soil and native. Very early In the century Alain René le Sage (1668–1747), in the admirable comedy of Turcaret, produced a
work not unworthy to stand by the side of all but his master’s
best. Philippe Destouches (1680–1754) was also a fertile comedy
writer in the early years of the century, and in Le Glorieux and
Le Philosophe marié achieved considerable success. As the age
went on, comedy, always apt to lay hold of passing events,
devoted itself to the great struggle between the Philosophes and
their opponents. Curiously enough, the party which engrossed
almost all the wit of France had the worst of it in this dramatic
portion of the contest, if in no other. The Méchant of Gresset and
the Métromanie of Alexis Piron (1689–1773) were far superior
to anything produced on the other side, and the Philosophes of
Charles Palissot de Montenoy (1730–1814), though scurrilous
and broadly farcical, had a great success. On the other hand, it
was to a Philosophe that the invention of a new dramatic style
was due, and still more the promulgation of certain ideas on
dramatic criticism and construction, which, after being filtered
through the German mind, were to return to France and to
exercise the most powerful influence on its dramatic productions. Diderot (plays).
This was Denis Diderot (1713–1784), the most fertile
genius of the century, but also the least productive
in finished and perfect work. His chief dramas, the
Fils naturel and the Père de famille, are certainly not great
successes; the shorter plays, Est-il bon? est-il méchant? and
La Pièce et le prologue, are better. But it was his follower
Michel Jean Sédaine (1719–1797) who, in Le Philosophe sans le
savoir and other pieces, produced the best examples of the bourgeois
as opposed to the heroic drama. Diderot is sometimes
credited or discredited with the invention of the Comédie Larmoyante,
a title which indeed his own plays do not altogether refuse,
but this special variety seems to be, in its invention, rather the
property of Pierre Claude Nivelle de la Chaussée (1692–1754).
Comedy sustained itself, and even gained ground towards the end
of the century; the Jeune Indienne of Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794),
if not quite worthy of its author’s brilliant talent in other
paths, is noteworthy, and so is the Billet perdu of Joseph François
Edouard de Corsembleu Desmahis (1722–1761), while at the
extreme limit of our present period there appears the remarkable
figure of Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732–1799). The
Mariage de Figaro and the Barbier de Séville are well known as
having had attributed to them no mean place among the literary
causes and forerunners of the Revolution. Their dramatic and
literary value would itself have sufficed to obtain attention for
them at any time, though there can be no doubt that their
popularity was mainly due to their political appositeness. The
most remarkable point about them, as about the school of
comedy of which Congreve was the chief master in England at
the beginning of the century, was the abuse and superfluity of
wit in the dialogue, indiscriminately allotted to all characters
alike. It is difficult to give particulars, but would be improper
to omit all mention, of such dramatic or quasi-dramatic work
as the libretti of operas, farces for performance at fairs and the
like. French authors of the time from Le Sage downwards
usually managed these with remarkable skill.
18th-Century Fiction.—With prose fiction the case was altogether different. We have seen how the short tale of a few pages had already in the 16th century attained high if not the highest excellence; how at three different periods the fancy for long-winded prose narration developed itself in the prose rehandlings of the chivalric poems, in the Amadis romances, and in the portentous recitals of Gomberville and La Calprenède; how burlesques of these romances were produced from Rabelais to Scarron; and how at last Madame de Lafayette showed the way to something like the novel of the day. If we add the fairy story, of which Perrault and Madame d’Aulnoy were the chief practitioners, and a small class of miniature romances, of which Aucassin et Nicolette in the 13th, and the delightful Jehan de Paris (of the 15th or 16th, in which a king of England is patriotically sacrificed) are good representatives, we shall have exhausted the list. The 18th century was quick to develop the system of the author of the Princesse de Clèves, but it did not abandon the cultivation of the romance, that is to say, fiction dealing with incident and with the simpler passions, in devoting itself to the novel, that is to say, fiction dealing with the analysis of sentiment and character. Le Sage, its first great novelist, in his Diable boiteux and Gil Blas, went to Spain not merely for his subject but also for his inspiration and manner, following the lead of the picaroon romance of Rojas and Scarron. Like Fielding, however, whom he much resembles, Le Sage mingled with the romance of incident the most careful attention to character and the most lively portrayal of it, while his style and language are such as to make his work one of the classics of French literature. The novel of character was really founded in France by the abbé Prévost d’Exilles (1697–1763), the author of Cleveland and of the incomparable Manon Lescaut. The popularity of this style was much helped by the immense vogue in France of the works of Richardson. Side by side with it, however, and for a time enjoying still greater popularity, there flourished a very different school of fiction, of which Voltaire, whose name occupies the first or all but the first place in every branch of literature of his time, was the most brilliant cultivator. This was a direct development of the earlier conte, and consisted usually of the treatment, in a humorous, satirical, and not always over-decent fashion, of contemporary foibles, beliefs, philosophies and occupations. These tales are of every rank of excellence and merit both literary and moral, and range from the astonishing wit, grace and humour of Candide and Zadig to the book which is Diderot’s one hardly pardonable sin, and the similar but more lively efforts of Crébillon fils (1707–1777). These latter deeps led in their turn to the still lower depths of La Clos and Louvet. A third class of 18th-century fiction consists of attempts to return to the humorous fatrasie of the 16th century, attempts which were as much influenced by Sterne as the sentimental novel was by Richardson. The Homme aux quarante écus of Voltaire has something of this character, but the most characteristic works of the style are the Jacques le fataliste of Diderot, which shows it nearly at its best, and the Compère Mathieu, sometimes attributed to Pigault-Lebrun (1753–1835), but no doubt in reality due to Jacques du Laurens (1719–1797), which shows it at perhaps its worst. Another remarkable story-teller was Cazotte (1719–1792), whose Diable amoureux displays much fantastic power, and connects itself with a singular fancy of the time for occult studies and diablerie, manifested later by the patronage shown to Cagliostro, Mesmer, St Germain and others. In this connexion, too, may perhaps also be mentioned most appropriately Restif de la Bretonne, a remarkably original and voluminous writer, who was little noticed by his contemporaries and successors for the best part of a century. Restif, who was nicknamed the “Rousseau of the gutter,” Rousseau du ruisseau, presents to an English imagination many of the characteristics of a non-moral Defoe. While these various schools busied themselves more or less with real life seriously depicted or purposely travestied, the great vogue and success of Télémaque produced a certain number of didactic works, in which moral or historical information was sought to be conveyed under a more or less thin guise of fiction. Such was the Voyage du jeune Anacharsis of Jean Jacques Barthélemy (1716–1795); such the Numa Pompilius and Gonzalve de Cordoue of Florian (1755–1794), who also deserves notice as a writer of pastorals, fables and short prose tales; such the Bélisaire and Les Incas of Jean François Marmontel (1723–1799). Between this class and that of the novel of sentiment may perhaps be placed Paul et Virginie and La Chaumière indienne; though Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814) should more properly be noticed after Rousseau and as a moralist. Diderot’s fiction-writing has already been referred to more than once, but his Religieuse deserves citation here as a powerful specimen of the novel both of analysis and polemic; while his undoubted masterpiece, the Neveu de Rameau, though very difficult to class, comes under this head as well as under any other. There are, however, two of the novelists of this age, and of the most remarkable, who have yet to be noticed, and these are the author of Marianne and the author of Julie. We do
