CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS IN FRENCH CRITICISM DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

The principle for which the PlÉiade stood was, like that of humanism, the imitation of the classics; and the PlÉiade was the first to introduce this as a literary principle into France. This means, as regards French literature, in the first place, the substitution of the classical instead of its own national tradition; and, secondly, the substitution of the imitation of the classics for the imitation of nature itself. In making these vital substitutions, Du Bellay and his school have been accused of creating once and for all the gulf that separates French poetry from the national life.[381] This accusation is perhaps unfair to the PlÉiade, which insisted on the poet's going directly to nature, which emphasized most strongly the sentiment for natural scenery and beauty, and which first declared the importance of the artisan and the peasant as subjects for poetry. But there can be but little doubt that the separation of poetry from the national life was the logical outcome of the doctrines of the PlÉiade. In disregarding the older French poets and the evolution of indigenous poetry, in formulating an ideal of the poet as an unsociable and ascetic character, it separated itself from the natural tendencies of French life and letters, and helped to effect the final separation between poetry and the national development.

I. Classical Elements

It was to Du Bellay (1549) that France owes the introduction of classical ideas into French literature. He was the first to regard the imitation of the classics as a literary principle, and to advise the poet, after the manner of Vida, to purloin all the treasures of Greek and Latin literature for the benefit of French poetry. Moreover, he first formulated the aristocratic conception of the poet held by the PlÉiade. The poet was advised to flee from the ignorant people, to bury himself in the solitude of his own chamber, to dream and to ponder, and to content himself with few readers. "Beyond everything," says Du Bellay, "the poet should have one or more learned friends to whom he can show all his verses; he should converse not only with learned men, but with all sorts of workmen, mechanics, artists, and others, in order to learn the technical terms of their arts, for use in beautiful descriptions."[382] This was a favorite theory of the PlÉiade, which like some of our own contemporary writers regarded the technical arts as important subjects of inspiration. But the essential point at the bottom of all these discussions is a high contempt for the opinion of the vulgar in matters of art.

The Quintil Horatian (1550) represents, as has already been seen, a natural reaction against the foreign and classical innovations of the PlÉiade. Du Bellay's advice, "Prens garde que ce poËme soit eslognÉ du vulgaire,"—advice insisted upon by many of the rhetoricians of the Italian Renaissance,—receives considerable censure; on the contrary, says the author of the Quintil, the poet must be understood and appreciated by all, unlearned as well as learned, just as Marot was. The Quintil was, in fact, the first work to insist on definiteness and clearness in poetry, as these were afterward insisted on by Malherbe and Boileau. Like Malherbe, and his disciple Deimier, the author of the AcadÉmie de l'Art PoÉtique (1610), in which the influence of the Quintil is fully acknowledged, the author of the Quintil objects to all forms of poetic license, to all useless metaphors that obscure the sense, to all Latinisms and foreign terms and locutions.[383] Du Bellay had dwelt on the importance of a knowledge of the classical and Italian tongues, and had strongly advised the French poet to naturalize as many Latin, Greek, and even Spanish and Italian terms as he could. The Quintil is particularly bitter against all such foreign innovations. The poet need not know foreign tongues at all; without this knowledge he can be as good a poet as any of the grÆcaniseurs, latiniseurs, et italianiseurs en franÇoys. This protest availed little, and Du Bellay's advice in regard to the use of Italian terms was so well followed that several years later, in 1578, Henri Estienne vigorously protested against the practice in his Dialogues du Nouveau Langage franÇois italianisÉ. As Ronsard and Du Bellay represent the foreign elements that went to make up classicism in France, so the author of the Quintil Horatian may be said to represent in his humble way certain enduring elements of the esprit gaulois. He represents the national traditions, and he prepares the way for the two great bourgeois poets of France,—Boileau, with his "Tout doit tendre au bon sens," and MoliÈre, with his bluff cry, "Je suis pour le bon sens."

According to Pelletier (1555), French poetry is too much like colloquial speech; in order to equal classical literature, the poets of France must be more daring and less popular.[384] Pelletier's point of view is here that of the PlÉiade, which aimed at a distinct poetic language, diverse from ordinary prose speech. But he is thoroughly French, and in complete accord with the author of the Quintil Horatian, in his insistence on perfect clearness in poetry. "Clearness," he says, "is the first and worthiest virtue of a poem."[385] Obscurity is the chief fault of poetry, "for there is no difference between not speaking at all and not being understood."[386] For these reasons he is against all unnecessary and bombastic ornament; the true use of metaphors and comparisons of all sorts is "to explain and represent things as they really are." Similarly, Ronsard, while recognizing the value of comparisons, rightfully used, as the very nerves and tendons of poetry, declares that if instead of perfecting and clarifying, they obscure or confuse the idea, they are ridiculous.[387] Obscurity was the chief danger, and indeed the chief fault, of the PlÉiade; and it is no small merit that both Ronsard and Pelletier perceived this fact.

The PlÉiade exhibits the classic temper in its insistence on study and art as essential to poetry; but it was not in keeping with the doctrines of later French classicists in so far as it regarded the poetic labors as of an unsociable and even ascetic character. In this, as has been seen, Ronsard is a true exponent of the doctrines of the new school. But on the whole the classic spirit was strong in him. He declares that the poet's ideas should be high and noble, but not fantastic. "They should be well ordered and disposed; and while they seem to transcend those of the vulgar, they should always appear to be easily conceived and understood by any one."[388] Here Du Bellay's aristocratic conception of poetry is modified so as to become a very typical statement of the principle underlying French classicism. Again, Ronsard points out, as Vida and other Italian critics had done before, that the great classical poets seldom speak of things by their bare and naked names. Virgil does not, for example, say, "It was night," or "It was day," but he uses some such circumlocution as this:—

The unfortunate results of the excessive use of such circumlocutions are well exemplified in the later classicists of France. Ronsard perhaps foresaw this danger, and wisely says that circumlocution, if not used judiciously, makes the style inflated and bombastic. In the first preface to the Franciade, he expresses a decided preference for the naÏve facility of Homer over the artful diligence of Virgil.[389] In the second preface, however, written a dozen years later, and published posthumously as revised by his disciple Binet, there is interesting evidence, in the preËminence given to Virgil, of the rapidity with which the Latinization of culture was being effected at this period. "Our French authors," says Ronsard, "know Virgil far better than they know Homer or any other Greek writer." And again, "Virgil is the most excellent and the most rounded, the most compact and the most perfect of all poets."[390] Of the naÏve facility of Homer we hear absolutely nothing.

We are now beginning to enter the era of rules. Ronsard did not undervalue the "rules and secrets" of poetry; and Vauquelin de la Fresnaye calls his own critical poem cet Art de RÈgles recherchÉes.[391] In regard to the imitation of the classics, Vauquelin agrees heart and soul with the PlÉiade that the ancients

Nothing, indeed, could be more classical than his comparison of poetry to a garden symmetrically laid out and trimmed.[393] Moreover, like the classicists of the next century, he affirms, as does Ronsard also, that art must fundamentally imitate and resemble nature.[394]

The imitation of the classics had also a decided effect on the technique of French verse and on the linguistic principles of the PlÉiade. Enjambement (the carrying over into another line of words required to complete the sense) and hiatus (the clash of vowels in a line) were both employed in Latin and Greek verse, and were therefore permitted in French poetry by the new school. Ronsard, however, anticipated the reforms of Malherbe and the practice of French classic verse, in forbidding both hiatus and enjambement, though in a later work of his this opinion is reversed. He was also probably the first to insist on the regular alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes in verse. This had never been strictly adhered to in practice, or required by stringent rule, before Ronsard, but has become the invariable usage of French poetry ever since. Ronsard regards this device as a means of making verse keep tune more harmoniously with the music of instruments. It was one of the favorite theories of the PlÉiade that poetry is intended, not to be read, but to be recited or sung, and that the words and the notes should be coupled lovingly together. Poetry without an accompaniment of vocal or instrumental music exhibits but a small part of its harmony or perfection; and while composing verses, the poet should always pronounce them aloud, or rather sing them, in order to test their melody.[395] This conception of music "married to immortal verse" doubtless came from Italy, and is connected with the rise of operatic music. De Laudun (1598) differs from the members of the PlÉiade in forbidding the use of words newly coined or taken from the dialects of France, and in objecting to the use of enjambement and hiatus. It is evident, therefore, that while the influence of the PlÉiade is visible throughout De Laudun's treatise, his disagreement with Ronsard and Du Bellay on a considerable number of essential points shows that by the end of the century the supremacy of the PlÉiade had begun to wane.

The new school also attempted to introduce classical metres into French poetry. The similar attempt at using the ancient versification in Italy has already been incidentally referred to.[396] According to Vasari, Leon Battista Alberti, in his epistle,

was the first to attempt to reduce the vernacular versification to the measure of the Latins.[397] In October, 1441, the Scena dell' Amicizia of Leonardo Dati was composed and recited before the Accademia Coronaria at Florence.[398] The first two parts of this piece are written in hexameters, the third in Sapphics, the fourth in sonnet form and rhymed. The prologues of Ariosto's comedies, the Negromante and the Cassaria, are also in classical metres. But the remarkable collection of Claudio Tolomei, Versi e Regole de la Nuova Poesia Toscana, published at Rome in 1539, marked an epoch in sixteenth-century letters. In this work the employment of classical metres in the vulgar tongue is defended, and rules for their use given; then follows a collection of Italian verse written after this fashion by a large number of scholars and poets, among them Annibal Caro and Tolomei himself. This group of scholars had formed itself into an esoteric circle, the Accademia della Nuova Poesia; and from the tone of the verses addressed to Tolomei by the members of this circle, it would seem that he regarded himself, and was regarded by them, as the founder and expositor of this poetic innovation.[399] Luigi Alamanni, whose life was chiefly spent at the Court of France, published in 1556 a comedy, La Flora, written in classical metres; and two years later Francesco Patrizzi published an heroic poem, the Eridano, written in hexameters, with a defence of the form of versification employed.[400]

This learned innovation spread throughout western Europe.[401] In France, toward the close of the fifteenth century, according to Agrippa d'AubignÉ, a certain Mousset had translated the Iliad and the Odyssey into French hexameters; but nothing else is known either of Mousset or of his translations. As early as 1500 one Michel de Bouteauville, the author of an Art de mÉtrifier franÇois, wrote a poem in classical distichs on the English war. Sibilet (1548) accepted the use of classical metres, though with some distrust, for to him rhyme seemed as essential to French poetry as long and short syllables to Greek and Latin. In 1562 Ramus, in his Grammar, recommended the ancient versification, and expressed his regret that it had not been accepted with favor by the public. In the same year Jacques de la Taille wrote his treatise, La ManiÈre de faire des Vers en franÇois comme en grec et en latin, but it was not published until 1573, eleven years after his death. His main object in writing the book was to show that it is not as difficult to employ quantity in French verse as some people think, nor even any more difficult than in Greek and Latin.[402] In answer to the objection that the vulgar tongues are by their nature incapable of quantity, he argues, after the manner of Du Bellay, that such things do not proceed from the nature of a language, but from the labor and diligence of those who employ it. He is tired of vulgar rhymes, and is anxious to find a more ingenious and more difficult path to Parnassus. He then proceeds to treat of quantity and measure in French, of feet and verse, and of figures and poetic license.[403]

The name most inseparably connected with the introduction of classical metres into France in the sixteenth century is that of Jean Antoine de BaÏf. This young member of the PlÉiade, after publishing several unsuccessful volumes of verse, visited Italy, and was present at the Council of Trent in 1563. In Italy he doubtless learnt of the metrical innovations then being employed; and upon his return, without any apparent knowledge of Jacques de la Taille's as yet unpublished treatise, he set about to make a systematic reform in French versification. His purpose was to bring about a more perfect unison between poetry and music; and in order to accomplish this, he adopted classical metres, based as they were on a musical prosody, and accepted the phonetic reforms of Ramus. He also established, no doubt in imitation of the Accademia della Nuova Poesia, the AcadÉmie de PoÉsie et de Musique, authorized by letters patent from Charles IX. in November, 1570.[404] The purpose of this academy was to encourage and establish the metrical and musical innovations advocated by BaÏf and his friends. On the death of Charles IX. the society's existence was menaced; but it was restored, with a broader purpose and function, as the AcadÉmie du Palais, by Guy du Faur de Pibrac in 1576, under the protection of Henry III., and it continued to nourish until dispersed by the turmoils of the League about 1585. But BaÏf's innovations were not entirely without fruit. A similar movement, and a not dissimilar society, will be found somewhat later in Elizabethan England.

II. Romantic Elements

Some of the romantic elements in the critical theory of the PlÉiade have already been indicated. The new movement started, in Du Bellay's DÉfense, with a high conception of the poet's office. It emphasized the necessity, on the part of the poet, of profound and solitary study, of a refined and ascetic life, and of entire separation from vulgar people and pleasures. Du Bellay himself is romantic in that he decides against the traditions de rÈgles,[405] deeming the good judgment of the poet sufficient in matters of taste; but the reason of this was that there were no rules which he would have been willing to accept. It took more than a century for the French mind to arrive at the conclusion that reason and rules, in matters of art, proceed from one and the same cause.

The feeling for nature and for natural beauty is very marked in all the members of the PlÉiade. Pelletier speaks of war, love, agriculture, and pastoral life as the chief themes of poetry.[406] He warns the poet to observe nature and life itself, and not depend on books alone; and he dwells on the value of descriptions of landscapes, tempests, and sunrises, and similar natural scenes.[407] The feeling for nature is even more intense in Ronsard; and like Pelletier, he urges the poet to describe in verse the rivers, forests, mountains, winds, the sea, gods and goddesses, sunrise, night, and noon.[408] In another place the poet is advised to embellish his work with accounts of trees, flowers, and herbs, especially those dignified by some medicinal or magical virtues, and with descriptions of rivers, towns, forests, mountains, caverns, rocks, harbors, and forts. Here the appreciation of natural beauty as introduced into modern Europe by the Italian Renaissance—the feeling for nature in its wider aspects, the broad landscape, the distant prospect—first becomes visible in France. "In the painting or rather imitation of nature," says Ronsard, "consists the very soul of heroic poetry."

Ronsard also gives warning that ordinary speech is not to be banished from poetry, or too much evaded, for by doing so the poet is dealing a death-blow to "naÏve and natural poetry."[409] This sympathy for the simple and popular forms of poetry as models for the poetic artist is characteristic of the PlÉiade. There is a very interesting passage in Montaigne, in which the popular ballads of the peasantry are praised in a manner that recalls the famous words of Sir Philip Sidney concerning the old song of Percy and Douglas,[410] and which seems to anticipate the interest in popular poetry in England two centuries later:—

The PlÉiade, as has already been intimated, accepted without reserve the Platonic doctrine of inspiration. By 1560 a considerable number of the Platonic dialogues had already been translated into French. Dolet had translated two of the spurious dialogues; Duval, the Lysis in 1547; and Le Roy, the PhÆdo in 1553 and the Symposium in 1559. The thesis of Ramus in 1536 had started an anti-Aristotelian tendency in France, and the literature of the French Renaissance became impregnated with Platonism.[412] It received the royal favor of Marguerite de Navarre, and its influence became fixed in 1551, by the appointment of Ramus to a professorship in the CollÈge de France. Ronsard, Vauquelin, Du Bartas, all give expression to the Platonic theory of poetic inspiration. The poet must feel what he writes, as Horace says, or his reader will never be moved by his verses; and for the PlÉiade, the excitement of high emotions in the reader or hearer was the test or touchstone of poetry.[413]

The national and Christian points of view never found expression in France during the sixteenth century in so marked a manner as in Italy. There are, indeed, traces of both a national and a Christian criticism, but they are hardly more than sporadic. Thus, it has been seen that Sibilet, as early as 1548, had clearly perceived the distinguishing characteristic of the French genius. He had noted that the French have only taken from foreign literature what they have deemed useful and of national advantage; and only the other day a distinguished French critic asserted in like manner that the high importance of French literature consists in the fact that it has taken from the other literatures of Europe the things of universal interest and disregarded the accidental picturesque details. Distinct traces of a national point of view may be found in the dramatic criticism of this period. Thus GrÉvin, in his Bref Discours (1562), attempts to justify the substitution of a crowd of CÆsar's soldiers for the singers of the ancient chorus, in one of his tragedies, on the following grounds:—

The Christian point of view, on the other hand, is found in Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, who differs from Ronsard and Du Bellay in his preference for scriptural themes in poetry. The PlÉiade was essentially pagan, Vauquelin essentially Christian. The employment of the pagan divinities in modern poetry seemed to him often odious, for the times had changed, and the Muses were governed by different laws. The poet should attempt Christian themes; and indeed the Greeks themselves, had they been Christians, would have sung the life and death of Christ. In this passage Vauquelin is evidently following Minturno, as the latter was afterward followed by Corneille:—

Vauquelin's opinion here is out of keeping with the general theory of the PlÉiade, especially in that his suggestions imply a return to the mediÆval mystery and morality plays. The Uranie of Du Bartas is another and more fervid expression of this same ideal of Christian poetry. In the Semaines, Du Bartas himself composed the typical biblical poem; and tragedies on Christian or scriptural subjects were composed during the French Renaissance from the time of Buchanan and Beza to that of Garnier and Montchrestien. But Vauquelin's ideal was not that of the later classicism; and Boileau, as has been seen, distinctly rejects Christian themes from modern poetry.

Although the linguistic and prosodic theories of the PlÉiade partly anticipate both the theory and the practice of later classicism, the members of the school exhibit numerous deviations from what was afterward accepted as inviolable law in French poetry. The most important of these deviations concerns the use of words from the various French dialects, from foreign tongues, and from the technical and mechanical arts. A partial expression of this theory of poetic language has already been seen in Du Bellay's DÉfense et Illustration, in which the poet is urged to use the more elegant technical dialectic terms. Ronsard gives very much the same advice. The best words in all the French dialects are to be employed by the poet; for it is doubtless to the number of the dialects of Greece that we may ascribe the supreme beauty of its language and literature. The poet is not to affect too much the language of the court, since it is often very bad, being the language of ladies and of young gentlemen who make a profession of fighting well rather than of speaking well.[416] Unlike Malherbe and his school, Ronsard allows a certain amount of poetic license, but only rarely and judiciously. It is to poetic license, he says, that we owe nearly all the beautiful figures with which poets, in their divine rapture, enfranchising the laws of grammar, have enriched their works. "This is that birthright," said Dryden, a century later, in the preface of his State of Innocence and the Fall of Man, "which is derived to us from our great forefathers, even from Homer down to Ben; and they who would deny it to us have, in plain terms, the fox's quarrel to the grapes—they cannot reach it." Vauquelin de la Fresnaye follows Ronsard and Du Bellay in urging the use of new and dialect words, the employment of terms and comparisons from the mechanic arts, and the various other doctrines by which the PlÉiade is distinguished from the school of Malherbe. How these useless linguistic innovations were checked and banished from the French language forever will be briefly alluded to in the next chapter.top