their devotions. 

The chief works of Plato are the _Socratic Dialogues_, the_Gorgias_, the _Timoeus_, the _Phaedo_ (immortality of thesoul), the _Republic_, and the _Laws_. The principal books ofAristotle are his _Natural History_, _Metaphysics_, _Logic_, _Rhetoric_, _Poetica_. The most notable volumes of Xenophon are the _Cyropoedia_, the _Economics_ and the _Memorabilia of Plato_. The only work ofTheophrastus we possess is his _Characters_, which was translatedand _continued_ by La Bruyère. 

STOICS AND EPICUREANS. --In the fourth and even the third century, philosophy spoke to mankind through two principal schools: those of theStoics and of the Epicureans. The chief representatives of the Stoicswere Zeno and Cleanthes. Chrysippus taught an austere morality which maybe summed up in these words: "Abstain and endure. " The Epicureans, whosechief representatives were Epicurus and Aristippus, taught, when all wastaken into account, the same morality but starting from a differentprinciple, which was that happiness must be sought, and in pursuance ofthis principle they advised less austerity, even in their precepts. Although these are schools of philosophy, yet they must be taken intoaccount here because each of them has exercised much influence overwriters, the first on Seneca and much later on Corneille; the second onLucretius and Horace; both sometimes on the same man, one example beingMontaigne. 

After Alexander, intellectual Greece extended and enlarged itself so thatInstead of having one centre, Athens, it possessed five or six: Athens, Alexandria, Antioch, Pergamos, Syracuse. This was an admirable literaryefflorescence; the geniuses were less stupendous but the talents wereinnumerable. 

In the cities named, and in others, history, rhetoric, geography, philosophy, history of philosophy, philology, were taught with ardour andlearnt with enthusiasm; the literary soil was rich and it was assiduouslycultivated. 

ALEXANDRINE LITERATURE. --From this soil rose a fresh literature--moreerudite, less spontaneous, less rich in popular vigour, yet veryinteresting. This is the literature known as _Alexandrine_. Withthis literature first appeared the _romance_, unknown to theancients. The historical romance began with Hecataeus of Abdera, thephilosophical romance with Evemerus of Messenia, who pretended to havefound an ancient inscription proving that the gods of ancient Greece wereold-time kings of the land deified after death, an ingenious inventionfrom which was to come a whole school of criticism of ancient mythology. 

THE ELEGY AND IDYLL: THEOCRITUS. --True and, at the same time, great poetsbelonged to this period. One was Philetas of Cos, founder of the Grecianelegy, celebrated and affectionately saluted centuries later by AndréChénier. Of his works only a few terse fragments remain. Another wasAsclepiades of Samos, both elegiac and lyric, of whose _epigrams_, (short elegies) those preserved to us are charming. Yet another was thesad and charming Leonidas of Tarentum. The two leaders of this choir wereTheocritus and Callimachus. Theocritus, a Sicilian, passes as the founderof the idyll which he did not invent, but to which he gave the importanceof a type by marking it with his imprint. The idyll of Theocritus wasalways a picture of popular customs and even a little drama of popularmorals; but at times it had its scene set in the country, at others in atown, or again by the sea, and consequently there are rustic idylls(properly _bucolics_), maritime idylls, popular urban idylls. Anastonishing sense of reality united to a personal poetic gift and ahighly alert sensitiveness made his little poems alike beautiful fortheir truth and also for a certain ideal of ardent and profound passion. It is curious without being astonishing that the idyll of Theocritusoften suggests the poetry of the Bible. 

PUPILS OF THEOCRITUS. --Moschus and Bion were the immediate pupils ofTheocritus. He had more illustrious ones, commencing with Virgil in his_Eclogues_, continuing with the numerous idylls of the Renaissancein France and Italy, as well as with Segrais in the seventeenth century, and ending, if it be desired, with André Chénier, though others moremodern can be traced. 

CALLIMACHUS. --Callimachus, more erudite, more scholastic, was what istermed a neoclassic, which is that he desired to treat in a new way thesame subjects that had been dealt with by the great men of ancientGreece, and so far as possible to conceive them in the same spirit. Therefore he wrote tragedies, comedies, "satiric dramas" (a kind of farcein which secondary deities were characterised), lyric and elegiac poemsafter the manner of Alcaeus or Sappho, a familiar epopee, a romance inverse, which was perhaps a novel type, but more probably imitated fromcertain poems of ancient Greece which we no longer possess. To us hispoetry seems cold and calculated, although clever and dexterous. It washeld in high esteem not only in his own day but to the close ofantiquity. 

DIDACTIC POETRY: ARATUS; APOLLONIUS. --Didactic poetry, of the cultivationof which there had been no trace since Hesiod, was destined to be revivedin this clever period; and, in fact, at this time Aratus wrote his_Phoenomena_, which is a course of astronomy and meteorology inconformity with the science of his era. More ambitious, and desirous notonly of writing an epic fragment like Callimachus, but also of restoringthe old-time grand epic poem after the manner of Homer (Callimachus andhe had a violent quarrel on the subject), Apollonius of Rhodes in his_Argonautics_ narrated the expedition of Jason. It was a fine epicpoem and especially an astonishing psychological poem. The study ofpassion and of the progress and catastrophe of the infatuation of Medeaform a masterpiece. Assuredly Virgil in his _Dido_, and perhapsRacine in his _Phèdre_ remembered Apollonius. 

LYCOPHRON. --Lycophron also belongs to this period. He left such anadmirable poem (_Alexandra_, that is Cassandra) that hiscontemporaries themselves failed to understand it in spite of all theirefforts. He is the head and ancestor of that great school of inaccessibleor impenetrable poets who are most ardently admired. Maurice Scève in thesixteenth century is the illustrious example. 

THE EPIGRAMMATISTS: MELEAGER. --To these numerous men of great talent mustbe added the epigrammatists--that is, those who wrote very short, veryconcise, very limpid poems wherein they sought absolute perfection. Theywere almost innumerable. The most illustrious was Meleager, in whom wecan yet appreciate delicate genius and exquisite sensibility. 

POLYBIUS. --Reduced to Roman provinces (successively greater Greece, Greece proper, Egypt, Syria), the Grecian world none the less continuedto be an admirable intellectual haven. As early as the Punic wars, theGreek Polybius revealed he was an excellent historian, military, political, and philosophical, inquisitive about facts, inquisitive, too, about probable causes, constitutions, and social institutions, themorals, character, and the underlying temperament of races. His principalwork is the _Histories_--that is, the history of the Graeco-Romanworld from the second Punic war until the capture of Corinth by theRomans. He was an intellectual master; unfortunately he wrote very badly. 

EPICTETUS; MARCUS AURELIUS. --It must, however, be recognised that in thefirst century before Christ and in the first after, Greece--evenintellectually--was in a state of depression. But dating from the EmperorNerva--that is, from the commencement of the second century--there was aremarkable Hellenic revival. Primarily, it was the most brilliant momentsince Plato in Grecian philosophy. Stoicism exerted complete sway overthe cultivated classes; Epictetus gave his _Enchiridion_ and_Manual_, wherein are condensed the elevated and profound thoughtsmost deeply realised of the doctrine of Zeno; later, the Emperor MarcusAurelius, in his solitary meditations entitled _For Myself_, depictshis own soul, admirable, chaste, pure, severe to himself, indulgent toothers, pathetically resigned to the universal order of things andadhering to them with a renunciation and a faith that are trulyreligious. Less severe, even playful and smiling, Dion Chrysostom (thatis, mouth of gold, nickname given to him because of his eloquence) ispenetrated with the same spirit a little mingled with Platonism, whichmakes him, therefore, perhaps, penetrate more easily than theover-austere pure Stoics. 

PLUTARCH. --Plutarch, as historian discreetly romantic, as philosophicalmoralist decidedly dexterous, gently obstinate in conciliation andconcord, in a large portion of his _Parallel Lives_ narrated thoseof illustrious Romans and Greeks to show how excellent they were and howhighly they ought to esteem one another; elsewhere, in his moral works, he sought to conciliate philosophy and paganism, no doubt believing in asingle God, as did Plato, but also believing in a crowd of intermediaryspirits between God and man, which allowed him to regard the deities ofpaganism as misunderstood beings and even in a certain sense to admittheir authority. Emphatically a man who observed the golden mean, heopposed the Stoics for being too severe on human nature and theEpicureans for being too easy or for too lightly risking the future. Hewas an elegant writer--gracious, self-restraining; nearer, all said anddone, to eclecticism than to simplicity, and he must not be judged by thegeniality which was virtually imparted to him by Amyot in translatinghim. Throughout Europe, since the Renaissance, of all the Grecian authorshe has perhaps been the most read, the most quoted, the best loved, andthe most carefully edited. 

THE GREEK HISTORIANS. --Greek historians multiplied about this period. Tomention only the most notable: Arrian, philosopher, disciple ofEpictetus, and historian of the expedition of Alexander; Appian, whowrote the history of the Roman people from their origin until the time ofTrajan; Dion Cassius, who also compiled Roman history in a sustainedmanner full of elegance and nobility; Herodian, historian of thesuccessors of Marcus Aurelius, who would only narrate what he had himselfwitnessed, a showy writer who seems over-polished and a littleartificial. 

A historian of a highly individualistic character was Diogenes ofLaertius, who wrote the _Lives of Philosophers_, being very littleof a philosopher himself and too prone to drop into anecdotage, butinteresting and invaluable to us because of the scanty information wepossess about ancient philosophy. 

LUCIAN. --Immeasurably superior to those just cited since Plutarch, Lucianof Samosata (Syria) may be regarded as the Voltaire of antiquity--witty, sceptical, amusing, even comic. He was primarily a lecturer, wanderinglike a sophist from town to town, in order to talk in vivacious, animated, nimble, and paradoxical fashion. Then he was a polygraphicwriter, producing treatises, satires, and pamphlets on the most diversesubjects. He wrote against the Christians, the pagans, the philosophers, the prejudiced, sometimes against common sense. Amongst his works were_The Way to Write History_, partly serious, partly sarcastic; _TheDialogues of the Dead_, moralising and satirical, imitated much laterin very superior fashion by Fontenelle; _The Dialogues of the Gods_, against mythology; _True History_, a parody of the false or romantichistories then so fashionable, more especially about Alexander. Hecertainly possessed little depth, but his talent was incredible:alertness, causticity, amusing logic, burlesque dialectics, anastonishing instinct for caricature, the art of natural dialogue, gayinsolence, light but vivid psychological penetration, an almost profoundsense of the ridiculous, joyous fooling; above all, that first essentialof satire, to be himself amused by what he wrote to amuse others; allthese he possessed in a high degree. Rabelais has been called the Homericbuffoon, Lucian is certainly the Socratic. 

POETRY AND ROMANCE. --Greek poetry no longer existed at this period. Hardly is it permissible to cite the didactic Oppian, with his poem onsin, and the fabulist Babrius, imitator of Aesop in his fables. Inreparation, the romance was born and the scientific literature wasimportant. The romance claimed among its representatives AntoniusDiogenes, with his _Marvels Beyond Thule_; Heliodorus, with his_Aethiopica_ or _Theagenes and Chariclea_, the love-story somuch admired by Racine in his youth; Longus, with his _Daphnis andChloe_, which still retains general approval and which possesses real, though somewhat studied grace, and of which the ability of the style isquite above the normal. 

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. --Scientific literature includes the highlyillustrious mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy, whose system obtainedrespect and belief until the advent of Copernicus; the physician Galen;the philosopher-physician Sextus Empiricus, who was a good historian, highly sceptical, but well informed and intelligent about philosophicalideas. 

DECADENCE OF THE GREEK SPIRIT. --Vitality was slowly withdrawn from theGrecian world, although not without revivals and highly interestingsemi-renaissances. In the fourth century, the sophist--that is, theprofessor of philosophy and of rhetoric--Libanius left a vast number ofofficial or academic discourses and letters which were dissertations. Like his friend the Emperor Julian, he was a convinced pagan, and withkindly but firm spirit combated the Christian bishops, priests, andparticularly the monks, who were objects of veritable repulsion to him. He possessed talent of a secondary but honourable rank. 

THE EMPEROR JULIAN. --The Emperor Julian, a Christian in childhood, butwho on attaining manhood reverted to paganism, which earned him the titleof "the Apostate, " was highly intelligent, pure in heart, and filled witha spirit of tolerance; but he was a heathen and he wrote againstChristianity. He possessed satiric force and wit, even a measure ofeloquence. A pamphlet by him, the _Misopogon_, directed against theinhabitants of Antioch, who had chaffed him about his beard, makesamusing reading. He died quite young; he would, in all probability, havebecome a very great man. 

PROCOPIUS. --It is necessary to advance to the sixth century to mentionthe historian Procopius, that double-visaged annalist who, in hisofficial histories, was lost in admiration of Justinian, and who, in his_Secret History_, only published long after his death, related to usthe turpitude, real or imagined, of Theodora, wife of the EmperorJustinian, and of Antonina, wife of Belisarius. 

POETRY. --Greek poetry was not dead. Quintus of Smyrna, who was of thefourth century, perhaps later, wrote a _Sequel to Homer_, withoutmuch imagination, but with skill and dexterity; Nonnus wrote the_Dionysiaca_, a poetic history of the expedition of Bacchus toIndia, declamatory, copious, and powerful, full alike of faults andtalent; Musaeus (date absolutely unknown) has remained justly celebratedfor his delicious little poem _Hero and Leander_, countless timestranslated both in prose and verse. 

GRECIAN CHRISTIAN WRITERS. --It is necessary to revert to the fourthcentury in order to enumerate Grecian Christian writers. As might beexpected these were almost all controversial orators. Saint Athanasius ofAlexandria was an admirable man of action, a fiery and impassionedorator, the highly polemical historian of the Church, after the manner ofBossuet in his _History of Variations_. Saint Basil, termed by hisadmirers "the Great, " without there being much hyperbole in thequalification, was an incomparable orator. He, as it were, reigned overEastern Christianity, thanks to his word, his skill, and his courage. Even to us his works possess charm. He intermingled the finest ideas ofPlato and of Christianity in the happiest and most orthodox manner. Thehumanists held him in esteem for having rendered justice to antiquity inhis _Lecture on Profane Authors_ and having advised Christians tostudy it with prudence but with esteem. Saint Gregory of Nazianzen, theintimate friend of Saint Basil, was also a great orator, exalted, ardent, and lyrical, whilst he was also as a poet, refined, gracious, and full ofcharm. Saint Gregory of Nyssa, brother of Saint Basil, was essentially atheologian and in his day a theological authority. 

SAINT JOHN CHRYSOSTOM. --The most splendid figure of the Greek Church wasSaint John Chrysostom, celebrated in political history for his strugglewith the Emperor Arcadius and the Empress Eudoxia, and for thepersecutions he had in consequence to suffer. His heated, fiery, andviolent eloquence, which was altogether that of a tribune of the people, can still profoundly affect us because therein can be felt a deeplysincere ardour, a passion for justice, charity, and love. A bellicosemoralist, he was, like Bourdaloue, a realist and therefore an exact andcruel delineator of the customs of his time, which were not good; and heteaches us better than anyone else what was the sad state of Easternmorality in his day. His widely varied genius, passing from the mostspiritually familiar of tones to the height of moving and imposingeloquence, was one of the grandest of all antiquity. 

EUSEBIUS. --Allusion should be made to that good historian Eusebius, whonarrated Christian history from its origins until the year 323. 

THE BYZANTINE PERIOD. --What is termed the Byzantine period extended fromthe close of the reign of Justinian to the definite fall of the EasternEmpire (565-1453). This long epoch, practically corresponding to theMiddle Ages of the West, is very weak from the literary point of view, but yet possessed a number of interesting and valuable historians (Josephof Byzantium, Comnenus, etc. ) and skilled and learned grammarians, thatis professors of language and literature (Eustathius, Cephalon, Planudes, Lascaris). It was the later of these grammarians, among them Lascaris, who after the fall of Constantinople being welcomed in France and Italy, brought the Greek writers to the West, commentated on them, made themknown, and thence came the Renaissance of Literature. 

CHAPTER IV

THE LATINS

The Latins, Imitators of the Greeks. Epic Poets, Dramatic Poets. GoldenAge: Virgil, Horace, Ovid. Silver Age: Prose Writers, Historians andPhilosophers:--Titus-Livy, Tacitus, Seneca. Decadence Still Brilliant. 

LATIN LITERATURE. --Latin literature is little more than a branch of Greekliterature. It commenced much later, finished earlier, and has alwayspoured into the others at least a portion of its living force. Romanliterature really begins only at the moment when the Romans came intocontact with the Greeks, read their works, and were tempted to imitatethem; that is to say, it commences in the third century before Christ. The first manifestation of this literature was epic. Naevius and LiviusAndronicus made epopees. They are destitute of talent. Ennius made one:it possessed merit; what the Latin critics have quoted of his_Annals_ is marked, first by an energetic patriotic sentiment whichaffords pleasure; then it possesses energy and sometimes even a certainbrilliance. In addition, Ennius wrote several didactic and satiric poems. Among the Romans, Ennius was the great ancestor and father of Latinliterature. 

LUCILIUS. --Lucilius was a satirist. Judging by the fragments of his workwhich have come down to us, he was a very acute and penetrating politicalsatirist. Horace, despite his sovereign disdain for all that preceded hisown century, did not fail to value him and agreed that there wassomething to be drawn and appreciated from this "muddy torrent. "

COMEDY: PLAUTUS; TERENCE. --Comedy and tragedy existed at this period. Itmay be apposite here to point out that it was later and in the finestperiod of Latin literature that they ceased to exist. Plautus conceivedthe plan of transporting to Rome Grecian comedies of the time of the newcomedy and of adapting them more or less to Latin morals. He possessed astrong and brutal verve which did not lack power, and more than onceMolière did him the honour of taking inspiration from him. Terence, afterhim, the friend of Scipio the second Africanus, and perhaps incollaboration with him, in a way widely different from that of Plautus sofar as type of talent, tender, gentle, romantic, sentimental, smilingrather than witty, so far as can be judged directly inspired by Menander, wrote comedies which are highly agreeable to read, but it is doubtful ifthey could ever have been widely appreciated on the stage. However, theRoman writers held him in great esteem, and at one epoch of our ownhistory, in the seventeenth century, he enjoyed remarkable and unanimousappreciation. 

L'ATELLANE. --To comedy strictly defined, whether it dealt with Romans orGreeks, the Romans also added the atellane, which came to them from theEtruscans (Atella, a city of Etruria) and which was a sort of farce withstereotyped characters (the fat glutton, the lean glutton, the old miseralways baffled, etc. ). Pomponius and Naevius endeavoured to raise thispopular recreation to a literary standard and succeeded. It then became athoroughly national characteristic. There was considerable analogybetween it and the modern popular Italian comedy, showing its Cassandras, its Pantaloon, and its Harlequin, without it being possible to assertthat the Italian comedy proceeded from the atellane. The atellane enjoyedmuch success in the second century before Christ. It was, however, oustedby the mime, which was the kind of comic literature thoroughly nationalat Rome. The mime was a farce of popular morals, particularly of thelower classes; it was a portrayal of the dregs of society in their comicaspects. It maintained its sway until the close of the Roman Empirewithout becoming more dignified; rather the reverse. The names of someauthors of mimes have survived: Publius Syrus and Laberius, in the timeof Caesar. What is curious is that these mimes, licentious and evenobscene though they were, throughout gave occasional utterance to highlymoral observations which Latin grammarians have preserved for us. Thiscurious mixture may be explained or contrasted at pleasure; perhaps itwas only a conventional habit. 

TRAGEDY. --As for what there was of tragedy, it was destined to be yetshorter-lived than comedy, but it was evidently very brilliant and it isregrettable that it has not been preserved. Livius Andronicus and Nasviuswrote tragedies, but the three greatest tragedians were Ennius, hisnephew Pacuvius, and Attius. Ennius imitated Euripides, PacuviusSophocles, and Attius Aeschylus. All three soared to the grand, themajestic, and the sublime; all seem to have been very sententious andreplete with maxims; but it is needful to be cautious: these authors areknown to us only by the citations made by grammarians, and grammarianswho, having naturally cited phrases rather than fragments of dialogue, make it possible that these authors appear to us sententious when theywere in reality not abnormally so. 

PROSE LITERATURE. --Prose literature at Rome appeared almost at the sametime as the poetic. Cicero has given us the names of great orators, contemporaries of Ennius, and there were historians and didacticians inprose of the same period. The elder Cato, the great censor, was anhistorian; he wrote a work, _The Origins_, which seems to have beenthe history not only of Rome but of all Italy since the foundation ofRome; he was didactic; he wrote a _De Re Rustica_ (On Rural Life)which has come down to us and is infinitely valuable as showing thesimplicity, the hardness, and the avarice of the old Roman proprietors, all qualities which Cato thoroughly well knew they possessed. 

THE AGE OF CAESAR. --The age of Caesar was a great literary epoch. Beforeall and almost over all was Caesar himself: great orator, letter-writer, grammarian, and historian. His _Commentaries_, that is, his memoirs, history of his campaigns, are admirable in their conciseness andprecision of rapid and running narrative. Apart from him, Cornelius Neposmade a very clear abridgment, characterised by marked sobriety, ofuniversal history under the title of _Chronica_. Varro, a kind ofencyclopaedist, wrote a _De Re Rustica_, also a work on the Latinlanguage, _Menippic Satires_--satires it is true, but mixtures ofprose and verse--and a work on _Roman Life_, as well as a crowd ofsmall books dealing with every possible subject. Cicero told him, "Youhave taught us all things human and divine. " He possessed immenseerudition and a violent mind not without charm. He can be imagined as asage of our own sixteenth century. 

CICERO. --Cicero was perhaps the greatest _littérateur_ that has everlived. It is obvious that all tastes were in his soul at the same time, as Voltaire said of himself, and he gratified them all. He waspolitician, lawyer, orator, poet, philosopher, professor of rhetoric, moralist, grammarian, political writer, correspondent; he encompassed allhuman knowledge, involved himself in all human matters and was a verygreat writer. What to-day interests us most in his immense output are hispolitical discourses, his letters and his moral treatises. His politicaldiscourses are those of an honest man who always held upright views andthe sentiment of the great interests of his country; his letters arethose of a witty man and of an excellent friend; his moral treatises, more particularly his _De Officiis_ (On Duties), are in a veryelevated spirit which subordinates all other human duties beneathobligations towards one's country. He did not always rise tocircumstances; he was well content, on the contrary, that they shouldserve him. 

SALLUST. --Sallust, who as an individual seems to have been contemptible, was a highly sagacious and excellent historian. He has left a history ofCatiline and another of Jugurtha. They are masterpieces of lucidity andof dramatic vivacity. Admirable especially are his maxims, which seem aswell thought out as those of La Rochefoucauld: "Friendship is to desirethe same things and to hate the same things"; "the spirit of faction isthe friendship of scoundrels. "

POETRY: CATULLUS. --Poetry was not less brilliant than prose in the timeof Caesar. It was the era of Lucretius and of Catullus. Catullus, adelightful man of the world, a charming voluptuary, passionate andeloquent lover, formidable epigrammatist, a little coloured byAlexandrianism (but barely, for this trait has been much exaggerated), comes very close to being a great poet. In many respects he closelyrecalls André Chénier, who, it may be added, was thoroughly conversantwith his writing. 

LUCRETIUS. --Lucretius is a very noble poet. If we knew Epicurus otherwisethan by fragments, it is highly probable we should be tempted to assertthat Lucretius was only a translator; but on that we cannot pronounce, and of the didactic part of the poem of Lucretius (_On Nature_), even if it were a simple translation, all the oratorical and thedescriptive portions would remain, and they are the most beautiful of thework. In his invocations to Epicurus, in his prosopopoeia of nature toman inviting resignation to death, in his descriptions of the immolationof Iphigenia and of the cow wandering in the fields in search of her lostheifer, there are a breadth, a grasp, and an epic grandeur, which recallHomer, arouse thoughts of Dante, and which Virgil himself, whilst muchless unequal though never greater, has not attained. 

THE AUGUSTAN AGE. --The Augustan Age, which was only really very great ifunder this title is also included the epoch of Caesar and also that ofOctavius, and thus it was understood by our ancestors, does not fail tooffer writers of fine genius. These are Virgil, Horace, and Titus-Livy. 

TITUS-LIVY. --Titus-Livy, who is one of the purest and most beautifulwriters and an orator of seductive talent in his own chamber, wrote aRoman history composed, as to the first portion, of the legendstransmitted at Rome from generation to generation, and in which it isimpossible for us to distinguish the false from the true; for two-thirdsof the work made very accurate investigations of all that previoushistorians and the annals of the pontiffs could give the author. As hasbeen observed, Titus-Livy, being a Cisalpine, was a Gaul who alreadypossessed the French qualities: order, clearness, regulated development, sustained and careful style, oratorical tastes. An ardent patriot, republican at his soul, yet treated in friendly fashion by Augustus, hewrote Roman history at first, no doubt, to make it known, but above allto inspire the Romans of his own time with admiration, respect, and lovefor the austere morals and exalted virtues of their ancestors. He erecteda monument, one portion of which is unhappily destroyed, but into whichmodern tragedians have often quarried and which orators have not scornedwhen desiring to instruct themselves in their art. 

VIRGIL. --Virgil came from almost the same country. His was a charmingsoul, tender and gentle, infinitely capable of friendship, very pure andwhite, as Horace said, with a tendency to melancholy. The two sources ofhis inspiration were Homer and love of Rome; add, for a time, Theocritus. Lover of the country and of moral life, he first wrote those delicious_Bucolics_ wherein he did not venture to be as realistic as theSicilian poet, but in which there is not only infinite grace and delicatesensibility, but also, in certain verses, admirable descriptions thatarouse memories of those of La Fontaine. Lover of the soil and desirous, in harmony with Augustus, to attract the Italians back to a taste foragriculture, he wrote the _Georgics_: that is, the toils of thefield, describing these labours with singular exactitude and precision;then, to give the reader variety, he introduced from time to time anepisode which is a fragment of history or of mythological legend. Atlength, desirous of attributing to Rome the most glorious past possible, he revived the old legend which claimed that the ancient kings of Romedescended from the famous kings of Troy in her zenith, and he composedthe _Aeneid_. The _Aeneid_ is at once both an _Odyssey_ and an_Iliad_. The first five books containing the adventures ofAeneas after the fall of Troy until his arrival in Italy form an_Odyssey_; the last six books, containing the combats of Aeneas inItaly in order to conquer a place for himself, form an _Iliad_. Inthe middle, the sixth book is a descent into hell, again an imitation ofHomer, yet altogether new, enriched as it is with very fine philosophicalideas which Homer could never have known. The main theme of the poem andwhat gives it unity is Rome, which does not yet exist, but which isalways to be seen looming in the future. All the poem leans in thatdirection, and alike by ingenious artifices, by prophecies more and moreexact, by the description of the shield of Aeneas, Roman history itself, in its broad lines, is traced. 

The sovereign merit of Virgil is his artistic sense. Others are morepowerful or more profound. No man has written better verse than he on anysubject on which he wrote. 

HORACE. --Horace was a man of infinite wit, profoundly conversant with theGrecian poets. With that knowledge of the poets he filled his odes withrecollections of Alcasus and Stesichorus; they were minutely and finelypolished, accustoming the Romans to find in Latin words the musicalphrases of the Greeks, but withal remaining very cold. With his wit, hisverve, his very lively sense of humour, his pretty moral philosophyborrowed a little from the Stoics but mainly from the Epicureans, hecreated his _Satires_ and his _Epistles_, which form the mostdelicate feast and which have no more lost their interest for us thanMontaigne has. Here was a charming man. He was not a great poet. He wasthe most witty of poets, the poet of the men of wit. 

TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS; OVID. --Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid immediatelyfollowed him. Tibullus was a tender and sad elegiast, less passionate andless powerful than Catullus, but gracious and touching. All the elegiacalpoets, and André Chénier in particular, have evinced recollections ofhim. Propertius possessed great talent for versification, but was moreerudite than inspired; being almost pure Alexandrine, he is moreinteresting to the humourist than to the ordinary man. Ovid, gifted withfacility and the skill of a prodigious versifier, dexterous descriptistin his _Metamorphoses_, ingenious and cold in his _Art ofLove_, has found some pathetic notes in his elegies wherein as anexile he weeps over his own misfortunes. 

DECADENCE. --With the second century arrived the commencement ofdecadence. The rhetoricians, who in Rome were what the sophists were inAthens, only far less intelligent, directed the public mind. They didnot spoil it completely, but they did not give it strength, and theLatins, believing they had reached the zenith of the Greeks, seemed todraw less inspiration from the eternal models. 

QUINTUS CURTIUS. --However, the Latin sap is still strong. QuintusCurtius, romantic historian, who wrote a history of Alexandria which istoo generous towards the legendary, narrates brilliantly and strews hispages with vigorously phrased maxims and apothegms. He is a remarkableauthor. The elder Pliny, a very erudite sage and a somewhat preciouswriter, is a worthy successor of Varro. 

SENECA. --Seneca, who certainly was well nurtured in Greek philosophy, preached stoicism in concise, antithetic, and epigrammatic styles, all inhighly thoughtful points which sometimes attain power. 

PETRONIUS; LUCIAN; MARTIAL. --Petronius was a man possessing highlyrefined taste who painted extremely ugly morals. Tragedy endeavoured toobtain renaissance with Seneca the tragic, who is perhaps the same as themoralist Seneca, alluded to above, and the effort was sufficientlybrilliant for our tragedians of the sixteenth century, and even Racine inhis _Phèdre_, frequently to follow it. Perseus, pupil of Horace sofar as his satires are concerned, was concise to the point of obscurity, but often displayed such vigour and ruggedness as to be powerfullymoving. Lucian, spoilt by a certain taste for declamation, is really asound poet, more especially as a poetic orator, and in this respect he isoften admirable. Silius Italicus, Valerius Flaccus, Statius, revert tothe school of Virgil and display talent for versification. Martial, almost exclusively epigrammatic, was extremely witty. 

JUVENAL. --Juvenal, arising sardonically from the crowd, is the prince ofsatirists for all time. He possessed a passion for honesty, spirit, andoratorical breadth, and incredible vigour as colourist, the gift of versecast in medallions and also the gift of energetic metallic sonorousness. Victor Hugo, in the satiric portion of his work, not merely drewinspiration from but seemed saturated with him. 

THE TRAJAN EPOCH. --now came the Trajan epoch. Quintilian, in elegantfashion, with point and rather affected graces, taught us excellentrhetoric full of sense and taste. Pliny the Younger, gentle and gay, honest and amusing, pleaded as an insinuating orator, and, under thepretext of _Letters_ to his friends, wrote essays of amiablemorality which evoke recollections of Montaigne. 

TACITUS. --Tacitus is a great psychological historian and moralist. He is, as Racine observed, "the greatest painter of antiquity, " and Racine meantthe greatest painter of portraits. He possessed an entirely fresh styleof his own creation: nervous, articulate, coloured, concise, with briefmetaphors which reveal not only a poet, but a fine poet, in the vein ofMichelet, but with the difference of febrility to the potent discharge ofpower. 

AULUS GELLIUS; APULEIUS. --Under Marcus Aurelius Latin literature fellinto decay. Aulus Gellius was only a rather untidy or at least not verymethodical scholar who wrote feebly; Apuleius with his _Golden Ass_was merely a fantastic romancist, very complex, curious about everything, more especially with regard to singularities, lively, amusing, mysticalat times; in short, distinctly disconcerting. 

WRITERS ON CHRISTIANITY. --Christianity was at an adult age. There werewriters of importance and some who were really great; the energetic andviolent Tertullian, beloved by Bossuet; Saint Cyprian, full of unction, gentleness, and charity; Lactantius, skilful Christian philosopher, ingenious and possessing insinuating subtlety; Saint Hilarius, an ardentpolemist, impetuous and torrential; Saint Ambrose, exalted, wise, serene, very well read, very "Roman, " who may be styled the Cicero ofChristianity; Saint Jerome, ardent, impassioned, possessing livelysensibility, an animated and seductive imagination, who--excluding allidea of scandal--suggests what is purest and most beautiful in JeanJacques Rousseau; finally, that great doctor and noble philosopher ofthe Church, Saint Augustine. 

SAINT AUGUSTINE. --Saint Augustine is pre-eminently a philosopher, a manwho analysed ideas and saw all that they contained, their first principleand their trend as well as their ultimate consequences. He was inaddition a great orator; he was also a historian, or at least aphilosopher of history, in his _City of God_; finally, he was a poetat heart and imbued with the most exquisite sensibility in his immortal_Confessions_. Probably he was the most extraordinary man of theworld of antiquity. 

CHRISTIAN POETS. --Christianity even had its poets: Commodian, Juvencus, the impassioned and skilful Prudentius, St. Paulinus of Nola. None werevery prominent, all possessed lively sentiment, such as Chateaubriandevinced, for what is profoundly poetic in Christianity. 

SECULAR POETS. --The last mundane poets were more brilliant than those ofChristianity. Avienus possessed charming elegance and rather effeminategrace. It should be noted that he (with Prudentius) was the sole lyricpoet after Horace. Ausonius had sensibility and remarkable descriptivetalent; Claudian, rhetorician in verse, rose sometimes to veritableeloquence and maintained a continual brilliance which is fatiguingbecause it is continual, but does not fail to be a marvellous fault. Finally must be cited Rutilius, first because he had talent, then becauseeven amid the invasions of the barbarians he made an impassioned eulogyof Rome which is, involuntarily, a funeral oration; finally, because, despite being a bitter foe to Christianity, he once more involuntarilydefined the great and noble change from paganism to Christianity: _Tuncmutabantur corpora, nunc animi_ ("Formerly bodies were metamorphosed, now souls"). 

CHAPTER V

THE MIDDLE AGES: FRANCE

_Chansons de Geste: Song of Roland_ and Lyric Poetry. PopularEpopee: _Romances of Renard_. Popular Short Stories: Fables. Historians. The Allegorical Poem: _Romance of the Rose_. Drama. 

_CHANSONS DE GESTE_. --The literature of the Middle Ages freed itself fromLatin about the tenth century. This was the moment when the great epopeeswhich are called _chansons de geste_ began to be heard. The mostcelebrated is the one entitled _The Song of Roland_. It is the storyof the last struggle in which Roland engaged on returning from Spain atthe pass of Roncevaux and of his death. The form of this poem is ratherdry and a little monotonous; but there are admirable passages such as thebenediction of the dying by the Bishop Turpin, the farewell of Roland toOliver, Roland holding out his glove to his Lord God at the moment ofdeath, etc. The _chansons de geste_ were numerous. Somecommemorated Charlemagne and his comrades, others Arthur, King ofBritain, and his knights, others, as a rule less interesting, were aboutthe heroes of antiquity, Troy, Alexander, not well known but notforgotten. The _chansons de geste_ permeated the whole of theeleventh and twelfth centuries. 

JOINVILLE; VILLEHARDOUIN. --In the thirteenth century appeared anhistorian, Joinville, friend of St. Louis, who described the crusade inwhich he took part with his master. He possessed _naïvéte_, grace, naturalness, and picturesqueness. Villehardouin, who described the fourthcrusade, in which he played his part, was a realist--exact, precise, luminous--in whom the strangeness and grandeur of the things he hadwitnessed sometimes inspired a true nobility, simple enough butsingularly impressive. 

THE TROUBADOURS. --Lyric poetry barely existed during these centuriesexcept south of the Loire, in the Latin country, among the poets calledtroubadours; nevertheless, in the north, the noble Count Thibaut ofChampagne, to cite only one, wrote songs possessing amiable inspirationand happily turned. Beside him must be instanced the highly remarkableRuteboeuf, narrator, elegiast, lyric orator, admirably gifted, who, to bea great poet, only needed to live in a more favourable period and to haveat his disposition a more flexible language, one more abundant and morewidely elaborated. 

_THE ROMANCES OF RENARD_. --In the fourteenth century, the _Romances ofRenard_ enjoyed remarkably wide popularity and multiplied inabundance. Each was like a fable by La Fontaine expanded to theproportions of an epic poem. Under the names of animals they were humantypes in action and concerned in multifarious adventures: the lion wasthe king; the bear, called Bruin, was the seigneurial lord of the soil;the fox was the artful, circumspect citizen; the cock, calledChanticleer, was the hero of warfare, and so on. Some of the _Romancesof Renard_ are insipid; others possess a satiric and parodying spiritthat is extremely diverting. 

THE FABLES. --Contemporaneously the _Fables_ amused our ancestors. They were anecdotes, tales in verse for the most part dealing withadventures of citizens, analogous to the tales of La Fontaine. Themajority were jeering, bantering, and satirical; some few were affectingand refined. They were certainly the most living and characteristicportion of old French literature. 

THE BIBLES. --The Middle Ages, after the manner of the ancients, delightedin gathering into one volume all the knowledge current. These didacticbooks were called bibles. Some were celebrated: the _Bible_ of Guyotof Provence, the _Bible_ of Hugo of Berzi. As a rule, whilst learnedas far as the resources of the times permitted, they were also satiric, precisely as almost the whole of the literature of the Middle Ages issatiric. 

_THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE_. --The _Romance of the Rose_, which was bytwo authors writing with almost half a century of interval between them, was in the first portion, of which the author is William of Lorris, anart of love in the form of a romance in verse; and the second part, written by John de Meung, formed in some measure a continuation of thefirst, but above all was a work of erudition and instruction, in whichthe poet put all that he knew as well as his philosophical conceptions, often of a remarkable and highly unexpected boldness. Aptly John de Meunghas been compared with Rabelais, and it is not astonishing that thepopularity of this poem should have lasted more than two centuries northat it should have charmed or irritated our ancestors according to thetendency of their minds. 

FROISSART. --The representative of history in the fourteenth century wasFroissart, a picturesque chronicler, very vital, always full of interest, although it is indisputable that he was lacking in historical criticism;and among the orators, polemists, and controversialists of the times mustat least be cited the impassioned and virtuous Gerson, who expended hislife in incessant struggles on behalf of his Christian faith. 

To him, without decisive proof, has often been attributed the_Imitation of Jesus Christ_, which, in any case, whoever wrote it, must be emphasised as one of the purest products of the religious spiritof the Middle Ages. 

CHARLES OF ORLEANS; VILLON. --The fifteenth century, otherwise somewhatsterile, introduced one distinguished poet, Charles of Orleans, gracefuland pleasing; and one who at moments rose to the height of being almosta great poet: this was Francis Villon, the celebrated author of _TheBallade of Dames of Ancient Times_, of which the yet more famousrefrain was, "Where are the snows of last year?"

MYSTERIES AND MIRACLES. --To deal with the theatre of the Middle Ages itis necessary to go further back. Without considering as drama those piousperformances which the clergy organised or tolerated even in the churchesfrom the tenth century and probably earlier, there was already a populardrama in the twelfth century outside the church whereat were performedveritable dramas drawn from holy writ or legends of saints. Thisdeveloped in the thirteenth century, and in the fourteenth and fifteenthit was prolific in immense dramatic poems which needed several days fortheir performance. These were _Mysteries_, as they were termed, or_Miracles_, wherein comedy and tragedy were interwoven and a greatdeed in religious history or sometimes in national history commemorated, such as the _Mystery of the Siege of Orleans_, by Greban. 

FARCES; FOLLIES; MORALITIES. --The comic theatre also existed. It provided_farces_, which were really little comedies (the most famous was the_Farce of the Lawyer Patelin_); _follies_, which are farcicalbut good-humoured caricatures of students and clerks; and_moralities_, which are small serious dramas, interspersed withcomedy, having real personages mingled with allegorical ones. The dramaof the Middle Ages was very living and highly original, coming from thesoil and exactly adapted to the sentiments, passions, and ideas of thepeople for whom and, a little later, by whom it was written. 

CHAPTER VI

THE MIDDLE AGES: ENGLAND

Literature in Latin, in Anglo-Saxon, and in French. The Ancestor ofEnglish Literature: Chaucer. 

THE THREE LITERATURES. --In England, prior to the Norman invasion, that isbefore 1066, England possessed Saxon bards who sang of the prowess offorbears or contemporaries, and monks who wrote in Latin the lives ofsaints or even lay histories. 

From 1066 must be distinguished in England three parallel literatures:the Latin literature of the cloister, the Anglo-Saxon literature, and theFrench literature of the conquerors. 

Latin literature, so far as prose is regarded, was devoted exclusively tophilosophy and history; in verse the subjects are more diversified, satire more especially flourished. 

The poets of the French tongue wrote more particularly _chansons degeste_, and those of such songs which form what is termed the _Cycleof Artus_ are for the most part the work of poets born in England. 

Finally, in the different popular dialects, Saxon, Western English, etc. , epic poems were written in verse, or romances, discourses, homilies, different religious work in prose. The Normans, ardent, energetic, andpractical, had founded universities whence issued, endowed and equipped, those who by patriotic sentiment or taste were destined to write inAnglo-Saxon or in English. 

CHAUCER; GOWER. --The greatest name of the period and the one whichradiates most brilliantly is that of Chaucer in the fourteenth century, author of _The Canterbury Tales_ and a crowd of other works. Hepossessed very varied imagination, sometimes vigorous, sometimeshumorous, an extraordinary sense of reality, much spirit, and a fertilityof mind which made him the ancestor and precursor of Shakespeare. To hisillustrious name must be added that of his friend and pupil Gower, who iscurious because he is representative of the three literatures still inuse in his day, having written his _Speculum Meditatus_ in French, his _Vox Clamantis_ in Latin, and his _Confessio Amantis_ inEnglish. So far as I am aware this phenomenon was never repeated. 

CHAPTER VII

THE MIDDLE AGES: GERMANY

Epic Poems: _Nibelungen_. Popular Poems. Very numerous Lyric Poems. Drama. 

FIRST LITERARY WORK. --The most ancient monument of German literature isthe _Song of Hildebrand_, which goes back to an unknown antiquity, perhaps to the ninth century, and a very beautiful fragment of which hasbeen preserved by a happy chance. We are entirely ignorant of workswritten in German between the _Song of Hildebrand_ and the_Nibelungen_, except for some religious poems such as the_Heliand_ in low German and the _Book of the Gospels_ in highGerman. 

THE NIBELUNGEN, --The _Nibelungen_ form a vast poem, written probablyin the thirteenth century (or, at that epoch, formed by juxtaposition ofmore ancient popular songs). It is a great national monument wherein arecollected the legendary exploits of all the ancestors of the Germans, Huns, Goths, Burgundians and Franks especially. Portions possessadmirable dramatic qualities. The analogy with the _Iliad_ isremarkable, and the comparison may be made even from the literary pointof view. 

VARIOUS PRODUCTIONS. --Then come productions less national in type, imitations of French poems. _Song of Roland_, _Alexander_, songs ofthe _Cycle of Arthur_ or of the _Round Table_, imitations ofLatin poems: for instance, the _Aeneid_, etc. Here, too, was spreadthe _Story of Renard_, as in France, and even now the question isunsettled whether the first poem of _Renard_ is French or German. Religious and satiric poems were abundant in the thirteenth andfourteenth centuries, but what is highly characteristic is the largenumber of lyrical poets (Dietmar of Ast, Kürenberg, Frederic of Hausen, the Emperor Henry VI, etc. ) produced by the Middle Ages in Germany. Thispoetry was generally amorous and melancholy, sometimes full of thewarlike ardour which is found among our own troubadours. The poets who, as in France, wandered through Germany, from court to court and fromcastle to castle, called themselves minnesingers (singers of love). Theone who has remained most famous is Tannhäuser. A fantastic and touchinglegend has formed about his name. 

Germany, like France, possessed a popular drama, less prolific possibly, but very similar. Among the most ancient popular tragedies now known maybe cited _The Prophets of Christ_ and the _Game of Antichrist_, which are curious because of the juxtaposition of biblical acts andcontemporaneous events. Later came _The Miracles of the Virgin_, _The Wise and Foolish Virgins_, dramas more varied, with morenumerous characters, more elaborate mounting, and with the interestrelatively more concentrated. 

COMEDY. --Comedy, as a rule very gross in character, enjoyed wide esteem, especially in the fourteenth century. What were performed under the titleof _Carnival Games_ were generally nothing but _fables_ indialogue, domestic scenes, incidents in the market, interludes at thecross-roads. Here was the vulgar plebeian joy allowing itself fulllicence. The literary activity of Germany in the Middle Ages was at leastequal to that of the three literary western nations. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE MIDDLE AGES: ITALY

Troubadours of Southern Italy. Neapolitan and Sicilian Poets. Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio. 

THE TROUBADOURS. --The Italian literature of the Middle Ages is intimatelyassociated with the literature of the Troubadours in the south of France. To express the case more definitely, the literature styled "Provençal, "apart from mere differences of dialect, extended from the Limousine tothe Roman campagna, and French literature existed only in the northernand central provinces of France, the rest being Provençal-Italianliterature. The Italian Troubadours, by which I mean those born in Italy, who must at least be cited, are Malaspina, Lanfranc Cicala, BartolomeoZiorgi (of Venice), Bordello (of Mantua), etc. 

NAPLES AND SICILY. --Naples and Sicily, where were founded largeuniversities, were the seat of a purely Italian literature in thethirteenth century, thanks to the impetus of the Emperor Frederick II. Atthis seat were Peter of Vignes (_Petrus de Vineis_), who passes asinventor of the sonnet; Ciullo of Alcamo, author of the first knownItalian _canzone_, etc. The influence of Sicily on all Italy wassuch that for long in Italy all writing in verse was termed Sicilian. 

BOLOGNA; FLORENCE. --The literary centre then passed, that is in thethirteenth century, to Bologna and Florence. Among the celebrated Tuscansof this epoch was Guittone of Arezzo, mentioned by Dante and Petrarchwith more or less consideration; Jacopone of Todi, at once both mysticand buffoon, in whom it has been sought, in a manner somewhat flatteringto him, to trace a predecessor of Dante; Brunetto Latini, the authenticmaster of Dante, who was encyclopaedic, after a fashion, and whopublished, first in French, whilst he was in Paris, _The Treasure_, a compilation of the knowledge of his time, then, in Italian, _Tesoretto_, a collection of maxims drawn from his previous work, besides some poetry and translations from Latin. 

The fourteenth century, which for the French, Germans, and English wasthe last or even the last century but one of the Middle Ages, was for theItalians the first of the Renaissance. Two great names dominate thiscentury: Dante and Petrarch. 

DANTE: _THE DIVINE COMEDY_. --Dante, highly erudite, theologian, philosopher, profound Latin scholar, not ignorant of Greek, much involvedin the agitations of his age, exiled from his home, Florence, in thetumult of political discords, proscribed and a wanderer, coming as far asFrance, studied at the University of Paris, wrote "songs, " that is tosay, lyrical poetry gathered into the volume entitled _TheCanzoniere_, the _Vita Nuova_, which is also a collection oflyric efforts, though more philosophical, and finally _The DivineComedy_, which is a theological epic poem. _The Divine Comedy_ iscomposed of three parts: hell, purgatory, and heaven. Hell is composedof nine circles which contract as they approach the centre of the earth. There Dante placed the famous culprits of history and his own particularenemies. The most popular episodes of hell are Ugolino in the tower ofhunger devouring his dead children, Francesca of Rimini relating herguilty passions and their disastrous consequence, the meeting withSordello, the great Lord of Mantua, ever invincibly proud, looking "likethe lion when he reposes. " Purgatory is a cone of nine circles whichcontract as they rise to heaven. Heaven, finally, is composed ofnine globes superimposed on one another; over each of the first sevenpresides a planet, the eighth is the home of the fixed stars, and thelast is pure infinity, home of the Trinity and of the elect. The power ofgeneral imagination and of varied invention always renewed in style, andthe warmth of passion which throws life and heat into each part, haveassured Dante universal admiration. The community of literaturepre-eminently admires the hell; the eclectic have been compelled toassert and therefore to believe that the paradise is infinitely superior. 

PETRARCH. --Petrarch, a Florentine born in exile, brought up at Avignon, Carpentras, and Montpellier, during four fifths of his life thought onlyof being a great scholar, of writing in Latin, and of obtaining therepute of an excellent humanist. Hence his innumerable works in Latin. But when twenty-three he was deeply affected by love for a maiden ofAvignon, and he sang of her living and dead and still triumphant in gloryand eternity, and hence his poems in Italian, the _Rhymes_ and_Triumphs_. The sensitiveness of Petrarch was admirable; never didpure love, growing mystical and mingling with divine love, find accentsalike more profound and noble than came from this Platonist refined withItalian subtlety. Petrarchism became a fashion among the mediocre and aschool among these above the common. In the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies there were innumerable imitators of Petrarch in Italy, andlater still in France. It is impossible not to instance Lamartine as thelast in date. 

BOCCACCIO: _THE DECAMERON_. --Immediately after these two great mencame Boccaccio, born in Paris but of Italian parentage, who resided atNaples at the court of King Robert. He was a great admirer of Dante andPetrarch, and himself wrote several estimable poems, but, in despair nodoubt of attaining the height of his models and also to please the tasteof Mary, daughter of King Robert, he wrote the libertine tales which aregathered in the collection entitled _The Decameron_ and whichestablished his fame. He is one of the purest authors, as stylist, of allItalian literature, and may be regarded as the principle creator of prosein his own land. 

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY IN ITALY. --The fifteenth century, less great amongthe Italians than the fourteenth, yielded many wise men: MarsiglioFicino, Pico della Mirandola, Aurispa, etc. But omission must not bemade of poets such as Ange Politien, refined humanist, graceful lyrist;and the earliest of dramatic poets of any rank, such as Pulci andBojardo. In prose note Pandolfini, master and delineator of domesticlife, as was Xenophon in Greece, and Leonardo da Vinci, the great painterwho left a treatise on his art; nor must it be forgotten that Savonarolawas a remarkably fine orator. 

CHAPTER IX

THE MIDDLE AGES: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

Epic Poems: _Romanceros_. Didactic Books, Romances of Chivalry

COMMENCEMENTS OF SPANISH LITERATURE. --Known Spanish literature does notgo back beyond the twelfth century. Like that of the French it began witha _chanson de geste_, and if France has Roland, Spain has the Cid. The _Poem of the Cid_, or _The Song of the Cid_, dates from thecommencement of the thirteenth century; in rude but expressive languageit narrates the ripe years and old age of the famous captain. 

ALPHONSO X; JOHN MANUEL. --At the close of this century, Alphonso X, Kingof Castile, surnamed the Sage or the Wise, versed in all the knowledge ofhis time, produced, no doubt with collaborators, the universal chronicle, history mingled with legends, of all peoples on the earth, and the_Seven Parts_, a philosophical, moral, and legal encyclopaedia. Hisnephew, Don John Manuel, regent of Castile during the minority ofAlphonso XI, a very pure and erudite writer, collated the code of thekingdom in his _Book of the Child_, and the code of chivalry in his_Book of the Knight and Squire_, with a series of apologues in thevolume known under the title of _The Count Lucanor_. 

_THE ROMANCERO_. --Of the same period and going back to the commencementof the thirteenth century, if not earlier, is what is called the_Romancero_. The _Romancero_ is the collection of all thenational romances, which are more or less short but are never long epicpoems. All the romances relating to a hero form the _Romancero_ ofthat personage, and all the _Romanceros_ are called the Spanish_Romancero_. It is in the _Romancero_ of Rodriguez that we findthe youth of Cid as known to us, or approximately, for it is purifiedand spiritualised by ageing and, for example, Chimanes curses Rodriguezbut also asks for him in marriage: "Oh, king . . . Each day that shines, Isee him that slew my father parading on horseback and loosing his falconto my dovecot and with the blood of my doves has he stained my skirts andhe has sent me word he will cut the hem of my robe. . . . He who slew myfather, give him to me for equal; for he who did me so much harm I amconvinced will do me some good. " And the king said: "I have always heardsaid and now see that the feminine sex is most extraordinary. Until nowhath she asked of me justice against him and now she doth ask him of mein marriage. I will do it with a good will. I shall send him a letter, etc. . . . "

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. --The fifteenth century in Spain, as everywhereelse, was destitute of great works. In poetry it was the era of lovesongsand of the influence of Italian literature, which only later wasdecidedly happy. In prose may be found many chronicles extremely valuableto the historian, and some moral works such as the _Dialogue of theHappy Life_ of Lucena and, finally, the famous _Amadis desGaules_, an ancient chivalric romance of unknown origin, brought topublicity in that century by Montalvo. 

PORTUGUESE LITERATURE. --Portuguese literature, which is highlyinteresting though evolved in too restricted a circle, is, aboveall, epic and lyrical. The Portuguese lyrics almost exclusively dealtwith love; the epic poets celebrated a certain number of salientachievements in national history. It is only in the sixteenth centurythat a genuine expansion of Portuguese literature can be noted. 

CHAPTER X

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: FRANCE

First Portion of Sixteenth Century: Poets: Marot, Saint-Gelais; ProseWriters: Rabelais, Comines. Second Portion of Sixteenth Century: Poets:"The Pleiade"; Prose Writers: Amyot, Montaigne. First Portion ofSeventeenth Century: Intellectual and Brilliant Poets: Malherbe, Corneille. Great Prose Writers: Balzac, Descartes. Second Portion ofSeventeenth Century: Poets: Racine, Molière, Boileau, La Fontaine; ProseWriters: Bossuet, Pascal, La Bruyère, Fénelon, etc. 

THE RENAISSANCE OF LETTERS. --The sixteenth century was for France theepoch of the Renaissance of letters. What is called the Renaissance ofletters is the result, to each race, of the closest contact of theeducated people with ancient literature, contact which sometimesstrengthened the national vein, sometimes weakened it, according to thedivergent temperaments of these races. 

MAROT; SAINT-GELAIS. --The sixteenth century in France was ushered in byMarot and Saint-Gelais. Marot was a gracious, fluent, and satiric singer. He was infinitely witty without venom, or mannerism, or affectation; attimes he attained to a somewhat serious philosophic poesy and also toeloquence. Saint-Gelais, because he was most emphatically court-poet ofall those who have ever been court-poets, was placed by hiscontemporaries above Marot, and literary historians have left him for themost part in that position. The truth is that his work is worthless. Itwould be impossible, however, to rob him of the glory of having broughtthe sonnet from Italy, where he long abode in youth. 

COMINES. --In this first half of the sixteenth century must be notedComines, the historian of Louis XI, a political historian and ahistorical statesman, remarkably subtle in perceiving the characters andtemperaments of prominent individuals, as well as a writer possessingexactitude and limpidity rare in his generation. 

RABELAIS. --Francis Rabelais, in his two epic romances, _Gargantua_and _Pantagruel_, was erudite, capable of a certain philosophicwisdom which has been greatly exaggerated, but above all was picturesqueto one's heart's content, and possessed the art of telling a tale as wellas any one in the wide world. He has been called "the buffoon Homer, " andthe nickname may be legitimately granted to him. 

THE PLEIADE. --The second half of the sixteenth century was in allrespects the more remarkable. In poetry there was the Pleiade:that is, the true and complete "Renaissance, " although Marot had alreadybeen a good workman at its dawn. The Pleiade consisted of Ronsard, DuBellay, Pontus of Tyard, Remy Belleau, and others; that is, folk whowished to give to France in French the equivalent of what the classicshad produced in nobility and beauty. They did not succeed, but they hadthe honour of having undertaken the task, and they also, all said anddone, produced some fine things. 

RONSARD; DU BELLAY. --If the truth must be written, Ronsard created anepic poem which it is impossible to read, and some rather overpoweringodes after the Pindaric manner; but he wrote detached epic pieces which, though always a trifle artificial, possess real beauty, and some_odelettes_ which are enchanting in their grace and genuineness offeeling, as well as sonnets that are in all respects marvellous. Joachimdu Bellay, on his part, wrote sonnets which must be numbered among themost beautiful in the French tongue--the rest often had agreeableinspirations. 

DRAMATIC POETS. --Add to their group some dramatic poets who did not yetgrasp what constituted a living tragedy and who, even when they imitatedEuripides, belonged to the school of Seneca, but who knew how to write inverse, to make a discourse, and, occasionally, a gentle elegy. To mentiononly the chief, these were Jodelle, Robert Garnier, and Montchrestien. 

PROSE WRITERS: AMYOT; CALVIN. --In prose, in this second half of thesixteenth century, there were translators like Amyot, who set forthPlutarch in a limpid French full of ease and geniality, as well assomewhat careless. Religious writings such as those of Calvin, in a hardstyle and "dreary, " as Bossuet expressed it, exhibited vigour, power, andsobriety. Among political writers was the eloquent La Boëtie, the friendof Montaigne, who in his _Discourse on Voluntary Servitude_vindicated the rights of the people against _One_, that is themonarch. Among authors of _Memoirs_ were Montluc and Brantôme, picturesque in divergent manners, but both inquisitive, well-informed, very alert and furnishing important contributions to history. 

MORALISTS: DU VAIR. --Finally, there were moralists such as Du Vair, toolong forgotten, and Montaigne. Du Vair was an eloquent orator whoexhibited plenty of courage during the troubles of the League; he leftsome fine philosophical treatises: _The Moral Philosophy of the Stoics_, _On Constancy and Consolation in Public Calamities_, etc. 

MONTAIGNE. --Montaigne, less grave and stoical, a far better writer, andone of the two or three greatest masters of prose France ever produced, possessed excellent sense sharpened with wit and enriched with a charmingimagination. According to his humour--now stoic, next epicurean, thensceptic--always wise and refined and also always the sincere admirer ofgreatness of soul and of courage, he is the best of advisers and ofcompanions through life, and of him more than of anyone else it ought tobe said: "To have found pleasure in him is to have profited by him. " Thesole reproach could be that he wrote a little too much of himself, that is, in entering into personal details that could well have beenspared. 

COMMENCEMENT OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. --The first half of theseventeenth century in France was only the corollary of the sixteenth, though naturally with some distinctive personalities and with one, practically isolated, effort of reaction against that sixteenth century. At that period could be found writing men, like Agrippa d'Aubigné, whowere absolutely in the spirit of the previous century; d'Aubigné, amiable, gracious, and also fairly often witty, which is too frequentlyforgotten, was ardent, passionate, a rough and violent fighter moreparticularly in his _tragedies_, which are baldly crude satires, illumined with astonishingly beautiful passages fairly frequent inrecurrence, against the Catholics and their leaders. Others of verydifferent temperament displayed yet more than the poets of the sixteenthcentury that liberty, that fantasy, that disorder which werecharacteristic of the times of Ronsard. So far as poets were concerned, that generation must be regarded as entering on a first romanticism. Theophilus de Vian, a fine but over-prodigal poet, without ballast, didnot live long enough to grow wise and acquire self-mastery: Cyranode Bergerac was a brilliant madman, sometimes sparkling with wit andimagination, but often dirty and ridiculous. Saint-Amant possessed plentyof imagination and capacity for exquisite poetical feeling, but he lackedtaste and too often was puerile. Wiser than they, yet themselves verbose, long-winded, slow, and spun out, Desportes translated into French verseItalian poetry of the sixteenth century, often with very happy turns ofexpression, and Bertaut, melancholy and graceful, lacked brilliance evenif he possessed poetic emotion. 

REGNIER. --Regnier the satirist, pupil of Horace and Juvenal, also assumedthe mental attitude of the sixteenth century owing to his viridity, hiscrudity, his lack of avoidance of obscenity, even though he was a truepoet, vigorous, powerful, oratorical, and epigrammatical, as well as awitty and mordant caricaturist. 

PRÉCIEUX AND BURLESQUES. --Then succeeded the _précieux_ and the_burlesques_, who resembled each other, the _précieux_ seekingwit and believing that all literary art consisted in saying it did notmatter what in a dainty and unexpected fashion; the _burlesques_also sought wit but on a lower plane, desiring to be "droll, " buffoons, prone to cock-and-bull stories or crude pranks in thought, style, andparody. Voiture is the most brilliant representative of the_préieux_ and Scarron the most prominent of the _burlesques_. 

MALHERBE. --In the midst of this unrestrained literature one man attemptedto impose reason, accuracy of mind, taste, and conciseness. This wasMalherbe, who was also a powerful lyric poet, a stylist with an ear formelody. His influence was considerable, but forty years after his owntime; for it was the poets of 1660 who were formed of him and proclaimedthemselves his disciples. In his own day he had only Maynard and Racanas pupils, or rather as partisans, for their work but little resembledhis. 

THE THEATRE. --On the stage the first portion of the seventeenth century, certainly as far as 1636, was only the corollary of the sixteenth. Hardy, writing without method or rule, being in addition a very weak poet, presided in the theatre whilst Mairet, in imitation of the Italians andin imitation too of the bulk of the dramatists of the sixteenth century, essayed to establish formal tragedy, but without creating much effectbecause his talent was of an inferior description. 

At last Corneille arose and, after feeling his way a little, createdFrench tragedy; but as this was only in 1636, and as in the course of hislong career he came into the second half of the century, he will be dealtwith a little later. 

PROSE: BALZAC; DESCARTES. --In prose, the first half of the seventeenthcentury was fruitful in important works. Cardinal de Perron, who began asan amiable elegant poetaster, became a great orator and formidablecontroversialist. Guez de Balzac, a little lacking in ideas yet anextremely good writer, though but little detached from preciosity, asVoltaire observed, imparted harmony to his phrases both in his lettersand in his _Socrates a Christian_. Vaugelas arranged the code ofthe language founded on custom. Descartes, with whose philosophic ideaswe have here nothing to do, in his broad, ample periods, well deliveredand powerfully articulated, reproduced the Ciceronian phrase thoughwithout its rather weak grace, and in great measure formed the mouldwhence later was to flow the eloquence of Bossuet. The important works ofDescartes are his _Discourses on Method_, his _Meditation_, andhis _Treatise on the Passions_. 

THE GOLDEN AGE: CORNEILLE. --The second half of the seventeenth century isin all respects the golden age of French literature. Great poets andgreat prose writers were then crowded in serried ranks. To begin with thedramatic poets, who furnished the most vivid glory of the epoch, therewas Corneille, who, from 1636, with _The Cid_, was in full splendourand who before 1650 had produced his most beautiful works, _Cinna_, _TheHoraces_, _Polyeucte_, continued for twenty-four years after 1650 tofurnish the stage with dramas that often possessed many fine qualities, among which must be cited _Don Sancho of Aragon_, _Nicomedes_, _Oedipus_, _Sertorius_, _Sophonisba_, _Titus and Berenice_, _Psyche_ (with Molière), _Rodogune Heraclius_, _Pulcheria_. Corneille must be regarded as thereal creator of _all_ the French drama, because he wrote comedies, tragedies, operas, melodramas. It was therein, apart from his universalvirtuosity, that he more particularly made his mark, and in his best workhe was the delineator of the human will overcoming passions and, as itwere, intoxicated with this victory and his own power, so that he hasbecome a great advocate of energy and a prominent apostle of duty. 

RACINE. --Racine, altogether different, without being opposed to duty, loved to depict passions victorious over man and man the victim of hispassions and of the over-powering misfortunes therefrom resulting, thusfurnishing a moral lesson. He was a more penetrating psychologist thanCorneille, although the latter knew the human heart well, and he showedhimself infallibly wise in composition and dramatic disposition, as wellas an absolutely incomparable master of verse. His tragedies, especially_Andromache_, _Britannicus_, _Berenice_, _Bajazet_, _Phèdre_, and_Athalie_ will always enchant mankind. 

MOLIÈRE. --Molière who was admirably gifted to seize the ridiculous withits causes and consequences, very quick and penetrating in insight, armedwith somewhat narrow but solid common-sense calculated to please themiddle classes of all time, possessed prodigious comic humour, and whonever gave the spectator leisure to reflect or breathe--in short, a greatwriter although hasty and careless--created a whole répertoire of comedy(_The School of Women_, _Don Juan_, _Tartufe_, _The Misanthrope_, _Learned Ladies_) which left all known comedy far behind, whicheliminated all rivalry in his own time, knew eclipse only in the middleof the eighteenth century, and for the last hundred and forty years hasproved the delight of Europe. He remains the master of universal comedy. 

BOILEAU. --Boileau was only a man of good sense, of ability, and ofexcellent taste, who wrote verse industriously. This was not enough toconstitute a great poet but enough to make him what he was, a divertingand acute satirist, an agreeable moralist and critic in verse--which hismaster Horace had been so often--expert, dexterous, and possessing muchauthority. His _Poetic Art_ for long was the tables of the law ofParnassus, and even now can be read not only with pleasure but even withprofit. 

LA FONTAINE. --La Fontaine was one of the greatest poets of any epoch. Hehad a profound sentiment for nature, a fine and penetrating knowledge ofthe character of men he depicted under the names of animals; he was freeand fantastic as a philosopher but well instructed and sometimesprofound; he had a gentle and smiling sensibility capable at times ofmelancholy and also now and again of a delicious elegiac; above all, hewas endowed with incomparable artistic sense, which rendered him thesafest and most dexterous manipulator of verse, of rhythms, and ofmusical sonorities, who appeared in France prior to Victor Hugo. It ismuch more difficult to state what he lacked than to enumerate themultiple and miraculous gifts with which he was endowed. His completelack of morality or his ingenuous carelessness in this respect formed theonly subject for regret. 

SECONDARY ABILITY. --Near such great geniuses, it is only possible tomention those of secondary talent; but no compunction need be felt atalluding to Segrais, a graceful manufacturer of eclogues, and Benserade, who rhymed delightfully for masquerades and was capable, on occasions, ofbeing wittily but also tenderly elegiac. 

GREAT PROSE WRITERS. --The writers in prose of the second half of theseventeenth century are legion and but few fail to attain greatness. LaRochefoucauld, in his little volume of _Maxims_, enshrined thoughtsthat were often profound in a highly accurate and delicate setting. Cardinal de Retz narrated his tumultuous career in his _Memoirs_, which are strangely animated, vivid, and representative of what occurred. Arnauld and Nicole have explained their rigid Catholicism, which wasJansenism, in solid and luminous volumes; the latter, more especially, merits consideration and in his _Moral Essays_ proved an excellentwriter. Mezeray, conscientious, laborious, circumstantial as well ascapable writer, should be reckoned as the earliest French historian. Bourdaloue, sound logician and good moralist, from his pulpit as apreacher uttered discourses that were admirable, though too dogmaticallycomposed, and painted word-pictures that piously satirised the types andthe eccentrics of his day. Malebranche, reconsidering what Descartes hadthought and revitalising his conclusions, arranged in his _Researchafter Truth_ a complete system of spiritualist and idealisticphilosophy which he rendered clear, in spite of its depth, and extremely attractive owing to the merits of his powerful andfacile imagination and of his rich, copious, and elastic style, thatattained the happy mean between conversation and instruction. But fivewriters of the highest rank came into the perennial forefront, attractingand retaining general attention: Pascal, Bossuet, Mme. De Sévigné, La Bruyère, and Fénelon. 

PASCAL. --Pascal, a scholar and also by scientific educationmathematician, geometrician, physician, turned, not to letterswhich he scorned, but to the exposition of those religious ideas which atthe age of thirty-three were precious to him. To defend his friends theJansenists against their foes the Jesuits, he wrote _The ProvincialLetters_ (1656), which have often been regarded as the foremostmonument of classic French prose; such is not our view, but theycertainly form a masterpiece of argument, of dialectics, of irony, ofhumour, of eloquence, and are throughout couched in a magnificent style. Dying whilst still young, he left notes on various subjects, moreparticularly religion, philosophy, and morality, which have beencollected under the title of _Thoughts_ and are the product of agreat Christian philosopher, of a profound moralist, of a marvellouslyconcise orator, and also of a poet who lacked neither acute sensitivenessnor vast and imposing imagination. 

BOSSUET. --Bossuet is universally admitted to be the king of Frenchorators; all his life he preached with a serious, imposing, vast, copious, and sonorous eloquence, fed from recollections of Holy Writ andof the Fathers, being insistent, convincing, and persuasive. His fewfuneral orations (on Henrietta of France, Henrietta of England, thePrince de Condé) are prose poems of glory, grief, and piety. He wroteagainst all those he regarded as enemies of true religion (_Historyof Variations_, _Quarrels of Quietness_), controversial works sparklingwith irony and exalted eloquence. He traced in his _UniversalHistory_ the great design in all its stages of God towards humanityand the world. He knew all the resources of the French language and ofFrench style, and in his hands they were expanded. Despite his errors, which were those of his epoch, his date counts in the history of Franceas a great date, the date in which the religion to which he belongedreached its apogee and when the grand style of French prose was in itszenith. 

MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ. --Madame de Sévigné only wrote letters to her friends;but they were so witty, lively, picturesque, admirable in aptlyrecounting the anecdotes of her day and in depicting the scenes andthose concerned in them, written in a style so brisk and seductive, uniting the promise of 1630 with the harvest of 1670, that her work stillremains one of the greatest favourites with people of literary taste. 

She was the friend of M. De la Rochefoucauld, of Cardinal de Retz, and ofthat amiable, refined, and gentle Mme. De la Fayette, whose novel, _ThePrincess of Cleves_, is still read with interest and emotion. 

LA BRUYÈRE. --La Bruyère translated and continued Theophrastus; he was amoralist, or rather a depicter of morals. He described the court, thetown, and (very rarely) the village and the country. He was on thelookout for fools in order to be their scourge. He painted, or, betterstill, he engraved in an incisive way that was sharp, like aqua-fortis. Almost invariably bitter to an extreme, he sometimes had flashes of quiteunexpected and very singular sensibility which make him beloved. Somewhatin imitation of La Rochefoucauld, but more particularly in conformitywith his own nature, he developed a brief, concise, brusque style whichbecame that of the moralist and even of the general author for the nextfifty years, a style which was that of Montesquieu and Voltaire, andsuperseded the broad, sustained, balanced, harmonious, and measured styleof the majority of the writers of the eighteenth century. In the field ofridicule, wherein he sowed copiously, more so even than Molière, thecomic poets of the eighteenth century came to glean copiously, which didthem less credit (for it is better to observe than to read) than itconferred on the wise and ingenious author of the _Characters_. 

FÉNELON. --Fénelon, extremely individual and original, having on everysubject ideas of his own which were sometimes daring, often practical, always generous and noble, was a preacher like Bossuet; also likeBossuet, he was a dexterous, skilled, and formidable controversialist, whilst, for the instruction of the Duke of Burgundy, which had beenconfided to him, he became a fabulist, an author of dialogues, in somedegree a romancer or epic poet in prose in his famous _Telemachus_, overadmired, then overdepreciated, and which, despite weaknesses, remainsreplete with strength and dazzling brilliance. Nowadays there is a markedreturn to this prince of the Church and of literature, whose brain wascomplex and even complicated, but whose heart was quite pure and hisreasoning on a high level. 

CHAPTER XI

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: ENGLAND

Dramatists: Marlowe, Shakespeare. Prose Writers: Sidney, Francis Bacon, etc. Epic Poet: Milton. Comic Poets. 

ELIZABETHAN AGE: SPENSER. --In England the Elizabethan Age is the periodextending from the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth to the end ofher successor, James I; that is, from 1558 to 1625. This was the goldenage of English literature: the epoch in which, awakened or excited by theRenaissance, her genius gave forth all its development in fruits thatwere marvellous. 

First, there was Spenser, alike impregnated with the Italian Renaissanceand gifted with the slightly fantastic imagination of his own countrymen, who wrote eclogues, in his _Shepheard's Calender_, in imitation ofTheocritus and Virgil as well as of the Italians of the sixteenthcentury, and who gave charming descriptions in his _Faerie Queene_. 

Next came Sidney, the sonnetist, at once passionate and precious, andthen that highest glory of this glorious period, the dramatic poets. 

THE STAGE: MARLOWE. --As in France, the English stage in the Middle Ageshad been devoted to the performance of mysteries (under the name of_miracles_), later of moralities. As in France, tragedy, strictlyspeaking, was constituted in the sixteenth century. Towards its closeappeared Marlowe, a very great genius, still rugged but withextraordinary power, more especially lyrical. His great works are_Doctor Faustus_ and _Edward II_. 

SHAKESPEARE. --Then (at the same time as the rest, for they are of aboutthe same age, though Marlowe appeared the earlier) came WilliamShakespeare, who is perhaps the greatest known dramatic poet. His immenseoutput, which includes plays carelessly put together and, one may ventureto say, negligibly, also contains many masterpieces: _Othello_, _Romeoand Juliet_, _Macbeth_, _Hamlet_, _The Taming of the Shrew_, _The MerryWives of Windsor_, _As You Like It_, and _The Tempest_. The _types_ andpersonages of Shakespeare, which have remained celebrated and are stilldaily cited in human intercourse, include Othello, that tragic figure ofjealousy; Romeo and Juliet, the young lovers separated by the feuds oftheir families but united in death; Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, theambitious criminals; Hamlet, the young man with a great mind and a greatheart but with a feeble will which collapses under too heavy a task andcomes to the verge of insanity; Cordelia, the English Antigone, thedevoted daughter of the proscribed King Lear; Falstaff, glutton, coward, diverting and gay, a kind of Anglo-Saxon Panurge. A whole dramaticliterature has come from Shakespeare. To France he was introduced byVoltaire and then scorned by him because he had succeeded only too wellin popularising him; subsequently he was exalted, praised to hyperbole, and imitated beyond discretion by the romantics. In addition to hisdramatic works, Shakespeare left _Sonnets_, some of which are obscure, but the majority are perfect. 

BEN JONSON. --Ben Jonson, classical, exact, pretty faithful imitator ofthe writers of antiquity, interested in unusual characters and customs, gifted with a ready and lively imagination in both comedy and tragedylike Shakespeare, succeeded especially in comedy (_Every Man in hisHumour_, _The Silent Woman_, etc. ). Beaumont and Fletcher, who wrote incollaboration, are full of elevation, of delicacy and grace expressed ina style which is regarded by their fellow-countrymen as exceptionallybeautiful. 

PROSE WRITERS: LYLY; SIDNEY; BACON; BURTON. --In prose this amazingperiod was equally productive. Lyly, who corresponds approximately to theFrench Voiture, created _euphemism_: that is, witty preciosity. Sidney, in his _Arcadia_ furnished a curious example of the chivalric romance. Further in his _Defence of Poesie_, he founded literary criticism. Francis Bacon, historian, moralist, philosopher, perhaps collaboratorwith Shakespeare, has a place equally allocated to him in a history ofliterature as in a history of philosophical ideas. Robert Burton, moralist or rather _Meditator_, who gave himself the pseudonym ofDemocritus Junior because he was consumed with sadness, left a greatwork, but one in which there are many quotations, called _The Anatomy ofMelancholy_. There is much analogy between him and the French Sénancour. Sterne, without acknowledgment, profusely pilfered from him. He isthoroughly English. He did not create melancholy but he greatlycontributed to it and made a specialty of it. Despite his pranks andwhimsicality, he possessed high literary merit. 

POETRY: WALLER. --The English seventeenth century, strictly speaking, virtually commencing about 1625, was inferior to the sixteenth, that hasjust been considered, which is easily explained by the civil warsdistracting England at this period. In poetry, on the one hand, may benoticed the softened and pleasing Epicureans, of which the most prominentrepresentative was Waller, a witty man of the world, who dwelt long inFrance, and was a friend of Saint-Évremond (who himself spent a portionof his life in England). Waller made a very fine eulogy of his cousinCromwell, later another of Charles II, and was told by the latter, "Thisis not so good as that on Cromwell, " whereupon he replied, "Sire, youknow that poets always succeed better in fiction than in fact. " Here wasa man of much wit. 

HERBERT; HABINGTON. --Also must be remarked the austere and mystical suchas George Herbert, with his _Temple_, a collection of religious andmelancholy poems, and like Habington, sad and gloomy even as far as thethirst for dissolution, analogous to the modern Schopenhauer: "My God, ifit be Thy supreme decree, if Thou wilt that this moment be the lastwherein I breathe this air, my heart obeys, happy to retire far from thefalse favours of the great, from betrayals where the just are preyedupon. . . . "

DRAMATIC POETS. --Let the estimable dramatic poets be alluded to. Davenant, perhaps a son of Shakespeare; Otway, the illustrious author of_Venice Preserved_ and of many adaptations from the French (_Titusand Berenice_, the _Tricks of Scapin_, etc. ); Dryden, declamatory, emphatic, but admirably gifted with dramatic genius, author of _TheVirgin Queen_, _All for Love_ (Cleopatra), _Don Sebastian_, was alwayshesitating between the influence of Shakespeare and that of the French, over-inclined, too, to licentious scenes but pathetic and eloquent. 

MILTON. --Quite apart arose Milton, the imperishable author of _ParadiseLost_, the type and model of the religious epic permeated, in fact, withprofound and ardent religious feeling, but also possessing veryremarkable grandeur and philosophical breadth. Milton became a secondBible to the people to whom the Bible was the inevitable and essentialdaily study. To _Paradise Lost_, Milton added the inferior _ParadiseRegained_ and the poem of _Samson_. Apart from his great religious poems, Milton wrote Latin poems (especially in his youth) which are extremelyagreeable, and also works in prose, generally in relation to polemicalpolitics, which came from a vigorous and exalted mind. Milton, from theaspect of his prodigious productiveness and his varied life, dividedbetween literature and the intellectual battles of his times, iscomparable to Voltaire, reservation being made for his high moralcharacter, wherein no comparison can be entertained with the Frenchsatirist. He did himself full justice. Having become blind, he wrote:

 "Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear, To outward view, of blemish or of spot, Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot; Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied In Liberty's defence, my noble task, Of which all Europe rings from side to side. This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask Content, though blind, had I no better guide. "

NOTABLE PROSE WRITERS. --In prose must be noted, on the austere side, George Fox, founder of the sect of Quakers, impassioned and powerfulpopular orator, author of the _Book of Martyrs_; John Bunyan, anobstinate ascetic, author of _Grace Abounding_, a kind of edifyingautobiography, and of _The Pilgrim's Progress_, which became one of thevolumes of edification and of spiritual edification to the emigrantfounders of the United States of America; on the side of the Libertines, Wycherley, who, thoroughly perceiving the moral lowness, fairly wellconcealed, which lies at the source of Molière, carried this Gallic veinto an extreme in shameless imitations of _The School for Women_and _The Misanthrope_ (_The Country Wife_ and _The Plain Dealer_);delightful Congreve, a far more amusing companion--witty, spiritual, sardonic, writing excellently, knowing how to create a type and charminghis contemporaries whilst not failing to write for posterity in his_Old Bachelor_, _Love for Love_, and _Way of the World_. 

NEWTON; LOCKE. --It must not be forgotten that at this epoch Newton andLocke, the one belonging more to the history of science and the other tothe history of philosophy, both wrote in a manner entirely commensuratewith their genius. 

CHAPTER XII

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: GERMANY

Luther, Zwingli, Albert Dürer, Leibnitz, Gottsched

NO RENAISSANCE. --The great originality of Germany from the literary pointof view--perhaps, too, from others--is that she _had no renaissance_, nocontact, at all events close, with classic antiquity. Her temperamentwas no doubt hostile; the Reformation, that is, the impassioned adoptionof a primitive unadulterated Christianity conservative and directlyopposed to antiquity whether pagan or philosophical, added to therepugnance. However that may be, the fact remains: Germany enjoyed norenaissance. 

LUTHER. --Also in the sixteenth century in Germany, as in France in thefourteenth century, there was only popular poetry, and all the prose isGerman, all reformist, all moralising, and has little or practically noecho of antiquity. Luther, by his translation of the Bible into thevulgar tongue, by his _prefaces_ to each book of the Bible, in hispolemical writings (_The Papacy and its Members_, _The Papacy Elevated atRome by the Devil_, etc. ), by his _Sermons and Letters_, gave to Teutonicthought a direction which long endured, and to Teutonic prose a solidity, purity, sobriety, and vigour which exercised an immense influence onhuman minds. 

THE REFORMERS. --Following Luther, Zwingli, Hutten, Eberling, Melanchthon(but in Latin), Erasmus (most frequently in Latin but sometimes inFrench) spread the new doctrine or doctrines in relation thereto. 

ERASMUS; ALBERT DÜRER; GOTTSCHED. --An exception must be made aboutErasmus in what has just been observed. With a very unfettered mind, often as much in opposition to the side of Luther as to the side of Rome, and also prone to attack the pure humanists who styled themselvesCiceronians, Erasmus was a humanist, an impassioned student of ancientletters, so that he has one foot in the Renaissance and one in reform, and withal possessed a very original brain, and was, from every aspect, "ultra-modern. "

Albert Dürer must also be cited: mathematician, architect, painter, yetbelonging to our subject by his _four books on the human proportion_wherein he shows, in chastened and precise style, that he himself isnothing less than the earliest founder of Teutonic æstheticism. 

The seventeenth century--extending it, as is reasonable enough, up to theregion of 1730--is almost exclusively the era of French influence and alittle, if desired, of Italian influence. The critic Gottsched (_PoeticArt, Grammar, Eloquence_) maintained the excellence of French literatureand the necessity of drawing inspiration from it with an energy ofconviction which drew on him the hatred of the succeeding generation. 

LEIBNITZ. --German poetry of his period, possessing neither originalitynor power, could only interest the erudite and the searchers. The domainof prose is more enthralling. Leibnitz, who wrote in Latin and French, and even in German, is pre-eminently the great thinker he is reputedto be; but though he never possessed nor even pretended to possessoriginality in style, he is nevertheless highly esteemed for the purity, limpidity, and facility of his language. 

CHAPTER XIII

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: ITALY

Poets: Ariosto, Tasso, Guarini, Folengo, Marini, etc. Prose Writers:Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Davila. 

THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. --Italy, after Dante and Petrarch, possessedliterary strength and much literary glory in the sixteenth century. She produced an admirable pleiad of poets and prose writers of highmerit. These were Ariosto, Tasso, Berni, Sannazaro, Machiavelli, Bandello, Guicciardini. Below them were a hundred distinguished writers, among which must be cited Aretino, Folengo, Bembo, Baldi, Tansillo, Dolce, Benvenuto Cellini, Hannibal Caro, and Guarini. 

ARIOSTO. --Ariosto wrote _Orlando Furioso_, which is not the epic inparody, as has been too often observed, but the gay and joyous epopee ofOrlando and his companions. The principal characters are Orlando, Charlemagne, Renaud, Agramant, Ferragus, Angelica, Bradamante, Marphisa. The tone is extremely varied and the author is in turns joyous, satirical, pathetic, melancholy, and even tragical. Ariosto is thesuperlative poet of fantastic imagination combined with a foundation ofgood sense, reason, and benevolence. Goethe has said of him very aptly:"From a cloud of gold wisdom sometimes thunders sublime sentences, whilstto a harmonious lute, folly seems to riot in savage digressions yet allthe while maintains a perfect measure. " Ariosto was well read in theclassics, but fundamentally his master was Homer. 

TASSO. --Torquato Tasso, whose life was characterised by a thousand trialsand who was long the victim of a mental malady, wrote a poem on thecrusade of Godfrey de Bouillon. The poem is full of the supernatural;the chief characters are Renaud, Tancred, the enchantress Armida, Clorinda. The inspiration of Tasso is specially mystic and lyrical;his facility for description is delicious. The repute of _JerusalemDelivered_ in the seventeenth century was immense, and all theliteratures of Europe have innumerable references to the personages andepisodes of the poem. In Italy there were fervid partisans of thesuperiority of Tasso over Ariosto or of Ariosto over Tasso, and manyduels on the subject, the most bellicose being, as always happens, between those who had read neither. 

BERNI. --Berni, like Ariosto, was half burlesque in the diverting portionsof his works. He wrote satires which were often virulent, paradoxes suchas the eulogy of the plague and of famine, and an _Amorous Orlando_which is quite agreeable. The Bernesque type, that is, the humoristic, was created by him and bears his name. 

SANNAZARO. --Sannazaro wrote both in Latin and Italian. His chief claim tofame lies in his _Arcadia_, an idyllic poem of bucolic sentiment, destined to evoke thousands of imitations. He also produced eclogues andsonnets in Italian which give sufficient grounds for regarding him as oneof the chief masters of that language. 

MACHIAVELLI. --Great thinker, great politician, great moral philosopher, Machiavelli possessed one of the most powerful minds ever known. He wrote_The Prince_, _Discourses upon Livius_, an _Art of War_, diplomaticletters and reports, for he was at one time secretary to the FlorentineRepublic, a _History of Florence_, a comedy (_The Mandrake_), romances and tales. _The Prince_ is a treatise of the art of acquiringand preserving power by all possible means and more particularly byintelligent and discreet crime. Machiavelli emphasised the separation, attimes relative, at times absolute, which exists between politics andmorals. His _Discourses upon Livius_ are full of sense, penetration, andprofundity; his light works show a singular dexterity of thought unitedto a fundamental grossness which it would be impossible to misunderstandor excuse. 

BANDELLO. --Bandello is the author of novels in the vein of those ofBoccaccio or of Brantôme. His voluntary or spontaneous originalityconsists in mixing licentious tales with sentences and maxims which aremost austere and moral. He also wrote elegiac odes that were highlyesteemed. His very pure style is considered in Italy to be strictlyclassical. 

GUICCIARDINI. --Guicciardini wrote with infinite patience, severeconscientiousness, and imperturbable frigidity in a style that waspure, though somewhat prolix, that _History of Florence_, virtually ahistory of Italy, which from its first appearance was hailed as a classicand has remained one. His history is altogether that of a statesman; hepassed his life among prominent public affairs, being Governor of Modena, Parma, and Bologna, a diplomatist involved in the most importantnegotiations; this historian is himself a historical personage. 

FOLENGO. --Folengo wrote a macaronic poem: that is to say, one in whichLatin and Italian were mixed, called _Coccacius_ (which must beremembered because when translated into French it became the earliestmodel for Rabelais), as well as _Orlandini_ (childhood of Orlando), whichis amusing. Other serious works did not merit serious consideration. 

ARETINO. --Aretino was a satirist and a poet so fundamentally licentiousthat he has remained the type of infamous author. He wrote comedies(_The Courtesan_, _The Marshal_, _The Philosopher_, _The Hypocrite_), intimate letters that are extremely interesting for the study of thecustoms of his day, religious and edifying books, replete with talent ifnot with sincerity, as well as an innumerable mass of satires, pamphlets, statements, diatribes which caused all the princes of his day to tremble, and through making them tremble also brought gold into the coffers ofAretino; he had raised blackmail to the height of a literary department. 

BEMBO; BALDI. --Cardinal Bembo, a devout Ciceronian to the verge offanaticism, wrote more especially in Latin, but left Italian poems ofmuch elegance and charm; he ranks among the most brilliantrepresentatives of the Italian Renaissance. 

Baldi, a very widely versed scholar, sought relaxation from his eruditionin writing _eclogues_, _moral poems_, and a very curious didactic poem on_navigation_. 

TANSILLO; DOLCE. --Tansillo, a very fertile poet, composed a ratherlicentious poem entitled _The Vintager_, and a religious poem called_The Tears of St. Peter_ (which the younger Malherbe thought so beautifulthat he partially translated it), _The Rustic Prophet_ and _TheNurse_, wherein he showed himself the pupil of Tasso, comedies, abucolic drama, etc. 

Dolce, not less prolific, produced five epic poems of which the best is_The Childhood of Orlando_, many comedies, for the most part imitationsof Plautus, tragedies after Euripides and Seneca, and then one whichseems to have been original and was the celebrated _Mariamna_, so oftenimitated in French. He was also an indefatigable translator of Horace, Cicero, Philostrates, etc. 

BENVENUTO CELLINI. --The great sculptor and chaser, Benvenuto Cellini, belongs to literary history because of his _Treatise on Goldsmithing andSculpture_ and his admirable _Memoirs_, which are certainly in partfictitious, but are a literary work of the foremost rank. 

HANNIBAL CARO; GUARINI. --Hannibal Caro, by his _poems_, his_letters_, his literary criticism, his comedy, _The Beggars_, and hismetrical translation of the _Aeneid_, acquired high rank in the judgmentboth of Italy and Europe. 

Guarini, the friend of Tasso, whom he helped in the labour of revisingand correcting _Jerusalem Delivered_, was unquestionably his pupil. Tassohaving written a bucolic poem, _Aminta_, Guarini wrote a bucolic poem, _The Faithful Shepherd_, which has been one of the greatest literarysuccesses ever known. It was a kind of irregular drama mingled withsongs and dances, highly varied, poetic, pathetic sometimes in a ratherinsipid way. All the _pastorals_, whether French or Italian, and laterthe opera itself, can be traced to Guarini, or at least the taste for theeclogue may be derived from the dramas Guarini originated. This was a manwhose influence has been considerable not only on literature, but also onmanners, customs, and morals. 

DECADENCE OF LITERATURE. --In the seventeenth century Italian literatureindisputably was in decadence. In verse more especially, but also inprose, it was the period of ability without depth and even withoutfoundation, of elegant and affected verbiage or burlesque lacking alikein power, thought, and passion. Marini loomed large with his _Adonis_, aningenious mythological epic, sometimes brilliant but also lame, sometimesfull of points, but also with trifles. Great as was his reputation inItaly, it was perhaps surpassed in France, where he was welcomed andflattered by Marie de' Medici and hyperbolically praised by Voiture, Balzac, Scudéry, etc. 

SALVATOR ROSA; TASSONI; MAFFEI. --The great painter Salvator Rosa devotedhimself hardly less to literature; he left lyrical poems and particularlysatires which are far from lacking spirit, though often destitute oftaste. Satiric, too, was the paradoxical Tassoni, who scoffed atPetrarch, and who in his _Thoughts_, long prior to J. J. Rousseau, was thefirst, perhaps (but who knows?), to maintain that literature is highlyprejudicial to society and humanity, and who achieved fame by his _Rapeof the Bucket_: that is, by a burlesque poem on the quarrel betweenthe Bolognese and the inhabitants of Modena about a bucket. 

Maffei (intruding somewhat on the eighteenth century), good scholar andrespected historian, produced in 1714 his _Merope_, which was anexcellent tragedy, as Voltaire well knew and also testified. 

HISTORIANS AND CRITICS. --In prose there are none to point out in theeighteenth century in Italy except historians and critics. Amongthe historians must be noted Davila, who spent his youth in France nearCatherine de' Medici, served in the French armies, and on his return toPadua devoted his old age to history. He wrote a _History of the CivilWars in France_ which was highly esteemed, and which Fénelon recollectedwhen writing his _Letter on the Pursuits of the French Academy_. Theforegoing are what must be mentioned as notable manifestations ofliterary activity in Italy during the seventeenth century, but let itnot be forgotten that the scientific activity of the period wasmagnificent, and that it was the century of Galileo, of Torricelli; ofthe _four_ Cassini, as well as of so many others who were praised, asthey deserved to be, in the _Eulogies of the Learned_ of Fontenelle. 

CHAPTER XIV

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

Poets: Quevedo, Gongora, Lope de Vega, Ercilla, Calderon, Rojas, etc. Prose Writers: Montemayor, Cervantes, etc. Portugal: De Camoens, etc. TheStage. 

POETRY: QUEVERO; GONGORA. --The sixteenth century and the first half atleast of the seventeenth century were the golden age of both Spanish andPortuguese literature. In poetry Quevedo is the first to be noticed, andhe is also notable in prose. Born at Madrid, but compelled by theconsequences of his youthful follies to take refuge in Sicily, then backin Spain and either at the height of his fortune near the Duke ofOlivares or else pursued, imprisoned, and tortured by that minister, hepossessed facility and force which were alike extraordinary. His poems, which are most satirical, revealed a glow and a freshness that were veryremarkable. 

Gongora, like Lyly in England and Marini in Italy, enjoyed the fame offounding a bad school. It was _Gongorism:_ that is, the art of writingnot to make oneself read, which could only suit lawyers, orators, critics, and scientists, but the art of writing to cause one's idea onlyto be discovered after many efforts, or even so as to prevent its beingdiscovered at all. _Gongorism_ belongs to every epoch, and in each epochis the means of scaring away the crowd, of obtaining a small band ofenthusiastic admirers, and of being able to scorn the suffrage of themultitude. Gongora, both in Spain and in France, found devoted admirersand imitators. 

LOPE DE VEGA. --Lope de Vega was one of the greatest of the world's poets, although he was intelligible. Prodigiously fertile, which is notnecessarily a sign of mediocrity, he published some romances in prose(_Dorothea Arcadia_), some novels, epic or historic poems (_Circe, _Shepherds of Bethlehem_, Jerusalem Conquered_, _The Beauty of Angelica_, _The Pilgrim in his Land_, _The White Rose_, _The Tragic Crown_, of whichMary Stuart is the heroine, _The Laurel of Apollo_, etc. ), burlesque andsatirical poems, and dramatic poems the number of which exceed eighteenhundred. In this mass of production may be discerned comedies of manners, comedies of intrigue, pastorals, historical comedies (with characterswhose names are known in history), classical and religious tragedies, mythological, philosophical, and hagiological comedies. Despite thesedistinctions, which are useful as a guide in this throng, all thedramatic work of Lope de Vega is that of imagination which seems to owelittle to practical observation and is valuable through happy invention, dexterous composition, and the charming fertility and variety of ideas inthe details. The dramatic work of Lope de Vega (as yet incompletelypublished and which probably never will be published in its entirety) wasa vast mine wherein quarried not only all the dramatic authors but allthe romancists and novelists of Europe. This prodigious producer, whowrote millions of verses, is the Homer of Spain and more fertile thanHomer, whilst also a Homer as to whose existence there is no doubt. 

ERCILLA. --Alonso de Ercilla created a peculiar species, that ofmemorialist epic poems. He was a man concerned in important events, whotook daily notes and subsequently, or even concurrently, put them intoverse. Thus Ercilla made his _Araucana_: that is, the poem of theexpedition against the Araucanians in Chili, or rather he thus wrote thefirst (and best) of the three parts; later, desirous of rising to epicheights, he had resort to the contrivances and conventional traditionalornaments of this type of work and became dull, without entirely losingall his skill. "This poem is more savage than the nations which form itstheme, " said Voltaire in a pretty phrase which was somewhat hyperbolical. The _Araucana_ is agreeably savage in its first part without beingferocious and fastidiously civilised in the sequels without beingcontemptible. 

MENDOZA. --Hurtado de Mendoza must be regarded--that proud, gloomy, bellicose and haughty minister of Charles V--because he was the earliestof the picaresque romancists. The picaresque method consisted indelineating the habits of outcasts, bohemians, spongers, swindlers, andvagrants. It lasted for about three quarters of a century. To this classbelonged _Guzmar of Alfargue_, by Mateo Aleman; _Marco of Obregon_, byEspinel; _The Devil on Two Sticks_, by Guevara; and somewhat, in France, the _Gil Bias_ of Le Sage. Now the prototype of all these was _TheLazarillo of Tormes_, by Hurtado de Mendoza. 

GUEVARA. --A moment's heed must be paid to the amiable Antonio de Guevara, an insinuating moralist whose _Familiar Letters_ and _Dial of Princes_, though rather affectedly grave, contain interesting passages whichcommend the author to readers. He is more particularly interesting toFrenchmen because it was from him La Fontaine borrowed his _Countrymenof the Danube_, attributing it to Marcus Aurelius (which led to muchconfusion), because the principal personage in _The Dial of Princes_ isone Marcus Aurelius, who is discreetly intended for Charles V. In spiteof what Taine wrote, though his criticisms in detail were accurate, La Fontaine followed pretty closely the fine and highly original wordingof Guevara. 

THE ROMANCE. --The Spanish romance was at its zenith in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries. It had a legion of authors, but here the principalonly can be mentioned. Montemayor, who lived at the close of thesixteenth century and led an adventurous existence, wrote the _Diana inLove_, which became celebrated in every country under the title of"_Diana_ of Montemayor. " It is a mythological, bucolic, and magicalromance, entirely lacking in order, being wholly fantastical, sometimescruelly dull, sometimes graceful, affecting, seductive, and pathetic, always ridiculously romantic. Its vogue was considerable in Spain, France, and Italy. The _Astrea_ of Honoré d'Urfé proceeds in part fromit, but is more sensible and more restrained. 

QUEVEDO. --Here Quevedo is again found, now as prose writer and in this noworse than as poet. He was prolific in romances or satirical fantasies, in social reveries wherein contemporary society is not spared and Juvenalis often suggested. Finally, he put forth all his powers, which wereconsiderable, in his great romance, _Don Pablo of Segovia_, which, twentyyears ago, would have been called naturalist. Quevedo obviously was anobserver, possessed psychological penetration or, at least, the wisdom ofthe moralist; but above all, his imagination was curiously original, heinvented, on an apparently true foundation, adventures which were almostprobable and were diverting, burlesque, or possessed a bitter flavour. His was one of the most original brains in Spain, which has abounded inmental originalities. 

CERVANTES. --Montesquieu has said of the Spaniards: "They have only onegood book, the one which mocks at all the others. " Nothing could be morewitty nor more unjust; but it is true that the greatest Spanish book isthat in which the author does mock at many other Spanish books. Cervanteswrote his _Don Quixote_ to ridicule the romances of chivalry which in hisland were a craze among the townsfolk and smaller aristocraticlandowners, but he wrote in no spirit of animosity and even reserved forhis comic hero, that is, for his victim, a discreet sympathy which hemade his reader share. A hero of chivalry himself, warrior withindomitable courage, thrice wounded at the battle of Lepanto, where helost an arm, seven years in captivity in Algiers, on his return to Spainhe became involved in adventures which again consigned him to prisonbefore he at length attained success, if not fortune, with _Don Quixote_. _Don Quixote_ is a realistic romance traversed by a frenzied idealist:here are the manners of the populace, of innkeepers, muleteers, galley-slaves, monks, petty traders, peasants, and amid them passes a manwho views the entire world as a romance and who believes he finds romanceat every turn of his road. This perpetual contrast is, first, effectiveand supremely artistic in itself, then is of a reality superior to thatof any realism, since it is the complete life of humanity which is thuspainted and penetrated to its very foundations and shown in all itsaspects. There are two portions to this romance, and they are constantlynear each other and, as it were, interlaced; namely, the episodes and theconversations. The episodes, comic incidents, humorous or sentimentaladventures are of infinite variety and display incredible imagination;the conversations between Don Quixote and his faithful Sancho representthe two tendencies of the human mind to recognise on the one side, thegoodness, generosity, devotion, the spirit of sacrifice, and theillusions; on the other side, common sense, the sense of reality, thesense of the just mean and, as it were, the proverbial reason, withoutmalice or bitterness. This masterpiece is perhaps the one for whichwould have had to be invented the epithet of _inexhaustible_. 

Apart from his immortal romance, Cervantes wrote novels, romances, sonnets, and also tried the drama, at which he did not succeed. The wholeworld, literally, was infatuated with _Don Quixote_, and, despite allchanges of taste, it has never ceased to excite the admiration of all whoread. 

THE DRAMA: FERDINAND DE ROJAS. --The drama, even apart from Lope de Vega, of whom we have written, was most brilliant in Spain during these twocenturies. The Spanish stage was very characteristic, very original amongall drama in that, more than the ancient drama, more than in the plays ofShakespeare himself, it was essentially lyrical, or, to express the factmore clearly, it was based on a continual mixture of the lyric and thedramatic; also it nearly always laid stress on the sentiment and thesusceptibility of honour, "the point of honour, " as it was called, andupon its laws, which were severe, tyrannical, and even cruel. These twoprincipal characteristics gave it a distinct aspect differing from allthe other European theatres. Without going back to the confused originsand without expressing much interest in the Spanish drama until thereligious dramas of the _autos sacramentales_(which continued theircareer until the seventeenth century), it is necessary, first, to note, at the close of the fifteenth century, the celebrated _Celestine_ ofFerdinand de Rojas, a spirited work, unmeasured, enormous, unequal, attimes profoundly licentious, at times attaining a great height of moralexaltation, and also at times farcical and at others deeply pathetic. _Celestine_ was translated several times in various languages, andespecially in Italy and France was as much appreciated as in Spain. 

CALDERON. --In the seventeenth century (after Lope de Vega) came Calderon. Almost as prolific as Lope, author of at least two hundred plays, someauthorities say a thousand, Calderon was first prodigiously inventive, then he was dogmatic, moralising, almost a preacher. Whether in hisreligious plays, in his love dramas, in his cap and sword tragedies, evenin his comedies and highly complicated intrigues, the great sentimentsof the Spanish soul--honour, faith, the inviolability of the oath, loyalty, fidelity, the spirit of great adventures--broaden, animateand elevate the whole work. With Calderon the titles are alwaysindicative of the subject. His most celebrated plays are: _In this LifeAll Is Truth and Falsehood_, _Life is a Dream_, _The Devotion to theCross_, _The Lady before All_, _The Mayor of Zamalea_, _Love afterDeath_, _The Physician of his Own Honour_. 

ALARCON. --Alarcon comes nearer to us owing to his regular and almostclassic compositions. Nevertheless he was a man of imagination and humourwith an adequate dramatic force. His tragedies must be mentioned: _WhatIs Worth Much Costs Much_, _Cruelty through Honour_, _The Master ofStars_; his comedies, _The Examination of Husbands_, and that charming_The Truth Suspected_, from which Corneille derived _The Liar_. 

TIRSO DE MOLINA. --Tirso de Molina was another prodigy of dramaticliterature, and his fellow-countrymen assert that he wrote three hundreddramas, of which sixty-five are in existence. All Spanish dramatistswere unequal, he more especially; he passed from grossness to sublimitywith surprising facility and ease. He particularly delighted iningeniously complicated intrigue, in surprises, and in unexpectedtheatrical touches. Yet _The Condemned in Doubt_ is a sort of moralepopee, adapted to the stage, possessing real beauty and not withoutdepth. His most celebrated drama, in so far as it has aroused direct orindirect imitations, and owing to the type he was the first to suggest, was _The Jester of Seville_: that is, Don Juan. All European literatures, utilising Don Juan, became tributaries to Tirso de Molina. 

FRANCIS DE ROJAS; CASTRO; DIAMANTE. --Francis de Rojas, who must not beconfused with Ferdinand de Rojas, author of _Celestine_, thoughpossessing less spirit than his predecessors, is nevertheless adistinguished dramatic poet. The French of the seventeenth century freelypilfered from him. Thomas Corneille borrowed a goodly portion of his_Bertrand de Cigarral_, Scarron a large part of his _Jodelet_, Le Sage anepisode in _Gil Blas_. If only for their connection with the Frenchdrama, William de Castro and Diamante must be noticed. William de Castrowrote a play, _The Exploits of the Cid in Youth_, which Corneille knewand which he imitated in his celebrated tragedy, adding incomparablebeauty. Diamante in his turn imitated Corneille very closely in _The Sonwho Avenges his Father_. Voltaire, mistaken in dates, believed Corneillehad imitated Diamante. 

PORTUGUESE WRITERS. --In Portugal the sixteenth century was the goldenage. Poets, dramatists, historians, and moralists were extremelynumerous; several possessed genius and many displayed great talent. Amonglyrical poets were Bernardin Ribeiro, Christoval Falcam, Diogo Bernardes, Andrade Caminha, Alvarez do Oriente, Rodriguez Lobo. Ribeiro wroteeclogues half in narrative or dialogue, half lyrical. He also produced aromance intersected with tales (Le Sage in his _Gil Blas_ thus wrote, asis known, and in this only imitated the Spaniards), entitled _TheInnocent Girl_, which often evinces great refinement. 

Christoval Falcam was also bucolic, but his eclogues often ran to ninehundred verses. He also wrote _Voltas_, which are lyric poems suitablefor setting to music. Diogo Bernardes also wrote eclogues and letterscollected under the title of the _Lyma_. The Lyma is a river. ToBernardes the Lyma was what the Lignon was to D'Urfé in his _Astrea_. 

Caminha, a court poet decidedly analogous to the French Saint-Gelais, possessed dexterity and happy phraseology. Eclogues, elegiacs, epitaphs, and epistles were the ordinary occupations of his muse. 

Alvarez do Oriente has left a great romanesque work, a medley of proseand verse entitled _Portugal Transformed_ (_Lusitania transformanda_), which is extremely picturesque apart from its idylls and lyrical poems. 

Lobo was highly prolific. He was author of pastoral romances, medleys ofverse and prose (_The Strange Shepherd_, _The Spring_, _Disenchantment_), a great epic poem (_The Court at the Village_), in prose conversationson moral and literary questions which have remained classic in Portugal, as well as romances and eclogues. 

EPIC POETS. --The most notable epic poets were Corte-Real, Manzinho, Pereira de Castro, Francisco de Saa e Menezès, Doña de la Lacerda, and, finally, the great Camoens. Corte-Real, a writer of the highest talent, was author of an epic which we would style a romance in verse, althoughfounded on fact, upon _The Shipwreck of Sepulveda_ and her husbandLianor. The varied and picturesque narrative is often pathetic. It wouldbe more so, to us at least, were it not for the incessant intervention ofpagan deities. 

Francisco de Saa e Menezès sang of the great Albuquerque and of _MalacaConquered_. He mingled amorous and romantic tales with narratives anddescriptions of battles. He possessed the sense of local colour andbrilliant imagination; he has been accused of undue negligence withregard to correction. 

Doña de la Lacerda, professor of Latin literature to the children ofPhilip III, although born at Porto, wrote nearly always in Spanish. The_Spain Delivered_ (from the Moors), an epic poem, is her chief work; shealso composed comedies and various poems in Spanish. On rare occasionsshe wrote in Portuguese prose. 

CAMOËNS. --The glory of these sound poets is effaced by that of Camoëns. Exiled in early youth for a reason analogous to the one which occasionedthe banishment of Ovid, a soldier who lost an eye at Ceuta, wandering inIndia, shipwrecked and, according to tradition, only saving his poemwhich he held in one hand whilst swimming with the other, he returned toPortugal after sixteen years of exile, assisting at the struggles, decline, and subjection of his country, dying (1579) at the moment whenfor a time Portugal ceased to have a political existence. He wrote _TheLusiad_ (that is the Portuguese), which was the history of Vasco da Gamaand of his expedition to India. The description of Africa, the Cape ofTempests (the Cape of Good Hope), with the giant Adamaston opposing thepassage, and the description of India were the foundation of thenarrative. Episodes narrated by individuals, as in Virgil and as in theSpanish romance, formed an internal supplement, and thus was narratedalmost all the history of Portugal, and so it came to pass that the loveof Inez de Castro and of Don Pedro formed part of the story of Vasco daGama. Camoëns was a powerful narrator, a magnificent orator in verse, and, above all, a very great painter. He evinced curious taste, even ascompared with his contemporaries, such as the continual commingling ofmythological divinities with Christian truths: for instance, a prayeraddressed by Vasco to Jesus Christ was granted by Venus. It may also beobserved that the poem lacked unity and was only a succession of poems. But, as Voltaire said, "The art of relating details, by the pleasureit affords, can make up for all the rest; and that proves the work to befull of great beauties, since for two hundred years it has formed thedelight of a clever race who must be well aware of its faults. "

DRAMATISTS. --The principal Portuguese dramatists were Saa de Miranda, Antonio Ferreira, Gil Vicente. Saa de Miranda was a philosophical poetor, to express it more correctly, a poet with ideas; he broke withthe eternal idylls, eclogues, bucolics, and pastorals of his predecessorswithout declining to furnish excellent examples, but more often aimingelsewhere and higher. He also reformed the versification, introducingmetres employed in other languages, but hitherto unused in his tongue. Hewrote odes, epistles after the manner of Horace, sonnets, lyric poems inLatin, and epic compositions. In all this portion of his work he may becompared to Ronsard. Finally, he wrote two comedies in prose--_TheStrangers_ and _The Villalpandios_ (the _Villalpandios_ are Spanishsoldiers, who have a recognised position in comedy). His mind was one ofthe most elevated and best stored with classic literature that Portugalever produced. 

FERREIRA. --Ferreira, who wrote lyric poems, elegiac poems, and especiallyepistles, by which he gained for himself the name of the PortugueseHorace, was more particularly a dramatist. He created _Farcas_, whichmust not be regarded as farces, but as dramatic poems in which theprofane and religious are interwoven; he wrote _The Bristo_, a popularcomedy; _The Jealous One_, which was perhaps the earliest comedy ofcharacter ever produced in Europe, and finally, a tragedy, _Inez deCastro_, the national tragedy, a tragedy so orthodox and regular in formthat the author felt bound to introduce a chorus in the classic manner;it is charged with pathos and handled with much art. 

GIL VICENTE. --Gil Vicente, a prolific poet who wrote forty-two dramaticpieces, two thirds in Spanish and the rest in Portuguese, touched everybranch of theatrical literature; he produced religious plays (_autos_), tragedies, romantic dramas, comedies, and farces. His chief works are_The Sibyl Cassandra_, _The Widow_, _Amadis de Gaule_, _The Temple ofApollo_, _The Boat of Hell_. His comedies possess a vivacity that isItalian rather than Portuguese. Tradition has it that Erasmus learntPortuguese for the sole purpose of reading the comedies of Gil Vicente. 

CHAPTER XV

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: FRANCE

Of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Fontenelle, Bayle. Of theEighteenth: Poets: La Motte, Jean Baptiste Rousseau, Voltaire, etc. ProseWriters: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, Jean Jacques Rousseau, etc. Ofthe Nineteenth Century: Poets: Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Musset, Vigny, etc. ; Prose Writers: Chateaubriand, Michelet, George Sand, Mérimée, Renan, etc. 

FONTENELLE. --The eighteenth century, which was announced, and announcedwith great precision, by La Bruyère, was inaugurated by his enemyFontenelle. Fontenelle, nephew of Corneille, began with despicabletrifles, eclogues, operas, stilted tragedies, letters of a dandy, so hemight be justly regarded as an inferior Voiture. Very soon, because hepossessed the passion of the eighteenth century for science andfree-thought, he showed himself to be a serious man, and because he hadwit he showed himself an amusing serious man, which is rare. His_Dialogues of the Dead_ were very humorous and, at the same time, in manypassages profound; he wrote his _Discourses on the Plurality of_(Habitable) _Worlds_; then because he was perpetual secretary of theAcademy of Sciences, came his charming and often astonishing _Eulogies ofSages_, which ought to be regarded as the best existent history ofscience in the seventeenth century and in the eighteenth up to 1740. 

BAYLE. --Bayle, a Frenchman who lived in Holland on account of religion, ajournalist and lexicographer, in his _News of the Republic of Letters_and in his immense _Dictionary_, gave proof of broad erudition about allearthly questions, especially philosophical and religious, guiding hisreaders to absolute scepticism. Fontenelle and Bayle are the two heraldswho opened the procession of the eighteenth century. Successively mustnow be examined first the poets and then the prose writers of the firsthalf of that era. 

LA MOTTE. --La Motte, as celebrated in his own time as he is forgotten inours, was lyricist, fabulist, dramatic orator, epical even after acertain fashion. He wrote odes that were deadly cold, fables that wereoften quite witty but affected and laboured, comedies sufficientlymediocre, of which _The Magnificent Lover_ was the most remarkable, and a tragedy, _Inez de Castro_, which was excellent and enjoyed one ofthe greatest successes of the French stage. Finally, becoming thepartisan of the modernists against the classicists, he abridged the_Iliad_ of Homer into a dozen books as frigid as his own lyric poems. Hehad parodoxical ideas in literature, and, being a poet, or believinghimself one, he considered that verse enervated thought and thatsentiments should only be written in prose. It was against thesetendencies that Voltaire so vigorously reacted. 

J. B. ROUSSEAU; POMPIGNAN. --Beside La Motte, being more gifted as a poet, Jean Baptiste Rousseau was conspicuous. He wrote lyrical poems which werecold as lyrics but were well composed and, sometimes at least, attained acertain degree of eloquence. From Malherbe to Lamartine, lyrical poetrywas almost completely neglected by French poets, or at least very badlytreated. Jean Baptiste Rousseau had the advantage of being nearlysolitary and for approximately century was regarded as the greatestnational lyrical poet. 

Le Franc de Pompignan has endured much ridicule, not the least being fora certain naive vanity perceptible directly he passed from the south tothe north of France; but he had some knowledge; he was acquainted withHebrew, then a sufficiently rare accomplishment, and he was an assiduousstudent of classic literature. His tragedy, _Dido_, succeeded; his_Sacred Songs_ enjoyed popularity, no matter what Voltaire might say, and deserved their success; in his odes, which were too often cold, herarely succeeded--only once triumphantly, in his ode on the death of JeanBaptiste Rousseau. 

THE _HENRIADE_. --So far as poets, strictly speaking, were concerned, theforegoing are all that have to be indicated in the first half of theeighteenth century, except the ingenious and frigid _Henriade_ ofVoltaire. 

DRAMATIC POETS. --To counterbalance, the dramatic poets are numerous andnot without merit. Let us recall _Inez de Castro_ by De la Motte. Campistron, the feeble pupil of Racine (and, moreover, there could be nopupil of Racine, so original was the latter, so closely was his geniusassociated with his mind), perpetrated numerous tragedies and operaswhich enjoyed the success obtained by all imitative works: that is, asuccess which arouses no discussion, and which today appears to be theclimax of tediousness. 

CRÉBILLON. --Crébillon followed, vigorous, energetic, violently shakingthe nerves, master of horror and of terrors, not lacking some analogywith Shakespeare, but without delicacy or depth, never even giving athought to being psychological or a moralist, writing badly and to acertain extent meriting the epithet of "the barbarian" bestowed on himby Voltaire. 

The latter was infatuated with the drama, having the feeling forbeautiful themes and for new and original topics, adapting them tothe stage with sufficient aptitude, delighting, in addition, in pomp, mimicry, and decorativeness, and causing tragedy to lean towardsopera, which in his day was no bad thing; but weak in execution, nevercreating characters because he could not escape from himself, as moderatein psychology and morality as Crébillon himself and replacing analysis ofpassion by these and philosophical commonplaces. He left tragic dramaswhich until about 1815 enjoyed success, but which then fell into adisregard from which there is no probability they will ever emerge. 

COMIC POETS. --The comic poets of this period were highly agreeable. Themost notable were Destouches, Regnard, La Chaussée. Destouches was thevery type of the comic writers of the eighteenth century already alludedto, who took a portrait by La Bruyère and turned it into a comedy, andthat is what was called a comedy of character. Thus he wrote _TheBraggart_, _The Irresolute_, _The Ungrateful_, _The Backbiter_, _TheSpendthrift_, etc. Sometimes he took pains to be a trifle more original, as in _The False Agnes_, _The Married Philosopher_; sometimes he borroweda subject from a foreign literature and adapted it fairly dexterously forthe Gallic stage, as in _The Impertinent Inquisitive_, taken from _DonQuixote_ and _The Night Drum_, borrowed from an English author. Hisversification was dexterous and correct without possessing other merit. 

REGNARD. --Regnard, on the contrary, was an original genius, thoughfrequently imitative of Molière. He possessed the comic spirit, gaiety, animation, the sense of drollery, and a prodigious capacity for humorousverse of great flexibility and incredible ease, highly superior in pointof form to that of Boileau and even of Molière, for he suggests a Scarronperfected by Molière himself and by the Italian poets. Still alive andprobably imperishable are such works as _The Gamester_, _The UniversalLegatee_, _The Unexpected Return_. 

THE DRAMA: LA CHAUSSÉE. --La Chaussée possessed a vein of the popularnovel, the serial, as we should say, and at the same time a taste for thestage. The result was he created a new species, which in itself is nosmall achievement. He created _the drama_: that is, the stage-playwherein common people, and no longer kings and princes, affect us bytheir misfortunes. This has been called by all possible names; when itis a comedy it is described as a tearful comedy; when a tragedy, as adramatic tragedy. This is the drama we have known in France for a hundredand fifty years; such as it already existed in the sixteenth centuryunder the title of the morality play, such as Corneille, who foresaweverything, anticipated and predicted in his preface to _Don Sancho_: "Iwould rather say, sir, that tragedy should excite pity and fear, and thatin its essentials, since there is necessity for definition. Now if it betrue that this latter feeling is only excited in us when we see thoselike ourselves suffer, and that their misfortunes put us in fear ofsimilar calamities, is it not also true that we can be more stronglymoved by disasters arriving to people of our own rank, having resemblanceto ourselves, than by the picture of the overthrow from their thrones ofthe greatest monarchs, who can have no relation to us except in so far aswe are susceptible to the passions that overwhelmed them, which is notalways the case?" This domestic tragedy La Chaussée wrote in verse, whichis not against French rules, and which has been done by dramatists ahundred and twenty years later; but it is probably an error, being evenmore unlikely that citizens would express themselves in metre than thatkings and heroes should give utterance with a certain solemnity whichentails rhythm. Thus he wrote _The Fashionable Prejudice_, _The School ofFriends_, _Melanide_, very pathetic, _The School of Mothers_, etc. Itmust be stated that he wrote his plays in verse somewhat systematically;he had made his first appearance in literature by a defence ofversification against the doctrines of La Motte. 

PIRON. --According to the old system, but in original verse, Piron, afterhaving met with scant success in tragedy, wrote the delicious_Metromania_ which, with _The Turcaret_ of Le Sage, _The Bad Man_ ofGresset, the masterpieces of Marivaux and the two great comediesof Beaumarchais rank among the seven or eight superior comedies producedin the eighteenth century. 

GREAT PROSE WRITERS: MONTESQUIEU. --In prose, writers, and even greatwriters, were abundant at this period. Immediately after Fontenelle andBayle appeared Montesquieu, sharp, malicious, satirical, alreadyprofound, in _The Persian Letters_, a great political philosopher andmaster of jurisprudence in _The Spirit of Laws_, a great philosophicalhistorian in _The Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans_. The influence ofMontesquieu on Voltaire, no matter what the latter may have said; onRousseau, however silent the latter may have been about it; on Mably, onRaynal, on the encyclopaedists, on a large portion of the men in theFrench Revolution, on the greatest minds of the nineteenth century, hasbeen profound and difficult to measure. As writer he was concise, collected, and striking, seeking the motive and often finding it, seekingthe formula and invariably finding it--Tacitus mingled with Sallust. 

LE SAGE; SAINT-SIMON. --In considering Le Sage and Saint-Simon, it is not, perhaps, the one who is instinctively thought of as a novelist who reallywas the greater romancer. They each wrote at the same time asMontesquieu. Saint-Simon narrated the age of Louis XIV as an eyewitness, both with spirit and with a feeling for the picturesque that were alikeinimitable, expressed in a highly characteristic fashion, which was oftenincorrect, always incredibly vigorous, energetic, and masterful. Le Sage, in the best of all French styles, that of the purest seventeenth century, narrated Spanish stories in which he mingled many observations made inParis, and set the model for the realistic novel in his admirable _GilBlas_. As a dramatist he will be dealt with later. 

MARIVAUX; PRÉVOST. --Marivaux also essayed the realistic novel in his verycurious _Marianne_, full of types drawn from contemporary life and drawnwith an art which was less condensed but as exact as that of La Bruyère, and in his _Perverted Peasant_ with an art which was more gross, butstill highly interesting. 

The Abbé Prévost, much inferior, much overpraised, generally insipid inhis novels of adventure, once found a good theme, _Manon Lescaut_, and, though writing as badly as was his wont, evoked tears which, it may besaid, still flow. 

HISTORY: DRAMA. --In history Voltaire furnished a model of vivid, rapid, truly epic narration in his _History of Charles XII_, and an example, atleast, of exact documentation and of contemporaneous history studied withzeal and passion in his _Philosophical Letters on England_. On the stage, in prose there were the pretty, witty, and biting light comedies ofDancourt, De Brueys and Palaprat, and Dufresny, then the delicious drama, at once fantastic and perceptive, romantic and psychological, ofMarivaux, who, in _The Legacy_, _The False Confidences_, _The Test_, _The Game of Love and of Shame_, showed himself no less than the trueheir of Racine and the only one France has ever had. 

VOLTAIRE. --In the second portion of the eighteenth century, Voltairereigned. He multiplied historical studies (_Century of Louis XIV_), philosophies (_Philosophical Dictionary_), dramas (_Zaïre_, _Mérope_, _Alzire_ [before 1750], _Rome Saved_, _The Chinese Orphan_, _Tancred_, _Guèbres_, _Scythia_, _Irene_), comedies (_Nanine_, _The Prude_), romances(_Tales and Novels_), judicial exquisitions (the Calas, Labarre, and Sirven cases), and articles, pamphlets, and fugitive papers onall conceivable subjects. 

THE PHILOSOPHERS. --But the second generation of philosophers was nowreached. There was Diderot, philosophical romancer (_The Nun_, _James theFatalist_), art critic(_Salons_), polygraphist (collaboration in theEncyclopaedia); there was Jean Jacques Rousseau, philosophic novelist in_The New Héloise_, publicist in his discourse against _Literature and theArts and Origin of Inequality_, schoolmaster in his _Emilius_, severemoralist in his _Letters to M. D'Alembert on the Spectacles_, half-romancer, charming, impassioned, and passion-inspiring in theautobiography which he called his Confessions; there was Duclos, interesting though rather tame in his _Considerations on the Manners ofthis Century_; there was Grimm, an acute and subtle critic of the highestintelligence in his _Correspondence_; then Condillac, precise, systematic, restrained, but infinitely clear in the best of diction inhis _Treatise on the Sensations_; finally Turgot, the philosophicaleconomist, in his _Treatise on the Formation and Distribution ofWealth_. 

BUFFON; MARMONTEL; DELILLE. --Philosophy, meditation on great problems, filled almost all the literary horizon, while scientific literatureembraced a score of illustrious representatives, of which the mostimpressive was Buffon, with his _Natural History_. Nevertheless, inabsolute literature there were also names to cite: Marmontel gave his_Moral Tales_, his _Belisarius_, his _Incas_, and his _Elements ofLiterature_. 

Delille, with his translation in verse of the _Georgics_ of Virgil, commenced a noble poetic career which he pursued until the nineteenthcentury; Gilbert wrote some mordant satires which recalled Boileau, andsome farewells to life which are among the best lyrics; SaintLambert sang of _The Seasons_ with felicity, and Roucher treated the sametheme with more vivid sensibility. 

THE STAGE. --On the stage, a little before 1750. Gresset gave his_Wicked Man_, which was witty and in such felicitous metre that itcarried the tradition of great comedy in verse; Diderot, theorist andcreator of the drama in prose, followed La Chaussée, and produced _TheFather of a Family_, _The Natural Son_, and _Is He Good, Is He Bad_? beingthe portrait of himself. Innumerable dramas by the fertile Mercier and ascore of others followed, including Beaumarchais, himself a devotee ofthe drama, but only able to succeed in comedy, wherein he gave his twocharming works, _The Barber of Seville_ and _The Marriage of Figaro_. 

ANDRÉ CHÉNIER. --Almost on the verge of the Revolution, quite unexpectedlythere emerged a really great poet, André Chénier, marvellously gifted inevery way. As the poet of love he recalled Catullus and Tibullus; inpolitical lyricism he suggested d'Aubigny, though with more fervour; aselegiac poet he possessed a grace that was truly Grecian; as the poet ofnature he employed the large manner of Lucretius; in polemical prose hewas remarkably eloquent. Struck down whilst quite young amid the turmoilof the Revolution, he bequeathed immortal fragments. No doubt he wouldhave been the greatest French poet between Racine and Lamartine. 

BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE. --In prose, his contemporary, Bernardin deSaint-Pierre, primarily was a man of genius, since he wrote that immortalidyllic romance, _Paul and Virginia_; subsequently he became a graciousand amiable pupil of Jean Jacques Rousseau, being smitten with thesentiment of nature in his _Harmonies of Nature_; finally he attaineda great importance in literary history as the creator of exoticliterature through the descriptions he wrote of many lands: Asia, African isles traversed and studied by him, Russia, and Germany. 

THE REVOLUTIONARY ORATORS. --During the revolutionary period may bepointed out the great orators of the Assembly: Mirabeau, Barnave, Danton, Vergniaud, Robespierre; the ill-starred authors of national songs:Marie Joseph Chénier; the author of the _Marseillaise_, Rouget de Lisle, who only succeeded on the day that he wrote it. And so we reach thenineteenth century. 

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. --At the commencement of a century which was sobrilliant from the literary aspect, James Delille was despotic: hisearlier efforts have already been attended to. A skilled versifier, butwithout fire or many ideas, he made cultured translations from Virgil andMilton, wrote perennially descriptive poems, such as _The Man in theFields_, _The Gardens_, etc. , and a witty satirical poem on_Conversation_, which, in our opinion, was the best thing he wrote. 

GREAT POETS: LAMARTINE. --Great poets were to come. Aroused, withoutdoubt, by the poetic genius of the prose writer Chateaubriand, the firstgeneration of the romantics was formed by Lamartine, Victor Hugo, andAlfred de Vigny. Romanticism was the preponderance of imagination andsensibility over reason and observation. Lamartine rebathed poetry in itsancient and eternal sources: love, religion, and the sentiment of nature. In his _Meditations_, his _Harmonies_, and his _Contemplations_, hereawoke feelings long slumbering, and profoundly moved the hearts of men. In _Jocelyn_ he widened his scope, and, emerging from himself, narrated, as he imagined it, the story of the soul of a priest during theRevolution, and subsequently in the obscurity of a rural parish; in_The Fall of an Angel_ he reverted to the life of primaeval man as heconceived it to be when humanity was still barbarous. Apart from hispoetic works, he wrote _The History of the Girondins_, which is aromanesque history of almost the whole of the Revolution, some novels, some autobiographic episodes, and a few discourses on literature. 

VICTOR HUGO. --Victor Hugo, though less sensitive than Lamartine but moreimaginative, began with lyrical poems which were somewhat reminiscent ofthe classical manner, then went on to pictures of the East, thence tomeditations on what happened to himself, and on all subjects (_AutumnLeaves_, _Lights and Shades_); next, in full possession of his genius, hedwelt on great philosophical meditations in his _Contemplations_, and in_The Legend of the Centuries_ gave that epic fragment which is a pictureof history. His was one of the most powerful imaginations that the worldhas ever seen, as well as a _creator of style_, who made a style forhimself all in vision and colour, and also in melody and orchestration. Although in prose he lacked one part of his resources, he utilisedthe rest magnificently, and _Notre Dame_ and _The Miserable_ are workswhich excite admiration, at least in parts. Later, he will be dealt withas a dramatist. 

ALFRED DE VIGNY. --Alfred de Vigny was the most philosophical of thesethree great poets, though inferior to the other two in creativeimaginativeness. He meditated deeply on the existence of evil on earth, on the misfortunes of man, and the sadness of life, and his mostdespairing songs, which were also his most beautiful, left a profoundecho in the hearts of his contemporaries. Some of his poems, such as_The Bottle in the Sea_, _The Shepherd's House_, _The Fury of Samson_, are among the finest works of French literature. 

MUSSET; THÉOPHILE GAUTIER. --The second generation of romanticism, whichappeared about 1830, possessed Alfred de Musset and Théophile Gautier aschief representatives. They bore little mutual resemblance, be it said, the former only knowing how to sing about himself, his pleasures, hisillusions, his angers, and, above all, his sorrows, always with sincerityand in accents that invariably charmed and sometimes lacerated; thelatter, supremely artist, always seeking the fair exterior and delightingin reproducing it as though he were a painter, a sculptor, or a musician, and excellent and dexterous in these "transpositions of art, " whetherthey were in verse or prose. 

THE PROSE WRITERS: CHATEAUBRIAND. --The French prose writers of this firsthalf of the nineteenth century were emphatically poets, as had alsoalready been Jean Jacques Rousseau and even Buffon. Imagination, sensibility, and the sentiment for nature were the mistresses of theirfaculties. Chateaubriand was the promoter of all the literary movementof the nineteenth century, alike in prose and poetry. He was a literarytheorist, an epic poet in prose, traveller, polemist, orator. His greatliterary theory was in _The Genius of Christianity_, and consisted insupporting that all true poetic beauties lay in Christianity. His epicpoems in prose are _The Natchez_, a picture of the customs of AmericanIndians, _The Martyrs_, a panorama of the struggle of paganism at itsclose and of Christianity at its beginning; his travels were _The Voyagein America_ and _The Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem_. Member of theparliamentary assemblies, ambassador and minister, he wrote and spoke inthe most brilliant and impassioned manner on the subjects that he tookup. Finally, falling back on himself, as he had never ceased to do moreor less all through his career, he left, in his marvellous _Memoirs fromBeyond the Tomb_, a posthumous work which is, perhaps, his masterpiece. His infinitely supple and variegated style formed a continuous artisticmiracle, so harmonious and musical was it more musical even than that ofJean Jacques Rousseau. 

MME. DE STAËL. --At the same time, though she died long before him, Mme. De Staël, by her curious and interesting, though never affecting, novels, _Delphine_ and _Corinne_, by her dissertations on various serioussubjects, by her work on Germany, which initiated the French into thehabits and literature of neighbours they were ill acquainted with, alsodirected the minds of men into new paths, and she was prodigal of ideaswhich she had almost always borrowed, but which she thoroughlyunderstood, profoundly reconsidered, and to which she imparted anappearance of originality even in the eyes of those who had given them toher. 

THE HISTORIANS. --Even the historians of this first half of the centurywere poets: Augustin Thierry, who reconstituted scientifically butimaginatively _The Merovingian Era_; Michelet, pupil of Vico, who saw inhistory the development of an immense poem and cast over his account ofthe Middle Ages the fire and feverishness of his ardent imagination andtremulous sensitiveness. Guizot and Thiers can be left apart, for theywere statesmen by education and, although capable of passion, sought theone to rationally generalise and "discipline history, " as was said, theother solely to capture facts accurately and to set them out clearly inorderly fashion. 

THE PHILOSOPHERS. --The philosophers were not sheltered from thiscontagion, and if Cousin and his eclectic school loved to attachthemselves to the seventeenth century both in mind and style, Lamennais, first in his _Essay on Indifference_, then in his _Study of aPhilosophy_ and in his _Words of a Believer_, impassioned, impetuous, andfebrile, underwent the influence of romanticism, but also gave to theromantics the greater portion of the ideas they put in verse. 

THE NOVEL. --As for the novel, it was only natural that it should bedeeply affected by the spirit of the new school. George Sand wrotelyrical novels, if the phrase may be used--and, as I think, it is herethe accurate expression--entitled _Indiana_, _Valentine_, _Mauprat_, andespecially _Lelia_. She was to impart wisdom later on. 

It even happened that a mind born to see reality in an admirably accuratemanner, saw it so only by reason of the times, or at least partly due tothe times, associated it with a magnifying but deforming imaginationconverting it into a literary megalomania; and this was the case ofHonoré de Balzac. 

NON-ROMANTIC LITERATURE. --Nevertheless, as was only natural, throughoutthe whole of the romantic epoch there was an entire literature which didnot submit to its influence, and simply carried on the tradition ofthe eighteenth century. In poetry there was the witty, malicious, andvery often highly exalted Béranger, whose songs are almost alwaysexcellent songs and sometimes are odes; and there was also the able anddexterous but frigid Casimir Delavigne. In prose there was BenjaminConstant, supremely oratorical and a very luminous orator, alsoa religious philosopher in his work _On Religions_, and a novelist in hisadmirable _Adolphus_, which was semi-autobiographical. 

Classical also were Joseph de Maistre, in his political considerations(_Evenings in St. Petersburg_), and, in fiction, Mérimée, accurate, precise, trenchant, and cultured; finally in criticism, Sainte-Beuve, whobegan, it is true, by being the theorist and literary counsellor ofromanticism, but who was soon freed from the spell, almost from 1830, andbecame author of _Port Royal_. Though possessing a wide and receptivemind because he was personified intelligence, he was decisively classicalin his preferences, sentiments, ideas, and even in his style. 

Stendhal, pure product of the eighteenth century, and even exaggeratingthe spirit of that century in the dryness of his soul and of his style, apure materialist writing with precision and with natural yet intentionalnakedness, possessed valuable gifts of observation, and in his famousnovel, _Red and Black_, in the first part of the _Chartreuse of Parma_, and in his _Memoirs of a Tourist_, knew how to draw characters withexactness, sobriety, and power, and to set them in reliefs that wereremarkably rare. 

THE STAGE. --The drama was very brilliant during this first half of thenineteenth century. The struggle was lively for thirty or thirty-fiveyears between the classicists and the romanticists; the classicsdefending their citadel, the French stage, much more by their polemics inthe newspapers than by the unimportant works which they brought to the_Comédie française_, the romantics here producing nearly all the plays ofHugo (_Hernani_, _Marion de Lorme_, _Ruy Blas_, _The Burghers_, etc. ), and the works of Vigny(_Othello_, _Marshal d'Ancre_), as well as thedramas of Dumas (_Henry III and his Court_, etc. ). Between the twoschools, both of which were on the stage nearer to the modern than to theantique, the dexterous Casimir Delavigne, with almost invariable success, gave _Marino Faliero_, _Louis XI_, _The Children of Edward_, _Don Juan ofAustria_, and _Princess Aurelia_, which was pretty, but withoutimpassioned interest. 

A veritable dramatic genius, although destitute of style, of elevation ofthought and of ideas, but a prodigious constructor of well-made plays, was Eugène Scribe, who, by his dramas and comedies, as well as thelibretti of operas, was the chief purveyor to the French stage between1830 and 1860. 

ROMANTICISM AND REALISM. --So far as pure literature was concerned, thesecond half of the nineteenth century was divided between enfeebled butpersistent romanticism and realism. Théophile Gautier, in 1853, gave his_Enamels and Cameos_, his best poetic work, and later (1862) his_Captain Fracasse_. Hugo wrote his _Miserables_, the second and third_Legends of the Centuries_, _Songs of the Streets and the Woods_, etc. 

A third romantic generation, of which Théodore de Banville was the mostbrilliant representative, and which proceeded far more from Gautier thanfrom Hugo or De Musset, pushed verbal and rhythmic virtuosity to thelimit and perhaps beyond. Then great or highly distinguished poetsappeared. 

FAMOUS POETS. --Leconte de Lisle, philosophical poet, attracted by Indianliterature, by pessimism, by the taste for nothingness, and the thirstfor death, forcing admiration by his sculptural form and majestic rhythm;Sully-Prudhomme, another philosopher, especially psychological, manipulating the lyrical elegy with much art and, above all, infusinginto it a grave, sad, and profound sensibility which would have awakenedthe affection and earned the respect of Catullus, Tibullus, andLucretius; Francis Coppée, the poet of the joys and sorrows of the lowly, a dexterous versifier too, and possessed of a sincerity so candid as tomake the reader forget that there is art in it; Baudelaire, inquisitiveabout rare and at times artificial sensations, possessing a laboriousstyle, but sometimes managing to produce a deep impression either morbidor lugubrious, considered by an entire school which is still extant asone of the greatest poets within the whole range of French literature;Verlaine, extremely unequal, often detestable and contemptible, butsuddenly charming and touching or revealing a religious feeling thatsuggests a clerk of the Middle Ages; Catulle Mendès, purely romantic, wholly virtuoso, but an astonishingly dexterous versifier. To these poetssome highly curious literary dandies set themselves in opposition, beingdesirous of renovating the poetic art by ascribing more value to thesound of words than to their meaning, striving to make a music of poesyand, in a general way--which is their chief characteristic--beingdifficult to understand. They gave themselves the name of symbolists, andaccepted that of decadents; they regarded Stephen Mallarmé either astheir chief or as a friend who did them honour. This school has beendignified by no masterpieces and will probably ere long be forgotten. 

REALISTIC LITERATURE. --Confronting all this literature, which had aromantic origin even when it affected scorn of the men of 1830, wasdeveloped an entire realistic literature composed almost exclusively ofwriters in prose, but of prose imbued with poetry written by some who hadread the romantics and who would not have achieved what they did hadromanticism not already existed, a fact which they themselves havenot denied, and which is now almost universally accepted. Flaubert, whosemasterpiece, _Madame Bovary_, is dated 1857, was very precisely dividedbetween the two schools; he possessed the taste for breadth of eloquence, for the adventurous, and for Oriental colouring, and also the taste forthe common, vulgar, well visualised, thoroughly assimilated truth, tersely portrayed in all its significance. But as he has succeededbetter, at least in the eyes of his contemporaries, as a realist than asa man with imagination, he passes into history as the founder of realismalways conditionally upon considering Balzac as possessing much of thevigorous realism which provided the impulse and furnished models. 

NATURALISM. --From the realism of Flaubert was born the naturalism ofZola, which is the same thing more grossly expressed. Also by hisenergetic, violent, and tenacious talent, as well as by a weighty thoughpowerful imagination, he exercised over his contemporaries a kind offascination which it would be puerile to regard as an infatuation forwhich there was no cause. 

More refined and even extremely delicate, though himself also fond of thesmall characteristic fact; possessed, too, with a graceful and gracioussensibility, Alphonse Daudet often charmed and always interested us inhis novels, which are the pictorial anecdotes of the Parisian world atthe close of the second Empire and the opening of the third Republic. 

The brothers De Goncourt also enjoyed notable success, being themselvesabsorbed in the exceptional deed and the exceptional character whilstpossessing a laboured style which is sometimes seductive because of itsunlooked-for effects. 

THE POSITIVISTS. --Two great men filled with their renown an epoch alreadyso brilliant; namely, Renan and Taine, both equally historians andphilosophers. Renan composed _The History of the Children of Israel_ and_The Origins of Christianity_, as well as various works of generalphilosophy, of which the most celebrated is entitled _PhilosophicalDialogues_. Taine wrote the history of _The Origins of ContemporaryFrance_: that is, the history of the French Revolution, and sundryphilosophical works of which the principal are _On Intelligence_ and_The French Philosophers of the Eighteenth Century_. Both were"positivists, " that is to say, elevating Auguste Comte, who has his placein the history of philosophy, but not here, because he was not a goodwriter; both were positivists, but Renan possessed a lively and profoundsense of the grandeur and the moral beauty of Christianity, Taine beingimbued with more philosophic strictness. Renan, with infinite flexibilityof intelligence, applied himself to understand thoroughly and always(with some excess) to bring home to us the great figures of the Bible, the Gospels, and the early Christians, as well as their foes down to thetime of Marcus Aurelius. Further, he affirmed science to possess_unique_ value in his _Future of Science_; elsewhere, under thesimilitude of "dreams, " he indulged in conceptions, hypotheses, andmetaphysical imaginations which were voluntarily rash and infinitelyseductive. As always happens, he possessed the style of his mind, supple, sinuous, undulating, astonishingly plastic, insatiable, and charming, evoking the comment, "That is admirably done and it is impossible to knowwith what it is done. "

TAINE. --Taine, more rigid, accumulating documents and methodicallyarranging them in a method that refuses to be concealed, advances in arectilineal order, step by step, and with a measured gait, to a solidtruth which he did not wish to be either evasive or complex. Highlypessimistic and a little affecting to be so, just as Renan was optimisticand much affected being so, he believed in the evil origin of man and ofthe necessity for him to be drastically curbed if he is to remaininoffensive. He has written a history of the Revolution wherein he hasrefused admiration and respect for the crimes then committed, which iswhy posterity now begins to be very severe upon him. His learned style iswholly artificial, coloured without his being a colourist, composed ofmetaphors prolonged with difficulty, yet remaining singularly imposingand powerful. He was a curious philosopher, an upright, severe, andrather systematic historian, solid and laboriously original as awriter. 

BRUNETIÈRE. --Brunetière, of the great French thinkers before ourcontemporaneous epoch, was critic, literary historian, philosopher, theologian, and orator. As critic, he defended classic tradition againstbold innovations, and, especially, moral literature against licentious orgross literature; as a literary historian he renovated literary historyby the introduction of the curious, audacious, and fruitful theory ofevolution, and his _Manual of the History of French Literature_ was amasterpiece; as philosopher he imparted clearness and precision into thesystem of Auguste Comte, whose disciple he was; as theologian, exceedingComte and utilising him, he added weight to Catholicism in France byfinding new and decisive "reasons for belief"; as orator he raised hismarvellously eloquent tones in France, Switzerland, and America, makingmore than a hundred "fighting speeches. " Since the death of Renan andTaine, he has been the sole director of French thought, which hecontinues to guide by his books and by the diffusion of his thought amongthe most vigorous, serious, and meditative minds of the day. 

THE CONTEMPORANEOUS DRAMA. --The drama, since 1850, has been almostexclusively written in prose. Emil Augier, however, composed somecomedies and dramas in verse and in verse particularly suited to thestage; but the major portion of his work is in prose, whilst AlexanderDumas and Sardou have written exclusively in prose. Augier and Dumas camefrom Balzac, and remained profoundly realistic, which was particularlysuitable to authors of comedy. They studied the manners of the secondEmpire and depicted them wittily; they studied the social questions whichagitated educated minds at this time and drew useful inspiration. Augierleant towards good middle-class common-sense, which did not prevent himfrom having plenty of wit. Dumas was more addicted to paradox andpossessed as much ability as his rival. Victorien Sardou, as dexterous adramatic constructor as Scribe, and who sometimes rose above this, dragged his easy tolerance from the grand historic drama to the comedy ofmanners, to light comedy and to insignificant comedy with prodigiousfacility and inexhaustible fertility. 

The most admired living authors, whom we shall be content only to namebecause they are living, are poets: Edmond Rostand, author of_Loiterings_; Edmond Haraucourt, author of _The Naked Soul_ and _The Hopeof the World_; Jean Aicard, author of _Miette el Noré_; Jean Richepin, author of _Césarine_, _Caresses_, _Blasphemies_, etc. ; in fiction, PaulBourget, Marcel Prévost, René Bazin, Bordeaux, Boylesve, Henri deRégnier; in history, Ernest Lavisse, Aulard, Seignobos, D'Haussonville;in philosophy, Boutroux, Bergson, Théodule Ribot, Fouillée, Izoulet; inthe drama, Paul Hervieu, Lavedan, Bataille, Brieux, Porto-Riche, Bernstein, Wolff, Tristan Bernard, Edmond Rostand, author of _Cyrano deBergerac_ and of _The Aiglon_; as orators, Alexander Ribot, De MunPoincaré, Jaurès, etc. 

CHAPTER XVI

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ENGLAND

Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Pope, Young, MacPherson, etc. : ProseWriters of the Eighteenth Century: Daniel Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Swift, Sterne, David Hume. Poets of the Nineteenth Century: Byron, Shelley, the Lake Poets: Prose Writers of the Nineteenth Century: WalterScott, Macaulay, Dickens, Carlyle. 

THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE: POETS. --As in France, the eighteenth century(the age of Queen Anne) was in England richer in prose than in poetry. Aspoets, however, must be indicated Thomson, descriptive and dramatic, whose profound feeling for nature was not without influence over Frenchwriters of the same century; Pope, descriptive writer, translator, moralist, elegiast, very intelligent and highly polished, whose _Essay onCriticism_ and _Essay on Man_ were remarkably utilised by Voltaire;Edward Young, whose _Night Thoughts_ enjoyed the same prodigioussuccess in France as in England, and who contributed in no small measureto darken and render gloomy both literatures; MacPherson, who invented_Ossian_, that is, pretended poems of the Middle Ages, a magnificentgenius, be it said, who exercised considerable influence over theromanticism of both lands; Chatterton, who trod the same road, but withless success, yet was valued almost equally by the French romantic poets, and to them he has owed at least the consolidation of his immortality;Cowper, elegiac and fantastic, with a highly humorous vein; Crabbe, avery close observer of popular customs and an ingenious novelist inverse, quite analogous to the Dutch painters; Burns, a peasant-poet, sensitive and impassioned, yet at the same time a careful artistmoved by local customs, the manifestations of which he saw displayedbefore his eyes. 

PROSE WRITERS. --The masters of prose (some being also true poets) wereinnumerable. Daniel Defoe, journalist, satirist, pamphleteer, was theauthor of the immortal _Robinson Crusoe_; Addison, justly adored byVoltaire, author of a sound tragedy, _Cato_, is supremely a scholar, theacute, sensible, and extremely thoughtful editor of _The Spectator_;Richardson, the idol of Diderot and of Jean Jacques Rousseau, enjoyed aEuropean success with his sentimental and virtuous novels, _Pamela_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, and _Sir Charles Grandison_. As a critic and as apersonality, Dr. Johnson has no parallel in any age or land. His_Dictionary_ is famous despite its faults, and _Rasselas_, which hewrote to pay for his mother's funeral, can still be read. 

Fielding, who began by being only the parodist of Richardson, in_Joseph Andrews_, ended by becoming an astounding realistic novelist, theworthy predecessor of Thackeray and Dickens in his extraordinary _TomJones_. The amiable Goldsmith, more akin to Richardson, wrote thatidyllic novel _The Vicar of Wakefield_, the charm of which was still feltthroughout Europe only fifty years ago. Laurence Sterne, the mostaccurate representative of English _humour_, capable of emotion moreespecially ironical, jester, mystificator, has both amused and disquietedseveral generations with his _Sentimental Journey_ and his fantastical, disconcerting and enchanting _Tristram Shandy_. Swift, horribly bitter, acorrosive and cruel satirist, sadly scoffed at all the society of histime in _Gulliver's Travels_, in _Drapier's Letters_, in his _Proposal toPrevent the Children of the Poor Being a Burden_, in a mass of othersmall works wherein the most infuriated wrath is sustained under the formof calm and glacial irony. 

HISTORY. --History was expressed in England in the eighteenth century byDavid Hume, who chronicled the progress of the English race from theMiddle Ages until the eighteenth century; by Robertson, who similarlyhandled the Scotch and who narrated the reign of Charles V; and byGibbon, so habitually familiar with the French society of his time, whofollowed the Romans from the first Cæsars to Marcus Aurelius, then moreclosely from Marcus Aurelius to the epoch of Constantine, and finallythe Byzantine Empire up to the period of the Renaissance. The imposingerudition, the rather pompous but highly distinguished style of theauthor, without counting his animosity to Christianity, caused him toenjoy a great success, especially in France. The work of Gibbon isregarded as the finest example of history written by an Englishman. 

THE STAGE. --The stage in England in the eighteenth century sank far belowits importance in the seventeenth century; yet who does not know _SheStoops to Conquer_ of Goldsmith, and that sparkling and lively comedy, _The School for Scandal_, by Sheridan? Note, as an incomparablejournalist, the famous and mysterious Junius, who, from 1769 to 1772, waged such terrible war on the minister Grafton. 

THE LAKE POETS. --In the nineteenth century appeared those poets sofamiliar to the French romanticists, or else the latter pretendedthey were, who were termed the lake poets, because they were lovers ofthe countryside; these were Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Southeywas an epic and elegiac poet, whilst he was also descriptive; Coleridge, philosopher, metaphysician, a little nebulous and disordered, had veryfine outbursts and some lamentable falls. Wordsworth was a mostdistinguished lyricist. Lord Byron did not acquire honour by so roughlyhandling Southey and Wordsworth. 

THE ROMANTIC EPOCH. --The two greatest English poets of the romanticperiod were Lord Byron and Shelley; the former the admirable poet ofdisenchantment and of despair, gifted with a noble epic genius, creatingand vitalising characters which, it must be confessed, differed verylittle from one another, but an exalted figure with a grand manner and, except Shakespeare, the only English poet who exercised genuine influenceover French literature; the latter an idealistic poet of the most suavedelicacy, aërial and heavenly, despite a private life of the utmostdisorder and even guilt, he is one of the most perfect poets that everlived; a great tragedian, too, in his _Cenci_, quite unknown in Franceuntil the middle of the nineteenth century, but since then the object ofa sort of adoration among the larger number of Gallic poets and loversof poetry. 

Keats was as romantic as Shelley and Byron, both in spite of and becauseof his desperate efforts to assimilate the Grecian spirit. He dreamt ofits heroes and its ancient myths, but there is in him little that isGrecian except the choice of subjects, and it is not in his grand poem, _Endymion_, nor even in that fine fragment, _Hyperion_, that can be foundthe real melancholy, sensitive, and modern poet, but in his last shortpoems, _The Skylark_, _On a Greek Vase_, _Autumn_, which, by theexquisite perfection of their form and the harmonious richness of thestyle, take rank among the most beautiful songs of English lyrism. 

Nearer to us came Tennyson, possessing varied inspiration, epical, lyrical, elegiac poet, always exalted and pure, approaching theclassical, and himself already a classic. 

Swinburne, almost exclusively lyrical, a dexterous and enchantingversifier, inspired by the ancient Greeks, generally evinced a highlyoriginal poetic temperament, and Dante Rossetti, imbued with mediaevalinspiration, possessed a powerful and slightly giddy imagination. Farless known on the Continent, where critics may feel surprise at hernecessary inclusion here, is his sister, Christina Rossetti. Herqualities as a poet are a touching and individual grace, much delicatespontaneity, a pure and often profound emotion, and an instinct as astylist which is almost infallible. The Brownings form a celebratedcouple, and about them Carlyle, on hearing of their marriage, observedthat he hoped they would understand each other. Elizabeth BarrettBrowning, translator of Aeschylus of Theocritus, gave proof in heroriginal poetry of a vigour, of a vividness, and of a vigorous exuberanceof similes that often recalled the Elizabethans, but marred her work bydeclamatory rhetoric and by a tormented and often obscure style. RobertBrowning was yet more difficult, owing to his overpowering taste forsubtlety and the bizarre--nay, even the grotesque. Almost ignored, or atleast unappreciated by his contemporaries, he has since taken an exaltedplace in English admiration, which he owes to the depth, originality, andextreme richness of his ideas, all the more, perhaps, because they lendthemselves to a number of differing interpretations. 

THE NOVELISTS. --In prose the century began with the historical novelist, Sir Walter Scott, full of lore and knowledge, reconstructor andastonishing _reviver_ of past times, more especially the Middle Ages, imbuing all his characters with life, and even in some measure vitalisingthe objects he evoked. None more than he, not even Byron, has enjoyedsuch continuous appreciation with both French romantic poets and also theFrench reading public. The English novel, recreated by this great master, was worthily continued by Dickens, both sentimentalist and humourist, ajesting, though genial, delineator of the English middle class, and anaccurate and sympathetic portrayer of the poor; by Thackeray, supremerailer and satirist, terrible to egoists, hypocrites, and snobs; by theprolific and entertaining Bulwer-Lytton, by the grave, philosophical, and sensible George Eliot, by Charlotte Brontë, author of the affecting_Jane Eyre_, etc. , and her sister Emily, whose _Wuthering Heights_ hasbeen almost extravagantly admired. 

Four other great prose writers presenting startling divergences from oneanother cannot be omitted. Belonging to the first half of the nineteenthcentury, Charles Lamb earned wide popularity by his _Tales fromShakespeare_ and _Poetry for Children_, written in collaboration with hissister Mary; but he was specially remarkable for his famed _Essays ofElia_, wherein he affords evidence of possessing an almost paradoxicalmixture of delicate sensibility and humour, as well as of accurate andalso fantastic observation. Newman, at first an English clergyman butsubsequently a cardinal, after conversion to the Catholic Church, appearsto me hardly eligible in a history of literature in which Lamennais hasno place. As a literary man, his famous sermons at Oxford and the Tractsexercised much influence, and provoked such impassioned and prodigiousrevival of old doctrines and of an antiquated spirit in religion; thenthe _Apologia Pro Vita Sua_, _Callista_, and the _History of Arianism_, revealed him as a master of eloquence. 

Ruskin, as art critic, in his bold volumes illumined with remarkablebeauty of styles, _Modern Painters_, _The Seven Lamps ofArchitecture_, and _The Stones of Venice_, formulated the creed and theschool of pre-Raphaelitism. At the time of the religious revival atOxford, he preached a servile imitation of antiquity by the path of theRenaissance, appealing to national and mediæval inspiration, not without_naïveté_ and archaism, none the less evident because he was sincere andmordant. George Meredith, who died only in 1910, was a prolific and ofteninvolved novelist (the Browning of prose), with a passion for metaphorsand a too freely expressed eclectic scorn for the multitude. Withal, hehad a profound knowledge of life and of the human soul; impregnated withhumour, he was creator of unforgettable types of character, and nopre-occupation of his epoch was foreign to his mind, whilst his vigorousrealism always obstinately refused to turn from contemporaneous themes, or to gratify the needs and aspirations which it was possible to satisfy. His epitaph might well be that he understood the women of his time, arare phenomenon. 

HISTORY. --History could show two writers of absolutesuperiority--Macaulay (_History of England since James II_), anomnivorous reader and very brilliant writer, and Carlyle, the EnglishMichelet, feverish, passionate, incongruous, and disconcerting, who dealtwith history as might a very powerful lyrical poet. 

CHAPTER XVII

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: GERMANY

Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland; ProseWriters of the Eighteenth Century: Herder, Kant. Poets of the NineteenthCentury: Goethe, Schiller, Körner. 

THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. --In the literature of Germany theeighteenth century, sometimes designated under the title of the age ofFrederick the Great, forms a Renaissance or, if preferred, an awakeningafter a fairly prolonged slumber. This awakening was assisted by aquarrel, sufficiently unimportant in itself, but which proved fertile, between Gottsched, the German Boileau, and Bodmer, the energeticvindicator of the rights of the imagination. In the train of Bodmer cameHaller, like him a Swiss; then suddenly Klopstock appeared. _TheMessiah_ of Klopstock is an epic poem; it is the history of Jesus Christfrom Cana to the Resurrection, with a crowd of episodes dexterouslyattached to the action. The profound religious sentiment, the grandeur ofthe setting, the beauty of the scenes, the purity and nobility of thesermon, the Biblical colour so skilfully spread over the wholecomposition, cause this vast poem, which was perhaps unduly praised onits first appearance, to be one of the finest products of the human mind, even when all reservations are made. German literature revived. As forGottsched, he was vanquished. 

THE POETS. --Then came Lavater, Bürger, Lessing, Wieland. Lavater, a Swisslike Haller, is remembered for his scientific labours, but was also ameritorious poet, and his naive and moving _Swiss Hymns_ have remainednational songs; Bürger was a great poet, lyrical, impassioned, personal, original, vibrating; Wieland, the Voltaire of Germany, although he beganby being the friend of Klopstock, witty, facile, light, and graceful, whose _Oberon_ and _Agathon_ preserve the gift of growing oldfelicitously, is one of the most delightful minds that Germany produced. Napoleon did him the honour of desiring to converse with him as withGoethe. 

LESSING. --Lessing, personally, was a great author, and owing to theinfluence he exercised over his fellow-countrymen, he holds one of thenoblest positions in the history of German literature. He was a critic, and in his _Dramaturgie of Hamburg_ and elsewhere, with all his strength, and often unjustly, he combated French literature to arrest theascendency which, according to his indolent opinion, it exercised overthe Germans; and in his _Laocoön_, with admirable lucidity, he made akind of classification of the arts. As author, properly speaking, hewrote _Fables_ which to our taste are dry and cold; he made severaldramatic efforts none of which were masterpieces, the best being _Minnavon Barnhelm_ and _Emilia Galotti_, and a philosophical poem in dialogue(for it could hardly be termed drama), _Nathan the Sage_, whichpossessed great moral and literary beauties. 

HERDER. --Herder was the Vico of Germany. Here was the historicalphilosopher, or rather the thoughtful philosopher on history. He dideverything: literary criticism, works of erudition, translations, evenpersonal poems, but his great work was _Ideas on the Philosophy of theHistory of Mankind_. This was the theory of progress in all its breadthand majesty, supported by arguments that are at least spacious andimposing. From Michelet to Quinet, on to Renan, every French author whohas at all regarded the unity of the destinies of the human race hasdrawn inspiration from him. His broad, measured, and highly colouredstyle is on the level of the subject and conforms to it. Even in anexclusively literary history Kant must not be forgotten, because when heset himself to compose a moral dissertation, as, for example, the oneupon lying, he took high rank as a writer. 

THE GLORIOUS EPOCH. --Thus is reached the end of the eighteenth close onthe beginning of the nineteenth century. In this intermediary epoch shonethe most glorious hour of Teutonic literature. Simultaneously Iffland, Kotzebue, Körner, Schiller, and Goethe were to the fore. This formed agreat constellation. Iffland, actor, manager, and author, friend andprotector of Schiller, wrote numerous dramas, the principal of which were_The Criminal through Ambition_, _The Pupil_, _The Hunters_, _TheLawyers_, _The Friends of the House_. He was realistic without beinggloomy. He resembled the French Sédaine. Kotzebue, who was the friend ofCatherine of Russia, subsequently disgraced by her, possessed a highlyirritable and quarrelsome disposition, and was finally killed in 1819as a reactionary by a Liberal student, did not fall far short of genius. He wrote a number of dramas and comedies. Those still read with pleasureare _Misanthropy and Repentance_, _Hugo Grotius_, _The Calumniator_, and_The Small German Town_, which has remained a classic. 

KÖRNER. --Körner, the "Tyrtaeus of Germany, " was simultaneously a bravesoldier and a great lyrical poet who was killed on the battlefield ofGadebusch, wrote lyrical poems, dramas, comedies, farces, and, above all, _The Lyre and Sword_, war-songs imbued with splendid spirit. 

SCHILLER. --Schiller is a vast genius, historian, lyrical poet, dramaticpoet, critic, and in all these different fields he showed himself to beprofoundly original. He wrote _The Thirty Years' War_; odes, ballads, dithyrambic poems, such as _The Clock_, so universally celebrated;dissertations of philosophic criticism, such as _The God of Greece_ and_The Artists_; finally, a whole repertory of drama (the only point onwhich it is possible to show that he surpasses Goethe), in which may beremarked his first audacious and anarchical work, _The Brigands_, thenthe _Conjuration of Fieso_, _Intrigue and Love_, _Don Carlos_, _Wallenstein_ (a trilogy composed of _The Camp of Wallenstein_, _ThePiccolomini_, _The Death of Wallenstein_), _Mary Stuart_, _The Betrothedof Messina_, _The Maid of Orleans_, _William Tell_. By his exampleprimarily, and by his instruction subsequently (_Twelve Letters on DonCarlos_, _Letters on Aesthetic Education_, _The Sublime_, etc. ), heexercised over literature and over German thought an influence at leastequal, and I believe superior, to that of Goethe. He was united to Goetheby the ties of a profound and undeviating friendship. He died whilststill young, in 1805, twenty-seven years before his illustrious friend. 

GOETHE. --Goethe, whom posterity can only put in the same rank as Homer, is even more universal genius, and has approached yet closer to absolutebeauty. Of Franco-German education, he subsequently studied at Strasburg, commencing, whilst still almost a student, with the imperishable_Werther_, to which it may be said that a whole literature is devotedand, parenthetically, a literature diametrically opposed to what Goethesubsequently became. Then a journey through Italy, which revealed Goetheto himself, made him a man who never ceased to desire to combine classicbeauty and Teutonic ways of thinking, and who was often magnificentlysuccessful. To put it in another way, Goethe in his own land is aRenaissance in himself, and the Renaissance which Germany had not knownin either the sixteenth or seventeenth century came as the gift ofGoethe. Immediately after his return from Italy he wrote _Tasso_ (ofclassic inspiration), _Wilhelm Meister_ (of Teutonic inspiration), _Iphigenia_ (classical), _Egmont_ (Teutonic), etc. Then came _Hermann andDorothea_, which was absolutely classic in the simplicity of its plan andpurity of lyric verse, but essentially modern in its picture of Germancustoms; _The Roman Elegies_, _The Elective Affinities_, _Poetry andTruth_ (autobiography mingled with romance), _The Western Eastern Divan_, lyrical poems, and finally, the two parts of _Faust_. In the first partof _Faust_, Goethe was, and desired to be, entirely German; in thesecond, through many reveries more or less relative to the theme, he moreparticularly desires to depict the union of the German spirit with thatof classical genius, which formed his own life, and led to _intelligentaction_, which also was a portion of his existence. And for beauty, drama, pathos, ease, phantasy, and fertility in varied invention, nothinghas ever surpassed if anything has even equalled the two parts of _Faust_regarded as a single poem. 

Apart from his literary labours, Goethe occupied himself with theadministration of the little duchy of Weimar, and in scientific research, notably on plants, animals, and the lines in which he displayed markedoriginality. He died in 1832, having been born in 1749. His literarycareer extends over, approximately, sixty years, equal to that of VictorHugo, and almost equal to that of Voltaire. 

THE CONTEMPORANEOUS PERIOD. --After the death of Goethe, Germany could notmaintain the same height. Once more was she glorified in poetry by HenryHeine, an extremely original witty traveller, in his _Pictures ofTravel_, elegiac and deeply lyrical, affecting and delightful at the sametime in _The Intermezzo_; by the Austrian school, Zedlitz, Grün, and themelancholy and deep-thinking Lenau; in prose, above all, by thephilosophers, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and lastlyNietzsche--at once philosopher, moralist (after his own manner), andpoet, with an astonishing imagination; by the historians Niebuhr (before1830), Treitschke, Mommsen, etc. Germany seems to have drooped, so far asliterature is concerned, despite some happy exceptions (especially in thedrama: Hauptmann, Sudermann), since her military triumphs of 1870 and theconsequent industrial activity. 

CHAPTER XVIII

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ITALY

Poets: Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Monti, Leopardi. Prose Writers:Silvio Pellico, Fogazzaro, etc. 

LITERARY AWAKENING. --After a long decadence, Italy, less overwhelmedpolitically than previously, reawoke about 1750. Once more poets cameforward: Metastasio, author of tragedies and operas; Goldoni, a verywitty and gay comic poet; Alfieri who revived Italian tragedy, which hadbeen languishing and silent since Maffei, and who, like Voltaire inFrance, and with greater success, established a philosophical andpolitical tribune; Foscolo, sufficiently feeble in tragedy but verytouching and eloquent in _The Tombs_, inspired by Young's _NightThoughts_ and _The Letters of Jacob Ortis_, an interesting novelist andeloquently impassioned patriot; Monti, versatile and master of allrecantations according to his own interests, but a very pure writer andnot without brilliance in his highly diversified poems. 

EMINENT PROSE WRITERS. --Italy could show eminent prose writers, such asthose jurisprudent philanthropists Filangieri and Beccaria; critics andliterary historians like Tiraboschi. 

NINETEENTH CENTURY. --In the nineteenth century may first be found amongpoets that great poet, the unhappy Leopardi, the bard of suffering, ofsorrow, and of despair; Carducci, a brilliant orator, imbued withvigorous passions; Manzoni, lyricist, dramatist, vibrating with patrioticenthusiasm, affecting in his novel _The Betrothal_, which became popularin every country in Europe. In prose, Silvio Pellico equally moved Europeto tears by his book _My Prisons_, wherein he narrated the experiences ofhis nine years of captivity at the hands of Austria, and found hisagreeable tragedy of _Francesca da Rimini_ welcomed with flatteringappreciation. Philosophy was specially represented by Gioberti, author of_The Treatise on the Supernatural_, and journalism by Giordani, eloquent, at times with grace and ease, and at others with harshness and violence. 

THE MODERNS. --As these words were written came the news of the death ofthe illustrious novelist Fogazzaro. Gabriel d'Annunzio, poet andultra-romantic novelist, and Mathilde Serao, an original novelist, pursuetheir illustrious careers. 

CHAPTER XIX

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: SPAIN

The Drama still Brilliant: Moratin. Historians and Philosophers, Novelists, Orators. 

THE DRAMA. Since the middle of the seventeenth century, approximately, Spain has exercised less literary influence than in the precedingcenturies. Nevertheless Spanish literature was not extinct; it was in thedrama more especially that it was manifest. Candamo, Cañizares, andZamora all illumined the stage. Candamo devoted himself to the historicaldrama; his masterpiece in this type was _The Slave in Golden Chains_;Cañizares, powerful satirist, displayed the comic spirit in his comediesof character; Zamora manipulated the comedy of intrigue with remarkabledexterity. Then came Vincente de la Huerta, skilful in combining the typeof French tragedy with something of the ancient dramatic national genius;then Leandro Moratin (called Moratin the Younger to distinguish him fromhis father Nicholas), very imitative, no doubt, of Molière, but inhimself highly gifted, and of whose works can still be read with pleasure_The Old Man and the Young Girl_, _The New Comedy on the Coffee_, _TheFemale Hypocrite_, etc. He also wrote lyrical poems and sonnets. He livedlong in France, where he became impregnated with Gallic classicalliterature. 

PROSE. --Stronger and more brilliant at that period than the poetry, theprose was represented by Father Florez, author of _Ecclesiastical Spain_;by the Marquis de San Phillipo, author of the _War of Succession inSpain_; by Antonio de Solis, author of _The Conquest of Mexico_. Infiction there was the interesting Father Isla, a Jesuit, who gave aclever imitation of the _Don Quixote_ of Cervantes in his _History of thePreacher Friar Gerund_. He was well read and patriotic. He was convincedthat Le Sage had taken all his _Gil Blas_ from various Spanish authors, and he published a translation of his novel under the title: _TheAdventures of Gil Blas of Santiago, stolen from Spain and adopted inFrance by M. Le Sage, restored to their country and native tongue bya jealous Spaniard who will not endure being laughed at_. Another Jesuit(and it may be noticed that Spanish Jesuits of the seventeenth centuryoften displayed a very liberal and modern mind), Father Feijoo, wrote akind of philosophical dictionary entitled _Universal Dramatic Criticism_, a review of human opinions which was satirical, humorous, and oftenextremely able. The historian Antonio de Solis, who was also a reasonablycapable dramatist, produced a _History of the Conquest of South AmericaKnown under the name of New Spain_, in a chartered style that was veryelegant and even too elegant. Jovellanos wrote much in various styles. Among others he wrote one fine tragedy, _Pelagia_; a comedy presentingclever contrasts, entitled _The Honorable Criminal_; a mass of studies onthe past of Spain, economic treatises, satires, and pamphlets. Engaged inall the historical and political vicissitudes of his country, he expiredmiserably in 1811, after having been alternately in exile and at the headof affairs. 

ROMANTICISM. --In the nineteenth century Spanish romanticism was broughtback in dignified poetic style by Angel Saavedra, José Zorilla, Venturade la Vega, Ramon Campoamor, Espronceda. The latter especially countsamong the great literary Spaniards, for he was poet and novelist, whowrote _The Student of Salamanca_ (Don Juan), _The Devil World_ (a kind ofFaust), lyrical poems, and an historical novel, _Sancho Saldano_. 

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. --In drama, _Quintana_ also produced a _Pelagia_;the Duke of Rivas a _Don Alvaro_, which enjoyed an immediate success;Zorilla a _Don Juan_ entirely novel in conception; Martinez de la Rosetragedies, some in the classic vein, others with modern intrigue andcomedies; Gutierrez, by his _Foundling_, attracted the attention oflibrettists of French operas; Breton de los Herreros wrote sparklingcomedies, the multiplicity of which suggest Scribe. In prose, FernanCaballero was a fertile novelist and an attentive and accurate painter ofmanner. Trueba (who was also an elegant poet) was an affecting idyllicnovelist. Emilio Castelar, the Lamartine of Spain as he was called byEdmond About, was a splendid orator, thrown by the chances of politicallife for one hour at the head of national affairs, who raised himself tothe highest rank in the admiration of his contemporaries by his novels:for instance, _The Sister of Charity_ and his works on philosophicalhistory and the history of art, _Civilisation in the First Centuries ofChristianity_, _The Life of Byron_, _Souvenirs of Italy_, etc. In ourday, there have been numerous distinguished authors (and for us, atleast, out of the crowd stands forth the dramatist José Echegaray), whocarry on the glorious tradition of Spanish literature. 

CHAPTER XX

RUSSIAN LITERATURE

Middle Ages. Some Epic Narratives. Renaissance in the SeventeenthCentury. Literature Imitative of the West in the Eighteenth Century. Original Literature in the Nineteenth Century. 

THE MIDDLE AGES. --Russia possessed a literature even in the Middle Ages. In the eleventh century the metropolitan Hilarion wrote a discourse onthe Old and the New Testament. In the twelfth century, the _Chronicle_that is said to be by _Nestor_ is the first historical monument ofRussia. At the same period Vladimir Monomaque, Prince of Kief, whodevoted his life to fighting with all his neighbours, left his son anautobiographic _instruction_, which is very interesting for the light itthrows on the events and, especially, on the customs of his day. At thesame time the hegumen (abbot) Daniel left an account of his pilgrimage tothe Holy Land. In the thirteenth century (probably) another Daniel, Daniel the prisoner, wrote from his distant place of exile to his princea supplicatory letter, which is astonishing because in it is found aremarkable and wholly unexpected degree of literary talent. In thethirteenth or fourteenth century two epic pieces, _The Lay of the Battleof Igor_ and _The Zadonstchina_, of which it is uncertain which imitatedthe other, alike present vigorous and vivid accounts of battles. In thefifteenth or sixteenth century there is a didactic work, _The Domostroi_, which is a moral treatise, a handbook of domestic economy, a manual ofgardening, and a cookery book, etc. The Tzar Ivan the Terrible (sixteenthcentury) was a dexterous diplomatist and a precise, nervous, and ironicalwriter. He left highly curious letters. 

RENAISSANCE. --Kutochikine (seventeenth century), who was minister in hisown land, then disgraced and exiled in Sweden, wrote an extremelyinteresting book on the habits of his contemporaries. The "Renaissance, "if it may be so termed, that is, the contact between the Russian spiritand Western genius, occurred in the eighteenth century. Prince Kantemir, Russian ambassador in London, who knew Montesquieu, Maupertuis, the AbbéGuasco, etc. , wrote satires in the manner of Horace and of Boileau. Trediakowski took on himself to compose a very tedious _Telemachidus_, but he knew how to unravel the laws of Russian metre and to write odeswhich at least were indicative of the right direction. 

LOMONOSOV. --Lomonosov is regarded as the real father of Russianliterature, as the Peter the Great of literature--a great man withal, engineer, chemist, professor, grammarian. Regarding him solely as aliterary man, he made felicitous essays in tragedy, lyrical poetry, epicpoetry, polished the Russian versification, established its grammar, andimparted a powerful impulse in a multitude of directions. 

CREATION OF THE DRAMA. --Soumarokoff founded the Russian drama. He wasmanager of the first theatre opened in St. Petersburg (1756). In theFrench vein he wrote tragedies, comedies, fables, satires, and epigrams. He corresponded with Voltaire. The latter wrote to him in 1769: "Sir, your letter and your works are a great proof that genius and tastepertain to all lands. Those who said that poetry and music belonged onlyto temperate climates were deeply in error. If climate were so potent, Greece would still produce Platos and Anacreons, just as she produces thesame fruits and flowers; Italy would have Horaces, Virgils, Ariostos, andTassos. . . . The sovereigns who love the arts change the climates; theycause roses to bud in the midst of snows. That is what your incomparablemonarch has done. I could believe that the letters with which she hashonoured me came from Versailles and yours from one of my colleagues inthe Academy. . . . Over me you possess one prodigious advantage: I do notknow a word of your language and you are completely master ofmine. . . . Yes, I regard Racine as the best of our tragic poets. . . . He isthe only one who has treated love tragically; for before him Corneillehad only expressed that passion well in _The Cid_, and _The Cid_ is nothis. Love is ridiculous or insipid in nearly all his other works. I thinkas you do about Quinault; he is a great man in his own way. He would nothave written the _Art of Poetry_, but Boileau would not have written_Armida_. I entirely agree with what you write about Molière and of thetearful comedy which, to the national disgrace, has succeeded to the onlyreal comic type brought to perfection by the inimitable Molière. SinceRegnard, who was endowed with a truly comic genius and who alone camenear Molière, we have only had monstrosities. . . . That, sir, is theprofession of faith you have asked of me. " This letter is quoted, despiteits errors, because it forms, as it were, _a preface to Russianliterature_, and also a patent of nobility granted to this literature. 

CATHERINE II. --The Empress wrote _in Russian_ advice as to the educationof her grandson, very piquant comedies, and review articles. Von Vizin, acomic author, was the first to look around and to depict the custom ofhis country, which means that he was the earliest humorous nationalwriter. The classic works of Von Vizin were _The Brigadier_ and _TheMinor_. Whilst pictures of contemporaneous manners, they were alsopleadings in favour of a reformed Russia against the Russia that existedbefore Peter the Great, which still in part subsisted, as was onlynatural. He made a journey to France and it will be seen from hiscorrespondence that he brought back a highly flattering impression. 

RADISTCHEF. --Radistchef was the first Russian political writer. Underthe pretext of a _Voyage from Petersburg to Moscow_, he attacked serfdom, absolute government, even religion, for which he was condemned to deathand exiled to Siberia. He was pardoned later on by Paul I, but soon aftercommitted suicide. He was verbose, but often really eloquent. 

ORATORS AND POETS. --The preacher Platon, whose real name was Levchine, was an orator full of sincerity, unction, and sometimes of real power. Hewas religious tutor to the hereditary Grand Duke, son of Catherine II. Another preacher, and his successor at the siege of Moscow, Vinogradsky, was likewise a really great orator. It was he who, after the Frenchretreat from Russia, delivered the funeral oration on the soldiers killedat Borodino. Ozerov was a classical tragedy writer after the manner ofVoltaire, and somewhat hampered thereby. Batiouchkov, although he livedright into the middle of the nineteenth century, is already a classic. Hevenerated and imitated the writers of antiquity; he was a devout admirerof Tibullus, and wrote elegies which are quite exquisite. Krylov was afabulist: a dexterous delineator of animals and a delicate humourist. Frenchmen and Italians have been alike fascinated by him, and his workshave often been translated; until the middle of the nineteenth century heenjoyed European popularity. 

THE GOLDEN AGE: PUSHKIN. --The true Russian nineteenth century and itsgolden age must be dated from Pushkin. He wrote from his earliest youth. He was an epic poet, novelist, and historian. His principal poems were_Ruslan and Liudmila_, _Eugene Onegin_, _Poltava_; his most remarkablehistorical essay was _The Revolt of Pugachev_. He possessed a fertile andvigorous imagination, which he developed by continual and enthusiasticstudy of Byron. He did not live long enough either for his own fame orfor the welfare of Russian literature, being killed in a duel at the ageof thirty-eight. Mérimée translated much by Pushkin. The French lyricstage has mounted one of his most delicate inspirations, _La Rousalka_(the water nymph). He was quite conscious of his own genius and, freelyimitating the _Exegi monumentum_ of Horace, as will be seen, he wrote: "Ihave raised to myself a monument which no human hand has constructed. . . . I shall not entirely perish . . . The sound of my name shall permeatethrough vast Russia. . . . For long I shall be dear to my race because mylyre has uttered good sentiments, because, in a brutal age, I havevaunted liberty and preached love for the down-trodden. Oh, my Muse, heedthe commands of God, fear not offence, claim no crown; receive with equalindifference eulogy and calumny, but never dispute with fools. "

LERMONTOV. --Lermontov was not inferior to his friend Pushkin, whom heclosely resembled. Like him he drew inspiration from the romantic poetsof the West. He loved the East, and his short, glorious suggestions cameto him from the Caucasus. Among his finest poetic works may be cited _TheNovice Ismael Bey_, _The Demon_, _The Song of the Tzar Ivan_. He wrote anovel, perhaps autobiographical, entitled _A Hero of Our Own Time_, thehero of which is painted in highly Byronic colours. 

GOGOL. --Russian taste was already veering to the epic novel or epopee inprose, of which Gogol was the most illustrious representative untilTolstoy. He was highly gifted. In him the feeling for Nature was acutelyactive, and recalling his descriptions of the plains of the Crimea, itsrivers and steppes, he must be regarded as the Rousseau and Chateaubriandof Russia. Further, he was a close student of village habits, and apainter in astonishing hues. He eminently possessed the sense of epicgrandeur, and added a sarcastic vein of delightful irony. His _TarasBulba_, _King of the Dwarfs_, _History of a Fool_, and _Dead Souls_, havethe force of arresting realism, his _Revisor_ (inspector of finances) isa caustic comedy which has been a classic not only in Russia but inFrance, where it was introduced in translation by Mérimée. 

TURGENEV. --Turgenev, less epical than Gogol, was also studious of localhabits and dexterous in describing them. He began with exquisite_Huntsman's Tales_ impregnated with truth and precision, as well asintimate and picturesque details; then he extended his scope and wrotenovels, but never at great length, and therefore suited to the exigenciesor habits of Western Europe (such as _Smoke_). He had selected Paris ashis abode, and he mixed with the greatest thinkers of the day: Taine, Flaubert, Edmond About. In the eyes of his fellow-countrymen he becameultimately too Western and too Parisian. His was a delicate, sensitivesoul, prone to melancholy and perpetually dreaming. He had a cult of formin which he went so far as to make it a sort of scruple and superstition. 

TOLSTOY. --Tolstoy, so recently dead, was a great epic poet in prose, avery powerful and affecting novelist, and in some measure an apostle. Hebegan with _Boyhood Adolescence and Youth_, in itself very curious andparticularly valuable because of the idea it conveys of the life of thelords of the Russian soil, and for its explanation of the formation ofthe soul and genius of Tolstoy; then came _The Cossacks_, full ofmagnificent descriptions of the Caucasus and of interesting scenes ofmilitary and rural life; subsequently that masterpiece of Tolstoy's, _Warand Peace_, narratives dealing with the war of Napoleon with Russia andof the subsequent period of peaceful and healthy rural life. It isimpossible to adequately admire the power of narration and descriptiveforce, the fertility of incidents, characterisations, and dramaticmoments, the art or rather the gift of portraiture, and finally, thegrandeur and moral elevation, in fact, all the qualities, not one ofwhich he appeared to lack, of which Tolstoy gave proof and which hedisplayed in this immense history of the Russian soul at the commencementof the nineteenth century; for it is thus that it is meet to qualify thisnoble creation. The only analogy is with _Les Misérables_ of Victor Hugo, and it must be admitted that despite its incomparable merits, the Frenchwork is the more unequal. _Anna Karenina_ is only a novel in the vein ofFrench novels, but very profound and remarkable for its analysis ofcharacter and also impassioned and affecting, besides having considerablemoral range. _The Kreutzer_ Sonata_ is a romance rather than a novel, butcruelly beautiful because it exposes with singular clairvoyance themisery of a soul impotent for happiness. _Resurrection_ shows thatmournful and impassioned pity felt by Tolstoy for the humble and the"fallen, " to use the phrase of Pushkin; it realises a lofty dramaticbeauty. Tolstoy, in a thousand pamphlets or brief works, preached to hisown people and to mankind the strict morality of Christ, charity, renunciation, peace at all price, without taking into account thenecessities of social life; and he denounced, as had Jean JacquesRousseau, the culpability of art and literature, being resigned torecognising his own works as condemnable. His was the soul of an exaltedpoet and a lofty poetical mind; from a poet must not be demandedpractical common sense or that feeling for reality which is demanded, often unavailingly, from a statesman. 

DOSTOEVSKY. --Dostoevsky, with a tragic genius as great as that ofTolstoy, may be said to have been more restricted because he exclusivelydelineated the unhappy, the miserable, and those defeated in life. Heknew them personally because, after being arrested in 1849 at the age offifty for the crime of belonging to a secret society, he spent years inthe convict prisons of Siberia. Those miseries he describes in the mostexact terms and with heart-rending eloquence in _Buried Alive: Ten Yearsin Siberia_, and in the remarkable novel entitled _Crime and Punishment_. He has lent invaluable aid in the propagation of two sentiments whichhave created some stir in the West and which, assuredly, we desire tofoster: namely, "the religion of human suffering" and the cult of"expiation. "

CHAPTER XXI

POLISH LITERATURE

At an Early Date Western Influence sufficiently Potent. Sixteenth CenturyBrilliant; Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries highly Cultured;Nineteenth Century Notably Original. 

WESTERN INFLUENCE--Widely different from Russian literature, much moreWestern, based more on Greek and Latin culture, Polish literature holdshigh rank in the histories of European literature. Christians from thetenth century, the Poles knew from this epoch religious songs written bymonks, in the vulgar tongue. To this is due the possession of the_Bogarodzica_, a religious and bellicose song dedicated to the Virginmother of God, which is even now comprehensible, so little has the Polishlanguage changed. All through the Middle Ages, literary historians canonly find chronicles written sometimes in Latin, sometimes in the nativelanguage. Under the influence of the universities, and also of theparliamentary rule, the language acquired alike more consistency and moreauthority in the fifteenth century, whilst the sixteenth was the goldenliterary epoch of the Poles. There were poets, and even great poets, aswell as orators and historians. Such was Kochanowski, very much aWestern, who lived some time in Italy, also seven years in France, andwas a friend of Ronsard. His writings were epical, lyrical, tragical, satirical, and especially elegiacal. He is a classic in Poland. Grochowski left a volume of diversified poems, hymns on various texts ofThomas à Kempis, _The Nights_ of Thorn, etc. Martin Bielski, who was anhistorian too, but in Latin, left two political satires on the conditionof Poland, and his son Joachim wrote a history of his native land inPolish. 

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. --Though somewhat less brilliantthan the preceding, the period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriesis not unfavourable to Poland. Then may be enumerated the satiricalOpalinski, the lyrical Kochanowski, the dramatist Bogulawski, manager ofthe theatre at Warsaw, who not only translated plays from the French, English, and Spanish, but himself wrote several comedies, of which _TheLover, Author, and Servant_ has remained the most celebrated. Rzewuskiwas a dramatic author with such national plays as _Wladislas at Varna_and _Zolkewishi_, and comedies as _The Vexations_ and _The Capricious_, and he also was historian, orator, literary critic, and theorist. 

Potocki was a literary and theoretical critic and founder of a sort ofPolish academy (society for the perfection of the tongue and of style). Prince Czartoryski showed himself an excellent moralist in his _Lettersto Doswiadryski_. Niemcewicz extended his great literary talent into amass of diversified efforts. He wrote odes held in esteem, tragedies, comedies, fables, and tales, historical novels, and he translated thepoems of Pope and the _Athalie_ of Racine. 

LITERARY RENAISSANCE. --Losing her national independence, Polandexperienced a veritable literary renaissance, which offered but slendercompensation. She applied herself to explore her origins, to regain theancient spirit, and to live nationally in her literature. Hence her greatworks of patriotic erudition. Czacki with his _Laws of Poland and ofLithuania_, Kollontay with his _Essay on the Heredity of the Throne ofPoland_, and his _Letters of an Anonymous to Stanislas Malachowski_, etc. , Bentkowski with his _History of Polish Literature_ and his_Introduction to General Literature_, etc. Thence came the revival ofimaginative literature, Felinski, on the one hand translator ofCrébillon, Delille and Alfieri on the other, he was the personallydistinguished author of the drama _Barbe Radzivill_; Bernatowicz, authorof highly remarkable historical novels, among which _Poïata_ gives apicture of the triumph of Christianity in Lithuania in the fourteenthcentury; Karpinski, dramatist, author of _Judith_, a tragedy;_Alcestis_, an opera; _Cens_, a comedy, etc. ; Mickiewicz, scholar, poet, and novelist, who, exiled from his own land, was professor of literatureat Lausanne, then in Paris, at the College of France, extremely popularin France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, the friend of Goethe, Lamennais, Cousin, Michelet, and of all the French youth. He was theauthor of fine poems, of a great historical novel, _ConradeVattenrod_, of _The People and the Polish Pilgrims_, of a _Lesson on theSlav States_. 

MODERN EPOCH. --At the time of writing, Poland continues to be a literarynation well worthy of attention. She presents an example to the raceswhich incur the risk of perishing as nations because of their politicalincapacity; by preserving their tongue and by sanctifying it with aworthy literature they guard their country and, like the Greeks andItalians, hope to reconquer it some day through the sudden turns offortune shown in history. 

INDEX OP NAMES CITED

A

AboutAddisonAeschinesAeschylusAesopAicardAlarconAlcasusAlcamo, Ciullo ofAlemanAlexanderAlfieriAlphonso XAlphonso XIAlvarezAmbrose, St. AmyotAnacreonAnaxagorasAndocidesAnne, QueenAnnunzio, Gabriel d'AntiphonAntoninaAntonius DiogenesApolloniusAppianApuleiusAratusArcadiusArchilochusAretinoAriostoAristophanesAristotleArnauldArrianAsclepiadesAthanasius, St. AttiusAubigné, Agrippa d'AugierAugustine, St. AugustusAulardAurispaAusoniusAvienus

B

BabriusBacon, FrancisBaldiBalzac, G. DeBalzac, H. DeBandelloBanville, T. DeBarnaveBarthariBasil, S. BatailleBatiouchkovBaudelaireBayleBazinBeaumarchaisBeaumontBeccariaBelisariusBellay, Joachim duBelleauBemboBenseradeBentkowskiBérangerBergerac, Cyrano deBergsonBernard, TristanBernardesBernatowiczBerniBernsteinBertautBielski, JoachimBielski, MartinBionBoccaccioBodmerBoëtie, LaBogulawskiBoileauBojardoBordeauxBordelloBossuetBourdaloueBourgetBoutrouxBoylesveBrantômeBrieuxBrontë, C. Brontë, E. Browning, E. B. Browning, RobertBrueys, deBrunetièreBrunettoBuddhaBuffonBulwer-LyttonBunyanBürgerBurgundy, Duke ofBurnsBurton, RobertByron

C

CaballeroCaesar, JuliusCalderonCallimachusCallinosCalvinCaminhaCamoënsCampistronCampoamorCandamoCañizaresCarducciCarlyleCaroCassiniCassiusCastelarCastroCatherine of RussiaCatoCatullusCellini, BenvenutoCephalonCervantesCharles of OrleansCharles IICharles VChateaubriandChattertonChaucerChénier, AndréChénier, Marie-JosephChrysippusChrysostomCiceroClaudianCleanthesColeridgeCominesCommodianComnenusComteCondillacCongreveConstantCopernicusCoppéeCorneilleCorte-RealCousinCowperCrabbeCratinosCrébillonCromwellCyprian, St. CzackiCzartoryski

D

DancourtDaniel (the abbot)Daniel (the prisoner)DanteDantonDaudetDavenantDavilaDefoeDelavigneDelilleDemosthenesDescartesDesportesDestouchesDiamanteDickensDiderotDietmarDiogenesDolceDostoevskyDrydenDuclosDufresnyDumas, (_père_)Dumas, (_fils_)Dürer

E

EberlingEchegarayEliot, GeorgeElisabethEnniusEpictetusEpicurusErasmusErcillaEspinelEsproncedaEudoxiaEupolisEuripidesEusebiusEustathiusEvemerus

F

FalcamFayette, Mme. De laFeijooFelinskiFénelonFerreiraFichteFicinoFieldingFilangieriFlaubertFletcherFlorezFogazzaroFolengoFontenelleFoscoloFouilléeFoxFrederick IIFroissart

G

GalenGalileoGarnierGautierGellius AulusGersonGibbonGilbertGil VicenteGiobertiGiordaniGoetheGogolGoldoniGoldsmithGoncourt, deGongoraGorgiasGottschedGowerGregory, St. GressetGrimmGrochowskiGrünGuariniGuascoGuevaraGuicciardiniGuittoneGuizotGutierrezGuyot

H

HabingtonHallerHaraucourtHartmannHauptmannHaussonville, d'Hecataeus of AbderaHegelHeineHeliodorusHenry VIHeraclitusHerbertHerderHerodianHerodotusHerrerosHervieuHesiodHilarionHilarius, St. HildebrandHippocratesHomerHoraceHuertaHugo, VictorHugo of BerziHumeHuttenHyperides

I

IfflandIslaIsocratesIvanIzoulet

J

JacoponeJames IJaurèsJerome, St. JodelleJohnson, DrJoinvilleJonson, BenJoseph of ByzantiumJovellanosJulian the ApostateJuniusJustinianJuvenalJuvencus

K

KalidasKantKantemirKarpinskiKeatsKempis, T. àKlopstockKochanowskiKollontayKörnerKotzebueKrylovKürenbergKutochikine

L

LaberiusLa BruyèreLacerdaLa ChausséeLactantiusLa FontaineLamartineLamb, CLamennaisLa MotteLanfrancLa RochefoucauldLascarisLavaterLavedanLavisseLeconte de LisleLeibnitzLenauLeonardo da VinciLeonidasLeopardiLermontovLe SageLessingLibaniusLiviusLivyLoboLockeLomonosovLongusLope de VegaLorris, William ofLouis, StLouis XILucenaLucianLuciliusLucretiusLutherLycophronLylyLysias

M

MablyMacaulayMachiavelliMacPhersonMaffeiMairetMaistre, Joseph deMalaspinaMalebrancheMalherbeMallarméManuel, JohnManzinhoManzoniMarcus AureliusMariniMarivauxMarloweMarmontelMarotMartialMartinez, Rose de laMary, PrincessMaynardMedici, Catherine de'Medici, Marie de'MelanchthonMeleagerMenanderMendèsMendozaMercierMeredithMériméeMetastasioMeung, John deMezerayMicheletMickiewiczMiltonMirabeauMolièreMommsenMonomaqueMontaigneMontalvoMontchrestienMontemayorMontesquieuMontiMontlucMoratin, LeandroMoratin, NicholasMoschusMun, deMusseusMusset, A. De

N

NaeviusNapoleonNeposNervaNewmanNewtonNicoleNiebuhrNiemcewiczNietzscheNonnus

O

OlivaresOpalinskiOppianOtwayOvidOzerov

P

PacuviusPalapratPandolfiniPascalPaulinus, St. Paul IPellicoPereiraPericlesPerronPerseusPeter the GreatPetrarchPetroniusPhiletasPhilip IIIPhilostratesPico della MirandolaPindarPironPisistratusPlanudesPlatoPlatonPlautusPliny the ElderPliny the YoungerPlutarchPolitienPolybiusPompignanPomponiusPontusPopePorto-RichePotockiPrévost, AbbéPrévost, Marcel. ProcopiusPropertiusProtagorasPrudentiusPtolemyPublius SyrusPulciPushkin

Q

QuevedoQuinetQuintanaQuintilianQuintusQuintus Curtius

R

RabelaisRacanRacineRadistchefRaynalRegnardRégnier, H. DeRégnier, M. RenanRetz, Cardinal deRibeiroRibot, A. Ribot, T. RichardsonRichepinRivasRobertRobertsonRobespierreRojasRonsardRosaRosa, SalvatorRossetti, ChristinaRossetti, DanteRostandRoucherRouget de LisleRousseau, J. B. Rousseau, J. J. RuskinRutiliusRzewuski

S

Saa de MirandaSaa e MenezèsSaavedraSaint-AmantSaint-ÉvremondSaint-GelaisSaint-LambertSaint-Pierre, Bernardin deSaint-SimonSainte-BeuveSakyamuniSallustSand, GeorgeSan PhillipoSannazaroSapphoSardouSavonarolaScarronScève, MauriceSchillerSchopenhauerScipioScottScribeScudérySédaineSegraisSeignobosSénancourSeneca the PhilosopherSeneca the TragicSeraoSévignéSextus EmpiricusShakespeareShelleySheridanSidneySilius ItalicusSimonidesSocratesSolisSophoclesSoumarokoffSoutheySpenserStaël, Mme. DeStatiusStendhalSterneSudermannSully-PrudhommeSwiftSwinburne

T

TacitusTaineTannhäuserTansilloTassoTassoniTennysonTerenceTertullianThackerayThalesTheocritusTheodoraTheophrastusThespisThibautThierryThiersThomsonThornThucydidesTibullusTiraboschiTirso de MolinaTolstoyTorricelliTrajanTrediakowskiTreitschkeTruebaTurgenevTurgotTyrtaeus

U

Urfé, Honoré d'

V

Vair, duValerius FlaccusValmikiVarroVaugelasVentura de la VegaVergniaudVerlaineVian, Theophilus deVicoVignes, Peter ofVigny, Alfred deVillehardouinVillonVinogradskyVirgilVizin, vonVoitureVoltaire

W

WallerWielandWolffWordsworthWycherley

X

Xenophon

Y

Young

Z

ZamoraZedlitzZenoZiorgiZolaZorillaZwingli