Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/701

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY POETRY.] of David. His OJes and his Cantates, though still to English taste curiously devoid of the poetical je ne sais quoi, which an Englishman rarely finds in any French lyrist between Uegnier and Hugo, are perhaps less destitute of that spirit than the work of any other poet during that long period excepting Andre" Che tuer. Rousseau was also an extremely successful epigrammatist, having in this respect, too, resem blances to Marot. Le Franc de Pompignan (1709-1784), to whom Voltaire s well-known sarcasms are not altogether just, and Louis Racine (1692-1763), who wrote pious and altogether forgotten poems, belonged to the same poetical school ; though both the style and matter of Racine arc strongly tinctured by his Port Royalist sympathies and education. Those authors form the first of the three poeti cal schools of the century, though perhaps it would be svfer to mark out only two, leaving Voltaire to himself as a master of both schools and a member of neither. The iirst method of versifying, indeed, subdivided itself into classes, not dissimilar in style to those which we have noticed in the preceding age as characterized respectively by elegance of a somewhat frivolous kind, and jollity not always free from ignoble admixture. The former was represented in the 18th century by the long-lived St Aulaire (1 043-1742), by Gentil Bernard, by the Abbe (afterwards Cardinal) de Bernis (1715-1794), by Dorat (1714-1789), and by Parny (1753-1814), the last the most vigorous, but all somewhat deserving the term applied to Darat of ver luisant du Parnasse. The jovial traditions of St Amand begat a similar school of anacreontic song sters, which, represented in turn by Panard (1674-1765), Colic (1709-1783), Gouflfe (1775-1845), and Desaugiers (1772-1S27), lei directly to the best of all such writers, Beranger. To this class Rouget de Lisle (1760-1836) perhaps also belongs ; though his most famous composition, the Marseillaise, is of a different stamp. Nor is the account of the light verse of the 18th century complete without reference to a long succession of fable writers, who, in an unbroken chain, connect La Fontaine in the 17th century with M. Viennet in the 19th. None of the links, however, of this chain, with the exception of Florian, deserve much attention. The universal faculty of Voltaire (1694-1778) showed itself in his poetical productions no less than in his other works, and it is perhaps not least remarkable in verse. It is impossible now-a-days to regard the Henriade as anything but a highly successful prize poem, but the burlesque epic of La Piicelle, discreditable as it may be from the moral point of view, is remarkable enough as literature. The epistles and satires are among the best of their kind, the verse tales are in the same way admirable, and the epigrams, impromptus, and short miscellaneous poems generally are the ne plus ultra of verse which is not poetry. It is impossible, more over, not to be grateful to Voltaire for refusing to counte nance by his example the second school of verse to which we have alluded. The Anglomania of the century extended into poetry, and the Seasons of Thomson set the example of a whole library of tedious descriptive verse, which in its turn revenged France upon England by producing or helping to produce English poems of the Darwin school. The first of these descriptive performances was the Saisons of St Lambert (1717-1803), identical in title with its model, but of infinitely inferior value. St Lambert was followed by Delille (1738-1813) in Les Janlins, Le Mierre (1723- 1793) in Lcs Pastes, and Roucher (1745-1794) in Les Mois. Indeed, everything that could be described was seized upon by these describers. Delille also translated the Ceoryic.s, and for a time was the greatest living poet of France, the title being only disputed by Le Brun (1729- 1807), a lyrist and ode writer of the school of J. B. Rousseau, but not destitute of energy. The only other poets until Chenier who deserve notice are Gilbert (1751- 665 1780), the French Chatterton, or perhaps rather the French Oldham, who died in a workhouse at twenty-nine after producing some vigorous satires and, at the point of death, an elegy of great beauty, and Gresset (1709-1777), the author of Ver- Vert and of other poems of the lighter order, which are not far, if at all, below the level of Voltaire. Andre Chenier (1762-1794) stands far apart from the art Chenier. of his century, though the strong chain of custom, and his early death by the guillotine, prevented him from breaking through the fatal restraints of its language and its versifica tion. Chenier, half a Greek by blood, was wholly one in spirit and sentiment. The manner of his verses, the very air which surrounds them and which they diffuse, are different from those of the 18th century ; and his poetry is probably the utmost that the language and versification of Racine could produce. To do more, the Revolution which followe 1 a generation after his death was required. 18th Century Drama. The results of the cultivation of dramatic poetry at this time were even less individually remarkable than those of the attention paid to poetry proper. Here again the astonishing power and literary aptitude of Voltaire gave value to his attempts in a style which, not withstanding that it counts Racine among its practitioners, was none the less predestined to failure. Voltaire s own Voltaire efforts in this kind are indisputably as successful as they (P la J 8 ) could be. Foreigners usually prefer Mahomet and Zaire to Bajazet and Mithridate, though there is no doubt that no work of Voltaire s comes up to Polyeucte and liodogune, as certainly no single passage in any of his plays can approach the best passages of Cinna and Les Horaces. But the remaining tragic writers of the century, with the single exception of Cre"billon ]>ere, are scarcely third-rate. Cre billon (1674-1763) himself had genius, and there are to be found in his work evidences of a spirit which had seemed to die away with /St Genest, and was hardly to revive until Hernani. Of the imitators of Racine and Voltaire, La Motte (1672-1731) in Inez de Castro was not wholly unsuccessful. La Grange-Chancel copied chiefly the worst side of the author of JJritannicus, and Saurin (1706-1781) and De Belloy (1727-1775) performed the same service for Voltaire. There was an infinity of tragic writers and tragic plays in this century, but hardly any others of them even deserve mention. The muse of comedy was decidedly more happy in her devotees. Moliere was a far safer if a more difficult model than Racine, and the inexorable fashion which had bound down tragedy to a feeble imitation of Euripides did not similarly prescribe an undeviating adherence to Terence. Tragedy had never been, has scarcely been since, anything but an exotic in France ; comedy was of the soil and native. Very early in the century Le Sage (1668-1747), in the admirable comedy of Turcarct, produced a work not unworthy to stand by the side of all but his master s best. Destouches (1680-1754) was also a fertile comedy writer in the early years of thu century, and in Le Glorieux and Le Philosopke Marie achieved considerable success. As the age went on, comedy, always apt to lay hold of passing eventa, devoted itself to the great struggle between the Philosophes and their oppon ents. 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 Mediant of Gresset and the Metromanie of Pirou (1689-1773) were far superior to anything produced on the other side, and the Philosophes of Palissot (1734-1814), 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 IX. 84