Corneille and his times

Preface

I HAVE reprinted, in the present Volume, one of the first works of my youth, a work pubHshed for the first time in 1813, nearly forty years ago. I have made many changes in it, and I was tempted to change much more. So many years, and such years, develope in the mind entirely new views upon all subjects, upon literature as well as life ; and no one is ignorant of the discoveries which we may make by changing our horizon, without changing our ideas. Perhaps, therefore, I ought to have re-written my work. I did not wish to do so. A book must exist and last out its time as it is. This book is, if I mistake not, a faithful image of the spirit which prevailed, forty years ago, in literature, among the men who cultivated it, and the public who loved it.

For literature was carefully cultivated and truly loved at that time, which left it so httle space for its manifestation. Never had the rude hand of politics

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SO completely held dominion over France ; never had force so incessantly filled years, months, and days with its actions and hazards. War seemed to have become the normal state of human society, — not war restrained within certain hmits by the law of nations and the ancient traditions of States, but war unlimited and immense, overturning, deranging, commingling or separating, violently and without intermission, both governments and nations. During the early days of my youth, and before its termination, I beheld civilised Europe exposed to two opposite deluges of invasion and conquest, the like of which had never been witnessed since the fall of the Roman Empire. During the space of ten years, I beheld the empire of Napoleon — the most dazzhng, the most overwhelming, and the most ephemeral meteor that ever crossed the horizon of the worldarise, grow, extend itself, and vanish away. And it was not only upon the pohtical state of nations, the fate of crowned heads, and the lives of generals and soldiers, that the ever-increasing weight of those vast conflicts which were destined to prove so vain was laid ; their influence extended throughout the whole of society ; no existence, however independent or insignificant it may have been, was exempted from putting forth its share of effort and bearing its part of the general burden ; and domestic life, in the obscurest as well as in the most elevated regions of

PREFACE. vii

society, was stricken by the same blows which overturned the tlirones of kings and effaced the boundaries of empires. In 1810, the commands of absolute power dragged from their homes sons and brothers who had complied with all the obligations of the law, and sent them violently to the army. In 1814, the rural districts were deficient in cultivators ; and, in the towns, suspended labour and abandoned buildings presented an appearance of recent ruins, as strange as it was painful to contemplate.

Such a state of things, in its glories as well as in its disasters, is but ill-suited to the prosperity of literature, which requires either more repose or more liberty. And yet, such is the intellectual vitality of France that, even then, it did not suffer itself to be confined or exhausted in a single career ; but it furnished noble gratifications to the minds of men generally, at the same time that it lavished tens of thousands of brave and energetic soldiers to gratify the insatiable ambition of one man.

Three hterary powers (I do not here allude to scientific men or philosophers) flourished during the Empire, and exercised a pregnant influence both upon authors and upon the public. These were the Journal des Debats, M. de Chateaubriand^ and Mme. de Stael.

The literary restoration of France, — that is, a return to the study of the ancient classics and of viii PEEFACE.

our own French classics, the great writers of the seventeenth century — was the undertaking and the w^ork of the Journal des Debats, It was a work of re-action, often excessive and unjust, as is the case with all re-actions ; but it was a work of good sense and good taste, which led the public mind back to a feeling of the truly beautiful — of that beautiful which is at once grand and simple, eternal and national. It was the characteristic of the seventeenth century in France that literature was then cultivated for its own sake, not as an instrument for the propagation of certain systems, and for ensuring the success of particular designs. Corneille, Racine, and Boileau, and even Moliere and La Fontaine, entertained, upon the great philosophical and political questions of the day, either very decided opinions, or very marked tendencies ; Pascal and La Bruyere, Bossuet and Fenelon, made more of philosophy and polemics than any other writers at any other period have been able to do. But, in their hterary activity, these great men had no other pre -occupation than the beautiful and the true, and were anxious to paint them well and skilfully only that they might gain for them greater admiration. They felt, for the object of their labours, a love which was pure from every other thought, and which was as serious as it was pure ; for, whilst they did not assume to rule society by their writings, they aspired to something far above the

PREFACE. IX

mere amusement of mankind. A frivolous and worldly entertainment was as far from their intentions as a hauglity or indirect propagandism. At once modest and proud, they demanded of literature, for the public as well as for themselves, none but intellectual enjoyments ; but they introduced and infused into these enjoyments a profound and almost solemn feeling, believing themselves called upon to elevate the souls of men by charming them with the exhibition of the beautiful, and not merely to arouse them for a moment from their idleness or ennui.

And not only is this the great characteristic of the literature of the seventeenth century, but it was by this that the seventeenth century was essentiall}^ and supremely a literary age. The Muses, to speak in classic language, are jealous divinities ; they will reign and not serve, be adored and not employed ; and they bestow all their treasures only upon those who seek after them solely to enjoy them, and not to expend them upon foreign uses. It was on this account also that the Journal des Dehats, fifty years ago, became a literary power. Other journals devoted themselves, with considerable talent, to literature ; but the Journal des Debats was able, better than any other, to discern and appropriate to itself, as it were, the truly literary idea. It reminded literature of its own power, by referring it to the examples of the time at which it had shone with

X PEEFACE.

greatest lustre, as regarded itself, and had been animated by the purest and most independent feeling of its mission. The principal writers in the Journal des Debats, at the time to which I allude — MM. Geoffrey, Feletz, Dussault, Fievee, and Hoffmann — were, in themselves, men of very distinguished mental powers ; but if they had written isolatedly, and each one had followed the bent of his own inclination, they would assuredly have obtained far less general authority and personal renown. They grouped themselves around one thought — the literary restoration of the seventeenth century ; with this object, and beneath this standard, they attacked the writers of the following century and of the age in which they lived, whether philosophers or scholars, poets or prose-writers, — men to whose influence they had long submitted, and whose tastes and ideas they frequently, at bottom, still retained. And by placing themselves thus, in the sphere of literature, at the head of the general movement of anti -revolutionary re-action, their journal became the literary journal par ewcellence, and they obtained a real sway over the public judgment and taste. ,

In the very midst of this dominion, and with the entire favour of the journal which wielded it, arose the boldest innovator and the most modern genius that has illustrated our contemporary hteraturo : I mean M. de Chateaubriand, a genius as little akin to

PEEFACE. XI

the seventeenth century as to the eighteenth, a briUiant interpreter of the incoherent ideas and disturbed feelings of the nineteenth, and himself affected by those maladies of our time which he so well understood and described, flattering and opposing them by turns. Kead once again the " Essai Historique sur les Revolutions," "Rene,'' and the " Memoires d'Outretombe," those three works in which M. de Chateaubriand, in his youth, his mature age, and his old age, has pourtrayed himself with such complacency ; is there a single one of our dispositions and of our moral infirmities which is not contained therein ? Our vast hopes, our speedy disappointments, our changeful temptations, our perpetual ardours, exhaustions, and revivals, our alternating ambitions and susceptibilities, our returns to faith and our relapses into doubt, our aspirations sometimes towards authority and sometimes towards liberty, — that activity at once indefatigable and uncertain, that commingling of noble passions and of egotism, that fluctuation between the past and the future, indeed all those variable and ill-assorted features which, for half a century, have characterised the state of society and of the human soul amongst us, — of all these things M. de Chateaubriand was conscious in his own person, and his works, like his life, everywhere attest their influence and bear their impress. Hence arose his popularity, which was general, in spite of our dissensions, and continued, xn PEEFACE.

notwithstanding our political and literary revolutions. The lettered and travelled gentleman Avho so boldly yielded to the exuberance of an imagination enriched with the treasures of all ages and of all worlds, the author who made so novel and sometimes so rash an use of our language, — this poetical and romantic prose-writer gained the admiration of the purest and most rigid judges, of M. de Fontanes, of M. Bertin, and of all the classic school of the Journal des Debats. The political emigre and partisan of the Bourbons, who, whenever the sovereign and definitive question was proposed, invariably ranged himself on the side of ancient recollections, has always obtained or regained the favour of the young liberal, and even revolutionary, generations. He was attentive and skilful in concihating these various suffrages ; he possessed an instinctive perception of public impressions, and could select, from his own feelings, that which was likely to please them. But this skilfulness would never have sufficed to gain him such difficult and opposite successes, unless he had been, by his merits as well as by his defects, by the good qualities as well as by the weaknesses of his character and genius, in harmony with his age ; he answered to inclinations and tastes which, though very different in other respects, were equally eager after, and delighted with, the gratifications which he offered them. For this reason, in politics, notwithstanding

PREFACE. xiii

his continual reverses, he was always a formidable adversary^ and in literature, from the same cause, he exercised over the whole of the public, over those minds which distrusted him as well as over those who blindly admired or imitated him, a most prompt, and remarkable influence.

Madame de Stael was not adapted thus to please so many different parties and tastes. She was a passionate and sincere person, who had her feelings and ideas seriously at heart, and she was, at the same time, a faithful representative of the eighteenth century, in its best and noblest aspirations. So true a nature, formed in the midst of so factitious a state of society, and so brilliant a mixture of the life of the soul and the life of the salons, of inner emotions and worldly impressions, have rarely been met with. This is the original and striking feature in Madame de Stael, and this forms her strong bond of union with the eighteenth century, although, in other and important respects, she differs widely from it. It was an age full of confusion and contradiction, of serious ambition and frivolous manners, of generosity and personality, — which became intoxicated at once with moral sentiments and with ideas destructive of all morahty, which desired to attain to goodness whilst utterly disregarding its source and laws, and which led men to the gates of Hell by dreaming for them, with lively and sincere sympathy, of innocence xiv PREFACE.

and the happiness of Paradise. Madame de Stael retained, under the Empire, the generous sentiments of that old Hberal regime amidst which her youth had been passed ; her mind had become elevated and purified without detriment to her faith ; and independently of their intrinsic merit, her works, whatever they might be, literature, philosophy, romance, morality or personal memoirs, received therefrom a powerful element of attraction. When a people has engaged with passionate earnestness in a great movement on behalf of a great cause, no mistakes, no disasters, no remorse, no re-action, however natural and mighty it may be, can efface from its heart the remembrance of its first days of strength and hope. The Revolution which began in 1789 has already received, and will perhaps continue to receive, some harsh lessons ; it has already cost, and will perhaps continue to cost, France very dear ; the Empire, which sprang from it, disowned and maltreated it strangely; and yet 1789 was, under the Empire, and is at the present day, and will always continue to be, a great national date, a powerful word, most dear to France. Madame de Stael was and remained attached to 1789; she clung to it by fibres ever living, even where they seemed utterly deadened. The numerous readers of her writings delighted to find in them — some their recollections and the image, manners and tone of that

PREFACE. >:v

old society in wliich they had moved, and others their hopes, and a living faith in the principles of that future which they had dreamed of for their country ; for all, they contained matter either for sympathy, for criticism, or for commentary ; and each new work of Madame de Stael constituted, in the literary world, in the drawing-rooms of fashion, and even among the scattered and distant public, an intellectual event, a theme of conversation, of discussions, of reminiscences, or of prospects full of movement and interest.

I am desirous to pass over no merit, and to offend no memory : the literature of the Empire certainly presents other names which justly occupied public attention at that time, and which ought not now to be forgotten. I persist, however, in my conviction : the Journal des Debats, that association of judicious restorers of the literary ideas and tastes of the seventeenth century — M. de Chateaubriand, that brilhant and sympathetic interpreter of the moral and intellectual perplexities of the nineteenth — and Madame de Stael, that noble echo of the generous sentiments and noble aspirations of the eighteenth, — are the three influences, the three powers, which, under the Empire, truly acted upon our literature and left their impress upon its history.

And all these three powers were in opposition. The incidents of their life would teach us this even xvi PREFACE.

if their writings did not exist to prove it. By an unexampled act of confiscation, the Journal des Debats was taken out of the hands of its proprietors ; M. de Chateaubriand was excluded from the French Academy ; and Madame de Stael spent ten years in exile.

Absolute power is not the necessary enemy of literature, nor is literature necessarily its enemy. Witness Louis XIV. and his age. But for Kterature to flourish under such a state of things, and to embellish it with its splendour, absolute power must be acknowledged by the general moral belief of the public, and not merely accepted as a result of circumstance, in the name of necessity. It is also requisite that the possessor of absolute authority should know how to respect the dignity of the great minds that cultivate literature, and to leave them sufficient liberty for the unrestrained manifestation of their powers. France and Bossuet believed sincerely in the sovereign right of Louis XIV. ; Moliere and La Fontaine freely ridiculed his courtiers as well as his subjects ; and Racine, through the mouth of Joad, addressed to the little king Joas precepts witli which the great king was not offended. When Louis XIV., during his persecution of the Jansenists, said to Boileau : "I am having search made for M. Arnauld in every direction," Boileau replied : " Your Majesty is always fortunate ; you will not

PREFACE. 3LVU

find him ;" and the king smiled at the courageous wit of the poet, without showing any symptoms of anger. On such conditions, absolute power can co-exist harmoniously with the greatest and most highspirited minds that have ever devoted themselves to literature. But nothing of the kind was the case under the Empire. The Emperor Napoleon, who had saved France from anarchy, and was covering her with glory in Europe, was nevertheless regarded, by all clear-sighted and sensible men, merely as the sovereign master of a temporary government, in little harmony with the general tendencies of society, and commanded by necessity rather than established in faith. He was served, and with good reason, by men of eminent minds and noble characters, for his government was necessary and great ; but beyond his government, in the regions of thought, great minds and lofty characters possessed neither independence nor dignity. Napoleon was not wise enough to leave them their part in space ; and he feared without respecting them. Perhaps he could not possibly have acted otherwise ; and perhaps this may have been a vice of his position, as much as an error of his genius. Nowhere, in no degree, and under no form, did the Empire tolerate opposition. In France, in the age in which we live, this becomes, sooner or later, even for the strongest governments, a deceitful snare and an immense danger. After xviii PEEFACE.

fifteen years of glorious absolute power, Napoleon fell ; the proprietors of the Journal des Debats regained possession of their property ; M. de Chateaubriand celebrated the return of the Bourbons ; and Madame de Stael beheld the great desires of 1789 consecrated by the Charter of Louis XVIII. And now, after thirty-four years of that system for

which our fathers longed so ardently ! God

gives us severe lessons, which we must comprehend and accept, without despairing of the good cause. After having witnessed these prodigious vicissitudes of human affairs, we are equally cured of presumption and of discouragement.

When, in 1813, I pubHshed this sketch of the literature of the seventeenth century, I was aided in my labour by a person to whom I was long indebted for my happiness, and to whom I shall ever owe the dearest recollections of my life. The essays on Corneille's three contemporaries, Chapelain, Rotrou, and Scarron, were prepared and, to a great extent, written out by her. I have carefully revised them, as well as the essays on Poetry in France before the Time of Corneille, and on Corneille himself; and I leave them in their place as an integral part of this work.

The Appendices annexed to the life of Corneille, have been furnished to me by the friendship of that learned Norman archaeologist, M. Floquet, whose

PREFACE. xix

researches have elucidated so many important points in our poHtical and hterary history, and who is now preparing a work on the Life and Writings of Bossuet, which is full of real discoveries. My gratitude to him, I am sure, only anticipates that of the public.

GUIZOT.

Paris : May 24, 1852.